Charles Willeford_Hoke Moseley 04

by The Way We Die Now

  They passed through Ochopee—a gas station, the world’s smallest post office, a grocery store, an abandoned motel, and a restaurant that also offered dune buggy and airboat rides to tourists—and then continued on to Carnestown without talking. Hoke got out of the truck, and thanked the driver for the ride, wished him good luck in the army— that made the kid laugh—and walked across the highway to the ranger station, thinking that he could have made a nice arrest of a hijacked truck. But he was confused by mixed feelings. It still wasn’t too late. An anonymous telephone call to Sheriff Boggis in Naples would take care of it. On the other hand, the kid had been good enough to give him a ride, and he had liked the boy. Besides, at the moment, he wasn’t Sergeant Moseley. He was Adam Jinks, itinerant fruit tramp. Fuck Brownley, and fuck the law; he didn’t even have his badge or weapon.

  THE GRAY-HAIRED LADY BEHIND THE COUNTER HANDED HOKE a partially filled four-ounce cup of grapefruit juice. Hoke tossed it down and asked for another.

  She set her lips in a prim line and shook her head. “Sorry, only one cup to a visitor.”

  “Two ounces isn’t much grapefruit juice.”

  “T’aint s’posed to be. It’s just a sample, that’s all. We get tourists in here who’d drink it all day, just ’cause it’s free.”

  Hoke left the counter and studied the large relief map of Florida on the wall. Carnestown was just a crossroads, and no one lived here. Most travelers would stay on the Tamiami Trail into Naples, but sometimes tourists, to avoid traffic in downtown Naples, took the state road north to Immokalee. From Immokalee, they could take the dogleg road west again to Bonita Springs and then get on the Tamiami Trail again north of Naples and miss all the stoplights downtown. Hoke hoped that some of them would take the longer road into Immokalee today. Hoke walked back to the crossroads and waited in the sun for a ride to Immokalee. An hour later an old black man driving a half-ton Ford truck loaded with watermelons stopped. Hoke opened the door, and the black man shook his head. He pulled his lips back and squinted his eyes. “In the back! If this was your truck, would you let me ride up front?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “You want a ride, you get in back!” He jerked his thumb.

  Hoke slammed the door, climbed into the back, and found a narrow space for his feet on the truck bed. He didn’t sit on the melons. He bent forward awkwardly to hold on to the front part of the bed, and the truck lurched away. The load was too heavy for the pickup, and the driver never got above forty all the way into Immokalee. When the old man backed into a loading platform of a packinghouse off the main road, Hoke climbed down stiffly. Both his feet had gone to sleep, and he pounded them awake, stamping on the asphalt lot. His back was sore from holding the scrunched-over position, and he hadn’t seen any mailbox with a “Bock” on it when he had passed the widely spaced farms. As Hoke straightened, his back made little cricking noises. The black driver disappeared inside the warehouse before Hoke had a chance to thank him for the ride.

  IT HAD BEEN AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS SINCE HOKE HAD BEEN in Immokalee, driving through without stopping on a trip to Fort Myers, but he didn’t think the little town had changed much. There was a fresh coat of oil on the main drag, and he didn’t remember the stoplight’s being there at the dogleg into Bonita Springs. But the buildings were just as ancient, and there was a fine layer of dust over everything. Hoke walked to the nearest gas station and asked the attendant, a teenager wearing a white “Mr. Goodwrench” shirt, for the key to the men’s room.

  “Hell, you know better’n that,” the kid said. “You’re s’posed to use the place down by the pepper tree. Get outa here! My John’s for customers.”

  The rejection astonished Hoke at first, and for a moment he considered taking the key off the doorjamb, where it was hanging, wired to a railroad spike, and using the toilet anyway. But the moment passed. His cover was working; he looked like a tramp, and he was being treated like one.

  Hoke looked down the highway and spotted the tall, dusty pepper tree. It was on the edge of a hard-dirt parking lot next to a building painted a dull lamp-black, CHEAP CHEAP GROCERIES had been painted in white letters above the door of the black building. There were seven or eight Mexicans near or under the spreading branches of the pepper tree. One sat in a rubber tire that had been attached to a limb by a rope; three men sat together on a discarded, cushionless davenport; and the others merely stood there, talking and smoking. This was obviously a work pickup spot, but they were all Mexicans here. If someone needed a man for an hour or an all-day job of some kind, he drove to the pepper tree and picked up a worker. Pay for the job would be negotiated, and off the man, or two or three men, would go. There were several of these unofficial pickup stations in Miami, in Coral Gables, Liberty City, Coconut Grove, South Miami, but those were reserved for unemployed blacks. There were no black men here under this tree. Hoke walked across the lot and looked beyond the tree. Behind the tree was a row of dusty waist-high bushes, and behind them a wooden rail was balanced across a sluggish irrigation ditch. This was the open-air John, and the bushes screened it from the road. Clumps of wadded newspaper littered the ground. Hoke took a leak, returned to the shade of the tree. Across the street was a long row of one-room concrete blockhouses. Each house had been painted either pink or pastel green, but most of them were pink. There were several blacks in each house, and he could see them inside through the shadeless windows. A good many children played in the dusty yards. Three skinny black kids were kicking a sock-ball with their feet, passing it to one another without letting it touch the ground. There was no laughter. Not letting the sock-ball touch the ground was a serious matter to these Haitian boys.

  Two Mexicans looked at Hoke incuriously when he joined them under the tree. One was tall; the other was much shorter and had a gold tooth. Hoke offered them cigarettes, but they were already smoking, so they shook their heads.

  “How’s the job situation?” Hoke asked.

  “Picky spanee?” the tallest Mexican said.

  “A poco.”

  “Malo.” The tall man field-stripped his cigarette and began to roll another with Bull Durhan and wheatstraw paper. Hoke offered his pack again, but the man ignored it.

  “You ever hear of Tiny Bock?” Hoke asked.

  The shorter Mexican smiled, flashing his gold tooth. “El Despótico!”

  The taller Mexican lighted his fresh cigarette with a kitchen match and shook his head. “El Fálico! Buena suerte.”

  The two men moved away from Hoke as he lit his Kool.

  Hoke went into the Cheap Cheap Grocery Store. It was more than just a grocery, although there were plenty of canned goods and a small produce section. There were also farm implements, rope and hoses, and bins of hardware items. Tables were piled high with blue jeans, bib overalls, khaki and denim work shirts, and rolls of colored cloth. There was a strong smell of vinegar, coffee, tobacco, and disinfectant. A pasty-faced white man stood behind a narrow counter next to a chrome cash register. There was a heavy mesh screen in front of the counter, with a pass-through window blocked by a piece of polished cedar.

  “Let me have a pack of king-size Kools,” Hoke said.

  The man reached behind him and put the pack on the counter. He slid the piece of wood to one side. “Dollar seventy-five.”

  “In Miami they’re a buck and a quarter.”

  The man put the cigarettes back and pointed east with his meaty arm. “Miami’s that way.”

  “Give me a sack of Golden Grain and some white papers.”

  “No Golden Grain.”

  “A can of Prince Albert, then, and a pack of Zig Zag. White.”

  Hoke paid for the tobacco and papers and rolled a thick cigarette. He lighted it and inhaled deeply. He hadn’t rolled a cigarette in several years, and he had forgotten how good Prince Albert tobacco smelled and tasted. He would be able to roll at least forty cigarettes out of a can of tobacco, too.

  “Does Mr. Bock ever trade here with you?” Hoke asked.

  “I
s a bear Catholic?”

  “I heard he was hiring.”

  “My hearing’s bad. But you can hear almost anything down at the Cafeteria.”

  “What’s the name of it, the cafeteria?”

  “The Cafeteria. I just told you. Cross the road and down two blocks. You’ll see the Dumpster in the parking lot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What for?” The proprietor moved the block of wood back into place.

  There were at least a dozen men in the parking lot, most of them in the near vicinity of an overflowing Dumpster, and a few cars were parked on the perimeter. Some of the men were hunkered down, Texas-style, squatting on their heels. Others were in small groups, and a few sat on wooden boxes. There were no Mexicans. Three bearded white men, middle-aged or older, were sharing a bottle of peach Riunite. The front glass window of the cafeteria, lettered THE CAFETERIA in black capitals and painted on the inside of the glass, had a handwritten menu taped to it beside the entrance. Hoke examined the menu, checking the prices.

  With one meat, either roast pork or roast beef, a diner could have all the vegetables he could eat for $3.95. Soup was fifty cents a bowl, or a person could order a bowl of vegetables for thirty-five cents. Bread pudding, with white sauce, was fifty cents. Coffee or iced tea was a quarter. Corn bread was eight cents a slab, and margarine was two cents a pat. At these prices most of the tables inside were filled with customers. Tables were shared, and none of the chairs matched; but the diners were eating seriously. Little talk was going on, and they were going and coming from the line, serving themselves from large square pans at the steam table.

  There was a heavyset black woman working the stoves and refilling pans at the steam table. Several large pots simmered on the stove. A brown-skinned man with a hooked nose, mottled skin, and glittering black eyes worked the cash register at the end of the line. He also checked the tickets on all of the diners who came back for refills. A person with a $3.95 check could have more vegetables—all he wanted—but the man had to make sure that someone with a thirty-five-cent check didn’t get another refill without paying another thirty-five cents.

  Hoke got a tray, a bowl of thick lentil soup, and two slabs of corn bread, without the margarine. He paid and sat at a small table for two against the wall. Hoke thought this was the best lentil soup he had ever tasted. The soup was flavored with fatback, diced carrots, onions, barley, summer squash, beef stock, garlic, peppercorns, and just the right amount of salt. Condiments were in a tin rack on the table. Hoke shook a few squirts of Tabasco sauce into his soup and began to spoon it into his mouth. A meal like this in Miami, he thought, if a man could find one like it, would cost at least five bucks. Little wonder the place was so crowded.

  An Oriental woman nodded and bobbed her head and then slid silently into the empty chair across from Hoke. She had a large bowl of stewed okra and tomatoes and a piece of corn bread on her tray. Hoke stopped eating for a moment, to see if she was going to attack her gooey bowl with chopsticks, but she began to eat with a soup spoon.

  The bank digital temperature gauge down the street had registered ninety degrees. Hoke knew that Florida bank clocks were correct, but they always set their temperature gauges lower to avoid upsetting passing tourists, so it was at least ten degrees higher inside the unair-conditioned cafeteria. All the burners on the kitchen stove were lit, the oven was baking more corn bread, and the body heat from the sweaty diners added to the humidity. By the time Hoke finished his hot lentil soup, he was perspiring freely from every pore. He wiped his forehead and eyes with a paper napkin and returned to the line for a glass of iced tea. For a quarter he received a vase-size glass of overly sweetened tea, filled to the brim with chopped ice. He returned to his table, rolled a cigarette, and sipped his tea. Between sips he nibbled on chips of ice and inhaled deeply, savoring the taste of the aromatic tobacco.

  The woman across from him giggled. “Smoking no good for you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You make me one. Smoking no good for me, too.” She giggled again.

  Hoke rolled a cigarette, licked the paper, and handed it over. He lit her cigarette with his lighter. As soon as she had it going, she reversed the cigarette and put the fire side inside her mouth, holding it between her lips, and allowing the smoke to escape through her broad, flat nose. She removed the cigarette and smiled. “My way, Filipino way, no waste smoke.”

  “Don’t you burn your tongue?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes.” She replaced the fire side inside her mouth and puffed away.

  “D’you live around here?” Hoke asked.

  “Why? You want to fuck?” She removed the cigarette from her lips and spooned up the last of her tomato and okra stew. Chewing slowly, she looked into Hoke’s eyes.

  Hoke looked at her a little differently now. He didn’t know whether she was a good-looking woman or not, nor could he guess her age. It had always seemed to Hoke that Oriental women looked about eighteen for many years, then suddenly turned forty overnight. There were a few crow’s-feet around her slightly slanted eyes, but her thick hair was so black it had tints of blue in it when the light caught it. Her skin, the color of used sandpaper, was smooth, however, and she wasn’t wearing makeup, not even lipstick. She wore a pale blue elastic tube top, and her breasts were barely discernible beneath the stretchy material. Her arms were as thin as a British rock musician’s but were more wiry than skinny. On the ring finger of her left hand she wore an aluminum skull-and-crossbones ring, with tiny red glass eyes. Hoke remembered having had one just like it in junior high school. All the guys wore them then; they sold these rings in Kress’s for a quarter. The teachers had hated the rings for some reason, making them even more popular.

  “To answer your invitation, miss, that’s just about the last thing I have on my mind right now. D’you know what peristalsis means?”

  “You show me. I try it.”

  “No, it’s something I have to do all by myself. After this load of lentils I have to go down to the pepper tree to take a crap.”

  “Pepper tree’s for Mexicans.” She pursed her lips and lifted her chin, pointing to the cash register. The proprietor was examining a dwarf’s check before allowing him to fill up his bowl again with collards. “You are white man. He’ll let you use his John.”

  “Okay,” Hoke said, getting to his feet, “I’ll ask him.”

  “You ask Mr. Sileo. I wait. I save table for us.”

  “You don’t have to wait for me.”

  “I wait.”

  “I’d like to use your John, Mr. Sileo,” Hoke said when he reached the register.

  “It’s for employees only.”

  “And the pepper tree’s for Mexicans, right? Where do white men go? I don’t have a car, so I can’t use the gas station.”

  “You want a job?”

  “Sure. I’m looking for work.”

  “Okay, then.” Sileo took a key out of his front pocket and handed it to Hoke. “The door next to the storeroom back there. Wash your hands when you get through, and start on the pots and pans. Marilyn’ll need more pans soon, and then get going on the dishes.”

  When Hoke came out of the john, there were a half dozen dirty pots and pans in the sink. He turned on the hot water and went to work. His cuffs got wet, and he removed his shirt, which was already soaked through with perspiration. He hung it on a nail beside the storeroom door. When he finished a pan and dried it, he placed it on the counter. Marilyn, the fat black cook, would immediately start chopping vegetables into it. She chopped zucchinis, summer squash, onions, and potatoes with equal rapidity. The potatoes, Hoke noted, weren’t peeled, nor were they entirely clean. But Marilyn knew exactly what she was doing, and she had several pots working on the stove. Hoke began on the dishes. He washed them in soapy water, rinsed them in clear hot water, and then carried the still-damp stacks of dishes to the counter beside the steam table. His job reminded him of the KPs he had pulled during basic training at Fort Hood, back in the V
ietnam War, except that he was the only kitchen policeman here and soon found out that he was the dining room orderly as well. When he got caught up on the dishes, Mr. Sileo sent him out to clear and wipe the tables. The diners were supposed to bring their own trays and plates to the pass-through to the sink. Most of them did; but some didn’t, and those who didn’t left the messiest tables. Hoke got into the rhythm of the work and forgot all about the Filipino woman. Later, when he was mopping the kitchen floor, he remembered her, but by that time she was gone.

  The cafeteria was open from six to six, but at five-thirty Mr. Sileo locked the front door. He let the diners inside finish but didn’t allow any more in.

  Marilyn took all of the leftover vegetables from the steam table (but not the meat) and poured them all—mixed as they were—into a twenty-gallon pot. She held open the back door for him, and Hoke carried the heavy pot out to a tree stump that had been cut across the top to form a flat surface. The men in the lot were already lined up at the stump and were more orderly than he would have expected them to be. They came by with coffee cans, tin cups, and other receptacles (one guy had a cardboard box, lined with Reynolds Wrap foil), to dip out of the pot. When the pot was empty, Hoke brought it inside and washed it. He swept and mopped the dining room floor and carried out two cans full of garbage to the Dumpster. The lot was empty. After eating, the al fresco diners had disappeared.

  Mr. Sileo handed Hoke a five-dollar bill. “Want to work tomorrow?”

  “Not for only five bucks I don’t, no.”

  “You only worked a half day. All day you get ten, plus you eat free.”

  “Hell, that isn’t even a buck an hour.”

  “Sure it is, if you count what you eat.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Sileo. I’ll have to sleep on it. What kind of retirement plan have you got?”

  Marilyn laughed, throwing her head back. Her body, including her massive buttocks, shook all over.

  “What’s so funny?” Sileo turned on Marilyn. “No man ever stays more’n three or four days! I’d be crazy to set up any kind of retirement plan.” He turned back to Hoke, a little calmer. “You want to work tomorrow, old-timer, be here at five-thirty. Otherwise, forget it.”