Florida Man
This is a work of fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Tom Cooper
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Hardback ISBN 9780593133316
Ebook ISBN 9780593133323
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Lee Ofman for permission to reprint “Miami Dolphins No. 1” by Lee Ofman, copyright © 1972 by Lee Ofman. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Zak Tebbal
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Characters
Tropical Storm: A Falling Meteorite of a Man (1963)
Category One: Grotto (1980)
The Sinkhole
The Florida Man Mystery House
The Skull
The Pervy Mermaid
Henry Yahchilane
Midnight Jaunt
Grotto
Grotto Closed
Back from Rennes
Riling the Beehive
I Found a Head
Spring Break
Cool Papa Lemon
Poinciana
In the Clink
Nganga Palo Moyombe
Like a Grape
Sprung
Microfiche
Eddie
Melee
Chocolate Buddha
Digging a Hole
Big Gorilla Fireworks
Kaboom
A Surprise Package
The Mental Census
The Sea Cave Arcade
Down in the Hole
Lasso the Pope
Give Me Your Belt Buckle
Category Two: Age of the Refugee (1981–1984)
Rum Jungle
Night of a Thousand Casks
The Golden Bridge
Stay in One Place
o-x-nxw-w-ver-var-legua 1/10 o-x-swxw-ver-var-hasta x
Shit on a Shoeheel
Boston Bluto
Complaint Box
1983
An Unexpected Reunion
Fort Lauderdale
Somewhere in the Everglades
Fish Heads
Santeria
Pick Your Battles
Doggy Doctor
Big Cypress
Independence Day
Mr. Clownfish
Love It or Leave It, Herman
Black Hair Falling
Boris Karloff
Another Havana
Slaughter on Goosefuck Avenue
Category Three: Catface (1985–1986)
Holiday Road
Excursions
Inferno
Big Cat Gas
Wigging
The Big Bad Python Rodeo
Melon Head
Operation Tarantula (Improbable Palaces)
Mr. Video
Der Kommissar
Dread Envelopes
The Plane, the Plane (What Would an Assassin Do?)
Phone Call from Hades
Speed Trap
Wicked Pissah Category Six Three-Pronged Shocker!
A Flock of Flamingos
The Bucket Brigade
Room Service
Were It a Different Season
A Blast from the Past
The Cat and the Mouse and the Lighthouse
Category Four: Wild Black Yonder (1986–1999)
Mild to Medium
Other Breaking News
Wall of Voodoo (Catface Redux)
Visiting Hours
Calusa Causeway
1988
Cracker Lazarus
Purple Marlin Hotel
Grouper Sandwich
Black Rubber Bag
1989
A Very Henry Yahchilane Christmas (Chateauneuf-Du-Pape)
A New Year
Kraken
Mr. Why
His Tours Changed
Butterfly
Thirty
Mariposa, Surfer Rosa
Hurricane Andrew
This Is It, Eddie
Deep Sea Fishing
Meet Me at the Beach House
Walk It Off
A Very Henry Yahchilane Thanksgiving
Zest
Ebenezer McFornication
Her Name Was Gabby
Whomp
Sugar Cubes
Category Five: Aphra aka Landfall Imminent (2008–2019)
Strange Weather
Aphra
SOS (the Phone, the Phone)
Get Out Now
The Serpentarium
The Terrarium
Butterbean
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Works Consulted
Other Titles
About the Author
Solastalgia: a longing for the world as it should be, for nature when there’s no nature left.
—Robert Macfarlane, from The Lost Words
We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea whether it is to sail or to watch it we are going back from whence we came.
—President John F. Kennedy
We are the ageless, we are teenagers
We are the focused out of the hopeless
We are the last chance, we are the last dance
—Public Image Ltd., “One Drop”
Levels rising on the island / Shows no sign of soon subsiding.
—David Berman, as Purple Mountains, “Snow Is Falling in Manhattan”
There is no time.
—Lou Reed, “There Is No Time”
Suspect every man. Ask no questions. Settle your own quarrels. Never steal from an Islander. Stick by him, even if you do not know him. Shoot quick, when your secret is in danger. Cover your kill.
—Old Conch saying
Miami has the Dolphins
The Greatest Football Team
We take the ball from goal to goal
Like no one’s ever seen
We’re in the air, we’re on the ground
We’re always in control
And when you say Miami
You’re talking Super Bowl
’Cause we’re the…
Miami Dolphins,
Miami Dolphins,
Miami Dolphins Number One.
Yes we’re the…
Miami Dolphins,
Miami Dolphins,
Miami Dolphins Number One
—Lee Ofman, “Miami Dolphins Fight Song,” 1972
Characte
rs
MAIN PLAYERS
REED CROWE, proprietor of the Florida Man Mystery House and Emerald Island Inn
HENRY YAHCHILANE, ex-military, semi-retired, jack-of-all-trades
HEIDI KARAVAS, painter and art curator, ex-wife of Reed Crowe
WAYNE WADE (aka Cool Papa Lemon, aka Mr. Video), factotum, Reed Crowe’s childhood friend
HECTOR MORALES (aka Catface), Mariel Boatlift survivor, assassin
EDDIE MALDONADO (aka the Coca-Cola Kid), ersatz boatswain, student
OTHER PLAYERS
ANDREW FREDERICK KRUMPP, proprietor of Red, White and Blue Liquor
BARRY BOONE, pyrotechnics expert, Big Gorilla Fireworks
CHARLEY ALEXOUPOBULOS, hardware store owner
CHILL NORTON, owner of The Pervy Mermaid
FONG, attraction owner
GABBY VU, physician
JERRY VOGEL, yachtsman, playboy
LEON CAESAR ARANGO, Cuban refugee
LILY CROWE (aka Otter), Heidi Karavas and Reed Crowe’s daughter
MARIPOSA ARANGO, Cuban refugee
MARLON ARANGO, Cuban refugee
MOE REYNOLDS, ornithologist, Myrtle’s girlfriend
MYRTLE BREEDLOVE, mailperson
NATASHA YAHCHILANE, Henry Yahchilane’s daughter, financier
NATE STERNBERG, deputy officer
NINA ARANGO, Cuban refugee
PETROWSKI, deputy officer
SEYMOUR YAHCHILANE, Henry Yahchilane’s son, professor of art therapy
SHELLY CROWE, ex–Weeki Wachee mermaid, Reed Crowe’s mother
ZIGGY SCHAFFER, sheriff of Emerald City
TROPICAL STORM
A Falling Meteorite of a Man
(1963)
THE BOY CAME INSIDE THE GIRL.
Reed Crowe rolled off Heidi Karavas with a final shudder and moan and lay next to her in the gunwale of the rocking aluminum skiff. Some wee morning hour, the August air sticky with heat. The planetarium of the Florida sky, a thousand score of stars strong, glimmered down. The vast Everglades was stretched in every direction around them, miles upon miles of black swamp and saw grass hammocks and mangrove thickets. And to the west on the distant shore, like votives arrayed along an altar, shined the lights of Emerald City, town of Crowe’s birth, the beach houses and shanties and houseboats with windows aglow.
The boy and girl were still catching their breath when Crowe said, “Puerto Rico.”
Heidi asked Crowe if he pulled out in time. He told her he did. The girl asked again. Crowe reassured her. And he was almost certain. Ninety-five percent certain. Still convincing himself, he said, “You hear me? Puerto Rico. How ’bout Puerto Rico?”
“You’re drunk,” Heidi said. She stood, hand on the gunwale, sweaty skin separating from the cold metal bottom of the boat with a tape-peeling sound. She picked up her mint-green panties. Slipped a thick shining thigh through a leghole, slipped the other leg through.
To the boy she was a vision. Her fulsome Greek figure, her wide hips. Her dark curly hair, sun-kissed from a summer almost past. Her blouse embroidered with little yellow and red flowers, the cotton startlingly white against her olive skin.
Crowe loved her.
She was seventeen, he on the cusp of eighteen.
In 1960 they’d met during Hurricane Donna, in Emerald City’s hurricane shelter, a repurposed gymnasium. She was from south of Tarpon Springs, visiting her grandparents, a girl from a Greek sponging family, and right away Crowe knew he had to see her again. As soon as possible. And before Donna had scythed across the state, he asked her on a date.
Flaming Star with Elvis Presley.
Three years later here they were, Heidi asking what the hell was in Puerto Rico. She settled next to him, pillowed her sweaty cheek against his chest.
They smelled like each other. Briny animal teenage lust.
Crowe popped a match and lit a cigarette. In the brief flare of light his green eyes were smirking. “Pamphlet in the mail the other day. A sign. Selling nice little houses on the beach out there, for cheap. Little huts.”
“You wanna live in a hut now,” Heidi said.
“Nice huts. Place you could live like a king. Dollar a day.”
“You’d die in two weeks.”
They often played this game after lovemaking, talking about where they’d run away. Fantasies, pipe dreams.
He had no money. She had no money.
He had no plans except far-fetched.
In May, the destination was Rio de Janeiro. In June, Isla Margarita.
Somewhere far, far away from their warring families.
About this they agreed.
Heidi’s clan, the Karavases, was leery of Crowe and his kin. Rightfully so. The history of the Crowes, among the first homesteaders in this outpost so far-flung in the jungly reaches of Florida, was long and sordid.
To the Karavas family, devout Catholics that they were, Crowe was guilty by association,
By blood, by birthright.
Wherever they ended up, the place had to be close to the water.
They both loved the water.
And they both loved this place, Emerald Island. The only reason why they’d leave was their families.
Now Heidi asked Crowe, “You know one lick of Spanish?” Knowing damn well he didn’t. Heidi, fluent in two languages, English and Greek. Three, counting the conversational Spanish she picked up from all the radio stations down south in Miami. When the weather was right and when the signal was strong, you could pick up the signals this far up along the Gulf Coast.
“Way you learn’s living in the country,” Crowe said, with as much authority as he could muster.
“I like how your voice sounds when I put my ear like this. The rumble.”
Night creatures—insects and frogs and alligators—babbled around them.
A mosquito lit on Heidi’s knee and she slapped it. She dipped her hand in the water, swished it, flicked off the drops. She wiped her fingers dry in Crowe’s hair.
“Hey, goddamn it,” he said. Kidding, leaning away. He smacked one of her fat brown ass cheeks. God, did he love her tan lines. Her ass.
She bit softly into his neck.
Crowe settled back and he went on. “Forcing yourself. Like throwing little kids in the water. Teaching them how to swim.”
“You been throwing kids into pools?”
“Hola. Bueno. Coma estas.” Crowe drew the last drag of his cigarette, put it out in an empty can of Hamm’s beer. Little hiss.
“Nasty cigarette,” Heidi said sleepily.
“I’ll dive for sponges. Scrape barnacles off yachts. Empty slop buckets. Lots of possibilities.”
Heidi cocked her head, held up a finger.
“Juggling,” Crowe said.
“Shush,” Heidi said. “You hear that?”
Crowe hushed.
They listened.
Now they both could hear it. The put-put-put of a small engine, a mile-high mechanical cough.
The put-put-put grew closer, louder.
And now they could see it, a small two-prop plane coming toward them, quickly shedding altitude. They could see the flashing beacon on the tail. The jerking navigation lights on the tips of the wings.
Then flames engulfed the fuselage. Metal shrieked and ripped.
A rudder broke free as the craft fell farther yet, closer yet.
A fulminating dragon in its death spiral.
Crowe saw something shear loose from the plane. Another part of the craft, he thought at first. But no, the flaming part was moving, screaming.
A man was dropping from the sky headfirst. Like a daredevil. His arms were pinwheeling, his legs scissoring, his body flailing like he was fending off a frenzy o
f hornets.
And then about a hundred yards away the falling man walloped the water, landing in the fringe of weeds circling a mangrove islet.
Still the plane spiraled, now so low and close Crowe could feel the heat on his face, the sting of fumes in his eyes.
Without thinking and without warning Crowe hooked his arm around Heidi’s waist and he tossed them overboard. All he heard was her little crying yelp before they went under clinging to each other.
Then the water jolted massively as if meteor-struck.
A roar of sound. An underwater supernova of light.
Crowe and Heidi flailed against the undertow.
They surfaced, gagging and retching against smoke. The wreckage of the plane flamed around them. Gobs of fiberglass and plastic so hot the little fires sputtered green and purple and blue.
Several yards away their capsized boat bounced on the big black waves. They frog-paddled back to it. Crowe flipped the boat over and pulled himself in. He took Heidi’s hands and hoisted her out of the water and they sat gasping for breath.
“I wanna go home,” said Heidi Karavas. Her voice was pleading, her eyes pure devastation. Like Crowe she was shivering and soaked.
Crowe told Heidi, “We gotta go over there.” He didn’t like how his voice sounded. Scared, boyish.
“No, no, no.” She was sobbing. She gripped Crowe’s arm, her fingers digging. “Just let the police.”
“People,” Crowe told her. “Never find this place again.”
“Don’t be stupid. Don’t be crazy.”
“Oh man. People. They’re people, look. No, don’t. Don’t look at them.”
“Are they dead?”
Crowe didn’t answer.
Heidi asked Crowe again.
“Yeah, yeah, they are.”
It took him several minutes to oar the distance to the wreckage and he did it alone. Heidi would not look. Could not look. She had her knees drawn up and her arms circled around her legs, her head hung down.
When they drew closer he saw the bodies in the water. Three men, charred and smoking. Dead.
“What’s that smell?” Heidi cried.
Crowe didn’t answer.
The nearest man lay belly-up in a stand of cattails, half his face scalded off so his jawbone showed through. Two other men bobbed in the water near the plane, the flesh of the bodies still aflame, their limbs skewed in angles anatomically impossible. Rag dolls twisted amok.