Chapter 5: “Good times and riches and son-of-a-bitches, I’ve seen more than I can recall.”

“Good times and riches and son-of-a-bitches,

I’ve seen more than I can recall.”

Chapter 5

It isn’t often that Billy Ray went off-key –sport fishing expeditions not counting.  He had been putting it off for a while, ever since the old man had died, as a matter of fact, but all the mystery about the dude in the Hawaiian shirt prompted this trip to the mainland.  Jimmy would have called it just some “Changes in Latitude,” but he would have meant going south to the Caribbean or the Spanish Main.  For Billy Ray, this change in latitude involved a pain-in-the-ass drive to Miami, followed by a even painer-in-the-ass flight to Colombia, South Carolina, the spiritual capital of the Confederate States of America, followed by a pretty nice drive out to The Grove, family seat of the Calhoun dynasty.

Billy Ray was doing all of this in order to sell the old manse to a distant cousin of his, some pencil-neck who had made a fortune in Atlanta by starting up the home improvement giant, The Home Depot.  The only thing Billy Ray hated more than going to one of those soulless warehouses was being forced to do it because this asshole had put the nearest decent hardware store on Key Largo out of business.  But hey, he wanted to buy and Billy Ray sure-as-hell wanted no part of plantation life, so off to the mainland he went.

Before going, Billy Ray did something unthinkable: he locked the door to his bar-partment.  Usually, he’d have just left it open with a sign on the bar asking anyone who stopped by to replace any bottles they had emptied, but this time he thought better of it.  Might as well piss-off anyone trying to break in.  Hell, somebody might even notice and tell the island Constable, Ronny, to go over and apprehend the villain. 

The next thing he did was to go over to the post office-lunch counter-fishing supply store and stop his mail delivery.  It rains a fair bit on Key West, and with the door locked, Billy Ray didn’t want his very important ads and bills soaked and blowing all over what passed for his front yard.

“Hey Jimmbo,” Billy Ray called to the postmaster-short-order-cook as he entered the store, “what’s the good word?”

“The good word is women’s legs: help spread the word, friend,” answered Jimbo, chuckling at his own joke.  “Say, I’m powerful-sorry about your dad passing.  If there’s anything I can do, just name it.”

“Well, there’s something you can’t do: deliver my mail for a week or so.  I’m going off-key to wrap-up some stuff with Dad’s estate, a.k.a. dumping the ol’ manse on some distant cousin who wants to live like a Southron Genleman, so I’d appreciate if you’d just hold my mail here until I get back.  Say, it that conch-fritters I smell?  Damn Jimbo, but you make the best there ever was.”

“Yessir, I’ll suspend delivery until your return, Mr. Calhoun.  And take a cup of those ol’ fritters for the road.  You want a soda too?  That’ll have to be paid for,” Jimbo said with a wink, “but Red Stripe beer is on the house.  I figure a sixer will hold you ‘till Miami.”

Billy Ray’s protests were useless, of course, and he thanked Jimbo for the fritters (which really are the best he had ever tasted) and the beer.  “Oh, one more thing: this came for you today from some lawyer.  You gotta sign for it,” said Jimbo, tearing the signature card off the bubble-wrap-inside mailer.  “Looks like it’s from a lawyer, or somebody with a lot of middle names.  Here ya go.”

“Thanks awfully for all this, Jimbo.  I’ll see you when I’m back on-key.  Don’t work too hard,” he added with a laugh.  Jimbo was probably the only guy that did work hard on the whole key.

“Happy exhaust fumes, amigo,” said Jimbo, waving Billy Ray out the door.  Now, I wonder what the hell that lawyer fellow sent me now, he thought, shifting the mailed and trying to feel the slightly heavy object inside.  I wonder why he didn’t bring it with him when he came by, Billy Ray thought as he opened the car, put the fritters in the cup holder and the beer on the passenger side floor, and opened the mailer.

Inside was a large brass key, tarnished with age.  A note from the lawyer explained that the key was sent via CSA mail because Billy Ray’s dad didn’t trust the lawyer to deliver it.  “What the hell, Billy Ray wondered aloud, “I guess the old guy’s paranoia finally got the better of him.”  There was a note in his father’s spidery handwriting on a 3x5 card, saying “This opens the chest buried behind the House of Shame.  Please forgive your ancestors.  Please forgive me for never telling you while I lived.  I doubt you would have cared, nor understood.  Your loving father.”

Way to go, Dad, thought Billy Ray.  The old cuss just had to get in one last shot below the belt –and this from beyond the grave!  If I ever run into your ghost, I’m gonna pee on it.  For now, it’s Miami or Bust!

Billy Ray tuned the car radio to CREB 106.5 in Miami, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tribute to their Sweet Home in Alabama came on.  Even with decent music and conch fritters, this did not promise to be a fun trip.

The first part was as pretty as it was uneventful.  The Florida Keys were all connected by causeways and bridges, something the CSA government did in the 1920's during the Great Southern Depression as a way to give out of work men something to do and a little pay besides.  The Key Highway touched on 21 keys end-to-end, with terrific views all around.  In winter, the parts that went through small towns could get a little crowded with tourist trash traffic, but the ride never got old to Billy Ray.  Dolphin pods swam by, pelicans vied with cormorants for fish, and everywhere you drove was flooded with that bright, Caribbean teal-tinted light that reflected off the water.  

Miami was a different story.  After making landfall from Key Largo, and after the utilitarian boxiness that was Homestead and it's large military airbase, Miami sent its tentacles out from its diseased, sky-scraped center, an urban blight upon the land, just as ugly as any US or Canadian city.  Even though Miami Beach had its mansions and South Beach had its arts area, Billy Ray just could not abide the city at all.  Why would someone choose to live here?  Hell, even Cleetus, the town drunk and weed-dealer, who also had the honor of being Key West's only homeless person, had a better quality of life than anybody in this urban swamp.

Gritting his teeth, Billy Ray followed the signs for Dade County Airport, left his car at the 7-story car garage, and got in line at the Southeast Airlines ticket counter.  After purchasing his round-trip ticket, he ambled along the concourse towards the departure gate, noting the changes made since his last flight, six years ago: none.  Herded onto the plane like cattle in a chute, Billy Ray found himself squeezed between a Yankee businessman and a fat, old black mammy, who promptly fell asleep after take-off and dropped her head on Billy Ray's shoulder.  Which was better than Mr. Yank-my-doodle, who kept trying to get him to invest in some crap called nano-technology.  "If ya can't see the machines, then how do you know what they're doing?" Billy Ray asked.  Luckily, the flight wasn't long enough for the full answer, so Billy Ray climbed over mammy and deplaned into the more genteel environs of Columbia Landing field.

What Billy Ray wasn't expecting was the chauffeur holding a sign up with his name on it.

Chapter 1: “Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame, But I know it’s my own damn fault.”

Hi, and thank you for reading my new story, White Man's Paradise.  Don;t worry about the title --it's not racist, neo-Nazi hate speech.  It IS, however, a counter-factual piece of historical fiction, set in a world where the Union did not win the Civil War (it was a tie, negotiated by France and Britain).  Starting out on Key West, Florida, the story follows William Raymond Caldwell Calhoun (y'all call him Billy Ray --everybody does!) and his friend, Jimmy Buffett (yes, THAT Jimmy Buffett) as he learns some surprising things about his family history and, incidentally, some surprising things about a 150 year-old conspiracy that could end up with him sleeping with the fishes off of Dead Rebel Ledge.  Y'all have a good read, y'hear?

White Man’s Paradise

Chapter 1

“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame,

 But I know it’s my own damn fault.”

     William Raymond Caldwell Calhoun squinted through bloodshot eyes at his 1970’s era clock radio, trying to correctly determine the shape and meaning of its analog display function.  Big hand on the 12, little hand on the 9.  Too damn early to get up on Key West, Florida; way too damn early to get up on Key West, Florida, after spending all night and a good part of the morning trading tequila shots and swapping spit with an entire college girl’s field-hockey team from St. Paul on spring break.  Tell a Yankee chick you’re Jimmy Buffet and a feller can just about do as he pleases.  Not that William Raymond (y’all can call me Billy Ray) could exactly remember whom he did what with for how long last night.  A more pressing concern was the 500 pound anvil-shaped headache that was threatening to crack his world in half at any moment.

     Eight oranges in the juicer, a raw egg, some honey and three aspirins later, Billy Ray regarded his domain through slightly scratched, very dark Ray Ban sunglasses: a 1-room shack (but a big room, he reminded himself) with 3 alcoves containing a double-sized platform waterbed, a pine clothes chest and wicker nightstand; a kitchenette and ½ size fridge filled with Durango beer, limes and margarita mix –there might be a couple of cans of something indestructible in the cupboard; a toilet, sink and mirror surrounded by a circle of hanging beads for privacy. 

     And then there was the bar. It occupied the entire center of the shack and was an honest-to-god bamboo Tiki bar from some defunct Chinese restaurant on the mainland.  Billy Ray had his friend, Jimmy, help him float it out to Key West on Jimmy’s boat, the Jolly Mon, just after Billy had bought the shack from the previous owner, a derelict castaway veteran of the Nicaraguan War.  He and Jimmy lovingly restored it, mounting a 100-gallon fish tank into the bottle rack dead center and cleaning the accumulated grime off of the bamboo until it gleamed like a freshly cut stand.  6 rattan covered bar stools were the shack’s only furniture besides the waterbed.  The bar also had a color t.v. attached to a satellite dish, an 8-speaker stereo, a c.b. radio mounted upside down on the ceiling next to the glass rack, a working dishwasher, blender, trash compactor, and a Hawaiian hula-dancer lamp with a shade made from local palm fronds.  Stolen street signs adorned the walls of the shack.  Screen covered picture windows provided ventilation and screened views of palm trees, ocean, his neighbor’s dumpster and a motel that had clearly seen better days.

     Legend has it that Jimmy wrote his huge hit-single, White Man’s Paradise, sitting at this very bar, a legend invented by Jimmy himself, because it was way more romantic than where he actually wrote it: an office cubicle in Nashville on his lunch-break from the commercial real estate firm he worked at right out of college.  However, it is true that more than a couple of his tunes were first tried out on Billy Ray and his select group of ‘Westies that would drop by with a bottle or two and a bag of burgers now and then.  Jimmy called them his “focus-group,” and would always stop in when he was between tours.

     Billy Ray shuffled around the bar and grabbed his beach towel from the back of the bar-stool where he had left it to dry.  He then walked out the front and only door, stripped naked, waved at the elderly hotel guest at across the yard who didn't think this was proper behavior for one’s own doorway, and stepped into the outdoor shower stall.  The water came from a rainwater collector mounted on the roof, with hot water coming from a solar-powered tank, also on the roof.  After a nice long shower, Billy Ray wrapped the towel around his middle so as to avoid repeated offense, stretched and wandered back inside his shack, wondering whatever possessed him to set an alarm for 9 in the a. of m., and hoping it wasn't something important he had forgotten.

     Now dressed in Key West local attire of sport fishing advertising tee-shirt, cargo shorts, old boat shoes with no socks and a Florida State baseball cap, Billy Ray made his way back to the bar, just about tripping over the reason for the 9 a.m. alarm before he actually saw it.  Or rather, saw him: a slightly pudgy man dressed in a tan suit, whose open briefcase was up on the bar.  The man was fishing around for something in there.  He stood up and greeted Billy Ray, who just now had remembered that his guest was his father’s estate attorney.  “Let’s get this over with,” Billy Ray sighed.

     “Thank you, Mr. Calhoun, and once again, I am so sorry for your loss.”

     “Not much of a loss, Mr…”

     “Howe, Mr. Calhoun.”

     “You can just call me Billy Ray, Mr. Howe.  Everyone does.  Except for my old man.  He never called me much at all, which was fine for both of us.”

     “Yes, well your father did leave you a small legacy: $75,000 worth in mature government bonds, as well as some family papers.  He was devoted to researching the life of your ancestor, John C. Calhoun.”

     “Yeah, old J.C.C. meant more to my father than I did,” replied Billy Ray.  “I guess that famous dead relatives are a whole lot less disappointing than living, breathing relatives who don’t –what was it he used to say? –who don’t realize their true potential, that was it.”

     “Every father loves his son, Mr. Calhoun,” said Attorney Howe.

     “Call me Billy Ray.  Mr. Calhoun died a couple of months back in Charlestown, South Carolina.  So, what do we have to do this morning, because I told a friend I’d help him out with a charter group of Jap businessmen who wanted to haul a blue marlin back to Tokyo with them.”

     “Just sign this account authorization, Mr. Calhoun.  This creates the bank account into which your inheritance will be deposited.  And sign here, saying that I explained that to you.  And sign over here on this paper, stating that you are next of kin to the deceased and that all taxes, debts and duties have been paid by the estate executor, who is me.  Sign here, which is a statement of my accounting, showing that the taxes, debts, etc., have been paid.  And finally, sign here.  This acknowledges your receipt of the decedent’s family papers, as stipulated by article IV, section 7, paragraph 19, clause 3 of your father’s will.  Oops, sign this line here, too.  This says I have presented you with this true copy of he will.  Do you have any questions I can answer?”

     “Nope, you’ve been very straightforward, Mr. Howe.  Thanks a lot.  You need directions out of here?” asked Billy Ray.

     “No thank you, Mr. Calhoun.  It is a small island with only one road off.”

     “That’s right, Mr. Howe.  You’re at the last stop sign in the continental Confederate States of America.  Go the wrong way and you’ll have a few sharks to keep you company on your swim to Cuba,” said Billy Ray with a wink.

     “I suppose you’re right, Mr. Calhoun.  And once again, I am so sorry about your loss.”

    

     “And once again, Mr. Howe, it ain’t that much of a loss.  That, and just call me Billy Ray –everyone does.”

     “Certainly Mr… certainly, Billy Ray,” said the attorney, shaking Billy Rays hand in parting.  He eased himself into some kind of expensive Kraut land-yacht that was backed into Billy Ray’s front yard (there was no driveway –Billy Ray thought having a driveway when he didn't own a car was just too flashy), turned left at the motel and right onto the causeway.

     Billy Ray watched him go, noting that the flags in front of the motel were twisting this way and that, as if the breeze couldn't make up its mind which direction to blow.  This could cause a problem later out on the water, as it was the beginning of tropical storm season.  There is nothing worse than a boatload of Jap landlubbers puking over the rail in the middle of a dirty squall, he thought to himself.  Better check the marine report at the bait dock before picking up the party. 

     After checking to make sure he had his rigging knife and wallet on him, Billy Ray grabbed a tube of zinc oxide from under the bar, leaving the legal papers on the bar for a later look.  As he walked up the street towards the municipal marina, the breeze finally decided to blow out of the southeast, making the motel flags (Jolly Roger, Florida and the Stars ‘n Bars, respectively) snap on their poles.  Maybe today would be ok for fishing.  Hell, a bad day of fishing beats a good day at work, thought Billy Ray with a half-smile.