Southernmost

by Silas House

  8

  They drove south, through the hot, black night. Asher had taken the top off the Jeep since it was dark now, and the sticky wind twisted inside the cab. Justin couldn’t sleep after his long rest at the motel. He turned the music up loud over the pummeling wind. Florida raced by them with only the gray highway visible in their headlights.

  Justin had named the dog—Shady—as soon as he awoke. They had given him a bath in the motel tub and then old Shady leapt into the Jeep and curled up on the back seat like Asher and Justin had been his family as long as he could remember.

  There was a sort of contentment that had settled between the three of them. Perhaps for Justin it was only resignation; Asher could tell that his son was going through all kinds of feelings about being on the run like this. He wished that he could take all of that from him, but no amount of talking about it would make it any easier.

  So for hours and hours there was nothing but the road. They tried listening to the radio for a while but there was only static or gospel stations. Holy Roller programs and screaming preachers. Somehow those programs always had the best reception. Asher found it hard to believe he had once been one of those hacking preachers himself. This other life didn’t seem possible to him. This other world.

  He drove down the long finger of Florida with nothing to keep him from thinking about what he was going to do.

  By the time they reached Key Largo, his back ached, his neck ached, his arms ached. Even his fingers were sore from gripping the steering wheel. But he had to keep driving. The sudden thought of finally arriving in Key West and not driving anymore filled him with a stark fear. What would it be like to be on an island where the road simply ended? The more Asher thought about it, the more it sounded like a trap waiting to swallow them.

  The sky lightened in the east, a graying of the blackness way out over the ocean. They waited at stoplights although the roads were empty. There was nothing more lonesome than an empty, dark intersection. Even the billboards seemed lonely.

  crocodile crossing just ahead

  see the christ of the deep

  glass bottom boat ride on the key largo princess!

  Behind this last sign a state trooper had hidden to watch for speeders. Asher felt a cold sweat on his upper lip and his heart drummed in his chest.

  The air—warm even before daylight—smelled like salt water and fish and overripe watermelons.

  Somewhere outside Tavernier Justin announced that he had to pee and Asher wheeled into a Tom Thumb gas station.

  The cashier was a mountain of a woman with a big, brown mole and sweet, green eyes. “Good morning, darlins,” she said when they entered and as they left she asked: “Are you going to the very end, then?” Asher didn’t understand. “Key West,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Good luck, darlin,” she cooed.

  Back on Route 1, driving, driving. They rode along in silence for a time, listening to the road slip beneath them. Shady struggled up from the back seat and licked at Asher’s face, then pressed his wet nose against Justin’s cheek before pushing himself into Justin’s seat. Justin kept his eyes on the road and one arm around Shady’s neck. Asher could hardly bear to watch this love blooming between his son and this new dog without thinking of their sweet, old boy Roscoe.

  As the light increased, Florida Bay yawned out at their right, dotted with sailboats and small yachts, lined by houses of every bright color. On the left, the Atlantic, too big to comprehend.

  islamorada, the sign said. Justin pronounced the town’s name aloud several times, more to himself than to Asher.

  (Eye-la-more-ah-dah)

  They passed over dozens of small Keys. They passed a hundred gas stations and motels and waters that sped by on either side. Justin begged to stop at the Theater of the Sea, and then at the Indian Key State Park, but they had to keep moving, and besides, it wasn’t even seven in the morning.

  Justin watched the Gulf, pointing to what he thought might be dolphins.

  There was the old railroad bridge, stretching out like a concrete mystery.

  Conch Key.

  “Look at that!” Justin pointed to a terrible plastic mermaid on a sign, welcoming visitors to the Tiki Bar.

  Justin was feeling good this morning. He turned up a Tom Petty song and danced along in his seat. Asher watched him twisting around, thrusting one arm out the passenger window, the other against the Jeep’s roof, his eyes closed in satisfaction as he sang along. Asher had done the right thing and they could be happy like this every single day of their lives if everyone would just leave them alone.

  “You’ve got good taste in music, little man,” Asher told him when the song was finished.

  “I know it,” Justin said, and smiled.

  9

  The Everything

  They walked out on the old bridge in the place where the Gulf waters churn against the Atlantic.

  Justin dragged his hand along the rusted metal railing. The sun shone in his hair and Asher imagined how warm it would be to the touch.

  The water beneath them—the Gulf of Mexico—was dark and blue, but up ahead, just past the bridge, were the emerald waves of the Atlantic. These were colors that were more than colors; they went beyond that into something magnificent. In all of Asher’s thirty-five years he had never seen anything that compared.

  This was a walk that called for silence, and they both knew this somehow. The dog did, too. They listened to the waves striking the pilings, and the hustle of the morning wind past their ears, and the occasional passing vehicle on the new bridge that ran parallel. They were walking out into a confluence, and they could feel that power beneath their feet.

  In the middle of the bridge they stopped and looked out at the immensity of the Atlantic. Asher stood behind his son and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. Asher and Justin: father and son, connected forever.

  Normally in a moment like this Asher would say to Justin that he was everything in the world to him. He wanted to tell his son that his own existence meant nothing until he was born. He wished Justin could know the way he felt about him, the way no child could ever really fathom until they cherished someone else completely. Being a parent was a constant heartache, an endless act of making sure the child was as safe and as happy as a person could possibly be in this life. Asher wanted to tell his son that he would die for him, or kill for him, and everything in between. He wished he could tell Justin that he had given his whole self to him without question, with total sacrifice. But he didn’t need to say any of this. It was contained in the way he touched his son’s shoulders, the way they stood there together, two people alone in this world made of nothing but endless waters and a strip of concrete crossing them.

  10

  I always wanted to come here, to the Keys,” Asher said as they strapped back on their seat belts.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Asher wheeled back onto Route 1 and then they were on the Seven Mile Bridge, crossing.

  “Your mother never wanted to. Couldn’t hardly get her out of Tennessee unless it was for a revival.”

  Shady stood on Justin’s lap, his front paws on the door. He squared his face out into the rushing air, ears clicking at the wind.

  “I miss her,” Justin said.

  “I’m sorry, Justin.”

  “I know.” Justin kept his eyes on the Gulf. “But I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  He nodded. “She lied, in court. Granny did, too.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Granny told me,” Justin said, still not meeting Asher’s eyes. He was watching as a white speedboat bounced away across the waves. A woman in a bikini was leaning against the silver boat railings, her face against the wind. “She didn’t say they lied, but that they didn’t tell the whole truth. Which is the same thing. Granny said she wanted me to know it was wrong.”

  Asher didn’t know what to say, so he kept his eyes latched on the road.

  “But this stil
l doesn’t feel right,” Justin said, “to run off like this.”

  Asher took his right hand from the steering wheel and laid it atop Justin’s forearm.

  Who knew what would happen next. Asher would most likely never see Tennessee again. The police could pull them over at any second and throw Asher onto the blacktop and arrest him. If that happened where would Justin stay until someone came for him? In the jail, too? And would he ever see Justin again once he was carried off to prison?

  Once they came off the Seven Mile Bridge there were cops all alongside the highway. He had never seen so many police officers on one stretch of road and his hands gripped the steering wheel tighter each time one of the cruisers schwoomed past them.

  A bunch of kids were laughing and running toward a man at the end of a pier that jutted out of the side of the highway. He was holding up a silver fish whose gills were gasping for water.

  “Oh no,” Justin said, his hands rushing to the door as if he might pull on the handle and open it. “Dad, go back.”

  “What is it?” But Asher knew what he was going to say.

  “Go back, and get that man to throw that fish back in the ocean.”

  “I can’t do that, buddy,” Asher laughed a little. “Come on, now, turn around.”

  But Justin couldn’t stop looking back. He turned in his seat and watched for as long as he could. Asher watched by way of the rearview mirror for long enough to see that the kids were jumping around the stupid man, like letting this fish die right there in front of them was the most fun they’d had in ages.

  “God, I hate people,” Justin said. “People suck.”

  Asher thought perhaps he should tell his son to not say that, but he didn’t. He let him be. If there was a parent who always had the correct comeback he’d like to meet them. But Justin was so wracked with guilt at not having helped the fish. He had twisted his head around, still looking back although the man and the kids and the fish were long out of their sight now.

  “Justin,” Asher said, and tapped his knee. “Come on, now, buddy. We can’t control everything in the world. Wish we could.”

  “I hope I hope I hope,” Justin was saying out loud without realizing it and so Asher put his hand gently on the nape of his son’s neck.

  “It’s alright, little man.” Asher patted the back of Justin’s head.

  Three cop cars in a row, all with their lights on and their sirens screaming (whyo! whyo! whyo! whyo!), schwoom schwoom schwoom they went by.

  Asher paled and held the steering wheel tight and looked up at the rearview mirror, afraid of what he might see, but the siren sounds got farther and farther away until they couldn’t hear them at all. They were not turning around to catch them.

  Telephone poles along the highway, topped with huge piles of sticks and twigs. Osprey nests. Asher had read about these.

  key west: 20 miles ahead.

  The Haitian Baptist Church with yellow doors.

  A white heron fishing in the shallow waters of the ocean.

  Stock Island.

  Trailer parks and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  One more bridge—no more than a second—and then, they were in Key West.

  Part Three

  Little Fire

  1

  Key West is coming awake when they arrive.

  Once they cross over onto the island and there is the opportunity to turn right or left, Asher chooses left for no real reason and then they are beside the ocean again, where people are jogging and riding bicycles and pushing baby carriages. The Atlantic burns a greenish-blue back to the horizon. He realizes he has no idea what to do next.

  On past two or three beaches (empty this early in the day), hotels and motels and guesthouses and resorts.

  All at once there are many different streets and Asher keeps making turns that will keep them near the ocean. Just seeing it has become a sort of security he is already not willing to abandon. And he knows it offers some sense of direction. Justin watches everything in silence, sizing up the place.

  After some time the traffic slows near a giant red, black, and yellow concrete buoy that sits on the shore where people are having their pictures taken. Asher knows it from researching the island online. Scooters zoom every which way. The Jeep idles behind a mess of tourists who are trying to navigate a rented electric car into a small parking space and Asher and Justin watch the people gathered around the marker. Families. Man, woman, and child. Couples. Two men, holding hands, which Asher has never seen before. Never. Despite himself he feels nervous about Justin seeing this. There is also a man and woman kissing.

  And here I am, he thinks, on the run, a criminal now, with my confused child.

  Across the fake buoy is written:

  the conch republic

  90 miles to

  cuba

  southernmost

  point

  continental

  u.s.a.

  key west, fl

  home of the sunset

  Asher’s legs have turned to planks of lumber and all at once he feels as if his body is shutting down. The exhaustion has caught up with him at last, now that they have arrived. He feels like he is speaking through a wad of cotton that has been shoved into his mouth. “I need to get somewhere and rest for a little bit,” he says, wheeling the car back onto the street, not knowing where he intends to go. His arms are jerking with exhaustion.

  But Justin is so excited to finally be here that there is no way he is going to nap. The heat, even this early, is too dominant to simply pull over and take a nap in the Jeep. But if Asher can stretch out for a few minutes, he will be alright. He believes he can will himself to not go to sleep.

  Asher turns down one street and then another and somehow they end up back on the waterfront. The water is a throbbing bluish green, so shallow he can see waves of seaweed swaying just beneath the surface. A lone sailboat sits tied up in the shoals, bobbing on the small, steady waves. When Asher sees the beach he pulls into an empty spot alongside the sidewalk.

  “We get to go swimming?” Justin says, excited.

  “No,” Asher slurs, “let’s just rest for a little bit. Okay?”

  But it’s too hot in the car and Justin is begging to let him go to the water.

  Asher somehow manages to grab the throw from the back seat and open the door. Justin is scurrying down the sidewalk, Shady running alongside him, darting away so fast that enough energy flares in Asher to holler out: “Justin! Stop!”

  Justin slows but does not come back to him, so Asher tries to push on, feeling as if he is wading through muck, the way the ground was for days after the floodwaters went down. Up the steps and past a bathhouse built of sea rocks and coral, and then there is the nearly empty beach. The sky is too cloudy for most people to come out, and the smell of an oncoming rain marks the air. Far down the sand a young family is settling themselves beneath a large white umbrella—man and woman, two children, a baby lying in a car seat on a towel—and even farther down a group of boys have just begun a game of volleyball. But that is all.

  Justin runs to the water’s edge, laughing, hollering out. Shady barks at the waves, then sticks his nose into the water and sneezes. Asher finds a shadowed place beneath the palms lining the beach; the morning is new enough that the air isn’t too thick in the shade.

  Only when Asher bends to spread out the throw does he notice the wind pummeling the beach. The throw bucks like a possessed thing. He falls to his knees atop one end and manages to pin the throw down long enough to take a seat. He has never been drunk before but he imagines this is how it must feel, the world shifting and leveling, then sliding back off-kilter again. He puts the flat edge of his hand up to his brow so he can gaze out toward the ocean, and watches Justin and Shady as they run down to the water’s edge.

  There are few things that fill him up more than seeing his boy running free, but as soon as this thought blossoms in his mind, he also realizes how neither of them will ever really be free again.

  He has
taken that from Justin, because what freedom is there in being on the run from the police? He hasn’t thought this through enough. What will they do when school starts back? There’s no way to enroll him without it becoming known. What will they do if Justin gets sick and has to go to the hospital? What if Asher himself gets sick?

  “Justin, come back!” Asher hollers, as Justin heads down toward the breaking water and the volleyball game. He minds, and starts back. Asher sees all of this through a thick haze, as if a fine mist lies over everything. “Come here, right now!”

  As Justin runs up the beach there is nothing but goodness on his face.

  Asher can’t stand it anymore. He lies back on the throw and locks his fingers together over his belly. If he can only rest for a few minutes . . .

  Justin is standing over him, his face shadowed as the sun blazes white behind his head.

  “Won’t you lay down with me for a little bit, hmm? Let’s rest awhile, buddy.”

  “No, I want to get in the water.”

  “Not yet,” Asher mutters. He can’t keep his eyes open. “You don’t have your swimming trunks—”

  “I can go get them. They have a shower house, I saw it, it’s made out of rocks—”

  “No, now. Let’s just rest awhile.”

  “I want to get in,” Justin says, fed up. “I’ve been in that car for two days! I’m tired of it!”

  Asher isn’t even able to make his mouth work correctly now. He is beyond tired; he is weary down into every muscle and bone. He hasn’t rested for months. “I’m sorry,” Asher hears himself say, as if from very far away, and even as he says the words he knows this is a mistake, that he can’t go to sleep, that he can’t allow Justin to be alone here on this beach. He tries to say: “Stay real close.”

  Asher is asleep before Justin has even turned to run back to the surf.