~
Bobby and Rasta walked up the steep winding path to the old stone house Bobby’s parents built thirty years earlier. Bobby needed to sort things out but couldn’t bring himself to think about Dennis.
“He’s an idiot,” he said to Rasta, who nodded. He wanted to swat Dennis like an insect.
The house was worn down, raunchy and beautiful from the battering of storms and the filth of Bobby’s animals. The place had held together through a dozen hurricanes.
The friends stood together on the bluff across from the marina looking out to sea. To the southeast, Bobby squinted into the afternoon sun and counted five or six boats trolling off the corner of the island. They were far away, hardly more than smudges on the horizon.
“Hey, man,” Bobby offered Rasta a high five. “We’re back.”
The captains of these boats were surely friends of his that had heard he was returning to Rum Cay.
There was so much riding on a glimpse. But of course the entire island was hardly more than a smudge or a glimpse—one wave could totally wash away Rum Cay with so much hope and tragedy resting a few feet above sea level.
“In two weeks there’ll be twelve trolling out there,” he said to Rasta.
There were things Rasta wanted to say, more tangible and immediate than the good times Bobby presumed. There was only one policeman on the island, and Dennis now owned him. There were other men who would do his bidding whenever he asked, whatever he asked. Bobby didn’t get it. Bobby was still in France with the girl.
“I need to clean this place up,” Bobby said with a guilty smile. “Hannah’s arriving in a week.”
Bobby shared the house with five big Labs, including Marlin who had sired the others. There were also a few goats that wandered in and out of Bobby’s several rooms filthy with animal hair and the smell of goat urine. Bobby cherished his dogs but especially Marlin who slept in Bobby’s bed.
“Maybe you and Flo would help me for couple days?”
Rasta nodded OK. But his mind had gone to the night he and Biggy had been fishing for snappers on the dock when several of Dennis’s workers captured a few of the town dogs that had been hanging around the outdoor bar barking and whimpering for food. The men petted the animals, fed them scraps of hamburger while tying them together with a dock line. Then, as Dennis directed, the men dragged the heaving package of animals onto the dock and kicked them over. Within a minute, bull sharks torpedoed the frantic drowning dogs. The men laughed while the sharks tore the dogs apart.
Biggy had gestured to the pitch-black water when it had grown quiet. “Maybe Dennis, he pay … he pay a fella a few bucks to slit Bobby and toss him to the sharks … Never worry a day about it.”
“Bobby a hunter, you know,” answered Rasta. “A serious hunter. Bobby can kill you with an arrow from a long way.”
Bobby and Rasta stood in the yard littered with dog shit and loose clumps of goat feces. Rasta knew if his friend felt threatened, he’d walk down the hill and punch Dennis in the face.
Bobby grabbed his billy goat by the horns. The beast smelled like a latrine that hadn’t been cleaned in a month. He began wrestling with the goat until they were both filthy rolling on the ground and Bobby was beaming.
Rasta didn’t say anything about Dennis. He didn’t mention that a few days before Bobby came back Dennis offered him sixty thousand dollars to cross over and Rasta said, “Shove it up your ass.” That’s when it first dawned on Rasta that he’d have to leave the island. Rasta walked back to his one room across the yard and crawled into bed. He didn’t come down to the marina for three days.
~
Bobby’s willowy young wife came off the small plane from Nassau holding a fancy writing pad. She couldn’t contain herself, noting impressions of her first hours on the island. She was intoxicated by the soft evening breeze and Bobby’s boyish delight to put it all into her hand—all he’d made and was going to make still. He’d shoveled and chiseled this place from sand and stone. Bobby could build houses and fix any machine that broke. He cooked meals like their favorite chefs in Lyon. Bobby crafted bold sculptures and placed them all around the marina, markers that illuminated the magic world he’d created. She wrote paragraphs about him in her notebook. Hannah had an idea for a little book of poetry that could be illustrated by lovely drawings of the island.
Hannah called her husband an artist. He wondered about what that meant and if it were true. She talked about opening a little store down by the gas dock where he could sell his sculptures. And maybe, she mentioned this tremulously while barely shaking her head no, maybe someday they could sell her book of verse. While she offered this, a sadness settled onto her face that he’d never noticed before. Bobby said, “Sure.”
Boaters began to come back to the island, not the big yachts but the smaller boats from Miami and Lauderdale and the Florida Keys. Bobby was making some money pumping diesel and collecting dockage. Some nights there were twenty-five or thirty guys drinking and eating burgers at Dennis’s place.
For several weeks Bobby worked on his docks, put in new pilings with Rasta’s help, pumped fuel, went home late, played with his dogs, made love to his wife.
What a life! Hannah yelped each time one of Bobby’s five dogs chased a rat through the kitchen. The dogs were bigger than Hannah, and when she walked into the house one or another of them jumped up and knocked her off balance. Stinking animals and water bugs the size of her hand walking the walls. After two weeks of heavy rain, mosquitoes and sand fleas were attacking in swarms. Hannah’s arms and legs became red and swollen from innumerable bites. Bobby said she shouldn’t worry, in time her body would become used to the bites. It was part of the life here. Great. She always smelled of dog, and there was no hot water in the shower. No neighborhood bookstore where she could peruse the poetry section. No one around to talk to. But she was game.
The youngest of the Labs, Cisco, was the first to win her heart. Whenever she felt lonely, Cisco came over and put his face into her hand. He seemed to feel her moods. Cisco looked pleased when she began taking notes and uneasy when she fretted. She fancied Cisco was encouraging her to write. Next she discovered Marlin, the oldest. He was a sage. He watched over the brood, growled when the young dogs stepped out of line. Hannah tried to read his mind. In the afternoons, she talked to Marlin about her new life here.
At night Bobby came home, shyly kissed her on the cheek, stalling, no, he wasn’t hungry, maybe later, chitchat about the marina, how are the dogs doing, coaxing, fretting, without a word about it, until she turned to him, casually took off her shirt. She found his urgency so curious, so different than boys she’d known in school. Bobby was intoxicated by the sight of her body, wanted to kiss under her arms, inhale her. It was such a big deal to him. Like he was breathing her youth.
Hannah wrote notes about the heat, the bugs, her fears and curiosity, her unexpected vulnerability, and a glimmer of darkness inside. Where would that lead? She was a Brooklyn girl, a wannabe poet living alone with large animals, her new family, because Bobby was rarely around during the day. Hannah was entering the outskirts of the heart of darkness. She laughed at herself. But she’d long believed that great writing depended upon the exploration of darkness.
She plunged into it, started drinking wine in the afternoon while she waited for Bobby to come home, took notes, fed the dogs, washed them so they didn’t smell so horribly. She was dissatisfied by her sentences, hoped the great ones would come later. Mysteries would pour out of her, unexpectedly. But the mystery was his passion for her when she took off her clothes. Hannah had wanted to write Othello. Instead, she herself was the work of art Bobby adored. She tried to relish it, to make him happy. Bobby, who had made this whole island world.
~
Dennis had put a lot of money into the marina. He’d built fancy cottages and the biggest outdoor bar in the Bahamas. He’d installed a new water maker big enough to s
upply most of the island with fresh water. He paid off clerks and judges in Nassau, and they gave him a folder of officially stamped documents. In his mind, the marina was now his. He could do whatever he wanted.
What do you want, Dennis?
Dennis enjoyed the sensation of waiting. As if he were watching himself grow larger and more powerful. He watched the boats pull into the slips, his slips. Dennis visited Flo in the kitchen whenever he felt a craving. He never noticed her loathing. He barely noticed her at all.
Bobby and Dennis walked around one another. For a few months, everything hung in the balance.
More boats visited the island. Some evenings every slip in the marina was filled.
For ten years Rasta had operated the small bar inside Bobby’s restaurant. The profit from this business was his to keep. He also owned three beat-up ATVs that Bobby rented out to guests to explore the island, gave the fees to Rasta. That had all dried up, but now with the boats coming back, Rasta began stocking the shelves in the bar.
The fishing was exceptional that season. Often in the afternoons boats came into the marina flying one or two or sometimes three small flags on an outrigger to announce they’d caught marlin. Locals came down to the docks for a slab of yellowfin tuna or a barracuda.
Flo continued to do chores for Bobby, but she no longer brought her pudgy little girl with her to work. Flo cleaned Bobby and Hannah’s breakfast dishes in the clubhouse kitchen, tidied the cottages on the beach, and then before leaving she took down the wash from the line. But she no longer sang her lushly phrased versions of “God Bless the Child” and “Summertime.” Flo no longer sang at all. From time to time, one of the regulars asked about her singing and Flo looked confused, as though she had been mistaken for another woman from town. When she finished her work, Flo walked thirty minutes along the dirt road to the outskirts of Port Nelson to retrieve her daughter from her mother’s farm, which was just north of the cemetery.
Part VI
I made a mistake. About noon on the last day of our troll to Rum Cay, we spotted several frigatebirds circling close to the water. I eased the Ebb Tide beneath the large swooping birds, quickly hooked one big mahi-mahi, about thirty pounds. She came aboard thrashing and glowing iridescent yellow, blue, and green. It seemed tragic to kill such a beauty, but after a brief discussion we put the fish in a cooler for our dinner that first night in Bobby’s marina.
Near the coast, mahi-mahi are often wary of boats, but out here in the middle of the ocean, they were curious and remained close to the Ebb Tide. Doron and John wanted to cast to them with spinning tackle. After catching one and letting it go, John put down his rod, grabbed a drawing pad, and stood beside Doron, tried to capture a likeness of these beauties jumping, twisting, sprinting just below the surface. But the fish were too fast and John looked frustrated. He wanted to keep trying, but we still had a long way to go. It was more than an hour before I put the Ebb Tide back on course. I realized we’d be late getting in.
By the time I spotted the bluffs marking the north side of Rum Cay, it was after six. It took us another hour and a half to reach the barrier reef that ran along the south side of the island. It was seven thirty, and Rum Cay was shrouded in darkness.
I’d messed up … badly. I’d expected to see red markers beside the reefs leading into Bobby’s harbor, but there weren’t any buoys I could make out. Looking east I couldn’t see any entrance into the harbor. I could barely see thirty feet in front of the boat, no moonlight.
Everyone looked at me for what to do. “Can you see the white line?” I asked Jimmy. He didn’t even smile. What was the best of difficult alternatives? I wasn’t sure. I might have idled around for twelve hours offshore of the reef. But I didn’t want to handle the boat in the ocean until dawn. I was exhausted and wanted a beer and dinner.
I headed the Ebb Tide toward the middle of the bay. If we could work our way around a few coral heads, we might be able to drop anchor close to shore.
Doron went to the bow of the Ebb Tide, climbed out on the pulpit. He peered into the darkening water like a Viking, alive with the responsibility of guiding us in. He had the best eyes on the boat. He pointed to each coral head and yelled up to the bridge, “Turn starboard. Now straight ahead for fifty feet … hard to the left, more to the left!”
Honestly, I felt unhinged. I was steering blind, couldn’t see a thing but glare on the shallow water. One mistake and we were wrecked. The overhead light on my bridge seemed to be broken and I could barely see my controls, kept reminding myself where the throttles were. I looked thoughtfully at the GPS though I didn’t trust the accuracy of my readings so close to the shore in this reef littered bay. If we hit and broke the props and shafts, how would I ever get her back to Florida? Doron was our white line. He kept pointing the way. “To the starboard … hard to the port … straight ahead.” I was only guessing, but Doron seemed to know. I steered where he said, and we edged our way in.
When I gauged that we were a hundred yards off the beach, I signaled to Doron to drop the hook. I knew we’d swing with the current and wind—maybe we’d plow into a coral head in the night, but there was nothing to do about it—nothing I could think of.
Our mahi-mahi was delicious, but my uneasiness persisted. I felt like I was waking from a dream I’ve had where I’m at a party but I’ve lost my pants. I walk among the guests in my underwear asking people if they will loan me pants to wear. People are surprised by my appearance, but no one will give me pants.
After dinner John began making a drawing of me in his large black book of secrets. I tried to pretend I was fully dressed. What kind of captain loses his pants, loses his bearings? I wondered if he would draw me without my pants.
The boat was quiet enough on the hook, but still I didn’t sleep very well. I kept worrying about what happened to the red markers leading into the marina. If they were all gone, how would we find our way in in the morning? After three years, could I find my way through the jungle of reefs? And if I could, what would we find there?
We went to sleep with a lot of unresolved questions—channel markers were the least of it. More than we knew had happened on Rum Cay in the past three years.
Part VII
Most of the visiting boat crews had been having evening drinks and burgers at Dennis’s bar. Dennis held court with a contemptuous smile, avoiding eye contact as though it were contagion. The atmosphere in his place was rowdy and festive with a hint of malice. Around ten each night, before the fishermen turned in, Dennis had one of his men bring buckets of tuna and wahoo guts to the water’s edge. Then with spotlights blazing, the men tossed the entrails in the water and everyone watched the bull sharks attack like gigantic piranhas. Dennis relished the spectacle.
It was Bobby who altered the balance. For weeks he’d steered clear of his presumptive partner, pumped fuel, repaired, and puttered around the marina. But it galled him that Dennis’s business was succeeding and that his former customers were laughing with Dennis, toasting sunsets with him.
Bobby decided to begin hosting potluck dinners in his dining room. In the old days, when the marina had been visited by super yachts, Bobby had held potlucks each Sunday night. All the boaters would contribute something delicious while Bobby concocted his storied dishes in the kitchen. In this new incarnation, Bobby provided all the food and did the cooking himself. One night he served the fishermen tuna tartare and coq au vin, the next night, cassoulet or boeuf bourguignon, each night another masterpiece.
Bobby didn’t charge a penny for these meals. He’d set out to break Dennis’s back with French cuisine served with largesse and charm. Why would anyone choose hamburgers?
Between manning the dock and dinners, Bobby was working eighteen-hour days. There wasn’t time for Hannah’s investigations and darkening moods.
All hands on deck.
“We’ll close him down,” he said to his wife before asking her to help run the bar busi
ness with Rasta.
Bobby was on fire with his food war and seemed to be winning.
Hannah tried to brighten herself for Bobby, dressed sexy in a short skirt and top showing a lean, tanned midriff. She was gorgeous, and no one noticed or cared about her melancholy. Even at half speed, she was smart and quick. Rasta was slow, had trouble keeping up with the rush of orders, made mistakes, particularly now when he had one foot out the door, his mind on the next life.
Hannah covered for him, happily. She found Rasta curious, inexplicable, and deep as the blue water. At the end of the night she’d ask him questions about his loneliness, or his enigmatic religion, and she became infatuated by the cadence of his sentences, his music, the way his odd language constructions wormed deep into the ecstasy or pain of a moment. Other times his voice rolled in like the surf. She stood at the bar listening to him speak to customers, or placing orders on the phone for supplies. She fancied him Othello. She wanted to put his voice into her poems, make it her own. She admired Rasta but also his mystery and wisdom made her feel like a poseur. Hannah wanted to be deep and enduring like the poets she studied in school, but she feared she had little to say. Rasta was all of these things and he didn’t write anything at all. Maybe that was a clue. Hannah wanted to crawl into his skin. She whispered painful secrets to him she could barely say to herself. He nodded, surrounded her in his huge arms. He might have taken her anywhere.
Deep Water Blues Page 6