From Bayou to Bay

By R. R. Ringo

When Jack Dillon sets sail around the coast of Florida to research coastal recipes for a cookbook, he has no idea what awaits him. After meeting and falling for a beautiful but troubled woman, their idyllic sailing trip turns to horror when they are kidnapped by a violent murderer during an armed robbery and they embark on a deadly journey that ends with an unforgettable twist. From Bayou to Bay will make you laugh and cry and will keep you on the edge of your seat when fate turns on Jack, an everyday man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781618422163

Book preview

978-1-61842-216-3

Prologue

The Nation-State of Florida is an aberration.

Geographically, it pokes rod-like into the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. The vagaries of nature being what they are, Florida just as easily could have been another island in the golden Caribbean Sea. Socially the Sunshine State is populated by so diverse a rabble that the term melting pot - used so often to describe the heteronomy of this great nation - seems understated when applied to Florida. Were time to be rolled back sixty or so years, one could find hard scrabble types making a go of it in the inhospitable Keys, Seminole Indians making a go of it in the inhospitable Everglades, and cattlemen making a go of it in the inhospitable interior.

Meanwhile, real estate men would be found pushing the innumerable features and benefits awaiting those who would buy just a little piece of this paradise on Earth. In spite of nature's respectable efforts to discourage settlers, from mosquitoes and no-see-ums to poisonous snakes, alligators and panthers, to hurricanes and floods, the real estate men prevailed. This one-time pirates' haven and last stronghold of the last Indians to cease hostilities against the U. S. Government (no treaty was ever signed by the Seminole) succumbed to the pressure of fast food franchise giants and low cost construction, utilities and food.

But all is not lost. One can still find an occasional hardscrabble type in the Keys. Seminoles still procreate in the primordial Everglades. And, anyone who has driven to Disney World knows that the cattlemen are doing more than merely making a go of it. And the real estate men? And women? Why they're doing just fine.

Though the land was tamed years ago, the water surrounding three sides of the place is unyielding. A man can still enjoy a five course dinner at a five star seaside resort, wade into the surf for a moonlight swim, and be eaten by a pelagic tiger shark on its way back to its summer haunt off Long Island. Oh, it's rare enough. The point is, it can still happen. And sometime does.

In bayous and bays live horseshoe crabs whose ancestors scurried across the sea floor under what is now Barry Hall, a women's' dormitory at the University of Florida. These broad flat waters are the settings of perpetual dramas: birth and death, the victorious and the vanquished, today's predator and tomorrow's prey. One day perhaps some of our fossilized old bones will be dug up in the foundation of a learning institution on some place like Florida. Will Homo Sapiens Futuri, after another few millions of years of development, one day hold up before him and gaze at a stony skull wondering whether his ancestors, like the horseshoe crab, scurried about in pursuit of food, shelter, and the means to multiply? In the meantime, we'll play at knowledge, drain our swamps and build our monuments. We'll master terra firma up to the shore. There the eon old sea, the promiscuous daughter of Mother Nature will remain standing with hands on hips; imperturbable, a constant reminder.

Master thyself child, before thou would court me.

Spring 1993

Chapter One

Kitty Odum thought Lonnie was the slickest thing ever to drift off the prairie the day he stopped in the diner for a root beer and a slice of pie. He had a neat haircut and wore a dark blue suit. At first glance she thought he was a state or federal cop. There had been trouble with a white supremacist group in the neighboring county and she had grown accustomed to seeing neat young men in blue suits driving Plymouth or Ford sedans. It was after she served him a big slice of cold lime pie and began talking to him that she noticed a hunger that seemed to rise from him and enter her skin.

That night she found what it was to be with a man deprived for years of a woman's being. He told her of his past, and she of her present. He had a life of crime behind him but had changed. She had a boyfriend but would leave. He never heard about the late night visits paid her by Mr. Colter when she was ten, visits where he put a pillow over her face and tickled her with something... down there, visits that ended after a year in a fiery car crash that sent him to hell. Then, who could she tell?

He never told her of the countless nights he lay huddling in fear in a bed waiting for a wire coat hanger to lash his back and turn the dark night red and black; lashings for transgressions imagined and otherwise, administered by a man hell-bent on making a man; lashings overlooked by a broken mother.

They left Oklahoma and his parole program the next morning and for two months lived on his prison savings. In sixty nights of living they converted five years of jailhouse income to room and board, whiskey and speed. She was introduced to cocaine and heroin and agreed that anything that felt that good couldn't be bad. They married on Kitty's twentieth birthday. They were in Reno. They were broke. And they were expecting a baby. Lonnie decided that Reno was as good a place as any to get a jump-start. So he robbed a movie theater, hit a liquor store heading out of town, and never looked back. When he thought he could get away with it, he killed. Kitty never knew. Or never let on.

Ricky White, Mamba to his friends, was high on a new feeling. He was on vacation from school - permanent vacation. He'd struggled for eleven years and gotten as far as tenth grade, twice. Two months before the end of his school year Ricky failed one test too many and said, the hell with this. He wasn't a bad student, just a poor learner. As fate and nature often conspired to keep the lives of the human creature in turmoil, Ricky was born with a misshapen foot on his short right leg. He also had an attention disorder, chemically manufactured by an imperfect brain and never discovered by his well intentioned but overworked society. These anomalies resulted in a quiet, retiring, and thoroughly frustrated young man whose childhood of harsh discipline built little character and plenty of low esteem. His path to destiny would follow a lifetime of menial jobs, poor diet, and pale intimacies. Ricky White was a member of the swollen anxious class.

This summer evening found him warmly ensconced behind the counter of a Tampa party store. If he showed up and did his job, he'd receive a dollar an hour raise in six months; the economic bait of the capitalist dream. He glanced up from the shiny pages of a naked lady magazine to see a customer move across the floor to the beer cooler.

A minute later, rising to his feet, he asked, anything else?

The customer put the twelve-pack on the counter and responded, Yeah, I'll take the cash drawer.

Ricky was sure he misunderstood.

Now!

He looked down at a nasty black gun pointed at his belly. He imagined the shot would feel like a baseball bat swung hard by a beefy hitter. He sucked in a breath of air and opened the drawer.

The customer took the money and gestured with his pistol toward a stained and gouged brown door.

Over there, he said. You know I got to tie your hands.

Yessir.

The boy unlocked the office door and stepped inside. He felt the hard revolver barrel press against his neck.

Skeert, nigger?

The boy's heart, lungs and brain lost their rhythm.

Please don't shoot me mister.

Do you pray, boy? the customer asked with glee.

Yessir, please don't shoot.

I ain't gonna shoot ya.

The neck muffled the bang as two pounds of pressure applied against the trigger brought an eventful end to the seventeen-year-old’s uneventful life.

Lonnie Adams stared at his handiwork and had a moment of thrill. The feeling died with his victim's final twitch. He closed the death room door, picked up his beer and a carton of cigarettes, and strolled to his car where Kitty waited with their two-year-old child.

Kitty's red face and bulging eyes appeared comical to Lonnie as he approached the car. She was gesturing frantically and waving her arms about as if her head was swallowed in a cloud of bees. Through the windshield she reminded him of a character on television.

...old you not to forget milk, he heard, as he opened the car door.

He looked blank faced at her a second before responding.

How do you expect me to rob a store, git me mah beer 'n smokes and remember your goddamn milk for your goddamn brat?

He's yours too, she whined.

The fuckin' hell he is. Jest shut up. He can go hungry for all I care. In a rare moment of empathy, Lonnie stormed off through the door and grabbed a jug of milk. Here, you happy now, he asked as he pitched the jug at her.

As the Adams' sedan pulled into the traffic, Colt placed his face into the crook of his elbow and began to whimper.

Had Lonnie Adams been born a million years earlier, he would have been a model specimen. He had the requisite skills of survival for the hunter-gatherer. He was strong, cunning and ruthless. What he wanted, he took. His heart and mind were unencumbered by the niceties of civilization. His uncomplicated approach to life and the basic needs of living worked well for him in the anonymous society of urban America. He was an efficient provider for himself and the woman he kept for image and his glandular needs. How many stick-up men have a wife and kid? It's good cover. His compassionless nature resulted from a combination of genetic dice and a violent childhood dominated by a vicious drunken father and a frantic mother lost in her own terror and grieving over circumstance.

He was the kid who hurt smaller children and neighborhood pets; the worse the hurt, the better for him. Dead was best. He was the teen who hung out with the older hoods and did stints here and there in reform school. He was the young man who entered prison with open eyes and open ears, the one who learned more precious lessons there than in all the schools of his youth.

He was the man on the front page of the local section killed by police during an attempted robbery. He was born during the adolescence of civilized man but belonged at the cradle. And many victims would bear witness to that truth.

Shut that crummy kid up before Ah smack hell out of 'em. Like father, like son.

Stop crying, Colt. Stop that crying right now, warned mommy.

Father and son, unknown to each other, share a common discomfort on this steamy night. Lonnie has a cracked molar that hurts when he breathes over it, eats, or drinks. Colt is growing two new teeth, the sharp little weapons poking through his sore gums causing pain from throbbing to acute, but always there. When Colt cries he gets a smack. He is learning how not to cry.

Oh, Baby, I got to have it now, Kitty said.

Hold yer water.

Cain't you shut up, he shouted in desperation.

SMACK - the flat of mommy's hand on two year old skin has a high note sound; not the dull basey sound of Lonnie's powerful backhand against Kitty's solid jaw.

Be quiet! Stop that snifflin'. You upset daddy. You’re too big to cry.

I ain't his daddy.

Colt takes the fire in his mouth, the sting on his leg, the black inside that he sees but does not understand, and huddles in the backseat, arms pulled against his chest. Alone.

Chapter Two

Oh gawd, I just don't know how I'm gonna get through another month of that insufferable prick. A thirty-page term paper! I didn't even need his course. Comparative Western Art. I thought it would be crib. Now I need to finish it to graduate. Oh gawd.

Mindy Phillips looked into a half-empty bottle of Dutch beer. When she closed one eye, she could see bluish pink swirls by looking down the neck of the green bottle. The colors reminded her of a candy dish in the living room of her childhood grandmother. She was leaning against the refrigerator in Jack's kitchen. One of her twenty-two year old legs was cocked up against the appliance. She wore a sunflower yellow shift with little white straps. Her blond hair was cut in one of those perky turned under styles and she would sometimes flip her head to one side, as though her hair was longer.

I don't understand how people write books. I mean thirty pages. My gawd! The statement drifted through the kitchen, several decibels above Sly Stone singing about hot fun in the summertime and getting high, high, high-highhher.

I work in a bookstore, she added. I don't know how they do it. All those pages, all those words. Christ, it makes me sick just thinking about it. She tapped her nails on the bottle as she fretted. You know Jack, I could have a breakdown while you're gone and if I did, who'd run your store? Did you think of that?

Eight or so other guests had drifted into the kitchen and were following Mindy's trial like a tennis match. All eyes turned to Jack. Well Mindy, if you go crazy, I'll have to fire you and you don't have insurance. I guess you'll spend the rest of your life on the psycho floor of Grady. He lit a cigarette and looked away with disinterest. He smiled at Ned Katz.

Oh gawd, you are such a prick, Jack Dillon, she said.

You can't talk to me like that. I'm your boss, he replied, trying to sound indignant. He winked at Katz.

I can so, she said, a little hurt in her voice. I'm having a crisis and all you can do is make fun.

OK, Mindy. Chill. You're not going to go crazy. At least not while you work for me. I need you. Thirty pages is a piece of cake. Later tonight I'll show you my research library and you can see how some others did papers like that. It won't be exactly what you need but it will give you a good place to start. She gave him a knowing smile and walked from the room. Girls, he said, to know one in particular.

The party was to be as much a celebration of fin de siecle as bon voyage; though Jack would never admit it. He was at that place in life where just enough sand had slipped through to make him aware of time. He sometimes found himself calculating his years; picturing them as a seesaw balanced with forty years past and forty to go. Soon there would be forty-one past. Recently he had begun dividing his years into adult and child time attempting to justify his last decade as the first one that really counted.

Now, most men struggle from infancy with the finer points of civilization that women seem to master from birth. Mothers, big sisters, steady girls and eventually wives spend the better part of their waking hours in a constant effort to improve or maintain the social performance of their male charges. Like a car in need of a front-end alignment, without steady, slight pressure on the wheel the car will eventually wind up in a ditch. Most men can count on the female's reassuring and firm hand to keep a steady course. It is in that period between tutors, when a man is free of the daily instruction and holds the illusion of understanding, that his primitive nature begins slowly to emerge and his graces begin to descend to reach equilibrium between a block of wood and a pig.

Oh, few men stay in this place, just as few cars remain in the ditch. Between the forces of civilization and nature, few men have the strength of will to live by the code of their primate heritage. But for a time some men have the luxury, due to circumstance, of flirting with the past, recent and ancient. Jack Dillon was in that time and space. Married most of his adult life, he had recently found himself on the outside, his second marriage having slipped away one April morning in a seventy-two year old courthouse in Decatur, Georgia; a casualty of disuse.

Jack made the rounds with two bottles of wine filling glasses as he went. It was after midnight and the crowd of thirty or so had reached a stage of collective inebriation. The guests were a mixed bunch, some of his customers and employees, a few students, and various other friends twenty years in the making.

To the casual observer, Jack Dillon was a typical man of the street. His countenance was unremarkable, a middling height athletic type whose mixed lineage had long ago blended away any exceptional features marking the aquiline face of a Teutonic forefather or the minty green eyes of his Celtic mate. His situation was typical of his on again off again generation - a great lump in the population carried on the wings of post war optimism in 1946 and brought to a halt in the uncertainty of the 1960s - an unbridled gaggle destined to learn life piecemeal without benefit of the rude teachers of economic depression and world war.

His classroom was the social discord of Indo-China, civil rights and the women's movement, followed by a confusing and half-hearted attempt to salvage some undamaged piece of youth through the likes of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. His material goods were mostly Reagan era vintage. At forty, he pushed himself to believe that life was just now opening the door to secrets and pleasures previously unknown. When events unfolded as he wished, Dillon was sure that he was right: life was just beginning to lift her skirt. At other times, mundane or adverse, he fought an enemy concept, which was that more experience lay in the past than waited in the future. Tempus fugit.

Earlier, as he had prepared for the party, he had done so with a heavy heart; a malaise so strong that he felt it as a tightness around his chest, a pressing down of his brow. At one time, this feeling would have alarmed him as manifestation of a physical threat. But this evening he’d gone about his business without giving the feeling a thought; like a day old bug bite, a minor annoyance with a life and death of its own. At times he tried to figure out what caused the dullness of heart but was usually too dispirited to put much effort into the search. He knew that