Far Tortuga (16 page)
Authors: Peter Matthiessen
Slowly Brown opens his eyes and mouth.
Bailar
? Dance? To
dat
?
Grandmother say, Dat Old Black Cat
I hope to God it will make him fat
And he mother say, I will cut he throat
If your Uncle Hedley don’t take de case to court
…
Wodie wears his red-black-white checkered vest cut from flour sacking, and seat-patched dungaree shorts. Heedless of Brown’s stare, he laughs, keeping time with his bare heels against the cabin side.
Dere was a boy name Bertram say:
If Old Black Cat don’t give me some
I gone to drink Uncle Willoughby Rum
Den I go out on a spree
And kick Old Bonnie right in three!
Oh, dat were a
big
song, mon!
Dat no fuckin
song
, mon! No fuckin love in it! (
outraged
)
Amor!
Well, Brownie, I just tellin you a little bit about Cayman, y’know. Pass de time dat way.
Shit! No
amor
!
Coco River.
Banging in over the bar, the boat ships water and the shoe box of ship’s documents is soaked. Raib curses brutally, staring about him; in the stillness, the distant jungle waits at the far bank of the river.
The shallow delta is a mile across, scarred with stumps of twisted trees. To the west is the wall of mangrove, silent, under yellowing gray cumulus; to the east a barrier islet of low scrub. On the tip of the islet, against a thickened sea sky, figures run and wave.
Ain’t gone to help dem?
The Captain squints at the far figures.
Prob’ly dey refugees from some goddom place. (
pause
) Prob’ly dey desperate for a boat. You want to go in dere? (
pause
) In times gone back, a mon would go to help people, but in dese days dey too many dat needs help.
Make me feel funny, Doddy. S’posin it were us in trouble—
De Coptin
tellin
you, Honduras, we go in dere, it
could
be us and pretty domn quick!
Modern time, mon.
Lord, what a miser-y
Took away dat cash mo-ney
People, people will be sorry to see
De graveyard for Bonnie and de gallows for me!
Wodie lies back on the galley roof, sits up again. Brown remains motionless on the blue oil drum.
Oh yes, Brownie, it gone to be dry weather. When de risin sun throw out rays at de horizon, it gone to be good weather, good times, and when she go down, and de rays comin dis way (
gestures
) shinin back on you, you gone to have plenty rain. (
sighs
) Today all de rays left her; she just a pure ball of light. And dat means dry, dry weather.
All dat old kind shit no use to me in life.
Well, dose are de things we studies at East End, not havin radios to tell us when de hurricanes is comin. Now in Caymans we ain’t lost anybody to hurricane since 1932. Dat were de heavy storm dat struck down Prospect.
Brown spits toward the Miskito Coast.
Dat old mon no pay me. No
dinero
.
Anyways, all along East End de storm had washed de sand away, and fill de channels. Dese are real channels, not de flats in de coral reef where ships goin aground in hurricane break
de coral down so small boats can come and go. Where one old wreck struck on de reef was de flat we called Old Anchor Flat, but dat growin up again long years ahead of me.
When dis voyage finish, I be naked.
Oh, yes! De corals is fillin it in.
Brown, picking at his rags, suddenly sings.
I can’t help
(voice cracks) shit! Help
it
…
If I still in love with you!
Oh, yes! De corals is fillin it in.
The two fall silent. Wodie gazes westward.
In the delta, the wind dies. The men lower the mast, and the boat drifts back on the brown flood. They run the oars through thatchrope thongs bent to the gunwales.
Raib takes up his Miskito paddle, which is heavy and short, with heart-shaped blade. Vemon is at the bow oars, Speedy amidships. Vemon bends with the long pull of a fisherman; Speedy has the choppy stroke of a man used to a paddle.
Dey calls you Speedy, dat right? Well, speedy ain’t no way to row. You gone to row a
catboat
, you gots to
row
!
Vemon right dis one time, darlin. I don’t think you got de theory into it yet.
You learn me, Doddy. I willin.
Don’t use your arms, den—use your back.
Dass right, put your domn
back
into it, mon—I sick of corryin you!
Vemon, it a very poor thing to shout at other people in dat manner when dey is learnin. You gots to figure dat each and every person got dere faults, and dat while you is thinkin dat you yourself is faultless, you may be de wrong one into de case. So what I try to do—
Copm Raib? I knowed you figure dat every mon got his fault, Copm Raib, but I never knowed dat you was so much against speakin
out
about dat fault!
Speedy’s laugh is a squeal of pleased surprise. Vemon sinks low at his oars, so that his striped railroad cap is barely visible to the Captain over the tattered shoulder of Speedy’s T-shirt. The crown of the striped cap has a rusted button.
Vemon frowns at his own shoes, clearing his throat.
Oh yes, dat were it. (
gruffly
) Dat provision ground north of Salt Creek were my chance in life and den I lost it.
Raib makes three quick powerful strokes, using the paddle like an extension of his heavy arm. Then he gives a little cough and begins
to laugh, a soft sweet laugh that collapses his broad face. The mirth rolls up slowly from his belly, until his body quakes with it, and his eyes weep; he stamps his foot in the bilges of the boat.
Speedy squeals anew; he cannot row. Vemon, too, dares a little sniffing laugh; resting his oars, looking innocent, he scratches.
Vemon Dilbert Evers! You okay, Vemon! You not such a poor fella as I always thought!
The
Eden
. Noon. Wodie is washing his flour-sacking shirt.
… wreck at de lower end of East End, dat was de old
Storborn Head
: dat wreck struck dere when my grandmother was a little girl, an old coffee wreck, and she say dass when de rats came to Cayman. She say de rats came ashore off dat ship in rafts and infested all de land.
Brown knocks his sombrero back to look at Wodie.
Por qué
you t’row dis old-time shit on me?
Well, y’see, Brownie, dem other fellas
knows
about Caymans—
I
Sponnish
, mon! I
travel
, mon, see de big towns! I ain’t no Cayman nigger!
Wodie’s good eye comes to rest on Brown’s dark arms and bare dark knees: he wrings out his shirt as Brown curses him.
We ain’t shamed of color in de Cayman Islands, Brownie.
The engineer, still hunched on the fuel drum rim, turns his ragged back to Wodie.
I mind my business,
entiende
?
Black trees, gray clouds, gray sky.
The catboat moves slowly up the estuary. A bigua surfaces, dives forward, surfaces again and flies.
Dat bird more like a seal, de way it duck under dere!
I seen seals in a pitcher show one time. Dat were de year dat I sailed up de Delaware, and I went to dat pitcher show in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Dey had seals in Chester, huh?
In de back-time now, dey had seals here in de cays.
No, brother. Seals is
north
—
I tellin you, Vemon, dey had seals. Call dem
monk
seals. I
read
about’m.
Read? Dat don’t mean nothin. I can read a little bit myself, and some of de things it said dere—
Seals
! One of de fellas saw one, I don’t believe it were thirty years ago, over dere at de Coxcones! Reginal Barney, dat went down on de
Majestic
. And den dere is Seal Cay—why you think dey calls it dat? (
more quietly
) Dey killed off de seals just like dey killin off green turtle, and de crocodiles before dem. De snipes is gone now. Ain’t no iguana left up at Northwest. Mahogany, logwood, fustic—all dat gone now! Dey cuttin it all away!
A waste of mud bars and stranded trees, set against the silence of the jungle.
The water freshens; the river margins turn a livid green. High on the banks are huge trunks of mahogany from the inland forest.
fish ripples
a white egret, transfixed
slow circling hawks, inland
passing rain
