Naked Came the Florida Man by Tim Dorsey

Author:Tim Dorsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Fort Pierce

The gold Plymouth Satellite rolled up to the corner of Avenue S and Seventeenth Street. Serge got out and looked at another sign.

Garden of Heavenly Rest.

For a cemetery, it was sparsely populated. No big monuments or even large headstones. The rows of modest markers and slabs were widely separated in an otherwise sunny grass field where kids would have room to play ball. Coleman looked side to side as they walked past graves. “I’m guessing you have a cool story to drag me out here.”

“One of the best stories yet!” Serge continued on until they reached the middle of the field. A single grave sat in the grass, surrounded by a small brick walkway. The whitewashed slab was raised slightly higher than the others, although the headstone was still only knee-high. It was the only one where people had been by recently to leave flowers. There was a candle. Some had left rocks on the headstone in the Jewish tradition.

Serge got down on a knee and placed his page over the letter Z. He began rubbing. “Hurston’s undeserved obscurity had become so complete that her grave was unmarked for years and nobody could precisely pay their respects. Then the story takes a hairpin turn, extending beyond the grave to Zora’s proper place in the public’s awareness.”

“It was only right,” said Coleman.

“The year? Nineteen seventy-three. The person? Alice Walker.” Serge rubbed on. “Walker was still nearly a decade away from writing her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Color Purple. But back in the early seventies, the budding writer, still only twenty-nine years old, stumbled across Zora’s works and became intrigued, even obsessed to the point of visiting Florida to get the vibes of Zora’s life. She started in Eatonville, where she learned Zora was buried anonymously somewhere in Fort Pierce. So she drove out here to the coast and—this part I love—she fibbed that she was Zora’s niece to get locals to open up about her ‘aunt.’ To her surprise, most had never heard of her, even those now living near Zora’s last home. Finally, with a history-researching tenacity to which I can only aspire, she located the lost grave and bought this headstone for it.” Serge began rubbing the words on the next line: A Genius of the South. “Two years later, Walker wrote a watershed article for Ms. magazine, ‘Looking for Zora,’ using her grave search as a vehicle to showcase the forgotten literary lion. That first-person piece slowly but surely rekindled interest in Hurston’s work until she now stands in the pantheon. Oh, and she’s from Florida!”

The gold Plymouth left the cemetery and headed south on U.S. 1, down through Jensen Beach and Stuart.

“Where to now?” asked Coleman.

“Our next stop,” said Serge. “But first I need to make a stop before our next stop.”

He pulled into a strip mall and opened the door.

“I’ll wait in the car,” said Coleman.

“As a general rule, that’s the best plan.” Serge went inside . . .

Coleman was unconscious when Serge returned, head resting against the passenger window and trademark drool stringing down from his lower lip.

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