Wild Honey

WILD HONEY

Enrique Flores-Galbis

2010

NYC.

I was standing in the heat and the hay on the side of the road, nineteen dollars folded snug in the pocket of my cut-off jeans. I earned that money carrying two large golf bags four hours in the August heat. By the tenth hole my legs felt rubbery, the straps of the heavy alligator leather bags were burning into my thin shoulders, but I wouldn’t let myself fall behind–– I was working for the tip. As I dragged myself up the last fairway, I heard the ladies arguing about who paid the caddy last, and suddenly the bags got heavier. My tip was slipping away.

When I finally made it to the top of the hill, I dropped the two bags. The gold plated clubs jangled and clanged just as one of my players, the lady with the lime green skirt, was lining up her last putt. The other caddy was holding the flag, looking at me like he was measuring the distance between the sharp red tip of the fiberglass pole and my heart.

He was an older guy who took the bus out from the city every morning, a real pro, the caddy master’s favorite. He had actually tried to teach me a thing or two about the art of caddying but he gave up by the third hole. He realized that I was just like the rest, in it for the fast cash. For the rest of the round he kept his distance, not wanting my sloppy amateurism to mar his perfect performance.

After the players added up their scores, Mrs. Harris, the lady with the short, lime green skirt waved a twenty at me.

“Would you be a dear caddy and bring me the change?” she asked breezily, then walked off toward the club- house.

The other caddy was shaking his head at me as he folded a twenty and a five into the pocket of his white polo shirt.

The first time I caddied they gave me a twenty, - let me keep the two dollars, but she wants change. As I rushed past the caddy, he tapped his shirt pocket and chuckled, “No tip for Juan today?”

I didn’t even slow-down. I clanged past him to the back of the pro shop, threw the clubs onto the rack– didn’t bother to clean them up, then I walked into the pro shop to change the twenty.

I could see her through the glass doors at the back of the clubhouse sipping on a drink, her free hand working on the top button of her shirt. She saw me, but she kept talking to her friends like I wasn’t there. Caddies aren’t allowed inside the clubhouse, so I sat down on the bench to the right of the doors.

I hated being someone’s donkey for a dollar a hole, then feeling like a cringing beggar when it came to getting paid. But I needed that money. School was starting soon and I was determined not to wear the hand-me downs or the weird clothes my mother bought at the Army of Salvation Store.

On the first day of school a dark girl named Toni made fun of my pants. Actually they were my brother’s yellow pants, and she was right, they didn’t fit me. When I tightened the belt to keep them up, they ballooned out like a yellow accordion hanging on my waist.

Toni always wore black chinos and pointy boots with Cuban heels, pressed shirts, mostly paisley or dark colors, never tucked in, her black hair slicked back. She was the exact opposite of what I thought American boys would look like, but even stranger than that she was the spitting image of what Americans thought all Cubans guys looked like.

Toni and I became good friends that day. It was her idea. She waited for me after school to tell me she was sorry for making fun of my pants, then she asked me if I played pool. Toni still made fun of the way I talked and dressed, but she never did it in front of the other kids.

I was thinking about Toni, when Mrs. Harris breezed through the reflections on the glass doors of the clubhouse. She put her left foot on the bench right next to my bare leg and asked, “Hey Ramon, you got my change?”

I didn’t bother to tell her that my name is Kiko, or ask her why she was so cheap.

I just smiled like an idiot, and handed her the two singles. As she laid the vivid green bill on the bench next to her pink tasseled golf shoe, her knee drifted, but I didn’t look up¬–¬– I could feel her looking down at me. When I reached for the bill, she smiled and I saw the red lipstick smudge on her right canine. It threw me off, and for an instant my hand froze just under her shadowy right thigh. Suddenly Mrs. Harris swung her foot off the bench grazing my knee. She did an awkward two-step shuffle to catch her balance, and then pushed back in to the cool clubhouse. I was glad that she didn’t stick around, because then I would have had to thank her for her miserly tip. I stuffed the money in the pocket of my cut-offs and then started walking down the long driveway to the road.

Toni lived in an old Victorian by a rail spur that serviced the Copaco slaughterhouse. She had a big pool table and a parrot in her living room. We used to play after school while the parrot scuffled around our feet cursing. I didn’t know that the only time the parrot did not curse was when he was trying to sneak up on you. One day as I was lining up a shot he took a nip out my Achilles tendon with his nasty, sharp bill that looked like it was made out dirty toenails. It hurt so much that I accidentally kicked the little green bastard across the room. It made a papery lunch bag sound when it hit the wall. The parrot was barely walking, weaving tipsy like a drunken sailor on T.V when Toni came back.

I confessed that I kicked her parrot, but Toni didn’t get mad, she just laughed, “It hurts like a bastard doesn’t it?” he said.

When you first met her you couldn’t tell, but Toni was nice. Sometimes I had the feeling that she had appointed herself as my personal guide to this new world-her world. She introduced me to television, music on the radio, Pall Malls, Elvis Presley Mrs. Tuttle and and hitchhiking.

Toni taught me everything I knew about hitchhiking, where to stand, how to spot the trouble ride, and when to bail if you had to. Last summer we hitched everywhere together. It was great to just stick your thumb out and end up at the beach, or at a friend’s house two towns away. Sometimes we would get to a place and then hitch right back again.

“Practice.” Toni called it.

The last time, Toni’s last day here on earth, we hitched to Mrs. Tuttle’s house, a blond divorced woman who regularly entertained the town cops on their lunch breaks. I never got a chance to ask Toni how she knew about Mrs. Tuttle, or how she found the slit in the shade in the bedroom of her little white house in a neighbor hood of white houses.

“This is the real thing Kiko,” Toni whispered in my ear as she pulled me to the window. “An eye opener.”

When my eyes adjusted to the twilight in her room, I found Mrs. Tuttle, her plush body melting into the pink duvet. Her hair, with tin-gray roots, washed over a light blue pillowcase in golden waves. She was looking up at the ceiling waving a thin cigarette above her head in lazy circles as if she were conducting Swan Lake, seemingly unaware of the cop who was sawing away at the Flight of the Bumble Bee. His exposed skin below the wagging blue shirttail ––he hadn’t bothered to take his shirt off, was catfish belly white.

I fell away from the window, disgusted, and confused. “That can’t be it!” I gasped. “It’s nothing like I pictured it.”

Toni’s dark eyebrows arched up like the roof of a house. “Hey, this is how it is,” she said. Then, as if acknowledging my disappointment she said, somewhat tenderly, “It’s the real thing, Kiko”

“It’s just like the elephant.” I mumbled. Toni looked at me like I was crazy. Then the cop started wheezing, and Toni laughed.

“He’s going to blow!” she squealed into my ear.

The cop’s veins were popping out of his bull neck. He was bellowing,“Oh Mama, oh mama, mama.”

Toni tried to pull me in, but I stepped back, tripped, and we fell into the bushes. We rolled out on to the lawn, laughing so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath.

The cop and Mrs. Tuttle reminded me of the first time I saw the elephant at the Havana Zoo. That elephant had weird wrinkled skin like dried mud with hair growing out of it. The real thing, that distracted, strangely colored creature waving its trunk around, didn’t look at all like the pictures in the books. I know I could have explained to her but I never got a chance to tell Toni about the Havana elephant.

On the way home Toni was dancing in the middle of the road casting rubbery blue shadows on the steaming asphalt. I was standing on the gravel shoulder looking down the hill. Off in the distance the mid-day sun sparked off the windshield of a car as it slid behind a stand of trees.

“Car,” I called, but Toni wasn’t listening. She was moving her hips in and out pumping her thin arms, singing, and wheezing, “Oh Mama, oh mama, mama.” I I was watching her move. I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off the road. When I looked up, the dark sedan was cresting the hill fast and heading straight for Toni.

“Car!” I screamed.

Toni was looking straight at me as the smiling grill slammed into her thighs. She flew over the hood like a rag doll, then smacked against the windshield. When the startled driver jammed on the brakes, Toni slid down the hood, and then under the still skidding car.

I don’t know how long I stood there listening to the ping and knock of the overheated engine, but when I leaned into the shadow of the car, the smudged face wedged in between the engine and the pavement no longer belonged to Toni. Little sparks of light–like when you get up too fast, were spinning themselves into florescent threads between us. Toni was leaving.

“She’s gone.” I yelled, and then sat up.

At the funeral I promised my mother that I would never hitchhike again, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.

Horse flies were buzzing around me as I stood in the hay just off the road across from the entrance to the Country Club. A dark sedan shimmered around the bend going a little too fast. The tires crunched on the gravel, and I jumped into the field. The kid driving was trying to tune his radio– not paying attention. The greasy breeze from the car drove more horse flies out of the hay so I took my shirt off to swat them away. I was about to start walking down to the intersection when I saw a sky-blue Cadillac was feeling it’s way down to the country club driveway. It stopped in the shade, the window hummed open, and a hand waved at me.

I crossed the road and leaned past the rising engine heat until I felt the gush of chilled air pouring out of the driver’s window. Mrs. Harris was squinting up at me, reaching for her big handbag.

“You’re the little Spanish . . . Ramon right?” she asked.

“Kiko,” I said.

She fumbled her sunglasses out of her bag, “You are all sweaty! ” she said looking at my bare chest.

I waved my shirt at her. “Horse flies! It’s hot”

“Well, you need a ride or not?” She said, tapping a long red nail on the blue and white steering wheel. “Just put your shirt over the back of the seat.” she said.

I sat at the very edge of the seat, fingertips hovering over the buttery leather. Perfumed air and Herb Alpert were breezing out of the burly wood and chrome dashboard; I inhaled deeply as the trumpet sang the melody for the first time; “Wild Honey.”

She slipped her foot off the brake and we edged across the road.As we floated down the hill the car would veer dangerously close to the edge of the road and then jerk back.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I looked at her, “What do I want?” Then I noticed that she was talking to the rearview mirror, not me, and every time she looked up, she leaned into the wheel and the car tracked right, dangerously close to the edge.

There was a line of cars backed up the hill behind us.

“I think your going too slow,” I suggested.

“Something’s wrong with this stupid car! It won’t go any faster.” Mrs. Harris said.

The shifter arrow was pointing at the L. “It’s in low gear.” I said, “That’s why it won’t go any faster.”

When she looked down at the shifter, the right front tire crunched onto gravel and the car dropped off the road into a field. We thumped across the freshly mowed hay, and then bumped up onto a smaller road that cut across the honey colored field. She jerked the wheel hard to the right and as we skidded across the narrow road I slid toward her. When the car finally stopped Herb Alpert was still working the melody, and I was sitting on her lap.

I could feel the red lipstick, the heat of her mouth on the back of my neck and cheek. She sure smelled good.

Mrs. Harris pushed her hair back and laughed nervously, “Wheee! I never did that before!”

I looked out at the field as she untangled her wedding ring caught in the black snakes of her hair. “You know what?” she said as she finally pulled her hand free. “I don’t think I can drive.”

“Oh, ok,” I mumbled and slid over to the door. This ride was too good to be true anyway.

Then she put her hand on my arm. “Wait, where are you going? You can’t just leave me here. How am I going to get home?”

“Your should call your husband?”

She shook her head and looked in my direction. I wasn’t sure if she was looking at me–– or the window behind me.

“No, I don’t want to call him.” she said, her voice sounding thick and slightly slurred. “You know how to drive?” She asked.

Last winter, after the accident, my brother let me drive his rusty Volkswagen in the high school parking lot. He said it was because I agreed to be the dummy, the drowning guy they practiced on in his senior life saving class, but I know he was just trying to make me feel better. I didn’t tell him that I liked getting saved over and over again.

“You can drive me home, I’ll pay you.” She insisted.

This had to be some kind of a test, a temptation. Maybe this is my punishment for watching Mrs. Tuttle–for what happened to Toni.

I was about to tell her the truth but then I pictured Toni laughing at me, “You really told her that you’re too young to drive?” she would say if she could hear me.

“Well . . . What do you say?” Mrs. Harris asked impatiently. “You going to help me out or not?”

She was rumbling through her bag again. “I can’t find it. I must have left it on my night table. I’ll give you ten bucks to drive me home–– pay you when we get there.”

The windows were tinted real dark, a cop could never see me in here. “I’ll drive.” I said. “Good,” she said and slid over to me. Then she arched her back and crooned “Here smooch under here.”

I slid under and her hair cascaded over my face and then she landed on my lap.

“She’s all yours.” She said and then slid off my lap.

I tried to take it all in: the lights, dials, the knobs, her hair, but it was just too much. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but she seemed to be in a hurry, so I just put my foot on the brake, and shifted into D for drive.

Easing the car into the blue shadows in the woods, I smiled to put her at ease, but she was rifling through her big purse. She wasn’t paying attention.

“Here it is!” She yelled. I looked over at Mrs. Harris and she was holding up a lumpy, lop-sided cigarette; I knew what it was.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked. I pushed the cigarette lighter in for her like I had done it a thousand times.

“Those two glasses of wine hit me like a ton of bricks,” she said. “It must be the pills my doctor gave me.”

Little Stevie Wonder was now singing “Baby, baby, everything is all right, uptight, clean out of sight!”

The lighter popped, she reached for it, her cotton shirt opened, and a sliver of moonlight skin peeked out.

“This’ll take the edge off,” she said, leaning back against the door. “Do you smoke?” she asked.

Before I could answer she started coughing. She leaned into the dash trying to catch her breath, sat back, and then lifted her leg up on the seat. Every time she coughed, a curtain of hair opened and closed around her face and her skirt inched a little further up her leg.

Outside, the road dipped into the damp ferns, then curved sharp around a large Pine tree. The tires squealed. We were going a little too fast as we bounded out of the pine grove into the bright sunlight. That was close, I thought, but she didn’t seem to notice. I better pay attention to the road.

We were driving along a high stonewall, when Mrs. Harris pointed vaguely at an iron gate up ahead.

“That’s his gate, right there, ”

I slowed and turned down a narrow curving driveway that led to the back of the house. Mrs. Harris was already opening her door, before I could put the car into Park.

“Bastard’s not here,” she said and then bumped her head against the window as she pushed the big door open.

Leaving one of her sandals in the car she limped up a slippery stone path. I had almost caught up to her when she tripped, and then reeled into the woods like a life size marionette. I grabbed her by the waist. She turned to face me, put her hands on my shoulders and then leaned back, I guess trusting that I would not let go.

We were spinning at the edge of her dark woods, and she was singing, “Leaves, leaves, whee, the leaves!”

Then she stopped abruptly. She looked past me like I wasn’t there. “Swim, I got to swim, ” she said.

She pushed my hands off her hips, then stumbled up the last few steps to the pool, but I didn’t follow, something dark, was seeping out of the woods with the smell of dead leaves, and her helplessness. I couldn’t leave. What if she falls in?

When I reached the deck, she was at the edge, trying to un-snap her skirt; her shirt was already floating in the water.

As she tipped into the pool she looked at me, and for the first time I saw her and I think she saw me. She went in head first, her hair, like a waving black arrow, pointing straight at the chrome drain at the bottom of the pool.

I searched the pool deck, then the edge of the woods, looking for a branch or a stick, anything I could reach out to her.

Every time the life saving instructor, Mr. Davidson, sent a kid in to save me he would say, “Jumping in after a drowning person is always your last and worst option.” But there was nothing at hand and I was running out of time, so I jumped in.

She looked so peaceful waiting down by the drain, little air bubbles clinging to her lips and eyelashes. I swam behind her, set my feet and pushed up as hard as I could. We were rising slowly, when suddenly she turned, and a panic flock of silver bubbles screamed out of her red mouth. I was too close; she dug her nails into my neck and pulled my head against her chest.

“A breath of air is all a drowning person wants, and they’ll suck it right out of your lungs if they have to!” Mr. Davidson warned.

Blinded by the dark cloud of her hair, I jerked my knee up, striking something soft, but she didn’t loosen her hold. I drove my hand under her chin trying to pry her away, but got tangled up in her legs. My lungs were screaming for air when she jammed her heel into my stomach, and then pushed off. I watched her fight her reach for the ladder, fight her way out of the water.

She was lying on her back, beautiful translucent veins of tears streaming down her temples. Strangely unafraid, I leaned over her open mouth. This was the closest I had ever been. I could hear her sobs gathering wind deep down in the hollows of her ribcage. First, they were delicate ripples, then waves cascading out. Then she opened her eyes, coughed up a mouthful of water and looked past me as if I wasn’t there.

“You owe me,” I said.

I got up and walked to the house, found an open door, made my way through the large kitchen, then up the stairs to the master bedroom. The crumpled bed sheets still held the impressions of the husband and wife. I went to the night table with the jar of cold cream on it, opened the drawer and found a fold of bills inside. I took my ten-dollar bill and then walked all the way home. That last day, Toni and I laughed so hard. I thought I was going to drown.

Enrique Flores-Galbis