Maybe I shouldn’t drink— last night I drank four Budweiser bombers and I’m hungover this morning.
I make a Mexican breakfast, fried eggs, refried beans, and tortillas. After breakfast, I smoke a joint and the world balances out some.
My Cuban wife left me for another woman of all things, a Nigerian ballet dancer, they ran off to New York. We didn’t get a divorce, why bother? I'm gonna shack up next time.
We haven’t talked for months, therapists say you should break it off, friendly-like, slow and easy— Lucia and I were finished in a flash and that was it, no contact, nothing, zip.
We were married eight years, all the bullshit we went through and money spent on things— is ashes in the wind.
It’s noon, I gotta get out of the house, I can't get Lucia the louse out of my mind.
I walk to Sonny’s place in an alley near Bohemian Village. A dive, a hole for Key West bums and alcoholics.
Ducking around the corner, I step into the bar, it's dark and half full. Sonny’s a fat man with a full head of curly red hair, wearing a white apron, I sit at the bar and he says,
how’s it goin Tony? Whataya have?
Call me Henry, make it a Boiler Maker, Jack and Bud.
I drop the shot of Jack into a large mug, taking a pull, feeling thankful and embracing my wee bit of a life.
A raven-haired angel's sitting alone at a table, drinking beer, looking forlorn with her head down. Her hair is in double-braids, Native Indian style.
I go to her table and ask,
may I join you?
Sure, paleface,
we laugh, and she tells me a little about herself.
I’m Winona, it means only daughter, I’m a skin, Calusa tribe. I’m from Cypress Reservation, on Big Pine Key. I’m 35, never married, no kids.
Well, I’m Henry, a freelance writer, I sell ganja to make ends meet. I met my one-time wife, Lucia, in Havana. She was a hooker and I was editing an X-Pat rag, The Gringo Times. She left me, taking off with a Nigerian woman. She's Latino, bi, and devilishly sexual.
As Skins go Winona talks up a storm.
I want to transcend the hackneyed Indian stereotypes. At the University of Florida, as I learned more paleface history Indian lore became less important.
I’m a social worker at Key West Medical Center. Henry says chuckling,
So you're in this dive looking for patients.
Why are you here Henry?
I think I’m Charles Bukowski.
Winona let's go for lunch at my place, it’s a few blocks away.
Can I trust you, Henry?
No,
right answer paleface.
After a short walk, they reach his bungalow, the front door is unlocked. Winona says,
Why don’t you lock your door?
It keeps the evil spirits away.
You think like a Skin, Paleface.
Are you hungry?
I’m starving,
I got some leftovers, refried beans, and tortillas, I can heat them up,
fine.
They go to the living room, Winona sits on the sofa, and Henry turns on his old Grundig radio to 101 Jazz in Miami, Pharaoh Sander's Love Will Find a Way moans spiritually through the radio speaker.
In the kitchen, eating tortillas and beans, Henry takes a couple Budweiser bombers from the refrigerator.
They eat some and finish off the bombers.
Winona says,
darling, I see you have a Chevy Wagon, let’s take a drive to my reservation on Big Pine Key. It’s isolated. I want to do peyote with you.
Great idea, let's go.
Carrying Henry’s Coleman cooler to his 68 Chevy wagon, they open the tailgate and place it in.
He backs out, Winona sits in the back seat behind him, braiding his long hair in double braids. She's wearing short jeans and a flannel shirt cut off at the sleeves. He has on khaki shorts and a ripped white T-shirt.
Taking White Street to Flagger, parking, going into Lost Weekend Liquor Store, they get five bags of ice, six Bud Bombers, and a few bags of fish jerky. Opening the tailgate filling the Coleman Cooler.
It’s an hour's drive to Big Pine Key. North on Highway 1, he exits the highway and Winona directs him to the reservation,
turn left, take Key Deer Road to the end, you'll pass a tiny village with food, liquor, and fishing supply stores, then a mini housing complex.
They reach the end of Key Deer Road, there are some dirt roads, big enough for one car.
Winona points saying,
take that one.
They drive through the big pine forest. The pine trees need fresh water to survive. The island is made of limestone, which holds rainwater like a sponge, so the mighty pines can drink.
At Cyprus reservation, there are twenty two-room houses, made conventionally, with aluminum siding and tiled roofs.
They’re all the colors of the rainbow, built in the pine forest off the shore to cool them from the sun's rays.
On the white sand beach, there are a number of small single-engine aluminum fishing boats covered with canvas.
Some of the Calusa tribe tidy cleaned and deboned Butterfish, Bass, and Chub— sun drying them on woven mats.
Others are net fishing from single-engine aluminum boats out in the gulf.
The Calusa are busy and productive, no one cares that Henry's a paleface, Winona says,
let’s go see Elk.
They walk into the pine forest, reaching a lime green house with blue roof tiles. Winona knocks on the door, a younger, thin Skin, with long black hair parted in the middle opens the door. It’s Elk, they go inside and sit on the sofa. Motörhead is blasting from two large speakers in each corner of the living room.
He rolls a joint of Purple veined bush, saying,
Winona, heard you got a big job in Key West, I couldn’t do it, gotta be free sister, the Calusa way.
Elk you holding any buttons? And how bout a quarter ounce of that purple weed?
Sure do, a hundred for the buttons, and the same for the bush.
Henry says,
No problem. Winona tells Elk,
we're going to Bow Channel, we want to trip at the Sacred Mound,
that's cool sister.
Henry hands over the scratch, Elk goes to the refrigerator and comes back with the OZ of buttons and the quarter of purple bush.
They leave Elks, go to the car, pick up the Coleman cooler, carrying it in tandem, one on each side.
Winona knows the way, she grew up on the reservation. They walk a dirt path through the pine forest.
When they reach the Sacred Mound, they are at the edge of the shore facing Bow Channel.
The Sacred Mound is one story high, composed of crustacean shells that are decomposed and bleached from being in the sun for thousands of years.
Henry and Winona open the cooler taking out a couple of Bud bombers and the OZ of peyote buttons, then roll a joint, knowing they will need it.
They each take a handful of oily buttons, filling their mouths, chewing the buttons, feeling seasick. They wash them down with cold beer.
Hitting on the joint relieves their queasiness.
As they come on to the peyote the Sacred Mound of crustaceans ripples then inflates to the size of a dirigible, persistently expanding. Eventually engulfing Henry and Winona, undulating their bodies. They feel ecstatic, like two babies being rocked in a hammock.
Ten minutes later, the paranormal dirigible pops, rupturing and opening, dusting everything with what looks like dry snow or chalk dust
The couple sees material matter in a purely energetic state, they can make out shapes covered in the white dust.
Testing the alternate environment they walk inside and through chalk-covered trees. Then wading into the white channel fifty meters out. The sea's rough with breaking waves, but they progress to shore as though they are passing through fluff, effortlessly.
The peyote has chemically altered their consciousness— but the materiality is real, it's a higher level of mindfulness.
As they begin to come down, Henry and Winona walk on the dirt trail back to the Calusa reservation with the Coleman cooler in hand, in silence, they load the Chevy Wagon and drive east on Key Deer Road, to Highway 1, then go south to Key West.
An hour later Henry parks the Chevy in the drive of his bungalow, saying,
let's shower and get in the sauna. They shower together, Winona has a fabulous shape, natural breast with nipples pointing up, a cello-shaped body, with olive-toned skin.
In the sauna, on the patio, they drink Bud Bombers, as the sun sets at Man of War Harbor.
They laugh at nothing for some time and then hug one other firmly, with loving intent.
Winona says,
Henry, I live in a small room in the nurse's quarters behind Key West Medical Center, would you like some company here? Let's shack up.
He smiles, a genuine smile saying,
I would love it, babe.
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