Mile Zero (23 page)

“The pedigree? Yes … well … it’s not that simple. Have to send to the Kennel Club and then …”

“Cute. How long?”

“Six, twelve weeks. I’ll send it.”

“Better yet, I’ll personally come back and get it in twelve weeks.”

Ed opened the front door. “Come back then, I’ll have even more pugs.”

“How’s that? It’s too short a time for your bitch to … oh, forget it.” He watched Lila hand over four hundred dollars. He thought of the hours cleaning bird cages it took to earn this money.

“Dad, when’s Mom comin home?”

The little pajama ghost popped back through the swinging doors, St. Cloud had him in full sight. Alice ambled over to the boy with a heartsick whine and licked his small hands.

“Soon, son. Go back to bed. Take Alice, she’s sleepy too.”

The boy waved to St. Cloud like they were old war buddies and was gone.

St. Cloud pondered the evil of what he now knew. There really was a wife and she really was working at the hospital. He moved outside and stood beneath the spotlight above the trailer door burning a hole in the night. It was all worse than he could have ever dreamed. Ed was not only a wife and kid beater, his family was so terrified of him that fear for their very lives rooted them here forever. St. Cloud tried not to dwell on the horror. He took solace in the fact he knew where the stars went in the morning. He tipped his head back to see their familiar patterns in the night sky, but all starlight was blinded
by the spotlight. The things that happen in the suburbs, St. Cloud shook his head sadly. Lila came through the door behind him, escaping Ed the neighborhood terrorist, unaware Ed so brutalized his family that the hapless victims prayed nightly for his tarnished soul. St. Cloud knew where the stars went in the morning, he knew things that happen in the suburbs are sometimes too evil to contemplate. He stumbled over to the convertible, it was as old as Lila, still sleek, nothing cute about its chrome fins ready to chew off the white line of any asphalt highway. Lila slipped in behind the steering wheel. He couldn’t believe how sincere and lovely she looked with the dog licking the flesh of her neck. Desire was eating a hole through his resolve, he yearned to kiss her.

“Ed’s a wife beater. Man’s a maniac, should be locked up.” St. Cloud spoke the words matter of factly, with no malice. “At least we saved the dog.”

Lila set the puppy loose on the car seat, it sidled to St. Cloud, nosing between his legs, pawing with the determination of a bear smelling honey. Lila flicked the key in the ignition. The convertible shuddered to a start, sending a burst of black exhaust behind. She plunged her foot down on the gas pedal, a scatter of loose gravel shooting from beneath the tires as she wheeled into the night. She deftly scooped the puppy up with one hand, the other hand fixed on the steering wheel, guiding the convertible between shadowed mangrove shapes edging along the narrow road. The dog grunted contentedly, nibbling at Lila’s ear exposed by wind smoothing the hair from her face. “You know, y’all really are strange.” Her words were encased in their usual sugar-coated Southern drawl, rolling over St. Cloud with an intimate familiarity, until the last of her thought was fully unwrapped. “I don’t know if I like that.”

H
URRICANE
be comin. Least ways that was the way Bonefish figured it to be. Mean weather casting out lightning spikes from the sun was a sure sign. Nother sign was when the sea grape trees flourished with such fruit their fat-leaved branches nearly bent to the ground. Bonefish seen that happen before the ’35 Blow, and he seen it now, kept his eyes open, ever on the lookout for ol Mister Finito ready to come long and make the bad ol world smoothed out again. You wanted to know from hurricane, all you got to do is look for yourself neath the skirts of Ma Nature, don’t have to be no scientist nor TV weatherman to figure that, needed no satellite photographs neither, needed a head on your shoulders, eyes to see lightnin and ears to hear thunder. Flamboyant trees would talk to you, you smart enough to listen. Those big ol gnarly ghost gray-trunked trees were up an down each to every street on the island, come over to Jamaica from the Madagascar in Africa, come over to Key West by smart Conchs wantin a fannin shade tree to cool them over in the sweat of summer. Royal poinciana tree was what some called it. Whenever one of the big ol ones forty feet high, its branches throwin a brilliant umbrella of flamin orchid flowers a hundred feet around, was chopped down, newspapers reported nother granddaddy royal poinciana had been killed to beautify the way of progress. Forget poinciana, that was a wrong name. Bonefish grew up with the right name, flamboyant. When thousands of flamboyant flowers blossomed such rich red a Christian person could barely afford to look at them, Bonefish knew then and there Ma Nature be takin a smart man by the shoulders an warnin him bout the truth of the bad ol world. That the rains was
comin, the steamy season of flat water an fat clouds was headed this way. Out there in the inky deep the Caribbean cauldron was swirlin, a tropical Atlantic stew was brewin, storms were in the makin. You lucky enough maybe it all wouldn’t come your way one more time, maybe it would move off west to blow a hole right through Louisiana. Maybe you’d still be round to see the end of the flamboyant tree’s natural cycle, after the flowers dropped, runnin rooster-wattle red in the gutters as hissing rains pummeled the hot an sticky of long afternoons, when lacy leaves would dry up and die, leavin the bloomin tree barren, except for leathery seed pods long as a woman’s arm, hooked sharp as a sickle blade. Then those seed pods would rattle their contents in the wind, rattle a new beginnin, wind chimes of birth. You be lucky an thankful you lived to see that, to know you been let off the hook of boisterous weather yet one more time, to have survived the summer in all of one piece to enjoy nother Day of the Dead in the far October, for that day marked the end of hurricane season. A man smart enough to hear thunder knew how to read the message of the flamboyant, knew that tree didn’t like Mister Finito at all, knew in its roots that it was a fragile-limbed tree in high wind, its brittle branches would creak an snap, its trunk pitch an groan, an maybe it would rattle a final death gasp in a last whip from a furious gust an topple to an early grave. That tree knew all that stuff an more. It knew to throw the most brilliant canopy of scarlet flowers ever witnessed before or since in its last late spring season before the Big Blow, to show off to the world how glorious it was to be alive, how sad it was going to be missed at the end of summer when El Finito put an end to the show. A smart man knew how to read that tree. Bonefish had never seen such a mess of flowers bloomin on the flamboyant as was blazin right now. No question bout it, the tree was talkin, sayin the Devil’s tradewind was windin up to punch the lights out of civilization.

Bonefish didn’t consider himself part of civilization. Bonefish considered himself smart. He didn’t only run over to the rock grotto, harboring the life-size linen cloaked statue of Mary Immaculate in the shadows of the Catholic church’s two towering metal-roofed steeples, to pray for his survival from the Devil’s trades when the weather was fixin to be boisterous. No. Bonefish prayed
every
day of the year at the grotto. Bonefish was a man of simple faith. The hare could outrun the hound if the hare didn’t stop to shit in the woods. Each day Bonefish got down on his knees, clapped his hands together
in prayerful salute and raised them high to the Immaculate Virgin. Bonefish was a thankful man. Bonefish had more than his own day-to-day survival to be thankful for, he had friends and family. What a family. Bonefish considered the island his family, his special domain, his rock of everyday hope upon which he banked his faith for humanity. Bonefish was an old saltwater Conch, born and bred to the island long before the time of the lethal yellow blight killing off the coconut palms, before the walls of condominiums threatened to block a man’s rightful view of the broad blue sea beyond, and the ships upon it, passing with one-quarter of all the world’s mercantile freight, from Florida oranges to Arab oil to Latin American tin and cocaine. Bonefish was a saltwater Conch, and as such an optimist who cashed the check of his trust in people everyday. Which meant he carried on a tradition of dropping round to chat with folks in order to move along the important concerns of human commerce, such as whose cat just had kittens, whose dog had died, whose grown grandchildren no longer called on them, and this after near raisin those kids one’s self. Bonefish was always to be seen walking along the shaded side of the street, stopping to call out a greeting, or lean against a white picket fence, peering over at someone who happened to be outside fetchin the newspaper or waterin the bougainvillea, and droppin the just for your information news that Y’s wife was meetin a sailor stationed across the Cow Key Channel bridge at Boca Chica Naval Station every afternoon at the Overseas Fruit Market, or R’s son, the one who never graduated high school, but drove a fast shiny car with Miami plates and had three Cuban girlfriends that he loaded up with diamond watches and gold chains, was busted the night before south of Torch Ramrod Channel runnin a two-million-dollar boatload of marijuana onto a coral jut instead of into safe harbor. At sixty-two years of age Bonefish had his common senses, his knack for listenin an tellin, and his bony straight body, which earned him in a town of nicknames a very early and obvious one. What Bonefish didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing, what was worth knowing he was bound to find out. One thing he did know was last night someone bound a goat by its hind legs, slashed its throat and hung its lifeless body from a rope tied to a high rafter inside that crazy ol bat tower out on Sugarloaf Key. What Bonefish didn’t know was why.

Sacrificial goats and mosquito-eating bats were the least concerns churning round in Bonefish’s brain. Hurricane coming was much closer and realer, right round the corner of the Gulf, lurking and
looming, not leaving Bonefish much time. Bonefish had lots of stuff to get rid of, didn’t want to get caught with it, let someone else tote it off this ol rock, not his job. His job was to figure the future and tell its truth, its truth was disaster over the thin blue horizon. Bonefish had to get himself flashlights and batteries, canned goods and bottled water, get rid of all the other stuff that could go flying round to bop him over the head in two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Bonefish was staying put when the Big One blew, wasn’t going to get caught on the Seven Mile Bridge with lots of panicked rats in cars loaded with dumb stuff like television sets, toasters and family photos. Bonefish saw clear the true fact of life, the Florida Keys are the most likeliest part of America to get knocked by a hurricane from each and every side. The truth looming even larger was in the Keys there was no high ground, there was no ground at all to speak of, nothing that would peak above a storm surge of seawater once Finito delivered his knockout punch.

Bonefish was in one big hurry, almost running down the street, going through the churning in his head looking for something he might have left out or forgotten altogether. Spam. Got to get lots of cans of Spam. Air-condishner, there was one item he forgot to unload. Got to get that ice-breathing monster out of the bedroom window and out of the house. He turned the corner in front of the Shrimp Docks and headed directly into Diver Dave’s Diner with his urgent message.

“Anybody need an air-condishner? Got a brand-new one! Just bout year old!”

Everyone was always glad to see Bonefish. Their faces lit up like bright beams of the flashlights Bonefish intended to buy to light up the dark world after El Finito roared through. When Bonefish entered the diner door it was open season to talk about anyone one knew. It wasn’t like talking behind people’s backs, it was like talking in front of them, because Bonefish himself was a social institution needing tending and respect. Bonefish wasn’t simply a pillar of the society, he was the torch of grapevine gossip, which in its time-honored way was to be passed from
buche
shop to
buche
shop, café to diner to restaurant, stoop to porch to veranda. In the old days the moment a person turned the corner onto one of the island’s crowded streets word reached folks at the opposite end who it was that was headed their way.

“How much you want for it?” Marilyn at the end of the counter
on the last stool let her spoon drop into a bowl of conch chowder and spun around on the vinyl swivel seat. “My trailer’s real hot. Could use a breeze.” Every day Marilyn was at the counter right at noontime eating with the workingmen. Sometimes the diner was crowded with Shrimpers fresh from the boat in their mucky white rubber boots. Other times the diner was filled with Charter Boat captains moaning in their beer that the wind was up, making the sea too busy for weak stomached tourists to venture out on. Very often there were also a few of Marilyn’s old Cuban friends playing dominoes at the corner table beneath the big window facing high-hulled shrimp boats docked in deep water on the far side of a weed-covered field. A rusting radio relay tower from World War I rose in the center of the field, its crisscrossed steel platform legs capped at the top by a man-size cage. Tense young soldiers once guarded for saboteurs from the lofty aerie, now empty as an abandoned eagle’s nest. Marilyn’s first husband once manned this tower, or one like it, she couldn’t remember, since many towers still stood on the island, decades beyond meaningful use, dilapidated monuments to past paranoia and a dubious future. The towers loomed as talismans from a not so primitive, but confused society. Island people are by tradition the most superstitious. Marilyn was an island woman. “Could use me a cool breeze, a cold beer and a hot sailor. Could use me that, brother.”