Home of the Brave

Lowell and Perry are out sunning, as usual. As usual it's late afternoon, to avoid the mid-day Florida heat. Perry is circumspect, as usual. Lowell is working on the brightwork of his perpetual rehab project, the schooner Andromeda. Keeping up the wood finish on a wooden boat in Florida is about like painting the Golden Gate bridge. By the time your done, it's time to start over again.

"Hey, Lowell," says Perry, through a cloud of cannabis. He's been smoking more lately, and enjoying it less. "Don't you ever get tired of working on your damn boat?"

"Sure. Every year," responds Lowell, slapping on a new coat of varnish on the stern rail, having finally finished re-sanding it.

"Seems to me you spend about ten hours of varnishing for every hour sailing, wouldn't you say?"

Lowell grins. "So few? I'd put it at more than a hundred to one. In fact, when was the last time we went sailing, like out on the Gulf?"

Perry relights his pipe, with a shrug. "Last year? No, the year before, I think. Which is my whole point."

"So? It gives you something to look forward to. Plus, think of all those memories."

"Mostly bad ones, what I remember. I am really not crazy about being driven through tidal waves with the boat about to tip over and I don't, like, swim, and there's lightning and thunder and we're goin' nowhere fast, and what's the point?"

"The joy of nature. And leaving no carbon footprint," adds Lowell. "And the sensation of speed."

Perry snorts. "Speed? That's speed," he notes, gesturing at a passing cigarette boat out on the Manatee River, beyond the bayou.

"It's not the same. Speaking of carbon footprints," mentions Lowell, "only thing burns more fuel for no good reason is those fucking leaf blowers."

"Hey, I love those leaf blowers. It gives me a sense of power. Pushin' all them leaves around."

"And dust," notes Lowell. "Those things mostly just push dust around."

"Hey, luckily here in Florida we don't get too much dust."

"Hence, no need to blow it around. And they create more CO2 than a hundred cars."

"That so? But it's very useful. We do get leaves, y'know. Like, every year in the fall?"

Lowell dabs a bend in the rail with his brush. "Are you familiar with the concept of a rake? What happened to all your Native American one-ness with nature, anyway?"

"Got bred out of us, I guess. Due to forced contact with Whitey."

"Hey, watch it. I haven't been white since the week I was born. Not even then. Pink, more like." Lowell gestures at his brown, well-weathered face with his brush. "Does this look white to you?"

"Only metaphorically speaking. Which is the whole point. No Native American would have the self-and globally-destructive impulse to tear up a river bed in order to make waves at seventy m.p.h. or whatever and leave a cloud of smoke and coating of oil in my wake as my gift to Planet Earth."

"It's just our way of showing our superiority to all things and creatures, great and small. It's also how some of us feel compelled to express our contempt for rules, regulations, and life's lower forms."

"Like your dead manatee out there," nods Perry, towards the mouth of the bayou, where a mother and calf had once lived, until the mother had been hit by possibly that same passing surface shark, as Perry likes to call them.

"Good point. But we Anglo-Americans have a strong need to kill stuff and wreck things, anyway. It's how we show our superiority. None of that Chief Joseph shit for us. Guns and God and Gobs, that's us."

"Gobs?"

"Good Ol' Boys. Like my man Dick Cheney. And our lady, Sarah Palin. Shoots wolves from airplanes, like sitting ducks. How cool is that?"

"Way cool. Wolves, ducks, and panthers."

"Don't even mention the panthers. What's left of them."

"But hey, you gotta admit, they look good on those clubhouse walls."

"Yeah, them and the elephants. Gimme that pipe." Lowell takes a toke, thinking about what kind of people like to behead wild animals. The same kind of people that like to behead people, probably.

"Anyway, as you say, some people just gotta be free, 'cause this is the Land of the Free."

Lowell nods. "Except from danger, threats, exploitation, deception, corruption, pollution, or injustice."

"Whaddaya want?" points out Perry. "Those things are all legal!"

That's a Croc

Lowell and Perry have just finished a difficult investigation involving a former police officer who had taken the law into his own hands, and his wife’s life along with it. Perry is morose. “People keep killing each other,” he complains. "Over nothin'."

“That’s because they have easy access to deadly weapons,” responds Tony, lighting his customary micro-dose of cannabis. Perry waves it off. “Used to be just fisticuffs, or a few sharp words. Now they use sharp objects.”

“Or firepower,” admits Perry. That’s a big admission for him. He’s NRA all the way, and has a weapons depot to prove it, in his barn and basement. Which is ironic, as Tony Lowell often points out, because Perry was trained very well in Special Forces to kill with his bare hands. That said, he’s basically a very peaceable guy, he just loves his guns. He wants to show Lowell the latest. A Ruger .38, actually an antique, but in perfect condition. “It reloads the old fashioned way,” he boasts, proudly, popping the clip out and back to demonstrate. “It can’t possibly shoot more than ten people at a clip.”

“That's reassuring.” Lowell waves it off. He’s a former Seal himself, but he hates guns. He’s seen too much of what they do. Especially, to people, for whom most were intended. Like this Ruger.

“Look, if that joker’s wife had one of these, she’d still be pole dancing at the Clam Shack,” Perry points out, defensively.

“Maybe,” replies Lowell. “But cops get a lot more practice at shooting than wives, usually. He’d of grabbed it out of her hand and shot her with it instead of just strangling her, that's all.”

“Huh.” Perry doesn’t want to think about that.

Lowell changes the subject. “Speaking of shooting, did you read about the kid who shot a croc down in Everglades? Except, she wasn’t. It was all legal, though.”

“Hold on.” Perry takes a long, thoughtful toke, like the peace pipe his ancestors once smoked, with this same herb inside. “She wasn’t what?”

Lowell looks up from where he was watching a crab scuttle away past the pier piling at his dangling feet. “She wasn't a crocodile. She was a woman.”

“A kid shot a woman in Everglades? Why didn’t I hear about this?”

“He was only fourteen. She was sunbathing. He said he was sure she was a croc, on account of she was lying down.”

"Maybe she was. That's never wise, in Florida."

“Oh, like sunbathers are supposed to never lie down now?”

“Not in National Parks. Besides, it’s legal to carry guns in there now, so what’s the point of not usin’ ‘em? So where was this?”

“At a state park campsite, near the Straits."

Perry nods. "There’s a lot of crocs down there, man.”

Lowell shakes his head, just trying to envision the scene. “She was a lovely woman, apparently. Left a husband and daughter.”

Perry looks doubtful. “Except for she resembled a croc.”

“Easy mistake to make, no doubt."

"The kid was probably just in a hurry. Jumped the gun, so to speak. Accidents happen, man."

"Perhaps he didn’t notice her purple polka dot yellow bikini.”

“That could happen. Like that kid in Washington who shot a hiker. Thought she was a bear. She was wearing orange, too."

"Well, Bikinis are kinda hard not to notice, especially when you’re a fourteen-year-old boy.”

Perry shrugged. “So how did he get out there? Into the Glades?"

"His grandpa. An old boy from way back. I gather gramps is devastated, though."

"Yeah, he won’t be able to take the kid hunting again ‘till next year.”

“Really? That's it? No hard time for, say, manslaughter?"

"Nah. He was just a kid." Perry throws a stick in the water.

"A kid with a gun." Lowell stirs an eddie with his toe. "One thing I don't understand," he says, at last. "I thought it was illegal to shoot wildlife in national parks, anyway.”

“Well, technically that’s true, but what’s the point of having a gun if you can’t shoot sometin’?” Perry points out.

“So it’s all legal. Except the girl part."

"Maybe some community service or somethin'. But the lawyers are workin' on that."

"So what's next? People can carry a gun everywhere?”

“Except to school. But they’re working on that.” Perry chuckles. “Anyway, boys will be boys. You gotta give ‘em some slack.”

Lowell nods. The sun is getting low. Mullet are jumping. Almost time for a beer.

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