Racing the Rain (25 page)

And, under the circumstances, historically it all went pretty much according to plan, though there was a tiny fraction over the years who really didn't seem to get the big picture, or who maybe got it all too well and ended up like the Big Bopper et al in some flaming calamity out on A1A, their meager passage on this coil now marked only by black-bordered photographs in next year's yearbook and the heart-rending ad hoc plastic flower arrangements scattered all along South Florida's two-lane blacktops that Cassidy called “prom crosses.”

But the VW minivan clown car returned to home port with its occupants none the worse for wear, though they were certainly dazed, sunburned and, or so they thought, a little hungover. Actually, they were mostly just exhausted. But they had survived their junior prom in decent order, and there were some who could not say as much.

The next week it was the All-Sports banquet, held annually in the same cafeteria where they consumed their Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and vegetable medleys during the week. As befitting a festive occasion, someone had taped up some crepe paper basketballs, footballs, and tennis rackets to the walls, but there really was no disguising the same old lunchroom.

Cassidy, Stiggs, and Randleman sat with their teammates and dates, along with the new coach and his wife. Coach Cinnamon had been invited but sent regrets.

The football team had barely broken even that year, so for once the coaches and players were sincerely humble, if not sheepish, in presenting their awards and rendering their various postmortems and rationalizations. But everyone understood that the whole year had been dominated by basketball and therefore so was the sports banquet.

Despite the stifling air in the cafeteria, the boys all immediately put on their letter sweaters as soon as they got them. Bickerstaff did a nice little sum-up and tribute to that year's team, along with his barely contained enthusiasm for what they would undoubtedly accomplish next year. Stiggs won Most Valuable Player, Randleman was Top Rebounder, and Cassidy was Most Improved.

Cassidy didn't think he'd improved that much, he just got a chance to play is all. But he was happy with his little trophy, which he ceremoniously presented to Maria, who accepted it with a small, sitting curtsy.

As Mr. Kamrad and the other spring sports coaches took their turns at the lectern, Cassidy's mind drifted. In some ways it seemed like a huge expanse of time back to the start of the year, that first hot September morning they reported to their new homerooms. The football team had been doing two-a-days since mid-August, and you could tell them in the hallways by their lean and wan faces: they walked around looking stunned (their coaches were convinced that withholding water would make men out of them—fortunately only a handful across the state died every year).

It seemed like it took forever until basketball tryouts at the beginning of November, and then the season itself had been inordinately long, too. From the first shaky games in early December until the state finals at the end of March, he had to admit that there were a few times toward the end when he had grown weary of it all.

But now that he was sitting here looking back on it, it seemed to have gone by in the blink of an eye. As Bickerstaff went on and on, Cassidy was looking so introspective that Maria gave him a quizzical look. He smiled and shrugged, and tried to pay attention. He didn't really come out of it until a few minutes later as Mr. Kamrad was describing how the Edgewater crew had barely been edged out of second place by Andover at the prep nationals.

“Many times in sports a contest is decided by a matter of inches. In our case it was a matter of about six of them. But that was the difference between first, which is where we wanted to be, and third, which is where we were.”

As far as Cassidy was concerned, a twenty-foot jump shot that misses by six inches makes you look like you couldn't throw a Ping-Pong ball into an open manhole.

He glanced down at the mimeographed booklet stapled inside a sad little crepe paper cover. The first page read:

1964 All-Sports Awards Banquet

Saturday, May 23, 1964

Edgewater Cafeteria

6:30 p.m.

- MENU -

FRUIT JUICE

TOSS SALAD

FRIED CHICKEN

BAKED POTATOES  GREEN BEANS
SWEET ROLLS

ICE CREAM PUFF
(Hot Chocolate Sauce)

ICE TEA
Or
COFFEE

As the bowling coach, a lesbian named LizBeth Q. Harlow, yammered on and on about the “near miracle” of her team's third-place finish in the county tournament at Orange Blossom Lanes, Cassidy folded the program in half and slipped it in his jacket pocket.

He figured it would be good scrapbook fodder, though he was fairly sure that in the future if he ever came across it among the desiccated boutonnières and ripped movie tickets, it would be that
“TOSS SALAD
” that would break his heart.

H
aving found nothing better, Cassidy thought he might return to his bag boy job at the base commissary, but then the Monday following the last day of school, Trapper Nelson called him from a pay phone at the Pantry Pride.

“You interested in a job this summer?” Trapper said.

“Holy cow, are you kidding me? I hate bagging groceries. I'd rather shovel crap than bag groceries.”

“Well, that's about what I'm offering. Come on down to the Jupiter Hilton and I'll buy you a Coke. We can catch up a little and discuss a little business.”

Cassidy hadn't ridden his old ten-speed in months, as there was an unwritten law governing the maximum age at which it was still cool to pedal yourself around town. He was well past it, but this was no time to stand on ceremony. It took him less than fifteen minutes to get to the Hilton, where Trapper was waiting on the bench in front of the store, eating four moon pies and drinking from a quart bottle of T.G. Lee milk. Sitting on the bench was an opened Topp Cola waiting for him.

“Youngblood!”

“Hey, Trap. Long time no see. How are the tropicals?”

“All signed, sealed, and delivered, except for one rock beauty. I couldn't bring myself to sell her. She has become a permanent resident. I could swear she recognizes me. When I come into the cabin she swims over to get as close as she can to me. She's amazing.”

Cassidy sat, out of breath, and greedily tilted back the bottle. It had been a hot, thirsty three miles of pedaling. After a minute, he could almost talk.

“I know. They have real personalities. But hey, what's this about a job? You're not pulling my leg, are you?”

“I almost wish I was. The jungle cruise business has just about gotten out of hand. Dave Booker brings boatloads of twenty-five to thirty tourists by most days of the week.”

Trapper, it appeared, had become a polished entertainer. He donned his Tarzan loincloth, wrapped himself in harmless snakes, and fake-wrestled sleepy old alligators. The crowd never failed to swoon. He would give a little tour of the camp, showing off whatever happened to be in the cages and pits at the time: bobcats, raccoons, lynxes, alligators, turtles. And, of course, Willie the parrot was a great favorite, sitting on low branches and begging potato chips from the kids. (“I tell them to brush the salt off first. It's not good for him.”)

“But basically, what it boils down to is that I need help running Trapper Nelson's Zoo and Jungle Garden. That's what I call it now. I even had postcards printed up! Those tourists will buy anything that isn't nailed down,” said Trapper. “It pays seventy-five cents an hour and I'll provide lunch. I need somebody to help me work up the trinkets and doodads, clean the cages, feed the critters. I mean, heck, it's getting to the point I don't even have time to go check my traps anymore. I like making money, God knows, but this really is getting out of hand. It's even starting to affect the Thursday night poker game. Last week the tourists barely had time to clear out before Jim Branch's boat pulled up. And he brought Joe Kern and Judge Chillingworth with him. I didn't have a thing ready for them. They joked around about it, but I could tell they were irritated. That ended up being a big night, too. At one point we actually had two separate games going. I didn't think they'd ever leave.”

Trapper took the last bite of moon pie and finished off his milk, shaking his head.

“I still don't get why they'd come all the way up there by boat just to play poker,” Quenton said.

“Yeah, well, come talk to me after you've been married a few years, Youngblood. You can tell me how much your wife likes having a bunch of your fishing buddies coming around, drinking bourbon and smoking cigars in her house.”

“Yeah, but they could find someplace to go closer to town, couldn't they?”

“Sure, but they
like
a little taste of the primitive. My place appeals to their frontier spirit. Why, some of those guys even bring guns with them, pistols. Lay them right on the table in front of them. I think it's supposed to be a joke, but it doesn't seem that funny to me.”

“Why don't you tell them to cut it out?”

“Well, I guess because I'm not used to bossing around circuit judges and state attorneys, Youngblood. I'm just the innkeeper. I provide a woodsy refuge from domestic bliss.”

Cassidy finished his drink and they sat watching the few boats heading out the inlet for some weekday fishing.

“Hey, Trap,” said Cassidy, “you ever been married?”

Trapper sighed. “Not so's you'd notice.”

“Yeah?”

“There was a girl, back before the war. We ended up getting married before I got drafted. Lucille was her name.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, I went off to basic training and left her running the camp. She got bored, I guess. She up and took off. Place was a mess when I got back. I didn't know where she had gone, so I got a lawyer and published a notice in the newspaper and divorced her. I still don't know where she is.”

Cassidy was surprised to see him looking wistful for a moment. His name had been associated with a number of young ladies over the years, but if he ever mentioned one, it was always lightheartedly. Lucille must have been different. Several seconds went by before Trapper snapped out of it.

“Hey, so about this job. Can I count on you?” Trapper said.

Cassidy pretended to ponder it for a few moments.

“Do nuns wear sensible shoes?” he said.

* * *

The footwear choices of various postulants aside, Cassidy was delighted to be heading out to Trapper's camp first thing the next morning.

On the way over he was thinking about how he was going to deal with his friends' reaction to this. He had already taken a lot of grief over the years, with some people dubbing him “Little Trapper” and “Trapper Nelson, Jr.” This was considered quite an insult by a few people around town who still believed Trapper Nelson was some kind of shady character, but Cassidy considered it a compliment.

He couldn't believe how much there was to do around the place. As elaborate as the camp had grown over the years, Trapper had been managing it single-handedly, except for a few weeks during the summers when relatives came down from New Jersey to stay in his “guest cabins,” primitive log structures he had built to rent out to hardy souls willing to rough it for a few nights.

This was familiar work for Cassidy. He had often “volunteered” around the place in the past, but money rarely changed hands. He was usually rewarded with gopher tortoise stew, fried gator tail, or some smoked sailfish or barracuda.

Cassidy got to work hosing out the cages of the various creatures. Robert, the bobcat, who looked like a peaceful tabby until he was approached too closely, was content to cower in the back of his cage while Cassidy worked. After cleaning, he filled Robert's bowl with scraps of mullet and turtle from the cleaning tables. Then he fed whole mullets to Stumpy, a ten-foot alligator who would have been twelve feet except part of his tail and most of one foot had been bitten off in battles with rivals. There were a pair of raccoons in separate cages who hadn't been named yet. Fastidious creatures, they cracked freshwater mussels and rinsed them off in the large water bowl Cassidy refilled for them. Trapper arrived as Cassidy was finishing emptying the traps of mice and rats that had been caught overnight, dumping the little carcasses into a zinc bucket for the delectation of the numerous snakes currently in residence.

“Good morning's work, Youngblood. Come on up for some lunch,” Trapper called.

Cassidy washed off at the hose by the cleaning station and sat down at one of the picnic tables under the chickee hut, where Trapper had laid out sandwiches, a citrus fruit salad, and iced tea.

“Wow,” said Cassidy. “Store-bought! What gives?”

“I splurge on occasion,” said Trapper through a mouthful of ham sandwich.

“I guess so. Somebody told me you sold a bunch of land to some developer. It was even in the paper. Is that true?”

Trapper shrugged. “You can't believe everything you read,” he said with a mysterious smile.

They ate in silence for a while until Willie the parrot flew over. If he didn't see anything worth begging for, he would fly back up to his limb and scream “cracker!” at them, so Trapper broke off a piece of crust from his sandwich and held it out.

“Cracker?” Willie said.

“Well, it's food, if that's what you're asking. And if you take it and drop it on the ground, that's all you're getting,” said Trapper.

Willie snatched the crust greedily and flew back to his limb, where he stood on one foot, holding the bread with the other.

“You're welcome,” said Trapper.

“His manners don't seem to have improved much,” said Cassidy.

“I've read that mentally they're like two-year-olds. That seems about right to me. And no two-year-old I've known ever read Emily Post.”

Cassidy finished his second sandwich while Trapper was on his third. There was one more left and Cassidy was pleasantly stuffed, but with Trapper around no food ever went to waste.