Midland

by James Flint

  —————

  The plan, in so far as they had one, was to hug the coast until they’d worked their way round to Chetumal, a resort tucked up inside a giant inlet and positioned smack on the border with Belize. Here they could sort out their paperwork, get some professional instruction, and spend a few weeks learning to handle the Chiriquí within the relative safety of the sound before risking any more trips out into the open sea.

  In the event they stayed in Chetumal for nearly three months. Sailing a yacht across borders, which is what they wanted to do, proved more bureaucratic than they’d anticipated. Apart from updating the registration papers, getting the usual visas and drawing up a crew list, they needed clearance papers, but they couldn’t get these without first buying insurance, which in turn could not be granted until one of them had a radio operator’s licence. So while Luggie, as the best sailor, found someone to teach him to properly handle the boat and spent his days tacking to and fro across the sound beneath the watchful gaze of the Mega Escultura, the peculiar 70-metre-tall wafer of steel latticework that loomed over the bay, Jamie signed up for a communications course at a sailing school. To pay for all this he divided up the bag of cocaine he’d kept back in case of emergencies into wraps that he sold, very cautiously and somewhat against his better judgement, to the vacationing American sailors who passed through the marina, while Bea advertised her services as an English tutor on the noticeboards in the state university on the outskirts of town.

  It was during this period, rather than in the couple of weeks they’d spent getting high on the beach by the lighthouse, that the friendship between the three of them was truly forged. They might have fallen into it more or less by accident, but preparing themselves and the Chiriquí for a proper trip down South America’s Atlantic coastline was proving to need proper commitment and, for Bea and Luggie at least, difficult conversations with relatives back home about their intention to stay overseas.

  More than once the couple discussed the sanity of chucking their lot in with this guy they hardly knew. In the end the pull of adventure always won out, but Bea’s doubts didn’t really leave her until the morning they woke to find the gull, having not exhibited any signs of ill-health beyond her inability to use her wing, lying stricken in the cockpit, gasping for breath.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Luggie asked, clambering up through the companionway to find Jamie cradling the bird in his arms.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘I don’t know. I was painting the forward hatch yesterday and gave her some fish out of the fridge. Maybe I had paint on my hands?’

  ‘I don’t know if that would have done it,’ said Bea. ‘More likely she just got sick.’

  Whatever the cause, Esperanza wouldn’t eat or drink and grew weaker by the hour. By the evening, she was dead. Jamie was distraught. Luggie and Bea had never even seen him angry or upset before, but now he punched the side of the cabin until his knuckles bled before disappearing below. When Bea went to check on him he was curled up in his bunk, apparently sleeping. She went back on deck where Luggie poured them each a glass of rum and rolled a joint which they sat smoking in silence staring up at the sprays of stars, wondering what impact this was all going to have on their trip, while the dead bird lay beside them in a casket fashioned from an empty box of granola bars.

  The gull had been their mascot; the thing that had brought them together and kept them together as they’d collectively nursed her back to health during their time by the lighthouse. They’d achieved that, and it had suggested to all of them that they could achieve more. Bea seriously doubted that if the animal had died in those first few days they would have had the faith to stick with Jamie through his crazy, risky boat deal and set off with him down the coast. But now she was gone, and her demise stabbed a needle into the balloon they’d inflated around themselves with their romantic, cocaine-fuelled fantasies of nomadism and escape. It was like when the drug wears off, and the house lights come on, and you see the club is just a sweat-stained room before you’re propelled out into the street where it’s morning, and it’s raining, and you’re hungry and your money’s gone and there’s no easy way to get home, and sensible people are hurrying past you with withering looks, desperate to get to the boring jobs that they do day after day, and that day after day help keep the world turning, and you’re painfully aware that for all the energy you’ve just gone and expended, you’ve made no contribution at all.

  Assailed by these doubts they were about to go to bed when Jamie appeared, eyes bloodshot, face puffy, but otherwise operational, and sat across from them in the little cockpit. Luggie handed him a glass of rum and began to build another joint. For a while Jamie sipped at the drink in silence, but then, when the joint was lit and had been passed around, he began to talk, telling them all the things he’d never told them, about where he’d come from and who he was, and most of all about why he’d left for South America in the first place. And this story changed everything.

  They committed Esperanza to the waves out in the sound with full naval honours and a week later, Jamie’s radio course completed, Luggie’s competency established, and their documents all in order, they motored out of Chetumal’s Terminal Maritime for the final time. Then they set the mainsail and the jib and headed past Belize into the Caribbean, glancing back periodically at the Mega Escultura as it slowly dwindled in size on the shore, until they looked up one last time to find that it had passed out of sight altogether.

  —————

  For the next year they meandered past Honduras and Panama, Venezuela and Suriname, getting in and out of scrapes, moving where mood and weather took them, exploring themselves as much as the coast and learning all the time how to better handle the boat and the sea, until they arrived on Brazil’s northern reach.

  And there they discovered Rosaventos. On the continent’s big bulge, not so far west of Fortaleza, cut off from the mainland by a dune sea and thus almost inaccessible unless you came in by water, it was the most perfect stretch of sand they’d ever seen. Vast, empty, fringed with a tassel of jungle and massaged for six months of the year by surfable breakers and a wind-sailable breeze, the place was a paradise.

  They’d spent a week alone there the first time, sleeping on the beach, the Chiriquí moored at the sheltered end of the bay. Then, after a trip to Fortaleza to pick up supplies, they returned for a month, spending their days body-surfing and gathering food for their feasts in the evening: fruits and coconuts from the trees, fresh fish and flat bread from the little fishing village perched at the foot of a huge dune the locals called la Duna do Por do Sol, ‘the Sunset Dune’. It was so big that it had its own water table, which the fishermen tapped with a string of little pump wells they’d dug into its base.

  But what next? They didn’t know. They couldn’t drift for ever. Though it hadn’t really been discussed, they’d all been feeling the same thing – that in some intangible way their trip was over, that they’d started to outgrow life on board the little yacht.

  ‘Something’ll turn up,’ Luggie had said, with classic stoner optimism. And in the past it always had. This time, however, the thought of trusting to chance made Jamie hot under the arms and cold round the shoulders. For the first time since he’d left Warwickshire he found himself wishing for a safe bet. He’d told Luggie and Bea the night the gull died why it was he preferred to be on his own, but being alone didn’t mean he always had to keep moving, didn’t mean he couldn’t try and start to construct a new life for himself.

  As it happened, however, Luggie was right. Something did turn up, in the shape of the besuited Brazilian who came striding towards them over the sand one afternoon as they lolled beneath the leafy boughs of a cashew tree. He said his name was Gomez and he represented some people who’d just bought a strip of land the boundary of which ran right through the tree in whose shade they were sitting. He was planning to grid it for water, sewage and electrics – the last could be brought in by pylon around the edge
of the dunes – and selling off the lots for villas, hotels and restaurants. What did they think? Did they know people who came here? Did they know people who might be interested?

  It was another gift from the gods. That evening, their imaginations well oiled with weed and rum, the three friends decided that they would pool together whatever cash they could, buy some plots off this guy, and build something real. It was what they’d been waiting for; it was what they would do. Because when they thought about it, it was perfect. The airport in Fortaleza was halfway decent, and though it took six hours by 4x4 to get from there to the fishing village, they realised that for the right clientele this would be a genuine plus. The journey would keep all but the most dedicated water-sports enthusiasts at bay, and speedboats and helicopters could whisk those seeking privacy and exclusivity to and from the understated luxury resort that they would build and run on the western curve of the bay.

  So Jamie sold the Chiriquí in Fortaleza and pooled the proceeds with some savings Luggie had squirrelled away and a small legacy Bea had inherited from her father, who’d died when she was in her teens. And the three of them bought a plot, christened their new home the Club Vayu (after the Hindu god of the winds – Bea’s idea), and embarked upon the not inconsiderable project of transforming it into a compelling place to come for a holiday.

  —————

  Dinho Gomez Pereira – Jamie discovered his full name when he read it, many years later, in the court report of Diário do Nordeste. Before then, he and everyone else he met just knew him as Gomez. And Gomez was a handy guy to know. He was able to sort anything, pretty much. Builders, materials, vehicles, equipment, red tape – he seemed to be connected to everyone and understand the ins and outs of everything, his influence extending not just to the local tract of coast but as far south as São Paulo and Rio. There was talk of a family too, from what Jamie could surmise a wife and two boys parked in some Fortalezan suburb, though he’d never seen concrete proof of their existence.

  Gomez was like that. Vague. He had proven as good as his word to Jamie on many occasions, though the thing about Gomez’s word was that it was never altogether precise. His accounts of events had the habit of being slightly self-contradictory, his facts slightly off, anecdotes left unresolved. And the more vague the details the greater the emotion with which he communicated them, as though the louder the skin of his passion the larger the void it was stretched across.

  This was common with cocaine: Jamie had observed it many times. During his travels around South America he had come to see this kind of behaviour, voluble but dissembling, as a signpost indicating the direction in which to make further enquiries about the drug. Jamie was not of a mind to buy coke from Gomez, further complicating an already complex relationship, but that turned out not to make the slightest bit of difference, because in the end the cocaine came to him.

  The first time it had been a small amount, a sugar-lump-sized rock that the Brazilian pressed into his palm the evening Jamie, Bea and Luggie met him for a game of pool in the hip Órbita bar in downtown Fortaleza to celebrate the completion of the first foundations they’d laid on their plot.

  ‘Shhh,’ Gomez hushed, gripping Jamie’s wrist to prevent him from examining the object in the middle of the busy room. ‘A little gift. To make sure you and your friends have a good time.’ And a good time they had, bouncing around the dance floor long after Gomez had disappeared off to wherever Gomez went, releasing energy that would carry them forward into the next few months on a great wave of optimism, months in which they would be hard at work constructing the first of the Club Vayu’s cabanas, its surf shop and its bar.

  During this period they lived in tents, bathed in the sea and carted their drinking water from wells at the foot of la Duna until Gomez got his pump station built and the pipes laid, at which point they were able to rig up some taps. It was immense fun to start with, but as the weeks wore on the challenges of the venture started to make themselves felt. In their naïvety they had completely underestimated the costs of building even the most basic of facilities, miscalculating both the manpower required and the quantity of materials. Jamie and Luggie had assumed they could do most of the work themselves, but this simply wasn’t possible; and even when they managed to source the large quantities of concrete, rebar, piping, wiring, timber and various pieces of equipment and machinery they needed at a reasonable price, they couldn’t get them across the dune sea without paying a hefty toll to Gomez’s drivers to ferry them in on the aged flatbed trucks the Brazilian had procured for the purpose.

  None of this had been discussed in detail when they’d purchased the plot. Being a bit more realistic than the boys, Bea had tried to raise these kinds of specifics, but Gomez had airily said that he’d provide transport links, and suppliers, and a utilities grid. What he didn’t say was that there would be a fee for the trucks, a ‘handling charge’ for buying from his suppliers, and a levy for connections to the grid. It might have been okay if they could have shopped around, but all the suppliers in Fortaleza turned out to be Gomez’s suppliers, as did all the workmen. Everything they touched seemed, in one way or another, to lead back to the Brazilian. There was no way around him, at least not one that didn’t involve running up even greater costs and risk offending the man who had effectively become their patron. If he took against them then that would be it.

  Running out of money and unable to see a better way forward, they decided that they had no choice but to talk to Gomez and try to negotiate better terms. The Brazilian listened, made a bit of a show of worry and disappointment at their lack of planning, and then – in a move Bea strongly suspected had been carefully premeditated – said that he was prepared to extend them credit at a reasonable rate of interest, with repayment deferred until they had started to generate income of their own.

  None of them liked the idea, but it was either comply or walk away, sacrificing in the process all the time and money they’d already invested. So they accepted the offer and got back to work.

  —————

  Two years passed. The Club Vayu had started taking in paying guests and the deserted beach where the three founders had once slept on the sand and feasted on papaya they’d plucked from the trees had become the focus of a buzzing little community. In between servicing the cabanas and running the restaurant with not inconsiderable flair, Bea had done wonders with the planting, bedding in Dominican bells, rain trees, Clivia and joewood, plants that were slowly turning the Club back into an extension of the jungle from which it had been hewn. Meanwhile Jamie and Luggie had grown into the role of water-sports instructors – the daily routine of schlepping boards in and out of the ocean and helping customers with their technique had given them the body tone and wetsuit-delineated tans of professionals, and had transformed their long hair and straggling beards from apologetic hippy, signifiers into the grizzled and authentic emblems of men who earned their living from the sea.

  When Jamie wasn’t taking classes or toiling away on the second batch of cabins he was throwing parties on the beach with the aid of a battery-powered sound-system he’d bought for next to nothing off a Swedish guy in Fortaleza marina who’d stripped it from his yacht. These events started out as small local socials, a focus for the frontier camaraderie that had established itself among Rosaventos’s collection of tourist-trade entrepreneurs, but they soon grew in scale and reputation and started drawing people to the resort on their own account. Which was very much welcomed by all the businesses in the community – everyone was desperate now for a steady flow of customers.

  But it wasn’t enough, not yet. Even at Club Vayu, where they were running at reasonable capacity, they were barely breaking even. And now that tourists were coming Gomez was starting to make noises about the need for Jamie, Luggie and Bea to start paying down some of their quite substantial loan. Given that they were no better off financially, and had even more to lose than when he’d first extended credit, this ignited considerable consternation.

  �
�Don’t you see what he’s doing?’ Bea raged when the three of them sat down in their little office one evening after dinner to go through the accounts and formulate some kind of a plan. ‘He’s led us by the nose all the way. We’re total patsies. We didn’t just buy his plots, we’ve now built him a fucking hotel, on our tab! He could kick us out any time and take all of it in lieu of the debt, and we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.’

  Luggie knew better than to go head-to-head with his girlfriend when she was in this kind of mood, so it was left to Jamie to remonstrate.

  ‘Come on Bea, it’s not like that. We went into this with our eyes open.’

  ‘I went into it with my eyes open. You two went into it completely bloody stoned, if I remember. I warned you we couldn’t trust him. But you didn’t want to listen.’

  ‘That’s unfair. He hasn’t even formally asked for a repayment yet. He’s helped us out from the start, he’s never let us down—’

  ‘Jesus Jamie, get real! He hasn’t helped us out at all! He’s manipulated us. He saw us coming.’

  ‘I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt.’

  ‘Well you would say that, wouldn’t you? You’ve only got yourself to worry about.’