It was, as John Anderson McCrae pointed out, no tropic paradise. Though the barrier reef was lovely and nourished a half-dozen diving resorts, the interior consisted of low scrub-thatched hills, and much of the coast was given over to mangrove. A dirt road ran partway around the island, connecting the shantytowns of Meachem’s Landing, Spanish Harbor, and West End, and a second road crossed from Meachem’s Landing to Sandy Bay on the northern coast—a curving stretch of beach that at one moment seemed beautiful, and the next abysmally ugly. That was the charm of the island, that you could be walking along a filthy beach, slapping at flies, stepping carefully to avoid dead fish and pig droppings; and then, as if a different filter had slid across the sun, you suddenly noticed the hummingbirds flitting in the sea grape, the hammocks of coco palms, the reef water glowing in bands of jade and turquoise and aquamarine. Sprinkled among the palms at Sandy Bay were a few dozen shanties set on pilings, their tin roofs scabbed by rust; jetties with gap-boarded outhouses at their seaward ends extended out over the shallows, looking like charcoal sketches by Picasso. It had no special point of attraction, but because Elizabeth’s family lived nearby, I had built my house—three rooms of concrete block and a wooden porch—about a hundred yards from the terminus of the cross-island road.
A half-mile down the beach stood The Chicken Shack, and its presence had been a further inducement to build in Sandy Bay. Not that the food or decor was in the least appealing; the sole item on the menu was fried chicken, mostly bone and gristle, and the shanty was hardly larger than a chicken coop itself, containing three picnic tables and a kitchen. Mounted opposite each other on the walls was a pair of plates upon which a transient artist had painted crude likenesses of the proprietor, John James, and his wife; and these two black faces, their smiles so poorly rendered as to appear ferocious, always seemed to me to be locked in a magical duel, one whose stray energies caused the food to be overdone. If your taste was for a good meal, you would have done better elsewhere; but if you had an appetite for gossip, The Chicken Shack was unsurpassed in this regard; and it was there one night, after a hiatus of almost two years, that I next had word of Ray Milliken.
I had been out of circulation for a couple of weeks, repairing damage done to my house by the last norther, and since Elizabeth was grouchy with her monthlies, I decided to waste a few hours watching Hatfield Brooks tell fortunes at the Shack. He did so each Wednesday without fail. On arriving, I found him sitting at the table nearest the door—a thin young man who affected natty dreads but none of the hostility usually attendant to the hairstyle. Compared to most of the islanders, he was a saintly sort. Hardworking; charitable; a nondrinker; faithful to his wife. In front of him was what looked to be a bowling ball of marbled red plastic, but was actually a Zodiac Ball—a child’s toy containing a second ball inside, and between the inner and outer shells, a film of water. There was a small window at the top, and if you shook the ball, either the word Yes or No would appear in the window, answering your question. Sitting beside Hatfield, scrunched into the corner, was his cousin Jimmy Mullins, a diminutive wiry man of thirty-five. He had fierce black eyes that glittered under the harsh light; the skin around them was puckered as if they had been surgically removed and later reembedded. He was shirtless, his genitals partly exposed by a hole in his shorts. John James, portly and white-haired, waved to me from behind the counter, and Hatfield asked, “How de night goin’, Mr. Winship?”
“So-so,” I replied, and ordered a bottle of Superior from John. “Not much business,” I remarked to Hatfield, pressing the cold bottle against my forehead.
“Oh, dere’s a trickle now and den,” he said.
All this time Mullins had said not a word. He was apparently angry at something, glowering at Hatfield, shifting uncomfortably on the bench, the tip of his tongue darting in and out.
“Been hunting lately?” I asked him, taking a seat at the table by the counter.
I could tell he did not want to answer, to shift his focus from whatever had upset him; but he was a wheedler, a borrower, and he did not want to offend a potential source of small loans. In any case, hunting was his passion. He did his hunting by night, hypnotizing the island deer with beams from his flashlight; nonetheless he considered himself a great sportsman, and not even his bad mood could prevent him from boasting.
“Shot me a nice little buck Friday mornin’,” he mumbled; and then, becoming animated, he said, “De minute I see he eye, podner, I know he got to crumble.”
There was a clatter on the stairs, and a teenage girl wearing a man’s undershirt and a print skirt pushed in through the door. Junie Elkins. She had been causing the gossip mills to run overtime due to a romance she was having with a boy from Spanish Harbor, something of which her parents disapproved. She exchanged greetings, handed a coin to Hatfield, and sat across from him. Then she looked back at me, embarrassed. I pretended to be reading the label of my beer bottle.
“What you after knowin’, darlin’?” asked Hatfield.
Junie leaned over the table and whispered. Hatfield nodded, made a series of mystic passes, shook the ball, and Junie peered intently at the window in its top.
“Dere,” said Hatfield. “Everything goin’ to work out in de end.”
Other Americans have used Hatfield’s method of fortune-telling to exemplify the islanders’ gullibility and ignorance, and even Hatfield would admit to an element of hoax. He did not think he had power over the ball; he had worked off-island on the steamship lines and had gained a measure of sophistication. Still he credited the ball with having some magical potential. “De thing made to tell fortunes even if it just a toy,” he said to me once. He did not deny that it gave wrong answers, but suggested these might be blamed on changing conditions and imperfect manufacture. The way he explained it was so sweetly reasonable that I almost believed him; and I did believe that if the ball was going to work anywhere, it would be on this island, a place where the rudimentary underpinnings of culture were still in evidence, where simpler laws obtained.
After Junie had gone, Mullins’s hostility again dominated the room and we sat in silence. John set about cleaning the kitchen, and the clatter of dishes accentuated the tension. Suddenly Mullins brought his fist down on the table.
“Damn it, mon!” he said to Hatfield. “Gimme my money!”
“Ain’t your money,” said Hatfield gently.
“De mon has got to pay me for my land!”
“Ain’t your land.”
“I got testimony dat it’s mine!” Again Mullins pounded the table.
John moved up to the counter. “Dere’s goin’ to be no riot in dis place tonight,” he said sternly.
Land disputes—as this appeared to be—were common on the island and often led to duels with conch shells or machetes. The pirates had not troubled with legal documents, and after taking over the island, the Hondurans had managed to swindle the best of the land from the blacks; though the old families had retained much of the acreage in the vicinity of Sandy Bay. But, since most of the blacks were at least marginally related, matters of ownership proved cloudy.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
Hatfield shrugged, and Mullins refused to answer; anger seemed visible above his head like heat ripples rising from a tin roof.
“Some damn fool have leased de Buryin’ Ground,” said John. “Now dese two feudin’.”
“Who’d want that pesthole?”
“A true damn fool, dat’s who,” said John. “Ray Milliken.”
I was startled to hear Ray’s name—I had not expected to hear it again—and also by the fact that he or anyone would spend good money on the Burying Ground. It was a large acreage three miles west of Sandy Bar near Punta Palmetto, mostly mangrove swamp, and notable for its population of snakes and insects.
“It ain’t de Garden of Eden, dat’s true,” said Hatfield. “I been over de other day watchin’ dem clear stumps, and every time de blade dig down it churn up three or four snakes. Coralitos, yellowjaws.”<
br />
“Snakes don’t bother dis negro,” said Mullins pompously.
His referral to himself as “dis negro” was a sure sign that he was drunk, and I realized now that he had scrunched into the corner to preserve his balance. His gestures were sluggish, and his eyes were bloodshot and rolling.
“Dat’s right,” he went on. “Everybody know dat if de yellowjaw bite, den you just bites de pizen back in de neck.”
John made a noise of disgust.
“What’s Milliken want the place for?” I asked.
“He goin’ to start up a town,” said Hatfield. “Least dat’s what he hopin’. De lawyer say we best hold up de paperwork ’til we find out what de government think ’bout de idea.”
“De fools dat goin’ to live in de town already on de island,” said John. “Dey stayin’ over in Meachem’s Landin’. Must be forty or fifty of dem. Dey go ’round smilin’ all de time, sayin’, ‘Ain’t dis nice,’ and ‘Ain’t dat pretty.’ Dey of a cult or somethin’.”
“All I know,” said Hatfield, “is dat de mon come to me and say, ‘Hatfield, I got three thousand lemps, fifteen hundred dollars gold, if you give me ninety-nine years on de Buryin’ Ground.’ And I say, ‘What for you want dat piece of perdition? My cousin Arlie he lease you a nice section of beachfront.’ And den he tell me ’bout how de Caribe live dere ’cause dat’s where dey get together with de space duppies…”
“Aliens,” said John disparagingly.
“Correct! Aliens.” Hatfield stroked the Zodiac Ball. “He say de aliens talk to de Caribe ’cause de Caribe’s lives is upful and just naturally ’tracts de aliens. I tell him, ‘Mon, de Caribe fierce! Dey warriors!’ And he say, ‘Maybe so, but dey must have been doin’ somethin’ right or de aliens won’t be comin’ ’round.’ And den he tell me dat dey plan to live like de Caribe and bring de aliens back to Guanoja.”
“Gimme a Superior, John,” said Mullins bossily.
“You got de money?” asked John, his arms folded, knowing the answer.
“No, I ain’t got de money!” shouted Mullins. “Dis boog clot got my money!” He threw himself at Hatfield and tried to wrestle him to the floor; but Hatfield, being younger, stronger, and sober, caught his wrists and shoved him back into the corner. Mullins’s head struck the wall with a thwack, and he grabbed the injured area with both hands.
“Look,” I said. “Even if the government permits the town, which isn’t likely, do you really believe a town can survive on the Burying Ground? Hell, they’ll be straggling back to Meachem’s Landing before the end of the first night.”
“Dat’s de gospel,” said John, who had come out from back of the counter to prevent further riot.
“Has any money changed hands?” I asked.
“He give me two hundred lemps as security,” said Hatfield. “But I ’spect he want dat back if de government disallow de town.”
“Well,” I said, “if there’s no town, there’s no argument. Why not ask the ball if there’s going to be a town on the Burying Ground?”
“Sound reasonable to me,” said John; he gave the ball no credence, but was willing to suspend disbelief in order to make peace.
“Lemme do it!” Mullins snatched the ball up, staring cross-eyed into the red plastic. “Is dere goin’ to be a town on de Buryin’ Ground?” he asked solemnly; then he turned it over twice and set it down. I stood and leaned forward to see the little window.
No, it read.
“Let’s have beers all around,” I said to John. “And a soda for Hatfield. We’ll toast the solution of a problem.”
But the problem was not solved—it was only in the first stages of inception—and though the Zodiac Ball’s answer eventually proved accurate, we had not asked it the right question.
This was in October, a time for every sort of inclement weather, and it rained steadily over the next few days. Fog banks moved in, transforming the sea into a mystic gray dimension, muffling the crash of waves on the reef so they sounded like bones being crunched in an enormous mouth. Not good weather for visiting the Burying Ground. But finally a sunny day dawned, and I set out to find Ray Milliken. I must admit I had been hurt by his lack of interest in renewing our acquaintance, but I had too many questions to let this stop me from hunting him up. Something about a colony built to attract aliens struck me as sinister rather than foolhardy—this being how it struck most people. I could not conceive of a person like Ray falling prey to such a crackpot notion; nor could I support the idea, one broached by Elizabeth, that he was involved in a swindle. She had heard that he had sold memberships in the colony and raised upwards of a hundred thousand dollars. The report was correct, but I doubt that Ray’s original motives have much importance.
There was no road inland, only a snake-infested track, and so I borrowed a neighbor’s dory and rowed along inside the reef. The tide was low, and iron-black coral heads lifted from the sea like the crenellated parapets of a drowned castle; beyond, the water was banded with sun-spattered streaks of slate and lavender. I could not help being nervous. People steered clear of the Burying Ground—it was rumored to harbor duppies…but then so was every other part of the island, and I suspect the actual reason for its desertion was that it had no worth to anyone, except perhaps to a herpetologist. The name of the place had come down from the Caribe; this was a puzzling fact, since all their grave sites were located high in the hills. Pottery and tools had been found in the area, but no solid evidence of burials. Two graves did exist, those belonging to Ezekiel Brooks, the son of William, a mate on Henry Meachem’s privateer, and to Ezekiel’s son Carl. They had lived most of their lives on the land as hermits, and it was their solitary endurance that had ratified the Brooks family’s claim to ownership.
On arriving, I tied the dory to a mangrove root and immediately became lost in a stand of scrub palmetto. I had sweated off my repellent, and mosquitoes swarmed over me; I stepped cautiously, probing the weeds with my machete to stir up any lurking snakes. After a short walk I came to a clearing about fifty yards square; it had been scraped down to the raw dirt. On the far side stood a bulldozer, and next to it was a thatched shelter beneath which a group of men were sitting. The primary colors and simple shapes—yellow bulldozer, red dirt, dark green walls of brush—made the clearing look like a test for motor skills that might be given to a gigantic child. As I crossed to the shelter, one of the men jumped up and walked toward me. It was Ray. He was shirtless, wearing boots and faded jeans, and a rosy sheen of new sunburn overlaid his tan.
“Frank,” he said, pumping my hand.
I was taken aback by the religious affirmation in his voice—it was as if my name were something he had long treasured.
“I was planning to drop around in a few days,” he said. “After we got set up. How are you?”
“Old and tormented,” I said, slapping at a mosquito.
“Here.” He gestured at the shelter. “Let’s get into the shade.”
“How are you?” I asked as we walked.
“Great, Frank,” he replied. “Really great.” His smile seemed the product of an absolute knowledge that things, indeed, were really great.
He introduced me to the others; I cannot recall their names, a typical sampling of Jims and Daves and Toms. They all had Ray’s Krishna-conscious smile, his ultrasincerity, and they delighted in sharing with me their lunch of banana fritters and coconut. “Isn’t this food beautiful?” said one. There was so much beatitude around me that I, grumpy from the heat and mosquitoes, felt like a heathen among them. Ray kept staring at me, smiling, and this was the main cause of my discomfort. I had the impression that something was shining too brightly behind his eyes, a kind of manic brilliance flaring in him the way an old light bulb flares just before it goes dark for good. He began to tell me of the improvements they were planning—wells, electronic mosquito traps, generators, schools with computers, a medical clinic for the islanders, on and on. His friends chimed in with additions to the list, and I had the feeling that I was listenin
g to a well-rehearsed litany.
“I thought you were going to live off the land like the Caribe,” I said.
“Oh, no,” said Ray. “There are some things they did that we’re going to do, but we’ll do them better.”
“Suppose the government denies your permits?”
I was targeted by a congregation of imperturbable smiles. “They came through two days ago,” said Ray. “We’re going to call the colony Port Ezekiel.”
After lunch, Ray led me through the brush to a smaller clearing where half-a-dozen shelters were erected; hammocks were strung beneath each one. His had a fringe of snakeskins tacked to the roofpoles, at least thirty of them; they were crusted with flies, shifting horribly in the breeze. They were mostly yellowjaws—the local name for the fer-de-lance—and he said they killed ten or twelve a day. He sat cross-legged on the ground and invited me to take the hammock.
“Want to hear what I’ve been up to?” he asked.
“I’ve heard some of it.”
“I bet you have.” He laughed. “They think we’re looney.” He started as the bulldozer roared to life in the clearing behind us. “Do you remember showing me old Meachem’s journal?”
“Yes.”
“In a way you’re responsible for all this.” He waved at the dirt and the shelters. “That was my first real clue.” He clasped his hands between his legs. “When I left here, I went back to the States. To school. I guess I was tired of traveling, or maybe I realized what a waste of space I’d been. I took up astronomy again. I wasn’t very interested in it, but I wasn’t more interested in anything else. Then one day I was going over a star chart, and I noticed something amazing. You see, while I was here I’d gotten into the Caribe culture. I used to wander around the Burying Ground looking for pottery. Found some pretty good pieces. And I’d hike up into the hills and make maps of the villages, where they’d stationed their lookouts and set their signal fires. I still had those maps, and what I’d noticed was that the pattern of the Caribe signal fires corresponded exactly to the constellation Cassiopeia. It was incredible! The size of the fires even corresponded to the magnitudes of the specific stars. I dropped out of school and headed back to the island.” He gave me an apologetic look. “I tried to see you, but you were on the mainland.”
The Jaguar Hunter Page 36