A Second Chance in Paradise (8 page)

“Sure did.
A guy up in Big Pine at ‘Big Time Bait and Tackle’ told me about it.”

“
Cap Forest?”

“No. A friend of Forest’s. A g
uy named Dalton Judge.”

“
Don’t believe I know him.”

After taking a swallow of
beer, I said, “I did meet Captain Forest though, and he gave me a job at the shop. I’m starting tomorrow. He told me to say hello to you.”

“
Yep, I know him and his daddy, Franklin Munro, for a lotta years.”

“Oh, I thought Forest was Caps last name.”
 

“Nope,”
Pa said before taking a pull on his Lucky Strike and spraying the smoke up toward a rotating paddle fan. “Ran some Hoover’s gold back in the thirties with Franklin. We was just teenagers then, but we knew our way through them mangroves like nobody else. Authorities took after us a few times, but they never had a chance of catchin’ us.”

“
Forest seems like an okay guy,” I said, “just a bit quiet.”

“
Yup, both him and his father are stand-up guys. Forest had some of the bootleg in his blood too. Ran some ‘square grouper’ a few times. That is until he got caught one day near off Lois Key – the island where the monkeys live. But that was back in the early 80’s, before the law started flying over this part of the Keys in Fat Albert ... the blimp. Day Forest got caught the coasties were swarming ’round him like sand flies before he knew what hit ’im. Impounded his boat, ‘The Low Key’.”

“
I guess he did time?” 

“
Four years at Raiford. He came out a much more serious man than when he went in. Been hittin’ the whiskey real hard ever since.” 

Pa pushed back a wisp of
his thin white hair then scratched the back of his head a couple of times. Figuring it was as good a time as any to tell him what I’d seen that morning I said, “I wanted to tell you something Mister Bell. Something I saw when I was fishing this morning.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, when I was leaving – walking off the bridge, a county truck and a black Mercedes pulled off the road at the foot of the bridge. This was over on the Flagler’s Key side. Anyway, two county workers planted a change-of-zoning sign behind an abutment. It seems like they were hiding it so nobody driving by would know it’s there. The suit driving the black Benz was supervising them.”

“
Damn!”  Pa said, suddenly narrowing his eyes real tight. “What did he look like – the guy with the suit?”

“
Tall, trim, deep tan, good head of silver hair, sharp dresser, probably in his early fifties.”

“
That god damned Topper!” Pa blurted, spinning his head, glancing out the front window at the road.

I then shifted my eyes that way. Heat waves undulated atop the torrid asphalt. The afternoon sun was ruthlessly hot, but not as hot as
Pa had become.

“
That’s state land over there on Flagler’s Key!” he said, balling his fists at his sides. “How the hell is he gettin’ ahold of it?”   

“I guess y
ou know him,” I said.

“Damned right I know him! That’s
Lionel Topper, some sleazy real estate baron from Michigan, came down here ’bout six years ago after tearin’ up half the Midwest. He’s the one responsible for most of the building goin’ on in the lower keys. I knew it was just a question of time before he’d work his way up here.”

Pa
then snatched my empty can from the bar, crushed it tightly, and put a fresh one in front of me.

“
They say that when he was up north he and his banker buddies tried to run a monastery full of monks off their property, in a place called Grassy Pointe, Michigan. They wanted to build a damn
country club
on the site. Only reason they didn’t get away with that one was because the monks had been there for close to a hundred years. They had no mortgage or encumbrances.”

“
Yeah, I know
his type
,” I said, nodding my head. “They’ve got their own ways of getting whatever they want done. It’s their country and their laws, and if they don’t have the necessary legal tools their buddies just whip them up. Whenever they want to they either change or make laws to fit their needs.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly how it works,” Pa said, glancing now at
the few other patrons at the bar. “I’ve gotta take care of them fellas. Be right back.”

As
he padded down the other side of the bar I turned to the open door and squinted. Jackie Beers was rolling in on his wheelchair with Fred Sampson behind him.

“
Let the games begin!” Beers howled.

Two men, commercial fisherman who
obviously knew Jackie, shook their heads, shared a chuckle then resumed their conversation.

“
Hey, what’s happening?” Jackie asked, as he pulled out the stool next to me with one hand and parked there – literally.

Once he’d rolled in,
Fred said, “Hello,” and sat on the next stool down.

“
I was just telling Mister Bell that I saw some guys put a sign, a zoning change notice, on the shore just over the bridge this morning.

“
What side?” Fred asked and then held his lower lip between his teeth.

“
The Gulf side. Right by the channel.”

“
Son of a bitch,” Fred said.

“
Let’s get drunk and trash the County Courthouse,” Jackie said. “I’m not afraid of those bastards!”

Pa
had overheard us and as he placed matching boilermakers in front of Jackie and Fred, he said, “We can’t go gettin crazy now. We’ve gotta take our time and think this thing out.”

“
When’s this meeting, hearing, whatever they call it?” Fred asked, pensively rotating the full shot glass in front of him. Without waiting for an answer he then swallowed the drink, took a gulp of beer and said, “Sneaky bastards!  What about that law they passed a few years ago that states you can’t destroy coastal mangroves. They’re supposed to be protected. What happened to that?”

“
I’ll tell you how that one works,” Pa said with a hint of helplessness now in the tone of his voice. “What they did down in Cudjoe and Sugarloaf Keys was buy up a bunch a waterfront property for a song, wherever there were a lot of mangroves. Folks who owned them were told they couldn’t build on ’em because the trees were protected.”

“
Right,” Fred said, stretching out the “i” in the word as he slowly raised his head and eyebrows, “because you can’t develop it. Then, after that bottom feeder Lionel Topper collected all the available lots, he built on them anyway.”

“
Yup,” Pa said, “he bought ’em dirt cheap. Then he came in with a John Deere Payloader and mowed down all the mangroves. After that, he throws up a dock so prospective buyers would have a place to tie up their boats. This raises the value of the property even more. He even dredged channels up to those docks illegally.”

“
Didn’t anyone report him for destroying the mangroves?” I asked.

“
All of the owners lived out of the state.” Pa came back. “Topper made damn sure of that. Most of ’em never even saw what was happening after they sold.”

“
All you have to do to find out who owns what parcel is check the tax rolls at the county courthouse down in Key West,” Fred said. “Just go into the computers. They’ll tell you when they took possession, their home address, and how long ago they purchased it.”

Pa popped
open a can of Busch for himself, took a swallow before lowering it to the bar then said, “Finally, one guy who got swindled came to Key West on business and took a drive up to see his old lot, the place he’d dreamed of retiring on. What does he see but a brand new house on it, and what a home. Damn thing looked like a castle on stilts – with not a
single
mangrove on the shoreline. They’d been cleared.”

“
What’d he do about it?” Sonny asked.

“
He went on down to the court house screamin’ and a yellin’ and finally the County Commissioners agreed to take a look at the situation. Well, the guy who got ripped off went back north when his business was finished down here. The commissioners didn’t address the problem till he was long gone and then they only did it because the scam had stirred some of the locals up real good. You know, the ones that care about what’s left of the environment.”

“
Yeah, I remember that now,” Jackie said. “It finally went to court and Topper’s good buddy, ‘The
Honorable
J.T. Simonton’ heard the case. He just slapped Topper on the wrist, and gently at that.”

“
That’s right,” Pa said, as he set us all up with drinks again.

“
I got this round,” Jackie told Pa as he tossed a twenty on the bar. Pa left it there for the time being and then went on. “Bottom line was Topper just had to pay a fifteen-hundred-dollar fine and then only for the lot that the one guy complained about. There was no further action taken on the dozens of others he’d cleared.”

“
Yupper,” I said, “the grand-and-a-half he had to pay was just a little overhead, an operating expense.”

Still looking at me, Pa then managed a small smile and said, “
You know son, I think you’re gonna fit in just fine here.” Then he paused for a second and held up a thick index finger. He shook it a few times, as he said in a kind, good-natured tone, “Just don’t be callin’ me Mister Bell anymore. Okay? Call me Pa.”

I stayed for one more beer and listened as the guys
continued to discuss what action they might take at the August 19th hearing. There weren’t many options. The best they could come up with was to march into the meeting and put up as much resistance as possible. They all knew the prognosis for Flagler’s Key was not favorable. They also knew they’d be listened to in Key West, but not heard. The businessmen would get to the courthouse early, with their entourage of friends, and take up most of the seats. The handful of folks from Wrecker’s Key would be made to look like nothing more than a handful of disgruntled misfits.

As I sat at the bar with these men I couldn’t help but feel myself bonding to them and to their cause. Pa and Jackie may not have been overly educated men but, like Fred Sampson, they were very insightful and had a strong sense of integrity. They weren’t about to let wrong trample all over right, not without putting up some kind of a fight anyway.
But as much as I’d taken a liking to them and to Wrecker’s Key, I had no plans on getting involved with their efforts to prevent Flagler’s Key from being developed. Sure, I was all for their cause, but I already had more than enough on my plate. And as the conversation wore on, my mind eventually went off on its own – stopping at a helping on my plate that I knew all too well was going to take a long, long time to digest.

Crystal clear images of Wendy’s face again started rolling through my mind. And as I studied each one closely, they were all shrouded with dark doubts. I doubted I w
ould ever truly fit in on the small island or, for that matter, anywhere else. Sitting there on that barstool, thinking about my estranged wife, the home we had, and the life we’d once shared hurt me deeply. And as if that wasn’t enough, I seriously began to doubt that I would ever be capable of loving again. After the way Wendy had betrayed me, how could I? How was I ever going to trust another woman again, let alone love her? Ever since our breakup, my past, present, and future problems had churned over and over again in my mind – abrading my spirit like so many grains of sand in a roiling surf. Oh sure, there had been other times since my previous birthday that I’d been at ease. Times like the first hour I’d spent in Barnacle Bell’s that afternoon and the day before, when I’d walked through Ernest Hemingway’s house. But those moments of contentment were always short-lived. They never lasted. For the most part, ever since that first moment when I realized my wife had been unfaithful, I had steadily felt my mind eating away at itself. There was no way I could stop it.

Chapter 9

As the magenta Florida sun rose from the far edge of the Atlantic the next morning, I prepared to go jogging. And the very first thought I had when I stepped outside was how fortunate I was that Julie’s place was on the other side of my trailer. She very well could be out on her porch, drinking coffee. With what had taken place between us, and with everything else I had on my mind, the last thing I wanted to do so early in the morning was to make small talk. Loping along slowly at first, I headed in the opposite direction.

Just a few trailers down, I waved hello to an elderly couple who’d been tending their small garden. I didn’t know them from Adam, but they waved back to me and smiled. Being the new kid on the block so to speak, I was certain they’d already heard all about me. At the time I didn’t know their names were
Ethel and Mordecai Cromarty nor that they were from Golden, Colorado, and had been married fifty-nine years. Short as they both were, when I passed by I couldn’t help thinking how they looked like two happy little leprechauns.

T
wo trailers up from the Cromarty’s place the Moon family was also outside. Horatio Moon was a quiet, fragile man, with shoulder-length, gun-metal hair. His wife, Eunice, put me in mind of the female half of the duet who’d sung at Barnacle Bell’s two nights earlier. Eunice also parted her long hair in the middle, but she was very fond of ankle-length, paisley skirts and dresses. To see the Moons was like flashing back to 1969 Woodstock, whether you were old enough to be there or not. They lived with their six-year-old son, Joshua, in an aging, one-bedroom travel trailer with rainbow murals painted in a vivid spectrum of colors of each side of it. My hunch would later be substantiated when Pa tells me that Horatio had done the artwork himself. When I passed, the amiable couple also waved at me just before climbing into their old van.

I soon picked up my pace, jogged up the sandy road, made a left onto the narrow highway, and crossed over the Wrecker’s Key Bridge. When I got to the other side I glanced back at that yellow sign down by the water then went about another mile before pushing the whole way back to the trailer. Once there, I was just about to grab the doorknob and go inside when I heard a
voice. It was Sissy’s. She was on the porch next door talking to Julie. I had left the small air conditioner running in my bedroom when I’d left, and low as they were speaking they surely must have thought I couldn’t hear them. Not with the steady hum of the AC between my bedroom and Julie’s porch. But they were wrong. I couldn’t quite make out what Sissy was saying, but I did hear her say my name. Then, like the lowest form of eavesdropper I was being, I slowly stepped around to the front of my trailer. Once there, I froze with my back to the aluminum structure like a deer in a headlight.

“
What a creep he turned out to be,” I heard Sissy say. “And to think I thought he seemed like a nice guy!”

Then, with absolutely n
o malice in her tone, Julie said, “Don’t jump to conclusions and pass judgment so quickly, Sissy. Like I said before, you don’t know what happened. And, really, it wasn’t anything major.”

“
I know you Julie, and I know somethin’s botherin’ you. Plus, I
know
he spent the night here. I saw him leaving yesterday mornin’, when I was goin’ to open up the store.”

“C
ertain things are personal, Sissy, and private things should remain that way. I’m not going to talk about it. But I will tell you this – it means an awful lot to me that you’re so concerned.”

There was a short pause at that point in the conversation. Still motionless, with the hot sun beating down me I figured they were looking at each other. Then Julie broke the silence saying, “And d
on’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

“
Well, I still don’t like him anymore.”

“Don’t say that.
I know that deep inside he’s a decent and sensitive person. He’s just got things troubling him right now.”

“
A lot of us had problems when we came down here,”  Sissy came back. “I never told you this, but the day I left Indiana two years ago I was in my nightgown, bendin’ over, scopin’ out the refrigerator to see what I could get for breakfast. Well anyway, when I reached inside for the milk is when it happened. My father came up behind me and leaned up against my ass ... ”

“Oh my God, Sissy! No!”

“Yeah he did. He grabbed a hold of my breasts too.”

“What the hell did you do?”

“I let out a long, loud scream, turned around, and gave him an elbow, hard as I could right in the face. He let go then ... put his hand to his nose then saw blood all over his fingers. I was still a screamin’ and started to run for my room. My ma still was still in bed with one of her hangovers but when she heard all the hollerin’ she got up and came down the stairs. I didn’t make it that far. My sonofabitchin’ father dove and tackled me before I could even make it out of the kitchen. Well ... I went down hard, face first on the floor. Put a dimple in the linoleum when I broke my tooth.”

“That bastard!”

“He sure is, but that wasn’t the end of it, Julie. Before I could get up he was on top a me – poundin’ away with both his fists. ’Bout that time my mother finally comes into the room. What do you think she says?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“She says, ‘What’s she done this time?’ Then my old man lies, ‘She told me to fuck myself when I said good mornin’ to ’er.’ He then gave me a couple more body shots, but he was all winded. They didn’t hurt all that much.”

“I am so, so sorry, Sissy. You told everybody here that you had to leave an abusive home, but I had no idea
....”

“Yeah, I know. I just never wanted to talk about it. Anyhow, once I broke away from his grip I ran up to my room,
locked the door, jimmied a chair beneath the knob, dressed real quick like then climbed out the window with two pillowcases fulla clothes. I don’t think they called the cops or anything. They were probably afraid they’d get in trouble. Anyways, I beat heels down the road, hitchhiked to I-65 and headed straight to Florida. I coulda gone anywhere. But I wanted to be where it was warm.”

“That was awfully dangerous, Sissy – hitchhiking all the way down here.”

“Not as dangerous as stayin’ there was. Anyway, four days later, I rode into Key West in the back of a truck. I musta been somethin’ ta see – sitting up there real high on top of a load of watermelons.”

After a brief pause in their conversation, Sissy changed the subject by saying, “
Come on Julie, you’ve gotta stay away from him.”

“Oh
... I think I will be staying away from him. I’m afraid I won’t be having any choice.”

“
Whaddaya mean?”

“
Let’s just say the reason he left so abruptly this morning was ... well, a physical thing.”

“
Wait a minute! Do you mean he split because of your ....”

“Yes, my hand, Sissy. He left because of my
... my missing fingers.”

“
So that’s why he’s avoiding you! What the hell makes him think he’s so perfect?  You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
You’re
too damn good for
him
.”

“
Sometimes things aren’t exactly as they seem, Sissy. Let’s just relax and take things as they come.”

Sissy
then said, “I’ve gotta go. Gotta open the store in ten minutes. I’ll stop back over this afternoon.”

Quickly, I tiptoed back around the trailer and ducked inside – gently closing the door behind me. I was disgusted with myself. I knew better than ever that Julie was a very special person. And I was still deeply attracted to her. Despite what I had thought up to that point, I was now beginning to believe there just might be one more woman in the world who I could trust. For the rest of the morning and all that afternoon, I wrestled with that possibility. I also kept questioning whether or not I could ever accept Julie’s two flaws. Emotionally sapped by the time I went to bed, I was still grappling with myself. I turned and tossed and must have flipped that pillow over a dozen times before finally falling off to sleep. Even then I wasn’t at peace.

I dreamed it was my previous birthday again. Everything seemed so real. I had driven home through the snow after quitting my job, but there was no black Lexus parked in front of my house. When I went inside, Wendy was still in bed, fast asleep. I woke her and told her what had happened at Searcy’s. Seeing the concern tightening up my face she sat up in bed, patted the mattress, and said, “Sit down, Sonny.” I did. And she put her arms around my head. Pulling it next to hers – cheek to cheek, she whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry, honey. We’ll get through this. We always do.” She then reached beneath her pillow and pulled out two airline tickets to a tropical island. A short time later, after packing, we backed the van out of the driveway and headed slowly through the slush toward Kennedy Airport. We were only two houses past our place when I looked in the rearview mirror. Only then did Steve Silverman’s Lexus pulling up in front our house. I could see his face behind his windshield. He looked angry as all hell. I said nothing to Wendy. I just smiled.