“You carry a rubber duck around?” asked Cheyenne.
“A close second behind the cowbell.” He heaved the yellow toy far out into the water.
They all watched it splash, then rotate in a wide but tightening circle until it was violently sucked under.
“Ta-da!” said Serge.
“Uh, you do realize you just littered,” said Cheyenne.
“What? Oh, shit! I usually play with it in the tub, so there’s rarely difficulty retrieving it. I wasn’t thinking.” Serge covered his face with his hands. “This negates my whole moment. I must atone.” He ran back along the bank and stared at the water and waited. Finally, a rubber duck popped to the surface inside the lock. He cupped hands around his mouth. “Hey, you in the boat! I need a big favor! I just accidentally littered because I was watching water like a house cat. See that rubber duck about to float by? If you could just snag the sucker, it would center my karma . . . Thanks.” Serge wiped his forehead. “Whew! Another close one! . . . Back to the car!”
They drove a short distance until three people were standing beside a Plymouth, watching Serge standing proudly atop a small hill.
“And this is one of the fabulous Ortona mounds, believed to have been created seventeen hundred years ago by the Calusa, who were the busy bees of early Florida, also digging a network of navigable canals . . . Back to the car!”
Another short drive. Serge leaped from the Plymouth. “You’ve been properly warmed up, so here it is! But first look around and let the context sink in: nothing, deserted, not even cars on the road. The closest thing to anything is that remote and idle quarry we passed on the way in. And I can’t get enough of it! Dig!” Serge walked fifty yards out into a roadside field that was blanketed in yellow. He called back to the gang: “Florida, literally the Land of Flowers, and all these beautiful babies around me are the state’s official wildflower, coreopsis.” He stretched out his arms and began spinning joyously amid the blooms. “‘The hills are alive with the sound of—’ . . . whoa, getting a little dizzy again.” He staggered back to the road. “And now for our feature presentation.”
Serge opened the Plymouth’s trunk for his gravestone-rubbing supplies. A brief hike followed. “This is the Ortona Cemetery. It’s hard to imagine now with all the surrounding emptiness, but for a few days in 1928, this was one of the busiest spots in the state. That year’s hurricane was so devastating that it required three mass graves, including this last one.” He placed his oversize sheet of paper against a historical marker and began rubbing. “We’re back in Zora country! Can you dig it?”
“Uh . . .” said Kyle. “This has been an . . . interesting day.”
“This is nothing,” said Serge. “I’m getting a familiar tingle in my bones. That means the biggest day of this entire tour is about to dawn and blow your hat off! Come on! . . .”
Chapter 36
West Palm Beach
Captain Crack Nasty grabbed a stuffed wahoo by the tail and ripped it off the wall. He smashed it over and over against the edge of his desk until it was almost dust.
His treasure business was turning to shit. The losing streak had reached six wreck sites that he had been sure would pay off like slot machines. All he had to show for it was another cannonball. Some of his workers left in frustration, and the rest found a way back to prison.
He fell in his chair and grabbed a bottle and fumed. He began thinking of an older “can’t miss” treasure site. The one that had slipped through his fingers.
Crack Nasty had indeed gotten away with that ugly business out at the lake with those three young men. Four years had quickly passed without a knock on his door from the cops.
But he had also screwed himself.
Pahokee was too small a town, and he had been too visible. If he wanted to keep getting away with the killings, he had to stay extremely clear of the area. Dammit! Why did he let emotions make business decisions? And after the homework he’d put in. He had been so close he could taste it. He grabbed a nautical map, out of habit, to look for another offshore site. “What’s the point!” He threw it and grabbed the bottle instead.
The phone rang.
“Hello? . . . No, I don’t know who this is. . . . Been a long time? You said to call and you’d pay? If you say so. . . . What do you mean, ‘prepare for happiness’? . . . What! Seriously? I’ll be there this afternoon . . .”
Captain Crack pulled the magnetic door sign off his pickup truck, kicked caution to the curb, and headed west into sugar country.
Bells jingled extra hard as Crack burst into the pawnshop. “When did it come in?”
The owner stuck a clarinet on a shelf. “A few weeks ago, but I couldn’t find your business card until this morning.” He reached into the display case for a coin dated 1911.
Crack held it to his face as waves of dormant greed resurfaced. “Who sold it?”
“Young girl from the local high school.” The owner pulled out a ledger book. “Her name was Chris something . . . Yeah, here it is. For whatever reason I didn’t get her address, but she plays for the football team.” He scribbled on a sheet of paper.
Crack laid a stack of hundreds on the counter and snatched the coin. “Remember . . .”
“I know. You were never here.”
Bells jingled.
The owner shook his head. “I will never understand white people.”
Raising Cane
The gold Plymouth swung down under the lake and passed a welcome sign: America’s Sweetest Town.
“This is it,” said Serge. “Clewiston. Epicenter of Florida’s sugar industry. Here we begin our exploration of the southern lake culture, moving on to South Bay, then swinging northeast along the shore. See the plumes of smoke dotting the horizon, as well as these recently burned black fields we’re passing?”
“We’re familiar with the harvesting process,” said Kyle. Still, it was always a sight, and he and Cheyenne leaned toward the window.
“Then I’ll tell Coleman,” said Serge. An elbow. “Coleman, you awake?”
“Just resting my eyelids. They’ve been going all day.”
“Look alive. We’re in a hallowed place.” He startled everyone by swinging into a convenience store at the last second, and running for the far wall.
Coleman caught up. “Coffee. What a surprise.”
Serge shook a small packet and ripped it open. “Know what I’m pouring in my coffee?”
“Sugar?”
“History!” He tore open a second packet. “And since I’m in Clewiston, I need a second helping of heritage. From the molasses and rum trade routes to modern-day Florida, the sugar industry has sparked economy and controversy. Back to the car!”
Moments later, the quartet stood quietly in the middle of a large, gleaming space.
“Have to hand it to you,” said Cheyenne. “You sure can pick ’em. This is incredible.”
“The Clewiston Inn? Easy call.” Serge swept an arm through the air. “Now this is a lobby! Other lobbies today are sterile nightmares that disagree with my colon: a few chairs, artificial flowers, rack of tourist pamphlets, and the counter where they lay out the free breakfast, which has been reduced to a plastic bin of Froot Loops where you have to turn a crank like a gumball machine. And then strictly at ten a.m., they actually lock up the Froot Loops! Will the madness never end? But not here! I can’t get enough of a lobby that is a virtual church of varnished dark-wood walls, with the original mail slots behind the vintage counter, antique sofas and bookshelves with more old stuff that makes you want to leave your room just to sit in the middle of bygone days. Check out the hotel’s preserved switchboard next to the fireplace, with the old cables and everything. And this coffee table over here is a glass display case. See those shiny metal things in there that look like a baseball catcher’s shin guards, except if they’d come off a medieval suit of armor? Those are the old sugar cutters’ leg protectors, because back before mechanized harvesting they were working so fast and swinging such sharp machetes to slice down the stalks that they kept hitting their legs, which was no good for anybody. And next to the protector things is one of the ancient cane blades. Notice the size and width of that bastard. If I ever have to attend a machete fight, that’s what I’m bringing.” He marched back to the receptionist’s desk, where they’d just checked in.