A Shadow of Truth
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
Abraham Lincoln Lincoln’s Own Stories
16th president of US (1809 – 1865)
Matthew, Matty (Poop) Skyles was born in the spring of 1970 in the Little Duck Key hospital, just outside of Marathon Key. I know because I was laying there squealing bloody hell like the newborn I was right there in the same nursery. My name’s Jimmy Scranton and I suppose me and poop have been best friends ever since. Longer than I can remember anyway.
We’re what you call natives around the Keys and the circle of folks that can honestly still say that are getting smaller and smaller each year. We were pretty lucky; Matty and me. We’ve seen the Keys as they were and looked on them with the innocent wild eyes of children in the 70’s and 80’s; when this little turquoise blue, emerald green part of the world really was paradise. Not the paradise I see plastered up on cute little mailbox’s and silly little restaurant’s called “Paradise Grill” or “Little Conch Paradise Smokehouse.” Nope, I’m talking about actual island hoppin, lobster stabbin, snapper catchin and anything else fun you can think of to do on the water in the tropical balm of summer and winter type paradise.
Lemme give you a typical day in an actual paradise growing up here in these warm rich waters. First, it always, and I mean always, had something to do with the big beautiful half Caribbean/half Atlantic/half Gulf of Mexico Ocean we have down here; all littered with uninhabited (then) little cays and sand-spit keys with cool names.
Names like sugarloaf key, Chub Cay, Boot and Big Torch Key, Snipe landing, Sombrero Light and a million others that we would just make the names up as we went along and then forgot them so we could make up another one the next day. It was like being a pirate! We all had little runabout boats growing up and Matty’s dad got him a fine one; nice little 26 ft Grady White and we’d spend all day doing one of three things:
Fish
Go Bugging
Or work the shoals and breaks for bait.
The fishing part was pretty easy. Up at the butt crack a dawn and hustle up some bait; goggle-eye if they were running, mullet in the fall cause they were thick as thieves or sardines if it was in the blast furnace heat of summer. If bait was scarce, as it could get once in awhile back then but happens all the damn time now, we’d simply run around in the boat through the canals until we spotted one of the neighbors out on their dock and holler up if we could grab a few dozen outta their wells if they had cages dropped and full in the water. If you had bait you always shared when asked, course the payment was a few fillets or tuna steaks later in the day from the borrower. After that shits pretty simple. Head offshore and run to the hump or Mann’s Point or any one of several dozen spots and look for birds to show the way to the tuna, or dolphin (Mahi Mahi) and wahoo or if God shined down, a big beautiful marlin to play with for a few hours. Course you don’t keep billfish, that’s just for the sport and if you weren’t really rigged for them they’d break the line pretty quick anyway. So we’d go looking for the fish, catchem up, put em in the box and head on back to the dock for some grillin. Or if the big boys weren’t eating that day, after awhile we’d head into the shallows and rock piles and crush some grouper or yellowtail snapper or mutton’s. Sometimes if we were feeling like being lazy we’d take the electric reels out and just deep drop for the tile fish and red-eye snappers that lurked in those cold deep reefs several hundred feet down. Easy-peezy man. Sounds like a nice day doesn’t it?
Now bugging was only legal a few months out of the year but back then-hell-nobody much cared when you went. All that entails is doing a slow troll at night, big flashlights searching the dark shallow water until their lights would show up like two little teeny diamonds and then someone would jump in head first with his gig stick while somebody else killed the engine (for safety) and you’d just kick on down to the rock the little fucker was hiding under, rope the little bastard with the gig stick and pull em out. Swim on up to the surface, hop aboard and toss that juicy little Florida Lobster right into the bucket with his friends.
Poop and me would do that a lot just by ourselves, sometimes Goose and Billy’d go with, especially when we all got older but the baiting was something only me and him would do.
It was his idea actually. Matty is a thinker if nothing else and he was always industrious. He figured we could make some good money catching bait for all the other fisheads, especially the charter guys who’s income depended on their customers catching fish so when we’d need some cash for gas and later for gas and beer we’d spend the whole damn day working the water with our cast nets,or sabiki rigs if sardines were around, and sell them bad boys all over the islands. Just go from canal to canal, dock to dock and marina to marina pulling bait outa the big fifty gallon live well he had on that Grady and we’d be set for a week or two. Kids can’t really do that now. They’ve got laws, registrations, regulations and all against that kind of thing.
But back than we were something I’ll tell ya. Bunch island boys, lanky and always tan from the sun and salt having times. Ya mon, we sure would have some times. Matty used to call us Renaissance Men on a reign of terror! He’d say it funnier than hell too; “..reeeeign of terror!” was how he’d say it and we’d all start laughing our butts off.
He could be a terror to when he wanted to, when he needed to, and I guess we were all pretty much fearless back then but Matty, that kid had a way of stepping in it all the time.
We came across a bunch of tourist kids one day, they were older; bout six of them, and they was just beatin the crap out of little Johnny Mafood. Johnny was a Jamaican kid, his folks were poor and Johnny was small for his age, plus he talked with that strange Caribbean accent. Easy target for a bunch of morons cause there’s hate everywhere, even in paradise. So we come across this half dozen kids wailing on poor Johnny, calling him all kinds of stupid ass names and Matty didn’t even hesitate. Before I knew it he launched himself into that scrum and started hitting anything that wasn’t black and dreadlocked. I was kinda committed after that and every last one of them tasted our knuckles before it was through. We both took a pounding but poop got the worst of it. Pretty bad actually; broken nose, busted his right hand, but after awhile those kids lit outta there with their tails between their legs. Problem was a few of them tourist kids had some pretty rich parents and word gets out pretty quick in these parts. People, other locals, started saying “troublemaker” and “white trash” (Matty’s folks lived in a trailer out by sugarloaf) in the same breath as Matty. Those kids told their folks Matty Skyles jumped em and started the whole fiasco; didn’t seem to matter the truth was he was just helping out a kid in a six to one fight.
Then there was the time me and Matty, Maggie Collins and Isie Hollis were all hanging out at Isie’s house. We’d had some beers and were sitting on the dock out back, watching the southern moon sprawled out on that canal water and things got the way things get when hormones are moving through you like the Gulf Stream. Matty and Isie started mashing and after awhile me and Maggs left to, well to kinda go find our own little spot to do the same thing. Isie’s dad, Carl Hollis came home and discovered Matty’s tongue wrapped around his little girls’ tonsils and about blue a fucking blood vessel! Ole Carl Hollis owned a whole lotta property around the islands at that time and he cast a pretty large shadow; over the town and in his own family and before you could say boo all of a sudden Matty Skyles is some sort of lurking pervert; ready to pounce on young girls virtue at a moments notice. I know Isie tried to stand up but once people like Carl Hollis started saying things is like this, in parts like these, there isn’t a lot you can do about it. Poor girl never stood a chance.
It got worse to as we got older. That’s when the snowbirds really started rolling in like an avalanche of god damn Hawaiian shirts and socks with sandals. I blame it on Jimmy Buffet and his freakin cheeseburgers in Paradise.(But that’s another story.) They started pouring down from New York and Philly, Chicago and Atlanta looking for their little slice of paradise. We both got jobs working the charter boats so not only would we have to rub elbows with all these masses of khaki shorts and sunscreen but we’d have to teach the ignorant bastards how to fish! And if they didn’t catch enough by their asinine calculations they wouldn’t tip!
I mean, we got by, me and poop but it was frustrating; we’re waiting in line for tables at dive’s we used to be able to just wander half drunk into and sit down for a nice grouper sandwich and a beer. And they started staying too. All these people with all this money and not a thread a manners among them. They’d say, “Well shit Gloria, look at that lovely little beachfront there. Perfect place for a nice big condo now is it not?”
Well money rolls I guess don’t it? And it rolled like a rogue wave into these parts; in a few years we had more people down here than we had sand, condo’s throwing up shadows on some of the best tarpon and bait lagoons and shoals we’d spent so many hours on as kids. I guess the whole thing started wearing Matty down. We’d always been drinkers; what in Christ’s name goes better with some nice snapper and lobster than a few dozen cold ones and some rum drinks? Well, he started drinking quite a bit and not just like we’d always done before, with a reason and all but just because I don’t think he had much better to do. Started getting in fights with snowbirds and local’s alike, sometimes about nothing and sometimes about something. Like the time some jerkoff named Goldstein started yammerin about how all these “uneducated, foul mouthed locals couldn’t even manage to do the landscaping correctly” at his brand spanking new slice of blue-haired condo paradise. So Matty said something I’m sure was not very welcoming and they ended up on the floor of the “Prime Catch” bar throwing insult and skin at each other.
Then early last year Matty and Celia Barton managed to get themselves preggers. Now Celia’s a peach but her old man wasn’t all that pleased with his daughter carrying around the seed of what most folks around here consider a cross between the devil’s spawn and James Dean. And I don’t mean the cool James Dean; I mean the one that had no direction, the one that stole women into the night, the one that died because he was stupid.
And that put a lot of pressure on poop. He loves Celia, he loves her crazy and he’s got his pride, like any man has. Well he wasn’t going to be supporting them and their little baby by mating on charter boats, all we’ve both ever done is work and play on the water and the only real paying type jobs around here are construction. And for the love of irony most of the construction round here is being done by one Mr. Carl Hollis so even if Matty had any actual experience at it he’d be shit out of luck.
Celia was working for as long as she could at the Pirates Cove; one of the new restaurants that seem to open up with every wane tide, but with the baby coming she had to cut that out about a month ago so money was getting really, really thin. Matty knew some guys, like we all do, that were running weed up through the straits and down into some of the smaller keys and he got to thinking about how easy that money would be. Me and him both know every back water, every hidden shoal and every unmarked cove from Islamorada to Key West. He knew he could run wide open on that Grady without running lights all night long if he had to. Plus half the damn Coasties know him from still spending three quarters of his time on the water so even if a cutter came up on him he could most likely talk his way out of it. I didn’t like it. I told him I didn’t like it but once an idea pops into his head he’s never been one to back off it until the wheels fall off; good or bad.
Well he ran into the other half of the Coast Guard. They didn’t know him and even if they did, who knows, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. So know Matty’s sitting in the sheriff’s cooler in Marathon, baby on the way and waiting on federal charges to be filed in a little necklace of island paradises where finding a handful of people to say one good thing about him is gonna be a stretch.
Of course, when the time comes, I’ll say all I can good about Matty Skyles. I’ll sing it from the god damn rafters if it’ll do any good; but I know it most likely won’t. What I can’t tell them, what won’t matter one bit are some of things I know about my friend.
Like the time he ran headfirst to defend a little Jamaican kid he barely knew.
Like the time he got called a pervert by some fat ass big shot who was lying through his teeth when he said it.
Like the time we were spear fishing and I got hit by a Barracuda. Stupid thing, me still wearing my watch down there; Cuda ain’t mean but they sure as shit are fast, stupid and have a mouthful of teeth. Ripped my hand to ribbons and we were half a mile offshore with a strong current blowing out. He swam me back, fixed me up as best as he could and carried me on his back two miles to the same hospital in duck key we were born in.
I’d like to tell them about the time he found Larry Peters wallet down on the beach. Had a shitload of cash in it, I mean it was loaded. Matty didn’t even ring the bell; he just dropped that wallet into the mail slot in their door and never touched so much as a dollar of it.
I’d like to tell em about a lot of things regarding my friend. I’ve known him thirty eight years and I’ve never seen him do a mean thing. I’ve seen him do stupid things, lots of them but never a mean thing and very much more often than not somebody had something coming to em and he’d walk away. I’d tell him we’re just two native boys trying to live, trying to make it down here because living anywhere else wouldn’t be thinkable. I’d say that God Damn it, we’re just trying to find our own little piece of paradise.
I guess maybe ole Don Henley was right; you call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.
