Florida Blues / part 5
(conclusion)
A couple of hours later, Leon stumbled back to his car, fell onto the front seat and was out for the count. The first to awaken some hours later was Roy, only because he was the first one to notice a sharp tapping noise on the window. He blinked and rubbed his eyes and stared at the automobile’s ceiling. Then he heard it again. He sat up and that’s when he saw the police officer tapping the windshield with his billy club. He reached over the front seat and nudged Leon. “Hey, wake up.”
“
What…? What is it, man?” answered Leon groggily, with half closed eyes.
“There are cops all around us.”
Leon sprang up like a jack in the box. “What the hell is going on, man?”
he almost yelled.
One of the police motioned to them to get out of the car. Surrounding
them were several patrol cars and half a dozen cops. The sun was just coming up
and the air was slightly cool. A pea soup fog was moving across the huge
parking lot, making visibility beyond a radius of fifty feet impossible.
“You
guys got any I.D.?” asked the officer holding the billyclub.
Roy and Leon handed their drivers’ licenses to him.
“I
suppose you don’t know that you are trespassing?”
“No
officer,” replied Leon. “That is… we didn’t know.”
“Uh
huh”, replied the cop.
The fact that Leon was a local resident was definitely to their
advantage. Several minutes later, the officer returned the licenses and told
them to hit the road. Leon was very anxious to put as much distance between
them and the cops as quickly as was possible, but the dense fog and the after effects
from the previous day’s consumption of alcohol prevented him from doing so.
After making a wrong turn or two, he found the exit to the main road and
breathed a sigh of relief. “Whew! It’s a good thing those cops didn’t look in
the glove box. That 45-caliber’s in there and it ain’t registered.”
Roy shook his head in disbelief and wondered how he had survived thus
far. In actuality, he knew that he should have parted company when they were in
Key West, but that would’ve only created other complications to his way of
thinking. At any rate, he was still a long way from home and with virtually no
money. He looked at Leon and said, “I need to get a road map. Could you stop
someplace where I can buy one?”
“No
problem,” replied Leon.
After Roy had bought the map, Leon then drove to the on ramp of the
expressway that went through Miami. Roy was understandably anxious, now that he
was actually confronted with the glaring reality of the tiring journey ahead of him,
but he had no other choice. He had been given the proverbial lemon. Somehow, he
would just have to make that proverbial lemonade. After studying the map for a minute or two, Roy
refolded it and stashed it away. “Well, this has been the most enjoyable
vacation I’ve had in a long time,” said Roy, ironically.
Leon smiled wryly and said, “I’ll bet.”
Roy nodded toward the expressway and said with mock seriousness, “The
next part of this journey should prove to be just as interesting.” Leon clapped
his hand against the dashboard and they both laughed heartily.
“Just go with the flow, bro
and never say die.” said Leon.
“Leon
my man, that…was a most interesting road trip, sure enough.” They laughed some
more, and then Roy got out of the car and the soul brother drove away. Suddenly
the troubling uncertainty of what Roy now faced was weighing heavily on his
mind as he walked dejectedly to the on-ramp with his thumb held out. Three
rides later, he arrived at the turnpike between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. He
stood at the entrance of the turnpike with his sketchbook, on which he had
painted, in bright green, a smiley face shamrock smoking a clay pipe and the
words, TAKE A BREAK. LET ME DRIVE. It was St. Patty’s Day, and though he didn’t
have any Irish ancestors that he knew of, he was hoping that the luck of the
really lucky Irish would be with him.
For way too long, he stood in the broiling sun as a multitude of cars passed by. Sweat dripped non stop off his brow and into eyes with stinging persistence. The heat had just about withered him. He was dizzy and dehydrated when a couple of jet setters on their way to the Rockies to ski pulled over in a late model 4-wheel drive vehicle. Thirty minutes later, Roy was driving while John and Jane Jet-Setter played backgammon and fooled around in the semi-private rear section of the car. Roy hadn’t eaten in almost two days except for just a bag of potato chips and an orange. His stomach was making so much noise that the jet setters must have noticed. Eventually, they told Roy to pull into the next rest area because it was time for lunch. Roy wondered what kind of lunch they had packed for the trip. But more importantly, he wondered if there was enough for a third person.
“We’re grilling hamburgers”, said one of the jet setters. “There
should be an outdoor grill at the rest stop.”
They found an ideal spot
nicely shaded with a view of flowering orange trees in a grove. John and Jane marveled
at Roy’s bottomless pit of a stomach. Roy gobbled down almost three times the
amount of food that the jet setters ate.
“You sure do have an
appetite. When did you last eat?” said Jane.
“I don’t exactly remember,”
Roy said as he continued to ravenously devour hamburgers, beans, and potato
salad. Afterwards, Roy felt like
taking a nap, but the jet setters were ready to hit the road again. John took
over the driving and Roy stretched out in the back of the car and fell asleep.
Relatively speaking, traveling with John and Jane lacked suspense, which was
just fine as far as Roy was concerned. He’d had more than enough surprises, and
then some, to last for quite awhile. Luckily for him, their route to Colorado
would include driving through Pascagoula, Mississippi. Roy had relatives
living in Pascagoula, so that’s where they dropped him off. He stayed there for a few days, safe at home, so to speak, among
those that he knew, though only because on one or two occasions he had met them
when families got together for weddings or funerals. Most of his relatives who
lived there were considerably older.
When it came time to leave, one of the relatives took him to the bus station, gave him a fifty spot and of course the obligatory words to the wise farewell speech which, in so many words, was that he should phone well ahead in advance to let others know what his plan was the next time he wanted to visit.
Upon his arrival home late on a Sunday, he found out that his mother,
who had also been on vacation elsewhere (which explained why he had no recourse),
had called the police who then put out an all points bulletin alert that very
same day when he arrived home. To her credit though, she remained calm which
was unusual considering how much she generally worried about things. In spite of
the sunburn, the weight loss, and the frazzled nerves he was none the worse for wear.
As
it turned out, the desk clerk at the Gulf Breeze Inn had committed an
unfortunate error (to say the least). His father had apparently been at the hotel the whole time. When
Mr. Baldwin checked with the desk clerk to see if Roy had arrived, the woman
explained that since she couldn’t read Mr. Baldwin’s handwriting, naturally,
she assumed that he wasn’t staying there. Roy was astounded at the incredulity of such a chance occurence.
“Well, how do you like that,” he said as he grinned. “Still, it’ll be a helluva story to tell my grandchildren some day, and if I don’t have grandchildren to tell the story to, I can always tell someone somewhere about the time I went to Key West for some fun in the sun, but had a hair raising trip to the twilight zone, instead.”
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