Randy White: The Man Who Ivented Florida

"How in the hell… I mean, damn it, Joe, you're talking nonsense."

"Say, Tuck," Joseph continued vacantly, "how 'bout we go jack-lightin' tonight. Kill some gators. They're giving Indians four bucks a hide over to Miami. Seven bucks to white men, so I guess you better handle the sellin', but goddamn it, I want to count the money before it hits your pocket-"

From the bed, a querulous voice interrupted: "Why waste your time trying to reason with that stupid Seminole? He talks gibberish. Nothing but gibberish. And I need my rest!"

Joseph shook away from Tuck and lumbered toward the shrunken figure in the bed. "I told you about that," he said.

To Tucker, the dim figure yelled, "Make him leave me alone!" Then to Joseph: "Go away, you red devil, or I'll buzz the nurses' station and have the orderlies tie you down again!"

Joseph found the plastic tube running from the sack into the old man and pinched off the flow. "Take it back. Say I ain't a Seminole."

Bright Eyes moaned, "Are you trying to kill me?"

Tucker was right there beside Joseph, and he whispered, "Hey Joe-will that really kill him?"

Joseph shrugged. "If it don't, I can choke him," he said.

Tucker turned to the figure and directed hastily, "Say he ain't a Seminole. Say it real nice like." He didn't particular care about the old man, but for Joseph to get mixed up in a murder trial now would completely screw up his plans.

"Okay, okay," hollered the man, "you are not a Seminole." His gaze swung to Tucker. "Now please get this stinking Indian away from me!"

Joseph released the tube, saying, "That's better." Bending over the man, he added, "I won't stand for disrespect." Then he turned and tottered back toward the window, which is when he noticed the sack Tucker was carrying. "Hey," he said, "you bring me a present? Nice can of snuff, maybe?"

Tucker pulled out the plastic bottle and held it up to the window. "Better than that. I got something here that's gonna fix you right up."

"Hum," said Joseph, clicking his tongue softly. "White liquor, maybe? Only, hey-this looks kinda yella. You ain't playin' no trick on me. It better not be-"

"It ain't whiskey, and I ain't playing no trick, you old fool." Tucker put his hand on Joseph's shoulder and began to whisper. "I got a favor to ask, Joe. Big favor that could do a lot of good for us both. Say-I bet they make you take a lot of drugs and stuff here, huh."

Joseph's mind drifted away, then drifted back again. "Nothin' any fun. I just take pills. All kinds a colors a pills. The fat nurse brings them."

"From now on, I don't want you to take another pill. Not a one."

"But it's my medicine."

"Hell, you don't look sick to me. You feel poorly?"

"Dang right I feel poorly. I'm old."

"I'd do it for you, Joe. I truly would. You wanted me to stop taking my pills, I do it in a second. Just 'cause we're friends."

Joseph said, "Sure, you can say that. But they stick 'em up your butt, you don't take them. They got about six or seven orderlies here, and I ain't as young as I used to be."

Tucker was shaking his head, a pained expression on his face. "Just pretend to take 'em. Gawldamn, you're stupid! No wonder you ended up in this shit hole, without me around to do your thinking."

Joseph gave him a flat look of warning. "I ain't that old, Tucker."

Tucker Gatrell said, "Okay, okay, okay," and began to whisper some more. After a few minutes, Joseph said, "Roscoe's nuts growed back? So what?" Tucker whispered again, and then Joseph said, "I'm the one they got locked up, but you're the crazy one."

Tucker said, "There ain't nothing in the world crazy about it. This water's got vitamins in it… minerals. Something. You know what they got now? Hell, they got whole stores now that sell nothing but vitamins. And you go to a grocery store, they got shelves and shelves of water. People actually pay money for it! This here's like two things wrapped up in one."

Joseph's mind drifted away for a moment, and he said, "My granddaddy, he used to tell me about that."

Tucker said, "Damn right!" But then he said, "Tell you about what?"

Joseph reached for the bottle. "Let me have a taste. I'll tell you if it makes me feel any healthier."

"Well, you ain't gonna notice it right off, ya idiot. Takes time." Tucker jabbed a finger at the side of his head. "I was drinking the water for only about a month when this here ear I lost in a fight started to grow back."

"You didn't lose that ear in a fight," Joseph said dubiously. "Some whore chewed it off down when we was in Caracas."

"Nicaragua," Tuck corrected. "And it was so a fight-sort of. But that ain't the point. The point is, it's growing back."

Joseph studied the pink stub of ear. It didn't look as if it had been growing. He tried to remember what Tuck had looked like the year before, but all that came to his mind was they way he had looked when they were young men.

"My granddaddy, old Chekika's Son, told me," said Joseph. "Water where the sick people could go and get better."

Tucker was nodding, sensing that he was winning Joseph over. Getting a little excited, too. If he could convince someone as stubborn as Joseph in only a few minutes, it wouldn't be hard at all to convince a couple of million normal people in the weeks he had left. He said, "Hell, I'll help bust you out of this place now if you want. Damn-wish I'd brought my gun." Tuck was patting his sides, just in case he had remembered.

Joseph said, "Nope. If I start feeling good enough to break out, I'll do it when I'm ready."

"But no more of them damn pills. I've been reading about that. Just drink the water."

"I'll see how it goes. I don't trust you, Tuck."

Tucker motioned to the walls, the ceiling. "I suppose you like living in this honey bucket."

Joseph looked at Tuck. "When I'm ready"-meaning it was not to be discussed anymore.

Tuck left, but Joseph kept the bottle of water.

In a rare lucid moment, Joseph Egret wrapped the bottle in his dirty underwear and hid it beneath his bed. The rest home's staff never looked under the beds, perhaps because to look was to acknowledge the existence of bedpans. They couldn't empty what they didn't see.

Joseph hid the bottle with the few valuables not already stolen by the staff (all they had left him was his deerskin boots and his old black Wyoming cattle roper's hat), and so the bottle was there every morning and evening when he wanted a drink from it.

He also followed Tuck's advice about the dozen or so pills he was supposed to take each day. Medications, the nurses called them, bringing the bright plastic capsules around on a cart in rows of tiny paper cups. Had he refused to take the pills, the orderlies would have been called-he'd already tried that. So what he did was toss his head back as if he was swallowing the pills, but he really transferred them into his big hands, to be thrown into the toilet later. The nurses didn't pay a lot of attention. They were busy making check marks on their charts so they could hurry and get back to their television programs downstairs.

On the third day, Joseph awoke, realizing that the numbness that had long deadened the left side of his body had disappeared. Like an arm that falls asleep and then slowly awakens, there was a strange residual itch, but it was not unpleasant. And the numbness was certainly gone. He also began to experience a growing restlessness, a sort of psychic itch-which was unpleasant. He had spent the bulk of his eleven months at Everglades Township Rest Home in a drug-induced reverie, never really coherent enough to realize or wonder how his life had degenerated to the point where he now carried a catheter bag on his hip as comfortably as he had once carried a. 38-caliber Smith amp; Wesson. This new itch filled him with a black depression that caused him to be feisty by rest home standards. He broke the tiny mirror in his room because he did not like the gaunt reflection that stared back at him. That did not assuage his despair, so he went from room to room breaking every mirror he could find. Joseph also discovered that he was desperately hungry, so he sneaked to the kitchen, threatened the head dietitian with a knife, and rummaged through cans of government surplus food until he found two pounds of hamburger, which he ate raw. On the way back to his room, he yanked out his own catheter tube, went to the bathroom, and, after enduring an initial burst of pain, found he didn't need the damn thing.