Tropic of Stupid Read online

  “He told me.”

  “And he doesn’t like church. Or Sunday school.”

  “Most boys his age don’t. But he’s a great kid.”

  “The school he goes to is a little rough, a lot of bad influences. I try my best, but usually get home late.”

  “He also mentioned how hard you work and how much you love him.”

  “You can sit at the head of the table as the guest of honor.”

  He entered the home and remained poker-faced at the sparse surroundings. He hadn’t realized they were this poor. Bobby was an only child, but a total of nine people squeezed up to the dinner table, thanks to the other family helping with the rent. His mother placed a hot meal in front of the priest.

  Father Al looked down and smiled at a bowl of soup.

  “I usually say grace,” said the mother. “But you’re, well . . .”

  “A professional? I’d be happy to.” They all bowed their heads . . .

  The next day, Bobby threw a baseball to Father Al. “My mother sure can talk, can’t she?”

  No kidding, thought the priest. She must have thanked him a million times. After that, how could he cut off their afternoons at the ball field? But eventually the time came again.

  “Bobby, I really have to spread myself around. There are some things I need to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Not fun stuff like baseball.”

  “Can I come along?” asked Bobby.

  “Seriously, you aren’t going to enjoy it. If you think you hate Sunday school—”

  “I want to come.”

  The next evening, Bobby stood next to the priest behind a long table. They both had serving utensils, filling plates at the homeless shelter.

  Bobby spooned out a mixture of peas and carrots. “How often do you do this?”

  “Try to get by at least once a week, but sometimes things come up.”

  “Like me?”

  “You make it worthwhile. Did you have a chance to read the Gospel passages I suggested? The Sermon on the Mount?”

  “Oh yeah, that stuff made sense.” Bobby nodded. “I can get with that.”

  “Then find your way,” said Father Al. “Follow your heart.”

  “It sounds simple.”

  “It’s far from simple,” said the priest. “Most people have the ability to know what the right things are to do in given circumstances, but they choose not to listen to their inner voice. They just want what they want. Because doing the right thing isn’t always easy or fun, and sometimes it’s downright sacrifice. You have to become the kind of person who wants to do the right thing more than what you personally desire.”

  “I’ll get the Bible back to you tomorrow.”

  “Keep it,” said the priest. “It’s the one thing we have plenty of at the parish.”

  A few days later, Father Al sat at a stark counter talking on the telephone. The person on the other end of the line sat a few feet away on the opposite side of thick glass in the prison visiting room.

  “Who’s the little guy?” asked the inmate.

  “Bobby,” said the priest.

  “Reminds me of me at that age,” said the prisoner. “I’m so sorry I let you down after all the time you gave me.”

  “You just hang in there,” said the priest, ignoring the young man’s black eye and busted lip. “You’ll get through this and go on to do great things.”

  A guard arrived and stood behind the young convict.

  “Father, I have to go. Thanks for coming by again.”

  Bobby had a lot of questions as they left the prison.

  “I knew him since he was your age,” said the priest. “Know his father, too. Serving life up in Union County.”

  The next week, Bobby tagged along again as they arrived in front of a modest ranch house. The priest had explained the situation. “Are you sure you want to come in with me? It’s going to be a little rough.”

  “I’m sure,” said Bobby.

  “You’re still pretty young. You can’t let them see you react.”

  “I’m good.”

  They were greeted at the door and went inside. The entire home had been converted for intensive long-term care. So had the family. The hospital bed and medical equipment were too big for any of the bedrooms, so it all sat in the middle of the living room.

  Father Al had known the girl growing up, all-county volleyball player and track star at the parish school. Glowing picture of health before the brain aneurism. The priest walked up to the bed with metal railings on the sides. He held a hand that was unable to hold his back. He stroked her hair and smiled.

  “How are you doing today, Sarah?”

  Eyes widened. Her mouth tried to smile but made an unintended shape. Then non-verbal noises communicated delight at seeing Father Al. That was the hardest part. Her brain was still going strong. Someone was still in there.

  Bobby looked around at the living room’s walls. They were covered with glossy photos. All autographed. All sports celebrities. The Miami Dolphins, the Miami Hurricanes, Wimbledon, the Olympics. It was Sarah’s hobby, what got her through, looking forward to the next surprise in the mail.

  Father Al smiled bigger and held up a large envelope. “You got another one! Let’s see who it is.”

  He pulled out a basketball photo from the Miami Floridians of the ABA. Louder non-verbal noises of glee.

  After they left the house, Bobby was full of questions again. “How did she get all those autographed photos? There must be a hundred.”

  “Letters to the players.”

  “How can she write letters?”

  “She doesn’t. I do.”

  “You wrote all those letters?”

  “The family has their hands full.” Then the priest turned. “Bobby, I don’t know if you’re trying to change the subject or not. That was pretty hard in there for someone your age. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Bobby nodded. “I will never complain about a bicycle again.”

  Bobby was surprising Father Al in a lot of ways, but today was something new. The pair sat at a table in the main communal room of the church rectory.

  “Here’s my report card, like you asked.”

  “Not bad,” said Father Al. “A nice number of A’s.”

  “But too many B’s for my mother’s liking. She says I can do better.”

  “She’s probably right. There’s a B here in science. That’s your favorite subject.”

  Bobby hung his head back in exasperation. “I’m just so bored! My classes are huge, and we’re out in those hot portable buildings because of overcrowding. And we’re always changing teachers, and then they go back over stuff I already know, and we never get to the end of the textbooks where the good stuff is.”

  “You’ll just have to bear down.”

  “Okay, can we talk about something else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Religion.”

  The priest’s eyebrows went up. “You want to talk about religion?”

  “Religion seems to be a big part of your life.”

  “What tipped you off? The clothes?”

  “I want to be just like you.”

  Father Al’s head pulled back. “You want to be a priest?”

  “No, I mean like you as a person. You’re the coolest guy I know.”

  “Well, I don’t know about cool.”

  “Definitely.” Bobby nodded with emphasis. “But I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t get what?”

  “My mom forces me to go to mass and Sunday school, and it’s not for me. It doesn’t make sense, just a lot of weird rules and rituals for old people.” The boy sat back. “But if you’re down with all of that, I must be missing something.”

  The priest thought hard to choose words. “Faith is a complicated thing. An individual thing. It’s what each person makes of it. You can’t just adopt beliefs that someone orders you to. It has to grow from inside your heart. Some of the finest people in this parish don’t
agree with a lot of the edicts.”

  “But you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I’m even more confused.”

  “Tell you what . . .” Father Al reached for a Bible on the table. “I want to give you something.”

  “You already gave me a Bible.”

  “Not that,” said the priest. “I was going to write down some new passages to read that might help you understand. If you want to read more, that’s up to you.”

  “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

  A month later, just after dark, a priest arrived at a homeless shelter.

  “Hey, Father Al,” said one of the volunteers.

  “Hi, Jerry.” He removed a light jacket. “Sorry I haven’t been around for a while. Got busy.”

  The volunteer just stopped and laughed. “That kid’s quite a character.”

  “Who?”

  Jerry pointed at the dinner line. Bobby waved at him with a serving spoon.

  Now it was Father Al’s turn to chuckle. “He likes to tag along with me. Guess he heard I was coming tonight.”

  “No,” said Jerry. “He’s been here two or three times a week since you last came.”

  “He has? . . .”

  A few days later, Father Al pulled a chair toward a glass partition and picked up a prison phone. An inmate on the other side picked up his own phone.

  “Great to see you again, Father Al.”

  “You too.”

  “And thanks for sending your friend to visit.”

  “I didn’t send anyone.”

  “Yes, you did. That kid Bobby.”

  “Bobby’s been here?”

  “A few times.”

  “But how—? A little kid can’t get in a prison. And where’d he get a ride way out to this place?”

  “Told me there are a few families in his neighborhood who come on visiting days, and he catches a ride and slips through security with them . . .”

  The priest was talking to himself as he left the prison. “Wonders never cease.”

  He was correct.

  The next evening he entered a living room and held a hand. “Hi, Sarah.” Then he noticed something, and turned to the parents. “Where did those new autographed photos come from? I didn’t write them letters.”

  “No, Bobby did,” said the mother. “He came by a couple of times to drop them off.”

  Chapter 8

  The Present

  A 1970 Ford Cobra sat at a gas pump on U.S. 1 in Miami. Serge squeezed the handle in his hand. A look of terminal exasperation.

  Coleman stood next to him openly chugging a can of Pabst. “What’s the matter?”

  “This is totally unnecessary!” snapped Serge. “Another thing that pisses me off: Gas pump handles that don’t have that little metal thing to latch it, forcing you to stand here with the fucking thing in your hand. Other pumps have latches, so there is the technology. You can just leave the pump in your car and get on with life by reorganizing your trunk or buying Skittles in the store. But no, at pumps like this, these bastards are plucking precious golden droplets of time from my existence that I’ll never get back. And it’s always the slowest pumps. Everyone knows this is happening and yet nobody ever mentions it. We need to caucus about this.”

  “But it’s just a few minutes,” said Coleman.

  “Life is just a few minutes!” Serge stared at the digital numbers gradually counting gallons, and he hit himself in the forehead. “This pump is slower than snail shit! But I’ll tell you what’s worse. New Jersey.”

  “Oh, yeah, Jersey,” said Coleman. “I’ve heard the rumors.”

  “No, the state’s great. The people are great,” said Serge. “But I found myself in Jersey once. Don’t ask me why. I was just in Jersey. And they have this weird state law that you’re not allowed to pump your own gas. I didn’t know this. So I get out of my car and grab the gas pump, and this dude comes out of the station and tries to take the handle away from me, and I say, ‘Get the hell off me,’ and he says, ‘You can’t pump your own gas,’ and I say, ‘Of course I can. I’ve done it a million times.’ And then he does manage to grab the handle, and there’s a wild struggle until another car pulls up and the driver sees my Florida plate and tells me about the law.”

  Coleman crumpled an empty can. “Why do they have such a law?”

  “Probably how all laws start,” said Serge. “There must have been some huge statewide crisis, residents unable to master the procedure, gasoline spilling everywhere, flash fires and explosions. Or more likely, the people up there did caucus over this: ‘Hey, where’s the goddamn metal thing to latch the pump!’ Then general ugliness, gas stations getting trashed, employees beaten with garbage cans. That’s how Jersey rolls.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Inside the store. Have to use the bathroom.”

  Coleman sat in the passenger seat of the parked Cobra. He looked at his fingernails and tasted them. “When did I get mustard in there?” He checked his pockets and found a piece of jerky and ate it. Then for ten minutes, he stared out at the sidewalk and the wide variety of people-shapes, and this is what was going on inside his head: crickets.

  Serge climbed back in the driver’s seat.

  “What took you so long?” asked Coleman. “And why is your face all red?”

  Serge began repeatedly punching the ceiling. “Motherfuckers!”

  “What happened?”

  “These corporations won’t spring for a cheap latch for you to comfortably pump gas. Yet they’ll install expensive motion detectors in the restrooms so you won’t waste a tenth of a cent of electricity. I’m sitting in one of the stalls doing my business, and nobody had come in for a while, so the motion detector turns off the lights! I’m in pitch darkness! So I try desperately waving my arms, but I’m behind the closed stall door blocking the motion sensor. I’ll spare you the details, but I was at the stage of the game where I needed to see what I was doing. What’s with these sudden bursts of terror in life?”

  The Cobra drove away.

  “Where to now?” asked Coleman.

  “A little neighborhood called Keystone Islands.” The Cobra pulled back onto the highway. “You know another subconscious facet of human behavior that nobody has meetings about? Really slow cars.”

  “I hate them.”

  “But I’m fascinated by the universal reaction of all the other drivers,” said Serge. “We don’t even realize we’re doing it, but whenever we see a really slow car and have to pull around to pass, we also slow down ourselves as we go by. We just have to look. Because we’ve judged ahead of time: ‘I can’t resist seeing what kind of dysfunction is in that car’ . . .”

  “Here’s one now.”

  “Let’s pull around.” Serge got in the passing lane and let off the gas. Their heads turned. “Yep, some loser on the phone and eating a sandwich.”

  “There’s another one a couple blocks ahead,” said Coleman.

  “Let’s speed up so we can slow down.”

  They pulled alongside another car and looked.

  “Dang, that woman must have fifty stuffed animals on the dashboard,” said Coleman. “How can she see out the windshield?”

  “And why that glazed look on her face like she’s on Thorazine? It’s as if the car’s driving itself.”

  They sped up.

  “So what’s with this Keystone place we’re heading to?”

  Serge tapped the map in his lap. “An elusive item on my bucket list. The Florida home of the gangster Hyman Roth from the second Godfather movie.”

  “Roth?”

  “Modeled after Meyer Lansky, who lived just south of here.” Serge turned onto a side street, holding a thumb and index finger an inch apart. “I was this close to finding the place once.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hollywood trickery.” The Cobra made another turn. “This is Hibiscus Drive, a figure-eight street with a canal all the way around, only one way in and out. Last time I was here, I
had just studied the movie scene frame by frame. Al Pacino comes from the city and makes a left turn up the road to the house. So, logically, I did the same thing, but I couldn’t find the place for the life of me. But upon further film analysis, I discovered that Pacino turns the corner from the direction of the water, not land, which makes no sense.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “Obviously Pacino got lost and later gave Roth a bunch of shit about lousy directions, but those parts hit the editing room floor because the movie was long enough already.” The Cobra stopped at a curb. A camera went out the window. Click, click, click. “Just like I remember it from the movie, except without the cool metal palm tree on the screen door. I can’t get enough of those screen doors! But at least I finally found the house.”

  “Strike it from the list.”

  “Damn straight.”

  The Cobra patched out.

  A short while north in Hallandale Beach, Serge pulled up to another home.

  “What movie was this in?” asked Coleman.

  “No movie.” Serge got out of the car. “This is the first stop discovering my roots. I just got the results back from Ancestors R Us.”

  He rang the doorbell. An old bald man answered the door with stains on his T-shirt. “Yeah?”

  “Are you Raúl Dixon?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  Serge’s face lit up as he shot out his right hand. “Cuz!”

  The resident just looked at it. “What are you selling?”

  “Selling?” He glanced at Coleman. “Nothing. I finally took the big leap and sent my saliva in to Ancestors R Us. Coleman sent in his . . . well, let’s not go there. But guess what? Your name popped up! You’re like my fourth cousin once removed. Name’s Serge Storms.”

  “Never heard of you.”

  “You would have if you sent in your saliva after I did.” Serge pulled a Q-tip from his pocket and brushed lint off the end. “Can I take a swab inside your cheek for my souvenir box?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I guess you definitely wouldn’t be up for Coleman’s idea. We’ll circle back to that later.” He stowed the Q-tip and rubbed his palms together. “So tell me all about my kin! And don’t leave out the black sheep! Who’s estranged and who’s not? Got some family albums lying around? How were the holiday dinners? Did everyone sing carols or was there wrestling? Any freaky genetics I should know about, like all that hair growing out of your ears?”