Part 6- unedited

It was a beautiful day in June when Julie showed up at the job. Nearing nine-thirty, I figured she had something to discuss, wanting to do it over my coffee break. This was a bit of a surprise since I hadn’t received a call, letting me know that she was coming. No, she didn’t want to have coffee. She had come to tell me that Danny was found dead that morning when his boss went to pick him up for work at Robert’s house. Oddly enough, it was Danny’s last day of community service. His mother immediately went to him, to try to wake him from his final sleep, finding him on his back with his feet crossed and arms folded across his abdomen. He had gently passed away in his sleep. It was the sixth of June 2006.

This news struck me very hard. Danny and I had been planning to go to the Keys when we stumbled into Julie’s life. 

The idea was to land a property management gig and take occupancy of a place near the beach or live on a boat, while composing and playing music around town. If we had done that, we may have not had the troubles that we ended up having, and would have possibly struck up something big in the music scene.

Dan had confidence in our act, seeing that as very possible if we got in the right area. He thought the Keys would be the place for that to happen. Then I remembered the list he had made that said, “The final move”, on it. 

I didn’t want to understand it, I suppose. It didn’t quite register to me what that meant but now I knew why he had spent a lot of time helping me ready the studio room at my house, giving me some lessons and guidance on working in there with the equipment he had given me.

He kept saying, “you’ll figure it out”, whenever I sounded confused about the recording process and with working on his compositions that he entrusted me to publish. 

He also gave me some art lessons on drawing portraits and scenery so that I could illustrate the children’s stories we had both written. 

He was making all the preparations necessary for the things he wanted me to do for him, tending to the business that needed to be handled so he could depart from this world. The road was being paved.

                        The strangest thing of all was recalling the dream I had the night before they found him. I was working on my truck but my truck and I were both in the river, in three feet of water. 

Something swam up along side of me and popped out of the water. This thing was a little over six feet tall, thin, covered in moss and other plant matter, looking very much like a rabbit or something. It startled me very much. 

Feeling a great sense of danger, I grabbed something and swung at the creature, striking it in the head, which knocked it out. 

After putting it in the bed of my truck, I took it to someone to explain what had happened. 

The creature stirred while I was showing it to them, so I grabbed a tool and struck it again, killing it. Then I realized that it was Danny. I had killed him. This really added a great deal to my grief, and was far too much to bear.

                        As if that wasn’t bad enough, Dusty had mysteriously died three days after Danny did. She was found in the yard with a mouthful of grass. The other dog freaked out to the point where the neighbors called the cops. It would have been nice if someone would have looked out there first because when Animal Control came, Jean answered the door and said the dogs were not hers- costing me fifty dollars to get the dogs back, even though one was a corpse.

                        Andy called around the third week of August or so, saying that he’d heard about Danny, asking me to come down to paint for him. Since I was so desperate to avoid going to jail for child support, having not yet received my disability insurance from Social Security, I agreed to do it. 

It was only to last a few weeks, which was just long enough to gather up the twenty-five hundred dollars I needed to keep from getting put in jail again. He told me to make sure I “bring the old lady along”. 

 In the planning stage, I called my kids and spoke to Cody, whom was receptive when I told him I was going to go to work for a few weeks because of the court thing, and that I would be out of town until then. 

We would resume our time together then. That particular three weeks was the longest three weeks known to man, a “Key West” three weeks.

                        Memory doesn’t serve up who took care of Jean when we left- maybe it was Aunt Rose. Julie booked a flight and reserved a car, and the bags were packed. Julie and I went to the airport to board our flight. We checked our bags and sat nervously while awaiting the prompt to board. 

After some time passed, I asked whether she had brought any pot for the drive down the keys to Big Pine, which she assured me she did. This was to be my first time on a commercial airliner, and boy, was I worried.

                        My thoughts of a “friend”, whining about motion sickness and having to take Dramamine to fly, crossed my mind. We opted to wait it out in the bar over a drink. Thoughts turned to crashing, as we boarded. 

Soon the force of the engines was throwing us down the Tarmac, tipping us back in our seats as the thrust lifted us into new heights. We seemed to just barely hang there, the weight of the plane dragging along behind the engines. Panic struck me for a moment but I stomped it out with other thoughts.

                        Now, I was all about the view of the earth below, and getting into the Mile High club. Curiosity somehow helped me decide it was a fair idea to try it… in the bathroom ALONE. It didn’t sink in, while the full surround of mirrored panels tried to tell me a story of security issues- things like surveillance cameras for anti-terrorism efforts. 

Aborting the attempt, shaving a few strokes off of my game, I finally realized it wasn’t a fair idea after all- Too Late. It must have been a sight, for who ever monitored the cameras, to see. Hopefully, I wasn’t the only case of that type of thing. It was pretty embarrassing.

We landed, retrieved our bags, and found a brand new Mustang waiting for us at the reception area. There was every rental car company to choose from. The car was gorgeous but that goes without saying- everything brand spanking new is gorgeous…. except for someone else’s newborn baby or someone else’s…. well, anything that belongs to someone else.  

Julie drove us out, finding a party store where I bought some libations for the drive. Julie used the lavatory to dig the smoke from one of her cavities. After I smoked four cigarettes in my wait, she finally came out of the restroom and got in the car with me. I had already soaked my shirt through, changing into a fresh one, due to the sweltering heat and humidity.

“I thought I was going to have to come in there, what’d you do, fall in?” I asked her.

She said, “No, I had a hard time getting it out”, handing me a pin joint.

 I asked, “Hard time getting it out? You’ve had two kids- the hardest part of the job should have been washing your hands and drying them off, so you didn’t get the rolling papers wet!”

We got on the road, heading for the highway through the keys. Now, I was expecting a vacation style doobie but then again, if you have to throw it out the window, you don’t want it to be a lot, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt, asking, “How many did you roll? And what’s with the pin joint?”

“I could only roll one”, she declared.

“Isn’t it like four hours to Big Pine Key?” I inquired. 

She said, “Yeah but that’s it- that’s all there was”. 

Now, I am confused, really confused. She had spent a half hour in the bathroom, rolling one single pin joint. 

Obviously upset, I asked, “that’s all there was? What? What do you mean, that’s all there is??? I thought you were going to bring some weed? I saw that man-made phallus you had when I moved in. Judging by the size of it, you could have fit a couple ounces of kind buds in that thing. And that’s it? That’s all you brought? AND it’s SCHWAGG WEED!” I

 was so upset; I started mimicking a conversation with a fictional passenger:

“Oh, pardon me, what’s that weed you have there, … brick-weed?”

“Oh, no, it’s dick-weed, you fool, my girlfriend, slash genius here, went through the hassle, and risk, of a federal drug charge to bring a cigarette cellophane with a tenth of a gram of the lowest grade weed in Michigan stuffed inside of her cavernous Vagina… vagina… vagina... gina… na… na… na!”

Oh, GOD, how stupid could I be, to let myself be pulled into a void so black? There’s killer pot that they grow up to sixteen feet tall, all over Florida, that we could have gotten hold of when we got off the plane. We would have been better off trying to score at one of the party stores on the way or mail it down ahead of us, as a general delivery, to pick up at the Post office. I was baffled that this woman was in charge of a trust fund, and the life of an eighty-four year-old woman. 

Thank God, Jean didn’t have a clue what was going on. She would have died from an aneurism or heart attack if she were in a mental capacity to mind. And here I was, guilty by association, and oblivious to what was in store for me next- like a lamb being led to a slaughterhouse by, quite possibly, the world’s finest specimen of a village idiot.

Andy had painted a Fantasy Island kind of picture, where a huge house stood in an image of Paradise. There was a Sports car with a T-top, Sea kayaks, an ocean style fishing boat, among other things, Key Deer being one of them. He volunteered to come pick us up at the airport in his “T-top” but then stated that he had to work too, which was a clever ploy to un-volunteer. 

He knew that anyone who knows about contracting work would never insist on someone taking a day off of making money while it was there to be made. He was a con but I needed money. So, there I was, once again, ready to fraternize with vermin. The price to pay was, yet, to make itself known.   

It was after sundown when we rolled up onto Big Pine Key, also known as “Big Stinky”. The Key Deer were in a group of about sixteen, munching on Birdseed and Celery. This was where we were to park. Andy had placed the food out there in order to have them in front of the house when we showed up. It was all part of the set-up as part of his con-job he was working on us.

We immediately noticed the bugs when we got out of the car but the sight of the miniature Deer, to a Michigander, was novel enough to disregard them. They were so docile that you could touch them, and they ate from your hands. The tiny antlers and bloated looking bellies reminded me of a pigmy goat we had when I was a child.

One of the does had been blinded in one eye by a vehicle injury. Several stories had been heard about the Key Deer but I’d heard of Jack-a-lopes too, so I didn’t believe it. Then the bugs could no longer be ignored. We started getting bit by bugs with stinging bites that were so tiny that they were invisible.

We went inside to find that everyone was in bed already. It was only around eight or nine p.m.  There was an inflatable mattress in the kitchen for us to sleep on. It deflated as we went to sleep, waking up in a pile if Vinyl.  Our genius host had put the rubber stopper in the cap backwards.

Andy was already gone by four-thirty in the morning. He had to run up to the Methadone Clinic, which was located all the way up near or past Homestead. When he returned, he decided to skip work for the day in order for him to baste us with his subtle attempts at seduction. That entailed going out on “his” boat.

Now, I love fishing, and boats, but I came to work and to enjoy a geographical change while I did it but this is my first day and it’s already off to a bad start, which means one more day without money for child support. Nope, Andy wants to go fishing instead.

Andy coaxed Julie with stories about his check being held for another couple days, while painting a tapestry of awaiting riches from future prospects, managing to get her to go buy poles, gear, bait and beer to go out on the ocean with. Under his spell, and holding the checkbook, she dropped a few hundred dollars at a local second hand store. And then at the marina fueling station, filling the very large diesel fuel tank as well.

The vessel was in the canal behind the house. Or was it the front? This was a Charter style fishing boat with a Pentax Diesel engine.  He took it instead of payment for a painting job- so he said, admitting to still owing the rest of the money for the purchase.  Turning the key, and steering was all he knew. As for the GPS, depth finders and the rest of the technical equipment that he knew nothing of, he asked me to try to figure them out.

Teaching people things has always been a pleasure, so I never thought anything much more than how unfortunate it would be to be as stupid as Andy. It took me about fifteen minutes to learn to use the technical gear, showing him the key points. Andy said that he had spent many weeks trying to figure these things out. Instantly, in his silence, I could feel that he hated me for it.  

The quality of the area and the fishing didn’t impress me. The first day we went, we caught a few Grunts, a Triggerfish, and a couple Yellow fin Tuna- all were pretty small. The second time we went, we caught two Barracuda that we cooked on the grill that same night.

Andy fed Barracuda to the Key Deer that night. He trapped the doe with the blind eye, and then put her in the back of a cube-van, tying her up with a pile of food near her. The idea was to lure a male into the van, lock it inside, and to take them to a person up in the mainland that was ready to purchase them. He never shared the name of this person, and I can only assume that it was one of his dope connections. 

Luckily, for the Key Deer, they didn’t cooperate with his plans. He locked her up in the fenced in portion of the yard, claiming that he intended to train her as a pet. Whether he succeeded or not, I cannot say but Andy didn’t ever succeed at much anyway. There are photographs of the Key Deer being molested, forbidden by law.

Two young men lived and worked with Andy and his mommy. One of the guys, Andrew, was a zealously religious person, and probably my sign from the supernatural world that I wasn’t entirely among demons. 

He was my subconscious reassurance that I was not forsaken, no matter haw bad things may seem to become. These two guys did a lot of bible study, and a lot of Ganja smoking. I thought that I could smoke with the best of them until I met these two. Geesh!

One evening, soon after I had arrived, they were instructed to take me out for a beer and some pool, under the pretense that they were to become better acquainted with me, so they took me out to a local bar called, Coconuts, on Big Pine Key, pretty close to the house. 

Andy had arranged to have a couple of his dope dealer buddies show up there. 

When they walked in, the bartender noticed that they were well hammered, especially when one of them fell from their chair moments after sitting down in it. Soon one of them was trying to sneak a pull from the bottle he had brought in.

They took no time cutting into me, asking to play pool with us. They also didn’t waste time at trying to trip me up in their little dope game, to get me involved with what Andy wanted me involved in, for reasons only Andy knew. It was obvious that the guys I came with were uncomfortable with being put up to this very odd and questionable thing that Andy had them doing.

As for the other two, they were not tolerated by the staff for much more of their disturbance, and were escorted out by the bouncers after about thirty minutes. Within minutes of that, we finished our beers and went back to the house. 

There was a silence among us that really said a lot about the whole affair. When Andrew got out of the car, he mentioned that he didn’t care for going to the bars or being put up to things by Andy but because he was living in his house he had to go along with things or at least make it look like he was. They knew that I knew what was happening.

After a few days, Andrew told me that he was going to buy a Sailboat.  He intended to sail to Jerusalem, where he was to go on a Pilgrimage, asking me to come with him when he went, explaining that he had been saving all of his money or most of it, and that he had it all planned out. 

As he explained it to me at work that day, I looked down at the floor, noticing an image that was created as a centerpiece in the mosaic tile. It was a Tall Ship with triple square sails and rigging. He took it as confirmation from God because it matched the ring he was wearing.  

He only needed a couple of hours off of work to go look at it, and since we were near where it was located, he walked there alone, stopping off at the Bike Week Rally to give a testimony, a message from God. 

He would later explain how he was filled with the Holy Spirit and moved to a great trembling and tears streaming down his face. He thought that the sailboat was meant to be his because of the scriptures that were written all over the walls of the cabin. He plopped down the fifteen hundred for the boat, and took it to where he could moor it.

Two days later, the boat had sunk. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Having no way to raise her, he planned to depart back to Texas, where he had friends, and had lived, most recently. He left with only the clothes on his back and the things he had learned of. 

The Keys of Florida had been nothing more than a Siren that pulled him from his course in life, momentarily. I was sad to see him go but I was also happy for his escaping. Or was it meant to be part of his trials and tribulations?

Despite my uneasiness, and my frustrations, troubles or difficulties, I was reassured with daily confirmations that I was being watched over. Danny, I wondered? One was that Sean Adams was here, and was also working on the project I came to help on. Joe Grimminck was here working on the same job, as well. We were all painting. 

They had been working for Andy up until Andy started doing what he does best, being an asshole and a tyrant, his little Napoleon complex- chasing off both of them with his antics.

They were immediately scooped up and put on the crew that the contractor holding the painting contract had working. 

Andy was sub-contracting for him, a pawn in the game. It was a typical scenario of the construction business.

On Key West, the condo project was a hotel that was being renovated for economic development. I’d see everyone when I got there to work. An interesting surprise, and to Andy’s dismay, was how elated they all were to see me. 

After a couple of hours, Andy’s statements regarding how we wouldn’t be drinking while at work, went to having lunch at the bar. 

We had started the day at four-thirty or five in the morning for our one-hour commute, taking lunch by ten-thirty or eleven, and calling it a day by one o’clock. Andy was drinking the whole time, starting off with the ride in, while he drove without a license. 

This didn’t help me in keeping my wits-end at all, especially with the whole “when in Rome” programming. My big “save the day” operation with staying out of jail was slowly turning into a big waste of my hope, and picking up speed towards what I felt was certain disaster. 

Had I any sense or wit in my employ, I would have paid closer attention instead of trying to stay focused on locking myself in as an asset where I had absolutely no business to concern myself with being. 

The worst thing I could have done, in my dependence on Andy, was to get recognized and praised for excellence by the painting contractor. Andy turned ten shades of red in a silent fury during the esteem I was given, while at Shannon’s Irish Pub, from the head man him self. 

Andy was now becoming fearful that I would ruin his gig, replacing him as the man for the job at hand. What he failed to remember was that I had my life in Michigan, and had no want for anything in Florida.

The next day Julie and I went to Bahia Honda to snorkel at the State park. This seemed like a great idea after all the great stories about snorkeling that Danny had shared with me. It was a fine idea… until I got in the water for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, for me, my stepfather had taken our family to see Jaws when it was previewing at Six-Flags over Atlanta Georgia- I was five or maybe six. When the diver, who was inspecting the sunken boat, pulled a sharks tooth from a hole in the hull, the Captains head rolled out into view. 

I went into shock and became instantly hysterical, peeing my pants. They ushered us out, and I have been traumatized ever since. Now, when I am in the water, everybody knows it. My body language screams out: “HELP SHARK”.

At about four feet deep I put my face in the water and started swimming around on the surface, slowly kicking my fins. The water was a bit cloudy from the weather stirring up the brackish waves, causing for great amounts of sediment to become loosened from the bottom. 

There were few signs of aquatic life but for a pair of antennae I saw pull inside a hole in the mud, it was a Lobster, so-called, protesting my disturbance. There was one or two small fish that seemed to have lost their way. The area seemed lifeless all through the Keys.

Looking around in the distance as far as I could see, I realized my vision was restricted to about eighteen or twenty feet. This limited sight made me very nervous. 

A slight panic snuck up on me. The water seemed to become murkier still. Hurriedly, I glanced around, looking for sharks, since the depth I was in was now a little bit deeper. That’s when I exploded with panic, scrambling for the shore like a madman. 

Snorkeling, for me, was done. Check that one off of my list of things to do. It must have been all of four minutes. Okay, now I was ready for a drink.

As I walked the area around the beach, land crabs scattered like cockroaches, and the place stunk of decaying vegetation and “low-tide”. Iguanas were everywhere. Bums were everywhere in the bushes. 

Thank God, I was leaving in a few weeks! But somewhere along the course of the weekend, Julie had decided that she was going to go back to Michigan for living needs. Little did I know, she was now seeking a job in the Keys and had plans of relocating the household to the area.

Julie made it sound like she was just going back for my tools and such, so that we could both make some money. Since I hadn’t brought anything with me, and Andy seemed to have a lot more in mind for me to do. Julie didn’t share her true plans with me in these regards. 

What I tried to tell her was that it wasn’t a good idea to go back, that we were going to be going home in a few weeks but all she did was conference with Andy, reassuring me that there was nothing to worry about, even though I explained how I felt like I was in danger- that I could feel something wasn’t right about all of this, that I was just there to get the money and we would be gone. 

There was something I just couldn’t put my finger on that wasn’t right. What I needed was for her to be here if something happened. It was hard to find a secluded place to do it privately but when I did I pleaded with her, begging her to listen to me, that I could feel something bad was about to happen but I didn’t know what it was, explaining that I sensed it deep in the pit of my soul. 

She said I was going to be fine, and off she went the following morning. 

The next day we left from the job in Key West. When we arrived back at the house, Andy decided we were going fishing. It wasn’t a choice for me to go along because he needed me to help man the boat. 

As we loaded it with gear I pointed out that the water line on the canal was ten inches lower than it had been, as indicated by the wetness on the coral. 

Though I am a novice when it comes to the ocean, it sure looked to me like the tide was out, which meant we couldn’t get out of the canal, past the coral flats that separated us from the ocean. Andy rudely said that we were fine, and that I didn’t know what I was talking about. 

Well, maybe I didn’t but it was a big boat with a draft that barely passed through the flats when tide was in. We only had one route to take that was marked by flags that were not very easily seen. 

Even though I knew it was a mistake, I got on the boat and he raced to get us to open water. As we raced across the reef, we kicked up a hell of a cloud of muck, leaving a grey and yellowish trail ten feet wide and spreading as we sped along.

Thoughts of the last time we had been out, and how I was working the bow, keeping at the ready for anchor duty, were running through my head. A sense of pride filled me as I held me eyes steady on the horizon that day, letting my knees bend in response to the waves moving the boat as it rose and fell beneath me. 

When I weighed anchor at his command, to move to a different spot, the turnbuckle had worked itself loose by the boat tugging in the rough waves. The pin had backed itself out completely, so we lost the anchor. It surprised me when I pulled only a line out of the water. 

I instantly sensed that there must be some kind of nautical folklore about it- perhaps an Omen or a superstition regarding some kind of doom. It was shameful of me to not have inspected the fastenings but then again, it was HIS boat, he should have said to do it. HE was the Captain, and I was in his care. That’s all there is to it. 

Filled with pride for having adapting to being on a boat in the ocean, I never revealed my thoughts or my willingness to foolishly accept responsibility for Andy’s boat and anchor.

We ended up cutting the fishing short because we were taking on water, as indicated by the lights on the dash that said the bilge pumps were not shutting off. We raced back to the house.
end of pt 34

The next day, we awoke to find the boat sunk where she slept. Seawater was two feet over the water line, which meant that the bilge pump couldn’t keep up with the leaking. The battery had become shorted out when the water reached the terminals.

 The entire Pentax Diesel engine was under water- under SALTWATER. Andy became agitated and in a panic, while scratching a hole in his thick skull as he tried to awaken what was left of his brain in order to come up with an idea. So badly, I wanted to say that I tried telling him not to take it out when we did but I kept quiet as his rat ran on the wheel in his head, chasing cheese it would never get. We unloaded the boat in a mad scramble.

After the boat was emptied, I asked him if we could use the boat winches mounted on the seawall where she was tied up. They looked like they were used for lifting boats out of the water, to me. They were rated for fifteen tons each according to the stamped information on them but, of course, one didn’t work. 

The winch at the stern did work, which I explained is where all the weight is at, and most likely, the leak. He said that wasn’t what they were for, and that I didn’t know what I was talking about. His genius idea was that he was going to run to Home Depot-a two hour round trip, to buy treated lumber, so WE could build a dry dock to put it on, while making the repairs.

After remaining quiet and biting my tongue, I asked him, “How would we get the boat on it, if we could possibly build such a thing?” A long back and forth argument ensued, trying to get him to listen to me. We had the crane system, the winches or one at least. 

All we needed to do was attach it to the stern, take the weight off so it would stay afloat, letting the water run back out of the leak to sea level- at least. Then He could get under it to inspect the hole and possibly repair it, with some type of marine product for underwater emergency repairs, long enough to get her to a place where it could be tended to properly by a competent marine mechanic. 

He kept dismissing me- even though I was a highly skilled carpenter with a builder’s license, and all the expertise to help solve the problem at hand. Andy insisted that I was to bow to his supreme knowledge- even though he knew that I knew he could barley sling paint.

What was going on in his head? I can only intuitively speculate. He must have started feeling a range of worries and emotions that were a result of his own insecurities. Everything came to a head while on our way to Marathon to get supplies for building a failure.   

Despite my assistance, he insisted on building this, so-called “Dry-Dock”. God only knows what he thought he was going to build. Every time he asked me something, my explanation or idea only conveyed to him that he was clueless, to which he’d say that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Finally, it sinks in that Andy and I are not, nor had we ever been, friends. He had been jealous of Danny and I since we met him in 2000. He had ruined expensive equipment at Prospect Studio, bringing Cocaine, Heroine and dirty skanks with him. Andy had stolen from us, and ripped us off for over fourteen hundred dollars when we worked for him on a Crystal Springs project in Grand Rapids. 

What was I thinking? Here I was, over twenty five hundred miles from home, trying to salvage my reputation with the court, win my kids love and admiration back, while trying to piece my life back together- all while working for someone who has never treated me right or even deserved any of my time. 

Holy crap! Had I made a mistake or what? Even though I am realizing I am being abused, it doesn’t really sink in until the phone rang.

Andy happened to pull into a Tom Thumb convenience store, so he could buy a pack of Camels and some Sparks, when Julie called me. Andy then say’s, “You better not be talking to your ol’ lady when I get back”. As he gets these words across my ears, I see a claw hammer on the floor between the seats in my peripheral vision. 

Instantly, I saw myself bury the claws into the right side of his skull, ripping a large piece of bone from it, killing him. I imagined how I would spend my life in prison for losing control of myself, which frightened the hell out of me. Andy wasn’t worth that. 

What Julie and I said to each other, exactly, I cannot recall but as soon as he was out of the van and into the store, I jumped from the van and dashed across the highway to a marina Tiki-bar.

Coincidence or irony, I am not sure, but I immediately called my friend Dennis Smith who explained that he was in the Keys working with a roofing crew. I quickly explained that my distress was presently in the Keys, where it looked as though I might be stranded. 

Quickly, I became pleasantly astonished that my very good friend was also in the keys. And he was not just in the keys but right across the street from where I had ran to hide! How could it be that so many people that I knew, were here?

Dennis was staying in a beach house with the crew, right next to the store- a lifesaver. I explained the whole story to him while calming down at the beach house, telling him how Andy and I had hit a dead end, and that I was alone here because Julie went back to G.R. for a few days, to get some things from the house. 

As the day slipped away through time, I was observing these people he knew and worked with; so-called “friends” of his. They turned out to be a bunch of addicts- all smoking crack. Hoping for advice or a solution, I turned up empty handed. I had him take me back to Andy’s the next day, dropping me off on Big Pine Key to walk back from the highway, giving me a little more time to think about what to do.

Sure enough, shit was hitting the fan all the way around. Andy accused me of trying to kick the door in on their house, taking a crap in the yard, stealing from him, and if that wasn’t enough, he also claimed that his mom saw me in the nude- groping myself on the couch, AND that I tried to get in her pants! A barrage of insults came at me- all were absolutely absurd. 

He was clearly in a drug-induced state of delusion and paranoia. Little did I know, what drugs or how bad. All I knew was that he had instructed me that he was kicking me out. He ordered me to gather my belongings and put them in the van. 

While I did this, I said I would get a room for Julie and I at a hotel when she got back. That wasn’t accepted. He was making me leave right away, telling me that Julie could stay there with him and his mom. He told me that I’d probably have to get a room at the Heartbreak Hotel in Key West, which revealed his plans of running off with Julie, being the prize that she was. 

Otherwise why would he mention that place, specifically? There was not much I could do but just go along with the situation for the moment.

Andy intended to drop me off in Key West, where I knew I would be able to seek refuge with Sean, so I didn’t worry a great deal. Everything would get fixed when Julie got back.

 When I asked him about money, he gave me a small amount, saying that he would have a check in a day or so, and that I could come by the job to get it.

Along the way toward Key West, he stopped at a few different places with a claim he that was trying to get a place for me to stay but I doubt that was the truth. He was more likely bragging about firing another employee or scoring dope or both. OR maybe he was conspiring with others to try to destroy me while I was there stranded, to look for me on the streets. 

 Everywhere we went there were no positive developments for me. When I asked for Sean’s number, Andy told me that wasn’t going to happen. 

Whether it was that I couldn’t stay because he figured Sean wouldn’t let me or that I couldn’t stay because he wouldn’t let me, is up for an otiose debate but when he got out of the van one last time, I gleaned the number from his phone and called Sean as soon as I set off on foot from where we ended up, which was at the painting project. 

The van he had parked there with tools and gear in it came in handy, leaving my belongings, which included a ten pound bag of chicken leg quarters that spoiled and smelled up the place up really well, giving Andy something genuine to bitch about.

In the meantime, Andy got on the phone with Julie, telling her his version of what went wrong: that I had wrecked his boat, wreaked havoc on the house, assaulted his mother, and made a mess of his van. He explained that he had given me my money but that I must have “blown” it, which insinuated that I spent the money on drugs- a crack spree. 

This only added weight to his con-job on her, which was certainly the plan all along. That is, if they didn’t work this whole thing out together- playing the situation out by ear but that may be giving them more credit than either of them deserve.

Of course, Sean took me in without a hesitation. It was a long confusing walk to Sean’s place, since I had no clue where I was or which way I was going but for a general direction- East. When I finally got to the apartment complex, it was around one in the afternoon. The sun had long since heated the whole island up to a steam, while my reality was turning into a genuine White Squall.

Sean was living with a woman named Desiree and her five-year old son. She worked on the Naval base, as a gunner’s mate or something, at the gun range. She got a cut-rate deal on the apartment because she was working on the military base. Sean was working nights, drumming in a band that had a gig playing at a place called The Island Dogs. The tourist season hadn’t really begun yet, so they weren’t playing but for a couple nights a week.

Municipal workers, and inmates from the local jail, were busy cleaning up the island before any real money showed up, hiding the reality with fresh sand and glitz, while filling up the jail with everyone they could sweep up off of the streets. Keeping the jails full meant having plenty of laborers to help clean the place up routinely. They were working all over the Keys, dressing up everything they could as they tried to conceal the massive amounts of storm damage, and even more degradation.

There were rotting whale carcasses that were washed up onto the sandbars, a Casino barge washed up on the coral flats, boats destroyed, half sunk, and washed up in the Mangroves, empty plastic bottles and Styrofoam in the waterways and bushes everywhere. There were homeless people with tents, and homeless people without tents. There were homeless people in the Mangroves, and homeless people living under the viaducts and overpasses. There were homeless people walking around and riding bikes. 

They hung out in any shad they could find, where they tried to hide the visuals cues that gave them away. They stopped you everywhere you went, asking for lose change or a cigarette. Key West looked very much like a scene out of the movie, Slum-Dog Millionaire.

My mother tried to warn me but I never listened, and of all the times I never did, this was the one time that she was actually right. Feeling like Gilligan, I found myself in a modern day shipwreck without a Ginger or a MaryAnn but most of all, without a Professor. Severe Depression set in quickly.

The shock of my realizations had me locked inside Sean and Desiree’s apartment but I knew I needed to find a job to escape, and to accomplish my mission. The local newspaper appeared to have jobs but what I found out was that those jobs were bait, fishing for Social Security numbers.

You see you don’t have to pay taxes and other employee expenses on the money you pay to someone who only makes five hundred dollars for the year. What these places do is pin an amount under five hundred bucks on every social security number they get, and they get those numbers by advertising for help wanted in their failing establishments. You never get the job. They get your information and use it to show where the money is going.

Anyway, the day I got up the nerve to go around to apply at these places, Sean say’s that he would let me use his moped to job-hunt with but he left it at The Island Dogs the night before because he had been drinking, causing him to take a cab home. It was decided that I take the bus to the area that I needed to be in, and that I would pick up his moped to ride back when I was done. 

His car was at the apartment complex but was not legal, so if I can get his moped it would save him from a cab fare later. It’s a plan he agreed with, so I set off to find work.

Julie finally calls me back, agreeing to meet up with me at the moped location, announcing our break-up, which really upsets me that she makes this decision after I told her that something bad was going to happen. Just like that, she is living in the Keys with Andy. She turned around, saying she would drop my things off at Sean’s. 

It didn’t seem like I could have been anymore flabbergasted but there I was, definitely, and royally, screwed. “Wow, how am I going to do this?” I thought. “She’s breaking up with me for ANDY?” Things just kept getting worse and worse and it would be quite a while before I could appreciate the true blessing of our separation.

As I walked to the moped, there was an argument that turned into a fight between some low looking people who were sucking down Hurricane Lager on the edge of the lot. I was splattered with warm beer as a can flew past my head. “Great!”, I yelled. “I am job hunting, you assholes!”

Riding back to Sean’s on his moped, as planned, but I having no idea where I was or how to get where I needed to be, caused me to call Sean to explain where I was at, so that he could guide me a little bit. It was my first day venturing out on “Coquina Rock”, as I heard it called. 

My ignorance of where I was going took me through some pretty rough looking neighborhoods but I found my way to a main road, stopping for smokes when I finally recognized where I was at from my earlier trips with Andy. 

When I got inside the store, I realized that I didn’t have my wallet in my pocket, causing me to have a huge panic. Frontal lobe syndrome strikes me again! Forgetting I had stuck it in the compartment under the seat, for fear I could lose it, I instantly felt I had lost it along the way. I went out and jumped on the moped to try to backtrack, hoping to find it before someone else did, which was highly unlikely in a land full of vultures.

No sooner than I got the moped turned around and moving again, I found myself immediately surrounded by police cruisers. They commented, saying that I had run a red light. There was clearly no red light in the area to run, and I tried to argue that point but was ignored. 

The five officers stood around me, taking turns asking me if I had any drugs or weapons. They were under the impression that I had drugs in my possession because of my long hair, bandana, and the fact that they had never before seen me in Key West. 

Repeatedly bombarded with interrogations, and having searched the moped and myself multiple times, they found nothing that they were looking for. 

The officer that wrote me a ticket was the female officer but then they all wrote me a ticket, all but one of them. 

One for the fictitious red light, one for no license, one for no moped registration, and one for driving under the influence. There was no Breathalyzer, no sobriety test, no evidence gathered- nothing but the claims they made against me. 

They arrested me and impounded the moped. My first day venturing out of the house on my own had come to this. “Welcome to Key West, Zach. Enjoy your stay”.
end of 36

I found myself in the Monroe County Detention Facility, where I cried for two weeks or more. They sentenced me in a Kangaroo court, giving me ninety days. I soon learned I was front-row to what goes on in the area, like how they get some of their money for the local economy, which is by keeping their jail full.

They go to great lengths to bring people to jail. If you don’t spend enough money in a particular establishment, the place has one of their buddies on the force arrest you for anything they can get you for. If you don’t leave enough of a tip for your drinks, they will plant contra-band in your coat or cigarette pack when you go to the bathroom, and when you walk out, you will find yourself being stopped by a friendly police officer, only to surprisingly find yourself going to jail for whatever it is they claim to have found on you. 

If you happen to get in the way somewhere, they’ll arrest you for trespassing. You can walk out with a drink and be on the street drinking it but if they don’t like something about you, you will get arrested for open container because it’s against the law when it’s convenient for them. 

If you laugh it off, and go back home to Alaska, they will bring you back on the charge. Maybe you’re from Maine or Nantucket? Don’t try to duck it. They get extra federal money, in addition to their regular funding, to back them up, and they’ll bring you back in a bucket. 

They are getting their money at the taxpayer’s expense. It’s a license to rob people, and they use it every single chance they get. They are still, to this day, trying to get two hundred and forty eight dollars from me, that I refuse to give them, for the fine on the red light charge.

Dennis Reeves Cooper got kicked around so badly by the Key West Police Department that he started his very own newspaper where he takes great pleasure in exploiting the local absurdities. It’s called “Key West, The Blue Paper”.

Key West is sometimes referred to as Bone Island because of the human remains that wash ashore. The Keys were long ago used as sacred burial grounds by Native Americans before any Europeans arrived. It has always been a haven for criminals, that is, ever since the days of Columbus- 520 years. 

They used to throw up Lighthouses to coax unsuspecting sailing vessels into the shallows, where they ran aground only to find themselves being raided by thieves who came upon them in Skiffs as though they were going to help. Ships crew and Captains found themselves to be robbed and most often killed. The money in the area, originally, came from this practice.

Modern day Land Pirates now coax their prey into the area with the promise of work and good pay. Word on the streets of many states is always touting the Keys as having lots of work- a partial truth. Yes, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, just as anywhere you go. In the coastal region, where there are severe storms and hurricanes battering the shacks and businesses, as well as the constant dilapidation of extreme poverty, there is always work that needs to be done. And if you’re Cuban you get the job because they don’t really want to pay anyone from the states to do it.

 Between the Cuban people and the drunks, who are willing to work for whatever the pay is that’s available, things are easily dealt with. Everyone else is a sucker, becoming strapped for cash and unable to drive back home, losing their possessions to the pawn shops while being led on that tomorrow things will be different. Tomorrow everything will work out.

The tourists bring the money every other week for the numerous festivals they organize but when it’s gone they count on storm damage claims. Many people file claims that they lost a boat in the storm, to receive money from FEMA, money that does not belong to them nor did they contribute to the taxes that provide the funds to real victims. 

We mainlanders all pay for their claims, essentially taking the money and using it, in most cases, to buy Cocaine and other drugs, and keeping them supplied with Hurricane Lager and 305’s. They brag about how they seceded but they beg for our money. Every single festival is a beggar, and so many fools go to take part in the deviance. 

And when it comes to the drugs, the money is going to foreign lands that are waging their own wars against us as a country. Poisons.

Roosevelt declared the Florida Keys a national park. What happened to that, I wonder? It’s a sham and a lot of people know the truth, some of them thankful to have escaped with their lives, unwilling to relive the nightmares with revisiting the memories.  

Me? I had to have a hands-on experience. It didn’t occur to me, how much trouble I was going to have. It was suppose to be “easy-peazy”.  It would have been, too, if I had not came with the fool I did or had some family with a lot of money living here or didn’t mind being robbed of all but my regrets.

Every single step I took along the way, there were people asking for change and cigarettes. Forty thousand people are on a two-mile by four-mile slab of crap for an island. I am told ten thousand are thieves, ten thousand are authorities, five thousand are employed and possibly respectable, four thousand live on boats, six hundred live in the jail at any given time, and four hundred live in the shelters, mangroves, streets and rooftops. 

And here I am, right in the middle of it because of my failure to do some of the homework first. What a fool I was, a drunken fool.

Now, as I am wondering how the world blew up in my hands, I remember Andy and Julie discussing the Witchcraft in the area. Julie tells him that she’s a “White” Witch, and Andy say’s that he’s a “Warlock”, which must be Floridian for Iguana crap because that’s closer to what he resembles than anything. 

Now, I don’t know much about these sorts of things but there were many clues that the witchcraft business was a bigger piece of the Caribbean area than I could imagine. Maybe it’s because of the excessive exposure to the sun and heat, evaporating the seawater. 

People are delusional from something, could it be they are drinking the water by breathing the heavy salt air? Am I hallucinating any of this myself? Stranded in the Florida Keys and stranded in my mind, I was just getting started.

They say we are given great difficulties to sort through in life, as we are capable of handling them because God wouldn’t give us challenges that we couldn’t handle. Truth is, I never thought that much of myself but I was definitely being challenged. 

Could it be the necessary evil to help me to quit drinking? Was it Danny and the angels that were keeping me from giving up in my spirit?

For the first time in my life, I needed serious help. My baby brother, Josh, was living in St. Pete but I couldn’t get him to help. 

Our father, (my stepfather), had recently moved into his place, so he wouldn’t let me have the address or phone number for fear that I was harboring a violent resentment towards “dad”. Whether that was true or not, obviously, was reinforced with our history and decidedly so, I suppose. 

Even now, I still have no address for him, and his dad has since moved to Pennsylvania, or so I’ve been told.

It sure would have been nice to have a little moral support from a family member right then. Making attempts to reach someone from jail was hard. 

A phone call was managed to Bruce, who was on his way down to the Bahamas to have a stay at his family’s resort home.  He planned on coming through the keys first, shooting to the Bahamas after visiting Julie and Andy in Summerland Key. 

The place was fifteen miles from the Monroe County Detention Facility, where I sat in a dormitory-style cell that held sixty-four men. I hoped for a visit from him. 

What I hadn’t realized was that he could become negatively influenced by those people he was to visit, which is exactly what happened. 

He was right there, within fifteen miles of where I was drowning in an ocean of despair but came and went without responding to my distress signal. In the coming years I would discover that Andy and Julie used my identity to purchase a house and a vehicle, when I began looking into correcting my credit score.

There was a bookshelf in the dorm, thank God. It measured thirty inches by forty inches Even though they were very light from dry rotting, guys were using the books as workout equipment, filling pillow cases to lift with them or using them as a barrier between the germs on the floor and their little patties or maybe they were floor protectors... none of it made sense but then again, not much of anything I ever saw an inmate do made sense. “Another Vote to stay in school,” I thought, while trying to find a book to take to my bunk. 

 It was hard to find a book that wasn’t too destroyed to read, let alone a book worth taking the time to read in the first place but I found and read them as often as I could.

About once a week we were taken out to the “yard”, which was a small part of the building having no roof. It was lame but it was “outside” in the heavy humid air and sunshine. Fighter-jets shot through the air above us, adding a layer to our senses in addition to the stench of island decay.

It was such a disturbing realization, what I’d gotten myself into. I was unable to handle my state of duress. My whole, so-called, life was being yanked out from under me and I couldn’t take it. The nightmares were so bad that they had to relocate me to another part of the jail, where people didn’t have to rest before their slavery on the island. 

Inmates provide the clean-up labor on the streets and beaches, in their preparation for tourist season and providing the labor for festival cleanup. Most of these guys had jobs to do on the street. But the place they moved me to slowly became interesting, and after a week or two I made a few friends.

The movie, Catch Me If You Can, had two key characters. William Hanratty was the cop, played by Tom Hanks, and Mr. Abagnale was the guy he was after. 

The Abagnale character is a real person- the uncle of Jean Paul Abagnale. 

Jean Paul had been living in the keys for some time but was locked up, like so many others, on charges stemming from Cocaine and alcohol. 

William Hanratty was in his late fifties or early sixties, who was also a Veteran from the Philadelphia area. He was a musician, and like so many others, was playing his guitar on the street for the tourists. He was living on retirement and Veterans benefits and had a mental condition residual from the military and alcoholism.

There were shiploads of musicians, artists, performers and treasure hunters and the like, locked up. It seemed like they all had been associated, in one way or another, with cocaine. There were witches, heathens, and once in a while a normal person- all victims of a struggling economy. Now, I was among them but only until my scheduled release.

When I walked out of jail, a day or two after Christmas, my olfactory senses became filled with the stale smell of cigarettes in the breeze. It was as if I was wearing an ashtray for a respirator. As I left Stock Island, all I could think about was how badly I wanted a cigarette, so that I could have a fresh stink in my nose, while walking along the road leading away from the jail, dressed in litter and filth. 

Tobacco packages, butts and alcohol containers were like the leaves of fall on the ground.

Crossing the channel was the only road to Key West. This was known as Cow Key Bridge, home to whomever could keep from being arrested, Cow Key being Stock Island. They called it this because it was the shipping port for receiving meat in the lower Keys.

There was a tattered American Flag jury rigged on a stick that was flapping in the winds. It was attached to the side of the guardrail that secured the roadway across the bridge. Looking around, I spotted a man below. I approached, explaining my circumstances and asking for a cigarette. It wasn’t hard to tell that he was another Veteran of the Armed Forces.

Bill Hanratty had told me, but now I saw, that there were lots of vets on the streets in the Keys. Rolling me a cigarette, the man filled me in on many key points to being on the street in the Keys, especially Key West. 

These were: 

don’t walk around with a backpack or a duffle bag, stay away from people with them, don’t stop and talk to anyone on a bike or drinking, keep away from the beaches, don’t try to hitchhike, and if you have no place to sleep you need to go to the Safe Zone. 

The cops cannot touch you at the Safe Zone but between seven a.m. and eight p.m. you have to watch out because if you get stopped, and you have too little money on you for a hotel or a restaurant, they will arrest you for whatever they dream up. 

There are all kinds of things from disorderly conduct and vagrancy to trespassing. It doesn’t matter if you are clean and legal. And if you try to take it to trial you will sit there while they file for numerous continuances until they give you time served.

Time served means you get out of jail but it also means you are guilty of whatever they say you did. If you try to go to trial, they will get a Psyche evaluation that says you are not fit for trial, which gets them the conviction too. You will not win. 

Come, spend the money you have and get the hell out. 

They will take you off of the street if they don’t want you there. You will find no work and if you do, the money will be so small that it will just barely fill your daily needs. Money is your only ticket to freedom, and you need lots of it or just enough to get out on a bus. If you can get some from a family member go to the bus station with it right away- GET OUT.

When I listened to him, part of me was concerned but another part of me was not willing to take his warnings as reality, figuring he was another alcoholic with some type of weird mental condition. Thanking him for his time, the cigarette and his advice, I left for Sean’s.

My walk back to Sean and his girlfriend’s apartment gave me time to think about the words from the Prophet of Cow Key Bridge. It also gave me plenty of things to observe along the way. My hope was for some contrast but I observed much to support what I had just been told. Even still, I had the mindset that I could find work to make the money I came for, and then some. 

If nothing else, I would be able to sell what tools I now had here to buy a bus ticket home since Julie did me such a huge favor by bringing me a bunch of crap that should never have been brought. 

The stuff she dropped off at Sean’s was just about every single thing I possessed, things like Danny’s guitar, Four Track recorder, my prototypes of the Dice sculptures I had made for a desktop pencil caddy, air compressor and all sorts of tools and things that I needed a truck to cart around. God bless her pointed little head.

When I got back to the apartment, Sean’s girlfriend explained that she and Sean had broken up. She was moving to the mainland near Jacksonville but I could stay there until she moved out. 

Sean had come home in the wee hours of the morning with a white crust in his nostrils. Assuming he had been screwing around after the bars shut down, with another woman and drugs, she threw him out. 

Her generosity included buying me a cell phone to use while trying to find a job- a means of receiving communication from any prospective employers, since mine was now lost in the shuffle.

In the meantime, I had been dragging my tools and air compressor all over the island hoping to be able to sell them to a pawn shop but the pawn shops were filled to the gills, revealing the history of people who spent what little they had to come to the Keys with, hoping to find work. They left what little they had left in life there in order to go back to where they had come from. 

And those are just the people who were lucky enough to make it out with their lives. It sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, I know, and wish it were, but I swear on the lives of everyone I share love with that it’s the truth. I witnessed it and almost lost my life as well. 

I was beside myself in shock that Julie had dumped me to be with a junkie. I was enraged that I fell into Andy’s scheme, and that I failed to remember he was no good. How could one man be so stupid, so consistently, as I had been?

My brain worked rationally long enough to realize my wisest decision would be to find a Community Mental Health office.  

By now, Sean’s ex-girlfriend had moved out. I was sleeping in Sean’s Oldsmobile that was left in the parking lot at the apartment complex. 

Before she moved out, I set up an account on an Internet social network. It was my hope to make some friends in the area that could help me. 

It made sense to use every avenue I could to find a solution. What I found only added to the problem, which happened to be three women who were friends of Julie and Casey- area witches who were always in communication by computer with them.

When they had me over for dinner, which was everything mushrooms, a lot of hints came out in the open. Everyone who knew me knew that I couldn’t eat mushrooms. They added comments about “other” people, conveying things that went on in the past with Julie and Casey. They suddenly vanished shortly after we started hanging out, removing all traces of our “friendship” on the computer.

My days were now being spent getting to know the area. Internet access was found at a K-Mart and the local public library. The K-Mart thing was new, an effort to help bring in a larger customer base but when they found the boat people and homeless to be the ones using the computers the most, they began organizing “technical difficulties”. 

There was a huge war on the island between the haves and have-nots. The majority are individuals suffering from addiction and poverty, casualties in the game of consumerism- the scrambling to give us an income, only to target us to take the money back. 

Consumerism makes us work more to have more to spend, making us need and want more of everything, while what we really need becomes neglected and unimportant. Eventually these people become unheard of or from.

Among my thoughts about what I was seeing, I remembered Danny saying that we’d live on a boat. “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do”, I thought. Having a boat to hide on would be better than having to keep walking around for fear of being arrested for vagrancy, and I could find someone else who’s been trapped here that can sail the vessel. With a Captain, we’ll make our way up the coast, up the Saint Lawrence River, into the Great Lakes and up the Grand River- RIGHT BACK HOME! It’s “easy-peazy”, as Danny would say. 

Now all I had to do was find a boat. And since a hurricane was just through the area, there should be sailboats all over for free or next to nothing. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It has to float, that’s all. Hoping for a break, I put my ear to the vine.

My feet found the local CMH office, where I was reunited with my medications that I had been prescribed back home. 

The guy I spoke with seemed genuine, giving me a camouflage Velcro wallet that he had just picked up at a flea market, after I mentioned how I lost my wallet in the process of the moped being impounded. He directed me to some shelters in the area that also served hot meals, explaining that one was a men’s shelter where I might find a room to get back on my feet. 

All I needed to do was find a job within two weeks. He also gave me the address of an employment center that housed the Department of Human Services, suggesting that I apply for assistance and build a resume for the talent bank. 

All of these bits of information were uplifting. My confidence in him soon built to what felt like a comfortable level of trust and friendship. With a smile and a renewed spring in my step, I set off for these locations.

When I came out of the building, I had food stamps, Medicaid, and a resume in the Talent Bank that I also submitted to several employment prospects. Finding a bench, I sat down to get my head together, deciding on what to do next. 

A man was already sitting there smoking a cigarette while waiting for his wife. He gave me one, and we talked about how we both played the Harmonica.

This man and his wife were both homeless, living in a van that was parked somewhere. There was work on Stock Island, at the crab shacks and on fishing boats. He told me I would find some work there. 

 There was also a place called Anchors Away, an A.A. meeting place. The only problem is that you have to walk by every bar, liquor store, drug addict and dope house to get to it. 

Little did I know, he and his wife were both Crack addicted, and I found myself right in the middle of some kind of drug transaction that I wanted nothing to do with.

I started going to Anchors Away that night for the six-thirty meeting, and then attended every night, hoping someone would see me in my struggle to do good for myself, that would help me to get back home somehow. 

So many people had ulterior motives that I couldn’t blame any of the A.A. patrons for shutting strangers out. It was not as fruitful as I had hoped, and I never received much by the way of an opportunity but I did receive a kind word and a few dollars.

The men’s shelter served a mid-day meal, so I made it a point to find my way there to get acquainted with how things worked, and whether there was an opportunity for a place to stay there. 

Eventually, I got to speak with the man who ran the shelter. He reminded me of Danny in so many ways. He was a musician with lots of equipment and guitars. A Golden Retriever named Bailey was his companion, the two of them making for a jovial pair. 

The fact that he was so unintimidating in appearance and nature, made me at ease. He took me in with requisites that I get a job and stay clean of drugs, alcohol and filth. This provided a huge relief for me.

Soon after moving in, I found that he and the man from the CMH office were friends. 

One night I was called into the end of the building that he was occupying. There was some paperwork that I needed to fill out, along with some further interviewing questions about my background that he thought of. 

Oddly enough, a television was on in the room where they were watching Porn together at the time. I thought that it was strange that two men would be watching porn together but didn’t really take interest in what they had going on or why.

The next day, I received my general scope of responsibilities, which was to police the grounds for trash every day, and to mop the bathroom and laundry area. The day I began my duties, the facilitator decided that it was a good time for him to shower, coming in and stripping down as he tried to engage me in a seemingly innocent conversation while I worked. 

Quickly, I became uncomfortable but continued mopping, while minimizing my interaction, and avoiding his insistence to impede upon my ocular sense. When I refused to glance his way, he became hostile and short- no pun intended. It started to sink in, after awhile, and I realized it was weird, that he pointed out where his bed was, and how he made references to Cheetos stains on his penis from snacking and masturbating. 

It finally dawned on me that I had been selected as a playmate, preying on my situation and my medical history.  Shocked that I had been set up to be victimized by the guy from the CMH office, the images of the two of them running some kind of freak show became more real. The shelter started to show that it was nothing more than a roach motel. 

Well, I was definitely checking out as soon as possible.

It happened to be Sunday when I decided to check out Stock Island for work but I don’t think I knew that, since I rarely know what day it is. 

The island environment has that affect on a person. The choice was to wander around to find work or stay in the trap. 

Anyway, the fishing doesn’t stop until the season does, unlike regular employment that generally doesn’t work on that day or so I told myself. 

The fish houses were open but I was told that there was no work and sent to another place where I might find a job. It wasn’t long before I had been all over the place, coming up with nothing but another dead end. 

Stopping a High-Low driver, he sent me to a salvage yard where boats were scrapped, saying that there are always people working on boats. 

My feet couldn’t get me there fast enough. The day was nearing six pm. 

After going into the office of the yard, I was sent to the end of the lot to see if there might be a boat owner around who may need help. I doubted anyone was going to be around or willing to get off of a few dollars but I made a last stitch effort to fulfill my mission for the day. 

When I got to the end of the yard full of boats in dry dock, I found an expensive looking vehicle parked next to an old Shrimp boat and a very large tourist fishing cruiser.

There were two older gentlemen working on the keel of the Shrimp boat with some body filler and fiberglass. 

One of them asked me if I knew how to work with the body filler, asking me to prove it by mixing some up and applying it, which I promptly did. 

They hired me on the spot and I worked the rest of the day. They laughed at my sales pitch, saying that I was willing to work for the first week at no charge.

The job was cash, and I was tickled- elated. Now, I was getting to do something I had never done, and I was filled with hope that I would recover from my mission at getting the money I came to the area to get. The first money I received was taken to a bank where I immediately started an account.

Eventually, I found out that these guys were all ex-cons, and the boats were distressed vessels that had been sunk. They had no value what-so ever but these guys were making them look like they were safe by patching them up in any way they could, asking me if I had ever seen M.A.S.H.- mentioning the phrase “meatball surgery”. 

They were brokering the junk for the scrap yard to sell to people who wanted to use them “one last time”. It didn’t matter all that much to me, I had my own problems to handle. 

Their con job was a bit alarming but meant little to me, that is, until two strangers started snooping around.

Instincts told me they were investigators, and when the guys came around that I worked for, they also said that they were detectives. That’s when they brought in a third man, also an ex-con, who put me to work on his Dive boat, a Manta, once the boats we had been working on were done. This was another D.V. that he intended on taking across the gulf to Honduras. He mentioned that I could go with him, illustrating the scenario of the adventure with all the seductive trimmings.

The idea was that the boat was going to be turned into a dwelling that he would use to go take his son from a Honduran woman he had been married to, and then disappear with his son, who would live on the boat with him. 

Lots of red flags went up in my head. I played along with him, seeming to entertain the idea for myself in order to keep the money flowing until I was to be done with him. Soon it was revealed to me that he was another person in the grip of cocaine addiction. 

Now it made sense when I recalled the guys I worked for talking about their associate getting hung up on the rocks. I thought that they meant with his boat.

 A short while later I was told, by the original guy that hired me, the company was being “run out of the area”, and that I could meet up with them in Alabama to continue working.

 There was no way I was going to take them up on that. I had eight or nine hundred dollars saved up, and that was enough to get me out of there and back to Michigan. It was short of my goal but what was I going to do? 

The day they left the area, I had them take me to the bank at lunch to close my account and cash the last check. They paid me for the rest of the day before they left to head back to the mainland at two o’clock. My work was to last until six p.m. that day.

When I returned to the yard, I had all my money in my wallet. The plan was to finish the day, get paid from the Manta job, and go to the bus station in the morning, cutting my losses.

About sunset, I headed for the shelter to pack up what little I had left of my possessions. 

Passing by a small road through the mangroves that had been blockaded with a pile of broken concrete, I was stopped by a young woman who asked me for a light. This was a place where I had seen and avoided people who hung out there drinking, and who knows what else. 

Subconsciously, I could feel fear of the area but today, with a pocket full of money, and filled with the joy that I was getting out of the Keys, I decided to be friendly- giving her a lighter to use. “Keep it.” I said to her.

She asked me a series of questions typical of acquainting one’s self, which I was happy to answer. And since I was starving for attention, I soaked it up. Then she asked me if I had any dope, to which I answered no but that I was leaving in the morning and would love to have a puff. Pulling a brass pipe from her pocket, and holding it to my lips, she lit it and I smoked from it. The taste was strange, like vanilla.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the mud without my pants. My red duffle bag that held my meds and personal belongings was missing and so was my wallet. It was pitch black out and Mangroves surrounded me. 

In a panic, I stumbled around looking for my things- my pants, anything.

 The Moonlight penetrated the thick overhead vegetation in few spots but I made out a trail, stumbling frantically through the Mangroves, muck and trash.

Struggling for what seemed like forever, I found another pile of concrete near the edge of a road. 

Exhausted, I sat on the cement pile to catch my breath and think. 

At some point I looked around the pile, my eyes catching a spot where the moonlight glowed on the rubble. 

There, on the broken concrete, was my Camo wallet.

 Happiness was but for a moment when I realized that the money was gone. 

Of course it was. In tears, I searched through the pockets inside, hoping to see a stash of cash through my watering eyes but all I could find were business cards and some receipts that I had been accumulating to tell a story of their own. 

As I pulled them out, sadly lamenting the loss, I found a Bill enfolded in the receipts- a One-Hundred Dollar Bill. 

This single bill made me so happy that I forget I am sitting there in my underwear, or that my bag, filled with some very important things, is gone.

Determined to find this girl to get my stuff back, I set off down the road- a road I was not familiar with at all. A group of four or five young men are walking toward me on the road, commenting: “Nice pants.” as they pass by. 

It’s then that I realize I am now walking around in my underwear and a t-shirt in public but I am so mad that I insist on passing it off as swim wear. They, of course, have no idea who I am asking about.

It seemed like I had been walking for miles and miles, and maybe I had ,by the time I found my way back to where it all started. My bike was the first thing I found to have disappeared. 

Going in to the Mangroves, I was happy to find my bag. 

Further in, I located my pants. 

The losses were: one bike, one phone, my dignity, and all the money but for the hundred bucks. 

It was an absolute travesty. It’s so cliché to say, “I’ve never been more humiliated,” but I hadn’t ever been more humiliated. And the strange thing is, just when you think that, you discover that you can be more humiliated, which I was about to find out.

Still, determined to find this woman, I stomp off down the road of fools to find a group of guys in front of a two-story house but I am so angry that I storm right past them. They were asking something that I assumed to be an attempt to sell dope, so I ignored them. Then it dawns on me that they may know, or have seen, this girl.

Turning around to go back and ask them was somewhat pointless. They weren’t going to tell me anything I wanted to know but I tried anyway. 

As I am standing there with them to make my inquiry, flashlights, assault rifles and a whole squad of goons grabbed me and rolled me up in a wad. They cuffed me, taking my wallet and removing the last bank note I had been lucky enough to retain, threw me in the back of a paddy wagon with two other guys, and then hauled us off to jail.

The officer had commented on his keeping my money, and they would be charging me with soliciting to sell cocaine. Certain I was going to be found innocent, I worried little about it. In a while I would see a judge, explain the whole incident, and I’d be on my way to Michigan.

Several “continuances” later, I demanded to speak directly to the judge. 

My “Public Defender” said it was a pretty gutsy move on my part, explaining that it was a Felony charge, and that there was digital video evidence. 

Well, conveniently enough, all the evidence against me had been lost. My council did nothing to provide a rigorous pursuit of defense. He did not motion to have the case dismissed.

When I went to court to be heard, the judge said how he couldn’t believe that I was in such denial of my drug problem, sentencing me right then and there to a day short of a year in jail, which stuck me with a year of probation that wasn’t transferable. 

This kept me in their little system, which made it extremely unlikely that I would get out. The routine was to violate people just before it was over- another part of the scam on the funding for programs. One way or another, I was going to pay for my time spent in the Keys. This shattered me.

The one thing that helped me to stay sane was, writing. The other thing that helped was working in the kitchen. Ideally, you try to get into the kitchen, so you can eat a little bit more than what they normally serve. It was all garbage but you get a bit more of it. 

Eventually, I was fired for my antics and practical jokes. There was a Log Book that we had to sign but the page was left empty and wasted, to me. I took it upon myself to enter actual log entries akin to a Ships Log, entering things that portrayed the actual goings on only in metaphorical illustrations. 

The guys I worked with got a big kick out of it, and a star was born. Now I was invited into the mop closet to smoke cigarettes that we got from the kitchen employees.

The cameras were located in many places, especially on the mop closet entry. It was always comical to think of the guy manning the surveillance monitors, who would see us coming out of the closet like a bunch of clowns getting out of a V.W. Beetle at a circus. Fifteen guys coming out of the room one by one, carrying a broom or mop or dustpan- whatever they could carry out, like it was normal routine activity. 

As if the guard didn’t know what was going on. It always cracked me up when they did that, wondering why the surveillance system didn’t have audio as well.

One day, I was fired from the kitchen. 

It wasn’t for the butter that I put on the backside of the cooler door handle, or the baking grease I smeared on the mop handles, or for the balled up cake residue left in the pan- that I placed on the floor near the bathroom as if someone crapped their pants. 

It wasn’t for switching the contents of the barrels that held the powdered sugar and the Corn Starch or for smuggling salt and pepper back to the dorm or for being caught smoking. 

And I didn’t get fired for playing the pots and pans like percussion instruments or for doing unflattering impersonations of Mrs. Alverez, the kitchen lady, or for eating an entire roast beef that I took from the O.R. cooler. 

 And It wasn’t because they found twenty containers of peanut butter while doing a routine search of my stuff or for putting jelly in someone shoes before they got up to go to work.

 I was fired because an English chap, that started working with us, decided to try getting in on the fun by urinating in a cup he had been drinking lemonade from, which he placed in the O.R. cooler after trying to offer us “lemon tea”. 

Someone had taken the cup from the cooler thinking that it was actual lemon juice because of the seeds that were in it, and either drank from it or added it to a batch of tea. 

They took me directly to the disciplinary wing called, Alpha, telling me that I was on thirty days confinement for pissing in the tea. What could I do?

The cell they put me in was on the upper tier. A young guy was already in there, so I was glad to have company… for about two days. He had very long hair, like I did before I cut it to work in the kitchen. 

Noticing the dirty nails and scratching made me suspect that he had a hygiene problem. The problem was that the dirt turned out to be blood. 

 It didn’t take long to talk him into cutting his hair a bit, so he asked me to help him with it. I agreed and we went to the officer’s desk, while we were out for our one-hour a day to shower and what not, asking to use the clippers.

When I dove into his hair with the clippers, dozens of Nits were easily seen. I freaked out because I was dealing with lice and didn’t want to be. 

They sent us to Medical to be seen and we were sent back with some chemical solution to treat with. We both had to stand naked in the shower area for almost and hour with the stuff on us. 

After we finished I was relieved to have gotten past it. There was no more sleep disturbing scratching going on after that but my sleep was disturbed anyway, when a ruckus two cells down made me jump out of bed.

Looking out the window of the door, I could see the clock that said three thirty, as well as, a guard on the floor below, watching the cell doors to see if anyone was up looking that way. 

There was a guard standing at the door of the cell with the commotion, and some muffled shouting. Then there was a bunch of thumping and screaming, and a loud crash as the person being beaten was slammed into a stainless steel cart on the catwalk, that for some strange reason was in front of his cell. Blood was everywhere. 

I will never forget the faces of the officer’s that did it. One kept his head shaved and had a nasty scar on his head from a bullet wound that he received in Desert Storm. Later, I found out that this was retaliation for filing a complaint and suing the officer. 

Whether that’s true or not, I cannot say. What I do know is that they attacked and nearly killed him. Four officers were involved.

The very next morning, in what I understood as an attempt to keep any lawyers from trying to find a witness, our cell door windows were completely covered with a plastic coating that prevented us from seeing out. A recipe file card was taped over a small hole they left in the center to peek in at us with. 

When they delivered breakfast, I asked the trustee what went on. All he could tell me was that a trail of blood two feet wide was left on the floor that led all the way to the medical office.

Just before my thirty days were up, I started scratching at night. I thought I was going mad. After putting in a kite to see a nurse, I was told that it was Scabies. 

They gave me some cream to apply to the areas. Here I was, fearing that I would get lice from the kid.