Naked Came the Florida Man Page 5
It was only an hour before grimy fingers pulled up the next gold piece. Excitement bubbled. There was a lot of time left before sunset. But that would be it for the day.
Chris pedaled home and ran inside.
“Where have you been?” asked her grandmother.
“Out.” She dashed into her bedroom and closed the door. Chris ripped the tape off her stomach and lay on the floor next to her dresser. She stared up as she pulled out the bottom drawer. The two newest coins were taped underneath next to the previous one. She closed the drawer and jumped up just as her grandmother came in.
“Good gracious, child, you’re filthy.”
Chris dropped into the chair at her small desk and opened the notebook. “I’m fine.” A pen clicked open.
“You go wash up right now before you make a mess of the whole place.”
“Don’t disturb my circles.”
“Are you sassing me?”
“No, it’s a math joke.” She stood from the chair. “I’ll go wash up. I love you!”
The next day in school, the teachers had a nagging feeling that something was different in class, but they couldn’t quite put their fingers on it. By fourth period, the science teacher figured it out. Chris was unnaturally quiet. She hadn’t asked a single question or added something arcane to the discussion, like, “Thomas Edison never slept more than four hours a night.” And Chris kept glancing at the clock on the wall. Before this day, she always seemed as though she wanted class to go on forever. Maybe she had the flu.
The bell rang, and the teacher caught her at the door. “Chris, is everything okay?”
“Great! I just got a cool compass that I’ve been thinking about!” She ran off down the hall.
Weird little kid, the teacher thought. But in a good way.
Chris burst through the door of her grandmother’s upstairs apartment, rolling in her bike. She ran right for her room. She rifled through papers and magazines and library books on her little desk. It became frantic. She ran out into the living room.
“Grandma, have you seen my green notebook? . . . Grandma?”
“In here.”
Chris ran to the kitchen. “Grandma, what are you doing reading my notebook?”
“I wouldn’t read it if it was your diary because that would be private.” The old woman turned the page with sausage fingers. “But you left it open on your desk. All these numbers and complex diagrams, for a child your age no less. So this is how you always get straight A’s?” She handed the book back. “I’m very proud of you. Just remember not to care what anyone thinks; you’re going to do great things someday.”
“Thanks, Grandma.” A kiss on the cheek, and then she was off again with her bike.
Today would be a watershed, but it didn’t look that way at first, taking two hours to find the next coin. But shortly after, her hands hit something else in the soil. She pulled out a piece of wood. A short thin plank with rusty rails on each end like it had been part of a packing crate. She tossed it aside and began excavating with vigor. The hole was wider than her others, exposing the surface of two more broken planks. She lifted them up and froze. Six more coins in a cluster. There was now no doubt that this wasn’t just stray dropped money. The folklore was true. Chris wanted to tell the world, but “I can’t tell anybody.”
She made all the required documentation in her notebook, then taped everything to her stomach again, and pedaled her bike home like a maniac.
Now she had a problem. An embarrassment of riches, so to speak. If her hunch was correct, she would quickly run out of room under her dresser drawers. And the bag she taped beneath her shirt wasn’t going to cut it much longer. She started taping coins inside her shoes, but that just made pedaling too hard. She had a stroke of brilliance.
The next day she raced home from the fields again. Boys stopped her bike at the corner of the apartments. There was a basket on her handlebars with daisies.
“Hey, Milk Crate! What have you got there?”
“None of your business.”
The tallest boy looked in the basket. “Textbooks? Ewww!” A punch on the shoulder and they let her go.
Chris ran up to her room and removed the rubber strap holding the books together. She opened an old algebra text that she had found discarded behind the school. In the middle of the carved-out pages were her coins for the day.
Next order of business: Improve storage. This would be more difficult. She stared out the window. Then she got down on the floor and began removing tape from under dresser drawers . . .
And so it went. Days, weeks, then months, slowly building her haul. She had depleted all that apparently could be found from that first crate, and there had been a dispiriting lull. But it was followed by the wooden remnants of a second box. Then a hundred yards south, the discovery of the next planks.
A year passed. Then two years. At first it had been pure excitement. Nothing goes together better than kids and buried treasure. But now that she was getting older: “Am I doing something wrong?”
Chris sat at her usual computer in the library the next afternoon. She looked up site after site on salvage laws. She read about how if something sinks in a body of water, under certain circumstances, it’s up for grabs. Then she went back to meteorology pages showing detailed computer models and maps of the tidal surge from the 1928 storm. The highest water levels rose twenty feet over the field she’d been working. She sat back and bit her lower lip in thought. “Technically, the treasure did sink. And I’m the finder.”
Back to work.
More time passed, more trips to the cane fields. But all good things must come to an end. Chris’s efforts dwindled in results as she depleted her find, until there was nothing. And she was sure about it, too, because she had dug her scientific sampling holes far and wide in the logical drift directions.
She was happy and sad at the same time. What an adventure it had been. On the other hand, Chris always felt unanchored when she didn’t have an obsessive goal to focus her mental energy. She would just have to come up with something else.
It only took a few days. She rode her bike as fast as she could, hyper as hell, down to the high school. She knocked on a door . . .
Chapter 5
South Florida
The Plymouth Satellite wound its way east on U.S. Highway 1 and crested the bridge out of Key Largo at mile 107. Then it entered what locals call “the Eighteen-Mile Stretch,” a no-man’s-land of mangroves and wild scrub from the bottom tip of the mainland to the first dribbles of civilization at Florida City. Do not break down, do not run out of gas.
Coleman sucked on his gator bottle and blew smoke out the window. “I never heard about trying to explode birds.”
“A sad state of affairs,” said Serge. “And not just Alka-Seltzer. Do any kind of Internet search on animal abuse, and it brings up a trail of tears. Pelicans get it especially bad for some reason, and now these ass-heads are filming the brutality and proudly posting it on the web. Rice is another one.”
“Rice, like the San Francisco treat?”
Serge nodded. “People feed uncooked rice to birds, waiting for them to burst. It’s another myth, and luckily, in that case, the birds aren’t poisoned and can fly away. But the intent is still there. I can’t get my head around that brand of cowardice.”
“But, Serge, there must be another way.”
“There is.” Serge checked the clip in his pistol and stowed it under the seat. “That’s one reason why a lot of people have stopped throwing rice at weddings. Instead they hand out bags of birdseed. Of course they don’t realize that the rice is safe, but I’m heartened to see they care enough to err on the side of caution.”
“You said it was one reason they stopped throwing rice?”
“The other reason is all the documented slips and falls on the tiny kernels,” said Serge. “It dampens the mood when the lovebirds are driving away with tin cans bouncing behind the car and then Grandma Petunia takes a spectacular header in the driveway
.”
“You know, I admire the way you respect animals,” said Coleman.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I like my little nature friends,” said Coleman. “Squirrels dig my potato chips.”
“You are noble in that way,” said Serge. “Although the salt contributes to hypertension. Those tiny fellows are wound way too tight as it is. Especially the flying ones. What is their fucking hurry? I mean, damn, just slow your roll, man.”
“What about jelly beans?”
“Diabetes,” said Serge.
The Plymouth entered southern Miami on the Dixie Highway. Soon, they passed a church, and Serge craned his neck around as people entered. “Well, I’ll be.”
Coleman turned. “Someone’s getting married?”
“We were just talking about weddings, and one’s about to get started,” said Serge. “This gives me a chance.”
“For what?”
“To restore tradition,” said Serge. “Whole generations know not of the rice joy.”
“What about Grandma Petunia?”
“My solution is elegantly designed not to break any hips.”
Serge drove on until he found what he was looking for. The Plymouth skidded into a parking lot.
An hour later, the pair waited alone in front of the church.
“So we’re going to be wedding crashers?” asked Coleman.
“No, that would involve dishonesty,” said Serge. “But there’s nothing unethical about standing outside a church and rooting for strangers not to get divorced.”
“The doors are opening,” said Coleman.
“Here they come,” said Serge. “Get ready.”
Guests poured down the steps and formed crowds on each side of the walkway leading from the church. Finally, the happy newlyweds emerged. They headed down the walkway, showered with cheers and birdseed. They were halfway to their car at the curb when suddenly:
Plop . . . plop, plop, plop . . .
“What on earth?” said the bride.
Plop, plop, plop . . .
The groom looked up in rage. “Who’s throwing rice? Cooked rice?”
“Me!” Serge raised his hand. “Because I care! There’s no way those old geezers over there will crack their noggins.”
The groom looked down at his chest. “It’s brown! And greasy!”
Serge grinned sheepishly. “It’s pork fried rice. Sorry, I got a little hungry and that’s my favorite.” Plop, plop . . .
“My dress!” screamed the bride. “It’s ruined!”
“You bastards!”
Serge held out an innocent hand. “What? I’m so happy for you! This is your special day! Don’t get divorced!”
“Special day?”
“Yeah,” said Serge, “but keep up this kind of gloomy fixation on laundry and tonight you’ll be wanking off into a honeymoon suite bathrobe.”
“Fuckers!”
“Get ’em!”
“Coleman, time to run again.”
Serge easily slipped out of grasp as usual, and just as usual, Coleman was captured. They had him squirming by the arms, and Serge was about to disperse them with a display of the Colt .45 pistol in his waistband. But Coleman was even more effective at the task by jackknifing over and rainbow-vomiting a bouillabaisse of Southern Comfort and Cool Ranch Doritos across the hems of black tuxedo pants.
“Son of a bitch!”
The Plymouth patched out and raced north on Dixie Highway. They heard a banging sound from the trunk.
“Jesus, can’t I get any peace?” Serge slapped the steering wheel while fishing bullets from his pocket. “I’m being mellow, but everyone else is rowing against my harmony stream.”
On an overcast afternoon, a gold Satellite sat in the parking lot of a sub-budget motel on Highway A1A. Across the street, a nearly deserted beach in Fort Lauderdale. Purple clouds rolled in over the unstaffed vintage lifeguard stands. The sign above the motel office featured a smiling mermaid, in an attempt to make up for everything else.
Serge and Coleman crashed through the door of room 6.
“This is going to be the best party ever!” said Coleman, dumping a shopping bag on one of the beds and chugging from a bottle of Jack.
“Damn straight,” said Serge, emptying his own bag. “We’re going old school. And if you’re going old school, then go all the way!”
“You don’t mean—?”
“That’s right!” said Serge. “Kindergarten!”
“Man,” said Coleman. “That’s off the hook.”
“Those were the last of the truly great days,” said Serge, pawing through his new stuff on the mattress. “All fun all the time, running around screaming on the playground, crayons and construction paper, those little milk cartons and nap time. No grade-point average yet, no pressure whatsoever except tying your shoes and trying not to spit up.”
“But then the janitor could always come with the sawdust,” said Coleman.
“It was like watching a miracle,” said Serge. “The first time I saw it, I didn’t give the sawdust a snowball’s chance, but then damn! For a while, life was perfect. If there’s ever a problem, just throw sawdust on it and everything will be lollipops and unicorns again. And one evening my mom was sitting at the kitchen table, crying over a pile of unpaid bills. She suddenly sits up straight and starts brushing all this stuff out of her hair: ‘Serge, what the hell?’ I say, ‘Sawdust, Mom. Everything’s okay now.’ But instead I got a time-out in the corner. That was the death of innocence.”
“Look at all this cool stuff on the bed!” said Coleman.
“And not a speck of digital.” Serge stood. “That’s how we lost our way.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get the rest of our haul out of the car. I’ll need your help.”
It had been a whirlwind shopping spree, with stops at quite varied retail outlets until brimming bags filled the car. After several unloading trips, Serge and Coleman were safely ensconced back in the room, enthusiastically sorting their recent purchases on the bed. Paste, safety scissors, pipe cleaners, finger paints, glitter, tinfoil, clothespins, buttons, Play-Doh.
Coleman picked up a couple of the buttons. They were clear, with something round inside that rolled around. “What are these?”
“Eyes you glue on a drawing of a bear or something to make him look wacky.”
Coleman held the buttons over his own eyes. “Serge, what do you think?”
“Overkill.”
Coleman cast them aside and picked up the scissors. “Remember in kindergarten when you could make a costume out of just a pillowcase?”
“That was the best!” Serge grabbed a sixty-four-count box of Crayolas. “You cut holes for your head and arms and could color whatever your imagination dreamed up. You could be anyone you wanted.”
“I was an Indian for Thanksgiving,” said Coleman. “What about you?”
“Chief Justice Warren.”
“Hey, let’s make costumes!”
“Great idea!”
They dashed toward the head of a bed and stripped cases off pillows.
Coleman plopped down at a table and grabbed crayons. “Do you think the motel will mind?”
“We’ll just slip them back on the pillows when we’re done. They’ve seen worse.”
Coleman leaned over the table, ready to go. “What do you think our costumes should be?”
Serge grabbed a blue crayon. “Superheroes. The pillowcases will imbue us with special powers.”
“What hero are you going to be?”
“It’s a secret.” Serge began coloring furiously. “And don’t tell me yours either until you’re done.”
“I love surprises.” Coleman joined in the vigorous scribbling. “So where’d you get this idea for a kindergarten party, anyway?”
Serge intently colored on his own case. “You know how sometimes I like to leave my cell phone in the car and take off on foot?”
“I’ve been wondering why you do that.”
“I remember that one time you left your phone and wallet behind, and you were hanging upside down on the monkey bars, making farting sounds with your hands on your mouth.”
“And the park officials made us leave just for that? I even explained it was part of my phone-and-wallet-free therapy, like EST, insulin shock or primal scream.”
“I think you were freaking everyone out.”
“They said it was inappropriate behavior for an adult, which I explained was the exact kind of thinking that now has everyone at each other’s throats.” Serge grabbed a different color crayon and scribbled. “Anyway, I realized I was severely limiting myself with those brief childlike excursions. I needed to invoke the Total Kindergarten Protocol. But of course society isn’t ready, like the monkey-bar fiasco or how they laughed when the Beatles joined that ashram in India. So we need the privacy of a motel room.”
“What do you do for this proto —. . . proto —. . .”
“Protocol,” said Serge. “In order to cleanse ourselves of the toxicity from the growing-up process, we must revert and do nothing beyond the level of a five-year-old.”