Swan Dive! Ch. 17: Shootout at RayRay’s

Stopping in mid-slurp, Randall Lark dropped his oyster on the half-shell loaded with horseradish and hot sauce. Wiping his mouth and hands on a white cloth napkin – RayRay insisted on white cloth napkins for the bar no matter how dirty they got or how much it cost to have them cleaned – he prepared for a showdown. Narrowing his eyes like an assassin looking through shutter slits in a dank motel he honed in on his quarry.

There he was.

The killer cop.

Marty Durkin offered a big goofy grin and wave to the Happy Hour regulars who now recognized him as one of their own as he waltzed into the Elbow Room beach bar like king of the sand dunes. For a moment, wearing an orange polo shirt decorated with gulls gliding in midair he bought at Target, Durkin didn’t have a worry in the world.

“Nice shirt,” Kim said.

“I’m feeling tropical,” Durkin said.

Heavy under Randall’s arm the semi-automatic pistol hung grip down and ready for action. Feeling his pulse in his throat, Randall’s thoughts raced through his frazzled mind, confusing and motivating him as he stood at the crossroads of his life with his conscience losing to the voice of vengeance.

Do it now. Just stand, walk slowly to the bar as you draw, tap Durkin on the shoulder, look him in the eye, say “This is for Tyrone,” and pull the trigger. Then split. Buy a plane ticket to Jamaica. Smoke weed and drink rum all day. Enjoy life as a free Black man.

Randall stood. Randall started walking. Randall quickly closed the distance and started to pull the firearm when Durkin turned.

“I spotted you soon as I walked in,” he said.

“I have a gun,” Randall said.

“So do I,” Durkin said.

“Me, too,” said RayRay from behind the bar.

“And me,” said Kim sitting beside Durkin as she slid her hand inside her black leather fringed shoulder bag that lie on the bar.

Nobody moved.

Nobody got hurt.

Dillon squawked from his spot at the end of the bar where he sipped a margarita on the rocks through a straw. Although the bar mascot parrot with a birdy beer belly sometimes came up with original words and phrases he learned from TV comedies he watched, his best responses came in reaction to a trigger word. This customer exchange overloaded him with one super trigger word.

“Gun?” Dillon screeched. “Gun?”

Conversation stopped as fast as an inebriated NASCAR driver at the Daytona Speedway.

“Shootout at RayRay’s,” Dillon said. “Shootout at RayRay’s.”

Nobody who knew what was going on laughed when everybody else at the bar did.

Durkin calmly spoke to Randall.

“Now what?”

Turning, Randall Lark hurried past vacationers gobbling grouper burgers and locals banging down two-for-one tequila sunrises. Picking up speed and stepping fast once he hit the street, he disappeared into the salty night.

“You knew he was coming,” Kim said.

“Only a matter of time,” RayRay said.

“At least I know he’s here,” Durkin said.

Just the week before Durkin told Kim and RayRay the whole story about accidentally shooting Randall’s brother, leaving out nothing and explaining everything. Now he expressed concern that he would put everybody at the bar in danger if he continued to frequent the Elbow Room.

“I value our friendship too much to do that,” Durkin said.

 “I can handle it,” RayRay said, immediately thinking about the Popov brothers showing up unannounced to try to take him by surprise and get the tapes.

“Tell me about it,” Kim said.

With that Tara and Shannon slowly came to in Kim’s mind, cranky and hungover after a long drunken nap, double-trouble split-personality devil twins ready to party at all costs.

Durkin teared up, overcome by truly understanding how much he meant to his new friends.  RayRay made him promise to continue to stop by for Happy Hour. Kim found the courage to invite Durkin to rent the extra bedroom in her condominium at a reasonable monthly rate.

“That sounds great,” Durkin said. “I’ll move my stuff in tomorrow.”

All three had quickly grown close. Fate sometimes brings danger but destiny also can heal. Real friends stick together no matter what happens when the shit storm hits. Ask wanted man Sam Bennett, who brought on a deluge all by himself and seemed no worse for the wear, actually proud of himself for going to the trouble of standing up for his rights and for theirs.

Ruby appeared from the kitchen holding a dinner check.

“I got this,” she said as she paid Randall Lark’s tab – a dozen uneaten raw oysters and a pint of untouched Barracuda Teeth Ale. “He seems like a really nice guy.”

Just then a voice exploded with the surprise intensity of an avalanche at a Siberian ski resort. Russian villain Ivan Popov stood swaying drunk at the doorway slurring a verse from the “Internationale,” the old anthem of the now defunct Soviet Union.

“So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.”

Also standing drunk and grinning, Borys Popov swayed like a MIG pilot who just successfully defected to Las Vegas with the dying swan lead dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet. He sang a different verse of the song from the long ago Communist workers’ movement.

“And if those cannibals keep trying

To sacrifice us to their pride

They soon shall hear the bullets flying

We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.”

No one mistook their Marx/Lenin disharmony for a Lennon/McCarthy song.

“I buy vodka for whole bar,” Borys said to RayRay. “Then you give me dirty tapes. We live happily ever after. Now I buy house a drink!”

“Dirty tapes,” Dillon screeched. “Dirty tapes!”

Many of the Elbow Room patrons, some who were so confused by the disruption they stood and placed their hands over their hearts as the men sang, accepted Borys’ offer of a free shot. RayRay lacked a stock of good Russian vodka but had a couple of cases of Grey Goose a shady truck driver who recently stopped for a beer said fell off the back of a truck and sold to RayRay at half price.

Ruby barely heard the throaty whisper emanating from Kim’s mouth in a thick Irish brogue.

“Make mine a double,” Tara said.

Ruby also heard the second different Irish accent join in the ensuing confusion.

“Oh, shit, he’s cute,” said Shannon.

“I want the fat one,” Tara said.

“I’ll fight you for him,” Shannon said.

“I have a gun,” Tara said.

“I have two,” Shannon said.

Dillon heard the Irish accents and immediately launched into his own slurred version of the traditional St. Patrick’s Day jukebox favorite, “The Unicorn.”

Just like nobody ever sees a unicorn, nobody in the bar saw what was coming next,

Just like nobody ever hears the shot that kills them.

Swan Dive! Chap. 16: You Know Who

Ivan Popov’s eyes bugged out.

“Fake? What mean fake?”

Russian Mafia billionaire Borys Popov gave his dimwitted brother Ivan the kind of look he usually reserved for roadkill skunk and sewer rats.

“Just what I said, Мудак, sacred Ukrainian cross one big bogus counterfeit hoax.”

The politically connected mob chieftain had asked Ivan to stop by to help him look for the famous Ukrainian crucifix he thought he misplaced while relocating into the luxurious house he moved into when he lost the penthouse in the structure he imploded to replace with the super condo tower he was building on the beach. Borys’ palatial digs rivaled Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Trump once even asked Borys for a few decorating tips to share with Melania who didn’t know a curtain rod from a petrified whale penis.

Borys’ bachelor pad encapsulated an $11 million Clearwater Beach palace he owned and used only to entertain business, political and mob clients (sometimes one in the same), an 8,548-square-foot waterfront home built with 5 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. The mansion also featured a private gym, a theater room, a billiard room, a media center, a deepwater dock with a 30,000 lb. boat lift, and an elevator he used to reach a private observation deck where he enjoyed vodka gimlet cocktails in the lounge after a long day on the water burying bodies.

Ivan moved into Sam Bennett’s musty old Spyglass room the old fellow vacated when he went on the run for the gull drone poop attack against the right-wing Florida governor and his flighty First Lady. Few people knew Sam’s whereabouts, but those who did also knew he’d survive. More than anything, Sam’s friends wanted him to be free. Sam craved freedom more than anybody.

The missing 24 karat cross included a one-inch piece of wood encased in glass, the blessed artifact cut from what gullible Christians worldwide called the “True Cross” on which they believed Jesus hung like drapes in the Vatican. This famed fragment from the cross on which Roman soldiers supposedly crucified Christ was even bigger than the other priceless hunk that was submerged in April when Ukrainian soldiers sunk the Russian warship Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Jesus personally autographed this splinter as he hung out to die, modern believers believed, scribbling his initials before soldiers pounded that last nail into his right hand. Suckers also believed deeply that Jesus carved the letters in the Latin alphabet because Jesus spoke all the world’s languages.

But Borys tired of the ruse about the cross that had outlived its usefulness. Now only interested in making the biggest profit he could, he decided to sell the relic. The plan went off the rails when Ivan “borrowed” the cross to wear to RayRay’s Elbow Room like a Saturday Night Fever medallion and told the Duvall brothers about the priceless value of the cross. These seasoned hustlers saw a quick score when he passed out drunk and they slipped the cross over Ivan’s thick skull.

“Cross is 100 % phony with spray paint gold,” said Borys. “I make deal with Pope to sell cross for $25 million in off-the-books cash stashed in Swiss bank account.”

Ivan looked shocked.

“Pope believes cross is real?”

Borys sneered.

“Pope believes virgin birth story, doesn’t he?”

What could have been a huge score for Borys Popov now turned into a massive debacle. Nobody expected the Duvalls to drive off the bridge in a deadly crash-and-burn automobile accident. Nobody expected RayRay to come into possession of the sneaky brothers’ treasure map, let alone the religious heirloom. And nobody expected the cellphone to ring in Ivan’s pocket while his international gangster and well respected Floridian brother scorned him.

“I found your necklace,” RayRay said when Ivan answered.

“You have blessed piece of holy lumber?”

Trembling, Ivan handed the phone to Borys.

“Return sacred relic now, American swine,” Borys said.

“Only if you guarantee nobody files charges against Sam Bennett,” RayRay said.

“Cross worth nothing to me now. Tell it to the Pope” Borys said. “You will pay for threatening John Gotti of USSR, you American capitalist dog.”

“I have something else you might want,” RayRay said.

Borys went silent as a bronze bust of Karl Marx as RayRay explained in a nice well-modulated voice.

“Remember those six-foot suntanned Moldovan beauty pageant contestants in Moscow a few years back? When I found the cross I also found video tapes of you and you know who dancing naked to Ted Nugent songs in what looks like a golden champagne fountain spray.”

Borys dropped his voice to a growl.

“You have those tapes? With me and you know who dancing naked in golden shower with Moldovan hotties?”

RayRay couldn’t help but snicker.

You know who is wearing nothing but a red baseball cap backwards like it’s Snoop Dog Day at the massage parlor. And you’re covered in thick chocolate syrup with ripe red strawberries stuck to your nipples.”

Borys threw the cellphone across the room, smashing glass and knocking off the wall a framed photo of him playing golf with you know who. The picture landed face up with you know who’s belly glistening in the sun streaking through the window like an orca sunning himself at another cruel SeaWorld show.

Borys glared.

“How did Elbow Room boss get dirty tapes, Ivan?”

Ivan blushed redder than heat rash on a Red Diaper baby’s bottom.

Here’s why: Those equally dirty Duvall brothers stole the cross and the porn tapes Borys stored on a thumb drive that wound up in Ivan’s pocket so he could show off you know who’s X-rated ballet to the girl he expected to pick up in the bar that night, Ruby, the sexy waitress who would fall for him one way or the other whether she liked it or not.

All Ivan could think to say in response were two words from his favorite Ted Nugent song.

“Wango Tango,” he said.

Swan Dive! Ch. 15: Aw, Shucks

Killing Durkin would end Randall Lark’s blood reprisal. Bringing the man who killed his baby brother to justice, as cops like to say, would be sweet. Just pull the trigger.

Randall already owned a gun. He bought the piece on sale for $300 within a week of tracking Durkin and moving to Florida, a Taurus PT-111, the number one concealed carry gun in Florida, according to the bad breathing bearded redneck clerk at the Florida Gun Supply store who wore faded red and blue tattoos on both arms featuring coiled rattle snakes ready to strike with fangs dripping venom.

“This one here’s a beauty,” the hick said. “Equipped with textured grips. You never want to drop a gun in a firefight. Sweaty palms and adrenaline can make you lose control of your carry gun in a pinch.”

Having never before owned, carried, shot or even touched a handgun, Randall stared. The white gun nut clerk kept rolling.

“Adjustable sights to make sure you’re always as accurate as possible, double/single action trigger that could save your life, striker-fired trigger that makes the single or double action trigger pull excellent.”

Stunned, Randall listened.

“Picatinny rail system which allows you to mount a laser or flashlight to be able to get on target or see a threat in low-light conditions, double stack capacity which ensures you’ll never run out of ammunition in a firefight.”

With his mind in a daze Randall’s thoughts drifted back to the gunfire blasts in his old Philadelphia neighborhood.

The gun merchant seemed offended.

“You listening to me? You hear me, boy?”

Randall woke to the sound of the word.

“Boy?”

The clerk grinned.

“No offense, mister,” he said.

That made two times Randall wanted to shoot somebody. Durkin, of course, topped the hit list. As time passed maybe Randall would conjure more targets. Maybe he’d run amok as a Black militant on a race rampage to get even like everybody else in America who seeks a reckoning to punish perceived sinners through slaughter with a bullet.

Randall now carried his own death grudge – a mortal vendetta heavier to him than the cross Jesus dragged up Calvary – and his own weapon, a semi-automatic with a dozen 9mm cartridges in the magazine with one in the chamber. The time had come to unload, actually to load, empty the magazine and maybe even reload. The time had come for Randall to start shooting.

Nestled nice and snug under his left arm, tucked into a snappy black leather shoulder holster, the nine hung within easy reach if he decided to use the gun when he got to RayRay’s to get something to eat. Entering and taking his seat at the same table for two at the back of the room where he sat a few nights before, he picked up a menu and got ready to order. He noticed Durkin sitting at the end of the bar.

Out back, behind the restaurant, Sam Bennett hid in the shadows eating the hot dinner RayRay snuck him as part of Sam’s being on the run. Sam hunched over a large pot loaded with three dozen steamed clams. The old man splashed melted butter down his red Hawaiian shirt as he slurped the night away. Sam sure loved clams – steamed clams, chopped clams, raw clams, clam chowder, clams casino, clams Rockefeller – any kind of clam cooked or uncooked any kind of way.

Nobody knew Sam had developed his love for gulls because of clams.

Each time Sam Bennett savored clams he registered deep in his body and soul his earliest nutritional experience, not remembering but feeling a primitive bond that connected him to another animal. In Sam’s case that attachment remained real, very real, a literal primordial taste and smell of primal nourishment reminding him of the raw clam meat soaked in river water that once kept him alive,

On a Saturday morning so very long ago, little Sammy’s first birthday, in fact, he fell asleep for a nap beside his maternal grandma Betty who had earlier spoon-fed him mashed yellow cake with chocolate icing to celebrate in their second floor apartment above the fresh fish shop. Weak from early onset arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries around the heart) and hypertension (high blood pressure), just caring for the baby wore her out.

Six months earlier she cradled her grandson in arms thin as smooth mop handles and watched her peroxide blond daughter with the eyebrow pencil beauty mark, cat eye rhinestone glasses and leopard print pedal pushers drive off with Sammy’s father Ricky to seek their fortune out West –  Vegas she thought her daughter Samantha said where she could dance with feathers in her hair or deal blackjack hands in one of the new gambling casinos until a producer or agent discovered her and featured her up on the silver screen. That was the last anybody heard of Samantha or Ricky. Whether they made it to Vegas was anybody’s guess.

When Betty and Sammy stretched out in the cool breeze of that crisp golden afternoon grandma left the bedroom window wide open, taking her last breath of salt air and Lemon Pledge furniture polish into her lungs until the shivering organs shut down as her heart tightened and gave out. Sammy awoke hungry, his cries weak and helpless, intermingling with yawps of gulls that gathered around the downstairs fish shop to dine on entrails and offal.

Baby shrieks drew the female gull to the window ledge where she landed and stood watching Sammy watch her make an instinctive decision, one that signaled life and death that hung in the balance. Lifting off and flying away she returned about 15 minutes later with the first of many deep fried clam strips she pilfered either from the garbage at the shop or from one of the handful of restaurants that operated near the beach in those days.

Soaked with water, the juicy clam ribbons the motherly gull dropped into Sammy’s open mouth sometimes five times a day gave Sammy the life sustaining nourishment he needed to stay alive. At night the gull returned, sopping wet from bathing or wading, to open wide her wings and nestle Sammy beside her drenched body as he found water droplets with little lips and snuggled for warmth into her soft pulsing breast.

Two days later police broke into the apartment after concerned workers downstairs called 911 to complain about a fishy but not fishy odor that wafted downstairs. Sammy screeched his greeting at the first responders, refusing to stop squawking until he got to the hospital.

“I thought the kid was a gull screaming,” a cop said.

Police located no gull – just a weak but living baby boy, a soiled child wrapped in a mysterious white blanket of swaddling feathers, a little ragged human hoping to fly.

Swan Dive! Ch. 14: You Talkin’ to Me?

Facing herself in the sparkling condo hallway mirror, posing in a cocky sideways stance with her arms folded across her chest, Kim spit scripted words like she was rehearsing for a remake of the famous Robert De Niro Taxi Driver movie.

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Talkin’ to me?”

Screaming her lines with an Irish brogue, feeling faint and weak, Kim braced herself against the door jamb between the condo’s plush living room and bright all blue kitchen. Continuing to talk to herself, this time sounding more like herself, she said, “Jesus, I sound like that stupid parrot Dillon at RayRay’s.”

Now the bastard brogue returned, blurting from her mouth, babbling coarser, cruder blather than before.

“Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the fook do you think you’re talkin’ to?”

On the other side of the closed door Ruby heard the frenzied jabber before she knocked.

“I’m standing here,” the shrill voice said. “You make the move. You make the move. It’s your move.”

Ruby knocked again, harder, louder.

“Kim! You in there?”

Slowly opening the door just a crack to peek out, Kim looked flushed and pale, wearing an expression as cold as a red, white and frozen raspberry vanilla parfait.

“Sorry I was watching TV,” she said.

Alert and leery, Ruby stepped inside the condo. The shining glass screen on the huge flat TV mounted on the wall loomed black, silent and off. Trying to smile with her eyes highlighted above her N95 mask to help remind Kim why she was there, Ruby got ready for anything.

“You ready to go clean out Sam’s room at the Spyglass? RayRay’s gonna store the stuff Sam asked him to keep until our poor fugitive can come out of hiding.”

Stooping to pick up an empty Paddy’s whiskey bottle, Kim stumbled. Moving with the fluid grace of a mermaid negotiating a rocky shoreline, Ruby caught Kim under the arms as Kim steadied herself and stood, wobbly and leaning on Ruby for support. Ruby looked Kim straight in the eye.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Kim’s face contorted, twisting like a hangman’s rope in a hot desert wind. When she spoke, her voice took on the inflection and accent of a gruesome Gaelic banshee snatching souls in a bloody horror movie.

“You talkin’ to me? You fookin’ talkin’ to me?”

Backing off, Ruby centered herself and called on Santa Muerte for balance and wisdom. When she spoke again she did so with confidence, drawing on ancient acumen in her quest for salvation.

“Who are you?”

“Not that it’s any of your fookin’ business, but you can call me Shannon.”

A second higher pitched tone with a thick Dublin brogue now joined in, wailing from Kim’s drooling whiskey-breathing mouth.

“And I’m Tara,” the voice howled. “You must be Little Miss Muffet.”

Ruby fired back.

“Which of you two sick goblins told Sam to jump off the ledge?”

“We both did,” the voices roared in devilish harmony.

The two-faced colleens’ blood-curdling shrieks assaulted Ruby’s brain as her mind filled with visions of a hit as final as a mob contract killing, an end these two dastardly djinns would one day provoke in Kim as long as they controlled her mind and pushed her toward the ragged edge of her frail emotional ledge.

Ruby watched movies, too, and all she could think of was poor Father Karras, the priest in The Exorcist who only possessed the power of Christ to try to compel the devil to relinquish his stranglehold on the child in the famous film. Even off-screen, tormented actor Jason Miller suffered the same bane that propelled him into the bottomless purgatory of drug and alcohol abuse that eventually killed him. Ruby had a more compelling ally in Santa Muerte who gave her a potent edge to overcome evil.

Ruby wasn’t about to send her friend Kim crashing through any condo window or high-priced psychiatric rehab program. She would help her overcome this hellish obstruction, overpowering her tortured mental pestilence through strong-willed goodness as instructed by Santa Muerte. Ruby had experience. As a girl she had seen a similar curse when on a trip to visit her grandmother in Mazatlán, Mexico, Ruby’s mother helped a young brewery worker drive screaming poltergeists from her mind and back into the fiery shadows of the netherworld from which they emerged.

Although Ruby also benefitted from spiritual instruction from her grandmother on her father’s side, a wizened woman who burned black candles in a Havana garden shed among statues of African-Cuban fire god Changó, Santa Barbara and other Santeria protectors, Ruby grew partial to Santa Muerte, the ultimate protector. Even Ruby’s grandma agreed, paying homage, as did her father, to Mexico’s La Santísima Muerte who reigned supreme.

Plucking a Beach Sunflower from two florets she wore with stems tucked into a black leather headband she decorated with a silver peace sign, Ruby brushed against Kim’s chin the soft petals of the radiant plant that grows among the dunes.

“Sunshine,” she said.

Kim scowled.

“Sunshine grows us too, Kim,” she said.

Kim froze.

“People dismiss the awesome power of the sun,” Ruby said. “Light always escorts darkness. You can’t grow a mango without the sun.”

“I love mango daiquiris,” Kim said, coming back to her senses.

Working fast, Santa Muerte’s power embraced her newest daughter and took hold. Darkness would surely revisit unless Ruby could marginalize these two treacherous Irish waifs who would return to trash and pillage Kim’s mind.

Ruby took Kim’s face into her hands.

“You are the Muerte,” she said. “You already have her in you.”

Puzzlement and concern crossed Kim’s face.

“Is Sam OK?”

Ruby tucked the sunflower snugly behind Kim’s ear, securing the sacred blossom with a deft crossover braid.

“Free as a bird,” she said. “Free as a bird.”

Swan Dive! Ch. 13: A Wanted Man

Except for their formation, the high-flying flock looked like any normal incoming colony of gulls heading north to look for food. To an observer with a keen eye on history, though, the arrangement called to mind a tight squadron of Japanese Zeros headed toward their target – exactly what Sam Bennett programmed the drones to do.

Just like the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, this was war.

Sam stood peeping from behind a Dumpster holding the control box with the dignity of a highly decorated field commander leading troops on a battlefield. Attired in a new white T-shirt and a threadbare white linen suit with sleeves he spray painted gray, he wore pink rubber soled sneakers that went well with the pointed yellow beak of the well-crafted gull mask Ruby made for him to wear to ward off COVID.

Sam didn’t think he was a gull. Don’t be so gullible. Sam just thought like a gull – resourceful, inquisitive and crafty.

The center of attention in the VIP crowd gathered for the proposed Clearwater Beach super condo tower ribbon cutting, throwing back her head in a hearty laugh, Jenna DeShafty, First Lady of the Sunshine State, opened artificially injected pouty painted lips in a throaty well practiced social register cackle.

Seconds after the lead drone locked its laser sight on her gaping mouth the revolting bombardment dropped and plopped down the hatch. At first the governor’s wife thought her jokester husband Ronnie had snuck up behind her and shoved a creamy deviled egg into her yap. On their big day some years before, he stuffed a piece of wedding cake down her craw at their private country club reception catered by special interests and other political hustlers who wanted a piece of something far sweeter than rich devil’s food with gold leaf icing.

But when the indescribable taste sent shock waves screeching through Jenna DeShafty’s pampered nervous system, exploding in the jolting flavor of fetid waste and glue, she gagged and tried to spit out the glop. As planned, the shitty adhesive clung to her tongue, hanging there like a raw clam that refused to let go of its shell.

“Direct hit,” Sam said with a victorious screech as the leader of the poop pack scored.

Billionaire Russian real estate developer and host Borys Popov, used to assassination attempts, sensed an ambush and sprinted for cover under the tent. A second attacker now dive bombed the ribbon-cutting ceremony. This time the governor himself looked skyward, staring panic-stricken into the red eyes of an oncoming drone gull that unloaded its crappy cargo as it swept upward and banked into the sun.

The footlong silver key to the state Gov. Ronnie DeShafty was about to present Popov took a hit, but the state’s highest elected official got slammed so hard with a load on his head he looked like he had donned a shiny black Little Richard wig.

A third attacker from Squadron Shit Storm honed in on Miss Teenage Clearwater Beach, a former celebrity child Scientologist there to sing the National Anthem. Her spangled gown shimmered like bombs bursting in air. But what ruptured in the atmosphere today were turds you could see by the dawn’s early light or any other form of illumination that glared and gave proof through the night that the poop was still there. A hefty bombardment of doo doo number two poo poo caught the Republican teen queen as she turned to run, slamming into her shoulder blades and running down her chest to rest on the swells of her breasts like fresh hot fudge adhering to a sumptuous cherry-topped sundae.

Leering from where he stood at the buffet table touching the clams on the half shell until he found a mollusk juicy enough to match his slovenly appetite, Borys’ simpleton brother Ivan wanted to date the teen queen. But even he got jarred from his reverie by the sudden onslaught of stinking droplets from the sky.

Within minutes all 12 gulls let loose with loads on a variety of wealthy guests, then lifted skyward, heading over the Gulf toward the horizon and then south toward the tip of the barrier island. A dozen targets suffered direct hits while countless others endured splatter shrapnel collateral damage.

So excited he couldn’t remain in the background, Sam rushed from his hiding place and began squawking. Flapping his arms wildly he spun in circles like a heretofore undiscovered breed of gull engaged in a bizarre territorial dance.

Ivan Popov spotted him and yowled.

“It’s him. It’s him. Crazy birdman from bar!”

Borys recognized Sam from TV.

“Maniac from ledge at Kingfish Hotel,” he said to an action news reporter and camerawoman assigned to cover the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Then Sam almost magically disappeared. Did he just know the streets’ nooks and crannies better than the overwhelmingly and inexperienced cops who moved to town to work the beach from other towns? Or did Sam receive otherworldly guidance? Depending on your belief system, you could say he had metaphysical help from above or below or from wherever such celestial assistance originates. Or maybe he was just better organized.

Ruby sat on her bicycle, watching the sad chaos unfold, thinking the rich deserve every drop of crap that lands on their heads like pounding raindrops from increasingly vicious storms due to unchecked climate change. The super condo would rise to the heavens unless people who opposed development stopped or delayed construction.

Sam had done his best.

At least he took a stand.

RayRay watched the air assault from the beach. Maybe he could trade the priceless golden cross he found for a promise from Ivan to ask Borys to grease the skids so the governor would give Sam a stay out of jail card. After all, Sam only pecked around the frayed edges of life, not asking for much and not getting his share of what he deserved. What riches Sam did possess, however, cash couldn’t buy. A treasure of morality and skill remained invaluable and unseen beneath sloppy eccentricity.

Survival topped the list.

Many years had passed since Sam graduated from the Navy’s 9-day Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training, best known by its military acronym SERE. The program prepares U.S. military personnel, U.S. Department of Defense civilians, and private military contractors to survive and “return with honor” in survival scenarios. Sam lived with honor and would return when he won this battle against all odds, against natures’ enemies. Sam would survive.

Hiding out might be fun. No more worries about running into that bonehead Russian landlord at the Spyglass. No more concerns about being cooped up inside like a bird in a cage. He’d roam free like the gulls. The drones were safe in the hiding place he set up for them in advance. RayRay would help behind the scenes. Ruby, too. Everybody would help Sam stay one step ahead of the posse.

Officially on the run, our hero dove underground as a radical gull guerrilla seeking justice.

Sam Bennett now ruled the roost as a wanted man.

Swan Dive! Ch. 12: Viva Santa Muerte!

Balancing on the 17th floor gull-shit-speckled ledge of the exclusive Kingfish Hotel and Condominiums, Sam Bennett perched precariously as he rose slowly to full height, breathing as deeply as he could until he steadied his wobbly legs. Raising his arms from his sides, past bony narrow sloped shoulders and above his head, he lowered them at the same steady pace, fluttering up and down in a smooth motion that fanned a lazy rhythm.

Flapping Sam Bennett finally stood unflappable on the ledge high above the beach, knowing one misstep would send him crashing to the ground and kill him – unless, of course, he lifted off and flew into the setting sun.

An orange and pink glow slipped into the horizon, another lovely touch to end the day. People stood on balconies holding full wine and champagne glasses to toast happiness and prosperity, gifting themselves with the hopeful promise of tomorrow and another glorious day in paradise.

“Put your hands where we can see them,” said the SWAT team member using the bullhorn.

Ex-cop Marty Durkin looked at the officer like the police sergeant had watched too many law and order dramas on TV. Ruby, the server from RayRay’s Elbow Room, pulled up on her bicycle.

“I saw Sam on the TV news,” she said.

RayRay arrived within seconds.

Kim, too.

“Jesus,” RayRay said.

“We know him, officer,” Kim said to the sergeant.

A captain pushed forward.

“Can you get him down?”

Wearing an N95 mask made it impossible for Ruby to put on her magic smile. So she let her emerald green eyes display her aura and the quiet tranquility she possessed.

“I can try,” she said.

Stepping off the vintage Western Flyer American bike and putting down the kickstand, Ruby stepped to the center of the sidewalk. Kicking off her lime green flip flops she extended her bronzed arms palms up, felt the power of strong earth through her toes, closed her eyes and took in the cool air, feeling centered the way her Mexican mother taught her when she was young.

Bewitching tattoos in shimmering shades of crimson, purple, green and blue covered both of Ruby’s light brown arms from shoulder to wrist. Soft cuts into Ruby’s skin left an inky tale of indelible art that drew from her Aztec past and the cosmic eternal life promised by ancient Sinaloan and Michoacán sages who shaped Anáhuac, the “land surrounded by water” as well as the universe in the native Mayan language Nahuatl.

A grim black and purple image of a crowned and hooded Santa Muerte, Our Lady of the Holy Death, ran from the top of Ruby’s left shoulder to her elbow. Skeletal mystery glared from the unholy savior’s empty eye sockets. A gaping mouth exposed corn-kernel-sized teeth. On Ruby’s right arm a swirling collage of spellbinding figures glowed, sparkling in sweat and the golden sunset light – lustrous blue stars, a red rose with rich, thick petals and tiny birds flying over a sandy graveyard covered in crosses dripping blood red tears.

Conjuring the magnificent energy of peace, Ruby extended juju juice skyward, directing waves of ataraxia drifting toward Sam’s core. Only Santa Muerte, the unholy embodiment of death linked to healing and protection could bolster Sam in his mission. Unlike urban heroin and cocaine dealers, vicious gangbangers, sexist rappers, cold-blooded cholo gunmen and other vampiric adherents, Ruby called on her ancestral ghostly goddess for strength, perseverance and courage.

Ruby’s mother once told her, “When the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe needs help she prays to Santa Muerte.”

Reborn with fresh stability in his legs, Sam stood erect, looking down as overweight and lazy spectators filled the street and the beach below, hooting and laughing at the human spectacle that added an extra measure of entertainment to their gluttonous vacations.

Only Ruby heard the whispered order.

“Jump,” said Kim under her breath.

A flock of excited gulls circled Sam’s head.

“Jump,” Kim said again.

Although shocked by Kim’s crazy statement, Ruby acted like she heard nothing.

Aware of Santa Muerte’s presence, Ruby besought her to help.

In return Ruby offered only love. Nobody promised love to Santa Muerte. The greedy begged for luxury pickup trucks, flashy diamond jewelry, yachts, estates by the sea, gross carnality and sweet revenge on bosses, spouses and politicians. Societal swines demanded executions, destruction, more money and more power. Ruby proffered love.

Santa Muerte responded in kind. The only time she snatched away the good life and sumptuous bounty she provided occurred when a disciple reneged on a solemn promise required in exchange for Santa Muerte’s blessing. If you vowed to give up eating cow tongue, you better never again eat cow tongue. If you swore off alcohol, you better never taste another Pacífico beer.

Default on your vow and lose everything, maybe even your life.

Ruby stood fast for love.

In turn, Santa Muerte reserved sanctuary in her bleeding yet stone heart for this young witch who could work miracles the world so desperately needed. Together Ruby and Santa Muerte would enter into a pact, growing more powerful than ever in their mission to save humanity from itself.

Just don’t get in their way.

Sam needed that asylum – not an asylum but an oasis from which to nurture his own love of Mother Nature, Santa Muerte’s godmother and pure friend of the earth. Sam needed a soulful retreat.

“Please, Santa Muerte, provide shelter for Sam Bennett,” Ruby said.

Standing hidden in the shadows of a queen palm tree, Ruby saw la Madrina flick a red serpent’s tongue from her mouth that twisted into a bony smile. A garland of phlox violet and teal orchids sat on her skull atop her lanky skeleton hidden from view by a deep purple hood sightseers might mistake for a poolside robe purchased in a boutique shop.

Kim spoke again.

“Jump,” she said, this time with an Irish accent.

Ruby knew Santa Muerte saw and heard Kim. Ignoring her to deal with later, Santa Muerte now faced Ruby and listened as the young devotee recited words of safeguard her mother taught her when she was an inquisitive and gifted child.

“Dear Death of my heart, don’t forsake Sam from your protection. Oh Most Holy Death, I invoke you so through your image you may free Sam from all danger and from curses so through this sacred plea you may purify his body from all disgrace and malediction and that in turn love and abundance may come. So be it.”

Ruby watched Santa Muerte nod.

So be it.

As adroit as a limber teenager, Sam stepped off the ledge, adjusted his gull mask and faced the police who gathered behind him and now pulled him by the arms, cuffing him roughly behind his back. Dozens of onlookers cheered and mocked Sam as burly tactical armed law enforcement officers, better equipped for a terrorist attack than a fantasy flyer, walked him through the crowd and pushed him into the back seat of a squad car.

Released on nominal bail to good citizen RayRay’s custody, Sam thanked his friend and made a heartfelt promise.

“One day, RayRay,” Sam said. “I will fly.”

When they got back to the Elbow Room RayRay went behind the bar and started mixing a pitcher of margaritas. Looking at Sam he sighed and asked the bar’s now notorious enigma the question that never needed to be asked.

“You want a martini, buddy?”

“Always,” Sam said.

“On the house.” RayRay said. “But only if you tell me why.”

“Why I stood on the ledge or why one day I will fly?”

“Both.”

“For practice,” Sam said. “And to be free.”

Swan Dive! Ch. 11: Do You Think I’m Hexy?

A big double nothing burger with extra nothing on it – that’s how Kim Phillips saw herself.

A lonely loser nobody, just another skinny real estate agent walking around Clearwater Beach in a yellow sundress studded with black polka dots and wearing silver bangles that jangled and gold Roman sandals like she was clinging to Emperor Nero’s arm for cocktails at the Colosseum instead of getting stood up by condo clients she despised for their wealth and power.

Kim didn’t need a man or woman or non-gender person with whom to share her life. She just wanted to feel loved.

The top-of-the-line Jeep lease would soon expire unless the repo man came for the car earlier. Upkeep costs and maintenance fees increased on her own two-bedroom condominium overlooking the Gulf. Her favorite stone crab claws at RayRay’s got too expensive for her to eat more than once a month. Even with a better income, loneliness ate away at her the way acidic saltwater eats away at wooden pier pilings.

RayRay slid into her line of sight holding a fresh Mai Tai he expertly placed on her wet cardboard coaster.

“Bad day, Kim?”

Bar mascot pain-in-the-ass parrot Dillon picked right up on RayRay’s language if not his concern.

“Bad day, Kim? Bad day, Kim? BRAWWKBRAWWK!”

Kim waved a hand in front of Dillon’s beak as if she were swatting a fly off a picnic potato salad, trying to ignore the squawking bobbing bird. If the beast were a husband she’d ask for a divorce.

“Drunk overboard,” Dillon said. “BRAAAK! Drunk overboard.”

“We ought to feature a special tonight on deep fried parrot wings,” RayRay said.

Dillon began to disco dance the way he did when the jukebox played 70s Bee Gees hits.

“I’m OK, RayRay, really,” Kim said.

RayRay patted her hand before slowly walking away to tend to Sam who stood at the end of the bar flapping his arms like a gull and signaling for his first martini of the day. Dillon rolled down on his little homemade skates to see Sam who always had a cracker or two tucked into his pocket for his plumed pal.

Kim wasn’t OK.

Not even close.

Compared to the turmoil she now faced Kim would have welcomed a year’s worth of bad days at the office. Cold words in her head benumbed her brain like a forgotten bag of peas stuck in the ice at the back of the freezer.  

“Buy Becky a drink,” said the voice inside her skull. “Let it all hang out, Kim.”

One night last week a familiar voice appeared in Kim’s head for the first time in more than a decade. Without warning the guttural sound reacquainted Kim with her long gone auditory hallucination, a woman named Becky, who showed up as swiftly as a great white shark attack. That very night, even though Kim was reading a novel in bed and already drowsy, Becky ordered Kim to get up and ready to go to a flashy beach bar that recently opened.

Kim hadn’t heard Becky’s voice in almost 11 years.

Eleven long years ago.

Nobody at the bar knew Kim, and even if somebody had recognized her, she now wore a long red wig with bangs, a rainbow glitter halter top, purple bell bottoms and red high-heeled sandals, all items that clashed with her normally modest fashion taste. Kim also behaved differently with Becky taking over the minute they walked in the door. Becky danced on the table. Becky took off her top. Becky cursed the bouncers who carried her bodily to the curb.

Kim now lived in Becky’s head, a prisoner watching from inside her own dark mental attic, observing from inside her own blown mind. She heard Becky. She saw Becky. She even smelled Becky’s perfume that reminded her of canned peaches in thick sugary syrup.

Drained and exhausted, Kim missed work the next day.

Weeks later when Kim could no longer stand the psychic raid on her sanity, convinced she was having a full scale emotional breakdown, she saw a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist reassured her she was sane. Becky agreed. Even a neurologist said the voice was real to Kim. Both doctors posed the same question.

“Who told you her name is Becky?”

“Becky did,” Kim said.

“I can prescribe something to make her go away,” the psychiatrist said.

Wanting desperately to win the fight against herself by herself, Kim declined.

Scientists agree some people hear a voice or voices without being mentally ill. Voices seem to come out of nowhere, but what causes them? Whose voices are they? What could Kim do to silence this eerie vocalization she carried around each day like the fake alligator skin briefcase she depended on for her job selling visons of paradise?

Working real estate sales at 52 hurt Kim’s feet. Constant smiles hurt her face. Living alone hurt her heart. She should own a dog but dreaded the thought of picking up and putting foul crap in little bags.

“So quit,” Becky said.

“Are you going to support me?”

“I can work as a pole dancer,” Becky said.

 “Like I don’t have enough problems,” Kim said.

She didn’t know the half of it.

Voices sometimes hear voices.

Tara and Shannon, two drunken twin sisters, had moved into Becky’s head even though she lacked a head. Becky kept Tara and Shannon secret as long as she could while these fiends plagued her with daily taunts and eruptions of psychological disorder.

The Irish psycho combo sometimes stayed awake all night arguing in their thick brogues and wailing like banshees whenever their problems got the best of them. Becky tried to referee but always failed. All she could hope for was a level of intoxication so severe the colleens, as they called themselves, eventually blacked out. Despite Becky trying to shield Kim from the continuous bedlam, Kim heard the incessant bickering in three separate voices that made her lose hope and fear the day she herself would meet the phantom sisters.

The she-devils grew more powerful, calling more and more shots in more ways than one (Jameson, Bushmills, Paddy), making Becky pressure Kim to join them more and more often for drinks and pot parties. Kim rode the berserk brainwaves like a stoned surfer on a tsunami to the Apocalypse. Normally a social drinker partial to Chablis or chilled prosecco, Kim lived on the edge, a battered multiple personality too often drunk, depressed and hung over when pointing out the beauty of a gray granite countertop in a waterfront condominium to customers who could smell alcohol fumes wafting from her pores.

Yet, competent doctors maintained that Kim had not lost her mind and was not suffering a breakdown.

Tara and Shannon stayed quiet as a Galway peat bog during the check-ups.

One Sunday morning so very long ago, while Kim made scrambled eggs and vegan sausage, getting ready to settle in for the day with the newspaper, Tara boldly interrupted, confronting Kim directly for the first time, slurring her words in a thick voice as curdled as spoiled dairy cream.

“What, no liver with those yolks?”

Kim jumped like somebody snuck up behind her and fired a gun beside her ear.

“Where’s Becky?”

“Becky’s fookin’ sleeping,” Tara said.

“Wake her, please” Kim said.

Tara shrieked.

“I always ate me liver.”

Now Shannon howled.

“We always ate our fookin’ liver.”

Kim trembled while vegan sausage links sizzled and burned in the pan.

Becky quickly showed up and tried to help.

“Ignore them,” she said.

Kim burned breakfast and went back to bed to try to forget, crying into her pillow like she did when she was just a girl.

 “They’re only figments of your imagination,” Becky said.

“So are you,” Kim said.

“But I’m your friend,” Becky said.

“Those two remind me of my father,” Kim said.

“Took you long enough to figure that out,” Becky said. “Your Irish father spun your head around everyday of your life. Tara and Shannon are just two more traumatized kids, abused spiritual sisters fathered by that old alkie who helped create you.”

Kim felt cold, sick to her stomach, lightheaded. Becky’s voice dropped to a gentle tone sweet as raisin pudding when she asked her most probing question.

“Do you remember when your mother locked you in the closet for not eating your liver?”

“Liver made me sick,” Kim said.

“Your mother got so mad at you she wanted to kill you.”

“I begged her to understand.”

“Your father screamed you should never talk back to your mother, Remember he knocked over his Guinness.”

Kim unblocked the memory. Every Thursday night for years her mother made rare liver and fried onions for the dinner Kim refused to eat. Once Kim got so upset she wet herself. Instead of ordering Kim to her room her mother locked the child for hours in the unlit closet off the small downstairs bathroom.

One night during her frequent imprisonment Daddy died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound her mother said was a cherry bomb when Kim screamed. Kim moved out when she turned 18. Her mother overdosed on Valium pills, and the day she was scheduled to be released from the hospital hung herself in her room with a soiled sheet from the bed.

“I was so scared all the time,” Kim said. “I still am.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Becky said.

“Will you be my friend?”

“You need to befriend yourself,” Becky said.

“Isn’t it too late for that?”

Becky spoke with confidence.

“Talk back to Tara and Shannon. Don’t listen to them. Put those voices in their places. You be the liver on their dinner plates.”

“What about you, Becky? Tara and Shannon control you, too.”

“I can take care of myself,” Becky said.

The next time Tara showed up to mock Kim, the frazzled Florida realtor garnered all the courage she possessed and spoke in a firm, steady tone.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

Tense seconds passed.

Shannon jumped in like a tattooed tag team wrestler.

“Shut your gob, Kim, you slut!”

“No, thank you, I won’t. I’ll do as I please. You know there’s something seriously wrong with you two, right? You might want to see a doctor.”

The twin demons roared in diabolical disharmony.

“Eat your liver! Don’t talk back to your mother!”

For the next month the two Gaelic kelpies tried their best and failed to commandeer Kim’s brain. They took Becky hostage, but Kim stood her ground. In the end these terrible Celtic shadows just disappeared, leaving Kim and Becky alone.

Becky moved out the next day.

Whoever put the whammy on Kim no longer wielded power.

The hex disappeared.

Kim got her head together and healed, taking a few weeks off before going back to work with a new real estate company. Potential buyers put faith in her renewed ability to show and sell one and two-bedroom luxury homes by the Gulf of Mexico.

That was 11 years ago.

In 2020, because of COVID, of course, business plummeted.

Kim’s mood swings swung.

Becky moved home.

Tara and Shannon showed up, too, worse than ever and anxious to party.

They hoped Becky wouldn’t tell Kim.

The colleens wanted to surprise their favorite sister.

Swan Dive! Ch. 10: Black Man’s Mission

New black silk pajamas felt cool on Randall Lark’s ebony skin.

Sitting cross-legged on the double bed at Frenchy’s Oasis Motel he watched “Honkies Hit Harlem” on TV, one of the least well-known low-budget 70s blaxploitation films that pitted the brothers against each other and the cruel, cruel world. In this one even badass dudes who cut each other’s throats and battled in blood over territory to sell cocaine and women came together to fight white invaders and win.

But that was Hollywood where Super Fly and Shaft and the Hammer ruled rather than fell in a barrage of bullets fired from a white cop’s gun. Randall lived a lawful life in the ghetto not nearly as slick as the movie players, homies in green Cuban heeled platform shoes, cranberry-colored leisure suits and matching wide-brimmed skimmers that impressed the ladies in their red stiletto heels, short tight leopard skin skirts and Afro hairdos big as basketballs.

After enlisting at 18, if his time with the U.S. Army taught Randall anything in Afghanistan, the military industrial complex prepared him to expect anything at any time, even from his own side which was sometimes hard to identify. By the time Randall separated from service and landed back in the world he wasn’t sure who to call the enemy. Taliban commanders and Pentagon generals all looked alike to him.

The same went for most college professors. Even Black scholars lived in comfortable ivory towers where ivory was just another shade of white. You’d think Black faculty at a historically Black college would know the streets and the culture from which they came. But these experts weren’t so expert after all. Except for unique teachers like militant Cornel West, give a Black Afro-American Studies professor from Princeton or Columbia a couple of appearances on MSNBC, a few New Yorker articles and a book deal about James Baldwin, and they forget where they came from as easily as any self-absorbed cracker. Professional brothers and sisters are too quick to forget, assuming they knew what was going down in the first place.

At least Randall came home alive and aware with sergeant’s stripes, combat medic experience and eventually a bachelor’s degree in Black Comparative Literature from an HBC, understanding fear, death and survival more than most PhDs. Even now Randall carried paperbacks by Black Detroit writer Donald Goines and Black Chicago writer Iceberg Slim, wise men who dug deep into urban jungles pregnant with violence, prisons packed with desperation and original gangsters packing handguns, recognizing systemic racism, injustice and the battle for survival many Black people lost long before they started.

Sweet baby Tyrone lost.

So did little Boss who wasn’t even Black even although he swore to Randall he was.

Randall couldn’t save either one.

Marty Durkin stepped to Randall at the hospital the night Durkin shot Randall’s young brother Tyrone. Randall stood there looking through the cop’s eyes, listening, breathing calmly until the cop’s buddies walked him away crying, blubbering apologies and talking all this accident shit that didn’t matter.

Randall wanted to kill him then.

Now, after stalking Durkin to his new tropical life on the beach, the other night at RayRays’ Elbow Room bar Durkin didn’t even notice Randall sitting in the back of the dining room, the only Black patron in the place. Sooner or later Durkin would spot him though.

Mama wouldn’t sue the Stone Harbor Republicans for Tyrone’s death.

Mama just prayed.

Then she died fast from the same Kool menthol cigarette-induced lung cancer that six weeks later killed her husband Julius, Randall’s father. Gone just like that. The insurance money would help him get settled somewhere else, even if that somewhere else turned into a crime scene. Randall didn’t want a chaplain standing next to him at the electric chair or the gurney onto which white men would strap him for a lethal injection. He’d take death the same way he took life – uncertainly.

Jesus wasn’t listening. Ignoring Mama’s plight and the troubled world of color, allowing horror as bad as anything Hell had to offer to envelop humanity and torture all species, Jesus just rolled as another pimp on the block. Dude wasn’t even Black no matter what the jitterbugs said. Randall knew if Jesus were Black the man wouldn’t stand for half the shit he let happen. A real Black Jesus would save the world.

Attempted prayer got Randall nowhere, making him edgy and angry. The only time he truly tried to believe was when he watched a gunfight break out in the neighborhood that left three teenagers who lived on his block dead in the gutter on the corner. Randall squeezed his eyes closed and begged Jesus to help. Bowing his head made him dizzy. Randall knew Jesus didn’t care.

Ask countless dead Afghan kids American taxpayers killed if Jesus loves the little children, all the children in the world?

While you’re at it, ask Muhammad.

The child in Sayed Abad district in Afghanistan’s Wardak province introduced himself with a raised fist and a chipped clay plate full of fresh figs he handed Randall in the middle of a patrol designed to capture a brazen killer warlord and opium poppy farmer who worked for ISIS as well as the Taliban and stole whatever he could from the United States government in between.

“Soul food,” the boy said.

Randall tried not to laugh but fell out despite the overall oppression of war. Although he knew better, he took two figs and tossed them into his mouth. Sweet, chewy, moist, the figs tasted wonderful.

“Thank you, little brother,” Randall said, his mind flashing back to little brother Tyrone at home.

Taller than 6-year-old Tyrone, this 8-year-old boy stood erect, his weathered face gaunt yet smooth as a hand-carved walking stick compared to Tyrone’s chubby cheeks, jelly belly and high waist.  Pulling up the sleeve of the brown long top that covered him to his knees above loose pants and calloused bare feet, the boy held out his arm and rubbed his tanned and weathered caramel-colored skin.

“Look, I’m Black like you,” he said.

“You are one solid little soul man, all right,” Randall said.

“Soul men,” the boy said. “Battle buddies. You and me. What’s your name, bro?”

“Randall.”

“Boss,” the boy said. “I’m Boss.”

Grinning wide grins they laughed easy as old friends.

Whoever taught the child to speak English shared a good attitude with him as well – the kind of trait that usually comes from love, the kind of affection Randall’s mother provided him when he was young. The child’s personality came from that magic place that anoints those who spread light in the lives of others, people who want to share benevolence, kindness and friendship.

Boss.

Randall always called him Boss, even at the end.

Moving off the bed as fast as one of the many Palestine yellow scorpions he killed on the Afghan battlefields, Randall clicked off the TV. Walking to the balcony he watched the slow lights of a grouper fishing boat moving in from the Gulf, past shadowy condominiums on the other side of the bay that winked as black water rippled softly in the nighttime breeze. Stillness reined until small muffled sounds drifted up from a friendly party downstairs, three or four white Baby Boomer tourists vacationing, believing they called the shots in their lives – retired, drinking, smoking and joking without a care.

Fate owned them and fate wasn’t always nice about making new acquaintances. Nobody’s in charge of anything. Destiny is a lie. Some white cop acting on a disturbing the peace complaint could kick in the door at any moment. Oops. Sorry. Shit happens. Shit happened to Tyrone. Shit happened to Boss. Shit happens most to those who deserve it least.

Randall needed to stop shit from continuing to happen. At least get even. Yeah. Randall would get even. That’s right. Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, Huey, Ali, even Martin would fathom revenge under these unfair circumstances.

Randall almost couldn’t wait.

Swan Dive! Ch. 9: Ready, Aim, Poop!

Gazing into the newly carved gulls’ glass eyes with all the affection a loving father bestows on a newborn babe, Sam Bennet spoke reassuringly to his wonderful secret weapons.

“Today is your maiden flight,” he said. “Please don’t be nervous.”

One dozen perfectly sculptured gull drones stared back, red eyes blazing in the morning light.

Carefully positioning a mechanically-inclined bird on its back and adjusting the clamping vice on his workbench, Sam gently used a pocket knife blade to pry open the two hinged bomb bay doors on the drone decoy’s white painted stomach, making sure the thin red, green and blue wires connected properly before snapping the pieces firmly back into place.

Sam methodically checked each bird for flaws.

As expected, all was well.

After wrapping up his Navy career as a crack electronics technician, Sam knew everything he needed to know about maintaining, repairing and calibrating electronic equipment used to detect, track and identify the enemy. Radar, sonar, communications and navigation equipment came easy. Compared to his ET duties in high seas, tight quarters and inclement weather, creating drone gulls was as simple as peeling potatoes.

Next Sam checked the handheld drone controller box to make sure he could send the radio signal from the remote control to the drone gulls so he could tell the birds what to do. Pricking his thumb and drawing a drop of blood as he poked into the mechanism, Sam couldn’t keep from cursing.

“Shit,” he said.

His ironic expletive made him laugh, a snorting guffaw that sent spit from both sides of his mouth. A sense of humor dry as a martini without vermouth helped Sam entertain himself, finding hilarity in somber moments during which most people wouldn’t even think to laugh. Snickering Sam thought he was a riot, funny as a Tootsie Roll floating in a public swimming pool.

The gulls were ready to dump.

Sam had packed with poop one dozen gull-shaped drones that looked just like the real deal, enough poop to land like a pie-in-the-face clown gag at the circus. Sam knew he and like-minded anti-real-estate-development community anarchists would cherish this feculent shenanigan.

Gull poop is normally icky enough when a glop drops from the sky onto your head or shoulder, but Sam needed industrial-strength stools to accomplish this manure mission, poo with heft and substance to its excremental load. Great Dane waste more so fit the bill, scooped from feces mountains Sam’s bongo-playing neighbor’s dog deposited daily in the backyard and the hipster cleaned up once a week with a wheelbarrow and shovel.

For the first airborne bombing run, spring-loaded to fire poop projectiles speeding with a velocity that would unleash doo-doo destruction on its marks, Sam cut the crap with eco-friendly, water-based liquid glue so the fecal matter stuck to your body when it landed. When these great gull drones locked on their targets, Sam would flip the switch.

Bombs away?

How about bowels away?

Russian oligarch billionaire Boris Popov had scheduled the press conference and ribbon cutting celebrating the new super condo tower for Saturday morning at noon. Billed as “The Biggest Beach Party Ever,” the VIP guest list included well connected invitees ranging from the dull golf-playing mayor to shit-for-brains Chamber of Commerce executives to the loony governor himself who would showcase the future of Clearwater Beach in all its storied glory. The event would make all the Florida papers, television news shows and even numbskull talk radio programs – maybe national news coverage, too.

What better place for the bananas Republican governor to announce his bid for the presidency? The site of the 100-story condo tower, an even more pointed erectile symbol of power than the Washington Monument, would show the governor’s willingness to stand up to swarms of woke liberals trying to run him out of office and ruin the nation. With Boris Popov’s backing even a dipshit despot politician like the governor had nowhere to go but up.

Despite their riches, these pompous tanned beach patron country clubbers in their white linen suits, pink pastel shirts and seersucker shorts had no idea they’d wind up shit out of luck when the shit finally hit the fan. Always taking what they wanted whenever they wanted, these bloated plutocrats never thought about humble peasants whose lives they adversely impacted.

But the gulls – the gulls mattered most.

Although Florida gulls are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it “unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner, to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture, or kill … any migratory bird,” humans shoot them with BB guns and government snipers sometimes even execute them for predatory behavior against vulnerable birds more threatened than gulls. But even killing a gull by accident can bring down the heavy arm of the law. Violating the Act constitutes a federal misdemeanor that can result in fines up to $15,000 and imprisonment up to six months.

As far as Sam was concerned, gulls’ lives mattered. Are gulls predators? Of course. Gulls eat endangered least tern eggs and sometimes even turn on each other. But humans comprise far worse danger to themselves and other beasts. And what about the gullible birds of a feather that congregate in poisoned landfills and filthy dumpsters to get sick with disease and infect humans?

Real estate developers don’t want to consider looking out for gulls.  Developers don’t think about caring for the planet. Developers do not care a lick about this good earth. Sam Bennett, a good and decent man, thought relentlessly about morality, evolution and the future, knowing he couldn’t save the world.

But he could do his best to protect his gulls.

Holding the drone controls, Sam said, “Roll.”  

In this mental practice run the bird moved left and right, literally “rolling” in the air.

“Pitch,” Sam said.

The bird tilted forward then backward.

“Yaw,” he said, using his favorite drone term.

The bird drone rotated clockwise then counterclockwise, allowing Sam to make circles and patterns in the air.

Pushing and maneuvering the left stick then the right stick on the control box, Sam finally held in his hands the power to control destiny for the evil in-crowd that chewed up and spit out people like him and his friends.

Sam said, “Throttle.”

In his mind he saw the birds dive at full speed as he commanded the amount of power he sent to the gull drones, making his attack squadron go faster and faster before throwing the switch with the zeal of the electric chair executioner at the Florida State Prison in Starke firing up “Old Sparky.”

Yes, the heavens would soon open.

One real shit-storm was about to begin.

Swan Dive! Ch. 8: What Would Jesus Do?

In RayRay’s bugged out brain the Duvall twins’ obituary breathed, pulsed and floundered like a dying carp with a continuing life of its own as if these good old boys might jump right off the page and start threatening people and ordering pitchers of beer followed by triple shots of Rebel Yell bourbon which they called whiskey. Each time RayRay read and reread the yellowed clipping in the weekly Clearwater News he hyperventilated and started to sweat from the head, neck and even around the waist.

“Morton and Clifford Duvall, 45, passed onto their eternal rewards to chill with the Lord Friday when the stolen car in which they were riding careened off the Indian Rocks Causeway Bridge. Neither man was wearing a seat belt. Well known in the Clearwater Beach area for their free (and often unannounced) professional wrestling exhibitions, the Duvall brothers also grappled with alligators one winter season until animal rights activists provided evidence to the county prosecutor to shut them down for cruelty after having discovered they pulled the gators’ teeth and sedated the reptiles with Mexican fentanyl. Per their request no services will be held.”

A silver key lay on the kitchen table beckoning RayRay the way the Siren’s song called sailors to crash against the rocks and die. Morton and Clifford drank at RayRay’s for a few months before their fatal accident. In fact, they sat at the bar until closing time the very night of the accident when they gave RayRay the key.

“You’re one of the only people we trust,” Morton said.

“Yeah,” Clifford said. “One of the only people.”

That’s when they gave RayRay the sealed envelope.

“Don’t open it,” Morton said.

“Yeah, don’t open it,” Clifford said.

“No problem, boys,” RayRay said.

People gave RayRay items to hold all the time – an electric rhythm guitar in exchange for beers until pay day and a Brazilian piranha in a five-gallon goldfish bowl that ate fried calamari and whole jumbo shrimp. The twins were impressed when 86-year-old regular Grandma Roses handed over her false teeth in the depth of her dementia because she worried the bill collector would repossess them. Kindly RayRay sunk her choppers into a pint glass of water and sat them beside the cash register after dropping in an effervescent Alka Seltzer tablet to help keep the upper and lower plates hygienic and shiny as the stars in the old woman’s eyes.

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz,” he said.

Grandma Roses ordered a martini and gummed the olive with a distant smile.

A week after the twins went off the shallow end RayRay opened the envelope after the bar closed. He sat alone with his thoughts and a pitcher of frozen margaritas. After reading the words “TREASURE MAP” underlined three times in gray No. 2 pencil, he contemplated his future and grabbed a sturdy garden trowel from the restaurant back shed and walked a mile up the street to Mandalay Park. The treasure map directed him to the long white and blue park sign that paralleled the sidewalk that bordered the grass and trees that faced the beach. A black X marked the spot on the treasure map under the bushes directly beneath the letter “C” in Clearwater on the sign.

RayRay burrowed under the bushes, hiding and digging when he felt comfortable with the deserted street at his back. Shining his flashlight like a solitary dog walker or lonely senior citizen grubbing for fishing worms, within minutes he clinked the hinged 8.65 x 6.3 x 3.54 inch tin box the twins bought at Walmart and buried about 10 inches into the dirt. The box wasn’t even locked. Looking around and seeing nobody, he shoved the canister into a medium-sized black garbage bag, slung the plastic sack over his shoulder and headed for home.

After opening a fresh Landshark beer RayRay retrieved the box, set it on the table on two open newspaper pages, raised the lid, dug through three layers of bubble wrap and immediately saw the golden gleam from a 24 karat cross. A one-inch piece of what believers worldwide call the “True Cross” on which Jesus hung shined from its sacred spot encased in glass at the center of the crucifix – an even bigger chunk of wood from the cross on which Roman soldiers crucified Christ than the piece that supposedly went to the bottom of the sea in April when Ukrainian soldiers sunk the Russian warship Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet,

This icon was different.

Jesus personally autographed this splinter according to a century of Russian legend verified and sworn to by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill himself. Jesus would have no trouble at all scribbling his John Hancock on this piece of the cross without even breaking a sweat. If Jesus couldn’t do it, who could?

You could actually see the letters JC carved into the wood.

Nowadays microscopic calligraphy is relatively common. And that doesn’t even take into account the Gansu Province artist who carved 204 Chinese characters on a single grain of rice.

 Of course RayRay didn’t know any of that. Nor did he know Morton and Clifford had stolen that very cross from Ivan Popov a month earlier when Ivan fell asleep one night with his head soaking up a puddle of warm vodka on a table at RayRay’s after the terrible twins met Ivan and spent the night banging down double shots. Since all three had at one time or another worked as half-assed professional wrestlers, they loudly argued and compared bear hugs until RayRay had to personally intercede when they began demonstrating choke holds on each other’s larynxes.

Morton pointed to the gold cross hanging around Ivan’s neck from a lanyard advertising Coconut Custard Tropic Tan Lotion.

“You afraid of vampires?”

“Cross worth millions of dollars,” Ivan said. “Borrowed from rich brother to wear to bar to boogie. Gold will help me pick up chicks.”

“Better than the Hope Diamond,” Clifford said.

“Yeah,” said Ivan. “Hope hot mamas dig flashy jewelry.”

“Does your gangster brother know you borrowed his blessed pendant?”

“We don’t tell him,” Ivan said with a slow wink.

After four or five more vodkas Ivan told the boys the story his brother Boris told him about how Boris turned down millions in cash from the Pope who sent Boris a personal Facebook message to offer to buy the celebrated religious icon.

Morton snickered.

“Does the Pope want to wear your love beads to pick up hot cardinals at the Vatican?”

When Ivan flattened out facedown on the table like a sunbaked squirrel splooting on a tree branch, the boys just slid the cross over Ivan’s cabbage-sized head, leaving quietly with the holy icon sharing space on top of a soggy pile of onion rings in a white foam takeout container.

A frazzled and severely hungover Ivan showed up at the bar the next morning looking for his jewelry.

“I lose, how you say, medallion,” Ivan said.

RayRay said he’d let Ivan know if somebody found whatever it was the big drunken thug had draped around his throat the night before like a pitbull in heat wearing a new flea collar and anxious to mate. Ivan gave RayRay his cellphone number. Yet Ivan’s missing precious metal ornament never dawned on RayRay when he found the treasure.

Instead RayRay called the cops – actually an ex-cop. In less than an hour Marty Durkin showed up at the bar wearing black high-top Converses and a Philadelphia Eagles-themed sweatsuit.

“Whoa,” Durkin said when RayRay showed him the prize. “What would Jesus do?”