CHAPTER 1
Florida air is different; every Floridian knows that. To the beach town people, Atlantic or Gulf, Florida air is salty and soft, and even tourists notice the difference between the air in Fort Lauderdale and the air in Cincinnati.
But inland Florida, the air there isn’t beach air. The air further inland is thick and heavy. If you hold your hand out the window as you drive, you can feel it move through your open fingers almost languidly. It’s silky and dense, and smells of pine and dirt and, in some cases, swamp.
Someone born and bred in the inland areas of Florida can tell the difference in the air even five or ten miles south of the Alabama/Florida line, or at least they think they can, especially after a long time away.
Jennifer Sheehan could, and when she’d driven over the bridge from Mobile, she’d cranked her window all the way down. Her ’66 Dodge Dart’s air-conditioning hadn’t been conditioning much for at least a couple of hours, anyway.
The heat had rushed in with the wind. For a moment, Jennifer felt a wave of moist warmth flood over her face and chest. Then the temperature in the car became the same as the temperature outside. She stuck her arm out the window and let the wind blow through her fingers, and breathed deeply.
She hadn’t thought she’d missed the scent of Florida but, as soon as she smelled it, she knew she had. Suddenly, transposed over the view of the highway, were other images that were almost as real, and flew by almost as fast. Her mother hanging laundry, barefoot and wearing a blue dress. Herself at six, running through the sprinklers in her flowered romper. Drinking from Grandma’s hose, so thirsty she drank it hot instead of waiting for it to cool off. She had sworn she could taste metal and rubber on her tongue.
Two lines of sweat had developed almost instantly beneath the rims of her sunglasses, and she’d pushed them up onto her head, squinting at the too-white sunlight. She had swiped at her cheeks, then pulled the glasses back down.
Now, an hour and a half later, she realized that she was only about forty-five minutes from her destination. She wasn’t ready, and she was thirsty. She pulled into a Gulf station on her right. I-10 hadn’t quite made it this far east, and US 90 was still a two- lane trip through the sticks. The last filling station had been a ways back, and there’d been a line, so she pulled up to one of the pumps. She had just grabbed her purse and gotten out of the car when a skinny guy in his early twenties appeared out of nowhere. He wore tan coveralls that were embellished with grease stains, and he was wiping his hands on a shop towel. His red hair was receding early, and there was a smattering of freckles on his cheeks. He smiled at her. “Fill ’er up, miss?”
“Yes, please.” Jennifer’s throat was dry, and her voice sounded funny to her after a full day of not speaking to anyone.
“Check your oil?” the guy asked, as he lifted the nozzle.
“No, thanks,” she answered. “But could you check my water?”
“Sure thing,” he answered. “Keys inside?”
She nodded at him. “Do you have a soda machine?”
“No, but there’s a cooler inside. Twenty-five cents.”
“Thanks.” She stretched her back, pulled the hem of her red T-shirt back down.
“If you need to wash up, the ladies’ room is in the back on the right,” the man said. “You can get the key from Mike.”
Jennifer nodded her thanks, then walked across the lot to the door. There were a couple of pickups parked out front, and an AMC station wagon parked in the open bay.
The bell above the door tinkled as she opened it, and cool air drifted out to greet her. It wasn’t cold, but it was a lot better than the air outside.
There was a counter to her left with assorted fuses and hoses and other automotive needs. The wall behind it was covered with posters and car ads cut from magazines. Some of them went all the way back to what looked like the mid-fifties.
On her right was another counter with the cash register and some snacks. A countertop wire rack held dusty postcards from places that were at least fifty miles away. In the window behind that counter, the AC unit chugged and wheezed. It was assisted a bit by the green metal fan on the counter. The fan blew tendrils of dust out toward Jennifer.
At the end of the counter, two older men in ball caps and shirtsleeves leaned toward a transistor radio. On the other side of them sat a thin man with a tuft of gray hair and a pair of coveralls on. He was lighting a cigarette, his ear turned toward the radio. All Jennifer could make out from the radio was the tinny sound of a large crowd hooting and clapping, almost drowning out the man who was speaking excitedly.
The men all turned and looked at her as the door closed. The two customers nodded at her, and the gray-haired man exhaled some smoke and gave her a tobacco-stained smile.
“Howdy, miss,” he said.
“Hi. May I have the key to the ladies’ room?” “Yes, ma’am you can,” he answered. He reached
behind him, where several sets of keys hung. He removed one that had a block of wood with Girls written on it in black marker.
“Thank you.”
Right outside and around the right,” he said as he went back to his radio.
Jennifer took the key and walked back outside. The skinny guy was washing three-hundred miles of dirt from her windshield. She walked around the side of the building and opened the door with a woman’s figure on it.
She used the restroom, then ran the water in the white sink until it was cool. She held her hands underneath it and patted her throat, the back of her neck, her face. She looked up and frowned at her reflection. She hadn’t slept much the night before, too nervous to relax, and she’d left New Orleans early. She looked as tired as she felt. Her green eyes were marked with little twigs of red, and her face looked pale despite her tan. She tried not to feel sorry for herself.
Her warm, blonde hair was a mess, and the underside uncomfortably hot and wet against her neck. She pulled the big barrette out, pulled her hair into a ponytail as best she could, and clipped it up in back, letting the ponytail flop over. Her hair grew well past her shoulders, and it still touched her neck, but at least it wasn’t hanging all over her.
She reached into her shirt and tugged at her bra straps, then dried her hands, threw the towel away, and went back outside. The bathroom had been dark, and she’d left her sunglasses on the passenger seat. The June glare singed her retinas, and she looked down at the sidewalk as she walked back inside.
She opened the door again, and the whooping and hollering of the men inside drowned out the little bell.
“I told you, Ben!” one of the men shouted. He held out his hand. “Gimme my dollar!”
“Aw, George, I only got a dollar-fifty on me,” the other man said as he pulled out his billfold.
“Then you got enough to stop for a beer on your way home,” George said, laughing.
Jennifer put the key by the cash register, then slid open the glass cooler in front of the counter.
“Told you not to take that bet, Ben” the man behind the counter said. “Everybody but you knew Secretariat was gonna take it.”
“Everybody did not,” Ben said, handing George some change. “Twenty-five years! Ah, who cares, anyhow? I’ll stick with baseball, fellas.”
When Jennifer straightened, the man behind the counter was headed her way, and the door opened behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see the skinny guy from outside.
He smiled broadly. “You’re all set, miss. I topped off your water for ya.”
“Thanks.”
“What does she got, Ned?” the man at the register asked as he rang up her can of RC.
“Four-fifteen,” Ned answered.
“Four-forty-seven,” the man told Jennifer.
She reached into a zippered pocket in her purse, pulled out a five, and handed it to him.
“Keep the change,” she said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” the skinny guy said as he walked past her. “I heard y’all hollerin’ all the way out there. Is it over?”
“George took my dollar,” Ben said.
“Again?”
“Thank you,” she said to the man behind the counter, who just nodded.
She stepped back out into the relentless heat. The clouds were building and darkening further east, and she hoped that she’d get underneath them before the rain was over. In summer, it rained every day around three, for about ten minutes. Unless there was a storm. Every Floridian knew that, too.
She slid back into the car and, when her hand brushed the scorching red leather seat, she was grateful she’d worn jeans instead of shorts. She cranked the engine and stuck her soda between her knees before pulling back out onto US 90.
The station she’d had on back near Pensacola was long gone. She reached over and punched at the buttons, past a gospel station, some news, and then a country and western station. Finally, she found a station playing Tony Orlando & Dawn. She was ready to cut the yellow ribbon into a hundred pieces, but she left it.
She felt her heart skip just a bit, from a mixture of excitement and dread. She hadn’t been back in eleven years. She’d be there in less than an hour. Suddenly, she felt more like an eighteen-year-old girl than a thirty-year-old woman, and she had been one scared and broken teenager.
She tried to distract herself with the radio. Sang along to “Drift Away.” Tried not to scream when “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” came on. She had nothing against Jim Croce, but she’d heard it at least twenty times since Mobile.
She finally shut the radio off altogether, and let the silence be her company for the rest of the drive. She had just finished the last of her warm Tab when she rounded a bend in the road and saw it.
The sign was exactly the same as it had been when she’d left, except they’d adjusted the population a bit and touched up the orange blossom.
Welcome to Dismal, Florida! Population 6,028, at least one of whom murdered your family! Have a nice day!
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