The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House

by Youngblood, Patrick

  Let’s face it, one doesn’t actually land in a plane that size, so much as just plop down out of the sky. For a proper landing one needs a DC-10 or an Airbus, something with jet engines and real brakes, something that doesn’t realign your vertebrae when you make contact with terra firma.

  The approach to Vieques is particularly alarming. (Culebra, the next-door island, is even worse, but let’s not think about that.) For one thing, the plane makes a loud beeping sound as the ground approaches and a recorded voice says (in what always strikes me as a decidedly pessimistic tone), “Five hundred feet.”

  Then the pilot, smacking his gum, essentially begins shutting down the plane—flipping off switches, pushing levers, etc.—until an eerie silence descends on the whole enterprise. The tiny runway, squeezed in between hills to the right and the sea to the left, appears to wobble unsteadily as the plane plunges towards it.

  This is always my worst moment, the time when I start imagining my mother going through my dresser after the memorial service and gasping at the sad state of my underpants.

  But relief comes fast. By the time we’ve wrestled our way through the munchkin-sized plane door and are standing on the tarmac in the fragrant heat, I’m ready for anything.

  ☼ ☼ ☼

  A harried-looking woman named Felicity met us outside the terminal. She was cordial in a distracted fashion.

  What I remember most about our first few minutes in Vieques was the acrid smell of the Turkish cigarettes Felicity chain-smoked and how fast she drove along the island’s curving roads. Despite her heavy foot we were able to catch fleeting glimpses of verdant overgrown fields on one side and pristine beaches on the other.

  So far so good.

  “You’re going to love this house,” Felicity volunteered as we shot past the gates of what I assumed to be the Dream Son’s resort, lighting her third cigarette from the dying embers of her second. “The goats are adorable.”

  Goats?

  Michael, in the front seat, stared straight ahead.

  We rocketed past a deserted-looking hospital and turned left at a house with matching half-size statues of cows, painted black and white, standing in the front yard. Then we drove up a series of dusty, pot-holed lanes until we reached an iron gate, secured with an enormous, rusty padlock that clearly hadn’t been unlocked in a couple of decades.

  We squeezed our way around the gate and stumbled along the driveway past the neighbor’s yard (technically a corral, filled with—you guessed it—goats), dragging our dented suitcases behind us.

  Although the house didn’t bear more than a passing resemblance to the idyllic website photos Michael had excitedly emailed to me a couple of months earlier, it looked presentable enough from the outside. And the view from the terrace was stupendous—a sweeping panorama encompassing both the big island of Puerto Rico and the tiny island of Culebra, with a broad swath of aquamarine sea between them.

  The less said about the interior of the house the better. Think jailhouse block meets suburban tract house, circa 1975, minus the glamour.

  It was grim but serviceable. The toilet flushed; the fridge worked; the sheets, though no doubt already threadbare when they’d escaped from their discount outlet a decade earlier, appeared to be clean. Nothing fancy, as Felicity cheerfully exclaimed, but it would get us through the week.

  And there was always the view.

  Once we’d settled in, Felicity drove us to the rental car company where we were given custody of a scratched-up clunker with a permanently-illuminated ‘check engine’ light. Tired and hungry though we were, it was thrilling to be cruising around in the tropics after a bitingly cold winter, so I suggested we take an exploratory spin.

  Michael, always good with maps, had already figured out the basic layout of the island and soon we were on the road to Esperanza, the tiny fishing village nestled on the south (or Caribbean) side of the island, where most of the restaurants seemed to be located.

  Then two things happened in rapid succession.

  First, there were the horses.

  At least five or six of them were standing in the middle of the road. Yes, we’d read all about the island’s wild horses but frankly we’d imagined something more along the lines of the ponies that inhabited Assateague Island off the Maryland shore (one of our favorite summer haunts), stubby, ill-mannered quadrupeds who ate your coveted club sandwich when you turned your back, then digested it and shot it out the other end with cartoonish speed.

  But these horses were something else altogether. For starters, they were slim and finely-hewn, with sharp, intelligent faces.

  Wild horses roam the island

  For another, they seemed to have absolutely no fear of cars or humans. In fact, they seemed to take great delight in blocking the road. If they’d had the ability (and lips) to whistle nonchalantly, I’m sure they would have launched into Anchors Aweigh or Begin the Beguine to signal their complete and utter lack of concern for the poor humans waiting patiently for them to clear out of the road.

  Even so, we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to honk—it seemed crass to startle these beautiful creatures who were, after all, doing nothing more than minding their own business on their home turf. But we did edge forward until they eventually got the idea (or, more likely, simply got bored) and dispersed to the side of the road.

  Away we went.

  The second thing that happened was that I got sick.

  Even worse, I knew what was wrong the minute I felt the first pang.

  A sinus infection.

  I’d been hauling around a spiteful little cold for a couple of weeks, and although I was feeling better (and hoping against hope that the tropical sunshine would chase away the last vestiges of illness), I hadn’t been able to shake the rattling cough that has constituted the bonus round of every cold I’ve ever had.

  Alas, I’d had sinus infections before and was thoroughly acquainted with every delightful symptom: headache, chest discomfort and a thrumming, low-grade fever. Not to mention the feeling that a sumo wrestler is squeezing your Eustachian tubes between his sweaty thighs.

  The instant this diagnosis occurred to me, I began to wonder what my chances were of getting any sort of decent treatment on this lovely but decidedly second-world island.

  Deep breath. As usual, I was leaping yards ahead of myself. First I had to tell Michael.

  “Miguel?” I said, trotting out the nickname I sometimes used when I was being ingratiating or coy or simply wanted my way.

  “Huh?’ he answered, half on his guard, half preoccupied with trying to take in the local sights.

  “I think I’m sick.”

  This got his attention.

  “Like what, your stomach?”

  I shook my head sadly.

  “Not really.”

  He slowed the car to a crawl.

  “Then what?”

  I looked past him towards the crystal-blue Caribbean lying just beyond the stone balustrade separating Esperanza from the sea.

  “More like my sinus thing.”

  He stopped the car completely.

  “Oh God,” he said.

  He reached over and took my clammy hand in his. We sat there for a minute or two, staring out across the water towards the glorious sunset, delaying the moment when we would have to swing into action, the moment beyond which we would never again be on this beautiful island for the first time with both of us (purportedly) in blooming health.

  “What do we do?”

  This was me, feeling very lost. He thought for a moment.

  “Didn’t we pass a hospital on our way to the house?”

  My mind flashed back to the modern but decidedly deserted-looking medical facility we’d zoomed past with Felicity a few hours earlier.

  “I think so, but it looked closed.”

  “It had an emergency room. That can’t be closed.”

  Oh yes it can, I remember thinking.

  But I didn’t say a word.

  The emergency room wasn�
��t closed, but it might as well have been.

  For one thing, it was completely empty. And I don’t just mean that there were no people. There was no furniture. No chairs, no tables, no three-year-old magazines. Nada. I half expected to see tumbleweed unspool in slow-motion across the linoleum floor.

  Surprisingly, there was an attendant at the desk. Yes, she was chewing gum, and yes, her expression screamed, why in the name of everything that’s holy are you bothering me? But she listened patiently enough as I tried to explain, in a garbled mixture of English and Spanish (with some college French thrown in for good measure), the nature of my problem.

  “Okay,” she said when I finished my pidgin Spanish recitation. “We help you.”

  This was said with such obvious kindness that I melted instantly.

  “Oh thank you,” I said. “Muchas gracias.”

  “When the doctor get back from his dinner.”

  Four hours later, I had seen the doctor and gleaned the following information:

  •Dr. Flores was a delightful fellow who had studied medicine at Georgetown.

  •My self-diagnosis was correct.

  •There was only one pharmacy on the island and it was closed until noon tomorrow.

  •There was no medicine in the hospital.

  That’s right. No medications of any sort in the building. I quizzed the doctor very carefully on this last point, trust me.

  “Can’t you just slip me some samples so I can get started on my antibiotics?” I wheedled, as he wrote our my prescriptions. “I feel really lousy.”

  His manner was courtly and forthright but unapologetic.

  “We don’t keep no medicines here,” he said and spread his arms wide, casting his eyes around the spotless but notably bare examination room.

  I struggled to match his super-polite tone (I’m ashamed to admit I even affected a slight Puerto Rican accent). “But isn’t it unusual for a hospital not to have medicine?”

  He handed me a sheaf of prescriptions.

  “Not this one.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “So what do you use to treat your patients?”

  “We have no patients.”

  “I don’t understand. This looks like a brand-new facility.”

  “That is so.”

  “Then where are the patients?”

  “We have none.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked at me as if he could hardly believe my stupidity.

  “Because we don’t keep no medicines.”

  Three

  No Wanna Iguana

  Books saved my life that week.

  While Michael was in town on Sunday morning, filling my prescriptions, I tottered geriatrically from the bed where I’d sweated my way through the night into the sun-drenched living room.

  The sight of the sparkling ocean through the French doors elevated my mood slightly but I still felt achy, light-headed and angry with my body for betraying me at the start of our much-anticipated vacation.

  Was this a harbinger of things to come? I asked myself.

  I was barely fifty and already falling apart.

  And then I saw the bookcase.

  At first I expected the usual vacation house dreck—fat, pulpy paperbacks caked with sunblock and sand. But these shelves offered much more. Clearly there was a reader of discernment in the general vicinity—whether the owner, the property manager, or just a lucky confluence of previous guests, it was impossible to say. Whatever the source, the result was a gold mine.

  I have always been a hungry reader, prone to losing myself completely between the covers of any half-well-written book. This little collection promised unhoped for release from my damp misery.

  By the time Michael got back from the pharmacy I was so engrossed in Carrie Fisher’s The Best Awful I’d almost forgotten I was sick. Between chapters I’d even found the strength to drag myself into the bathroom and wash my face. Now I was on the balcony, draped across a chaise with a glass of orange juice at my side, and a light blanket thrown across my knees to keep the shivers at bay. Michael swung around the corner, sweaty but triumphant.

  “They opened at eleven, just like the doctor told us,” he said, panting slightly, “but what he didn’t tell us was that there would be about twenty people waiting in line. It had a slight whiff of Stalingrad about it, but everyone was very pleasant and here I am.”

  He dug the bottles of pills out of the paper bag he was holding and lined them up across the rickety table at my side.

  “This is your antibiotic. This is for your lungs. And I’m not sure what this one is for, but it looks fierce. I might try a couple of those myself.”

  He hurried inside for a glass of water, clearly as anxious as I was to let the healing begin. Pills duly swallowed, I continued to feel wretched. Michael hovered empathetically but there wasn’t much more he could do. I simply had to sweat it out, literally and figuratively.

  “Come on,” Michael said, jolting me out of my reverie around four that afternoon. “We’re going to the beach. You need some exercise.”

  I looked at him in disbelief.

  “You must be kidding,” I croaked.

  In my present condition the thought of dragging my aching bones the thirty feet separating my present location from the bathroom seemed like a marathon. The most energetic thing I’d imagined doing before bedtime was coughing up a pound or two of lung tissue.

  “I’m not kidding,” he said, his voice dead level. “Let’s go.”

  Okay, that’s one of the things about Michael. In general, he’s a loving, thoughtful and all-around great partner, but inexplicably he believes that movement, under any and all circumstances, trumps indolence. Even in cases of illness.

  I well remember the day he insisted we go for a bike ride a few hours after I’d had a colonoscopy. When I questioned the wisdom of parking my backside on a hard narrow bike seat, shortly after having a five-foot tube poked up my rear, he brushed aside my concerns with a wave of the hand. And of course, blessed with the will-power of a new-born kitten, I acquiesced.

  As I lay there shivering under my summer blanket, I could tell from his expression that he meant business this time too, not because he was uncaring but because he honestly believed that rousing me from my death bed “would do me good.” Clearly, resistance was futile.

  We bounced down the rutted hill in our rented Vitara and cruised along one of the island’s narrow twisting roads towards Isabel Segunda, the larger of Vieques’ two settlements.

  The town itself struck me as shabby and disappointing. We passed row after row of boarded up businesses and deserted-looking houses. The whole thing had a bombed-out, apocalyptic air to it.

  But then we turned a corner and there before us, at the end of a long broad street lay the ocean, turquoise blue now, choppy and glistening, and altogether beautiful.

  Suddenly everything clicked into context and the town seemed quaint and charmingly run down. And I loved it.

  We had no idea where we were going. From our balcony Michael had spotted a strip of beach in this general vicinity and was navigating us towards where he imagined it might be. This was no easy task since the roads became extremely circuitous after we passed the ferry terminal.

  In no time, we found ourselves hopelessly lost—until we drove right up onto the little beach we’d been looking for and got stuck in the sand.

  It wasn’t altogether a bad beach. More than anything it reminded me of Smathers Beach in Key West, a narrow strip of trucked-in sand punctuated by prickly bushes and a couple of anemic palm trees. Here the palm trees looked healthy enough and the sand was clearly indigenous. But even so, this couldn’t be one of the four-star beaches we’d read about online.

  Michael, slightly crestfallen, got out and walked around the car.

  “Oh yipee, I think we’re stuck.”

  The very thought of putting my shoulder to the task of getting us unstuck was almost more than I could bear but I smiled gamely.

 
“Let’s try to find some boards or something that’ll give us leverage,” I suggested.

  I hoisted myself slowly out of the car and began teetering along the beach, concentrating for all I was worth on not fainting. Michael came up alongside and took my elbow.

  This made me feel somewhat pathetic, though after a while I decided to enjoy the moment. The secret to being a good invalid, after all, is surrendering wholeheartedly to your illness (so long as it has been satisfactorily diagnosed as benign), having a good wallow in self-pity, and then allowing your unfortunate companion to do absolutely everything but breathe for you.

  Such was my happy state of mind when we encountered The Iguana. First of all, let me say that this wasn’t my first iguana sighting. Once, when I was walking along 15th Street in Washington, I’d come upon a bright green two-foot-long lizard languishing on the sidewalk as its hysterical owner rushed out of her apartment.

  “Help me find my iguana!” she’d screeched

  I’d pointed at the dead-looking creature and fled.

  But that puny little thing was a mere gecko compared to the tongue-slithering five-feet-long dragon standing before us now.

  Huge.

  Prehistoric looking.

  And no more than a couple of yards away.

  An image popped into my head of diminutive Japanese businessmen shrieking in terror as they fled down a Tokyo street.

  Michael was the first to speak.

  “I’ve always heard they’re not dangerous unless they’re provoked.”

  Although this was vaguely comforting on an academic level, I wasn’t sure what the average iguana considered provocative.

  Pink polo shirts? (I was sporting one.)

  Flip flops? (Check.)

  Also, it’s well known that true predators go for weak prey and I’d never felt more feeble in my life.

  “If he charges I won’t be able to fight back. But save yourself,” I said in my best Christian-martyr voice, only half-joking.

  To his credit Michael didn’t laugh—well, not much.