One day, a small tiger mosquito crawled onto my mother’s skin, possibly from the bully bay, the muhly grass, or just dropped in from the night sky and pierced her, taking her blood in tiny droplets and exchanging it for Yellow Fever.
It’s said that the fever started in East Africa somewhere and passed from land to sea, sea to land, person to person. Eventually, one mosquito in a long lineage of short-lived ancestry reached St. Augustine, Florida, and passed on this small dark gift to my mother.
March 26, 1929
The Florida sun pulled itself over the horizon and caromed off the gaps in the wind-bounced palm fronds in the front yard. I can’t remember the last time I spent all night out. I put one hand on the doorframe and the culmination of the night’s adventures peeled tocsin through the front of my head to the back of my ears.…
When he was born, his mother cried for two days, and his father got desperately drunk. His grandmother—who wore many shawls, had seen many things, and whose passions time had ground to dust—regarded the newborn’s odd bony protuberance with nonchalance. If God had put a knob on her new grandson’s back, he must have done so for a reason.
For those two days, the grandmother sat close to the fire—for her shawls were thin—stirring the embers and rocking the baby. On the third day, she slapped and punched her drunken son until he wept—not an easy task since in his state he felt little physical pain—and plied her daughter-in-law with brandy until she was drunk—not a difficult task since all that crying had left her dehydrated and thirsty. …
I know nothing but the spray of buckwheat, highway perfume which permeates tar oases we cross each day. Our tired shoes trace contrails of an F-150 that has already blitzed through eternal savannah.
I know nothing but adobe homes and SNAP. Bricks laid in a pattern I can’t quite discern, etched into mountains like long-forgotten cuneiform, waiting for some denim-clad explorer to bring its Rosetta Stone.
Until then, we settle, ephemeral & unpronounceable, waiting upon this assembly of fissure and dust for a voice evicted—its stolen breath now only a road apparition: Tilework Americana.
A blink of neon lights the path from Mississippi deltas to concrete jungles, from checkered walls of late-night diners to the daytime glow of Sunday papers, headlines flickering into a lithographic coma as we turn to our pharmaceutical dreams.…
Miamians have a perverse, reverse pride, I get that. We think our newscast is more ‘interesting’ than other places. We’re the world’s rudest city, the worst drivers, the epicenter of Medicare fraud. When some study reported that, combining all the social indices – housing, crime, attitude, whatever – Miami is the number-one lousiest place to live in the U.S., many of us thought, “We won!”
But did I really just now think that this murder isn’t as bad as the one two days ago, because this time no machete was involved, because this time he killed the mother but spared the child?
I must leave Miami before my son is much older. But noticing how randomly delightful this place is can mess up an exit strategy.…
These are the words he used to describe his discomfort: “I’m better when I sit there.” He pointed to a set of chairs, backed up to the pub’s exterior wall.
His attentive companion tipped her head to the side, narrowing her eyes and nodding, stepped forward.
They sat, her expression suggesting uncertainty.
But I knew.
I knew the moment I noticed him approach the sidewalk seating and sensed that he had noticed me first, and everyone else in the immediate location, assessing us within the casual, situational elements of walls, windows, furniture, dress, drunkenness, gesture, and relaxation.
I knew when I noted the ink, resting on skin pulled tight over well-defined muscle, peering out from under his left short sleeve . . . the lower third of the gray-green letters composing the words Leave No Man Behind.…
Molly’s paper dress crackles. The stiff, waxy material creates white looming cliffs and shadowed valleys, and she explores them with her fingers, reading the anatomy charts on the wall. The Muscular System. Personal Hygiene. Silky streams of cold air snake around her arms.
“Molly! How’re you doing?”
Molly jerks her back straight, glasses falling down her nose. She turns the corners of her mouth up, giving the doctor her polite, one-word answer.
The doctor shakes her hand and settles into her round of questions. Yes, she eats regularly. No, she hasn’t felt any odd pains. No, she hasn’t started her period. She hopes she never has to. Her head starts hurting; the office is so cold.
A flashlight shines into her eyes, nose and throat; a hammer taps her knee. …
