Florida Man

by Tom Cooper

  Had the mayhem of Miami spread that far?

  So many questions in the hive mind of the media, and so for an hour or two that late January 1986, when the first news crews arrived, a number of Emerald Island residents experienced their veritable fifteen minutes of fame.

  * * *

  —

  Myrtle the mailwoman was unloading the empty satchels from her Toyota Celica when she heard a car cross the bridge.

  “I knew somethin’ was off. His face. I’m the postmaster here. Been for a while. You get to know the faces. And this face. I don’t want to be mean or anything. I’m not talking homely. But you could tell he’d been in an accident. Bad, bad. But that’s not what made him scary. I don’t know how to describe it. He just comes speeding off the bridge, and I’m like? Because he gave me this cold weird smile. And maybe I would have forgotten it, but then, what happened. Anybody could have been on that bridge.”

  This was how she told it.

  How she remembered it, a different story. So many details she wasn’t able to put into words on the spot like that with the microphone in her face.

  She would never forget it coming out of the quaking hot dusk as it evanesced. A sleek Cadillac quivering in the heat, mirages snaking off the road.

  As it approached she heard a soukous beat. The syncopated rhythm over the keening insects.

  The car was a convertible and the top was down and the music was coming out of the sound system. Horns and the guitar. The same Cuban rhythm. Not music you usually heard around here.

  The late sun glared bronze on the windshield so she couldn’t make out the driver’s face at first. Then she saw a hand. The driver held it out of the car just as he was about to pass, flashed a peace symbol with two fingers, casually, the arm relaxed and loose. A round-faced golden ring.

  Myrtle raised her hand. As the car passed she glimpsed the driver’s face. He turned to look at her, the hand still hanging out of the car, flashing a peace symbol.

  The face, it looked mangled, the smile warped.

  Myrtle convinced herself it was an optical illusion.

  Nonetheless dread settled in her stomach like a chunk of ice.

  That face.

  * * *

  —

  That day, the day of the bridge explosion, they also showed on cable via local affiliate the Big Gorilla Fireworks emporium engulfed in flame. A towering inferno, a boiling wicked column of fire and volcanic smoke. The whole sky, bruised and bloodshot. The camera shot was from at least two miles’ distance, the heat and fire were so great.

  They interviewed a deputy, haggard and harried, speculating that maybe faulty wiring was to blame. Ash was caught in his bushy eyebrows. Ash dusted his shoulders like epaulets. Ash was caught in the folds of his hat. “Best not to leap to any wild conclusions.”

  The newsperson was a young African American woman. Candy Parker. A purple blazer with overlarge shoulder pads. Big faux-pearl earrings. “Wouldn’t you agree, though, sir, that this is pretty wild?”

  A pandemonium of fire trucks was in the background. Three different passels of men with fire hoses fought the conflagration.

  “Well, you know what, ma’am? Best not leap to anything.”

  She waited.

  “So yeah,” said the deputy, “that’s our policy.”

  He grinned an enigmatic hayseed grin at the newswoman.

  With a small shake of her head she turned the microphone onto the fireworks kid.

  “But you say there was a man in a suit? Mr….”

  The young man thought hard about this. “Well, I’d rather not say, Miss Parker.”

  “This is on live television, just so you know.”

  Barry Boone swallowed, a dry click. His face wrinkled like a baby’s, turned pink, like he might cry. His face was very sweaty, despite the brisk day.

  On the other hand, the heat from the inferno was that tremendous.

  Finally Barry started, “This man, he just, just, just…”

  “It’s okay, young man. It’s okay, take your time.” Her face changed. She cocked her ear. She held up a finger to the camera.

  She listened to a transmission in her headpiece. “Ladies, Gentlemen,” she said.

  Barry Boone stood there. His fifteen minutes of fame: thirty seconds.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Miss Candy Parker, plugging her one free ear against the racket of the distant helicopter, “we have other breaking news.”

  * * *

  —

  Eddie Maldonado too was on the television news. Albeit briefly. Fine by him.

  Some underpaid intern was holding a boom mike aloft. It hovered above his head and bumped the crown every so often.

  To anyone watching at home on television, Eddie Maldonado looked stricken, beyond traumatized. There was a twitch on one side of his mouth. Even his eyeballs were shaking. The anchor told the audience that maybe there was a language barrier. Eddie told her he spoke English. “I just cannot describe,” he said.

  Finally, after Eddie got knocked in the head four times, the newsman in the Band-Aid colored suit lost it. “Cut, cut, goddamn it, cut. Motherfucker! We’ll do it live! On the count of motherfucking five, oh, this is bullshit out in the boondocks, one, two…”

  “Wild West these days,” the newsperson started over. He looked into the camera. Glossy helmet of black hair parted on one side, lemon-colored tie.

  “You really don’t remember anything about the man’s face? Any little detail? Just keeping it real.” This was the guy’s catchphrase. Reilly “Keeping It Real” O’Connor.

  Eddie nodded anemically. Because he was traumatized. Not only because of the cameras, but about the question about the catfaced man.

  Never in his life would he tell another soul about Catface.

  Which is why he was glad when the newsman held up a ruby-ringed finger. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have other news to report.”

  WALL OF VOODOO (CATFACE REDUX)

  THERE WAS A STORY EDDIE MALDONADO could have told, but he didn’t.

  Eddie Maldonado never told the story to a soul as long as he lived.

  When Catface pulled the stolen Cadillac into the Mister Donut it was an hour until full dark. One of those long purple and red Florida twilights of late January.

  Bats flitted above the spindly sand pines.

  From behind the donut counter Eddie saw the car glide into the lot. A glycerin lozenge. The blood fruit light gleamed on the chrome rims and fenders and the polished paint job.

  The man who stepped from the car wore tailored linen clothes, a panama hat angled, the brim tilted.

  From his vantage Eddie couldn’t make out the face. And once he did, he had a shock.

  His face was mangled. Deformed. So scarred and roughly patched it looked made of bark.

  “Evening,” Eddie forced out.

  The man gestured a greeting with his chin. “Café con leche?”

  Eddie told him back next to the soda fountain.

  The man held up a few fingers, gold wristwatch catching the harsh white incandescent light. He walked to the back.

  Also in the donut shop were two Florida college kids. They’d heard the Spanish being spoken and looked at the man with the scarred face.

  They chuckled low and dark. Joked in whispers.

  The tinny music system played Wall of Voodoo. “Mexican Radio.”

  The man’s alligator shoes clocked neatly on the floor.

  “Ugly motherfucker,” said one of the kids.

  Laughter again.

  Catface stepped up to them and stayed where he was even after they laughed nervously and looked away.

  “What’s up?” said one of the kids. This the kid with the diamond stud in his left ear. A camouflage cap.r />
  Catface stayed where he was. His posture unchanged, hands in pockets, his shoulders easy.

  “You looking before,” Catface said.

  “You in front of me,” said the kid.

  “Before. You said motherfucker. I fucked my mother?”

  “Havin’ private conversation.” This the other kid with the pinched black eyes.

  “Ugly motherfucker? Because my face?”

  “Fuck off,” said the kid with the cap. “Go back to Cuba, Mexico, whatever the fuck shit hole.”

  “Why you stare?” Catface asked.

  “Maybe this is why,” said the pinch-eyed kid. He reached into his pocket, drew out a butterfly knife. Flicked it open in an elaborate series of maneuvers.

  Catface reached into his pocket and withdrew a knife and sheared off the kid’s ear with a street criminal’s greased swiftness.

  For an instant the kid seemed unaware he was missing part of his head. He clutched at his ear. Glanced up with befuddled pique. He groped for his missing ear, confusion coming to his face when he found his fingers slicked with blood.

  The next instant, the college kid regarded Catface’s palm. A magician’s coin trick, except with the young man’s ear. Macabre legerdemain.

  The young man grabbed the side of his head and wailed. He lashed out at Catface, tried to grab back his ear. Something in Catface’s expression gave the kid pause.

  The hard reptilian look of murder.

  And then he saw the dagger in Catface’s grip.

  With a stricken face the kid backed up a few steps.

  The kid’s friend stood at a distance. Frozen still by this turn of events. Disbelieving.

  Blithely Catface withdrew a cream silk handkerchief from his cappuccino summer suit and wrapped the ear. Pocketed it. Strode to the counter as the earless kid kept shrieking.

  Eddie stood as far back from the counter as he could.

  Catface, “Coffee. Just coffee. Por favor. And wet naps, por favor.”

  “Wet naps?”

  “Si. Blood.”

  Eddie’s face writhed. The small muscles around his eyes and mouth twitched. He gestured with his chin. His hands were held up half-mast, palms toward Catface.

  Catface grabbed tissues and wet naps, went to the lavatory. Locked himself in. At the sink he scrubbed the spots of blood off his sleeves, his cuffs, his shirtfront.

  He was lighting his butane torch and freebasing from the glass pipe when he heard the young men quarreling outside the door. Consorting among themselves in harsh urgent whispers about what to do. The cops, the hospital. Both were mentioned. Then a gun. A baseball bat.

  “Good,” Catface said through the door, breathing out crack smoke. “Call the cops. Goo. Go right ahead, conyo.”

  Silence.

  Then, Catface sang from the bathroom, “Miami Dolphins, Miami Dolphins.”

  Catface could hear the other young man, self-appointed ambassador, step closer to the door. “Mister. We just want his ear, mister. We’ll leave. We’ll get right out of here, mister.”

  “You want this ear?” Catface asked through the door.

  “Yes, mister.”

  “All needed was to ask,” Catface said. He took the ear from his pocket. Unwrapped it from the bloody handkerchief. Slid the ear, speckled with lint and pubic hair, under the door.

  The earless kid bawled anew. “Fucked!”

  Catface stepped out of the bathroom. The college kids moved back. At the register Catface paid for the coffee. “Dos, por favor,” he said, pointing at the coconut crumble donuts.

  Eddie was looking at the man’s necklace.

  Catface asked him what the matter was.

  “Your necklace.”

  “Tell.”

  “The face.” Eddie pointed at the logo behind him, the sign hanging above the racks of donuts. “I thought it was Mister Donut.”

  Catface looked at his medallion. Then he looked at the donut shop’s logo behind the counter. A baker in one of those old-fashioned baker hats jauntily tipped, the mustache, the wink.

  It was true.

  Few people, so struck by the spectacle of his face, mentioned Catface’s necklace. No one had ever before remarked on the medallion’s resemblance to the donut chain’s logo. Catface himself had never discerned the resemblance.

  “Hermanos,” Catface said.

  Eddie nodded.

  “Ah!” Catface said. Pointed at Eddie. Wagged a scarred finger the color of a hot dog. “It’s true. Observant, smart. Goo.”

  Eddie unfolded a donut box. Took the piece of wax paper to handle the coconut donuts.

  Then Catface hopped a cracked-out hop, almost leprechaun like, an idea having just occurred to him. He clapped his hands, smacking them three times quickly in front of him, a giddy sprite.

  “Hold on, amigo,” he said. “Hold on, hermano.”

  Catface went outside. He popped his car’s trunk and for an instant Catface was eclipsed. Eddie dared not move.

  “Do something,” wailed the one-eared kid.

  Outside, “Miami Dolphins! Miami Dolphins!”

  “You wanna die?” Eddie said.

  “Call somebody.”

  Catface outside, “Greatest football team!”

  “Marielito,” Eddie said. “He’ll fuckin’ kill you.”

  Catface’s head popped around the side of the trunk, vaudevillian theatricality. He held up a finger. Just a second.

  “Jesus Christ,” Eddie said. It came out in a shaky whisper.

  At last Catface came dashing back into the shop. “Miami Dolphins! Miami Dolphins!” He was holding something that looked like a brick. He fetched to the counter. Smacked the brick-shaped parcel down on the glass.

  Eddie was sure it was a test. And he had zero idea how to pass it.

  A block of money. One-hundred-dollar bills.

  Catface said, “For your problems. Pardon. Buenas noches, mi amigo. Goo luck, donut hermano!”

  Then with his donuts and coffee Catface exited, got into his car, and wheeled off with shrilling tires into the night.

  * * *

  —

  The television crews might have gone on about the Emerald Island bridge explosion had circumstances been different. They might have eventually interviewed Crowe were he not recovering from a stroke. Henry Yahchilane were he not visiting a woman friend in Boca Raton. They might have gone on to interview the whole island down to SnoBall Larry and Red Hamilton, but there was other news to report.

  Tragic news.

  It was January 28, almost 11:40 A.M. They saw the news in the sky. Due northeast, a contrail of smoke, a vertical scar of fire in the sky.

  It was the space shuttle Challenger.

  Then, all at once, like migratory birds switching direction on an ill-omened wind, the helicopters and vans lit from Emerald County due east toward Cape Canaveral, away from the Gulf Coast.

  VISITING HOURS

  THAT WINTER AND SPRING OF 1986, a train of visitors came through Crowe’s hospital room. Yahchilane often came around. So did Eddie. Myrtle a few times, Red Hamilton once, Chill Norton once.

  The men in particular seemed incapable of spending too much time with Crowe. They were at a loss for what to say. Avoided looking at him for too long. They tried sitting in the corner chair, but would stand again after a minute, pacing the room, probably wondering how much time qualified as a legitimate visit.

  “Oh, this is bullshit, Reedy,” Chill Norton told him. “You got this. Mild to medium? It’s a pussy stroke. You got this. I know you got this.”

  * * *

  —

  Reed Crowe told no one about Catface. Not a soul. Twice Sheriff Schaffer came to visit Crowe asking about the exploded bridge, about his
stroke the same night in the Everglades, but it seemed to Crowe he wanted the matter put behind him just as much as Crowe.

  * * *

  —

  He had to relearn how to hold a spoon. His grip around the utensils was like a child’s. Mutilating his food with his gawky knife, making scraping horrible sounds against the plate, the plate sliding on the table.

  * * *

  —

  One morning Crowe was surprised when Mariposa visited with her mother, Nina. Surprised: He was gobsmacked. But his face, still palsied and lopsided, didn’t show it. Immobile as stone.

  Nina stood in her dark blouse and skirt at the foot of the bed. She looked over Crowe dispassionately. Keeping her distance, keeping her voice low and toneless, she wished Crowe a speedy recovery. She told him she would pray for him.

  But that was the extent of her words. She then stood in the corner.

  So the visit had been Mariposa’s idea, Crowe realized. Not Nina’s.

  Or maybe the idea was Eddie’s, though Crowe somehow doubted it. Yes, Eddie Maldonado had wed Nina Arango. A shotgun wedding. A sudden turn of events Crowe would never have expected. Mother of all plants, one thing begetting another. God bless the kid, Crowe thought. That time wherein he was smitten with the woman seemed incredibly long ago.

  “I’m so sorry,” Crowe wanted to say. “Look at you. Look at who you’ve become.”

  Yet she still had an air of a tomboy. Blue jogging shorts with white piping, a green polo shirt. Her hair was short and she was wearing a visor with a bill of translucent green celluloid, like a casino dealer’s.

  Unlike her mother Mariposa came to his bedside.

  Crowe’s arms were folded across his chest, his hands crisscrossed atop each other.

  Mariposa reached for Reed Crowe, put her hand on his.

  Nina cleared her throat. Nunnish. Peremptory.

  Mariposa paid her no mind. She kept her hand where it was, tightened her grip. “You’re gonna be okay, Uncle Reed.”