Maywell Hope finally appeared in the Pirate’s Lair, tugging the baseball cap down, fixing sunglasses over his eyes. He nodded at Lester and left the building. Lester hurried behind, and didn’t catch up until they were halfway down the little rise.
“Did you tell Miss Polly we were going to town?” Lester asked innocently, although he knew he was being prankish—how long does it take to tell a woman you’re going to town?—and Maywell knew it too.
Maywell let it go, this time. Sometimes he’d let things go, sometimes he’d get all righteous and start throwing punches. There was a time when Lester would have hit back, indeed there was a time when Lester could have kicked Maywell’s scrawny white butt. But all that was different, now that Maywell had found his way into Polly’s bed. Now Lester was forced to trot after Maywell like a dog. Maywell did the clean work, Lester was the one with shit all over his hands.
They climbed into the rusted minivan. Lester sat in the passenger’s seat. When there were guests being driven around, of course, Lester was expected to crawl into one of the rear seats. But now it was just the two of them, which—his complicated emotions notwithstanding—made Lester enormously happy.
Maywell cranked the key and the vehicle yowled into ignition. He threw the thing into gear (not first gear, Lester noticed; Maywell was a piss-poor driver) and piloted out onto the gravel road. Lester rested his arm out the window and settled back into his seat, pretending, for a few minutes, that he and Maywell were still best friends. “We got things to do in town,” he announced for no reason.
“We have plenty to do at the Edge, getting ready for the storm,” Maywell said. “So I don’t want you going into the Royal.”
“No, sir, I won’t do that.” Although Lester would do it, fuck Maywell Hope. He’d do whatever the hell he wanted to. He turned and looked out to sea. Far to the east, beyond the horizon, the sky was darkening.
Maywell stopped the car in front of Millroy’s General Store. Lester threw open his door and scampered away, making a beeline for the New Royal Tavern. “Be back in half an hour!” Maywell called after him.
“Yes, sir!” Lester returned, although it was all a show. For whose benefit, Maywell couldn’t say, but it was all a show, both his own bossiness and Lester’s servility. He understood Lester’s bitterness; Lester resented the fact that Maywell shared Polly’s bed and was accorded certain privileges and other favours. What Lester didn’t appreciate was the fact that Maywell loved Polly. Mind you, Lester didn’t exactly know that, because it was Maywell’s great secret. He kept his love secret because he suspected it was imperfect. What else could one expect from the Last of the Merry Boys?
Upton Belshaw stopped Maywell, pressing a hand against his chest, outside Millroy’s. Upton removed his hat and nodded a few times before speaking. “They’re making this storm out to be fierce,” he finally said.
Maywell nodded. “There’s going to be some wind and rain, Upton. Make sure your windows are boarded.”
“Now there’s the thing, Maywell. The front window broke and I haven’t replaced it. Should I put board up anyway?”
“I would, Upton.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t worry. There’ll be a big blow and then there won’t.”
“I’m a little concerned that my house … I don’t believe my house is up to it. I have young children, Maywell.”
“I know that, Upton.”
“I was wondering if we could come over to the Water’s Edge.”
Maywell pictured the Water’s Edge, the main building sitting atop the little rise. “If I were you, Upton, I’d take my family to the big hotel.”
Then he walked into the store. The shelves were almost empty. They were never overstocked at the best of times, but now there were but a couple of boxes of cereal, a few tin cans, and that was that. Maywell went to the counter. June gazed at him steadily, and Maywell detected a slight hint of fear in the whites of her eyes.
“Carton of Sweet Caps,” he said, pulling bills out of his pocket, smoothing them out in his hands.
June shook her head, very slightly. “No cartons left.”
“I’ll take whatever packs you got.”
“We’re out of Sweet Caporals,” June almost whispered.
“Rothmans, then.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Winstons. Silk Cut. Senior Service.”
“We don’t have any cigarettes, Maywell.”
Maywell made a careful inspection, turning his head slowly as though scanning the flats for bonefish. He saw lottery tickets, a few video cassettes, some empty pop bottles that had been returned for the deposit. “None?”
“People have been stocking up. We were supposed to get some more today, but the flight was cancelled.”
“June, you knew I’d need smokes.”
“Maywell, you told me you were going to quit. You said that was the last carton you were ever going to buy.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, June, I say that every goddam time, don’t I?”
“I’m sorry, Maywell.”
“You’re absolutely sure that there’s none, not a solitary pack, in the store? Don’t you want to check the back room or anything?”
“Maywell … we are out of cigarettes.”
Maywell entered the New Royal Tavern, which was pretty grandly named considering that the bar proper was banged together out of plywood and the appurtenances amounted to two posters, both years out of date, team photographs of the Tottenham Hotspurs. There were a few stools scattered about, two of them currently occupied. Johnny Reyes was sitting in a corner, and Lester had claimed a seat beside the bar so that he could rest an elbow there and balance his head on his folded knuckles. When Maywell entered the establishment, Lester downed his shot of rum and then tapped the countertop for another. Kirby moved slowly behind the bar, drawing up a big bottle of Captain Morgan’s from down below, filling a shot glass and overturning this into Lester’s empty tumbler. Then Kirby filled the shot glass again and pushed the thing toward Maywell.
“You know I won’t drink that,” said Maywell.
“I just thought,” returned Kirby, “that you’d be sick of white milk by now.”
Lester laughed, too loudly. “Kirby got you good, Maywell. Sick of white milk. You should kick his ass.”
Maywell understood that he had been the topic of conversation in the bar for the past little while. He looked over at Johnny Reyes, who was nodding slowly, staring down at his own feet. “Sick of white milk,” Johnny repeated. “Maywell ought to be sick of white milk.”
“Milk’s good for you,” noted Maywell. “You need milk to grow. Come along, Lester.”
“I believe I’ll just have another drink.”
“We have work to do.”
“That woman got you doing work?” demanded Kirby. “Fuck, May. She must have one goddam glory hole.”
“That’ll be enough of that, Kirby. Don’t you have business to attend to? Seems to me there’s a storm headed our way.”
Johnny Reyes looked up from the close inspection of his feet, the rubber flip-flops and burnished calluses. “Hey, Maywell,” he muttered, so quietly that the words barely made it to Hope’s ears, “are you thinking of sticking around for this one?”
Maywell Hope had been off Dampier Cay only twice in his lifetime. He knew that many people would account that as odd. His knowledge of the world was therefore limited, informed largely by television-watching, although he did that only rarely. There were nights, as Maywell tended bar in the Pirate’s Lair, that the guests had no questions for him, nights when everyone just sipped cocktails in a relatively civilized and subdued manner, and Maywell, growing bored, would turn on the television set. He would watch CNN and listen to tales of chaos. He had seldom heard of the countries the reporters talked about. He had grown up in Williamsville, and it had only been twenty-odd years since some representative of the British government had stopped by to establish mandatory education. Before that, schooling was more or less optio
nal—and not even a viable option for Maywell, burdened as he was by the Hope family name.
Maywell’s concept of the globe was based in large part on his reading, and rereading, of William Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World. So in Maywell’s mind there was the Atlantick Sea, and Dampier Cay was in the Caribee. He thought of the largest island to the southwest as Hispaniola, although he was grudgingly aware that it had at some time been divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Hope knew his unique reference points made him an object of curiosity. His fishing clients often grilled him about the immediate geography; Maywell might refer to New Andalusia, which would earn him a look of confusion, then as much laughter as the clients thought they could get away with.
What the clients didn’t know about were the wondrous things that were included in Maywell’s world view from reading A New Voyage Round the World. Penguin-Fruit, for instance, which are wholsome, and never offend the Stomach; but those that eat many, will find a heat or tickling in their Fundament. That book was filled with such goings-on as would make the CNN reporters tremble and quake: Therefore Captain Swan immediately march’d out of the Town, and his Men all followed him; and when he came to the place where the Engagement had been, he saw all his Men that went out in the Morning lying dead. They were stript, and so cut and mangled, that he scarce knew one Man.
Maywell Hope had read this book since he was a child. Indeed, it had been read to him as an infant, as he lay awaiting sleep. The book was one of three his father owned, the other two being thick tomes dealing with navigation. Maywell’s father, Marlon, was barely literate, and this book, filled with whimsical spelling, seemed to forgive that fault. Marlon, like Hope men for generations, also suspected that there might be some clue as to his genealogy somewhere in its pages. There was no privateer named Hope in the book, but perhaps the original progenitor had changed it, or the name had been changed somewhere along the line. Perhaps Marlon and Maywell (and Maxwell and Melvale Hope, and all the others) were descended from Dampier’s right-hand man, Basil Ringrose. Or perhaps they were descended from the Chirurgeon, Mr. Wafer, the mischievous fellow who was always getting into difficulties: Our Chirurgeon, Mr. Wafer, came to a sad disaster here: being drying his Powder, a careless Fellow passed by with his Pipe lighted, and set fire to his Powder, which blew up and scorched his Knee … Mind you, the greater mystery was the identity of the Hope family’s Eve. If there was a woman sailing with the Merry Boys, William Dampier writes nothing about it.
Maywell’s favourite story in the book—at least, one he had read many times, particularly over the last few years—proceeded like this: Dampier and the Merry Boys, sailing the Batchelor’s Delight, found themselves set upon by a huge storm. They put into a cove and anchored there, furling all the sails because the wind would have torn them to tatters. The ship weathered well until the winds began to shift. Because of the furious counter-clockwise motion of hurricanes, the winds howl first toward the west and then, after the passing of the eye, in the opposite direction. Dampier had to turn the ship but knew that he couldn’t unfurl any sails in order to do so. So he instructed all of the Merry Boys to ascend the forward rigging and cling to the foreshrouds. Maywell had imagined these men, high in the air, clutching the screaming ropes, and each other, their bodies offering enough resistance to the wind to finally turn the ship about.
Maywell wished that he could have been there.
Because Maywell had been off the island only twice in his life. He had gone once to Cuba and once to Jamaica, both trips undertaken to find women, since he had had the women on Dampier Cay, all those who were willing to have him. On both occasions when he’d been away from home, Dampier Cay was hit by storms. The first was not too serious; it had taken out a few homes in Williamsville and destroyed some of the yachts in the Government Harbour. The second time he’d been away, Fred had come to call. Seventeen dead on Dampier Cay, including Lester’s boy, Powell. Maywell returned home to find that many things had simply disappeared. Even the Royal Tavern was nowhere to be seen, although its place was marked by a dead refrigerator, lying on its side, wide open.
CALDWELL AND BEVERLY sat in the Pirate’s Lair and waited for the storm. Both seemed calm, but Caldwell’s patience was that of a fisherman—who is willing only to wait one more moment, over and over again—and Beverly was busy holding her emotions hostage. This is what she’d learned from the professionals, how to ride shotgun on the weird stuff.
Jimmy Newton came in with Gail and Sorvig. The girls still wore their bathing suits, but Jimmy had put on some sort of safari gear, a khaki jacket and shorts. All of the pockets were jammed with stuff: light meters, lens cleaners, cords to connect his electronic gear. Two pockets held small still cameras, there was a large thirty-five-millimetre slung around his neck, and in a pouch over his crotch he had the beauty, his newest toy, a digital minicam that was guaranteed to give him broadcast-ready quality.
“See, me,” said Gail, “I’m just trying to go through life clean, you know what I mean? If I can avoid, you know, terminal illness, um, psychopathic boyfriends and, well, hurricanes …”
“Yeah,” said Jimmy, but he was shaking his head. “Except they’re different. They’re different kinds of problems. There’s human stuff and then there’s, I don’t know …”
“God stuff?” suggested Sorvig.
“Weather is God,” said Jimmy Newton. “God is weather. The natives, the cavemen, they saw, you know, the sky all lit up with lightning, they heard thunder, they said, ‘Hell yes, there’s someone up there and He’s pissed.’ So, yeah, it’s kind of God stuff, but it’s … the thing is, it’s just a lot bigger than human stuff. Okay, Gail, you say you’re trying to go through life clean. But here’s the thing. Let’s say that you, um, got cancer, and HIV, and, um, your boyfriend attacks you twice a week with a machete. That and any other shit you care to imagine. Take that outside when a category three is passing through. That’s clean, baby. That’s all your problems blown away.”
“I don’t think I agree with you, Mr. Newton,” said Beverly. “I think God is the little human problems. All that other stuff is flash and filigree, you know. A cheap trick. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
“Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you are just a little nuts.”
“Perhaps. But I know what I’m talking about. You may not remember me, but I went on a tornado-hunting expedition with you.”
“Yeah, I remember. You’re a friend of Larry DeWitt’s.”
“Well, we had sex once, but that hardly makes us friends.”
“Right.”
“But what struck me about the tornado—when we finally found one, thanks to you, Mr. Newton—was that it was composed mostly of the, um, detritus of human lives. Condoms, candy wrappers. Nails and wedding rings.”
Caldwell opened his mouth to say, “I know what you mean,” but he choked on the first word and reached instead for his whisky.
“Hey,” said Jimmy, throwing open the trap and walking behind the bar, “I wonder if they fixed this piece of crap yet.” He opened the cupboard doors, exposing the old Bakelite radio. He reached out, flipped the toggle switch, and the silver filaments in the tubes began to glow. Jimmy unclipped a small microphone from the side of the machine, a silver disc that filled the palm of his hand, and depressed a button on the side. “Come in, come in.” He was answered by an intense spurt of static. “Hmm,” he scowled, working a dial, trying to locate a serviceable frequency.
“Hello?” came a broken voice. “Who’s this?”
“This?” responded Jimmy Newton. “This is Mister fricking Weather. Who’s this?”
“This is Burt Gilchrist. My wife and I came to look after the property in case the hurricane hits,” explained the voice. “But we’re thinking we made a mistake. I mean, what can we do? What can we do when the storm comes?”
“Well, you should know the procedure, Gilchrist. You bought property in the hot zone.”
“Who is this?” sho
uted Burt Gilchrist, and in the background his wife could be heard asking, “Who is it?”
“Over and out,” said Newton, spinning the dial, squinting to watch a needle pass over a grid. “NOAA. Come in, NOAA.” As he waited for an answer, Jimmy cocked his wrist to the side and toyed idly with the microphone, flipping it up and down. After a moment he tried again, returning the metal disc to his lips and thumbing the button. “NOAA,” he said. “Come in, NOAA. This is Newton on Dampier Cay.”
A voice returned suddenly. “Newton? You’re on Dampier Cay?”
Jimmy Newton grinned widely and looked at his companions, vastly proud of himself. He spoke into the microphone. “Yeppers. I’m on Dampier Cay.”
“Well—it’s been good knowing you.”
“Aha!” shouted Newton gleefully. “So she’s big?”
“Jimmy, go to a safe band,” said the voice on the radio. “Go to eighty-seven.”
Newton twisted the dial. The radio screamed and made little electronic burping sounds. A voice came: “You there, Jimmy?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you bought it this time, son. Claire has sucked up Daphne. She’s heading due west at twenty knots, but we think she’s going to pick up speed any time. And we can’t see how anything’s going to change her mind, so you know … if there’s anything like high country on Dampier Cay, you better get there.”
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