Torpedo Juice Page 5

  Coleman walked three blocks to the charred gas pumps. Firemen folded hoses. Excited witnesses filled the parking lot, repeating stories for latecomers. Coleman went inside and grabbed another six from the cooler. He set it on the counter next to a windproof-lighter display showing a woman with a cigarette in a monsoon. Coleman fiddled with one of the lighters, broke the lid and set it back. He eventually realized nobody was coming. Out the front window, the clerk was giving a statement to a fire official with a clipboard. Coleman reached in his pocket and dumped coins on the glass counter. Pennies rolled off. He counted exact change for the sixer, including tax, which he knew from genetic memory.

  Coleman pulled one of the cans off the ring and pushed open the front door. There were several clusters of people on the side of the road, each surrounding someone who said he “saw the whole thing.” Coleman walked up behind the nearest group, sticking his head between two people in back. “…Then this idiot drove off with the fuckin’ handle in his tank!…”

  Coleman raised his face to the sky, chugging the rest of the beer. He popped another off the plastic ring and moseyed to the next group. The man in the middle was pointing at the road. “The armadillo committed suicide, an accident. I know all about this. They jump when startled. If they stayed put, they’d be fine, but instead they spring up and fracture their skulls under the cars. I’m from Texas.”

  Coleman drifted away from the second gathering and approached the edge of U.S. 1. People with cameras formed a line on the opposite side of the road. One had a picture-taking cell phone, beaming the action to his tax attorney in Buffalo. Coleman walked out into the traffic jam, picked up the armadillo, stuck it under his arm and headed home. The people on the side of the road lowered their cameras and became depressed. Cars began moving.

  A HANDFUL OF regulars stood outside the No Name Pub, watching Serge jump up and down on a guitar. He crammed the pieces in a garbage can and dusted his hands. “Enough of that sad chapter.”

  They went inside through a screen door. The day wore on. The last helicopter took off from the bridge. Traffic got back to normal on U.S. 1. Time slid into early afternoon, the hot hours when everything stops in back reaches of the islands. It was quiet outside the No Name.

  The silence was broken by gravel crunching under car tires that rolled past the pub.

  A white Mercedes with tinted windows.

  Part Two

  5

  Inside the No Name Pub

  T HE GANG HUNKERED atop tall stools. A stuffed bear in a Harley T-shirt hung from the ceiling. The bartender leaned across the counter toward Serge. She was flirting. “Ready for another?”

  Sop Choppy drained a draft. “What was the deal with that guitar?”

  “I’m reinventing myself.” Serge twisted the cap off a bottle of water. “Music was just a blind alley.”

  A Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up. College students came through the screen door. “We found it!” They grabbed a table in the middle of the room and began scribbling on dollar bills. “Bartender! Stapler!”

  “Why reinvent yourself?” asked Sop Choppy.

  “The trick to respect in this life is a robust turnover in acquaintances,” said Serge. “The Keys are the perfect place to hole up and create a new mystique.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because nobody down here is who they seem to be.”

  “Nobody?”

  A limo pulled up. Gaskin Fussels burst through the screen door. “Let the party begin!”

  Sop Choppy’s head sagged. “Not that asshole again.”

  “Did you say something?” asked Serge. He was rotating on his stool like radar, absorbing the contents of the pub, which originally opened as a pioneer trading post, complete with upstairs brothel. A living treasure chest of footnotes and contradictions. The No Name Pub is actually named after something: No Name Key, a remote island not yet touched by public utilities, where modern homesteaders rough it out with cisterns, solar panels and generators. Except the pub isn’t on No Name Key; it’s across the bridge on Big Pine, way, way back in the sticks, hidden by lush vegetation, possibly the worst retail location in all the Keys. That’s why it was so popular. The pub had two main advertising points: great pizza. And you can’t find the pub.

  Serge continued revolving and smiling. The interior was intimate and dark, the decor busy. Old life preserver, mounted deer head, street signs, license plates, framed photos, newspaper clippings, Midwest police patches. And dollar bills. Thousands. Inscribed by tourists. “Made it from Colt’s Neck, N.J.! Suzie.” The walls had long since been covered, and now hundreds of newer bills hung stapled to the ceiling by their ends, fluttering down in the breeze from the screen door and giving the already cave-like room the additional impression of bats. The bartop also met Serge’s approval, etched and worn from decades of rough living and ribald stories. If it was a person, it would be Keith Richards. Serge absolutely loved the No Name! He fidgeted and hopped off his stool. “I have to get the hell out of here.”

  “See ya, Serge.”

  The screen door slammed. Serge hoisted his knapsack and began walking up the street toward the water. It was an isolated stretch of road surrounded by unforgiving nature. Scorching, bright and still except for the electric buzz of crickets. Serge’s senses were keen, outlook superpositive. This was his favorite place on earth. He told himself to slow down to appreciate the moment, and he started walking faster to appreciate it sooner…. Photos. I need photos!

  Serge set his knapsack on the ground and retrieved camera gear. He began walking briskly again, one eye closed, viewing the world through a zoom lens. Click, click, click…

  A photo of each living thing he saw. “All life is sacred, even algae…. Oooh, nice flowers, pine hyacinth, turk’s cap…” Click, click, moving on to the insect family. “…Wood tick, spiny orb weaver…” Click, click. He noticed movement below on the street. “I’m in luck! A ghost crab!”

  The crab skittered sideways across the pavement. Serge got down in a baseball catcher’s crouch with his camera, sidestepping with it. A pickup truck flew by. “Get out of the fuckin’ road, you imbecile!”

  Serge kept his eye to the viewfinder. “Another soul out of tune with the life force.”

  The crab stopped. Serge lowered himself with stealth until he was belly-flat on the road, aiming the camera like a sniper.

  “Photography teaches me to be observant,” said Serge. “Discipline. Becoming one with the environment so I don’t miss even the smallest detail.”

  A skunk ape crossed the road behind him.

  Click. “Got it!” He stood and continued on. Trees gave way to scrub, the sky got big, water up ahead, sagging power lines and crooked palms. A loose parade of cotton-clouds drifting north, and Serge free-associated on their shapes: “Elephant, giraffe, Snoopy, Elvis, the Baltic states, chain of mitochondric enzyme inhibitors, a Faustian choice…” Standing against it all was a solitary old clapboard building at the foot of the Bogie Channel Bridge. White paint and white metal storm awnings. Behind it sat the dock, a neat row of identical rental boats and an aboveground fuel tank with a big red Texaco star on the side. Serge walked past a sign:

  OLD WOODEN BRIDGE FISHING CAMP

  EFFICIENCY COTTAGES

  BEER • TACKLE • BAIT

  He reached the building.

  Ting-a-ling. The woman behind the counter looked up. She had a tank top, ponytail and a local’s tan. “Hi, Serge…” She raised a hand in front of her face. “Don’t take my picture again!”

  “You’re a living thing.” Click.

  The woman finished unpacking a UPS box of spoon-lures and reached for a hook on the door under the number five. “Your regular room?”

  “Thanks, Julie…. Ooooo, new fishing caps!” He grabbed one off a shelf and studied the front. “Embroidered establishment name and dateline. That means I’m not allowed to leave without it.”

  She rang the register. “Anything else?”

  “New T-shirts, too!” H
e held one up to his chest. “And hand-painted postcards. Gimme ten of each.”

  “Who do you send all your cards to?”

  “Me.” Serge inspected a nearly empty pegboard of Instamatic film and individual packets of Bayer aspirin. The Coca-Cola snack-bar menu board indicated Fruitopia was now in stock and pinfish were going for a buck apiece. Julie punched buttons on an accounting calculator. Serge spun a rack of sunglasses. “They shot the movie Tollbooth here.”

  “You told me.”

  “When?”

  “Last six times you stayed.”

  Serge picked up a pot of complimentary coffee, smelled it and made a face. “It’s a B movie, but it beats trench mouth. They chopped up a guy and stuck him in your bait freezer over there.” Serge replaced the coffee beneath a mishmash of sun-faded photos covering the wall. People holding up bull dolphin and tarpon and snook. Bikinis, lobsters, smiles. Somebody’s dog was wearing a bandanna.

  The back door opened. A man came in from the dock, sunglasses hanging from a lanyard around his neck. “Hi, Serge.”

  “Hi, Mark.” Click.

  “Anything going on?” asked Julie.

  “One of the rental boats came back trashed again.”

  “Which one?”

  “Number seven, the businessmen.” He turned to Serge. “Guys from the Pacific rim, don’t know what nationality. Every morning this week they come in and buy twice as much bait as anyone needs and take a boat out all day.”

  “Catching anything?”

  “Apparently. Each time they come back, the deck is a bloody mess from bow to stern, but they never bring any fish to the dock. We just find all these skeletons in the bilge.”

  “They’re eating raw fish out there?”

  Mark nodded.

  “What about the extra bait?”

  “I think they’re eating that, too.” Mark snatched a compact yellow walkie-talkie off his belt. “Jim, hose out number seven…. That’s right, again.” He clipped the Motorola back on his shorts. “Staying in number five?”

  “You know it.” Serge adjusted the band of his new cap and left through the rear door. He walked along the dock, where someone was flushing out a boat with a garden hose, pushing squid tentacles and loose suckers along the deck.

  “Noble work.”

  “What?”

  Serge headed across the parking lot. He stopped and raised his camera. A row of tiny, white cottages from the forties. Picnic table in front of each.

  The two proprietors were outside, trying to straighten a signpost someone had hit.

  “Who’s he talking to?” asked Mark.

  “Himself,” said Julie.

  “…Ah, the Old Wooden Bridge Fishing Camp!” said Serge. “Last vestige of the early days, when rustic compounds defined the archipelago, vernacular gems with wraparound verandas and plantation fans, Zane Grey lounging in coconut shade, polishing dispatches on pompano for northern intelligentsia. Then the march of progress, coming ashore like Godzilla, smashing the historic fish camps like balsa-wood pagodas…”

  “Why is he stomping around the parking lot like that?” asked Mark.

  Julie shrugged.

  “…Now they’re all memories. Even the old wooden bridge itself is gone, replaced by concrete. But at least the camp is still here….”

  “What’s he doing now?” asked Mark.

  “Kissing cottage number five.”

  Serge stuck the key in the knob, went inside and double-bolted the door. Safe and snug. His own space capsule. Microwave, coffeemaker, fridge, stove, dark paneling and a dark-wood kitchen table bought at some place with a name like “The Wagon Wheel.” There was a single small painting on the wall of a lionfish made with the bold, instinctive brush strokes of a state prison art class. Then more impressionism, a clashing 1963 avocado sofa covered with sunflowers, marigolds and violets like Van Gogh’s bitter, less-talented half-brother worked in upholstery. Serge jammed the window AC unit up all the way, closed his eyes and stuck his face in the freezing vent. Good ol’ number five.

  It was a busy hour. Serge scurried around the cabin, stowing all his paraphernalia in The Special Places. Finally, he was done, the cottage in perfect order. Serge unfolded a scrap of paper from his pocket and committed a task list to memory. He ran out the door, cutting between other units. There were no fences, just one big feral lawn with pockets of standing water that connected all the cottages and homes behind the camp like an abandoned par-three golf course. Serge ran past a car parked behind cottage number three, which he couldn’t tell was a metallic green Trans Am because it was hidden under a tarp.

  The curtains parted a slit on a back window of number three. Eyes watched Serge jog across the grass and disappear up the road. The curtains closed. The petite woman went back to the couch and sat bolt upright at the very edge. Full ashtray, nearly empty bottle of vodka, baggy eyes. She stared at the cell phone on the coffee table and was frustrated she didn’t feel the least bit drunk. Adrenaline.

  Her name was Anna Sebring. She’d been up most of the night, glands on battle stations, constantly peeking out the curtains for a white Mercedes with tinted windows. Then back to the windows again at every random sound. Toads, raccoons rattling garbage cans, dragonflies bumping into porch lights, the people four cottages up with their midnight fish fry and campfire songs. That was the problem hiding out at the Old Wooden Bridge. It was so quiet it was noisy.

  A tap on the window.

  Anna screamed and found herself standing on the couch.

  Another tap. At least it wasn’t gunfire or someone kicking in the door. And what if it was him? But how did he find her? The car?

  Tap.

  Anna slowly lowered a leg off the sofa. She made it to the window and parted the curtains….

  Her heart seized. Face to face. The beady eyes and narrow beak of the great white heron that the previous tenants had been feeding. Dinnertime. Tap.

  In the background, fishermen returned to the dock, and two guys carried a green kayak over their heads.

  Anna closed the curtains. “Get a grip!”

  She returned to the couch and drank the end of the vodka. She stared again at the silent cell phone on the coffee table. A fast pulse throbbed in her forehead, which was running a horrible, round-the-clock slide show. Always blood.

  Anna didn’t want to turn on the TV in case it blocked out a warning sound. But this was getting ridiculous. She needed distraction.

  Anna picked up the remote control and pointed it at the TV. She paused a moment and studied her own reflection in the black picture tube. She clicked the power button and was then looking at a photo of herself on the local news. The remote crashed to the floor; batteries rolled under the couch.

  The multiple killings were all over TV, and now her photo, asking the public’s help. The picture switched to a live shot, rows of evenly spaced volunteers combing a field for her body. Anna curled up on the couch and pulled her knees tight to her body.

  The cell phone rang.

  Her head snapped toward the sound, and she curled tighter. Three rings. Answer it! Her body wouldn’t respond. It was like she was floating somewhere near the ceiling. Five rings. Pick it up! Seven rings, eight…She saw one of her arms reach for the coffee table.

  “Hello?…”

  Sunset, cottage number five

  SERGE OPENED A thick, leather-bound book in his lap, the journal he wrote in at the end of each day. He tapped his chin with a pen and stared out the window at the fading light over Bogie Channel. He hunched over and started writing:

  Captain Florida’s log, star date 764.354

  Another night of vivid dreams. Found myself in Key West a hundred years ago when the lawless streets were filled with bloodthirsty smugglers and wreck-salvagers. Except for some reason I had a plasma gun, which gave me the edge. Basis for hit TV series? Which started me thinking: How the early pioneers must have lived! By the late 1800s, Key West had run out of fuel sources. So people on the other islands built giant, ten-foo
t-tall earthen kilns to make charcoal that they shipped down on boats for barter. Which brings us to what I did today: The Great Serge Kiln Project! It was a daunting task, but the payoff would be immense in spiritual terms. Then I got to thinking: Hey, this could also make some real money. Remember natural sponges? Sell bags of the shit all over the place. “Historic Keys Charcoal.” Completely change the way people cook out, make a ransom by mass producing the un-mass-produced simpler life like Ben and Jerry. I have to admit, it was getting pretty exciting! I walked over to No Name Key and found a perfect clearing in the woods. There was much to do. Prepare the site, gather the right wood, assemble a domed superstructure, pack it with mud, then diligently tend the fire for at least a week, narrowing and expanding the chimney so the charcoaling process doesn’t overheat or extinguish. And I’m standing there, staring at the ground, and I think: That’s way too much fucking work. So I drive to the convenience store for some briquettes. And on the way in I pass the Dumpster, and there’s that smell again. You know, the Dumpster smell. They all smell the same. Convenience store, Bloomingdale’s, third-world deli, doesn’t matter, exact same odor, like there’s a Dumpster molecule we have yet to isolate, and when we do, we’ll be able to neutralize it. No more smell for the customers. Boom! Business skyrockets! Another big moneymaking idea! But does the guy behind the register at Circle K listen? He just wants me to get out of the way so the line can move. I tell him it’s that kind of parochial thinking that’s keeping him behind that counter, and then the conversation wanders again into nastiness. But it’s no surprise; lost people everywhere and none of them accepting my free maps. Then I realize something else. Fish have eyes on the sides of their heads. How do they focus? Do they get a split screen? Is this what’s holding them back?

  Serge took a deep, satisfied breath and slowly closed his journal. He gazed out the window at the soothing waters. “Can you feel it? Peace and solitude, nothing but tranquility in every direction.” He nodded to himself. “Sometimes it’s good to be alone with your thoughts.”