“To Florida” concerns a man headed straight for hell and is a masterpiece of contemporary nihilism.
J. A.
To Florida
(1987)
Music blared as a ton of pink rocks flattened the orange bear. He sat up bonelessly, rubbing mauve stars from his head, and marched off the television screen, aggressive and undaunted.
Teller, not watching the bear’s problem, started recounting the money. His fingers danced through the stack of twenties like hunger in motion, like a love song, caressing.
A purple boxing glove belted the bear across a yellow room. Laughter screamed.
Teller glanced up, then down. His face was insolently wary, the face of a kid grown up to find out it was all a lie. He wore heavy sideburns, very black, and a lot of undisciplined mustache. He was on the short side of thirty, and looked soiled and a little crazy.
The apartment door bumped open. A girl’s voice said apologetically, “Whoops, slipped, I guess.” She backed into the room, angular and ugly, almost twenty. She wore blue jeans and a dirty pink sweatshirt. A big gray yarn purse, striped blue-yellow-green, had slipped to the crook of her arm. She clutched two sacks of groceries.
“Jerry, can you grab a sack?”
“Dump ’em on the table.”
“They’re slipping.” She sidled crabwise across the room, showing too many teeth in a mouth like a frog’s. She thumped the sacks on a green painted table holding an air conditioner and the remains of last night’s Kwik-Karry Chicken. The window behind the table puffed cold air at her.
Jerry said to his hands, “You know what? I’m fixing to take me down to good old Florida and have a time.” He stroked the money. “I’m gonna drink me some beer and soak up some of that sun.”
“Yea, Florida,” she said. And speaking saw the money in his hands. All the expression flattened out of her face. “Is that yours?”
“Mine.” Their eyes met. “What you think, Sue Ann? Want to run down to Florida?”
She eyed the money, wary, surprised. “You got enough maybe we could give Mr. Davidson some? For the rent. He keeps calling.”
“He gave me this.” His quick fingers doubled over the bills, thrust them into the pocket of his shirt.
“He didn’t.”
“Go look in the kitchen and see. But don’t squeal, now. Don’t you squeal.”
“He wants we should pay him something.”
“Look there in the kitchen.”
She looked into the kitchen and her shoulders lifted slowly and slowly settled.
“Is he dead?”
“Naw.”
“I mean, really, is he dead?”
“I told you no. I just tapped him. Not even hard.”
“His one eye’s open.”
“So he sleeps with one eye open.”
She swung around to look at him. Apprehension twisted in her face like a snake in a bottle. “If you hurt him, we better not let anybody know.”
“We’re gonna be gone. I got his car keys. I’m cuttin’ out.” He waited for her enthusiasm and his face hardened when it did not come. “I figured you were so hot to run down to Florida.”
“To Florida. Well, I guess... sure...”
He heaved up from the recliner, boot heels cracking on the uncarpeted floor. “You get yourself together.” He grinned, watching her mind stumble after his words. “I want to go get me some of that good beer.”
“Jerry, you’re sure Mr. Davidson’s all right, aren’t you?”
“I said he was OK. Get packed.”
“Should I put a blanket over him?”
“You just let him be, now.” He pulled her to him with one arm, pressing hard, but that didn’t reassure her much.
She went into the bedroom and began opening and closing drawers. He shook his head and, grinning, went to the table, and heaved up the air conditioner. It was a small window model, the simulated wooden front very new. Through the open window he could see out along Holmes Avenue, glowing with spring dogwood, white and pink. Above the flowering branches spread a pale blue sky, featureless as painted wood.
He carried the air conditioner out into the hallway. From the back apartment, a radio hammered rock, violent and forlorn, into the dim air. He used two fingers to open the front door, carried the air conditioner across the porch, along a cracked brown concrete walk, to the light blue Toyota parked by the curb in the bright morning sunlight. He dumped the conditioner into the backseat and straightened up, working his fingers.
“Jesus is Lord, and salvation is at hand,” said a voice at his right ear.
Behind him on the sidewalk stood a hook-nosed old ruin, all bone and wrinkles, holding out a printed tract. “Let me give you the Lord’s word, brother. It ain’t too late for the word.”
“Ain’t that nice.” He stepped around the scarecrow, who smelled sourly of upset stomach. As he climbed the porch steps, the old voice called, “All sins forgiven in the bosom of Jesus, brother.”
In the apartment bedroom, she had pulled out all their clothing. The bed was piled with stuff that looked and smelled like specials at the Saturday flea-market.
She told him, “I don’t know what to take.”
“All of it.”
“All of it?” She snatched up a pair of shoes.
“You think we’re coming back here?”
Confusion blurred her face. “You got to open the filling station tomorrow, Jerry.”
“You think so, huh?”
He loaded two cardboard boxes of his own clothing into the Toyota’s trunk. The old boy with the wet eyes was talking Jesus at a house up the street. When he reentered the apartment, she was still staring at the clothing, jerking her arms. Impatience twisted his mouth.
“You ready?”
“Not yet. Not yet.” She blundered into uncoordinated motion.
“Like a scared blind hen,” he muttered, stepping into the kitchen.
It was a long, dirty room painted pink. A narrow window spilled sunshine across unwashed dishes, paper sacks, fruit peelings, empty cans, a squadron of flies. The room stunk sourly of garbage and cigarettes. Old Man Davidson lay on the floor by the sink, his head in a jumble of beer cans. One eye glimmered palely under a sagging lid. He was a sharp-nosed runt with reddish hair. His mouth lolled open and a fly tilted and curved above the lard-colored lips.
“Show you to bad-mouth me,” Jerry said to the figure on the floor. In half an hour, he hustled her out the door, her arms dripping loose clothing. He put on a wide-brimmed brown hat, banded with pheasant feathers, and a shabby leather coat with the hunting knife tucked down in one pocket. It was tough that the television was too big to load into the car. “Hell with you,” he said and closed the door.
No one called good-bye. He fed the Toyota gas and they eased off between the exuberant dogwoods.
Half a block down the street, she clutched his arm. “I forgot the groceries.”
“Let ’em sit.”
“They’ll spoil.”
“So what?”
Thin brown fingers slipped across her mouth. “I used all our food stamps on them. Got some ribs for you.”
“Now, that was nice.”
“They were for you.”
He said in a flat, rapid voice, “Look, if we drive back, maybe somebody sees us in his car. You ever think of that? Then what you going to tell them?”
She stared at him, brown eyes blankly confused.
“What you going to say?”
“I... Well...”
“You got to think about that.”
She said faintly, “I just didn’t want them to spoil.”
“Well, OK. We’ll just go on.”
“I’m sorry, Jerry. I didn’t think about the car and... and all.”