A veritable fountain of eloquence, that one. He could be president!
Sweeney walked on, the spring in his step was waning. He pulled his tuna sandwich from a Ziploc and took a bite. It crunched. Celery? He took another bite. Another crunch. Sweeney knew there was nothing like prison food to dull the senses but he didn’t recall eating crunchy tuna fish at Raiford. He peeled back the bread and saw the three giant half-dead cockroaches nestled into the fishy goo and promptly threw up in his mouth. He gagged again and spat his vomitus onto the sidewalk then wiped his mouth and looked into the paper sack where he discovered a note under the semi-rotten orange that came with the sandwich.
“FUCK U,” it said, signed by Dimmit Hardin in childish scrawl.
The “C” was backwards. Of course.
He dropped the sandwich and the bag in the gutter.
“Litterbug!”
Sweeney wheeled. A large Jamaican lady in a pink spandex jumpsuit was steaming out the door of a tumbledown, concrete-block shithole wagging a finger, brow furrowed. Sweeney was transfixed. At first he thought she was wearing a forward facing fanny pack. Then he realized what he was witnessing was the most spectacular camel toe he’d ever seen, hanging below a navel indentation the size of a pie plate.
“No-o-o, mon, dis ain’t soom fukkin’ Babylon ghetto, no! You gather dat shit, motherfucker! Where you t’ink you is, you fukkin’ whitehead?”
He snatched up his brown bag and deposited it in a nearby trashcan. Then backed away—eyes still on the Jamaican lady, gag reflex in overdrive—and straightaway stepped in a mountain of fresh dog shit.
Wow. It had been years since he’d done that. He’d forgotten what that felt like. After all, there were no dogs in prison. He’d also forgotten the smell. Until now. And immediately began hacking and gagging again, by now almost running back to the bus depot, where just as he was stepping onto the bus, he managed to befoul the sole of the other shoe with a gigantic wad of bubble gum.
When Dixon got back on the Greyhound after a trip to the men’s room, he thought, I’m free. I’m a free man now. That’s all that matters.
Then he said it aloud. “I’m free.”
***
The sun was going down when the bus reached Yeehaw Junction. He didn’t get off the bus this time. He didn’t want to risk it. And there was too much noise and neon lights. Huge trucks were parked in rows that spoiled the air with mirage-making exhaust. Big men sat or stood at dirty picnic tables eating fried gizzards and wiping their hands on their pants, talking about trucking.
They were talking about women, too. Because across the highway there was a strip joint with a sign that read: 12 BEAUTIFUL GIRLS! 23 BEAUTIFUL LEGS!
He cocked his head and wondered if one of the girls was an amputee, or maybe they had a double amp and a lady with three legs. Or maybe someone couldn’t add.
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.
***
In a town called Corkscrew, Dixon bought a box of saltwater taffy. He climbed back aboard the bus just in front of a family that smelled like fish. Every one—the four boys, the father, even the mother—all smelling like clams.
Dixon recognized the aroma. He knew it well. They were a family of clammers, folks who lived in a trailer somewhere by the Intracoastal Waterway and raked clams off the mud bottom, selling them by the bushel and scraping out an existence.
Sweeney hadn’t smelled a real clam in a long time. But if you’re a cracker, you don’t forget. He liked the seaweed stench and the salt tang. He smiled. Then the mother smiled back at him and sat in the seat in front of the latrine with her husband, while the children piled up in a tumble of clam-smelling clothing that took up the next row. Sweeney passed out some of the taffy to the kids. They acted like they didn’t know he’d just come from prison. They seemed to think he was normal. The father made them say “thank you,” and the guy sounded like he had marbles in his mouth because of the Red Man, but he made his kids behave, which Sweeney thought was cool.
The bus trundled south. Everyone seemed happy as, well, clams. They didn’t know about Sweeney. Somehow he’d fooled them. Maybe the world had other things to think about after all.
***
Corkscrew was a clam-smelling town and a saltwater-taffy-with-a-thank-you town. Lauderdale and Miami and Homestead were nothing—blurry images in the night. At dawn the bus stopped sixty miles south on US 1, the Overseas Highway. Dixon claimed his box and his taffy from the overhead rack and got off. He surveyed the surroundings amid a swirling vortex of dust in front of a sign that read “Welcome to the Florida Keys.” The Greyhound pulled away, while thunder pealed and the heavens crackled and rent the air with the smell of ozone and rain. Then the sky fell and thick drops tumbled down in angled sheets of white.
As my dad used to say, timing is everything.
“Timing is everything,” he said aloud.
3
But Dixon Sweeney wasn’t about to be discouraged. In fact, he started dancing.
He moonwalked and he shouted and he threw his box of taffy high in the air. And even when the rain turned his black prison brogans into slapping seal feet, and even when all that water whipped the sandy berm into mush, he didn’t let up. He’d been gone so long, damn near a decade, and he missed his home and his wife and he jumped up and around like an idiot, in the rain, in the mud, in the dumb seersucker suit that was given to him as a prison guard joke. And he missed his wife, and his people and his house, and his wife…
The rain shut down like a faucet, which made Sweeney stop, dizzy with exertion.
He blinked. Across the street there was a brace of palm trees and a sandy trail. Beyond, through a cluster of sea oats, there was a glimpse of blue.
He started running, kicking off his shoes, ducking under his string tie, yanking away his coat, ripping through his pajama-top shirt, tossing everything aside. He began hopping on one foot at the water’s edge, finally falling and rolling as the double-pleated seersucker pants split over his toes and his underwear disintegrated. He ran headlong into the sea, naked as a jaybird, babbling incoherently about his true love, his baby, the love of his life, a presence since he was born that had been denied too long—the sea.
When he was sent away, he knew he would miss a lot of things. He would miss pizza and pancakes and popcorn and the taste and feel of his woman. Yet he denied there would be any real damage. After all, he was still relatively young, not ugly, a Florida man with a Florida tan and a good chin. He was tall, with blue eyes and plenty of wavy yellow hair. He would come back strong, he thought. He would forget about his losses, become himself again and regain those long years of stagnation.
But he never counted on the big loss. The real loss. The eight-year death knell that made him cry inside and ache with longing. He never understood about his connection with the salt and the sea and the currents that could take a man and pull at him and mold him and float him away.
He’d been raised on the ocean. He’d first met the Gulf Stream when he was only a year old. He’d fallen off his father’s lobster boat into Hawk Channel when he was two. By the time he was eight he was running his own skiff, pulling his own traps. And when he graduated from high school, he didn’t get a wad of cash or a trip to Disneyworld or a car. He got a brand new Evinrude. He was an ocean guy.
And the ocean absolutely did not suck.
So he stood buck naked in the ocean, looking at his white toes in the gin clear water, eyes welling with tears.
What a baby, he thought. But hey, this is my ocean.
“My ocean,” he said.
Then he said it again, louder. And he dove in and splashed and rolled like a sea otter. He stuck his hands in the sand of the bottom and luxuriated in the taste and the smell and the feel of all he had missed for all those years. The sun was out, the sky was blue, there was only one cloud he could find—a little puffy number—and everything was going to be put right. He knew it. Before him a school of jacks ripped through the water. Welcome hom
e, Sweeney. Off to his left a breaching dolphin went airborne. Nice to see you again, Sweeney. Away to his right a flock of roseate spoonbills picked at the tide line for goodies. Long time, no see, my man. All he had to do now was take advantage of his opportunities and recover his attitude, reclaim his piece of the pie.
His mother once told him, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” One thing was certain, though—he was a free man.
And from here on out things were gonna be different.
Back to TOC
Table of Contents
BACK TO BROOKLYN
Chapter One: Leaving Alabama
Chapter Two: Still Leaving Alabama
Chapter Three: Stuck in Ala-Fuckin’-Bama
Chapter Four: Still Stuck in Ala-Fuckin’-Bama
Chapter Five: I’m Outta Here
Chapter Six: Home Sweet Home?
Chapter Seven: Home Is Where the Heartburn Is
Chapter Eight: Staten-Fuckin’-Island
Chapter Nine: Vinny to the Rescue
Chapter Ten: Homecoming Is Such a Scene
Chapter Eleven: Scream a Little Scream for Me
Chapter Twelve: He Said, She Said…No
Chapter Thirteen: Son of Zeus
Chapter Fourteen: A Parikh by Any Other Name
Chapter Fifteen: Hottie Cototi
Chapter Sixteen: Good Karma Ain’t Bad
Chapter Seventeen: Jitters
Chapter Eighteen: Semantics
Chapter Nineteen: Quid Pro Schmo
Chapter Twenty: The Quintessential Joe
Chapter Twenty-One: A Job with Great Benefits
Chapter Twenty-Two: It’s Your Funeral
Chapter Twenty-Three: They Got Nothin’
Chapter Twenty-Four: War Hats?
Chapter Twenty-Five: Ma?
Chapter Twenty-Six: You Want to Ask Me Some Questions?
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Mea Culpa
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Talk of the Clown
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Pocket Change
Chapter Thirty: What the Hell Am I Eating?
Chapter Thirty-One: Fashion Police
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Big House
Chapter Thirty-Three: A Man with a Plan
Chapter Thirty-Four: Mighty Joe and the Guidos
Chapter Thirty-Five: Masters and My Johnson
Chapter Thirty-Six: Too Many Balls in the Air
Chapter Thirty-Seven: No Rest for the Weary
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Outstanding
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Taking out the Trash
Chapter Forty: Sizing Up the Opposition
Chapter Forty-One: The Man of Steel
Chapter Forty-Two: A Good Ass-Kicking
Chapter Forty-Three: Poor Defenseless Forest Creatures
Chapter Forty-Four: The Guy
Chapter Forty-Five: The Dreaded Tribunal
Chapter Forty-Six: Tough Love
Chapter Forty-Seven: Just Whisper It in My Ear
Chapter Forty-Eight: Suck Wind
Chapter Forty-Nine: At the Crack of…
Chapter Fifty: Favor of the Month
Chapter Fifty-One: Emergency Service
Chapter Fifty-Two: Almost 10:16
Chapter Fifty-Three: Big Sal
Chapter Fifty-Four: That Feels So Much Better
Chapter Fifty-Five: Relax!
Chapter Fifty-Six: They Got Nothing
Chapter Fifty-Seven: You Checking up on Me?
Chapter Fifty-Eight: Big Donna
Chapter Fifty-Nine: I Hope He Ain’t Making a Monkey out of Himself
Chapter Sixty: Hey! Who Asked You?
Chapter Sixty-One: That Means Nothing to Me
Chapter Sixty-Two: I Said I Want a Proper Wedding
Chapter Sixty-Three: What’s with the Glasses?
Chapter Sixty-Four: Soul Symphony
Chapter Sixty-Five: God Smacked
Chapter Sixty-Six: Special Delivery
Chapter Sixty-Seven: Baby Food
Chapter Sixty-Eight: Subterfuge
Chapter Sixty-Nine: This Is Gonna Make Your Fuckin’ Day
Chapter Seventy: The Quintessential Vinny
Chapter Seventy-One: Not Bad, Right?
Chapter Seventy-Two: Can You Identify the Man in this Photograph
Chapter Seventy-Three: Rub a Little Dirt on it, Mr. DA
Chapter Seventy-Four: “Broccoli? On his butt?”
Chapter Seventy-Five: I Beg to Differ
Chapter Seventy-Six: No One Pulls the Wool Over the Eyes of a Gambini
Chapter Seventy-Seven: The Quintessential Lisa
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
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