The Last Marlin

by Waitzkin, Fred;

  Most evenings Craig sat alone at a derelict bar on the downstairs floor manning the phone and looking out the harbor mouth at the sunset or glancing at his thirty-foot Chris Craft, which was tied casually with a single line to a broken piling. It amused him to watch the boat come around 180 degrees with the tide without touching the seawall, or if it banged a few times, so what. Craig was no yachtsman. The boat’s windshield was cracked from hairy night crossings in twelve-foot seas, and there were empty Heineken bottles rolling on the deck. The thirty-footer looked like it belonged in a junkyard, but it was powered by 350-horsepower Crusaders and could run at thirty-five knots under a full load. It was named the M.S.T.—moments of sheer terror—and beneath the fiberglass deck were secret compartments Craig had built for storing up to a thousand pounds of marijuana.

  Craig was slight of build with long sun-bleached hair and a face gaunt from little food and long drinking days. He had allowed a bushy mustache to fall over his mouth, partly obscuring bad teeth. When I was around Craig I often thought of my father. Maybe it was Craig’s alcoholism and emaciated body, his mechanical excellence. He kept my boat running. I felt safe when he was around.

  In his new incarnation Craig enjoyed having a wad of big bills in his pocket, pretending to be a player drinking at the Compleat Angler. But mostly Craig believed that his smuggling life was hilarious, and his biggest and best deals were crafted for garish audacity more than maximum profit. Craig was a gentle man and could never have survived as a drug kingpin in New York or Miami, but on Bimini he was intrigued by the absurdity of turtle fishermen harvesting marijuana on the bank, of pastors and little kids searching the mangroves for bales.

  Funny, Abe had always suspected that natives were smoking grass, or tea, as he called it, twenty years before they had ever heard of marijuana. Craig made good bargains because in the early months of the trade, locals hadn’t learned what the foul-smelling stuff was worth. Sometimes he allowed bales to accumulate on the patio while he drank beer, unconcerned that a drunk might run off with one. Eventually he loaded the bales on a dolly and pushed them down the road to a broken shed next to Chalk’s Flying Service, a stone’s throw from a little house on the water’s edge where Hemingway had once composed chapters of Islands in the Stream. Usually Craig’s marijuana was damp from floating in saltwater and it smelled like cow manure. If there was a breeze from the south, the stench from the shed carried up the road toward the marinas. Craig paid the local police to ignore the smell. Even the most proper citizens handed money to the officers, encouraging them to spend the day napping on the second-story porch of the police station, which had a splendid view of the bonefish flats and mangroves.

  Whenever Craig had collected a thousand pounds or was in the right mood, he loaded the compartments of the M.S.T., fitted back the fiberglass deck and headed out the harbor mouth into the night ocean for Lauderdale. The M.S. T. was a wet boat when loaded down with marijuana. For hours crossing the black Gulf Stream he was drenched and looking out for the lights of Coast Guard cutters patrolling the fifty-mile stretch to Florida. A few times when they spotted him, Craig gambled and raced the patrol boats to the coast, lost them in the winding intracoastals north of Fort Lauderdale. Other times he gambled, allowing seamen holding guns to come alongside and search the M.S. T.

  “If you were with me when the Coast Guard came on board, I’d be nervous,” he said to me. “They could see the fear in your eyes. You’re no smuggler. ... When I’m by myself I invite the young men on board and offer them a beer, urge them to look anywhere they want. If you play it cool or if you really don’t care what happens, they won’t look very hard or they won’t look at all. The truth is that some days I really don’t care if they catch me. If I’m thrown into jail, I’ll read some good books for a year.”

  Craig pushed the envelope. He had a deep boredom and needed the fix of outrageous dares. One day he was approached by the head of Bimini immigration who said that he had a cousin living on Ragged Island, three hundred miles to the south, who had a ton of Colombian gold perfectly dry—it had never even been in the water. Craig wasn’t set up for transporting a ton of marijuana from Ragged Island, but it tickled him to work in partnership with the head of immigration—a few months earlier this tedious stern-faced official had wanted to ship Craig off Bimini.

  Craig might have rented the mail boat or any one of a half-dozen cruisers on Bimini that could easily carry enough fuel for such a trip and would blend into the seascape of the quiet southern Bahamas, but instead he approached a veteran pilot who flew the big Chalk’s seaplane into Bimini each afternoon. In the Bahamas Chalk’s was a virtual icon of safe, reliable transportation. Craig offered the pilot five thousand dollars to fly the drugs, and when the man agreed, Craig traveled to the Chalk’s terminal on MacArthur Causeway in Miami to charter the plane and pilot for a day of sightseeing in the Bahamas. Craig was entranced with the idea of this lumbering big craft that everyone recognized landing next to a rickety dock on Flamenco Cay in the Ragged Island chain and loading up with bales.

  It was Craig’s plan for the pilot to pick up the bales on Ragged Island and then Craig would meet the Chalk’s seaplane in the M.S.T. on the flats south of the lavish resort island of Cat Cay. That’s what happened, except there were a few complications. When the seaplane arrived from Ragged Island, the evening sea was choppy and it was exhausting work lifting bales onto the Chris Craft, which was tied up to the seaplane’s pontoon. There was much too much marijuana to store in Craig’s secret compartments, so the bales were all over the deck and piled floor to ceiling in the small salon. Craig had forgotten to bring a broom. The pilot tried to clean the plane with his fingers, but it was hopeless and he went back to Miami dirty with seeds and sticks.

  Craig was too tired to run across and he spent the night anchored near a half-dozen trawler yachts in the lee of Cat Cay, where Vanderbilts and Rockefellers owned homes and Richard Nixon often visited his pal Bebe Rebozo. Craig slept in the cockpit on top of the bales. In the morning he plowed across the Gulf Stream, too heavy to make any speed with the marijuana in full view. If a Coast Guard helicopter or plane had passed over he would have gone directly to jail. Craig pulled up to a house he had rented for the day in Key Biscayne. There was supposed to be an adjacent boathouse where he could transfer the marijuana into a waiting van, but there was no boathouse. Craig and another man hustled the bales across the lawn and piled them into the van with a few neighbors watching. Then he raced the M.S.T. back to Bimini.

  So much money floating in the ocean had changed the essence of Bimini life. Fishermen no longer worried about the declining bluefin run or whether wahoo would arrive in the fall. The enormous diesel generators in the power plant were idle much of that summer because mechanics were searching for grass in skiffs, and Donnie Marie, the plant manager, was flying around the out islands in a small plane trying to buy a ton of grass cheap to make a killing like Craig. Biminites purchased brand-new appliances, although there was no electrical power. They imported Honda generators, which powered VCRs, big-screen TVs and powerful stereos. Up and down the island little generators screeched through the night like buzz saws.

  Bonnie and I kept fishing. I had never had so much energy for fishing, as if this shearing away of tradition had raised the stakes for me. I needed to be out there pulling baits and looking for color changes and birds, feeling the movement of the boat. Three or four times a week, after trolling much of the day, I’d come back to Porgy Bay, take a shower and suggest to Bonnie that we should spend the night catching mutton snapper or chumming for yellowtail off South Cat Cay. When there was no sea running, she loved spending nights on the water away from the screech of generators. Sometimes we headed way offshore and dropped baits deep for broadbill swordfish. While we drifted north in soft swells Bimini to the east looked like a few blinking stars.

  In our second Native Tournament there were fewer entries by a third as some Florida fishermen were scared away by articles in the Miami Herald about drug
smuggling on Bimini. The tournament was still quite large, about two hundred boats, but there was far less energy and conviction for fishing. Crowds were no longer waiting on Brown’s dock to admire the catch and to bring fish home for the freezer. Biminites had more important things to do. Sadly, many fish were wasted, kicked back into the water for the sharks.

  During party nights on shore, booze and money talk incited Florida skippers, even men who ran million-dollar Rybovich and Merritt fish boats, who grunged up to Bimini lowlifes trying to buy cheap bales to bring home. A couple of bales hidden in the bilge could pay for a Mercedes or a year’s college tuition for a kid. In the morning, while the Florida guys trolled baits, they asked one another on the radio about sighting any unusual grouper. A few got lucky.

  Bonnie and I pushed resolutely to the south. Once again the wind was blowing up big seas, but we traveled even farther from Bimini exploring reefs and deep drops south of a remote atoll called South Riding Rock. This year it was much harder fishing for all the boats. The marlin were scarce and during the intervening months a fleet of Cuban fishing boats had wiped out the thirty-mile string of reefs south of Cat Cay. The surviving fish had grown wiser, it seemed, but we coaxed some strikes using the downrigger and a few northern lures I’d brought to try in the Bahamas.

  Bonnie had become a great angler. She was now better than I was, more reliable on the strikes and strong, too. I loved the Riding Rock days without any boats in sight, trying out new ideas, but at Brown’s dock we both felt guilty weighing in wahoo, kings and grouper without our rooting section of Porgy Bay kids waiting to carry home the catch. None of our friends were focused on the tournament. Dick Davis was keeping to himself and Craig was in Jamaica doing business. Bonnie won the top angler prize for the second year in a row—I was best captain—a rare encore performance that played to a half-empty house.

  One day in the middle of August scores of bales were floating near the pristine bathing beach just down from the cemetery on the hill near Minnie’s house in Porgy Bay. All the boys who used to wait for us on Charlie Rolle’s dock jumped into the sea and collected fortunes; wriggly three-year-olds without underwear splashed into the ocean to help their big brothers pull at the black garbage bags. Minnie’s beautiful thirteen-year-old daughter stood on the beach. Ava couldn’t swim a stroke. All of this money floating in front of her and Ava didn’t have pretty clothes or a radio to listen to music. She ran into the ocean and threw herself onto a bale as if it were a life preserver. One of the bigger boys wrestled her off and she almost drowned in the placid water. On the beach she screamed at the boy, “I can’t swim, can’t fuck’n swim. I risked my life. Give it back.” He was ashamed and gave it back to her. The Davis family dried the bale on their back porch. A policeman came around and was going to take it away but Minnie thought to hand him an envelope. Ava got eight thousand dollars for her bale.

  Dick Davis didn’t have the energy to look for marijuana. He sat on the porch in his T-shirt, reading and sometimes crying. He believed that he was placed on earth for bigger things than doing yard work or maybe a little house painting, but he didn’t know what; and the children collecting fortunes on the beach deepened his sense of futility. A few nights Dick flew into a rage and beat Minnie and she ran to a neighbor’s. When she came back to the little shack the following morning, he asked her like a child, “Dear, what did you buy for me to eat?”

  In his patient voice Dick explained to Minnie he would look for drugs on the bank if he still had his skiff, a beautiful sloop with an outboard on the transom. Three years before the boat had been stolen. “I lost everything,” he said to Minnie. He had looked everywhere for it, even traveled to Miami and walked the docks along the Miami River, no luck. After that Dick became impotent.

  “What are you laughing about, dear?” he called to her from the porch.

  “Would you rather see me laugh or cry?” Minnie would respond.

  While Dick sat on the porch watching or reading one of his great books, Porgy Bay was booming. Nearly all the homes were replaced or improved by drug money, but the Davis family only sold the one bale and all the kids and grandkids needed something. Several of the Porgy Bay teenagers with fast boats made many thousands and built lavish homes with imported shrubbery and private docks where they tied up their boats. They built concrete walls and guarded their pocket estates with vicious dogs.

  Dick began suffering excruciating headaches. He’d reach for Don Quixote or Lord Jim and press the volume down on his skull. Ava came home from school to find Daddy grimacing under a book. When she switched on the television inside, he screamed, “Turn it off, I don’t want to hear that.” Then a few minutes later in a sweet voice, “Minnie, dear, you must come and read this.” Minnie was inside sweeping and tending her pot of crabs and rice. From the porch he tried to interest her in a passage from Don Quixote, but she didn’t have time for that.

  “Dear, are you jealous of me?” he called to her through the broken pane of glass. “I’m not talking to you. I’m living in another world.” A few minutes later, “Dear, let me kiss you. I just want to kiss you.” Minnie didn’t answer but she giggled at his foolishness.

  In the evening Minnie carried water from Charlie Rolle’s well and heated it for Dick’s bath. She put clean sheets on his bed, rubbed lotion on his skinny legs. She did what she could until they were both frustrated.

  In the middle of the night he was back on the porch, feeling the offshore breeze and calling to her through the broken glass. “Dear, I just want to kiss you. I love you, dear.” Minnie pretended to be asleep.

  “Dear, I could put you in my lap and cut your throat and you couldn’t do a thing.”

  At the end of August, a week before Bonnie and I ran the little boat back across the Gulf Stream and trailed it north with Dad’s Buick, Dick Davis died of a stroke. That was our last summer in Porgy Bay. The following year Charlie Rolle found a permanent tenant for his cottage, and Bonnie and I weren’t able to rent a house on North Bimini. Maybe it was time to find new waters. We took a small plane and visited Chub Cay and the out islands, San Salvador, Cat Island, Long Island. We discovered rustic marinas where men were openly discussing marijuana, making deals, moving bales north to Bimini or directly to Florida in planes and boats. No one was talking fishing.

  The Colombians

  ON OUR LAST FISHING TRIP WITH ABE, BONNIE AND I JOINED HIM in Fort Lauderdale and we took a small plane to the tiny island of Chub Cay, about a hundred miles east of Bimini. The Ebb Tide was waiting for us at the private marina along with a young man who was running her for Dad, Don Lash. I had long wanted to take the big Ebb Tide and fish one of the more remote southern islands. Off Chub, boats used live lobster for bait and caught hundred-pound cubera snapper—wild.

  But we found the Ebb Tide broken down at the dock. Don couldn’t get the port engine to fire. He was covered with grease and he looked beaten. Abe took off his white business shirt and climbed onto the engine, pulling off wires and testing with his meter. He had been ill, his face gaunt and very stern. After a half hour he signaled with his hand for me to go onto the bridge and hit the starter. She turned over. Dad made a disgusted expression—why do I have to do everything? He sent Bonnie for cigarettes, sat in the salon with smirks and sent us scurrying: find my lighter, my slippers, buy J&B, pick up the galley.

  The following morning we fished near the island. It was rough and overcast. I ran the boat all day and we never had a strike, no birds. As we approached the dock, Dad came out from the salon where he had been resting, tapped against the ladder with his cigarette lighter, to say, let Don bring her in. I said, that’s okay, I’ll do it. Dad widened his eyes, and I turned away from him, looked at the dock. I had never brought her into a slip by myself The wind was blowing about twenty and sweat began running down my sides. Maybe I’d bang her up. Fuck it.

  I spun the Ebb Tide around and backed her in, pulled the transmissions in and out of gear, compensating for the wind, put her right between the pilings. It w
asn’t hard. I’d been practicing in my head for ten years. I tried not to look at his face.

  The following morning the port engine wouldn’t start and Dad was back in the bilge with his tools. The big diesels were still hot from the previous day’s running. His chest was sweaty. I don’t know where he found the strength to pull the wrenches. I should have been able to do this for him, but I didn’t know how. He worked on the engine for hours but he couldn’t figure the problem. He was choking and dizzy when he climbed out. His anger spread all over the boat.

  Don and I decided to leave for Fort Lauderdale on one engine. Abe was below, smoldering. We tried to pretend he wasn’t there. In the late afternoon we moved slowly across the shallow Bahama bank, a seventy-mile stretch where the translucent water is rarely deeper than ten feet—on calm days from the bridge it’s like peering into the world’s largest fish tank. I stayed on the bridge with Don trying to admire skiddering sharks and cudas, enjoy the breeze, trying to forget him, but I couldn’t. He had this pull, could make your world come apart.

  About ten o’clock at night we could see the light from Gun Cay, twelve miles off, it was blowing twenty-five and building. We kept coming ahead. By the time we apprached Gun, it was blowing a gale out of the east. The wind was behind us and on the starboard quarter, throwing the boat ahead into bucking seas. It felt reckless running into blackness and tumult. Don steered and I held a flashlight on the compass and watched the Fathometer. I went down below and took a glance. Abe was slowly chewing a boiled potato. He didn’t say a word. I told Bonnie to come onto the bridge.

  We decided to go through the cut between Cat Cay and Gun, hoping that on the north side of the Bimini Islands we would find some protection from the wind. But with only one engine we were getting nudged toward the reef that runs north a couple of hundred yards between Cat Cay and the deep passage alongside Gun. Too dangerous. We should turn around and beat back into the gale. It was too late. Without a port engine we couldn’t get around in time against the wind and seas—we’d wash broadside onto the reef. Don steered for the cut, but there was only thirty yards of good water. I thought of Abe down below, stewing, no idea what was ahead. We were showered with water, shallow seas breaking every which way, Don pulling the wheel hard to starboard. I turned the flashlight on his face and Don looked crazed or ecstatic, as if he were going over a waterfall. Bonnie kept her courage—she always did.