English Studies Forum

Tamiami Trail

Joe Ashby Porter

(Octogenarian Vince’s wife having declined to join him and their grand-daughter Denise with her boyfriend Tink on a road trip from Tampa Bay to Key West, Vince has persuaded the trailer park’s newest resident Vola to come along instead.)

            Manatee, Manatee Springs, and East Manatee slip away behind the orange coupe.  It slows, as if doubtful of the southbound freeway's low haze, and then hops on.  Denise Passaro at the wheel sports silver wraparound shades, a Florida pink ruched halter and matching patio pajamas.  Yesterday afternoon, while Gramps was out paying respects to one lady or another, Neesy and Tink rocked Gramps's trailer on its foundations.  Remembering as she drives, Denise entertains the possibility of a glowing future for the two of them.  She lets pass a decommissioned prison van of whackos before she blows Tink a quick kiss.

            Tink reciprocates, noodling on a ukulele, riding sideways with his back against the door so he can face all three other voyagers.  Over his headrest he says, “So Lillian wouldn't buy a visit to the Keys?  What's with her, no sense of adventure?”

            Vince snorts and caws, waving away imaginary smoke or midges.  “I . . .”

            “Bummersville,” Tink continues.  “I mean, some couples find stimulation in a mere new set of sights.  Huh, Babe.”  He leans over to elbow Denise.

            Beside Vince in the back seat Vola Byrd says, “Hmm.”  She glances this way and that.  “I didn't notice a rumble seat on this buggy.”

            “No.”  Denise shakes her head.

            “No,” sputters Vince.  “No, I knew she wouldn't come.  That's why I did her the courtesy of inviting her.”

            “Er,” says Tink, “I was joking.  I didn't actually think you'd asked her, man.”

            Vola laughs.  “I wonder what would have happened if she'd accepted.”  She settles back and hums.

            Blinking lights whiz along the freeway, palm fronds and hibiscus, egrets and ruined haciendas and blue electronic jungles.  The light bunchy traffic seems benign until the Caloosahatchee bridge when, what's that fishtailing between lanes up ahead?  Better ease over into the breakdown, Denise.  Looks like a drug convoy with hypersteroided goons fore and aft.  Denise lets them disappear into the depths of Fort Myers before she slips back into the southbound stream.  “Well done, kid,” says Tink.

            Shortly the route veers east onto the Tamiami Trail, through swamp and marshland across the southern end of the state.  “My, my,” says Vola, “a soul could get lost back in here.  What are those trees, and is that Spanish moss, that looks like cobwebs?”

            “Sure is,” says Vince.  “And the trees are what this part of the swamp is named for, Big Cypress.”

            “Baltimore this ain't,” says Tink.

            “Really,” says Neesy.  “Although a body could get lost in parts of Baltimore too.”

            “I'll say this,” says Vola, “this must be the most unimproved territory I've set foot in.  Well, not exactly foot.”

            “Tire,” offers Tink.

            “Whatever.  Compared to this, my childhood Oklahoma was Versailles.  Hey, a For Sale sign?”  Askew and blistered on a sand hill cresting the muck.  “I thought this was federal park.”

            Vince hawks.  “Unfinished.  It's trying to be a park, but they don't have the right laws in place.  You wouldn't believe it to look at it, but people all over the world own dribs and drabs of the Big Cypress.”

            “We read about it,” says Denise.  “Land fever.  People bought without coming for a walk around.  A wade around, it would have been.  That sign must be a relic, though, because didn't we read that only the federal government can buy here now?”

            “I'm starting to remember,” says Vola.  “Fifty, sixty years ago, a bubble.  Mostly small investors left holding the bag.  Not my sort of real estate.”

            “Still,” observes Tink, “some principles must be the same.  Buy low, sell high.”

            Vola sighs.  “Tell me about it.  Oh well, easy come, easy go.  Say, what's that with an American flag over it?”

            When the convertible has tooled to a stop, the group discovers that the shed houses the Ochopee post office, smallest in the country according to the postmistress, and serving two hundred swamp families.  Since it's noon and there's no telling what might lie ahead, the group picnics on the grass under the flag.  The sky seems to cloud earlier in the day here than in Manatee.

            On the road again, as the older passengers doze and Tink drives, Denise opens her laptop to pore over the chain letter opening. 

This letter has gone around the world nine times. It has been sent to you for good luck. You will receive fabulous money within days, provided you don’t break the chain.  This is no gag.  This letter is causing seismic changes in the international distribution of wealth. Use your head and read on.

Is it good?, Denise wonders.  The style settings seem to work okay.  Denise folds down the screen and muses.

            Suppose this scam makes Tink and her richer than billionaires, then what?  Will it force them to marry for the tax advantage?  Even then, would Tink be more likely to love her the rest of his life?  On easy street, mightn't he roam quicker and farther?  Mightn't Denise find herself whiling nights away with simulacra in her personal game room in her private palace with gold toilets?  Small comfort if Tink didn't come home.  Out cheating, like Gramps snoring in the back, with Denise cooling her heels like Lillian this very minute back in Manatee.    Clunkety clunk, clunkety clunk, what?  The coupe gasps and dies.  “Eh?” says Vince and “Uh?” says Vola, as Tink pilots them to a halt on the shoulder.  Neither Tink nor Denise succeeds in reviving their car, Vola never owned one and knows beans, and Vince explains that, with everything modular and computerized, there's no point in his even lifting the hood.  There hasn't been other traffic in the past hour.  The four think.  A brown and olive slough stretches from the roadbed to a bank where dragonflies hover under fringes of Spanish moss, and a marsh wren moves through underbrush like a mouse.  The still water dimples. Attentive nostrils and eyes surface.  A bittern cries.

            Denise spreads a roadmap on the hood.  “The nearest town is Pinecrest on this loop road.  Tink, let's you and me bicycle back there and call Triple A.  We should get there in an hour, the land's flat.  Meantime, you guys relax.  Should you flag down somebody, maybe their emergency phone will work.”

            “Sounds good,” says Tink.  He shakes his head. “We had this buggy checked out in Baltimore.”  He bounces a ten-speed and then another.

            “Okay,” says Vola.

            “Okay, then,” says Vince.  “Watch your step back in there.”

            “Don't worry, Gramps.”

            Tink calls over his shoulder, “You two behave yourselves.” 

            Although the loop road needs paving, and a cloudburst forces the cyclists to shelter under a cabbage palm, still they roll into Pinecrest before three.  Curs snap at their heels past the few houses and trailers, the Pinecrest and Gatorhook taverns, and the grocery, until they stop at Jim's Exxon.  Jim is out catching turtles but his Lucy thinks she might be able to solve their problem.  “Let me lock up, and we'll take my tow truck just in case.  You'uns can lash your bikes to her.  There's room in the cab for all three of us'uns.”

            As ancient thin Lucy coaxes her wrecker back through the village Tink remarks, “We just came from another trailer park, on the Gulf coast.  But it didn't have houses, and it was bigger.”

            “More law abiding too I'll allow.”  Lucy waves to a friend traipsing out of the Gatorhook.  “Maybe more bushytailed too, but that's neither here nor there.  Whoo-ee, though, used to be, you'uns show up here on a Sattidy night, you'd be lucky to get away walking.  County jail's three hundred miles away by road.  We had critters wouldn't come out of the swamp until they heard jigging and smelled sour mash, and they brought their heat.”

            “Heat?” asks Denise.

            “That's right, sugar pie.  Possum guns, Sattidy night specials, every kind.  Not one in ten with a permit.  The ‘Glades is quieter now, but I still packs heat on this stretch.”

            “Where did you say the county jail is?” inquires Tink.

            “County seat.  Key West, Florida.  Posse'd forget who they was after.  Okay, here's the Trail.  That must be you'uns's wheels up there.  Don't know if I'd'a'  left her unattended, but I reckon there weren't much option.”

            “Uh,” says Tink, “she wasn't unattended.”

            “Where could they be?” asks Denise.  All listen to the silent swamp.

            “Let me toot,” says Lucy.

            The wrecker's blast flushes a marsh wren across the slough. It flutters a few feet and then drops back into undergrowth. Nearer, nostrils and eyes sink beneath the surface of the opaque water.  On the front seat of the runabout Vola sits up, rubbing her neck.  “Vince?”

            In the back seat Vince sits up and stretches.  “Caught me napping.  Well, well, look if those hot dog youngsters didn't bring Triple A.”

            “Ain't Triple A, Mister,” says Lucy leaning in the window, “but I may be able to cure what ails you howsomever.”  While Tink returns the bicycles to their carrier, Lucy spends a few minutes under the hood and then says, “Try her now.”  The engine springs to life.  “Looky here,” Lucy says, “nearest I can explain, she needed more air.  The carburetor had got discombobulated.  Now shove that wallet right back where you pulled it.  You can buy me a drink at the Gatorhook if you're ever back this way.”  She nudges Vola with an elbow.  “He looks spry, but you needn't worry.  A drink's all I meant.  Where you'uns headed?”

            “County seat,” says Denise.  “We'll tell the sheriff not to lose any sleep about this end of the county.”

            “Shoot, I reckon they got the sheriff sweeping floors at a money laundry down there now.  If I was you'uns I'd keep my eyes peeled in the Keys.  Bye.”

            With Denise at the wheel the group sets off once again east on the Tamiami Trail.  By the time they reach Greater Miami a dome of light is forming over the city, brighter than the ones over Baltimore and Tampa, and more colorful and restless with its roving searchlights.  Salsa and cumbia, merengue and rap, and here reggae, hip-hop, and tango, and now calypso and junkanoo float through alleys and streets and under freeways.  Since accommodations may be uncertain to the south, best pull in somewhere here for the night.  The Noches Incantadas under a Bacardi billboard looks inexpensive, and the second-story rooms should be safe.