A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris

Author:Joshua Ferris [Ferris, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241972960
Google: XG0PEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2021-09-15T23:00:00+00:00

While Under

41

Hitchhiking into Key West … the blimp over Cudjoe called Fat Albert keeping one eye on Cuba, the other on Cartagena, Dickie Dickerdick had been inside it … Monte’s Fish Market, Mangrove Mama’s, the antique biplane at the Sugarloaf Lodge … cars parked down by the mangroves on Big Coppitt, mostly fishermen, the occasional masturbator … the military dead zone just after Rockland Key where the naval station sits, my nose fried to a crisp … Cubans fishing along the pedestrian paths, five, ten rods lined up in a row, the pink of the red snapper drowning in a dry bucket … “Free beer … tomorrow” painted on the face of the Stock Island bar … Mercedes and her husband, Paul, they owned the Eatery … sweeping the sand from the flagstones for $3.35 an hour just before the morning rush, returning South Beach to itself as the beachcombers slowly stirred … pausing to watch the waves hit the breaker, you could see all the way to Cuba on a clear day … running down Duval for café con leches, one for Paul, one for Hazel, one for Billy Ray … Mercedes demonstrating how to properly scour a cobbler dish after it comes off the buffet … the line cook saying to me, “Do you know what jailbait is, boy?” … fruit smoothies, fried plantains, conch chowder—all exotic to the kid who grew up going to state fairs and corn festivals … the crackhead, a former publisher of the Key West Citizen, whose morning ritual began at the Eatery and whose hand shook lifting the coffee cup to his lips … the Poles, Cubans, Bahamians, and hippies who showed up at South Beach around ten and did not leave it again until cocktail hour … don’t be confused by “South Beach,” a small clutch of sand on lower Duval next to the Atlantic Shores motel and a crumbling pier—worlds away from its Miami counterpart … cracking eggs for the next morning’s buffet into five-gallon buckets with Mohawk Dave, the breakfast cook, he later died of an overdose … busing tables with Blind Richard, he died in a boating accident … Hazel smoothing out her dollar tips at the end of a shift, she died of ovarian cancer … receiving the week’s deliveries, boxes of produce, sacks of potatoes, and carrying each item into the walk-in or dry storage … learning from Charlie (different Charlie, hockey player from Ottawa) how to thicken a gravy using cornstarch, he was stabbed to death in Bahama Village … watching O’Neil clear the mounds of seaweed from South Beach with his backhoe, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound … sharing a rum and Coke, my first, with Snake in his empty one-bedroom on Flagler, hard to say what happened to that guy … the three Polish brothers, not a word of English between them, manning the kitchen for Paul at night, as hardworking as they were mute and pale … the dough hooks

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