Driftwood Houses: A Key West Story Sequence

By Jon Michael Miller

In these offbeat short stories, "Driftwood Houses" belongs squarely in the comic tradition of Florida Fiction. It exposes and celebrates the daily ironies, heartbreaks and triumphs of ordinary people as they fumble through the challenges of everyday existence.

In a Key West setting these struggles are personified by a dizzying array of characters, each one masterfully sketched. All of them grapple with internal and external forces to realize their dreams. Each has his or her own story, yet all the tales are interconnected. Some show victory, some defeat. You will laugh with some, perhaps shed a tear with others.

Taken together these comic, ironic slices of life dramatize the successes and setbacks we all experience as we battle our fates in a world that seems uncertain and often unjust. Our struggles reveal how much we affirm the value of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Michael Miller
• Release date: Sep 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466198166

Jon Michael Miller

Born and raised in the farmland of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Jon Michael Miller received a teaching degree from Penn State University. After teaching high school English a number of years in his home area, he attended graduate school at Ohio State during the turbulent 60’s when he was introduced to Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He then spent twelve years in the TM movement, rising to work directly under the spiritual master himself and later for the movement’s television station in Los Angeles. To activate his writing career he returned to Penn State where he earned two advanced degrees, taught English, and administered a liberal arts major in which students were able to design individualized courses of study. After fifteen years in Happy Valley, during which he became a regular visitor to Jamaica, he relocated to Saint Petersburg, Florida, where he now teaches and writes.

Book preview

DRIFTWOOD HOUSES

A Key West Story Sequence

JON MICHAEL MILLER

Copyright 2010 by Jon Michael Miller

Smashwords Edition

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Comments from Readers

These stories have real bite! They’re as tangy as key lime pie!

A unique tapestry of life in a beautiful corner of the world that Miller clearly knows and loves.

The best Key West book I’ve ever read. A don’t-leave-home-without-it book.

Table of Contents

Booty

Black Beans and Rice

A Ripe Peach

Cranes and Four O’Clocks

Mother Kate

Randal’s Revenge

The Crystal Sky

Dancing the Mambo

What a Man Must Do

The Dancer

About the Author

~

For Suzanne Cordes,

who once helped me get out of Dodge.

Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.

—James Taylor, Fire and Rain

~

In the driftwood house, you learn how to dream.

—Jimmy Buffett, Why the Things We Do

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know …

—Wallace Stevens

The Idea of Order at Key West

~

BOOTY

1995, March

The trick was to toss the morsels to the egret without the gulls stealing them. Many of the invaders hovered above, others waited on nearby rocks. A few paddled about in the gray water. Shy of the ruckus, a great blue heron watched from shore.

Sitting on a boulder along the jetty, George took a piece of frankfurter from a plastic bag and held it up to coax the egret. With a single flap of its wide wings, the bird leapt to a closer stone. George tossed the meat, and the egret snagged it from the rock just out of the beak of a swooping gull. The tall bird flung back its snakelike neck and with a croaking sound swallowed the treat. It shook its plumage in a shiver of white.

That was the game for George Endicott, aiming and timing his throws so that his lone friend among the noisy throng could enjoy his generosity. A piece captured by a gull was a point for the opposing side. But today, as in all the mornings recently gone by, George was distracted by the impending arrival of the Asian girl.

In a few minutes, she appeared in the distance, running at the edge of the water in a red bikini. Closer and closer she came, her hair cropped short as a boy’s, her tanned skin gleaming. When she arrived at the jetty, she stopped and did jumping jacks, waist twists, toe touches and knee bends. She settled on the sand for sit ups. She lay back for leg lifts. Then she got up, dived into the restless surf and swam out near the flock of George’s visitors. There, in hip deep water she rinsed her slender arms, stomach, shoulders, and back. She dipped her head and rubbed her hair. All this was her daily ritual.

But today, instead of splashing back to shore and running off, she stood solidly before him and waved.

George was so startled he didn’t move. Grinning and beckoning, she waited until he had the sense to return her greeting. Her smile brightened.

May I talk to you, sir? she shouted.

Talk? To me?

May I come to there, next to you?

It appeared that without his permission she wouldn’t take a step in his direction.

May I come to there next to you? she said again as though he were deaf.

Well, sure, if you want to.

I don’t want to fright your birds.

Oh, he won’t be scared for long. Be careful. Don’t slip.

She clambered up the steep pile of stones, stirring the resting gulls to flight. The egret bounded a few feet away. George was more frightened than the birds. His imaginings of the past weeks seemed suddenly exposed. Shamed, he glanced away from her as, climbing, she leaned toward him.

She sat on a rock next to his feet and smiled up at him with disconcerting innocence. Her chest moved with her strenuous breath. His did too, in kind.

The weather is so cold today, she said, rubbing goose-bumped arms.

The sun will burn through the clouds soon.

Oh, I don’t care. I like cold.

She sat there, shivering. It seemed that she would be happy to remain all day.

What do you want to talk about? he asked.

I want to ask you, will you be my friend? I see you always here, each day. You are so pure.

What did you say? Pure?

And your birds are so fun. They make me laugh, each day. I want to be bird as them. What do you name them in English?

Name them? Well, all these are just gulls, several types, pests really. But that tall white one over there is a great egret.

Great egret? She laughed. Yeah, he is so great. His black knees are so funny, like old lady’s. And his little eyes look down his long noses like driving on very long road. His noses are sharp, like knives. But he is scared of me.

He’ll come back. I feed him.

You are so kind to him.

It’s more like a game.

Sir, could I play that game?

He handed her a hot dog bit and told her to aim well and throw hard so the other birds didn’t get it. She threw it toward the egret, which stabbed out its beak too late to keep it from a darting black-faced gull. A battle ensued above. The frenzied pursuit of the other gulls forced the first one to drop the food. Another one swept the scrap out of the air only to be assaulted by the others. They screamed, flapped, veered, dived—all of which delighted the girl.

Sometimes it’s better not to get what you want, George said.

He gave her another piece of meat. This time she held it up to the group of hovering gulls. They came just inches away, causing her to laugh shrilly until one snatched it from her fingertips. She shrieked in surprise. She turned to George, smiling. He tossed the final bit of food, which was plucked deftly from the stone by scissor beaks.

How old you are? the young woman asked, still smiling.

"How old? Sixty-eight, if you must know. I’m George.

What’s your name?"

I am Kyoko, but everyone calls me Koko, like sweet chocolate. I am nineteen years. I am from Osaka, Japan. Have you been to my country?

I got as far as Okinawa.

Oh, I love Okinawa. I traveled to there on junior high school holiday.

George wriggled on his rock. I wasn’t exactly on vacation. I was just eighteen when I signed up in the Marine Corps. Lifting the sleeve of his tee shirt, he exposed a ragged scar.

Though her smile disappeared, her levity seemed irrepressible. The water is so blue in Okinawa, more than here. She laughed. And the beaches much more lovely. She looked at a large diver’s watch on her wrist. I must go. I am too late. Could I play that game tomorrow?

Well, sure, if you want to.

See you, bye.

She climbed gingerly over the rocks and swam back to shore where she waved goodbye and ran back up the beach around a distant bend.

As he continued to gaze at the spot, the beating of his heart warmed him from the morning chill. Though it was time for him to go to work, he remained transfixed. She had actually stopped everything, waved to him and joined him on the rocks. She wanted him to be her friend. Such innocence, such beauty!

He realized he was almost an hour late, which would get him some cross words from Mrs. Espenshade. But she would soon forgive him. The Key Western Motor Lodge, where he worked part time for room and board, was to receive a shipment of window screens. He was supposed to install them. Still, he lingered. With the food gone, most of the gulls had flown away, and the egret had glided further off to preen.

George spent the whole day putting in screens. At the window of Cottage Six, he interrupted some honeymooners making love. As he worked, he constantly reviewed the morning’s events. By four, he was exhausted. His clothes were soaked in sweat, but he was satisfied that he had completed the job. The breezes had gone, and the air had resumed its usual sultry stillness. As preface to an evening storm, thunderheads were building. Before supper he relaxed on the café patio, drinking a cold mug of beer that soaked his mustache and felt marvelously cool sliding down his throat.

He woke next day with the gray-green light of dawn. In the bathroom he relieved himself with satisfying force, and as he lathered his body in the shower, he whistled along with oldies on the radio. While combing his beard, he sang a verse of Heard it on the Grapevine. When he stepped outside his cabin he imagined that behind the silver rays beaming through mountains of clouds God might be grinning.

George’s clapboard cottage sat between a row of palmetto palms and a thicket of old bamboo. Across a wide lawn, the motel’s main building loomed in the shadows of tall pines. The raucous caws of blackbirds in the high branches didn’t annoy him as they often did. Today he considered them affirmations of life. With the words of Gladys Knight and the Pips still in his mind, he unlocked the gate of the pool and uncurled a hose. In imaginative circles, he sprayed the deck. Then he fastened a brush-pole to the hose and rhythmically scrubbed the pool’s tile border, which was decorated with fierce Aztec gods, half beasts, half men. Fishing with a long-handled net, he lifted a cigar butt from the water.

With a cloth that smelled of lemon, he caressed the breasts of the two brass mermaids that adorned the gateway of the pool. Soon he would see Koko. She would run to him, exercise, rinse herself in the sea and sit by his side. They would talk again. So what, if she didn’t see the gulls as a nuisance? She could play as she wished. Her laughter was like music, her smiles doses of delight.

By the time the sun blazed above the clouds, all pinks and reds over the churning sea, he was collecting refuse from the beach, palm to palm, bench to bench. In the restrooms, he spun deodorant discs like tiny Frisbees into the urinals, wiped the mirrors, and with a hint of Fred Astaire choreography mopped the floors. Chores completed, he headed to the coffee shop for breakfast. Behind the rolled down plastic that kept the wind out, he settled at the corner table always saved for him by the Garcias. Alex Garcia, an ex-combatant against Fidel and owner of the shop, soon approached him with a silver pot from which he poured Cuban coffee into a mug.

Buenos dias, Señor, Garcia said.

George was trying to pick up a little Spanish. Garcia was his

tutor. George answered with the same phrase. He opened the Miami newspaper, shared by the café’s guests. In Spanish, he tried to say, The Phillies beat the Braves in spring training. You owe me five dollars.

I’ll make it up tonight, Garcia said, when they go against the Dodgers.

In English, George said, The Phils could go all the way this year.

Si, and I could sprout wings and fly home to Cardenas.

Garcia moved off to serve some early guests, and his wife, in a starched apron, arrived with a whole nectarine, two slices of toast, and a bag of leftover hot dogs from the rotisserie. George covered the toast with butter and mango jam. As he munched, he looked over the stock reports. Even at his age he didn’t need glasses to read the tiny numbers.

Comforted from the performance of his modest portfolio, he rolled up his trousers, tucked the bag of meat into his pocket, grabbed the fruit and strolled to the water’s edge. He took a bite of the nectarine, oozing juice onto his fingers. Strong waves cracked like thunder as they broke far out over the reef. Wavelets slapped his sandaled feet. In what seemed a mystic unity, seven pelicans cruised by in follow the leader formation, almost touching the water, lifting, slowly moving their wide wings, gliding a few yards, and dipping again. George side-armed the fruit pit like a fastball into the surf.

He reached the palm lined strand of Smathers Beach where, as always, the egret was wading in the shallows. George climbed carefully over the wet boulders along the jetty to his usual spot. The gulls flew in. From the shore, the egret joined him. As George fed the bird, he watched for Koko. Finally she rounded the faraway bend. She waved immediately. He waved back. Abandoning her exercise routine, she splashed directly into the water. This time he paid more attention as she crawled up, though the top of her swimsuit was not quite loose enough for him to get a full view inside.

Breathing hard, she rested until he handed her a bit of hot dog that she held up for the gulls. She laughed as one nipped it away, beginning another melee in the sky.

Would you take my picture with your birds? she asked, undoing the wrist strap of a waterproof camera. I will show it to my mother. She will be so charmed.

He struggled to understand the gadget. As she held the food up, he managed to snap a photo just as a gull got its prize. She thanked him and requested a shot of him. Though he declined, she insisted. She wanted a picture of her new American friend, she said, and snapped it as he tried to smile.

She leaned back in the sun. While her eyes were closed, George looked at her perfect skin, her flat stomach, her slender legs crossed at the ankles, toes pointed. A gold ring gleamed on a miniscule toe.

You’re dressed for war, he said, commenting on the camouflage pattern of her bikini. Your bathing suit looks like it was issued by the military.

Japanese do not accept war. We will never have war. That’s in Japan Constitution. My friend presented this swimwear to me as bonus gift.

I see. What do you mean ‘bonus gift’?

I work for him and his brother. They are Americans.

He feasted his eyes on her body.

My student visa is almost expired, she said. Two weeks and three days from now. But my friend doesn’t want me to go back to Japan.

I don’t blame him.

I like U.S., but some crazy dudes are here.

Especially in Key West.

Oh, no, Key West is so nice. I never saw pink taxi before. And so much gays. My friend hates gays, calls them ‘fags,’ but I like gays. They are clean and so pretty. Many in South Beach, but not like here. Miami is really crazy. My friend and his bro had to run away from Miami to here so fast. They drove like bullet train.

The egret croaked. George flipped a tidbit to him, lost to a lightning fast gull. The great white bird nabbed the next one as soon as it hit the stone.

What do these friends of yours do? George asked.

Gangsters. Thugs. She laughed merrily. I know I can trust you with secrets. Your hands are so gentle and kind. You love nature. You will never hurt anyone, I know.

But to be honest, I have a secret too.

All eagerness, she sat up. I want to know.

Can’t you guess?

Please, tell it.

Okay, but don’t get mad at me.

Mad? Nani? She immediately apologized for having spoken Japanese. Nani meant what, she explained. Sometimes English was difficult for her, she added, because she had to translate everything mentally. She was confused because she thought mad meant crazy. I won’t be crazy when you tell your secret, she said.

George explained that mad also meant angry.

After thanking him for the English lesson, she grabbed his wrist and demanded to know what he had to say.

All right, I’ll tell you. You see, for the past few weeks I got used to you running down the beach and doing your exercises here. I looked forward to it. I enjoyed watching you.

Okay, sure, she said. I like to watch you also.

Well, I mean, I especially enjoy watching you.

But this is not secret. She shook his arm. What secret do you have? Please tell it.

You don’t understand, Koko. I watch you, well, like a man gets pleasure from looking at a woman. And I picture you sometimes, in my...private thoughts.

She let go of his arm and looked at him, not smiling now, but studying.

I’m just being honest, he said. "You called me pure. But I’m

not."

America is so different than Japan.

Why do you say that?

You are old guy, George. Sixty-eight years. In Japan, old people don’t think about sex.

They don’t?

They don’t dance, don’t run, don’t have fun. Old people in Japan don’t have birds for friends. However, here I see old people everywhere, do anything.

Sure, why not?

I think it is good thing for America. I like that.

"Didn’t you know I was watching you when you exercised? I

imagined you were performing just for me."

I did not think you noticed—because you are so old.

Not too old to enjoy a beautiful girl.

So, you are dangerous.

Not dangerous, but not pure either.

In America every man is dangerous dog.

I can’t help noticing how pretty you are.

She thought a moment, watching the birds. "You make me

feel nice, George. You are pretty too."

He let out a laugh. Me? Pretty? That’s a good one.

Hairs on your face are so silver and eyes blue like ocean, hands so strong and gentle and kind. You are so pretty.

Pretty is a word for ladies not for men.

She smiled sheepishly. My vocabulary is not so strong, I think. What word for men is correct?

Maybe handsome is better for men.

You are handsome.

Well, thanks. But let me ask you—what did your gangster friends do that they had to leave Miami in such a hurry?

The egret wheezed again. George obliged it. Koko tossed a treat to the flying gulls, and her seriousness got lost as she laughed at the noisy battle above.

Tell me about your friends, he said.

They are rappers, dealers, money freaks.

Really? Why do you like such people?

So interesting. Handsome.

May I ask—Are they black guys?

Do you hate black? Are you discrimination?

Not at all, I worked with them all my life at the post office in Philadelphia. But I don’t like gangsters. Where’d you meet these guys?

South Beach. Rollerblading.

When you say ‘friend,’ Koko, do you mean boyfriend?

Swannie is like boyfriend, little bit. Junko is bro of him. Do you like hip-hop, George?

I’m worried about the dealing. Do you use drugs, Koko?

"I never use drugs. Swannie and Junko deal handguns. They

hate drugs. And they make website. Live interact, photos, chat. And they make many investments, NASDAQ, online. And write rap music. So interesting guys."

George tossed the remaining pieces of meat, not caring if the gulls got them. Koko looked at her watch.

Will you come tomorrow? George asked. I’m not a dangerous dog, really I’m not.

I am so shocked old man think like young dude. Today I learned Americans not old like Japanese. Your mind is young. Hair is white, but body is strong. Handsome.

But not a dog, don’t worry.

Climbing down the rocks, she stopped and looked up at him. In her position he could almost see the tips of her little breasts. Thinking it might be his last glimpse, he stared.

America is strange, crazy, she said. But I like to meet some native people. You are my friend. She swam ashore and ran away.

Back at the motel George took the company van to buy a cordless drill but stopped also at an Old Town bookstore for something on Japan. As he browsed, the words pure and dangerous rang in his mind. He hoped he convinced her he was neither. After unclogging the commode in Number Six, he settled on the patio to look through Fodor’s Japan, which had a lot of useful information, such as the exact location of Osaka. Apparently there was a famous castle there. A Marine buddy of his had married a Japanese girl he’d met during the occupation. After George was wounded and sent home, his friend had written about his Japanese bride.

During the fighting George had thought very little about Japan. He only knew that the Japs were vicious little men who fought like hellions and had to be rooted out of burrows and dealt with hand to hand. On Okinawa he’d seen several Japanese women jump off a cliff while holding their children. It was beyond his comprehension. Of course, years later he’d seen Sayonara and had wondered why Marlon Brando was so captivated by the Japanese woman. He didn’t find her very appealing. But Koko’s case was altogether different.

As he dried off after his evening shower, he inspected his body in the mirror. His thighs and calves were long and muscular from years