Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (123 page)

This time around, the reporters had begun showing up three weeks before the election, carefully charting everything Joe did. The stress was getting to be too much. His wife couldn’t go shopping without being tailed by test marketers from Kellogg’s and Frito-Lay. His children came home crying, saying their classmates were calling them “lukewarm,” “pedestrian” and “pablum.”

Joe Blow would head out to his car each morning before work with a mug of coffee.

“What did you have for breakfast, Joe?”

“Please leave us alone! I’m begging you!”

“How much coffee do you drink a day?”

“Is that perk or crystals?”

Joe lurched out of the driveway and raced off to his job as an orange juice taster at the Tropicana plant.

The shopping habits of the Blow clan may have been intriguing, but it was Joe’s political views that drew the most attention. Because he was so average, he instinctively gravitated toward the candidates who would ulti
mately poll a majority of the electorate, and he began predicting races with oracular certainty. At first it was novel; then it became scary. Joe accurately called twenty-six consecutive races before the street filled up with TV trucks and he refused to give any more predictions, but the genie was already out of the bottle.

Joe Blow came home from work. He got out of his car carrying his lunch pail.

“How was your day at work, Joe?”

“Who do you like for governor?”

“How many times did your bowels move?”

“Fuck off!”

FIRST THING THE
next morning, a state trooper pulled the
Orange Crush
over again.

Marlon rolled down the window. “I thought we’d settled this.”

“Mail call,” said the trooper. He passed a small cardboard box through the window and left.

“I asked them to do that,” said Escrow, taking the box from Marlon. “If we’re gonna be on the move, we have to stay plugged in.”

Escrow sat down on the floor behind the driver’s seat and began sorting the cards and letters.

Marlon pulled back onto the road, and Pimento came up front with a stack of newspapers and climbed into the passenger seat.

“The
Times-Union
is leading with your unorthodox campaign in a Winnebago and the disgruntled gunman rampage. The
Herald
is leading with your campaign and the Willie Nelson Bandit. The
Times
is leading with your campaign and the shoot-out at the kindergarten. The
Tribune
is leading with your campaign, a quadruple shooting and the discovery of a head in a crab trap in Tampa Bay. The
Sentinel
is leading with the campaign, a triple drive-by and a shocking exposé revealing that students are drinking at college football games.”

“My turn,” said Escrow. “You got a lot of mail. It generally falls in three categories—donations, requests and
insane rants…. Here’s ten thousand dollars from Big Insecticide, five thousand from Big Trial Lawyers, another thousand from Big Nursing Home, five Gs from Big Lap Dance, and, what’s this? Two-fifty from Little Businessman?” He tossed it out the window. “Three thousand from Big Asbestos Removal, five K from Big Indicted Highway Contractor—”

“Toaster Strudel?” offered Pimento.

Escrow waved it off, but Marlon took one.

“Time to pay the piper,” said Escrow. “Here are the requests: ‘
Get the charges dropped against my company,’ ‘File charges against my competitor,’ ‘Loosen smokestack rules,’ ‘Give us the bridge contract
,’ and ‘
Come to my daughter’s wedding
.’ I don’t know about that last one—sounds a little presumptuous.”

The shadows of two blimps criss-crossed each other on the highway.

“The rants are basically still the same,” said Escrow. “The first one is the standard ‘
You suk!
’ and a few more cover the same ground: ‘
Bite it!’ ‘Eat it!’ ‘Suk it!
’ Here’s another ‘
You suk!
’ followed by ‘
No UN in the U.S.’ ‘The Trilateral Commission Suks!’ ‘When will you wake up to the Jewish world conspiracy?’ ‘Stop lying about the flying saucers!
’ and ‘
You suk!
’”

Marlon turned on the radio.

“Sir,” said Escrow. “I want to pick out something to listen to.”

“I don’t know…” said Marlon.

“C’mon. If we’re going to have fun, like you say, then you have to let me play, too.”

Marlon relented, and Escrow turned the knob until he came to a station playing John Philip Sousa military marching music. He swayed side to side and smiled.

“Aaaauuuhhh!” screamed Pimento, heat-butting the lavatory door. “Make it stop!”

“He’s right,” said Marlon, changing the station. “Don’t take it personally.”

They crossed the bridge over the inlet at Fort Matanzas and soon saw a blue arch on the left.

“Is that Marineland?” said Marlon.

Pimento nodded. “Opened in 1937. World’s oldest marine attraction. You’ll never again see one built in such an incredible location, just a ribbon of land between A1A and the ocean. It’s like a museum of old roadside Florida.”

“I’ve never been,” said Marlon.

“You’re kidding!” said Pimento. “Then we absolutely have to stop!”

“By all means,” said Escrow. “Let’s stay a week.”

They pulled over in a gravel lot and parked next to a red Ferrari with a vanity tag,
DAY-TRADR
. A man got out of the sports car talking on the phone. He wore a tight-fitting golf shirt, tighter slacks and loafers without socks. “Sell the bonds! Put an eighty stop-limit on the IPO!…”

Marlon and the gang went inside. Things didn’t look good. The gift shop’s air-conditioning had been cut off, and the shelves were nearly empty. Marlon flipped through a few sun-bleached postcards from the sixties, and Escrow picked up a seashell toilet seat and stared through the opening at the others.

They went out to the dolphin tank and had the whole thing to themselves. Ten dolphins lay around the water, no shows, nobody to perform for, listlessly pushing a basketball around the pool with their noses.

One dolphin flicked the basketball up to Marlon. He
caught it and threw it back. The dolphin got its bottlenose under the ball and flicked it up again.

“Where is everyone?” said Marlon, catching the ball, throwing it back.

“This is a tragedy,” said Pimento. He clapped his hands, and the dolphin threw him the ball. “We’d better take a good look—it might not be here much longer.” He threw the basketball back.

“Hey, it’s market forces,” said Escrow. “Sink or swim.”

Pimento caught the ball again and threw it back. “Escrow—try real hard not to poop on this moment.”

The dolphin flicked the ball again, and it went wide.

A young woman in a wet suit caught it. She made a clicking sound with her mouth, threw the ball back in the water and dove in after it.

The men stopped talking and watched her. She swam around and caught rides from the dolphins. One dolphin spun on his side, and she rubbed his belly. She didn’t smile once—almost a frown the whole time. She was chewing gum.

They guessed her age at around twenty. She was tall and fit, with developed shoulders from swimming, and she had dark hair in a tomboy Buster Brown cut. Her posture was fiercely independent, but her face seemed vulnerable. It was a corny picture of everything that was right in America. Marlon and Pimento felt hopelessly paternal.

The woman rolled on her back and grabbed a dorsal with her left hand. She closed her eyes, and the dolphin took her around the tank, over and over.

On the sixth lap, there was shouting. They turned and saw a man hanging over the side of the tank.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls?”

Her eyes opened fast, and she let go of the dolphin.

She swam to a ladder, and the man followed her, walking along the tank railing and yelling. “I asked you a question! Nobody treats me like that!”

She climbed out without a sound and started to walk away.

“Did you hear me?” He grabbed her by the arm. The others recognized him. It was
DAY-TRADR
. “How come you don’t want to go out again? Too good for me?”

He shook her. She didn’t resist, just let him yank her back and forth and gave him an empty stare.

“You think you’re a tough little bitch!”

She finally spoke. “L-l-l-l-let g-g-g-go. You’re h-h-h-hurting m-m-m-me!”

He slapped her across the face.

Out of the blue, Pimento erupted with a wild aboriginal scream and charged. The man saw him coming and released the woman’s arm just as Pimento tackled him high. They fell into the life preservers. Pimento had the upper hand, but the man pulled a gaff hook off the wall.

So Marlon dove in.

He wrestled the hook away, and he and Pimento began punching the piss out of the man’s kidneys.

Escrow jumped up and down. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!…” He looked around for tourists, but the place was still empty.

If the woman hadn’t pulled them off, Marlon and Pimento might have cashed out
DAY-TRADR
.

“We have to get out of here!” yelled Escrow.

Marlon and Pimento seemed to be taking their time, having trouble registering what they’d just done. Pimento rubbed his scuffed knuckles, and Marlon pulled one of his fingers, popping it back into joint.

“What are you waiting for?” shouted Escrow, pushing them in the direction of the exit.

The woman was also lollygagging, standing over her unconscious assailant.

“You’ve got to come, too,” Escrow told her. “We need to debrief you.”

She didn’t respond at first, but when the man started regaining consciousness, she turned and ran after them.

They sprinted down the steps and across the street to the Winnebago and took off south.

The woman was sitting up front with Marlon. He went to say something but stopped. He looked at her profile. Gentle features except the cheekbones, which were high and sharp. There was a small scar on her chin. Her wet suit was black-and-aqua and getting the seat damp.

“What’s your name?”

She didn’t answer.

“You want something to eat?”

He looked over at her, but she stayed facing forward.

“I’ll stop anywhere. Just say the word. We got your Checkers and your Pizza Hut…”

She pointed.

“That’s more like it.”

Marlon looked to see where she wanted to go. “Hey, that’s not a restaurant. Those are batting cages.”

She pointed again, more emphatically.

“You’re the boss,” he said. “Batting cages it is.”

There were five machines in ascending order of velocity. Marlon got out some quarters and walked to the first machine, but she grabbed a bat and helmet and went right for the last one. She squared off at the plate and looked over her shoulder impatiently, waiting for Marlon
to put in the quarters. When the last coin fell, the twin wheels began spinning and the balls fell into the chute.

The pitches smoked. Marlon had never seen anything that fast. She fouled off the first three, then found her rhythm and clobbered the next seven. The machine stopped. She turned and stared.

“Okay, okay!” Marlon put in more quarters. The machine began firing again. She kept her streak going, hitting eight in a row with the meat of the bat, most ending up high in the net.

A ball misfed into the wheels and came curving through the batter’s box, knocking her down.

She jumped up, tore off her batting helmet and slung it at the machine. Then she crowded the plate and crushed the bat handle in her grip.

The next pitch was another curveball inside, and she opened her stance and pulled it with authority. She stomped away from the plate, handed the bat to Marlon and left the cage.

Pimento waited until she was out of earshot, then came up to Marlon. “What the hell was
that
?”

“I think it’s what’s called ‘unresolved issues.’”

THE YOUNG WOMAN
from Marineland was sleeping in a bunk in the back of the
Orange Crush
as it continued south along the shore. Escrow tapped on his laptop. Pimento sat up front with Marlon.

“Volkswagen! I called it!” said the governor. He slid an orange window over the Beetle on his card. “I almost have bingo.”

“No fair,” said Pimento. “I want to draw another card. I got a silo, a snowplow and a mountain on mine.”

“Did she say anything?” asked Marlon, pointing over his shoulder.

“Nope. Went right to sleep.”

“I don’t get it. Won’t tell us her name, address, anything.”

“She’s probably still shook up. Can’t say I blame her after what we saw.”

“Speaking of which, what happened back there?” asked Marlon.

“What?”

“Jumping that guy. Not that he didn’t deserve it. It just isn’t you.”

Pimento paused awhile. Finally: “I don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember what?”

“Everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know who I am.”

“We’re all trying to discover ourselves.”

Pimento shook his head. “That’s not it.”

“What are you saying?” Marlon chuckled. “You have amnesia or something?”

Pimento nodded.

“Forget about it!”

But Marlon saw it wasn’t a joke.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“For months, the only thing I could remember was all these history facts and trivia. It was the damnedest thing,” said Pimento. “But recently I’ve started to have these little flashbacks. It can be triggered by something that reminds me of my childhood…. Or it can be from The Dark Side, when something makes me angry. Then I start remembering bad things, and I black out. Like back at Marineland, I can only remember that guy yelling at the girl. The next thing I knew he was unconscious and I was standing over him.”

“Why didn’t you say anything to us?”

“I was afraid you’d fire me. This is the best job I’ve ever had. Then again, how would I know?”

“I can’t believe this!”

“So you’re not going to fire me?”

“Of course not.”

“Someone I know would.”

“Escrow thinks you’re dangerous,” said Marlon.

“Escrow’s dangerous.”

“So your memory’s on the hazy side. So what? It doesn’t change your character. I’ve been around you long enough to know you’re good people.”

“I’d just like to remember. Sometimes I find myself in the bathroom for like twenty minutes staring in the mirror…”

“Don’t worry—I’m sure it’ll come back eventually. Meanwhile, you’re my best speechwriter. You’re my
only
speechwriter. I can’t fire you.”

“Thanks.”

“Just don’t attack any more people.”

“Deal.”

Escrow came forward to report an urgent phone call.

“Sir, we have to move on the tax exemption for the new stadium in Orlando. Von Zeppelin’s starting to call people. It’s getting nasty.”

“I’m going to block the exemption,” said Marlon.

Escrow became nervous, then laughed. “Okay, you got me. Good one.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re starting to scare me,” said Escrow. “The joke’s not funny anymore.”

Marlon was quiet.

“Sir, you’ve been doing a lot of crazy things. But this one you don’t want to mess with. He’ll crush us. He could even have us killed.”

“There are a lot better uses in Florida for thirty million dollars,” said Marlon.

“I’m sure there are. But that’s irrelevant.”

“Why does he need an exemption, anyway?” asked Pimento.

“He
doesn’t
,” Escrow said like he was talking to the simple. “That’s not the point. The point is that he can get it.”

“Not this time,” said Marlon.

“What is the fucking
problem
with sports team owners, anyway?” said Pimento. “It’s like they took business classes on the Death Star.”

“What are you, some kind of Trotskyist?” said Escrow.

“They’re not warm-blooded,” said Pimento. “I’m convinced they hatch from subterranean membrane pods.”

“There you go again—blame it all on the businessman,” said Escrow.

“I just want them to show a smidgen of humanity, something we can examine under the microscope to prove there’s a few platelets carousing through their arteries instead of that phosphorescent green Prestone ooze I saw when the Buccaneers’ owner was riding on a parade float and accidentally cut himself on a money clip suffering from metal fatigue.”

“Are you hearing this?” Escrow asked Marlon.

“Play nice,” said the governor, trying to concentrate on driving. “Don’t make me pull over.”

The argument awoke the dolphin woman, and she came forward in the RV rubbing her eyes. She was wearing some unflattering clothes they’d picked up along the way at a strip mall. Jeans, sneakers and a 3
FOR
$10 T-shirt from a defunct serpentarium.

“You ready to stop for something to eat now?” asked Marlon.

Escrow checked his watch. “Not enough time, Governor. The debate’s set for nine at the speedway, and it’s still a long way to Daytona.”

At the word
governor
, the woman turned and looked at Marlon, and her eyes flashed with recognition.

“I know,” said Marlon. “Don’t that beat all?”

Marlon made up time behind the wheel, and in less than an hour they began seeing the bars, college kids and motorcycles that signaled Daytona Beach’s orbit. Everyone shifted to the left side of the Winnebago and stared out the windows as traffic thickened and slowed. Outside was a tropical Coney Island, people jamming the board
walk and the midway, riding the Space Needle, bungee-jumping and driving on the beach to a thousand stereos.

“Right there!” Pimento pointed. “That’s where Sir Malcolm Campbell drove two hundred and six miles per hour to set the land speed record on February nineteenth, 1928. The car was called the
Blue Bird
, powered by a Napier aircraft engine.”

“More news you can’t use,” said Escrow.

Marlon turned west, away from the hubbub, and crossed a bridge to the mainland.

“Turn up here on MLK,” said Pimento. “I remember something else.”

“We don’t have time!” said Escrow.

They turned.

Minutes later, they were standing on the edge of an old campus. Pimento whispered, and Marlon nodded.

“Big deal, it’s a school. And now we’ve seen it,” Escrow shouted from a window in the RV. “Can we finally go? I mean, if that’s okay with you. It’s not like we’re going to be on TV or anything tonight.”

They got back in and headed east.

Marlon was still a few blocks from the Daytona International Speedway when he first saw the turmoil. A giant traffic jam. Cars, lights, people, chaos. The Winnebago pulled into the parking lot next to a row of satellite trucks. Vendors sold corn dogs and fried dough.

News of the wild campaign had spread, and now anyone who wanted any piggyback media exposure was showing up. It was a long, deep ballot this year. Dozens of fringe-party candidates and constitutional amendments, and they were all represented at the speedway. There was the Communist Party and the Socialist Party and the New Socialist Party, which had splintered from
the Socialists because it thought they were soft on Communism. There were the Fascists, the Nazis and the Whigs. There was the Libertarian Party, which refused to meet, and the Anarchist Party, whose goal was to disband. There were two parties that wanted to preserve the Confederate flag, the Metaphysical Party, which was selling lucky crystals, and Parrot Heads for Economic Progress.

Every one of them had a candidate for governor, and they stood with megaphones, competing in a cacophony of tortured rhetoric, all packed tightly together except for the Immolation Party candidate. The angry Reform Party nominee, Albert Fresco, was even madder than usual, now having to jockey for the spotlight with a whole cast of quarrelsome paranoids.

As the candidates shouted each other down, highly paid petition-takers canvassed the audience, signing them up for a menu of constitutional amendments that would legalize casino gambling, cap millage rates, penalize the sugar industry, regulate campaign finance, deregulate utilities, and make tax-free e-mail a birthright. Amendment 16 was incomprehensible, and Amendment 33 would repeal Amendment 16.

Marlon and company got out of the
Orange Crush
and worked their way through the noise.

“Ah, democracy in action,” said Pimento.

“How do we ever win any wars?” said Escrow.

They passed Albert Fresco, who was yelling at the Fascists. “I was mad first!”

Guards cleared Marlon through the security checkpoint and into the speedway. It was like a rock concert inside. Gomer Tatum was taking water and oxygen under the Democratic tent.

Just before nine o’clock, the candidates made their
way to the makeshift stage from opposite sides. Each was given a few minutes for opening remarks and rebuttal. Tatum spent his allotment talking about the electric chair. “We have an execution coming up. The guy’s name is Frank Lloyd Sirocco. You watch—I’ll bet anything Marlon Conrad weenies out of it!…So a lot of things can go wrong with the chair—good!”

The ovation was off the meter. Tatum looked over at Jackie, and she smiled and gave him an A-OK. Perfect—just like they’d rehearsed!

It was Marlon’s turn. He stepped up to the microphone.

“I don’t wanna talk about the electric chair anymore. It’s sick, and everyone who just applauded is sick, too.”

That shut them up.

“I want to talk about things that move the spirit. Great achievements don’t just happen. People need to be inspired. Many things can inspire you, something as small as a really good movie. I remember watching
Rocky
—the first one, not the others, and especially not the one with Dolph Lundgren. You remember how you felt coming out of the theater?”

There was a lot of nodding. Of course they remembered!

“I know how
I
felt. I was ready to take on the world! I had stallion blood in my veins”—Marlon stopped to throw a few jabs in the air. “No more taking it from the bullies!”

There were hoots and whistles now. People shouted from the beer line. “Yeah, fuck the bullies!”

Marlon raised a hand for them to quiet down. “Things that can inspire us are all around, and we don’t even notice. Today, a friend took me to a place just a few miles from this very spot. It’s a place here in town you’ve prob
ably driven by a hundred times. It’s a story that may never be made into a movie, but it’s much bigger than
Rocky
.”

The crowd couldn’t believe it. What? Bigger than
Rocky
?

“That’s right, bigger than
Rocky
. Because it’s true and it’s about this great country….”

Escrow whispered to a sound technician, who began playing “Eye of the Tiger” over the PA speakers.

“Turn that crap off!” yelled Marlon. The music stopped. He looked back at the crowd. “Talk about your against-the-odds story. Her name was Mary. She was the fifteenth child of former slaves. And she wanted to start a school. She only had a dollar-fifty and five students and a small piece of property that used to be the city dump, but she also had something inside that I’d be proud to have just a small piece of. The world was against her, but she made it work. The Klan even showed up. Bunch of brave men! She just sang songs. Her full name was Mary McLeod Bethune, and that school is now Bethune-Cookman College.”

He raised his arms and voice for the finale. “Bless you, Daytona, for giving us Mary!…I yield the rest of my time to my worthy opponent. Thank you and good night!”

The crowd went wild. They surged the stage. “Eye of the Tiger” came back on as Marlon ducked off the rear of the scaffolding and disappeared.

THE
Orange Crush
rolled south in the darkness. They cruised through Titusville after midnight. Marlon looked out his window across the Indian River and saw the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. A few miles beyond it, down by the ocean, something glowed in bright spotlights.

“Must be a shuttle on one of the pads,” said Marlon.

“
Endeavour
on Thirty-nine-B,” said Pimento.

The woman from Marineland was in the passenger seat, but she still wasn’t talking.

They passed Port Canaveral and the subtle Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach and the guard shacks at Patrick Air Force Base.

Marlon thought he’d try again. “What’s your name?”

She wouldn’t answer.

“Please, just a first name.”

“J-J-J-Jenny.”

Marlon smiled over his shoulder at Pimento. “She’s got a name.” He turned back to her. “Jenny, I think both our luck’s about to change.”