Naked Came the Florida Man Read online

  Serge listened to the morning news on his emergency radio. He reached inside their small dome tent and began shaking Coleman to no avail. “Come on, wake up! The road’s clear. It’s time to go.”

  Serge shook harder and harder until he heard primitive groans. Then Coleman woke up all at once. He had somehow managed to turn himself around in his sleeping bag during the night.

  “Help! Help! Something’s got me again.”

  “It’s just your sleeping bag. Hold still.”

  But Coleman had the reasoning ability of someone drowning. “Help! Help!” He thrashed around like a giant caterpillar trying to molt. Then he jumped up and dislodged the tent’s poles, and soon he was wrapped up in that, too, rolling left and right.

  Serge watched without expression until his pal wore himself out. A piled entanglement of nylon heaved as he panted.

  “You finished?” asked Serge. “Because the tent isn’t completely wrecked yet.”

  “Just get me out of this.”

  Serge extricated his friend and they began breaking camp. When everything was stowed in the car, Serge walked over to his science project. “Well, I’ll be. It worked.” He sealed the lid on the storage bin, started the battery-powered fan and stuck the whole business in the back seat.

  A gold 1969 Plymouth Satellite emerged from the trees and drove away from the Old Wooden Bridge Fishing Camp. Soon, they were almost out of the Lower Keys, approaching the bridge to Bahia Honda. The debris piles that had been pushed aside by heavy equipment appeared like small mountain ranges down each side of the highway.

  “Discussion time. Where were we?”

  “When?” asked Coleman.

  “I don’t know. The hurricane destroyed our train of thought,” said Serge. “Which is a plus because a train of thought is just another one of society’s cages.”

  “Why don’t we talk about society?” asked Coleman. “Your thoughts?”

  “These are dark times.” Serge tapped fingers on the steering wheel. “The decline of society can be boiled down to the culture of airline flights.”

  “I’ve seen the videos on the Internet.”

  “You take a couple hundred people from our savagely polarized nation, cram them cheek by jowl in a metal tube and send them up to altitudes where there’s no oxygen. Then people read the headlines: ‘Wow, I didn’t see that coming,’” said Serge. “Plane travel used to be glamorous, people getting dressed up, wearing hats. But now it’s devolved into a subway in the sky, cursing, shoving, public urination, removing socks from smelly feet.”

  Coleman popped a can of Schlitz. “Preach.”

  “It starts before you’re even off the ground,” said Serge. “Especially if you’re in one of those planes where the coach passengers have to walk through first class to get to their seats. It trends Darwin in a serious hurry. First-class passengers watch the coach people walking past them in the aisle and they’re like, ‘Yeah, you lazy losers, this is what you get for being assholes: inadequate legroom.’ . . . Simultaneously, all the coach passengers are checking out the elite in their giant, comfy seats: ‘That one clearly doesn’t deserve to be up here.’ ‘What has this guy ever brought to the table?’ ‘There’s another cosmic mistake of seating assignment.’ ‘Don’t even get me started on this prick.’ . . . Then on the next flight, for whatever reason, some of the first-class people have to fly coach and vice versa, and they all immediately switch teams: ‘God, I hate those fuckers.’”

  “Then the plane takes off and the fun really begins,” said Coleman.

  “Something about flying makes people lose their freaking minds,” said Serge. “And I’m not talking about getting grumpy over the food or a kid kicking the back of your seat. I recently spoke with some flight attendants, and the true stories of psychotic breaks at thirty thousand feet would send you screaming for Amtrak. They said the public would be amazed at the number of people who freak out and try to open the doors.”

  “It’s a senseless crime,” said Coleman.

  “That’s why flight crews have to carry so many handcuffs nowadays,” said Serge. “One woman was refused alcohol, so she drank liquid soap and bit a stewardess. Two groups of football fans had a brawl from rows seventeen to twenty-eight. During night flights, passengers ask for blankets and then leave spent condoms in seat pockets. Guys take off their shirts, try to light cigarettes, sleep on the floor.”

  “Sounds like every traffic intersection in Florida.”

  “And I swear this one’s true: Another dude jumped up on the serving cart, dropped his pants and took a dump in the peanut basket. I think you lose frequent flier points for that one.”

  “It’s just not right,” said Coleman, pointing out the window at a jet overhead. “There’s one now.”

  “Take a pass on the peanuts.”

  They were four miles into the Seven Mile Bridge. “Oh man!” said Serge. “Irma whacked Pigeon Key!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Coleman, you’ve asked the same question the last fifty times we’ve driven over this bridge!”

  “Was I here?”

  “Under the old Seven Mile, it’s all deep water, except partway across there’s a single peculiar little island under the piers, with a steep ramp rolling down to it. Very popular with postcard photographers,” said Serge. “Tourists driving down to Key West on the new bridge can’t miss it. They all look over and go: ‘Aw, how cute.’”

  “Like a puppy?”

  “Roughly the same level of low-grade gratification. But then puzzlement sets in, especially when they see the ramp. ‘What the hell is its deal?’”

  “Serge, please tell us.”

  “I cannot deny the public!” He leaned toward the window for a closer look. “A bunch of Henry Flagler’s people lived there when they were working on the oil baron’s Overseas Railroad, which opened in 1912 and at one point had four thousand employees toiling under the sun to erect it.”

  “You said ‘erect.’” Coleman giggled. “I see a bunch of wooden buildings that got clobbered.”

  “Some of the most beautiful examples of old Keys wooden construction. You’ll find verandas and gables and tin roofs. Tin is key to my roofing pleasure . . . Damn, it even hit the Honeymoon Cottage.”

  “They look kind of familiar.”

  “That’s because back in Key West I’ve dragged you through every art gallery on Duval Street.”

  “I hate that!”

  “I’ve noticed,” said Serge. “Might have something to do with the galleries being sandwiched between the bars.”

  “So close and yet so far,” said Coleman. “I also hate it because whenever we go in galleries it means you’re going to get me in a headlock.”

  “You won’t look at the paintings otherwise. You just keep pointing out the door with a trembling arm: ‘Beer,’” said Serge. “Culturing you up requires wrestling moves.”

  “But then they always throw us out.”

  “It’s so unfair,” said Serge. “Doesn’t opening a gallery mean they want people to admire art? And that’s what we’re doing, minding our own business looking at paintings with you in a full nelson. But no, they want us to do it their way. I try to explain that the whole concept of art is about individual expression, and I haven’t seen any signs that say ‘No Wrestling.’ They just fixate and respond that all your thrashing to get free is driving away the others.”

  A burp. “And breaking vases.”

  “That’s on them. They distracted me and your arms got loose.”

  A fresh can of Schlitz popped. “What were we talking about?”

  “The buildings that look familiar to you on Pigeon Key,” said Serge. “Before we got eighty-sixed from those galleries of shame, you’d seen dozens of killer paintings depicting quaint pastel cottages with fiery azaleas under vibrant coconut palms. A disproportionate number are from that little island under the bridge, because artists are always setting up easels down there to feel the muse. My favorites are the watercolors. Nothing capt
ures the palette of the Keys like that medium, and I always get pumped visiting Pigeon Key and watching them work. They seem so happy. So I point out that the best art is spawned from a tortured soul, and offer to help. But here’s the thing I’ve learned about these art types: They’re highly sensitive, and as a general rule they don’t like their easels knocked over when you wrestle.”

  The Plymouth came off the Seven Mile Bridge into Marathon.

  Coleman hung out the window. “Man, there’s a whole lot less trash on the sides of the road.”

  “It’s amazing what a difference twenty miles one way or the other makes when the eye comes ashore.”

  Coleman pulled himself back inside the window and shotgunned the Schlitz. “Where to now?”

  “Where we were going before the hurricane interrupted us,” said Serge. “Continuing our cemetery tour of Florida.”

  “Is that what we were doing?”

  “Cemeteries rock! They’re portals to our roots with all the obvious history, not to mention upbeat landscaping and bitchin’ statuary,” said Serge. “The perfect places for a picnic, except I always seem to be the only one with a basket and checkered blanket.”

  “And playing a kazoo,” said Coleman. “Remember the one time they were lowering that guy into the ground?”

  “I thought the music would cheer them up.”

  “Instead they stomped your picnic basket.”

  “That’s the downside of cemeteries,” said Serge. “The only occasions most people go is when there’s a lot of hysterical crying and they drag a dead body along. I don’t have room for that kind of negativity.”

  The Plymouth crossed a couple of small bridges onto Grassy Key. Serge made a left turn near mile marker 58.

  Coleman’s head was back out the window, staring at a round, blue-and-yellow sign.

  Dolphin Research Center.

  “This doesn’t look like a cemetery.”

  “It’s not technically one,” said Serge. “But I’m including famous individual grave sites. My tour, my rules.”

  “So who’s buried here?”

  Serge parked. “Follow and find out.”

  Moments later, the pair stood solemnly in a secluded corner of the property near the water, crowded by mangroves and other lush vegetation. In the middle of the plants was a statue. There was a marker below it. Serge knelt with a large sheet of paper and a block of colored wax, making a grave rubbing.

  Coleman scratched his head and squinted at the statue of a tail-walking dolphin. “I thought you were taking me to where some scientist or soldier was buried.”

  Serge continued lightly rubbing. “Back in the day, this majestic creature was arguably the most famous Floridian in the whole country.”

  Coleman read over Serge’s shoulder. “Flipper?”

  “The iconic dolphin was introduced to the world in 1963, but few viewers realized the star was actually a female dolphin named Mitzi. And even fewer know that this is her final resting place.”

  “But why here?”

  “Before becoming the research center in 1984, this place opened in 1958 as a roadside attraction named Santini’s Porpoise School, and Hollywood came calling. Mitzi trained and resided here until passing away in 1972.” Serge stood with his wax rubbing in hand and sniffled.

  Coleman put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay, buddy?”

  “We’re in the presence of gentle greatness,” said Serge. “Mitzi was a genius in the industry, able to pop out of the water and make clicking sounds that caused humans to respond: ‘What is it, Flipper? You say that an evil research scientist trying to poach rare tropical fish is trapped in his personal submarine near the coral reef surrounded by unexploded mines from World War Two training exercises?’”

  “Wow,” said Coleman. “Next to that, ‘Timmy fell in the well’ makes Lassie look like an idiot.”

  Chapter 2

  Eight Years Earlier

  Just before dawn. The horizon was on fire.

  Literally.

  Across hundreds of distant acres, bright orange flames whipped violently in the wind.

  The sky began to lighten, revealing dozens of columns of black smoke rising hundreds of feet along the rim of the Everglades.

  A rusty 1968 Ford pickup truck raced down a lonely dirt road, kicking up a dust plume. The truck was dark red, and the Florida outdoors had made the metal rough like sandpaper. The dirt road stretched through uninhabited miles of open fields. The road was elevated like a causeway, and on each side were canals. Water flowed broadly from Lake Okeechobee down into the Everglades, giving it the nickname River of Grass. The canals had been dug to divert the water and create hundreds of square miles of arable farmland. The canals were deep, and vehicles regularly sank in them. Drownings weren’t rare. The pickup truck stayed in the center of the bumpy road, bouncing on old springs. Its bumper was held on by twisted coat hangers and rope. It was doing fifty. The bed of the truck was full of children.

  Most of the children held empty canvas sacks and pillowcases. Their clothing was hand-me-down-and-down-again. Striped pullover shirts and ripped denim shorts and even a pair of swim trunks. The ones who had shoes didn’t have shoelaces. There was a lot of chatter and laughing in the back of the truck. Bragging. Who had been champions in the past, and who would do even better today. Then the merriment trailed off. They were getting close.

  The pickup sped straight toward the nearest fire. It approached upwind, but smoke still wafted over the truck. Some of the kids pulled the necks of their shirts up over their noses and mouths . . .

  Palm Beach is the largest of the state’s sixty-seven counties, and this was the other Palm Beach, the unknown one. Along the Atlantic shore: Worth Avenue, the Breakers Hotel, Rolls-Royce and Mar-a-Lago. On the opposite side, along Lake Okeechobee: boarded-up buildings, empty streets, burglar bars and poverty so corrosive that even the local prison moved out.

  The area is now oddly known for only two things: sugar and football players.

  These burning fields are where they meet.

  From October to April, the harvest is on, and some of the nation’s largest sugar growers set fire to their fields in controlled burns that remove leaves and weeds, making way for the mechanical harvesters. The procedure is done with straight lines and right angles. There will be a giant, perfectly square patch of flat, jet-black land where the last burn took place, right next to a thriving green square of waving cane stalks. From the air it looks like a checkerboard. When the fire and smoke start, the children head out, from Pahokee to Belle Glade to South Bay and Harlem.

  The ’68 pickup skidded to a stop on the dirt road, and the kids in the back hopped out over both sides like troops jumping down from a combat helicopter. They took off running full speed across a black square, their sacks flapping by their sides. Ahead, a wall of cane. The far half of the field was already on fire. They charged into rows of stalks that would soon also be ablaze.

  It was a decades-old tradition.

  They were hunting rabbits. By hand.

  But this wasn’t some thrill sport like running with the bulls in Pamplona. It was economic. Each pelt brought a few dollars, and what was left was dinner. Only if you lived around here could you realize how much of a difference that made. From years of experience passed down by word of mouth, even the youngest kids knew how to approach a burning field and head off the rabbits being flushed out.

  The kids continued sprinting with all they had, smoke getting thicker. Then they saw them. The first child planted his foot and cut sharply left, diving through a row of stalks and pouncing. A cottontail went into his pillowcase. Then another child cut right, diving on another rabbit. Then another child, and so on as sacks filled.

  The cottontails weren’t exactly easy to grab, but the jackrabbits were another matter entirely. Almost nobody could lay a hand on them. Almost. Some of those who had accomplished the feat . . . well, everyone knew where they were now.

  Amazingly, this short strip of tiny towns along the bott
om of Lake Okeechobee has produced more than sixty players in the National Football League. A number so insane that there must be a catch. Word got around, and soon, each fall at high school games, there were almost as many college football scouts in the stands as parents. At first the scouts couldn’t believe what they saw. But seeing was believing. These kids were fast. Except how was it possible, so many players from such a small area?

  The legend began.

  Chasing rabbits.

  It didn’t lead down to Alice’s Wonderland, but turned them into professional football players. It even reached a point where ESPN sent journalists down to cover the hunts in the cane fields, reporting how the kids could nimbly cut, change direction and speed up again as the rabbits required. It was a heartwarming myth, but the real reason was more sobering: The kids had been dealt such a cruel hand of hardship at birth that it cultivated a fierce drive to succeed.

  And on this particular day, instinct kicked in again. The children knew in their blood exactly when they had pushed it to the last second toward the advancing fire. Then they retreated as fast as they had charged in, regrouping joyously in the safety of the adjacent blackened field, peeking down into their sacks and comparing their hauls. One had four cottontails and proclaimed himself champion of the day, until a heated dispute and a recount. Another sack actually contained a fifth bunny. Hooray!

  Then on to the next burning field. Young, lanky boys who had just experienced a growth spurt raced into the cane stalks, dashing and darting with stunning speed. Behind them came the younger kids from grade school, who idolized the older boys and tried to be just like them. They weren’t nearly as fast but getting there. They caught the occasional cottontail, but most of the quarry eluded their grasp as they fell facedown in the dirt, and the older boys laughed. Then there was one final youth, the scrawniest of all. Named Chris. But lack of weight didn’t affect this child’s velocity; in fact it seemed to help. Chris ran on tiptoes. And was surprisingly consistent, nabbing at least one rabbit per field. Then, just as consistently, an older boy would snatch the animal away. “Give me that!” And shove Chris to the ground. “Now go play with your Barbie dolls.”