Mile Zero (41 page)

So there, I have told one of my promised stories and have but few left. Don’t become cocky with this new knowledge, there is a difference between heard and learned. Don’t think because you are a being that you are necessarily a human, such would be fatal. We are about fatality here, reality of survival. If some have to die so ideas of others may flourish, so be it. So it be in the beginning as in the end. Do you see the green monkey grinning in Africa, high in the tree? The green monkey has a secret he shares with me and withholds from you. What you see is a playful primate, a creature of childish proportions. When one grows weak, cannot keep swinging through leafy jungle canopy, loses its grip and plummets to earth, the others fall upon it with a screeching chatter, tearing the fallen’s furry limbs, pounding the fallen with a fury of fists. Death is not an exotic exit. Death is a door hammered shut. The so-called beings of human are not so suave as the green monkey. The beings of human suckle their sick, coddle their ill, such will be the death of the living. Green monkey blood is loose among you, and you are not monkey clever enough to stamp it out. I am forced to go forth in search of purity, cleansing the circle. My blade of righteousness is aimed at those among you with green monkey blood pumping in their veins. They will not escape, the eternal X cannot be eluded. I intend to finish with my purpose. I am a wasp buzz in the ear of reason, whispering your mother’s name, exposing your father’s bastard treason. I am a little blaze, growing. I am a big
bamboche
, a grand party of deliverance. I am the little world called upon to save the Big World. Green Sailors, green monkeys, all blown to microchip bits. You can be saved if you know your history, if you understand I am not a simple aberration, a fabulous apparition, a dead document sealed in a bottle, floating in a dream pool garden. I am inevitable intolerance, and don’t forget it, as you have forgotten all else. It is my job to make the intolerable tolerable. I am indomitable as the current of the Gulf Stream coursing with 75 million tons of water each second, a force greater than all the earth’s rivers combined. Do you hear the roar of water over my head, do you see the weeds floating to the top of the jar, do you see the circle closing, do you understand now you are standing within it, without eyes to see,
without ears to hear? All God’s creatures got to make a living, and I am your guide. A lit candle burns atop my skull, there is only one last step to take, one final act remains to complete. No, it is not an Act of Contrition, it is an act of retribution. The bull is cleansed and perfumed before its beastly bulk is butchered heavenward. Shuuush! Hushabye my baby. Stop crying, we are almost there.

Don’t worry chilrens, Mammy’s at the wheel of reason, Zobop’s at the wheel of the Ghost-Car. They say Zobop is a mob of sorcerers, magical gangsters who transform their victims into goats and toads before slaughtering them. They say Zobop has been given a burning charm from the Loas, for Zobop cleanses the earth of the foul and failed, leading them to the slaughterhouse to the march of a drumbeat. They say Zobop has intercourse with evil spirits, suckles from a fountain of fresh terrors. They say Zobop goes about the night in a Tiger-Car, an Auto-Zobop which careens through the heavens, along dark country roads, beaming blinding blue from bright headlights. They say Zobop feeds salt to zombies, which wakes and shakes them to acts of free will. They say Zobop kidnaps children. Lies! Zobop does not disturb the dead. Zobop inhabits the dead. Zobop kidnaps no one. Zobop did not kidnap you. Zobop just likes to take people for a little ride in his Ghost-Car, up the street of illusions, down the avenue of dreams, around the curve of illumination, over the cliff of doom.

Bop till you drop. You think I’m kidding? Just wait. I drive by night. Do you see my clever soul? A newborn New World monkey at the wheel of misfortune. Here we go. Hang on!

You don’t like it, do you? If I am everything you are not, then you are everything I am. You want to run, you want to close your ears, to close out treason of misfired reason, but you can’t. You are still with me because you are me. Look here, my darling suckling pig, my tireless turtle hatchling, the feast is in the wood. You don’t know what I’m talking about? For three hundred years you don’t know what I’ve
been talking about. Three hundred years ago the great fleets of Castilian plunderers were cut to ribbons on coral off the Florida Straits, sunk to sea bottom, weighted by bullion and precious stones. For three hundred years this cargo attracted men like those who went down with the ships, men who didn’t make their own fortunes, spent lifetimes scratching the earth’s crevices in search of treasures bought by sweat of others. Men who mined the currency of cultural droppings which had fallen into cracks of history, or sunk to bottom of timeless ocean. Scattered around this island, in any direction you choose to sail, are treasures on the ocean floor still untouched. The wood of sunken galleons once transporting fabulous treasures now nurtures implacable shipworms. Shipworms feast upon a banquet of seasoned timber while surrounded by worthless dull gleam of gold and emeralds. Do you finally see the value of what I offer? Your treasure has no currency in the natural world. Heed my world if you do not want to end up a dead document. The feast is everywhere around and you turn a blind side to it, ignorant to turtle hatchlings moving toward false light of shopping centers, panthers coming up from the Everglades to cross deathtrap highways going nowhere. So I am forced to action. I start my engine. I roar to life after life. The Ghost-Car is on the prowl tonight. Zobop the Great Corrector is loose. He is not who you think him to be. He is a feast in the wood, a blue streak in the heavens, water on the brain.

Water and wind, wind and water, they bore all plant life to this island in the beginning. Water and wind brought life, water and wind will take it away. I place my lips to the
lambi
, the sacred shell of the conch. My breath blows a message which opens the heavens, parts the pearly gates, calls upon the wind to sail ships across water to a magic spot, where those who survive dwell in perpetual mystery. I summon wind to raise the sea over this island, drown the disbelievers for one and all. I condemn tainted souls to a fate worse than life on this putrefied globe. Nothing shall be left except voices over still water, no more roaring cascade in my brain, calm prevails as waves smooth themselves overhead. The chattering screams of green monkeys heralding the deluge is finally silenced. In the east, sun rises in an Avenging Angel’s outstretched hand, graves yawn open around her as mounted Horsemen storm from beneath the sea, thunder ashore on raging tide of dead documents. I feed the sea, sow the waves, reap the tide, ride the current, time is on my side. I dance the time of my history while God is out to lunch and worms feast on
wood. I right the way. I write the way. I write. I am witness. I am testimony. I am writing right, the right exit. Dead documents float ever swiftly to ocean surface. Furious weeds rise in a jar. The yellow circle closes. The steel cage clatters down around us all. Look at me, straight at me. Peer into my face. Escape awaits through my eyes. The only escape route is through the Eye of the Hurricane. I am the Hurricane. Get out while you can. Are you with me? Yes! Let’s go then! We are storm riders! We are in orbit! At last! Know my language!
A-OK! A
through
ZZZZZZZ-Be-Bop Ah Lu-La! ZEROBOP!

We see Eye through I now. You knew you were me all along, didn’t you?

C
AYO HUESO ES EL PAIS DE SIGUARAYA
. Key West is the land where anything goes. On this evening of All Saints’ Justo didn’t know if things were going to the Gods or to the Devils. One thing certain things were already going their usual loco. Justo touched the gold bone at his neck as he made his way toward music blaring from crowded Duval Street ahead. All Saints’ Eve always spooked him, spooked him as a kid, spooked him more now. Made no difference if All Saints’ Eve was also called Halloween. On this island Halloween wasn’t a night which brought out gay children costumed for treats. Instead it released the child within adults. It was an excuse for masked nocturnal antics, dancing in the streets, ceaseless prowling through raucous bars and discos in search of illicit treats. A night spent hidden behind the costume of an ape, a Bozo clown or an impeached president, one could don the ego of another, the droll become garish. Accountants miraculously transformed into barstool Romeos, bank clerks slinky as short-skirted Lolitas, randy divorcees slippery as oil-slick Valentinos, and nervous Navy housewives purring hot as fresh whiskered cats in black leotards.
La vida es un tango
. Life is a ball.

The ghosts of All Saints’ Eve, and the goblins of Halloween, had lately given way to an official Mardi Gras-style frolic, a high time of civic-minded madness, renamed by the city, Fantasy Fest. Beneath the costumed sheets of Fantasy Fest’s ribald revelry was a not-so-disguised plan designed to lure ever more northern tourists into the jaws of the island’s insatiable hunger for fast bucks and quick turnover. The warily wise native Conchs slammed their shutters, waiting for the brassy overflow of masked tricksters to blow away in a whirlwind
of hangovers, empty wallets and guilty consciences. Fantasy Fest obliterated a once serious date on the calendar, the end of hurricane threat, another furious season survived, not that there still weren’t tropical storms off the coast of Africa capable of cooking up a two-hundred-mile-an-hour surprise. The Conchs knew the main danger was past, even though the official hurricane season didn’t end for another month. Conchs understood the nature of their weather, with each sweltering dog day, from beginning of August right through end of sweaty October, gathering storms grew more frequent and belligerent. A beefy squall could turn overnight into a swirl of devastating windy skirts, sweeping the island’s inhabitants into the sea beneath a twenty-foot wall of water. Justo could live without Fantasy Fest, it had become less of one thing, a corruption of many. No longer a simple kids’ holiday or a religious celebration for the devoutly superstitious, not even the official end of hurricane season. Because it was not what it pretended to be many people mightily aspired to make it into a real excuse for riotous behavior.
Cada uno tiene su modo de matar pulgas
. Everyone has his own way of killing fleas.

Fantasy Fest was not a cop’s favorite holiday. Justo was normally at home that night, surrounded by close
compadres
drinking
compuesto
and playing dominoes in his living room as tangled scents of squid, chicken and shrimp drifted from the kitchen, where gossipy chatter of Rosella and the women added spice to a boiling stewpot of Paella Valenciana. While masked revelers danced to a worrisome beat in distant streets Justo smugly thought, as he watched an opponent’s bridge of dominoes about to fall,
puerco con frio, y hombres con vino, hacen gran ruido
. Cold pigs and drunken men make a lot of noise. But this Halloween Justo was not spending a tranquil night at home. He was in the midst of drunken men, drunken pigs, drunken lions, Little Bo-Peeps, Attila the Huns and Andrew Jacksons, a howling mob of counterfeit inebriates. He was in a
sofo con
, an embarrassing fix, hoofing it without the authority of a
perseguidora
, a police car. Why? Because,
eres como Canuto, mientras mas viejo mas bruto
. The older you get the dumber you are. His elaborate scheme to keep control of Voltaire’s destiny had collapsed. Not only had the Coast Guard sent in a squad of lawyers to argue the city of Key West had no jurisdiction over what transpired on Voltaire’s boat while on the high seas, the grand jury refused to hear the case on a battery of technical points, not the least of which was a lack of evidence to find Voltaire accountable for anything other than nearly starving to death, much less manslaughter.
To make matters worse, while Justo investigated the drug murder of a Massachusetts felon on the lam, cut off in his prime by a blast from a sawed-off shotgun behind the All-You-Can-Eat fried chicken diner out on the boulevard, two Federal Marshals from Miami showed at the jail in an unmarked van with blacked-out windows to haul Voltaire to the Everglades detention camp.
Mal día
. On top of this a Southerner recently recruited by the police department, a six-foot-five genius who thought Don Cervantes Saavedra was the name of any Cuban refugee running for mayor or caught doping greyhounds before a big Quinella, had complained up the chain of command that Justo kept a dog in his car while on duty. The blister-faced recruit maintained Justo’s behavior violated regulations, a threat to dignity the force worked hard to maintain in face of a sullen and apathetic public. Justo knew, from reliable information of scammers working the seamier side streets off Duval, the Southerner was a heavy-handed skimmer of narcotics seized in daily busts. This white man in blue did not like Justo’s skin hue, distrusted the way Justo chose to turn a blind eye to smaller infractions in order to bag bigger game. Complaints about Ocho, coupled with the honor Justo brought the department in the case of Voltaire, compelled his superiors to make him a small present. Despite seniority he was busted back to a street beat during the baddest week of the year, the week of Fantasy Fest. Justo was allowed no comfortable loose
guayabera
shirt to walk the streets in, instead he had to stuff himself into an iron-creased suit of regulation rayon blues he hadn’t worn in years. A too small visored police cap perched atop his head; revolver, riot stick and handcuffs swung at his hips as he patrolled his beat with a static squeal coming from the two-way radio crammed in his back pocket.
Mal día
, what a bad day. What a bad situation.
Quien al cielo escupe, en la cara le cae
. He who spits toward heaven has the spittle fall back in his face.