“For God’s sake, Bert,” I plead. “I was only trying to stay healthy.”
“Of course, Weber. Of course. And from the looks of that belly of yours I’d say you have the right idea. Good for you, Weber. Discipline is important.”
“Bert, there he is.
“Who? Ah, you mean your officer. There he is, all right.”
“Bert?” I am ready to grab Bert and shake the serenity out of him.
“My assumption is, Weber, that this guy wants to arrest you for jogging without a shirt on, jogging on a north-south road, and jogging in what looks to be your underwear. All of these things are illegal in the Palm Beaches. I advise you to get the fuck away from me and jump. Call my secretary on Monday morning and let me know how things turned out. Good-bye, Weber.”
I am overwhelmed by my responsibility. Jimmy Jamaica supported everybody in the Keys and kept a Third World economy on its feet. Sundown pumped money into progressive political campaigns all over the country. After they locked up Alfredo the Ass, the sharks took over and people started getting killed. If I go down, Bert might end up with me, and if Bert goes, Statia goes, and golden dominoes are going to fall all over the place.
My knees are weakening. How did the structure wear so thin that the stock market would twitch if somebody got busted for jogging in Palm Beach? Perhaps this is the time to stand in full force and virtue. Give my attorneys something they can sink their teeth into. “Your honor, the bare chest of an athlete, we contend, is not unsightly. There is no more fundamental right than the right to feel good.” Oh boy, am I in trouble. The cop is about fifty yards away and I can hear him blasting farts like a galloping horse.
“Jump where, Bert?”
He doesn’t want to talk to me but he sees that I am not jumping so he mumbles to me out of the side of his mouth as he casually reels in one of his lines.
“Jump into the water, dummy. Swim out to the black cigarette laying off the reef with those fishing boats. Better hurry, Weber. Your friend is about ten steps behind you.”
I am up on the railing poised like a cliff diver. Hands grab me by the waist and squeeze into me, trying to hold on. I try to pry the fingers back but they are gripping me with a maniac’s resolve. I push off into space. The hands stay with me for about a second but then slip down and tear away. My impact with the water hurts, it knocks the breath out of me. I plunge deep, waiting for the release of gravity, and when it comes I feel in control again and kick slowly to the surface. Thirty feet above me there’s the cop, waving my boxer shorts at me. Man, I wish Bert would get over there and talk him out of shooting me.
I am a man who rarely regrets his actions, but right now I’m a little disappointed with the way the morning has developed. My muscles ache, energy seems in short supply, the policeman may not stand for this sort of resistance, and here, from the surface of the ocean, that black cigarette looks miles away bouncing in the white-capped distance. What the hell, I tell myself. What the hell. I roll in the emerald water and breast-stroke eastward. Tericka, these strokes should be for you.
Like a seal, I duck under crashing waves and pop sleekly up in the calm foam of their passing. The tide is crawling away from land and I am riding its cushion like a victorious athlete raised on the hands of his teammates. It’s best to forget about bullets spitting into the water around me, or Bert’s big fish nipping off the piece of bait that’s waving between my sore thighs. It’s best just to stroke, pull, and kick ahead through the dazzling blue and concentrate on this new challenge.
I glide across dark clumps of turtle grass and out over fields of sand bright blue with refraction. At least here a half-mile from shore there is no one to intrude on one’s autonomy. Beyond the reef, the fishing boats swing and jerk like white kites against their anchors. Mackerel must be running, dolphin migrating. The coral heads are mottled rose and amber beneath me. The surge is strong and I have about had it but still I frog-kick into deeper, more sinister water where death can flash up from infinity and take a big bite. The ominous black hull of the oceangoing powerboat lures me onward, my dark salvation.
On board the cigarette, two fellows are gauging my progress. One extends a long gaff out to me. I reach for the crook of the pole but it thrusts beyond my hand and twists to hook into the back of my neck. Maybe I am not wanted here. The violence in the motion stops at the surface of my skin. I cannot raise my head but gaze instead into the sheen of the black fiberglass and my reflection sliding by. The desperation of my image startles me absolutely cold. I didn’t know, I murmur to myself. There is seaweed in my mustache. There is a familiar Cracker accent calling down from above.
“Webah, is that you?”
In my exhaustion, all I can think of is Chuck Berry. Maybelline? Honey, is that you?
“Webah, is that you?”
“Yes!” I scream it. My voice takes what juice I have left. “You tried to spear me!”
“Now, Webah, don’t be like that. I didn’t know that was you.”
A wave slaps me and my mouth fills with salty water. I sputter and cough and begin to drift away from the boat. A strong hand locks into my hair but I feel no pain. A rope is somehow looped under my arms and I am hauled up over the gunnel and flipped on deck. I land sprawling next to a colossal blue marlin, easily five times my size. Its eye is as big as my fist. Blood has puddled around the torn beak.
“Goddamn, Webah. You’re naked, boy.”
I can say nothing, only sympathize with the fish. Leo Stubbs, the best diesel mechanic on the Gold Coast and a former employee of mine, crouches down beside me and helps me to sit up.
“Webah,” he says. “I know there ain’t no sense in askin’ what the hell you doin’ bare-assed a mile offshore. Things happen to workin’ men. But Webah, my man here and me’s on a business trip, ya know, and this is my man’s boat, and he wants you to catch your breath and leave.”
“Leave to go where, Leo?”
Leo suffers the telling of his message. Loyalty and friendship are not in excess in Leo’s life, but here they have crossed tracks. His weather-eaten eyes appeal to me for understanding and he lowers his voice.
“Come on, Webah. My man the captain here is a fuckin’ renegade, a regular shitball Ernest Hemingway. You won’t believe what he done. Webah, I’m sorry I don’t have time to be more hospitable, but you gonna have to go over the side and swim to that drift boat passin’ by. Let’s get together tomorrow and have us a clambake or somethin’, drink some ten dollah bourbon.”
I look at Leo’s man to try to get a feeling for the situation. He is up in the bow lackadaisically casting a silver spoon over the reef. He’s dressed in a white cotton T-shirt and seersucker pants, unstained by salt or sweat. His face is bright red but clamped shut by wraparound shades and a stiff blue captain’s hat. In his back hip pocket is a conspicuous bulge and anybody would know this is intentional, for there’s more heat per capita in Miami and the Gold Coast than anywhere north of Bogota.
“Been fishing, eh?” I ask Leo.
“Oh, brother, have we ever. You said it,” Leo says, narrowing his eyes.
“Square grouper, is it?” I ask. Square grouper is a very popular catch these days in south Florida. It stacks up neatly in the cargo hold and is the only fish I know of that stinks sweet.
“No, Webah. Wrong.”
Leo has seen too much sunlight. He is a perpetual squinter. His hands, the hands of a marine mechanic, lead a rough and reckless life. They are everywhere scarred, the fingers crooked, the nails smashed off. They tell me Leo is the one man I would want with me on a boat, but he’s a loner and won’t stay put.
“Shit, Leo,” I tell him. “We worked together, we survived a hurricane together. You even fell in love with my wife, didn’t you, and now you’re telling me—”
“I’m not lying, Webah.”
I look at his hands, the course of the palms black with grease, and shake my head sadly.
“And Statia ain’t your wife no more.”
“Nobody take
s a boat like this out fishing. You picked up the marlin at dockside in the Bahamas. Come on, Leo. This is me, Weber.”
“No, Webah, you ain’t gonna believe this. It’s black gold we got. My man Captain Shitball here has himself forty-six Haitians down below sittin’ on each other’s feet. We picked them up in Freeport last night and each of them handed over six hundred bucks to the captain. I don’t know where people like that get that kind of money.”
Something is wrong here. A big boat like this one crosses the Gulf Stream in an hour, one thousand horsepower boiling the sea astern. Live cargo is off-loaded on the golden beaches in the dark morning hours. Leo and his man should have been at the night deposit window of their bank hours ago.
“Webah,” Leo says, “my man here is insane. As soon as we’re out of the harbor last night he rigs up a trawl line and sets it and we take it real slow ’cause we got time to kill. Then about twelve miles out the clothespin snaps off and the line rings through the reel. My man goes berserk. I tell him cut the fuckin’ line and let’s go. He pulls this runty piss-ant little pistol on me and says, ’No, I want the fish.’ Well, hell, that big marlin swam us up to Abaco and then back down toward Eleuthera and this way and that way. At five this morning I could still see the lights on Bimini.
“Finally he lands the son of a bitch and struts around like a commandante. I turned the boat west and let her fly but by the time we got here the sun’s up twenty degrees and we’re down to the last sip of gas. Damn the man! Webah, this is the truth. We’re just waitin’ for nightfall.”
This is not where I want to be. Nothing looks more suspicious to the Coast Guard than a cigarette, especially one this size, lying offshore all day long.
“Leo,” I say, “give me a pair of pants or a bathing suit and I’ll be on my way.”
“Can’t do that, Webah. Only got what I have on.”
“Hell, give me your underpants then.”
“Ain’t wearin’ any.”
“What about the captain?”
“I’ll ask.”
My strength is returning. I am prepared for the swim to a nearby boat but I am, when possible, a man of standards myself, and would prefer not to impose my nakedness any further. I try a shaky push-up on the hot deck. Leo’s conversation with his man is very short.
“Captain Shitball says go below and take what you need from off the cargo and then beat it. Come on, I’ll show you the way.”
I follow Leo’s taut little body into the cockpit and down a ladder into a spotless, ultramodern galley. Beyond this there’s only a bulkhead, teak from beam to beam, and Leo unlatches a door into the forward hold and opens it to the escaping darkness and the smell of poverty. I step through the passageway and can hear teeth chattering nervously, stomachs gurgling, one or two babies crying.
“Leo,” I say, “this isn’t the business for you.”
Leo ignores me. My eyes adjust and I can make out the round, black faces framing the neon glow of eyes and teeth. The air is low on oxygen but satiated with hope. Several women giggle and I instinctively cover my genitals with folded hands.
“Welcome to America,” I say.
“Izt Meeami?” a girl’s voice sings.
“Oui oui,” Leo answers, although it sounds like whey whey. “My mammy soon foof come-go yeah yeah, y’all dig that?”
The people nod their heads understandingly, joyously.
“Leo,” I say, “you’re a pig, telling these people you’d take them to Miami. Give me some money, man.”
“What for?”
“I’m going to buy myself a pair of pants.”
“Webah,” he says impatiently, but I won’t let him go on.
“Just lend me the money,” I tell him, “and leave it at that.”
“All I got is hundreds,” he says, digging into his cutoffs. I pluck a bill from the tangled bundle he reveals.
“That’ll do.” I tuck the money into the shirt pocket of a man in front of me and motion for him to take off his pants. He gives me a nice smile and obliges. Most probably the captain prohibited his cargo from carrying luggage, so I am not surprised to see that the man has a second pair of short pants underneath his outer ones. I have enough foresight to ask him also for the Salvation Army suit jacket that matches the pants. I shake the man’s hand and the deal is complete.
“Webah, you’re crazy to give a hundred bucks to a nigrah that don’t even speak English.”
I don’t want to argue with Leo. It was a discussion much like this one that lost me the best mechanic I know of on the water. (Webah, you’re crazy to walk away from a woman like Statia.) I shrug and begin to step into my recently purchased trousers, blue serge circa Korean War era. Two things happen.
As if it had a nervous system for chills to run through, the boat gives a silent shake, a sequence of twitches, and then a roar crescendoes behind us. Like a horse rearing suddenly up, the bow of the boat rises, the stern punches into the water. My ankles are tied by the trousers I am struggling with and I pitch backward through the passageway and crash into the galley. Leo tumbles after me, banging his elbow into my mouth with such force that I want to cry. We are two grains of salt instantly buried by a rain of pepper. By the time I am able to breathe freely and move again, Leo has somehow clambered up on deck and now is back down in the galley, pushing Haitians out of the way and furiously searching the cupboards, throwing things around. He looks like a man who has just been electrocuted and enjoyed the volts.
“Leo!” I shout.
Leo has found a jar of instant coffee and from the way he’s gulping the dry brown granules you’d think he had a cold beer in his hand.
“Lord, Lord, Lord,” he says. “Marine patrol comin’ outta Boynton inlet. Lights, siren, a big show. Shitball’s borrowin’ time.”
Leo is grinning, he’s having a good experience. My mouth, I realize, is bloody. My ribs feel cracked. Leo throws more condiments out off the shelves, finds a baby food jar with about a half-inch of powder in the bottom. He dumps its contents on a countertop and begins frantically chopping at the crystals with his buck knife.
“Wanna line, boy?” he asks, talking fast. “Fortify yourself for the ride. Come on now, blow summa this snow and grab a handful of vitamins there in that jar.” He looks away from his project to nod toward a mason jar filled with a tropical flora of pills. In his haste he chops into the hump of his thumb. He jerks his hand away to keep the blood from spilling into the cocaine. He holds the deep gash up for me to inspect. His eyes are all squinty.
“How’s that for a pain threshold, Webah? I don’t feel a damn thing.”
I take a pinch of the coke and rub it across my busted lips. Hoisting myself up the ladder, I reel through the hatchway into the cockpit, gripping desperately for any handhold that will keep me from catapulting out of the boat as we hop and skip over the ocean at tremendous speed. Captain S is at the wheel, as indifferent as any midweek commuter. I’ll bet catching that marlin made the worms in his heart glow. The lights of law and order are shrinking far astern.
“How many horsepower you got in this thing?” I yell idiotically. I cannot hear my own voice, but a hand cups my ear. Leo has joined us, his wound bandaged with gray duct tape.
“Damn impolite!” he screams. His mouth is cold on my sunburned ear.
“WHAT?”
“Damn impolite question. After a thousand, it ain’t nobody’s business!”
I turn to grimace at the bouncing, jolted face but his eyes cut me away. Here’s a man whose sureness and certainty are proportionate to the degree of chaos he is able to sniff out. Tericka says the same of me but she’s wrong. I am satisfied enough keeping capitalism and myself healthy. I am satisfied by the girl, the tits, the baby, the house, the mango and grapefruit trees, the weather, the music, and the money. I am a gentle man, for God’s sake.
The gash of our wake is as tempestuous as a squall line on the surface of the water. The Moorish towers of the Breakers Hotel rise ten degrees off our portside. We are no more th
an a quarter-mile out. Amid the flying spray, the crashing and pounding, the extreme noise, something within this fiberglass behemoth slips, and the kinetic clutch of our motion relaxes for a second. The air stutters but then the roar continues.
“All right, goddammit,” Leo is shouting. “That’s it. That’s all she wrote. Son of a bitch, put her on the beach, man.”
Leo’s man, the captain, one gets the feeling, is dozing behind his sunglasses. The air cracks and stammers. Vaa vaa vaa va va. The passengers that have come up on deck crouch like Muslims at prayer. Leo shoves the captain aside and spins the wheel to port. The cigarette arcs and slams broadside through the water. The force of the maneuver sends several Haitians crashing through the lifeline, which they grab and dangle from like eels. Just as we regain our forward momentum, an unnatural silence implodes down into us. We are out of gas.
Captain Shitball has pulled his pistol and he waves it at Leo. This sort of behavior depresses the hell out of me. I try to make myself small, but the captain says in a high Latin accent, “Keep those folks there away from my feesh.”
We have enough glide left in us to coast within fifty yards of the shore where up above the concrete breakwater, in the glassed bays of the Breakers’ dining room, I can see the faces of the aristocracy turn with concern from their fois gras and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
To the north and south red lights are flashing out beyond the reef and you know the sirens are blasting even if you can’t hear them yet. I tell Leo good-bye, and Leo’s man thanks for the ride.
“Miami!” Leo announces. “Miami! End of the line.” He begins to throw the Haitians overboard. They are shrieking and wailing hysterically. For some of these immigrants in the past, this point has truly been the end of the line, but the water here seems shallow enough to stand in. I dive over the side and freestyle as fast as I can toward the beach. Leo follows close behind. The captain has chosen to stay with his marlin, a man intent on legend.
We must seem a very peculiar aquacade to the ladies and gentlemen lining the oceanfront windows of the hotel. Surely money is changing hands over the prospect of our individual arrivals. Small fortunes suddenly made or lost. America, I am back ashore again and ready to run.
Easy in the Islands Page 15