4.3
Florida Fried Gator is a popular joint with a menu dominated by alligator-based items—there are no fewer than twenty-four in Sarasota County alone. This one was well-nigh empty. As he walked across the blistering asphalt lot and neared the restaurant, he heard a pssssst, but continued walking. It couldn’t have been directed at him, and if it was, he didn’t want it to be. He knew not one single soul in this godforsaken concrete hell.
He entered the building and this time, the AC felt rational. Rupert had changed into a pair of knee-length denim shorts and a t-shirt that depicted a vintage photo of four Native Americans lined up, holding rifles. On top, it read: “HOMELAND SECURITY, and beneath: Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.” It hadn’t gotten too sweaty on the short walk over.
He stared at the menu behind the counter for a while: There were buckets—original recipe, extra crispy, and grilled, in addition to the Family Gator Gut-Buster Bucket which included all the contents of three regular buckets of each flavor. There were gator tenders, popcorn gator, and gator sandwiches of either original, extra crispy, or grilled gator. Sides included coleslaw, biscuits, mashed potato and gravy, swamp cabbage, and much to Rupert’s surprise, turnip greens, unaccompanied by collard or ham (or gator). He contemplated the Gut-Buster Bucket, but figured that might be too much gator. (Is there such a thing?) He ordered an extra crispy gator sandwich, two orders of popcorn gator, some coleslaw, a couple of biscuits, and three servings of turnip greens, thank you very much. Two for him, and one for his mother, whose portion he’d eat in memoriam despite that she was still living.
As he finished the words “turnip greens, for my mother,” a three-and-a-half-foot alligator sailed through the drive-thru window and a car’s tires screeched a second before the driver had to come to an abrupt halt in order to make the sharp corner of the drive-thru lane around the building, and then screeched again as it launched onto the highway. The man taking Rupert’s order looked placidly at the gator, now lying on the tile floor in front of the deep fryers. This struck Rupert as ironic and unsettling, here in the FFG. The woman running drive-thru shook her head and picked up the phone.
“Goddamn Crackheads,” she muttered as she dialed. Her conversation with dispatch indicated that this was not the first time this had happened.
“Will that be all?” the man asked. He had a Cuban accent.
The beleaguered FFG employees jumped from the snapping jaws of the small alligator until Animal Control showed up, and once Rupert had received his meal, he sat down at the biggest table he could find, which was still too small, and popped a popcorn gator piece into his mouth. He thought hard about how he could avoid having to think about this study. The D.E.A.T.H. program. Why the hell was he sitting in a Florida Fried Gator 956 miles from home? Rupert stuck a fork into the consolidated pile of three turnip greens servings and noted that he was out in public and didn’t feel too anxious. The place looked vacant, yes, and after the flight and the weirdo at the front desk, it was a relief.
Someone entered, but Rupert didn’t notice. He thought about how his mom had made greens. His grandmother had made greens the way you make greens: spinach and mustard greens, diced onions, a variety of seasonings that Rupert could not recall, and a ham hock, split in two with a cleaver, so it could sit low in the pan and not tip the lid. Her sister—his mother’s aunt—would make hers with turnip greens instead of mustard and nothing but the seasonings, sans pork knuckle. As a child, Rupert’s mother preferred her aunt’s, which, of course, was a betrayal of epic proportions and led to a twenty-year sibling rivalry that bordered on ugly, and pushed a wedge between mother and daughter. At some point, Rupert’s mother was able to rebuild the relationship—as she simultaneously ruined her relationship with her own child, her only son—but it had never been as strong as it was before the day she’d said, “Mama, I like Auntie’s greens.”
“Pssssst.”
Rupert stared at his thus-far untouched gator sandwich, thinking, not for the first time, about how the fabric of his family life had unraveled due to his mother’s early preference for porkless turnip greens and subsequent career choices, then took a bite.
“Pssssst.”
Across the aisle, two tables up, sat a man in tight, flared, dirty jeans (worker dirty, not homeless dirty), cowboy boots, a button-up blue flannel that looked way too hot for Florida, and a tan, suede jacket sporting sleeve and back fringe about a foot long. Rupert stopped chewing and stared at him instead of his sandwich. The man had semi-greasy, long grey hair, about shoulder length and pulled back haphazardly here and there with small braids adorned with birds’ feathers and other trinkets. He looked as if he’d been held hostage in a tanning bed every day of his life—he was deceptively dark, but pinkish. His features looked identifiably Caucasian.
Rupert watched the man get up from his single table, turn around to the garbage bin stationed behind his seat, separate out his recyclables with mindful care, and place his tray atop the bin. He then turned around, smiled a meth-mouth full of dental terror and went: “Pssssst.”
Rupert’s mouth hung open, and when the guy winked at him, then motioned with his head that he should follow, a half-chewed piece of popcorn gator rolled out and landed in Rupert’s half-eaten pile of turnip greens.
Methhead, Rupert thought. Methhead. Must contact Methheads.
Then the man was out the door.
Rupert made to follow him when the Cuban FFG employee bellowed, “Eh, preito . . . ” He pointed at the garbage bin. “Te sueno la cara . . . ”
Rupert had no idea what he’d said, but sensed it might be a little racist. The unmistakable look on the man’s face was an incommodious mixture of threat and condescension, and his gesture indicated that he expected Rupert to clean up after himself. Meanwhile, his Methhead was getting away.
Though Rupert was side-show big, he hadn’t much girth, and considering Newton’s First Law, the distance between them, and the net force of a large thing moving at a certain velocity versus the net force behind the large thing standing still . . . he opted to gather up and discard his unfinished meal. He thought to ask for a bag to go, but the man’s unibrow dipped between his eyes in a way Rupert didn’t think was possible, so he separated his recyclables, stacked his tray on top of the Methhead’s, and ran out the door. He then ran back in, grabbed his cross-body bag from the chair he’d been sitting on, and ran out again.
He looked right, then left, and caught a hint of tan fringe disappearing around the corner of the building to the back. Rupert jogged after him, assuming he couldn’t have gone that far, but as he turned the corner, the guy was gone. A large dumpster sat among an assortment of cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, plastic tampon applicators (?), and worthless, scratched-off lotto tickets. There was also a Hispanic guy standing there. Or Latino. Hispanic, Rupert thinks. Latino?
“Hispanic,” the guy said.
Rupert raised an eyebrow and narrowed his gaze.
“I could see you were struggling.”
“There was a guy,” Rupert began. “Weird. Fringe jacket, feathers.”
“You just described, like, three guys I know, güey.”
“Really?” Rupert shook off the distraction. “No, a man ran back here . . . ?”
The guy shook his head. His sepia skin leaned toward straight-up brown, and he had long, straight black hair hanging loose to his waist, kept in place by an olive green bandana tied tight, covering his eyes, a la Mike Muir circa 1983. He wore what looked like a long basketball tank jersey, but Rupert didn’t know the team, not that he’d recognize any teams. The shorts matched, dark spring green and white, hanging low about shin-length, with white socks pulled up to the hem and black dress shoes. His number was two.
Rupert stood, awkward, sweating, still hungry, his cross-body bag dangling from his hand. He was such shit at conversation, but an abrupt departure seemed rude. The sun back here was relentless and the greasy dead-gator-and-original-recipe-breading stench was overpowering. This guy didn’t seem to mind.
“Hot,” Rupert said. He didn’t like that he couldn’t see this guy’s eyes. “Bright, too.” Where did that weirdo go?
“Yes, it is.” The guy took a pair of sunglasses out of his shorts pocket and put them on, making his eyes more invisible, which made no sense, but Rupert felt the effect distinctly. He also still regretted not buying a pair of sunglasses at the airport.
He squinted at the guy’s jersey.
“Basketball?” Rupert knew nothing of sports.
“Qué? Naw, man,” the guy laughed. “The Sarasota Scullers, man. Rowing.”
“Rowing.”
“Well, technically a youth rowing club.”
Rupert looked at him.
The guy didn’t appear to feel the need to defend this and he put out his hand, which Rupert took warily.
“Jesus Salvador.”
“For real?”
“Man, that’s racist,” Jesus said, offended.
Rupert’s face reddened.
“I’m just messin’, ese. It’s pretty ridiculous. You should see my parents.”
“They clearly had high expectations.”
Jesus laughed, so Rupert laughed and it felt good to. It’d been too much stress, too much weirdness for one day. And he was still hungry, and tired from the Xanax.
“Hey, you seem like a smart guy,” Jesus said.
“Thanks . . . ?”
“Yeah, man.” He leaned closer to Rupert, who refrained from leaning back. “Have you, uh . . . have you heard about Crack Planet?”
“What?”
“Crack Planet.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“No, it’s like ‘hay-soos’ . . . Sal-vad-or.”
“Crack Planet,” Rupert repeated, not knowing if he was making a statement or asking a question.
“Yeah, man. What I got here, and what I know you want, are tickets.”
“Tickets.”
“Yeah, man.”
“Tickets to Crack Planet.”
“Golden Tickets to Crack Planet, bróder.”
“What the fuck am I doing here?” Rupert said as he hoisted his cross-body bag over his shoulder, about to walk away.
“Eh, eh, eh, man,” Jesus protested, tapping Rupert on the arm. “Man, I was testing you. You seem pretty smart.”
“The test for intelligence here is whether or not someone will buy a ticket to Crack Planet.”
“You haven’t been here very long, have you?”
“Arrived today,” Rupert said. “And I’m hungry, and I’m tired—I watched a three-and-a-half-foot alligator get thrown into a drive-thru window, and I don’t want to eat gator anymore.”
Jesus’s already-considerable smile widened. “Man, you come with me. I’ll fix you up.”
Lee Harper Oswald 
Sock it to me...