by dannal
Max and Josue hacked and zinged their blades until Max’s calculations told him they had harvested nearly ten tons of sugarcane. He kept a little leather-bound notebook that included all of his rum-making calculations, dates, and observations. The small black book was the rum-making holy grail of the Fleur de Lis brand.
But the grueling job of harvesting the cane was only half the work. Max and Josue still faced the next step in the process of creating their own rhum agricole. Max lacked the authority and credentials to call his product AOC rhum agricole Martinique, not to mention his product was one hundred percent unregulated, untaxed, and otherwise against the law.
Max threw a switch in the shed behind his villa. Four powerful sodium lights flashed to life, bathing the massive pile of cut sugarcane, heaped in the grassy backyard of the villa, with warm orange light that steadily changed to a brighter yellow color.
Josue began to hose down the cut cane; it gave the stalks a quick wash before they were fed into the crusher. Max’s tool for the job was an old Goldens model #36, powered by an eight-horsepower Honda generator engine, which grumbled to life with a few pulls of its cord.
Max grabbed two stalks of cane and fed them into the crusher. Robust steel gears turned rollers that grabbed hold of the sugarcane and pulled it through, effectively flattening it, and squeezing out the sweet, light green juice that ran off into a fifty-gallon plastic drum. From the drum, the extracted juice would eventually be fed by a lengthy food-grade siphon hose that stretched, snakelike, down the gaping hole of the cavern opening and into the big copper still.
Max drew off the first liter of fresh-crushed juice into a pitcher, and he added ice from a cooler. He poured himself and Josue a refreshing cup of sweet cane juice which they drank from disposable plastic cups.
Josue clinked cups with Max. “Cheers, Boss.”
Then the two set their attention back to their grueling task. Max fed the canes into the crusher two or three at a time. Josue stood behind the rollers; he grabbed the compacted, fibrous husks spit out on the other side. He then pitched the spent canes onto a growing pile, about fifteen feet from their work area.
After they had collected the next two liters of juice in another pitcher, Max took it into his small laboratory on the ground floor of his subterranean distillery. He set the glass pitcher on a long stainless steel table next to a glass-fronted medical-style cabinet which contained beakers, Erlenmeyer flasks, hydrometers, thermometers, and all of the other complicated testing equipment he needed to produce his secretly renowned rum. Max added his preferred strain of liquid yeast to the pitcher of juice to make a yeast starter that would grow for several hours until the crushing work was finished.
At the crusher, every hour or so Max and Josue traded jobs. Not so much to give the other man a break—each job was back-breaking work—but rather to split up the monotony of doing one thing for such a long period of time. Max could not believe the sun had not yet come up by the time they had filled the still with cane juice.
“Must be a new record or something,” he said to Josue, who rubbed a knot in the thick muscle of his left shoulder. “We cut so much cane, I thought it’d be noon before we were done crushing. Not that I’m complaining...”
“You are animal, my friend,” Josue said. “You work as ten men.”
“Ten really old men,” Max replied. “It’s how I feel anyway.”
Max and Josue descended a rustic wooden staircase built from the mouth-like cave opening in the yard to the smooth cavern floor. Halfway down, Josue flipped a switch on an electrical box attached to the porous rock of the cavern wall. An elaborate lighting grid, arranged throughout the entire subterranean distillery, flickered with bright fluorescent illumination that filled the entire cave with cool, even light.
Max reached the bottom step and approached the still. He used a chemical test kit to check the pH of the cane juice inside the copper still. He opened his black book and compared the results to previous batches. Then he jotted down some calculations.
Josue carried over several buckets of recently collected spring water, and he poured some into the small opening on top of the still. Max checked the pH level again, and added a bit more spring water. He did this three more times until satisfied the juice was not too basic and not overly acidic, and then he pitched the yeast.
The yeast would grow, feasting on the sugar in the juice, producing alcohol and burping off carbon dioxide gas for the next couple of days before the distilling process would begin.
“Thank God for that,” Max said, slapping Josue on the back. “I don’t know about you, but I think I need sleep. You might have to carry me upstairs.”
Josue responded by rushing up the wooden steps as quickly as he could. He’ll be in bed before I even make it halfway up, Max thought. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Max snorted awkwardly to himself. He was tired to an almost delirious level.
With an excessive amount of caution, Max connected a tripwire across the cavern, about a foot up from the floor, just off the bottom step. Then, he delicately pushed a button on a control panel next to the light switch. An indistinct red light flickered to life on the wall beside the glass-fronted cabinet. The slowly flashing light indicated an armed detonator attached to about forty pounds of C-4 plastic explosive hidden in the base of the cabinet. Should anyone come down the stairs looking for Max’s illegal rum operation, they would, along with any trace of the subterranean distillery, suddenly cease to exist.
Max mounted the steps and reached the cavern’s mouth, but was startled by a strange sound. The dense foliage around the villa typically teemed with life: squawking birds, clicking bugs, even the geckos would make a strange bird-like chirping sound from time to time.
But the air was still and silent as Max’s head broke the surface and he climbed up to ground level. He searched all around him with a watchful gaze, but saw nothing.
Darkness enveloped him. Josue had switched off the sodium lamps on his way to bed. He likely had assumed Max would have been right behind him and not thought twice about cutting the lights.
As he stood in the middle of the yard behind the villa, Max listened. His senses felt prickly and alert. He turned his head, deliberately scanning the entire area for the rustling of a leaf, a stepped-on twig, an out-of-place motion.
Max observed for nearly ten minutes. And though he didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, Max knew full well: someone else was present, and they were watching his every move.
Despite his body’s protests, Max’s senses told him to wake up. He resisted as long he could, but the smell of frying bacon assaulted his olfactory senses, and forced him out of bed. He went downstairs and found Josue hard at work in the kitchen.
“Smells good,” Max said, rubbing his stubbly face with both hands. “What is it?”
“Creole eggs,” Josue said. He was wearing a black tank top and shorts, and he had a white apron tied around his waist; he looked like a line cook in a restaurant. All he needed was a really tall hat.
What Max had thought was bacon turned out to be tasso. The spicy and flavorful Creole ham sizzled in little cubes inside a cast iron skillet on the stove. Josue was a dynamo in the kitchen, sautéing, simmering, and chopping all at the same time. Max wasn’t sure where the enigmatic Haitian had learned to cook so well, but he was thankful to be the beneficiary of the younger man’s skills.
Josue opened the freezer and pulled out two gallon-sized freezer bags filled with crushed ice cubes. “Arm up, Boss,” he said. The quiet Haitian unrolled an Ace bandage, and then plunked the first bag of ice on top of Max’s left shoulder. Max cringed.
Josue wrapped the bandage around Max’s arm in layers, securing the ice pack in place before repeating the process on the other side.
“I think we’re about one bitter argument away from being considered an old married couple,” Max said, slapping the other man on the back. “Thanks, Josue. Would you call me when breakfast is ready?”’
“Lunch,” Josue corrected.
> “Oh, jeez,” Max said.
“Oh, Boss. I got text message few minutes ago. Serge say he dropped off box on dock.”
“I’ll get it,” Max said, stretching out his arms to ensure he could still move them with his ice bags attached.
Max stepped through the kitchen door leading outside, to the rear of the villa. It was only about ten feet away from where he and Josue had crushed all of the sugarcane, the pile of spent stalks looming like a small mountain close by.
A path bordered by banana trees, tall palms, and dense low-growing foliage connected the villa to the long wooden pier at the south side of the island. The pier, with a wide boat dock on the end, was the lifeline that connected Max’s island with the rest of the world. Built over the shallows close to the ilet, the lengthy white pier extended about fifty feet out to the deeper waters where a good-sized vessel could approach the ilet without grounding its outboard motors.
An arrangement Max had made with a grocer in Le Robert meant that a box full of eggs, cheese, fresh baguettes, milk, and cream, was delivered by boat to the dock, two times a week. It also contained whatever produce was fresh and available at the moment; Max always enjoyed the surprise of finding out what was in the box. It only cost him three bottles of Fleur de Lis rum per week.
Max stepped over to the corner of the dock to find the box overflowing with greens: kale, spinach, and arugula spilled out over the top of the box like a volcanic eruption of salad. He dug around inside and found some nice fingerling potatoes and heirloom tomatoes along with the usual stuff. He bent down and picked up the box. “Oof,” he said, straining under the weight of the groceries, as his back and iced shoulders reminded him he wasn’t eighteen anymore.
As he walked back to the kitchen, Max considered the effort he put into the production of Fleur de Lis rum. He cut the cane himself, crushed it, as well as doing the fermenting and distilling of the juice for every batch of rum he made going back to the very first one, nearly five years earlier. Each time, it took a toll. Recovery time took longer with each batch. Max wondered how much longer he could keep doing it.
Sure, he could hire others to do the manual labor. But Max knew it wouldn’t be the same. As far as he was concerned, he needed to do the work himself, to put a little bit of himself into the process each time. This devotion to quality was what made his product special, and it was why people would seek it out every time.
At the end of the pier, Max’s eye caught sight of something that stopped him short. The moist dirt near the end of the pier revealed several footprints quite clearly visible in the light of day. Max set down the box and inspected the prints. Close scrutiny showed the prints all had the same shoe style, and appeared to be all of the same size foot.
The foot was small. Max guessed about a size seven. Or maybe it was about a nine in women’s, he thought.
Max had never seen anyone but Serge from Guillaume’s Market dropping off the box of groceries on the dock. And he had never seen the hulking grocer take a single step further than necessary to drop off the box at the far end of the pier. And Serge de Bounevialle’s foot was probably about a size fifteen.
Why would a woman be snooping around my dock? Max thought. Where else on the ilet had she been? Had she seen the still?
Max considered the previous night, the time just before he had gone to bed, with the startling stillness he had experienced around him. He followed the footsteps and discovered they faded away as the soil grew dryer and denser closer to the villa where more of the rocky foundation of the island showed through the earth.
Max’s cell phone rang to life in his pocket, startling him. He hardly ever received calls. Max removed the smartphone and saw the name T.L. Wilkinson.
“Sorry, Terry,” Max said to the phone, as he pressed the phone’s lock button to reject the call. He slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Not today.”
“You haven’t seen anyone else on the ilet, have you?” Max asked, when he returned to the kitchen.
“No, why?” Josue sounded alarmed. It was out of character for him.
“Nothing. Just stay sharp, okay?”
“Of course.”
Max and Josue sat down for a slow lunch to be savored and enjoyed. Their physical efforts over the previous thirty hours or so had taken a toll and would require a great deal of calories to replace the energy spent. They each consumed about six eggs, which were deliciously prepared with onions, peppers, celery, and the crispy tasso, and some hot sauce—along with a whole baguette each. Max had made a large French press full of coffee. He poured Josue a steaming cup, while he trickled his own over ice, before adding a generous splash of heavy cream.
After the replenishing meal, Max fell asleep in his master bedroom until well into the evening. Four Ibuprofen tablets had relaxed his aching back and shoulders just enough to allow him to drift back to sleep.
He awoke, sunken into the center of his queen-sized memory foam mattress, and parted the opening in the mosquito netting draped over the four bed posts. His room was nearly pitch dark.
Max switched on a lamp and let his eyes adjust to the room. Tropical furniture decorated the large room: part of some sort of Hemingway collection he had ordered from back in the States. The room was orderly, impeccable. Come a long way from the slob I was when I was married, he thought. But his life was less complicated now, simple in its purpose.
He walked downstairs and stopped by the door to Josue’s room. His young business partner lay sideways on his bed, reading a book in the shallow light from a small bedside lamp.
“Dinner?” Max asked.
Josue nodded.
“Le Homard Paresseux?”
The younger man nodded again.
Within minutes, the two were casting off Max’s boat—a Cobia twenty-seven foot center console fishing boat—from the dock. Josue gave the boat some throttle and the twin 225hp outboards propelled the boat forward. The slender dark-skinned man wore black wraparound sunglasses despite the darkness, and the wind did nothing to muss his short, perfectly-trimmed afro.
Max made himself comfortable in the stern, leaning his left arm over the rail to touch the warm spray from the bow, and just enjoying the warm humid air of the evening.
The swift speedboat had proved to be a great way to travel around the island, often proving to be much faster than the roads. The exception would be traveling to the leeward side of Martinique. Max could drive from Le Robert to Fort de France in twenty minutes, while a boat trip would take an hour or so. That was why Max kept a car in Fort de France, one in Saint-Pierre, and another in Le Robert; nothing fancy, just reliable, economical Japanese imports. He also kept a couple of motorcycles and a pair of scooters parked in friends’ sheds in various locales around the island. Not the priciest or fastest bikes he could find, but reliable, gassed-up, and always at the ready. Max wanted to be able to get anywhere on the island quickly, and in his business, he never knew when he might need to make a quick getaway.
A fifteen-minute boat ride took them around the Caravelle Peninsula, an area popular with hikers and tourists thanks to its mangrove paths and magnificent views of the ocean, a lighthouse, and the ruins of the seventeenth-century castle called Château Dubuc.
Josue directed the boat toward a beach adorned with the lights and all the activity of a bustling and lively village. He throttled down to an idle. Max grabbed a pair of night vision binoculars from a duffel bag and scanned the shoreline. It was a precaution, but Max knew the one time he failed to be vigilant would be the one time he got burned.
“Looks clear,” Max said, and Josue throttled up until he reached the pier, almost identical to the one at his ilet.
Max helped Josue tie off to the pier and secure the boat. The beach at the town of Tartane was one of Max’s favorite on Martinique. A lively little fishing community, it was popular with tourists on their way to see all the sights of the peninsula.
Max knew a few of the fishermen from the village, and as he and Josue walked the pier towar
d the beach, they passed some of their colorful skiffs, often called gumtrees, each bulging with heaping nets and tackle, as the boats rested for the night.
A quartet of musicians–a guitarist, a keyboardist, a djembe drummer, and an alto saxophonist–performed what Max decided was their take on mini-jazz outside Le Homard Paresseux, a bustling seafood restaurant specializing in whatever the fishermen dragged in that day. Max threw a couple of Euros in the musicians’ hat and Josue opened the door to the restaurant.
“Bon soir, bon soir, Maxwell,” the host said. The guy had a craggy look about him that suggested he had grown up casting nets off one of the skiffs outside for decades before opening his restaurant. Now the man stood poised behind a podium, well-dressed in a bright yellow-and white-striped linen suit with a matching fedora. He embraced Max and kissed him on both cheeks, before doing the same to Josue.
“Bonjour, Alfred,” Max said. “Any chance you’ve got a table for us? I know we should have called first…but we didn’t.”
“Of course, Maxwell. Un moment.” Alfred gestured to one of his wait staff. In seconds Max and Josue were ushered through the crowded restaurant to a big round table in the corner, large enough for about six people. Max knew Alfred kept a table or two open for last-minute VIPs, and for whatever reason, he considered Max to be such a customer.
As Max sat down, sliding himself around the booth-style cushioned seat so that his back was to the wall, facing out into the middle of the bustling restaurant, he felt his breath catch in his throat, as he spotted Isobel Greer sitting two tables down, alone.
Max whispered a few words to Josue and then stood up to walk over to Isobel’s table. He tugged on the tail of his black Columbia Bahama shirt to straighten it out as best he could. He looked down at his cargo shorts and flip flops. Wish I’d known she’d be here, Max thought. I’d have worn a blazer, and maybe some long pants.
Max walked past Isobel, who faced the front window of the restaurant; she seemed to be enjoying the musicians, even though she only saw their backs through the window. Max turned and smiled at Isobel. It took a few seconds for her to notice him.