Florida Man

by Tom Cooper

  En route to the nursing home they passed one of the old Florida Man Mystery House billboards. The sign was sun-beaten and peeling in swaths and beneath the strips in palimpsest you could see one of those old Coppertone suntan lotion ads, the one with the little pigtailed toddler girl getting her bottoms yanked off by the rambunctious dog, her tan-lined butt showing.

  Yahchilane saw the sign. He was looking straight at it. Smoking his cigarette, his mouth slightly ironic and bitter.

  Crowe felt slovenly, derelict. He had no idea why he gave a fuck. “Yeah, gonna have to give that one up,” he heard himself saying.

  Yahchilane still said nothing. He tapped the ash off his cigarette. He took another deep drag and exhaled and flicked the butt into the saw grass blurring past, a vast track like a serrated savannah.

  A sudden silence filled the car. The air-conditioning blasted on high but still they were sweating in the miserable Florida heat.

  Crowe cleared his throat, ran his fingers through his crinkly beach bum beard, drove on.

  * * *

  —

  At the Poinciana they threw an early birthday party for Crowe’s mother. There was a Carvel ice cream cake shaped like a whale. Fried chicken from Fran’s off Federal Highway in Boca Raton. A resident’s false teeth fell out and there was laughter over this. Then a man named Mr. Brewster pissed his pants and the nurses said it was time to bring the party to a close. Crowe and Yahchilane helped pick up the paper plates and Dixie cups.

  Crowe’s mother thought Henry Yahchilane was someone called Larry.

  “Larry, oh my god, how long has it been?”

  Yahchilane took Crowe aside and asked what to do.

  “Easier just to go along.”

  Henry Yahchilane said to Crowe’s mother, “It’s been a hot minute. How are you, ma’am?”

  “Oh, Reedy’s just bringing me home for Otter’s graduation. Is that why you’re in town?”

  * * *

  —

  There was so much he’d still meant to ask her, especially recently, and now it was too late. Later on in life, perhaps as a result of curbing his vices, Crowe started remembering more by the year instead of less. Maybe something had been knocked loose in his brain. A passage unblocked, like the skull so many years ago rolling into the grotto.

  Memories from when he was five or six came to him.

  He remembered for the first time since perhaps he’d experienced it, his father screaming. He was screaming life, underground, money, over, away, future. Then he heard his mother say Reedy will hear, you’ll scar him for life acting like this.

  Then Crowe remembered the hallway light was on and his red Mickey Mouse suitcase sat beside the door. He glanced at the nightstand clock: one in the morning. He heard a car grumbling outside. He cracked open the drapes and saw an old Buick in the driveway. Behind the windshield his grandparents sat, tired lined faces eerily lit in the streetlight and dashboard glow.

  This was when Crowe heard his father say, “I might as well just blow my head off.”

  Crowe went down the hallway to his parents’ room, creeping so he wouldn’t make a noise. Then he saw his mother standing at the foot of the bed, dressed like she would be during the day, in black pants and an angora sweater. His father sat at the foot of the bed, his face red and tired in the lamplight.

  He saw Crowe. Then Crowe’s mother noticed him too.

  A gun lay in his lap, a .38 special.

  His mother said, “Reedy, go sit in your father’s lap. Don’t be scared. Go sit in your father’s lap and tell him you love him.”

  Crowe went over and his father placed the gun aside on the bedspread. He climbed clumsily onto his lap.

  “Son,” his father said, holding him close, his sobbing voice full of abject animal grief. “My son.”

  What else was going on around this time?

  Did it very much matter now?

  At any rate, there was now no way of knowing. His mother was gone. The disease had eroded her memory bit by bit, until now only a loose scattering of flotsam and jetsam like sea wrack remained.

  * * *

  —

  They loaded her Airhawk reclining gerichair into the back of the van, Yahchilane taking the highway slow as Crowe’s mother dozed. The Florida wilderness scrolled by. A bright haze of green spattered with bright flowers. A Monet gauziness from the heat. Dragonflies hovering everywhere.

  She was asleep when Crowe and Yahchilane carried the chair up the steps and into the house where Crowe put her up in the guest room bed. A palliative care nurse would visit in the morning from Emerald City to discuss home visitation plans.

  But sometime in early evening his mother awoke with a cry. Crowe, sitting in the solarium, set down his glass of wine and half-trotted into the room. His mother was propped up in the bed and looked at him with foggy eyes that didn’t know who he was. That didn’t know where she was. Or maybe who she was.

  “It’s okay, Mama, it’s Reedy,” he told her. “You’re in the beach house.”

  If you’re in trouble, go to the beach house, that used to be the refrain when Crowe was a kid. If you ever get lost, or if you’re ever in trouble, go to the beach house.

  Now, realizing where she was, Crowe’s mother at first seemed disbelieving, even incredulous. Her breath was a labored moan. “I need some sea air.”

  “Then let’s get you some air, Mama.”

  “I think I had an accident.”

  “Don’t you worry about it. Happens to me all the time.”

  He changed her. He lifted her out of bed, so fragile, no more than eighty pounds, and he set her carefully down into her gerichair and wheeled it out into the sunroom and opened the sliding glass doors. He bumped the chair over the transom.

  “Get me a blanket, Reedy. Some water?”

  “Yes, Mama, of course. You comfortable?”

  A feeble nod. A cough that wracked her skinny shoulders. His mother, shrunk to the size of a girl. An old girl.

  He kissed her on her wrinkled, soap-smelling cheek.

  She clasped his hand, a bird-boned papery grasp. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

  The wind chimes hung on the porch clanged mellowly. The distant surf broke, a soft murmur.

  “It is, Mama. I’ll be right back.”

  He went inside and got the blanket and the glass of ice water but by then she was already gone.

  WALK IT OFF

  THE LONG BLACK LONELINESS WEIGHED HIM down like a vulture squatting on his shoulders.

  Mama, Crowe would think.

  He was the oldest Crowe left on earth.

  What were the words? It saddened him that there would be no one left alive who remembered her face.

  His face.

  Lily’s face. Otter’s laugh.

  Who would Lily be now? He wondered if she would be more like him, or like her mother. He wondered if she’d find him the kind of father she’d like. The kind of person.

  He walked it off. He walked in the morning and the night. He walked so much that season that the backs of his knees got sunburned, even before spring.

  A VERY HENRY YAHCHILANE THANKSGIVING

  TRY AS CROWE MIGHT, THERE WAS no avoiding the holidays and their monsoon of sentimentality. Everywhere you turned: colored bulbs and tinsel and fake snow. The glowing red life-sized plastic Santa under the cabana at the Rum Jungle. The weird junky crèches over in Emerald City.

  There was no escape. The saccharine jingles played in the gas stations, the bait shop, on every commercial during football.

  This holiday season especially, with Heidi gone, there seemed no escape.

  His daughter gone longer than she was alive. Otter, Otter, my god Otter, how could you be gone so long?

  And with his dreaded bir
thday on the horizon.

  There were the nights he missed Heidi acutely. A crack gaped wide in his heart. He wanted very much that night to put his nose in her hair. He wanted to feel her hot sticky skin against his. He missed her breath, her accent.

  Sometimes he lost himself in other women, it was true.

  There was a marmalade maker over in Naples, Penny.

  A few days before Thanksgiving, Crowe spent the night at her house.

  The whole night after they fucked, the woman’s cats wouldn’t stop making a racket. The cats loathed Crowe. They smelled Emerald Island cats on him.

  Penny would chuck a doily into the dark. “Stop it, kitties. Stop it. Quit it.” She fussed at them more. She explained to Crowe, “They’re battin’ around the broken angel head. The cats got the damn ornament. They’re battin’ around the damn broken angel head. Hey, kitties. No, kitties. No.”

  It was some wee hour of morning. The two cats, executing acrobatic twists in the air, were flipping the grape-sized porcelain head soccer-like with their hind legs.

  Every so often the head would crash against something in the dark and startle Crowe awake.

  “Godfuckingdamnit.”

  The woman would snap her fingers and fuss again. “Kitties, no, kitties.”

  Finally Crowe sat up to the edge of the bed. The sandy ache of insomnia smarted his eyes. He pulled on his jeans. Porcelain doll faces peered down from the shelves. Some fucked-up spooky demondoll jury.

  “I gotta go.”

  “But it’s the holidays.”

  “I gotta go.”

  “No, kitties, no.”

  * * *

  —

  Let’s beat this motherfucker. So was Reed Crowe’s resolution the night before Thanksgiving.

  He drove over to the Hoggly Woggly and bought all of the traditional holiday fixings. A twelve-pound turkey. New potatoes. String beans. Pecan pie. Cranberry sauce. Yams.

  A few magnums of wine.

  So Crowe the night before got crocked. He cut up celery and chunks of bread and he made homemade stuffing. He peeled the beans. He boiled and mashed the potatoes.

  Before bed, shitfaced, he went outside and told the cats, “Tomorrow, we’re gonna have us a turkey. How’s that sound? Ha. All right. Merry fuckin’ Christmas, man! That’s right. High five? No? Okay, let’s see tomorrow.”

  But in the morning he discovered that he had not taken the turkey out to thaw. All that preparation, and he had not taken the motherfucking turkey out of the fridge in time. The thing, still frozen solid. A bowling ball.

  He made an animal sound of dismay and picked up the frozen plastic-wrapped bird and it fell to the kitchen floor.

  Barefoot he kicked the frozen bird. His toe bones crunched. He wailed and hobbled.

  * * *

  —

  He called Heidi. She did not answer.

  He drank a few glasses of wine.

  He called Heidi again. She did not answer.

  Crowe drank another glass of wine. Remembered all the old Conchs and rummies who used to live on the island, dead for several Christmases.

  This time of year, Good Old Mac, the long-dead bartender of the Rum Jungle, used to have a special fancy drink for him. The Green Eyed Loco Man.

  One day, “There he is, in trouble again, Green Eyed Loco Man.” And without Crowe’s asking, without Mac’s announcing, unbidden, the old man made an elaborate impromptu concoction.

  Aperol, St-Germain, Angostura bitters, chartreuse, spiced rum, Pimm’s, orange zest, cinnamon, mole.

  And it was delicious.

  Refreshing, not too sweet, like a hitherto undiscovered fruit, mellow in the mouth as watermelon, he was the first man to taste.

  A few times a year when he was down in the mouth, stormy-eyed and gloomy—shit, these days few was on the verge of becoming several—Mac would make the drink for him. Again unbidden. And miraculously he replicated it exactly from memory every time.

  Some other classic drink given another name, Crowe was sure.

  But no, the old-timers at the Rum Jungle, inveterate drinkers one and all, vouched for Mac. Swore on their mothers. Swore on their drinks.

  From their earnest oystery eyes Crowe knew they spoke the truth.

  Crowe remembered Old Mac’s last Christmas presiding over the cutting of the turkey, the Santa cap on his head, the apron, beach shorts, flip-flops. The big-bulbed Christmas lights glowing on the wind-bent coconut palms. A soft December wind rustling in the fronds.

  Get out of the house, Crowe told himself. Clear your head.

  So that’s what he did.

  * * *

  —

  At twilight, Reed Crowe in his longshoreman sweater and cargo shorts and moccasins went down the tideline of Emerald Island beach with a bottle of shipwreck wine tucked under his arm.

  He was headed toward Henry Yahchilane’s house.

  At very least the hike would kill an hour. Clear his head.

  He pictured Yahchilane answering the door. His bark-like face. His inscrutable squint. He imagined what he’d say to the man. “Hey, Yahchilane, man, remember that time we almost died? In the cave?”

  Henry Yahchilane would blink his slow turtle-like blinks. Henry Yahchilane would invite him in for a drink. To shoot the shit for a while.

  “Don’t mind if I do, if it’s no inconvenience. Hey, man. Remember the squid, Yahchilane?”

  * * *

  —

  When Reed Crowe reached Henry Yahchilane’s shaggy-shingled barrel house he saw that all the windows were lit. And through the sea-facing windows he could see the high-ceilinged main room lit and full of people. A Christmas tree decorated with ornaments and bulbs and garlanded with tinsel, a hearty monster towering to the ceiling.

  Reed Crowe stood watching the house and was turning away when he saw a tall man coming down the length of the pier.

  Henry Yahchilane.

  “Crowe,” said Yahchilane.

  “Yahchilane,” said Crowe.

  The two old men faced each other on the beach in the waning daylight.

  “You act as if surprised to find me here. This is my house.”

  “Yeah, man, I know.”

  “Are you lit?”

  “Of course.”

  Yahchilane stood there, hands shoved in his jeans, thumbs hooked.

  “Just taking a walk. Happy Thanksgiving and shit, Yahchilane. Though I don’t know how you feel about all that nonsense.”

  “Hey.”

  Crowe still walking away, said, “Yeah.”

  “Come on in.”

  “No, it’s all right.”

  “Come on in.”

  “Just taking a walk. Thanks.”

  “Come on in, egghead.”

  Crowe was so overtaken by the man’s hospitality that he broke down weeping with gratitude.

  “What the fuck,” Yahchilane said. “Get yourself together, man.”

  Crowe pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Hey, man,” Yahchilane said. “It’s okay, come on in, egghead.” He whacked Crowe’s shoulder hard and chummy, cupped his hand there. “The turkey isn’t that bad. Give yourself a minute and let’s get your fish stick–looking ass into the house.”

  * * *

  —

  Inside Yahchilane’s big barrel house were about twenty people, and before Henry could make introductions, Crowe right away excused himself to the bathroom.

  He was afraid he reeked of pot and wine.

  He was also afraid that he looked deranged, swollen-eyed from crying, snot in his beard.

  He was not expecting this many people, this kind of scene.

  In the bathroom medicine cabinet he found a travel-sized tube of
toothpaste. He squeezed a pellet onto his finger, ran it across his teeth and gums. He looked in the mirror. “Jesus.” He smelled his hands. He washed them. Smelled them again. He rubbed potpourri on his fingers. Then he scooped up a big handful, ran the shavings through his beard.

  Crowe met the relatives. There were grandchildren. There were a few far-flung cousins and a few friends who’d driven the distance.

  Good smells wafted from the kitchen. Turkey and cranberry and mulled cider.

  A big fire crackled in the stone fireplace.

  If they noticed anything strange about Crowe in appearance or behavior they didn’t let on. They welcomed him heartily.

  “I’m Reed Crowe,” Crowe said. “Your all’s dad calls me egghead.”

  One of Yahchilane’s brood, a very tall black-haired, sharp-smiled woman with cat-like eyes, seemed mortified by this bit of information. “Oh no.”

  “Yep,” Crowe said, “but I’ve been called much worse.”

  “Daddy,” she said. Her name was Natasha, and she was dark-haired with Yahchilane’s same cheekbones. His same nose. But her eyes, they were large and black and long-lashed and caught the amber light in the room.

  Yahchilane waved her off. “Oh, come on, I call everybody that.”

  “I’m comfortable with it,” Crowe said. “It fits.”

  The big dining room table was long and teak and manmade, Viking sturdy. Over it was the most elaborate stained glass chandelier Crowe ever saw in his life. The walls, the floors, most of it good solid wood.

  Crowe knew he’d be dead within two weeks of living in such a place. He’d burn himself alive. Between the bongs and the joints and the candles and the pyro explosives, a powder keg.

  There were several stocked bookshelves. The leather-bound books of the autodidact. Crowe was surprised to see, among them, the Golden Guides he grew up with. No, not surprised that Yahchilane had grown up, like him, with the books. Every boy had them. Books of the stars, books of the animals, books of the fish. But Yahchilane’s collection still retained the brassy luster of a prize-winning ticket.