Weeds in Bloom (15 page)

On my right was a dead bell-bottom cypress.

My nose sensed muscadine and wild coffee. All the smells were damper now, cooler and more intense. A Florida swamp, if you’re unfamiliar with it, has a way of suddenly surrounding you, with no north, south, east, or west. Just a jungle of green.

Large leaves hang thicker, lower, more entangling.

Ahead of me, the child was walking a definite path, serpentining around black puddles of swamp water, ducking in between the long, dangling vines, some of which were stouter than wharf rope. A wood duck, displaying his rainbow of plumage, darted across a small pond of dark water, his V-shaped wake spreading to both banks.

I breathed moist greenish air.

But smelled smoke.

As the little girl stopped, she turned and pointed at a log shack, on stilts because of the wet terrain. A wispy scar of gray smoke was scraping its lazy line upward into the high greeny lace of cypress. Reaching her home at last, I put the turtle down, almost dropping him from my tiring arms.

A thin woman appeared at the door.

Her dress was identical to the little girl’s. The same cloudy cottony material, no pattern or color, only larger. My guess was that this woman had possible sewed both garments. Her hand clutched a can of beer.

“Hello,” I said. “We brought you a turtle.”

A dog came, quickly arched its back, and growled. From all I could see, it was a black-and-tan coonhound. The dog looked as poor as the people. The woman’s hair was long and yellowy white, totally unstyled, hanging in witch’s tangles front and back. Her skin was old, grayer than aging concrete.

“Who you be?” she asked, burping.

“I’m Robert.”

Briefly she looked at the motionless meal, then at the child (too young to be a daughter), and back to me.

“Who?”

“Robert. Rob Peck. If you demand to know my full name, it’s Robert Newton Peck.” I grinned. “But
I don’t know the little girl’s name, or yours.”

If I expected an answer, I didn’t get one. Only stares from two aging eyes that appeared to be neither alive nor dead.

“Jeeter,” the child told me.

A name isolated, especially if it’s unfamiliar, rarely sounds like a name. Merely like a noise. A bird call. Here, from all sides, I could hear birds, bugs, frogs—a steady throbbing swamp song of endless tempo. An eerie backdrop to one more natural chirp.

“Jeeter,” the girl said again. “We’s be Jeeters. Like you. All peoples got Jeeter for a name.”

Her little voice was as soft as her dress. A sound of cotton. Almost no sound at all. Uneducated, unspoiled, she spoke so slowly.

I asked a dumb question. “Do you go to school?”

Her sustained silence, however, was providing answer enough. She didn’t know what
school
meant. It would be silly, and rude, to explain to these two people that I was an author. For once, I resisted trying to impress the ladies. Appraising the coon dog, I decided not to move around too much, or too quickly. The dog’s teeth were bared. The black hair along the dog’s spine had bristled erect, the shoulder bones up, as if it was concentrating on a larger-than-customary human.

I turned away, to the little girl.

“So, your name is Jeeter. What’s your other name?”

“Belly.”

“Your name is Belly Jeeter.”

“Belle. My granny say Belly sometime.”

“Oh, I see.”

Without another word, Granny Jeeter took her beer and disappeared back inside the shack. The dog stayed. Belle started picking up pieces of dry wood. Seeing what she was doing, I helped her.

“Belle … Belle?”

She looked my way, holding a stick.

“Do you have a mama, or a daddy?”

Scowling, she said, “I got me Granny,” sounding as though she was surprised I didn’t thoroughly understand.

“Just the two of you?”

“Three. We’s got a dog. He be a Jeeter dog.”

“Yes, of course.”

Dropping the wood she had been carrying, Belle scratched her head, curving the delicate fingers of her right hand into an inflexible claw, digging at her scalp. Head lice, one could presume. If I could ever find this place again (better yet, and more importantly, first find my way
out)
, I’d bring Belle a bottle of dog shampoo. Industrial-strength.

All around this shack, the ground was littered
with debris, leftovers of junk food, bread wrap, empty cigarette packs, a plastic six-ring holder from a six-pack beverage of unknown brand. And there were countless empty cans everywhere. Beer. Beer. Beer.

Litter is a fact of life, I suppose.

Where the Jeeters resided was a spot of natural savage beauty. Except for ugly humanity. I smiled. Here I stood, the largest hunk of humanity in sight; ergo, the biggest litter problem. At least the Jeeters would
eat a
turtle. How many times had my powerful, expensive cars hit and killed a road animal, leaving it behind, unused?

Together we built a fire in an outdoor pit. Using a bucket and making several trips, I filled the pot with swamp water. Once it was angrily boiling, the giant turtle’s life ended in a second or two. We cooked it, shell and all.

I ate very little.

Not because I dislike turtle meat, but because I was observing how skinny little Belle and lean old Granny tore at their portions. Hands stinging from the hot meat, they couldn’t wait for it to cool. Turtle flesh is an acquired taste, one I never fully acquired. A turtle, like a turkey, has several different varieties of meat, all edible if your dietary standards are adequately relaxed.

“This is good,” I lied.

Belle and Granny just chewed.

With a rock, I busted apart the complete shell so the coonhound could munch too. He did, cracking a few bones with his teeth, tail wagging. Years ago, in a swamp one night, camping with a Calusa friend, I happened to hear a similar noise, very loud. A cracking, crunching report.

“What was that?” I’d asked.

“Gator.”

“Killing something?”

The Calusa nodded. “Big turtle.”

This is the Florida that is real, the one that tourists never see, or hear, or taste.

It is forest, swamp, and untamed survival. Best of all, it is sharing a fresh-boiled turtle with a very old swamper and a very young one.

Granny and Belle.

A year later (believe it or not, with a bag of oranges, bread, a white plastic bottle of shampoo, and a comb), I tried to find my way back to visit the Jeeters. After a few futile starts, I located the place. The shack was gone, destroyed, and little of it remained. Some of the local litter had begun to decay. With a sigh, I policed the area, tidying up as neatly as I could, burying the trash.

“Belle,” I called a few times, hoping.

Only the frogs answered.

V
ALOR
.

This is the name my dog answers.

Years ago, I had only to whisper his name and he’d come. Now he is almost deaf, so as a courtesy I go to him. Sensing me, knowing my smell, a broken tail thumps the floor in welcome. Then slowly, with groanings of painful age, he forces himself to rise, ready for duty.

Valor is thinner now, almost fragile, no longer the burly coon hunter and bear tracker. I cannot ask him to splash into cold water to retrieve a fallen canvasback. Or drive a deer to my watch.

Frequently he naps indoors, seeking patches of sunlight to ease his stiffness. His eyes, which once shined brighter than horse chestnuts, are now cloudy, a look of winter. I must be careful not to
rearrange furniture, for if I do, Valor may bump an uncustomary chair, and then appear to be shamed by his clumsiness.

As a hunter, his bark once sounded with orchestral variety, announcing a rabbit, a fox, a treed coon … or that he had found water or my truck.

Valor’s body has been bitten by a rattlesnake, raked by panther claws, hit by a car, kicked by a horse as well as by his former owner. Yet pain never soured his rapture for life. Except once, and then only briefly. Valor came whimpering home one night, his soft muzzle bristling with porcupine quills. Head in my lap, he lay trembling as my pliers removed each bloody spear.

He trusted me to do this unpleasant task, somehow knowing it had to be done, licking gratitude upon my face when I told him the last quill had been extracted.

Valor is deaf, blind, lame.

Today I must take a shovel and a pistol. The two of us will stroll our final outing together. A grave will be dug somewhere in woods where he used to hunt, or merely race the wind. Somehow he will know that what I’m about to do for him is just and merciful. One of my many quirks that he accepts.

No veterinarian’s needle will terminate his
life in foreign environs. He will not die among strangers. Valor’s end must be private and dignified. For my dog, I promise that his death shall be painless.

Only his friend will feel the pain.

I
MET THEM IN A DINER
.

One of those pewtery Florida cow-town diners with a plain name that you’re as eager to forget as its decor. Not much of a seating choice. No table. Pick a narrow booth or a hard stool. As every booth was occupied, I took the counter.

Back in the kitchen, a radio was wailing a sad cowboy song. Merle was sounding more sorrowful than a flat puddle of flat beer.

A plump waitress, perhaps beyond her prime (me too), eyed me as I wishboned my legs to fork the stool’s torn leatherette top. Her uniform, half a size too small, was a skimpy white waitress dress trimmed with pink piping. A plastic Mickey Mouse head pinned a cheap lace handkerchief, folded fluffy to resemble a corsage, just north of an ample breast.

Beneath her opposite shoulder, a slightly warped name tag announced something about her life as well as her name: RITA.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Please. Hot and black, Rita.”

“You got it, cowboy.”

After filling a white mug, Rita pivoted on the Cuban heel of a white Red Cross, landed the sloshing mug on the smeared counter in front of me, cracked her gum, and raised one eyebrow with what I guessed was a rehearsed gesture.

“Need a menu?”

“Thanks.”

Without reading it, I could probable predict what the breakfast menu was fixing to offer.

“Good Morning!” was its opening salvo at the top of the single see-through yellowing card. It was morning for sure. Early. On the clock over the coffeemaker, both black hands hanged into five thirty-three like a Fu Manchu mustache. Eyeing the menu instead of Rita’s generosity, I considered: one egg, two eggs, three eggs, ham, bacon, sowbelly, biscuits and gravy, golden pancakes (large or small stack), waffles, bass, or catfish. Fried potatoes and grits served gratis with every plate.

Rita returned.

“What’llyagonnahave?” she asked, without her Doublemint breaking stride.

I smiled. Even though Rita had been booked right out of Central Casting, she was perfect, and entertaining. “Eggs,” I said with a grin.

“What flavor?”

“Two over medium. And please ask the cook to puncture the yolks so they don’t stare at me like I’m babe-naked.”

Checking me up and down in less than a second, Rita nodded. “Anything else ya might like, cowboy?”

I cuffed back my beat-up silbelly Stetson. “Two strips of bacon. Crisp. Dry, not slippery. And a hot biscuit. No butter. Just orange marmalade. I’d like my breakfast on a warm plate. And please, when you get a chance, how about a refill on coffee?”

“In a shake.” Rita shook herself away. “Nobody can hustle everything to once. I only got one pair.”

I’d noticed.

While waiting for my breakfast to burn, or spill, I sipped coffee. It was near strong enough to poison rats, kill weeds, and peel varnish. This was genuine redneck coffee in which you could float a horseshoe. Instead of a taste, it was more like a burn. Or a cut.

Behind me, the screen door squeaked open, paused, then banged shut. An aging cowpoke grunted as he occupied the next stool. His worn
knuckles appeared to have been busted in several joints, or in several saloons.

Rita hurried to greet him.

“Hiya, sugar bun,” the old man said.

Her smile was genuine, and warmer than a hug in a honeymoon hotel. “Hey, Daddy.” Eyes shining, Rita touched his leathery hand, giving it a quick pat. She handed him a rumpled paper. “Here’s the news, darlin’. So read up.”

Her father took it and squinted at the headlines, pulling his head back enough to fake reading.

“You,”
Rita scolded, “didn’t git your eyeglasses fixed. I told you I’d spring for ‘em.” Reaching across the counter, she tested the one breast pocket on his gray work shirt. “And they’re to
home
… where they won’t do you no good at all.”

“But it cost twenty dollars,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “I ain’t got a half of it. But maybe by the end of the morning, when Thelma comes, I’ll have twenty. If we git a booth crowd of butt pinchers.”

Nodding like a chastised child, he quickly changed the subject.

“I got me a job, Rita.”

“Where at?”

“Over to the rodeo arena.”

“Doing
what?”
she asked, fists on her hips as though preparing a quick disapproval.