Light Action in the Caribbean

by Barry Lopez

  I didn’t know what to do with the Rachel. It was the most beautiful ship I had ever built (which is not saying much, since I was so impatient as a boy with the earlier ships) and I wanted to give it some kind of life. I considered carrying it home, but, more, I needed to release it. As I prepared to leave I thought of a plan, to which Brother Jorge gave his blessing. I would carry it down to the ocean and launch it. Most of it, of course, had come off the beach, from the ocean itself. I would launch it with sails furled, on a morning with a strong offshore breeze. The breeze would carry it out to sea, and then its fate would be its own.

  Brother Jorge asked me, as I was preparing to go, if I would set the ship up in one of the wide halls that had once been a gallery, so the other monks could appreciate it outside the confines of the small room where it had come to life. I was glad to. The others smiled and nodded enthusiastically as they inspected it. They wanted me to understand that they thought I’d done a very good job.

  The day I chose to launch it, after matins and lauds but before breakfast, I carried the ship down the hill to the shore, with the monks following. I waded into the Pacific with the Rachel braced in my arms and stood a while. I teared up at the thought of all the loss in human life, the great and stupid mistakes. I had taken care to ballast the ship and when I set it in the calm water it floated right and square. It rode the water so perfectly that for a moment I felt I was huge and the ship real. I held on to it with one finger hooked over the bulwarks and then let it go. It leaned off under the wind and came around with its stern into the breeze. I glanced back for Brother Jorge, to catch his eye, and saw him standing on the beach with what I knew to be his manuscript of the ninth volume of his History of Mexico under his arm. He nodded at me in a way that suggested he was trying to offer reassurance. Behind him the other monks were standing with duffel bags and cloth shopping bags from which loaves of bread and vegetable tops protruded. Brother Damien had arrived in the monastery’s blue Ford pickup with a trailer, both piled high with boxes and bundles. They were waving to me, the gesture that says “It’s okay, things are fine now,” and pointing out to sea.

  When I turned back to look for the Rachel it was not there but instead, standing offshore, a ship three hundred feet long, its high masts gyrating gently under the morning sky.

  I backed away in the water and then plunged ashore to where Brother Jorge stood.

  “Again and again,” Brother Jorge said to me, “we sailed for Brazil, for the Isles of the Blessed. We sailed until it was no longer possible to sail, because they said the world was known in every corner and men no longer knew how to sail anyway, did not know the names of the sails, the belaying order of the lines. We sailed until men went to sleep at night and let the engines do the work.”

  As I listened to him I watched Brother Maria, who had stripped to the baggies he always wore under his robes, swimming for the Rachel.

  “Now we will sail again, Eduardo.” He put his manuscript down on top of his leather valise. “Let us help Brother Damien unload the truck.”

  As we hauled baggage and provisions to the waterline, I watched Brother Maria clamber aboard the ship, swing a boat out on the stern davits, and lower away.

  “Do we have enough food here, Father?” asked Brother Theodore.

  “Loaves and fishes, my son, loaves and fishes,” answered Brother Jorge, smiling at me, hardly looking up from his tasks.

  I looked out at the Rachel. The water where it rested carried no history to contradict its immediacy or to diminish its right fit on the opaque swells.

  In three trips we had every person and every thing aboard. I sent Brother Maria forward with instructions about how to unfurl the sails. He took some of the monks aloft with him on the main mast and began to work. It did not occur to me how we would manage with only the small group of us. As the others began to haul on the sheets and clew lines, I marveled at the abilities of men I had before resigned in my imagination to the world of the monastery. They were adaptable and willing, and lived lives of belief.

  I saw Brother Jorge go up to the bows. As the Rachel began to respond to the wind, I turned the wheel in my hand to set the angle of the rudder. When I felt the first shallow plunge and race of the hull, I was glad in building the ship I had cut no corner. Not one.

  Light Action in the Caribbean

  Libby Dalaria had her bags squared up in the hallway next to the door in her apartment by five-forty-five. For the first time since she’d been to Cancún with Brad she was thinking she had everything right, even the underwear. Her only misgivings were about how her dive gear fit, but David had checked out every piece and he’d told her not to worry. Still, she was feeling he really didn’t get how everything was supposed to look together, and he’d become really irritated when she said she wanted to get the chartreuse fins, because they had to be special-ordered.

  What was important, he had told her, was to have your own things. No rental gear. No wearing other people’s stuff. He’d emphasized that and so she ‘d done it.

  So now, she thought, she just had to wait until he showed up with the cab. She checked the cat food dispenser again and looked over her VCR recording menu. So many shows in a week, she thought, how was she going to watch it all when she got home? She canceled the Julia Roberts special.

  David had the passports, he had the tickets, he had the foreign cash. What a relief, she thought. He was so good at this, she could concentrate on things that were going to be important to her. None of them really mattered, she reminded herself, but why not do them right? The book, Losing Girlfriends, which Helena had told her was terrific. Her new nighttime skin lotion, Benediction. And she’d replaced all her other lotions with the ozone-calibrated ones. And then vitamins, ginseng, all that. Condoms, in case David forgot. New Wet Maniacs CD. The remastered Bob Marley, to listen to on the plane on the way down, to get into it.

  “What a dork,” she said out loud, remembering Brad, scanning the street for David and the cab. With him, she thought, she’d have had to do all this for herself, plus figure out the visas, get the tickets, find out what shots Brad needed.

  “What a waste,” she blurted, staring at small brown stains on her kitchen curtains. Two years with that toad.

  David pulled up in the cab. She glanced at her watch. Six a.m. exactly. “I like it,” she said.

  Driving from Arvada all the way out to the new Denver airport, thought Libby, was like driving to another country before you could take off. Miles and miles of these nothing fields, no houses, no mountains, no development, no roads, no trees.

  “So, where’s the airport?” she prompted the driver. “In Kansas?”

  “Yeah, right,” the cabbie joked back. David gave her a look like she was a jerk. Not cool, she instructed herself.

  They were flying United to Miami, then Air Carib to St. Matthew, then Bahía Blanco to San Carlos. It bothered her that most of the way to Miami David gazed into his laptop, but he said there was no way he could arrange the days off without working a little while they were away.

  “You are in command of your universe,” he intoned, closing the laptop firmly and tapping it like a revelatory object. He gave her a look he meant to seem smart and conspiratorial, but which she took to mean he was scheming. At the gate he’d casually thumbed fifty $100 bills in a bank envelope at her.

  When they landed, David made cell phone calls from the United gate all the way to the Air Carib gate. She hated being ignored. He said he was just touching base with everyone.

  “If you want to be the guy which they cannot do without,” he instructed her, “you gotta be sure they really get that. Before they know to ask the question, you answer it. After a while they think of you as indispensable. That’s how it works, especially with the programming I’m putting in with these guys. I want them to get a big dose of me before I sign off, and then have them sweat a little next week—”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “So, you know, I screwed a few things up—which they’
ll run into next week.” He gave her a big grin, a smirk he’d seen somewhere, and put his hand up in the air, asking her for a high five.

  When they cleared customs in St. Matthew and were waiting at the Bahía Blanco gate, she got out a copy of Allure. She’d been reading “Boff Your Breasts for the Boardroom?” for only a few minutes when he said, “So, what, I’m a freaking bore?”

  She closed the magazine and slid it into her carry-on. As she did so, he took the bag and hefted it onto his lap. He pushed the magazine aside and pulled out one of her zippered makeup pouches. Inside was a small aluminum snap case. He opened it just enough to show her four joints.

  “Are you totally insane! Jesus!” she seethed under her breath.

  “The genius of it, Libby,” he reminded her calmly, “is that no one brings dope into the Caribbean, right?”

  She had a good look around the lobby while David checked them into the Beach Banner Inn. If you’d just read about the place in a travel magazine, she mused, you’d say no way. It sounded like shag carpets, polyester blankets, plastic water glasses in the bathroom. But this was quite classy, she decided, the oversize bouquets of fresh flowers, really good-looking people having espresso. The women were mostly in white, she observed, with gold accessories, so that was going to be no problem. She agreed with David’s judgment. Why go to a top-of-the-line Hyatt or Sheraton, where you get the heavy terry-cloth robes, the turn-down service, when for 40 percent less you get what you actually need? He had enumerated: a view of the water, cable access, firm pillows, the right drinks in the minibar (he’d asked which labels, he said), and then something nice, like two sinks. And these people didn’t skimp, he emphasized, with cheap necessities like wire hangers and little soap bars. He’d asked.

  He did know how to handle it all, she reflected.

  “What I like with him,” she’d told her friend Helena, “is that this guy who makes like a hundred and sixteen thousand dollars a year goes to the trouble to actually check everything out, to spend the money smartly, you know, not just throw it at travel agents, whatever it costs, who cares. One thousand five hundred for a week in the Caribbean, Brad told me, and most of that went for the room, with the big towels and the turn-down service. Meals extra. That was Brad. For the same money David gets the hotel, plus a three-star restaurant, all that in a plan, plus five days—five entire days—on a private dive boat. Plus he sent flowers when I got certified to dive.”

  “So is this guy married?” asked Helena.

  “Are you totally insane?”

  While she unpacked, David phoned his mother in New Jersey and Libby heard his side of it.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “___________.”

  “Yeah, because you weren’t home and you didn’t have the machine on.”

  “_______________.”

  “How’s Dad, how’s he getting on?”

  “________________________.”

  “Well, it’s going to get better. I know that. Listen, I wanted to see how you were. I’m going to call you in a few days.”

  “____.”

  “I’m out of the country, Mom. I’m traveling. I’ll call in a few days. I love you. Him, too.”

  “__________.”

  “Okay, bye.”

  David stood still awhile, holding the receiver, his finger depressing the disconnect bar, as though considering another call. Then he cradled the receiver, looking tired.

  While they were dressing for dinner she noticed he’d brought all new clothes, new slacks, new shirts.

  “You try on all your clothes?” he asked her. When she looked back at him blankly he said, “Lots of people buy clothes for a vacation, but they don’t try them on before they leave. They end up with things that don’t fit, or they don’t match, or there’s an imperfection. You bring any new clothes?”

  “Well, I already had almost everything I needed—”

  “Okay, so it’s not that special to you.”

  “Except the Hilfiger windbreaker you got me. And I got some underwear.”

  She wished right away she hadn’t said it. He hunched over and began to imitate a crowing rooster flapping its wings and then broke into an imitation of a matador’s capework, daring the bull to charge.

  The restaurant was called Michael’s. He’d gotten them a table near a window so they could see the sun set. She gave him an approving look.

  When she reached for her menu, he waved her off. “I’ll order,” he told her. “If you don’t know—I don’t know, maybe you know—but if you don’t know how to order food and wine in a foreign country, you can screw it up. You don’t want that. Besides, in some of these places you have to be able to read through the menu, you know, to what they’re actually saying. You gotta put the French aside.”

  When the waiter came, David ordered oysters for both of them and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

  “A cabernet, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “And I’ll go with the marlin and, for her, the grouper. Now this is local, right?”

  “Yes sir. We purchased it this afternoon on the dock.”

  “But, instead of the rémoulade, the mango and chili deal, we’ll have peas. Fresh peas mixed with carrots. Can you do that?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “And with dinner we’ll have a California chardonnay. Let’s see if you’ve got a Chalone here.” He picked up the wine list.

  “Would monsieur like to try perhaps a Riesling or a Pinot Gris with the fish?”

  “No. This Chalone here will be great.”

  They ate in silence. She always found this the hardest part. She felt stupid, that she had nothing to say. She thought about the Bob Marley tape, but she’d forgotten to listen to it. She remembered some guy in the news a while back, maybe in Haiti, but not what that was about. Were they coffee growers on San Carlos? Her job. Boring. David said the place she worked, a psychiatric clinic, was interesting because more and more people were actually crazy, but he said the doctors were all losers—“dogheads,” he called them—because they had no Web sites. “Sooner or later,” he told her, “everybody and everything is going to be on-line.

  “If you want to make yourself some money,” he advised, “look deep into your business—step one. Step two, upgrade. Everywhere. For example, with the Web sites, you’ve already got psychiatric profiles, I’ve read up on them. You can match those profiles to standard kinds of treatment, therapy, whatever, and some people will be able to cure themselves, right off the Net. You laugh, but it’s true. If you have correct information and you apply yourself, you can do anything. Up until now, too much information has been in the hands of too few people.”

  She didn’t think it would work, but she hadn’t wanted to get into it with him.

  She was watching the sunset and wondering if this was when you saw the green flash.

  “Are you married?” she asked him.

  “Married. Are you kidding?”

  She wanted to try the sorbet with fresh guava for dessert, but he ordered Key lime pie.

  “Dairy,” he cautioned her. “Never order dairy in the tropics.”

  After the meal he asked for Courvoisier on the deck and ordered amaretto for her.

  She thought the stars were beautiful. She wanted to lie in his arms, but he hardly looked at her. He sipped a second Courvoisier and nodded at people who walked past, as though they were all in on the same arrangement. When women with large breasts came by, he stared at them until they passed.

  Their room was nonsmoking, but he said that didn’t apply to incense and lit two tapers. She wasn’t sure.

  “Nah, nah. Didn’t you ever get in a cab with these people? They all have twenty air fresheners going, they love this stuff. It’s cigarettes. Cigarettes are the problem.”

  He was watching her get undressed with a look that made her uncomfortable. She went into the bathroom to change. She had begun to worry a little about sex. In the beginning it had been great, but the
n he wanted to try things which, even though she had heard of them, seemed strange, even if you were in love. He told her he wanted to tie her to the bed and spank her with a grade-school ruler. And he kept suggesting that she shave her pubic hair off. When they made love and he rolled off and went to sleep and she told him that wasn’t making love, he said it was. “You satisfy me so much,” he explained, “I go straight into dream sleep, right into REM sleep.”

  When she came out of the bathroom in her short nightgown, she saw he’d turned out all the lights.

  Learning to dive was the big issue, Libby knew, for their trip. She had worked diligently at it, getting the theory down as well as all the skills—buddy breathing, neutral buoyancy, mask clearing. David, who was certified to the level of rescue diver, had chosen her training program, but she went by herself to the classes, and her instructors told her she was one of the best they ever had. And they said they envied her the trip to San Carlos, a little-dived locale that was getting a reputation as the place to go in the eastern Caribbean.

  After breakfast, after they’d gotten all their gear down to the dock, David found he’d left his gold ear stud in the room. He asked her to go back for it. He was fanatical, she’d learned, about his ear studs. He tried to explain to her one time what the different occasions were, for the silver one with the miniature rose, the turquoise one, the one with the diamond out of his grandmother’s engagement ring, and the plain gold one. He said he wouldn’t dive without the gold one, but she couldn’t keep it all straight. It was like the time he tried to explain to her why some baseball player had to eat some combination of Kentucky Fried Chicken exactly two hours before every game.

  When she got back with the stud, David was arguing with the boatman. It was an open twenty-foot skiff, a Boston Whaler with two big engines that looked brand-new and eight dive tanks mounted in a wooden rack like wine bottles. David was leaning against the steering console with his lime-green wraparound sunglasses and holding his chest out, she noticed, more than he usually did.