Then one day Chris came home from school and found that someone had stolen her milk crate.
“Chris? Chris?” said Coach Calhoun. “Did you hear me? Have you ever been bullied?”
“Huh, what?” She raised her chin from her fists. “I’m sorry. I drifted there for a second.”
“I was asking about bullies.”
“Oh no. Not really.”
“I’ve never seen a look like that in your eyes before,” said Calhoun. “You almost scared me.”
“Just tired.”
“I heard they call you Milk Crate, not out of affection. And they stole yours.”
“No big deal. I got another.”
“Okay, if you say so . . . We need to start getting ready for the game.”
“You got it, Coach.” Chris went to a storage locker for the paper cups.
The game went pretty much as expected, a rout by Pahokee. Reggie was awarded the game ball.
An hour later, the last of the team dribbled out of the locker room in street clothes, laughing and recounting key plays that now loomed larger in their imaginations. Coach Calhoun emerged and headed for his car.
He stopped. The field and stands were empty now, just a single small person at the far end repeatedly trying to kick a football through the uprights.
One of the field maintenance people walked past the coach, opened the main power box and threw a large circuit breaker, turning off the stadium lights. Chris just teed up again and kicked one in the dark.
“Excuse me,” Calhoun said to the maintenance guy. “Could you turn the lights back on?”
Chapter 18
The Atlantic Coast
Florida has a lot of cities and towns with fort in the name. Given everything else, why not?
Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Fort Meade, Fort Lonesome, Fort White, Fort Walton Beach. Tampa used to be Fort Brooke, and Ocala was Fort King. And there are more than a hundred other well-known actual forts, many still in existence, for which communities are not named. As late as the early twentieth century, the Sunshine State was still frontier country. While people in Manhattan attended operas and Yankee games, many Floridians were, well, Seminoles, the unconquered people, living down in the Glades.
A gold Plymouth Satellite revved south down coastal Highway A1A, through one of the last long, relatively empty and non-berserk stretches of Florida seaside where you can hear yourself think, and that voice is whispering not to take it for granted. Driving by Patrick Air Force Base, through Indialantic, Melbourne Beach, Sebastian Inlet, Wabasso Beach, past the Navy SEAL Museum before turning inland at the jetties.
Into Fort Pierce.
The city is located on the east coast of Florida about sixty miles north of West Palm Beach, named after the army fort built during the Second Seminole War in 1938, which in turn was named for Colonel Benjamin Pierce, brother of the fourteenth president of the United States, for what that’s worth. Fort Pierce is the home of the A. E. Backus Gallery, in honor of the famous natural-landscape artist, and birthplace of the Florida Highwaymen painters movement. But in more recent years, as more and more people discover the past, it’s developed a growing reputation for something else.
Zora Neale Hurston was a black woman traveling Florida in the 1930s. Not the best time for that combination in the Jim Crow South. Yet she carried it off with such class and dignity that you can only genuflect. She was a novelist, historian, anthropologist and a standout in the Harlem Renaissance scene. Or that’s how one avid Floridian put it.
“Stetson Kennedy was often at the wheel of the car,” said Serge, at the wheel of the gold Plymouth heading west on Avenue D. “The state’s connective tissue I spoke of earlier. Rawlings to Stetson to Zora. She roamed the back roads with him, preserving local history and chronicling her times, kind of like us.”
The Plymouth turned north as Serge chugged a travel mug of coffee. “Zora is often associated with Eatonville, one of the first self-governing African American communities, which used to be north of Orlando, and is now engulfed by it. They have a festival for her each year.” The car continued a short distance until easing to a stop at 1734 Avenue I. “But Hurston spent her last years here.” An arm pointed.
Coleman looked oddly out the window. “That tiny-ass house?”
“Realtors prefer to call it cozy.” Serge got out of the car with his mug. “While Zora was well known and respected in literary circles, her body of work never really gained traction with the general public until well after her death in 1960. In fact, Zora lived out her last decade in destitute obscurity. She taught briefly at a local school, wrote a few articles for the local paper, even worked as a motel maid. But her undaunted pride and individual spirit never waned. Near the end she wrote: ‘I have made phenomenal growth as a creative artist . . . If I die without money, somebody will bury me.’”
They walked across a tidy lawn toward a modest light blue stucco house with a flat roof. Couldn’t be more than five hundred square feet.
“This was her last home.” Serge stopped to absorb invisible rays coming off it. “Sometimes history puts the right person at the right place at the right time. Just after Hurston died, a sheriff’s deputy named Pat Duval happened to be driving by here when he noticed someone burning trash in a big oil drum. He stopped to inquire, and the man said he was disposing of stuff from the house. Now, the deputy happened to be one of the few people at the time who had read Hurston and knew her worth. He quickly put out the fire, saving invaluable manuscripts and personal papers. Doesn’t that spin your derby?”
Coleman was paying attention to something else. “What’s with that big sign?”
“Official marker for the house, stop number three of eight on the Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail,” said Serge. “The city of Fort Pierce rightfully stepped up to honor Hurston and educate the masses, which I’m totally down with.”
“Then why that look on your face?”
Serge finished his coffee in a long swig. “I like to dig up these off-the-path places on my own, and the sign makes it look like I cheated. But I knew about this place before the sign, I swear!” He grabbed Coleman by the front of his shirt. “After I’m gone, you’re the only one who can set the record straight!”
“Sure thing,” said Coleman. “My shirt . . .”
“Sorry.” Serge released him. “Do you think I’m over-reacting?”
“Who am I to judge?”
“I’ve been thinking of getting a service animal,” said Serge. “Or switching to decaf.”
“Service animal?” said Coleman. “You’re not disabled.”
“Oh, how wrong you are,” said Serge. “I’m crazy, whack job, nut-bar, basketcase, Looney Tunes, Froot Loops, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, screws loose, not playing with a full deck, batshit, bats in the belfry, off my rocker, off the deep end, out where the buses don’t run. Stop me when I’ve made my point.”
“No, I get it. I already knew but didn’t want to say anything.” Coleman whistled. “Wow, you’re really admitting that to yourself?”
“Of course. What’s the big deal?” Serge got out his camera. “Everyone’s a little bit crazy, but my case is state-of-the-art. Usually it’s a blessing, endowing me with supernatural powers of free-range thinking: Pavlov’s dog, pinecones, softer bath tissue, covalent molecules, Pyrrhic victories, Lou Gehrig, nuance, the induction cooktop, the Yalta Conference, rationalization, pasteurization, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Lemon Pledge, the number fifty-six, ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ opening products to void warranty, Hot Pockets, rainfall at the airport, Aztec beating hearts, osmosis, buy-one-get-one, frequent having to go, Netflix original series . . .”