by Lee Lynch
When they crossed US 19, Gran surprised them with wistful talk not about Eddie, but about her husband.
“Your grandfather and I honeymooned on Santa Maria Island, Berry.” She pointed south. “It took some time to get there in those days, over a rickety wooden bridge. We rented a one-room cabin. Every day we went out on the pier fishing, and at night your grampa fixed what we caught for supper over a pit fire on the beach. It was an extravagance, but he was known for his champagne taste and beer wallet. He always showed me a good time, till the day he died.”
“Tell us about more good times, Gran.” Jaudon called her Gran, as her own had long since passed on.
“On the way home, kids, if I’m not too worn out by these big happenings.”
Gran’s voice was at its strongest since the sinkhole misfortune, either from happy memories or this adventure. Jaudon found a parking space on a side street at the Tarpon Springs sponge docks. White sand shone in patches on undeveloped lots.
Berry put on a horrified face before she laughed. “Can you imagine how much sweeping we’d be doing if we lived this near the beach?”
“True,” Gran said. “But we’d have these delicious breezes.”
Two retirement-age men sat at a table, selling tickets to the sponge boat. Jaudon led them on as it was almost filled. Gran’s stories had livened them up.
“Walking the gangplank, Gran?” said Jaudon, kidding, and offered a hand to help her board.
The ramp led them into a boat painted bright white, with mahogany trim. They sat on the hindmost of the long benches under a wood canopy. Two little kids in front of them craned their necks to look at Jaudon, whispering and giggling until their mother looked too, smacking the one closest to her and yanking the arm of the other child. The mother turned back to a conversation with her neighbor. After the boat left the dock, the children snuck frequent quick looks. “Is it a boy or a girl?” one of them asked. The mother swatted the air without interrupting her chat.
Berry squeezed closer to Jaudon.
This was why she feared outings. The comments were hateful to her, and she imagined Berry and Gran must be embarrassed half to death. What does it matter what I am? Jaudon railed to herself, trying not to cry in front of these spiteful strangers. Why are people so desperate to pigeonhole every living being?
Berry glared at the two kids. She wanted to bawl them out, but feared cross words would draw more attention to Jaudon. Would people always raise children like these to pester Jaudon to her grave?
“We don’t have to take this.” Gran leaned forward and tapped the mother on her shoulder.
The woman turned with a grimace.
“Your children are being rude to my granddaughter. You need to teach them some manners.”
As upset as she was, Jaudon wanted to jump for joy at Gran claiming her.
Berry was as tense as a cat stuck in a tree.
The woman turned her back and cuffed both kids in the head. “Shut the hell up, you two, or you’re going overboard.” She looked at Berry, let her eyes linger on Jaudon, and told Gran, “Why don’t you teach your granddaughter how to be a lady?”
“My granddaughter isn’t badgering your brats.”
The mother gave Gran an angry look and turned her back. She made some loud, rude comments about Gran and Jaudon to her friend. The kids sat face forward for a while.
Berry smiled and, under cover of her flared skirt, touched Jaudon’s hand, unsurprised it was in a fist.
Retirees took up much of the seating with more preschoolers and mothers scattered among them. Jaudon left the bench and rode silent and backward for a while, leaning on the stern rail, the purr of the boat’s engine vibrating up through her body. Nature was spectacular here. The banks of the Anclote River hosted skinny-legged birds while frogs dodged the birds’ long beaks. Dolphins played in the boat’s wake; more birds roosted in the tops of mangroves and bay trees and fished amidst the green and yellow saw grass. The air was warm, but the canopy shaded them. She breathed in the earthy, fishy smells of the river and simmered down.
As the captain steered farther out into the bayou, he gave a running commentary about the history of the Tarpon Springs sponge industry. The diver was pulling on a suit used to this day by sponge divers. Jaudon went back to her seat, tensing up again.
Berry took Jaudon’s hand between her own and rubbed it while everyone watched the diver sink into the water from the weight of his iron shoes. There was quiet suspense while he was down there, but he soon surfaced with an object on a long two-hooked pole. Everyone applauded.
“Goodness, I never saw a sponge so dirty.” Gran made a face, but touched it when offered all the same.
Berry balked about putting a hand on the thing. “Didn’t the captain say they’re animals, not plants?”
“This is an animal?” Jaudon didn’t touch the sponge either, afraid to bring attention to herself.
“Nowadays you can’t find real sponges in the stores.”
“Best news yet, Gran, because they were killing harmless animals so we could wash dishes.”
“Come on, Berry,” Jaudon told her. “We’re supposed to be having fun today. Don’t be talking about killing things unless you want me to go after the group in front of us.”
“Can’t say as I blame you, Jaudon,” said Gran.
The ride lasted about thirty minutes. On the way back, Berry named the wading and diving birds: a kingfisher, an osprey. A flock of red-winged blackbirds flew from branch to reed and back. A gator slipped off a bank. Turtles, necks stretched upward, sunned on flat rocks.
Berry said, “It smells so fresh out here.” She leaned on the arm Jaudon stretched along the back of their bench. The children had at last lost interest in Jaudon.
“Those clouds look to be out of a movie.” She caressed Berry’s back with a furtive thumb.
Berry craned her neck. “They’re shooting straight up in the air into a long lazy sky river.”
Back on the dock, Gran pretended to work at getting her sea legs. “That was very peaceful. Short and sweet.”
Berry smiled at her happiness. “Our ocean cruise, Gran.”
Jaudon was overwrought from the encounter with the kids. She watched them debark and steered Gran and Berry in the other direction. She swept a hand toward the boat, bowed and announced, “The Queen Elizabeth of the sponge docks.”
“We didn’t have to ride in steerage like some of our ancestors,” said Gran.
Jaudon rubbed her hands. “I’m starving. Where are we going to eat?”
“Let’s look into a few shops. We can drive back to Pappas’s Restaurant,” Berry said.
Jaudon dashed across the street. She met them as they crossed at the next corner. “I was too hungry to wait.” She danced in place with edgy excitement, tearing off pieces of a sesame bread ring for them.
Berry, with her trace of a sashaying walk, led them into a gift shop. She looked at the dead sponges lying in bins, but didn’t say anything this time. Jaudon and Gran were showing each other souvenir ashtrays and spoon rests, shot glasses and nail files, having a good old time as far as she could tell. Berry was relieved there were no more confrontations with poorly brought up children. She pretended not to see Jaudon take a tiny glass bird to the cashier. She went along with the idea and picked up a few stocking stuffers for Christmas while alone in the next shop.
Jaudon spotted a blue cement mermaid statue holding a bird bath bowl. She found some chips and stains, but insisted she’d buy it if she got a discount. She wanted Berry to be able to watch her birds.
Berry said no because of the expense.
Jaudon said, “Uh-uh. Look at your face charged up like Broadway, New York City. We’re getting it.” She plunged inside the store with her sailor’s walk and asked the man behind the counter, “How bad do you want to get rid of the mermaid out front before the tourists figure out it’ll chip worse in their frozen backyards than it does here?”
The guy looked at her for a long moment, stare
d at the moisture-stained ceiling, peered out the door, ran a finger over the keys of his cash register, and asked where she was from.
“Over to Rainbow Gap, about an hour east on 60.”
“Not one of those Northerners?” He came down eight dollars. Jaudon said twelve, he said nine, and they settled on ten dollars off. Once they got the birdbath stowed in the trunk, she hopped up and down, reveling in her victory. When she looked up, a short dark-haired woman was swaggering past them, carrying a small bouquet of pink and purple flowers.
“Tante Genevieve,” called a small child.
“Hold up there, Sis.”
The woman turned to her brother and opened her arms to the tiny girl, presenting her with the bouquet.
Berry looked at Jaudon. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“She’s family, like Rigo would say.”
“Or she’s from France.”
“We get Canadians vacationing here.”
They heard the woman speaking English. Simultaneously, they said, “A New Yorker,” and laughed at the woman’s accent.
“She looks like a miniature James Dean.”
Jaudon shaped her hair into a pompadour and imitated the woman’s strut.
“What are you gals up to?” Gran asked.
With a start, Berry gestured. “Where do you think that woman got those hollyhocks?”
“There was a driveway stand back a ways selling flowers. She must have stopped.”
Berry followed Gran into a store where she found a tiny model of a sailing ship with Tarpon Springs hand painted on it. She presented it to Gran as a souvenir of their outing. They drove to the restaurant and tried everything: gyros, dolmades, keftedes, and shared a plate of loukoumades for dessert.
“Oh my gosh, I’m full.” Jaudon used her index finger to scrape up honey residue and lick it off.
“Brim full of joyousness.” Gran patted her tummy. “I haven’t eaten Greek food in an age.”
“You haven’t eaten much of anything recently, Gran. We need to have fun more often. We’re like tourists.”
Gran nodded. “It’s not Paris or the Bahamas, but look at these out-of-state cars come to explore what’s an hour from us. Plus we have a beautiful birdbath to remind us of today. I had no idea you knew how to bargain, Jaudon.”
“Jaudon is first-rate at everything she does.”
She was pleased to hear Berry brag on her. “I can’t say as I’ve negotiated before. It’ll come in handy if I’m someday buying for the Bays.”
“Oh,” said Gran, “you will be. Not a doubt in my head.”
Chapter Six
Spring 1971
Momma Vicker rose to treasurer of the chamber of commerce. She decided she needed something newer than a Cracker house, something more suited to the Beverage Bay revenues and her growing position in the business community. She wanted room for an office, an area for entertaining, a house that was closer to town, for certain in an all-white neighborhood, and larger, not a hodgepodge of add-ons perched in swampy wetland.
Pops rounded up the male relatives and moved into a new stucco house with pretend white columns and a screened-in porch called a lanai across the back. The house came with a regular green lawn, budding Southern magnolias, shaped crepe myrtles, palms without a yellowed frond in sight. Momma hired a landscape company to take care of the property. There was an oversized two-car garage to hold Pop’s newest big pickup and the baby blue Cadillac de Ville Momma bought herself.
Pops told them they could find him Sunday afternoons smoking a cigar with other businessmen. They served mojitos on the lanai.
“Aren’t they overdoing it?” Jaudon asked Berry.
Berry smoothed Jaudon’s cowlick down. “This is your momma’s dream house, angel. She’s worked hard for it.”
Jaudon didn’t begrudge Momma, but a niggling foreboding filled her. This wasn’t the momma she knew.
Once Pops and Momma were gone, Berry moved out of Gran’s trailer into the old house with Jaudon and—when he was on leave—Bat, neither of whom wanted anything to do with Momma’s palace, as they called it.
Berry was naturally handy and Jaudon had learned a lot from Pops, so they picked up tools and, day off by day off, framed, roofed, and otherwise did the work of adding a bathroom and fixing up the southwest bedroom with a bay window and window seat for Gran. A cousin from Momma’s Jaudon side plumbed the bathroom. Toby the cat stayed with Gran in the trailer for the months it took to finish the project. Zefer moved between house and trailer, anxious to be buddies with old Muddy, reluctant to leave Gran.
Although Jaudon and Berry each had a room, Berry caught on that Jaudon paid no attention to the old sock and wet dog blend issuing from her room. They slept together in Berry’s bed.
Rigo regularly fought with his father and showed up at their door to find sanctuary in Jaudon’s empty bed. He borrowed Gran’s nightgowns. Gran found him a hoot. Bat found him ridiculous. If his army buddy came home with him, Bat gave Jaudon Hail Columbia at any sign of Rigo’s dress up inclinations. Rigo quit visiting when Bat was home.
“Hey, Sister,” said Bat during a trip home. “We should turn this place into a plant nursery when I’m cut loose for good. I’m thinking Bat’s Royal Palm and Plants.”
“What about the Bays?”
Bat looked at her, one eyebrow raised.
Of course he doesn’t want to work for Momma, she realized. She bosses him around worse than any ten armies.
“What do you think, John?” Bat’s buddy, John Lau, was an intense, serious Chinese American with old world manners. When he and Bat went out on the town, poor John took a lot of guff—strangers assumed he was Vietnamese.
“Why not turn this place into a nursery?” Bat said. “Veteran or no, if I can’t find a damn job except for the Beverage Bay, my druthers are to drive trucks or work outdoors. I wouldn’t mind selling trees to the damn Yankees and charging to plant them. There’s plenty of sabal palms, lantana, and daylilies in every color to dig up around here to give us our seed money, Johnny boy.”
John nodded his head, as if he didn’t know Bat was full of stillborn ideas. “I’ve thought of a business along those lines, home in Oregon. Not palms, but a Christmas tree farm.”
“Maybe I’ll move out there to help you. Great minds, hey, John?” They cuffed each other’s knees.
Berry pursed her lips. She knew better than to start a discussion so tried to skirt around her real message. “I wish you two didn’t have to go back over there.”
John and Bat chanted in unison. “Look Sharp, Be Sharp, Go Army!”
“How sharp do you look in the jungle?”
“We do okay driving stores to the troops, Berry, don’t you worry.”
“I do worry, Bat. I worry why we’re in Vietnam.” Berry put her hands together, as if in prayer. “There has to be a better way. Why get our boys killed by Vietcong artillery?”
“Are you a peace nut, Berry? ’Cause if you are, I would kindly ask you to remove yourself from my home. Meaning this house and my country.”
Jaudon was distressed by the conversation and worried Bat and Berry would go off on each other. “She’s asking questions, Bat. It’s a democracy. We’re supposed to be able to ask questions.”
“We’re supposed to stand up for the United States of America.”
“Right or wrong?”
Bat held up his hands and looked at John as if John knew the answers.
“We’re not brainwashed, Berry,” said John. “We may not know the ins and outs of government decisions, but I trust our leaders to do the best thing. It’s my job as a citizen and a soldier to back them up. I also trust you to back us up.”
“How can anyone back up war, John?”
Bat’s face was hard. Jaudon saw the soldier in him.
He turned to her. “Where do you stand, Sister? Do you insult American soldiers on the street?”
“Heck no, Bat.” Jaudon put away her annoyance at Berry and gave the smile Bat said alwa
ys lit him up. “You know better. Berry doesn’t believe in killing anything that isn’t a spider.”
“They needn’t die because of my fear,” Berry said. “Jaudon catches and evicts them.”
John cracked up. “We need you to keep watch over us in ’Nam. Florida has nothing on ten-inch centipedes—”
Bat, bless his heart, grabbed the chance to clear the air. “Mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue fever, cat-sized rats, dog-sized—”
“Come on, Bat. They’ll think we’re bug exterminators, not military.”
“We are exterminators, John. Our vermin is human.” Bat grabbed his cap and jacket and waved a V sign at them. “Peace and love. Come on, John, let’s go find some women who like men in uniform.”
Jaudon smiled and held her hands palms up. “I know, you’ll be at your favorite beach dive bar.” She hugged Bat before he left.
“Don’t wait up, Sister.”
The house went silent. She looked at Berry, vexed. “Why did you start talking war?”
“I didn’t. I wished he’d stay home and sell plants. I don’t understand what makes anyone hurt other people. I don’t believe they’re trained—they’re indoctrinated. Somehow, we turned a group of people different from us into the enemy. I believe in the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. Our society believes in both—why do we go to war?”
“Because of the Communists, Berry. Don’t forget, Bat’s my big brother. You don’t have to agree with him, but, jiminy, Berry, we do have to be nice to him when he’s home.”
“I’m sorry, Jaudon. He’s my brother-in-law and I care about him if for no other reason than how devastated you’d be if anything happened to him. Don’t you wish he wasn’t putting himself in danger?”
“I don’t want to think about Bat getting killed over there. It’s nothing you can stop, men going to war. They graduate high school and sign up because it’s their bounden duty. They think it’s manlier than waiting to be drafted.”
“And being manly is more important than being humane.”
Jaudon stomped a foot. “When it’s us or them, it is.”