Torchwood Days

In my last post I mentioned Farrel and Randia Torchwood, neighbors of mine back in the late 70’s. Folks living in the Keys often are an unusual bunch. The oddest of them are Keys Characters and this couple was just that. In reality they were solid good people just a bit quirky. Let me tell you a little tale about them from back in those days…

Vibrations shot up the hickory handle carrying through the bone and nerves, traveling a familiar route. Wrist bone to elbow, shoulder to neck. Synapses closed, their electrical impulses flashing invisibly. A hypothesis was formed and a conclusion reached.

“Geez, I hit caprock already”, I groaned. Another silent curse formed on my lips as I massaged an aching shoulder, tingling elbow, and numb wrist.

Sinister chuckles emanated from behind a shaky driftwood fence.

Havin’ fun yet? Don’t stop now, boy!”

Creaky cackling followed the intemperate outburst. This I attributed to the semi-toothed grin I know to be lurking beneath a pair of twinkling, wrinkle shrouded, gray eyeballs currently peering through twin knot holes in a slab of splintered dunnage held up by trap rope.

“Yeah, Farrel, this is just my idea of a great time in paradise” I muttered, “Paradise lost.”

I forlornly compared the height of the 14 inch rootball that supported a healthy Glenn mango and the pitifully shallow depression I’ve painfully carved in the calcareous, limestone fill I wishfully call soil.

“How many times I got to tell ya, boy, build up the bed first, afor ya spend yer doubloons on a tree?”

Pearls of Keys wisdom like this are common from my neighbor, a sun-baked former crabber turned garden troll, named Farrel Torchwood.

“Now whatcha gonna do with that puny stick in that there pot next ta ya? I got just the spot fer it. Next to the ‘Proud Mary’. Might could give ya a double sawbuck fer it, I might.”

“Farrel, you know that’s less than half of what I paid for it”, I complained.

“Well, boy, now the way I sees it, less’n you want ta keep thet little twig in a pot forever, en water it ever’day, ya might be better off puttin’ thet sprout where a man can turn a spade. Just might I could get that Sea Hag ta turn loose a couple o’ them mangos to ya, come pickin’ time.”

The slight and back bent Farrel, together with his wife, a large-boned, rough looking woman, Randia, have created a dense arboreal Eden on their land. From the depths of that seemingly impenetrable jungle, only an octave below that of nails on a chalk board, comes a banshee wail, “FARREL, YOU OLD COOT, I HEARD THAT!!.”

Randia emerged through the foliage; a beefy callused hand pointed a pitch fork menacingly at Cap’n Torchwood.

“I’ll give you ‘sea hag’, you scupper-lipped bilge rat. You leave that boy alone and git your bony butt back here. I ain’t gonna pick them alligator pears by myself, ya lazy, useless, bearded barnacle.”

The Torchwoods had sold tropical fruit from a roadside stand made from the stern half of a partially burned wooden 45-foot Chriscraft Sportsfisherman which sat on the Key Deer Boulevard frontage of their property. A rickety canopy made with thatch palm fronds, perched precariously on the dry-rotted gunnels, shaded glistening avocados, yellow key limes, star-shaped, waxy carambolas. The transom atop which the fruit rests proclaims, in peeling paint, the name “Proud Mary.”

With two decades of labor behind them, this ever- battling couple had built large deep beds of rotted compost, some two feet deep, growing a host of trees and shrubs, all with a singular purpose. Seemingly every plant was edible in one way or another. Stocky Raja Puri bananas grew with elephant ear- leafed Malanga. Lemon grasss completed with spindly sugar cane and pineapples abounded beneath a broad Cannistel.

“Aw now Randi, them avocados kin wait a bit. This boy here was jist askin’ more damn-fool questions and I was jist tryin’ to set ‘im straight“,lied the Captain. “He thinks he can plant thet mango by using his back ‘stead of his brain. Seems he doan’ listen too good. I told ‘im, a body should pile up a wad ‘o mulch abouts four foot deep, water ‘er down a bit, mix in some seaweed, maybe some horse dung and grouper heads to really heat up that pile. I told ‘im if’n he turns thet pile ever so often, why then the boy’d soon have hisself some real dirt.”

“Why you lyin’ shiftless trap robber… what you are really tryin’ to get is him to part, for next to nothin’ I’ll bet, with that mango. Now son, you listen here, you just move over about ten feet southeast from where you stand, and swing that mattock. This mangy, eight-fingered, rum-swilling, pirate cut down a fine Jamaica tall coconut nearly six years ago, before you bought this parcel of ground next to us. That stump must be rotted out by now so you’ll dig just fine in that spot,” Randia tells me, a gentle smile creasing her lips, incongruous on this mercurial, broad shouldered woman.

Swiftly turning back to Farrel, Randia bellowed “As for you Cap’n Chumbag…maybe them gator pears kin wait but what ‘o that busted limb on the Spanish lime from last night’s blow? It’s squashin’ my Jicama trellis.”

I swung the pick tentatively in the indicated spot and the flat rusty blade sank as though in butter. I could still hear Farrel’s receding voice, ”Randia, you’s as impatient as a big city snowbird, ya wench…I shoulda’ left ya at Diamond Lil’s saloon the day I met ya…”

Picking up my shovel my thought at that moment was, “Ahhh, paradise regained.”