Lights Out Page 7

  “The cook won’t be a problem.”

  “Why not?”

  Jack didn’t answer. Out on the water, Mandy kept swimming.

  7

  “Interested in herb, man?”

  Eddie, screwing new planks on Fearless’s dive platform, looked up at the dock. A man on a bicycle was watching him, keeping his balance with one bare foot.

  “No, thanks.”

  “With your hair like that, I could only aks myself.”

  “I’m not in the market.”

  “Market? Who be speaking of market? I just want to show you somet’ing interesting, man, if you be interested in herb. In the most friendliest way, since you and me be colleagues.”

  “Colleagues?”

  “Sure. Meet JFK, the new cook.”

  JFK leaned down, extended his hand, fingers pointing up for a black handshake. They shook hands.

  “I didn’t hear your plane.”

  “Was no plane. I carry myself on this fine made-in-Japan bicycle.”

  “From where?”

  “All the way down to Cotton Town, on the very tip of this earthly paradise,” said JFK, waving toward the south. “The famous Cotton Town Hotel and Villas. Diving. Tennis. Sailing. Happy hour. Goombay smash. Push-push. When there be guests. Not now.”

  “You work there?”

  “Formerly, man. Now Mr. Packer has sweetened my pot.” He chuckled. “You Jack’s brother.”

  “Right.”

  “I have two brothers. They both’s in jail. Franco in Miami, Dime in Fox Hill.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Lost their trials.” There was a pause while JFK stared out to sea and Eddie waited for elaboration. Then JFK spoke: “Destiny, man. Destiny be rulin’ the fates of humanity.” He raised his hands slightly, as though summoning divine forces.

  A black dot appeared in the northwestern sky, grew, formed the shape of a plane, turned white. It flew overhead, lost its whiteness, lost its shape, became a black dot again and disappeared.

  “Don’t trust no planes,” said JFK. “Boats for me.” He scanned the shoreline, taking in the six cottages, the thatched bar, the main building, the overgrown shuffleboard court.

  “This place gonna make it, man?”

  “It’s a nice spot,” Eddie said.

  “Nice spot. These islands is not’ing but nice spots. Except no one be making it.” He took a penny from his pocket, flicked it in the air, caught it. “Takes luck, man,” he said. “Make a wish.”

  “You make it.”

  JFK shook his head. “You look lucky to me.”

  Eddie thought. He knew there must be things he should wish for, but all he could think was: fun in the sun.

  “Ready?” asked JFK.

  Eddie nodded. He wished for fun in the sun.

  JFK spun the penny off the dock. It made a coppery arc and a tiny splash, then vanished.

  JFK smiled. He had a big smile, with gaps here and there. “Maybe I can make your wish come true,” he said.

  “How?”

  “Come. I show you.”

  Eddie tightened the last screw, climbed onto the dock. JFK made a wobbly circle on his bike-he had a big suitcase, tied with twine, on the rear carrier-and pedaled away. Eddie followed.

  JFK rode at a walking pace, up the conch-lined path, past the cottages and the main building, onto the dusty road linking Galleon Beach to Cotton Town. “Feel the heat,” he said. “We got nice spots. We got heat.”

  Eddie felt the heat on his bare shoulders, felt how it made him conscious of every breath.

  “We got the heat here, that’s for sure,” said JFK after a while. “You got heat like this where you come from?”

  “No.”

  “Where is that you come from?”

  Eddie named the town.

  “That be near L.A.?”

  “No.”

  “I want to go to L.A. That my number-one goal in this earthly life.”

  “I’ll be there in the fall.”

  The bike wobbled. “Whoa. You tellin’ me the trut’?”

  “I’m starting college-USC,” Eddie said. He added: “That’s the plan.”

  “Then what you be makin’ wishes for? You already got everyt’ing a heart desires.”

  The road went past the fish camp, past a cracked, dried-out red-clay tennis court and its sun-bleached backboard, partly screened by scrub pines, then swung inland. The temperature rose at once; in seconds, a drop of sweat rolled off Eddie’s chin, landed on his dusty sneaker, making a damp star.

  “Easy, man,” said JFK, pedaling more slowly; so slowly Eddie was surprised he could keep the bicycle steady. “You on island time now.”

  They came to a flamboyant tree-Eddie knew the name now-by the side of the road. Not far ahead lay the turnoff to the airstrip. JFK leaned his bike against the tree, set off on a narrow path through the bush. Eddie followed. Something bit him on the ankle. He slapped at it, received bites on the other ankle, back, and face.

  “No-see-ums,” said JFK. “Not’ing to be done.”

  The path narrowed; vegetation brushed Eddie’s skin at every step. He began to itch all over. The sweat was dripping off him now. He thought of Muskets and Doubloons. Hadn’t there been a scene where One-Eye’s band of buccaneers chopped through the bush with cutlasses in search of buried treasure? The treasure chest had contained nothing but the severed head of Captain Something-or-other.

  Ahead, JFK seemed to be moving faster. His thin calves knotted and lengthened in smooth motions, like water going back and forth in a tube. He began to sing.

  Gonna get some goombay goombay lovin’

  Gonna find a goombay goombay girl.

  A no-see-um bit Eddie on the nose.

  They mounted a long rise, came down in a clearing. It was filled with head-high plants growing in rows. JFK stopped, laid a hand on Eddie’s arm. JFK wasn’t sweating at all, hardly seemed to be breathing, but his pulse beat fast and shallow, like faraway tom-toms.

  “You understandin’ what you see?” he said.

  “Marijuana,” Eddie replied.

  “You got a smart brain. A college brain. Only here we say herb. That’s the friendly name.”

  A slow, heavy breeze blew through the clearing. The herb leaves rustled and then were still. The sun was high overhead. It seemed to have lost its shape, expanding to fill the sky, the way stars were supposed to do, Eddie recalled, at some point in their evolution. There wasn’t a sound until JFK spoke again.

  “I don’t like no planes,” he said. “Give me a boat every time.”

  “You said that before. Give you a boat for what?”

  “A boat like Fearless. Best name I ever heard for a boat. Except maybe Lot-O-Bucks, and she be sinking off Bimini last year.”

  “Fearless belongs to Mr. Packer. Jack and I just have the use of it.”

  “Perfecto,” said JFK. “If you want to be earnin’ a little extra bonus.”

  “What do you mean?”

  JFK smiled. He laid his hand on Eddie’s arm again and was about to answer when something brown burst out of the clearing and crashed by. Too big for a dog: Eddie had time to think that thought. Then there was a blast that knocked the top off the marijuana plant beside him. JFK yanked him to the ground.

  Eddie looked up in time to see the tall green plants part and Brad Packer stumble out in front of them, a rifle in his hands. He saw them, saw, that is, living animals, and raised the gun.

  “Boss!” said JFK.

  Packer checked himself, lowered the gun. “Christ,” he said, “I thought you were a fucking pig. What the hell are you two doing here? You’re supposed to be working.”

  JFK picked himself up. “Looking for guava, boss. I be plannin’ guava duff for dessert.”

  Packer glanced around the clearing. “There’s probably some around. This island’s a goddamn greenhouse.”

  “Plenty around boss, plenty,” said JFK. “Mrs. Packer, I know she like it.”

  “She doesn’t nee
d it, not with those thighs. Neither do I, for that matter.” Packer turned to Eddie. “Him I pay to look for guava. You I don’t.”

  “He be helping me, boss,” said JFK.

  “Yeah? Well, he can help me now. There’s a dead pig the other side of this clearing. They like it in here, fuck knows why. You can carry him back to the hotel while I go after the other one.” He started for the path, stopped, indicated Eddie with the muzzle of his gun. “And get a haircut.” Packer disappeared in the bush.

  Eddie and JFK found the dead pig. It lay on its stomach in a circle of marijuana plants, legs splayed, bleeding from a hole in the side of its flattened snout.

  “He be tense, man,” said JFK.

  “Rigor mortis,” Eddie told him. “It’s normal.”

  JFK laughed softly. “Too soon for rigor mortis. We know all about rigor mortis in these islands, my friend. But I be talkin’ about Mr. Packer. He the tense one.”

  “Why?” asked Eddie. An ant crawled across the bared eyeball of the pig.

  “The investor, man. Big investor coming from the giant to the north.”

  “To buy the place?”

  “To supply the cash, man. Some friend of Mrs. Packer’s daddy. Gonna make Mr. Packer’s dream come true. The hotel eight stories, the restaurants, the condos, the time shares. Golf, tennis, a waterfall. Maybe Shecky Greene.”

  “Who’s Shecky Greene?”

  “You never been to Vegas, man?”

  “Have you?”

  “Not the question. The question be is I hip to Shecky Greene? And I most surely be. I plugged into the happenings of the world, man.”

  The ant stopped in the center of the eyeball, antennae trembling. JFK gazed down at the animal and sighed.

  “I could handle it, man, but not on the bike.”

  “I’ll do it,” Eddie said, realizing that there was some presumption that if heavy work awaited, the black man was expected to do it. He squatted down, got a grip on one front and one rear foot, and rose, swinging the animal onto his shoulders.

  “Ooo,” said JFK. “Great white hunter.”

  “Packer’s the great white hunter.”

  “He be white, white as white can be. No offense.”

  They walked back through the marijuana plants, Eddie carrying the pig. The coarse hairs of its underbelly prickled his bare skin; blood dripped down on his chest, diluting itself with his sweat. They found the path, mounted the rise. Eddie felt the burden now, not so much the weight of the pig, but the weight of anything in that heat. By the time they reached the flamboyant tree by the side of the road, his heart was beating the way it would in the last length of the four-hundred free.

  JFK got on his bike. “Don’t be calling it a pig if you run into any tourists. That be the famous wild boar of the islands. Ernest Hemingway he come to hunt them.”

  “Bullshit,” Eddie said.

  JFK laughed and started pedaling. Not slowly this time. Eddie realized that JFK wasn’t intending that he keep up. “Where do I take it?” Eddie called.

  The answer came back, faint: “The kitchen, man. You be bringin’ home the bacon.” JFK was soon out of sight.

  Eddie started walking. There were no tourists, no people at all. There was just the sun, the dust, the pig, still warm. After a while it stopped bleeding and Eddie stopped thinking about how soon he could be in the shower. On that empty road on the edge of the banana-shaped island he lost his revulsion for the touch of the pig and began to enjoy what he was doing, began to feel strong-absurdly strong, like a white hunter, he supposed, master of the wild. He ceased to feel the weight of the beast at all; by the time he approached the desiccated clay court he was striding.

  Eddie heard the thump of a tennis ball and looked through the row of scrub pines. He saw a ball hit the backboard, bounce back, saw a racket swing and meet it, saw a tanned arm. A tree blocked his view of the rest of the tennis player’s body, but he knew who it was. He moved a little closer.

  Mandy was working on her backhand. Eddie had played some tennis, enough to know she was good. She wore a white T-shirt and white shorts, both soaked, and white sneakers, reddened by the clay. She grunted softly with every stroke. Without realizing it, Eddie had drawn closer still. Soon he was standing at the side of the court.

  The ball took a bad bounce. Mandy stretched for it, saw him as she swung. The ball flew over the backboard.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Look at you.”

  “Don’t call him a pig,” Eddie said. “He’d be insulted.”

  “I know what it is. Where’s your gun?”

  “I didn’t shoot it,” Eddie said, surprised. He’d never shot anything, didn’t want to.

  “Who did? Br-Mr. Packer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Stalking another one.”

  Her gaze slid down to his chest, moved back up. “You made me lose the ball.”

  “It’s the pig’s fault.”

  “You could help me find it. It’s my last one.”

  Eddie hefted the animal off his shoulders and laid it on the side of the court. They walked around the backboard, into a thicket of sea grapes and low bushes. No ball in sight. Eddie raised a branch to search the undergrowth, pricking his hand on a thorn. The bugs, the thorns, the heat-Muskets and Doubloons had left all that out.

  “Forget it,” said Mandy. “There might be balls in the shed.”

  The shed stood at the end of a short path that began on the far side of the court. It had a window glazed with cobwebs and a doorway with hinges but no door. Mandy walked ahead, her sweaty T-shirt and shorts clinging to her body. Her calves, like JFK’s, bunched and lengthened with every step, but Eddie couldn’t watch them in the same detached way. He felt a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with the heat.

  They went inside, out of the sun now, but Eddie felt no cooler. At first he couldn’t see anything. He could hear Mandy breathing close by, and smell her too: fresh sweat, in no way repellent. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. The shed had an earthen floor; there was a heavy steel roller in one corner, a wheelbarrow and a mound of red clay in the other. On the walls hung wide brushes and wooden tennis rackets, warped in a way that reminded him of a bent pocket-watch in a painting he had seen somewhere.

  “Don’t see any,” he said.

  “No?”

  There was a silence. Then her hand was between his legs, soft and gentle, but there. Eddie had had a few girlfriends, but none of them had ever reached for him quite like that, not even after they’d been going together for months.

  No one said a word. Their mouths came together. They began to make a little world for themselves where the elements-their bodies, their sweat, pig blood-were hot and wet. It was a world dominated by rhythm but quiet, where sounds were moist and speech was monosyllabic and unrehearsed; a world full of irresistible animal smells. Eddie didn’t resist. He sank down with Mandy on the mound of red clay.

  After, they just lay there, bodies together but minds drifting apart. Their minds had to be drifting apart, because Eddie was thinking about Muskets and Doubloons, and how could she have read it? Today was a day for learning how much it had omitted about tropic isles. Then Mandy said, “I knew it would be like this,” and Eddie thought that maybe their minds hadn’t diverged very much after all: they were both thinking about what had happened and that it was good. He was trying to think of a way to convey this to her, to tell her about Muskets and Doubloons and maybe even other things from his childhood, when there was a tremendous boom in the sky, followed by the screaming of a low-flying jet.

  “Jets can’t land here, can they?” Eddie said.

  “They’d better, nature boy,” said Mandy. “That’s the money man.”

  8

  The wild boar, now minus its coarse hair and internal organs, turned on a battery-powered spit over a driftwood beach fire. JFK basted it with a paintbrush he dipped into a kettle of lava-colored liquid. His hands were long and delicate. Eddie stood beside hi
m, tossing wood on the fire whenever JFK gave the signal. JFK was singing under his breath.

  Gonna get some goombay goombay lovin’

  Gonna find a goombay goombay girl.

  Over the flames and across the beach, Eddie could see the dinner party, sitting in the thatch-roofed bar. They looked good, all fresh tans and white cotton, linen, silk. The dinner party: Packer, Evelyn, Jack; and Mr. and Mrs. Trimble, moneyman and wife. Their voices carried in the still air.

  Packer said: “You’ve never seen it?”

  Mrs. Trimble said: “No, but I’m looking forward to it, aren’t you, Perry?”

  Mr. Trimble replied inaudibly.

  Packer said: “You’ve come to the right place, Mrs. T.” He refilled their glasses from a chilled pitcher of planter’s punch.

  “They be talking about the green flash,” JFK said to Eddie. “Biggest lie in the islands. Bigger than we gonna have jobs for everybody or I won’t come in your mouth, baby.”

  “There’s no green flash?”

  “I be raised in this country, man. Seen so many sunsets to make me sick. But never not one time the notorious green flash.”

  The sun set. Colors appeared and disappeared, but there was no flash, green or otherwise, not that Eddie saw. He heard Packer.

  “There! Right then! Did you see it?” He was on the steps of the bar, gesturing with his cocktail glass. Planter’s punch slopped over the side, staining his white trousers; he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I–I think I did,” said Mrs. Trimble, standing beside him. “I certainly saw something.” She turned to her husband, watching behind them. Mr. Trimble: tall, beaky nose, concave chest, crewcut. “Did you, Perry?”

  Mr. Trimble shook his head.

  “Oh, come on now, Mr. T,” said Packer. “Right there-” He pointed and slopped again. “As plain as the …”

  Evelyn appeared. “I don’t think so, Brad.” Her voice was cold. “Not tonight.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ev, what do you-”

  She cut him off. “Why don’t you freshen our drinks, Brad.”

  “No more for me, thank you,” said Mr. Trimble. He came down off the steps, over to the fire.