Robert Mason - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

“I don’t know. Never been this side of the island before. But I think those lights are maybe a marina or something. Maybe they have some cold fucking beer.”

“Say, John, do you mean, ‘cold fucking beer’ or ‘fucking cold beer’?” I said, laughing.

“Yes,” John said. “That’s what I mean: Budweisers with ice sticking to the cans; brew so cold your scrotum will shrivel.”

We saw a dock, a big house, but no marina. John rowed up to the beach and we jumped out and pulled the dingy up on dry land. The ground felt like it was moving and I almost fell over. When we let go of the dingy, I stood up with my arms out, like I was balancing on a tightrope. I laughed. “They’re right! Sea legs,” I said.

We stumbled across the sand and came to the house. I was laughing. I just couldn’t get over it. I could not convince my body that I was on land. The ground seemed to pitch and roll, like the sea. I walked stooped over, like I might fall off the earth. The house was a clubhouse, I think. We walked all around it. Nobody there. We walked through the club’s landscaped grounds until we came to a gravel road. We stood on the road and looked toward the only lights around, about a quarter mile away. The trouble was, neither of us had thought to bring shoes, and the gravel hurt. “John, you really must want a beer, to go through this torture.”

“Ice cold, freeze your nuts off,” John said, laughing. “Besides, isn’t this fun? Shore leave. Wanting; having.”

The lights were at a garage and it was closed. We seemed to be in a part of the island that closed up early. John was pissed, “Dammy! Wanting; but no having?” John was picking up Ireland’s manner of speech; so was I. I was saying din-GEE as soon as I heard it. John shrugged and said he’d make up for it tomorrow. We tenderfooted back down the road to our dingy.

There had to be two hundred sailing yachts in Saint Thomas Harbor. I was astounded. Where’d they all come from? What were they doing here?

“Some of them—a lot of them—are here for the same reason we are, Bob,” John said.

I think he was right. As we threaded our way among the anchored boats, I saw mostly men on board. Mostly three men on each boat, just like ours. They waved, we waved. When we got within six hundred yards of the docks, we found a spot big enough to anchor the Namaste . I went forward and dropped anchor at John’s command. The Namaste settled back against the anchor line. John stood up on the deck and looked at our neighbors. “Good. We’re clear all around. When she swings around with the wind, and they swing around with the wind, she won’t hit anybody.” Glad he thought of that; I sure hadn’t.

We put on clean clothes. A note Patience had stuck in the crotch of my underwear said: “Use it and lose it!” The little girl smiled, holding a knife. Damn, Patience, I’m not like that… then I remembered she had every reason to believe I was. We flopped the dingy overboard and jumped in. Bob and I decided I’d row in; he’d row back out. As we passed by the boats, we got questions: “Where you from?” “Jacksonville?” “Got some weather, eh?”

We passed a houseboat, or rather a house on floats. It was a rundown two-story shanty. You could see that it was built to be a cheap place to live; there was no fee to anchor off in the harbor. A woman on the front porch was hanging up clothes. “Lots of these people live in the harbor,” John said. “See that guy out there with the big windmill on his boat?” I looked and nodded. “He was here last time. Lives there, generates his own electricity with that windmill, distills his own water in a solar still, catches fish to eat; only comes ashore to sniff out women when he gets tired of jerking off. Neat guy, Mason. You have a lot in common with him. Oughta go meet him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You make him sound real glamorous, John.” Actually, I did want to meet the guy. This was just a tourist stop, wasn’t it? I wasn’t a pot smuggler yet.

The docks where we tied up the dingy were shared by the Islander , an island-rustic bar and restaurant, and the Harbor View , a large, modern hotel. We blended into the tourist traffic—mostly people sightseeing off cruise ships—looking in the shops that ringed the plaza between the hotel and restaurant. They sold tropical T-shirts, palm frond hats, conch-shell lamps, ice cream—tourist geegaws and whatnots. I was looking for a pair of sandals and a place to develop some slides I’d taken. I found a photo shop and asked the guy where I could use a phone. He said the hotel had pay phones. We found the phones. John and I called our wives; Ireland called his girlfriend.

“I miss you,” Patience said.

“Me, too. How’s Jack?” Jack thought I was just working as a sailor.

“Oh. He came in second. Cross-country race.”

“That’s great,” I said. I’d seen Jack run in two races. A lot of fathers were at every race. Now one of the fathers was on a pot run. There was one way out of this trip, but Patience hadn’t mentioned it. I asked anyway. “Heard anything from Knox?”

“No. That last letter from Norton was it.” An editor at Norton had said he thought my manuscript was very well written, BUT: the usual stuff about no one wanting to read about Vietnam.

We didn’t talk long. I told her a little about the storms and stuff, said we’d be home in a couple of weeks; I’d call before we left Saint Thomas.

Outside the hotel compound, Saint Thomas was pretty scruffy. We walked along a busy, litter-strewn street to a place John said served great hamburgers. We’d been talking about hamburgers for days. The street reminded me of the crummier neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I was really impressed by this. Saint Thomas was a tropical paradise, yet the citizens buried it in trash. Also, no one smiled. If you tried smiling at someone, you got a sullen stare back.

We got our hamburgers and fries and milk shakes and sat down at a table covered with catsup, pieces of dried onions, relish, and a hundred flies.

“Man, what a dump,” I said. “Why’s everything so dirty?”

“The people don’t give a shit,” John said. “They’re all on welfare and they’re pissed off at those white people living up on the hills.” He pointed to a mansion that hung out on a cantilevered deck off the side of Crown Mountain. “They’re pissed off at them because they’re rich, and if you’re a white tourist they’re pissed off at you because you’re white and, since you’re a tourist, probably rich, too.”

“Hot dammy!” Ireland said, flicking his eyebrows at the hamburger he held in two hands. “Living good, Juan!” He bit into the hamburger, squishing out catsup, smiling as he chewed.

While we ate, John said we would spend a couple of days getting supplies, and then sail to Thatch Cay, just to the east of Saint Thomas, to keel-haul the boat and install the depth finder. We needed the depth finder because we were going close to shore in Colombia, and the last thing we needed was to be pinned there, waiting for the Colombian navy.

We walked to a grocery store and bought four bags of groceries, six cases of beer, a case of Cruzin rum, and ten cartons of Winstons. We filled a cab with the stuff and drove back to the docks. John had Ireland wait with the supplies while John and I went into a marine supply store and bought a new fitting for the fuel line, plus spares

We loaded up the dingy and rowed back to the Namaste.

That afternoon I replaced the fuel-line fitting and then just loafed around the boat watching life in the harbor. Some people sunned themselves on the decks of their boats; others polished brass, painted bright work. Everybody was laid back. I wasn’t laid back. I was plagued with doubt, tense with worry. I wondered if I was really able to go through with the scam.