Джон Сэйлз - Cruisers

Roderick is talking with Ricky G., who sits looking disoriented at the fore of a shiny new Beneteau. Ricky is wearing a shirt with a Day-Glo parroffish design and has marks from fiberglass deck beading on one side of his face.

“Looks like somebody passed out on the deck,” says Emmett.

“I needed to rest.” Ricky never seems to shave yet never has a full beard, sporting a perpetual morning-after stubble. “These people are up in Vermont or something.”

“What if I trespass you,” says Roderick, “sleep on Ricky bar some night?”

Ricky tends bar at the Y-Ki-Ki, which he co-owns, the only bar locals of all colors go to. He squints at Roderick. “I’ve pulled you out from under the table more than once.”

“Never ‘appen beyond closing time. Surprise me them authority don’t ‘carcerate you while they here last night.”

Emmett steps closer. “Listen, Roderick, what —”

Before he can say more Roderick puts his big hand up for silence.

“Mr. Alphonse already vex me wit instruction. I got nothing to tell till official version has been spoken.”

“Were you here?”

“Drag me ass out of bed, got to open every gate in creation.” Roderick shakes his head. “Why they don’t weat till sunup, spear a mon his sleep?”

“It was an emergency.”

“Nothing in that boat that wouldn’t keep till sunup.”

“Remember the dude two Christmases ago,” says Ricky, “washed up by the old turtle works?”

“Accidental causes.”

“That’s what they always say when they don’t know shit. Didn’t know where he came from, what boat he was off of, nada. And nobody ever claimed him.”

“Plenty of that on this island.”

“But the watch he had on, the guy was obviously a tourist —”

“Black mon drown,” says Roderick, “authority don’t inquire. White mon drown they declear mystery.”

There is a pause as they all watch the blond divorcee from Sarasota and her teenage daughter in matching bikinis pass on the parallel pier. Ricky moans quietly.

“I could go either way with that.”

“Them womens kill you, Ricky. Rum has sap all your powers.”

“I heard a rumor,” says Emmett, “that it happened three days ago. Whitey and Edna.”

“No way. He came in just yesterday.” Ricky spends so many of his waking hours shooting the shit behind the bar that he never has a tan. “About four. Sat at the end, three G and Ts, paid his tab and left.”

“You didn’t talk with him?”

“There were these Belgian girls, I was feeding them yellow birds— you know, with the amaretto? They were starting to loosen up so I didn’t pay much attention to Whitey.”

“Whitey always drink his cocktail on his boat,” says Roderick. “Why is he paying double to you?”

“Psychology’s not my field, man. I just pour ‘em what they ask for.”

“How’d he look?”

“Like he always did. Like he just stepped off that battlewagon of theirs with some twenty-foot sea monster in tow. He had that squinty-lookin’ smile —”

“Muriel called him the Ancient Mariner.”

“He wasn’t so ancient.”

“Couple years older than me, and I’m getting on.” Emmett turns back to Roderick. “I think as a resident of this marina, I deserve —”

“I give you a groundation and everybody want to ax me same story.”

“You tell Emmett here,” says Ricky, “and the news will fly.”

Roderick just smiles and starts away. “Weat for official story. Then I tell you what part is a lie.”

~ * ~

When Emmett last talked with Whitey he’d been fine, upbeat even. They ran into each other at the local grocery, the one a mile walk from the marina but half as expensive as the Captain’s Larder at the Ocean Breeze condo complex.

“Only thing she’ll eat anymore,” said Whitey when he caught Emmett checking out the four loaves of white bread and dozen tins of ham spread in his basket.

“I thought you liked to cook?”

“Used to. Used to do a three-course layout in that little galley of ours. Baked bread, pies. Now, it’s just — you know.” Whitey shrugged. “It’s another meal.”

Emmett nodded. “Mine won’t have anything to do with fixing dinner. Twenty-five years of feeding the kids —”

“Yeah.”

“So I just fire the old hibachi up —”

“Grilled what — was it amberjack last night?”

“You can smell it.”

“No problem. Just don’t let day man catch you.”

“Roderick and I have an understanding.” Emmett pushed his items forward on the counter to make room for Whitey’s case of bargain gin. “How the fish been treating you?”

“Oh, fair.” Whitey and Edna didn’t keep much of what they caught, but they went out almost every day. “Punk Loomis got into a bunch of wahoo the other day off the east tip, we might try that.”

“What are the locals catching?”

“Infectious diseases.”

They laughed. As more kids drifted down from the States there were fewer and fewer locals working in the bars and restaurants, and Ocean Breeze advertised that it had “fully professionalized” its staff, which meant most of the black faces were gone. The little market was one of the few places Emmett still rubbed elbows with people born on the island.

“It had to happen sooner or later,” Whitey said. “That ‘no problem, mon’ thing only goes so far and then you need some service. It’s something we thought about a lot before we made our commitment here.”

“But the culture —”

“Nobody comes here for the culture.”

There was a carnival once a year that Emmett tried to avoid, people passed out in unusual places and a couple local bands that played loud enough to be heard over the water several miles away. What, amazed Emmett most about the island was that it was populated at all, with no fresh water and almost nothing edible grown in the interior. European sailors had tried leaving pigs and goats on it for provision, but they quickly died of thirst, and cane and sisal plantings hadn’t done much better. The locals were descended from the workers on these destitute plantations and escapees from slave ships that ran aground in the early 1800s.

“All dem other crop feel,” Roderick liked to say, “but tourist business been very good to we.”

“You circle the globe between ten and twenty-five degrees above the equator,” said Whitey, laying a sack of limes on top of the gin, “one port isn’t much different than the next.”

“So you’re here for a while.”

“Oh, we’re here to stay. Like it says in the brochures,” Whitey winked at Emmett, “‘It’s always smooth sailing in our island paradise.’”

~ * ~

The Schmecklers are behind the pilothouse of their big Frers head-sail ketch, spreading engine parts on a tarp. Emmett knows the father and son are Fritz and Stefan but can never remember which is which.

“Part still hasn’t come in?”

“Customs,” says the father. “They steal it.”

“One focking injector.” The son stares down at the disassembled machinery. “They don’t know what it is, but they steal it.”

They are tall and wide-shouldered, relentlessly enthusiastic, with thick beards bleached by the sun. The first day they sailed in Muriel thought somebody was shooting a beer commercial.

“You were a friend of the diseased?” asks the father.

“Diseased —”

“The one who is dying.”

“Deceased. Whitey — yes. They were neighbors, sort of. D Pier.”

“Your boat is?”

“The Golden Years ? Island Packet cutter?”

“I have seen this.”

“Nothing compared to your rig, but we call it home.” Mrs. Schmeckler, Greta, smiles as she steps up from the cabin to shake a mat out over the starboard side. “Whitey and Edna were eight or nine slips down from us.”