“Eddie Wall circle round and round for an hour, but he couldn’t find Brad. They search the beach but they couldn’t find him.”
“They never found him?”
“Three days later, my mommy saw a body lyin on the beach or what was left of Banes after the sharks finish with him. She call some neighbors, and they pull him out. Then Ansel and I made a rough box. We knock it together in a few minutes. We wrap Banes in a sheet and put him in the box. Same time we was making the box, fellas was diggin the hole.”
“He should have been holding on, Jim.”
“No, Fred. Was his time. When it’s time for a man to go, he’ll go whether he’s holdin on or not.”
Jimmy nodded a couple of times before he stood up and slowly headed down to his bunk.
The three of us walked outside to take a last look before turning in. It was a beautiful night, clear, breezy, with a little chill in the air. Before going back in, I switched on the underwater lights, and the sharks were still patiently circling the boat, waiting.
In the morning the sharks were gone, but none of us was in the mood for a swim.
Part III
Even when Bobby was on top, he spent part of each day crafting sculpture from coral. In the heat of the afternoon, before he began preparing stocks and sauces for the French cuisine he would serve the boat owners, you’d see him standing outside a plywood shack down the road fifty yards from the clubhouse working with a noisy grinding tool. He was wearing a bandanna and goggles, his big Lab, Marlin, at his feet while he fashioned starfish, marlin, barracudas, turtles from grooved pieces of brain coral that he and Rasta dug up from the bottom of the lagoon. Bobby’s face was matted in thick dust. He worked rapidly, with a steady hand, and though the work came together quickly, it was never glib or glitzy. Rather, Bobby’s sculpture was primitive and heavy, as if excavated from the earth, which seemed unlikely given the speed with which he worked and coming from a man who seemed deeply invested in life’s razzmatazz.
Many evenings, he was joined beside the shack by Rasta who watched like a hawk. Rasta wanted to learn how to make sculpture, and Bobby was teaching him. Then after a while, the two friends sat on a couple of crates that faced the tall rock cliffs that girdled the opposite side of the lagoon and protected the little harbor from storms. Bobby told Rasta his plans as he did many afternoons. He was going to build a five-star hotel in the rocks—blast and drill rooms into the cliffs in a style that had impressed him when he was on holiday in Matera, Italy, where rock cave houses were carved into the cliffs. It was a big unusual idea and Rasta took it in.
Then Bobby decided there wasn’t enough stone for an entire hotel. Instead, they could fashion six or eight luxury apartments in the cliff, each of them with a balcony affording an incomparable view of the reef and the blue water beyond. Rasta imagined himself and Bobby blasting and drilling rooms into the rocks. Why not? They’d dredged the lagoon and made a harbor. They could do this.
Bobby predicted the luxury condos would lure back the wealthiest boat owners that had stopped visiting the island following the sad event with the Haitians. Bobby’s biggest players had just felt uneasy about the whole episode, which ended with half-eaten corpses, their skin falling off, littering the beach within sight of the yachts and dining hall. Instead of Rum Cay, the high rollers now cruised their yachts to Turks and Caicos and the Virgin Islands. Really, it was understandable.
Bobby’s plan to win them back entailed the new condos, building a dozen beachfront luxury homes, sprucing up the restaurant, and he and Rasta would need to add on an additional twelve hundred feet to the small landing strip in the center of the island so his patrons could bring in guests on their private jets. That would be easy enough.
Bobby estimated they’d clear ten million with his condo idea alone. Rasta would soon become a wealthy man.
Meanwhile, the marina was struggling. Most days in the slips there were only a half dozen boats owned by serious fishermen who raced down from Florida for several days of marlin and tuna action off the corner. These men operated much smaller boats burning only a small fraction of the fuel as the larger fishing yachts that had once frequented the island. Bobby’s diesel sales were off nearly 80 percent. His new clientele didn’t have thousands to burn on fancy dinners and wine in Bobby’s restaurant. Instead, they grilled hamburgers on the dock and went to bed early. Most evenings there were only one or two couples eating Bobby’s unrivaled cuisine, and sometimes he just kept the doors of the restaurant closed.
The millionaire yacht owners of the past had taken pleasure in tipping Bobby five or even ten thousand before casting off for the next island. In those days, Bobby had given a share of his tip money to Rasta who then had enough to live his modest life and to help out Biggy, who never had a dollar. And also, he gave money each month to Rosie, who was struggling to keep her dilapidated pig farm operating. Bobby’s new clientele didn’t leave tips, or if they did, they might slip him fifty dollars.
~
In the late afternoon, Dennis drove his new jeep from his beach house to the marina and parked on the dirt road just north of Bobby’s shed. With a nod he walked past Bobby and Rasta sitting on crates, making their plans.
Dennis smiled with squinting hooded eyes. He had plans of his own.
Bobby’s dog, Marlin, tensed and growled at the hefty man with several days’ growth of beard.
“It’s OK, boy,” said Bobby. Marlin didn’t look so sure but settled again at Bobby’s feet.
Dennis shuffled ahead, sniffing the air as if trying to pick up the scent of prey. He lived in the present, moving from one urge, one argument, one conquest to the next. He didn’t value or even understand patience or compromise.
He turned the corner and slowly climbed up the path to the air-conditioned clubhouse, wiping sweat from his forehead with a thick hairy forearm.
He walked into the empty clubhouse and through the dining room where Flo’s little girl played quietly with a small doll beneath one of the tables.
Dennis passed the child and stood in the kitchen doorway while Flo leaned over the sink, washing the lunch dishes. Flo was humming an old Billie Holiday standard in her rich, deep voice.
Dennis closed his eyes and seemed to sway a little to her tune.
Flo heard something, turned around.
She registered his snickering smile and turned back to her work. She was no longer singing.
Most of all, Dennis trusted his needs and instincts. He always chose battlefields where he could win.
Dennis’s body now ached with need.
He walked to Flo, turned her as if executing a crude dance routine. He reached for her large breast, then roughly pulled down her bra. She stood there accepting his rough handling. She knew it would be a big mistake to resist. Flo turned her head to the side when he put his hand under her light dress. Dennis pulled down her panties and then his underpants. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t make a sound. She never looked at him.
Dennis quickly ejaculated on the cement floor and gestured for Flo to clean it up. He pulled up his shorts and headed out the kitchen door and back through the dining room past the child and out the door into the heat of late afternoon.
He stood on the dining room porch for a minute or two looking at a roped-off area of Bobby’s property that would soon become his hamburger bar. Dennis had made a deal with Bobby. For two hundred thousand, Bobby had agreed to make Dennis a 51 percent owner of a small hamburger bar with seating for about twenty people. Within the week, a barge from Florida would come with supplies. Dennis had already flown in men from Miami who would soon begin constructing the facility on Bobby’s property just south of the clubhouse.
Dennis shook his head. Too small, much too small. He walked down the hill to the markers slowly savoring the smell of Flo on his fingers. Dennis began moving the markers further down toward the marina’s docks, greatly increasing the footpr
int of his bar.
~
Bobby didn’t worry about the downturn in business. Since he was a kid fabricating his own skateboards and surfboards, he’d always made good money. Later on, when his custom car shop had gone belly up, he’d hired on as a freelancer for the DEA embedding himself in a Colombian drug operation working in the southern Bahamas. He was brash and gutsy and loved the life of a double. He made a half million in six months until he barely escaped with his life. For Bobby, making big money and spending it was breathing—inhale, exhale. In recent years, he’d kept a Ferrari in Miami, brought his lady of the month to clubs in South Beach, took groups of buddies to pricey restaurants, and always picked up the tab. Then he’d return to the island, sit beside the sculpting shed, and report his lifestyle and conquests to Rasta, who had never had any money to speak of.
Even during these difficult times, Bobby had nearly a hundred thousand in the bank not including the check from Dennis who, for some reason, was anxious to throw even more money into the marina.
But now Bobby could barely think about the marina. He was crazy in love with a girl more than twenty years his junior and he would do anything to win her heart.
“She has me reaching,” he said to Rasta. “She’s just so fresh and alive.”
Rasta nodded.
These days Bobby’s huge friend walked with a limp from an arthritic hip and frequent flare-ups of gout. Some mornings it was too painful for Rasta to get out of bed.
“When she takes off her clothes, all the Bobby goes out of me. I can’t say no to this girl.”
For years, Bobby’s women had been weary—that’s how it seemed—or he’d grown weary with them. His seductions had become boozy and monotonous and forgettable, scores of women passing in a blur like his youth.
“She makes me shiver like an old horse … and she knows it, Rasta. The power she has. I’m always worried she’s gonna leave me. I was always the one who did the leaving.”
Rasta looked at the boats in the empty marina. He looked at the rock wall where they’d planned to build the grand hotel.
“Who is she?” he finally asked.
“Come on, man. You met her. She was studying art or some kind of writing in graduate school and I brought her here spring break. Don’t you remember? Slim girl with long hair, always writing in a notebook.”
Bobby looked at his old friend for affirmation that Hannah stood out for Rasta as well.
Rasta nodded to make his friend happy, but he didn’t remember. Bobby had brought so many for a weekend.
Bobby would soon leave the island to take his bride-to-be to Europe for a three-month ultra-first-class vacation. He spoke of the resorts they’d visit, the wines they’d sample. Rasta nodded. “You’ll be in charge here,” Bobby said gesturing toward the docks that were empty but for an old charter boat from Key West and Mike’s listing sailboat. When a shadow of doubt passed across Rasta’s face, Bobby quickly added, “I’ll take her to Matera in Italy and sketch the rock houses. When I get back, we’ll get started blasting into the cliff.” He gestured toward the rock wall across the lagoon.
~
Soon after Bobby left for Europe, Dennis directed his stateside building crew to put up a large guesthouse near his home several miles north on the beach road and right behind it, long trailer-shaped living quarters for a dozen of his workers who would remain on the island for future building projects. The dimensions of his property were now about four times the size of what he’d purchased from Bobby. After a month, he brought in more men from the States, and they went to work on his hamburger bar.
Dennis never considered Bobby’s response to these unannounced or greatly expanded building projects. He trusted his instincts and moved ahead with his plans. Every two weeks, a barge from Miami came into the lagoon at high tide bringing appliances and building supplies. In the morning, Dennis looked over engineering drawings with his men and set them to work. Whenever he was in the mood, he visited Flo in the kitchen.
After three months, the finished hamburger bar was replete with icemakers that could service a three-hundred-seat restaurant, a large costly machine to desalinate water from the lagoon, and a custom twenty-foot grill to handle a hundred burgers at a time. The kidney-shaped facility now reached from Bobby’s restaurant to the dock and nearly all the way to the cottages on the beach—an outsized architectural monstrosity that engulfed the petite marina that remained mostly empty. In late afternoon, after his lovemaking, Dennis walked out onto the back porch of Bobby’s restaurant and admired his accomplishment.
~
Rasta’s friend, Biggy, was a short, unassuming man, with a sad smile. For years, when the marina was in its prime, Biggy, showed up in late afternoon to watch the fancy boats work their way through the reef and enter the lagoon. With a mixture of expectation and melancholy, he watched swaggering captains power big boats into their slips while he stole glances at the young women in the stern. No one seemed to mind these evening visits by Biggy. Unlike some of the other locals who came to the marina, Biggy never pestered mates or captains for fish to take home. He mostly stood by in silence. Occasionally, one of the young women on the boats brushed against him with a smile as she passed on the narrow dock, or even lingered to say hello, standing so close he could smell her womanly aroma.
Once I asked him why he visited so faithfully, and Biggy surprised me with his candor. He came, he said, hoping to find a girl he could love. I didn’t respond to this immediately. Honestly, I was too nonplussed and at the time I didn’t fully understand his predicament. But during a subsequent conversation, I tried to suggest that perhaps the young girls visiting on the yachts might not offer the best chances for him. I wondered if Biggy might find a local girl in town or perhaps he might travel to Nassau with Rasta for a week where he might meet someone to love. Biggy listened attentively but didn’t look convinced. Then he added, inexplicably, that girls are afraid of him. Still, Biggy remained hopeful that one afternoon his ship would come in.
Many evenings, and particularly with Bobby off the island, Biggy lingered in the marina for talks with Rasta. Usually the friends sat on weathered benches overlooking the lagoon. They enjoyed watching twelve-foot tiger and bull sharks gracefully cruise beneath the docks in their endless circling of the lagoon searching for food.
“Jealousy, yeah,” said Rasta, answering his friend. “I feel Dennis just want the place. I don’t know what he want it for. Not for the money. There’s no money here. He want it for his own pleasure. He don’t even like a bunch of people around him. He want it for hisself.”
“Maybe he want to be Bobby?” offered Biggy.
Rasta mused a little. “You know, he just regretful of what Bobby have and the kind of relationship Bobby have with people,” he said. “And the way Bobby live his life in the marina. That put a serious toll on Dennis … The way people look up to Bobby, admire him. Bobby don’t have Dennis money, but he have something Dennis lack and that eat him. Maybe the marina give it to him.”
Biggy was a wounded man, but also he was unduly wise and compassionate. Rasta watched out for him, tried to make him happy. One time he even paid a girl to give his friend an evening of pleasure, although that didn’t work out so well.
It was Rasta who began calling his friend Biggy, and the name stuck. One afternoon the two friends had been conching on the flats in Bobby’s Boston Whaler. Biggy was leaned way over the side looking for conch and crawfish on the bottom through a glass bottom bucket when Rasta glanced over at his friend. Rasta glimpsed a fat snake—a poisonous rock snake from the island, he presumed, that had climbed into the skiff and was working its way from Biggy’s knee up into his shorts. Rasta shouted and tried to whack the creature away. That’s when Biggy reached down and curled his astonishing package back into his underwear. Rasta was speechless. Had never seen anything like this before in his life. His little friend possessed a thick donkey penis that hung to his
knee … A year or so earlier, when Rasta had paid a small pretty young woman to make love to his friend, she’d run away from Biggy. Now Rasta understood.
~
During the nearly four months Bobby traveled in Europe, the marina became a virtual ghost town. Besides Dennis’s workers, there were no visitors. A pack of hungry dogs had moved from the tiny village and had settled on Bobby’s property. Mostly in the heat of day, they slept under trees or in the shade of buildings, but in the evening they raced around, barking, chasing dock cats, and foraging for food.
The boats from Florida stopped coming altogether. The big game fishing community is quite small, and fishermen in the States knew that Bobby was away. Most of them traveled to the island to feast and drink with Bobby, to feel his life force and implicit promise of a long wild ride ahead—even for the oldies—with infinite land deals and fiery sunsets falling into the blue water.
Rasta was left in charge of nothing. He had no money. He was shepherding the empty place for his friend. Once or twice a week, a transient boat pulled into the dock to buy a little fuel. Occasionally one of these boat owners paid Rasta with cash. He put the money in his pocket—perhaps it came to a thousand dollars a month. He felt shitty stealing from his friend but he needed money to buy food and pay his electric bill. He waited for Bobby to begin constructing condos in the cliff, for the party nights to ramp up again with naked fire dancing on the beach and the morning’s deafening roar of mega fishing yachts racing up to the corner for marlin action.
~
After nearly four months, Bobby flew back to Rum Cay. He buzzed the island astonished to see his marina swallowed whole by Dennis’s hamburger bar. He saw the new buildings leeching from Dennis’s property on the north end of the beach and two new guesthouses near the marina beside his three more modest ones. He saw a barge laden with supplies nearing the entrance to the lagoon.
By the time Bobby got to his marina, the barge was about to tie onto his dock. It was loaded with large refrigerators and freezers for the hamburger bar, two diesel generators to run the operation whenever the aged generator on the island shut down, sundry supplies, and stacks of wood and electrical hookups for future projects Dennis was planning.
Deep Water Blues Page 4