Far Tortuga (2 page)
Authors: Peter Matthiessen
Sunrise at Prospect, on South Sound, abandoned since the Hurricane of ’32. The Prospect Church decays in an old orchard, grown over now by seaside wood; the roof of the church is wind-slotted, battered by gales. Lizards scatter in the leaves and sun-spots that stray in the church door, and a hermit crab, snapped shut, rocks minutely in the silence.
In the graveyard behind the falling church grows oleander and white frangipani. On the ironshore below, incoming seas burst through black fissures in the rock, and black crabs scutter.
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
WILLIAM PARCHMENT
BORN
16
TH DECEMBER
1924
PERISHED
APRIL
1968
ON THE MISKITO BANKS
The quai at Georgetown.
Shade trees, a small waterfront of green and pink pastels. Soft air of sunrise. Birdsong and a bicycle bell. Sweet rot, tin roofs, bougainvillaea.
Cock crow.
Three walking figures and a dog.
Black palm fronds stir against the eastern light: a hard glitter in the dew on leaf and tin where the sun pierces burning trees. Hard sun, high wind, high morning cumulus that draws swift shadows across the quai and dampens clacking palm fronds with a shower. A bird voice and sweet flower smells blow over Hanging Point into the ocean.
Clear of the land, the clouds string out and dissipate in the emptiness to westward, where the rain returns into the sea.
Figures beneath an almond tree observe the distant rain. Though the water at quaiside, in the lee, is clear and still, the green schooner offshore swings on her mooring. Beyond, the water shades from emerald to gray to the hard blue of the Antilles Current which mounts in shimmers to the sea horizon, rolling away west toward Quintana Roo.
Small motor vessels of several hundred tons may berth alongside a rough wharf at Georgetown, Grand Cayman, the capital of the Islands. Docking facilities are poor.
There are reasonably frequent services to Tampa and Miami, Florida; Kingston, Jamaica; and the Bay Islands, Republic of Honduras
.
A big man in a turquoise shirt forsakes the figures by the almond tree. He steps backward, his voice rising. In his left hand, he carries a cardboard suitcase; in his right, a string bag of green mangoes. He rolls down to the quaiside, hailing an old man across the wind.
… a fair wind for de Cays, den, Copm Teddy!
The old man waits for the wind to ease before making his answer; he does not raise his head. Steadily he pares the skin from night-blue tuna. The fish, set out in a rigid row, have long lean wings that hold the ocean light.
You sailin late, Byrum! Get more wind den turtle, in de May time!
On the quai, a weathered sign reads
WELCOME
. Behind the sign, old boat ribs rise from a graveyard of dead oil drums, rust-gutted. Under the quai, in a slip blasted from black ironshore of fossil coral, is a Cayman catboat, an open boat like the whaleboat of other days that can be rigged quickly as a sloop. A small black man, barefoot, in ragged clean white T-shirt and blue denims cut off as shorts, is rolling a blue drum across the bench of coral and concrete that adjoins the slip. At quaiside, where he brakes the drum, its rumble dies in a thick slosh of oil.
The man in the turquoise shirt lays his suitcase flat and sets the mango bag on top.
What say, mon? Easy, mon! I give you a hand dere with dat drum!
Dat okay—I got dis by myself. Long’s he don’t squish dat sailor in de boat, Speedy doin fine!
Call dat a sailor? Dat old Vemon! What say, Vemon?
A man is slumped in the bilges of the catboat. His rags are nondescript in color; on his head sits a striped engineer’s cap and on otherwise bare feet are old black shoes, well-rotted by salt water. Upright in his lap is a bottle with a yellow label:
SAINT CECILIA RUM
. The man’s chin rests on the gunwale of the boat, and he stares into the shallows of the small cove called Hogsty Bay.
On the bottom, the flayed skin of an angelfish is yellow-gray, shaped like a face. Through a faint rainbow of petroleum, the white sand is scattered with cans and bottles in welt-colored crusts of coralline algae, and sand-shrouded old conchs, each with a hole knocked in the whorl, and white coral skeletons poxed with red hydrozoans.
A tubeworm blows its ghostly waste. In the small surge of tropic tides, as the bottom breathes, the faceless face rises and falls.
The catboat rolls and surges with the loading of the fuel drum; water laps against the quai. The drunk frowns, coughs and scratches, staring downward. He tries to spit; the spit hangs from his chin. Cursing, he wipes his mouth, then drains the bottle and dashes it into the water; the reef fish dart from point to point, in liquid sparkles.
sergeant major
butterfly fish
beau gregory
The bottle fills, and the yellow label shimmers; in the silence, in slow motion, the bottle sinks to the white sand, does a slow roll, and comes to rest beside the face-shaped skin.
Shuddering, the drunkard glowers at the small sailor in the T-shirt.
Black Honduran!
How dat go, Vemon?
Nemmine, mon, he don’t bodder me. Speedy doin fine.
Goddom Vemon. (
sighs
) Dat de last fuel drum you got dere, Honduras?
Dat de last one.
Fueled up, Vemon? Well, let’s go, den! Ready, Vemon? You got any last-minute engagements?
I waitin on
you
, Byrum! Ain’t I settin in de boat? We goin to
sea
!
Byrum slings his gear into the boat. He winks at Speedy.
Dat a sailor talkin, hear de way he do? De thing was, I had to give more sweetenin to my intended dere, Miss Gwen—hey, mon?
Byrum socks Speedy on the arm.
Touchin de bun! Don’t have none of dat down in Honduras?
Oh, we
heard
about dat, I guess.
Heard
about it! Dass all dem niggers do down dere is coot! Goddom Honduras! Me and de Coptin, we ain’t never goin back dere in dis life, I tell you dat!
You and de Coptin!
Vemon, you don’t shift you ass, it gone get
wet
!
The reef fish jump as an oar blade darts downward—
choonk
!—and parts the oil slick; tepid bubbles rise, and a faint grating sound, as the oar probes for a footing in dead coral. The boat is shoved stern foremost from the slip.
In the bow, Speedy mans the port oar; Byrum, astern, mans the starboard. Vemon sits sullen in the bilges.
The boat slides across the harbor toward the green schooner. At the commercial wharf, a crewman on the motor vessel
Daydream
dumps slops into the harbor; in the clear water, the stain rolls.
What say dere! We gone see you on de banks?
No, mon! Season done with, Byrum! De onliest one you gone find out dere is Desmond Eden!
Copm
Desmond! Mon, oh
mon
!
From the water between the catboat and the
Daydream
, a man-o’-war bird snatches up bright entrails of a tuna, kept afloat by gas caught in the bladder. From the shore, in the new heat of growing morning, blow sweet market smells: fish, blossoms, rotted coconut, papaya, creosote.
BRING DAT BOAT ABOARD OF HERE!
Byrum bends to his oar; the sun dances on his turquoise shoulders.
Hear dat, Honduras? Old Raib jumpin already!
The
Lillias Eden
, formerly a schooner. Men move about her decks, which are littered with ship’s stores, fuel and water drums, stove wood, fishing gear. On her stern a raw new deckhouse is still unpainted. Her rusty hull is worn near bare of its green paint; rope fenders sag, her shrouds are frayed, her taffrail broken.
Byrum whistles.
Mon! I never think she come home from Honduras lookin poor as dat!
You in de modern time, mon: sailin boat a thing of de past.
Well, all of de same, I be sorry to see dem motors. Dass de last one you lookin at dere. Dass de last of de old-time sailin fleet.
Mm-hm. I seen her de day she sail down to Honduras. I workin dere in French Harbour, y’know, into de drydock, and I seen her come in dere under sail. In Roatán. In de Bay Islands.
Well, you know den, Honduras—
I called Speedy. Cause I fast, mon. Very, very fast.
Okay den, Speedy, you see for yourself how very bad she look now with de masts half sheared away, and dat goddom deckhouse dat she got dere place of de fo’c’s’le.
Dass right. Modern time, mon.
De fashion dat domn thing tacked on dere! Look like a outhouse! Look like a goddom
Jamaica
boat, and dass de truth. (
sighs
) How come you sign on, mon? Don’t like drydockin?
Oh, I like it very fine. But den Old Doddy dere, he kept after me cause he short-handed.
You gone find out why Raib short-handed!
Huh! Byrum go crew for Copm Raib cause he got fired off de
Adams
—
I go crew cause I gots to eat, same as dis Vemon gots to drink! I a big mon, and I gots to eat! (
strokes violently
) Down on de banks, may be hard farins, but mostways you haves something to eat, even if it nothin better’n hox-bill or barra!
Dass it. So one day I say, Speedy-Boy, you best cotch turtles one time in dis life just so you know it.
Might cotch turtle, but dis ain’t de number one boat. Dey heard about de
A.M. Adams
down dere in Honduras? (
whistles
) Sweet Christ, look at dis turtler we got here! Got hisself another bottle!
What dat you said, Byrum?
I say I s’prise de old bastard sign you on again, Vemon, must be he desperate! Goddom Raib dere, he do better with dis vessel runnin
tourists
den sailing away down to de Cays. (
shouts
) LAST OF DE CAYMAN SCHOONERS! HOPPY SAILS AROUND DE ISLAND! SEE COPM RAIB AVERS AT WEST BAY! But he such a domn stubborn mule, ain’t nothin you can tell him—
Vemon sits up, spilling rum.
You watch your mouth! Copm Raib hear you talkin into dat manner, he gone change your speech!
It
your
mouth need de watchin, Vemon. All de rum runnin out. (
quietly
) Dey only de one way de Coptin gone to hear something, and dass when you tell him. And you just de mon to do a job like dat—
Easy, mon. He only drunk—
He hidin behind dat. Dis Vemon is a pretty one, y’know—
I knowed Copm Raib gone forty year, and never a wry word!
You gone get a wry word, Vemon, you don’t hide dat rum! Dis ain’t no kind of Jamaica boat, mon, ever’body drunk aboard and all of dat! Dis a
turtle
schooner, mon!
You tellin
me
dat, dat help build dat vessel thirty year ago, right dere in de yard of Elroy Arch! Me ’n Elroy ’n Seth ’n Fossie, and Jim Arch!
I didn’t think you ever be sober enough to ’member so much as dat, Vemon. You quite a fella, Vemon.
You think you somebody cause you went crew on de
A.M. Adams
! But I got
papers
! You can go right up dere to United States and ask if Vemon Dilbert Evers got he seaman’s papers, able-bodied seaman! Ask Copm Gene on de
Tropic Breeze
! Goddom sonofabitch! I tellin you—
A silence as Byrum rests his oar; the catboat is gliding up under the hull. Byrum places a big hand on Vemon’s shoulder.
No,
I
tellin
you
: shut dat dirty mouth or you goin over de side!
Mon, mon. We ain’t even put to sea yet.
BRING DAT BOAT ABOARD OF HERE! DAT DE LAST BOAT!
C’mon, Buddy! Throw de line down, boy, we comin up!
Byrum and Speedy bend a rope sling to the fuel drum, which is hoisted aboard: the pulley is rigged to the end of the foremast boom, and lines of a second pulley are reeved through blocks high on the foremast.
On the blue morning sky above, a heavy-headed man lays big hands on the rails.
