Monkey Jungle
“Sometimes there is no moral to the story. Sometimes, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.”
-Homer Simpson

I’ve lived in Key West for twenty five years this December. When I was eighteen my folks and I decided perhaps living in their house, under their rules; wasn’t going to be a feasible option. So I followed my boyfriend down here. And when I say down here, I mean really down here. In case you didn’t know Key West is the closest point of land to Cuba in the United States; the southernmost point of dirt in the entire country; tropical living baby.

Well the boyfriend thing lasted about a month but I fell in love with the place the moment I saw it.

You’ve seen the pictures I’m sure, maybe even saved up to take a vacation for a week down here once or twice so I won’t bore you with that. I mean, it’s obviously stunning from a vista standpoint. What I fell in love with was something I doubt I can even describe properly. I mean I’m no writer or anything. Although I am one of three reporters for the Conch Republic; which is basically just the local paper here and it’s not like we do pieces on nightline or anything; just flowery local stuff on things the year round natives already know about before it ever finds its way into print.

If you lived here year round you’d find that word travels fast for a place that seems to move pretty slow otherwise. We all watch out for each other.

Especially in the winter months when the weather is perfect and the tourists come down.

Don’t think we have a problem with tourists either. We absolutely do not. We depend on them for survival. Almost every business and job exists for those six or seven months out of the year. The rest of the time we just get by on the flood of cash that rolls in during season. I won’t lie and say we all prefer the life here when the black socks and SPF 60 sunscreen, and floppy “Key West” hats (which nobody actually wears if they live here) and going into a bar without having to watch some Lilly white business man from Cherry Park New Jersey toss his cookies after his tenth rum and coke (because he’s on vacation) all make their annual migration back North.

But still, we need them and mostly they’re just good folks who wanted to go somewhere better than where they live for a brief week of their lives.

But it’s still better when they’re gone.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, describing my love of the area. I guess if you’ve come this far and read the above that’s a pretty good start to what I would try and impart. The only other thing I’d add is if you’ve ever met someone for the first time and knew after spending a few hours, or few days with them that they were going to hold a special place in your heart forever and ever; after just that brief time with them, then you’d probably know how I felt about this place after a few days.

It’s changed here of course. What place hasn’t after a quarter century? But I’m not one of those malcontents who want to wax poetic about better days. Progress is time and if you want to stop time then something’s really off with you in my book. What’s funny hear though is how we get to view progress. I mean we see it in new condo buildings and watch the increasing amount of cheesy names on our once very apropos named establishments. Cheeseburger in Paradise down on Duvall St used to be called Grumpy Joes. Didn’t know that did you. Yes the owners name was Joe and he certainly was a grumpy old guy. That was until Jimmie Buffet bought the place and made it a namesake to his now famous mantra of slow living tropical lifestyle. I don’t know what happened to Joe. I like the song though.

Anyway that brings me to the point of all this because although I have never been one that particularly concerned myself with getting somewhere; I still don’t like to dawdle.

Today is Tuesday and every Tuesday for the last twenty five years (I swear on a stack of bibles and an all you can eat fish fry) my girlfriends and I go out for ladies night to Monkey Jungle.

First of all let me say this. I’m sure you are accomplished with basic math but let me tell you I am still one hot smoking little lady and am more than capable of spending an evening out, in a bar, with those of say, lesser experience.

Yes. Let’s put it that way.
And yes we ladies travel in packs. Most of ours I’ve known since the first week I landed here. Some have gone away for various reasons and other’s we’ve ingratiated into our group, for various reasons. But we do go as a group. Men, you are lovely things but we always seem to have more fun when surrounded by our own and make you find your way to one of us, when you have to go through all of us.
Of course Monkey Jungle is not the name of any bar, or club. It’s not on the brochure of “What to See in Key West.”

It’s just an old house on the bottom edge of Duvall Street. Past the Buffets and Peel and Eat Paradise Grill and the rest of the required stop by locations our friends from the North must see. The house is just a shell really, a broken down gloomy façade to hide the local getaway heaven inside it truly is. Loud Island music, usually live and raucous, surrounded by faces you have known and trusted for a very, very long time. It’s not a secret but we don’t advertise it. It is certainly not place of decadence but we choose to present it outside as uninviting and troublesome.

We all gather at my house on XXX Duval, because it’s the closest. We laugh a bit about the day, the week, the year. We make some light road-pops to take on the short walk to Monkey Jungle because nobody ever drives in Key West, unless you’re coming in or leaving. We wear different colors of easy sun dresses built for movement; wear only the makeup of today’s tan and perhaps a few bobbles of jewelry.

Alley is wearing the seashell earrings I keep telling her I MUST borrow at some point.

And we walk down the nighttime street of a tropical village. The heat of the day has been replaced by a night sky, cicada’s chirping us along our way and the bright white moonlit sea. We arrive at the old cracked white door of the house and walk in laughing. Upon entry, the customary WOOOOOOOO is raised by all of us with arms (spirit) uplifted and it is returned back loudly, genuinely by those we know, and those we will always be with.

Max lay there in bed thinking quite literally of nothing. He just watched her asleep; pushing out small, even puffs of air through pouty lips enjoying her presence. He lightly moved a hand through her hair which caused a smile and small sigh escape from her mouth. The only real thought in his head has no name but its closest relative would be; amazing.

The late afternoon light through the thin sheers gave the room a warm orange light and he studied her sleeping form. The closed eyelids hiding the bright blue beauty that had so often shown him the love and trust she carried deeply within herself for him. It always made him strong and right. He looked that the startling lovely face, with the soft lines around the eyes just beginning to show the edge of wrinkles. He thought she would age very well. He gazed at her amazing mouth; those lips that he had been kissing just small moments ago, one of his favorite features.

He lay there quietly looking at parts of her; seeing all of her.

Suddenly the air in the room is filled with the Rolling Stones song, Beast of Burden.

“Shit.”

And Max scrambled to the phone sitting on the nightstand. He opened it without even checking the number as he didn’t want to wake her.

“Hello.”

“Max?”

“Charlie?” He glanced towards her but she was already in the stages of wakening.

“Are you at the office?”

“Charlie… what.. yes… yeah, I’m at the office what is it.”

“It’s Adrienne Max. I’m going out of my fucking mind. I mean I am literally losing my mind.”

“What? Why? Is she all right; was she in an accident?”

He was sitting up in bed now, against the headboard and he felt her hand gently stoke the back of his next.

“No, no. Nothing like that. I wish that was the case.”

“Charlie. What the hell.”

“No, of course I don’t wish that. I would never wish that.”

Max could hear his breath on the other end of the phone.

“It’s just that she was going shopping today with Rachel, Louisa and Hellaine. She explained this long detailed itinerary to me last night. I mean Christ sakes Max; it took like an hour for her to tell me. Finally I got tired of hearing about it. You know how it is and I told her look, are you going shopping or preparing for the Iditarod.

“Jesus Charlie.”

“I know. I know. I shouldn’t have said that. Stupid.. Stupid… Stupid. We just went over shit like this with Dr. Feldon just last week in our session. Dammit.”

“I still don’t get it. It’s not that big a deal. She’ll get over it.”

“No. You don’t understand. It’s happening again.”

“What is happening again?”

“IT Max.. IT.”

She was fully awake at this point and ran her hands through his hair and got up from the bed. She walked languidly over to the chair by the desk and put his shirt on over her nakedness. He thought how glorious she looked in his shirts. How her perfect little apple bottom swayed behind the material and how later when he put it back on, it would smell of her.

He made a motion with his hand to her like drinking from a glass and she walked over to the place where the mini bar was located.

“What is IT Charlie?”

“She’s doing it again. She’s having another… another one. I can feel it I know it.”

“Christ.”

The voice on the other end of the phone was accelerated now, more frayed.

“I’m not kidding Max. Look, I had a lunch meeting it Beverly Hills today, some hack screenwriter with the next best piece of shit nerd Novel adaptation….”

“Where’d you eat?”

“Does it fucking matter? Jesus. So we’re outside finishing lunch and who walks by? Who do you God Damn mother-fucking thinks walks by?”

“Steven Spielberg.”

“Fuck you. Rachel, Louisa and Hellaine that’s who walk by. They see me and stop naturally and I ask them where Adrienne is. Do you know what they say? Do you want to oh God fucking kill me know what they say?”

“That she’s been taking hostage by Louis Vuitton.”

“GOD DAMN IT MAX. THIS IS SERIOUS.”

“I’m sorry Charlie; I’ll stop. What do they say.”

“They say they don’t know! They say they called her yesterday about shopping today but she told them she had a spa appointment. I’m telling you she’s doing it again. She’s doing it to me again Max. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m going to lose my fucking marbles this time. I can’t do it again. I can’t go through it.. again. I’ll blow my head off Max. I swear to God I’ll blow my fucking brains out. I’ll blow her fucking brains out.”

“Settle down. Nobody’s blowing anybody’s brains out. “

“I don’t know what to do.”

The voice on the other end of the phone had now become more flattened. Like an airless balloon. Max could almost picture him in some bar downtown, or sitting on some park picnic table far away from anyone with his Bluetooth on and his hands buried in his hair with his head in his bowed down.
She returned then with a drink for him and one for herself. She placed his into his hand, ran her hands through his hair again and kissed him on the forehead. Then she went over to the other side of the bed, crawled in beside him and took a sip from her drink.

“Max?”

“Sorry, sorry. My girl just came into my office with some phone messages. So are you asking me what you should do Charlie; is that what you want.”

“What the hell do you think I just asked you what –should-I –do for?”

“Alright… Alright; I’ll tell you what you should do.”

He took a drink from his glass and looked at her as she looked at him and took a drink from hers.

“You need to stop Charlie. You just need to stop this. I mean it. It’s just crazy. You love her. She loves you. And you need to trust her and stop always coming up with all these damn crazy scenarios and misguided, destructive, completely fabricated accusations of malfeasance. It’s madness Charlie. It’s just madness and you have to just stop it. How would you feel if it was her constantly putting you on the witness stand? Wanting to know where you were at every moment of every day. Asking you all these crazy questions and putting together timelines and average traffic commute times and checking your credit cards with an accountant’s fervor and reading your email and looking through your cell phone while you were in the shower. How would that make you feel Charlie?”

“Well that’s different.”

“Different. How the hell is it different? Good grief man. You’ve been going to your shrink for two years. Two years and you come back full circle to the same issues because she didn’t go shopping with the witches of eastwick? Are you serious?”

“Max she spent an hour giving me a detailed plan like they were going to invade Rodeo Drive.”
“Maybe she remembers this morning she had already made a spa appointment. Maybe another friend calls her and needs her help that precedes some bullshit shopping trip. Maybe she left the witches voicemails and they hadn’t listened to them yet by noon during their American Express flushed shopping tempest. Maybe Charlie, she had a moment of adult uncertainty; you know, the ones we all have when everything we are and will ever be comes under the dark light of inspection. And she just wanted to be alone and went to the beach. Maybe a lot of things could and did occur; none of which are even remotely in the same vicinity of adultery. “

“I don’t know Max. Something just feels wrong.”

“What’s wrong is you.”

That weighed Max down some and as it was coming out of his mouth he hated the taste of it.

“I don’t mean you as a person Charlie; or as a husband and father. I just mean you have to stop all the paranoia. Stop pushing her away with it. This is just like the last time.”

“But I was right the last time.”

“Charlie have you even talked to her; have you asked her where she was today.”

“I don’t know where she’s at. She’s not home.”

“Just talk to her. I’m sure there is a perfect explanation.”

She made a noise then. He thought it might have been a sigh; or maybe something else. When he looked at her she had already risen from the bed and as she passed by his side on the way to the bathroom tickled his foot with her finger.

He waited for some moments. He could hear Charlie breathing into the other end of the phone.
“Charlie.”

“Charlie?”

“I’m going to hire a private detective.”

“What. Have you even been listening to me? You ask me for my help and I tell you what you should do and you want to hire a fucking investigator to invade her life, her privacy? Are you crazy?”

Silence again. Two men breathing on opposite sides of a phone. He heard the toilet flush in the bathroom and heard her start to run the water for the bath. The bath was their little ritual.

“Max I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. Especially at work. You’re a good friend. I’m sorry.

“It’s not a bother. We’ve been friends since grade school. Forever really. You just need to stop this. You need to get it under control.”

“We have been friends that long haven’t we? Longer than before any kind of woman was ever important; right. “

“Long before that Charlie. Long before that.”

He put the phone back on the nightstand and stood up. He looked at his naked body in the mirror. Needed to lose a few pounds, he thought. Getting heavy again.

In the bath he was rubbing her feet as she sat across from him.

“You need to go home after this. He’s very worried and I hate hearing him like that. Talk to him. I don’t care what you tell him or what you do but talk to him. Make him understand everything is going to be alright.

“Three aces.”

“Fuck that!”

“Three aces.”

“Well Goddamit Harley, Just who in the hell of God’s green garden wins four hands out of five?”

“I do. And I’ll have them panties now please.”

She took them off of course. It’s the rules and all. I didn’t care much if she didn’t like it, didn’t care if she thought I was cheating. (Which I was of course) What I did mind, what mattered to me was that I see little miss sunshine in all her glory and that me, Harley Templeton, was the one that got it done.
You can call me reckless and maybe, I suppose call me a fool, but I grew up in one hell of a one horse town. We had the MacDonald’s, and we had some pretty fine stores; Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart, of course, and even a God Damn brand new TGIF restaurant down on Main and River Street. Good damn grub in that place.

My point being that I ain’t stupid and I know what life is and that if this was my lot in it I was bound and determined to see Holly Peterson naked as hell just one time before I died.

So this is what I did.

My folks had been saving up for four years to take some cruise to some damn Island in the Bahamas. Four years? Can you imagine? Anyway that kind of detail and longevity of planning has to include the entire family so I probably knew their go there and come back schedule better than them. So I figure, being fifteen and all, a party was in order and sent the word out the week they was getting ready to leave.

It worked out fine. You don’t need much to have a party at that age except some free air and a parental free unoccupied dwelling. They was leaving on Friday and from what I’d heard in the hallways and homerooms of High School I had myself a regular event scheduled that very Saturday evening.
It went something like this.

“Hay Harley; party at your place?”

“Yah Stacey, bring your brains in something black and lacy along with your friends.”

“Sup Harley; your house this weekend?”

Yah Early, bring your brains and some beer.”

It went on like that for a few days. You get the picture. The bottom line is that I had an EVENT going on and then, on Friday, right after sixth period little ole Holly Peterson, the twelve month suntanned, raining Ms. Glory of the world herself came up to me and said;

“Hay Harley..I heard you were having a party this weekend and I haven’t seen an invitation for the life of me.”

First off; who in the hell talks like that? But second off, I was damn happy to reply;

“Well now Holly, why would you need an invitation? “ I thought it was pretty slick.

The rest of that day I rode a wave of something; joy I guess that I’d never experienced before. You don’t know me but let me say this. I wasn’t the smartest kid, I wasn’t no athlete, didn’t care much for drugs, wasn’t all that good looking (although my neighbor Sissy kept trying to kiss me when we walked home together) and sure as hell never got so much as a wink from Holly Peterson. I don’t even want to know what those Chess Kids did in school but I wasn’t even invited to that. I guess what I’m saying is that I wasn’t much of anything. I’d felt uninvited most of my remembering life and the fact that I was inviting felt pretty God Damn good.

So Friday came and I suddenly had more friends than I knew existed in my town. Saturday all day I prepared.

I bought me some chips and dips and little hot dogs in little bitty dough buns and all kinds of shit. I even spent twenty dollars on some fresh shrimp my Uncle Bobby brought in off the Gulf and put it all in a nice glass bowl with sauce in the middle. Little salad leafs gently falling out from the sides of the bowl and everything. It was all pretty fucking cool.

And then they came.

Waves and waves of people came to my door. I didn’t know them, and the ones I did, I didn’t want to know ever again. My house, before I knew it was filled with the assholes and miscreants that had tortured me for years. They were enjoying MY house, eating MY food, fucking up MY (well my Father’s perfectly fine sound system).

And I reveled in it. I wallowed in it like my cousins pigs and thought, wondered really, at how amazing a host I could be.

Then I heard something break. Glass shattering and laughter from the drunken, uncaring mistake; I heard Bobby Taylor, through cigarette mist shout about a poker game in the bedroom. My bedroom. And I was a bit fucking curious about that.

I’ll set the stage because it’s kind of odd. Was to me anyway:

It’s me (of course)

Bobby and Tre Stevens and Mike Burkwoltxz and Lisa Finch and Tanya Lanski and (of course) Holly Peterson.

I have a pretty big round table in my room, it’s just always been there and so we start the game.
Strip Poker. One hand, one piece of clothes per winner.

Well I suck at poker and Bobby and Tre are pretty good I learned and before you know it Lisa and Tanya are about as naked as you can get without having a tag on your toe or a birth certificate. Holly, God Bless Her, is sitting there in a white bra and refusing denim bleach washed jeans.

Bobby and Tre decide the game is as good as it’s going to get and stumble off in some strange lurid wobble walk with Lisa and Tanya; down a darkened hallway towards empty bedrooms and I thought about how much laundry soap was left in the laundry room. Sheets were going to have to be done tomorrow. The girls were giggling but then, they giggle at everything.

Mike figures he would rather puke in my hallway bathroom than anything else on Earth.

So then it’s me and Holly.

I deal and she looks at me carelessly and laughs. A smart laugh. She laughed and tossed her hair her eyes held no ridicule, or judgement; but they did have something of challenge in them. Like C’mon, I dare you.. no, I double dog dare you.

She deals and I see laughter, feel pain and the curious sting of hope.

I deal and I wonder.

It seems so long ago now. It seems stretched, like the saltwater taffy we bought on the boardwalk that day, into forever. I remember your face bursting into smile like the dawn in fast forward when you tasted it and it was so beautiful I remember my heart breaking into more pieces than a heart could ever be made of, then wondering where your mother was shopping. She wanted bric a brac for the summer house we had finally been able to purchase and wanted to find the “perfect pelican” for the front porch. I remember that.

Remember how we walked all down the boardwalk, and then back up. Doing touristy things. Cotton Candy which tickled your nose. The bumper cars you had us ride two times; first in separate cars and then together. You wanted to sit in my lap and smash into strangers as a team.

You fell when running towards the man on the stilts juggling and scraped your knee. There was just a slight bubble of blood from the scratch but you didn’t cry or even seem to mind. And we shot those old fashioned pellet guns at targets. Remember how bad I was. Couldn’t hit a barn with an elephant the old man running the booth joked with me. But you were skilled and won that enormous rabbit. You walked around so proudly with it all day, wouldn’t even let me help you carry it once. And then that evening you gave it to your sister. I was impressed and it reminded me that even little boys could also, at times, be men.

And we went on the Ferris wheel that sits in the middle of the boardwalk. You laughed so hard when we were stopped at the top for so long I thought you would burst. I gave the operator twenty dollars to do that.
Mostly we walked, and talked and spent the day just being together. You asked me why girls were so stupid. I told you they wouldn’t be stupid forever. You asked me for how long. I said… not long. Then you made the face you make when you’re trying to decide if you should tell me something. You do make that face. Your mother and I didn’t want to tell you though. When you’re a parent with a child that has a tell like that you want to keep it in your back pocket for as long as possible.

But then you decided and told me how you kissed Jenny Birch on the playground before we left for the shore. I asked you how it was. You said it didn’t suck. Then you said she punched you in the arm right after but that it still didn’t suck. I said I know exactly what you mean.

You asked me how they make saltwater taffy and I said I wasn’t sure but thought it involved a lot of stirring and pulling, and of course, some saltwater. You said maybe if we went back to where we bought it the man might tell us, which I thought was a smart idea. We did and he was more than happy to tell us everything we ever wanted, and didn’t want to know about making saltwater taffy.

We bought Italian Ice and you wanted to know why they called it Italian Ice. But the girl selling it wasn’t much older than you and didn’t know so we were content to enjoy it in ignorance.

In early evening we bought hot dogs and sat down by end of the boardwalk, looking at the ocean slowly pulling down the sun and you said these were the best hot dogs you ever had. I said I didn’t think finer hot dogs had ever been made; ever. You asked about your big sister. You wanted to know why she was crying last evening. You were genuinely concerned. I told you that boys can also be stupid sometimes. And you thought about that and then you made the face you make when you decide something and looked at your enormous rabbit. I hadn’t remembered that small detail until just now. That was when you decided to give it to her wasn’t it.

We walked for awhile and watched the daytime carnival turn into its nighttime cousin. Jugglers tossing glow balls, the younger children and parents giving way slowing to teenagers and felt myself wishing a machine existed that would slowly tug us back through to the day and to the point we arrived. So we could do it all over again.

I asked if you wanted to ride the roller coaster. It was a small coaster designed to thrill small boys but you said no and I could tell you were afraid. I asked if you were sure and you said yes and we left it at that.

Your mother and sister met us at the Ferris Wheel. And you gave her the enormous rabbit. We paid for double time and you rode with me, your sister with your mother behind us and we spun around and around, laughing and cheering and looking back at your mother and sister laughing and cheering.

It seems so long ago now. You remember that day don’t you? The boardwalk, bright sun and your father.

mark

On November 8th, I will run the Athens marathon.
26 miles of hills, running the same course as the original marathon centuries ago and ending in the Olympic stadium. After much deliberation, I have chosen a cause to give this event some purpose that is larger than just my personal sense of achievement.

“Wounded Warrior Project” is a cause that speaks to my heart and I am asking for your individual sponsorship which can be made in 2 ways.
Per mile sponsorship (for example:$1 per mile sponsorship totals $26)
“Flat rate” sponsorship (any amount is appreciated)

How I chose this cause
We are fortunate in the USA to have an all volunteer military; it was not so in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia as it was called then) where I grew up in the middle of a civil war. As each of my 3 older brothers turned 18, they were conscripted and went to serve in different branches of the military. All three were wounded at different times. Etienne, the oldest was shot in the leg, a wound that turned gangrenous. Marcel, the second eldest lost hearing in one ear when an RPG rocket exploded beside him; the neurosurgeon was never able to get all the shrapnel out of his brain and face. Neither ever recovered from the trauma of experiencing violent guerilla warfare at such a young age. How do you ever sleep restfully again when you have seen horrors like severed heads stuffed on poles and dried human organs made into wallets and carried like trophies. Both suffered severely from post traumatic stress syndrome and went on to cope with life the best way they could, numbing the pain and trying to forget these images with alcohol and drugs. Marcel died at 39 and Etienne 3 years ago, far too early. Both broken men.

Pierre, my youngest brother claims he was the lucky one. He was driving the Landover that was ambushed by terrorists. Multiple AK47 bullets went through both ankles but he had to keep his foot on the gas – to stop would mean torture and death for the guys in his troop. No one lost their life that day. It took several skillful operations and many months of painful rehabilitation to finally ensure both feet were saved from amputation. Today, 30 years later Pierre lives with the constant dull ache from the steel rods and pins that connect his feet to his ankles and allow him the gift of being able to walk.. Yes, one leg is shorter and one foot does not bend at the ankle so he is unable to run, but nothing deters him from living life with zest and laughter. He is my hero because of his spirit and integrity and every step I run is for him, because he can’t.

We have no idea of knowing exactly what horrors and trauma our military forces experience in combat, but they serve this country to protect our way of life and keep us safe. No matter what side of the war debate you are on, no matter your political affiliation, these brave men and women need our continued support upon their return home. Wounded Warrior Project picks up where the military medical funding falls short. So please check out the website below and sponsor my run with whatever you can afford.

https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/content/view/412/875/

I would appreciate you spreading the word and asking friends, acquaintances, even clients (where appropriate) to sponsor.

All you need to do is pledge to me via email, any amount this week and only once I cross the finish line, will I come looking for the checks.

Thank you.
Charmaine
Cell 954-806-6065

Charmaine du Plessis
International Yacht Collection
Executive Assistant
1850 SE 17th Street, Suite 301
Fort Lauderdale FL 33316 USA
toll free: (888) 213-7577
phone: (954) 522-2323
direct: (954) 769-9276
cell: (954) 806-6065
fax: (954) 522-2333

cduplessis@iyc.com

http://www.iyc.com

“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.

He took a long, thoughtful pull on his martini and read, for the fourth time, the letter in his had explaining to him that his youngest daughter who, although in her final year at University, had been regretfully expelled for what was innocuously called “ ..violation of moral code.”

It had arrived this afternoon with the bank and broker statements and he hadn’t yet shown it to Abigail, his wife of thirty two lackluster, predictable years, who had gone into town to shop or gossip- or both. He took another drink and thought about that for a moment. Just how he was going to breach this that with her was something he couldn’t imagine. Good God, he thought; seeing the hysterics and crying and wondering aloud “how this was to be explained” to all “our” (her) friends.

Milton let a small laugh escape then at the further thought of it. Whatever “this” was he thought, it was serious business to be sure but the gaping look of shock and fright of societal jeopardy that would surely appear on his wife’s face couldn’t help but make the poor man smile.

He read the letter again then and the smile disappeared as the thoughts of a father’s concern came rushing back in.

“Just what the hell is a violation of moral code.” He said to the sea.

Obviously she was in no danger, no personal injury had occurred, no great tragedy had happened. The school would have called. She would have called. Certainly nothing of financial issue had happened either. They absolutely would have called about that. So what could it be? Just what in the good green earth had his beautiful Olivia done to account for expulsion in her final year at a school overflowing with the petulant, conniving, entitled and bored offspring of New York’s wealthiest first rate families?

He thought this with a lifetime’s knowledge of her classmates; of his own classmates in fact. Milton was, always had been, a good man. He had realized both is luck of birth and its responsibilities at a young age and accepted them immediately. He had worked at his fathers, fathers, firm since graduating from his own ivy covered walls of learning and he’d married Gloria Spencer just like he was silently expected to do. But he had been rich his entire life and had witnessed the underbelly of having much and wanting more early and often.

He remembered Richie Barstow laughing at lunch break in the eighth grade after he told the headmaster Mr. Miller had “touched him” and subsequently ruined the poor man’s life forever.

“Bastard wants to fail me!” Richie had said, “Look who’s failed now!”

He remembered Thomas Fulham pointing a manicured finger at Nigel, the only colored student in their school, his senior year and screaming, “Niggers don’t belong here unless they’re serving me lunch or mopping MY floors!” Then he and his friends had pummeled Milton with abandon for choosing Nigel as a lab partner because nobody else would. He remembers his mother weeping in the bedroom while his father explained how a man needed variety.

“..a violation of moral code.” He read the words again, finished his martini and carrying the letter rose up to make another from the corner bar on the porch. The sea had found an inland wind and the welcome smell of its brine calmed him as he thought about his daughter.

He knew it was wrong but he had always loved her the most. The others, they were fine and they looked perfect but were fractured in so many ways. They talked so much and did so little.

Michael had been sixteen and enthralled them all at the dinner table with his perfectly executed report of the Great Depression. Olivia was eleven and began a sidewalk food drive on the corner of their uptown block the next morning.

Constance, bless her heart, had “found “ a dog one day and in pigtails and sundress demanded that they keep it because Debbie Harold had one JUST LIKE IT. The next day she left for school with a brief pat to the dog’s head and Olivia spent the week putting up fliers until the relieved owners called to reclaim him.

Milton sat back down on the porch, sipping his fresh drink, and had all these memories and thoughts bouncing around his head along with the worried theories of just what his Olivia had done. She was no Saint of course. He knew this but her “disturbing” (as his wife called them) qualities had always been so close to his own hidden ones. The acting without thinking at times and seemingly inherent ability to locate trouble when it could be easily avoided, to call a spade a spade when it was so obvious to say nothing at all. To all too often choose fun for fun’s sake regardless of appearances and propriety. These were his gifts first and he had willingly given them up for necessity; seeing those in her, from the very beginning had given him more pride and joy than any of the others could ever bring. He sighed a bit at the thought because until now it had only brought him pride and happiness in seeing himself so clearly in his own child.

But now; what was this? The layers of his mind could only wonder. She was due in on the ferry tomorrow morning, home from school, He would meet her at the landing with flowers, Gloria would be there to unless an event at the club demanded her attention. He wished she would call but thought then that the letter had just arrived. She most likely would think she would beat the mail and explain whatever this was in person. She would explain in her normal measured tone, her loving and caring voice the exact nature of this new turn of fate. She was first rate and she would always make him proud.

He was thinking this as their housekeeper came out onto the porch wrapped in an apron of blue checkers and carrying a fresh pitcher of lemonade.

“ Mr. Milton?” She said. “ Ms. Olivia is on the phone.”

“I’ll take it out here Rose.” Milton said as he folded the letter and put it on the table by his drink.

“Yessir.” Rose said and turned to bring out the telephone.

Staring out at the clear Ocean Milton put his feet up on the small table in front of him, laughing again to himself at the picture of his wife’s rapidly approaching look of dismay and horror.

“Rose…” he called out with a tilted head, “ can you please bring me a fresh martini?”

They are not sad, merely finished with their work and spent.

Tomorrow; I will buy more flowers

The entire length of the left side of their house had been something of a neighborhood legend the last several years. Mrs. Haggerty had often called it always in bloom and during holidays, Easter especially, Tallulah would cut bouquets of lilly’s and roses; handing them out on the sidewalk as if they were Halloween treats. The garden that began as the desperate hope for a woman who no longer felt whole or loved or human that beauty could still exist in the world and that she could be its creator. “And she had,” Percy thought as he stared down at the dry cracked soil, shriveled stalks and dead vines that now remained where blooming color and life had been only three months before.

“Fuck.” He lightly exhaled as he sat down in front of the decaying mess and remembered that first day, almost eight years ago now, when his wife, Tallulah, had finally and mercifully declared she had suffered about enough of his selfish self-pity and her own wallowing self loathing.

“My tits are gone Percy; they sure aren’t going to grow back.” She had said with the bloodshot eyes from her binge drinking from the night before that also seemed to hold the building luster of defiance in them that had been absent for so long.

“You do what you have to do.” She had continued, “stay down in the basement playing with your goddamn trains and watching MASH (she said sarcastically referring to the disturbingly large volume of porn tapes he had in the basement innocuously labeled as the old T.V. drama) for all I care.

He remembered thinking then to himself for the first time since the operation and long hospital stay that my wife is not sick. She is not going to die. He had looked up at her and found her standing in a long white sundress with her thick brunette hair twisted back in a ponytail with a bright red scrunchy and a little green bucket in her hand with little spades and trowels sticking their little gardening tool heads up over the lip.

“Do what you have to do,” she had repeated. “I’m going to do some gardening.”

And she did just that, all that day in fact. She had one before, a garden along the front left side of the house because it captured the best sun. It was before she brought home the news, before she had gotten sick. It had been plain and normal but she had tended it with pleasure and pride but between the surgery, then the chemo and the furious landslide into the lonely darkness they both had fallen into afterwards the garden never really stood a chance and had become nothing more that a long patch of dry dead earth.

So she had grabbed the keys and an hour later returned with a truckload filled with things of petals and color and life. She spent that entire day toiling away in the ground and he had watched.

He sat back from the window and watched her lightly water the dirt, turning it from dusty brown to a rich black.

He watched her till the earth, then create wide, strategically placed holes for planting, and then gently place her flowers of hope in them. She would then knead the wet soil, almost caressing it, into place and then rise up gently, wipe her perspiring brow and step back to take in the placement for final approval.

She did this with each one and she had purchased several dozen. He watched her as she did this. He watched the brown mane of her hair his hands hadn’t felt for too long as it became playfully disheveled. He watched her long delicate fingers that hadn’t felt him for too long as they worked the soft earth. When she stood he watched the outline of her long and slender legs as the sunlight flowed through her thin white dress and Percy felt desire and shame in equal measure.

The late afternoon sky turned red and yellow as the sun went to sleep and he watched her for awhile longer as she proudly watered her creations with the garden hose; the freshly planted colors bright and new and dripping with water. He went upstairs then but paused briefly in the kitchen to leave a note on the table for his wife which simply said: Come to bed. Don’t bother taking a shower.

She had come to bed that night smelling of flowers, and earth and sweat and Percy made love to her while he whispered things in her ears only two people in love can truly ever say to each other. Afterwards they ate cold chicken in bed and softly talked about grief, and shame and loss. The spoke to each other about these things, their own frailties and failures and then they made love again.

The next day Tallulah went out early and returned with all the bits of nature people landscape gardens with. Old stones, rustic little wooden trellises and weather beaten railroad ties and she spent the day filling in the empty spaces of her garden like she was putting a puzzle together.

That evening Percy made love to her again and would in fact, while their garden grew, make love to her every night for the next seven years.

Even when she became sick again they made love each night and when the relentless bitch disease had taken to much from her physically; when she once again was forced to return to the hospital, they made love still. With their eyes and their words and the light touch of a hand on a clammy forehead they still made love.

Then one day during an early spring shower she died. That was two months ago and he sat now at this dead parcel of dirt and decay that hadn’t been touched in over half a year.

He rose slowly to begin his work.

The dead things were an affront and had to go quickly. He raked the withered, hollow stalks and vines away with ferocity and gathered them all up in large green plastic bags to be put out with the trash the next day. Then he watered the hard soil until it became black and moist. He dug small planting holes to the map he had already plotted out in his head and then he walked to the garage.

Percy returned with two small rose bushes. One red, one yellow. Then he brought out some perennials and a then a hibiscus to go next to one of the trellises; then a purple bougainvillea for the other trellis.

He worked the earth, carefully placing each offering into its new home, and sometimes he found himself crying. He wept not as much for her death as he did for those wasted days and months so many years ago. He cried for the time when he couldn’t bring himself to touch the only person he had ever really wanted to touch because he had thought her changed and broken instead of saved and given back to him, like a gift from death.

But then as he worked he would also laugh. The memories of millions of seconds of joy and love flooding into his mind like they had just happened; knowing they would never happen again. He worked most of the day and when he was done stepped back to take the garden into full view.

It was not a special garden. It was plain and normal and although would grow to be lovely would never, ever truly be beautiful. Not like hers was. He accepted this with a small smile as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. No, nothing would ever be as beautiful as that again.

At fifteen he decided he was going to be a painter. His mother said he could be anything he wanted to be. His father being dead didn’t have much of an opinion on the matter. He was not a frivolous boy and meticulous by nature. Not exactly the normal primary colors of nature assumed by an artist but he was diligent, patient and in two short years was something of a well known commodity in his small uncultured town.

The mayor commissioned him for a fresco on the south wall of the newly built library and although it was not his favorite form he loved Diego Rivera mightily and with that in mind captured a very nice adaptation of Day of the Dead . This lead to a public showing of all his canvas work that fall coinciding with the annual High School football team’s corn boil; where afterwards over a dozen of the town’s residents proudly displayed his work on the walls inside their homes and offices-he was within their limited confines now fairly famous.

The finished product was never really something he cared for; never had been. It was the process of creation, the discipline, the exact skill of line and colors all coming together for the common goal that was the voice that called to his heart. He felt as he gripped the brush in his hand and slowly stroking the canvas with firm deliberation that he was creating something that would never be created exactly the same again. Not by anyone; even by him.

The summer he turned eighteen he found Jasper Johns while on a trip into the city with his mother. The walked among the colonies of writers, musicians and artists in the village and stopped at a showing of the man’s work going on in an open air gallery.

He wandered among the explosions of color and form wide eyed. He came across a piece called False Start and stood for a full fifteen minutes staring at it without blinking once. Never had he seen something so brilliantly ambiguous and concrete at the same time. He would, he knew then, paint something just as perfect one day.

The mail came one Saturday late that summer. He had been eighteen for almost 3 weeks and they had called his name. His mother cried and fretted and then cried some more and then, twelve weeks later he marched along with the rest of his green laden brothers on the sweltering airport tarmac in Vietnam.
They marched together, all thirty of them, in perfectly synchronized olive steps. Their faces, both black and white, barely able to carry a beard let alone a gun and their eyes were full of both known and unknown fear. All except his. His eyes were soaking up every detail. The sky was a blue he was sure he had never seen and as he marched enjoying the unifying cadence of the group he found the lush landscape before him on the outer reaches of the airfield so beautiful and rich that he formed a mental painting of them instantly.
A week later his company was ambushed in the morning as the crept though a dense jungle while he was noticing the throbbing large veins on the leaves as he brushed them away from his face. As he fought the enemy mortar blasted in the earth around him shooting up spectacular showers of black earth, the bullet fire rushing past him seemed to leave behind light trails of smoke as they passed.
Later, when all was quiet again, he held a boy named Tim, from Muskegon Michigan, in his arms as rivers of ruby blood poured from the boy’s body like the spreading tributaries of an ocean delta. He cried as he stared at Tim’s perfectly severed leg, directly above the knee, and he traced the line of the round bone with his eyes as it protruded from his leg like some ghoulish country ham.
He wrote his mother by flashlight that evening telling her, among other things, that he wanted to be a soldier. Several weeks later, as a white jungle moon danced across the starlit treetops a bullet tore through his brain as he walked point and as his soul floated up to meet the heavens an airplane landed carrying a mother’s letter telling her son he could be anything he wanted to be.