by Jack Gantos
Since I was trying so hard to make books lead my life, I didn’t want to read them and then just put them back on the shelf and say, “good book,” as if I was patting a good dog. I wanted books to change me, and I wanted to write books that would change others.
I was still trying to find something significant to write about and so, like all those political writers, I realized the only thing for me to do would be to jump right into the middle of the racial tension and use my wits. I remembered reading a quote from a newspaper journalist that stuck with me: “Where there is blood, there is ink.”
I thought I’d put that quote to work. I got my notebook and a pen and ventured down to the Black Revolutionary Party headquarters to see if I could interview any of the leaders. There were about twenty black guys sitting under fluorescent lights in an old warehouse. They were playing cards and drinking rum. The walls were covered with Black Power posters, pictures of Malcolm X, and green, red, and black maps of Africa. When I walked in, all heads turned toward me. It wasn’t quite like stepping into a military ambush, or being on the front lines in Spain, or witnessing the aftermath of an atomic bomb, but the atmosphere around me was definitely hostile.
There was a man in the back sitting at a desk. I assumed he was the leader. He had an Afro-pick stuck in his ball of black hair and he was talking loudly to someone on the telephone. When he saw me he abruptly hung up and gave me a long, studied look.
“What you want, white boy?”
That question sure cut to the chase and everyone watched to see how I’d take it.
There was no going back. “I’m looking to interview someone about the race relations,” I replied. “They seem pretty bad to me, and I want to know more.”
“What’s there more to know than what you can see with your own eyes?” the man shot back. “The white people own the island and the black people work it like wage slaves.”
That brought loud agreements from the other men, but they seemed to laugh and enjoy the situation more than be angry. For the moment, the oddness of my showing up was funnier than it was confrontational. That was a relief, but I wasn’t sure how far I could keep going.
“I guess I want to know what you are going to do about it. I mean, how are you going to go about getting your share?”
“See,” the man said, pointing at me, and looking to the other men in the room as if he were a preacher, “see, this question goes directly to the heart of the matter. Because we don’t want a share of what we own, we want all of what we own. And that is the issue that cannot be solved with the white man unless we come to blows.”
I stood still, and felt instantly trapped inside a stage play of rehearsed hostility. I looked from side to side as much as I dared. The anger was so sudden I was afraid to make eye contact with anyone for fear they might make something personal of it. And I couldn’t tell if my courage had evaporated or if it was common sense that told me to get out of there, so I just asked, “Well, do you have a book I can read, or some material that will explain what your goals are? And then I can understand it all a bit more, and we can talk about it later?”
“What’s to understand?” a man sitting to one side asked. “He already told you: the island belongs to the black man, so the black man is going to take what is his and be done with it. We don’t need to make it more clear than that.”
“Thank you,” I said, and like some cub reporter I began to scribble a few words down on a small pad of paper. My hand was shaking badly.
“Besides,” the first cut in, “how can we trust you?”
I didn’t answer.
But another man did. “Give him a gun,” he suggested. “Give him a gun and let him go out there and shoot a white man dead. Then we’ll trust him.”
I started to back away.
“Yeah. Give him a gun. If he’s on our side, let him show it.”
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Then here’s some advice,” the same man continued, pointing a finger as black as the barrel of a gun at me. “Don’t be coming in here as if you can play with the big boys. Revolution is serious business. You just turn your white ass around and go back to the white bar you come from and drink a cold white man’s beer while you can because as the song say, ‘When the revolution comes, Hertz is not going to put you in the driver’s seat.’”
I knew it, too. “Okay,” I said, turned around and fixed my eyes on the door, and as I walked toward it, I hoped I would make it. And when I did make it, I walked quickly to my car and took off with both hands on the wheel to keep them steady. I drove directly to the all-white bar and ordered a drink. I didn’t know what to do next so I went out back and smoked a joint, then returned and ordered another drink. And another. I should have taken out my journal and written about what had happened. But I was so afraid of the incident I ran from it rather than write it down. Somehow, I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust that my own words would make a difference to anyone, black or white—even if the ink was blood red.
A few nights later Rik stopped by the warehouse. My dad was gone and I guess that was the moment he knew he could talk to me about his big plans. He wanted to pack the crate and have me screw it together, as he didn’t have a screw gun. Before we got busy he pulled out a hash pipe and a piece of hash the size of a candy bar.
“You mind?” he asked.
“Fire it up,” I said.
He cut off a gram and lit the pipe. He took a big hit and passed it to me. We went on like this, loudly inhaling and exhaling, until the pipe was finished.
He went to his car and returned with a stack of square plastic containers about the size of cigar boxes. The edges were sealed with silver duct tape. We both knew they were filled with hash. What else could it be? But I didn’t say anything. He slipped them into the false bottom, wedged them tightly together with wadded-up newspaper, then I screwed down the next layer of plywood. That was it. He didn’t have anything else to send in the rest of the three-foot-square crate.
“Seems odd to ship an empty box,” I ventured, before screwing down the top.
“Yeah,” he said.
I looked around the warehouse for some heavy items. We threw in a bag of concrete, some broken pieces of cast-iron garden statuary, and a twenty-pound ingot of hard tar, then carried it to his trunk. It wouldn’t fit all the way in.
I went to get some twine to tie the trunk lid down, and when I returned he said, “I’m a little low on bread, but I could pay you in hash if that would work for you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’ll work for me.” Since I wasn’t paid anything from my dad, getting paid in hash was a good deal. Besides getting off the island, it was the only other thing I wanted.
He snapped the bar of hash in half and gave me some. It must have been about two ounces.
Just before he pulled away he said, “By the way, if you see a sailboat with red sails pull into the harbor, give me a call.” He told me the name of his hotel.
“Sure,” I replied. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
As soon as he left I made a pipe out of some plumbing fittings and aluminum flashing. I got so high I passed out in the warehouse and slept on a sheet of packing foam.
A couple of days later I looked down at the harbor from our hillside house. There was a sailboat with rusty red sails reefed around the booms of the fore and aft masts. A red jib was set and the skipper was carefully trying to steer it toward the dock. The boat looked to be about fifty feet long, and every few minutes the skipper had to let go of the wheel at the stern, then dash to the jib to make an adjustment, then dash back to the wheel, then back to the jib. It was obviously a job for two men, and it was equally obvious that he was by himself. As the boat slowly picked its way through the moored yachts, I thought of Rik. Then, just before I went inside to call him on the phone, I took one more glance down at the boat and watched as it drifted head-on into the dock at the Hotel on the Cay. I could hear the faint thud as the bow hit the pilings.
After work I
met Rik at the dock. We got in a dinghy and rowed out to the boat. Beaver was painted across the stern. It was a sixty-foot gaff-rigged ketch with a wide beam—a real tub—but as I stood on deck it felt solid against the harbor chop. We were silently met by a tall well-tanned man wearing cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. He was British, and his name was Hamilton. I guessed he was forty years old, maybe fifty. He had a full beard, as bushy as a giant sea sponge, and intense blue eyes. He stood as still and meditative as a Greek Orthodox apostle. He didn’t say a word, and as he looked me over, top to bottom, I felt like I’d been rubbed with sandpaper.
“We have a proposal to make,” Rik said. I looked at Hamilton. He pursed his full lips and nodded.
“First,” Rik continued, “before we get into the particulars, do you think you could help us sail this boat to New York, like, leave this week? And take, say, six weeks to deliver it?”
The thought of it hooked me right away and I was ready to push off immediately. That night, if necessary. With so much around me going the wrong way, I figured the boat was my exit. Plus, I’d end up in New York, where all the writers ended up.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I can do that.”
“Then here’s the deal. But if you don’t take it, you can’t say a word to anyone.”
“Okay,” I said, glancing at Hamilton, who looked even more morose as he leaned over me.
“We have two thousand pounds of hash buried somewhere,” Rik said. He pointed toward the ocean. “I need to fly to New York and arrange the deals, and we need someone, you, to help Hamilton sail the boat to Manhattan, where I’ll be waiting. Your job is just to get the boat there, and for that you get ten thousand dollars. Cash. Of course, we can’t pay you until we’ve made some deals, so you might have to stick around and help out a bit.”
All I heard was the number—ten thousand dollars, cash. This was the jackpot. The answer I was looking for. My exit from St. Croix and my entrance to whatever good school would have me. I didn’t think of the danger involved with breaking the law. I didn’t even consider that I had no idea how to sail a large boat, or that Hamilton might kill me and dump my body off the coast of New Jersey—that anything bad could possibly happen. I just saw my exit from the island and entrance to my future, and it was glorious and good and calling me and there was no way I was going to get a better offer in a lifetime of sitting on St. Croix. And even if I had a good job it would take me years to save that kind of money. But now I could do it in six weeks and all for little work and lots of adventurous fun. I was ready. My heart was pounding.
“Count me in,” I said, smiling. “I’ll go home and start packing.”
“Not a word to anyone about the cargo,” Hamilton finally said with his eyes bearing down on me. “No bragging to your friends. No loose talk. No nothing.”
“Not a word,” I replied earnestly. “I can keep a secret. You can trust me.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he said, with some reluctance.
After that, there wasn’t much to say. I was so anxious to get going I swam to shore and drove my car up the steep unpaved road to our house. All the way up I kept saying to myself, “Now, settle down and think. Think about what you are doing. Be careful. Think about what you are risking.” But I wasn’t answering myself. I was so excited I knew I wasn’t weighing the danger. I was ecstatic. I felt invulnerable. When I reached the top of the hill I looked down at the harbor. There was the sailboat floating on the blue water like a toy. My ship had come in, and I was ready to play.
The next day I told my mom and dad I’d been offered a sailing job, and had taken it and that I might be moving to New York.
“But you just got here,” my mom said, disappointed.
“I can’t blame you,” Dad said. “If I could afford it, I’d get off this rock, too. Maybe the last crate I make will be my own—and hopefully it won’t be a coffin.” I hoped so, too.
I felt bad for him, but I had to go. Two days later he came down to the boat with me to look it over, and make sure it was seaworthy. He had been in the navy. I set it up in advance for Hamilton not to be there and to just leave a note saying he was grocery shopping. I hadn’t told Dad that Rik was involved. He already had him pegged, and I just knew if he laid eyes on Hamilton he’d peg him, too, and never let me go.
We spent about an hour looking over every square inch of the boat. I could tell Dad was on to something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Finally he said, “Well, I guess this tub is shipshape.” Then he looked me in the eye. “Is this on the up-and-up?” he asked.
“You bet,” I replied.
“Then smooth sailing, sailor,” he said, and slapped me on the back. “My only regret is that I’m not going with you.”
I’m so glad he didn’t.
2 / bon voyage
Before Hamilton and I set out on the final journey we took several practice voyages, and each one was disastrous in regard to seamanship and companionship. If I hadn’t been so spellbound by the thought of ten thousand dollars in cash, I would have fled with the rats the moment the rust-colored sails were hoisted, because it was obvious that we didn’t so much arrive at our destinations as aim and crash into them like kamikaze yachtsmen.
On our first practice run we couldn’t even get out of the harbor without shaming ourselves in front of the entire boating community. We were in high spirits when we set off so we had the Beaver in full sail—the main and mizzen and jib smartly trimmed for all to see as we lumbered toward the channel through the reef which outlined the harbor. I was down in the main cabin opening a couple of cold beers for a mid-morning toast when a crash and a sudden pitch to starboard had me panicked. I could hear the brittle staghorn coral snapping off against our bow as the sail dragged us up and onto a reef. I dropped the beers and scrambled up the ladder to the main deck. Instead of steering between the port and starboard buoys marking the deep channel through the reef, Hamilton steered to the outside of the port marker. Now he stood at the wheel and scowled at me as if I had charted the course. “Don’t just stand there,” he barked, “lower the sails!” I hurried to get them down before we did any further damage to the hull. For all I knew we would sink. As I lowered the main, the keel struck a solid wall of coral heads and we heaved forward and came to a grinding stop. I flopped awkwardly onto the deck.
“Idiot!” Hamilton shouted. “Get up. You’re making a fool of us.”
“Don’t blame me!” I snapped.
“Don’t you dare talk back to the captain!” he snapped. “Now get to work.” Then he went below and didn’t return.
“Remember the money,” I muttered angrily to myself. “The money. The money.”
While I secured the sails I began to realize why he ducked out of sight. Boats passed out of the harbor and into the harbor and each one slowed to remark on my sailing gaffe and give me advice. It was clear that we had to sit there like wooden carrion until, if we were lucky, high tide would float us off. Four hours later, it did. Hamilton returned from below and I raised the sails.
“Take the wheel,” Hamilton ordered, “and head for the Buck Island beach. I’m going to check the hull.”
Buck Island was a small island just off the northeast coast of St. Croix. Before the racial trouble started, hundreds of tourists sunbathed there, and it was especially popular with scuba divers, who could follow an underwater park trail through the coral on the east side. Now, it was mostly deserted.
I aimed for the sandy west side. The wind was behind me and the mainsail was full out. The boat cruised along. Down below I could hear Hamilton knocking about, lifting boards and looking for leaks. It occurred to me that I knew nothing about survival at sea. The only commonsense facts I knew were to get in a life raft, have protection from the sun and plenty of fresh water, and drink your own urine when you run out of fresh water because saltwater will certainly kill you. My father had thought to teach me this after he had been in a sailing accident and stranded on a life raft for two days.
When Hamil
ton emerged he said the hull was fine, then checked the trim of the sails. He frowned at me as he pulled the main in a bit and tightened the jib. I just kept moving the wheel a little to the left and a little to the right, pretending that my small adjustments actually made a difference.
Hamilton stretched out on the deck and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get there,” he said.
I just stared at the huge mainsail and kept the wind behind us. I didn’t want it to start luffing or Hamilton would hop up and get after me. In the few days we had spent outfitting the Beaver—checking the ropes, repairing sails, sealing the deck—he treated me like Billy Budd. I couldn’t do anything right, and he just glowered at me like Claggart when I made a stupid mistake. I was thinking about what it was going to be like spending a month on board with only him when suddenly I noticed we were rapidly closing in on the island, and we were still under full sail.
“Hamilton!” I shouted. “Get up.” I spun the wheel hard to port and began to lower the main. But it was too late. Our momentum took us directly toward the beach. We ran aground, softly, onto the sand. Only the bow was stuck, like a knife in a rum cake. A few locals ran toward us, laughing and shaking their heads in disbelief. We were the Keystone Kops of the sea. I waved back to them and grinned.
Hamilton was furious. “This is an outrage!” he said. “You’ve made a fool of us again!”
“Then keelhaul me!” I barked back.
“Don’t tempt me,” Hamilton said coldly. “Keelhauling is still legal in the British navy.” Then he ducked down the hatch and in a minute the motor started and he shifted the boat into reverse. The sea beneath our stern bubbled up but the screw didn’t generate enough torque to pull us out. Finally, one of the idle tourist boats edged up alongside our stern and the captain tossed me a lanyard. I tied it to a cleat and he towed us off the beach.
“Thanks,” I shouted when we had been set loose. I untied the lanyard and let it drop to the water.
“Anytime,” the skipper called back, and I could make out his sly smile as he deftly coiled the rope.
