by Tom Cooper
Catface stepped out of the Mustang. He took off his shirt, draped it on the driver’s seat. He dragged the officer’s body by the legs to the edge of the marsh. He pushed the body with his shoe and it rolled a few times until toppling into the bog where green scum and algae swallowed him.
Catface then got behind the wheel of the cop car. He put the car in neutral, cocked the wheel so the tires swiveled swampward. Catface then stepped to the back of the car and pushed it until it lumbered and sank into the muck.
MICROFICHE
CROWE TRIED TO FORGET THE MAN’S face. He tried to banish it from his mind. He could not. The face burned like a fire in his head. It was graven in his brain, cattle-branded.
Somehow he knew the face. And he knew from the way the man’s eyes lit on him from across the parking lot, the way his eyes looked away from him, cut back to him, switchblade quick, that the man somehow knew his face too.
For days nightmares about the catfaced man hounded him in the wee hours. He would wake in bedsheets tangled and sweaty. He would wake on the couch shouting pleas, flailing his limbs as if fending away an attack.
Sometimes he found the feral beach cats gathered anxiously outside near the sliding glass door. Peering inside with their reflective yellow eyes, drawn by his thrashing and shouting.
Blood knocking loud in his head he sat on the edge of the sofa. He set down his half-moon television-watching glasses on the coffee table.
He’d fallen asleep watching Johnny Carson.
As he caught his breath, he glimpsed his spooked reflection, bathed in the blue wash of the test pattern, in the glass. The dark sand dunes beyond, the darker darkness of the Gulf.
His heart slowed.
He watched the cats relax. Oh, that guy.
They scattered.
He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of ice water. He downed it in three big gulps. He poured another. Then he went back to the den and sat on the couch, put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and he said, “Get your shit together, man.”
* * *
—
After his next visit to see his mother at the Poinciana, Crowe on impulse visited the Broward public library. Inside he sat in the periodicals section at one of the carrel desks and looked up old editions of Miami Herald on the microfiche machine.
Images flickered past. Lurid headlines.
Grainy green, pixilated photographs of shoot-outs in front of the Fort Lauderdale Burdines. Refugees landing in jury-rigged boats ashore Key Largo, Islamorada.
The thunk-thunk-thunk of the microfiche machine caught people’s attention in the stale air-conditioned hush of the building.
Thunk, thunk. Crowe zooming in and zooming out onto the negatives, a quick carousel of images.
Other patrons glanced peevishly from their carrels.
There was no way he could quiet the machine. He apologized nonetheless.
Thunk.
Dadeland Mall Massacre.
Thunk.
Castro, “I’ll flush the toilets of Cuba. Send all the criminals to America.”
Thunk.
Morgues overflowing in Dade County. The Dade medical examiner’s office storing corpses in a refrigerated Burger King truck.
Thunk.
The narcotics war between Cuban and Colombian dealers. Some guy, a local Venezuelan resident who’d immigrated to avoid such mayhem, “They’ll kill your wife. Your kids. Your neighbors. Your dog. Your plants. They’ll kill your pet rock.”
Thunk.
Disembowelment by sword at a Cooper City car wash.
Thunk.
The green microfilm blurred past. About thirty minutes into his search he stopped.
It was an article and picture about a shooting near the Hotel Mutiny, Miami Beach. Police tape sectioned off a street. In the middle of the street was a body draped in a white sheet. Across the street on the far sidewalk a crowd stood to rubberneck. Among the heads and faces Crowe saw him five or six heads deep.
The catfaced man in the custom-tailored summer suit.
Unmistakably him.
Right there, in plain sight, peering from between the breach of bodies and heads.
How could anyone miss him?
Could they just not bear to give him a second glance? Was he that unsettling to behold, that maimed and deformed?
Crowe went to the reference desk and returned the box of microfiche to the librarian.
“Sir? Sir? Are you okay?”
Reed Crowe already had his back turned. He held up a hand, a two-fingered wave. He thanked the woman for her help.
He walked outside in the muggy Florida afternoon. Said, “Fucked.”
* * *
—
One morning when arriving to the Florida Man Mystery House Reed Crowe found the new kid Eddie dragging the garden hose from the side of the lavatory building, across the caterpillar grass, across the bucked-up tamarind fig tree roots, to the pontoon boat. He was blasting the swamp crap off the boat. He’d already washed the mildew off the hard top. Scrubbed the tourist benches. Washed the slime and mold off the Bimini top of the console.
Crowe went down the dock and saw Eddie in the water of the canal, wakeboard shorts and scuba goggles on. He was brushing the barnacles and beards of algae off the hull.
Crowe couldn’t believe his eyes. “Eddie, Eddie, what’re you up to, buddy?” He was looking down at the skinny kid in the tannin-tinctured water.
“Five dollars?”
“Five dollars to clean the boat? That’s the best bargain I ever heard in my life.”
“Wayne should be doing this.”
“Why not?”
“Why doesn’t he? He’d contaminate the Everglades.”
“Sorry?”
“He’d pollute the water.”
“Que?”
“Good work, Eddie,” Crowe said.
Crowe went into the gift shop for the express purpose of breaking Wayne Wade’s balls. He found him behind the counter with an issue of Fangoria magazine.
The spring door squawked back on the hinges and Wayne looked up. “Uh,” he said in the way of greeting.
Crowe pointed his chin at the door where through the cobwebby screen, past the giant tamarind fig, past the picnic pavilion, sat the SS Merman at its dock. He said, “See that?”
“Huh,” was all that Wayne said. His mouth tightened around his toothpick, ticked to the side of his face like it did when he was peeved.
What tourists there were idled by the knickknacks and gewgaws. One kid in a Space Invaders T-shirt and straw cowboy hat was whacking his chubby brother upside the head with an alligator backscratcher. “Keep it up,” their father was telling them. “We’ll see what happens at Uncle Barry’s tonight when I fire up the grill.”
Sometimes the things Crowe overheard from these tourists, he had no idea.
He was still waiting for a response from Wayne. “I said see that, Wayne?”
Insolently Wayne flipped a page of the magazine. “Spic in the water. Amazing. Ten stars.”
“Doing shit you should have done five years ago.”
“Tell me then. I’m not a mind reader.”
Crowe stood there staring at Wayne Wade.
“You’re not, eh? Try.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Wayne flicked an annoyed glance upward. He hissed dismissively through his toothpick. His eyes went back to the magazine.
“See, there. Don’t underestimate yourself.”
Now he could hear Eddie starting up the boat, the cough and splutter of the balky engine from a distance.
A few startled terns winged over the mangroves.
Crowe went over to the Mystery House entrance and called out, “Five minutes,
folks.”
The small passel of tourists began to herd toward the gift shop.
Crowe went back to the register. Wiped his sweating forehead with his thumb. “When’s the last time you tuned her up?”
“Okay, Reed. I get it.”
“Boat sounds like fuckin’ Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
* * *
—
In the following days Eddie became a steward of sorts, attending to the maintenance of the boat, attending to chores long gone ignored and neglected. Always coming back at you with some excuse, Wayne Wade. And if Reed Crowe dunned him about it, he’d sulk the rest of the day.
Not so with Eddie. So the Merman chores became his. Crowe started paying Eddie twenty dollars a week.
Their excursions were twice a day during the spring, once at ten in the morning and the other at two.
But during the summer that dwindled to one excursion. The bugs, the heat.
So the tours went on. As he cruised the waterways and canals Crowe delivered his spiel about Florida, all the native flora and fauna. He pointed out turtles and manatees and alligators. Wetlands, pinelands, hammocks, prairies.
There’s a roseate spoonbill. Pete. He owes me twenty dollars.
There’s a great blue heron. Cornelius. He’s going through a rough time with his old lady.
There’s an asshole. Wayne Wade, ladies and gentlemen. Beyond hope or salvation, but please feel free to tip the help. Even feel free to tip Wayne Wade.
EDDIE
CROWE CAME TO LEARN PIECEMEAL THAT Eddie was here on a visa, a night student at one of the Broward Community College satellite campuses. He was saving for his family back in Juárez, and in the meantime staying with his abuelita and cousins.
Crowe asked the kid, “You drive all the way out there? Broward Community?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I would have never thought,” Crowe told him.
“Why not?”
Indeed, it was a good question. One to which Crowe had no answer. “Good for you, Eddie,” said Crowe.
A big part of him wanted to apologize for Wayne’s behavior, though it was out of his control. Or was it, really?
* * *
—
As the summer wore on and heated to a boil, problems proliferated. Mother of all plants.
Wayne Wade often came into work hungover or stoned or both.
One day during the Florida Man Mystery House boat ride, he missed his bogman cue.
“Legend has it,” Crowe called midway during the boat tour, Wayne’s cue to come charging out of the swamp hammock in his bogman costume, but there was silence within the mangroves. No bestial roar, no animal bellow.
Crowe cleared his throat.
Insects buzzed electric in bracken.
Whut-whut-whut, went a whacked-out bird from the jungle deep.
The sweaty tourists blinked and waited. They looked wretched. Their faces were an unhealthy glazed ham pink. They batted away mosquitoes and midges. They fanned themselves with brochures.
“Ointment,” Eddie said. “Root beer.”
Their faces said it all. If only they’d chosen Disney instead.
“Yes, legend has it,” Crowe said again, pitching his voice louder.
Then there was a huge splash in the water, as if a man had belly-flopped from a diving board into a shallow pool. A sickly human moan came from within the bracken.
A phalanx of tourists stood and grouped starboard, wondering if the commotion was part of the tour. They glanced questioningly at Crowe, who wore a poker face.
Finally Wayne Wade emerged from the muck and mire toting the gorilla head in the crook of his arm. With his other arm he groped around for purchase but it was all lily pads and swamp cabbage as he foundered through the bog.
His rattail was loose, so his lank sparse hair was in a weedy tangle. His eyes were bloodshot, conjunctivitis red. Dried vomit like a bib was fanned on the front of his costume.
“Looks like the bogman got a touch of the heatstroke,” Crowe said. He winked expansively from behind his green sunglasses, so the tourists could see. What few were looking. Almost all the people were gawking at Wayne.
“That man’s drunk,” said a man with a large Rottweiler-like face. For some reason the man made Crowe think of a Louisiana constable. Mr. Rottweiler Constable was not amused. “I got children here,” he said.
The two husky boys, brothers, seemed elated. They grinned grins that were stained blue from Polar Pops.
“Hydration,” Eddie yelled tonelessly. “Ointment. Ice-cold water. Hydration.”
Wayne stopped sloshing midway to the boat and went still. His face moiled. He retched and a bountiful spate flew.
Crowe preempted the tourists, their complaints, “Of course all you folks’ll be getting your refunds.”
MELEE
WHEN CROWE ARRIVED TO THE FLORIDA Man Mystery House a few days later it was to a melee. From a distance he could see two men fighting, duking it out beneath the enormous strangler fig tree. Ringed around them was a score of tourists.
There were evil-looking charcoal clouds shoving inshore from the Gulf. Already the day looked fucked. They’d have to leave in five minutes, max, to make the tour safely before the storm.
And now this.
Crowe parked and jogged across the lot. Above the heads of the tourists, in the midst of the fracas, an aqua-blue Miami Dolphins cap flipped in the air.
Crowe knew the cap well.
Wayne Wade’s.
Crowe parted through the tourists. “Pardon, folks. Pardon, ma’am.”
Eddie and Wayne were in a tangle, flailing. Eddie had Wayne in a headlock. They were spinning about, throwing sloppy punches, almost tripping on the heaved-up roots of the tree.
Crowe wedged himself between the two like a wrestling ref, shoved them apart. They were in each other’s faces, bloody-mouthed, cursing.
“Fuck’s wrong with you two?” Crowe said in a vicious whisper.
Reluctantly the men staggered apart. Wretched-looking, pummeled. Wayne had gotten the brunt of the blows. The right side of his face was already swelling. His cap was smashed where the ground was slick with mud and deliquescing fig jam.
“The cap, signed by Bob Griese, ruined!” Wayne wailed. The thin cloth of Wayne’s T-shirt—FLORIDA BEER CAN CONVENTION—was ripped at the sleeve.
The tourists were agog.
Crowe led the pair to the squalid public restroom.
“Look at this place,” Crowe complained, glancing rancidly about. “Gloryholes. Spider webs. Green fuckin’ slime. And you’re duking it out there.”
The men said nothing. They stood tensely, like they still had fight in them. Wayne with his soda straw legs, his knees scuffed and dirty. The flesh around one eye was swelling purple.
Crowe asked the men what happened.
Still nothing from either one of them.
“One of you idiots is gonna tell me.”
Eddie’s head snapped up. “Hey, fuck you.”
Crowe stepped back, flung up his hands, showed his palms. “Whoa,” he said. “Hey, let’s calm down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m not your wetback.”
“Eddie? I don’t know what you think, but? Hey? You think I’m your enemy? Is that what you think?”
They were both looking at the ground, the grubby mint-green hexagonal tiles. Their breaths were loud and scraping in the small space. A sink was leaking, slow steady silvery plinks.
Crowe’s face turned rancid. “Smells like bona fide pig shit in here and you guys are doing whatever the fuck out there.” He turned to Wayne. “Wayne, tell me what this shit’s about.”
“Kinda way is that to ask?”
“You wanna scroll from
the queen?”
“That. That.” He shook his finger, prosecutorial. “That way of askin’ right there. What’s that? Like I’m your employee.”
“Wayne. I got people out there. Families. A couple of kids scared half shitless.”
Wayne opened his mouth, goober teeth showing, chin lifting, scrawny neck corded and red with indignation.
Before Wayne could speak, Crowe pointed at him. “Fuck whatever you’re gonna say. I got shit to do.”
“I’m the villain?” Wayne asked.
Wayne’s high wheedling voice was still going on when Crowe started walking out.
“Am I fired?” Eddie asked.
“What? No. No, Eddie. Why’d you be fired? Forget it.”
Then Crowe was out of the restroom and addressing the crowd in his corny game show host voice. “All right, folks, let’s get you some godforsaken tchotchkes.”
CHOCOLATE BUDDHA
A GRUFF IMPASSE REMAINED BETWEEN THE two men. A grudging truce. They exchanged nary a word aside from bare necessity. “Boat,” Wayne would say, reminding Eddie to get the Florida Man Mystery Boat ready. Sometimes it was a shrill roistering whistle that he sounded through the gift shop door. It rolled across the picnic area beyond the huge strangler fig tree and it reached the boat and then it whanged back with reverb, bouncing off the curtain of rank jungle green on the far side of the canal.
“Watch,” one would say to the other if they were about to collide during their errands. Not even bothering with the “it.”
So few were his responsibilities that Eddie spoke only when in dire need. Some random emergency. “A little girl shit in the bathroom, on wall,” he said.
Wayne, his face a vaudeville parody of vexation, said, “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”
* * *
—
Then one night in Red, White and Blue Liquor, Wayne Wade was fetching a six-pack when two Mexican kids Wayne recognized as friends of Eddie’s came into the store.