by Bob Morris
When he turns to face us, he is smiling. Peculiar, since Boggy is generally pretty miserly with emotions and his smiles are rare indeed.
He says, “That which is planted here will grow strong.”
Then he picks up his bag and walks toward the terminal.
As we follow him, Barbara says, “Now that wasn’t so goddamn gloomy, was it?”
“Just more mumbo-jumbo,” I say.
3
As promised, the Bismarcks are waiting in the backyard of Aunt Trula’s house when we arrive.
It is some kind of house—a three-story Georgian affair with more rooms than I’ll probably have a chance to see during the two weeks we plan to stay here.
And it is some kind of backyard—the length of a football field from the rear of the house to the bluffs overlooking the beach.
The whole place is called Cutfoot Estate. I figure there must once have been a Lord Cutfoot or an Admiral Cutfoot or a Rich Somebody Cutfoot who originally owned the property. I figure wrong.
“Named after Cutfoot Bay,” explains Aunt Trula, with a nod to the ocean. “The rocks down there are quite vicious, like razors. They make the beach rather difficult to walk on.”
After a pair of butlers haul away our bags—I am pretty sure we’ll need detailed maps to find our rooms later—Aunt Trula whisks us off to a sunny terrace, where we sit having tea.
It is just the three of us—Barbara, Aunt Trula, and I—sipping cups of Earl Grey. Boggy has already joined Aunt Trula’s chief gardener to inspect the Bismarcks.
A pretty young woman in a black-and-white maid’s uniform serves us goodies from a silver tray—cucumber topped with a smidgen of salmon, watercress sandwiches, and other dainty things that require you ingest them by large handfuls if you wish to gain anything approaching sustenance. I am hungry, my natural state, and I am trying hard not to make it look as if I am foraging.
We watch Boggy as he moves from where the Bismarcks lay on one side of the lawn. The chief gardener—a slender, erect man named Cedric, outfitted in a khaki uniform—follows Boggy, carrying a shovel. When they reach the general vicinity of where the palms are to be planted, Boggy takes the shovel and starts digging a hole.
Aunt Trula wants the Bismarcks planted in a V-shape, four on each side. They will start just beyond a big fountain off the terrace, bordering beds of lilies and amaryllis and opening onto the ocean.
The pretty young woman refills our cups and disappears inside the house. Aunt Trula takes a sip of tea, puts down her cup, and fixes her gaze on me.
She smiles. It is a thin, forced, I’m-still-sizing-you-up smile. That’s OK. I’m still sizing her up, too.
So far, she has pretty much met my expectations. Sturdy and imperious, quite fit for almost seventy, her beauty still rigorously intact. Dame Judi Dench was born to play her.
“I must tell you, Mr. Chasteen, I am rather disappointed in those palm trees of yours.”
It catches me off guard.
“Oh?”
That is all I can manage, but I ennunciate it nicely.
“They seem rather unsubstantial,” says Aunt Trula.
“Well, that’s probably because they’re tied up and laying on the ground. Wait until we get them planted, then I think you’ll like them just fine.”
“I don’t think so,” she says. “They aren’t as tall as you led me to believe.”
I look at Barbara. The way she wrinkles her eyebrows is barely perceptible, but it conveys boundless sympathy. It also conveys an unmistakable amusement. I am on my own here. I forge ahead.
“It was never my intention to mislead you,” I say. “Those Bismarcks are at least sixty or seventy feet tall, and that’s just about as tall as the species gets.”
Aunt Trula makes a face.
“Disappointing,” she says.
She reaches for one of the cucumber thingies. She removes the salmon from it and takes a small bite of cucumber, studying me while she chews.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “You’re in luck.”
“How’s that?” says Aunt Trula.
“I brought a palm stretcher with me.”
“A palm stretcher?”
“Uh-huh. We can hook it up and get another twenty feet out of each of those palms, no problem.”
Aunt Trula considers me. She purses her lips while she does it.
“You are jesting,” she says.
“I am,” I say.
Aunt Trula says nothing. I get the distinct feeling that she is not someone who appreciates a good jesting.
I reach for the watercress sandwiches and dispatch with two of them in rapid order. Enough to fuel a hummingbird for maybe fifteen minutes.
Aunt Trula says, “My niece tells me that you were once an athlete, Mr. Chasteen. Football, was it?”
“It was.”
“Rather a brutish sport, in my opinion.”
“In mine, too.”
It gets a raised eyebrow from Aunt Trula.
“Then why, Mr. Chasteen, did you play?”
“Because I’m a brute.”
Barbara covers her mouth, stifling a laugh. Aunt Trula scrunches her lips some more, then unscrunches them to sip some tea.
We turn our attention back to the lawn. Boggy puts down the shovel. He kneels by the shallow hole he’s dug and reaches into it.
“Your man there,” says Aunt Trula. “What did you say his name is?”
I start to tell her that Boggy is neither my man, nor anyone else’s. But I catch a look from Barbara. Behave, it says.
“His full name is Cachique Baugtanaxata,” I say. “That’s why we call him Boggy.”
“And what is he exactly?”
“He’s my associate,” I say.
“No, no, I meant what is he?”
“Well, he’s an aggravation sometimes, I can tell you that. A damn aggravation.”
“Mr. Chasteen,” she says, “I mean … where does he come from?”
I know what she means. I’m just not having any part of it.
“He’s from Hispaniola,” I finally say. “The Dominican Republic side.”
“He doesn’t look Hispanic.”
“He’s not.”
“And he’s not a Negro.”
“No, he’s not.”
“And he’s no Chinaman.”
I don’t reply to that.
“So what is he exactly?”
“He’s Taino,” I say.
“Tie what?”
“Taino. They lived in the Caribbean long before any Europeans made it there.”
“Ah, I see,” says Aunt Trula. “He’s an Indian fellow.”
“No,” I say. “He’s Taino. Indians are what the Europeans called them. Because they had their heads up their asses about where they were.”
If I sound a little testy it’s only because I am.
Cue, Barbara.
“Titi,” she says, reaching for her aunt’s arm, “why don’t we take a stroll?”
“Splendid idea,” says Aunt Trula. “I could use the fresh air.”
And she gives me a smile even thinner than the one before.
4
I follow Barbara and Aunt Trula off the terrace. They go their way—to a gazebo on the bluff overlooking the ocean. And I go mine—to where Boggy and Cedric kneel by the hole in the lawn.
The two of them stand as I approach.
Boggy says, “There is a problem, Zachary.”
“Yep, there is,” I say. “It’s called Aunt Trula. She’s a pain in the ass.”
Cedric looks away, biting back a smile.
Boggy picks up the shovel and pokes it in the hole. It only goes down a foot or so and then it hits something. Something that sounds like rock.
“That is the problem,” says Boggy. “Limestone. We cannot dig a hole that will be deep enough for the palms.”
“Well, so much for your prediction, huh?”
“What do you mean, Zachary?”
“I mean, that little scene back at the airport,
where you held those stones in your hands and did your Taino-vision thing. You said what we planted here would grow strong.”
“Yes, that is what I said.”
“So this limestone thing is just a little bump in the road? We’ll work around it? The palms will be all right?”
Boggy shrugs.
“About the palms, I do not know, Zachary. Maybe they live, maybe they die.”
I just look at him. An aggravation, a damn aggravation.
“How much hole do we need for these palms?” Cedric asks.
“Five or six feet at least,” I say. “The root balls need to be covered with soil or else the palms will die.”
“Then we’ve got some hard digging ahead of us. I don’t know that we have all the equipment here that we’ll need. I better go make some calls.”
“I’ll go with you,” Boggy says.
After the two of them have stepped away, I kneel beside the hole. I reach down and touch the limestone. Hard digging for sure.
We might be better served by dynamite. And, if not that, then at least some kind of big drill.
Which will mean renting heavy equipment, maybe paying for a couple of guys to help shovel out the rock and haul it away.
I’m thinking that these are turning out to be some very expensive palm trees when I hear Barbara shout: “Zack!”
She is standing in the gazebo with Aunt Trula, waving for me to come quick.
I set off on a run across the big back lawn. When I get to the gazebo, Barbara points to the water.
“Out there,” she says. “I think it’s …”
I look to where she is pointing. A wave washes over a finger of jagged rocks that juts out from the beach. Sea foam sprays everywhere. I can’t see what she is pointing at.
“Darling, please,” says Aunt Trula. “It’s just a bag of garbage. Probably off one of the cruise ships. It happens now and then.”
Then the wave washes out to reveal something hung up on the rocks, something black and misshapen, something that is no bag of garbage.
“Stay here,” I tell Barbara and Aunt Trula.
I scramble down the side of the bluff, stripping off blazer, shirt, and shoes as I go.
There’s no reason for me to hurry. Not if the object in the water turns out to be what I fear it is.
But pumped by the adrenaline of the moment, I hit the beach running, hurdle the first wave, and the next, and then land squarely atop a rock, one of those rocks that gave this particular beach its name.
Knives slash the sole of my right foot and I twist as I go down, trying to break the fall. And then knives are slashing my shoulder.
A wave rolls me over and I catch a glimpse of my foot, blood drizzling from the heel. I grab for my shoulder, feel the gash, figure it must be bleeding, too.
Another wave crashes in, and now the water is just deep enough for me to grab a stroke without scraping bottom. Then another and another.
I close in on the finger of rocks that juts out of the water. And I can make out what I’d been dreading to see.
The dead guy wears a black wet suit, a full-body one, with footies and a neoprene hood. He is hogtied, his arms and legs bound behind his back with a nylon rope that has hung up on the rocks.
Easy enough to forgive Aunt Trula for thinking she’d seen a bag of garbage. It is a neat little black bundle of death.
I tread water, trying to figure out the best way to approach this, how to get the body unsnagged without actually, you know, having to touch it.
I reach for the rope, manage to slip it off the rock. I get a good grip and sidestroke to shore, towing my grim cargo behind me.
And then another wave rolls in. It lifts the body, thrusts it forward. And suddenly I am face-to-face with the dead guy.
Only his is like no face I’ve ever seen, nor ever wish to see again.
It’s his eyes. They are gone. Just two ugly holes where once eyes had been.
5
By the time I draw close to shore, Boggy is wading out to help me. Together we drag the body from the water and lay it on its side in the sand.
I grab my blazer, drape it over the guy’s head, and shield us from his zombie stare.
Barbara and Aunt Trula have already gone inside the house to call the police. Boggy and I sit on the rocks and wait.
The cut on my foot is nasty, but it will heal without stitches. The scrapes on my shoulder sting worse than they look. No telling what all kind of marine bacteria is now crawling around under my skin.
Still, I’m way better off than the guy lying on the beach under my blazer. Boggy and I try not to look at him.
“It was not the fish,” says Boggy.
“Not the fish what?”
“Not the fish that did that to his eyes.”
“Why you think that?”
“Because he has not been dead so very long. The body, it is not swell up. His wet suit, it has no tears, no holes. The rest of him, it has not been eaten.”
I taste something bitter at the back of my throat. I swallow hard and keep it down.
I look at the ocean. And I keep looking at the ocean until the team from the Bermuda Police Service arrives.
There are six of them, plus two EMTs, one of them carrying a foldup stretcher as they make their way down the side of the bluff.
On their heels is a tall woman with a frizzy ponytail of black hair, her notepad at the ready. A newspaper reporter, I’m guessing. A photographer trails her. And following them is a TV news crew. The insignia on the camera says ZBM-TV and has the CBS logo. The guy carrying it stumbles as he comes down the bluff, catching himself just before his camera bites the sand.
The cop in charge of things introduces himself to Boggy and me as Chief Inspector Worley. He is fortyish, short, and slender.
“If you gentlemen don’t mind staying right where you are, we’ll take your statement shortly,” he says in a deep voice that doesn’t match his compact size.
Worley moves toward the body and squats beside it. He studies it for a moment before lifting the blazer.
He jerks his head away, lets go of the blazer.
“Goddamn,” he mutters.
He pokes his chin at the reporters and photographers as they jockey for angles.
“Get them out of here,” Worley tells one of his people.
An officer steps in and herds them away. The woman reporter who led the charge puts up an objection, but soon she is climbing back up the bluff with the rest of them, joining Barbara and Aunt Trula.
The rocks create a natural barrier and keep the few curiosity seekers on the beach at bay. But the blufftop provides a prime vantage point. It stretches for half a mile on either side of us, lined by stately compounds, some of them bigger even than Aunt Trula’s. Already, there are dozens of people standing in tight little clumps along the bluff, pointing and taking turns with binoculars.
Worley lifts the blazer again. He studies the face longer this time. Then he lets the blazer drop and wipes his hand on his pants.
He stands and speaks with the other cops. One of them squats down and peeks under the blazer. He gets up quickly. The others keep their distance.
I look up at the bluff. The TV cameraman has his lens trained on Barbara and Aunt Trula. The reporter he is teamed with stands off camera asking the two of them questions. Barbara has an arm around Aunt Trula’s shoulders. Both of them seem to be handling everything just fine.
Worley steps over to where Boggy and I sit on the rocks.
“Show me where you found the body.”
I point to the place.
“It was wedged between those rocks out there.”
Worley flips open a cell phone and steps away, punching numbers. He speaks to someone on the phone, then closes it. He steps over to the five other cops and speaks to them.
When he is done, the cops split up. Two of them work one way along the shoreline, nudging clumps of seaweed with their shoes, poking around rocks. Another two go in the opposite direction, doing th
e same thing.
The fifth cop waves in the two EMTs. They unfold the stretcher as Worley makes his way back to us.
“You two together?”
Boggy and I nod.
“American?”
We both nod again.
“Passports?”
“Up at the house,” I say.
“You’re staying with Mrs. Ambister?”
It takes me a second. I only know her as Aunt Trula. I’ve never heard Barbara use her last name.
“Yes,” I say. “We just got here this afternoon.”
“Some welcome,” Worley says.
The EMTs finish loading the body onto the stretcher and start moving toward the bluff. It will be a tricky climb.
Worley sees them and calls out: “Just put it down right there. Got a boat on the way. You can load him up in it.”
He turns back to us, pulls out a notepad and a pen.
“OK,” he says. “Tell me anything else I need to know.”
There isn’t much to tell. By the time I’m done, two Boston Whalers have arrived and are idling several yards offshore. They are twentyseven-footers, each bearing the logo of the Bermuda Police Service.
There are three people in each boat—a uniformed officer at the helm and two scuba divers, wet suits on but not zipped up all the way.
Worley steps to the edge of the water and hollers instructions. One of the boats moves out about a hundred yards. Moments later both sets of divers are in the water, working a grid, slowly and methodically closing in on each other.
There is nothing to do but sit and watch. I look up at the bluff. Barbara and Aunt Trula are no longer to be seen. But the crews from the newspaper and the TV station are still hanging around.
Worley climbs up the bluff and speaks to them for half an hour or so. By the time he comes back down to the beach it is starting to get dark. The divers have converged, but there is nothing to report. They get back on the boats.
Worley waves in one of the boats. The EMTs roll up their pants, wade out with the stretcher, and load it onto the boat.
The officer at the helm whips the wheel and gives the boat some gas.
Boggy and I watch the boat skitter away across the inky waves, heading to wherever it is they take dead bodies that wash ashore on the beaches of Bermuda.