Naked Came the Florida Man

by Tim Dorsey

  Minutes later, Serge sat at the steering wheel of the Plymouth. “Coast clear? No Cheyenne?”

  “Right-o,” said Coleman, leaning over a bong.

  “You’re not even looking.”

  “I’m high. I have extra powers.”

  The gold Plymouth slowly pulled around to the dark side of the motel and the special parking area for the bass boats favored by the sportsmen staying at the inn. Serge backed up to one, got out and fastened the trailer hitch.

  “You’re stealing a boat?” said Coleman.

  “No, this is one I rented earlier and had waiting here on standby.” Serge climbed back in the car to the sound of banging in the trunk. “It’s actually a pretty good deal around here. I grabbed this baby on the wings of hope that I could employ it in my next science project.” The Plymouth pulled out of the parking lot and turned east . . .

  Lake Okeechobee has various access points for fishermen. There are a number of ramps over the Herbert Hoover Dike to public launches. If you have a really big boat already in the water, then you have to enter through one of three locks.

  “It’s not a very big boat,” said Coleman.

  “No lock, no problem.”

  Serge followed the road curling south toward Clewiston until he found one of the ramps, dark and deserted. The bass boat slid into the water, including the captive, tied up again to the chair. Serge got behind the wheel and pushed the throttle just above idle.

  At this part of the lake, the open water is a few miles away. In between, marshland laced with canals, including a large one around the rim, logically called the Rim Canal. Serge rode it awhile before reaching an opening off the port side, and turned left into what’s known as the Old Moore Haven Canal.

  From there it was a straight shot through ferocious thriving nature. Birds and bugs and bogs.

  “Listen to that racket,” said Coleman.

  “The swamp sizzles at night,” said Serge. “Humans might be at the top of the food chain, but out here we’re seriously outnumbered.”

  “What is this place?”

  “They call it Dynamite Pass. But it’s nothing like the cool name of the spot where we’re heading. In fact, I chose it just for the name.” Serge pushed the throttle forward again, and the boat began to plane. “Florida has some of the best place-names: Corkscrew, Spuds, Festus, Roach, Howey-in-the-Hills, Two Egg, but we’re about to reach my favorite one of all.”

  Moments later, they dropped anchor at a crossroads of canals, sitting just a short distance from the lake proper.

  “Okay,” said Coleman. “I give. What’s the name of this place?”

  Serge stood with spread arms and yelled at the sky: “Monkey Box, Florida!”

  “That is catchy.”

  “In this case, I’m also media savvy: If you’re going to pull some newsworthy stunt like this, and aren’t geographically constrained, always pick a place with a name that makes the TV people go belly up. They won’t be able to resist!”

  Coleman turned all the way around. “But there’s nothing here.”

  “Florida doesn’t care, so why should we? Now help me with our newest best friend.”

  They dragged the pastor, chair and all, into the shallow water and up onto spongy ground.

  Coleman kept slapping his arms and swatting in front of his face.

  “They’re attracted to carbon dioxide,” said Serge. “Remember me telling you down in Flamingo at the tip of the state?”

  “No.” Coleman spit something out of his mouth.

  The captive struggled fiercely in the chair. “You won’t get away with this! I’ll yell!”

  “I’ll yell,” said Serge. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Damn, that feels good. You should try it.”

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” The hostage stopped and coughed and spit something out. “You’re insane!”

  “Thank you.”

  Coleman continued swatting and spitting. “What are these things?”

  “The blind mosquitoes,” said Serge. “Scientific name Chironomidae, also known as lake flies, and in Florida—you’ll love this—chizzywinks. Guess what? The chizzywinks are back in season! I checked with the locals, and they expect them to be at maximum swarm strength tonight in the darkest hours just before sunrise. And that’s just their activity level back on land away from the lake. Out here—hoo-wee! . . . Back in the 1800s, there were rampant cases of entire herds of cattle dying from insect asphyxiation in this region. Just read A Land Remembered.”

  Serge put on a surgical mask and safety goggles, and handed an identical pair to the now-coughing Coleman. He turned to the captive. “Oops, I’m short on supplies. I guess that’s where the power of prayer comes in.”

  The pastor was blinking rapidly and trying to breathe through his nose.

  “What a nature show you’re about to experience,” said Serge. “Kind of like something out of the Bible.”

  Serge sloshed back out to the boat and helped Coleman aboard. They motored away in the direction of Dynamite Pass.

  A buzzer rang on the night window of a budget motel on Lake Okeechobee.

  Serge swatted away bugs. He cupped hands around his eyes and pressed his nose against the window, looking at the empty front desk.

  Someone emerged from a back room. “There you are! I was wondering what kind of business took so long.”

  “Totally tedious,” said Serge. “But I do need to report a missing chair from our room. It kind of got away from me. I’m good for it.”

  “You know, I still have that extra room available next to yours, if, uh, your friend would like some privacy. On the house.”

  “You’ve read my mind . . .”

  A half hour later, Serge lay on his back in the bed, holding up a series of large pages like flash cards. “Here’s another cool tombstone rubbing, and here’s another, and this one has a little cherub on top. I’m a sucker for that. And this is Mitzi the Dolphin . . .”

  Cheyenne continued massaging him below the belt. “Um, Serge? Am I doing something wrong?”

  “I can accurately say no. I believe most of my gender would concur.”

  “But you’re still looking at your rubbings.”

  “Precisely.” Serge flipped to another page. “What you’re doing down there makes me appreciate them in a whole new light.”

  “Serge . . .”

  “O-kayyyyyyyy.” Serge set the pages on the nightstand and picked up something else. “What about View-Masters? No? My elongated penny collection? I thought women were into sex toys.”

  “Is that what you call those?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Serge set the penny album down. “Don’t tell anyone I have all this stuff. I’d be mortified if the public knew about my kinky trove.”

  “What about simple vibrators?”

  “You mean those things in the ads that people are using to rub tense facial muscles?”

  “Those ads are kind of in code.”

  Serge crinkled his nose. “That would explain so much.”

  “Stop talking.”

  “What?”

  Cheyenne got on her hands and knees and slowly crawled up the bed toward him like a jungle cat. She growled.

  “Yikes.”

  Chapter 33

  Pahokee

  Coach Calhoun stuck his head in the principal’s office. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Come in. And close the door.”

  Uh-oh, that’s never good. Hopefully one of his players hadn’t made a mistake that couldn’t be reversed.

  “Lamar, I can’t tell you how happy I was when you first showed up back at the school.”

  “It was a special day for me, too.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “Lamar, we all kind of wondered a little bit about your missing years,” said the principal.

  “That would be natural,” said Calhoun. “I’m sort of a private person.”

  “We weren’t being nosy, mind you. It’s just that you were so gifted, we a
ll expected to see you someday in the NFL draft. But after a while, we simply assumed football didn’t work out for whatever reason, and the rest was your business. Until you finally decided to come back to your roots.”

  “Life takes its turns,” said Calhoun. “I worked in an auto plant for a while, then a drydock . . . But by that look in your eyes, you already know that.”

  It pained the principal, and Calhoun saw it all play out again like it was yesterday instead of more than twenty years ago . . .

  The winters in the upper Midwest were far more freezing than Calhoun had ever imagined. It was his senior year at the university, and while he hadn’t torn up the Big Ten, Lamar was expected to go in the top six or seven rounds of the draft. He stared out at the snow that was crusting over the campus and piling up on the windowsill of the athletic dorm. His roommate was named Ted, but everyone called him Bruiser.

  It was kind of a joke. Ted was a kicker, and they tend to be the smallest players on a team, usually by such a degree that they seem not to be football players at all. It held true in Ted’s case. Hence, Bruiser. Ted was from a small farm in an equally small dot on the map in Missouri, and he was lost on the big campus. He didn’t know the current music, how to talk to girls or even basic slang. “You mean when something’s ‘bad,’ it’s actually ‘good’? That doesn’t make sense.” They went to a club one night, and Ted tried to dance. Lamar almost lost a lung from laughing. The huge player from Pahokee, Florida, appointed himself Ted’s big brother, and they became the inseparable odd couple. That’s how Calhoun first developed an affinity for kickers.

  There are many scandals in big-time college sports that make headlines, and many more that never leave the practice field or locker room. The head coach was in the mold of Ohio State’s Woody Hayes, who punched a player on national TV. Which meant he was a dinosaur. It was a new era, and the assistant coaches struggled to keep him in check. It came to a head halfway through the season. Ted had shanked a thirty-yarder, costing them the game against Michigan. For the next few days, the coach’s rage had been tightening in a vicious cycle until he was spring-loaded. On a Wednesday, the practice field was extra busy, pockets of activity where various specialty players honed their specialties. But the coach’s eyes were locked in on the kickers. They call it staring daggers, and all the assistants went on high alert, like a domestic abuse victim detecting the first signs of that telltale mood swing.

  Ted was back in form, nailing it down the middle. But the coach was just waiting. After, who knows, fifteen perfect kicks, Ted dinged one off the left upright, and the coach was on the field. The assistants chased. Before they could get there, the coach had his hands around Ted’s neck. A similar incident had already hit the news, when an Indiana basketball coach was videotaped choking a player. But that was brief compared to this. It was a two-handed throttle that wouldn’t let go. Ted vainly fought for breath. He was trying to cough and turning red. The assistants raced up and grabbed the coach’s arms—too gently, under the circumstances, because they didn’t want to lose their jobs. “Coach! Coach!” One of them looked up to an overhead booth and made a slashing gesture to stop filming practice.

  Thumbs pressed harder into Ted’s windpipe. A red face was becoming blue. “Coach!” They grabbed him around the waist and arms to no avail. Then, out of nowhere, a fist came flying in. It caught the coach in the jaw and he went down. So did Ted, finally free, gasping frantically before throwing up.

  The assistants had a crisis on their hands. They looked around. All the other players had stopped practicing, standing and holding their helmets at their sides by the face masks. Even if they could destroy the video, there were too many witnesses. And if the coach went down, so did their assistant coaching positions. A new head coach would wipe the slate clean and hire all his own people. Panic turned into a plan. They would get out ahead of this and deflect. The solution was handed to them on a platter.

  The punch.

  They were initially thankful that Lamar had jumped in to help his friend. But thanks didn’t pay power bills. In an instant, he was under the bus.

  Handcuffs clapped on Calhoun’s wrists, followed by expulsion from the team. But it was handled hush-hush, because any digging into the running back’s arrest could lead back to the coach. They promised he’d stay on scholarship until graduation, to buy his silence. There was a quick plea bargain with no testimony, followed by a misdemeanor conviction and a suspended sentence.

  Although it never made the papers, there was always the grapevine. Nobody knew the details, just that Lamar had attacked a head coach. It was a de facto blackball. Despite his credentials, the entire NFL draft took a hard pass on Calhoun.

  He went to look for a job. “Sorry, we just can’t do it.” Like many athletes’, his academic major was physical education, and schools weren’t allowed to hire anyone with an assault conviction. Lamar began welding fenders . . .

  That was then; this was now.

  “I wish you would have said something.” The Pahokee High School principal shook his head. “On the surface, it didn’t sound at all like you. So we looked into it and learned the real circumstances, and then it all made sense. If we had known earlier, we might have figured something out, some kind of exemption, or gotten it expunged.”

  “But now?”

  The principal held up a sheet of paper. “You didn’t disclose it. You filed a false job application.”

  “I used bad judgment,” said Calhoun. “It was just so long ago. I wanted to put it behind me, and I wanted to get back to the kids.”

  “Dammit!” said the principal.

  “I know this is putting you through a lot. I’m sorry.”

  “No, not you,” said the principal. “That asshole Garns.”

  “Who?”

  “The science teacher I got rid of.”

  “Oh, I remember him now,” said Calhoun. “But what’s he got to do with any of this?”

  “He couldn’t simply go quietly and get on with his life,” said the principal. “I wish he was still here just so I could fire him again.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “He must have spent weeks digging, and then I still don’t know how he found out,” said the principal. “He’s the one who reported you.”

  Calhoun sat a moment in helpless thought as the pieces of realization fell into place. “Someone like that has no business being around our kids. It was still worth it.”

  “Not from where I’m sitting,” said the principal. “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “You’ve done enough.” Calhoun stood. “I’ll go get my stuff.”

  Chapter 34

  Okeechobee

  The next morning it was breakfast in bed. Then Serge and Cheyenne took a brisk five-mile stroll along the Florida Trail on top of the Hoover Dike.

  By ten o’clock, they were back in the room, making plans for her day off. By eleven, a crash against the wall from Coleman’s room. “He’s up.”

  By noon, it was on the news.

  Law enforcement needed airboats to reach the scene, and they now sat clustered near the northern bank of the Old Moore Haven Canal.

  TV correspondents in even more airboats began broadcasting from behind police lines.

  “This is Soledad Torres reporting live from a place few have heard of. I’m standing here in Monkey Box, Florida, where a trio of bass fishermen heading out to Lake Okeechobee made a grisly early-morning discovery of a body in this remote swampland. The sheriff’s office is releasing few details, but confidential sources tell me the victim may have been the leader of a controversial church infamous for picketing military funerals around the state. Sources also describe the murder victim as being bound and tortured with what are known in these parts as blind mosquitoes, also known as chizzywinks, which occasionally swarm in ferocious numbers. The most probable cause of death was asphyxiation, but prior to the victim’s demise, the insects likely also filled his ears, eyes and even the sinus cavity via the nose, whe
re he could feel them moving around behind his eyes. Sorry for ruining your lunch. This is Soledad Torres in Monkey Box, Florida. Back to you, Chet and Angela.”

  The broadcast switched to a pair of anchorpeople behind a desk in the home studio, sharing light banter and a chuckle. “I think she just likes saying Monkey Box . . .” “I like saying it, too. Monkey Box.” “We’ll be right back after these commercial messages. Monkey Box.”

  Cheyenne stared. “What exactly was your business last night?”

  “Fake news! Fake news!” Serge clicked the set off and clapped his hands a single sharp time. “I’m famished! What do you say we grab a bite to eat?”

  “Actually, I’m supposed to have lunch with my brother,” said Cheyenne.

  “Kyle? Fantastic! We’ll make it a family affair,” said Serge. “My treat. I insist!”

  A knock at the door. Serge jumped and spun. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Probably my brother. I told him where I was.” She cast a suspicious eye over her shoulder as she went to the door and opened up. “Hey, Kyle.”

  “Hi, sis.” He stepped into the room and glared at Serge without speaking.

  Serge spread his arms. “What?”

  The glare lasted a moment longer. “I just watched the news.”

  “That? Ha, ha, ha!” Serge waved a dismissive hand that signaled silly talk. “Where do they dream up all the crazy stuff they’re putting on the air these days? I mean, death by chizzywinks? Is there even such a bug? Such a word?”

  Cheyenne wanted the subject changed. “Serge has offered to take us to lunch.”

  “Damn straight!” said Serge. “It’s the least I can do for your service to the nation. The only condition is I get to pick the place. I’ve been dying to try one of Okeechobee’s famous steak houses.

  A loud crash on the other side of the wall, followed by a scream and a thud.

  Serge pointed. “I’ll go get Coleman.”

  A gold Plymouth pulled into a parking lot.

  Kyle looked up at the sign. “I thought you wanted to go to one of our famous steak houses.”