Walking on Water: A Novel (24 page)

The keys’ history is as colorful as their landscape. Because of their location, the keys have always been a hot spot for drug smuggling and illegal immigration. In response to these problems, in the early 1980s the US Border Patrol created a series of roadblocks to search cars returning to the Florida mainland.

When the measures began to affect Key West’s tourism industry, Mayor Dennis Wardlow declared Key West an independent and sovereign nation, renaming it the Conch Republic and appointing himself its prime minister. Wardlow’s first act as prime minister was to declare war on the United States, then, in the same hour, surrender and apply for a billion dollars in foreign aid.

Hunter Thompson was right.

The next morning I began walking around eight, stopping an hour later at a McDonald’s to eat. Shortly after I left the United States mainland. The road changed to two lanes divided by a waist-high, blue concrete median. There was a wide, grassy shoulder on each side hemmed in by a tall chain-link fence.

The scenery remained the same all day: black-gray asphalt, a green shoulder, and miles of blue ocean infested with mangrove forests. At around twenty-four miles I entered Monroe County and left the highway at Pirate Hat Marina. After a long and monotonous day, I had hoped for some kind of service, but there were only darkened residences and rental homes. I pitched my tent in a lush, secluded part of the marina and ate dinner from my pack.

I woke early the next morning eager to leave the place. Less than a mile from the marina the highway’s name changed to Florida Keys Scenic Highway. I walked through a group of convicts wearing Day-Glo orange jumpsuits who were picking up litter on the side of the road. The men pretty much acted as if I were invisible, except for the two correctional officers who were managing the detail. They watched me closely.

I realized that I had spent the night in the first of the Florida Keys: Key Largo. To tell the truth, I knew of Key
Largo only from the Beach Boys’ mention of it in the song “Kokomo,” which they supposedly wrote on the island.

Billboards advertising scuba diving and snorkeling tours flanked both sides of the highway, which is what you would expect in the self-proclaimed “diving capital of the world.”

I stopped at a Circle K for something to eat and to look for a more detailed map of the keys. I asked the female clerk if there were many hotels in Key West, but she didn’t know. In fact, she said that she had never been there. I was surprised, even more so when she told me that she had lived in the Florida Keys her entire life. I asked her if she ever planned to visit Key West, and she just shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. I wondered why someone would choose to live in such a small world.

She gave me a free map and a Key West coupon book. I bought some sunscreen, an orange, and an egg-and-cheese breakfast burrito, then sat down to eat as I looked over the map. From what I could see, many of the keys seemed nearly deserted, and I would be camping some nights.

By evening, I had logged twenty miles, ending at the district of Tavernier. I booked a room at the Historic Tavernier Inn, a tiny hotel on the east side of the thoroughfare, then ate dinner at the Café Cubano, a homespun diner run by a Cuban family. I ate clam chowder and pork chops, which came with a side dish of sweet plantains, then retired to my hotel for the night.

The next morning it took me only an hour to make it to the township of Islamorada, which is technically a village
consisting of Plantation Key, Windley Key, Upper Matecumbe Key, Lower Matecumbe Key, and two offshore islands.

A little way into the village I came to a long building with a sign out front that read

HISTORY OF DIVING MUSEUM

I went inside to check it out. There was a sign above the museum entrance that read

Man has left footprints on the moon but still hasn’t walked on the ocean floor

I was the only one there. Even though the museum was small, it was crowded with exhibits and artifacts that the owner had spent his lifetime collecting. I thought it was pretty interesting, especially the deep-sea diving outfits that looked like robots from sixties sci-fi novels.

After the museum I stopped at the Islamorada Restaurant & Bakery—home of the famous Bob’s Bunz—for lunch. I ordered a Reuben o’ the Sea sandwich, which was basically a Reuben sandwich with fish instead of pastrami, a side of sweet potato fries, slaw, and one of their cinnamon buns.

While I was waiting for my food I read about the bakery’s history, which was printed on the back of their menu. The bakery’s owner was a Philadelphia native who, some twenty years ago, had come to the keys for a season and never left. It was something I could understand.

More than once I had fantasized about reaching Key West and never leaving. Of course that’s all it was—a fantasy. I had no idea what I’d do there. A city as small
as Key West could never support an advertising agency or even a single ad guy. Maybe I’d buy a fishing boat and take tourists out. I’d name my boat the
McKale
. Of course I would. When people asked who McKale was, I’d tell them she was a beautiful girl in a dream I once had and leave the rest to their imaginations.

I finished my meal, then started off again. At fourteen miles I reached Indian Key. It was narrow enough that I could have easily thrown a stone from one side of the key to the other. There were cars parked alongside the road, and people had gotten out to swim in the ocean.

The next key was the Lower Matecumbe Key. It was linked to Long Key by a long bridge with dozens of people fishing from it.

The sun was setting as I reached my day’s destination, Fiesta Key and the Fiesta Key RV Resort, a twenty-eight-acre RV park. I was tempted to stay in one of their cottages overlooking the sea, but the price the guy in the rental office quoted me was too much—$250 per night with a two-night minimum. For five hundred dollars I would sleep in my tent again.

I rented a small campsite, about fifteen by fifteen feet, marked by oiled railroad ties. Even with sleeping in my tent, the park was more luxurious than most of my camping; there was a pool, bathrooms, a laundry, a mini-mart, and a small diner called the Lobster Crawl Bar & Grill.

I set up my tent while there was still light. Then I put a load of whites in the washing machine and went to dinner at the restaurant. I had calamari rings, coconut shrimp, and a mushroom Swiss burger.

Then I went back to the Laundromat and put my whites in the dryer. No one else was using the place, so I left my clothes and went back to my tent to sleep.

The next day’s walk was more of the same—more keys, more ocean, more bridges. An hour and a half into my walk I reached the Long Key Channel Bridge, which was the longest I’d encountered in the keys so far, almost two and a half miles, spanning south to Conch Key. There was a narrow pedestrian lane, but I was the only one using it. The turquoise water below looked inviting, but I remembered once seeing a video of a massive hammerhead shark stealing a fisherman’s catch in the Long Key Channel, which was reason enough to stay on the bridge.

Next I passed through Duck Key, then Marathon Key, where I ate lunch at a place called The Wreck. Marathon is one of the larger keys, a full residential community with hotels, banks, and schools. I walked the rest of the day on Marathon and spent the night at the Ranch House Motel.

The next morning I ate breakfast at the Wooden Spoon restaurant, where I had coffee and a chili omelet with a side of grits. Less than an hour later I reached the famous Seven Mile Bridge.

Seven Mile Bridge was, at its creation, one of the
longest bridges in the world, connecting Knight’s Key to Little Duck Key. Near its center, the bridge rises in an arc to sixty-five feet, high enough to provide clearance for boat traffic. Like the Long Key bridge, Seven Mile Bridge has a narrow pedestrian lane, its outer edge flanked by concrete safety barriers. It took me about an hour and a half to cross the bridge, and, in spite of the danger inherent in walking such a narrow space, the view was worth the hike.

To the east of the bridge was the remnant of the older bridge (with the unfortunate name of Knights Key–Pigeon Key–Moser Channel–Pacet Channel Bridge), which had been constructed in the early 1900s by Henry Flagler but had been damaged by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935—the most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States.

Late afternoon I entered Big Pine Key. The key is a preserve for a tiny endangered species called key deer. The road was enclosed on both sides with chain-link fence and posted with deer crossing and myriad endangered species signs. I saw one of the deer as I walked. It was just a few yards behind the fence eating leaves off a bush. The animal seemed to have no fear of humans and didn’t even stop to look at me. I don’t know if it was an adult or not, but it was barely two feet high at the shoulders.

Even though I had walked less than twenty miles, I stopped for the day. Key West was thirty miles away, with another four or five miles to reach the southernmost end. It was a distance I had walked before, but not easily, and I didn’t want to reach Key West exhausted and in the
dark, so I broke up the final leg of my journey into two trips of twenty and ten miles.

I booked a room at the Big Pine Key Motel, and the man at the front desk suggested that I eat dinner a few blocks away at the unoriginally named Big Pine restaurant. I ordered a mixed green salad, fried clams, and the HE-MAN ribs.

As I was finishing my meal I checked my watch. If their flight wasn’t delayed, Nicole and Kailamai should have landed in Miami almost two hours earlier. They planned to stay in a hotel near the airport, then rent a car and drive to Key West in the morning, passing me somewhere along the way. The thought of mixing my two worlds seemed a little surreal. I turned on my phone just in case they called.

I was grateful that they were coming and that someone, besides me, would witness the end of my walk. Still, I couldn’t believe my walk was finally at its end.

I woke with the realization that it was my last full day of walking. I ate breakfast at a café called the Cracked Egg. I had coffee, orange juice, and their specialty, the Gut Buster—potatoes covered with shredded cheddar cheese, sausage gravy, and two scrambled eggs.

My phone rang while I was eating. It was Nicole.

“Good morning, handsome,” she said brightly.

“Good morning,” I replied. “Are you in Miami?”

“Yes, we’re just leaving the car rental. The man at the counter said it would probably take us about three and a half hours to reach Key West.”