Makepeace was neither surprised nor concerned. His interest was polite. “That’s a riddle, all right,” he said. “I can see that.”
“What do you think the answer is?”
“Me?” Makepeace was amused that the question was put to him. “Why ask me? I have no idea.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Should it?”
“You’re getting a reputation . . .” Maynard paused, then added carefully, “. . . not you, but this area . . . as a dangerous part of the world. That can’t do any good.”
Makepeace laughed. “We have been dangerous for three hundred and fifty years. We have had rumrunners and gunrunners and pirates and poachers and now the drug people. We have not changed; the yachtsmen, they have changed. They think this is a playground. Well, they are damned fools. I can give you a simple answer to your question: The boats are gone and the people are dead.”
“Don’t you care how?”
“No. It makes no difference how you die. You are dead. It’s like asking me if I care whether Russia and the States go to war. Why should I care? I can do nothing about it, and it will affect us in no important way. If the States blew up tomorrow, a lot of us would starve. We have starved before. Somebody always survives.”
“But it’s your responsibility . . .”
“What is? To see that a man in a sailor suit has a nice holiday? No. I am in charge here. One tiny island.” Makepeace tapped his foot on the floor. “Like the flies are in charge of the dungheap. That’s what we are, you know, a dungheap. Most of the world doesn’t know we exist, and the ones that do think we’re ignorant jungle bunnies. It’s not our fault. We came here as slaves, and they kept us slaves and beat it into us that that is our destiny. I escaped as a boy; my mama sent me up to Nassau, to learn. I learned. I learned that the best job I could hope to get was as a waiter or a bartender or a taxi driver or, if I had influence, a construction laborer. Then the Bahamas got free and everybody got hope. Hope!” Makepeace smirked. “White-power people were replaced by black-power people, who had to prove how proud they were, how independent. They nearly sank the whole country.
“So I said to myself, ‘Birds, you go back to the Caicos and show them how it can be done.’ I came back and rounded up some chummies. We threw Molotov cocktails here and there, and the British they said ‘Good-by.’ So here I am, a commissioner, chief fly on one small patty. I have a few hundred people. Most can’t read. Them that don’t work for the government, they fish—so many that the grounds are being fished out, and in a few years that will be gone, too. They got no hope of anything better, not ever, not anywhere. We give them the vote, and they vote, but they got nothing to vote for. They got all the freedoms they want, but you can’t eat freedom.” Makepeace paused. “And you would have me care whether some fat-ass Yankee gets himself killed?”
“Tourism,” Maynard said. “It’s an old answer, but you can eat off that.”
“It is happening, a little bit, but we don’t have much to offer. Loneliness and clear water. Bugs. We are a hundred years in the past.”
“People will pay for that, that alone.”
“I know.” Makepeace smiled. “We get a few. And there is always talk of the big Yankee companies coming down and building golf courses and tennis courts and beach clubs. If it ever happens, there will be money for a little while, and then someone will take over the government and kick out the Yankees and put locals in charge of everything. In five years, it will be a dungheap once again.”
“You have a cheerful perspective.”
“Realistic. This place has no business being populated, let alone being a nation. Nature didn’t populate it, except with bugs.”
The waitress brought their food—fish chowder and conch fritters and, for Justin, a thin gray square of chopped meat topped with a smear of cream cheese and enveloped in bread.
Maynard looked to the beach and saw Justin appear around a corner of the cove and paddle a rubber raft swiftly toward shore. He whistled through his teeth, and Justin waved.
“You won’t get answers about your missing boats,” Makepeace said, “not down here. Most everybody either don’t know or don’t care to know. It does not pay to ask about things you cannot do anything about. I don’t say that a few folks might not suspicion, but they got no reason to talk to you. If a couple people do know something, they know because they got a stake in it, whatever it is, and they get nothing from telling you. Personally, I doubt there is anything to know. Things happen. Good things, bad things, things no one understands. They happen.” Makepeace shrugged. “Life goes on.”
Justin came to the table wrapped in a beach towel. He gazed, horrified, at the slimy puck on the plate before him. He whispered to his father, “What’s that?”
“You asked for a cheeseburger.”
“It’s gross!”
“Eat.”
“I’m gonna starve to death, and it’ll be your fault.”
“Eat.”
“I’ll probably get diarrhea.” Justin prodded the doughy bread. He looked at Makepeace. “What’s the boat down there?”
“I don’t know. Where?”
“Around the corner. There’s a boat half buried in the sand.”
Makepeace called the waitress to the table. As he spoke to her, he let his diction slip into the singsong cadence of the out-islands. “What de boat down de beach?”
“Don’t know, mon. Been dere month or more.”
“Anyt’ing good on ’er?”
“Stripped clean, mon. Must be t’rowed-away boat.”
“Nobody t’row boat away.”
“Somebody t’row dat one away. Beat her up and t’row her away.”
“Okay.” Makepeace dismissed the waitress and said to Maynard, “We can look at it.”
After lunch, they walked down to the cove and picked their way across the rocky promontory to a long, straight stretch of white sand.
The wreckage of the boat was above the high-water mark, jammed into the dunes. The surf had washed it ashore broadside and buried its keel in the sand. It lay on its side, its deck tilted toward the sea. Once, it had been a thirty- or thirty-five-foot sailboat, with a deckhouse (now gone) and a single mast (gone, too). The forward hatch had been torn away and the deck around it splintered by an ax—by scavengers, Maynard assumed, after the boat had come to rest on the beach.
Maynard brushed sand from the cockpit. The steering wheel was gone, all the brass and chrome fittings had been removed, and even the cleats had been unscrewed from the deck. The hull was pocked with screw holes. Maynard turned away, but his eyes flickered over something irregular, and he looked again. One of the screw holes was larger than the others and was not empty. He said to Justin, “Got your knife? See if you can get whatever it is out of there.”
Justin knelt in the cockpit and dug in the wood with his jacknife. It took him a few minutes to widen and deepen the hole and a few more to pry the object free from the wood. He worked steadily and patiently, never trying to do too much too fast. “It’s a ball,” he said, and he dropped it in his father’s hand. “It’s heavy.”
Maynard nodded. “It’s lead.” He turned to Makepeace. “What are your laws about firearms?”
“Simple. You can’t have them.”
“What about antiques? Flintlocks, percussions . . . ?”
“It’s never come up. Why do you ask?”
“This is a bullet,” Maynard said, turning the ball between his fingertips. “Homemade, you can see the mold marks on it.”
“What does that tell you?”
“By itself? Not much. Just that somebody took a shot at the boat, or at somebody in the boat, with an antique pistol.”
Makepeace looked at his watch and said, “I should get you to the airport.”
As the Jeep turned into the airport Maynard saw the DC-3 on the runway, baking in the midday sun. The door to the cabin was open, but the cargo hatches were closed, and there was no activity around the plane. “Why aren’t
they loading the plane?” he said. “Whitey said it would take an hour to load it up.”
For a moment, Makepeace seemed confused. Then he laughed. “He told you that? All they load here is a packet of mail. He picks up his cargo in Navidad. Frozen conch.” Makepeace laughed again. “He meant it takes an hour to load him up, and an hour to sleep it off.”
“What?”
“He has friends here. They get together at Cyril’s and drink rum and tell lies. He feels at home here. Back in Miami he’s a misfit. Call him Kid Clorox or Bleach Boy or, some of them, the White Nigger. He once did the Bahamas run, but it was worse there; they treated him like a leper—too white to be white, too colored to be colored. The blacks there think he’s bad luck. Here they accept him for what he is, another piece of human garbage, like them.”
“When’s the next plane?”
“Tuesday, but that is to Haiti. Don’t worry. Whitey is careful enough. He always sleeps before he flies.”
Justin noticed the stricken look on his father’s face, and he said, “Don’t worry, Dad. He showed me how things work. I think I could do it if I had to.”
Maynard smiled wanly and patted Justin’s shoulder. “That’s comforting.”
They waited beneath the wing of the DC-3. Whitey came out of the terminal building, yawned, and adjusted his sunglasses.
“See? He’s been asleep,” Makepeace said. “He’ll be fine.”
With an envelope of mail tucked under his arm, Whitey walked to the plane. His pace was straight and steady.
A bit too steady, Maynard thought. He’s concentrating on every step.
“How you doin’?” Makepeace said to Whitey.
“Top form, chief.” Whitey ushered Maynard and Justin toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. That sun’s like to suck all the juices out of you.”
Makepeace waved to Maynard and said, “Come back and see us.”
Maynard waved back. At the door to the plane, he hesitated.
“Move it, man!” Whitey said. “Want to get home by dark.”
Reluctantly, Maynard helped Justin up the stairs and followed him into the empty fuselage.
Unburdened by cargo, the plane rose quickly off the runway.
“Flaps up,” Whitey said. He did not flip the switch. “Flaps up!”
Justin looked at Whitey, then at his father, then at Whitey again. “Me?”
Whitey flipped the switch. “Wheels up.”
There were four switches in a row, and Justin didn’t know which one to push.
“Dammit, boy!” Whitey said, bringing up the wheels. “How long you been flying?”
The plane leveled off. “Now, where we going?” he said as he reached forward to set the autopilot. “Navidad? Yeah, Navidad.” He set a compass course and pushed a button. “Keep a sharp eye out for Fokkers,” he said to Justin. “I hear the Red Baron’s looking for the White Knight. But don’t let ’em fool you. Some of them Fokkers is Messerschmitts.” Giggling at his little joke, Whitey grunted and shut his eyes to sleep.
Justin looked back at his father. He was scared. “What’m I supposed to do?”
“Nothing. I think it’ll fly itself.” Maynard searched the sky for clouds. “Let’s hope there’s no weather.”
The plane droned northward. Even at four thousand feet, it was cold in the unheated, unpressurized cabin. Each of Whitey’s deep, noisy snores brought forth a cloud of steam that fogged the side window. Maynard saw Justin shiver. He removed his jacket and wrapped it around the boy.
Justin pointed to the pistol in the holster under Maynard’s arm. “What about that?”
“That should be our only worry,” Maynard said, wondering what he would do if Whitey would not wake up.
Justin sensed his father’s anxiety. “If we turn to the northwest, at least we know there’s land there.”
“I know. We’re fine.” Maynard forced a smile. “You’ll have a few things to tell your buddies at school.”
“They won’t believe me.”
Maynard reached into his shirt pocket and found the lead musket ball. “Give ’em this. They’ll have to believe you.”
“Yeah.” Justin was pleased. “Did you do what you wanted to?”
“Sort of; not really. But what the hell: We had an adventure, right? More fun than piano lessons.”
“For sure. What’ll you tell Today?”
“That there isn’t any story. Not yet, anyway. They’re used to that.” Still, Maynard cautioned himself, you’d better come up with somebody for the fall-fashions cover. Anybody. Even if you fabricate enthusiasm for Margaret Trudeau, that’ll show you’ve been thinking. Hiller will sign the expense voucher.
The plane was over the center of the Caicos Banks. To the left, Maynard could see the religious retreat on West Caicos. Navidad was rising ahead. He could make out an X-shaped clearing: the airport.
He shook Whitey’s shoulder. Whitey awoke and cleared his head and ran his tongue over his coated teeth.
Maynard pointed. “Navidad.”
“First-class.” Whitey blinked and yawned. He turned off the autopilot and took the controls.
The wind was from the north, giving Whitey a straight shot at the runway. He looked around, to make sure the air was free of other traffic, and pushed the stick forward. The nose dropped.
The plane was at two hundred feet, and dropping, when the tiny figure of a man dashed out onto the runway and waved his arms, warning Whitey off. Whitey pulled the stick back and poured power to both engines, and the plane rose and roared over the field.
“What’s up his ass?” Whitey said. He circled the field twice, looking down at the runway. “No wrecks, no donkeys.”
“Why don’t you ask the tower?” said Maynard.
“Good idea. You find me the tower.” Whitey chuckled. “Nothing down there but a hot-dog stand and a coon with a load of conch.”
Whitey positioned the plane for another approach. The man was still on the runway, still waving wildly. Whitey shook his head. “Guy must have lost a few dots on his dice.”
Whitey aimed the plane down the runway and reduced power. The man waved once more and then, seeing that the plane was going to land, broke and ran. Whitey laughed and called, “Up you, Charlie!”
The plane fell slowly, centered on the runway. A perfect landing.
Justin’s eyes darted across the instrument panel, and suddenly he knew what was wrong. “The wheels are still up!” he screamed.
It took Whitey a full second to absorb the information, and by then it was too late. The engines were without power. The ground was rising, gently but inexorably.
Whitey said softly, “I’ll be goddamned.”
Maynard lurched forward and flung his arms around Justin, pinning him to the cushioned seat.
The tail wheel hit, and for a second the landing was normal. Then the fuselage bellied down on the runway. Metal scraped on crushed limestone rock with the shrill protest of a dull ax being ground on a rough wheel. Rivets were ripped free, plates peeled back.
The plane dipped to the right. A wing tip caught, wrenched the fuselage into a turn, and tore away. Wheeling in a lazy circle, the plane righted itself and dipped to the left, crushing the port wing.
Maynard clung to the boy and to the seat, fighting against the yawing centrifugal pulls. He heard the wing tear away and drag along the fuselage. He smelled fuel.
The plane rolled toward its wingless side. The nose struck and plowed chunks of rock from the runway. The windshield shattered.
Maynard felt a blast of heat. He smelled hair burning.
The plane skidded to a stop. There was a whoosh sound and a flash of light.
Maynard did not look back. He was driven forward by the heat. He fumbled with Justin’s seat belt, unlatched it, and pushed the boy before him through the windshield frame.
Justin slid off the nose of the plane and fell to the runway.
“Go!” Maynard yelled. “Run!”
Maynard squeezed himself through the w
indshield, insensible to the shards of jagged glass that raked his butt and thighs. He dropped to the ground and ran after Justin.
When he felt that they were a safe distance from the burning plane, Maynard stopped and looked back.
Whitey was caught in the windshield frame. The flames had consumed the after section of the plane. The skin was melting away, and the skeletal ribs were glowing red.
It was like watching a snake swallow a rabbit: Inch by inch, the plane disappeared into the fire’s gullet.
Whitey was caught around the waist. He pushed with both arms, and his body twitched as he kicked from below.
Maynard ran back to the plane. He thought no noble thoughts, felt no courage. His only thought was: Maybe if he pushes and I pull, he’ll come free.
He crawled up the nose of the plane and grabbed Whitey under the arms.
Whitey pushed, and Maynard pulled, and Whitey’s body popped out of the windshield frame. Maynard fell backward, with Whitey on top of him, and they tumbled onto the runway.
They stood with Justin—panting, exhausted, light-headed—and watched the plane’s nose succumb to the fire.
Justin was still wearing Maynard’s jacket. He took it off and hung it over his father’s left shoulder, concealing the holster. Maynard reached out and hugged him.
With a rumbling sigh, the plane collapsed in a puddle of flame.
“Surprise!” Whitey said. “We’re still alive.”
C H A P T E R
8
The investigation took an hour, and consisted of dozens of questions directed mostly at Whitey by Sergeant Wescott, the senior (of two) policeman on Navidad.
Sergeant Wescott resented the plane crash. It was an unwelcome intrusion on his orderly routine. It would bring officals from Grand Turk who would criticize the way he had filled out the accident reports, who would exceed their authority and look into things they had no business looking into. As Whitey explained when Wescott was out of the room searching for more forms, the sergeant collected all customs duties and all fees for all permits, and he reported only a fraction of the revenue. He was an established bureaucrat—proud of his position, arrogant about his power—who had been able to write his own book on procedures on the island.
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