“I saw that Iguana managed to outrun the hurricane.”
“We was down by Aruba,” he said. “Hide near Cumaná, Venezuela.” A man stepped up, fist-bumped Jason and moved on. “How come you back so soon?’ Jason asked. “You another one a’ them tourists that just falls in love with Nevis?”
“I thought it a good place to welcome in the new century,” she said. “Tell Liz I’m sorry about his father.”
He nodded, a hint of a smile.
A choir on the courthouse steps burst into a gospel version of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Els threaded her way back to Lauretta and Tony.
“What were you doing, trying to score some dope?” Lauretta asked.
“He’s a sailor, not a dealer.”
“Ha,” Lauretta said. “Just look at him.”
Els remembered the roll of cash, the men who’d drifted toward Jason for whispered conversations at Sunshine’s and again tonight. He could be shady, even on the wrong side of the law. “I’ve had enough of this crowd,” she said. “I’ll go lock myself in the car until you’re ready to go.”
“You can leave that New York London fraidy cat stuff behind,” Lauretta said. “Come on, Tony, let’s get the princess back to her tower.”
CHAPTER 19
When a man called, “Inside?” from the court, Els carried her morning tea out to the patio, the flagstones dewy under her bare feet. It was the fisherman from the Resort beach.
“Mawnin,” he said, and smiled broadly. “Sorry to intrude into you Boxing Day, Miss Els. It kinda urgent.”
“My whole holiday could have used a little intrusion,” she said. On Christmas, she’d taken her watercolors to Oualie, where families cavorted while she dabbed at a painting she’d later—after reducing the rum bottle by several inches—thrown into the bin.
“I help Jack build he boat,” he said. “Me and Jack, we had a understanding. Anything happen to him, de boat is mine.”
“It’s a little late for a claim against Jack’s estate. That boat and everything on this property were part of the sale.”
“Jack do a lot by handshake.”
“Handshake doesn’t get you much in court.”
“No fisherman getting mixed up with lawyer,” he said. He sucked his teeth. “Enjoy you boat and all a’ you property.” He replaced his cap and turned away.
“Why don’t we have a little tea?” she said.
He stopped, his back to her. “We doan need no tea to talk about that boat.”
“You quit easily,” she said.
He walked to where the boat trailer was backed against a new oleander hedge, a pale yellow cultivar specially ordered to complement the house trim. He untied the tarp and rolled it back. “Miss sell boat, de buyer need inspection.”
She followed him, walking tender-footed across the gravel.
“Little Maid sit through three hurricanes,” he said. “Maybe develop problems.” He dangled a shriveled baby mouse by the tail and tossed it into the oleander. He held up a seat cushion to show where mice had chewed and tugged a length of gnawed line until it snapped.
“What makes you think I want to sell?” She lifted the varnished mahogany daggerboard. Painted across the stern was Mermaid S. “I might just take up sailing.”
He removed the mast and sprit and made a business of inspecting the lines and wrapping them back around the spars and stowing it all again. Shaking his head, he ran his hand over a crack in the gunwale made by the fallen palm. “She take hard blow.” He pulled off a splinter. “Smart miss doan try sailin’ no leaky boat, or you goin’ be makin’ Jack’s acquaintance. Where she sail?”
She led him to the storeroom and pointed to a folded canvas, woolly with dust and peppered with mouse droppings. He took the sail to the patio, flapped away the droppings, and spread it in the sun. Three ragged holes, a mildew stain along the foot. He rested his knuckles on his hips. “Miss, you not goin’ far with this.”
“Make me an offer,” she said.
“Ah take she off you hands—holes, mice, and all—five hundred dollars.”
“You must be joking.”
“That US, not EC,” he said.
“Two thousand,” she said. “US.”
He whistled. “Man gotta be crazy to pay that much for what already his,” he said. He folded the sail and tried to hand it to her, but she averted her face and he set it on a metal garden chair.
“What will you use it for?” she asked.
“Tending pots,” he said. “Most a’ my livin’ come from pot fish and lobster.”
She paced a circle around the lumber stacked on the patio. “Fifteen hundred.”
“Man like me cyan put his hands on that kind a’ money, not legally,” he said. “’Preciate you time.” He walked toward the drive.
“I promised you tea,” she called after him.
“This wasn’t no social visit,” he called back.
She strode into the restaurant at Oualie and rapped her knuckles on the bar. Barrett Cobb emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel tucked into his jeans.
“Boxing Day special, Els,” he said. “Conch salad.”
“Someone named Finney fish out of here?” she asked. “He wants to buy Jack’s boat.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Cobb said. “He designed the Maid, taught Jack how to build her. He’s busting his behind over there right now repairing an old tub that got stove in so badly during Lenny the owner gave it to him.” At the end of the beach, a shirtless black man leaned over a boat on sawhorses, planing. “He deserves a break.”
As she approached, Finney was shaving a long curl off a new plank in the hull. “You’re working hard on a holiday,” she said.
He brushed the shavings onto the sand. “Gotta get some boat back in the water.”
She slipped a curl onto her finger, a bulky ring. “What would you say to one thousand?”
He straightened. “Boat need repair,” he said. “New sail cost plenty.” He knocked a shaving from his plane. “Can’t do more n’ six hundred.” His expression was a mixture of pride and need and he held her gaze.
“Okay,” she said.
He set the plane down. “Ah doan have all that money in hand.”
“What, you want installments now?”
“Hurricane bust up the whole fleet and most a’ the pots. Ah got a stack a’ new pots in me yard. Cobb goin’ take anything me catch. Give you one hundred down.”
She glanced toward the restaurant. Cobb was watching them from behind the bar. “Will he vouch for you?”
“I doing business with him steady,” he said.
She drew circles in the sand with her toe. “Come at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“I goin’ be punctual.”
She marched back to the restaurant and asked Cobb for two bags of ice. When he put the ice into the Jeep, he said, “Deal?”
“He’s giving me one hundred dollars down. I’m relying on your recommendation that he’ll be good for the rest.”
Cobb chuckled. “As soon as you leave, he’ll be over here asking me for that hundred. Advance on the catch.”
“Give it to him.”
Finney surveyed the kitchen and said, “It almost like Jack still living here. If he was, he’d a’ loan me the Maid long as I need her and we wouldn’t be doin’ business.” He fanned five US twenties onto the table. “You want me sign a paper for the rest?”
“Might as well have a proper note,” she said. She sat down at the table and flipped Lauretta’s pad to a clean page. Finney leaned against the drainboard.
She asked for his full name and wrote on the pad in big letters, reading aloud as she went. “I, Finneaus Fleming, agree to purchase the sailboat Mermaid S from Eleanor Gordon for a total of six hundred US dollars, including an earnest money deposit of one hundred US dollars cash, paid 27 December, 1999, and the remainder of five hundred US dollars to be paid no later than . . . .” She looked up. “What should I put for the terms?”
“Good principle,” she said. “How’s fifty dollars a month? Interest of, let’s say, five percent.”
He looked out the kitchen window at the mango tree. “No problem.”
She handed him the note and he read it over aloud, took her pen, and signed where she had drawn a line. “One next thing, Miss Els,” he said after she’d signed her name with a flourish. “I gotta borrow that Jeep to haul she down to Oualie.”
“Let’s go right now,” she said. “See if she floats.”
While Finney stood in the water directing her, she backed the trailer down the beach until the Maid floated free. He rigged the mast and sprit, raised the sail, and let it swing lazily. “T’anks for dat expert tow,” he said. “I go to come back.” He smiled. “Unless I end up at de bottom.”
“For such a bargain,” she said, “you could at least throw in a little ride.”
He peered through a hole in the sail. “Better move that car. Tide comin’ in.”
She’d dressed for the sun—billowy white linen trousers, one of Jack’s shirts, her floppy sun hat. After moving the car, she returned to the edge of the water and bent to roll the legs above her knees. Finney backed the Maid’s stern to the sand and held out his hand. She grasped his broad palm and he helped her to the midship thwart, facing astern, and gave her the gnawed seat cushion.
He pushed off and settled onto the stern seat. When he slid the daggerboard home and trimmed the sheet, the boat heeled and leapt forward. Els clutched the thwart.
“Can you swim?” he asked.
She looked over the side at Oualie’s white-sand bottom. “That depends.”
“I hopin’ you was goin’ save me,” he said, mischief in his smile, “if that time come.”
The sun was hot on her shoulders. The little boat rocked and yawed, and when Finney changed tack she felt it hesitate and heel to the other side. He was at one with the boat, this burly man whose hand caressed the tiller. Older than she’d first thought: grizzle in the hair below his cap, yellow tint in the whites of his eyes.
“If you don’t think she’s seaworthy,” she said, “don’t go out over our heads.”
They looked down at the bilge, which held a sheen of water, mostly spray.
“She good.” He trimmed the sail and headed out of the harbor.
When the water turned from turquoise to dark green, Els’s chest began to constrict and she gripped the thwart more tightly. “No junket to St. Kitts,” she said.
“Just lookin’ for a little real wind,” he said. “See how she do.”
Remembering Liz’s tricks for easing queasiness and panic, she stared over Finney’s shoulder at sturdy Wilma, which had shrunk to the size of a child’s toy. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Her knuckles ached. “Who’s the boat named for?”
“Mena know,” Finney said. “Jack say something about mermaid in Greece what does wreck boats.” He trimmed the sheet again, and the boat leapt forward and heeled more sharply. “He had something for the name Susie. Call every one a’ his dawg Susie, gyull or bwoy.”
The boat dipped and rolled with the growing swells, and the dark water was only inches below the rail.
“Keep talking,” Els said.
“About what?” His frequent interjection of “anh?” gave his speech a staccato musicality, and his low register lent it a calming steadiness. His knees were pocked with white archipelagos of dried salt.
“Anything. Your family.”
He told her his wife, Vivian, a former schoolteacher, had the “sugar,” which had already claimed a foot and made her nearly blind. Their son was a lawyer in New York, and their daughter had worked at the Resort until it was destroyed. Vivian’s father had been an influential, canny trader, and her older brother, Eugene, was part of the current government. “The higher he rise, the worse things get for Viv and me.”
“Family in high places ought to benefit you.”
“Not if you won’t take from crooks and they despise you for it,” he said.
A wave slammed the port bow, tossing cold pellets of spray, and she yelped and wiped her face with her sleeve.
“Miss not enjoying her ride,” he said. He pushed the tiller and the little boat spun around. When she’d finished ducking under the sail, she was facing out to sea and he was squinting toward shore, avoiding her gaze.
While they zigzagged back to Oualie, she concentrated on a cruise ship steaming toward Basseterre, and he told her about diving for lobster and the beauty of the reef and all its creatures.
When the water turned turquoise again, she eased her grip and kneaded her aching hands. “You know the Iguana men?” she asked.
“I doing business with Jason long time,” he said. “Like most a’ we.”
“What’s his business?” she asked, hoping she hadn’t written a loan to someone involved in drugs.
He shrugged. “Jason very discreet.”
“Then tell me about Liz.”
He signaled for her to duck and changed tack. “Jason bring him here, maybe ten year back,” he said. “He have big trouble then.”
“With the law?”
“If Jason know the circumstances, he doan speak about it.” He eased the sail. “Liz a little like Jack,” he said. “Make everybody laugh, but have a lotta sadness. Lotta anger.” He squinted under the sail. “No ladies stay ’round him for long.” He put the tiller over. “Keep you head low.”
He raised the daggerboard and guided the Maid to a gentle crunch on the beach, stepped into the shallows, and steadied the sail.
“Lovely ride,” Els said, accepting his help getting out. “I shan’t be taking up sailing after all. See you in a month with that installment payment.”
He grasped the painter and heaved the boat higher onto the sand. “You want some of it in lobsters?”
“Only if you cook them first.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to cooking lobster. Viv show you in ten minutes.”
“You said she couldn’t see.”
“She see with her mind and her ears.”
“Tell her I look forward to that lesson, Finney,” she said.
CHAPTER 20
Jack didn’t have any flutes, so Els drank her first bottle of champagne from a jam jar and the second, since she wasn’t sharing, straight from the bottle. In honor of what the Nevisians call “Old Year’s Night,” she’d put on a tangerine sundress and her great-grandmother’s ruby matinee necklace. She’d splurged on a tin of caviar and was sitting at the top of the gallery steps spooning it messily onto crisps.
At midnight, car and boat horns blared and someone at Oualie sent up fireworks—a few sparkles and pops. Then it was dark again, and silent. Els began singing “Auld Lang Syne” in a faltering near whisper. After the first verse she swigged the champagne and said, “Here’s to the new fucking millennium. Not exactly where I thought I’d be at Y.2.K.”
She sang the second verse louder; the Scottish words on her tongue were a taste of home. “Ain’t tha’ fer true, me darlin’ lad?” she said. “Many a weary, lonely foot have I wandered since I’ve seen yir fair face.” Looking up at the stars, she began the third verse, but when she sang “But seas between us braid hae roar’d,” she stopped and hugged her knees. “A great sea lies between us now, my love,” she said. “And likely ever shall.”
When she launched into the final verse, a man’s voice chimed in—a baritone, tuneful and strong. He was standing in the shadows at the edge of the court with his hand extended to grasp hers, as the song lyrics said.
She squinted at him. “Is it you again?” she asked. “Stop skulking and come over where I can see you.”
He stepped onto the gravel. He looked much as he had that night in her bedroom, but less tired, and naughtiness had replaced the pleading in his expression.
“Okay, Jack, so am I hallucinating again? I’m that pished.”
> He stepped closer. “You’re so sad tonight, sweet. I thought I might cheer you up.”
She held out her hand. “Shall we tak a right guid willy waught, or did ye come to dance, perhaps? Been a while since I had a spin in a handsome man’s arms.” She stood up, lost her balance, grabbed the railing, and sat down hard. “Well, forget about cutting a bit a’ rug.” She looked at the midnight sky. “If you want to cheer me up, go off to heaven and bring back the two people I most want to see. If you can drag back only one, leave Father there and bring me Mallo. Father’d never answer all the questions I have for him, anyway.”
“They’ll have to find you on their own.”
“Is there a time limit for yir wandering, a sell-by date, after which ye’re just a stale spirit? Have I missed my window for seeing them again, and no goodbye for either?” She took another swig of champagne and set the bottle on the edge of the step. It tumbled down the flight, fizzing what remained onto the stones. “Bloody hell,” she said. “Ach, just as well.”
“Mark Twain is supposed to have said, ‘Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough,’” he said. “My motto, but I hope you don’t make it yours.” He walked to the bottom of the steps. He seemed too substantial to be a hallucination, but her eyes were sliding in and out of focus. “So what did you think you’d be doing when the century turned?”
“My plan was to be the lady of the estate and my . . . my bonnie Mallo and I’d be managing it together, keeping it sound and strong. He’d be the darling of the devolution movement, and I’d be his secret weapon. Now it’s all gone. Cairnoch. Him. No use crying in that beer.”
“You like crying in your beer.”
“And who cares if I do?”
“‘First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you,’” he said. “F. Scott Fitzgerald. And he should know.”
“Is that what you do, wander in and drop er-u-dite quotes? Don’t you have anything original to say? Look, Jumbiekins, if that’s who you are, the last thing I need is someone visiting from the other side—and a poor example, at that—telling me how to live my life.”
The Moon Always Rising Page 13