“Now get the fuck up and follow me,” said the larger youth. “And don’t tell anyone about the jackrabbit or I’ll kick your fucking ass! I know where you live!”
The rest of the gang was waiting in the harmless black square, watching nervously as flames grew higher and nearer.
Finally someone pointed. “They’re coming out!”
The older boy raised his trophy in triumph.
“Look!”
“James caught a jackrabbit!”
“He’s going to play college ball for sure!”
On the ride back to Pahokee, the bed of the pickup was much louder than usual. Laughter and tall tales. Everyone had rabbits in their sack. Except one.
Chris just sulked with chin down, the way most of these trips ended.
The others wondered why Chris even bothered to come along. After all, she was a girl.
Chapter 3
The Florida Keys
Piles of hurricane debris continued to appear down the sides of the road as if snowplows had been at work. Branches, dresser drawers, broken mirrors, toilets, tires, ceiling fans, cans of food, ripped shirts, rolls of carpet, a deflated basketball and a cuckoo clock.
A Plymouth Satellite raced east.
“Stop the car!” yelled Coleman. “Stop the car!”
Serge screeched the brakes and skidded off the side of the highway.
“Jesus! What is it?”
“Wait here.” Coleman jumped out and waddled fifty yards before reaching into the trash. He returned and climbed back in the passenger seat.
Serge pulled back onto the highway. “What have you got there?”
“Check it out!” Coleman thrust his arm an inch from Serge’s eyes.
Serge swatted it away. “I’m driving over here.”
Coleman cradled his find and brushed off dirt. “It’s a squeeze bottle for Florida honey. I remember these from when I was a kid. See? It’s a cute smiling alligator from one of those roadside places.”
“The old citrus stands,” said Serge. “The kind that sold tourists boxes of navel oranges that got crushed by baggage handlers and leaked on the luggage belts, leaving sticky slicks that contaminated other people’s suitcases in our state’s way of saying, ‘Please visit!’”
Coleman twisted off the top and stuck an eyeball in the hole. “I’d been watching the road for something like this.”
“You’re kidding.” Serge looked quickly toward the passenger side. “You were seriously looking for a cool vintage souvenir?”
“Oh, sure. It’s just what I wanted.”
Serge turned back toward the road and shook his head with a smile. “Well, I’ll be. There’s hope for you yet . . .”
A half hour later, the gold Satellite sat on the side of the road near mile marker 82 in Islamorada.
Serge glared across the front seat.
“What?” said Coleman.
Serge shook his head again, but with different import. “Hope with you is a fool’s errand.”
Coleman shrugged and stuck the alligator’s head in his mouth, taking a hit from his new honey-bottle bong. He exhaled and pointed. “What’s that on the edge of the street? The thing with orange lightbulbs?”
“Temporary highway sign to alert motorists,” said Serge. “Don’t bother me right now.”
“I know it’s a road sign,” said Coleman. “But they usually say something like ‘Detour Ahead.’ Why does that one say ‘Screw Worm Inspection Station Mile 106’?”
Serge was trying to concentrate on a file folder in his lap. “Because they inspect for screw worms. Probably not now because of the storm. But they’ll be back up and running soon.”
“I don’t even know what a screw worm is,” said Coleman. “And why would they need to inspect?”
“It doesn’t concern you. Leave me alone.” Serge intently flipped through the file.
“I just wanted to know. You’re not the only curious one.” Then Coleman lapsed into his stoner pastime of playing with the sound of words. “Screw worm . . . screw worm . . . screwwwwwwwww worm . . . screw wormmmmmmmm . . . screw wormy-worm . . .”
Serge slowly raised his reddening face and stared out the windshield.
“. . . Screwy-screw worm . . . Worm screwy worm . . .”
“Fuck it!” Serge emitted a deep sigh and closed the file. He grabbed a thermos of coffee and chugged. “Okay, most flies—like houseflies—lay eggs in dead stuff. But there’s this nasty other fly from Central American called Cochliomyia hominivorax. It needs living flesh and deposits eggs in open animal wounds. To up the gross-out factor, the larvae burrow into the meat as they feed, using a screw-like anchor that is so strong it can penetrate bone. It gets pretty ugly and is often fatal. You don’t want to see the photos.”
“Maybe,” said Coleman. “But what’s that got to do with the Keys? Why do we need that sign here if it’s in Central America?”
“The United States eradicated screw worm flies in the early 1980s, but somehow they got back in and caused the current outbreak that is confined for now to the Florida Keys. That’s why they need the signs. Any tourists who bring pets with them on vacation must have them inspected before returning to the mainland.”
“They’re eating poodles and stuff?”
“Not yet, but the outbreak has already caused much sadness down here.” Serge pointed back over his shoulder. “You know those cute little miniature Key deer back on Big Pine that are found nowhere else in the world?”
A pot exhale. “Know ’em and love ’em.”
“They seem all sweet and everything, but they’re still wild creatures, and during mating season all bets are off. The males have these tiny antlers and they start butting heads for primacy. To watch these little suckers go at it, it’s actually kind of funny.”
“Kind of like babies fighting.”
Serge paused. “When do babies ever fight?”
Coleman puffed and shrugged. “They can’t all be nice.”
“Whatever. So all this head crashing leaves the tops of the deer’s scalps with bunches of antler gashes. That’s when the screw worm flies move in, and they work fast! In as little as eight hours, the fleshly laid eggs can hatch and bore down almost an inch. Necrosis follows with equal alacrity, and if immediate care isn’t sought, it’s game over.”
“Cool.”
“But here’s the freakiest part: Although the host animal is already hopelessly doomed, they’re still alive and semi-functioning. That’s what happened recently on Big Pine Key. Nobody knew there was an outbreak until they started seeing these zombie-like deer staggering around with parts of their heads gone. They had to euthanize around fifty of the poor fellas. It was the big news down here all season.”
“Now I’m sad.”
“Maybe this will cheer you up.” Serge pulled a photo of a headstone from a manila folder.
Coleman blew another cloud out the window and leaned over. “Whatcha got there?”
“I’ve begun collecting tombstone rubbings.” Fingers flipped through pages. “And the Keys are the best place to start! Whenever launching a new hobby, always pick a starting point that provides immediate success and encourages an obsessive-compulsive lifestyle of more and more hobbies until you retreat from all human contact, subsist on delivered pizza, and remain behind the closed curtains of a house crammed to the eyeballs with comic books, Civil War figures, postage stamp albums, ships in bottles, Coca-Cola signs, prison contraband, display cases of dead moths from across North America, jars of dirt from all fifty states, the world’s largest ball of Scotch Tape, and a life-size model made entirely from matchsticks of the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting in the Dallas police basement.”