by William Lobb
The cash was seed money for Frankie. There was a used White Freightliner waiting for him in Virginia. The cash was the down payment for Eddie’s investment. The two of them were going to be in the flower business. Eddie cut Frankie a nice deal. It was verbal and attractive to both of them. They found the load of electronics in the yard, hooked it up, and headed toward sunshine and warmth.
Looking out the window now, heading south for the first time, Frankie felt something inside he’d never felt before. Something unnamed and intangible, and not something as simple as emptiness. It was more an overwhelming sense of loss for something that never actually existed. He wasn’t missing the girl, the fun, the friendship, the sex, or the laughter; it was something more. It was like his illusion had broken apart, like the concrete facade falling off a very old building, slowly and randomly coming off in chunks and slamming into the sidewalk and the unsuspecting people below. The illusion hit the sidewalk and exploded into a million pieces, turned to dust and then, finally, the wind took the dust away until it was as if it had never existed. Not a sudden collapse, but a slow, almost imperceptible decay.
Buried deep inside, Frankie knew it would be a long time until he slept again. Something in him—that mechanism that allowed each man to lie to himself enough every night about his fate, his success, his honesty, his character, and his goodness; that ability to take a quick mental inventory and assure himself he was on the right track, that he’d be okay—had broken. The ability to lie to himself about his goodness and caring and kindness; slowly falling asleep wrapped in the sweet arms of the Lord and peace, knowing everything was going to be okay; was fantasy. Yet somehow there was an ingrained belief in everyone else, it seemed, that we all would meet again to live in Heaven forever.
Are these not the rituals of men lying down for the daily mini-death, not unlike accounting oneself to the man in the mirror? Frankie could stand for none of this. It was not that he didn’t want to believe. A very real part of him did. He wanted to believe the way the old woman believed: drink the Kool-Aid, jump in the water, wail the hymns, and let Jesus take the wheel. It wasn’t so much cynicism or not wanting to believe. It was as if Frankie had been born without the ability. Sleep became something to long for and attempts to sleep became just endless frustration until Frankie simply stopped trying.
He deeply feared sleep. Frankie’s dreams were twisted, confused, jagged, and broken terrors. To him, life was defined by his inability to connect to himself, to simply connect with his own humanity, to the world, to the mother, to the earth, to the universe, to someone’s God.
In many ways, Frankie was the most isolated man I’d ever met; in other ways he was the freest. With no allegiance to anyone, not even to himself, he was free to move through life unencumbered, uninjured, and unscathed. No right, no wrong, only the long train of disconnected events of his life. It was a desolate freedom, an exhausting, unending freedom. Owning nothing; owing nothing; belonging to no one or nothing; a perfect and disconnected life, floating like a bubble, and when the bubble burst, no one would notice or care. A clean, silent escape from an inconsolable and inexplicable life.
The life of a smuggler really seemed perfectly suited to Frankie. He made it very clear to anyone who would listen that he was certainly not a truck driver or not at least in the country music sense of the word. He was a smuggler. He had one job and one job only and that was to get illegal goods from point A to point B without getting caught, and he planned to make a lot of money in the process. It was a cash-only kind of life: no checks, no receipts, only untraceable living always under the radar. Always look clean; always obey the laws; smile and wave. He became frighteningly good at being deceptively clean-cut. It was a little disturbing, the way he had instantly merged into the trucker lifestyle. The older he got, the more of a chameleon he became, chain-drive wallets and cowboy boots and the ever-present Marlboro hanging from his lips. He could talk on the CB radio and sound just like any one of the other highway heroes while he was secretly laughing his way to the bank.
When he picked up the Freightliner in Virginia, it belonged to a company called F and G Brothers Produce. He never changed the name or the signs on the door and he spent a lot of time pondering what F and G could stand for.
It was about this time that he met his friend Jones. Jones was also looking to get into to the smuggling business and they decided to run together, hauling ass and drugs up and down the East Coast at 85 miles an hour, loading up on weed, whites, and wine, as the song says. In Frankie’s case, it was vodka, not wine, and Jones never really drank much at all; he did take a lot of speed. It was during one magical night somewhere near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, while talking back-and-forth on the radio, that F and G Produce became the Flying Gonzo Brothers and a legend was hatched.
Chapter Ten:
The Flying Gonzo
Brothers Go To Work
They sat on a shaded patio near the beach, surrounded by people drinking coffee and reading newspapers and starting their days, drinking warm beer at eight in the morning. Nothing tastes quite like warm beer, especially at the end of a brutal night. It was hard to tell exactly what its purpose was, to keep the party going or simply a bridge to the inevitable hangover?
Jones reached into the bag, now wet with condensation from the once-cold beers’ response to the blistering Miami morning, pulled another Iron City from the rings, and cracked it. “Of all the stuff you could have brought from the north, you had to bring this shit beer. This is seriously piss in a can!”
Frankie smiled and said, “I like Iron City. It tastes like Pittsburgh.”
Frankie had this desire to be from anywhere other than where he was from, to be anyone other than who he was. To him, Pittsburgh was a dream and Iron City reminded him of the dream. They somehow thought keeping the beer in the bag would keep it colder and keep the other people from noticing. The two of them were anything but inconspicuous. They sat there in silence, watching some guys in the park across the street preparing to cut down a massive Live Oak tree. Frankie started to get pissed and was looking for a fight. The arrogance of cutting down a tree: suddenly deciding one day to take 50, 75, or maybe 100 years of growth and in a few hours make it as if it never existed. They watched, Jones in amusement and Frankie in sadness, as the limbs of the giant tree crashed to the ground.
“That’s the difference between us, Frankie—I say get the old shit out of the way and move on. You sit there and mourn what was, but what you have no control over. You have to let it go. New trees will grow. It doesn’t require our approval or involvement. Just let it go.”
Frankie reached in the bag and took the last Iron City, popped the top, and guzzled it down in one long drag. Maybe Jones was right. A steady breeze was blowing in off the surf, a hundred feet away, down the narrow sand-covered street. Frankie silently hoped the tree would come crashing down on whoever had decided to cut it. Jones went to get more beer, Budweiser this time. The newly formed plan for the day was to get a little more drunk and pass out in the sun. In sadness, Frankie watched the tree come apart.
Jones returned with more beer and the conversation turned to pussy and the need to get Frankie laid and stop thinking about Pam. Sadly, the beers, exhaustion from four days on the road, and the hot sun took effect and they soon passed out at the table, among the blue-haired ladies and well-dressed citizens of the patio. A sign over Jones’ head read “Welcome to Miami Beach.”
Jones heard a noise and woke up Frankie. They both took off in a dead, wobbly, hungover—still very drunk—gait and sprinted toward the parking lot. The beach patrol, who looked a lot like cops, talked to the people on the patio about the two of them. As they reached the tractors they jumped in, fired up the engines, and headed out of the parking area. Moments of panic were always compounded by never knowing for sure what type and amount of contraband were in the trucks, in the sleepers, under the seats. After a quick conversation on the CB, they decided to spli
t a room, get some sleep, and shower. They had to meet Eddie and get introduced to the flower business.
They drove to the warehouse together. The place looked intimidating as hell: a dark, abandoned warehouse on a fishy-smelling wharf about six miles outside of town. No sign of flowers anywhere. They saw Eddie’s tractor and pulled up alongside. Jones was a little nervous; Frankie, more fascinated than anything else. Both of them were severely hung over. They walked in through the small door that was part of a larger sliding door and continued back to a small, dimly-lit office. Inside they saw Eddie, smiling and drinking a beer, and three other guys, who all talked quietly. Once everyone was in the office, one of the men closed the door.
The rules were simple: Frankie, Jones, and Eddie were truck drivers. Nothing more. They’d be paid after dropping a load in the Bronx. All that mattered was that each get there and back as fast as possible and without attracting attention. They were going to be on a very tight schedule and they would be compensated for it—well compensated. They didn’t need to ask a lot of questions. They didn’t need to worry about loads coming back. If they took one, it had better not screw up the schedule. They were in the flower business, first and foremost.
Frankie was in love. These boys were the real deal—three guys, impeccably dressed, no last names, cash-only business. They knew Eddie. He vouched for Jones and Frankie. Everything was word of mouth and everyone carried a pistol. The first loads north were going out that night. No questions about what they were hauling—it was flowers. They had 48 hours to be back. That was eighteen hours driving and six hours to turn it around and head back. The amount of money to be made was stupid. Just stupid money. Who wouldn’t take this shot?
Within fifteen minutes of walking in the doors of the warehouse, Frankie became a smuggler and loved the idea of it. He said the word “smuggler” over to himself about a dozen times, like he was trying on a suit. It fit him, it fit him perfectly. Everyone rose from the table, handshakes were offered and accepted. The three drivers walked slowly out of the warehouse and to their trucks. They’d meet at the pickup point, a warehouse about twenty miles up the road in four hours.
There is only one way to deal with doing things that could send a person to prison for the rest of his life: compartmentalize. One has to isolate the thoughts as they are happening and ignore them, but acknowledge them, put them in their own little box in the corner, see them there, and just let them sit there and be. It’s like waking up every day knowing you have cancer, or some other thing that can kill you. It’s like any fear. It can rule a person and force him to make mistakes or he can just acknowledge it and leave it in its place. Don’t let it rule; don’t get complacent. Let it be.
As the years progressed and Frankie’s crimes became more and more complex and involved, he thought about them less and less, no more than a bus driver thinks of the possibility of a fiery crash, or an accountant thinks of the possibility his office might burn down with him in it. The possibility was remote, at best. At least that’s what he told himself. To be successful as a smuggler, he really needed to convince himself that what he was doing was just some other job, like driving a bus. Be cool, look cool, act cool. Forget there was anything that could ruin his life, for the rest of his life. Just be cool. Go with it. Tell no one anything. Make Grandma proud. Tell her you bought a truck and you and some of your friends went into the flower business. Frankie was a goddamn chameleon. He could fit into any role, convince himself that he was only doing a job, nothing more.
It was something of a perfect system. They would make a phone call at a predetermined time. They’d be told the pickup and drop off instructions. They never opened the trailers—they were sealed and locked. People on both ends had the keys to the cargo doors, but not the drivers. Drop off the trailers and go to a spot to get paid, grab a trailer and head south. Time was of the essence.
It was an idyllic life for Frankie. Alone, in the complete solitude of the truck for endless hours, sometimes the loneliness would lead to a borderline psychosis. But usually Jones or Eddie were within CB distance. Life became such a ritual and such a routine that I think they all forgot they were smuggling drugs. Almost every run left from the same place in Miami and ended at Hunts Point market in the Bronx. Leaving Miami at 6:00 a.m., arriving in the Bronx the next day at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., over and over and over. The three of them rode together for months and it almost became a contest to see who would be the first one to need to take a day off. They were making stupid amounts of money, more money than they could spend. They had no time for a good drunk or strippers; they had no time to spend any money on anything anyway. They had each become a part of a machine, a quarter-million-pound weed delivery system burning up and down the East Coast almost nonstop.
It was during one of those long, endless, forty-eight-hour trips when the fringe functions of his brain started to collapse: way, way too much speed, and idiotic volumes of vodka. Days blurred into weeks, then months, then everything blurred together. Basic thought processes stopped functioning and gave way to exhaustion. There were fading flashes of sanity creeping in around the edges where, with every moment, the exhaustion became the only thing that mattered. It settled in the bones and the muscles; the ability to speak faded, as did the ability to think, or to concentrate on anything but the taillights in front and the white line outside the window.
Life became about motion and taking whatever was required to keep the motion going. Some moments right before complete collapse, sometimes just seconds before, those moments when thoughts were like two songs playing simultaneously in his head, with a shaking hand he’d reach across the cab and back into the sleeper and find the bottle, simply grab a couple more White Crosses, wash them down with a mouthful of vodka, and keep that demon of unconsciousness away again. Just feed him a little more speed and make him go away. Looking down at the little pills with the cross covering the entire front, sometimes a man could feel his own crucifixion.
It was during one of these phases, during one of these times that Frankie realized there was really nothing to take seriously at all, nothing. All he had to do to live successfully was just live slightly under the radar and slightly this side of the law, with their fines and sentences and other such fucking silliness. Would a fine stop someone from doing what he’d made up his mind to do? Would a few months in jail change a man or only make him harder and more determined?
There are two types of people in the world: those who find some comfort in the rules and the laws, and those of us who know the truth of our nature, our humanity. The first type goes to sleep at night with some illusion of order in the world, thinking that the laws and the fines and the jails will keep them safe and warm and comfortable and clean and fat. For the second type, the laws are meant to be respected and worked around. They are nothing more than a fence to keep the timid in line. It’s good to have frightened and timid and passive people in the world. The world needs good solid respectable people. Let them stand in the sunshine; let them fly above the radar. For the rest of us there is a lot of work to do, money to make, crimes to commit.
Frankie thought a lot about the absurdity of what he was doing. He was making a small fortune smuggling what was essentially a naturally growing weed up the East Coast buried inside a load of flowers. He learned to hide his fear and his anger and make himself the model trucker, except for the fake logbooks and the hours he was logging. That in itself was a job that employed a few women in Miami. Each trip, another set of fake logs, all part of the machine. Hell, one day he was sure they’d write a country song about Frankie and Jones and Eddie, the Flying Gonzo brothers. Frankie laughed at that thought and said, “Fuck that.”
Chapter Eleven:
A Night In Virginia
This constant pace went on until late June. They were all destroyed, but they kept on. At a meeting at the warehouse toward the end of the month, the impeccably dressed guys with guns—Frankie still didn’t know their names, he didn’
t need to, Eddie knew, Frankie got paid cash, that’s all that mattered—the guys with guns said they had to change plans. This trip to the Bronx would be the last for a while. They should go home and wait to hear from Eddie. Apparently things were getting hot. They were moving operations, maybe to Detroit. Not sure; just go home and rest and wait. Frankie was excited. Maybe they’d move to Pittsburgh! Jones laughed out loud and said, “Shut the fuck up about Pittsburgh.”
They all gathered on the loading dock of the produce distribution warehouse. The muffled sound of the idling diesel engines echoed off graying corroded aluminum siding. The heavy stink of diesel in the hot humid air was so thick it could choke a man. Eddie, Jones, and Frankie smoked Marlboros and drank sixteen-ounce beers as they waited for their fake logbooks, paperwork, and last minute updates.
The unnamed, impeccably dressed guys eventually drove up in a Caddy, a massive, 1980 Coupe Deville. Frankie looked at the car and said, “Why not?” It was fitting. The car was black with deeply tinted windows. There was some kind of antenna in the back. Eddie said it was for TV. All Frankie could think was that he wanted to be these guys when he grew up. They handed the three of them bogus business cards, but with legitimate phone numbers. They were given a word to use to identify themselves on the phone and told that after they got to the Bronx, they should lay low and call that number in a week, if they didn’t hear from Eddie first. By then, the new plan would be in place. They rolled out of the huge warehouse and headed north on Route 95 out of Miami. It was 6:15 a.m. and the breakfast beers had everyone in a really good mood.
They joked back-and-forth on the radio about what they were going to do with their big summer vacation. As beat up as they were, no one really talked about just getting some sleep and relaxing. Eddie wanted to head back home and reconnect with family and friends as he hadn’t seen home in six months. Frankie wasn’t so sure he wanted to go anywhere near home. He’d spoken to Alex on the phone a few times and even called the bar and had spoken to Jack, the bartender. Frankie was pretty sure there was no danger of him being arrested. Billy Martin was now completely healed and recuperated.