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Code Orange Best-selling novelist and serial muckraker Carl Hiaasen is mad as hell about what they're doing to Florida. His revenge? Vicious mockery of Sunshine State sleazeballs and greedy eco-thugs. An equally pissed-off Bob Shacochis tags along for a day of fantasy bonefishing and literary whup-ass. By Bob Shacochis
We haven't seen each other in almost ten years, and here's our chance to get out on the water in pursuit of salvations wet and wild. But Carl knows it, and I know it, and the birds know it, too: This is a lousy day for bonefishing in the Florida Keys. It's crybaby cold, and a 20-knot spring wind is blowing straight out of the north, down the scrubby backbone of the archipelago, greatly diminishing any chance that we'll find schooling fish and a moment of glory to break like bread between us. Hiaasen frowns behind the console of his 17-foot Hell's Bay flats skiff, the 90-horsepower Merc gargling as we push off from his dock. He's not sure how to handle this weather and, after a minute of pinched reflection, guesses we should head ocean-side and slams the throttle forward. If we were anywhere near the U.S. Navy, they'd blow us out of the water. We resemble a pair of jihadists racing into Allah's arms, dressed in jackets bulky enough to conceal suicide belts. Hiaasen has on some sort of Al Qaeda–brand ski mask that hides everything under the bill of his cap except his nose and sunglasses, and water pours off my mullah's beard as we thunder toward the channel between two islands, the skiff bucking and yawing through the turquoise chop. "Tarpon fishermen," Hiaasen shouts over the engine as we race past a small flotilla of anchored boats bobbing in our wake, a flick of contempt in his voice. A world-champion bonefisherman, Hiaasen has stalked these flats for decades, but these guys are just snoozing on their backsides, freelining live bait on floats. We head offshore, speeding across deeper water, but another skiff off our starboard bow seems to have the same idea. "Where's this moron going?" says Hiaasen, scowling, but the boat fades off to the south. It's worth noting that whatever faces of displeasure he makes have little effect on the sparkle of youth in his blue eyes: At 51, Carl looks like a tallish, lean, but graying college sophomore on summer break, driving an ice cream truck around the neighborhood. But I appreciate his impulsive vitriol toward other boats; our mutual fantasy is selfish and mildly misanthropic and yet curative as well. We want the water, the Keys, the beaches, all of Florida all to ourselves, which is about as deep as you can get in the angry utopian eco-nostalgia that I seem to share with Hiaasen and I don't know how many other Americans. Maybe it's just a baby-boomer disease, but I doubt it. We have both experienced another, lost Florida, timeless and lovely and free, with nary a traffic jam, and miss the hell out of it, miss the balance, miss its buggy hum and its hush. As the water shallows up, Hiaasen cuts and raises the engine, unlatches the long pole from the gunnel, and monkeys atop the poling platform in his bare feet. I step up onto the bow platform and, because—and only because—it's a ritual of mighty comfort, begin casting at imaginary fish. And we talk. Hiaasen has a new novel, his 14th, coming out in July: Skinny Dip, a high-speed, gonzo murder mystery revolving around a nature-hating marine biologist spiritually deformed by greed. Hiaasen seems to have invented a subgenre that goes hand in glove with South Florida's uninhibited lunacy—the darkly comic eco-thriller, savage and sardonic pulp à la Tarantino, complete with command performances by Nature and cameo appearances by its endangered toothy creatures and avenging servants. No matter how many plot twists you use to enthrall a reader, it's usually literary poison to let one's narrative turn frothy with an overt moral agenda, especially one as aesthetically bright-eyed and potentially smarmy (Edward Abbey notwithstanding) as the environment. Yet Hiaasen performs his root canals with plenty of nitrous oxide, and he's among the anointed in the stable of legendary Knopf editor in chief Sonny Mehta, installed in the winner's circle with the likes of Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, and Richard Russo. At the moment, though, who cares? The wind strips the veneer off our psyches down to a tender layer of angst. No fish in sight. And for some reason that belongs on a barstool, we swap insecurities about our respective writing lives. Hiaasen confesses to being in possession of a bundle of neuroses. I admit to the same. Jesus. Bad day.
Contributing editor Bob Shacochis wrote about Kathmandu for Outside's 20th anniversary, in October 1997. • Subscribe to Outside and get a FREE Gift! • Give the gift of Outside Magazine! • Subscribe to Outside Online's free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring gear reviews, fitness advice, galleries, podcasts, and more. |
   
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