by Tod A
I can’t recall ever seeing Buster without a beer can gripped in the remaining digits of his left hand as he gesticulated wildly with his right. Reeling on the prosthesis, he’d hold forth on his current obsession—the shameful treatment of returning vets, the best method of curing venison, the genius of the Mothers of Invention’s Live at the Fillmore East—as a forgotten Chesterfield dangled precariously from his lip. His garage was stacked with crates of empty cans. When I got too rambunctious, Buster would send me out in his old army boots to crush them on the concrete floor.
What my uncle had been like as a young man I never knew. But the post-Vietnam, post-GE Buster was a creature of extremes, imbued with a supernatural grace. He swaggered and weaved through his remaining days like some back-woods Keith Richards in a haze of nicotine and booze, music and marijuana, motorcycles and gentle madness. He left me his life savings, sixty-five thousand and change—my college fund. I think he would have been happy to know that I’d escaped our little town for the big bad world, and even happier to know I’d become a writer—against my father’s aspirations—even if it meant dropping out of school. At least that’s what I told myself.
By the time Saturday came I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with myself anymore. I rose with the sun, grabbed Buster’s Nikon, and stuffed a few clothes into my backpack along with the first thin draft of my novel. The laptop and The Rocket remained behind—I couldn’t seem to lay three words end-to-end these days. Before leaving, I took the last roll of cash from the monkey skull. I had no idea what I would do once the last rupees ran out. I tried not to think about it.
The road was empty, the air sweet and cool. I reveled in the fine sea breeze and the blur of sun-lit green as I headed east toward the harbor. It occurred to me that for the first time I was riding a motorbike without the usual tense shoulders and sweaty palms. Buster would have been proud despite the fact that I was driving what he used to call a rice-burner.
Families were hanging elaborate decorations over the road, long bamboo poles intricately woven with palm leaves and flowers. In the temples they were building huge creatures of papier-mâché and wire. Everyone was gearing up for some kind of festival.
I made it to the harbor around seven, bought some fried rice and coffee and a Madu Post, and sat at a table overlooking the oily waves. Raj had the lead article on the front page, an update on the stolen idols mystery. I tried to read it but couldn’t focus. I lit a cigarette and looked out past the clam diggers and fishing boats toward the dark silhouette of Longa on the horizon.
I had high hopes for this get-away. I was hyperactive, sleepless and irritable—everything I used to drink to avoid. I craved a cold beer, and it was only seven-fifteen. I recalled the meds I’d flushed back in Brooklyn, and cursed. Despite my denials, Cooney’s rainforest rant had wormed its way into my consciousness. I was hoping the trip to Dimana might shed some light. I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another. With my luck, I would sober up and die of emphysema.
Throwing down my crutch had left me on shaky legs. The old voices had returned to their nattering and I was worried: worried that I was starting to like myself even less than before, worried my depression would return full-force, worried I’d never be able to write again, worried most of all that I would fail—that I couldn’t even last a month. And Longa was exactly the wrong place for someone trying not to drink. What the fuck was I thinking?
I hadn’t survived more than two days without alcohol in almost twenty years. Beer had been my faithful friend through good times and bad. It had been there when I wanted to party like a Viking, and it had been there when I felt like slitting my wrists. But it had always been there, like a wagging dog, to greet me at the end of a shitty day. I felt like I’d taken that dog out behind the barn and shot it in the skull.
No. That would have been humane. I’d locked it in the basement, where it whined and clawed behind the door.
The poor thing didn’t understand what it had done.
“I was always loyal,” it whimpered. “What went wrong?”
{ 8 }
Longa
Ifound the Titanic II at the far end of the pier, with everyone already aboard.
“Ah, here he comes,” Raj shouted jovially. “We thought you might have bagged out.”
“Plenty of room forward,” Cooney said.
If I hadn’t still been lost in my thoughts I might have marked his smirk. I threw my pack on top of the other baggage and clambered into the bow. Everyone else sat in the stern. But I wasn’t feeling particularly social, and I figured there would be a good view from up front. At first Cooney tooled the boat calmly through the harbor. I got a look at the old wooden fishing boats, a few Chinese junks, and several perahu—the traditional schooners of the local Bugis pirates. But as soon as we hit open ocean, Cooney jammed the throttle forward, kicking to life the massive twin Yamaha outboards.
“Let’s see what this baby can do!” he shouted, grinning like a teenager. The bastard soon had the boat gunned-up to about forty knots, making the bow slam down onto the oncoming swells with bone-rattling force. I clung to the gunwales, bracing myself to avoid spinal injury.
“Are you trying to fucking kill me?”
I could hear laughter above the engine noise. My screams seemed only to goad him on. Escape was impossible: the hatch connecting the bow to the stern had been sealed. I just held on and prayed we’d get there soon.
After about an hour of this torture, Longa rose into view: a low atoll crowded with palms and buildings. Cooney revved down to pass through a gap in the reef. I could at last unclench my cramped fingers and turn to glare at him. He smiled beatifically as he steered into the busy harbor.
Longa was the party island—the place to go for psilocybin, sex, and other assorted sins. While the trafficking of any other drug spelled a mandatory death sentence, the hallucinogenic mushrooms that grew wild on Longa were perfectly legal. As soon as we’d tied up, Monty and Kubu jumped off to pick up provisions and check into their hotel. Cooney, Raj and I planned to sleep on the boat that night.
It was a gorgeous morning. A stiff breeze held the clouds at bay. I could imagine how Longa might once have looked to the first US GIs who waded ashore here: a handful of bamboo shacks, a decrepit Dutch hotel, and a hundred half-naked natives under the coconut palms.
Sadly, decades of unchecked development had eroded the island’s charm. All along the beach front were concrete huts with hand-lettered signs: Magic Tea, Full Body Massage, Tattoo, Cold Beer. Plastic pipes crisscrossed the sand, spilling raw sewage into the oily swells beyond the reef. Touts slouched in front of their shacks, plying for trade. Children and old crones hawked cheap baubles along the beach. The islanders were smiling with their teeth, but not their eyes.
Monty and Kubu returned with ice and lemons. We whiled away the rest of the day on deck—Monty teaching Kubu chess, Raj scribbling away on a legal pad, me half-heartedly proofing the first draft of my manuscript. Cooney had brought along his Japanese suitcase phonograph and a crate of records. He’d popped his first Oh-Cha the minute we tied off.
“I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you!” he rasped, along with the 45.
The ferry from back-island bumped against the pier, disgorging a horde of tattooed and shirtless men: Indonesian loggers and their Chinese bosses, pumped up on whiskey and testosterone.
“Look at these yahoos,” Cooney drawled. “Bloody hicks from the sticks.”
“So primitive,” Kubu said.
“That one’s missing an ear!” Monty said.
Cooney changed the disc and The Clash boomed over the sound system. The loggers eyed us darkly as they passed.
“Running, police on my back!” Cooney crowed along with the song. “Love me some Clash. Had them on my boat once—stand-up blokes. David Bowie as well, another time—what a gentleman! But Simon and Garfunkel—fuck me—talk about a dysfunctiona
l couple. That Simon was an evil little dwarf. Fuck-near tossed him overboard. Maybe I should have, eh, Cowboy?”
His little stunt on the trip over seemed to have cheered him up.
“Why do you insist on calling Mark that?” Monty said. “It doesn’t suit him at all.”
“Not even with the hat?” I said, trying to be affable. I’d actually taken to wearing it. It kept my face from burning in the savage Madu sun.
“Not even with the hat.”
“Maybe it’s because I come from seafaring stock.”
“You?” Cooney said.
“Believe it or not, my ancestors were whalers from Rhode Island. My family’s mainly Irish, but my uncle told me we’ve got Portuguese blood in there somewhere. I’m no sailor. But I could never wait to ship out, you know?”
“Sounds like me and Port B,” Cooney said.
“Small town?” I said
“Claustrophobic. Everybody always in your business. It was either make myself scarce, or wind up like the other bloody sheep-shaggers.”
“So how did you escape?” I asked.
“There is no escape,” Monty said vaguely. “We are all lost souls.”
“Lost souls,” Kubu echoed.
Cooney ignored them. “Well, now and then we’d get some yachts come in at the sailing club. Usually it was rich fuckers from up Adelaide. But sometimes they was from further off—Caribbean, Mediterranean. Why they’d wind up in Port fucking Broughton, who the fuck knows. Ill winds, I suppose. Anyway, soon enough word would get around town, and I’d wander down for a gander. I mean, this was exciting stuff—blokes with diving watches, young ladies in bikinis, rum daiquiris, ska music—quite glamorous for our neck of the woods.”
“Somewhere over the rainbow,” Monty sang. “Way up high, there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby…”
Cooney looked at him sideways, then continued. The Oh-Cha’s were making him uncharacteristically chatty.
“Well, sometimes they could be right snobbish cunts. But often as not they’d already heard all each other’s jokes and needed somebody new to tell ‘em to, see? So they’d invite you aboard for a barby and a booze-up. You could have yourself a laugh, maybe even a snog with one of the sheilas. Well, it didn’t take long rating how these fancy yachting folk lived against my own humble lifestyle before I knew which way the wind was blowing. One day, lo and behold, I get my chance.”
“Someday I’ll wish upon a star, and wake up where the clouds are far behind me…”
Cooney ignored him.
“So, what happened?” I asked.
“So, one fine evening one of these yacht hands gets himself into a barney over in the Parlour Rooms of the Port Broughton Hotel. Over a girl of course. He’s rotten-drunk, stabs a mate of mine pretty good, and my mate presses charges. Now the fellah’s got to stick around for the legal proceedings. So, the owner of this particular boat, The Agatha, he’s a Brit. Phillip, The Honorable. Well, old Phil wants to set sail for St. Bart’s before it’s too late in the year. Plus, he’s already had it up to his eyeballs with this dipstick getting into scrapes wherever they tie up. Phil confides to me that he wouldn’t exactly mind a little new blood on board. ‘Well, Mr Coons,’ he says. ‘You seem like a nice enough young chap. How’d you like the job, then?’’
“Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that’s where you’ll find me…”
“So, what did you say?”
Cooney raised his eyebrows and laughed.
“Well, I give it about three and a half seconds of deep deliberation before I say, ‘Hell, yes!’ Didn’t even ask what it paid! Anything to get me out of that bone yard. The next day I ship out, and to be honest, I never looked back.”
“Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly…”
“Old Phil turned out to be a right piece of work, at the end of the day, his poncy accent notwithstanding. The Honorable, my ass. But that, as they say, is another tale.”
“If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?”
“Oh, leave it out, would you Monty?”
He flipped the record and The Clash’s “Rebel Waltz” floated out over the cove. I lay on deck and watched the black clouds massing above the horizon.
“Hey, Cooney,” I said after a while.
“What.”
“Is that it?” I said, pointing.
“Is that what?”
“The monsoon. Is that the monsoon?”
“It’s coming, alright,” Cooney said, rubbing his knees. “I can feel it in me bloody bones.”
“Starting to feel the years, eh, old man?” Monty teased.
“You know I broke my biscuits, you Dutch pederast,” Cooney muttered.
Monty blinked.
The record was over and there was an ugly silence.
“Had them broken for you, wasn’t it, Cooney?”
Cooney pretended not to hear, as he scrabbled around for a beer in the ice chest.
“Yes, it was in San Juan, if I remember the story correctly,” Monty continued, turning to me. “Cooney had to abandon his boat, fully loaded with cargo. You see, the harbor police had come calling. But Cooney outsmarted them. Before he swam for shore, he doused the deck in petrol. So when the police boarded, they didn’t stick around to look in the hold. With all those petrol fumes, they thought they’d all be blown to bits!” Monty laughed. “Brilliant!”
“Clever,” I said. “What was in the hold?”
“Never you mind, Cowboy.”
“You didn’t outsmart the chicken farmers, though, did you, Cooney?”
“Chicken farmers?” I said.
“It’s much funnier when Cooney tells it. Go on, Cooney.”
“I’m not in the mood, alright?” he said, rubbing his knees again.
“Well, it seems Cooney crawled ashore into the middle of Puerto Rico’s biggest chicken ranch,” Monty sputtered. “They thought he was a chicken thief!”
“It was the middle of the fucking night. Couldn’t see a fucking thing, could I?” Cooney burst out. “I didn’t know where the fuck I was. They hunted me down with dogs. Worked me over with baseball bats, the bastards.”
“The moral of the story is, Mark, the life of an international smuggler isn’t all glamor,” Monty gasped, crying with laughter.
Cooney flashed him a filthy look. “Watch it.”
My cheeks hurt from trying to keep a straight face.
“I’m trying to teach the boy a lesson,” Monty said. “Cooney’s a little shy about it, Mark. But once upon a time, he was a regular Pablo Escobar, weren’t you Cooney?”
“I told you, Monty. I’m not in the fucking mood.”
“What do you think paid for that lovely beach-front property of his? And that darling little Swiss Family Robinson bungalow? And the bar? I’ll tell you what. The ill-gotten gains of a misspent youth.”
“You know, you’ve got a really big mouth, Monty.”
“Oh, don’t be such a bore, old man. Mark’s probably never met a real pirate before—have you, Mark?” He continued in a stage whisper. “We’re not allowed to talk about it because Cooney thinks the police are still hot on his trail, thinks they’ll track him down to Madu twenty years later for his crimes, lock him up in a nasty cage full of big burly men who’ll steal his innocence away.”
“I’ll hunt you down with a fucking knife, you great child molester.”
“Best thing that could possibly happen to him, really,” Monty said to me, raising his gin and tonic. “To losing one’s innocence!”
Cooney’s beer bottle sailed narrowly past Monty’s forehead.
“Easy, Captain,” Monty pouted. “Don’t dish it if you can’t take it.”
Raj was giggling behind his legal pad.
“Locked in the closet and can’t fi
nd his way out, poor man,” Monty whispered to me. “That’s why he’s so surly.”
“What are you buzzing about now?” Cooney yelled.
“Nothing, my dear.” Monty stuck out his tongue.
“Queers. I’ve got a boatload of queers on my hands,” Cooney said. “I should dump the lot of you here on this godforsaken sand bar and head back to Madu.”
“Me?” I laughed. “What did I do?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cooney,” Monty said, cheerfully. “The weekend is young. Why don’t you try to put on something halfway presentable, and we’ll all meet up over at the Hotel Jayabaya in half an hour for sunset cocktails. Come on, darling,” he said, taking Kubu’s arm. “Let’s go change.”
“No, Monty,” I called, as they clambered from the boat. “Don’t ever change.”
He blew me a kiss as they swayed down the pier.
Cooney moaned. “How do I manage to get myself saddled with these freaks?”
We sat awaiting the sunset on the upper verandah of the Hotel Jayabaya, a crumbling colonial relic. Monty and Kubu were in a fine mood, knocking back papaya margaritas. Raj was still scribbling away at his article. Cooney had scored a bag of dried mushrooms and was wolfing them down like chips with his beer.
I chain-smoked and gazed into my tonic water. Few things are less fascinating than watching other people get shit-faced when you’re stone-cold sober. I wondered how many days of my life I’d pissed away sucking down booze.
I watched the crowds passing on the boardwalk below, legions of mayat in degrees of undress: tattooed surfers, sun-burnt sex tourists, potbellied returning GIs. It was colonialism all over again—except that the invaders had traded in their pith helmets and quinine for sunglasses and Singapore Slings. A century ago the Madunese might have butchered us all on the beach. Today they needed the cash. And I was complicit in the whole equation. How far did you have to flee to evade the tentacles of Western imperialism? Maybe it was impossible. Even Robinson Crusoe had owned a slave.