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Ol’ Beady Little Black-Eyed Deaths

…They just circle and circle, staring down at everyone and everything with their beady little dead black eyes. Sometimes the wind catches them and they hang perfectly still — stuck there motionless in the air. Everybody always calls them seagulls. But they aren’t seagulls, because there is no such thing as seagulls. They’re Laughing Gulls mostly, but some Ring-billed and Black-backed Gulls too. Everyone calls them seagulls though — the same way people call soda pop “Coke” …Now one of them starts cawing and the rest join in quick as they can like a mess of avian auctioneers bantering back and forth with one another…

And here comes an old lady walking directly below the whole big old swarm of them. She’s dragging a suitcase-on-wheels with one hand. Tucked under her other arm is a cheap foam-core sign a few feet long. I can’t read the sign from here. It’s facing the other way. Any second another gust of wind is going to come along and crease her sign right in half easy as folding a newspaper…

It’s going to rain something fierce too. It stormed all last night and now the clouds are threatening again. It’s only a few minutes after three but the sky already looks about seven-thirty. There ain’t a speck of blue on any horizon… She ought to know better than that. That sign’s too flimsy. With this kind of wind, she’ll be lucky if she doesn’t end up chasing it halfway across the parking lot…

Last night, when the lightning was flashing through our room and the dogs were curled-up under the bed growling at the thunder, I woke and noticed Elaine twitching up against me and breathing fast and heavy. I put my hand on her thigh and shook her gently. “You’re having a bad dream,” I whispered. My speaking startled her. She jerked her head up and gasped, “Huh?” I whispered again, “You’re having a bad dream.” She stared at me for a second, then mumbled, “Oh… Yeah. I was.” We went back to sleep. I always sleep a good heavy sleep when it’s raining. Mom still talks about how when she was growing-up her family lived in a house with a tin roof. She says that during the rainy seasons the tap tap tapping of the rain at night would lull them off to sleep better than any melody any mother could sing. Her memories made me want a tin roof. Never had one though. Closest I ever came was living in a trailer. It had an aluminum roof. I don’t know if that counts or not, but at night I heard the tapping of the rain and I imagined it was much the same… It’s going on three-fifteen now. Elaine still ain’t here and if this son-of-a-bitch sitting on the next bench down doesn’t stop staring I’m going to freak-the-fuck-out. He just won’t stop staring. Every time I glance over he’s staring right back at me with his stupid little ski cap pulled down to his eyebrows. No matter how long I look at him, he just stares right back at me without so much as an acknowledgement. Looking at somebody’s fine. Nothing wrong with looking at somebody. But staring is different. It’s rude. And he knows it. He knows what he’s doing. He wants me to say something. Thinks he’s tough with his little designer construction boots and his gold chain. I’d like to walk over there and jam my fucking pencil into his skinny little face… I ain’t a fighter though. Ain’t been a fighter for years — if I ever was. Everyone always used to tell me that I was going to get hurt or that I was going to end up in jail. Well I never got hurt — not too bad anyway. And I never went to jail — not for too long anyway. But no one ever warned me I was going to be ashamed. Not ashamed for losing. I lost my share and never thought twice. It doesn’t come from feeling like a bully either, because I often wondered about that but ultimately figured that anyone who ever beat anyone considers their reasons for it — to one extent or another. Nah, it’s the kind of shame that sneaks up five years later when you’re sitting at the bar and a friend walks in and starts talking about old times, telling everyone in earshot this story or that. When that happens I just sit back and listen, feeling like a dirty old thief, like some sort of washed-up never-has-been. Those stories don’t seem like my stories anymore and it doesn’t seem like I deserve them either, because I’m physically and mentally incapable of reliving them even if I wanted to. I feel like I stole those stories from someone and am too cowardly to admit it or give them back… If Elaine’s not here in ten minutes I’m walking home. Let her get to worrying and feeling sorry about it, but I’m tired of waiting. Always waiting on something… Where was it that I heard the average person spends five percent of their time waiting? Five percent of their whole entire life waiting, and for what? Waiting for the dentist or getting a new driver’s license. Waiting for the jackass ahead of you in line at the express register to write a check. Or waiting for the telephone company girl to come back on the line to say, “I apologize for the wait Mr. McKenzie. I’m reviewing your account now and our records do indicate that you called ffffiiiiiivvvvveeessssix times in the past four months to cancel your dial-up service. Unfortunately, our policy states that it is your responsibility to make certain that the service was actually cancelled…” Here comes another plane. It’s easing down just over top of the gulls. They don’t notice or don’t care. Why are they even here? Just circling and circling. Why aren’t they at the beach? …The plane is landing across the street, at an airport that used to be orange groves and cow pastures and strawberry fields. When we where kids me and my friends used to take buckets and go in the middle of the night to sneak into the berry field at the end of our street. Them berries was as big as our fists and sweeter than sugar… But they plowed over that berry field too. Plowed over this one to build a private airport and plowed over that one to build a strip-mall with a giant grocery store… Shit, I’m tired of waiting… I’ll be goddamned if there ain’t another dumb-ass carrying one of them signs. Walking with it sticking out two feet in front and two feet in back of him, begging for a good gust to come long and ruin it. The best way to carry that type of sign is upright, in close to your body so that you help protect it from the wind. Uh-huh, he’s got sense enough to buy a big burgundy SUV and to buy himself his little burgundy polo shirt to go with his SUV and his olive-green pants that are pressed all nice and neat. But he ain’t got sense enough to know how to carry nothing. At least his hair will be safe though. You could throw that fucker in a wind tunnel and his hair would be safe. He’s got it parted and formed with so much shit in it that it’d take a blowtorch and an act a God to budge one strand… Elaine is never on time for anything. Normally, I don’t mind. Aside from her lateness, I’ve got no complaints — nothing serious anyway. But right now, I’m fucking annoyed… That guy is pulling away in his burgundy SUV, already on his tiny little cell phone that’s glowing fluorescent blue against his tanned cheek… And we can’t even eat the fish anymore. We used to go fishing and crabbing in the Hillsborough River, catching a dozen blue crabs an hour — dog easy. Then we’d go over to the Courtney Campbell Bridge and find clams along the shore. You just wade out up to your knees or waist and start twisting your foot down into the sand. If you didn’t feel anything, you moved on a few steps and burrowed your foot down in the sand again. When you hit one you knew it and you dove down real quick and stuck your hand in the hole your foot made and pulled out a clam as big as your fist. After a couple hours the whole family would have buckets full of them. But you can’t eat them anymore. Can’t eat the fish or the muscles or the crabs or the clams or just about anything else. It’s all poisoned now. Officially poisoned. The Fish and Wildlife Commission placed “mercury warnings” on all the fish and shellfish in every body of water in Florida and all along the state’s entire coastline… Shit, I’m tired of sitting here… The wind is giving the palm trees a hearty rustle, and the dying brown fronds that hang from the bottoms of the fresh green ones answer with a crinkling sound — whispering that they want to slip off and swoop away with that wind… Not too many palms left around here… Whenever Elaine and I go out of town, when we hop on the interstate headed north, we’re always amazed at the open woods and pastures along the way — miles and miles of green as soon as we get outside of town. Dense growth covers the shallow Florida hills as they gently roll on and on and on before smoothing out into vast spans of scrub grasslands as flat as calm waters. Sometimes a palm stands alone in one of those fields. But they also grow wild in the woods, with the oaks and the pines. The palms rise through the tangles of kudzu that smother the undergrowth, and stretch high above the tops of the other trees, like a periscope breaking the surface to peek around. We drive along and say, “there’s another one…and another one…” Not too many palms left around here though, except for the ones stuck in concrete planters or those lining downtown street medians to remind everyone that we are in the Sunshine State… Huh, there goes somebody else carrying another one of them signs. I wonder what they’re doing with all them anyway. Where they coming from or going to with them? …I don’t know. But I know one thing — I’m tired of waiting. And I’m tired of watching them up there, watching them just circle and circle like a bunch of starving buzzards looking down on me like I’m a fat dying heifer that’s about to drop…

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