Let Them Eat Tea

by Coleman Maskell

  Chapter 7 - Setting Off

  The sun is not yet visible on the horizon, but its light and warmth have already begun to spill out over St. Lucy. Early morning sounds of fishing boats and fishermen can be heard in the distance. The air is clear and clean, washed by a light breeze from the ocean.

  Zeph parks his boxy blue compact car in front of Buddy's lab. He and Zoe Jalissa get out slowly and stretch themselves like cats. Zeph takes a few quick steps across the sidewalk and taps out a rhythmic knock on the closed door of Baldwin's lab. "You in there?" he calls out. "Daylight is upon us."

  Annetka opens Baldwin's front door halfway and leans out from behind it, blonde hair hanging loose, smiling a morning person smile. "We're almost ready," she says, gesturing for the two newcomers to enter the room. "Buddy is just putting together a few things to bring. Sample jars and what not." She yawns and stretches as they walk into the room. "Hope you had an early breakfast," she adds.

  "We did," Zeph answers for both of them. "Miss Zoe Jalissa Zamora ate two entire miniature pancakes, and about an ounce of pineapple banana salad."

  "Well," Zoe Jalissa retorts, "Dr. Zephram Horatio Yates the Third ate five scrambled eggs. Yes, five. He drank his fruit salad as a smoothie. A large smoothie. He also had pancakes, but definitely not miniature. And some kind of fried potatoes I didn't recognize. I think it's an American thing."

  "I am not the third Zephram Yates," he corrects her as usual, deflecting the topic from his breakfast appetite. "My father is named Zeke Hiram Yates. Grandpa was Zebediah Henry Yates. I am the third Z.H., not the third Zeph. There's only ONE Zeph." So saying, he kisses her on the forehead. "One Zeph," he repeats. "One." He looks her in the eye, sternly but lovingly.

  "One Zeph who likes to eat big breakfasts," she teases, patting his stomach playfully and pulling away, then turning back to look into his eyes and flash a quick Mona Lisa smile.

  Baldwin walks out from another room with a large picnic basket into which he is packing equipment as he walks. He picks up a portable microscope and sets it in carefully. A box of sterile disposable gloves goes in next.

  "We certainly won't be eating a big lunch," Zeph adds, speaking to his girlfriend, feeling compelled to justify the current allocation of the picnic basket.

  "You don't want to eat on the island," Buddy states what he thinks should be obvious. "There could be contamination. It's just a precaution." He doesn't know what to expect, so he wants to be prepared for the worst. He wonders to himself whether he wishes he owned a gun.

  The two scientists and their girlfriends are preparing to go to the small nearby island where the infected ants and the native healer are said to reside, a place they have gradually fallen into calling Witch Doctor island. Jalissa disapproves of the nickname, but it rolls off their tongues anyway. The native residents of St. Lucy call it Crazy Man Island, and that isn't much better. If it has an official name, nobody seems to know it. The girlfriends will double as translators and indigenous guides. The trip is both a date and an expedition.

  "Okay, that's everything, I think," Baldwin announces. Looking around the room one last time, he turns toward the door.

  Annetka picks up a stack of neatly folded blankets and towels in one arm, and in the other a beach bag containing sunscreen, sunblock, hair brushes and ties, and similar beach paraphernalia.

  Zeph picks up two big magnifying lenses and a box of matches and drops them into the equipment basket.

  Jalissa, near the front door, yawns and stretches again, letting her outstretched hand settle on the doorknob. She opens the door. Bright morning light streams in. She lowers big dark sunglasses from her head to cover her eyes.

  The group adjourns to the car Zeph left parked at the curb, which has just enough remaining room in the rear compartment to put in the picnic basket, with the beach bag by its side and the blankets on top.

  "Don't forget we have to pick up Jack," Zoe Jalissa reminds Zeph as he starts the car.

  "Forget? I'm counting on leaving the car in his driveway while we're gone."

  They take off toward the harbor, stopping three blocks short of the waterfront.

  Her brother Jack lives in a small beach house, traditional but with modern upgrades. In other climes it might be called a cabin or a cottage, or maybe a bungalow. Here it's just a house.

  Zeph parks in the driveway and puts on the hand brake. They all pile out of the car and in through the front door of the house, straight into the main room, knocking on the open door as they pass. Jalissa taps out a Caribbean tune with both hands on the door and the dining table, then ambles over to the sink and starts washing up the breakfast dishes. Zeph stares in amazement.

  "I know," Baldwin says when Zeph looks at him. "What girl in America ... ?"

  Zeph laughs and shrugs.

  Jack and a friend are sprawled out on a sofa in front of a television, watching a rerun of a recent soccer game. It's a fairly big sofa, but they make it look small. They give no immediate indication of noticing the company. Someone scores in the game, and a cheer rises from the stadium crowd. Jack stands up to greet his sister's troupe. His head comes close enough to the low ceiling that he has to bob around the light fixture to approach them.

  "My brother Jack," Zoe introduces him with an undulating two handed flourish, turning her back on the sink and leaning back against the counter.

  Jack doesn't smile, but he doesn't look standoffish either. His expression is more stoic than anything else. His eyes size up the guests. Muscular and good-looking with high cheekbones, slightly inset eyes, and a strong chin, he looks Samoan or Hawaiian but is in reality a mix of Irish, Norwegian, Native American, Carib, and Afro-Caribbean, like his sister.

  "Dr. Yates and I have met," he says with a nod, eyes locking on Zeph.

  "Zeph," Zeph answers.

  "Yeah, Zeph," Jack agrees. Releasing his visual grip on his sister's boyfriend, Jack turns to look at the other two new arrivals. "This must be Dr. Baldwin with Anna?" he inquires with an even voice, looking back and forth between the two.

  "Annetka," she corrects Jack half-heartedly, following Zeph's lead to show support for his position. In fact she doesn't much care what modifications people impose on her first name. People get away with calling her any nickname that starts with Ann or even contains the syllable Ann in a prominent position.

  "Yes, this is my boyfriend Buddy," Annetka continues, introducing Baldwin to the two young men.

  Baldwin realizes he must have given an involuntary start at hearing the spontaneous recognition of what he hoped was becoming their relationship, because the next thing he notices is that she winks at him and smiles fleetingly before turning back to continue speaking. He feels a rush of warmth on his face as he blushes slightly, and he hopes it isn't as noticeable as it feels.

  "Dr. Albert Bedwin Baldwin," she continues. "Biochemist, lately of the NIH in the United States, now employed by the sovereign government of the island of St. Lucy, currently working on prevention of, and treatment for, the recent outbreak of sudden onset insanity in the islands. Setting out on a scientific expedition to retrieve biological specimens of the giant antler ants on Crazy Man island." She ends the announcement with a self-conscious smile and a head turn accompanied by a shoulder shrug that sends both arms into an outflung gesture reminiscent of lifting an invisible ballgown skirt in a curtsy. Annetka is graceful and easygoing by any rational standard, but compared to Zoe Jalissa she seems stiff and British. At the moment she feels that awkwardness acutely and wonders why.

  "Buddy," Baldwin says, offering an extended hand, locking eyes with Jack. "So you don't like for your sister to go off-island without a bodyguard, I hear."

  "That's right," Jack answers, in a tone that says "we understand each other." He accepts the outstretched hand with a traditional European-American business handshake. Resourceful and confident, without any natural propensity to introspection, the young man assumes himsel
f invulnerable enough to fill the bodyguard role perfectly. No one in the room expresses any doubt.

  "Good. I don't own a gun," Buddy agrees to the relationship.

  For answer Jack nods slightly toward a handgun and ammunition on an end table by the sofa, near the TV. "Snake does," he says, clarifying the provenance of the weapons.

 

  For himself Jack picks up a knife and machete, fixing them to his belt. These are standard tools for the jungle, used to cut paths through overgrowth. Their utility as weapons is normally secondary.

  "They want to see the ants on Crazy Man Island," the sister repeats Annetka's announcement, in case Snake hasn't heard. "And maybe meet the old man."

  "But first we go swimming," Annetka interjects. "At North Beach. Then we look for the ants."

  Jack's friend Snake, actual name Franklyn Smith, jumps to his feet and punches the air, cheering a play on the recorded television game. Then he turns to face the others, putting on his more serious face and voicing acceptance. "Yah, mon, we be coming along with you there to that place now," he says. "Crazy Man island. L'Isle Barjot. Let's go."

  "L'Isle Barjot," Zoe repeats the forgotten name softly. Somehow it sounds less offensive in French. Zeph and Baldwin exchange a quick glance, with which they agree to adopt the new nomenclature.

  Snake stands a little taller than Jack. Like his friend he stands with a loose and limber posture. Both have bodies made slender and agile by years of martial arts and Caribbean dance. Though both are handsome athletic men, their features are very different. Jack has the mixed European Carib look of his sister, projecting the appearance of a more athletic, more suntanned, better looking version of a young Elvis. Snake is Afro-Caribbean, with smooth dark skin of a color and texture somewhere between well oiled walnut wood and expensive dark chocolate, and with the majestic bearing of an African Masai.

  Outwardly friendly and extroverted, Snake is loyal and affectionate to his friends. Despite his innate good nature, he can be lethally cold blooded and remorseless when a situation demands it. This, together with his lightning reflexes, has earned him the nickname Snake. It is said he can disarm an opponent by grabbing the knife or gun straight out of his hand, moving with the speed of a Cobra strike.

  Jack, by contrast with his close friend Franklyn, doesn't seem as friendly and outgoing. He has a Scandinavian reserve copied or inherited from his father's Norwegian father. Despite the surface difference in their demeanour, the two are very alike in their thinking and in their feelings. Jack's friends sometimes call him Jag, a shortened form of his childhood nickname Jaguar. The two young men have been inseparable friends since very early childhood, when they played together on the beach and were known in the neighborhood as Jaguar and the Doberman.

  Though both young men are babe magnets, Annetka doesn't find herself attracted to either of them. They're nice enough. They're good looking. They just aren't her type. She goes for the educated intellectual sort of man. Her affection, once given, is almost impossible for her to withdraw, so she needs a lot from the people she lets herself get close to. They have to be courageous, not just physically but intellectually so, willing to face not just new situations but also new ideas. Good character is an absolute prerequisite. A sense of humor is a big asset. To Annetka's mind, Jack seems to lack a sense of humor. She finds the jury to be still out on Snake's character. Because she is close to Zoe, she accepts both Jack and Snake as part of the team, but she hasn't formed a personal bond with either of them beyond that. Being naturally well mannered and considerate, she is always friendly toward them, but not overly friendly, because she doesn't want them to get the wrong idea. Since they're both babe magnets they accept the distance readily. They have plenty of other women to choose from at any time. For their part they seem to think of Annetka in a role something like that of a mascot.

  Snake straps on the shoulder holster pistol and an over-the-shoulder ammunition belt, then puts on a loose lightweight cotton jacket over the weapons. He also ties an athletic band around his head. It has wild colors and an aggressive pattern of skulls, crossbones, and a rising sun. "For effect," he explains with a laugh when they look at the headband. "Better to scare an enemy away than to fight."

  "Your face should be enough for that," Jack offers, deadpan.

  Maybe he does have a sense of humor, Annetka reflects. She still likes Baldwin better. It's just a chemistry thing, she supposes. She can't explain it otherwise.

  "Actually, bro, you walk in front then," Snake snaps back. "I want them scary things to see that face you got first."

  The group leave the little house and walk together the few blocks to the old wooden boat pier, carrying their beach supplies and the picnic basket of equipment.

  Jack jumps down from the pier onto the floor of a big outboard-motor boat that belongs to his father, a fisherman. Snake hands down the basket and other things, then helps the women down one at a time. The scientists climb down next. Snake follows last, casting off the rope. Jack adjusts the rudder and starts the motor, and they take off across the calm salt-smelling ocean, towards the island.

  Jack handles the boat with complete ease. His father's father had been a fisherman in Norway before coming to the islands during the European potato famine. It had not hit Norway especially hard, but it had hit. The grandfather had made a good life for himself and his family fishing in the Caribbean, and had brought up his son to do the same. The grandson Jack has been around boats and fishing all his life.

 

  The slight breeze from the forward motion of the boat skimming across the water caresses their skin softly and stirs the women's hair like a cosmetics ad.

  "I'm looking forward to swimming," Annetka reminds Baldwin. "You sure you don't have a swimsuit? North Beach is clothing optional."

  "I, uh, I found a swimsuit after all," he tells her. Realizing he wasn't quite ready for nude swimming, he had somehow made time to go out and buy the first swimsuit he could find.

  "Oh, I hope I remembered to bring mine," she teases, and he blushes again despite his efforts to fight it.

  Soon they arrive, pulling around to the top of the island, putting the boat into a small inlet on an empty beach. They all hop out of the boat into waist deep water, into gentle waves not more than a foot in height. Jack joins Snake at the bow of the boat, pulling the rope hand over hand, hauling the boat up onto the sand. A conveniently located palm tree serves as a post to tether the boat. The tethering isn't really necessary, but since the tree is there they use it.

  The two women spread out the blankets on the powdery warm white sand while the men carry the other things up onto the shore from the boat.

  Sitting on a blanket, Jalissa braids her long black hair and pins it in a coil on top of her head. She then stands up and takes off her shirt and slacks, revealing a very brief two piece turquoise swimsuit underneath. The bright, almost fluorescent greenish blue snippets of cloth contrast nicely with her deeply tanned skin. She sits back down on the blanket and leans back on her elbows, looking out over the water.

  Annetka stands up, leaning forward from the waist, brushing her long pale hair into a pony tail on top of her head. She wraps the tail around itself and pins it firmly in place, like a topknot. Then she lets her outer clothes fall onto the blanket, revealing an equally brief variegated green print bikini, with a pattern reminiscent of palm fronds.

  Snake removes his shoulder holster and ammunition band, wrapping them tightly into a towel to keep out the sand. He removes his shirt, but keeps on his Bermuda-style shorts.

  Jack lays out his machete and five various knives within easy reach, then covers them with a towel to hide them from sight. He puts the picnic basket on one end of the towel for a weight against the wind, and Snake's weapons package on the other end. Like Snake he takes great care with the situation of the equipment.

  Sitting on a blanket, Buddy removes his shirt, then takes off h
is trousers while still in a sitting position. He immediately rolls onto his stomach. Still unaccustomed to the very casual dress code in the islands, he feels embarrassed. Somehow he doubts that his swimsuit will completely hide the evidence of his feelings for Annetka, especially when she's wearing that little bikini.

  Snake and Jack sit at opposite ends of the little encampment, backs towards each other, each facing inland at a different angle, the weapons cache between them. No other soul can be seen on the beach. A light wind carries in the smell of clean sea air and stirs the tops of the palm trees. Seagulls dance in the crystal blue sky overhead. It is still fairly early morning, already warm, not yet hot.

  Zeph and Zoe Jalissa decide to go in for a swim. They walk off slowly across the warm sand, feeling its powdery warmth slip between their toes as they walk hand in hand toward the water.

  "Put some sun block on my back?" Annetka asks Baldwin as the other couple disappears into the water. He sits up and begins rubbing the cream onto her soft warm skin, feeling very happy about the decision to go to the beach today.

  Annetka rolls over slowly and he applies more sun block onto her abdomen. She closes her eyes and almost hums a drawn out form of the sound of the letter M, enjoying the moment. When he stops, she sits up and says "My turn."

  "Just on my back," he says, lying down on his stomach, arms crossed under his face. She applies the sun block like massage oil, rubbing his muscles like a trained masseuse. Not that he's ever been to a trained masseuse, but this feels really good, so he supposes a professional massage must be something similar. "Where'd you learn how to do that?" he asks, curious.

  "What, put on sun lotion?"

  "No, the massage thing. It's like you're giving me a back massage," he answers, thinking he shouldn't need to explain. In the same instant he realizes she's teasing him and she understands the question perfectly well.

  "Oh. I don't know. I thought everybody does that. Maybe it's different in America?"

  "Oh, America is a lot different all right," he answers. "Quite different."

  "Do you miss it at all? Your home in America?"

  "I'm feeling more and more at home on St. Lucy," he answers, lifting his head to look sideways into her eyes. "Anyway I didn't have one fixed home in America," he dismisses the question. "I worked several places. None of them as nice as here."

  "Family?" she asks, a little uncomprehending. "Parents?"

  "My parents live in Massachusetts. If I want to see them, I fly there on an airplane. That hasn't changed. If they want to come for a visit, they can come here just as easily as they can come anyplace else on a plane. In fact in the winter this is a lot better than most places. I might even see them more often than before."

  She half laughs, half giggles. "So I'll get to meet your parents soon, then?" she asks, half teasing, half serious.

  Zeph and Zoe come back up from the water and stretch out next to each other on a blanket, turning to lie on their backs facing up at the sun. Beads of saltwater dotting their skin begin to evaporate slowly but visibly.

  "What do you think, Zeph?" Baldwin asks. "Miss the USA much?"

  Zeph laughs. "What's to miss? The weather? The political corruption? The blizzards in winter and forest fires in summer?" He pauses and sits up, looking around. "The traffic tickets?" he continues after taking a refreshing deep breath of the clean sea air, realizing he's on a sudden roll. "The executions? The deportations? The crumbling infrastructure? The weather? Oh, I said that one already." He turns to Zoe Jalissa and asks seriously, "Do you realize it's February in America right now?"

  "It's February here, too, silly," she answers sweetly, and taps the tip of his nose with her forefinger. "It's February everyplace."

  "Do you know what snow is?"

  "I've read about it and seen it in movies," Zoe offers in reply.

  "You probably don't even know what cold is," Zeph observes.

  "That's not fair. We do have ice here, you know. Also Ice cream. Popsicles. Refrigerators and freezers."

  "Well, up in North America it's like a giant outdoor freezer about a third of the year, at least in the Northeast and Midwest. It has bad roads, unreliable electricity, corrupt police and officials, poorly funded public education, and virtually no public health care at all. Greed is a way of life. The USA has the biggest percentage of its population in prison of any country on Earth. I could go on," Zeph ends his short rant mercifully.

  "Oh, no, that's all right. No need to go on," his girfriend answers, laughing. "Sounds like an oversized Haiti," she adds, making the comparison sound like an insult both to the neighboring island and to the northern giant. "Only frozen sometimes. So, I'm getting the idea you don't miss it much, then."

  "I'm happy here," he says, turning to face her and look into her enormous deep brown eyes. "I'm happy here with you." He strokes her silky black hair and continues gazing into her eyes, and she feels almost as if her being merges into his for a moment.

  "Plus," Baldwin offers when his friend falls silent, "At least for the present, unless current international treaties change, we don't have to pay back our student loans anytime soon."

  Zeph laughs and nods. "That's right, we don't. We've escaped. We're finally free men. They don't extradite for debt."

  Annetka asks what a student loan is.

  "It's a form of indentured servitude," Baldwin answers, only half in jest.

  Zeph laughs again. "That's pretty much it. We're sort of like escaped slaves."

  "Like Mama's great grandmother," Zoe Jalissa suggests, making a connection with something she knows about. "When that Spanish slave ship wrecked on those rocks in the hurricane."

  "Similar indeed," her boyfriend answers. "More like your great grandmama's great grandmother probably, but otherwise quite similar. When did that happen? The event you're talking about? Sometime around 1800?" He pauses and shakes his head, imagining what the scene must have been like.

  "She must have been one tough lady to survive all that," he finally suggests, thinking what it must have been like for her, thrown into the sea by giant waves breaking over the deck, battered and tossed like a limp rag doll among the cracking timbers, finally being washed up onto a strange foreign beach in the darkness, hurricane winds howling and lashing at the wreckage all around her on the wet sand. He shakes his head again. She must have been terrified. "Imagine the woman," he continues, "Making her way to land in a hurricane, and then having to hide out in the jungle, not knowing whether her captors might still be hunting down the survivors, with no food or fresh water, no clothes, no tools or equipment, no maps, not knowing any local languages, not knowing what to expect from the local people when she runs into them." He pauses, focusing on the image. "Hunh," he finally grunts, shaking his head again as if to shake off the haunting scene. "Well, our servitude and conditions were nowhere near as extreme as what she went through," he says, "but in principal it's essentially the same type of thing, just a much tamer version of it."

  After a quiet interlude he decides to try to bring in more accuracy and perspective. "Actually, indentured servitude isn't strictly speaking slavery, because the servitude isn't open-ended. It has a fixed term, after which the victim is automatically freed. Also indentured servitude is linked to a specific debt," he tries to clarify. "A slave is well and truly stuck in the situation, like a prisoner condemned to life with no hope of parole, and no limitations on the power of the master. With a servant it's different. It's more like a contract. There are definite rules as to what the master can or cannot do to the worker. Eventually, through clearly spelled out services, the servant pays off the debt and gains freedom. The trickiest part is in how long it takes to pay off the debt. In the case of American student loans, for a lot of people it takes half a lifetime to work free of the debt."

  Another quiet moment falls on the group, the silence punctuated only by the breaking waves and the intermittent seagull cries.
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  "Also, student loan servants have it better than most indentured servants because we aren't manual laborers. We're members of a higher class of servants, more like Roman slaves. You read about that in school I suppose?"

  He knows he can suppose this fairly confidently, because St. Lucy has an extremely high literacy rate. It even has the highest proportion of Nobel Laureates in the world: including the recent winner in astronomy, three Nobel prize winners, from a tiny island. One might be a fluke. Two could be a coincidence. Three is a pattern.

  Zoe agrees that she had a course in school that included Roman history, Roman slaves, and the decay of the Roman Empire.

  "In short, the Paradise Islands are aptly named," Zeph concludes. "Especially St. Lucy. Especially in winter. Especially with an angel like you here."

  The friends continue to bask in the sun and celebrate their good fortune as the morning slips by them. When the sun is about halfway to its zenith at the top of the sky, Zeph's cell phone chimes out a jaunty Caribbean tune from beneath a pile of clothing and towels.

  "Your phone works out here?" Baldwin wonders, surprised.

  "Apparently so," Zeph concedes, somewhat surprised himself. He fishes the phone out from a trousers pocket. The caller ID identifies his niece Katrina Lundgren, a graduate student in Physics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

  "Hello, good morning," he greets her, imagining the snow in Wisconsin, glad to be where he is. "Hope you're all well there. I know we're doing fine here."