Gallatin Canyon (26 page)

It was agreed that he would go on sleeping on the yawl and borrow the skiff for transport. One of the women, tall and Indian-looking, with a bright yellow-and-black cloth tying her hair atop her head, informed him in English that when dinner was ready someone would come to the shore and make a noise. Noting his pause at her choice of language, she said, “I from Red Bays.”

The older of the two men who’d brought him said, back in Spanish, “You’ll come, of course.”

Errol bowed all round and said, “Enchanted.”

All replied, “Equally.”

Errol returned to his boat, rowing past the great fish swimming slowly around its stake, tying the skiff alongside and climbing back into the yawl and the security it offered, especially after its latest and probably worst storm. He found himself disturbed and so particularly dreading the dinner that he made himself sit in the cockpit and puzzle over his aversion to such companionable people, an aversion so strong that he only abandoned the thought of sailing off when he admitted he’d never find the way back over the bar. Isolation seemed to have the attraction of a drug, and he reluctantly intuited that he must not give in to it. He’d have been less apprehensive about that dinner if it had been at the White House, but he believed, if he could pass this small social test, he could begin to escape the superstitions and fears that were ruining his life.

He had a short rest on the quarter berth with its view of blue sky over the companionway. The stillness of the yawl was a miracle, and he laid his palms against the wooden sides of the hull in a kind of benediction, or at least thanksgiving. For now at least it gave him the feeling of home.

He smelled buttonwood smoke. The sun was going down and he had to close the companionway screen to keep out the mosquitoes that always seemed particular to their own area: these were small and quick, produced a precise bite that was almost a sting, and couldn’t be waved away. Presently, he heard someone beating on a piece of iron. Poking his head out the hatch, he saw the younger of the two men announcing dinner with two rusty pieces and gave him a wave, upon which the man retired up the path between the shell mounds. A fog of buttonwood smoke lay over the water at the mangrove shoreline.

He pulled the skiff onto the beach and secured its painter to a palm log, which, judging by the grooves worn in its trunk, was intended for that purpose. He pulled his belt tighter and straightened his shoulders before heading up the path for dinner. Excepting the woman from Andros, the group, including the blind old man, were sitting by the fire watching strips of turtle roast over the glowing coals; which the older of the two men raked toward him. The remains of the turtle were to one side, heaped within its shell, and seemed to have concentrated a particularly intense cloud of mosquitoes. When Errol saw the rum being passed around, he reassured himself that the supply would be limited. No liquor stores out here! he thought, with creepy hilarity.

The unhesitating first swallow made everything worthwhile and was followed by an oceanic wave of love for his companions. When the Andros woman came to the fire with plantains to be roasted, he reached the rum out to her. The younger of the two, Catarino, seized his hand, said, “No,” and took the bottle himself. The woman from Andros cast her eyes down and went on preparing the plantains. At Errol’s bafflement, Catarino explained. “She is our slave.”

Looking at the bottle of rum and wondering why Catarino was so slow in raising it to his lips, Errol asked, “How can that be?” He wondered if he had misunderstood the Spanish word but he repeated it,
esclava,
and had it confirmed. He reached for the rum but it went on to the old blind man.

Catarino patiently explained further. “As you can see, she is black.”

Errol emitted a consanguineous giggle lest his next statement give offense and dispel the convivial atmosphere and—he admitted to himself—result in the withholding of the rum. “But all of you are black, aren’t you?”

The blind man threw his head back and in a surprising rumble of a baritone asked incredulously, “Black
and
Spanish?” Catarino looked at him sternly.

“We are as white as you, sir. I hope this is understood.”

“Oh, it is, it is,” said Errol, with rising panic.

The older of the two men, Adan, gazed at him with a crooked smile and said, “You must be hungry.”

Not seeming to hear him, Errol asked, “Will she eat with us?”

“Clearly not,” the blind man rumbled. “The American would do well to turn to our repast and that which makes all men brothers.” He held up the bottle. Errol decided not to express his thought,
Except the slaves,
again less out of principle than a fear of causing the rum to be withheld. When the Andros woman came back to the fire, Errol asked her in English what her name was and she told him Angela. The others nodded their incomprehension but encouraged this foreign talk with smiles.

“I’m told you’re their slave.”

“They believe that,” she said complacently.

“And it’s because you’re black?”

At this, she stopped and gave voice to what was evidently dispassionate consideration. “How amusing I find this. I am a Seminole Indian. My great-grandfathers came to Red Bays in cayucos. Why else would the University of Florida send us so many anthropologists? We are all Indians in Red Bays. Why else would they bring us T-shirts from the Hard Rock Cafe and expensive tennis shoes to earn our trust, if we were not Indians?”

The others nodded happily; they were enjoying her indignation and seemed to understand that it was based on a discussion of her slave status.

“These disgraceful Spaniards don’t understand that they are blacks. They think their language protects them. How they’d love to be Indians!”

“Were you captured?”

Angela couldn’t control her mirth. She held the turban around her head with both hands and jiggled from head to toe with laughter. The others united in what seemed to be real pleasure, and she looked at them and rolled her eyes at the absurdity of the white man. This rather calmed things because, as his fellow whites, the Spanish-speaking blacks did not want to throw in their lot with their slave too emphatically. They wished to project that they were compassionate slaveholders who followed the dictates of humanity.

The rum landed back in Errol’s hands, and all the others, including Angela, generously relished his enthusiasm as he raised it to his lips and kept it there for a long time, not fully understanding how ravenous he was. But when he lowered the bottle something in his gaze caused them to fall silent. The moment passed as interest turned to the turtle and plantains. Noticing that Angela sat by herself on the step of one of the driftwood shacks, Errol asked her if she thought of herself as a slave.

She replied, “Don’t be a fool.”

“Oh, well,” said Errol, in odd contentment. Confusion could be pleasant when you were drinking; it kept the mind whirring agreeably. He began to eat, taking pieces of turtle from spits over the sputtering buttonwood coals. The teenager with dreadlocks was wholly focused on the food and neither laughed with the others nor in any way seemed to know he was not alone. The only other woman, a heavyset Spanish-speaking black, watched Errol with sullen attention as though he were there to present a bill or a summons. The blind man staring with white eyes across the fire into the darkness cupped his hands in front of him, into which Adan and Catarino placed pieces of food. Catarino asked Errol if he was enjoying his meal.

“I certainly am!”

“And the rum suits you, does it not?”

“Very agreeable.”

“Sometimes it is more important than food, no?”

“Sometimes,” said Errol.

Adan smiled at his food and asked, “Sometimes?”

Errol waited before answering. “I believe that is what I said.”

Catarino gave Errol a jovial thump on the back and returned the bottle to him. The wind had shifted slightly, and Errol moved closer to the buttonwood smoke to be free of the vicious little mosquitoes. When he glanced at Angela, sitting away from the fire, Catarino explained that mosquitoes didn’t bother black people.

“How is it that she is your slave?” Errol asked. At this, the blind man spoke in a surprisingly firm voice.

“Her man drowned.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that is so,” said Adan. All except Angela seemed quite sad to reflect upon this event. “We didn’t take her back to her country. That would be against the law. Those blacks have laws no one can understand. With her man dead, she wished to throw in with us, but we were barely surviving as it was. You see how it is. We offered to let her come and be our slave, as that is entirely natural and appealing to blacks. As you see, she accepted.”

“Which only proves our point,” Adan added.

Errol took another slug of rum and gazed around at his companions, who seemed to him, as best as he could tell, to all be black. Then he thought of something. “What color do you think I am?” The three looked at each other. It was Catarino who finally spoke, his smile full of accommodation.

He said, “We haven’t decided.”

“I can’t take mosquitoes at all,” said Errol nervously. “Never could. They drive me nuts!”

The blind man said, “Have some more of that aguardiente. To enjoy your meal, you must calm your nerves.”

Adan looked pensive. “They served wine at the Last Supper. If we had not been prepared to offer refreshment to our guests, perhaps the turtle would not have offered himself to us. All things are connected. Even you, sir, are connected to us, if only in that we share a clearing which we made of sufficient size with our machetes as to offer you a place at our meal.” He smiled pleasantly. “Surely we knew you were coming.”

Errol’s expression of gratitude was interrupted by a burp, which brought a change of mood and all went about eating with a purpose, all except Angela, who paced about, desperately waving away the mosquitoes.

The sun must have awakened Errol, balled up next to the extinguished fire, the sun that caused the mosquitoes to retreat into the mangroves. Errol didn’t seem to remember where he was, and indeed his body was disagreeably unfamiliar. No parts of it seemed to fit together any longer and all were consumed by burning and itching. He felt his face with swollen fingers. His lips were drum tight, his eyelids so thick he could see them, and his cheeks lumpy with bites. He had lost his shoes, then remembered they’d been laced. Someone had taken his shoes. In any case, his swollen feet would no longer be contained by them. He lay back, let his mouth fall open, and gazed at the sky.

Once there was sufficient water in his boat, he could call it provisioned and begin the voyage home. He had hand lines and a shoebox full of diamond-shaped silver spoons: he would have fish and freshwater and that was enough. All this horror, this misshapen body, was temporary. Steps toward atonement had been taken; more could be promised. He remembered his mestizos and the groves. He tried reckoning how long he’d been away, but no exact answer was required. The cracker’s deadline had come and gone: he had broken his covenant with the mestizos and by now they were dispersed, thrown once again to fate, to wander the labor camps at Immokalee or Belle Glade, offering the days of their lives for sugar, citrus, and white men. His, like theirs, were the inconveniences of hell.

Certainly it lay in his power to arise, thank his hosts, sail away, and, against the cadences of wind and sea, sort through his many failings and the invoices for atonement that accompanied them. There was no mess so great it could not be broken down into a manageable sequence, a bill of lading for debts to oblivion.

As he stood, his buttocks abraded each other in special misery. My God, he wondered, how did they get in there? He began scratching himself all over. He hurried from one place to another as no sooner did he palliate some mad insistence than it appeared in another place. He was writhing and dancing without leaving his small spot in the dirt.

Something caught his eye.

Angela, arms wrapped around her sides, was lost in shaking, silent mirth. He stopped and stared at her through indignant, swollen eyes. He walked over to her, the pressure of edema squeezing up his calves with every step. She smiled at him when he arrived. She had unwound her turban and twisted it around her hands, allowing her hair to spring out in all directions. In his present condition, that hair struck him with its terrible vitality. There was something thrilling about it. She said, “I tink it will rain. And dis is my great day. Dey have freed me.”

“That’s nice,” said Errol sarcastically. His disfigured lips distorted this offensive speech but Angela seemed not to notice. “Are they still sleeping?”

“Oh, dey gone.”

Errol could not lose his snide tone. “Where exactly is there to go?”

Angela answered him imperturbably. “Miami.” Errol considered this for a remarkably short time.

“They took my boat?”

“Oh, yes.”

Errol seemed unsurprised. He considered levelly that he was without choices. His despair was such that the possibility of solace could only lie in the evaporation of all his options. Never before had he sensed himself greeting his destiny with so little resistance. It was an odd luxury to contemplate this, pants unbuttoned to accommodate his itches, spread fingers hanging at his sides, and a face whose risibility could now be enjoyed only by Angela, who had the upper hand of observing him.