Coconut Cowboy Read online

  “The only light is more orange neon,” said Mary. “There’s a fiddle player somewhere.”

  “Peter!”

  “Is someone calling you?”

  “We just moved here.”

  His name was shouted again.

  “I think someone is,” said Mary.

  Her husband squinted through kitchen smoke at a table in back by the restrooms. Actually it was three tables pushed together, each a sturdy maple square with a half inch of slick lacquer to fight the wear and tear for which the barbecue community is known. There were two pitchers of sweetened iced tea, a basket of biscuits, hand wipes, and racks of giant ribs surrounded by eight men of uncannily similar appearance.

  Peter noticed a familiar person in overalls at the head of the table, waving. “Peter!”

  “I know him,” he told his wife.

  “Where from?” asked Mary.

  “He was the man at our door.”

  Vernon Log stood and shook Peter’s hand. “Guys, this is our new neighbor, Peter Pugliese.”

  “Hi, Peter.” “Pleasure.” “Nice to meet,” etc.

  Peter smiled back, thinking about his now rib-­sauce-­sticky hand he was holding away from his chinos.

  “Who’s that behind you?”

  “Oh.” Peter stepped aside, and all the men at the table quickly stood. “This is Mary, my wife.”

  “Pleasure.” “You’re a lucky man.” So on.

  “Told you we’d meet again at Lead Belly’s,” said Vernon. “Join us.”

  “I wouldn’t want to intrude—­”

  “Nonsense.” Vernon swung a hand to dispel the concept. “Guys, pull up that other table.”

  Peter paused. “But a family is about to sit down at it.”

  “They’ll find another.”

  Soon they were all gathered together. A young woman in an apron arrived with a notepad and pen. She blew a bubble with her gum. “What’ll ya have?”

  “Get the ribs,” said Vernon, gnawing a bone.

  All the men at the table wore plastic bibs. Each bib had a large lobster.

  “They serve seafood?” asked Peter.

  Vernon looked down at the crustacean on his chest. “No, these were just cheaper.”

  Peter handed the waitress their menus. “Two orders of ribs.”

  “Comes with three sides. Coleslaw, hush puppies, mac and cheese, black beans, black-­eyed peas, okra, corn on the cob, off the cob, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, crinkle-­cut potatoes—­”

  “Dixie,” said Vernon. “These are our new neighbors. Bring ’em a little of everything.”

  Gum smacked, and she left.

  A loud wail from a hand-­cranked siren went by outside the restaurant.

  “Another fire?” asked Peter.

  “No,” said Vernon. “They went the wrong way again . . . You want a beer?”

  “Sure.” Peter turned to look for the waitress.

  Vernon shook his head. “They don’t sell any. No license.” He reached down into a cooler next to his chair and pulled out a dripping-­cold longneck Budweiser. “Here ya go.”

  “Thanks,” said Peter. “Customers are allowed to do this?”

  “We are,” said Vernon, and a wave of laughter ran round the table.

  Peter laughed, too, nudging his wife, who forced a chuckle.

  “Let me introduce the gang,” said Vernon. “This my cousin Bo, the fire chief, and my brother Floyd, the tax collector, and my other brother Jabow, who we call Bo unless the other Bo is around. It’s caused problems. He’s a city councilman, along with everyone else, and so is my nephew Clem, and my son-­in-­law Otis, and the twins, Harlan and Haywood . . .” Each of the men nodded in turn at the ­couple.

  Peter smiled back. “Sounds like you got most of the government here.”

  “The whole government,” corrected Vernon. “We’re actually having a commission meeting right now.”

  Peter looked over his shoulder. “What about the city hall up the street in the town square?”

  “No good,” said Jabow.

  “Tried that before,” said Clem.

  ­“People showed up,” said Harlan.

  “Asked questions,” said Haywood.

  “We got us a nice little town here,” said Otis.

  “Take care of our own,” said Vernon. “And at that table next to us are the three young bucks, Elroy, Slow and Slower, the town’s next generation. Still wet behind the ears, but we’ll bring ’em around. They’re not allowed to sit at the main table yet.”

  “What kind of names are Slow and Slower?” asked Peter.

  “Nicknames, because they’re slow in the head, one a bit more so,” said Vernon. “We’re straight talkers around these parts.” He used a desiccated rib to point across the rest of the diner at children and grandparents and more overalls. “Couldn’t ask for a better bunch of neighbors . . .” Then he cupped hands around his mouth, calling out to a man in a crisp plaid shirt sitting alone in back. “Steve! Will you stop with the utensils already?”

  The man smiled back and waved a piece of cutlery.

  Vernon shook his head benevolently. “Still eats ribs with a knife and fork. But we’ll learn him.”

  “Another newcomer like you,” said Jabow. “Bought Old Man Maynard’s farm last year.”

  “He’s a farmer?” asked Peter.

  “No, just a city boy who don’t like the city no more. Has some kind of wholesale brokerage job he can do at home with a computer, so he moved here.” Vernon refilled his iced tea and squeezed lemon, hitting Harlan in the eye. “More and more city folk are discovering what we got here, but we don’t want it too discovered, if you know what I mean.”

  The front door opened, and a disheveled man stumbled over to the table and whispered in Vernon’s ear. The mayor nodded and handed him a Budweiser from the cooler.

  “You know I’m good for it,” said the man.

  “Forget about it, Grady.”

  He staggered out the door.

  Vernon saw the question in Peter’s eyes. “The town drunk. Every small place needs one. Practically an official position . . .”

  The door opened again. Peter expected Grady’s return, but this time he saw the opposite. A trim man in his fifties, hundred-­dollar haircut, khakis and a button-­down oxford shirt. He stood beside the table with extra-­white teeth. “Gentlemen.”

  “Ryan, grab a chair,” said Vernon.

  “No time. I just wanted to check on that thing—­” He stopped when he noticed they weren’t alone.

  “Ryan,” said Vernon, “these are our guests, Peter and Mary Pugliese . . . Peter and Mary, meet our state senator, Ryan Pratchett.”

  He shook their hands with another large smile. “Visiting this fine community we’ve got here?”

  “No,” Vernon interjected. “Just bought a place out in the pines, our newest neighbors.”

  “Even better,” said Ryan. “Two more votes!”

  More chuckles around the table.

  “Vern, I’ll talk to you later about that other thing,” said the senator. “Guys . . .”

  “Take care, Ryan.”

  The front door of the restaurant closed again. The Puglieses were getting dizzy.

  “So what do you think?” asked Vernon.

  “About what?” said Peter.

  Vernon spread his arms. “Everything.”

  “It certainly is a lot different from the big city.”

  “And we mean to keep it that way.” Vernon yanked off his bib and stood. “I have to take a squirt. Welcome to Wobbly, Florida.”

  Chapter FOUR

  BORN ON THE BAYOU

  The oncoming pickup truck approached the motorcycle on a lonely country road.

  A shotgun poked out the window.

  Ba
ng.

  The cyclist crashed, and the red-­white-­and-­blue teardrop gas tank exploded in a fireball.

  Serge watched the flames rise on his laptop screen. He turned off the device and dabbed misty eyes.

  Coleman exhaled smoke from a bong he’d fashioned out of a toy airplane. “Why are you so upset?”

  “The last scene in Easy Rider always chokes me up.” He aimed a camera out the window. “Two freethinkers exploring the limitless road of our great nation, and they’re wasted by a pair of mental dead ends.”

  Coleman exhaled again as pot smoke filled a tiny cockpit. “I remember that movie now. It was about those cats doing weed all the time. What a great plot!”

  “Coleman, that wasn’t the plot—­”

  “It most definitely was the plot.” Coleman nodded emphatically as he packed another bowl in the luggage compartment. “I mean morning, noon and night, coast to coast, blazing fat ones with everyone they met, listening to righ­teous music, munching out, then torching up again before driving to meet new ­people with their own weed, passing more doobies until they all finally fell asleep. Then they’d wake up and do the same thing again, day after day. Why don’t they still make movies with great plots like that?”

  “Coleman, Easy Rider was about the American Dream.”

  “Like I just said.”

  “No, not like . . . Never mind.”

  Conversation took a break as the powder-­blue 1972 Mercury Comet sat quietly on a deserted shoulder off Highway 105.

  Serge and Coleman. An unforeseen permutation of the odd ­couple. Theirs was a long-­standing alliance of mutual tolerance with a perpetual sound track of camera clicks and bong bubbles.

  Coleman raised his hand.

  Serge pointed at him in recognition. “Yes, the transfer student from Cannabis County.”

  “Why are we in Louisiana?”

  Serge twisted the camera’s telephoto lens. “Because it happened right there . . .” Click, click, click. “ . . . the shooting location of the final scene from Easy Rider, a few miles north of Krotz Springs.”

  “How’d you find it?”

  “Exhaustive, frame-­by-­frame analysis of the closing aerial shots fading back from the burning motorcycle.” Click, click, click. “That modest bayou out there was the last clue. I studied Internet satellite photos until I located it alongside the Atchafalaya River.” He lowered the camera as a dragonfly flew in the open window. “Except they used a little geographical liberty to choose this filming site because the story line had them heading east out of New Orleans, not northwest.”

  Coleman’s eyes rolled in their sockets as they followed the insect buzzing along the inside of the windshield looking for an exit. “Dragonfly, dragonfly, dragon . . . fly, dra-­gonnnnn-­fly, dragon-­flyyyyyyy, dragon-­ffffffly, dragon! fly! . . . fly! dragon! . . . dra-­fly-­gon! . . .”

  “Coleman, whatever the fuck it is you’re doing, can you please stop?”

  “Hey, Serge, you know how if you keep repeating the same thing over and over, it just becomes meaningless gibberish?”

  “I do now.”

  “That’s seriously messed up. It’s all I’m saying.”

  “Keep those bulletins flowing.”

  “You got it.” He leaned back over his airplane.

  “But here’s the part that really hacks me off.” Click, click, click. “Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper were heading to Florida. That was their ultimate goal. And after they trip on acid in that cemetery and hit the road, I’m rubbing my palms in anticipation: ‘Okay, here comes the best part of all! My home state!’ And then suddenly it’s over. I bought the DVD to scour the bonus material for an alternate ending, but no luck there, either.”

  Serge started up the car.

  “Where now?” asked Coleman.

  “The key to my quest for the American Dream. Those two cyclists were always hitting small towns on their quest for the Sunshine State.” Serge pulled back onto the road. “So we’re going to pick up the baton that Fonda and Hopper dropped right here and head south to create our own alternate ending.”

  An hour later, the Comet rolled east out of Slidell on Route 190.

  “Man, you must really love that movie,” said Coleman. “I remember you swearing you’d never leave Florida again, after that last time.”

  Serge studied the side of the road with intention. “Technically we’re still in Florida.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Coleman. “We’re not even back to Mississippi.”

  “The sign we passed a while ago said we crossed the Saint Tammany Parish line.”

  “Parish? You mean like nuns and shit?” Coleman rubbed phantom pain from his knuckles.

  “The other forty-­nine states have counties, but because of Napoleonic law and influence, Louisiana has parishes,” said Serge. “The French are a curious tribe.”

  “But what’s that got to do with Florida?”

  “When you say Louisiana, ­people think, sure, Louisiana Purchase, 1803, I was paying attention that day in school.”

  “I was home with the mumps.”

  “But the purchase was mainly west of the Mississippi River. So where did Louisiana get the rest of the land that makes up the eastern bottom of its L shape?”

  “I’d like to buy a vowel.”

  “Florida!” said Serge. “Back then our Panhandle stretched all the way to the Mississippi in a region controlled by Spain. But settlers of British descent didn’t dig it, and in 1810 they successfully stormed the garrison at Baton Rouge and proclaimed independence. It blows the mind! Few realize it today, but in the early nineteenth century, there was actually a separate country within the United States. They drew up a constitution—­which officially referred to the new nation as the ‘State of Florida’—­established branches of government, elected a legislature and designed a flag of a lone white star on a blue field. The president was named Fulwar Skipwith.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “History has an imagination greater than any writer,” said Serge. “Sadly, the new nation only lasted ninety days. The U.S. government looked south and said, ‘Nice work with the Spanish, boys. Now we’ll take that land, please.’ Then they annexed it to what became the state of Louisiana, but to this day the land is still referred to as the Florida Parishes. There are eight of them, including Saint Tammany. Discovering that kind of insane Florida trivia is so intense that I become temporarily incontinent.” Serge glanced around the empty stretch of road and pulled the car over. “This is as good a place as any.”

  “For what?”

  Serge grabbed a long pole from the backseat. “Just stay alert.”

  The pair headed up a grassy embankment. Serge climbed over a barbed-­wire fence, and Coleman crawled under it. “Ow, ooo, ow . . .”

  Serge reached the top of a small hill and jammed his pole in the ground, unfurling a blue flag with a white star. Then he scanned the horizon. “I don’t see any opposition.”

  “What’s that noise?” asked Coleman.

  “Sounds like a tractor.”

  They turned around. A furious farmer dismounted and stomped up the back side of the mound. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing on my property?”

  “We’re from Florida.” Serge raised the front of his tropical shirt to reveal a Colt .45 in his waistband. “You’re welcome to continue plowing this land if you shift your allegiance to my state.”

  The farmer began backing away slowly, then turned and ran.

  “Make that ninety-­one days and counting. And without a shot fired. I always wanted to be president.” Serge handed his camera to Coleman. “Take my picture next to the flag.”

  He grabbed the pole and stared off proudly.

  Click.

  Coleman handed the camera back. “What just happened?”

 
“We formed our own country.”

  Coleman froze. “Wait, what? . . . I can’t believe it! This is so incredible! I don’t know what to say! It’s the best idea you’ve ever had! I’ll never forget this day as long as I live!”

  “Uh, thank you Coleman.” Serge rubbed his chin. “I always thought my history stuff kind of bored you.”

  “Shit, no! I’ve never been so excited!”

  “This is an astonishing development,” said Serge. “There still may be hope for you—­”

  “Hold on! Hold on!” Coleman turned to light a mondo joint against the wind. “Pot’s legal here, right? This is going to be so fantastic! I’ll be the drug czar, but like in the cool way. I’ll, you know, sit on a royal throne and point at ­people: ‘Yes, you may get stoned. Let it be written.’ This is so freaking great!”

  “Settle down, Beavis.”

  “When do we plant the crops? I know these dudes who can help. Man, they’ll all flip!”

  “Coleman, there are much more serious issues when you become sovereign.” He gestured back at the flapping blue flag. “You think we’re just playing fort here?”

  “Sorry. What do we need to do?”

  “First, get recognition from another power as a bulwark against annexation. Maybe I’ll back-­channel to establish diplomatic ties with the Conch Republic.” Serge smiled at the notion. “They’ll understand our struggle.”

  “Who’s the Conch Republic?”

  “In 1982, the federal government roadblocked the Florida Keys, searching for drugs and illegal immigrants. This pissed off the chamber of commerce because it choked tourism, so they seceded from the United States, and in short order declared war, surrendered and applied for foreign aid. The publicity stunt worked and the roadblocks were removed.”

  “That’s pretty weird.”

  Serge nodded and headed back to the car. “The second weirdest surrender in Key West history.”

  “What’s the first?”

  “In 2003, four armed Cuban soldiers docked their Coast Guard boat at the Hyatt and marched in uniform past the T-­shirt shops on Duval Street looking for a police officer so they could defect.”

  Serge reached the barbed-­wire fence by the road. “What’s that racket?”