Dagger Key and Other Stories

Across from the mall lay a vacant lot overgrown with weeds, sprinkled with scrub palmetto, and adjoining it was another, larger lot that had been cleared for construction, the future site of LuRay Condominiums—so read a sign picturing a peppy senior citizen couple who seemed pleased as all get out that they would soon be living next door to a casino where they could blow their retirement in a single evening. Farther along was a cluster of tiny redneck dwellings set among diseased-looking palms. Squatty frame houses with shingle roofs and window-unit air conditioners and front yards littered with sun-bleached Big Wheels and swing sets. They looked deserted, but each of them harbored, I imagined, a vast corpulent entity with dyed hair and swollen ankles, who survived on a diet of game shows and carbohydrates, and went outside once a day to check the sky for signs of the Rapture. Now and then a car zipped past and, less frequently, one pulled into the mall and disgorged a porky Florida Cracker family desirous of some Burger King or a couple of bare-midriffed Britney Spears clones in search of emergency eye liner.

This dose of reality caused the mud to settle, the sediment to wash from my thoughts, but clarity did not improve my prospects. I tossed my trash into a bin. Zombie hold ’em players and doe-eyed ladies who were a little damaged…I wanted that crap out of my head, I wanted things back the way they had been. Small Time. That was me. Yet I was content with my small-time life. I was adept at it, I was pleased with my general lack of ambition. Tentatively, I gave the trash bin a kick. It quivered in fear, and that inspired me to unload on it. The bin rolled out into the parking lot and I kept on kicking it. I crushed its plastic ribs, I flattened it and squeezed out its soggy paper-and-crumpled-plastic guts. Inside the Baskin-Robbins, people stared but didn’t appear terribly alarmed. They were accustomed to such displays. Heat drove men insane in these parts. The manager took a stand by the door, ready to defend his tubs of flavored goo, but the moment passed when I might have stormed his glassed-in fortress and engendered the headline Five Dead In Baskin-Robbins Spree Killing—Louisiana Native Charged In Crime. I strode out to the highway, fueled by a thin, poisonous anger, and was nearly struck by a speeding Corvette that veered onto the shoulder. Dizzy with adrenaline, I gazed off along the road. Despite the vegetation, I felt I was on the edge of a desert. Weeds stirred in a fitful breeze. One day the Great Sky Monkey, sated with banana daiquiri ice cream, would drop down from the Heavenly Banyan Tree to use the place for toilet paper. I tried to calm myself, but everywhere I cast my eye I saw omens and portents and outright promises of doom. I saw a wine bottle shattered into a spray of diamonds on the asphalt, I saw a gray-haired man poking his cane feebly at a dead palm frond, I saw a sweaty twelve-year-old girl with a mean, sexy face pedaling her bicycle full tilt toward me, and I saw a black car with smoked windows idling beside a dumpster under the killing white glare of the sun.

Frank Ruddle looked like an empty leather gym bag. He had recently lost a great deal of weight, something he proclaimed loudly and often, and his skin had not tightened sufficiently to compensate. Forty-something; with thinning blond hair and a store-bought orange tan and a salesman’s jaunty manner; these attributes—if attributes they were—had been counterbalanced by dewlaps, jowls and an overall lack of muscle tone. His outfits always included some cranberry article of clothing. A tie, a pair of slacks, a shirt. I assumed this was his lucky color, for it was not a flattering one, serving to accent his unhealthiness. At the tables, prior to making a bold play, he was in the habit of kissing a large diamond signet ring. He appeared to have taken a shine to Pellerin, perhaps in part because Pellerin was an even unhealthier specimen than he, and, when sitting at the same table, he would applaud Pellerin’s victories, including those won at his expense, with enthusiasm.

“Damn!” he would say, and give an admiring shake of the head. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Pellerin, in heads-up play, let Ruddle win the lion’s share of the pots and took his losses with poor grace. Watching him hustle Ruddle was like watching a wolf toy with a house pet, and I might have felt sorry for the man if I had been in a position to be sympathetic.