Florida Man

by Tom Cooper

  * * *

  —

  Certain nights dreams harassed him. Nightmares.

  In the dream there was a hand reaching out, reaching. Sometimes it was his daughter. Sometimes it was Heidi.

  Almost always, though, it was his daughter.

  Sometimes there were dreams about the catfaced man coming at him on a Jet Ski. On a giant anhinga. On a giant robotic bat. Out of the darkness.

  Crowe would wake doused, as if he’d been swimming. The sweaty sheets tangled and thrown off the bed and to the corner of the room. His arms reaching and flailing, his hands clutching, in the dark.

  * * *

  —

  April Fool’s, no less.

  Reed Crowe was released April Fool’s Day, 1986.

  Henry Yahchilane picked up Crowe from the hospital in his root-beer-colored van. He drove across the state, two hours through the Everglades on Alligator Alley, from the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf.

  At the Emerald City wharf Yahchilane kept a small aluminum dinghy. It was early evening, two hours of sun left, the clouds like big pink frigates over the bay, when Yahchilane crossed the water to the island. A few tarpon the size of surfboards rolled in the glassy water, their big silver scales glinting.

  They docked at Emerald Island wharf. Yahchilane strode up the embankment to the island-side of the bridge. Crowe crutched after him.

  They crested the embankment.

  “Holy shit,” Crowe said when he saw the demolished bridge.

  Yahchilane laughed his gruff short laughter.

  Crowe asked Yahchilane what was so funny.

  “That contractor,” Yahchilane said, still laughing. By now his laughter had elongated to an old doggy wheeze. All those years of smoking.

  Crowe stood there on his crutches gawking at the wreckage. The balmy bay wind was a bellows to his head after the sarcophagus of the hospital. He imagined a google-eyed Don Knotts as the contractor, the gadzooks! expression. The incredulous tremble of the lips and head.

  And for the first time since Catface, since his stroke, since the beginning of this, Crowe laughed—or close to laughed, his stroke-victim version of it.

  The matter was decided.

  The contractor fucked off from whence he came.

  * * *

  —

  For months Crowe pondered how the catfaced man found him. He suspected Schaffer might have played a part in spreading the word. Or Wayne. Or perhaps hearsay and rumor and backroom talk meandered up the coast, unfurling like the mother of all plants up the land of ten thousand islands, tendriling up the trellis of Florida. He kept vigilant for any sign that someone else was out to get him, but after a time he convinced himself that it was paranoia.

  * * *

  —

  When she first saw Crowe, Heidi Karavas tried to hide her dismay. “Oh, Reed. Reed, what the fuck happened? I didn’t know. I had no way of knowing.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. A heavy slur, like he was drunk.

  She thought he was kidding. He was a kidder. But even this would be going too far for Reed Crowe.

  She excused herself. She said she had to go to the bathroom. He could hear her soft sobs coming muffled through the door.

  Oh, how he wished he was fucking joking.

  She asked about the bridge. Of course she asked about the bridge. Everyone was asking everyone else about the bridge in Emerald City. Speculation ran amok about the culprit. Were his situation different, Crowe was sure Heidi would have asked if he was somehow responsible. If his stroke and the bridge explosion were connected.

  Lord knew he’d gotten into trouble before.

  * * *

  —

  After a lasagna dinner, Heidi Karavas delivered the news to Reed Crowe that she was leaving again, this time off to Italy for a three-year residency in Florence. She told him sheepishly, as if dreading his reaction.

  He said nothing for a while. They were sitting on the sofa in the sunroom. They had a view of the dunes, the whispering sea oats. The big harvest moon over the dark Gulf.

  They were into their second bottle of cabernet.

  Crowe started railing about the time change. He’d gotten his voice back by now. He was a talker. Yahchilane liked pointing that out during the recovery lessons. “Yeah, yeah, egghead, I know you want to call your weed dealer, so you better start practicing quick. Because I can’t read your fuckin’ handwriting.”

  Yahchilane. God bless the man. His friend after all these years. Though Crowe considered him a complete island crank. As Yahchilane considered him, Crowe was sure.

  And now that he had his mouth back, Crowe railed. “Complete idiocy.” It sounded like “idioticity” but goddamn it if he wasn’t getting there. “Dark at six stead’a nine. Saving time? For who? Who farms anymore, right? Right? Who saves time?”

  Heidi set down her wine. “Every year the same rant.” She took the white afghan throw draped on the back of the sofa and snugged it over her brown shoulders, bare in the orange sleeveless sundress.

  She rested her hand on his forearm. He looked at her. “Three years,” he said. A catch in his throat.

  She drew in a long sharp breath, steeling herself. “You can visit.”

  “Come on.”

  “You come on.”

  Crowe said nothing. He sipped his wine.

  “It works both ways. Once you’re there, you’re there.”

  “Three years.”

  He took two more quick sips of his wine. He was about to cry.

  Heidi asked, “Don’t you ever feel isolated?”

  “No.”

  “Ever?”

  “No.”

  “Come on.”

  “I got a car. I can leave when I want.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, it’s getting late.”

  “Reed.”

  “No, that’s okay. I got to go to bed.”

  He rose and picked up his glass and started walking to the kitchen.

  “It wouldn’t be a betrayal, you know.”

  Crowe halted. Half turned. He asked her what she meant.

  “She’s not here-here. You wouldn’t be leaving her.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  CALUSA CAUSEWAY

  IT TOOK SEVERAL MONTHS TO REPAIR the bridge whole. And it was a month before the Emerald Island bridge was patched and buttressed enough to let through one car at a time.

  But those several weeks before that ersatz route was constructed, the only way to and from the island was via boat.

  Those fortnights the island was as desolate and quiet as it was in the pioneer days. Only the hale and hearty islanders stayed, the denizens with the old Conch blood.

  * * *

  —

  In 1987 the visitors were few, the island preternaturally quiet. Even the Afro-Caribbean music every Friday and Saturday at the Rum Jungle, the steel drums and marimbas and scratchy Spanish guitar: silenced.

  So Reed Crowe’s daily walks were in solitude. At night, when the moon was new and not yet a crescent-waxed, the night sky was as he remembered it as a young boy. A planetarium of stars across deep Florida dark.

  Meteor showers. Small weather satellites zipping along the skyscape like misrouted comets. Lost UFOs.

  * * *

  —

  Between the medical bills and the time he would have to spend convalescing, Crowe’s stroke cost Reed Crowe his financial stability. He was faced with a choice. He could sell some of the land on Emerald Island, and that would no doubt cause a major rift within the community, because it would mean ceding the preserved land to commercial enterprise and development.

  On the other hand
, all his financial woes still tormented him, kept him awake.

  Ultimately, after a hard few seasons, Crowe opted to put the Emerald Island Inn for sale. Someone else could take care of it, renovate it, because its heyday, for Reed Crowe, had long come and gone. The FOR SALE sign wasn’t up a day before he received a call. From Eddie. He and his family wanted to buy the motel. It would have to be a handshake arrangement, for myriad reasons, and Crowe and Eddie had no choice but to trust each other, seeing that a laissez-faire principle prevailed on the island.

  * * *

  —

  When the bridge was finally repaired in full Crowe in rare semi-formal attire—chinos and button-down white Oxford tucked in with a lizard-skin belt—attended the dedication ceremony.

  And Yahchilane attended, in his denim on denim. His hair ocean-washed and in stiff curls. A cigarette smoking in the crease of his lips.

  The benefactors dedicated the bridge to the Native American diaspora hailing from that area of Florida. Christened it the Calusa Causeway.

  There was a ribbon-cutting with giant cartoon scissors. A retinue of old Conchs with houses on the island, snowbirds one and all, wearing their finest hot weather finery.

  The women wore gold seashell jewelry. They were well-tanned and cap-toothed.

  Their husbands were well-tanned and cap-toothed too. They clapped and whistled and bravo’ed. They shook hands and embraced and took pictures.

  The benefactors made a short speech. The birdwatchers. The Emerald Island book club.

  Then one of the snowbird biddies asked Yahchilane if he’d like to say a few words.

  The group of two dozen people were beginning to sweat in the Florida heat.

  Yahchilane was caught unawares when the silver-haired Conch women from Naples presented him with a green bottle.

  Yahchilane looked at the bottle. “I don’t drink champagne.”

  There was a smattering of laughter. It quickly ceased when the expression on Yahchilane’s face didn’t change.

  “No, no, Mr. Yahchilane. To christen the bridge.”

  Yahchilane considered what the woman was asking. “I’m not doing that, lady,” he said. “I’m sorry. Sure way to get cut and don’t wanna go to the hospital.”

  He asked the lady to hold the bottle.

  The woman’s face ticked. Her eyes found her husband, a bow-tied man in a seersucker suit who shook his head in a quick and tight way. His face was constricted.

  The nonplussed woman cradled the champagne to her heat-rashed bosom.

  Finally Yahchilane looked up and down the length of the bridge. Took the cigarette from his mouth and held it smoldering between his big-knuckled hand. He said, “Looks like it’ll work.”

  1988

  THEN CAME DAYS REED CROWE WAS smote with self-pity. Days he was overcome with bewilderment. Days he felt like a cripple, like a eunuch. Days when he was full of fear that he would never be the same. That his life was over. Days when he was resigned to becoming a sot, a beach bum, a burnout.

  More than he was, that is, before.

  Everyday errands and chores were puzzles to solve. Communication, an Olympic feat. His tongue writhed like a clumsy slug in his mouth. The words came out marble-mouthed.

  In those dark days of autumn after Heidi left for Europe, Eddie and Yahchilane were his most frequent visitors. He shunned others. Partly out of embarrassment and vanity. But it was also to spare others the awkwardness. He noticed their doleful piteous looks. He noticed how they struggled for words, always coming up with the same platitudes and sentiments.

  Hey, he wouldn’t know what to say either. He was sure whatever it was would be unadulterated bullshit.

  So he stayed home. He stayed home even as people kept leaving messages on the answering machine.

  Myrtle, Red Hamilton.

  One day Chill Norton chastised him. “It’s been a minute, Reedy. You want me to bring you over some oysters? Those’ll go down easy.” Pause. “What’re you doin’ over there? Whacking off?” Another pause. “Is it true what they say?” Then there was a smile in his voice. “When your arm falls asleep, it’s like getting a tug job from a stranger? Huh? Ah, fuck you, Reedy, come on.”

  Yahchilane would bring over conch and clam chowder from the Blue Parrot. From his home Eddie would bring picadillo, sopa de pollo, ropa vieja, leftovers in Tupperware.

  And then one day Eddie brought over another surprise.

  Mariposa.

  * * *

  —

  Mariposa came on weekdays, every weekday aside from Friday, to help Crowe with his recuperation.

  When before he embarked on his convalescence halfheartedly, now Crowe threw himself into the challenge fully.

  He worked on his exercises with Mariposa. Knee extensions in the BarcaLounger. Wrist bends. Wrist extensions. Ball grips with a tennis ball.

  At the kitchen table he laced his weak fingers together around a water bottle and tried to scoot it around in circles. He could not. He shook his head in anger and dejection.

  “No woe-is-me shit, Uncle Reed.”

  Crowe sat there at the table with his head hung. The sea out there, so far away. The seagulls and sea oats. It would take him half a day to crutch that distance.

  Across from him Mariposa, struck with a fresh idea, slapped her hands onto the table. “How about this,” she said. “How about I make it your beer. How about I make it a bong. You got a bong in the house? Okay, we’ll make it a beer.”

  “You don’t have to come around here.”

  “I know.”

  “Your mother.”

  “Let me worry about my mother.”

  “If you say so.”

  And so he endured, he abided, one sunset and one sunrise at a time. He lived through his first time as a convalescent. Lived by looking forward to his visits from the girl. Hearing about her life as he worked on his repetitions.

  Soon after Crowe was fully ambulatory Mariposa told Crowe that she had something to tell him. That maybe he should sit down.

  “I been sitting for a goddamn year,” he said.

  It was a few weeks before Thanksgiving, nights getting darker earlier and earlier.

  “Sit,” Mariposa told him.

  Crowe sat in his sunroom BarcaLounger.

  And it was then when Mariposa told him that Wayne Wade was still alive.

  Crowe was glad he’d sat, though he didn’t believe what he heard.

  “Sometimes I wonder,” Crowe began. Then his throat caught. His voice. “Sometimes I wonder if I ruined your life.”

  Mariposa was taken aback. “My god, Uncle Reed. No. No.” She leaned across the table and took his weather-beaten hands in hers.

  Crowe sat there thunderstruck, disbelieving.

  Mariposa wiped the tears off Crowe’s cheeks with her knuckles.

  Crowe was in denial. “He’s been dead for years, honey.”

  “Coconut Grove. I’m positive.”

  “What were you doing all the way in Coconut Grove?”

  “Field trip to Flagler.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He was at an ice cream shop. With a video camera. Sittin’ there in a booth.”

  CRACKER LAZARUS

  AND STILL TO THIS DAY CATFACE stalked Reed Crowe in dreams, tormented his imagination, hurtling out of nightmares on his Jet Ski, a cackling goblin caped with flame, veiled with fire.

  Now it was Wayne Wade who came at him, sometimes on a Jet Ski, sometimes on his tricked-out bike, sometimes with Catface’s face, sometimes with Wayne’s face.

  But he came always out of darkness, always yodeling his cracker laughter.

  * * *

  —

  There was a part of Crowe that remained incredulous, in denial
. He knew how your mind could play tricks on you. Jesus blue Christ, did he know. And say Catface hadn’t slayed Wayne. That Wayne hadn’t bled out and died an agonizing and humiliating death in some godforsaken place. What would be the pervert’s reason to live?

  Perhaps he’d moved onto perversions even more sordid, twisted, unimaginable.

  Shudder at the thought.

  * * *

  —

  Once Crowe had his license reinstated and was recuperated enough to drive he rented a car at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Say Wayne Wade was still living like Mariposa said, he’d spot Crowe’s hatchback at once. So in a gray Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows he cruised the streets of Coconut Grove, of Hialeah. He drove as far north as Boca Raton. Quickly dismissed the place. No, not Wayne Wade’s style.

  For weeks Crowe stuck to the beach strips, looking, looking, to no avail.

  More each day he doubted poor Mariposa. And more each day he was relieved she might have been wrong.

  * * *

  —

  It was finally by stroke of luck that Crowe learned of Wayne Wade’s whereabouts. He was at Charley Alexoupobulos’s hardware store buying lightbulbs.

  “Some tan you got there, Mr. A,” Crowe remarked at the register. “You dating again?”

  It was true. The man with the fierce white hair and mustache looked like he was made of terra cotta.

  “Trying out for Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue next year,” Mr. A joked. Then his face changed. Circumspect wrinkles crimped his nut-brown forehead. “Speaking of tans. You never guess who I saw getting his skinny little ass kicked out of this hotel pool where my sis was staying.”

  PURPLE MARLIN HOTEL

  THERE WERE MANY COMPLAINTS FROM THE visitors at the Purple Marlin Hotel about the carousing malingerer in the hotel pool. He loitered at the cabana bar, tried to engage young bikinied women in conversation. For the most part they ignored him.