Buried At Sea (16 page)

Jim hardly registered that the silent men in her boat immediately pushed off and motored away. Margaret was practically falling out of her dress. Her skin was very black—as black as the absence of light—and framed a friendly smile that gleamed like ice. Will introduced Jim as "my shipmate."

"Hello, muscle man."

Margaret leaned down toward Jim in the dinghy and extended a plump hand. A warm electric jolt of skin and her generous décolletage were acute reminders that it had been six long weeks since he had even seen a woman.

"Must you go?" she asked in an English accent.

He was vaguely aware that her eyes had the elsewhere glow of a woman seriously stoned. She wouldn't let go of his hand and was actually pulling him and the rubber boat closer. He smelled perfume, marijuana, and woman. She cocked her head, teasing him, daring him. Promising? Mocking? Who knew? She was older than he had guessed from her bouncy body, more woman than girl, closer to his own age—high and happy and out for a good time.

He glanced at Will. Will returned a shrug, vastly amused and apparently at ease with whatever decision Jim made.

He didn't suppose that Margaret fit Shannon's idea of an adventure when she'd sent him sailing. Squalls and breaking seas were more like it, and their unspoken thought, he assumed, was that they would fess up first, if either wanted to mess around. No blindsiding. No fait accompli–ing.

Trouble was, at this very moment in this very place, Margaret would fit any man's idea of adventure to a T. And it wasn't as if Shannon were waiting with a great big yes. It would serve her right for saying no. And it might be good for him to step out a little. But if he wanted to try to pick up as close as possible to where they had left off, wouldn't it be better to go home still exclusive? Was he nuts? For all he knew at this very moment Shannon was—well, probably not. She would be up-front about it.

"Nice to meet you, Margaret. I have to go. See you later, Will." She squeezed his hand with a wistful "Later?'

Jim sat down in the dinghy, pushed off from Hustle's high side, dipped the oars in the water, and rowed clumsily toward the distant dock. Margaret chirped a question he couldn't hear and Will laughed.

It was a hot pull over the still lagoon—long enough for a variety of erotic what-if scenarios to gallop through his mind. Maybe later, after he arranged a ride, grabbed a beer

somewhere, and headed back to the boat. Will's, remark about Margaret's sister was clanging in his skull, too. Maybe she'd be waiting at the dock. Or he'd bump into her on the street. Hi, there. Jim Leighton. Just dropped anchor in the lagoon. So what do you do for fun around here?

He looked over his shoulder to make sure be was on course. The smoke-shrouded village was still deserted. But at the dock, as he looped the dinghy's bow line around a weathered piling, the rickety structure began to shake.

He looked up to see four tall, gaunt teenagers drift out to greet him. Machetes dangled from their waists. Their feet were bare, the skin of their toes and heels cracked. Their plaid shirts were patched, the cuffs of their long pants in tatters. The handles of their machetes were wrapped in dirty cord and frayed electrical tape, and the blades were pitted. But where the edges showed through their makeshift scabbards, they gleamed as silvery as the sharpest knife in Will Spark's orderly tool chests. He looked up into the nearest face and, before the kid's eyes slid away, said, "Hey, how you doing?"

"Five dollar."

"What?"

"You hear. Five dollar?'

The Sailing Directions said that English was the official language, but that in the Delta there were many tribal dialects. He spoke slowly and loudly. "I don't follow what you're saying. Where is everybody?"

The answers came back fast and loud. Through the accents, he realized that they were speaking the pidgin English that Will had told him was the lingua franca. He heard a word that sounded like "money." And another that sounded like "chop."

"We take arm and chop!"

Any comparisons he might have entertained to making buddies with locker-room attendants were instantly dispelled and Jim fumbled the painter loose to get the hell out of there. Before he could, he got the phrase they were repeating over and over.

"Landing fee?"

"Are you stupid?" shouted one. "Money." Then Jim realized that what had sounded like

"We take arm and chop," actually meant "Pay us money so we can go shop."

"Pay," yelled another, sticking out his free hand, and his friends started chanting, "Pay. Pay. Pay."

Jim shot a glance across the lagoon, where Hustle laid her upside-down reflection on the oily green water. Will, who was following Margaret down the companionway, waved as he disappeared below. The canoe that had delivered her was headed down the creek in the direction of the main channel, trailing thin Vs of ripples.

"Pay. Pay. Pay."

I'm getting mugged, Jim thought, his temper rising. All want is a ride out of here and I'm getting mugged. He jumped without warning, using his arms to pull himself up and bound onto the dock in a single swift motion. The two in front backed up, bumping into those behind them and nervously fingering their weapons. They were taller than he but emaciated, their skeletal chests barely as broad as his arms, and he saw fear in their eyes as he prepared to kick the head off the first one who pulled his machete. Then he stumbled. The dock felt as if it were rolling under his feet. He struggled to catch himself. But after six weeks on the moving boat, his slow-to-adjust inner ear, which had made him prey to seasickness, was betraying his sense of balance on land. It felt like an earthquake and he stood reeling visibly, which cost him the initiative as quickly as he had gained it.

They moved closer. "Landing fee. Pay."

He'd have a better chance duking it out drunk. The one who had yet to speak gave him a hard stoned-on-something grin and demanded in a loud British accent, "You pay for landing your boat a five-dollar landing fee. It is the custom."

"Five dollar."

Four against one. They had machetes. Don't get killed for nothing. Besides, they were dressed in rags. What the hell was five dollars? He kept his roll in his pocket as he peeled off one of the bills.

Out shot another hand. "Five dollar."

"I just paid you."

"Five dollar." Louder.

"I paid you. Get out of my way."

They drew their machetes and pointed them at the rubber dinghy.

Jim stared hard at the stoned kid, who explained with the dull, uncaring, but certain logic of a clerk in a bank, "You pay five dollar. We protect your boat." He produced another five. Then he walked through them, toward the village. The entire place seemed to be nothing more than twenty shacks on stilts. But he noticed two exceptions. One was a concrete structure with unglazed windows and the faded sign community CLINIC over the gaping door; goats had moved in and it stank of their dung. The other structure that stood out was a larger house made of three attached huts. The chief's? Jim wondered. It too was empty.

Maybe the main village was farther inland. There was a dirt road of sorts, twin tracks beaten in the sand and mud that indicated some vehicles had been through here at some point. The land was still rolling under him, and his feet kept slipping as the road seemed to fall away. At the next step they would scuff the dirt as it seemed to rise like a wave. He was still wobbly when the road forked. He followed it right. It narrowed, wandered into the mangroves, and petered out at the edge of another swampy creek. Mangrove trees towered from the water up to a gloomy canopy. The treetops blocked the sun and it dawned on him that he had already walked through the village thinking that the wooden huts with tin roofs were the outskirts.

He walked slowly back. The left fork looked no more promising than the right, and he almost passed it by. Then he thought he heard music. A far-off pulse in the thick, hot atmosphere. So he took the left fork and followed it into the mangroves, still groping for balance, pausing occasionally to cock his ear to the music.

He walked for fifteen minutes, slapping at the bugs that hovered just beyond the aura of his insect repellent. The land began to rise. The stagnant pools disappeared, replaced by thick bushes, and the mangroves gave way to more ordinary-looking trees without the spidery roots. When he stopped again to hear the music, he heard people calling out and laughing. The main village: a bigger one on a main road.

Now he smelled food cooking in the still air. Climbing a steep rise, he found himself on a ridge. But instead of a bigger village, all he saw below was a shallow ravine where scores of people were digging with picks and shovels. The cooking smells came from an open fire above the excavation, where three women dressed in bright red blouses and long skirts were roasting sweet potatoes on sticks. There was no village in sight, no huts or buildings of any sort, just a raw earth gouge in the land, which looked like it had been dug that morning.

They had exposed a buried pipe. A long, narrow break in the trees, overgrown with bushes, marked the pipe's track. More people were streaming down the slopes carrying buckets, jerricans, and plastic pails.

Jim was still trying to figure out what they were doing when suddenly a cheer went up. People started pushing and shoving to get to the center, waving their buckets and pails. More people came streaming out of the woods and a sharp smell, much stronger than the roasted sweet potatoes, rose from the crowded pit—the nostril-pricking stink of gasoline. A man in a ragged shirt burst from the crowd carrying a brimming bucket in each hand. He climbed the slope nearby, his face beaming. Jim backed away quickly and bumped into someone. An old man had come up behind him.

"Excuse me, sir."

"Sorry," said Jim. "My fault. You speak English?"

"Yes, of course." He had an accent like Will's friend Margaret's. His hair was white. He wore a rope for a belt and a Shell Oil cap with a missing bill. His running shoes had been re-sewn by hand and his red plaid shirt was patched with green cloth.

"What are they doing?"

"Scooping," said the old man. "The white man's pipe runs under the land. They've made a little puncture to scoop some petrol."

"Petrol? That's a gasoline pipeline? They'll get killed if it blows up."

"They know the danger of explosion. But they're poor. People have to survive."

"What do they use it for? I haven't seen any cars." "There are no cars, sir. They mix it with oil to run a generator, or sell it to someone who owns an outboard motor." That explained where everyone had gone. The adventure

seemed to have emptied every village for miles around. "Is there a way I could get to an airport?"

"There is no airport."

"A boat, maybe? To Lagos or Port Harcourt."

"Far away."

"How about Calabar?"

"You might find someone with a motor canoe. Go to the lagoon."

"I just came from there. No one's there."

"When this is done, they'll come back. I wonder, sir, if you would have a dollar?" Jim was reaching into his pocket when suddenly the eager shouts and laughter turned to cries of alarm. The mob scattered. People clawed their way up the slopes, trampling one another. Jim saw fire jump skyward. Bright flame leapt from a puddle of gasoline onto a man's shirt and he ran, screaming, while the fiery puddle spilled toward the pipe. The burning man slipped and fell facedown in the mud. Men pounced on him, pummeling at the flames, beating them out with bare hands.

Others kicked mud and dirt on the flames. There was a moment of utter silence, then nervous laughter rippled through the crowd. Shouting, laughing, people pounded one another on the back, shook hands, pulled the fallen man to his feet, and began picking up their buckets.

A big cheer greeted a pair of fat middle-aged women who marched out of the woods with cases of beer balanced on their heads.

"We live," the old man said, "by the mercy of God." Jim turned away. Anyone who would risk burning to death to steal gasoline was stuck in the Niger Delta worse than he was. The old man was still glued to his side. Jim pressed one of his five-dollar bills into his hand.

"God bless you, sir. God bless you and yours:'

Jim hurried back toward the dock, sweating in the heat, slapping at the bugs that grew bolder as his perspiration washed away the repellent. One of the machete gang had climbed into the dinghy.

The kid with the best English said, "What do you want?" "I need a ride upriver to Calabar."

"How much you pay?"

Will had told him that the daily income in the Delta averaged thirty cents. Based on the ten-dollar bribe to come ashore with a promise of finding his boat on his return, and the blessings from the old man for five, Jim guessed a ferry price of twenty dollars. The kid hooted. "You crazy, man. Twenty dollar. No way. Never happen. What's twenty dollars to a big man like you? Your family rich."

"No"

"They live in a big house?"

"I live in a little apartment."

"They drive big cars. SUV cars."

"I drive a goddamned Honda," said Jim.

All three started shouting at once.

"You burn our oil."

"You take our oil. You pay us with pollution?'

"You kill our fish."

What in hell had Will gotten him into here, a dead-end village with no way out? There was an American embassy in Lagos. But it might as well be on Mars for all the good it would do him on the Calabar River.

"Wait a minute. I'm not the oil company. I'm just trying to go home."

"Does your family miss you?"

The innocuous-sounding question seemed a welcome shift from blaming him for wrecking the environment; but they were suddenly extra-alert, all four intent on his answer.

Was he paranoid? Or did they sound like kidnappers assessing his ransom value? He glanced again at Hustle—perched upon her upside-down reflection as white as an egret—and realized with a sinking heart that driving a cheap car didn't make him any less of a jackpot to kids in bare feet. The rich white man's yacht had delivered a miracle: their winning lottery ticket dressed in a Gap shirt, Levi's, and New Balance 1220 running shoes whose cost could put food on their tables for a year.