The Promise of Cedar Key

Author Don Then says Robinson has a career writing, “…about the human condition, about all the magical moments in life that make us who we are. In this area he shines.”

Born in Florida and raised in Kentucky, Rick Robinson is the author of nine books, writes regular political humor columns, is often heard on talk radio, and plays electric mandolin in an Irish punk rock band. His novel, Alligator Alley, was the Grand Prize Winner at the Florida Book Festival and he has won international writing awards for his fiction. Robinson and his wife, Linda, currently reside in Arlington, Virginia.

The Promise of Cedar Key

Award-winning author, Rick Robinson, takes his readers to Cedar Key, Florida, where successful novelist, Bobby Wade, must put aside the hustle and bustle of a writer’s life in New York City just long enough to fulfill a promise he made long ago. In the few days he must spend in the small coastal town, Wade faces demons he never knew existed and would rather drink them away than fight.

a novel

A coming of age novel for people still waiting to do so.

Rick Robinson

Rick Robinson

The Promise of Cedar Key Rick Robinson

A coming of age novel for people still waiting to do so

Publisher Page

an imprint of Headline Books, Inc.

Terra Alta, WV

The Promise of Cedar Key

by Rick Robinson copyright ©2017 Rick Robinson All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents, except where noted otherwise, are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any other resemblance to actual people, places or events is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any other form or for any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage system, without written permission from Publisher Page.

To order additional copies of this book or for book publishing information, or to contact the author: Headline Books, Inc. P.O. Box 52 Terra Alta, WV 26764 www.HeadlineBooks.com Tel: 304-789-3001 Email: mybook@headlinebooks.com Publisher Page is an imprint of Headline Books ISBN 13: 9781946664099 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017941759

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To my friends, Gary Beatrice and Mark Morris I hope you enjoy it.

“Gentle rain falls on me, And all life folds back into the sea, We contemplate eternity, Beneath the vast indifference of Heaven.”

—Warren Zevon

Chapter One “Well, Old Girl, you used to reprimand me because I saw everything in black and white.”

Only two years older than me, I nicknamed her Old Girl on the day we met. It always pissed her off, but calling someone by a moniker they despise is just one of my many charms. I have a way of beating a dead horse until it seems like a charismatic trait. I inherited it from my father I suppose, who could not pass a store or road sign without pronouncing it phonetically. I was in my teens before I realized old furniture and knickknacks were not called ann-tee-cues. She liked Dad. “Now, here I am nearly sixty, my thinning hair is grey and I’m seeing a range of colors I never anticipated back when we were kids.”

The thought of colors I should not be seeing at this age suddenly infiltrated my brain like an acid trip. Her piercing brown eyes, like always melting away whatever emotional barrier I set between us, were working their magic. Her lightly tanned skin so inviting. The bright hues of her beads and hippie scarfs.

Having once known each other so intimately, I spent the last few days wondering how I would react to being in her bedroom for the first time in decades. Her full dark lips 7

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set in a smile still looked as sensual. I felt uncomfortable, but oddly aroused, like our first night together. Just like that first night, I knew nothing was going to happen, but I was still breathless with anticipation. Damn, after all these years, she still has a way with me. I felt the muscles tense up in my shoulders like a knot and my heartbeat stepped up a notch.

“It happens to all of us,” came the response, the voice soft and melodic to my brain—like a supplication.

“I guess age does that,” I muttered, staring mindlessly at the floor with a slight degree of amusement at my own predicament. “Colors. There are days when I’d kill for something as simple as black and white.”

I am hard pressed to wonder why I remain so mentally captivated by a woman separated by distance for so many years, my bond to her never faltering. Inspiration is fleeting. This singular moment caused me to wonder if my attraction was bordering on obsession. No court orders. Yet. Realizing she had aged much better than me, anticipation turned to envy. “You still look so much better than me,” I stammered through an imp-like grin.

“But then again, you always were the one drawing looks of others. Not me. The only people looking at me were wondering how I was on a date with someone as pretty as you.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re just as I remember and just as I had hoped.”

“I call bullshit,” I said, nose wrinkled in utter disgust.

Self-doubt and inner reflection are treacherous exercises in the presence of an old love. Bad memories softened through the passage of time, tempting the suppression of an internal dialogue on how it might have been. Fearing 8

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answers to those questions nearly kept me away. Yet, here I stood.

“We could still be in college for all I care.”

I smiled at the thought of our college days and warmed to the idea of being with her again. “There’s a dangerous time in a man’s life when he starts to believe his own press clippings,” I continued, grabbing the love handles just above my belt. “Remember how skinny I was back in college?”

“How could I forget those days?” There was a pause.

“They were the best of my life.”

“You’d fix me those awful God-awful protein shakes in a futile attempt to make me gain weight. Remember?”

It was a rhetorical question I asked in a feeble attempt to calm my own nerves at where I stood, not expecting an answer. “All I ever got was constipated.”

She used to laugh at my jokes. Silence. “Now I can’t seem to lose any weight,” I said, pacing in a half-step fashion as I talked, another annoying habit.

“One day I woke up and the skinny jeans just didn’t fit anymore. Drifting backwards never became an option.

Five pounds a year kind of sneaks up on you and suddenly you find yourself buying Dad jeans to hide the effect of gravity on the belly.”

“Women understand the concept when buying bras.”

I laughed out loud before continuing. “I fucking hate gravity,” I confided, clearly the only one now adding to the one-sided conversation.

“About two years ago,” I said, turning to escape her intense stare, “is when gravity really became my sworn enemy—my first fall. Every man dreads the moment they become their father. And with one tumble to the pavement, it happened to me.”

“Ouch.”

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“Funny how it transpires,” I said, sucking air into my lungs. “Years ago, a call to my Old Man always started with a discussion of his latest health dilemma.”

“Your dad was always so nice to me.”

“He always liked you, ya know,” I tossed in. And for no apparent reason added, “He wanted us to be together when everyone else thought it was a bad idea.” I was just making up shit now to cover for my unease. I needed to jump back to the topic at hand.

“Now my health is tops on the calls to my friends,” I returned the conversation back to me. “Telling them about my health elicits the same emotional investment I spent on my Pop. I’m not sure what hurt most on the first fall—my hip, my head or my dignity.”

I waited. She used to show me such empathy. This time a reference to my own self-doubt brought silence.

“Gravity, Old Girl,” my voice softening like a prayer to a God I never understood. “My cursed adversary. Once I ignored it. Now it runs my life. What the hell happened to me in between?”

I waited. She used to have all my answers. Silence.

“But just like always, I’m rambling,” I sighed, gnawing at my lower lip. Closing my eyes, I continued. “One thing that hasn’t changed about me. When I’m nervous, I ramble.”

Eyes open. Her smile so tempting. Those eyes defining a retained innocence I lost so long ago. Reaching out, I touched her face … but the frame on the picture was dusty. Well, it should be. No one had been in the bedroom for months.

“Gravity, Old Girl,” I sighed, wiping the grit from the tips of my fingers onto my pant leg. “I’m above the ground and you’re below it. How the hell did that happen?”

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Tears welled in my eyes pondering the answer. I always fantasized of being in Jane’s bed again—just one more time. But I’d waited too long for there to be any physical gratification for either of us. When I got the letter informing me of her illness, I never expected her to go so quickly. Through my own procrastination, there was no time for a reconciliation.

Leaving the bedroom, I began opening all the windows in the small house, my actions doing little to remove the stagnant smell of a Florida home closed-up for the winter. I could feel my sinuses slamming shut as I walked. Considering my options, I lit up a cigar as much for the fragrance as the stress relief. “Couples spend a lifetime falling in and out of love,” I pondered, as I blew out the first puff. “They fall out of ‘like’ only once. We walked away still liking each other. I think we were too impatient on the love.”

“Who am I kidding?” I snarled. “There was no ‘we’ decision. It was me. I was the one who opted for career over life in paradise.” Looking around, I added with sarcasm, “Such as it is.” From the letters she had written over the years, I had always pictured the house a bit bigger.

The small cypress wood home was not much larger than the college apartment we shared in our youth. “I got over falling out of love with you. I never reconciled leaving the one woman I truly liked.”

There was an old photo of Jane and me in front of the Phi Delt fraternity house—her piggyback, arms wrapped around my neck—both of us smiling as if we did not have a care in the world. In many ways she was forever trapped in my brain as a 22 year old coed with soft skin, beautiful eyes and an insatiable appetite for sex. Her aging never entered my mental process.

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“I always thought you’d be the one getting the call,” I said, picking up the photo. “I’m the one with bad lifestyle choices and too damn much stress. You were supposed to come for my earthly bon voyage party.”

Striking another match and lighting a candle on an end table, I paused. “Aw fuck, why am I even here?”

“Because I asked you,” sighed a soft voice. Imagining conversations with people was an annoying habit even to me at times.

“Snap out of it, boy,” I said, clapping my hands together as I walked into the living room. “Get these fucking voices out of your head. This whole adventure is merely temporary. Get appointed executor, sign some papers, do my duty and get the hell out of Cedar Key.” A smack to the back of the couch brought a small cloud of dust. “Note to self,” I mumbled. “Get someone in here to clean.”

I began surveying the walls determining the decorating style was best described as neo-hippie and included artwork I had sent her over the years to mask my own guilt at the failings of our relationship.

Then I saw it. The bookshelf on the wall behind the couch displaying pristine copies of my thirteen novels, painted rocks as bookends, looked like it was about to fall.

“I wonder if she even noticed there hasn’t been a decent book on this shelf for a couple of years,” I continued, pulling the books down one by one and stacking them on the end table. I opened the last book to the title page. Noticing the binding was unbroken, I read my hand-written inscription out loud. “Old Girl, Remember the promise. Love, Bobby Wade.” No need to read the others. The inscription was always the same.

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That’s why I’m here, not Jane’s Will or the legal stuff. It was that fucking promise. I slammed the book shut and tossed it on top of the others. More dust arose to settle on the books.

A heavy sigh reminded me I was tired. It had been a long day of airplane flights, missed connections and rental cars. Cedar Key is only three hours from the airport in Tampa, but is strategically located in the middle of nowhere. As I drove north and then west, each small town got sizably smaller. Billboards advertising gas prices were replaced by signs congratulating the local peewee football champs. And then for the last half hour there was absolutely nothing. Jane wrote one time she had come here “to escape it all” and the drive in to Cedar Key proved she accomplished her mission.

I cautiously opened the refrigerator expecting the smell of rotting food, but it was clean. The freezer contained only ice cube trays. I began exploring the cupboards. Opening one kitchen cabinet, I laughed when I saw an envelope with my name on it taped to a fresh bottle of Joseph Magnus bourbon.

No formal glassware to be found, I poured some bourbon into an old jelly jar with a cartoon figure on it. “I guess a proper cocktail glass would have been expecting too much, Old Girl,” I whispered. Raising my glass in a toast—no, a prayer—I took the first drink in one large gulp and poured a second shot before continuing my exploration, pontificating with the pace of my steps. I put the bottle and the unopened envelope on the coffee table.

“The thing is Old Girl, I’m at the point in life where a man reaches the stunning realization …” I paused and blew a cigar smoke ring toward the ceiling. Once the puff was as complete as the corny pregnant pause intended, I 13

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leaned back. “… his contemporaries are dying off quicker than he can keep up with. Mine sure are.”

“I’m spending a whole bunch of waking hours trying to figure out why,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, I know why they died. Alzheimer’s, heart, cancer, even had one go from Agent Orange. I know what you’re going to say, ‘all of us get there someday.’ That’s not the point. I’m searching for the significance of what preceded death.”

“Epiphanies take a while to build,” I murmured, sipping more bourbon. “The Enlightenment didn’t happen in a day. At least it didn’t happen in a day for Voltaire. That son-of-a-bitch made a career out of enlightening people.” I looked at the stack of books on the chair and flipped a cigar ash into a plate on the table.

“I should be so lucky.”

I looked at the red tip on my freshly de-ashed cigar, searching for an analogy. “The expectation of death is a controlled slow burn at first.” Silly, but it worked for my very limited audience—me. “At first the fire fighter will rationalize the flames as being a necessary evil of a chosen profession. Then the flames explode into something no longer containable.” I picked up the candle I had lit earlier.

“The flicker becomes a raging inferno. And it happens so fucking fast, there is hardly time to react. So many of my friends are dying so quickly, I have had little time to understand the significance of their death, let alone their lives.”

More bourbon.

“When we are young, death is tragic.” I spoke slowly but deliberately, trying to let my thoughts flow organically, not a tough proposition considering my circumstances and growing buzz. “The loss of a friend caused a dramatic reaction. Tears flow, prayers are offered and drunken curses thrown at the universe. But as quickly as the loss 14

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was felt, it was just as swiftly forgotten. Fearlessness is a characteristic hidden somewhere in DNA and, as it ages, delineates one generation from the next.”

“When I was barely sixteen,” I continued with the setting sun over Cedar Key pushing a cool briny breeze into the home, “the death of a kid from my church caused me inconsolable grief. My anger at God for stealing the life of one with so much yet to accomplish was based in some cosmic theory of universal fairness. At his funeral, our group of friends vowed to make his life matter. Yet, today I struggle to remember his name, his face lost in my memory long ago.”

“That really happened, Old Girl,” I said, swirling my bourbon in the glass before drinking. “I never told you about it. I don’t think I’ve told anyone ever.” My glass empty, I returned to the kitchen and flipped on a light.

“Someone’s been paying the electric bill,” I spoke into the emptiness of the little house.

“Anyway, I’ve come to justify my weathered indifference to his death as genetic rather than having a hard heart,” I said. “In my teens, death didn’t scare me because I was going to live forever. Like every other boy my age, I was invincible. I took risks with my body and mind. No one could touch me and I lived with a reckless abandon that today makes me alternate between shuddering and laughing.” I looked over again at the college photo of Jane and me. “That’s how I was when I met you.”

“I’m not sure when I quit getting angry about death.”

If I was being honest with a ghost, I might as well let it out. “The truth is, I quit yelling questions at God when I became afraid of the answers.”

“I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but one day I came to understand my angst with God stemmed from 15

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the lack of meaning in my own life. The death of a young writer was paralyzing when I realized someone who had lived less days than me had accomplished more with them. God shined a mirror on my rage and I didn’t like the reflection.”

“I suppose no one should ever be truly happy with what they accomplish in life until they quit breathing.

I simply get this feeling those other guys left knowing something I didn’t, something in my quest for the next 90,000 words, I missed. And I fear God is going to consider my life wasted because I never found it. I’ll show up at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter will tell me how much he liked the first couple of books, but quit reading when he figured out I had nothing in me other than formulaic love stories.”

“So, a couple of years back funerals started being accompanied by a lack of emotional response.” I looked at the stack of pristine books with the spines still unbroken.

“I guess that’s also about the time the words made their way to paper with the same lack of passion.”

“So, here I am. My contract says I have one book left to write.” I locked my hands behind my head and gazed at the floor. “But I’m not sure if I have anything left to say.”

I walked around, looking at the decorations on Jane’s walls. A brightly colored wood fish on the wall brought back a memory of Jane and me breaking into the college natatorium at midnight and skinny dipping, but left my thoughts as quickly as entering. The grin was the first genuine one I had smiled in weeks. Upon discovering she had framed an article about me from People magazine, my mood instantly darkened. Either because of the alcohol or my somber mood, I ripped the frame from the wall and tossed it on the chair with the books. It hit the 16

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arm of the chair, bounced to the floor, cracking the glass from corner to corner. “Good,” I groused. “I’m afraid that guy may be as dead as Jane.”

“See, there’s the point,” I said, raising my hands skyward. “Fear. True, boot shaking, uncontrollable fear usually trumps grief. As I push sixty, however, the death of a past love—you—becomes far more relevant to me because it’s personal.”

“And I take it personally, damn it all,” I paused, “maybe too much so. These days I oddly view the death of a friend with morbid curiosity, assessing my connection with the dearly departed through the lens of my own subjective prism that attempts to filter out the bad memories in favor of the good. Through other’s pain, I tend to romanticize my own past with them trying to add their value to my own life.”

“I wish it were about you,” I admitted embarrassingly.

“It isn’t. It’s about me.” I flopped on the couch, a dust cloud rising gently around me.

“Using my current age as a Vegas-like high/low, death is a reckoning of odds involving my own mortality. Each visitation I attend is a selfish gloat wracked with agony, guilt and glee all at the same time. With each roll of the eternal dice, odds get greater the next time it’ll be me.

The law of averages is catching up. And when my worries are lost to the ages, some other lucky son-of-a-bitch gets to do the visitation happy dance.”

“But you …” Unable to finish the sentence, I put the cigar into the ashtray. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, my eyes searched the floor as if it held the answer. “I always thought we’d have a reckoning before one of us went to our reward. And I sure as hell was planning for me to go first.”

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Leaning back, I let the dusty couch engulf me. Little left after the events of the day, I grabbed the envelope and opened it. Handwritten and dated a month before Jane’s death, her words fed my melancholy as I read.

Dear Bobby: I read in the Times that you drank cheap bourbon to remind you of where you came from. I figure that’s bullshit thought up by your publisher to sell books. So, I bought you a bottle of the good stuff. I haven’t drunk in decades, but I read it’s good. If you really came all this way to fulfill our sacred pact, you deserve it. I’d like to think I’d have done the same if you’d been first to go.

As I write this, I know my end is near. Don’t be sad, though. We both lived our lives as we planned. Funny. I always thought we’d somehow end up together again. After your successful career and unsuccessful marriages, we’d sit in rockers in front of this house contemplating the meaning of it all. Ain’t it a bitch when life doesn’t work out as planned?

This will be hard for you to understand, but I never quit loving you. When we went our separate ways, I initially dismissed my sadness as a tribute to the leftover transgression of my youth. It took a while to understand the nature of it all. Looking at my end, I understand it was something more than a dream never realized. Loss defines a life more than success. My life was never the same after we split.

But that’s okay, too. My move to Cedar Key in search of a simpler life was the direct result of our 18

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breaking up. The life I made here is who I’m taking to the grave.

Religion wasn’t for me. That was your gig. I was more spiritual than religious. I am rejoicing in spending my final days on earth wondering which one of us is right. Write about it someday.

“The promise” seemed silly over the years. As I ponder my demise though, it suddenly seems necessary. I know you’ll do what is right.

My neighbor, Johnny, will take care of you while you’re in Cedar Key. He knows about us.

He’ll understand.

See you on the other side. Loser buys.

Love, Janie P.S.—If you still smoke pot, it’s in my dresser, second drawer down on the right. There’s a bong under the sink.

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Chapter Two People Magazine Bobby Wade is Literature’s Golden Boy Bobby Wade feels right at home in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The best-selling author stands in the middle of a tree lined street and boasts about not being able to see a single skyscraper. “Kind of reminds me of home,” he says, sporting a fake country drawl lost ago to life in the Big Apple.

As a young boy from a small river town in Kentucky, Wade grew up reading stories written by great southern authors like Jesse Stuart. At seventeen, he set out to write what Wade called his great coming of age novel. “The problem was,” he said, “I hadn’t come of age yet.”

So, instead, he headed to college in pursuit of an English degree. It was there he said he discovered the winning formula that would make him one of America’s most popular authors.

“Readers want you to bleed all over the pages,” he said. “So, I give them my heart and soul.”

And while the formula has allowed Wade to become a sales boon for his publisher, he is 20

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hoping his works will successfully transfer to the silver screen. His wildly popular third novel, Pete’s Restaurant, is currently in movie production.

“At first you just want to make sure the option check doesn’t bounce,” Wade said with a smile, evoking the wicked sense of humor he is known for in the writing community. “Then you suddenly realize someone else has control of your baby. It’s nerve racking at times.”

As to coming of age, Wade professes to still not being there yet. Recently divorced, says he’s still looking for Mrs. Right. “I want to find someone who can be happy drinking the cheap bourbon, while I travel the journey to find myself.”

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Chapter Three “Hello! Anybody in there? You up?”

Shifting my swollen eyes in the general direction of the voice was a chore. Early in my writing career, I adopted the Hemingway-lifestyle with far too much enthusiasm. Just ask my first two wives. When I wasn’t on the literary page, I was in the gossip column. I’d been thrown out of most clubs in the Village more than once.

Of course, the beauty of the Village is there’s always a club nearby where my ban had expired.

Needless to say, even without last night’s combination of pot and bourbon, I’m not much of a morning person.

My head was as blurry as the view of sun struggling to find its way through the heavy Cedar Key swamp fog.

Squinting at the portly silhouette peeking through the screen door, I grunted a noise, somehow conveying it as an affirmative response.

“Bobby Wade, is that you?” the stocky man with the salt and pepper goatee asked, his booming voice cutting through the house, and my head, like a knife. Throwing open the front door as if it were his own house and holding a cup of coffee in one hand, he looked at the bong on the floor next to the couch.

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“You a cop?” I asked, begrudgingly pulling myself up to a sitting position. I was not afraid of adding a Florida charge to my bad behavior rap sheet. A cop taking me to a cell where I could get breakfast actually sounded like a pretty good idea.

“Hell no,” he replied, waving his hand. “Lawyer.”

“Good,” I said. Staring at the man acting so comfortable in Jane’s house, I ran my hands across my head attempting to straighten my hair. “I may need one.”

“I hear ya, man,” he laughed, picking the bong off the floor and placing it upright on the coffee table. “I see you’ve discovered ‘the Crippler.’”

“The Crippler?” I replied, hoping I had enunciated just enough of the word to be understood. “What the hell is the Crippler?”

Mimicking my mumbled question with great delight, he sang my words. “The Crippler?”

“Yeah, the Crippler,” I repeated through my mental fog. I blinked several times in quick succession, forcing myself to remember my unfamiliar surroundings. I was in Jane’s house in Florida, hung over from pot and bourbon, and carrying on a conversation with someone I’d never met before. I was ready to call the cops on myself to escape.

“Well,” the odd intruder said, rolling his fingers through the content of the bag of marijuana he’d picked up off the table. “The Crippler is a special strain of weed I spent the last forty years developing myself. Good shit, huh?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, shaking my head quickly as if that would remove the cobwebs of the previous evening from my brain. “As best as I can remember.”

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“I’ve got some acid if you want it,” the man offered. “A micro-dose will wake you up.”

“No, thanks,” I winced.

“Sure?”

“I’ll pass.”

“Mushrooms?”

“No thanks. Really.”

“Speed? That always picks me up,” he replied in obvious enjoyment of my rumpled confusion.

Fearing the laundry list of drugs might continue for hours, I cut him off with an obvious question. “Who the fuck are you, again?”

A large grin split across the man’s face, “Aw hell, pardon my bad manners,” he said. Striding towards me with his right hand extended, “I’m Johnny. Johnny McHale,” he said. “I live next door. I was the guy who called you last month to tell you Jane had passed away.”

I first thought Johnny’s quick pace was threatening and I flinched as he approached. Then using the handshake as leverage to pull myself off the couch, I stood up. His strong grip caused me to recognize the Popeye-like muscles in his arms. I also now remembered his name from Jane’s letter. “Right,” I replied. “I’m Bobby Wade. I was a friend of Jane’s.”

“Well no shit, Sherlock,” Johnny shouted laughingly.

“I know who you are. Hell, everybody in Cedar Key knows who you are. Jane told everybody about you,” he said loudly.

Pumping my palms towards the floor in a silent request for him to lower his voice, I was able to exhale, “Shhhhh.”

“Sorry,” he whispered. “Jane told me you’d come. My old lady wasn’t as sure. She thought after we’d talked, 24

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you’d blow it off. But I knew you’d come. I saw the lights on last night and just knew it was you.”

“Okay,” I slurred, trying to reconstruct the timeline from the night before. “I don’t remember too much after hitting the bong. Actually, most everything beforehand is a little fuzzy, too.”

“The Crippler will do that to you,” Johnny said, almost gleefully, placing the cup on the table. “Here,” he said. “I made you some coffee. Let me know if you reconsider the acid.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, nearly falling over as I leaned down to pick up the cup. “I’ll let you know.”

“THE Bobby Wade,” Johnny continued, puffing out his chest as he spoke. “All the neighbors on this little strip of land feel like we know you personally.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not following,” I said. It was an honest assessment of my situation. I wasn’t following much of anything at the moment.

“Jane never quit talking about you,” he said, picking up the broken frame off the floor and inspecting the damage. “When your first book came out Jane bought copies for all of us.”

“No shit?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Johnny continued, placing the frame on top of the books. “Jane was your biggest fan.

The county library has a local branch over at the old Schlemmer Rooming House. When they ordered only one copy, she got pissed and bought ten more copies to donate. Every book you wrote, she’d donate ten copies to the library.” Johnny went around the house straightening up the mess I had made the night before as he talked. “I think if she’d had the money, she would have bought 200 copies and hand-delivered them to every family in town.”

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“Two hundred?” I replied. This place was even smaller than I imagined.

“She never had to buy me a second book, though,” Johnny continued, ignoring my comment. “After the first one, I always bought my own. I really like your work.”

“Thanks.” Cobwebs clearing a bit, the weirdness of the visit was sinking in. The offer of speed suddenly sounded appealing. Walking to the front of the room, I gazed at water barely visible below the fog and immediately beyond the street in front of the house. “Nice to meet a fan,” I threw over my shoulder, giving my standard book signing response.

Johnny sauntered over and elbowed me in the ribs.

“You know, boy,” he said, “she carried a big old torch for you.”

The words hit me as funny. I always figured she’d moved along. I mean I had. Twice. And a third had been in the works before I cut it off last month. I was about to reply when a woman with her long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail came barging through the front door with the same degree of familiarity as Johnny. Carrying a tray of food I assumed was for me, she instantly became my favorite person on Cedar Key. “It’s him, baby,” Johnny shouted excitedly.

Remembering my earlier admonition about volume, he looked over and shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry,” he said. Lowering his voice, he went on. “It’s Bobby Wade— THE Bobby Wade. I told you last night it was him.”

The woman put the tray down on the kitchen table and turned to me. “I didn’t think you’d show,” she said with a saucy smile.

“So I heard.” I glanced hungrily at the tray, my stomach grumbly letting itself be known to me.

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“Hi,” she said. “I’m Andrea.” She held out her hand to me.

“Bobby,” I said, shaking her hand.

“I’ve read all your books,” she said, continuing the hand pump.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Even the shitty ones,” she laughed, her blue eyes twinkling.

“Uh, again, thanks,” I said, somewhat questionably, dropping her hand.

“Baby, don’t call ‘em shitty,” Johnny interrupted, holding his hands to his head at the awkward declaration.

“Well, the critics called the last one shitty,” Andrea replied. Cocking her head and smiling, she sheepishly added, “in so many words.”

“Critics don’t know squat,” Johnny objected, trying to defuse what he was envisioning as an escalating situation.

“It’s okay,” I shrugged with a wink. “The last one was shitty.”

The couple seemed stunned at my admission.

“Really?” Johnny queried.

“Yeah,” I said. “And the one before it wasn’t so great either.”

“Wow,” Johnny said, unsure what to say next. “I never saw that coming.”

I’d heard it all over the past couple of years and had developed a solid defense mechanism. When the reviewers come up with lines like “the Golden Boy ages to rust,” you figure out a way to deal with criticism.

Dorothy Parker once said a novel she was reviewing should not be tossed aside lightly. “It should be thrown with great force,” she concluded. As Parker was a writer as well, I appreciated the wit of her remark and long ago 27

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decided my defense mechanism to criticism would be self-deprecating humor. “In fact,” I continued, reaching for my wallet, “I won’t be upset if you ask for your money back. Lord knows other people felt compelled to do so.

Had to buy two books back on the flight down here.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Andrea said, smiling at the connection we had made. She pointed to the plate of food on the tray. “Here, I made you some breakfast.”

“Thanks,” I replied, genuinely appreciative. Sitting and eating were two immediate personal priorities established with the simple goals of keeping me from either throwing up or passing out. I dove in. “You had me at ‘I made you,’” I said. Through my first bite of the day, I went on. “So, how long have you been Jane’s neighbors?”

I asked, with a full mouth.

“We’ve lived in Cedar Key all our lives,” Andrea said.

“The only time we left was when we went to college.”

“The only time you left,” Johnny said, correcting his wife with a head shake. “I tried to practice in the big city after law school.”

“What happened?” I asked, feigning interest, all my true attention on the eggs and bacon in front of me.

“What did you practice?”

“Oh, this and that,” Johnny said somewhat vaguely.

“It wasn’t too bad.”

“You fucking hated it,” Andrea pointed out, dismissing her husband with a flick of her wrist.

“Yeah,” Johnny admitted begrudgingly. “I hated it.

When I came to the realization institutions like law firms have no soul, living my life by the billable hour seemed senseless. I had become a lawyer to help people, not to just raise my rate every year by ten dollars to meet budget projections. A large law firm sucks the life out of lawyers who give a fuck.”

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Okay. Johnny is a bit bitter about his law firm past.

I decided to concentrate on the bacon rather than interrupt.

“After a couple years of that silly bullshit, I moved back home to the Key and hung out my own shingle,” Johnny continued, believing I cared. “I still have a little law office on the main drag. I’ve represented about everyone on the island at one time or another.”

“His law practice was how we started dating,” Andrea added, tossing a thumb towards Johnny.

“I represented her on a possession charge,” Johnny said.

Andrea smacked him. “For pot you’d sold me,” she exclaimed.

“And way before I’d developed the Crippler,” Johnny said, walking over to Andrea and putting his arm around her. “My homegrown shit was real weak back then, but Andrea couldn’t handle it.”

Andrea got red in the face. “I got real high one night,” she admitted, smiling sheepishly. “And, when the cops showed up at Steamers, I was dancing on a table with my top off.”

Johnny laughed at his wife’s admission. “I’ve always contended if you wouldn’t have grabbed the Chief ’s crotch so hard, he’d have let you walk,” he said as he hugged her.

“I still think you set me up just so you could get me in the sack,” Andrea replied. “I didn’t have money for a lawyer back then. So, the Silver Knight here agreed to take it out in trade.”

I nearly spit out my coffee. “Regular ‘Love Story’ material,” I chuckled, gathering my composure. “Love means never having to say ‘I’m guilty.’”

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“Dinner and a movie,” Johnny said, waving his hand.

“All I asked for was dinner and a movie. You invited me back to your place.”

Andrea smiled impishly. “I’ll let him remember it however he wants.”

Johnny rolled his eyes as he crossed the kitchen table.

Pulling out a chair he flipped it around , straddled it and sat down. “But back to your question,” Johnny continued sounding exasperated. “We moved next door right after we got married. Jane had already been here a couple of years.”

“And I assume you became Jane’s lawyer?” I asked, pushing back from the table and pointing my coffee cup at Johnny.

“Yeah,” he replied shrugging his shoulders. “Not that she had much legal work.”

“A boring client, I take it?” I asked, relaxing back, my stomach full and content.

“Busted once for possession.”

“The Crippler?”

Johnny smiled. “She never mentioned that to the judge.” He paused. “The only other thing she ever asked me to do was prepare her estate documents.”

“Which, of course, is why I’m here,” I concluded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Which is why you’re here. Once you get cleaned up, come on over. I’ll have my secretary run the papers out to the house. I’ll go over them with you.

Later, we can meet up at my office and have everything notarized.”

“Okay,” I replied. “By the way, what’s in it?”

“It’s a hybrid blend of five separate strains of marijuana...”

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“Not the Crippler, dumbass,” Andrea interrupted, shaking her head in disgust. “He wants to know what’s in Jane’s Will.”

“Oh, sorry,” Johnny laughed. “Not much. She left everything to her granddaughter.”

“Granddaughter?” The stunned look on my face was obvious. Jane had never mentioned a child, let alone a granddaughter. I was flabbergasted. “What the hell?” I demanded, nearly dropping my coffee cup on the table.

“You didn’t know?” Andrea said slowly, looking at Johnny who shook his head. “Sorry, I just assumed you knew. Her daughter lived with Jane when we moved here and was quite a handful. She was always into something.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “I bailed the crazy child out more than once. She had the kid while she was still in high school.”

Andrea shot Johnny a disapproving look. “Stop,” she instructed in a commanding tone. “She had some issues.

But her granddaughter, Sunshine, was the light of her life.”

“Sunshine?” I asked wincing, a million thoughts running through my head, all running back to the name.

“Sunshine?” I repeated.

“Well, her real name is Grace,” Johnny said. “Jane thought Sunshine better embodied her free spirit.”

“So where is the mom?” I asked. This was all very new to me. “Does she live around here?” I asked, still unconsciously shaking my head while trying to process the news. “I’d like to meet her,” I added.

Pointing skyward, Andrea smiled. “Looking down on us with Jane right now. She’s been gone quite a while. Jane pretty much raised Sunshine.”

“Damn,” I replied, running my hands through my hair and exhaling heavily. “I never knew any of this.”

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Johnny stood up and grabbed Andrea by the arm.

“We’ve given Bobby quite enough to think about for one morning,” he said. “Come over when your head clears up and we’ll discuss when we can get you appointed executor of the estate.”

“Leave the dishes,” Andrea added, pointing to the tray on the table. “I’ll come over later and get them. I have a key.”

As Johnny started to walk out the door, Andrea crossed over to the kitchen, picked up an odd shaped urn and placed it on one corner of my breakfast tray. “What’s with the vase?” I asked pointing.

“I was wondering when you were going to ask,” Andrea smiled softly. “That’s Jane. She said you’d know what to do.”

32

Chapter Four In the Seventies, an aspiring English major was never named “Most Popular” under Senior Superlatives in the high school annual. The pecking order for popular kids was reserved as a competition for jocks and cheerleaders.

“Funniest” usually went to the kid who kept interrupting class by constantly cracking jokes, a quality that today would get someone identified as ADHD and destined for a special learning plan. Then we just merely labeled them as funny. “Most Likely to Succeed” was reserved for the 4.0 students destined for a full-trip academic scholarship to a college of their choice, followed by a life of regret and prescription drug addiction.

Future English majors were just below the band kids and right above the stoners. And we socialized with both, because they were the only ones who shared in our dreams. The band kids understood our creativity and, to the stoners, we were the closest over achievers to their burnt-out social status.

Dreaming of being a writer caused your classmates to scoff, your guidance counselor to suggest vocational school and your parents to speak in hushed tones about where they went wrong. Even my high school English teacher, who encouraged me to write, instructed me 33

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on how my degree would be a good foundation for a teaching certificate. No one believed I would be published someday, me included. Yet, deep inside the writer, there remains a desire to create an image with words that defies the painted canvas of the artist—who by the way were just below the stoners. They only rose to prominence each year around homecoming, when they were called upon by classmates to construct the class float of tissue paper and chicken wire.

College is where those who aspire to write find their wings—or have them clipped—depending on just how ostentatious those feather-wrapped appendages might become. Thus it was with me. Suddenly, the shy kid writing for the high school newspaper found himself amongst peers just as nerdy. At college, even with the other English nerds, it was good to be king.

And that was how I met her.

I’d seen Jane around the building housing the English Department on several occasions. I was a freshman and lucky to find the bathroom in our building. But, I saw her and was captured by her natural beauty. One day I was walking across campus and she was laying in the ravine, the grassy amphitheater focal point of student activity, reading a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The sight of her curvaceous body under a loose-fitting sun dress caused me to pause in my tracks and do something totally out of character for me. With all the nerve, I could muster, I actually approached a woman. I mumbled some stupid shit about Kerouac’s brilliance. Jane looked up nonchalantly and replied, “This book convinces me the Beat Generation was just as full of shit as everyone else.”

The earth stopped moving for a moment and I walked away humiliated, not knowing how to reply. And there began my lifelong obsession with Jane.

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“Well, Old Girl,” I said, running a towel through my wet hair. “You certainly have some interesting neighbors.”

My eye caught the mirrored reflection of the urn which was now sitting on the sink. I’m not sure exactly why, but carrying it around the house with me was somehow giving me an emotional relief I desperately craved. The news of Jane’s death had come at perhaps the lowest point in my life and now I felt guilty thinking of my own troubles in light of her death.

Yet, carrying the urn around the house made me feel close to her. And she was someone I needed right now. I stared at it for another moment, waiting for a response.

“Just like my latest manuscript,” I grunted at the urn.

“I see you aren’t talking to me this morning, either.”

The air conditioner was humming a tune about removing some of the humidity from Jane’s small home, but it was still sticky—the towel having only a limited effect at drying my skin and hair. Even in the winter, Cedar Key was humid.

“I sweat a lot these days,” I told Jane, wiping a running stream of perspiration from my temple. “I can’t remember sweating as a kid. We’d play ball all day and seemingly never worked up a sweat. Now I can’t dry my hair without becoming soaking wet. I can’t figure out if it’s my slowing metabolism, growing belly or fading memory.”

“The search for remembrances change as you get older,” I continued as I walked to the bedroom and shuffled through my luggage for some underwear. “Tears lose their bitterness as their unpleasant trappings fade and are replaced by sweeter nostalgia. I suppose there’s nothing particularly wrong with changing recollections in order to diminish melancholy as life drags on, even when it’s premeditated. At times, I just can’t figure out 35

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which one of my fading memories are real and which are made up.”

Walking back into the bathroom and grabbing the urn, I apologized. “Sorry, Old Girl,” I laughed. “I didn’t mean to leave you in the bathroom. But having you back in my life again—even in a jar—is taking some getting used to.”

“You know there was more than once that I used you for inspiration,” I said, putting on shorts and a tee shirt with a logo from one of my books turned to movie. “Well, maybe not always you singularly, but definitely us and the vibe we shared.” The premise set, I shook my head.

“That’s the whole fucked up thing. The more distant we became, the more the recollections mattered. And the more they became pleasant. Oddly, at first I blamed it on time. Now I’m not as sure. I think it’s my own growing indifference to life in general.” I looked at the urn seeking forgiveness. “I’m not angry at you, but I struggle for happiness for me.”

Again, there was no response. Now, even Jane was ignoring me like a gathering of snooty buyers at Book Expo. “Well, if you’re not going to talk to me, I’m headed next door to see your weird neighbors.”

Leaving the urn on the living room coffee table and heading outside, I sat down on a swing on the front porch. The humidity from the low lying fog hit me in the face like a prizefighter’s punch. If I looked closely, I could see the tide water receding quickly in the direction of what I assumed was the Gulf of Mexico, but little else.

The sounds of the morning filled my head as I listened to a bird screech loudly in the distance. A shadowy figure appeared through the fog—a man carrying fishing gear.

He saw me on the porch and waved with the familiarity 36

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of a life-long friend. Just as quickly, the man disappeared in the mist.

The man’s silent greeting caught me off guard and reminded me of my hometown where everyone met each other with a friendly wave. Whether they believed it or not, townsfolk from my childhood believed in the value of a welcome. A friendly “Howdy,” mattered to my parent’s generation—at least until they got home and spoke over fences and alleys about the shortcomings of those only socially accepted in public. Financial failures, alcohol abuse and spousal indifference are never so popular as in a small town where everyone is accepting.

Following the sound of Native American flute music, I wandered off Jane’s well-kept porch onto the porch of the house next door. Through the window, Johnny and Andrea—eyes closed and hands on knees—sat stoically in overstuffed chairs. I thought of the Ballad of John and Yoko: “They looked just like two gurus in drag.” A tap or two on the window brought no response to their trancelike state. So, I rang the doorbell … repeatedly.

“Hey,” said Johnny, looking a little fuzzy-eyed as he answered the door. “Come on in.”

I walked through their flamingo pink front door into a house the exact replica of Jane’s.

“How long were you standing out there?” Andrea asked, turning down the music. She had the same dazed look as Johnny. I laughed to myself as I wondered if they had done a ‘wake and bake’ with the Crippler.

“Just got here,” I replied. They were acting so dazed and confused, I was not sure what to do. “Is this a good time? Should I come back later?”

“No,” she said, walking around to get her bearings.

“You’re good. Stay. We weren’t too long yet into our morning meditation.”

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“Meditation?” The thought of the neighborhood lawyer/pot dealer doing his morning meditation was too cliché for me not to smile. If nothing else came from this trip, I had two new characters for my next book.

“Yeah,” Johnny said, sleepily rubbing his eyes. “We do it every morning. It’s what we do to start the day.”

“Good for you,” I said. “I never had enough concentration to get through confession, let alone meditation.”

Andrea smiled. “Catholic, I take it?” she asked.

“Episcopalian,” I laughed. “More salvation. Less guilt.”

“We’re Daoist,” Johnny shared, as he gestured me towards a recliner covered with a worn, multi-colored Seminole blanket.

“Not a Cowboys fan,” I said jokingly. Seeing they both clearly missed my witty Dallas NFL reference, I continued. “So what do you meditate about?”

“As Daoist, we try to envision a world without us in it,” Andrea said, heading back to the couch.

“Maybe all my old fans are Daoist,” I joked, scratching my head in mock seriousness. “According to my agent, they’ve all been envisioning a world without me for a year or two.” Once again, my attempt at humor fell on deaf ears. I could see they took this seriously. “Meditation? So, what does that get you?” I asked.

“Consciousness,” Andrea replied without hesitation.

Considering I lost consciousness last night, the declaration was confusing. I needed to get back to simpler topics. “I thought you were supposed to sit cross-legged on the floor like hippies in order to meditate?”

“Naw,” Johnny laughed, pointing to his knees. “We’re too old. If I sat Indian style, I might not be able to get up off the floor.” He returned to his meditation chair and sat down.

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“We just sit and relax,” Andrea added, patting her hands in a calming motion. “It’s all about total relaxation—no matter how you sit.”

“And you can get so lost you can’t wake up?” I asked pointing to the front of the house. “Like just now, when I came to the door and had trouble rousting you.”

“Yeah,” Johnny added, looking at his watch.

“Sometimes it’s hard to snap out of. Fifteen minutes from now and you might have been waiting on the porch for a while.”

“Meditation does that to you?” I asked.

“Not all the time,” Andrea replied. “It’s really hit or miss. Everything has to be just right. But on the occasion when you clear all thought from your mind, that’s when remarkable things happen. It’s hard to snap out of it.”

Suddenly, I was interested. I knew people back in the Village who meditated, but I’d always dismissed the idea.

“What kind of remarkable things?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Andrea replied, shrugging her shoulders.

“Try,” I said encouragingly. “You’ll never know when the experience may end up in one of my books.” I was only half-joking.

Johnny held up a finger and started explaining. “What is there before thought?” he answered my question with a question of his own.

I hesitated. “I’m not sure,” I said, shaking my head and shrugging my shoulders. I was not sure where he was going with this line of questioning.

Johnny shifted in his chair and leaned in toward me.

“Think about it for a minute.”

Something before thought. “Nothing, I suppose.”

“Precisely.” Johnny nodded approvingly at me, sitting back.

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“I don’t follow.” My confusion written all over my face.

“So if you can clear your mind of all thought,” he continued, swinging his arms as he spoke, “you’re closer to nothingness.”

“Or original thought,” Andrea added, tucking her legs up under her lap.

“Which is …” I asked as both stared at me.

“Follow it through to the conclusion,” Andrea offered.

“God?” I concluded tentatively.

“Maybe,” Johnny said, shrugging his shoulders. “For some, maybe it is God.” “Not necessarily the God the church preaches about,” Andrea added, pointing first skyward and then to her temple. “But certainly a higher level of consciousness about a superior being.”

“And by meditating, you get closer to God?” I asked.

Then correcting myself, “… or whatever Superior Being you choose to follow.”

“If at all,” Andrea shrugged. “Consciousness is simply a state of mind before thought. I’m not sure anyone’s figured out what’s before thought.”

“Do that and you’ll solve the unknown questions of the universe,” Johnny added.

As someone who had struggled his entire life with religion and spirituality, this conversation was getting way too deep for my hungover brain. I was neither in the present state of mind or position in life to ponder such big questions. The last time I tried it led to a panic attack and a three-day bender. Needing to change subjects, I turned to Johnny. “You said you had some papers for me to sign?”

“Oh, right,” said Johnny as he headed to a credenza in the dining room, tearing through several file folders until 40

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he found the one he wanted. “Here are the documents for Jane’s estate. I took the liberty of calling the judge this morning to get us in tomorrow. He owes me a favor or two, so I got you in quickly. I hope that works for you.”

“It does,” I said, moving to the dining room table and opening the file. I was amazed at how few documents there were actually needing my signature.

Johnny leaned over my shoulder. “I’ve marked everywhere you need to sign,” he instructed, pointing to little post-it notes on particular pages. “There’s really not much to being appointed executor.”

“Looks like it,” I replied, signing the final paper.

“I do need to get them notarized,” Johnny said as I signed the final page. “My secretary can do it for us. She will need to get a copy of your driver’s license to keep on file.”

I handed him the file as I rose from the table. “Okay to meet you after lunch at your law office?”

“Sure thing,” Johnny said, reviewing my signatures and placing the file on the table. “It’s right across the street from Steamers. Grab lunch there, you’ll like the place.” Johnny paused for a moment obviously weighing his next thought. “Hey, you want to meditate with us tomorrow?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. As intriguing as the offer sounded, I was not in the mood to think about a world without me in it. “I don’t want to be fuzzy for court.”

“Don’t push him, honey,” Andrea instructed in a firm tone, obvious that her word ruled in the house. “It’s a personal thing.”

Johnny slid a sideways glance at his wife. “I’m not, I’m not,” he said reassuringly. “He just looks so troubled.

I thought meditation might help.”

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“Johnny!” Andrea was truly annoyed this time, her anger evident in her tone as well as her demeanor.

“Well, he does,” Johnny restated. “Look at his eyes.

That’s from more than just a night with the Crippler.”

“But you don’t just blurt that out to someone you don’t know,” Andrea argued. “It’s impolite and rude.”

“Well, so is telling him his books suck,” Johnny pointed out. “You ever think about that?”

I held up my hands. “It’s okay, really.” I started back up to the front door. “Maybe I’ll go to confession later.”

I grabbed the doorknob with relief and closed the door behind me.

The fog covering a late winter morning in Cedar Key suddenly seemed inconsequential as compared to Johnny’s spot-on inquiry. As I walked back to Jane’s house, I pondered how obvious my discontent seemed to him. Entering her house, I looked at the urn on the table.

“I am troubled, Old Girl,” I admitted. “And it’s me causing the disturbance.”

“Think about this,” I said, my hand tugging at my hair in frustration. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get people to pay attention to me. And now, according to your potsmoking, Daoist hippie neighbors, in order to attain a higher level of consciousness, I’m supposed to envision a world in which I don’t exist at all. I can’t fucking do it.” I flopped on the couch.

“Why not?”

“Oh, you’re back now,” I replied to the voice so clear in my head. “Where were you this morning?”

“In the urn.”

I rolled my eyes. “And now you’re a comedian, too?”

“It’s your subconscious, go figure.”

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I let out a strangled laugh. “Thanks for reminding me.” I twisted my head back and forth until I heard a gentle pop in my neck.

“But go back to the original question. Why can’t you envision a world without you?”

“My own ego, I suppose,” I mumbled out loud. “There was a time when people held me up on a pedestal. They thought what I wrote had meaning in their lives. They wanted to be like me. Today all those folks who believed in me have no idea the words aren’t there anymore.

They’re looking to me for some sense of being. How can I give them what they want when I can’t find my own place.”

“Writer’s block happens.”

“You know it’s not writer’s block,” I snapped.

“Of course, I know. I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

I dropped my chin to my chest. “I can’t do it, because I no longer believe in myself. It’s the very nature of a writer to contemplate his place in the world. It’s a bitch to be pushing sixty and suddenly you have no place.”

“So you think it’s your ego?”

I leaned my head back to the couch cushion behind me and stared blankly at the ceiling. “I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worried about what people will say when they discovered I failed,” I admitted. “There. I said it out loud. Are you happy?”

“No.” “No?” “Because it’s not about ego and you know it.”

I sighed. “Mortality,” I answered, low and quiet.

“Of course.”

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I paused. “You think I’m worried about who will remember me when I die?”

“You’re getting warm.”

“I need to go for a walk,” I said, bouncing off the couch. Grabbing the door knob and looking back at the urn, I frowned. “Hey, Old Girl, the shit I said yesterday about gravity’s effect of us, me being above the dirt and you being below it. I suspect both of us are secretly wishing to trade places.”

“Praying for a peaceful death isn’t much of an offering to God.” “Yeah, I suppose,” I huffed. “But one of these nights the white light I pray for will appear and I’ll walk … no run … right into it.”

“That ain’t much of an exit strategy, now is it?”

44

Chapter Five When I had been driving into town the evening before, it was late in the day. The drive from Tampa International Airport had been a dreadful experience.

In Tampa, the traffic was as bad as Fifth Avenue at quitting time, with bumper-to-bumper lines of angry local travelers. About an hour or so from the airport, I jumped onto a state route which made its way through a cluster of small towns forgotten by Florida’s changing demographics. In one small community, I came upon a four way stop with a gas station on each corner. All four of them were boarded up and closed.

If the drive north was boring, making the left for the final thirty mile run west to the islands was a bad standup routine. The drive along the final stretch to Cedar Key required no turns of the steering wheel and, except for the occasional side road blocked by a cattle gate, the scenery all looked the same. I was being lulled to sleep by the long stretch of road when a small patch of buildings suddenly appeared. The sign in front of a roadside church read “Rosewood.” Seeing a historical marker on the opposite side of the road, I whipped the car around. As I entered my fifties, I seemed prone to taking on many of my old man’s habits. Reading inscriptions on statues and 45

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historical markers being one of those quirks. But, this one had significance. I knew about what had happened in Rosewood and felt compelled to stop.

Rosewood, Florida “Racial violence erupted in the small and quiet Rosewood community January 1-7, 1923.

Rosewood, a predominantly colored community, was home to the Bradley, Carrier, Carter, Goins, and Hall families, among others. Residents supported a school taught by Mahulda “Gussie” Brown Carrier, three churches, and a Masonic lodge. Many of them owned their homes, some were business owners, and others worked in nearby Sumner and at the Cummer Lumber Mill.

This quiet life came to an end on January 1, 1923, when a white Sumner woman accused a black man of assaulting her. In the search for her alleged attacker, whites terrorized and killed Rosewood residents. In the days of fear and violence that followed, many Rosewood citizens sought refuge in the nearby woods. White merchant John M. Wright and other courageous whites sheltered some of the fleeing men, women and children.

Whites burned Rosewood and looted livestock and property; two were killed while attacking a home. Five blacks also lost their lives: Sam Carter, who was tortured for information and shot to death on January 1; Sarah Carrier; Lexie Gordon; James Carrier; and Mingo Williams. Those who survived were forever scarred.”

SIDE 2: “Haunted by what had happened, Rosewood residents took a vow of silence, lived in fear and never returned to claim their property.

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That silence was broken seventy-one years later.

In 1994 survivors, including Minnie Lee Langley, Arnett Turner Goins, and Wilson Hall, filed a claims bill in the Florida Legislature. A Special Master, an expert appointed by the Speaker of the House, ruled the state had a “moral obligation” to compensate survivors for the loss of property, violation of constitutional rights, and mental anguish. On May 4, 1994, Governor Lawton Chiles signed a $2.1 million compensation bill.

Nine survivors received $150,000 each for mental anguish, and a state university scholarship fund was established for the families of Rosewood and their descendants. A fund was also established to compensate those Rosewood families who could demonstrate property loss. This Historic Marker was dedicated by Governor Jeb Bush in May, 2004.”

The marker and its significance had such a profound impact upon me, I felt rooted to the spot. Admittedly, I am a history buff, but it was more than the meaning of place calling my name. I spent about an hour or better walking around the grounds hoping to hear the voices of the souls silenced in 1923. A day later, as I reflected on Johnny’s explanation of meditation, I marveled at the irony of it all. He was a successful, if somewhat fried, lawyer trying to envision a world in which he did not exist. The poor men and women of Rosewood wanted to exist. And but for the story on a historical marker, they achieved Johnny and Andrea’s meditation goal of a world without them, albeit without their consent.

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In the end, I took longer walking around Rosewood than I should have and made it to Jane’s place just around sunset. Thus, I saw little else of the island itself. Now, I wanted to get out. I needed to get out. Judging from the heavy fog, my morning view wasn’t going to get any better.

I thought about sitting on the porch and enjoying a cigar.

Walking was better than just sitting around waiting to meet Johnny after lunch. So, I headed out into the mist.

Normally when I walked, I carried a small notebook with me. I suppose the act of mindlessly placing one foot in front of the other was my own personal form of meditation. My mind would clear and all at once ideas would appear out of nowhere. If I did not write them down, they’d be replaced by the next mental onslaught.

Frankly, it seemed it did not matter much these days.

There were too many burdens for any story lines to fight their way to the top. Nevertheless, I took a deep breath, bounded down Jane’s front steps and headed towards the thriving metropolis of Cedar Key. Of course, when I hit the corner, I had no idea which way to go.

Just around the corner from Jane’s house I ducked into what I assumed was the only gas station on the island, where several older men were standing around having coffee and smoking cigarettes. As I hit the door, all conversation ceased. “Gentlemen,” I greeted.

Nods and one “Howdy” came from the group. It was clear from their stares, they were checking out and probably judging the new guy in town. I suspected most visitors to town did not stop off here a morning latte.

I knew the look. It was one which I could normally overcome by purchasing a round of beers. But, I was at a gas station on a remote island in Florida. I looked around at a room full of suspicious eyes. “I’ve never been here before,” I said, cringing at the awkward admission.

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“Florida?” one old-timer asked, puzzled by my bold declaration. “You mean to tell me you’ve never been to Florida before?”

Admittedly, it sounded a bit odd. So, I set out explaining I had been to Miami and Key West, which drew laughs all around. “What’s so funny?” I asked, truly confused by their laughter.

“This is Old Florida, son,” another man said. “The south end of Florida is another country. They ain’t part of us.”

“Coffee, boy?” asked one of the old-timers, a bald man in overalls with enough years behind him to call me “boy.”

I smiled at the offer, but realized it was time to move on. “Naw. Which way is town?” I replied. “I need a bit of Old Florida, more than coffee, I guess.”

A young man in a short sleeved police shirt and wirerimmed glasses stepped forward. “I got this,” he said to the others, pointing an accusatory finger as he spoke.

“You derelicts try to stay out of trouble today.” He turned to me. “I’m done with my morning Joe and headed back to the station. If you like, I’ll give you a ride.”

I glanced at the officer’s name on his tag. Rob James.

“Great,” I said, following the tall blond towards the door.

I really wanted to walk, but thought a refusal would be frowned upon by the others. I looked around as we pushed outside. “I didn’t see a police car though.”

“I don’t have the truck today,” he replied, pointing to the corner of the station parking lot. “I’m in the golf cart.”

Sure enough there was a royal blue four-seater EZ Go golf cart with POLICE on its side and a gold police badge on the front panel. The Cedar Key police force was a pickup and a golf cart. “Didn’t see that coming,” I laughed.

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“It’s Cedar Key, mister,” he replied, arching one eyebrow. Using a towel to wipe down his seat and the windshield, he readied our ride. “I suspect there are more folks wandering around this island in golf carts than cars.

And in the winter, policing here is pretty slow. We’re kind of like Mayberry with sunshine and palmetto groves.

Most policing we need to do can be done from a golf cart.

We like to save the truck for when we have to transport a drunk driver to the county jail. That’s a thirty-minute drive.”

“Mount Pilot?” I asked as he tossed me the towel to wipe the morning dew off my seat.

“Of course,” he chuckled at the reference to The Andy Griffith Show as he backed the cart out of its parking space. “So you just got in to town last night?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m here for a few days on some personal business.”

A small store across the street from the gas station advertised “Fine Art and Smoked Mullet.” As the cop made a right onto the street, he said, “Well, everything you’re likely to need is within walking distance.”

I looked out towards the water. The fog was a bit lighter than earlier, the winter sun fighting valiantly to burn it away. Where there had been water the night before was mostly mud now with water cutting small streams in the dirt as it flowed to the Gulf. A flock of white pelicans flew overhead announcing their arrival with a loud cacophony of squawks. “When the tide goes out, it really goes out,” I declared.

“That’s why we have so much clamming here,” he said. “The mud and the water are perfect for it.”

“So is that why Cedar Key is here? Clamming?” I inquired as we drove. A little town like Cedar Key had to have some historical reason for existence. Commercial 50

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fishing and clamming seemed as good a reason as any I could think of.

“Not originally,” the officer said. “Creek and Muskogee Indians had been around here forever. There’s an island about ten miles away where they’ve found Indian relics over two thousand years old. White men started hanging out here in the early 1800s.”

I noticed all the old white men wandering around in their gold carts. Apparently, they came here in the nineteenth century and never left. As the new guy on the island, I decided not to share my snarky observation with the officer. “Spanish?” I asked. Referencing Florida’s history book past seemed like a safe historical reference for me to bet on.

Officer James shook his head. “British,” he replied.

“They built a lighthouse out on Seahorse Key, but the Spanish came along later and tore it down. Commerce started to build up during the Seminole Wars. Zachary Taylor had a fort built not too far from the gas station.

George Meade did the design. It was on the island you can see from the bars. We call it Atsena Otie. They called it Depot Key back then.”

“Really?” The answer surprised me. I did not know the English had a foothold in the early years of Florida.

“Then just before the Civil War broke out, businessmen started using Cedar Key as a shipping port for lumber.

They used the lumber up north to make pencils.”

“It looked like there was a bed for an old railroad when I drove in yesterday,” I observed.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Damn bad timing on that development. The first train pulled into town right after the Civil War started. Union troops occupied the islands during the war in order to produce salt. And that pretty much put an end to the shipping.”

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“So what happened after the war?”

“Saw mills started popping up on the islands. They were all over the place and we were a shipping port. Then Tampa became the big shipping port and the mills died out. Cedar Key became a sleepy fishing town.”

“You sure know a lot about the history of this place.”

“Like I said, it’s winter. As a cop here I spend as much time giving out tourist information as fighting crime.” We made a turn onto Second Street and a two block stretch of old buildings were in front of us. “My biggest crime last week was catching a kid doing donuts in the parking lot of the city museum.”

“What did you charge him with?” I asked.

“Charge?” the man laughed. “I didn’t charge him with anything. I yanked his ass out of school, gave him a bull rake and made him clean up the shells in the parking lot.”

Officer James drove me around a couple block area, pointing out the sights of Cedar Key. His friendly nature was easy to absorb as he described the island’s history.

The contrast it drew with my encounters with New York City police was stark. Granted, when I usually interacted with the finest from the Big Apple, I was obnoxiously intoxicated. I got the idea this was the kind of guy who would rather drive you home in the golf cart, than drive you to the county jail in the pickup truck.

Having looked on-line at maps and photos before my trip, I had a basic understanding that Cedar Key was actually a group of several narrow islands joined by bridges and manmade road beds. The final miles of the drive to Jane’s house was only accomplished by crossing several channels. It was the golf cart tour that brought the size and island into context. No matter where we drove, it seemed water was never more than a block away in any direction. And we were never more than a few feet above 52

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sea level. Officer James informed me one of the adjoining islands even had a small landing strip, the person who operates the short runway doubling as the airport taxi service.

A loud screech snapped me from my trance and I flinched, afraid something was headed in my direction.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking into the fog as if I could actually see something.

“Eagles,” the officer replied. “We got a shitload of birds around here. In fact, about a dozen islands around Cedar Key are wildlife refuges. I kayak out there all the time to see them. Let me know if you want to go out some morning. I have an extra kayak you can use.”

“Sounds like a lot of effort,” I said rubbing my chubby belly. “I’ll stick with hearing them.”

“Hell, there are more birds around here than there are people,” he laughed at my dodge. The eagle screeched a second time. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell one from the other,” he added, pointing at the sky, “but the sound of an eagle is distinctive.”

As I looked around, I began understanding Jane’s love of this remote place. “You got everything you need here.”

The officer nodded in appreciation. “Everything except a doctor,” he said.

“No doctor?”

“Yeah,” he replied mournfully. “It cuts down on the retiree population when you have to drive an hour for your appointment.”

“Bummer.”

“We’ve got a dentist, though, Doc Baker,” he replied.

“If that’s any conciliation.”

As we drove, a sign on a small, two-story wood building about a block away caught my eye. It was an old historic structure, painted white with a single word sign 53

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hanging over the front steps. An old man sat in a rocker reading a newspaper on the second story porch. “Mind dropping me off at the library?” I asked pointing at the old man. “He’s got the right idea this morning.”

“Sure thing.” We hummed down the street. “But stay away from him. That’s old man Chastain,” he said as we drove. “He’s a crazy old SOB. Spends his nights hunting snakes and alligators just for the sport of it. Sells gator tail by the pound, if you’re interested.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied, barely able to suppress a shudder.

When he pulled over in front of the library, he reached out his hand. “Tour’s over my friend. Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks,” I replied, returning the handshake.

“By the way, mister,” he said. “I didn’t catch your name. I’m Rob James. People around here call me Radar.”

He pointed at the wire rim glasses. “You know, because of the glasses. People think it makes me look like that guy from M*A*S*H*.”

“Nice to meet you, Radar,” I said. “I’m Bobby Wade.”

“The author who was Miss Jane’s friend?”

“That’s me.”

“Well, welcome to Cedar Key, Mr. Wade. Any friend of Miss Jane’s is a friend of mine.”

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Chapter Six “Cedar Key is two and one half or three miles in diameter and its highest point is forty-four feet above mean tide-water. It is surrounded by scores of other keys, many of them looking like a clump of palms, arranged like a tasteful bouquet, and placed in the sea to be kept fresh. Others have quite a sprinkling of oaks and junipers, beautifully united with vines. Still others consist of shells, with a few grasses and mangroves circled with a rim of rushes. Those which have sedgy margins furnish a favorite retreat for countless waders and divers, especially for the pelicans that frequently whiten the shore like a ring of foam.”

John Muir, “A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf ” (written 1868, published 1906)

I stared at the cutout quote in the display placed strategically in front of the door. The closer my nose went to the book, the odder I probably looked to any wandering observer. Still, my eyesight had gone bad over the past couple of years and I had left my cheater glasses in my luggage. My stooped posture was necessary for 55

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viewing the old text. I was so engrossed in the book, I did not hear the footsteps approaching me.

“And half of it is water,” the woman proclaimed in a slight southern drawl, speaking with the authority only a librarian exhibits.

“Excuse me?” I replied. Looking up from the dusty old book hiding in a glass-protected casing, I was caught off guard by her dark brown eyes. She was wearing jeans and a loose fitting blue cotton shirt with a white tee underneath. I’ve always been a sucker for a woman with piercing eyes and the attraction, like today, was usually immediate. I stammered for a moment in search of the next words.

“John Muir,” she said, tapping her finger on the glass to focus my attention. “He came here just after the Civil War. His description of Cedar Key is pretty accurate for the time. We’re just over two miles square. But technically half of Cedar Key is water.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling my face flush with embarrassment at the instant infatuation. With a sheepish grin, I forced myself back to reality. “I noticed coming over here the pelicans haven’t left either.”

“We’re a small town, but there’s still quite a few fishing charters and clammers that take out of here every day,” she replied. “Wherever you find fishing boats on the Florida coast, you’ll find pelicans looking for a handout.

They’re our homeless.”

“I suppose so.” My eyes shot around the room. “I hope you don’t mind me looking around. I enjoy libraries.”

A small, soft smile played around her mouth. “Not at all,” the woman replied. “It’s what we’re here for.”

“I love old books like this one,” I prompted, hoping she would continue the conversation. “It’s a passion of mine.”

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“Me too,” the woman replied. “This one is particularly cool because it’s one of the earliest accounts of Cedar Key. It’s really raw.”

“So who was this Muir cat?” I asked, pointing at the book under the glass. “His name sounds really familiar to me.”

“A Scottish naturalist,” she replied. Leading me over to an old framed map on the wall, she pointed at a dotted line running from Kentucky to Florida. “Right after the Civil War, Muir decided to walk from Louisville, Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico. The book in the glass case is basically his journal.”

“That’s commitment to your subject,” I quipped. “I ran out of breath just walking up the steps.”

Encouraged as the woman laughed, I continued. “So, Muir was a writer?”

“Kind of,” she replied. “John Muir is remembered for heading out to California and founding the Sierra Club.”

“The original tree hugger,” I laughed. This time she did not share in the joke. Note to self—stay away from political humor.

“He was quite a prolific writer about the outdoors,” she scolded gently, sounding a bit put out at the thought I had somehow disrespected Muir. “The journal entries in that book ended up being the basis for some of his other works. You should read him. He’s very spiritual and uses a lot of Biblical imagery.”

“I wasn’t insulting him,” I said, holding up my hands.

I turned, squaring myself to the woman. “Some of my best friends are writers. Hi. I’m Bobby Wade.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh my God,” her drawl increasing with each word she spoke. “THE Bobby Wade.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, shrugging my shoulders.

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“Your friend Jane made sure of it.” She smiled again and I liked it. A lot.

“And your name?” I requested, mustering up my best smile. My buddies in New York called it “the pose,” a practiced look I’d perfected for meeting a woman.

“Where are my manners?” the woman fluttered.

Genuinely fluttered. After wiping her hand on her jeans, she stuck it out. “I’m Holly. I run the library here.”

“Nice to meet you, Holly,” I said, returning the shake.

“And it’s a wonderful collection you have here.”

“Thank you,” she demurred, a mischievous twinkle in her gorgeous brown eyes.

I walked back to the Muir book. “I suspect this book is not available for checkout.”

“No,” she said. “Not even for THE Bobby Wade.

It’s a first edition and stays under glass. When the last hurricane came through, it was one of the few books I made sure to save. But I do have an old paperback available.” She started back to the stacks before turning.

“It’s also available on Kindle.”

“No, thanks,” I replied, waving my hands. “I’m more of a paper guy.”

“Me too,” she said. “Let me go get it.” I watched as she walked back to the non-fiction section. While her eyes were the first thing to catch my eye, I finally noticed Holly’s curvy body also fit what my friends jokingly called “the profile”—a general description of seemingly every woman I’d ever dated. Returning quickly, she handed me the book.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t have a library card,” I admitted.

A broader smile. “I think I can trust you.”

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“I’m good for it,” I said. “If I run off with it, you can call my publisher for late fees.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Holly crossed her arms across her chest, pushing her already ample breasts even higher.

I couldn’t help but notice.

“By the way,” I added. “Do you have any books on Rosewood? I stopped there yesterday on the way in and I’d like to know more.”

Holly paused and shook her head and lead me to the checkout desk. “I don’t have anything here, but I can get some books from the main branch and have them here tomorrow.”

Happy for a reason to see her again, I agreed to return the next day.

Holly’s smile brightened a bit. “Your friend Jane was quite a fan of yours,” she said going through the motions of checking out the book for me.

“Never had one better,” I confirmed softly as she handed me the book.

“Come here,” Holly said turning towards the back of the library. “I have something to show you.” Turning right at a fiction aisle, she pointed. “Take a look.”

“Holy shit,” I exclaimed. Johnny was not kidding about Jane buying books for the library. There on one book shelf were ten copies of each of my thirteen books.

“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to swear.”

Holly laughed at the comment. “We have a fiction section, a non-fiction section and a Bobby Wade section.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” I laughed. I approached the stacks and ran my hand across the books.

“Not in the least,” Holly replied proudly. Her gaze slowly dragged over the books and me.

“Jesus,” I said shaking my head in disbelief. “Now I know who funds the royalty checks.”

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“And residuals, too,” Holly said, motioning with her right hand. “We’ve got the movies in the DVD section.”

We walked to where the DVD’s were stored. “Only two per movie title?” I asked in mock disappointment.

“Jane didn’t think libraries should stock movies,” Holly confessed. “She thought we should have a higher purpose. But when the local DVD rental store went out of business, she bought all your movies and begrudgingly donated them to us.”

I picked up a DVD of my first movie. “Movies are an interesting prospect for a writer,” I told her.

“Really? How so?” Holly asked, leaning forward.

I frowned. “When you sign the option,” I continued, shaking the DVD container, “you grant someone else your vision for their own artistic interpretation.”

“And is it hard to give your baby over to someone else?” Holly reached out and gently touched my arm.

I shook my head. “Not at first,” I admitted sheepishly.

“At first you just want to make sure the option check clears the bank. Pretty quickly you come to realize Hollywood generally shuts writers out of the screenwriting and production process.”

“So I’ve heard,” Holly replied, tilting her head to one side, studying me. “Something bothers you about the movies.”

“Yeah. I never liked the way my female protagonists were portrayed in the movies.” I placed the DVD back on the shelf.

“As I’m apparently the keeper of the world’s largest Bobby Wade collection, do you mind if I ask a question?”

Holly leaned past me to straighten the DVD, brushing against my arm. My body tightened at her casual touch.

“Shoot.”

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She turned her head and looked me in the eye. “Was Jane really the inspiration for Sally Malone?”

“Yeah,” I smiled, Holly’s warm gaze drawing me in.

“She told me she was, but I wasn’t quite sure.” Holly winked, turned and headed back to the front of the library.

I fell into step beside her. “I had been working on my first novel for over a year. I could have papered my entire apartment with rejection letters. We split up and suddenly the story took on a different meaning. I kept a whole bunch of the book, but added Sally Malone to express all my feelings for and about Jane.”

“And thus started your reoccurring character,” Holly correctly concluded.

“Yeah,” I said, my eyes getting surprisingly wet at the memory. “Readers love it when you bleed all over the pages. They love it when the male lead has reflective remorse. My feelings for Jane at the time were very raw and I put them on paper. The readers related. I went from having more rejections than a sixteen year old with acne to being auctioned for a multi-book deal. It changed my life.”

“Another question?” Holly paused behind the desk.

“Sure.” Anything to keep the conversation going. I leaned in.

Holly looked like she was unsure of asking the next one. “If Jane was your Muse, why is this your first trip to Cedar Key?” “Wow.” My body language showed I was a bit taken aback.

“Too forward?” Holly pressed her lips together seemingly a bit concerned she’d stepped over a line.

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“No,” I hesitated. It was a question I’d often thought about myself. “I just thought we were talking books. I wasn’t expecting personal questions.”

Holly winced. “Sorry,” she said. “Jane always talked about how close you two were in college and her hope you’d come here someday. I just always expected her to make the introduction.”

“Well, it’s complicated.” I lied. It was simple. I hadn’t come because I was using my failed relationship with Jane as inspiration for guilt-ridden, reflective prose.

The conflict had led to my success. It was a formula. If I had visited Jane, I knew I’d fall in love all over again.

Complacency doesn’t lead to conflict. I didn’t show up because I wanted the literary gravy train to keep rolling.

I was using Jane and she never knew it. God, what a bastard I’d been.

Holly saw I was struggling with the answer. “You don’t have to answer,” she said, quickly arranging and rearranging books on her desk.

“No. I …” I trailed off, unsure of how to answer Holly without sounding like a complete and total jerk.

“It’s okay,” Holly assured, glancing at me again. Her nervous actions ceasing.

“Thanks,” I was not in any kind of mindset to attempt a verbal rationalization of my own self-centered behavior.

There was a long pause as both of us struggled with what to say next. I broke the ice. “Hey, I have to meet someone in about an hour. Is there somewhere close where I can grab a bite of lunch?”

“Sure,” Holly replied, looking relieved and brushing her hair behind her ear. “Go down the street and head towards the pier. Steamers has a good meal and a great view. Everybody in town goes there and you can’t miss it.

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It’s the place with the bright blue stairs leading up to the restaurant on the second floor. Tell them I sent you and they’ll take good care of you.”

“Thanks,” I said. Before reaching the front door, I stopped. The end of the conversation had been so awkward. I turned. “I’m only in town for a few days.

Could we have lunch or dinner together one day?” I asked with nonchalance.

She blinked in surprise. “I don’t know,” Holly replied nervously, shuffling her feet.

“Really, no pressure,” I said. “I’ve just always had problems understanding the Dewey Decimal System. I thought you might be able to explain it to me.” A grin spread across my face.

Holly laughed. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good. Dewey really screws with my head.”

Holly crossed her arms, tilted her head and grinned ever so slightly. “It’s just a maybe.”

“I need guidance.”

She shook her head laughing.

I put my index finger to my ear and my pinky to my mouth. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

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Chapter Seven I followed the friendly librarian’s advice and headed towards Dock Street. Passing a parking lot filled with trucks and empty boat trailers, I stopped, looked and surveyed my surroundings. The fog had burned off and I had a good view of several blocks in every direction.

Old wood buildings were home to small shops and boutique hotels. People rode their bicycles to a fishing dock making its way out into the Gulf of Mexico. Several species of birds chased a john boat headed out a channel to the Gulf, warbling their menu choices.

From my vantage point, I had a fog-less understanding of Officer James’ assertion of how so many streets in Cedar Key were bordered on both sides by water or, at this point with the tide out, mud. I walked one street east to a fresh fish market where the smell of the daily catch combined with the salty mud. A boat was tied to a dock sitting on dirt in anticipation of an incoming tide to make it sea worthy again.

The old timers at the gas station were right to scoff at my Miami reference. Cedar Key may well be the last bastion of “Old Florida.” In fact, my view resembled what I imagined Key West was like in the 50s before tee-shirt 64

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shops lined Duval Street and Parrot Heads roamed the bars searching for Jimmy Buffett.

But Cedar Key seemed to be something more than simply Old Florida. This was the embodiment of small town Americana where everyone acknowledges each other’s presence and keeps their front yard clean.

Everyone knows the name of the town drunk as well as the mayor.

While many writers use their childhood as a catalyst for their artistic rage, I revel in the fact I grew up in a small town. My upbringing became the foundation for my work. But being the third generation to graduate from the same high school, there was great pressure from my parents to make it four. I chose to end the streak.

Today, many places try to re-create the feel of a small town in order to attract a certain socio-economic demographic. They self-proclaim a locally owned doughnut shop to be “quaint” and adjust the local cost of housing accordingly. Real small towns don’t need an advertising agency to describe the charm. Cedar Key is one of those special places where you feel its authenticity the moment you drive over Number Four Channel.

I appreciate why Jane never wanted to leave.

Smiling over that revelation, I trudged on until I found the signature “blue stairs to happiness” Holly described. Heading up to the second floor, I wandered into Steamers. A waitress asked if I wanted a table, but my eye was immediately drawn to the long U-shaped bar which offered a stunning view of the water and several smaller islands in the near distance. The few tables on the deck were taken. I shook my head at the waitress and walked to the bar. “Pint of Guinness draft,” I instructed to

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the young man behind the bar as I pulled out a stool and sat down. “And a glass of ice water.”

“You got it,” he replied. “You want to run a tab?”

“Sure,” I replied, reaching for my wallet. “I could use a little hair of the dog today.”

“Rough night last night?” He starred at me as he started the pour on my Guinness.

“More than you could possibly imagine.”

The inside of Steamers celebrates Cedar Key’s small fishing village ambiance. Fishing nets and lobster traps hang from the ceiling and there’s a bright orange Coast Guard life preserver on the far wall. Pondering the odd cast of characters I’d met in my first morning on the island, I watched the young man filling the glass three quarters full before running my credit card. “Quaint town,” I thought to myself. “But at least the boy knows how to pour a proper Guinness.”

“There you go Mr. …” he paused reading my name out loud from the credit card “Bobby Wade.”

When he said my name, I noticed a young, blonde with a streak of purple hair on one side, in Daisy Dukes, look back over her tattooed shoulder at me. “Fame has its price even in Cedar Key, I suppose,” I reflected. I smiled.

She turned away.

“First time in Cedar Key?” the young man asked as he handed me the pint.

“How can you tell?” I asked, taking a large first drink.

“It’s a fairly small island,” he replied. “We tend to know just about everyone who lives here.”

“And I guess I kind of stand out?”

“Hard not to for a stranger around here,” he said while cleaning a glass in the sink behind the bar. “Like I

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said, it’s a small island.” He paused. “And you’re as white as a Canadian snow bird. Not even a fisherman’s tan on the arms. That was my first hint.”

“Fair enough,” I laughed, raising my glass in a toast.

The young bartender who had looked over her shoulder earlier at me walked past staring in my direction.

I greeted her with a friendly head nod which was quickly rebuffed.

“Where ya from?” the bartender asked in a cadence reminiscent of someone who had asked the same question hundreds of times before. He swiped my card on the register.

The answer escaped me at first. Having been born in a small town in Kentucky, I headed to New York City after college to be closer to the center of the writing world.

Following the collapse of my last marriage, I wandered around before settling, if only momentarily, back in the Village. It suddenly dawned on me I wasn’t sure where I was from anymore. “Oh, here and there,” I finally replied.

“So what brings you here?” the man asked, hanging my card back to me along with my beer. “Fishing?”

“Naw,” I replied, having not had a fishing pole in my hand since I was a kid. “Personal business.”

“Well then,” he said, obviously becoming bored with our conversation. “Welcome to Cedar Key. Let me know when you’re ready for another pint.”

“Will do,” I replied as he disappeared to the other end of the bar.

Later, with an order of fresh fried oysters in front of me, my mind wandered nostalgically back to my upbringing. Jane’s house was really no bigger than the one my family had lived in, and there were five of us.

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As for the water and mud, I grew up on the Ohio River.

“Damn,” I mumbled to myself. “I grew up in Kentucky’s small town answer to Cedar Key.” Both places seemed so friendly. Not like that selfdescribed “friendly” retirement community I passed on my drive in. I laughed as I saw the signs because it’s also the town I’d read about having the largest per capita incident of sexually transmitted diseases. I guess it all depends on your definition of friendly. Looking around the bar, by any definition, Cedar Key sure fit the description of friendly.

I was a couple of beers into lunch when the purplehaired, tattooed bartender passed by another time. I glanced at her name tag—Grace. “Oh, my God,” I thought.

“This is Jane’s granddaughter.” As I studied her face, the resemblance was unmistakable. I made deliberate eye contact. “Sunshine?”

Looking slightly irritated at the interruption, she replied simply, “Yeah.”

“Are you Sunshine?” I asked. “I mean are you Grace Stelton?”

She continued washing out glasses in the sink behind the bar. “That’s what folks around here call me,” she replied, rolling her eyes in disdain.

“Jane’s granddaughter?”

She placed one arm on her hip and nodded affirmatively.

“Hi,” I said, sticking out my hand. “I’m Bobby Wade.”

“THE Bobby Wade?”

“I was when I came in here,” I replied modestly.

“The writer?”

“I suppose so,” I said, smiling broadly and waiting for her to take my hand.

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“Good,” Sunshine said, sticking out her hand too, raising it to my face with her middle finger extended.

“Then fuck you!”

69

Chapter Eight Located right across the street from Steamers, Johnny’s law office was not hard to find. It was, I think, the only business on Dock Street not a bar or tee shirt/souvenir shop. And as he shared his office space with a real estate broker located on the first floor, the front street window was covered with flyers of houses and condos for sale on Cedar Key. Scouring the various listings before I entered, I was astonished at the reasonable cost of waterfront living here. Remoteness apparently has its benefits, too.

It was yet another indication I was not in South Florida’s land of million dollar, 400 square foot condos.

I needed a moment or two before going in to get my signature notarized and reading real estate listings was an easy enough distraction. The idea of Jane having a child, as well as a grandchild, had been a total shock to me. I simply had not thought through the process of meeting her. And if I had, I certainly would not have envisioned it being as abrupt and hostile as the actual encounter. I was stunned by her anger towards me. As my confusion was not going to be solved by real estate flyers, I climbed the stairs to Johnny’s office.

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should have waited for me to introduce you,” Johnny kept repeating. “I was supposed to do it. Explaining how it was a chance encounter for which I had no control, only seemed to aggravate him more. The easy act of having my signature notarized suddenly became a lesson in futility. A suggestion for Johnny to go home and chill out with a bowl of the Crippler drew a snarl. That was not an exaggeration. He really snarled at me. By the time I left, I was more exhausted than I had been from the previous day’s combination of travel, bourbon and the Crippler.

I left Johnny’s office, wrestled with what to do next.

On one hand, I could use a good nap to clear my head.

But, I knew if I returned to Jane’s, my inner dialogue could likely keep me awake for hours. Not being quite ready face Jane yet, I opted for Plan B, my go to solution for every dilemma in my life, a stiff drink.

Knowing I did not want to return to Steamers and again face Sunshine’s inexplicable wrath, I glanced up and down the street for a secondary watering hole. I spotted a sign for the Big Deck Raw Bar, a scruffy open air bar where I could watch the clamming and fishing boats pass in and out of the city’s marina. I picked a table on the rail, sat down in one of the metal chairs and told the surly waitress to bring me a double shot of the best brown liquid on the shelf. When she returned with a generous pour of Michter’s Rye, my favorite brand, I smiled at the first thing seeming to go right all day.

I picked up John Muir’s A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf and tried reading it, but my mind was as flighty as that of the young botanist himself. The tide was barely starting to come back in now and the salty smell of the water was quickly being replaced by a musty, dirty, albeit still briny, odor. Feeling a little salty and muddy myself, it fit my current mood. In an odd sense, I was feeling 71

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guilty about leaving Jane’s house and being at a bar. I was also trying hard to figure out how I felt about Sunshine, but was having trouble identifying any feelings about a person whose existence was unknown to me only this morning. Thoughts drifted in and out like the tide.

Unable to comprehend anything written on the old pages, I tossed the book aside, closed my eyes, and allowed my mind to wander. And to who else could it ramble to at this point, but Jane.

If I said when I met Jane it was love at first sight, it would only be a half truth. Following our brief encounter in the ravine, I was instantly smitten. She was totally unimpressed by the freshman in skinny jeans with a superficially pompous view of literature.

A couple of weeks after our first encounter, I was meeting several other first year English nerds at the Bear and the Bull, one of the bars off campus not prone to checking identification. When I entered, I assume my age was not hard to determine from my baby-faced, wideeyed expression. I was well under legal age and it showed.

I spotted Jane standing by the pinball machine next to the door with a guy in a Molly Hatchet tee shirt. Once again, her soft skin and ravishing eyes took my breath away. Seeing my uncomfortable shuffle-of-feet as I stood there, she jokingly asked to see my driver’s license and demanded a $1.00 cover charge. I panicked and went to my wallet for both.

My friends were watching and clearly enjoyed the laugh being at my expense. I blushed and headed to the table of other illegal drinkers, as they hooted and hollered at my misfortune. As we sat there chugging cheap draft beers, I could not take my eyes off the girl at the door. She could not help but pick up on it and began a playful flirt.

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sarcastic sense of humor kicked in and I wittily doffed her the Old Girl. She spat some response back at me and quickly moved on. I was left silently cursing my sarcastic tongue and the social awkwardness of a boy with a crush.

It was the grade school equivalent of pulling her pony tail to show how much I liked her.

Everyone congratulated me about having the balls to diss an upperclassman, but I was devastated at having blown another chance to talk to her.

As I continued in classes during the semester, I would see Jane from a distance. More often than not, my smiles did not even get an acknowledgement. The most I would get in reply was a polite nod. And she was older, so it was not like we had classes together. It was an agonizing first year for me. I had a few dates, one of which even ended up at the Thrifty Dutchman—the campus no-tell motel.

But even that next day, I went back to my dorm room thinking of Jane.

As my first year of college drew to a close and I was registering for the next semester’s classes, I noticed a class on Southern Literature being taught by a graduate assistant—Jane Stelton. I took this as a gift from the Gods. It was my chance to start over with her, I thought.

I signed up.

During summer break I was back in my small home town, but I could not get the thought of Jane off my mind. If I had known where she lived, I likely would have driven there just for a chance to see her face from a distance. Luckily, the lack of this knowledge saved me from becoming a part-time stalker.

Finally, the endless summer drew to a close and my second year at college began. The first day of class, I showed up with a copy of our introductory reading assignment, The Thread that Runs So True by Jesse Stuart.

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When Jane arrived and passed out the syllabus, she stopped at my desk. “Bobby Wade, right?” she asked. And when I nodded a vague affirmation in a nerdy attempt to seem cool, she calmly asked me to stick around after class. I cannot remember what we discussed in class that day as my mind was constantly constructing scenario after scenario of what Jane wanted with me.

After everyone had left the classroom, and going for the “Mr. Cool” look, I nonchalantly shuffled to Jane’s desk. She was sitting behind the desk in the front of the room and was very confrontational. “Why are you here, Mr. Wade?” Her eyes flashed and her confrontational tone burst my fantasies with an audible pop in my head.

So much for casual chit chat. I blinked and could feel the red creep into my neck. She was already calling me by my last name. “Because you asked me to stay after class,” I replied with a snark from the side of my mouth. Damn, I did it again.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Jane’s lips were tight and drawn. It was clear she was pissed about something. It was safe to assume it was me. Maybe I had stared at her once too often the previous semester. I did not want my obsession with this woman to lead to a restraining order.

I backed off. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to ratchet down Jane’s tension. “I’m not following you. I’m just getting through a few major requirements.”

“Don’t play coy with me, Mr. Wade,” Jane shot back.

“You may be an underclassman, but everyone in the English Department is raving about you.” Her lip curled up on one side.

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my professors socializing about anything other than diagraming sentences. Trying to be consolatory, I offered, “I’m sorry if that upsets you,” thinking she might be jealous of my departmental praise.

“It doesn’t upset me, Mr. Wade,” Jane replied, rolling her eyes. She was getting more riled up with each passing moment.

And I was becoming even more confused. “Then I’ll repeat your question, why the hell am I here? You asked me to stick around after class, remember?”

“Fine,” Jane replied, uncrossing her arms and leaning forward. “This class is way below your level,” her scathing tone implying my very existence was a federal crime. “I would like to know why you signed up for a lower level class taught by a graduate student. Look, if it’s payback for the thing last semester at the Bear and the Bull, I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“That’s not it at all,” I insisted, panicked at the idea she thought me capable of such an action.

“Look, I saw you staring at me all the time last semester,” Jane rolled right over my protest. “We need to bury whatever hatchet you’re carrying around for my scalp.”

Dear God, Jane did think I was stalking her. But what she saw as an ax was actually a torch. This was going far worse than I could have ever possibly imagined. “Uh,” I said, my thoughts bouncing around my brain so quickly I could not latch onto a single coherent one.The heat of my embarrassment was making the sweat pool on my brow.

“I just don’t need the prodigy of the Department showing me up to get back at me,” Jane continued. “I’ll get my Masters this year and I’m out of here. You can play King of the English students all you want after I’m gone.”

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I was stunned by her admission and angry at myself for having left the impression I wanted revenge. I decided to come clean. At that point, I had little to lose. “It’s true,” I explained. “I signed up for this class because you were teaching it.” I wiped the moisture from my forehead.

“I knew it,” she said, standing and pointing an accusatory finger at me. “Well, if you think for one minute …”

I cut her off. “But I’m not looking to get even,” I claimed. “Not even close.”

“Then what do you want from me, Mr. Wade?” she said, placing both hands on the desk.

“Well, for one,” I snapped. “Please quit calling me Mr. Wade.”

“Okay, Bobby,” Jane replied, my name popping out like a curse.

“And for the other … a date,” I blurted out. Not believing I actually said it out loud, my face burned even brighter in an instant.

Jane sat back down in her chair, astonished at my admission. We stared at each other, both of us stunned at my offer. “I don’t quite know how to respond,” she hesitated.

Since I had inadvertently let my intentions be known, I went for broke. “I mean, not tonight,” I stammered.

“Unless, of course, if you don’t have plans. Anyway, I was hoping if I took this class I could get to know you and maybe we could grab a pizza or something …” My words drifted off. I was way out of my league and a complete mess. My gaze glanced away over her shoulder, fearing eye contact that would bring a rejection.

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are aware the university has a policy against teachers fraternizing with students in their classes. So, I really don’t think pizza or something would be appropriate.”

My gaze snapped as I zeroed in on her eyes. “Okay then, what if I wasn’t in your class?” I held my breath.

Jane paused and then capitulated. “I’d think about it.”

I dropped Southern Literature that afternoon.

A tapping of fingers on my closed library book, interrupted my daydream. Johnny was standing over me, peering down at my table. “Start with Chapter Five,” he advised.

“Pardon me?” I replied looking up. I was quite content to be sitting there by myself. I really was not looking for company, especially with the man who had just “busted my chops” about introducing myself to Sunshine.

“It’s a bit slow in the beginning,” Johnny said. “Chapter Five is when he gets to Florida.” When I said nothing, he asked if he could sit down, while simultaneously taking the liberty to do so. I waved at the waitress and pointed to Johnny. We did not speak again until the waitress had alcohol in front of us both. Johnny broke a silence becoming more uncomfortable by the moment. “Hey man, I’m sorry if I was a bit abrupt back there in the office,” he finally said. “I have a tendency to get a little worked up at times.”

I thought about suggesting to Johnny a listing of all the illegal drugs he had recited to me upon our first meeting as stress relievers. But truthfully, I was afraid he would pull some out of his pocket. “It’s alright,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Well it isn’t,” Johnny shook his head angrily. “I was so pissed back there because we were so close with Jane and Sunshine. Andrea and I babysat her when she was 77

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a baby. She had a rough go of it growing up. Her mom was always either sick or in trouble, and Jane pretty much raised her. We kind of watched out for her when she was growing up. Hell, it’s a small island, everyone watched out for her growing up.”

I ran my finger around the rim of my glass. “What did the mom die of?” I asked.

“Cancer,” Johnny replied, pausing to take a sip of his bourbon. “I figured Sunshine would have trouble with you,” he continued. “I wanted to get to her first, you know, to smooth the road a bit. There’s a lot going on there you don’t know about. I was going to buffer the introduction.”

I thought about it for a moment and then reached out my hand to Johnny. “Thanks, man,” I replied. “I didn’t think introducing myself was that big of a deal.”

“Well, it was,” Johnny insisted, shaking my hand.

“Apparently.” My sarcasm was lost on Johnny.

“Grace is unique,” Johnny said, sipping on his drink as he plowed on.

“That’s one way to put it,” I replied, scratching my head. “Psychotic was where I was heading. I’ll settle on unique.”

“With enough anger issues to start her own support group,” Johnny continued, nodding at my assessment.

“So I found out,” I replied, searching his eyes. “When I realized who she was, I just wanted to meet her. She’s Jane’s granddaughter and I thought I’d say …”

Johnny was getting worked up again. “That’s why Jane wanted me to do the introduction. What are you going to say, man? I’m the only guy your grandma ever really loved, but never showed up. Nice to meet you. I’m Bobby.

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breached the difficult silence. He leaned across the table and grabbed my clenched fists. “Sunshine’s grandmother loved you, dude,” he said softly.

“I know,” I said, lowering my head. “And I loved her.”

Point made, Johnny leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, I suspected as much. But Sunshine has no clue. She doesn’t know how you feel.”

“All she knows is how I let her grandma down,” I replied softly.

Johnny killed the remainder of his shot. “In her eyes,” he said. “Yeah.”

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Chapter Nine There is an old guy in the Village we call The Walking Man. Tall and lanky, he has a well-trimmed salt and pepper goatee. On any given day, you can spot him somewhere, walking around reading a book as he strolls.

In the summer, he wears khaki walking shorts and in the winter corduroys. On days it is supposed to rain, he’ll have an umbrella hooked over a forearm. Spotting The Walking Man is a topic of conversation whenever he is spied on your street. Everyone seems to wonder who he is and what he is reading. One family even started a Facebook page for a listing of books people see him reading.

Having declined Johnny’s offer for a ride back to Jane’s house, I decided to walk around the island. I did not have time for a Muir-like walk, so on my lawyer’s advice, I headed to the Cedar Key museum, where there was a historical marker for John Muir. Reading as I walked, I wondered if folks in their houses and golf carts were gawking at me as I walked and read, in the same way I had pondered the odd intentions of The Walking Man. In any event, the calming nature of the walk made me come to appreciate more of the reasons Jane loved Cedar Key. 80

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Muir’s journal account of his walk from Louisville to Cedar Key is an interesting description of the postCivil War South, complete with politically incorrect descriptions of his encounters with former slaves. Muir was a twenty-nine year old laborer turned botanist and his story is filled with descriptions of trees, moss, flowers and ferns. Johnny was right, it was more than a bit of a slow read. I skipped to the chapter where Muir took a steamer named Sylvan Shore from Savannah, Georgia to Fernandina, Florida.

As I read the story of Muir’s trek across the Sunshine State, I laughed at his encounter with a group of loggers: “Near the middle of the forenoon I came to a shanty where a party of loggers were getting out long pines for ship spars. They were the wildest of all the white savages I have met. The long-haired ex-guerrillas of the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina are uncivilized fellows; but for downright barbarism these Florida loggers excel.

Nevertheless they gave me a portion of their yellow pork and hominy without either apparent hospitality or a grudge, and I was glad to escape to the forest again.”

As I re-read the passage, I suddenly had a vision of Muir as the original incarnation of The Walking Man, trudging around swamps and writing in his journal as he went. Except this passage gave me a new perspective.

I always thought of The Walking Man as one of the odd creatures of the Village. I never considered he may have been viewing me with just as critical an eye.

Maybe, as I sat watching The Walking Man walk by, he was looking at me as the wild savage being tossed out of bar after bar, with a shot of whiskey to offer instead of 81

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yellow pork and hominy. There is an alternate universe out there. It’s the eyes looking back at you.

Like Muir, I walked on. A cell phone photo of the Muir historical marker obtained and the “I’ve Become My Old Man” mission accomplished, I was well on my GPS-charted course to Jane’s house when I came upon the Atsena Otie Cemetery. At some point, Johnny had told me this was the original name for Cedar Key, except it was pronounced nowhere near the way it was spelled. At such a low sea level and so near the water, I was actually surprised to find headstones marking underground graves. I thought the water table would prevent such burials, but there was a rise in the property probably explaining it.

I was intrigued and went inside. This was not your run of the mill cemetery. Many of the graves were uniquely decorated. The graves of one couple had a Christmas tree and ornaments between them. Another had wine bottles painted as tulips around the headstone. One simply had a half-drank bottle of whiskey in front of it. I sat down on one of the many stone benches and thought about the roadside marker I had seen yesterday for the men and women who had died in the raid on Rosewood. I wondered if any of the victims were buried here. Many of the markers were certainly old enough to qualify, but I doubted if any of the victims of that terrible massacre actually had the opportunity for a proper burial.

“Can I help you?” came a voice from behind startling me. I turned to find an old man rambling up the hill, huffing and puffing his rosy cheeks as he went. “Name’s Gary. I’m the caretaker,” he said. “You?” “I’m Bobby,” I replied, offering my hand. “I was just walking along and spotted this place and thought I’d walk 82

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through for a bit. You okay with me walking around? I’m not trespassing, am I?” “Oh, Lord no. If we arrested everyone who wandered into this place, there wouldn’t be any space left in the county jail.” Gary slapped my shoulder. “I happen to know most of the regulars who come through here. Saw you were new and thought you may be lost.”

I considered the fact that being flipped off by Jane’s granddaughter might be the least of my eternal worries.

“Well,” I laughed and scratched my head. “Maybe I am lost, but I do know where I am physically.”

“Good to know,” Gary replied with a hearty laugh. “A lot of folks coming in this place don’t know, either.”

“On the front end or the back?”

“Both,” he huffed. “So which one brings you here?”

“I’m a friend of Jane Stelton,” I replied. Before I could even get Jane’s full name out, he cut me off.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, suddenly eyeing me up and down with great interest. “You must be the writer fella she always went on and on about.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I confirmed, now not sure of my welcome. After the day I had, I thought my paranoia justified.

“Well, she told me your story,” he declared, nodding.

It seems Jane had told everyone in Cedar Key some version of our story. “Doesn’t surprise me,” I said, shaking my head. “Jane liked to talk.”

“Yup,” Gary went on, indicating I should follow him as he walked. “When she got sick, we tried to sell her a plot. Showed her a real nice one under this live oak tree with a view of the water. Said she couldn’t do it and it was up to her friend Bobby to decide where she ended up.”

“Well, that decision is what brings me here to Cedar Key,” I affirmed, hands on hips looking at the view. “Jane’s 83

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ashes are in an urn back at the house and I have to decide what to do with them.”

“Bring ‘em here and we’ll take care of her,” Gary implored while pointing. “We got a place right over there called the Garden of Remembrance.”

I shook my head negatively. “She didn’t want to be buried.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t bury her,” Gary said. “We’d sprinkle her ashes here and there, so she’d be with her friends.

Then we’d put a plaque on the wall with her name. Give ya a deal deal for both of ya.”

I felt like Gary was checking out my height and weight, trying to calculate how much ash I would generate. I decided to change the subject. “I guess there’s a lot of the characters of the island out here?” I looked at the grave with the liquor bottle in front of it. “Like this guy?” I asked as I leaned down and squinted to read the name. “Homer Kelly?”

“Oh, hell yes,” Gary replied, slapping his knee. “That’s old man Kelly. Loved to fish, but had a real mean streak when he was drunk.”

“Yeah?” I starred at the headstone, picturing an angry leprechaun with a fishing pole. I blinked away the image.

“Fell off the pier and drowned after a three-day bender.”

“No shit?” I laughed.

“The bottle was put there by WD, his best fishing buddy, who drank half of it and left the rest for Homer.” I was strangely touched by the story.

Oblivious to my attempt to change the subject, Gary went about trying to sell me eternal rest. He pointed again. “And I promise I wouldn’t sprinkle either of you next to Crazy Mary.”

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Intrigued by the new name and despite knowing better, I asked, “Why?” “Nice woman, but a little loose … if you know what I mean?” Gary said with a wink.

“I do,” I attested. “Sounds like my second wife.” I briefly entertained the notion of bringing Jane’s ashes out here, dumping them and getting on my way. I could justify it by allowing Sunshine the opportunity to visit her grandma. As quickly as the idea came into my head, it was gone. Gary already said Jane did not want to be here.

Looking at the markers for Homer and Mary, it seems people’s reputations lived forever in this place. I turned to Gary. “So how long have you been the caretaker here?”

“Thirty years or better, I suppose,” Gary replied, adjusting his ball cap .

“So, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Do you believe in the afterlife?” I asked. I suppose I’ve gone lower than asking a cemetery caretaker about the meaning of life. “I mean, you’ve seen a lot of people buried here. Do you think there is something beyond?”

Gary did not skip a beat in responding. “I’m not a religious man, son,” he said. “But follow me over here. We walked to a grave marked simply by an orange painted stone with no name. “The fella buried here is a Seminole.”

“Okay.” The significance of his declaration was, I admit, lost on me.

“You know the native Americans believe the soul remains on this earth as long as people remember them and continue to tell stories about them.”

“What do you think?” I prompted. I let out a breath I had been holding, my anticipation of his response surprising myself.

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Gary shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. “Every year this man’s family comes here on the anniversary of his death simply to tell stories about him.

They say it keeps him a part of nature. When they stop showing up, it’s time for him to cross over to whatever is next.”

I thanked Gary for his tour and spiritual and the new spiritual contemplation. He made certain I knew he was serious about his “two for one” offer on eternity in Cedar Key. I did not read during the walk back to Jane’s, but instead pondered the old caretaker’s words about the afterlife.

I grew up in a religious home where we went to church every Sunday and memorized the books of the Bible. I’d sit through Sunday school and color pictures of Jesus walking on water while my parents were upstairs getting hell fire and damnation religion.

I learned my first prayer from my grandma.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I never really thought about the morbid tone of the 18th Century rhyme because I was in the first-grade and had no concept of death. One day as I left for school, my mom walked me out to the front of our house and gave me a very confusing talk about God, Heaven, death and my Uncle Huey, a great man who lived next door to us.

“Pray for your Aunt and your cousins,” she told me as I walked away.

All morning I thought about what she had told me.

Suddenly, at lunch, I remembered her telling me to pray.

I only knew one prayer. So, I said it silently to myself.

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In that instant, I burst into tears at the realization Uncle Huey was the soul God had taken in his sleep. I ran home from school and found a priest sitting with his family planning the funeral and wake. Thereafter, the simple childhood prayer scared the living Hell out of me. It was frightening enough to go to a dark room all by yourself and try to sleep. But now I was offering a rhyme to the guy who came in the middle of the night and killed my uncle. The day someone taught me the Lord’s Prayer was the happiest day of my childhood.

When I finally got back to Jane’s house, the sun was nearly setting in the west. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” I murmured as I walked past the flowers on the front porch and opened the door.

“Well, well look what the cat drug in.”

“It’s been a long day and I have court in the morning,” I said out loud, pointing at the urn. “I’d really like to get some sleep without the use of the Crippler. Let’s not start this.”

“Ignoring me again.”

“Jesus, I don’t need this tonight. I really need some sleep.” I kicked my shoes off at the door.

“So, you went looking for Grace?”

“More like stumbled into her. Very pleasant young lady,” I retorted sarcastically. I went to the cabinet, pulled down a clean glass and poured myself a bourbon.

“Thinks I should go fuck myself. Absolutely charming.” I slammed the bottle down on the counter.

“You’re drinking a lot these days. Too much, maybe.

I’m starting to worry.”

“Well, when I get back to New York, I’ll be going cold turkey, won’t I? I better get in all I can while I’m down here.” I poured a little more into the glass, just for good measure.

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“You always say you’ll dry out. You’re just hitting it awfully hard this time.”

I raised my glass towards the urn. “Cheers,” I announced. “Here’s looking up your old address.”

“Maybe you could try that meditation thing?”

I shook my head. “Won’t help me and you know it,” I said. “I nearly had a panic attack this morning at the thought of a world where I never existed. I crossed over to the couch and stretched my legs out onto the coffee table.

“You like Holly, don’t you?”

“Jealousy is not an emotion I can deal with tonight,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. “I feel bad enough already.” I grabbed a little throw pillow and shoved it behind my neck.

“I’m not jealous. I like Holly. Quit feeling guilty.”

“Thanks,” I snorted. Like I needed approval. “Jesus.”

“And you went by the cemetery.”

“Sure did,” I said. “Nice place.”

“Please don’t leave me there. I know you’re thinking about it.”

I closed my eyes. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I was being honest with myself.

“Sprinkling me there is a cop out.”

My legs hit the floor as I leaned my forearms on my legs. “I should and just get the hell out of here.” The thought had crossed my mind more than once.

“You won’t do it. You couldn’t deal with the guilt.”

“I don’t believe this is happening.” I pounded my fist on the table in anger.

“What?”

“Guilting me about your ashes. You’re not my wife, you know,” I threw out into the space before drinking from my glass.

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“Wow. I guess we’re getting to the roots of your feelings.

That hurts.”

“It’s true,” I shouted. I was slowly working myself into a rage.

“You’re here because you wish I would have been your wife.”

“Is that how I should remember you?” I yelled. “Jane Stelton—almost first wife number one.” I went to the hall table and opened my pocket humidor. “Might as well enjoy these, too,” I said, firing up a cigar. “This is stupid.

I’m arguing with a ghost.”

My brain went quiet for a moment. Finally, I thought.

Some peace and quiet.

“Tell me a story.”

“What?” I threw myself back on the couch. “What kind of story am I supposed to tell you?”

“A story of when we were young.”

Remembering my conversation with the caretaker at the cemetery, I smiled at this twist in my own inner dialogue.

“Better yet, let’s figure out a story to tell Sunshine.

Maybe it will help make things go a little smoother the next time you meet up.”

“Okay then, but I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to share it,” I took a drag from my cigar. “Do you remember when you were teaching Southern Literature as a graduate assistant…”

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Chapter Ten Johnny and I did not speak much on the thirty-plus mile drive to the county courthouse. And the silence really did not bother me. Yesterday’s encounter with Sunshine had left such a dark cloud on my psyche, not talking was a relief. Johnny meditated to envision a world without him. With one flip of the bird, Sunshine gave me a similar spiritual awakening. Not reliving it was a relief.

As we drove by mile-after-mile of nothing but palmettos and swamp grass, I thought of John Muir seeing this place for the first time. Spying the abandoned railroad bed, I thought of those once holding the tracks Muir had written about in his journal leading him into Cedar Key. Officer James’ description of when the railroad was being built fit the timeframe. I envisioned Muir traipsing his way along the tracks, whistling a song and making notes about moss, flowers and leaves.

Residents of the town are quite proud of Muir’s writings about their home place. Reading his book, I came to realize Muir’s real objective had been to travel to Key West in order to catch a freighter to Havana. His stay in Cedar Key was extensive only because a nasty bout of malaria changed his plans and kept him in the area. And 90

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whether it was from the fever or the drugs, Muir spent his down time writing about religion.

“After human beings have played their part in Creation’s plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatsoever,” Muir wrote during his convalescence.

“Burning,” I chuckled silently to myself. Maybe he had discovered ‘the Crippler’ before Johnny.

The previous day’s events were sifting through my brain as I sat on the hard wood bench in the hallway outside the Levy County Probate Court. The bench reminded me of sitting in a church pew as a kid, waiting for the Sunday morning fire and brimstone. Lost in the turbulent thoughts of my past, I was unprepared when the elevators doors opened and Sunshine appeared.

Johnny handled her surprise well. Immediately inserting himself between us, he took Sunshine a little ways down the hallway and talked to her about the proceeding. While they were in a side bar, I called my agent and lied to her about the progress I was making on my next manuscript.

When we went into the courtroom, Sunshine sat silently through the hearing. But she stared lasers through me as I was appointed Executor. My discomfort was palpable. I was tense, my body ready for some kind of attack, be it verbal or physical. As soon as the hearing was complete, she was out the door, albeit with no rude hand gestures, but also with no acknowledgement of me either. “Well, Old Girl,” I mumbled to myself. “So much for sharing stories.”

The drive to the county courthouse had taken longer than the actual court appearance. But because of what happened, the drive back seemed to be taking twice as 91

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long. About ten minutes into the drive home, Johnny broke the uncomfortable silence.

“I had no idea she would show up, you know,” Johnny said, looking away from the road momentarily.

I stared out the window.

“I mean, I had to tell her about the hearing,” Johnny pleaded his case like a lawyer on appeal. “Except for the ashes, she’s Jane’s sole heir. It’s the law, man. I had to tell her.”

Johnny was right. But knowing he was right didn’t make the situation any easier. Sunshine’s sudden appearance at the court hearing had shaken me. “I just wish I would have known, that’s all,” I complained, shifting my position in the passenger seat. “I went into the courthouse expecting one thing and ended up getting something totally different. It was very uncomfortable in there. I just wasn’t ready for it.” I rolled my shoulders in a feeble attempt to relax. A headache was building at the base of my skull.

Johnny was clearly remorseful about the encounter.

“Truthfully, man,” he said, tapping on the drivers’ wheel as he spoke. “I really didn’t think she’d be there.”

I believed him and decided to simply continue to look out the window for a while longer. There was no need to question his motives. Anyway, the appearance of Grace in my life was not what was bothering me. Truth be told, it was dealing with the legal formality of walking into the white light that was fucking with my brain.

When my mom and dad died, I was appointed to be the administrator of their estates. I barely had time to toss the first shovel of dirt on their graves before I was raising my right hand and swearing to do what was just and right under the law. It was a horrible experience. As 92

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the only child, I undertook the solemn family obligation performed over generations by the poor son-of-a-bitches stuck with the duty. I would have gladly traded anything for the responsibility. The administration of their estates was more about inventorying suppressed emotions than their meager assets.

The whole process of estate administration takes the raw emotion of losing a loved one and formalizes it in a legal proceeding meant, by its very nature, to dig up inner conflicts buried long before the decedent. When the estate was final, I took my mom and dad’s money and put it in an account where it has sat for years. I’ve still not decided what to do with it.

I fleetingly thought about talking to Johnny about estate planning. As my current royalty checks had trouble meeting the alimony payments, I was unsure if a Will even made sense for me. I played with the idea of converting my entire wealth to nickels and making my ex-wives fight over it with a pail and shovel. It would be a great pay-for-view event.

Anyway, after my parents were gone, I swore I’d never be the Executor of an estate again. In this instance, the property split was relatively simple. Grace “Sunshine” Stelton got all the assets—a bank account, some insurance proceeds and the house—and I got an urn of ashes. As easy as it sounded, I was cursing the promise of Cedar Key. Sleep the night before had been intermittent. I woke up several times to check the clock in anticipation of my court appearance. Now, it wasn’t even noon and I already needed a nap. If I did not change my attitude soon, I would never get any rest. “The judge was sure friendly with you,” I said, looking over at Johnny.

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“Yeah,” Johnny replied eagerly. I could see he was happy to have the silence broken. He was a guy who lived to talk. “He’s a real good guy.”

“It looked like it to me,” I responded. “He’s definitely fond of you.”

“Well, I’ve done some work for him in the past,” Johnny explained, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Client?”

“Crippler.”

I burst out laughing. I had not laughed so hard in what seemed like weeks. Johnny started to giggle and then also broke into a full belly laugh. In an instant, Johnny and I were laughing so hard, we had to pull the car over and catch our breath. “You want some?”

“Aw, hell yes,” I replied eagerly. “I’m hoping you have some back home. If not, there’s plenty left in Jane’s stash.”

“Why wait?” Johnny grinned. He reached over and popped open his glove compartment. “Feel right above the lip,” he said. “There should be a bag taped up there.”

I began to appreciate the finer points of having a lawyer who also grew pot. I could easily put him on retainer. As we passed a small pipe back and forth in Johnny’s car, I kept a paranoid lookout for Officer James and the pickup truck.

“Do you think the Daoist monks have shit like this when they meditate,” I asked, giggling a bit as I spoke while exhaling.

“Nope,” Johnny laughed. He was getting just as silly as me. Then he smoothed his face into serious lines.

“Through Daoism, I strive to sharpen my senses.” He cracked up. “I’m getting less so by the minute.” Johnny took another hit. “Nope to dope. That’s the Daoist slogan,

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I think.” He too laughed at his own joke. We were both quickly becoming our own best audiences.

“Did you ever use any mind-expanding drugs,” I asked, reaching for the pipe again.

“Oh yeah,” Johnny sighed as if recalling good times from years gone by.

“What did you learn?” I blew out another toke from the pipe.

“The only thing they expanded was my belly,” Johnny guffawed, patting his stomach. “Gave me the munchies like a mother. Couldn’t quit eating for days. Nearly had to have my stomach pumped. I never found the meaning of life or anything.” Johnny could barely get the sentences out laughing between the words.

“Maybe I should be a Rastifari,” I replied, grabbing my own belly. “I could take some Crippler and become the Buddha of ganja.” I was getting royally fucked up.

Johnny was starting to slur his words. “You’d have to give up bourbon. They can smoke weed, but they can’t drink.”

“I’m out,” I declared, slapping my leg and laughing outrageously. And then for the next ten minutes or so we passed the pipe, saying stupid things to each other while laughing our asses off. When the bowl was burnt, we tried to catch our breath.

For some reason, good pot has the tendency to compel even the most consistent of users to contemplate the meaning of life. I am no exception. No proper high can be spent entirely on laughter. So, with a break in the frivolity, I went deep. “Seriously, man,” I said, tragically contemplating the end of the burn. “Your meditation and Daoism shit. Have you found anything the rest of us don’t know yet?”

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Johnny shook his head sadly and with a little exasperation. “Aw, hell no,” he lamented, placing the pipe in the cup holder. “It doesn’t work that way.

Unfortunately, the meaning of life is we will never really know the meaning of life.”

“Well, that sure sucks,” I said, spinning my finger heavenly as I spoke. “I thought it was all about discovering the celestial bottom line.”

“It doesn’t work that way, man,” Johnny went on. “But there’s got to be a guru sitting on a mountain somewhere who’s figured it all out.” He laughed, but just as quickly continued his serious dissertation. “Meditation only brings us shit we already know, but the ego won’t let it out.

It’s a way to reach a higher form of your own intelligence.”

“I don’t follow,” I said, shaking my head.

Intent on his message, Johnny leaned in toward me.

“The brain operates on a certain wave length,” he said.

“And it’s those Beta waves driving our every action.

Meditation is a level of relaxation to slow down that cycle.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You slow down the brain in order to expand it?”

“I know it sounds counter-intuitive,” Johnny conceded, slurring over the final words of his thought.

“Slowing down is the ego surrendering to your own brain.”

“I’m pretty slow now,” I said, the effects of the Crippler sneaking in to my speech as well. “I surrendered to the Crippler about ten minutes ago.”

Johnny pointed at the bag of pot. “Some people use weed when they meditate,” he said. “I can’t do it. The combination puts me to sleep and makes me hungry.”

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The silence was companionable now with no trace of the earlier uncomfortableness. After a few moments, I continued, “So, when you meditate, you slow down the vibe of the brain?”

“Yup,” he said.

“What happens next?” I was sincerely trying to understand.

“Sometimes,” Johnny said, “absolutely nothing. I can listen to a thirty-minute meditation tape and all I get is irritated. Those are the days I can’t get past the ego of my own life—money, clients—you know, the bullshit we all focus on. But sometimes, after about ten minutes, it all comes together, and it’s like a psychedelic trip of light and images.”

“No shit?” I replied. I had never used psychedelics.

Not because of lack of desire. It was fear. But the idea of being able go there without a sugar cube intrigued me.

“Better than an LSD micro-dot, and there’s no sunlight hangover to deal with when it’s done,” he shared.

“Only energy.”

“Fuck.”

“Last week, I went down to the shell mounds and put my headset on with my favorite meditation tape. I started out focusing on a small island about a mile off the coast.

It was a real bright day and the sky was clear blue. After a while, the whole fucking horizon started changing colors.

Bright fluorescent blues and greens were floating around like a tie-dyed shirt flipping on a clothes line in the wind.”

“I’d kill to have an experience as intense,” I said, feeling nothing but the emptiness of envy.

Johnny looked over. “I bet you’ve meditated before,” he suggested. “You’ve done it and you don’t really know it happened.”

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“Nope, never,” I said shaking my head.

“I read a story about you once where you said you couldn’t use an outline when writing a book,” Johnny said. “You remember that article?”

“Yeah,” I replied. A lot of my writer friends go overboard on outlining. Some of the outlines are nearly as long as the final manuscript. “I tried to do it once or twice, but then I’d start writing. And each time I’d planned for one of my characters to turn right, they’d invariably see something shiny on the left and screw up my outline.

My characters always end up having a mind of their own.”

“Why do you write in bars?” Johnny prodded.

“Cause I’m a drunk,” I laughed, leaning back against the door and crossing my arms.

“No, you’re not,” Johnny disagreed.

“My last wife and her attorney would disagree,” I smirked.

“Seriously man, why do you write at bars?” Johnny punctuated his words by pounding on the steering wheel.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it’s because I can focus through the noise and confusion.”

“Ever get lost in your writing?” Johnny asked.

“Aw fuck, all the time,” I said with a shrug. “One night I went to this pub right around dinner time. I started writing and drinking, and the words were flowing at an incredible pace. It seemed like I was at it for an hour or two when suddenly the bartender tapped on my glass. It was two in the morning and the bar was closed. I missed dinner, phone calls from my wife, everything.” A smile flitted across my face at the memory.

“Does it happen all the time?”

“Hell no,” I replied. “But when it does it’s golden.”

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“That’s meditation, dude,” Johnny said excitedly. “You were so relaxed at the pub you reached a different level of consciousness. You slowed down the vibes in your brain, allowing you to access parts not normally available when you’re at home dealing with redlines from your editor.”

“Damn.” I’d never thought of those great days writing as meditation, but it made sense. “So, what have you learned from all of your meditations?”

“Well,” Johnny paused for a moment. “I believe in the afterlife.”

“Heaven?”

“Not like the ministers and priests go on about,” he replied. “But I know there’s a place of raw and natural energy out there I want to attain. You still have to deal with the challenges of everyday life. But that helps us with the test.”

“Test?”

“It’s all a test, man. And how many tests we pass decides how quickly we move on to the next level.”

Johnny’s explanation all made sense on a level I hadn’t contemplated previously, but I was having trouble connecting all the dots. I punted. “Got any more Crippler?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, putting more marijuana in the pipe. “Let’s meditate on this.”

Knowing we were barely capable of walking—let alone driving—Johnny called Andrea to come rescue us from ourselves. Andrea was not in the least bit upset. I suspect she had made the rescue run once or twice before.

When we pulled up into Johnny’s driveway, I nearly fell out of the car. A noon nap was not going to be a problem after all.

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Andrea looked over at me as I stumbled in the direction of Jane’s house. “Want to come over to dinner tonight?” she yelled across the lawn. “Johnny is making a seafood boil with some fresh shrimp and clams. We can fire up another stick after dinner.”

I winked as I replied. “Can’t,” I said. “I have a date.”

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Chapter Eleven Following a long Crippler-induced, noon power nap, I wandered onto Jane’s front porch to take in the afternoon sun. A lemonade in one hand and a cigar in the other, I let the cloud of smoke encircle my head. Johnny was already on his porch, sleeping in the chair he landed in when we returned from court. Andrea was sitting across from him reading a book and nodded a greeting when we made eye contact. She looked at Johnny, shook her head and headed my way with a chuckle.

We sat around making small talk for a while. When Andrea heard I was taking Holly to dinner, she suggested I head out-of-town to do so. On the off chance I might cross paths with Sunshine again, I decided to take her advice. I’d had enough excitement for the day and I really did not need any more. The prospect of having a couple of hours in Cedar Key without any drama was enticing.

When I had called Holly from the courthouse earlier, it had taken a bit of convincing for her to agree to dinner. It was clear my past reputation had preceded me. However, I was able to persuade her all I really wanted was a dinner companion for good conversation and a passable meal.

In the end, she relented.

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On the drive to Holly’s house, I rolled up to a stop sign and spied Officer James coming in the other direction in the official Cedar Key Police golf cart. I cranked down the window on my rental car and waved like I was a local.

He pulled alongside.

“What’s up, Mr. Wade?” Officer James asked.

I propped my elbow on the door. “Not much, Radar,” I replied. “Fightin’ crime tonight?”

“No more than usual,” he said, laughing. “There’s a regular crime spree of overtime parking meters today.

Where you headed?”

“Out to Treasure Camp,” I said. “I have dinner plans with Holly.”

Officer James’ eyebrows climbed up under his hat.

“Must have been a good trip to the library,” he replied.

“Have fun and keep an eye out for Gaspar’s Treasure.”

He pushed on the gas pedal and rolled silently down the road.

Once I picked up Holly from her place, I headed out towards one of Johnny and Andrea’s favorite haunts.

Treasure Camp is a small fishing dock and restaurant about a fifteen minute drive from Cedar Key. When we arrived, the sun was setting and a foggy mist was just starting to rise above the Suwanee River. Spanish moss covered the trees on the shore, giving it the creepy look of a grade B horror movie set in a swamp.

A sign on one side of the boat ramp alerted boaters to be on the lookout for manatees and another announced it was twenty miles to the Gulf of Mexico. On yet another sign boaters were warned about flying sturgeon being hazardous to one’s health. Not being much of a fisherman, I wondered what kind of a flying fish actually needed a warning sign. Turns out sturgeon do. When I brought up the sign with Holly, she told me the story about a boater 102

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who had been killed when one jumped out of the water and hit him in the temple. The story both amused and horrified me simultaneously.

Despite looking like a serial killer was waiting inside for us, Holly was familiar with the restaurant and happy with the choice. We walked through the general store in the front where you could pick sweet potatoes from a wood bin. I nodded to an older man in the corner softly strumming Hank Williams tunes on an old Gibson guitar as we sat down at a table with a view of the Suwanee River.

The small talk over dinner was the kind of stuff you’d expect of two people getting to know each other on a first date, except unlike younger folks in the same situation, we were at ease in our own skins. We talked about everything from our personal backgrounds to authors we both enjoyed reading. I questioned Holly about John Muir’s journey, and how his short time in Cedar Key had such an impact on the remainder of his life. She quizzed me about the creative writing process. And, of course, we talked about Jane—a subject remarkably comfortable considering the circumstances.

And we talked about Treasure Camp itself. She laughed when I told her of Officer James’ odd comment about Gaspar’s Treasure. According to Cedar Key’s librarian, John Muir was not the only person who spent time on the island. Spanish pirate Jose Gaspar, known as Gasparilla, is well known in Florida lore for plundering the Gulf Coast of Florida in the late 18th Century. According to Holly, legend has part of his hidden treasure buried somewhere along the Suwanee River. Thus the name of our dinner location.

After dinner, as Holly headed to the bathroom, I went to the man picking guitar and asked if he knew how to play the Tennessee Waltz. He told me the owner 103

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of the place liked to sing it as he played. I slipped a five into his tip jar and waited. When Holly returned, the man was picking the intro and the owner headed to the microphone. We stood in the middle of the dance floor with everyone watching as I took Holly’s hand.

“I was dancing, With my darling, To the Tennessee Waltz, When an old friend I happened to see.”

I pulled Holly close and we swayed slowly to the slightly off-key version. It wasn’t exactly Les Paul and Mary Ford, but it worked for the moment.

Following the song, I paid the tab and we strolled outside, resting on a bench overlooking the Suwanee. A spotlight on the dock offered guidance for boats headed back to Treasure Camp and just enough light for us to see the fish breaking water on the river. We both stared out at the water as frogs croaked loudly on the shore at a large manatee lumbering by. The air was thick and, despite the circumstances of the last few days, I was feeling more relaxed than I had in years—certainly better than in the last couple of weeks.

Holly was quite a remarkable woman. Over dinner I had discovered her path to Cedar Key had taken her through the New York City library system. A daughter of the south, with ever the slightest hint of a South Carolina accent, she found the Big Apple a bit much to bear. So she headed to Gainesville to teach for a few years. Only an hour or so from Cedar Key, she visited over a long weekend and was hooked. When there was an opening in the county library system, she applied. Eventually she was transferred to the job she truly wanted, running the branch library on the island.

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As we sat, I was quite happy just listening to the roaring frogs and cicadas. Holly broke the silence. “I feel very comfortable with you, Bobby Wade,” she said.

Women from South Carolina have a way of saying your entire name and still making it sound informal.

I laughed at her pronouncement. “Well,” I sighed.

“That makes one of us.” I did not mean to drift mindlessly into my discontent, but I was so relaxed it slipped out.

“Wow,” Holly looked at me and shook her head.

“Aren’t you just Debbie Downer tonight?”

I winced. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This whole trip is just weirding me out, I guess.” That was an understatement.

I was in Florida to dispose of the ashes of an old love I never really got over, but had not seen personally since our college split up.

Well, that really is not true either. Right after I moved to the Village, Jane came to visit. It was her first and only trip to New York City. Arguing my career would be better served in a small town in the Old South, she tried her best to get me to follow her back to her remote island in the bend of Florida. In the end her efforts were unsuccessful.

The sex, on the other hand, was the most raucous three days of love-making I have ever experienced. Part of what was bothering me now was whether I remember Jane as the soulmate I never followed or the woman for whom no other lived up to in bed.

Despite how well the evening was going, my mind began wrestling with those old thoughts and demons.

Holly sensed my sudden distance and was having none of it. “So why are we here, Bobby Wade?” Holly asked.

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for dinner, or the larger philosophical question on the meaning of life?” I asked, leaning back on the bench. “I mean I can go either way here.”

Holly laughed at having broken the after dinner ice.

“Let’s start with the micro and work our way up?”

“Alright,” I began. “Well, I wanted to go somewhere out of Cedar Key without going all the way to Gainesville.”

“No,” Holly cut me off with a laugh. “I mean why did you call me this morning? You could have easily come out here with Johnny and Andrea. You knew getting me to say yes was a long shot and still you called.”

I was a little caught off guard by the question. “I don’t know, really,” I stammered. “Maybe it’s because there was a 50/50 chance you’d say no. I like a challenge.”

“I’ve read the trades.” Holly was not going to let up on my past. “I’m not exactly the kind of woman you normally romance.” She sat back on the bench and crossed her gorgeous legs.

Dear God, if she only knew what was going on with me right now, she’d likely turn and run. This trip to deal with Jane’s ashes was merely the tip of a mental iceberg threatening to sink my life. I had been cutting ties and ending relationships for weeks. This certainly was not the time to start a new one, but Holly was honest and engaging. Truthfully, I was simply enjoying her company.

“You’re a beautiful woman,” I stated. “But that’s not the reason I asked you out this evening. In many respects, I’m no longer the guy in the trades.”

“That sure sounds like the bullshit answer of a man trying to get into my britches,” Holly replied, her accent drawing out the words.

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intentions. Although from my past exploits, it was not hard to understand why she felt I had illicit intentions.

“I can’t deny my past,” I shrugged. “A whole lot has happened to me recently. I’m in a place right now where I’m not sure I really know who I am anymore.” I paused.

“Wow, I really am a downer tonight.”

“Losing your confidence?” she asked, laying her hand on my arm.

If she only knew. I tried to be cool. “Confidence is a trait in direct proportion to the mistakes you’ve made in life.”

Holly dropped her hand. “I remember that line from one of your books,” she snorted in disgust.

Busted. “Then based upon my mistakes, I should be confident as hell,” I laughed.

“Seriously, Bobby Wade. You’re one damn fine writer.”

She smacked my arm.

I was surprised by her flattering statement. “And what makes me earn such praise from a librarian?” I asked.

Holly sat back and thought for a moment. “When I read a book,” she said. “I want to go to bed at night damning myself for not reading one more chapter and waking in the morning anxious to start where I left off.

Your work does that to me.”

I was humbled by her assessment. “All of them?” I asked hopefully.

“Not really,” Holly replied honestly. “The last one sucked.”

I should have stopped while I was ahead.

We did not stay at Treasure Camp very late. No one really stays anywhere late in Cedar Key. They pretty much roll up the sidewalks at sundown and tuck them away until the next morning. So, we headed back to Holly’s place, which was just about two blocks from the library.

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When we got to her front door, it was odd. I did not know whether to give her a handshake or a kiss. On one hand, I found her sexy and enticing. On the other, I was afraid a forward move would reinforce her gossip column fueled opinion of me. I opted for a good in between, a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

The in between option seemed to catch Holly off guard. I think she was expecting a kiss. “Do you want to come in for a night cap or something?” Holly asked, her voice sounding a little uncertain at the actual offer.

I had gone a long way convincing Holly there was a real person somewhere in me. It was clear she was not sure about offering “or something.” The funny thing was, I was less sure about accepting. We both stood there looking silly in our indecision. I was saved by the buzz of my cell phone. It was a text from Johnny asking me to meet him at Steamers “ASAP.” I was relieved.

“Can’t,” I replied. “I’ve got to go meet my lawyer.”

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Chapter Twelve A clear night in Cedar Key is absolutely astounding.

With so few lights and no big cities nearby, the evening sky is alive with sparkling stars. Johnny and Andrea told me how they had an app on their phones to tell them when the International Space Station was flying by. The sky was usually so clear, they could see it roll across the horizon. Understanding their love of the night sky, I left my rental car at Holly’s, lit a cigar and started the short walk to Steamers.

I really could not remember the last time I had declined a woman’s request for “or something.” I was at a writer’s conference one time and conducted a session called “Authors Got No Groupies.” The point of the session was, if you’re looking for women who want you because of words you put on paper, start a rock band.

Writers write. It is an end, in and of itself. Write because someone digs it. No one is going to throw their panties at you because you know how to spin a yarn with the proper use of a semicolon.

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putting words in an order entertaining to others is as much of a curse as it is a talent.

One night I got loaded with a great songwriter and I scoffed when he asked if I thought writing was lonely. It was an odd question for me because I must be in a place with a lot of activity to write creatively. The noise and constant movement somehow allows me to concentrate on what’s on the computer screen. Which is why I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and bars typing away. There are always people around me when I write. Put me at home and I’m ignoring the story on my computer screen, watching reruns of South Park.

Lonely—no. “Singular,” was how I responded about my process.

In the early days, a critical analysis of the writing process did not seem to matter. I’d head to the White Horse or The Kettle of Fish, plug in and work away. No one, not even my regular bar mates, knew my name or cared. Those were the “coffee appointment” years.

When I landed my literary agent, I quickly noticed there was a pecking order to her impressive client list.

Dinners were reserved for New York Times best-selling authors with movie deals. Lunches were for those who were selling, although without the requisite Hollywood stars in their resumes to warrant The Palm. Breakfast was for rising stars. “Let’s grab coffee,” was for young rookies like me yearning like puppies for attention and hoping to sell their first book.

As the books became more popular, word of my favorite haunts started to leak out. People would come up and either want an autographed copy of my latest for some relative’s birthday or insist I need to talk to their kid who was the next Hemingway. Of course, those offers 110

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would always come with a drink and I never turned them down. A conversation about little Sally’s seventh grade English project was a small price to pay for a shot of McClellan’s 15. I was happy to oblige. Authors are far too arrogant about their talent to turn down requests to accept a drink and talk about their books.

After a while, I had to become more creative at finding places to go in the Village to write, even at times heading to Pubs like O’Looney’s where tourists wander off Times Square for a cool pint on a hot summer day. They thought the guy at the end of the bar with an open laptop was just another New York slug watching porn, which was at times not too far from the truth.

And the gossip pages were right. Occasionally, I had a few too many and found myself falling down drunk. The staff at most of my regular joints knew I would tip extra well to be dragged home and tucked into bed.

It was when I became my agent’s “dinner client” that the hard drinking (and I) started to get out of hand.

Readers never remember you from the author’s photo on the inner sleeve of a novel. But they sure as hell remember the arrest picture in People. And I ate up every minute of it, drinking every drink, signing every DVD and accepting every offer of “or something.” My writer’s session about groupies should have come with an asterisk and disclaimer about what happened when your work went to the silver screen. My agent spent as much time getting me out of trouble as she did negotiating options.

With fame, I was able to toss aside the English nerd label, and I did it with gusto.

Jane watched it all from a distance, occasionally calling and always offering in vain for me to head to

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Cedar Key to get my head on straight or dry out. I’d always pledge to think about it, although we both knew it would never happen. My offers to bring her to New York again were always declined. I would find another drink, another woman with daddy issues and bang out eightyfive thousand words.

Suddenly one day the words just quit flowing so freely. Not from lack of trying, but I never figured out why. Now, my mind was unable to swim out of my own self-indulgence. I resigned myself to the uncomfortable fact I had nothing left to say.

Johnny met me at the base of the steps leading to Steamers. “Hey, Bubba Bear,” he said excitedly. “How ya feelin’?”

I thought for a moment. “Singular,” I replied.

Having no earthly idea what I meant, Johnny never missed a beat. “How’d the date go with Holly?” he asked as we climbed the stairs to Steamers.

“Great,” I said nonchalantly. “She’s really a nice person.”

“Didn’t invite ya in, I see,” he said, elbowing me in the ribs. He seemed a little too eager to be living vicariously through me.

“Naw,” I replied. I had no desire to share the details of our evening, least of all with my lawyer. It was best to just ignore the question and move on. “So, what’s so urgent to require an ASAP text?”

Johnny nodded at the bartender as we stood at the front door. “Good news, brother,” he said excitedly.

“What?” I asked.

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“Well, while you were striking out with Holly the Librarian,” Johnny said. “Andrea and I were having dinner with Sunshine.”

I cocked my head. “Really,” I replied. “She flip you off, too?”

“No, she agreed to talk to you.”

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Chapter Thirteen My mother (and both of my wives, come to think of it) always insisted nothing good ever happened after 11:00 p.m. Of course, I never listened. How could I? I was living in New York where nothing happened at all until 11:00. So, when Johnny and I bounded up the steps to Steamers, I felt a little spring in my step, like the night was still young. Sleepy Cedar Key was another story. Except for what I assume was a handful of regular drunks, the bar was dead.

Sunshine came out from the kitchen and stood behind the bar, talking to one such red-eyed patron, when Johnny and I spotted her. He was a big fellow, typical of what I assumed people meant when they used the term “Florida cracker” in a derogatory sense. His greasy coal black hair was slicked back and drawn in a ponytail. A wrinkled red flannel shirt fit tight across his belly and chest.

My gaze quickly went from the redneck to Sunshine.

As our past encounters had been relatively brief and hostile, I had little time to truly appreciate how much she resembled her grandmother, or at least what her grandmother would have looked like with tattoos and piercings. She had a whimsical natural beauty about her which reminded me of Jane in college. As she spoke 114

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to the drunk, I thought of the odd contrast of a middle American beauty and the beast.

Johnny asked to do the talking and I obliged.

“Sunshine,” Johnny called as we sat down on a bar stool.

“Look who I found hanging around outside.”

Sunshine turned and smiled at Johnny. Her glance in my direction looked like she had just bit into a Florida key lime. The drunk did not like us interrupting his conversation and as Sunshine turned, he grabbed her arm.

Sunshine’s “Ouch” caused Johnny to stand up.

“Thomas,” Johnny warned.

She quickly turned. “It’s okay, Johnny. I got this.” It was pretty clear she was used to handling the local riffraff.

Johnny was not amused by the young man’s illmanners. He turned to me and nodded towards the pair.

“Tommy McIntosh. Good kid. Mean drunk. Defended him on an assault charge once. He’s been banned from a few bars on the mainland and spends more nights in the drunk tank than anyone in town.”

I looked over at Sunshine to make sure she was okay.

I felt myself interestingly protective of the colorful young girl who hated my guts. “Well, like you said, it’s a place where everyone knows the town drunk. It looks like we found one of them.”

After a few quiet words with Thomas, Sunshine turned and came to our end of the bar. “What’ll ya have, guys?” she asked while wiping a wet rag across the bar top, looking mostly at Johnny rather than me.

I ordered a pint of Guinness and Johnny made it two.

The entire time Sunshine was pouring the beers, Johnny and Thomas were locking eyes.

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When Sunshine returned with the beers, Johnny gently grabbed her arm and looked at her wrist, examining it as if he were an Emergency Room physician. “Did that asshole hurt you?” he asked, emphasizing the personal insult loud enough so Thomas could hear it. “Because if he did, I’ll take him out.” His eyes shot across the bar. “I swear to God, I’ll send him into next week.”

Thomas grimaced at Johnny and continued to drink his beer.

“It’s okay, Johnny,” Sunshine replied. “I can handle myself. I know you have a hard time believing it, but I’m all grownup, now.”

Johnny turned to me. “Sunshine thinks I’m a little over protective of her at times.” He took a sip from his beer, the foam sticking to his upper lip.

“He was close to my grandma,” she said looking over at me. “When I was born, he made Grandma Jane a vow he’d always look out for me.” She looked back at Johnny.

“I love him like family, but sometimes he takes things a bit too far.”

“She’s like my own kid,” Johnny confirmed, nodding.

“Which is why I wanted her to get to know you on my terms.”

“And the only reason I’m even talking to you is because he asked me,” Sunshine said. “I don’t know I’d do it for anyone else.” Her eyes were spitting fire at me, albeit the gaze had tempered to a smolder.

Johnny went about trying to explain the relationship between me and Jane. I was trying very hard to keep my mouth shut, although I’m not too sure what I would have said differently. Johnny was talking about “the promise” Jane and I had made to each other, when he was suddenly interrupted by a hand on his shoulder.

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“These idiots bothering you?” It was Thomas, the mean drunk.

Johnny turned around and looked squarely at Thomas. “This doesn’t involve you, boy. You need to get back to your place.”

Thomas was not about to budge. “Boy?” he sneered.

It’s not that I’ve never found myself in a bar fight.

A quick Google search would pull up articles about the number of scuffles I’d been in over the years, usually on the losing side. Once I got five stitches in the back of my head over an argument about who should win the National Book Award. I mean, how was I to know the guy next to me was related to a nominee I referred to as a self-indulgent hack? What concerned me about the potential for this confrontation was the bulk and youth of the drunken behemoth.

Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “You need to walk the fuck away, right now, Tommy-boy. This will not end well for you, I’ll guarantee it.”

“Who are you to tell me?” Thomas slurred his words as he spoke.

“Your lawyer,” pushing back on Thomas’ large chest as he rose up from his bar stool. “And I’m giving you some good advice right now. Walk away. Now.” “Fuck you, Johnny,” Thomas replied, poking Johnny hard in the chest. “Fuck you and your little twerp friend here.” For emphasis, Thomas leaned over and slapped me across the back of the head. He hit me hard enough for me to lunge forward and knock my beer across the bar.

“That’s enough, boy,” Johnny leapt from his spot, knocking over the bar stool in the process. He grabbed Thomas around the neck and backed him up hard against the rough-cut pine paneling. When they hit the wall, Johnny delivered a blow to the young man’s gut. Thomas 117

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let out a grunt followed by a string of cuss words in response.

I looked over as Sunshine was backing away and reaching into her pocket for her cellphone to call the police. I went to Johnny’s side. There was not much for me to do. Johnny had the man bent over, ass to the wall.

Whispers in Thomas’ ear were being followed by sharp body blows. I leaned in to hear the dialogue.

“Apologize,” Johnny was whispering in his ear.

“Fuck you.”

Johnny raised his arm high and landed a roundhouse blow just a little harder than the last. “This man’s a guest on our island,” he said. “I told you to apologize.”

“And I told you to go fuck yourself.”

The next shot was just below the rib cage and was hard enough to send Thomas to one knee, gasping for breath. Johnny lowered with him and tightened his headlock, cutting off Thomas’ air. I was suddenly worried my lawyer was going to kill one of his clients, something which I assumed was frowned upon by the Florida Bar Association. I put my hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “I think he’s had enough, Johnny.”

Johnny turned. His face was red and hardened -- his eyes black and remote.

“It’s okay, man,” I repeated, patting his arm in an effort to sooth his anger. “The police are on their way. Let him go.”

Johnny was like a wild dog, not understanding a command to fetch. “John …” I had not even finished saying his name when I was distracted by Officer James entering the bar with a second uniformed officer.

“Let him go, Johnny,” I implored again. “Radar’s here.

Let the cops handle it.”

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Johnny was breathing hard and fast when he seemed to realize where he was again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, yeah.”

“Good man,” I replied, patting him on the back.

Johnny finally did as I instructed and stepped back from the drunk, which turned out to be a very bad call on my part.

In retrospect, I can honestly say I never saw the punch coming.

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Chapter Fourteen When I was growing up, there was a guy in my little town everyone called “Angry Arnie,” a nickname he earned after he turned down commendations for getting shot up in Vietnam. A big Scotsman, he was a mountain of a guy. Under most circumstances, he had a very pleasant disposition. But, because of his reputation as the absolute toughest guy for miles around, over the years people were always showing up in bars and challenging him to a fight. His long red hair and scrappy beard made him easy to spot and it never took much to get it started.

Some stranger would walk into a bar like a gunslinger at high noon. He’d have a couple of friends at his side and everyone knew what was going to happen. Folks at the bar would clear out from the rail, leaving Arnie on his lonely stool. The guy would insult Arnie, who’d then knock the stranger on his ass. The idiot’s friends would carry him out the door, and everyone else would go back to their beers as if nothing odd had happened.

My Old Man used to say he never saw Arnie start a fight, adding, however, Arnie always ended them.

The funny thing about Arnie was his reputation never aged. Word still gets around about the tough guy who lives down the road. Friends from back home tell me 120

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guys in their twenties show up looking for him and are shocked to see the old grey-haired man sitting quietly at the bar. Some of them even try to start a fight. One of the great tragedies of today’s youth is they are not afraid to take a swing at an old guy.

Thomas had popped me right on the button, shoving my teeth straight into my lower lip. I was hurting, slightly disoriented, embarrassed and bleeding like a son-ofa-bitch. On the bright side, I was doing better than my assailant. When he hit me, Johnny really did a number on him. I thought of Arnie as my lawyer sent the young drunk to his knees with a sharp blow to the ribs. An empty admonition to millennials from my stand point considering my ass was on the floor like a recovering Angry Arnie challenger. Apparently, it took Radar and his partner both to pull them apart. While the police were cuffing Thomas, the city’s first responders were gathered around me deciding what to do next.

Looking around, the quaint saloon suddenly looked like the losing corner of a boxing match. Johnny’s bar stool was still knocked over on the floor and I was surrounded by empty packages once containing gauze and rubber gloves.

With what seemed like half the population of Cedar Key gathered around me, the volunteer life squad gave me two choices, go home or go to the hospital. I held my lip with a piece of gauze, while Sunshine held a cold bag of ice against my jaw. Knowing the hospital was a half hour drive away, I looked at Officer James. “Hey, Radar,” I mumbled. “Didn’t you tell me the island has a dentist?”

Officer James took his attention off Thomas for a moment and knelt alongside me to examine my lip.

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up the bridge of his nose. “Doc Baker. Her office is on Second Street.”

“You think she’d take an emergency visit to her office?” My words sounded a bit mush-mouthed due to my fat lip.

“A dentist?” Johnny interrupted. He crouched down beside me, inventorying the damage.

“Take me there,” I insisted. “If I need stitches, she can sew me up. Anyway, I probably need to see if Donkey Kong cracked a tooth.”

Johnny looked up at Officer James. “I’ll go get her,” Officer James offered.

“Thanks, Radar,” Johnny replied, flipping his keys.

“Take my car. Leave the golf cart for us. We’ll meet you over at Doc Baker’s office.”

Since childhood, I despised the dentistry. My pop had a job where his benefits included dental care. Our family dentist was named, and I swear I’m not making this up, Dr. Paine. He took full advantage of my dad’s dental benefits, diagnosing me with more cavities than any child could have and scheduling the maximum number of visits our insurance would allow. Dr. Paine drove a nice car on my dad’s insurance and I grew up with a paralyzing fear of going to the dentist.

Over the years, I overcame my fear of dentists through the liberal use of nitrous oxide. Any dental work I needed was completed while under the influence of laughing gas.

So, my suggestion to head to the dentist was partially for a good whip-it and partially for expediency. I was more than ready to go lights-out for a few minutes. We made our way to Dr. Baker’s office, with me wincing every time we hit a bump in the road.

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“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the young dentist with short cropped brown hair tucked under a Tampa Bay Thunderbolts ball cap, as she approached us in our police-issued golf cart. “Looks like you boys had a rough night.”

I removed the now very bloody bar rag from my lip. “I’ve had better,” I grumbled. “Thanks Dr. Baker, I appreciate your coming out this late at night to take a look at me.”

“Not a problem,” she replied over her shoulder, unlocking the door to the office before heading to the wall to turn off the alarm. “You’re Bobby Wade, the author, right?”

“Yes doctor,” I confirmed gingerly through my everexpanding lip.

“Well, come on in,” she said flipping on lights as she walked. “You can pay me back for the after-hours appointment with an autographed book.”

“Great.” I wiped some more blood off my lip in a failed attempt to look a bit more presentable. “Nice to meet a fan.”

“Oh, it’s not for me,” she replied, patting the chair for me to sit down. “It’s for my mom. I fancy non-fiction, myself. Now let’s get a look at your lip.”

“Ouch,” Johnny interjected, his cringe at odds with the twinkle in his eyes. “That’s gotta hurt worse than the lip.”

Officer James flipped the car keys to Johnny. “Hey, Mr. Lawyer, next time you loan your car to a cop, fumigate it first,” he advised pointedly.

Johnny went still. “Aw shit, you aren’t gonna search it, are you?” he pleaded.

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“Naw,” the police officer laughed. He looked at me.

“My mom’s a fan, too. Sign one for her as well and we’ll call it even.”

“Johnny,” I directed. “Make a note.”

I sat down carefully in the dentist chair. Doctor Baker shined a light on my face and pulled my lower lip forward.

“Ouch, go easy please,” I said.

“Who did this?” she asked.

As Dr. Baker was holding my lip at that point, I was unable to answer. It did make me wonder why dentists always ask questions when their patients are incapable of a reply.

“Thomas,” Johnny chimed in, leaning over her shoulder to observe.

“Damn him,” Doctor Baker went on. “Oh yeah. He caught you pretty good. It doesn’t look like he cracked a tooth. But, we’re going to need a stitch or two in order to stop the bleeding.”

Through my ever fattening lip, I explained my fear of dentists and my need for nitrous oxide. Despite the alcohol on my breath, and at Johnny’s insistence, she obliged. “And a prescription for some Percocet,” he added.

She gave Johnny an exasperated look and tossed him some rubber gloves. “Johnny, my assistant isn’t here, so I’ll need your help. Wash up over in the sink and put these gloves on.”

“No freaking way, Doc,” Johnny replied, shaking his head and backing away simultaneously. “This stuff gives me the heebie jeebies. I will take a shot of the nitrous oxide though.” He paused. “You know, for medicinal purposes. Just to calm my nerves a bit.”

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“Stick with the Crippler,” she laughed. Apparently, Johnny’s customer list was expansive.

I heard a noise and looked to the door to see Holly walk into the room. “Oh, my Lord,” she exclaimed, her hands fluttering at her chin.

I shot a disapproving look at Johnny. “Don’t look at me bro. I didn’t call her. I’ve been with you the whole time.”

“I heard the call on the police radio,” Holly replied.

She approached and looked down at me “Somehow I had a feeling it was you. I called the station. They said you’d be here.”

I gathered the best smile I could manage from a man whose mouth was being stuffed with cotton. “I guess there is no sense right now in telling you it wasn’t my fault.”

Johnny tossed the gloves to Holly. “Just in time, Holly.

Doc Baker needs an assistant.”

Dr. Baker turned the gas on and looked down at me, her formerly pleasant face now covered in a physician’s mask and safety goggles. I immediately tensed up. “Try to relax, Mr. Wade,” she coaxed. “We need to get going on this lip. Please lean back in the chair.”

She placed the mask over my nose and I started to feel a little happy. When she came at me with a big needle of Novocain to numb my lip, I scooted as low in the chair as I could go.

“Oh, you’re going to be a tough one, I see,” Dr. Baker said, reaching over to increase the flow of the gas a little more.

The ceiling of Dr. Baker’s office was painted with balloons. When she told me to breath deep and look at the balloons, the colors quickly melted together in a rainbow blob. I was out.

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When I came out of the anesthesia, everyone was staring at me with odd shocked expressions on their faces.

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Chapter Fifteen It seemed I could not wake up in Cedar Key without a headache. Whether it was a result of the Crippler or a sucker punch, mornings on the island were literally making my head spin. I moaned and rubbed my head as I rolled over in bed, and looked at the clock. I had expected to sleep late, but not until noon. A look in the mirror brought back memories of the night before, encouraging me to simply go back to bed. Voices coming from the living room prompted me to wander out of my protective cocoon.

“Dude,” exclaimed Johnny as I walked into the room.

“I was wondering if you were ever going to get up.”

I looked over and Holly was in the kitchen making a pot of coffee. I was a bit embarrassed about wandering out in front of her in my boxers. I then looked at the blood stains down the front of my tee shirt and realized her seeing me in my skivvies was the least of my worries.

She walked in from the kitchen. “Here,” she said, handing me a zip lock bag filled with ice cubes. “Doc Baker said to keep this on your lip until the swelling goes down.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled though my split lip.

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the trades, I started to explain what transpired the night before.

“Stop,” Holly instructed, heading back to the kitchen.

“Johnny already told me what happened last night.”

“This time it really wasn’t my fault,” I pledged, holding up my right hand. “I swear to God it wasn’t my fault.”

Handing me a cup of coffee, she smiled. I know,” she replied, patting me on the arm.

The gesture was sweet, but there was no way I could drink hot coffee with the gash in my lip. “Thanks,” I said as I placed the coffee on the table and sat on the couch.

Holly stared at me. “Trouble does seem to follow Bobby Wade around, even to the little town of Cedar Key.” She sat down next to me on the couch, gently grabbed my jaw and looked closely at my lip. “Seriously, Bobby, how do you feel?”

I could think of nothing to say except the truth. “Like I’ve been punched in the mouth.”

Holly got up and walked over to the hall table, picked up a book and handed it to me. “It’s a book on Rosewood,” she said. “I think you’ll have some down time over the next couple of days.”

“Thanks,” I grimaced. Even the simplest utterance was causing pain.

Johnny came over and stood in front of me. “Andrea ran out to get your pain prescription filled.”

I nodded in appreciation, but was unnerved by his odd stare.

He finally spoke. “What about your other meds?” he asked. “Do we need to get anything else filled?”

“Other meds?” I asked, puzzled by the question. “I don’t know what you mean?”

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Johnny looked at Holly and then back at me. “Come on, man,” he said, shuffling his feet and looking at me expectantly. “You know.”

“No, I don’t,” I insisted, totally confused by this line of questioning.

“You told us all about it last night at Doc Baker’s place.”

I flashed back to the shocked faces from the night before. I did not like where this was going. “What did I tell you?”

“The cancer, Bobby,” Holly exclaimed. “You told us all about it while you were under the nitrous oxide.”

“Well fuck.” About a month ago, a diagnosis of blood cancer had sent my life into a tail spin. I had kept it from everyone in New York. I was pissed I had let it slip while under the influence. “Whatever I said last night, please promise to keep it quiet.”

“Who are we going to tell?” Johnny asked, shrugging his shoulders. “The Cedar Key Beacon?”

“I just don’t want my readers to know,” I followed. It was a bullshit response.

Holly looked over at me, her face softening with genuine concern. “So what’s happening here, Bobby?”

I guess it was time to tell someone. It might as well be these two. “I have cancer,” I replied simply.

“Damn,” Johnny interjected. “I was hoping you were just rambling.”

“Nope,” I said, pursing my lips. “I’ve got the Big C.” Holly grabbed my hand. “So, what’s the prognosis?” she asked, genuinely concerned.

There was no need to go into great detail. Nor was there any reason to lie. “Not good,” I said. “They can slow it down with some meds, but I’m not sure I want to go through the pain.”

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“It can’t be cured?” Johnny asked, stunned by the declaration.

“No,” I replied. “Well, not for me anyway. I would need a bone marrow transplant.”

“Well hell son, go get one,” he quickly replied, relief evident on his face.

“It’s not so easy,” I suggested, picking up the now cool coffee, as much for a moment to collect my thoughts than a drink.

“Why?” Holly asked. “Don’t you have insurance?”

“It’s not the cost.”

“Then what is it?” Holly asked, taking my hand.

“The most likely sources for a match for the kind of cancer I have are first-line relatives, kids, siblings, grandkids,” I explained. “And as I have none of the above, well, the clock is ticking.”

“Oh, Bobby,” Holly said, squeezing my hand in hers.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Remember when I told you the other day I was a different guy than I had been in the past?”

“Yeah,” Holly replied.

“Well, I’m looking at the end of the line here,” I admitted. “This is it. The view of life is a helluva lot different when the rose-colored glasses are gone and it’s your own life.”

While I had been talking to Holly, Johnny had started pacing. “So, a bone marrow transplant from your blood line will cure you,” he finally asked frowning.

“Not a guarantee, but my it’s my only hope.”

Johnny bounded for the door. “Don’t go anywhere,” he instructed as he flew out the door.

I pointed at my lip. “Not likely,” I said.

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Johnny bolted down the steps, shouting “I’ll be right back.”

Holly and I got up and watched as Johnny ran down the street like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.

I looked at Holly. “I really have to stop getting wasted with my lawyer.”

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Chapter Sixteen “We’re finally alone.”

Johnny was God knows where and Holly had wandered down the street to pick up a bag of ice. “I was wondering when you were going to jump into the conversation,” I replied, looking at the urn.

“It would have been a little embarrassing to do while they were here, don’t ya think?” Jane asked.

“At this point, I don’t think there is too much that will surprise either of them about me,” I replied. “I’ve given them enough to think about for the time being.”

“Still too early to tell them you carry on extensive conversations with an urn?”

“Or even that it talks back,” I laughed, hurting my lip in the process. “Nope. I think they’d both find it pretty run of the mill, at this point.”

“And I hope you now understand all of these anxieties about being here involve your own impending demise.”

“Oh, I had it figured out for a while,” I admitted. “I guess I just didn’t want to say it out loud. It’s the whole epiphanies taking a while thing.”

“It’s been the urn in the middle of the room all week, hasn’t it?”

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I laughed. Jane was right. The thing I had been struggling with was not her death, but as self-centered as it seemed, my own mortality and the thought of what eternity awaited me.

Religion is easy when you’re a kid. People told you the rules and you either followed them or not. There was no debate. Having been raised in a good southern Christian family, I was taught all I had to do for eternal peace was to believe in God and ask Jesus Christ for forgiveness of my sins. As I got older, my problem became believing salvation was so simple a task.

In my teens, I started questioning why God set a rule book no one could live by and yet made Heaven as reachable as saying “I believe” and “forgive me.” Despite the assurances of my Sunday school learnings, I went upon a path of trying to prove I was worthy of God’s love.

I couldn’t settle down anywhere because there was always another cause to take on, something more to write about.

Now, with my own end in sight, I wondered if my caring about everything had been at the expense of focusing on the things that really mattered to me.

Even without Jane saying it, her death was so devastating to me was because, while striving for relevance as a writer, I forgot to do what was important.

The gathering of words on a page surely had a greater cosmic meaning than awards, royalties and rankings.

I began singing a tune to Jane by John Denver where, in the middle of telling an old love about his misery over how he treated her, he slips in the line: “I’m sorry for the way things are in China.” I suddenly understood the song’s meaning and began singing the lyrics. There was pain in the story of a love lost to social awareness.

I quit singing when I heard voices on the porch.

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looks on their faces. “What’s going on with you two,” I asked. When neither spoke, I went on. “This is not the time to go silent on me.”

Johnny was the first to speak. “This isn’t easy,” he began.

“Neither is this,” I returned, pointing at my lip.

“Well, I’m about to make it worse. Or better. I guess it depends on how you’ll look at it,” Johnny said, pacing once again.

I sat on the couch, getting more tense as Johnny failed to get to the point. “Try me.”

Johnny stopped pacing in front of me. “Remember when Jane came to visit you in New York?” he asked.

I looked at the urn. “Of course, I do,” I replied, smiling carefully so as to not stretch my lips too far. “It was one of the best weekends of my life.” I started to relax a little.

Johnny scratched his head, struggling to continue.

“Well, dude, when Jane came back from New York, she was carrying more than her luggage, man.”

I looked at Holly, who turned her head to avoid eye contact. “What the hell is he talking about?” When she did not reply, I half rose off the couch and repeated harshly, “Holly?”

Holly approached me and gently pushed me back down on the couch. “Bobby, when Jane came back from visiting you in New York, she was pregnant.”

“What?” I was stunned.

Johnny stepped forward. “You knocked her up, man.”

“Whoa, whoa …” I stammered. “What the fuck, man.”

“Apparently, it’s true,” Holly said. “Johnny just told me the whole story on our walk back to the house. Jane told Johnny and Andrea years ago.”

Their words were sinking in. “Then that means …”

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“You got it,” Johnny said.

“Sunshine is your granddaughter,” Holly confirmed softly, sitting down next to me on the couch.

I reeled back in amazement. So much of my post-New York City relationship with Jane suddenly became crystal clear. I had tried to visit her on a couple of occasions, but it always seemed like the wrong time for her schedule.

In a snap, my outlook on life was changed by a secret known only to a few. I was stupefied by the revelation, but It instantly changed the vista of my life. I searched Johnny’s face. “You knew about this,” I asked haltingly.

“And you kept it from me.”

“Yeah,” Johnny admitted, as he sat down across from me.

“And when were you going to tell me this?”

“When you left,” he replied firmly.

I leapt off the couch. “Are you kidding me?” I asked, angered by the flippant response. “You knew this all along and weren’t going to tell me until I was out of here?” My arms flailing in every direction. “If I didn’t feel so damn bad right now, I’d beat the shit out of you.” Remembering how Johnny had handled the drunk the night before, I added, “or at least I’d try.”

“Not my call, bro,” Johnny dissented, as he watched my spastic movements.

“Not your call?” I stopped in front of him.

“That was the way Jane wanted it,” he said. Reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out an envelope, he handed it to me. “It’s all in here.”

“What’s this,” I asked Johnny, looking at the envelope.

“A letter from Jane.”

“Makes no sense,” I muttered, along with a string of curse words under my breath.

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“It makes all the sense in the world,” Holly interrupted.

“Jane wanted to make her death a test for you. There was no assurance you’d even show up in Cedar Key after she died.”

“I made a promise,” I insisted, as I sat back down.

“True,” Holly said, “but other than writing some words in a book, she apparently wasn’t sure whether you’d come here to fulfill it. And if you made the big step of coming here, she wanted you to have a reason to return. It’s a test.”

“Jesus.” The weight of the situation suddenly sat heavy on my shoulders. I sank as low as the couch would let me.

“No wonder Sunshine hates me so much.”

“She doesn’t even know, dude,” Johnny admitted.

“She doesn’t?” I asked.

“Well, she didn’t.”

“You told her?” I jumped off the couch, causing Johnny to do the same.

“I made a judgment call, man.”

“Dammit Johnny,” I yelled, grabbing him by the shirt before pushing him away, the motion causing me to move further backwards than him.

“Keep your voice down, bro,” Johnny instructed.

“Why?” I shouted, yelling through the pain in my lip. “Why can’t I yell at the top of my lungs ‘I’m Grace Stelton’s Grandpa.’”

Johnny put his index finger to his lips. “Because she’s on the porch.”

I froze in place. Most grandparents get to meet their grandkids at the hospital nursery. I’m meeting mine following a bar fight.

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grinding her teeth. “Well, how’s it going Gramps?” she sneered from the side of her mouth. “I heard you yelling all the way outside.” She stood toe to toe with me, waves of indignation pouring from her. “Welcome to the family.

I’ve been screaming my whole life. I ain’t too happy about it either.”

Looking at her for the first time through different eyes, I struggled with what to say. “Yeah, well …” I glanced towards Johnny for help.

Sunshine was giving me no time to process. “It wasn’t enough to know you fucked over my grandma.”

“Now wait one damn minute …” There was a lot of anger in this young girl. “I’m sorry,” I began again.

“Sorry?” she shouted. “That’s a laugh. You’re a bastard, you know. A real sick bastard.”

“Hey look, this is all new to me, too,” I implored. “Up until two minutes ago, I didn’t even know about you.”

Sunshine’s rage at me reached a fevered pitch. Without warning, she reared back to slap me. Johnny grabbed her arm. “Slow down, honey,” he cautioned, pointing at my lip. “Look at his face for Christ’s sake.” With Sunshine’s wrist firmly in Johnny’s grip, she struggled for a moment to free herself. “I’m not letting go until you agree not to slap him.” She finally nodded her acceptance and Johnny let go. When he did, Sunshine let loose a primal scream and kicked me in the shin. Grabbing my leg in pain and hopping around, I let out a string of curse words which caused my lip to split again from yelling. My dignity was nonexistent.

“Jesus Grace,” Holly yelled, grabbing Sunshine by her shoulders. “Give the man a break.”

I held up my hand. “No, Holly, don’t,” I said. “As painful as that was, I think I deserved it.”

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“And a helluva lot more,” Sunshine said as she headed for the door.

I followed her and placed my hand on her shoulder.

She turned quickly, mascara flowing down her cheeks.

“Please don’t leave,” I pleaded. “I really would like to talk to you.”

“Why?” Sunshine wiped the tears from her cheek with her fist. “So you can convince me to cannibalize my body?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Sunshine spat. “Johnny told me about the cancer. Well, fuck you, Grandpa. You’re not getting anything from me. My bone marrow, my sympathy, my blood—nothing.”

Johnny came along side Sunshine. “Don’t say that, honey,” he said. “This man needs …”

I cut him off. “No Johnny,” I looked at Sunshine. “I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want anything but a little time.”

“What are you talking about, man,” Johnny snapped.

“This is the answer. This is the lifesaver, here.”

“I don’t want it, Johnny,” I insisted, looking at Sunshine.

Johnny, Holly and Sunshine were puzzled. “I thought you said you needed a bone marrow transplant,” Johnny said.

I looked around at the expressions on their faces.

“Holly, Johnny, you don’t know me very well, but I made my decision weeks ago. This new truth doesn’t change much for me.” I turned my attention to my granddaughter.

“Sunshine,” I continued, “I just want a little time with you.

I know you don’t want to have anything to do with me, but I’d like to know a little about you. More importantly, 138

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I need to tell you some stories about your grandma. This is for Jane’s sake, as well as mine. I’m headed back to New York for some treatments to slow down the progression, but I can come back. I’d like to come back.”

“I thought this was about me helping you,” Sunshine replied suspiciously. “Johnny said you were sick and dying.”

“I am,” I said flatly. “And despite Johnny’s stash of available meds, he is not my attending physician. I’m resigned to my fate at this point. But I have a few stories I need to tell you. That’s all.”

“What then?” Sunshine asked through sniffles.

“After that, it’s your call,” I assured her. “You get on with your life. If you never want to see me again, fine. I’m out of here and I’ll never return to Cedar Key.” “Why?” Sunshine asked. “Why do you want to do this?”

“It’s not a want,” I said. “It’s something your grandma asked me to do.”

Sunshine looked right through me. “I’m not sure.”

Johnny stepped forward. “Do it for your grandma, honey.”

Sunshine paused, but before turning for the door replied, “I’ll think about it.”

Fulfilling a promise made long ago seemed so meaningless and shallow. The prospect of a future meeting with Sunshine notwithstanding, I could not take it anymore. it was time for me to leave Cedar Key.

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Chapter Seventeen Whether it was the stark, windowless treatment room at the hospital or the three feet of snow in the streets, New York City seemed colder than normal.

The trip home to my lonely loft in the Village was an emotional cluster fuck. Following the unexpected unveiling of my newfound family lineage, I left Cedar Key as quickly as my rental car could take me. I used the excuse of doctor appointments, but Johnny and Andrea saw right through it. They knew I was running away. I even left the urn behind, unsure if I’d ever return to fulfill my promise.

It did not take me long to fall into my old habits. On the flight home, I drank myself into a stupor on the final leg into LaGuardia. I was so loaded, at one point the flight attendant refused to serve me anymore. It didn’t matter.

My cab was barely gone before I stumbled to the White Horse, where I continued my assault on my liver. Just like old times, my old drinking buddies took me home.

I woke up the next morning hung over and wondering if my friends would have noticed if I had never returned at all. Johnny and Andrea’s Daoist teachings were flooding my brain.

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Although I used it as an excuse to leave Florida, I really did need to see my oncologist. She suggested a month-long regimen of chemotherapy treatments designed to slow down the cancer. Once the treatments were complete, she’d chart my numbers and consider future treatments. Once those treatments quit working, everything would be about pain management until the end. Whenever she mentioned seeking a donor for a transplant, I changed the subject. I decided not to tell her about Sunshine. I rationalized I could buy enough time to finish my current manuscript and maybe even get a second one done. I’d called Johnny and asked how I could assign my royalties to Sunshine.

As for my granddaughter, up until this week, she had been refusing to take a call from me. Johnny had been acting as a go between and had finally convinced her to see me again. One treatment left, I made plans to return to Cedar Key. The one thing keeping me sane was the final letter from Jane. I took it with me on treatment days and read it over and over again.

My dearest Bobby – Well my love, if this all worked out the way I planned, my ashes are scattered somewhere and you’re on your way back to New York City.

Along the way, Johnny introduced you to my granddaughter. Her mom named her Grace, but I’ve always called her Sunshine because of the light she brought to my life.

Sunshine’s smart, passionate and articulate.

She’s also got a bit of a wild streak in her. In fact, she reminds me a lot of you.

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Annnnnnd … there’s a reason for that. Sunshine is your granddaughter.

If you’re reading this on the plane, I suspect you just spit your bourbon across First Class.

Let me explain. When I came to New York, you knocked me up. I never told you about it because I knew you’d leave it all behind for a life in Cedar Key. The thing was, I knew living here would kill your writing career. Oh you’d have turned out another book or two, but eventually you’d fall into an island lifestyle.

You’re too good of a writer to end up writing columns for the weekly shopping tabloid. You had too much to say for such a fate. The only thing I could think of being worse than raising a family without you was depriving the world of your words.

So I kept it from you. I hope you’re not too angry.

In the end, our daughter died way too early of cancer, but before she left this world, she gave us a beautiful gift in Sunshine. And now that I’m gone, she’ll need you.

By the way, even though I arranged for Johnny to introduce you to Sunshine, she has no idea you’re her grandpa.

When, how and even if, you decide to tell her is up to you. But I will tell you this my love, in Grace you will find the passion missing in your most recent books.

She may be a handful at times and needs your guidance, but she has a spirit that will long outlast your memories of me.

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You were my one and only love. The gift of your child was our true promise to each other. Cherish our gift and promise forever.

Peace and love, Jane

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Chapter Eighteen The tides of Cedar Key flow in and out each day without anyone consciously noticing the changes in their currents. High tides and low tides are charted, but only scheduled by fishermen looking for their next charter or birds seeking their next meal. Only God knows when they will stop flowing in and out and when we will personally see them for the final time. On the first day I returned, I followed the charts and timed when the tide was at its lowest, just to watch the current switch—something nominal to those whose eyes remain focused on the daily goals of living.

My prior visit to Cedar Key, albeit short, had made me understand my significance—or better put, insignificance—in the larger cosmos. Maybe Johnny was right and everything on earth is just a test to reach the next level. Perhaps my Sunday school teachers were correct in their John Muir-like view of heaven and earth.

In any event, I am on the verge of the next level, no longer trying to find the key to the entrance, but instead hoping my life mattered enough to move on. A reconciliation with Grace seemed to be my final test.

I grabbed the urn from the bedroom and moved it out front to the kitchen table.

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“So, what are we going to tell her?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I replied honestly. “I stayed up half the night trying to figure out where to start. I’m not even sure what she knows about you or us.”

“It’s not about me,” Jane said.

“Sure, it is,” I insisted. “But only to the extent of how I saw you, heightened by my own image of what could have been between us. And therein lies what will be hard to actually verbalize.”

A knock at the front door interrupted my internal conversation. Seeing Sunshine’s outline in the drapes of the front door, I picked up a tray of lemonade and headed to the porch.

When I opened up the front door, Sunshine asked, “Who were you talking to in there? Is Johnny around?”

I set the tray with lemonade down on a table in front of the swinging chair. I looked up at her and smiled. “This may surprise you, but I was talking to Jane,” I replied.

“You were taking to my grandma?” she asked with a puzzled look on her face.

“Yeah,” I laughed and, stealing a line from a movie I’d seen, I replied in a whisper, “I see dead people. Well, I talk to them anyways.”

“And you do it all the time?” Sunshine asked.

“Yeah,” I grinned.

“And,” Sunshine added slowly, “does Grandma Jane talk back?”

“Ohhh yeah,” I replied. “Even in death she’s pretty opinionated.”

“Jeez,” Sunshine said. “And people on the island think I’m screwed up. I can’t wait to tell everyone you’re as fucked up as me. I guess our kind of crazy is in the genes.”

As she finished, she looked me over. “You’ve lost weight,” she said, sitting down on the porch swing.

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I wondered if her comment was meant as an insult or a compliment. In either event she was not hitting or kicking me. It was the first time I had ever seen her smile in my presence, a big improvement over our previous meeting. Without having to plan for an unannounced kick or slap, I noticed how her smile contained a youthful charm I remembered in her grandmother from so many years ago. Sometimes you need to appreciate the small blessings in life.

“So what do you want to talk about?” Sunshine asked.

“You called this family meeting.”

She was still being a bit guarded in her approach to me, so I sat down on the porch swing. “Did your grandma tell you how we met?” I asked, pouring the lemonade.

“She told me how you stalked her,” she replied. “She said you were obsessed with her, especially when she wore a loose fitting sun dress.”

“Okay,” I said. “There’s a good place to start. How about I tell you my side of the story.”

The conversation wasn’t a love fest, but we talked for about two hours. In between me telling stories about Jane, she described her upbringing, a set of tales for which I fought shame due to my lack of presence.

When Sunshine went in to use the bathroom, I went inside to pour a bourbon. When she returned, I was sitting on the swing sipping away.

“You shouldn’t be drinking that you know,” Sunshine admonished, pointing to my bourbon. “You should be getting ready for your treatments. Drinking and smoking won’t help.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never been good at taking care of myself,” I admitted. “Your turn. Any questions?”

Sunshine took a moment to respond. “Three,” she said.

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I was a bit apprehensive at the offer I’d made, but resolved myself to be truthful, at least until she started kicking. “Shoot,” I replied.

“So first, why’d you quit writing?”

The question threw me off. “I still write,” I pointed out a bit defensively.

“Grandma said you quit a couple of books ago,” Sunshine shrugged. “She said you were just going through the motions.”

I was used to getting beat up by critics, but I wasn’t expecting Sunshine to echo a critique from Jane. “She said that?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Damn,” I replied. I thought for a moment and tried to put my ego aside. Everyone else had picked on my writing, why not Jane. “Loss of inspiration, I guess.

One day the words just quit flowing. I’m not sure I have anything left to say.”

“Sounds like a bullshit answer to me,” Sunshine said.

“What really happened?”

This kid was tough. She expected real answers. “The checks were rolling in. I had a movie deal. And then the day I realized I was content, I was fucked.”

“What’s wrong with being content?” Sunshine asked.

“Isn’t that what we all strive for. Hell, I’d kill to be content, if only for a day.”

Somehow I believed her. “It’s what normal people want,” I said. “Writers aren’t normal. They need conflict. The conflict a writer puts on paper is driven by something that bubbles up from their inner most demons. Contentment is a writer’s curse. No one writes a story that says I got up today and life is good. The End. It’s a nice way to live, but no one would buy the book.”

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“I get it,” Sunshine nodded. “You should write about me then. I have conflict coming out my ass.”

I laughed at the comment. “Nice,” I said. “Maybe you’ll end up in the next book, if there is a next book.”

“You mean there won’t be a next book?” Sunshine sounded surprised.

“I don’t know,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. “I’ve got a manuscript written. It’s a decent story, but there’s no passion in the writing. Even I see its weaknesses. With the days I have left, I’m not sure I want to spend them getting the story into shape.”

“Wouldn’t it be your legacy?”

I thought about the question. Legacy seems to be a moving target based upon your station in life. I patted Sunshine on her knee. “You’re my legacy,” I said. “Next question?”

“Okay,” Sunshine said. “Second, why didn’t you ever marry grandma?”

“Hell. I begged her to marry me. But Jane didn’t want to come to New York, I guess because of your mom and you. And Jane wouldn’t let me show up here. This may shock you, but she never told me. She wrote me a letter before she died and said it was because she knew if she told me, I would have dropped it all and moved here. She knew I could never find the conflict I needed to keep writing if I was spending my days on the beach in Cedar Key. On my end, I always thought in the back of my mind we’d work it out one day. It just got too late for us.”

“Would you have been miserable?” Sunshine asked.

I grabbed her hand. “Honey, today has made my life complete. You may hate me for not being here all your life, but just knowing you exist …” My eyes teared up and I was unable to complete the sentence.

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There was a long silence as we simply swung back and forth on the porch swing, the silence speaking volumes.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “You had one more question?”

“Third,” Sunshine looked up a bit sheepishly. “Mind if I come back another day?”

“I’ve got to head back to New York soon, but okay.”

“When you headed out?

“I’ve got a few treatments to try and slow the cancer down, but if you want a few more stories, I can push them back a week.”

“I thought you weren’t going to get the treatments. I thought you didn’t care.”

“I’m not sure what I think right now.”

“Huh,” Sunshine nodded. “Sounds like you got some real conflict going on.”

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Chapter Nineteen Placing the urn with Jane’s ashes directly in front of me on the table, I opened my laptop and fired it up.

As the operating system labored through its start up, I considered striking up a good cigar to enjoy as I wrote.

With the bone marrow transplant only a week away, my doctor warned it was time for me to consider some cleaner living. I thought of the old line from Mickey Mantle, “If I’d have known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”

I looked at my arm, black and blue from the multiple blood tests and other injections I’d had over the past two months. I cringed at the thought of Sunshine having the same marks on her arms. At least some of her marks will be hidden by body ink.

The idea to go through with the bone marrow transplant was Sunshine’s idea. Quite frankly, I was shocked when she made the offer. Trying to talk her out of it was not an option. The more I argued against it, the more she displayed the same attitude as when we first met. To some degree I was afraid if I declined, she’d beat the hell out of me.

In the end, I guess it was something fulfilling for her as well. I was her last link to Grandma Jane and she wasn’t 150

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ready to let that tie sever so quickly. So with Sunshine’s encouragement, I eventually relented and scheduled the transplant. Although, agreeing to the treatment wasn’t as easy as I thought. The actual transplant is being preceded by a laundry list of pre-treatments and chemotherapy.

The down time between treatments allowed me to rework my latest manuscript. Remarkably, my publisher loved it and is pushing for an early release. That means getting through the final draft before next week.

The familiar chirp of the screen-ready computer signaled it was time to go to work.

“Deadlines, Old Girl,” I said, laughing out loud at my own choice of words. Talking to a deceased girlfriend likely seems a bit odd by most people’s standards.

Catching myself being embarrassed about saying “dead” in front of her was silly, even by my own standards. I patted the marked-up manuscript on the table. “My publisher loves the book and thinks it will put me back on top,” I said, pondering the thought of being back on the best seller list. “The funny thing is, I’m not sure if I care anymore. I’m enjoying writing for myself this time around as opposed to others.”

Jane did not respond, so I guess she agreed.

“Still, she’s all excited about it and my agent is already working on the publicity,” I continued. “I guess an aging cancer patient with an expanding belly and a shrinking world view is good enough to get a fresh article in People.

I’m going to do it all from here though. They tell me I’m going to be pretty weak for a while. So if they want an in-person interview they have to find me. Who knows?

If I play my cards right, I might even get an article in the Cedar Key Beacon.”

“Oh, and don’t worry about our granddaughter,” I added. “Grace and I are still finding each other. I’ll keep 151

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telling her the stories as long as my body allows and my mind remembers.” I pointed my finger at Jane. “I know there is a lot of you in her and I intend to do all I can to find it. She’s a tough nut to crack, a whirlwind of tattooed anger. But I’ll keep working on her.”

I pulled the manuscript up on the computer screen, took a sip of coffee and let the words flow. I smiled broadly because the words were, in fact, flowing again.

Inspiration is as fleeting as fame. When you find it, you roll with it. I spoke the prose out loud as I typed.

The Promise of Cedar Key—A Novel by Bobby Wade Daoism is an ancient Chinese religion, the foundations of which lie in an understanding of man living in harmony with nature. In order to detach from earthly desires, they meditate about a world without them in it.

Attaining this primal state brings enlightenment. Much of their writings refer to man’s harmony with nature in terms of water, in large part because of the way it yields to its surroundings.

Watching the ever shifting tides of the Gulf of Mexico wind their way through the nooks and crannies of Cedar Key strikes at the Daoism theory of man’s place in the world. Maybe we should all envision a world without us in it, not necessarily for the goal of transcendental enlightenment. But the colors of psychedelic meditation are a definite improvement over a black and white world.

Our time on earth is very short. We only get so many trips around the sun and then the Daoists win their prophecy anyway. With one quick snap of God’s immortal fingers, the world is suddenly without us. Like spiritual walks taken by our forefathers centuries ago, perhaps souls remain on earth as long as we allow them.

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All my life, I strived to be remembered. Now I want to take it all back with a goal of not being forgotten.

There is a difference. We create our own narrative to make sure people remember. It is their view of our back pages that lets us not be forgotten. Being remembered is orchestrated. Not being forgotten is organic.

Such is a treasure even a pirate could not keep hidden.

For years, what had troubled me about death was my not my reaction to it, but how others would view mine. I thought of my life as an hour glass, nervously watching each grain of sand run by until my time was up, anguishing over whether I had done enough to be granted eternity. The liberating promise I found in Cedar Key is that when the hour glass starts to get low, simply turn it over and start anew. There are those who never got the chance. Turn it over while you have the chance.

This is a hard concept for those of us who have cared about so many things we tended to not focus on the ones of importance.

There was silence for a minute as I leaned back in my chair and reached for the next sentence.

“Other people’s woes seem much more tolerable when viewed through the abyss of your own mortality,” a soft female voice said.

I glanced at Jane’s ashes sitting in the front room. “Oh damn, that’s a good line,” I said as I began to type it into my laptop.

“Thank you.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I steal it.”

“Maybe,” Holly came walking out of the bedroom wearing nothing but my blue, button-down dress shirt.

She ran her hands down my chest, pressing her torso against my back and kissed me on the back of my neck.

“But, I want proper attribution.”

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“If you’re looking for residuals, talk to my agent,” I laughed, holding up my open palm. “I don’t handle the business side of things.”

Holly returned the high-five and looked over at the urn. “I’m not interrupting you two, am I?” she asked.

“It’s okay,” I replied. “She’s not talking to me as much these days. I just have her around for the moral support.”

In false show of modesty, Holly pulled the shirt down to better cover herself. “You don’t think Jane’s jealous of us, do you?” Holly asked. “I don’t want her to quit talking to you just because I’m hanging around.”

“No, I think she’s quite content,” I replied. “With everything happening, she’s happy I’ve discovered my conflict again, and I’m conflicted about my contentment.

See, plenty to write about.”

“It’s going to be a helluva ride,” Holly said pouring a cup of coffee and sitting down at the table. “Bring me lunch today and I’ll give you a special tour of our Bobby Wade collection.”

The last time I had brought Holly lunch, she locked the doors and we made love on her desk. “As enticing as that offer sounds, I can’t.” I said, regret heavy in my voice.

“Remember? I have to go by Johnny’s office and sign all the closing papers on this place.”

Holly shook her head. “You know you’re paying twice as much for Jane’s house than what it’s worth,” she said.

“You could get a new condo off Dock Street with a view of the Gulf for what you’re spending for this place.”

“I know,” I replied. Holly was right. I had looked at the property offerings on the front window of Johnny’s law office. If this were simply about real estate prices, it was a damn bad investment. “But now Sunshine can get a nice place of her own and still have some extra to put aside.”

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“You know you can’t buy Grace,” Holly cautioned with a stern look.

I needed to convince her it was not a guilt purchase.

“I’m not trying,” I said. “When my parents died, I didn’t want or need their money, and I had no one to pass it along to. I decided to put their money into an account until I figured out what to do with it. So, I gave it to a broker and just let it sit there. I never even opened the account statements. I didn’t want to know how much was even in it.”

“How long has it been?” Holly asked, standing up and looking over my shoulder at the laptop.

“Years,” I replied. “And it turns out I picked a good broker. He’s rolled it over a couple of times.”

“And now you have an heir,” Holly continued. “It makes sense to give it all to your granddaughter.”

“Most of it,” I said, turning slightly in my chair. “I’ve set aside a little to establish a writing endowment for the library.”

Holly moved closer, straddled me and rubbed her chest against mine. “Ohhh, I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

I put my arms around her waist. “You’ll be late for work,” I said letting my hands run slowly down her backside. “Old man Chastain will understand,” I said.

“Before you get all wound up again …,” Holly began.

“Too late,” I interrupted.

Holly laughed. “Don’t forget to call Sunshine and remind her we’re having her over for dinner tonight,” she said. “Chastain has some fresh alligator tail for me to grill.”

“Speaking of fresh tail,” I growled as I started unbuttoning her shirt, kissing her chest as I went.

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Despite my advances, Holly wanted to get her point across. “If you’re going to get Sunshine’s bone marrow, you need to get to know her better.”

“Okay.” Actually I was now getting so worked up, I had little idea what I was agreeing to. I finished unbuttoning the shirt and tossed it on the table, covering the urn.

Holly looked over my shoulder at the table. “What about her?”

“I don’t know. I still haven’t decided,” I said, placing light kisses on her collar bone as I filled my hands with her breasts.

“So, you’re going to keep her around for a while?”

Holly asked, battling my hands away.

“A least until the bone marrow stuff is over,” I said.

“I talked with Sunshine about it the other day. She wants me to recover first. Then we may kayak out to the island where the birds hang out in the summer because they’re too old to migrate. We both thought it was an appropriate place for Jane.”

Holly placed my hands back on her breasts. “Just keep her out of the bedroom when we make love.”

“So, you’re saying you won’t consider a threesome.”

“You’re sick,” Holly laughed, lowering her brow to mine and staring intently into my eyes. “Just tell me you’ll fight this thing, Bobby.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“I’m serious Bobby Wade. I need to know you’ll be here for me.”

I smiled and winked. “I will. I promise.”

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Acknowledgments A previous book of mine, Alligator Alley, was the culmination of personal angst that started at puberty and lasted until I put it on paper in my mid-50s. I never planned a sequel, because I wanted people to have their own ideas as to what happened next to the book’s main character, Jimmy Conrad. Jim “Scorch” Chastain, who helped me with research via a tour of the Everglades was pissed. He gave me a detailed account of what happened next. When I told him, “Then, that’s what happened.” He got it. Everyone who read Alligator Alley had their own idea of Jimmy Conrad’s life.

Before the ink of Alligator Alley was even dry, Kevin Kelly began asking me what was next—for me, not Jimmy Conrad. He convinced me there was a purpose in writing coming-of-age novels for people with grey hair who had never come of age. Thanks to him, I started three separate books along the way, each exploring a different view of mid (plus) life. The Promise of Cedar Key is the story that survived.

For a while, I struggled with the subject matter for this book. When my friend Gary Beatrice was diagnosed with cancer, I found myself questioning my own emotions about his fate. My friend and editor, Mark 157

Morris had a heart attack in the meantime, and—through his recovery—the obsession with writing about my own mortality was born. I owe Gary and Mark a great deal of gratitude for their friendship and for freely sharing their personal insights. This book would have a whole bunch of blank pages in the middle without them.

Bobby and Jan McCabe were great tour guides for my understanding of their home island, Cedar Key. And my brother-in-law, Wade DeHate always humors me on my writing trips through the Sunshine State.

Everyone familiar with my works, know I like to write at bars. I call it the Hemmingway in me. My wife and kids think I just like to drink. In either event, with this book, I’ve found a new writing spot. Just a couple of blocks from our new abode in Arlington, Virginia, Jimmy Fagen and the folks at Ireland’s Four Courts keep my belly full, my mug cold and my laptop plugged in.

Fellow patrons have become friends and they no longer scoff at the old guy at the end of the bar with his nose in a laptop. And occasionally, I get to sit in with a few of the staff who stay after hours and play “rebel music.” There are way too many people to thank individually, but a tip of the Guinness to all at the Four Courts.

Several folks have assisted me with the spiritual journey developed in these pages. Thanks to Rev. Joe Pennington and Rev. Peter D’Angio. Lifelong Ludlow pals Jim Lokesak and Jim Young helped in this vein as well. Johnny McGreevy provided some much needed inspiration. A brilliant writer, I look forward to being acknowledged in his book one day soon.

As always, I have a lot of folks providing editorial and story assistance. Thanks to: Jim and Kathy Brewer, Robin DeHate, and Tony Wicke. None of my books would be 158

complete before Jeff Landen (great editor/better friend) takes a cut.

Thanks to whoever provides blurbs My publicist Debbie McKinney keeps me in the news and on time for book signings. And my publisher, Cathy Teets at Headline Books, continues to be my biggest fan.

Thank you isn’t enough for either.

And finally, as always, I owe a deep debt of gratitude and love to my children: Joshua, Zachary and MacKenzie.

My wife Linda remains the love of my life, my greatest editor, and best friend.

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Other Books by Rick Robinson The Maximum Contribution Sniper Bid Manifest Destiny Writ of Mandamus The Advance Man Killing the Curse (with Dennis Hetzel) Alligator Alley Strange Bedfellow Landau—(with Landau Eugene Murphy)

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Author Don Then says Robinson has a career writing, “…about the human condition, about all the magical moments in life that make us who we are. In this area he shines.”

Born in Florida and raised in Kentucky, Rick Robinson is the author of nine books, writes regular political humor columns, is often heard on talk radio, and plays electric mandolin in an Irish punk rock band. His novel, Alligator Alley, was the Grand Prize Winner at the Florida Book Festival and he has won international writing awards for his fiction. Robinson and his wife, Linda, currently reside in Arlington, Virginia.

The Promise of Cedar Key

Award-winning author, Rick Robinson, takes his readers to Cedar Key, Florida, where successful novelist, Bobby Wade, must put aside the hustle and bustle of a writer’s life in New York City just long enough to fulfill a promise he made long ago. In the few days he must spend in the small coastal town, Wade faces demons he never knew existed and would rather drink them away than fight.

a novel

A coming of age novel for people still waiting to do so.

Rick Robinson

Rick Robinson