Tim Dorsey - Hammerhead Ranch Motel

The man slid his stool over to Art and held out a hand. “Name’s Jethro Maddox. A name is what a man makes of it, not what others may make of him. I sometimes write my name in my shorts-”

“Right, right,” Art said impatiently, and quickly shook the hand. He snatched his change off the bar and took a fast sip of beer. He put the can down and turned toward the door. Something made him hesitate. He decided he’d better have another sip for the road, and he reached back for the can. He took a second sip, paused, and started gulping.

“You remind me of my greener days, when I, too, had unquenchable appetites, or was that Gertrude Stein? It doesn’t matter. It was Paris in the spring and the wine made me burn with desire, and then I beat a mime with the bottle-”

“Please stop talking,” said Art.

Art then experienced an unusual rumble of emotion moving up his chest, and the next thing he knew, he was facedown on the bar sobbing like a baby.

“Cowards and men do not cry the same, and a man can cry with dignity and not confuse the two. But when women get going, they can sometimes throw ashtrays with the velocity of Sandy Koufax, and it is best to leave the house.”

“Will you shut up!”

“It is a woman that is causing you this pain, is it not? I was married to four, which is also the number of wisdom teeth I was separated from, and they caused me much less distress in the end.”

“Shut up! Just shut up!”

But Jethro Maddox did not shut up and Art did not stop crying until the fourth round of beer. Art didn’t want to say anything, but it just blurted out-about how he was dying and the engine blowing on his car, and then more sobbing.

“We are all dying,” replied Jethro. “I do not say that without compassion, for death is in a hurry with you. Find something worth living for and grip it by the neck with both hands… I have found something, and it has changed me forever.”

“Don’t tell me-Hemingway.”

“Of course, Hemingway. Touched my soul. Once I started reading, I could not stop until I finished it all.”

“I had to read it in school,” said Art. “The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea.”

“What?”

“His masterpieces.”

“No, no!” said Jethro, waving Art off as if he were talking foolishness. “I haven’t read a word of that stuff. I’m talking about the Hemingway biographies. I’ve read all twenty-three.”

“But if you never read him, how come you talk like-”

Jethro cut him off, reaching in his pants and producing a Berlitz pocket reference book: English-Hemingway/Hemingway-English.

“The Papa mystique made me question my existence,” said Jethro. “That is why I joined the Look-Alikes. They are my whole life now.”

“Look-Alikes?”

“We gather in Key West every year for the look-alike contest at the Hemingway Festival. There are something around three hundred of us, with a permanent colony living in trailers down on the island. A British entertainment consortium discovered us and signed us up. We tour five months a year.”

Jethro pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it to Art. “Jethro Maddox, assistant regional manager, Hemingways Unlimited Ltd… Live appearances, historic anniversaries, ground-breakings, movie extras, children’s birthdays.”

“That’s an old card. We don’t do the birthdays anymore since last time when a couple of the guys threw up in the kiddie pool and on the bunnies.”

Something on the television caught the bartender’s attention and he turned up the volume. A newsman appeared on the screen, talking dramatically into a weatherproof microphone as he walked along a beach.

“…This is Florida Cable News correspondent Blaine Crease reporting to you from the Cape Verde Islands, where the latest hurricane spawned during this treacherous season has dealt a devastating blow to the simple people who inhabit this remote atoll…”

The camera panned with Blaine as he moved through the village. He came upon some stilts without a hut on top. A campfire burned in front of it, and a small animal the size of a Cornish game hen turned on a makeshift rotisserie.

“…The destruction and the hardship is so severe that the residents have been reduced to cooking their own pet dogs!…”

The people sitting around the campfire behind Blaine couldn’t have looked happier.

When the report ended, Jethro Maddox stood and picked up a ratty canvas bag. “It’s time we got going. This is a moveable feast.”

But Art was still immobilized by intermittent sobbing.

“We’ll never get to Kilimanjaro with that attitude.” Jethro grabbed him under an armpit and coaxed him off the stool. He led Art to the parking lot and got him into the passenger seat of his blue Malibu, then went to the driver’s side and climbed in, and they began heading east across the panhandle on Highway 98.

They entered Okaloosa County, “ Florida ’s Finest Beaches,” and drove through Fort Walton and Destin. Recent storms had taken bites all up the coast. Some homes were still set back high and safe with wide beaches; elsewhere, waves lapped the stilts. They entered Walton County, “The Best Beaches in Florida,” and drove through the movie-set town of Seaside, featured in The Truman Show. They entered Bay County, “ Florida ’s Most Beautiful Beaches,” and came to Panama City, spring break territory. Jethro eyed the motel balconies. “Life has a cruel way of taking the youngest and the brightest.” The balconies were enclosed in bars and cages to prevent the brightest from falling on their heads.

They continued east. Fighter jets buzzed high above Tyndall Air Force Base. They hit Gulf County, no motto. The waterfront housing was spare and humble as they approached Port St. Joe. They stopped at the Indian Pass Trading Post near Cape San Blas and ate shellfish in Apalachicola, down on the elbow knot under Florida ’s panhandle.

In the restaurant, Art spoke for the first time since The Flora-Bama. “Where are we going?”

“It is not the destination but the journey.”

Art stared sadly at him.

“Okay, we’re going to Tampa. I have a gig with the Look-Alikes.”

I t had all the makings of a Girl Power roadtrip, “Daytona or Bust.”

Steppenwolf was on the stereo as City and Country headed out of Apalachicola after a seafood lunch.

“If this were the early 1800s, we’d be in the third-largest cotton port on the Gulf,” City told Country. “The bridge and half the things in town are named after Dr. John Gorrie, the first person to figure out how to make ice cubes.”

After Apalachicola, erosion had its way with the highway. There was no beach, and the waves hit the side of the road and sprayed cars. Some sections of road had collapsed in the sea and been repacked with new tar. There was no shoulder. If the wheels went out of the lane, they rolled into the water.

City drove with one hand, then the other, pulling her T-shirt off over her head and revealing a purple bikini top. She put on a tennis visor. In the passenger seat, Country slouched way down and stuck her feet up on the dash. She pushed a floppy hippie hat down over her long hair. She had a white tank top from a Jacksonville radio station and white shorts, and she watched the road over the top of raspberry-tinted Janis Joplin glasses perched at the end of her nose.

They stopped for gas and cheddar popcorn.

“I taught my Rottweiler Chinese,” the Miami man ahead of them at the cash register told his friend.

“Get outta here.”

“No lie. You know how everyone in Dade is buying vicious dogs because of crime? I read where burglars are giving the dogs commands, because everybody uses the same ones-sit, stay, heel-and houses are cleaned out while expensive pit bulls and German shepherds stand there stupid.”