Florida Heatwave (36 page)

But marriage is all about concessions, right? He tried to remember that. After all, she did let him frequent that fishing camp five miles out in the empty Everglades and not once did she question the fact that he never fished. She didn’t argue once when he purchased the airboat that was essential to getting out to that remote spot that was perpetually and naturally in one to three feet of water in the middle of Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s “River of Grass.” Heck, the one time she’d accompanied him, she loved the roar of the airboat’s airplane engine, the rush of air through her hair as they sat high over the sawgrass blasting over the open acreage. He knew that she didn’t appreciate that envelope of silence that would surround one’s head after the engine was shut down and you were miles away from anything that could be defined as noisy.

Concessions. He was good with it.

Then came Maria and Lance. And it was all too much. And he was sorry, but they all had to die.

Yes, Susan’s constant need to talk was bothersome, unrelenting, exasperating, but he never considered homicide until the Conners moved in next door.

Maria and Lance. Lance and Maria. The were young, artistic (by their standards), ambitious (or so they said), garrulous, and possessed of an almost demonic ability to talk simultaneously for immeasurable lengths of time. They read
People
magazine. They debated the meaning of life through the episodic lens of
Desperate Housewives.

And his wife loved them.

Their first night in the neighborhood, Marie and Lance came over to introduce themselves—afraid, it seemed to him later, to be alone. Within ten minutes he knew he was in terrible trouble. Introductions were quick: Lance was from L.A., a self-described “film guy” come to settle in with The Love of His Life and “probably write screenplays.” Florida was the new hotspot for films. Lance winked when he said this and all Charles could think of was Mr. McGuire stage whispering “Plastics” to Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate.

Maria was Cuban, her Spanglish so rapid and bereft of punctuation as to remind one of a bilingual auctioneer trying to sell a bin lot of Spanish handbags to a crowd from Dubuque. During his lifetime in Florida, Charles had met Cubans from the old 1980 Mariel Boatlift days who refused to learn English because they planned to go back to the island after Castro died of lung cancer or was overthrown. But Maria, he was to learn later—about fifteen minutes later—was third generation and had never set foot in the nation she claimed for her heritage and had for thirteen years gone to school in Miami-Dade public schools and should know English like a native. These thoughts remained his alone.

He only nodded and smiled. At least he thought he was smiling. After an hour and a half his wife and her two new best friends had broached forty-three subject areas from the death of the iconic Michael Jackson (“That was the big one for me. It was the the disaster
por la vida a me
“) to the professional death of Ricky Martin (the segue no doubt was motivated by Maria’s use of the phrase
la vida,
which was the way this so-called conversation was obtusely carrying itself out; one participant would seemingly pick up a single word or phrase uttered by one of the others and then simply and loudly introduce a brand new line of discourse all their own).

In time, beer and the new Maria’s requested drink, a Rob Roy, were introduced by his wife, and Charles sat back sipping his Bud and daydreaming while simultaneously keeping a running tab on the topics contained within the three-person babble. Eighty-seven in two hours. No commercials. No public service announcements. All Talk, All The Time.

“So Charlie, seen any good movies lately?”

Charles realized the question was being directed to him. He had made his introduction as Charles Norland III. Now, after two hours of rambling and drinking his booze, he was a neighborhood friend, Charlie.

“Well, I did see
Unforgiven
recently on a late-night cable channel. It was about—”

“Yes! Clint Eastwood. Excellent director,” Lance cut him off. “Too old to still be acting though. I would have casted a Sean Penn, you know? Someone the whores would have fallen for, like, you know, to add the romantic interest in there.”

“Right, but that really wasn’t the point,” the new Charlie tried again. “In my humble opinion, I thought—”

“So Clint Eastwood, the
gringo,
eh?” Maria jumped in. “Making the Hispanics look all the time
pobre
and
estupido
in those pasta westerns.”

“Spaghetti westerns, honey,” Lance corrected the love of his life.

“Sí pero …”

The new Charlie was out of it by then. Conversation moved on. Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety.

But Susan was enthralled. These would be new people to talk with after her daytime job of talking to people. Oh joy. The Connors for dinner. The Connors for weekend barbecues. The Conners for double-dating at the movies where all three of them would whisper constantly during the show despite the shushes from the folks seated around them that made Charles III hunch his shoulders and duck like an embarrassed turtle.

But he endured. He made concessions. He tried until he reached the point where he would have to shoot them all or shoot himself.

Then, he had a better idea.

Ten in the morning and the noise was, well, deafening. Even with those little yellow marshmallow-type ear plugs, the sound of the engine was an assault. He pushed the airboat throttle higher, the pitch went up, the wind in their faces increased, whipping hair and distorting cheek flesh and causing all of them to squint. But he could still hear them.

“Whooooooeeee. Yeah baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

Lance.

“Woooooooo.” In that high-pitched, female cry that every schoolgirl somehow learns.
“Dios Mio!
“

Maria.

“So I was telling Gracie about Tom and his new girlfriend.” Her attempts at gossip conversation were not to be deterred by some thirty-mile-an-hour rip across the western Palm Beach County Everglades. She’d just yell as loud as possible.

His wife, Susan.

When he had suggested that the Connors come out with them on the airboat, Susan had looked at him in that way she did whenever he took a chance and stepped slightly out of character and did something crazy like wear a blue button-down oxford shirt to work instead of a white one.

“Really?” she said. “Out to your secret place?”

It wasn’t really a secret. The fishing camp had been in his family for three generations. It was out in a secluded meadow of sawgrass. Nothing around. An unbroken landscape from horizon to horizon with the exception of two green hammocks farther to the west, but you had to have good eyes to see them. It was a place where you could sit of an evening on the wooden deck at sunset and swear you could hear when that glowing orange globe touched the earth at sunset and hissed—ssssssss.

No, he was not taking them there, even though that is what he told his wife. That in fact is the last place on earth he would take them. The contamination would be too much. After the one time Susan had accompanied him, her constant chatter nearly spoiled it for him. She never asked to go again. And he had not offered. So on this day when voices were going to be silenced, it wasn’t going to be at a place he would ever remember, nor a place he would be able to recall, or ever find again. No, he was not heading toward the camp, but was swinging them in essentially a big circle, all according to plan.

“Charlie! Look! There!” yelled Lance while pointing out in front of the racing boat at what appeared to be a grey log floating in the open water of that path they were racing down. “Is that a gator?”

Charles III just nodded, kept his speed, and watched as the log grew eyes and then, just before being run over by the slanted nose of the flat-bottomed airboat, flicked its tail and dove under for cover.

Yes, wildlife was here: Alligators and the turtles they ate. Herons and the fish they ate. Fish and the water spiders they ate. Kites and the snails they ate. Well, you get the picture. The Glades was nature. And that’s the way it is. You kill what you have to kill to survive.

Charles had explained all this to the Connors, when he could get a word in edgewise, while he instructed them where to sit on the airboat. He had in recent weeks had a welder install the two extra seats on the raised carriage that kept pilot and passengers high above the boat’s platform, and thus above the top of the sawgrass. From that vantage point one could see everything. And you were also up in the air, the self-made breeze keeping you cool in the stark sunshine. But even from on high, you had to be familiar with the area in order to know where you were. The landmarks were subtle. To the uninitiated, everything that you could see looked all the same. Charles knew this well and he had counted on it.

Finally, at the designated spot, he eased off the throttle, let the boat slide across the water and run up into a thick marsh, tamping down the grass in front of them and creating at unnatural mat just off the bow.

He choked out the engine and there it was. That silence. That feeling around the head like when you pull the car up into the driveway after too long a ride on the interstate and the sudden lack of noise feels like a balm. It only lasted a second.

“Whoa, dude,” Lance yelled, his voice not adjusting to the new quiet. “That was awesome. That’s an airplane engine, right? Man, the vibration, dude. This thing kicks out the jams!”

Charles only nodded. Indeed it does. Kick jams out, that is.

“This is like being out in the cane fields in Cuba,” Maria stated authoritatively as she stood, shading her eyes with one hand like some kind of explorer, and surveyed.
“Me recuerdo esta
scene in
The Bridges of Madison County
when they are staring out on the fields of wheat. It is the same, no?”

No, thought Charles. This grass grows up out of two feet of water. And you have never been to Cuba, or Iowa.

“Ha! That’s Eastwood again,” said Susan, pointing a finger at Maria as if she had just made a joke. “But I loved Meryl Streep in that one. You know she had her neck done.”

“But of course, there is no way a woman her age could look so well, and another thing …”

Charles tuned them out. He would not be deterred. He took extra pains to change his face to one of concern as he climbed out of the pilot’s seat and began to trace a cable from the throttle back to the engine’s carburetor. He stood at the stern of the boat platform, wrinkled his brow, bent into a kneeling position and stared at the machinery.

The others kept talking. Susan about what a wonderful view this would be for a good restaurant. Maria about how the view on Varadero beach in Cuba was much better. Lance about how difficult it would be to get a film crew out here to shoot a feature. Their overlapping chatterings didn’t seem to bother them and despite his facial antics, they paid no attention to Charles until he said in an overly loud voice for him: “There’s a problem.”

The others were not used to someone disagreeing with their visions. Everyone usually just nodded an assent to their various statements and then charged in with their own. A phrase of disagreement seemed to startle them.

“Charles?” Susan said.

“The, uh, fuel line,” he said without looking up. “There’s a problem with the fuel line.” He bent and fiddled some more, pretending to do something, but actually just checking the explosive that he had so carefully placed next to the gas tanks the night before.

“Can I be of any assistance?” Lance said, but did not approach, knowing of course that his total lack of knowledge in all things mechanical would be of no assistance at all.

“No. I’m afraid not,” Charles said and then stood staring for effect. He then climbed back up into the pilot’s seat and with some physical grace stood up on the seat and looked out into the distance.

His wife shaded her eyes with one hand and looked in the same direction, seeing nothing. Maria followed suit. Lance held his ground.

“I’ll have to go for help,” Charles said and then climbed down.

“I have my cell,” Lance said, reaching into the pocket of his safari shorts, purchased just for this occasion.

“No,” Charles said, again with an authority that was uncharacteristic for him. “There aren’t any towers out here. No reception.”

While Lance, then Maria, then Susan all grabbed up their cells and checked their bars, Charles reached into a cooler and removed one bottle of water.

“It’s only a mile,” he said, tucking the water into a high vest pocket. “Won’t take me long. There’s plenty of water for you, and Susan knows how to drape the rain tarp over the seats to give you some shade.”

Susan looked at her husband. With such authority in his voice, she was sure that she must know how to put up the tarp. Charles rarely spoke with such command. She simply nodded in agreement. It’s an old maxim that Charles had seen himself a million times and thus took it as truth: If you say something with enough authority and assuredness in your voice, ninety percent of the people will believe you even if you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Businessmen, marketers, advertising spokespersons and P.T. Barnum have been doing it forever. He zipped up his multi-pocketed fishing vest and suddenly, at least suddenly in the eyes of the others, jumped overboard.

He landed crotch-deep in the water and a spume of mud-colored water bubbled up around his shorts. All three others adopted the same look on their faces, as if they’d suddenly tasted something gone bad in their mouths, their noses wrinkled, their eyes squinted.

“Better you than me,” Lance stage whispered.

“Only take me an hour or so,” Charles said. “You can find something to do for an hour, right honey?” he said, and Susan again turned her look from soured to perplexed. Charles never called her honey.

“Oh yes. Sure,” she finally said. Speechlessness did not become her. “It’s kind of an adventure.”

“We could work out a script,” Lance said with a tone that was actually more than half serious.
“An Afternoon with a View.
There we are. Once you have the title you’re half done.”