Coconut Cowboy (13 page)

“Matt,” Serge said into his microphone. “How do you like the radio headset we got for your lacrosse helmet?”

“The tunes are so crisp. Is this the Heartbreakers?”

“Good call,” said Serge. “Plus, if you're with us, you're
with
us. You need to be in the loop of our tour-­guide chatter.”

“ . . . I need to know! I need to know! . . .”

After a brief stop, the chopper pulled away from a convenience store with a back-­to-­school special for suitcases of Bud and Bud Light. An extra-­large coffee sat in the motorcycle's drink holder, iced down for consumption velocity.

“Radio check.” Coleman looked up as they rode past a massive edifice. “What's that place?”

“Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, home of the University of Florida Gators football team,” said Serge. “Also known as the Swamp, because when you walk into the place from street level, you enter at one of the top rows of seats, and the rest of the stadium is below ground. Ain't that the shit? I never drank coffee on a motorcycle before. Little streams are dribbling past my ears. I don't like that. We need relevant tunes.”

He cranked the stereo in their helmets.

“ . . . I'm free . . . free-­fallllllling! . . .”

The chopper drove a few blocks south and made a left on Museum Road. They pulled around the side of a modest single-­story brick building with a pointed entrance arch that made it look like a church. The kickstand clicked into position.

“ . . . I won't . . . back . . . down . . .”

Serge removed his helmet. “There it is! The Phelps Laboratory!”

Coleman exited his sidecar like a deep-­sea diver going backward over the side of a boat. He got up and brushed off dirt. “The Phelps what?”

“Lab. They do wetlands research.”

“I thought you said we were going to a Tom Petty place.”

“We are.” Serge drained the rest of his coffee.

“Tom Petty had something to do with this lab?” asked Matt.

“Not remotely.” Serge boldly led them up the walkway to the front door. “But I'm one of the few ­people who knows how to properly conduct a pilgrimage. You don't just rush in and grab the chalice off the altar. You have to sit in the pews first and let a damn-­the-­torpedoes excitement properly build steam.”

“So what's inside this place?” asked Coleman.

“I have no idea.” Serge tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. “But we're about to find out!”

At first there was no one in sight. The others followed Serge as he poked around until arriving at an open office door. A man in a white dress shirt looked up from behind his desk. “Can I help you?”

“Maybe,” said Serge. “Are you a professor?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can definitely help!” Serge clapped his hands a single time. “You look too young to be a professor. I was hoping for something bald with a pipe.”

“You have a big brown stain on your shirt.”

“I drank coffee on a motorcycle.”

“Uh, are you a student here?”

“Without question,” said Serge. “But that's my gripe with universities. They want you to apply and be accepted and attend class after class. All that just slows down my learning curve. I prefer to self-­construct an individual, at-­large curriculum of intellectual curiosity and live by my own spiritual definition of enrollment.” He raised his eyebrows. “I understand that sort of thing goes over big in the philosophy department.”

The professor paused to appraise one of the others in the trio.

“Coleman!” snapped Serge. “The flask! We're on campus!”

“What? Oh, sorry.” He screwed the cap back on and stuck it in his pocket.

Serge turned back around and grinned. “There are also rules against drinking in the football stadium, but we all know how that goes.”

“Excuse me,” said the professor. “Did you guys just walk in here off the street?”

“Of course,” said Serge. “That's how it works. We don't have
Star Trek
transporter machines yet.”

The teacher's eyes measured the distance to his desk phone and how long it would take to call university police.

“You don't have to call university police,” said Serge. “This is a friendly visit, not like some of my others. The whole reason I'm here is to express my total support for everything you're doing.” He spread his arms. “This is the Center for Wetlands Studies. What a coincidence! I'm all about wetlands
and
studying! I love to research so much that I research things I don't even want to research. Just jump on the computer and start wandering the Net. You wouldn't believe some of the fetishes. Do you think we could grab a few chairs and sit here to watch you work? We'll be real quiet. Except I usually have a lot of questions. I'm sure that's encouraged around here.”

“It's probably not a good idea.”

“Even if I raise my hand?”

“Don't think so.”

“Say no more.” Serge gave a thumbs-­up. “The politics of academia. Everybody acts so charming at the galas, but it's dog eat dog. Publish or perish. I'm sure you're working on a major wetlands breakthrough and can't risk a leak to the backstabbers.” He placed a secretive hand beside his mouth and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, we were just up near Baton Rouge—­don't even get me started on Louisiana!—­and I got the vibe that the folks at LSU are on the verge of something big.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Serge stood back up and winked. “Of course you don't.”

The professor's eyes drifted to the phone again.

“That won't be necessary.” Serge pointed out the office window. “We were leaving anyway to go see the Tom Petty tree.”

“Oh.” The professor relaxed in his chair with relief. “So that's what this is all about. Yeah, we get a few . . . uh, visitors from time to time asking about Petty.”

“You were going to say weirdos,” said Serge. “That's okay. It's a common mistake. I'm on a quest to discover what went wrong with the American Dream by tracing my snow-­cone machine wonder years with a sixties road trip through small-­town Florida that's a sequel to
Easy Rider
. Once you understand all that, there's nothing to be suspicious about.”

The professor blinked.

Coleman hit his flask again. “Serge, what's the Tom Petty tree?”

“Tom was never a student here, but he worked on the grounds crew.” Serge reached in his pocket and uncrumpled a treasure map. “Legend has it that as part of his job, he once planted an ogeechee lime tree.”

“Far out,” said Coleman.

“I heard that was a myth,” said Matt.

“Because of an interview Tom did,” said Serge. “Petty claimed he never remembered planting any lime tree. Then he joked that what he
did
plant wasn't at the university.”

“Weed!” said Coleman.

“Down, boy,” said Serge. “Anyway, there's so much data he did plant the tree—­the specific species and exact location—­that it can't be dismissed just because Petty says he doesn't recall forty years later.”

“Why not?” asked Coleman.

“When you're working a crappy minimum-­wage job, your mind is always elsewhere,” said Serge. “On the rare occasions you were employed, what do you remember?”

“Watching the clock until I could smoke weed.”

“Anything else?”

“It's just a big blank.”

“Excuse me,” said the professor, trying to wind things up. “I understand he's a very popular musician, but—­”

“More than that. A genuine sun-­kissed Florida product, now with more pulp!” Serge squinted down at his map, and the professor saw an exit strategy.

“You won't need that.” The teacher went over to the window. “Just walk down the east side of this building to that Dumpster and those bicycle racks, then walk ten yards out in the common area. Can't miss it.”

Serge looked up with large eyes, then abruptly ran out of the building.

The professor returned to the window and spread blinds with his fingers. Serge sprinted down the hill, punctuating his run with cartwheels and somersaults. He dashed the final distance and hugged the tree. Then he placed an arm around it like a buddy's shoulders, pulled out a cell phone and took a selfie.

Matt caught up first, followed distantly by Coleman.

“I'll take your pictures!” said Serge. “One on each side! I feel like singing! . . .
Don't do me like that . . .”

Matt posed next to the tree. “Have to admit I was secretly skeptical after your references to violence yesterday. But all we've been doing is a lot of delightfully wacky trivia research. Nothing remotely dangerous.”

“Fun and games all the time,” said Serge, covertly checking something on his cell and growling. Then he looked up with a smile and raised his camera.
Click, click, click.

The professor watched from the window until the three drove off on their chopper. Then he returned to his desk and opened the file on his latest wetlands project. “Louisiana bastards. I
knew
it.”

 

Chapter
SEVENTEEN

THAT EVENING

A
rusty orange pickup truck drove through the ­countryside just before sunset. It had a sticker on the left end of its bumper. R
EDNECK
S
EX
M
ACH
INE
. On the right was another sticker. S
QUIRRELS:
N
ATUR
E'S
S
PEED
B
UMPS
.

It was one of those Ford F-­Series jobs from the mid-­1950s, with room for only two ­people in the cab. Sitting up front were Elroy, Slow, Slower.

“Move over, you're squishing me!”

“There's no room, shithead!”

“Blow me!”

“Can I have some of your Big Gulp?”

“Okay.”

“Will you two shut up?” said Elroy. “I can't hear myself think!”

“What are you thinking about?”

“What we're supposed to be focusing on tonight, remember?”

The pickup continued on, passing a billboard where the American Automobile Association warned of an upcoming speed trap. Then a newer billboard: W
ELC
OME TO
W
OBBLY.
D
ON'T
B
ELIEVE
W
HAT
T
HEY
S
AY.

Slower turned on the AM radio and found an all-­night preacher reading straight through the Book of Leviticus.
“Do not have sexual relations with your sister . . . Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister . . . Do not . . .”

“Can we at least get some music in here?” asked Elroy.

“Wait, this is stuff I need to know.”

“ . . . Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife . . .”

Slow elbowed Slower in the stomach.

“Ow.”

“I told you it was in the Bible!”

“You idiots.” Elroy turned the dial to Clapton.

“After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang out . . .”

GAINESVILLE

The chopper cruised west on Museum Road and pulled over again just after the bend at Lake Alice. Serge led them to a wooden fence.

“I need a nap,” said Coleman.

“See those two buildings across that field?”

“Yeah,” said Matt. “They look like a pair of houses, except it's just the attics on tall poles. The bottoms of the houses are gone.”

“Check this out!” said Serge, holding up his cell phone. The others peered over his shoulder as he navigated to a website with a streaming video. “This is from a live cam inside one of the attics.”

“What am I looking at?” asked Matt. “It's just an amorphous giant vibrating mass.”

“These are the bat towers,” said Serge. “The early one down in the Keys never worked out because the bats didn't dig it, but the university got it right and you're now looking at the world's largest human-­engineered bat colony, with more than three hundred thousand flying mammals living in those two structures.”

A ­couple of ­people joined them at the fence, then a few more, and another handful. Coleman looked around at others beginning to pour in from all directions.

“What's going on?”

“It's the local evening tradition where ­people flock to this fence and wait for sunset.”

“Why?” asked Coleman.

“The bats emerge en masse at dusk to feast on the plentiful insects at the lake across the street,” said Serge. “It's practically apocalyptic in scale. The sun just went down.”

“Cool.” Coleman headed for the woods. “Be right back. I'm gonna need a joint for this.”

Matt got out his notebook. “And Tom Petty helped build the bat towers?”

“That would be Floridaphile overkill,” said Serge. “I have a big enough stiffy as it is. I should probably stand closer to the fence.”

“Then what does this have to do with the Tom Petty tour?”

“Nothing.” Serge set his camera on low-­light mode. “And that's the mark of an excellent tour. This is so conveniently close to the Tom Petty tree that I'd be remiss not to post it on my website, sort of like when a bunch of podiatrists come to town for the big convention, and the chamber of commerce puts out brochures of Other Things to Do: ‘After the riveting bunion symposium, the perfect evening starts with our flying rodents.' ”

Matt scribbled quickly. “There's an undercurrent of tangential logic.”

“But in the bigger picture, it has
everything
to do with the overall tour, because beneath it all, Gainesville is essentially a small town. Sure, there's the frenetic hive of a university, but it's one of those schools stuck out in the empty countryside, like Tuscaloosa, where everything around it is pastoral. Nothing screams ‘small town' more than ritual sundown gatherings at the bat towers, except maybe a roadside attraction about a really big ball of yarn.”

“It's already dusk,” said Matt.

“And here they come!”

The crowd oohed and aahed as Serge raised his camera toward the flapping, swirling dark cloud that swooped over their heads toward the lake.

Coleman returned from across the street and stared straight up, rotating in place. “Serge, you should see this stoned. Whoa, it's out of sight!”

Matt tugged Serge's sleeve. “Why do a bunch of the other ­people have umbrellas?”

Coleman looked down at his arms. “What's hitting me?”

Serge continued clicking away. “I forgot to mention one thing. Tonight's forecast calls for intermittent urine and bat guano. But it's all part of nature, a small price for witnessing such an awesome phenomenon.”

Coleman held out his arms and whimpered. “But I'm high.”

WOBBLY

The orange pickup passed a row of rural mailboxes and turned onto a dirt road. Headlights lit up spooky eyes of critters that dashed into the underbrush. The landscape opened into a sprawling field, and a farmhouse came into view. The truck drove around back and parked by the barn, where someone else was already waiting in the shadows, leaning against a high-­mileage Chevy.

Elroy jumped down from the cab. “Shorty, is that you?”

“Hope so.” He stepped away from the car and into the moonlight. Shorty actually was short, because he'd grown up in a town of straight-­talkers.

“So, a Malibu this time?”

“Just finished the camshaft this afternoon,” said Shorty.

Elroy turned around. “Why are you still standing there? You know what to do!”

The brothers jogged toward the barn and opened the door.

Elroy faced Shorty again and shook his head. “My cross to bear.”

From the barn:
“Stop it!” “You stop it!”

“Think of the extra pay,” said Shorty.

“That eases the burden. Slightly.”

The brothers emerged with large spools over their shoulders and headed out separately across the darkness of the adjacent field, letting out line as they went.

The remaining pair sat on the pickup's tailgate and popped bottles of Miller High Life.

“Ready for Founders' Day?” asked Elroy.

“Ready for it to be
over,
” said Shorty. “Could you believe what happened at the pig races last year?”

“That was the most insane shit I've ever seen in my life,” said Elroy. “I suggested we race gerbils this year. But ‘No, no, no, the ­people want pigs.' ”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Yup.”

“Mmm-­hmm . . .”

After a third round of beers, they watched the brothers trotting back from the field.

“All done?” asked Elroy.

“Just like you told us,” said Slow.

They headed toward the barn again.

“What are you doing?” asked Elroy.

“Going to turn it on.”

“No!” said Elroy. “Not yet! Don't you remember? That's the most crucial part of the plan. We have to wait until the last possible second to minimize the chance of detection . . . What's that behind you?”

The brothers turned. “Huh?”

“Why is the barn on fire?”

Elroy and the brothers raced over and got to work with garden hoses. They quickly sprayed down a bale of hay.

“That should do it.”

They hung the hoses back on the outside wall and returned to the pickup. Elroy glared at the pair. “I don't know what's so difficult to grasp about avoiding attention—­”

“Shhh!” said Shorty. “Listen . . . I think it's him.”

They all stopped and perked up as the familiar sound grew louder.

“You're right,” said Elroy. He called over his shoulder: “Guys, turn it on. No fires this time.”

The brothers went into the barn and hit the switches.

The field dramatically changed. Elroy and Shorty stood with open jaws.

The sound became even louder.

The brothers returned quite pleased with themselves. “What do you think?”

“What the hell is that supposed to be?”

“We strung out all those Christmas lights, just like you told us.”

Elroy stared another moment in disbelief. “It was supposed to be two parallel lines marking the clandestine runway for the pilot.” He extended a palm. “I have no idea what
this
is.”

“I think there's an X,” said Shorty. “With a large S and maybe the number four.”

“It's hard walking straight in the dark,” said Slow.

“We can fix it,” said Slower.

“Too late,” said Elroy. “He's about to land.”

The form of a small aircraft cleared the trees at the end of the field and then seemed to veer with indecision.

“He's going the wrong way!” yelled Elroy.

The plane touched down at a weird angle on the far side of the field and struggled to stop.

“He doesn't have enough room,” said Shorty.

The plane disappeared into a ravine.

“Come on!”

Elroy and Shorty jumped into the pickup's cab, and the brothers hopped in the bed. The truck raced across the field, ripping up Christmas lights. They approached the edge of the pasture, fearing the worst.

To their astonishment, the bruised pilot came crawling up the embankment. Luckily the ravine didn't have any hardwood, just reeds and more brush.

“Boggs!” shouted Elroy. “You're okay!”

“No thanks to you guys.” He stood and dusted himself off. “What the hell kind of landing strip was that?”

“Long story—­” Elroy spun. “Headlights! Get down!”

They all flattened themselves on the grass.

A Mercedes arrived. “You realize I can see all of you. The Christmas lights led me right to where they're tangled up in the wheels of your truck.”

“Oh, it's you.” Elroy got to his feet. “Everyone, this is Martin, Steve's cousin.”

The new guest at the party looked left and right. “Where's the plane?”

The pilot stared in the direction of his prized possession. “The ravine.”

“What's it doing—­ . . . Why are all these lights still on? . . . Do I smell smoke?”

“The barn!”

They all ran for the vehicles.

Suddenly:

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang . . . bang, bang, bang . . . bang, bang, bang . . .

Everyone hit the ground again.

Elroy looked up from the dirt. “Someone's shooting!”

“No,” said Slow. “Those are just our firecrackers.”

“Your what?”

“Yeah,” added Slower. “We went to the Founders' Day fireworks tent and they had this great sale on black cats.”

“You bought firecrackers?”

“And just a few Roman candles . . .”

. . .
Bang, bang, bang
. . . followed by a series of loud, shrill whistling sounds.

They watched through the open barn doors as dozens of flaming balls ricocheted around inside.

“What's all that doing in the barn?”

“We stashed them in there yesterday,” said Slow. “To be safe.”

The roof began to burn.

“But that's it, right?” Elroy said sarcastically. “Just firecrackers and Roman candles. Nothing crazy?”

“They were also selling these excellent air bursts! I think the law changed or they're not enforcing it, but you can now buy these outrageous things like they use in real fireworks shows!”

A large hole had now burned through the roof, leaving an escape route for a screaming meteor that shot high into the sky before exploding in a shower of red, white, and blue streamers. Then another, and another . . .

The barn was now fully engulfed. Then a few last blasts toward the heavens, and the entire property soon turned to day, bathed by several points of incendiary phosphorus light that slowly drifted across the sky.

Slower pointed up. “And we spent the rest of our money on some military parachute flares.”

A half hour later, there was a needed intermission where nobody talked. They gazed solemnly at the smoldering embers where the barn had been.

Martin took a heavy breath. “I don't know, I could be wrong. I'm not from around here. Maybe, just maybe, when your kinfolk decide to smuggle a load of contraband that can land you twenty years in the federal pen and stealth is the top priority, that actually means go crazy with Christmas lights, burn things to the ground, and fill the sky with bright explosions.”

Elroy cleared his throat. “We're awfully sorry—­”

In the distance, a stream of headlights came around the bend at the bottom of the hill.

Martin ceased leaning against his car. “Now, who the heck are all
these
­people?”

A siren.

“Police cars!”

Martin stood rod straight. “Okay, everyone shut up and let me do the talking . . . and get that suitcase out of sight.”

The cars skidded to a stop in front of the former barn. An older man in overalls leaped from the passenger seat.