All My In-Laws have been Outlaws

Love Note to Tomorrow / 2017 / Mixed media collage / RCS

As we sat on the back porch of her cottage near the banks of Lake Okeechobee, in the shade of a long-limbed Oak with an overabundance of Spanish Moss, Ruby Louise casually said, “All my In-Laws have been Outlaws.” The early springtime humidity had let up some, the further we got past sundown. I was looking forward to full-on nighttime during deepest summertime, when the lightning bugs come out and do their crazy dance. But at the moment the evening insects were making insectoid noises, which in some circles are considered to be songs. Ruby Lousie continued, “Aunt Dreamy Queen, called such due to her always carrying around a dreamy expression on her face, and her love of Dairy Queen soft-serve ice cream – she and her future-ex, Uncle Bud, they were souped-up powerboat wild-ass bootleggers, delivering made in Havana illicit rum and the Cuban version of  White Lightning – up to the Keys, from 1922 until sometime in July, 1930 when Uncle Bud caught a bullet in his left shoulder by a damned lucky FBI sharpshooter, shooting at a long distance at night on a boat too close for any kind of comfort, and aiming over and under the choppy waters of the Florida Straits. The upshot of the miraculous nighttime gunshot is it got too close to Bud’s heart. He’d said, at the time, after he’d been patched up by a underground doctor who was paid with a case of illegal liquor and a chicken thrown in for good measure, “Dreamy, let’s hang up our smuggling shoes before one of these Guv-ment men’s bullets hits one of us in the brain box. Turns off our lights for good. That just won’t do.” Dreamy, recalling it years later, had told him, “Bud, that’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.” I pictured these couple of Prohibition era rum runners making high-speed, low-or-no -lights heavily-weighted trips on that long-trafficked waterway, for smuggling contraband mind-altering substances, whether it be alcohol from way back when to more modern 1970s pot smuggling two-seater airplanes, dropping off bales of heavy-duty plastic wrapped,   jammed in to the max superbuzz marijuana flown up from Columbia, on aircraft with no flight plans, often stopping to fuel-up near Havana. Flying by sight under the radar at night, sweaty palms gripping guns that got jammed, and in league with people willing to do whatever it took to make a living or die trying. I went into the kitchen to open another bottle of Burgundy, on sale from the corner Liquor Store, and freshened up our glasses. When I sat back on the wooden porch chair, Ruby Louise closed her eyes, put her fingers around the wine glass, then said, “Dumbest of the Outlaw lot, by far, was Cousin Eddie, who maybe fell off the roof and hit his head too many times as a kid. Gambled away any money he ever made. One time, he was living in a boarding house in Tampa, near Ybor City. He’d been gambling for some time at a weekly card game with Cubans who’d escaped Cuba just before the revolution, as in a hot minute before the shooting started. So, they didn’t mess around. He was in for about five grand, which might as well have been a million. Hard up for cash, he rode his used ten-speed bicycle to the closest Savings & Loan. Where he pulled a stick-up with an unloaded gun. Not exactly a well thought out plan when your getaway vehicle is a ten-speed. He pedaled his ass just two blocks away, before he was apprehended by an off-duty detective who later married the bank teller Eddie had robbed. Tell me that ain’t serendipity in action.” We each took a sip of wine and looked up into the night sky. A cluster of dark clouds began rolling across the lake, and it was one of those moments where everything felt like the world made as much sense as it was ever going to make.