Pissing on Dolphins
There used to be a house at Sunset beach that some hurricane flicked away with waves and wind. All that remained was the cement seawall and a set of stairs that led from the beach to the non-existent house. God was correcting the mistake that was Florida, one beachfront property at a time.
Most evenings, while I counted the days before I left for college, I sat alone on those steps to watch the small waves toddle and fall upon the powdered sugar sand.
One late afternoon, a dwarf was already sitting on the cement stairs. With both of his small rough hands, he held a beer can. He nodded his grey-stubbled chin to acknowledge my arrival.
"Beer?” he offered.
"Thanks. I'm Jarred." I lifted the six-pack by its two empty rings and plucked a can off like a ripe apple.
"Name’s Odd. O-D-D. Unless of course you see fire-eating dwarves all the time. Odd’s the name." The sentence sounded like it had been recited countless times and was punctuated by a click of the tongue and a wink.
"Fire eating, huh?"
"Yep, I used to work for Barnum and Bailey."
We watched the sun slide its way towards the Gulf of Mexico, and Odd told me about his life in the circus. When the last beer was gone, he made his way down the steps, supporting himself against the wall. He paused at the final step where the high tide barely licked, and began to urinate.
"Take that, you fucking fish," he said. "Come on, man. Do your part. We can fill this thing to the brim. Let’s flood those rich fuckers’ houses with piss and seawater."
I hesitated from shyness.
"C'mon. No fish is going to bite your pecker off. There's nothing like pissing in the ocean."
So I pissed in the ocean.
When I released my stream, he said, "That will put those dolphins in their place. Uppity fish."
After the sun set, I offered him a ride home.
“Much obliged. The buses are always full of sad old coons. It’s depressing,” he said.
He lived in a trailer park not far from the beach. Florida is like that. Hidden behind a million dollar condominium complex, a run-down shop will be rotting in its shadow with lawyers circling the location and waiting for the aged proprietor to die. When he does, they swoop down and suck the bones of his insignificant legacy and another million dollar condominium sprouts from its corpse.
The trailer park was one of these tiny vestiges of the Old Florida. The poor harsh Florida that air conditioning and vacationing New Yorkers have erased. There were about a dozen sad single-wide trailers scattered amongst the clumps of saw grass and palmettos. The seashell road grumbled and hissed under my truck’s wheels.
“Look here, Jarred. I’m cooking up this deal, and I need some help getting around town. I’ll pay your gas and give you ten bucks a day.” The deal Odd was cooking up was a concession stand to sell Blooming Onions. Everything he needed, the fryer, the utensils, the diesel generator, was contained in a small aluminum trailer. After he got the trailer, he’d find a cheap used truck and once again he’d follow the mad teacup rides, the crooked games of chance and the Ferris wheels tucked onto their trailers like huge toys. That was the plan anyway.
Odd and I were supposed to meet the trailer’s current owner at a convenience store near the freeway that ran like a black spine toward the border eight hours away. We had only been sitting on the curb a couple minutes before Odd stood up and went into the store. He returned with a six-pack.
While we sat drinking, a woman and child walked past us. I got nervous, thinking they were looking at me, a teenager drinking outside the 7-11. My thoughts then turned to the trouble Odd would get in for giving beer to a minor. They wore the same gaping mouth and blank stare. Their heads turned to keep fixed on us even after they passed.
“Man, sometimes I’m just not in the mood for that shit. She’s pulling along that ugly little tadpole and they stare at me? Inbred Crackers.” Odd threw his beer toward the road, and it slopped and clattered noisily before rolling to a stop on the grass median.
“Fuck ‘em,” I burped.
“Yeah, exactly. Fuck ‘em.”
The cashier came out heralded by the door’s mechanical chime.
“Guys, you can’t be drinking that here. You got to go somewhere else.”
“Shh. We're busy drinking. Come back later,” Odd said without turning to look at the guy.
“Listen, I could lose my job. Could you please just go across the street or something?”
“We'd be doing you a favor. You don’t get paid shit. You got to wear that stupid hat and that red and yellow shirt.” Odd turned and pointed a crooked finger at the offending garments. “We’ll be going soon. Keep your bright red pants on.”
The man went back into the store with the bing-bong of the chime following his retreat.
“Jackass,” Odd said. “The circus had this gorilla called Tyrone the Terrible. He was fucking nuts. He’d tear up and down his cage. Scream and holler at all hours. Tyrone would bash his head bloody trying to grab one of three guys it took to feed him. They would fuck with that poor animal something fierce. Spraying him with water. Throwing his food at him. No wonder he was crazy. He got so bad they couldn’t show him anymore. He’d scare the kids and throw his shit at the adults - here’s our man.”
We shielded our eyes from the headlight’s glare as the truck pulled into the parking lot. After the money was exchanged and hands were shaken, the man unhitched the trailer and left with a wave and a toot of the horn. Odd whistled and brushed the trailer’s shiny aluminum sides with his hand. He kept chattering about what a deal he’d got and how new it still looked.
“What happened to Tyrone?” I asked.
“Huh? They had to kill him. Some idiot backed an elephant too close to his cage and Tyrone pulled its balls right off. God, it was awful. Tyrone just sat there grinning with those bloody balls in his hands. That poor elephant died a terrible way.”
“Jesus,” I muttered.
“Man, I think this thing will do just fine.” Odd continued looking inside the countless silver drawers and cabinets.
We hitched it to my truck and I drove him home.
That night he cooked his first batch of Blooming Onions. Like all great fair food, it is a greasy pleasure that is instantly regretted. The batter and grease that seduce the taste buds sit like a resentful toad in your gut.
Odd concentrated like a surgeon. He placed the onions into the cutter and made its layers open like a carnation. He dunked them into a thick brown batter, the onions sizzling and bubbling in the hot oil. Several neighbors, tugged away from their trailers glowing TV-blue, followed the smell of frying onions. He boasted and bragged and offered Blooming Onions to everyone.
“Compliments of the house,” he said and climbed back onto the beer cooler that served as his stool. At the center of each of his creations, he placed a plastic ramekin filled with an orange-pink glop of special sauce.
“That shit ain’t special. It’s ketchup, mayo, and relish. You buy gallons of each, stir it all together. It costs nothing. If some customer wants extra sauce, I’ll dish it out with a smile.” Everyone stood around the trailer with Odd volleying jokes and stories from behind the gleaming silver box still hitched to my truck.
But, Odd couldn't find a truck that he could afford. After every failed attempt, he cussed about the guy ripping him off on the trailer and wondered what the hell he was going to do with twenty gallons of ketchup.
“Hey, Odd. I wanted to stop by and say goodbye before I left.”
“Left? Where are you going?”
“College. University of Texas.”
“Texas. Christ, nothing but steers and queers out there, and you ain’t got horns. Well, damn. I didn’t know you were a college boy. Shit, Jarred. When you leaving?”
“End of this week.”
“Damn.” He paused for a second. “Well, good luck.”
“Thanks.”
We sat on his front step and talked. He told his jokes and stories, all of which by then I had heard. Throughout the night, we never mentioned the concession stand that was growing dull and rusted under the palm trees outside. I ended up getting too drunk to drive home and fell asleep in his reclining chair. In the morning, Odd's snores emanated from his room. I closed the front door behind me and left.
Video: Morrissey - The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get. Official video.
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