Delphi of Florida
Chris Daly
Remarks of PATRIARCH BRIAN, AUGUST, KATHERINA SCHMITT aka Meemaw, Fraulein Frenchy, Black Ceasar, Lincoln, C. TRAVIS (work colleague of Gordy), RON DUPIN passenger in cab, Ellen J, DEAD CHILD GORDY JR, and ORIGNAL JENNY
C. Brian:
C. August, detective of the aesthetic self, most like me, on the journey at age twelve, spying on the world at 3:00am from the vacant second floor of a commercial building on the boulevard; most unlike me, doesn’t exactly want to get someplace. One doesn’t blame Gordy who was in and of the dynamic, in mental power outgunned by a son who was therefore unguided. Malou, interlocking partner, in denial of being possessed, took care of things in a careening way, one was encouraged to stand to the side and let it happen. Two kinds of unavailability and the kid’s out on the street, the original me dancing across the ocean in a coffin was the last true gregarious Boru, builder of life out in the world. RB, like all politicians a master of the glide, connections may not prove to be lasting. So C. Gordon, Calvinist of self, turned away, and his son in the window turned away from turning away. One can imagine slight adjustments, big differences, whole parts of the clan followed script, did fine and remained sensible, go figure and document, by late summer 1960 when the particular franchise rolled down the peninsula, sensibly, instinct taking over, to the Miami area, the bottomed out part of Gordon’s life was beginning, out of the air, out of a profession, and before long, for the first time since age sixteen, out of a vehicle to drive on the rather bright streets, if one doesn’t count his daily assigned cab.
August, C. August:
Suspects originally reconnoitered at the nicely appointed Entrada motel on Federal Highway in Hollywood-by-the-Sea, hard by greater and lesser Miami, kidney shaped pool, kid’s bathing suit off and on and off and on, doubtless a small spectacle among the preternatural landscaping, next stop was a stucco motel / efficiency courtyard with terrazzo floors, metal TV shock therapy administered repeatedly to the non-learner, from there to the Beedleby Arms, no explanation of which shall be forthcoming, and then the separate back white stucco two-bedroom just off the highway one couldn’t get away from, by which time one had begun to step it out.
C. Black Caesar
In at least two major incarnations one had brought a certain ethos, derivative of Africa and the Bahamas to the mystical, as understood in the timeless 1600s, particular middle passage area, one was the good, the bad and the various blends, one was big, it was a place to handle it, Ponce the slaver, arguably worse than my rather large black synecdochal ass, checked into to south Florida but didn’t’ check out, sorry officer motherfuckers, one did not yet exist unless you want to arrest a primal myth, still there is room in history for the name, as there was in the area for gangster and celebrity, in the early 1960s Ali (still Cassius) and Malcolm X, Overtown‘s great entertainment era winding down as I-95 was built, and beach hotels were desegregated, and like oneself back when, Cubanos now washed up, Fidel and Che having taken to killing many who had attained to any level of accomplishment in the particular corrupt society they were replacing, watch out for these poor achievers with guts to go to sea, one does not need to go north of fort Lauderdale at this point, Joltin’ Joe and Marilyn coming out of the Tides motel, one likes his size, big head and Picasso profile, if not his middle age, and she also getting a little old to be a girlfriend, big hair blowing in the breeze, one is reminded that Florida, not the worst post-colonial name, is a tricky place, hard by the tropics, go north a bit to Palm Beach West and one gets the prez and Jackie, smiling, getting off planes, some little white ones came our way, not to often, one’s personal taste runs to more substantial truth, rooted in the motherland, softened by time in the islands, shake the upper part of the staff up over at the Fontainebleau.
Fraulein Schmidt
As an insider-outsider one knows one’s opposite number in the form of the wife of my final piece of work C. Gordon, and had to laugh when she scooped up a towel from a settee in the lobby of the Fountainbleau and somehow mostly stuffed it into a medium size purse, to the shock and amusement of the great detective, C. August.
C. Travis:
Countless times one was with him in the line at the Greyhound bus station, NE vector of Young circle, where the better sort of bus riders were occasionally good for the usual. The Trailways around the south side, not good. So Gordy was a good driver, the steady, reliable one, we don’t need the crazies, the motors mouth, proper hustling is a delicate business. Gordy, refined enough in his own way, not an improviser not a hustler, and that’s basically all there is down here, no industry, no manufacturing, just tourism which is doing nothing, full time if possible, so one’s specialty therefor is nothingness, you have the service work force and the service providers of the service workers, it’s a human service ponzi scheme, here in the godforsaken light, Gordy, one noticed, is fairly good at staying still, though his mind seems a bit whirly, rode his bike home to the rental, stop for a six-pack or two, one would bet a fair to the airport that he’s a quiet drunk, if that is the word, en famille, i.e. no friends, one feels protective in this milieu of Julius LaRosa and Joe Sonken, the Volare set in one, gangsters in the latter, but mostly of course there is primarily your hoi-poloi, the word Seminole means something like “run-away”, specialty of the state, and the particular vector, bottom of the peninsula, great fishing, one hears, Hemingway gone and now Marilyn, the night air is sometimes soft and caressing, early morning, good easement, Collins Avenue, can be nice, stop at a deli, sand hard by the terrazzo.
Jenny J
So a century after the end of me great grandson Auggie has a year in reverse: a personal theological upheaval led to being kicked out of Little Flower, Auggie didn’t mind leaving the name behind to enter the public arena of Central Elementary, same federal highway, different spot, an innocent abroad the better part of the year, and upon being sent away from that institution soon was an interned at something called Junior Haven, in order to be released from which consent was made to return to Holy Mother holy hat in holy hand, and the year he started in seventh he ended in sixth form, personally one does not have trouble understanding this; one’s husband, C. Brian of the immortal, talented, sometimes obtuse Boru type, was the genius of the new world, did the most with the least wasted effort, RB was the official achiever, had a brief period as a stage door man, an occasion for a kind of reverse-pride, always kept a small reserve of imagination, Gordon disconnected with the past and large parts of the competitive present, a man of certain easy virtue, did not carry negativity in any pure form, didn’t have a chance, the true odd man out, and so for August it was necessary to appear in rags while having as part of the mix, something else, bump against the vast it, emergence of the young, twisted, pre-intellectual self, smoked at the donut store before school, partly to shock girls, no articulation needed, clothes-shamed, one couldn’t get away with it, concussion once on playground, knelt in aisle next to desk when Kennedy was shot, got kicked out of this and that, but not the school itself, finished the highest grade and rather than proceed to homoerotic catholic boys high with the faculty of brothers, to remain somewhat more segregated, polish the brand, instead exited back to the marketplace arena. By going public August demonstrated an unfortunate need for immediate gratification, prelude to a floating life, best detective mind since Brian, in one’s particular spiritual-emeritus opinion, straight from the dark.
Katharina S.
After Rathbone died and the kids were gone one moved back to Germantown, as oldster with an apartment properly located and ordered, while retaining connection to one’s inner Nietzsche. The charm of the hillock house was gone, especially after Brickhead O’Reilly came around to the wake with his rat droppings, ruined for me the movie star daughter, whom one might have liked. Our one-time neighbor was un-wasteful, comprehensive, proved to have direction;
Babe Riley
I climbed my way to the top, made a small substantial handful of good movies, retired at twenty-six to become a princess, proved to be a good one as royals go, culturally enlightened, able to throw open the palace doors for good parties with the bona-fide and the meritocracy, didn’t need to say Fuck You and Fuck You, but didn’t mind if you did, hopefully with a little style.
Katharina S.
…one is neither bitter, nor wise beyond annoyance. My Gordy would have done well and used well a remittance, and a happier union, one time his Malou came home and announced that she’d voted for Goldwater, pointless to argue about it, it was too aggressive and painful. Auggie could simply claim not to believe it, and continue to not adjust to public or private life, conscious of same, conscious of being conscious, etc., conceptually active, however with fear of organization, possibly trainable if caught early enough, never know, but one likes and believes in August, the Hun can sometimes note the Other, i.e. the loser who retains a level of shabby gentility, and one likes and accepts Gordon, as one does oneself as oldster with an apartment properly located and ordered, while retaining connection to one’s inner Nietzsche.
C. Travis
The light bleached the air, put one’s soul on hold, one sometimes had to connect with the insect self to make it through, days are for baseline defenders like Gordy, but if life is a caper, try the night or swing shift, better chance for something different, money itself is looser after dark, and the downtime, so much better, here on the edge of the tropics, of if not technically in the Caribbean, that theme more than a theme here, Cubans and CIA ops, strong man gangsters, from Hispania ex Trujillo thugs, to Hispania Spaniards to wipe the early nation state, bring slaves from Africa, until rebellion in 1800, Haiti still governmentally lost, get away with it in this climate zone, one’s neighbors in back from Venezuela, does one first go to Caracas and then out, a family one couldn’t figure out, women on the porch running insolent mouths in an entertaining fashion, one time the authorities arrived in a small fleet of vehicles and one made it to the back window to see the oldest of the younger Lopez boys scale the back fence like a marine, one liked the particular blended demographic, the bend of the trees, the ability to harbor the illusion of an unthreatening, large scale, simple deep night of history / no history, girls down from Jersey on vacation, near 163rd St., border of North Miami Beach and MB proper, going south the Fontainebleau lip-synching set and then my favorite part, the slightly shabby oldie art deco area, best shot for a score was the middle part, but in this mid-sixties era the greater Miami area could turn into a ghost town in a minute, hour of the philosopher, one time took some gay individuals down near Little Havana, around first street, and had a vastation in the manner of the James family, Castro was a Strong-man, LBJ was literally an ugly American, enabler-in-chief of a war event, in the age of modern commodification, and certain excitements previously denied to the mass market, the cosmos stood out in relief, yes, one became another cabbie-mystic, C. Meister Eckhart, in honor of one’s non-mystical (and only, though most days not seen in the shift overlap, and rarely spoken with) friend and reference point for something, three-fourths of the left arm burned by the sun, face lost in the light.
Mr. Lincoln
One reads in Gore Vidal that as a concession one entertained the idea of paying the passage of blacks back to Africa, or to a spot in the western Caribbean mainland, one was depressed, politically acute, a century later in a Florida town the easements marching the federal highway were named in order for the presidents, just north of town, other side of Sheridan Street (the generals picking up after the office holders) was Dania Black Ladies and Gentlemen Town, and to the south was Hallandale Black Ladies and Gentlemen Town, the lost Boru franchise moved into a storied rental on my street, just up from Dixie Highway, (for half a year gunning cars continued to stop out front), young Boru and his semi-hoodlum gang had first aesthetically meaningful adult contact with representatives of the mother continent in restaurant kitchen jobs, and before that scoring beer just across Sheridan down Dixie from the liquor store convenient to the teen-friendly cemetery, they could look into a world that was about to partly disappear, the stillness of the Borus prove that the world is moving, history did not match traffic patterns, Johnson Street, one block north of the side street of one’s own, was a semi-main artery, Margaret, who could work in various conditions, bussed and walked Johnson out to Memorial Hospital, nurses aid, graveyard, at some point guys started following her home, lowly angels.
C. August
One night two characters from a noir film showed up at the rental on Lincoln, in the matter of a personal institutional loan that was due, Malou repaired to the bedroom and C. Gay Gordon rose to the occasion with a persuasive pocket lecture on the commodification and exploitation of labor, and other core principles of the Fix. On certain rare occasions the old man was capable of a Delphic level of discourse, the noir types were impressed and finally said fuck it, and left, more of this hardness on the continuum might have been OK. In any case the last private dick in the particular branch of the line veered from the pre-chosen path, skipped class and advanced straight to the drive-in, where, out at the wall, pride of place, dope came to town, good match for some, not so good for others, one was now twice an exile, consciousness ex-pat, follower of the immediate ancient vector, daytime hider except for goofs at Greynolds Park, plotter of escape, imaginary lecturer, selective resourceful hedonist, but in poor command of general logistics, in Hamlet mode, desperately, though not seriously, narcissistic, a certain lack of resources, or creativity in this area, or tolerance of tedium, or delay of gratification, one stared at the pond, the pond stared back, the sky darkened, suddenly, dramatically, a certain commitment was called for.
C. Travis
Get somebody at the Diplomat, here in town, take him south on A-1-A / Collins Avenue to the Fontainebleau, Miami Beach, where I should be working, get one over to the airport for a night flight, one is mostly not a talker, lacking in colorful cabbie lingo, some fares bring it out of one, certain kinds of winners or losers; silence, cunning and long fares, occupy the cat-bird seat, home de philosophe, the world, as usual, but maybe especially, is “going crazy”, the against all odds, predictable, romance and the pain of the endless hangover, WW2 is finally in the books, a prelude to the emergence of the “third” world, one’s nation-state trying to ventriloquize another, has to be a no, proxyism too tricky and a poor bet, chicken-roost Lumumba, chicken-roost Diem, chicken-roost all the non-Mao, chicken roost the cold war playboy president, Beard-boy waving at us, proxy hero to artist, to “his own people” a somewhat competent boss capable of being a “total” asshole, kicked Ginsberg off the island and out of the revolution for gay and pot, one blames not the friend of Engels, j’accuse St. Peter, all the islands in this part of the world quite musical, but Koo-buh imported or allowed to take root most extensively formal traditions of Espagne and elsewhere to mix upon skins in rhythmic timings from the dark motherland, to create the greatest traveling music tradition, here on this rather exceptional spit Xavier Cugat and Desi led a conga line out the door of one joint and in the door of another, to hustle a service living better to be out on the coast, for sure, to be down here may enhance one’s particular tragedy, cool moments offered to take advantage of, in the rain, which will not last, re-approach the commoditized city limit, pick up the mike.
Ron Dupin
One was down on a visit, caught a cab to Fort Lauderdale, one likes heat but get off the plane it hits and you feel like crawling out of your skin and jumping in the blue water, never mind the barracuda or the Portuguese men-of-war, so between hot flashes one notices that the driver seems to be adjusted to it all, smaller, decent, working man, turns out to be talkative in his way, complete sentences presented in an orderly fashion, a reasonable man, said his name was Gordon Boru, one revealed that one knew and was connected to some Borus in Delphi. You know the rest, a few letters were exchanged, first family contact in twenty years, featuring his famous line: “I’ve been meaning to get in touch.”
C. Brian
If one is a leaver, this quality may be passed on to randomly surface in succeeding generations, a little-studied side-effect of the immigration process, it may be classified as an addictive behavior, not to be confused precisely with escapism, which is related to a particular stimulation. Leavers orient to a horizon, that technically they can never reach; at an early age one crewed on a coffin ship, transportation, in some cases, to the new world, of actual corpses.
Ellen J
When a child dies young one’s concept of certainty evolves, one can talk to our Gordon, the words and grammar interlock properly, double meanings, features of the meta language work, connections uncertain, speaking to one’s self, it all happened on these shores, met one’s husband here, destiny is truth, one is glad the cabbie had two layers of cushion.
C. Barney
There are bums and there are bums, it’s not as easy as it looks, a certain approach to technique is required, and a letting go on the near sublime level, to be modest; what’s not to like about Gordy, but one places him with those who “hang on.”
Dead Child Gordy Boru Jr.
The Portuguese attach to one’s skin, creating multiple instances of localized paralysis, tenderizing and spicing the dish for the arrival of the guests of honor.
C. August
One’s grandfather’s sister completed all spousal substitute filial duties, Original Brian was of the long Irish widow tradition, pleasures of escapist sufferance, C. Brian died very early new century, new land, and Esther Jenkin Boru emerged a modern person, as one did oneself sixty years later hanging by the runaway window, looking down on an empty stage, built for a lot of light, sometimes better without it, one can be a confirmed cynic while valuing modernity, an ancestral gift. By the late 60s reinvented as an intellectual criminal, and for the high crime of being high, a Broward County jailbird, housed with mostly black people, many with distinctive personal stylings, including friends, neutrals and two enemies, one white one black, many were bound or re-bound for the state pen called Raiford, in unincorporated Bradford County. Fortunately only had to survive a couple of weeks, during the second of which the Chicago convention riots were featured on television that one could not watch in the pen, and therefore barely noted by a consciousness specialist in personal crisis, nor even was the Nixonian event a short drive south on Collins avenue. That week one did slip in and out of the Liberty City riot to purchase evil tasting medicine from the Harlem drugstore, one was aware that the body politic required urgent and long term care, that the leaver, except for the new-old revelations in the nature of philosophical notions, rescued from the landfill compost of human cultural history, about proper direction and orientation of the nation-state, was not prepared to deliver. At this time one had to dance for the judge, and per instructions from Sonny Bono himself, finish the last two years of dropout high school in a couple months at night, get a job, early morning (the wolfish hour before dawn) maintenance at Sears. Cops sometimes appeared and rolled along the sidewalk where one walked, talking shit no less, but Sonny at least came through with the flotation of a plea negotiation, with upper management, involving a permanent exit of the Boru in question to the Bear Republic.
Original Jenny
Men in this family don’t talk about the women, and half of the family rarely
mentions the other half, so though one is not from a line of village explainers, i.e. no literary type, literature does not contain one, one is in it and not of it, grandson Gordy was not a great ruminator, liked to make the decision, hang with it, i.e. he wasn’t going to get around to leaving Malou, nor was she likely to leave, and though it’s OK to lift a towel, a woman does not enter a hotel lobby alone, though crazy men may come right up to the yard of the house on Lincoln that needed to be demolished. Malou sister Anne got strung out on booze, dead at an early age, turned out to have, like Original Mac, bean-counting talent, spilled some to Malou, who flew out to the coast for the funeral, back in Florida went to the hospital where she didn’t work, to avail herself of certain services. Except when working with one’s Holy Mother, Malou did not adapt any particular graven image, there is no icon between her and her god, as a bean heiress it was simply time for relocation, kid in the legal system, occasion for the first vehicle in years, behind his own wheel Gordon recovered and lost some more of himself.
C. August
It was in the period of legal leprosy, I rolled out of bed to a truck driven by pa Gordy who’d had an incident at the cab company; it was a kind of long, windowless van which we loaded down with heavy Italian foodstuffs at a warehouse in Hialeah, an ass-buster easier for a kid used to being banged around, rather not appropriate for one older and slighter of frame, muscle and conceptual hellfire, funny thing, C. Gordon never learned to like that good food, on the way back coffee, donut and cig, and early the following year, after Sonny had obtained permission for August Boru to leave the state and return for the court date, one helped load up a cross-country blue station wagon.
Author resides West Coast USA. Publications include Rolling Stone, Wormwood Review, Tears in the Fence and Chiron Review.