Thompson, Hunter S (15 page)

We barged in and sat down at a table. I was fairly drunk by now and I didn't care if we
were thrown out or not. The party broke up just a few minutes after we arrived. Nobody
said anything to us and I felt a little foolish when we were left on the balcony by
ourselves. We sat there for a while, then wandered down to the street. A few blocks away
we could hear a band warming up. Soon the street was jammed once again with people, all
clinging to each other and dancing the strange dinga that we'd learned earlier in the day.

We humored Chenault for a few hours, hoping she'd get tired of the dancing, but finally
Yeamon had to drag her out of the mob. She pouted until we found ourselves in a club full
of drunken Americans. A calypso band was hammering and the floor was full of dancers. By
this time I was drunk. I fell into a chair and watched as Yeamon and Chenault tried to
dance. The bouncer came over to me and said I owed fifteen dollars for the cover charge,
and I gave it to him, rather than argue.

Yeamon came back to the table alone. He had left Chenault to dance with an American who
looked like a nazi. “You rotten butcher!” I yelled, shaking my fist at him. But he didn't
see me, and the music was so loud that he couldn't hear. Finally Chenault left him and
came back to the table.

Yeamon led me through the crowd. People were screaming and grabbing at me and I didn't
know where I was being taken. My only thought was to lie down and sleep. When we got
outside I slumped in a doorway while Yeamon and Chenault argued about what to do next.

Yeamon wanted to go to the beach, but Chenault was for more dancing. “Don't order me
around, you goddamn puritan!” she screamed. “I'm having a good time and all you do is
sulk!”

He knocked her down with a quick whack to the head, and I heard her groaning somewhere
near my feet as he shouted for a cab. I helped him lift her into the back seat and we
explained to the driver that we wanted to go to Lindbergh Beach. He grinned widely and
started off. I was tempted to reach over the seat and give him a rabbit punch. He thinks
we're going to rape her, I thought. He thinks we grabbed her off the street and now we're
taking her out to the beach to hump her like dogs. And the bastard was grinning about it;
a criminal degenerate with no morals.

Lindbergh Beach was across the road from the airport. It was surrounded by a tall cyclone
fence, but the driver took us to a place where we could climb over it by using a tree.
Chenault refused to make any effort, so we shoved her over and let her fall in the sand.
Then we found a good spot that was partly surrounded by trees. There was no moon, but I
could hear the surf a few yards in front of us. I spread my filthy cord coat on the sand
for a pillow, then fell down and went to sleep.

The sun woke me up the next morning. I sat up and groaned. My clothes were full of sand.
Ten feet to my left Yeamon and Chenault were sleeping on their clothes. They were both
naked and her arm was thrown over his back. I stared at her, thinking that no one could
blame me if I lost my wits and pounced on her, after first crippling Yeamon with a blow on
the back of his skull.

I considered trying to cover them with her raincoat, but I was afraid they'd wake up as I
hovered over them. I didn't want that, so I decided to go swimming and wake them up by
shouting from the water.

I took off my clothes and tried to shake the sand out, then shuffled naked into the bay.
The water was cool, and I rolled around like a porpoise, trying to get clean. Then I swam
to a wooden raft about a hundred yards out. Yeamon and Chenault were still asleep. At the
other end of the beach was a long white building that looked like a dance hall. An
outrigger canoe was pulled up on the sand in front of it, and under the nearby trees I
could see chairs and tables with thatched umbrellas. It was somewhere around nine o'clock,
but there was no one in sight I lay there for a long time, trying not to think.

Chenault came awake with a shriek, snatching the raincoat around her as she peered up and
down the beach.

“Out here,” I yelled. “Come on in.”

She looked out at me and smiled, holding the raincoat between us like a veil. Then Yeamon
woke up, looking puzzled and angry at whatever had broken his sleep.

“Let's go!” I yelled. “Up for the morning dip.”

He stood up and ambled toward the water. Chenault called after him, waving his shorts.
“Here!” she said sternly. “Put these on!”

I waited for them on the raft. Yeamon came first, thrashing across the bay like a
crocodile. Then I saw Chenault swimming toward us, wearing her panties and bra. I began to
feel uncomfortable. I waited until she got to the raft, then I slid off. “I'm hungry as
hell,” I said, treading water. “I'm going over to the airport for breakfast.”

When I got to the beach I looked around for my bag. I remembered putting it in a tree
the night before, but I couldn't remember which one. Finally I found it, jammed into the
crotch of two branches just above where I'd been sleeping. I put on some clean pants and a
rumpled silk shirt.

Just before I left I glanced out at the raft and saw Yeamon jump naked into the water.
Chenault laughed and tore off her bra and panties, then leaped in on top of him. I watched
for a moment, then tossed my bag over the fence and climbed over after it.

I walked along a road that paralleled the runway, and after a half mile or so I came to
the main hangar, a huge Quonset hut that bustled with activity. Planes landed every few
minutes. Most of them were small Cessnas and Pipers, but every ten minutes or so a DC-3
would come in, bringing a fresh pack of revelers from San Juan.

I shaved in the men's room, then pushed through the crowd to the restaurant. The people
just off the planes were getting their free drinks, and in one corner of the hangar was a
group of drunken Puerto Ricans, beating on their luggage to the tune of some chant I
couldn't understand. It sounded like a football cheer: “Busha boomba, balla wa! Busha
boomba, balla wa!” I suspected they would never make it into town.

I bought a
Miami Herald
and had a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon. Yeamon arrived an hour or so later.
“Christ, I'm hungry,” he said. “I need a massive breakfast”

“Is Chenault still with us?” I asked.

He nodded. “She's downstairs shaving her legs.”

It was almost noon when we got a bus to town. It let us off at a public market and we
started walking in the general direction of the Grand Hotel, stopping now and then to look
in the few store windows that were not boarded up.

As we neared the middle of town the noise increased. But this was a different sound --
not the roar of happy voices or the musical thump of drums, but the wild screams of a
small group of people. It sounded like a gang war, punctuated by guttural cries and
breaking glass.

We hurried toward it, cutting down a side street that led to the shopping district. When
we turned the corner I saw a frenzied mob, jamming the street and blocking both sidewalks.
We slowed down and approached cautiously.

About two hundred people had looted one of the big liquor stores. Most of them were
Puerto Ricans. Cases of champagne and scotch lay broken in the street, and everyone I saw
had a bottle.

They were screaming and dancing, and in the middle of the crowd a giant Swede wearing a
blue jockstrap was blowing long blasts on a trumpet.

As we watched, a fat American woman raised two magnums of champagne above her head and
smashed them together, laughing wildly as the glass and the booze rained down on her bare
shoulders. A percussion corps of drunkards was beating with beer cans on empty scotch
crates. It was the same chant I'd heard at the airport: “Busha boomba, balla wa! Busha
boomba, balla wa!” All over the street people danced feverishly by themselves, jerking and
yelling to the rhythm of the chant.

The liquor store was nothing but a shell, a bare room with broken windows in the front.
People kept running in and out of it, grabbing stray bottles and drinking them as fast as
they could before somebody else jerked them away. Empty bottles were tossed casually into
the street, making it a sea of broken glass, studded with thousands of beer cans.

We stayed on the edge of it. I wanted to get my hands on some of that stolen booze, but I
was afraid of the police. Yeamon wandered into the store and came out moments later with a
magnum of champagne. He smiled sheepishly and tucked it into his bag, saying nothing.
Finally my lust for drink overcame my fear of jail and I made a run for a case of scotch
that was lying in the gutter near the front of the store. It was empty and I looked around
for another. In the forest of dancing feet I saw several unbroken bottles of whiskey. I
rushed toward them, shoving people out of the way. The noise was deafening and I expected
at any moment to be smashed on the head with a bottle. I managed to rescue three quarts of
Old Crow, all that was left of a case. The other bottles were broken and hot whiskey oozed
through the streets. I got a firm grip on my loot and leaned into the mob, aiming for the
spot where I'd left Yeamon and Chenault.

We hurried off down a side street, passing a blue jeep marked “Poleece.” In it, a
gendarme in a pith helmet sat half asleep, idly scratching his crotch.

We stopped at the place where we'd eaten the night before. I put the whiskey in my
satchel and ordered three drinks while we pondered the next move. The program said a
pageant of some kind was scheduled at the ballpark in a few hours. It sounded harmless
enough, but then nothing at all had been officially scheduled for that hour when the mob
looted the liquor store. That was supposed to be a “Rest Period.” There was another “Rest
Period” between the ballpark festivities and the “All Out Tramp,” officially scheduled for
eight o'clock sharp.

It had an ominous sound. All the other Tramps were listed as beginning and ending at
certain times. The “Birds and Bees Tramp,” on Thursday, began at eight and ended at ten.
The “High Combustible Tramp,” which seemed to be the one we'd been caught in the night
before, ran from eight until midnight. But the program said only that the “All Out Tramp”
would begin at eight, and in small brackets on the same line was a note saying “climax of
carnival.”

“This thing tonight could get out of control,” I said, tossing the program on the table.
“At least I hope so.”

Chenault laughed and winked at me. “We'll have to get Fritz drunk, so he can enjoy it.”

“Balls,” Yeamon muttered, not looking up from the program. “You get drunk again tonight
and I'll abandon your ass.”

She laughed again. “Don't try to say I was drunk -- I remember who hit me.”

He shrugged. “It's good for you -- clears your head.”

“No sense arguing about it,” I said. “We're bound to get drunk -- look at all this
whiskey.” I patted my satchel.

“And this,” said Chenault, pointing to the magnum of champagne under Yeamon's chair.

“Christ help us,” Yeamon muttered.

We finished our drinks and wandered over to the Grand Hotel. From the balcony we could
see people heading for the ballpark.

Yeamon wanted to go out to Yacht Haven and find a boat leaving soon for South America. I
wasn't particularly anxious to join the mob at the ballpark and I remembered Sanderson
saying most of the good parties were on the boats, so we decided to go there.

It was a long walk in the sun, and by the time we got there I was sorry I hadn't offered
to pay for a cab. I was sweating horribly and my bag seemed to weigh forty pounds. The
entrance was a palm-lined driveway that led to a swimming pool, and beyond the pool was a
hill that led down to the piers. There were more than a hundred boats, everything from
tiny harbor sloops to huge schooners, and their naked spars swayed lazily against a
background of green hills and a blue Caribbean sky. I stopped on the pier and looked down
at a forty-foot racing sloop. My first thought was that I had to have one. It had a dark
blue hull and a gleaming teakwood deck, and I would not have been surprised to see on the
bow a sign, saying: “For Sale -- One Soul, no less.”

I nodded thoughtfully. Hell, anybody could have a car and an apartment, but a boat like
this was the nuts. I wanted it, and considering the value I placed on my soul in those
days, I might have struck a bargain if that sign had been there on the bow.

We spent all afternoon at Yacht Haven, desperately scouring the docks for an outgoing
boat where Yeamon and Chenault could sign on with no questions asked. One man offered to
take them as far as Antigua in a week or so, another was going to Bermuda, and finally we
located a big yawl that was headed for Los Angeles, via the Panama Canal.

“Great,” said Yeamon. “How much would you charge us to ride that far?”

“Nothing,” said the owner of the yawl, a poker-faced little man wearing white trunks and
a baggy shirt. “I won't take you.” Yeamon looked stunned.

“I pay my crew,” said the man. “And besides that I have my wife and three kids -- no room
for you.” He shrugged and turned away.

Most of the boat people were gracious, but a few were openly rude. One captain -- or
maybe a mate -- laughed at Yeamon and said: “Sorry, pal. I don't carry scum on my boat.”

Far out at the end of the pier we noticed a gleaming white hull flying the French flag
and rocking leisurely in deep water.

“That's the finest craft in the harbor,” said a man standing next to us. “A world
cruiser, seventy-five feet long, eighteen knots, radar dome, electric winches and a
walkaround bed.”

We continued along the pier and came to a boat called the
Blue Peter,
where a man who later introduced himself as Willis told us to come aboard for a drink.
Several other people were there and we stayed for hours. Yeamon went off after a while to
check the other boats, but Chenault and I stayed and drank. Several times I noticed Willis
staring at Chenault, and when I mentioned that we were sleeping on the beach he said we
could leave our bags on the boat, instead of lugging them around. “Sorry I can't offer you
bunks,” he added. “But I only got two.” He grinned. “One of 'em's double, of course, but
that still makes it crowded.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We left our bags there, and by the time we started for town we were all drunk. Willis
rode with us in a cab as far as the Grand Hotel, and said he'd probably see us later in
one of the bars.