King's Coney Island: the thin line between truth and fiction

My kids stood sullenly in the parking lot of the Brooksville, Florida Coney Island. After a twenty-hour road trip, we were in an eccentric Florida town, at a roadside eatery with bikers and gator dogs. When I told my kids we were going to Florida for spring break, this was not what they had in mind.

Truth is, we didn’t stop at that particular Coney Island just for the hot dogs. Two years prior, I had written this coney dog location into my most recent novel, The Way of Cain, as a tribute to my uncle Gary who passed away in 2020.

I learned of Gary’s death while I was on a weekend trip with a childhood friend. I was preparing for a morning run when I got the call from my dad. It was a brief call, not overly emotional or surprising, as I remember. Gary was in his late-seventies and not in particularly good health.

I hadn’t seen or talked to my uncle in years, but as I ran that morning, I couldn’t help but think about the mark he left on my life.

My dad has three older brothers, and they all had endearing nicknames. Most of my friends know my dad as Buzz, a nickname he was given for the buzz cuts he received in the garage from my grandpa. Gary, the oldest of the family, had the noble nickname of King. 

When I was young, we would take road trips to Florida. The first stop was often in Brooksville to stay with King before venturing on to Orlando or a coastal town. Back then, King owned a small shop in Brooksville, just up the road from the Coney Island.  He sold autobody paint and parts. But in the back, it was a hoarder’s delight, all for sale on eBay. His home was no exception, packed to the brim with junk or antiques, depending on your perspective, all for sale on the internet.

King was an eccentric. He pursued a lifestyle now made commercial by shows like Pawn Stars or Storage Wars, but his greatest skill, as I recall, was his storytelling.

As a child, I spent every Christmas Eve with my dad’s family in Cadillac, MI. There were always presents and a letter from King, return address, Brooksville, FL. As a family we would gather around the fireplace mantle to read his letter. King knew his court and drew us in with tragedy and comedy, the roots of every good story.

After his death, I knew that I wanted to honor him in one of my stories.

This gets at the heart of the fiction writer’s dilemma. Our best source of material is the nonfiction of our life. We must take what we know, the experiences we’ve had, the moments that moved us deepest, and deconstruct them. We break the parts of our life down to the primary colors and lay them out on our palate like a painter. Then we recombine them in a new way to suit the story we are called to tell. 

There is one chapter in The Way of Cain where I have broken down and reconstructed King. To say it is my uncle Gary would be false. King is a fiction born of truth. Maybe a shadow of something real, but not real. Perhaps a fossil; DNA and carbon fragments captured in a new form.

When I was writing The Way of Cain, I needed a backstory for one of the main characters. Brooksville fits the bill. Desperately trading family heirlooms for cash at a seedy Coney Island, that was my character’s plight. King could facilitate this kind of transaction with decorum.

In 2023, when my cousin asked me if I wanted to do a road trip with our families to Florida, like he and I had done together as kids, I felt the magnetism of the scene I had written with King and the thin line between truth and fiction. What was it? Was it a no man’s land? Was it the dissolving gray fuzz of dreams? It is what writers hope for, to put our readers directly there, in the undistinguished space between real and unreal.  

Life imitates art. Or does art imitate life? I have experienced both. It’s a powerful notion, either way. It implies that art is a self-fueling enterprise. The art we consume forms in the aesthetics of our life; and the aesthetics of our life forms the art we create.

If I have learned anything from writing fiction it is this: the line between what we call real and what we call fiction is a thin, filmy substance, a dissolving substrate, like a sugar tab or rice paper. It’s a form of disappearing magic meant to push your perspective just outside of reality. We can take what is real and break it down and recreate it as fiction, and we can take fiction and use it to inspire real action.

As I sat at the Brooksville Coney Island with my kids eating gator dogs, I was in a fiction made real and a reality turned to fiction. King was there too, even if I was the only one who saw him. He sat at a red picnic table with a soda and eyed the crowd, looking for a mark and an angle on a good deal.

If you’re worried about my kids having a good time, don’t, the Coney Island stop is regaled as one of the highlights of the trip.

Below I have included the chapter from my unpublished work, The Way of Cain, in which King appears. I don’t normally like sharing unfinished work out of context, but in honor of Gary, it seems fitting.

Excerpt from The Way of Cain

Alice stood in the dim, yellow glow of the lamp. The incandescent light pooled on the floor alongside the tattered sofa, and the midmorning sunlight chased the shadows across the stained carpet. The smell of mold and wood rot hung in the stagnant air. She tried to keep her mind on the plan, but as she stood in the remains of her childhood home, she could not stop the memories flooding in.

She thought of her mother sitting on the tattered sofa when it was new and sheen, watching Alice do cartwheels on the freshly laid carpet. Then there was the dark image of her mother’s gaunt figure lying in the bedroom and moaning during those terrible nights before the end. She thought of those years after her mother’s death when she cared for her father, filling her mother’s void, feeling as if it was her duty to bear. And she did bear it, and she took all the good and bad. She enjoyed the afternoons working with him on the Mustang, making his meals, and maintaining the home subserviently, and she suffered the fear, shame, and resentment of the evenings when his drunken silhouette appeared in her doorway. 

Alice forced herself beyond thoughts of the past, went through the kitchen to the front door, and out into the warmth and humidity of the new day.

She walked the uneven sidewalk along Oak Park Avenue under the old growth, live oaks. Moister clung to the Spanish Moss that hung down from the high limbs and the long tendrils quivered in the soft breath of humid air. As a child, the tendrils of Spanish moss were like ghosts swaying outside her bedroom window at night.

There was purpose in her step when Alice turned down South Brooksville Avenue. The tall oaks formed a tunnel over the brick road, and the Spanish moss swayed in the light breeze. The image of a man was clear in Alice’s mind, and his name on the tip of her tongue. “King,” she said in a barely audible whisper.

On the corner of Early Street, there was a Coney Island. At the Coney Island, Alice turned in. The décor was a slice of americana, Elvis, Betty Boop, automobilia, and beer signs that hung from the red and yellow walls. If I know King. She mused. Alice made her way to the counter.

The lady behind the counter went to the register and then came back to Alice. “What’ll it be, Hun?” She asked.

“Coney dog with onions and a coke.” Alice ordered.

“Six seventy-four.” The lady behind the counter instructed. 

Alice paid.

“Well thanks, Hun. It’ll be right up. If you want to grab a seat, I’ll bring it out.”

Alice walked to a red picnic table in the corner of the diner. She had done the ritual countless times, but it felt foreign now. The colors, noises, and smells were overwhelming. She listened to the lady at the counter take another order and the popping and clacking of the register sounded like the popping and clacking of a semi-automatic rifle. A bead of sweat formed on her brow and lip, and she breathed deeply.

Alice wiped her face and evaluated the room, as if it were a battle zone. Across the room, she found King, although, with age he was a different man then she recalled. She waited patiently for him to come to her.

As she waited, Alice pulled a small piece of paper from her pocket. On it, there was a name and a number that she had written down almost two years prior and that she had carried with her ever since. She put it on the table and thought of the longing she had felt for Lucy on those nights together in the Afghan desert. If she had ever known love, it was then.

“Your order, Hun.” The lady from behind the counter said, handing her the tray.

“Thank you.” 

The lady put the tray down and went back to the counter.

Alice looked at the paper next to the tray of food. She wondered what the inevitable call would be like, felt a shudder of fear, and thought of what Roman had said, “She’s as mean as a wounded animal. Her words are her claws.” 

Alice ate her coney dog with a sick feeling in her gut. She was sipping her Coke when she spied King standing. He stretched like a house cat, looked at Alice, and his pale blue eyes locked on her. Then, he smiled strangely, and his sunburnt, pumpkin-like face was as dreadful as a jack-o’-lantern. 

The old, corpulent man lumbered across the room to Alice. A few feet short of her table, he stopped and waited for Alice to look up and acknowledge him. He stood there with a strange half smile. His gut hung out between his t-shirt and yellow Bermuda shorts, and he brushed the wispy strands of hair across the dome of his head. “You George’s girl?” He asked.

Alice played the game calmly. “I am.”

“Been a long time.”

Alice nodded.

He smiled effusively. “May I sit?”

Alice nodded again.

He crouched slowly until his legs gave out, and he fell back with a thud. As he settled, he offered niceties. “Your dad was a good man. You know that?” Alice nodded a third time, and he looked at her with testing pale eyes. “How long has it been now?”

“Must be nearly ten years.” 

King shook his head sadly. “Damn, it goes. How the time goes...”

“You still running your shop?”

“Finally decided to hang it up. I retired, whatever that means. I still go up to the shop to tinker from time to time, but most days I end up here eating hot dogs.” He rocked in the seat as if still trying to get comfortable. Alice slid her tray to the side. He looked at her squarely. “What brings you back?” 

“Finished my fourth tour. I thought that was enough, thought it was time to try something new.” Alice said.

He pursed his lips and rocked in his seat. “Four tours. I thank you for that. In my day, that would have been a hell of a go at it. Most got one, maybe two.” King stopped and cleared his throat. “So, something new, eh? What does that mean?”

“Not sure yet. Figured I’d finally settle my father’s affairs.” 

King nodded, agreeing that this was the proper topic for them to discuss. “You look a hell of a lot like your mother, you know? Those big bright green eyes of yours en’ all.” He smiled widely.

Alice nodded.

“How about your mom’s old Mustang? That still around?”

Alice buried her eagerness. “That and the truck.”

“Really?” He questioned.

“Really.”

King peered around the room. Then he looked at Alice suggestively. “You know, your old man once offered to sell them to me?”

“Did he?”

King looked to her remorsefully. “A long time ago when he was hard up for cash.” 

“What do you think they’re worth, King?”

“The pair? Oh well, that depends.”

“On what?"

“The condition, for one."

“I started them up this morning and they fired to life like they always have. They have been covered, and they’re as clean and fine as they always were.”

“You don’t say?” King pried.

Alice leaned into the table slightly. “I do."

The critical question had formed in the conversation. King spoke evenly. “You looking to sell?”

“I do need to get them off my hands."

King’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “Well, you know, if you hold out for a good buyer, you’d probably get a fair bit.”

“Oh yeah?” Alice played innocent, “How much?” 

King’s leathery face folded with contemplation. His meaty hand wiped the oily whisps of his white hair. “Twenty thousand, maybe a bit more.” 

Alice knew he had taken the bait and that she had a hook in him now. “And how much if I sold them quick?”

King rocked in his seat, wiped a film of sweat from his brow, and his upper lip trembled with excitement. “Hard to say. You know though,” he went on suggestively, almost sensually, and then he paused. He looked at Alice with daring eyes and then his voice came out triumphantly. “I happen to be sitting on fifteen grand myself.”

Alice raised her brow and asked. “Oh yeah?”

King nodded.

Alice smiled thinly and said, “Like you said, my old man did offer them to you once.”

King sucked air through his front teeth with grandeur. “That he did."

Alice nodded with consideration. “I don’t know, King, sounds like the smart thing is to hold them a while. I might get a dealer to help me sell them.”

“Oh, Hun, no. Don’t get a dealer involved.” His face contorted as he spoke, and his lips trembled with distaste, as if he had taken a bite of rotten fruit. “They’d gouge you. They’d suck you dry. Get you a big price, yes, but gouge you on the commission.” 

Alice nodded. “I see."

King cordially remarked, “And like you said, your old man did offer them to me."

“We go back, King, and you know the vehicles. Maybe it is right you have them?"

“Maybe.” King said.

“You said fifteen?”

“Fifteen.”

“Alright. Fifteen then. See me tomorrow with the fifteen and I will clean them up for you.”

King rocked in his seat, “Yes, that sounds fine, so long as they are as you say. Tomorrow. I’ll be by around noon.” He said.

“Noon it is.”

King smiled. “Maybe I was wrong. You may have your mother’s eyes, but you are much more like him. You know that? Much more like old George. Kind, sweet, and innocent on one side, and calculated, cold, and ruthless on the other.”

Alice grimaced and then forcefully bent a smile.

“What’d you do in the army?” King asked.

“Sergeant."

“Just like old George, alright. God rest his soul.”

Alice nodded meanly and said, “Tomorrow at noon.”

“Tomorrow at noon.” King agreed.

Alice shook King’s hand. Then King stood and sauntered across the room.

Alice took her tray up to the trash, dumped it, and went out. The air was hot and thick. She put her hand in her pocket and thumbed the paper with the name and number on it as if it were a talisman. What’s fifteen plus twenty-three… Thirty-eight. Plus the house. It might be a start. It might be something. She thought.

As Alice turned up Oak Park Avenue and walked under the wide oak branches and the Spanish moss, she felt enveloped in a dream, or perhaps a memory. She thought of her childhood on that road. That too was trapped in time. The world was changing, but not there on Oak Park Avenue. I can’t move forward unless I leave it behind. She mused and looked over her childhood home. The roofline of the small white house bent strangely, and mold and moss had formed in the joints. The paint was chipped, and a stack of old tires leaned on the side of the house.

The front door whined as it swung on its hinges. Alice sat on the sofa with heavy thoughts. How much for the house? Not enough. We will have to find other ways to do it. Will I get anything from the house? Something. I must get something for the house. She put her hand in her pocket and fingered the paper within, and then took out her phone and made a call. There was a shuffle and a cough on the other end of the line. “Hello, Sarge.” Lucy said.

“It’s just, Alice. Just Alice now.”

“Okay, just Alice.” Lucy said with a cough.

“How are you?”

“I’d be better if death wasn’t hanging about my doorstep.” 

“What is the update from the doctor?”

“No update.”

“What do you mean?”

“No money for an update.”

“I thought Roman had… options…”

“Not for what I got. I need a different kind of money for what I got.”

“Look, don’t worry about the money. I’ve got some coming. I will take care of the bills.”

“It’s not your problem, Alice. It hasn’t been your problem for a long time.”

“It is my problem. It’s those damn pits. It is happening to other soldiers.”

“I’m not a soldier, Alice. I’m just a hired hand with a bad cough.”

“Lucy, listen. I am going to come up there. I am going to stay with you. I will have money to pay for the treatments.”

“You don’t have enough, not for this.” Lucy said.

“I will have enough to get it started. We will find ways to pay for it.”

“Why, Alice? Why do you care? Is it shame?”

“I care about you, Lucy.”

“You care about your shame, just like everyone else.”

“I have to help you.”

“I don’t want help.”

“How about love. Can’t I love you?”

“Not anymore. That time went away.”

“I thought it hadn’t come yet. I thought that was waiting for us in Michigan.”

“I’ve been here a long time, Alice.” 

“I am coming there. I will have money. It will be a new start.” Alice said.

There was silence, then wheezing and a cough.

“I will be there in a week. Once the cars and house sell… should just be a week.”

Lucy wheezed and coughed.

“I will see you in a week, Lucy.”

“In a week.” Lucy said.

“In a week.” Alice said.

The phone beeped, and it was silent. Alice worked it through. It should only take a week. Just a week. Then it will be a new start, a new start for us both.