Easy in the Islands

by Bob Shacochis

  “Fish, come wit me tonight.”

  “Mahn, why you so in-trested in town? Daht’s a bad spot, a place daht just eat de money right from a fellah’s pocket.”

  “Come wit me,” Glasford repeated, “come wit me,” as if he were under a spell.

  “Look here, why you need me?”

  “Fah bruddah-hood.”

  “Bruddah-hood? Mahn, daht cahn wait till mornin.”

  “Fah witness.”

  “Witness! What, boy, you puttin youself on trial?”

  “Bear witness to de lion.”

  “Glahsford, I feel you strivin, mahn. You lookin close at someting I cahnt see.”

  “You cahnt hear me now, Fish. I speakin de language of Jah Rastafari.”

  “How you cahnt speak a level daht make some sense to a guy like me? You might as well be monkey ahnd me jahckass. Daht’s no bruddah-hood.”

  “Tell me, what dese words mean—guerrilla ahction, Babylon ahfire, ahnd Jah’s people in liberation?”

  “Mahn, who you? You a Jamaicahn fellah now?”

  “As yet I find no boundary to corruption, ya know. Dis place deviled up too, same as Jamaica.”

  Fish scratched his head, thinking the matter over. Althea offered him sugar, Glasford wanted him to take salt.

  “One mahn wit vision is ahll it must need to make a bettah world,” Glasford added.

  Fish sucked his teeth. “Daht’s a simple line. You makin a joke.”

  “I jokin? Me? You come see, see how I joke.”

  Fish smiled without discretion. “Mmm,” he said. “Mmm,” as if he were savoring the dialogue, the smoke, the temptations now upon him. Glasford was blowing a big wind, talking a lot of movie house shit. But Fish would kick himself tomorrow if there was a show and he had missed it.

  “Dere’s a womahn callin my name,” Fish said.

  “Womahn must wait.”

  Fish stood up with a grunt and an exaggerated sigh so that Glasford would know of the sacrifice he was making for brotherhood.

  It took a long time for Glasford to flag them a ride into town. Fish kept his distance from him on the side of the road, turned away as if he were just about to walk on, the visor on his cap pulled down toward the bridge of his flat nose. He was uncomfortable begging anything from a fellow he didn’t know. Now if a friend drove past, he would wave his hand as hard as Glasford, but who could tell in the dark who was friend and who was not? This attitude had much to do with the second piece of knowledge Fish had learned during what he called his self-studies—the hours he spent alone fishing on the sea. It used to be, a few years ago, that he worked as a crew member on one of the sport fishing boats that were charted out to tourists. He didn’t mind the work, but it wasn’t worth the extra dollar a day to endure a boss. In fact, given the type of boss he had, and kept having as he moved from job to job, it made more sense to sleep in the rain and starve. To suffer under the hand of God, that was one thing. It was the hand of his fellow man that Fish could not abide.

  This thinking led to a third truth that completed for Fish the extent of his destiny. A man’s life was not to be perfect, but that was not to be worried over until other people pressed you with responsibility for that fact—a wife, a boss, or the salesmen, the politicians and preachers.

  It didn’t matter whose life was better, as long as his was the way he wanted it. Two years past, with no particular ambition in mind, he had signed a piece of paper that put him in the middle of the cane fields of Hendry County, working like a mule, swallowing enough dust to bury himself in, his forearms scarred from the sharp leaves of the cane.

  He thought vaguely that in America he would see how the white people lived, live that way for a while, and then decide which life was better—island or Stateside, black or white. But in Florida, in the labor camps and fields, he never got close enough to a white person to talk. The rest of the fellows there were all Antiguans or Virgin Islanders, or dark, dark fellows who didn’t know English. The women who came along with the laborers enjoyed the spectacle of men fighting over them. Fish, for the first time, felt lonely, bottled up. At night on his bunk, he relaxed only with thoughts of the warm Caribbean Sea, the spectrum of blues that colored it, the mood of reefs, of sand flats, of deep holes. He needed the sea as much now as when he was a boy spending idle days on the piers of Georgetown, studying the water for hours at the spot where his fishing line cut the surface and connected him to another world, one as familiar as a dream. When he had earned enough money to build a catboat of his own, he left Florida with no regrets.

  Glasford had been to the States, too.

  De States, Glasford said when he returned, was baptism, was education.

  You ahsk how it was in New York, mahn? What, you doan know, nobody tell you so? No jobs, everybody have a blind eye to sufferin. You come today ahnd de fellah daht come yesterday tell you to go away, ain’t have no place left fah you. Ahll de West Indian people dere does be up to tricks. You cahnt trust you muddah. Ahll de womahn too busy. White people afraid to look by you. Cahnt even have a piss witout trouble. Mahn, dis de sulfurous heart of Babylon.

  “So how you not get rich in de States like my bruddah Granville?” asked another guy taking his refreshment in Momma Smallhorne’s a few weeks ago when Glasford had first returned.

  Glasford rolled his eyes. “Mahn, what you say, you ignorant? I beg everywheres fah a job. I weep ahnd pull up me shirt. Look aht dis, I say. My belly cavin in. I has nuttin to eat fah six days. I will work ahll day fah a piece ah bread, please. Dey point a big gun aht me ahnd chase me away. Den de cops see you in Mahnhattan where ahll de white people does live ahnd make work in dese big prick buildins, ahnd dey beat you wit sticks, ya know. So how a mahn sposed to get by? You tell me. Den dis white bitch tycoonness find me. I will give you a tousand dollahs to please me, she say. I take de money ahnd poke she, but den I run away because she disgust me so.”

  Fish had laughed trying to picture Glasford fleeing a white woman with money.

  “Mahn, you realize a tousand dollahs doan pay one month’s rent in New York?”

  “Yes, daht’s so,” said Fish to the other guy. He had heard some mention of that same information.

  “See, what I tell you,” Glasford had said, glaring at the other fellow. “Den it get so cold ice covah me face. I tell myself I dyin now, good-bye. I fall to de street. I look up at de sky—I cahnt see it. I see only dese buildins, mistah, goin up into de air, where ahll dese bigshots does rule de world like dey in heaven. De hell wit dis, I say. I’m no mahn to give up. I is resistin. I crawl back to Brooklyn. Ahn old auntie take pity on me ahnd give me plane money home. I escape, I escape de dragon.”

  “Uh-huh!” the other fellow exclaimed, beginning to appreciate the magnitude of Glasford’s adventure.

  “Daht’s a nice piece of story, Glahsford.” Fish chewed thoughtfully on an orange, analyzing all that Glasford had said, separating what could be true from what could not. New York City was a hard place—everyone knew that. Somehow Glasford had done okay though. He strutted off the plane in soft, pretty shoes, new Levi’s with a crease ironed into them, a shiny brown shirt that Fish knew he hadn’t owned before he went north, his hair wilder and longer. Strapped around his wrist he had one of those little cassette units with a good AM/FM radio in it. On the other wrist, pinching his flesh, was a thin gold bracelet that seemed too small for a man the size of Glasford.

  Glasford had made out. He had done okay. Something had happened though. Whatever it was, it made Glasford start talking like a warrior.

  Glasford’s calm, sardonic voice: “So, Fish, you believe I makin a story, eh?”

  “Nah,” Fish said. “I’m only sayin my ears find an in-trest in de ahccount.”

  “My bruddah Granville,” the other guy mused. “I tinkin now he must be a very lucky fellah to be gettin by so in de States, sendin us money each month.”

  “Lucky!” Glasford used the word like a whip. “Daht is bullshit.”

  “Come, Fish. Come.”


  Fish shuffled over to the car and lowered himself in. Glasford slapped him lovingly on the thigh. Brotherhood.

  Fish suspected the uselessness of it all, but he got in the car anyway, uncomfortable, embarrassed to look at the driver once he saw it was no one he was familiar with. He stared straight ahead, stared directly at the government license pasted to the outside of the glove box without realizing what it was. A car passed. In the light that melted through the interior of the old Ford, Fish suddenly focused on what it was before his eyes. He leaned forward onto the front seat to shout at the driver.

  “Stop. Mahn, what de hell you doin pickin us two boys up?” The driver tapped the brake reflexively but then let off, continuing down the road.

  “Mahn, stop. We ain’t payin no taxi.”

  The driver turned to look at them. He seemed quite used to taking his eyes off the road. The three were only dark outlines to each other.

  “Look, doan worry wit daht,” the driver said. “I just now comin from me suppah.”

  The fellow sounded friendly enough to Fish so he sat back uneasily. “Okay,” he said. “Watch de road. We nuttin special to look at.”

  Fish could tell the fellow was okay just by the way he nodded and moved and drove—fast, but not out to be fastest. He was an older fellow, probably one of the first drivers around when the hotels were built. His car was clean but coming apart.

  “Um hmm,” Glasford grumbled. It was a sinister sound. Nobody else said anything.

  “Um hmm.” Glasford again, only louder. Fish couldn’t figure it.

  “Um hmm.”

  Fish wasn’t going to pay attention. There was no sense answering a voice that proposed trouble you didn’t want. He hoped the driver knew as much. But then the driver was bending around again, his elbow on the top of the seat.

  “Here now,” he said to Fish. “Why dis guy um hmm so? What’s on his mind?”

  Fish didn’t want any sort of conversation. The best policy was to let a man make whatever speech he cared to, and forget about it if it wasn’t your concern. Glasford tapped him conspiratorially on the knee.

  “Fish, you tink you have de proper ahttitudes and mentalities to be a bourgeois fellah like dis taxi mahn?”

  “How you expect me to ahnswer daht?” muttered Fish.

  “What you fellahs up to?” the driver turned once more to ask.

  “We is de Black Knights,” Glasford said. His arms were crossed on his chest and he talked scornfully. Fish looked at him in horror.

  “Black nights,” the driver said, nodding his head.

  “You heard of us?”

  “No.”

  Silence. Fish made himself stone-hard. They were less than a mile from the edge of town.

  “You doan hear word of us?” Glasford persisted.

  “No.”

  Silence. They slowed for a stop sign, floated through it into shantytown.

  “We is revolutionaries, ya know.”

  “Oh,” the driver said with less interest.

  “Revolutionaries,” Glasford repeated. He made each syllable march out of his mouth.

  “Oh,” the driver said. “I first thought you must be some music group.”

  “No, no,” Glasford explained. “We is de words to de music. We is de livin words.”

  “Oh.”

  Fish interrupted this nonsense. “Drop us aht de corner, please.”

  The car stopped. Fish jumped out. Glasford remained in his seat for another minute, continuing his talk.

  “We must change our ways ahnd work togeddah.”

  “Okay,” the driver said.

  “You is wit us, taxi mahn?”

  “Sure, big noise,” the driver answered. “I just give you a free ride.”

  “Ahll right, ahll right,” Glasford said as if he had fixed a deal. “Maybe someday we give you a good job, Mistah Taxi Mahn.” He slammed the car door behind him and joined Fish, his feet springing lightly off the pavement, a high swagger that Fish couldn’t help but admire.

  There was not much action on the street. Glasford saluted the few limers and layabouts with a raised fist. They turned their heads to nod tentatively.

  “Bruddahs,” Glasford declared.

  “Yeah,” some of them called back. They stepped past a few nice houses, gated and barred, protected from the street by cement walls, and then onto a block alive with hucksters and kids, shops angry with light and noise, trash and stink scattered through the gutters.

  Once they entered Billings Road Fish guessed where Glasford was headed. His mood sunk. The Ethiope was a discotheque-bar, too big, too expensive. You had to be a kingpin to feel right there. Or carry a gun—same thing. Fellows bothering you to buy weed at Miami prices or talking a big sell on pills that made you dizzy, or pills that made your thoughts jerk too fast for your brain. The girls stayed tight against the money men, or one of the high-rolling tourists they sometimes talked inside the door. Fish preferred smaller places, safer people, booze that only cost what it was worth.

  A bouncer who was all heft checked the entrance. Glasford knew him.

  “Steam, my bruddah, out de way. We comin trew.” Glasford tried to push by him. The bouncer grabbed his shoulder.

  “How you gettin so cocky, boy? Put in my hand a dollah, quick.”

  Glasford pretended not to hear. “Steam, bruddah,” he said with an earnest expression. He placed his own hand on the hump of the doorman’s shoulder, so that the two of them formed a box, facing off each other like wrestlers. “Which title sound bettah to you—Black Knights or Black Brigaders? Knights sound too schoolboyish?” Glasford attempted to step inside the entrance but Steam restrained him.

  “Doan talk shit,” Steam said. Fish didn’t like a man who had such a smile, a smile that let you know you were underfoot and easily squashed. He moved back on the sidewalk, from distaste as well as for his own protection.

  “Put a dollah in my hand quick.” The smile was fading.

  “What happened, Steam?” Glasford protested. “I nevah pay a dollah before.”

  For a second Steam glared at Glasford’s hand on his shoulder. “Dis a new policy to keep away a cheap, mouthy niggah such as you,” he said. Glasford’s eyes shrunk and locked into Steam’s, so he couldn’t see, as Fish did, the bouncer reach with his free hand behind his back and pull a gun from his belt. He laughed as he slid it up the outside of Glasford’s pants, into his groin. Glasford didn’t have to look down to know what Steam was pressing into him. The pistol was small, almost nothing, in Steam’s massive hand.

  “Fish,” Glasford said coolly, “bring a dollah.”

  Without knowing the seriousness of Steam’s threat, Fish had no choice but to pass over a bill from his pocket and then—he had not expected this—another for himself. The gun was lowered and tucked away. Steam’s posture flaunted his disregard for danger, his amusement with his own power, as if he were trying to squeeze himself up to beast-size.

  “So, Glahsford,” he said. “How come it’s so long since I see you? How Momma Smallhorne keepin?”

  Fish was outraged. “Mahn, what kind of a fool are you?” he demanded of Steam. The doorman blinked and grinned benevolently, finished with his big joke and now oblivious to any ill feelings he had created.

  “Doan be so touchy,” he chided as Fish and Glasford, who was now laughing nervously at the game Steam had played, passed by him through the entrance into the shiny fluorescent oasis of the Ethiope—E-T-OPE. The vibrations of the crushing music were like the pressures of rough water against Fish’s body, the invisible surging of the bass guitar, the swift tugs of the high notes, then a sucking release as the music stopped and a deejay searched for another record.

  “Dey fix dis place up nice since I last come,” Glasford observed.

  On the plywood and concrete walls, shimmering under the electric voodoo of black lights, were unfinished murals of lions’ heads and serpents, naked women and seven-spired marijuana leaves, demons and tribal warriors, and everywhere, even on t
he floor, the three-bar cake of primary colors—red, yellow, green—of the flag of Ethiopia. Some of the images were crude, some elegant, some elaborate or simple. Apparently, customers were free to add to the art as they wished. Cans of Day-Glo spray paint were abundant along the walls.

  “Beautiful inspiration,” Glasford said. He penetrated the crowd and Fish rejoined him minutes later at the bar. Once again the music had detonated. Fish stared at the clothes of the dancers that glistened, pale sheets of flashes like phosphorus churning at night in the sea.

  “Buy me a beer,” Glasford yelled to him.

  “Look, slow down wit dis revolution. It costin me dearly.”

  Glasford seemed to hear only the one sweet word he was operating off of. “Dis beast too big to confront straight on,” he said. “Its heart too hard fah weapons to pierce. We must take bite by bite ahnd cripple it so. Zimbabwe take a bite. Cuba take a bite. Nicaragua take one, too. Soon a new world will grow on de ruins of Babylon.”

  “Um hmm,” Fish snorted. “I tell you, daht Steam is de first guy I lock up in dis new world.”

  Glasford acted surprised. “What! No, he’s a good fellah. He knows how to handle heself.”

  The bartender brought them bottles of stout which Fish, when he heard the price, paid for reluctantly. Glasford slumped forward into the music in a trance. A drunken woman, clutching a can of spray paint in one hand, a drink in the other, bumped into Fish. Without apologizing, she had him hold her glass, and Fish watched suspiciously as the woman bent down, kicked off her sandals and sprayed them a blazing green.