Bahamarama, page 8
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
Ten minutes out of Fort Lauderdale and we breached the Gulf Stream’s air space, the silty backwash of the tidal shelf cleaved by the virulent, dream-blue river, which churns out of the Florida Straits and courses northward on its mission to save higher latitudes from the Arctic’s full wrath. Ireland would be a damn sight less cheery and green if it weren’t for the Stream. Hell, it would be Norway.
Cross the Stream and you’ve officially surrendered yourself to the tropics. It’s the demarcation line between “I-need-it-now” and “Mon, soon come,” the checkpoint for chucking out the notion that schedules are essential to the everyday needs of humanity.
Oldtime Floridians will tell you the Stream isn’t as blue as it used to be. Let them believe what they want to if it preserves some sense of better days. All I know is that gazing upon the Stream at that particular moment, on my way to meet as good a woman as I could ever hope to know, it was a blue full of promise, a blue to make you ache, a blue to help you doze off even though your mind is wired, and you are thinking about thugs who are on your tail for God knows why, and how you left one of them dead in a boathouse.
I slept as we skirted past Bimini and didn’t wake up until the plane banked at Spanish Wells to begin its descent to North Eleuthera. I spotted Harbour Island just a couple of miles to the east, picked out the government dock on the lee side and straight across, on the ocean side, a tennis court that looked like it might belong to the Albury Beach Club, which was hidden under a canopy of gumbo-limbos and poinciana. Harbour Island isn’t big enough to have its own airport. You have to land on North Eleuthera and then catch a water taxi. But first you have to clear customs. I was anxious to hear Charlie’s plan for how I was going to do that.
“It’s your lucky day,” said Charlie. “We got rain.”
He nodded to the southeast, where a dark gray thunderhead was churning and roiling and beginning to consume the horizon.
“We’re a little ahead of it,” said Charlie. “I’m gonna have to stall for a bit.”
He turned to the other passengers, cupped a hand to his mouth, and put on his best Chuck Yeager drawl: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. The control tower has asked us to delay our landing for just a few minutes.” Charlie coughed and hacked a couple of times, making it sound like static coming over an intercom. The couples from Tampa laughed, eating it up. “So, as an extra-added bonus, you get the fifty-cent aerial tour.”
Charlie flipped the plane hard to the left and dipped low. One of the women let out a shriek and grabbed her husband. One of the men said, “Holy shit.” Charlie leveled off at three hundred feet, and we zipped along above Dunmore Bight, the two-mile-wide channel that runs between Harbour Island and North Eleuthera.
“Off to your left, those are some of the Loyalist houses,” Charlie shouted above the whine of the engines, pointing to a row of pink and yellow and blue cottages lining the Harbour Island waterfront. “Date from the 1770s or so, back when the first settlers came to these islands. Bunch of King George–loving Brits from Virginia and the Carolinas who knew their asses were gonna be in a sling once the Revolution cranked up. Descendants are still thick through some of these islands. Been marrying and inbreeding for going on two hundred and fifty years now.”
We followed the curve of Harbour Island, passing over Valentine’s dive resort and the Island Marina, until the land tailed off to the south. Then we cut west to Eleuthera. The thunderhead was rolling in faster now. There were flashes of lightning and the wind began to gust.
One of the men in the back leaned forward and asked Charlie, “That isn’t the tropical storm coming in, is it?”
“Oh, hell no. That thing’s still way out in the Atlantic,” said Charlie. “Doesn’t even know which way it’s going yet.”
Eleuthera is a long skinny island—never more than a mile or two across, but running a hundred miles from north to south. Charlie swooped in at Glass Window Bridge, the island’s narrowest spot, a limestone backbone just wide enough to drive a car over. On one side, the water was the almost-violet blue of the Atlantic. On the other, it was a balmy Caribbean green.
“Right up there, that’s where the caves begin,” said Charlie, pointing beyond the bridge to miles of craggy limestone bluffs pocked with holes and arches. “The whole island’s like a piece of goddam Swiss cheese, got tunnels and passages running all through it. Used to be, when a bad hurricane was bearing down, that’s where the islanders would go and take shelter, in the caves.”
“Looks pretty cool,” said one of the men from Tampa. “They let people explore them?”
“Sure, I guess,” said Charlie. “But you damn sure better go with someone who knows them or else we’ll never see you again. And watch out for that limestone. It will flat-out tear you up.”
When the first fat raindrops began splattering the Navajo’s windshield, Charlie pointed us toward the North Eleuthera airport. We bumped, then skidded on the runway, the rain coming down in sheets as Charlie pulled to a stop, still a good hundred yards from the tiny terminal. The AC was off and the little plane was an oven. One of the young women was fanning herself with a magazine. The others looked flushed and miserable.
“Folks,” said Charlie, turning around to them. “We’re gonna have to make a break for it.”
“Can’t we pull any closer to the terminal?” asked one of the women.
“’Fraid not,” said Charlie. “Federal regulations.”
I knew that was a crock. Charlie had always pulled right up to the terminal before.
“I vote to get the hell out of here,” said one of the guys. The others nodded in quick agreement. As they unsnapped seat belts and grabbed bags, Charlie turned to me, speaking low: “Over there by the shed. That’s where you wanna go. There’s a gap in the fence.”
He nodded to a small tin lean-to that I could just barely make out through the rain.
“Good luck,” said Charlie. “But if you fuck up . . .”
“It’s my ass.”
“Bingo,” said Charlie, and he was out his door, onto the wing, then hopping down to open the rear hatch.
“OK, folks, let’s shit and git,” he shouted, helping the six of them down the three-rung ladder and pointing them toward the terminal. When I got to the hatch he stopped me.
“Let us get halfway to the terminal, then you go. They won’t be looking for anyone after me.”
And then Charlie was gone, running after the others as the rain started coming down even harder. When I lost sight of him through the downpour, I jumped down to the tarmac, grabbed my duffel from the compartment and beelined it to the tin shed. The gap in the fence wasn’t quite as big as I might have hoped for, but I squeezed through, managing only to rip my brand-new shorts and put a small gash in my thigh. It didn’t bleed much. But my brand-new shorts, jeez . . .
The main road was right there, and I followed it, away from the terminal and toward the water taxi dock. It was about a two-mile walk. A couple of cars passed me, but no one paid me any mind or offered me shelter from the storm or ran me down with sirens screaming and locked me up in jail. After the first mile, the rain stopped, and the sun came back out. It was like a greenhouse by the time I reached the dock. One of the water taxis was getting ready to pull out for Harbour Island and I hopped on board. The captain took my canvas duffel and put it on the transom with luggage belonging to the three or four other passengers.
“Four dollars,” said the captain. I gave him a five and he kept it.
14
A horde of young boys—at least a dozen of them, none older than thirteen or fourteen—swarmed around the end of Government Dock as the water taxi pulled up after its ten-minute sprint from North Eleuthera. A couple of the boys grabbed lines tossed by the captain, while three or four others leapt onto the water taxi before it came to a stop. One of them, a skinny kid in a Miami Heat T-shirt that covered his knees, grabbed my duffel.
“Hey, Mr. Big Man,” he said to me. “You belong ’dis?”
I told him I did. He gave me a big smile.
“You follow me, sir, come-come. Watch your steppin’ off the boat, sir.”
I hopped onto the dock and the boy told me to wait right there with my bag while he found me a taxi. Not a difficult task, since there were four minivan taxis parked on the other side of the dock, just ten yards away, with their drivers looking straight at us. The boy walked up to one of them, they spoke, the driver finally nodded grimly—as if the bond between taxi driver and passenger was a solemn sacrament—and then the boy ran back, picked up my duffel, and lugged it to the taxi.
I didn’t really need a taxi. The Albury Beach Club was only a five-minute walk, but I knew the drill at the dock from previous trips. It was like an unofficial entry tax to Harbour Island—benign and fairly cheap, and if you got all huffy and Ugly American about it, then it was bad juju for the rest of your stay. Harbour Island is a small place—less than a thousand people—and in the course of a few days you’re likely to run across most of them. A little good will at the get-go stretches a long way. The boy in the Heat T-shirt put my duffel in the backseat of the taxi with all the care and attention one might give a cuddly puppy. I gave him two bucks. He stuck out a clenched fist and I bumped it with mine.
“You be needing anything, Mr. Big Man, you look for me,” he said.
The taxi jostled along the buckling timbers of Government Dock, stopping where the dock met Bay Street to let a couple of old women cross in front of us. Actually, it would be more accurate to call them old ladies. They wore long pastel dresses and hats with silk flowers, and they carried umbrellas against the late afternoon sun. They nodded at the driver as they passed by.
“Afternoon, Maurice,” they both said.
“Afternoon, aunties,” said the driver.
A big sign at the foot of the dock announced: WELCOME TO HARBOUR ISLAND, THE FRIENDLIEST ISLAND IN THE BAHAMAS. It wasn’t just tourism board hokum. Brilanders, as the people of Harbour Island call themselves, are gracious and polite to a fault. And, aside from the shakedown by the boys at the dock, it’s not a put-on just to pry loose tourist dollars. I guarantee that if you walked from one end of the island to the other, every single person you passed, be they five or ninety-five, would at least say hello. Just a small thing, perhaps, but a small thing that has been discarded elsewhere, a small thing that helps keep a smattering of civilization in everyday life.
The straw market along Bay Street—a half dozen or so plywood stalls selling everything from hats and woven placemats to T-shirts and coconut purses—was open for business that was anything but booming. The vendors were drowsing or talking among themselves. A couple of fishermen cleaned their catch of snapper and grouper on the hull of an overturned skiff. Golf carts, the main mode of Harbour Island transportation, were parked at weird angles along the curb outside the Harbour Lounge. Tourists in snazzy resort wear held down a table on the deck, munching fish sandwiches. Between the street and the bay, a couple of old men sat chatting on rickety wooden stools perched on the lip of a broad pit in the sand.
Something seemed a little off. And then I realized what it was. The old men were sitting at the exact spot where a giant, century-old fig tree had once stood. It had been a landmark, the main gathering spot on the island, its canopy big enough and thick enough to shade a hundred people. Public ceremonies, island council meetings, school concerts, and plays—all were held under the fig tree. If you wanted the lowdown about anything that was happening on Harbour Island, all you had to do was go to the fig tree and you could find out. And now it was gone.
I asked the driver what had happened to it.
“Floyd took ’er down, man.”
“Hurricane Floyd?”
“He da one. Helluva blow. Took down the fig tree and carried her clear up Bay Street into the Landing Hotel. Knocked off the hotel’s verandah. Had to build it all back new-new again.”
“Where’s everyone hang out now?”
“Oh, here and there. But some of the old-timers they just keep sitting at that big hole where the fig tree used to be,” said the driver. “Fig tree gone, but the gossip still alive.”
“So what’s the latest gossip?”
The driver let out a big laugh.
“Oh hell, man, you know. Mostly about somebody been stealing somebody else’s woman, same as it always is. The gossip don’t never change, just the people getting gossiped about. Tongues are always burning on this island.”
15
Pembroke Pindle, the Albury Beach Club’s ancient bellman/bartender/man-about-the-premises, was resting in the shade of a bougainvillea arbor as the taxi crunched into the shell driveway by the reception area. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt with a navy blue tie, brown pants, and brown shoes. He snapped an Atlanta Braves cap down on his head, eased himself up from the bench, and walked to the taxi. He was a slow walker. Then again, maybe he was somebody who stood still at an extremely fast pace. It was hard to tell. I could have opened the taxi door myself, but that was Mr. Pindle’s job, and I knew it would upset him if he didn’t get to do it. I paid the driver and tipped him and traded some idle chitchat about fishing and the weather. Finally Mr. Pindle opened the taxi door.
“Welcome back, Mr. Chasteen.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pindle. Good to be here.”
I let Mr. Pindle take my bag, and I followed him along a gravel path as the taxi pulled away. It was a lot like following a statue. It gave me plenty of time to soak up the surroundings. The Albury Beach Club wasn’t fancy by any means, but it evoked a sense of timelessness. Built in the 1930s by a rich British industrialist who wanted a family enclave, it had passed first to his heirs and then to a succession of other owners who opened it to the public. Its ten cottages were simple, almost spartan. No televisions, no radios, and the only telephone was the one that Barbara had called me on from the salon. Maximum occupancy was twenty guests, most of whom had been coming there for years. On our last visit, Barbara and I had met a multigenerational family from North Carolina who had been visiting each April since the 1960s. They said Mr. Pindle had been old even then.
We passed an allamanda hedge in full golden bloom and came to a convergence of several other gravel paths. A signpost pointed the way to different cottages—Orchid, Whelk, Dolphin—and a concrete sidewalk led to the main house with the salon, dining room, and bar.
“You care for something to drink first?” Mr. Pindle asked.
“No, thanks. I’ll wait.”
“I expect you ready to see Miss Pickering, huh?”
“Yes, I am.”
“She down on the beach still.”
“Hard at work, huh?”
“Oh yah, man. She up and at ’em early this morning. Didn’t even take breakfast, she didn’t. That picture man, he up early with her.”
Bryce Gannon. Up early with Barbara? I didn’t like the sound of that.
“The photographer, you mean?”
“Yah, English fellow. Mr. Gannon.”
“Is he staying here, too?”
“Oh, no. He staying at Bahama Sands with all the rest of the magazine people. But he came by to pick up Miss Pickering first thing, before the sun up even.”
That sounded a little better. Not that I was concerned about the love of my life running around with her old boyfriend. Oh, no. Because I was an adult. And I was going to act like one. Really I was.
A path led up a low hill toward Hibiscus Cottage. About halfway up, Mr. Pindle stopped at a gazebo perched above the dune line. He pointed north along the beach.
“There Miss Pickering now. See ’em way up there?”
A cluster of people stood near the edge of the ocean about a half mile away. I could just barely make out what looked like two big blue beach cabanas. I had visited Barbara at another photo shoot, on Miami Beach, so I knew that one of the cabanas probably held all the outfits and served as a dressing room, while the other was for makeup. What with sylists, makeup artists, caterers, photo assistants, and various other minions, the crew and models probably totaled about twenty people. The rest of the crowd were likely just tourists and a few Brilanders, hanging around to gawk.
A table and chairs sat under the Albury’s gazebo. A pair of binoculars was slung over the back of one of the chairs, left there so guests could indulge in one of the great pleasures of the beach—spying on other people from a distance.
“Try these,” said Mr. Pindle, handing me the binoculars. They had suffered from being left out in the salt air, but after wiping clean the lenses and making a few adjustments, I was able to get a better glimpse of the scene. I picked out Barbara, standing near the edge of the water, one hip cocked, a floppy straw hat atop her head, her hair tied back with a long purplish scarf. I’d bought her the scarf from one of the vendors at the straw market on our first visit to Harbour Island. Barbara had liked it not so much because it was purplish, but because it had tiny dolphins on it. She said they were lucky dolphins. She said they reminded her of me.
“That whole football thing’s behind me,” I’d told her.
“Has nothing to do with a silly football team,” she said. “Dolphins just make me happy. Like you.”
Barbara was wearing what she referred to as her “has-been ballerina’s outfit”—a black leotard top and baggy white pants. She had danced professionally as a young woman and still visited the studio on a regular basis. Just standing around on the beach she had more grace than any woman I had ever known. I got this squishy feeling inside just looking at her.
A man approached Barbara, a tall man with shaggy dark hair. He kept tossing his head back to keep it out of his face. He wore a long-sleeved black T-shirt and baggy black pants. A camera dangled around his neck. Nice meeting you, Bryce Gannon. But who the heck wears black on the beach in the Bahamas, buddy? This isn’t London.
Gannon stood close to Barbara. He pointed to a model who was stretched out on a chaise longue and being tended to by a stylist. Barbara and Gannon talked and nodded, and when Gannon walked away, Barbara turned and looked in my direction. She knew when I’d be arriving and was probably keeping an eye out for me. I raised an arm and waved. Barbara shaded her eyes, and for a brief moment I thought she might have seen me. But then one of the crew members approached and handed Barbara a bottle of water. She took a sip from it and turned away.
