Swimming in the Volcano

by Bob Shacochis

  “If this is for the volcano,” he said, reluctant to play the spoilsport, “go easy on it, would you. It’s a very difficult hike. Don’t get too fucked up.”

  “Mitch,” she said blithely, “do I ever get too fucked up,” and he let it go at that.

  After lunch, he took her in the Rover a short distance up the windward coast, turning off on a coral track leading to a somnambulant fishing village behind a ridge of dunes, and from there they walked over a ridge another twenty minutes to a two-mile-long beach, utterly deserted, end to end, washed by sets of lazy combers that broke far out on a bar and churned in foamy rows over a shallow, sandy bottom. Johnnie wanted to strip all the way but he told her to leave her suit on.

  “Even here?” she pouted.

  “Even here.”

  “Jesus, what a prig,” she teased, and he chased her into the surf, whooping; they rode the waves for hours, rushed headlong on flying carpets of forgiving energy, each ride ending in a tumble of celebration, though Johnnie was just a little disappointed that the swells lacked symmetry and shape, denying the rider the cannonshot burst from a perfect locus of power, and yet still there was enough force to them to do what he had prohibited, so the joke was on Mitchell, Johnnie said, because although the waves disrobed her again and again, it was he who ended up losing his trunks.

  On the way home, Johnnie asked what was that up on the hill, meaning the ruins of a colonial church, destroyed by a hurricane in the Sixties. Can we stop and walk up, she asked, and Mitchell said sure, why not, it was a pretty place, with an always breezy view of one of the roughest stretches of coastline on the island. He parked off the road and they followed a goat path up the knoll, Mitchell scanning the land, wondering where the old plantation had been, and who had walked before them up this hill to worship. Johnnie began stopping to pluck shards of Indian pottery out of the furrow of the path, pocketing the fragments that held a design. The church was roofless and had not been used in many years, but as they came up the rise they began to hear singing, and when they approached the chapel entrance and peered in beyond the threshold, they saw a nun with her back turned to them, a group of children who sat on the larger stones in a pile of rubble, the sister leading them in hymn as the sun lowered behind the mountains and the last full light of the day to reach inside the church lifted off their faces. It was one of the most peaceful, cohering scenes he had ever chanced to witness, so infused with timelessness and serenity that it allayed, finally, something inside of him he sensed but could not reach, a deep disturbance at his core that he could not name or describe or associate with anything happening around him, not even Johnnie. “Let’s leave them alone,” he whispered to her; she nodded, kissing the side of his face, whispering back to him if he thought God was still here in the desecrated church, and if not who were the children singing to. The memory of God? They moved away from the entrance, down the bricked portico, and when they passed the vestry, the only part of the ruin still roofed, bats flew out, small flapping blurs of being, scattering into the onset of dusk. For a moment they stood and watched the eastern rim of the ocean cool and harden, and then went back to Howard Bay, and from there to town for dinner, making good use of the Rover, eating in a centuries-old yellowstone building that had once housed the offices of the West Indian Trading Company, the dining room divided by stonework arches, the heaviness of the past mellowed by linen tablecloths, underlighting, good bread and wine, a clientele who appreciated subtleties enough to pay for them, a kitchen that served French Creole. They both ordered lobster, split down the middle and grilled. At many of the tables, Mitchell recognized familiar personalities from the government, and for a while he eavesdropped on a pair of couples sitting nearby, where the evening’s specialty seemed to be contempt, dished out cold upon the reputations of the island’s growing corps of soothsayers predicting a civil war. “And who de hell goin fight it?” one man said to the other. They chupsed in unison. They chupsed and chupsed and chupsed, ridiculing the very notion of Catherinians caring enough about anything to kill one another in an organized fashion. They would all choke to death on the smoke first.

  Mitchell warned they had to make it an early night, but after dinner he went ahead and took Johnnie up above the city, not spelling it out to himself what he had in mind until they were all the way atop Mount Archer and he was pulling off the road to park at the toolshed disco that Josephine had taken him to the week before. Johnnie said she didn’t know he liked places like this, so raw and proletarian and funky, and he had to say, proletarian? are you kidding? Holding onto one another, they drank rum, smoked the reefer being thumbed around, and danced. Mitchell got bombed, higher than he intended, and they stayed longer than they should have, sweating through their clothes, pressed into each other, rocking to the music without moving their feet, eyes half-lidded, spinning. He couldn’t explain this, his timing, why he did it, but, nuzzling her, he mumbled a phrase that suddenly resurfaced in his mind. Te amo.

  “What?” Johnnie said, jerking awake in his arms. “What did you just say?”

  “Te amo. You were saying it the other night, out on the veranda.”

  “I don’t remember.” Her eyes were steely, she looked at him as if to say, what are you trying to do? Underneath his hands he could feel her muscles twitching. Not with alarm though. She wasn’t alarmed. It was more like she was all there, all at once, full-sized, every part of her, every desire, every danger, every strength and weakness, all that must be reckoned with.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I love you. My husband used to say it, the only time he spoke Spanish to me. It’s unsettling, to say the least, hearing it come from your mouth.”

  “You ripped him off, didn’t you?”

  Her eyes were locked on his, unnerving in their concentration, but also shining; if this was a game it intrigued her, it stimulated. “What do you think,” she said. “I tried to tell you on the ferry but you stopped me.”

  “What did he do about it? Is he after you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. In a very evil way it pleased him, what I did. He didn’t punish me directly, he punished someone close to me, as if to say, every time you fuck me over, you’re hurting the ones you love. I’ll talk about it if you want but I don’t want to. I want to go home. I want you to make love to me.” Her voice dropped to its lowest register. “I want you to do whatever you want to me.”

  She was changing him: he was beginning to see how. It attracted a devil in him, for them to be in this place, having this conversation, about these things, in this tone, to see her lit up by both her ability to survive and her compulsion to self-destruct. What did it mean, when a woman told you, you can do whatever you want to me? What was she talking about? There’s less, he thought, to total control than meets the eye, and for one moment he accepted the pleasure this knowledge brought. Meaning, for one moment, until he shook himself out of the spell, he was Bobby Fernandez. It was, if he had stopped to understand it, the most incriminating moment of his life.

  Saturday at dawn, he argued with her about footgear—she intended to wear her sandals, he insisted she take along her tennis shoes—and the last thing she did before they left the house was to fill a bowl with kibble, leaving it, despite his mutterings to forget the cat, out on the front stoop for Pelé.

  Chapter 29

  He had been “detained,” as they called it in the GIS press release, on Saturday, April 16—found up north in the jungle and taken into custody. His name never appeared on any list, there was no need for that. Too much attention could breed its own emptiness and anonymity and seem as bad as too little, though not as bad as none at all.

  The friends of golf were on the island by the following Monday, a day and a half later, that’s all the time it took once they had been attracted by the novelty of Mitchell Wilson. There were four of them, then three, then only two, not counting on the first day legal counsel and the PC-CD, standing for country director, Sally’s administrator who also happened to b
e Archibol’s brother-in-law, and from the start, everybody wanted to make it clear they were his friends. Plus the consul, flown in from the regional embassy in Barbados, whom he saw and spoke with only once during the three days the friends convened—the time it took for the consul to exhaust his efforts to secure Wilson’s immediate (albeit conditional) release. Failing then to reach an arrangement, the consul lobbied for some semblance of due process, charges quietly filed somewhere other than on the streets and in the government-controlled press and given the chance to be appropriately addressed.

  But no one, including the embassy, unofficially of course, wanted to see Mitchell Wilson anywhere but where he was, for the time being. Which he accepted, so far. He was outside the process, but nobody could actually say he wasn’t cooperating—all he was doing was seeing past their questions to other questions, the ones nobody asked, and they thought perhaps he was hiding things.

  Being an embarrassment though to either government was no embarrassment at all, nor was he moved by the accusation that he was, absurdly, an enemy of the people. He had become everything to everybody, equally useful to opposing points of view, the infant split down the middle by arrogance. Off the record, the embassy scrambled to come up with a position on him they could best adapt to their own interests, once they had identified what those were. St. Catherine was a surprise—what had they missed, where was the flea collar on this dog? Wilson was a crash course in what was going on. There was no consensus about which side they were on; these days you couldn’t really depend on one. There were interests within interests, so it was no small chore figuring out whether to sacrifice or defend him or simply pretend he wasn’t there, so that policy might be furthered, and perhaps one or another principles upheld.

  Who did they want him to be was just another one of those questions. The embassy would neither confirm nor deny who he was, who he wasn’t, who he was supposed to be—and that was for the record.

  His first morning among the friends was pro forma. Perhaps because of the cast on his right wrist, no one offered to shake his hand, not that he took it personally. They met in a closed room, around two long blond wooden tables placed end to end, somewhere inside the administrative wing of Fort Gregory. His guards had led him down vaulted underground passageways, then up four right-turning flights of steps, the stones worn smooth in the center from many generations of boots. The guards—now everybody on the police force was wearing camouflage fatigues, though the color of berets differed, depending on loyalties—remained outside the door. He’d been through this Q&A again and again with the National Police, two different sets, one antagonistic, one solicitous and patronizing. Then the factions switched roles after he was brought down out of the mountains where he had been looking for Isaac, and jailed.

  There was a free-standing, old-fashioned fan that no one could make work. An earthy smell of mortar and dankness from the walls. The view out the windows was back down toward the harbor and town, spectacular, making Mitchell think Fort Gregory had a viable future as a resort. Except for the lawyer—barrister—and Grambling, Archibol’s slouching brother-in-law, they introduced themselves namelessly. Bill Smith, Jim Grey, what’s the difference? He stopped listening and named them himself. Ben, Jack, Arnold, Sam. Sam, like the barrister and country director, was black. The back channels were becoming equal opportunity; maybe in other circumstances he’d regard this as progress. The white men in the room had what his mother would call nice hair.

  He sat down opposite them. He had no plans, he was hostage to somebody else’s, at this point. They offered him cigarettes and that was how he started smoking again. If he put his nose to his cast he could smell the rancidness inside like a dead animal. Legal counsel had gold fillings and a Bajan accent; he was the only one wearing a necktie, something Ivy League, burgundy, with tiny sailboats. He asked if Mitchell was being mistreated, or required medical attention. Mitchell smiled tightly and shook his head. The cigarette had made him high.

  “What we wish to do this morning,” the lawyer said, opening his briefcase and holding up a folder bound with a dark blue strip of ribbon, “is have you verify this statement you made to the National Police on—” He removed a clip of papers, recited date and place, pushed a three-page handwritten document across the table toward Mitchell, blotting up the sweat from the glass of water placed there beforehand. Ink ran like black smoke out of the bottom line of words.

  “Then we’d like to depose you—”

  He must have made a face.

  “—take your deposition, that is, have you elaborate certain areas of interest, ask you some questions for the record. The Collymore trial is all I’m concerned with, at present. These other gentlemen I believe have questions of their own.”

  “All right.”

  “So if you could, sir, reread the statement and confirm that it is true and accurate of the facts. To the best of your knowledge.”

  “All right.”

  His fingers were flat on the table, the pages in between. They looked at him, their eyes serious, waiting for him to drop his head and begin.

  “Is this a problem? You’re not going to have trouble doing this, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Take your time. We understand.”

  He shrugged, rubbing a dry corner of the coarse, blue-ruled paper between his fingers. Each of his sentences had been given its own line or lines, as if he had recited an epic poem to the police.

  “Out loud, if you don’t mind. So it will be fresh for all of us.”

  He drank half the glass of water and started.

  Shortly after dawn Saturday April ninth I left my house in Howard Bay.

  I was driving a government Land Rover and I was accompanied, by my house guest, Johanna Woods, who has since left the island.

  We went to Rosehill Plantation to pick up three friends—Tillman Hyde, Adrian Roberts, and Sally Jorgensen—who planned to hike with us to the top of Mount Soufrière.

  Sally Jorgensen had also asked me to make a short detour to the village of Retreat for the purpose of visiting a woman with a child who could possibly benefit from enrollment in Sally’s school.

  We stopped at the checkpoint outside of the town of Camell where our travel pass was inspected by the officer on duty.

  I don’t remember his name.

  He refused to return the pass to me but said we could go on.

  He gave us no advice or warning about any danger of any type reported in the North Windward District, or of any law enforcement operations in process in the vicinity of Mount Soufrière.

  Around 9:15 we arrived in Retreat and asked someone where we could find a woman named Jolene, who was either the aunt or mother of the child.

  We were given directions to a house where Jolene was and went there.

  Sally went inside while the rest of us remained in the vehicle.

  We heard a loud argument, then Sally screamed my name.

  Tillman and I went inside to help Sally.

  The child’s father was pointing a rifle at Sally.

  I told him to calm down, nobody was going to take his child away.

  He said he was going to kill Jolene and the child.

  I put my arm around Sally and said This is my wife, there’s been a mistake.

  He accepted my explanation and we left.

  Sally was worried for the woman’s safety and so we went to find a policeman.

  We had to go to Belair, the next village, and drive him back with us to Jolene’s.

  The husband had run away and Sally convinced Jolene to go back to Queenstown with her baby.

  Her mother-in-law who had been taking care of the child refused to leave and cursed Sally and Jolene.

  Jolene and her son sat in the carry-all space in the back of the Rover.

  We took the policeman back to Belair who said he would talk to Jolene’s husband.

  We then discussed among ourselves whether to continue with our plan to hike Soufrière or go directly back to Queenstown.
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  We decided not to change our plans since Adrian Roberts was scheduled to leave the island the next afternoon and this was her only chance to see Soufrière.

  Sally especially insisted we do this and said she preferred to keep the woman and child company while we were on the mountain.

  We drove back south several miles to the turnoff and then to the end of the track to the trailhead.

  There were three other Land Rovers already parked at the turnaround.

  I recognized one as the vehicle assigned to the forest ranger Godfred Ballantyne.

  The other two Rovers had no markings but bore NPF license tags.

  I did not think anything of this since the police force has a youth program with organized outings, or off-duty personnel might have come with their families.

  I had no reason to believe otherwise.

  We were looking forward to our expedition.

  Since we were getting a late start I suggested we hike at a fast pace if we were to reach the summit and come back down before nightfall.

  Jolene got out of the Rover with the child and she strongly insisted Sally walk up Soufrière with her friends or she would be very unhappy for ruining Sally’s holiday.

  Jolene sat down in the grass and began making a palm frond doll for her child and refused to speak or look at Sally.

  I saw how Jolene looked at us and thought she had changed her mind about Queenstown and I was right because when we came back down off the mountain Jolene and the child were gone.

  Sally reluctantly agreed to come with us after making Jolene promise she would stay by the Rover.

  We started up the path which was a little muddy.

  I was in the lead.

  After twenty minutes I stopped to wait for the others at a fork in the trail.

  Tillman Hyde and Adrian Roberts came first, then Sally Jorgensen and Johanna Woods a few minutes behind.

  I told them they should try to keep up and we started out again.

  An hour later I halted at the waterfall which is about one third of the way up to the crater.