THE SOUTHERNMOST PATROL

THE SOUTHERNMOST PATROL

By Andrew Paul Grell

“Outranked by a dog. Imagine that. Only in the Army can that happen. Some overeducated Major, sociology degree, probably, came up with that. I’m okay with it. Three hots and a cot, keep the smokes tax-free at the PX and sign the paychecks.” Lance Corporal Joshua Liphshitz was chatting up a woman at Southernmost House’s Key West bar. It must have been tough getting a high-gloss, drink-sliding bar out of mangrove wood, but someone managed it. They were both approaching the aphasia and silliness line but were still below the legal limit. “Pardon me, Bobby Sue. As long as I’m here, I might as well recycle my beer in the southernmost men’s room in the United States.”

“I’ll be here, soldier boy. I’m still waiting for you to tell me the story about Colonel Sanders.” They seemed a good match for two strangers from very different parts of the country, both of them tall and fit, Josh with Appalachian teeth and Bobby Sue with Florida leather skin and polychromatic eyes, one blue and one green. Both had unobtrusive tattoos, a Lambda below her knee and a lance on his forearm.  Both, apparently, free to drink on a weekday morning.

“Keep it cool, Joshy boy. You’re on active duty. You’re on a mission right now. ‘Players with short bats, please step closer to the plate.’ The things you read in a men’s room. ‘Place hands under automatic dryer and run vigorously.’ Yeah. Then rub hands on pants.” Sometimes mission-stress had Josh talking to himself aloud. The pre-noon sun was streaming into the crapper and the corporal figured the light was right for a selfie. He stood under an actual sign that said, “Southernmost Restroom in the United States.” He managed to get a good shot of his own smiling face, two urinals along the back wall, the sign, and in the mirror over the sinks, a slice of ocean view and a mangrove tree. One shot, and that summed up Key West. 

“You must have been standing at attention for some time, trooper.”

“Perfection takes time, sweetie pie.” He showed her the selfie.

“How romantic. A guy shows me a picture of himself in the bathroom, and the only thing stiff in it is the tree.”

“I have an idea. My CO said there’s a place on the Bite that has the best conch fritters in Florida. Maybe he’s getting a cut, maybe free meals, maybe it’s true. Wanna try it?”

“First of all, it’s pronounced like Konk, landlubber. The Bite can be a little rough sometimes, it’s where the netmen go. The commercial trawler crews. I think I know the place. It’s just a shack on Lazy Way. Take-out only, but you can sit on the promenade and eat. Might want to reload on the beer. Let’s go eat some mollusk guts fried up.”

“I saw some pedicabs cruising around. I’ve never been in one. How ‘bout you?”

“Ha, I used to drive one. My first job in Key West. I still know a lot of the pushers. It’s supposed to be romantic, but I don’t think we’re either up to that or drunk enough to get romantic, Lance Corporal Josh. We can do this as a platonic bike ride.” Betty Sue hailed a passing bike. She asked the driver to stop at the nearest place that sold beer, and when they got there, she hopped out and came back with a carton of St. Pauli Girl.

“Funny, I didn’t recognize any of the pushers. This round’s on me, Hero, and thank you for your service.”

“And thank you for your service as well,” he said, lifting a bottle of the imported beer. Josh was still a little slurred and he was afraid it came out as ‘Thank you for your cervix.’ He decided to see where the accidental detour would lead.  In for a penny, in for a buck. “I like White Rock, myself.”

“Is White Rock a beer? I thought I knew every beer there was.”

“Nope. It’s a brand of soda water. Slogan was ‘Purity, Come to the White Rock.’ There was a naked nymph or nyad or something keeling on a rock, peering down into the rapids. Every boy where it was sold was obsessed with figuring out how to see her nipples. Supposedly there was a trick to it.”

 Josh left the detour and got back on the main conversational road with a perfect close-order drill wheeling left face. He gave the driver unusually specific, yet sub-optimum, directions. Betty shot him a surprised look but didn’t say anything. She also looked surprised when the soldier was paying more attention to details of the street than to her, and also didn’t remark on it.

“What’s the deal with the cats?”

“Oh, Honey Child, those cats are Key West. Hemmingway Cats. Bent tails, random numbers of toes. They own the place. What’s the matter, Joshy? Cats make you nervous?”  They didn’t, but they did make him nervous about how they would affect the mission coming up in a few days. The cab dropped them off at Fishwife. Josh paid the driver and threw in a generous tip, off course. Betty Sue hopped out and ordered for both of them. She insisted on paying and on schlepping the carboard trays to a comfy-looking Lazy Way bench. Josh busied himself wrapping two beers in brown paper bags and, as instructed in Infantry training, camouflaging the beer carton, which he did by covering it with his windbreaker. There were six healthy fritters for each of them with three dipping sauces, a little crudité on the side, and a rhubarb cobbler pre-cut in half.

“What’s the sauce with the skull and crossbones on it?”

“Oh, that’s the one with scotch bonnet. Be careful if you haven’t trained for it, Hero.”

“Really? One of my grandmothers is from Scotland, she cooked a lot, I never heard of it.”

“It’s a plant that looks like a hat.  Make sure you have a beer ready to down.”

“Wow! That is one weaponized, military-grade sauce.” Josh chugged the beer in one go and decided to stick with tarter sauce for the rest of lunch. Betty Sue poked him in the ribs.

“Don’t use up your mouth on food until you tell me the Colonel Sanders story, grunt.”

“Alright, alright already. It was a thing in my town in New Hampshire when KFC opened a franchise, first in the state. It wasn’t quite the way people in New England liked their fried chicken. Kids would make prank phone calls to anyone named Sanders to complain. Then it spread to just calling and asking stuff like if extra crispy was yesterday’s original re-fried. The base commander we’re detailed to is an actual Colonel H. Sanders. So I hacked Whitepages.Com to put in a listing for a Colonel H. Sanders with his residence phone number. Within three days, he was flooded with complaints, people threatening to sue him for teeth or fingernails or whatever in the chicken, but most especially asking if they were real chickens or just chicken meat grown in a lab. Set him back a week in which he didn’t have time to bother us by making us do stuff.

“You can do that? Hack Whitepages?” A little warning bell went off in the corporal’s head and he toned down what was really going on.

“We all get basic instruction in anything the Army does, that includes Cyber Warfare. I thought it would be like playing Call of Duty or something, but it wasn’t. We got just the basics.

 “Hey, are those ferries over there? Where are they going? I thought Key West was the end of the line.”

“Those are the boats to the Dry Tortugas. Some islands due west of here. It’s a National Park. Delicate, varied eco-whatever, they say. I guess they would be America’s Galapagos Islands but without Darwin.”

“Hmm… More boats are heading out than coming in.” Josh noticed Betty Sue taking a beat before answering.

“It depends on the tides and on when Sunrise and Sunset are. Plus, you can arrange to dock your own boat; no schedule for those.” The chance couple went back to partaking of their park bench picnic. A music set started at the restaurant right next to them, just east of the Bite. A slim, Mediterranean woman was tickling the ivories and singing. They could hear the lyrics: “Everybody has a house guest in Key West.” The audience was eating it up; Josh and Betty Sue stood up on their bench at the end of the song, waved, and applauded. The singer waved back.

“That’s Lenore. Best entertainment on the Key, people say. I’ve wrangled a show or two myself there.”

“What kind of show?”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know!”

 She fed him some of the cobbler like a bride feeding wedding cake to her groom for the cameras. He fed her back. She napkinned his lips where the rhubarb escaped the jaws of death, he wet a napkin in the bubbler and blotted up some cobbler from her blouse. He kissed her, chastely, on the lips but closed-mouth. She half-kissed him back; maybe less, maybe a quarter kiss.

“Josh, you are one fine specimen of a man. Smart, a gentleman, a hero ready to give his life for his country. For people like me. But this is not going to end at all well. Take my word for it. Really. Did you like the conch fritters? Have I steered you wrong? We can be inebriation intimates as long as you’re stationed here, a casual culinary couple, but that’s it.”

# # #

The mission platoon members were interviewed individually by Colonel Sanders and a guy in a seersucker suit. Josh was sixth into the “deep fryer.” He didn’t see the first five come out the way they came in.

 “How did it go, Lance Corporal?”

“Sir. I established contact with a local and used the opportunity to surveille the credible-threat theater. I can report the following…”

“At ease, Josh. Take a seat. We’re both professionals, NAS KW specifically requested your platoon after the job you did for the Uriah Levi. Just talk, tell me what you saw and what you think.”

“Thank you, sir. My local observed that she no longer recognized many of the pedicab drivers, which she thought odd, since she used to be one and kept in touch. I suggest putting the pedicabs on the search list before they get near New Orleans House, or better yet, checkpoints at the Historic District and Bahama Village, and one further out on Duval. A bomb is a hollow tube plugged at both ends with a reactant inside. A bicycle is made out of hollow tubes with the ends plugged up. Only one step away, sir.

“The cats may be a problem. Handlers, including myself, should be aware. Some of them are cute, some of them are just trying to get by, but some are freakish monsters and the software might not tag them as neutral. Finally, the Coast Guard should have a picket line between Key West and the Tortugas. I was observing with my “date” and it seemed that yesterday there was far more traffic to the park than back here. Or back anywhere.”

“Good job, Josh. I knew I could count on you. And congratulations, Sergeant Liphshitz.” Colonel Sanders handed the new three-striper his new pin and patch.

“Thank you, Sir! Does this mean Petunia will be a Lieutenant?”

“I think we’ll make your dog a warrant officer. But let me fill you in on the intelligence situation. Two of your platoon recognized the pedicab threat. All six of you so far managed to have companions suddenly appear when you were surveilling the ops area, statistically off the charts for the collection of ugly mugs on this mission. That means there’s a leak somewhere and somebody else’s intelligence service is probing us. Did you tell your ‘date’ anything about the mission?”

“No Sir, Colonel. The only thing I mentioned was about the dogs outranking the handlers.”

“Good. You’re the only one to come up with the Tortugas angle. I’m phoning NAS KW as soon as we finish up here. Our cyber scan turned up some social media posting about the Drag Queen Drop. There’s a group that thinks it’s disgusting, and I’m quoting, ‘It is totally unacceptable that the two thousand and twentieth year of the Risen Christ could be publicly celebrated by a transvestite descending to earth in a whore’s shoe.’ They’re planning an action of some kind. Take Petunia around town a few more times, let her get a little more familiar, a little more used to those freaky cats. Finally, even without the threat, the Drag Queen Drop is going to have some drama. Sushi, who is the drag queen in question, is down for the count. People will be going BSC about her replacement. Or his. I’m not really up on how that works. And one more thing, Sergeant. There’s a recommendation for you to OCS in my desk. How do you feel about that, Josh?”

“I enjoy working for a living, Colonel. I don’t know how I would be at telling people what to do.”

“That’s the only correct answer, Josh. Be safe out there and keep everyone else safe.”

Josh left the Colonel’s office and headed to the K-9 area. Petunia did a full agility and search and rescue circuit before sticking her tongue through the hurricane fence to give Josh a good lick. Josh signed her out and mated the Ellison Mark 2 translator harness to the implants on the strawberry Lab’s neck. To the casual observer the artificial intelligence miracle looked like a bark collar. Josh tapped the blue tooth button on the civvy Panama hat he was wearing. Right away he heard “Daddy, daddy! Roam! Roam! We go!” The team discretely left the realm of structure and order and entered the chaos of the civilian world. It took about 15 minutes to interact with a Hemmingway cat. 

“Danger, daddy. Carnivore. Wild carnivore. Petunia attack.”

“Petunia, stand down. Statue position.” The dog did a great imitation of Egypt’s seated sphinx, squarely facing the cat. Josh counted seven toes on its left forepaw. It padded over slowly to Petunia, sniffing as it went. When the feline got close enough, it sniffed Petunia’s muzzle, and Petunia licked the cat’s ear. Two more encounters like that and the issue was solved. The brand-new Warrant Officer was good to go, at least on the cat front. As a special treat, Josh walked them past the world-famous lepidopterarium. She just loved watching butterflies.

# # #

The New Year’s Eve invasion was not by sea from the Dry Tortugas. It was not by land from exploding pedicabs, but that theory was almost close. It came from over the last mile of Overseas Highway in the form of the Stock Island Bicycle Club. When they made the turn onto Duval the helmets came off and were replaced by MASA hats. There were pray-ins and proselytizers, megaphone speeches about Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, doom preaching about the loss of “family values,” vivid descriptions of both Hell and Heaven and the free gift of Grace available to all. Josh put Petunia into friendly-pet mode, which is what she preferred, and asked a young-looking dad and child what MASA stood for and found out it was Make America Straight Again. They were annoying and a buzz kill. The team stayed on patrol and checked in regularly with the other dog and handler teams. At one minute to midnight, Petunia sent a stream of warnings, mostly about gunpowder. Petunia pointed Josh to his ten o’clock where he saw three bicycles being rapidly disassembled with the top tubes being fitted with scopes, stocks and triggers. At the same time, the shoe started its drop. Josh, even in the emergency situation, couldn’t resist seeing who would replace Sushi. He saw the two-color eyes clearly and the tattoo poking out from under the phantasmagorical gown.

“Petunia, take down identified targets.” Then he shouted up at the shoe. “Betty Sue! Betty Sue! Get down! Stay in the toe! Stay Down!” Petunia easily handled targets one and two, but by then target three was prepared and none of the other teams were close enough to make it through the throng. It was illegal, maybe unconstitutional, for the U.S. Army to shoot civilians on American soil, so Josh just grabbed the top tube “gun” and wacked the protestor’s head with it. Betty Sue was back to waving and nodding just before she touched down safely.

# # #

“I told you this wouldn’t work, Soldier Boy. Now you know why. Thanks for saving my life.  But there you have it. I am what I am. Look me up next time you’re in the Keys. We’ll have a few beers and go to Dry Tortugas Park.”

“I’m not so sure. It wasn’t just saving a life or doing my duty as a soldier. I knew I didn’t want to lose you.”

“Remember how hard it was learning how to enjoy the scotch bonnet dipping sauce? Being with me is going to be ten times harder to learn.”

“I’m a United States Soldier attached to special forces, Betty Sue. Soon to be commissioned as an officer. I’m supposed to be resourceful and carry out any mission.” Betty Sue gave him a kiss on the lips, closed-mouth, still no tongue. Josh went into silent mode with Petunia’s harness, keying in Morse which the harness would convert to canine. “Is she a spy?” The answer came back, “No, she is my new Mommy.” 

Josh wrapped things up by the numbers. He locked non-military harness functions to avoid additional ethical lapses. He gave Betty Sue his best Junior High tongue-tennis kiss. Then Blue-toothed for an appointment with the best dentist on the Key.