Easy in the Islands

by Bob Shacochis

  “Girl, you crazy?” Fish said.

  “Me?” she answered seductively, looking him up and down. “How you know what I am?”

  Fish’s natural response to women was to be flirtatious. He felt he was drawing her into his charm when Glasford interfered.

  “Here now, Fish,” he remarked. “Doan distract youself wit dis womahn. Lissen to de music.”

  As far as Fish was concerned, this was bad advice. He turned back to the woman, but she was brusquely removed from his side by a scowling fellow with eyes like small blue light bulbs in a tarry face. Before the man could drag her back to the dance floor, she thrust her can of spray paint into Fish’s hand.

  “Discipline you mind to de music.” Glasford regarded him fretfully and continued. “Lissen to dese prophets ahnd doan be foolish.”

  “I hear dis sound ahll de time.”

  “Yes, but you doan lissen, Fish mahn. You keepin a message from youself.”

  Because he didn’t understand what Glasford wanted from him, and because he was irritated that his friend could talk so big and behave so small, Fish wandered away, surveying the images and slogans on the walls. He looked at the paintings, at the can of spray paint in his hand, and began spraying, first a tentative line, then a curve that sagged from both end points, next a perpendicular line rising from the first, then the sweep of a sail, until he had outlined the catboat built with his own sweat. The way it shone so mightily in the dark pleased him. Since the spray can was only good for broad, bold strokes, he signed the name of the boat, God’s Bread, in the sky above the mast, so that another fisherman would know it was his. Then, under a squiggle of waves, he sprayed ugly sharks and pretty fishes. When he stood back to appraise his work, Glasford was there.

  “Daht’s a nice picture. Look, cahn you buy me a next beer?”

  “No.”

  “How you mean no? We is bruddahs. We look out for each oddah.”

  “Dis rich place take ahll me money.”

  “Ya know, Fish, dis a very sad country if two good men such as we cahnt drink ahnd eat as we need.”

  “Daht’s true.”

  Glasford took the can of paint from Fish. He shook it violently and began to spray slogans along the wall, disregarding the work of other painters.

  Black Power!!!

  Babylon Finish!!! He ran out of paint on the hook of the F but soon found a fresh can.

  More work for people!!!

  “Glahsford, if it’s work you want, come wit me in de boat.”

  “Doan talk foolish, mahn. You missin de point.”

  Fish didn’t see the point. Instead, he was bored.

  But Glasford had inspired himself. “Okay, let’s go,” he ordered. “I cahnt hold meself back now. I ready to ahk-tivate.” He marched toward the exit, gripping two cans of spray paint as if they were pistols and he were a desperado. Without much hurry, Fish trailed after him.

  Fish never came to town much at night. Once he came for medicine for one of his babies, once for a cockfight, several times to play poker with an old uncle and his cronies. But generally Fish had no business in Georgetown and no interest in its activities, designed more for foreigners than for the people of the island.

  Glasford armed Fish with the second spray can and led him up the alleys, through the streets and across the promenades, commanding Revolution, Revolution, in his raw, heroic voice. The fellows out and about stared, turned away smirking, or raised their fists in solidarity, observing Glasford painting the slogan Black Power in pink paint on the walls and windows of Georgetown.

  Eventually Fish said, “Here, Glahsford, tell me someting. How you writin Black Power so? You tink Halston ahnd dem fellahs in Parliment is pink like de words you sprayin?”

  “No, no, Fish. You doan catch de music, mahn. Black significates de Holy Jah, ahnd Power symbolize his lovin sword of vengeance. You see now? I must only write dese expressions to set dis message trew de blind eyes of de Ministers of Corruption.”

  Fish wondered if Glasford knew what he was talking about. He himself had no message to deliver to anybody, so alongside each incident of Glasford’s work he would write the wobbly name of one of the women he loved: Margareet, Rita, Alvina.

  They had infiltrated the city to its core: the hotels, the casinos, the government houses. As they sprayed their paint freely on the perimeter wall that enclosed one of the popular gambling resorts, Glasford explained his forthcoming strategy to Fish. They would bust into the casino, he said, and grab the wealthiest white bitch in sight. They would hold her for ransom, and they would demand from the slaves at Government House a plane to fly them to Havana. Once they were in Cuba, they would train with Castro’s freedom fighters until—

  “Doan stop on my account.”

  Fish looked over his shoulder. There, his legs spread out in a military stance, a nightstick clenched firmly in both hands, was a cop. Fish smiled extravagantly in an attempt to minimize any notion the cop might have that Fish was a threat to anybody.

  “I say, gentlemen, doan stop on my account wit dis beautification program.”

  Glasford was just turning to acknowledge the man’s presence when the cop struck them both—tunk tunk—so quickly with the nightstick that Fish had to think about what had happened before he could recognize the pain of the blow on his elbow.

  “I say doan stop.”

  “Mahn, what de hell.” Fish raised his arms for protection. Glasford was not intimidated. Before he could be stopped, his can of spray paint was level with the policeman’s nose.

  “You ugly bitch,” Glasford snarled. In an instant the cop’s round black face blossomed pink. “Dere, you mudhead. Now you a pretty pink-face boy in truth.”

  Fish was stunned, thrilled. His knees shook. Glasford was finally getting somewhere, behaving such a way to this bigshot, letting him know how people were tired of cops all the time molesting a fellow who wasn’t bothering a soul.

  “Run, Fish. Fly.”

  Glasford threw his can at the policeman but missed. The two friends raced halfway down the block before they heard the muffled pops of a handgun behind them. They turned a corner, following the high wall studded with broken glass along its top, turned another corner, then slowed cautiously as they approached the bright entrance to the resort’s compound. A guard in a flamboyant colonial costume narrowed his eyes at them.

  “We has a message fah dem fellahs in de band,” Glasford explained loudly, out of breath. “We comin right back.”

  “Wait a minute, you.”

  “Get out of me way,” Fish yelled, shoving the guy aside. He was suddenly furious. The man might have the power to prevent his escape. The cop back on the street might beat him and lock him up. How easy it was for a quiet fisherman such as he to so quickly become an outlaw.

  They sprinted down the drive and across the lawn to get behind the huge glittering block of the hotel. Then they could cut down toward the bayshore which Fish knew would lead them into the darkness and safety of the harbor. He looked beside him at Glasford, legs and arms pumping frantically. He would never have guessed this lazy guy could run so fast.

  Fish was seething with militancy. Dis water rough but I cahn mahnage, he thought. As if he were in a movie, music—the sort of music Glasford was always barking about—began a crescendo that soon enveloped them. They poked through a tall hedge of hibiscus into what surely must be Babylon. The lawn was dazzling with party lights and torches. White folks, hundreds of them, jerked about like land crabs to the din of the reggae being cast at them by five arrogant-looking musicians on a raised platform. Native servants in tuxedos, their hands gloved in white cotton, delivered drinks and food on silver trays throughout the crowd. At the end of the lawn, toward the darkness of the sea, a goat was roasting slowly over an open-pit barbecue.

  “Keep runnin. Doan stop.” He glanced at Glasford and nodded fiercely. This was not an environment they could lose themselves in.

  After his recent persecution, Fish loathed the gay scene he found himsel
f in the midst of and wanted to mar it somehow. He thought he was feeling for the first time the brotherhood of Glasford’s emotions, the new community of spirit that the music prophesied, the spirit and its rage. They pushed their way rudely through the dancers, deaf to the protests and shallow threats, but Fish was not blind to the fear their presence sponsored. At the shoreside fringe of the crowd, Fish’s passion boiled up into a wicked impulse, and the wickedness made him laugh, at least to himself, and his laughter frightened him but he could not stop. He raised the canister of spray paint gripped tightly in his hand all the time they had been running.

  “Look out. Look out. Get away,” he shouted. “Is a bomb I have.”

  There were a few uncertain screams from women. As the news swept through the crowd, the dancing stopped although the music didn’t. People struggled to back off from where Fish stood. Fish watched them move away, fascinated by how readily they responded to him. He shook the empty spray can vigorously and pitched it into the barbecue pit. Glasford had halted to hear his proclamation, frozen with his mouth wide open.

  “Holy Christ, Fish. What de hell craziness is dis?”

  Most people had abandoned the dance patio and were regrouping near the casino’s doors, watching Fish to see what would happen next. The lawn around the roasting goat was clear. The aerosol can exploded with a noise like a truck backfire, scattering the coals of the barbecue pit out a few yards as a cloud of embers ballooned into the atmosphere. Fish watched the red sparks swell up, for an instant more radiant than the stars, and felt a small sadness in himself, as if he belonged to another world and had just painted a slogan that nobody could read.

  Glasford whooped victoriously. “De Black Knights strike,” he said.

  They ran along the shore through the shadows of a grove of Australian pines. They kept going to where the lights began again near the harbor, the two of them loping between the few cars on the docks, crouching unnecessarily until they were positive no one followed. Finally they walked out bravely into the open, down along the pier toward the public anchorage where the yachts and sailing ships and some sport fishing boats tied up.

  “We need money,” Glasford stated. Fish could only sigh. He was weary and wanted the comfort of Althea.

  “A hungry mahn must satisfy himself.”

  “Daht’s true.”

  They proceeded aimlessly down the pier. It was late but the anchorage was filled with boat sounds: rigging slapping against masts, bilge pumps switching on automatically and splattering oily water into the bay, the creaking strain of anchor lines. Not many lighted portholes though. No people around. Fish was ready to reverse direction and start home when Glasford leapt quietly from the wooden pier onto the deck of a sailboat. He snuck along the cabin and disappeared into the cockpit. Fish heard him trying to force the cabin door and felt his loyalties to Glasford begin to split. Fish liked boat people. No matter how well outfitted they were, their good grace was always a question of their courage and their luck. Pirate and prince were often equal, their brotherhood instinctive, on the sea. He wished Glasford had shared a day of fishing with him. An island man shouldn’t forsake the sea.

  Glasford hopped back to the pier. “Shut up tight,” he whispered.

  “Glahsford—”

  “Come, come.” He darted onto another boat but a dog began barking from below deck, and a light flicked on. Fish was off the pier by the time Glasford caught up with him. They walked along the city wharf. There was nothing Fish wanted to say. The triumph at the casino already seemed the secondhand boast of a street hooligan.

  They came to the end of the quay. There were no lamp posts here and the air smelled fresher. A piece of moon had appeared over the eastern waters and hung in the sky like a fishscale. Glasford was still acting sneaky.

  “Psssss. Fish, look.” Glasford held a finger to his lips to forewarn silence.

  From the cleats on the quay two nylon lines ran over the edge and down toward the blackness of the water. To see what was below, Fish had to step up next to Glasford. At first glance the motorboat was nothing unordinary. Big but not so big, no cabin, nice size engine pulled up and locked. It didn’t take so much to buy a boat like this one—lots of fellows had them.

  What did surprise Fish was seeing on the exposed flooring of the boat two twisted, humped piles of, what—sheets or light blankets—a tennis-shoed foot connected to a white ankle protruding out from one pile, the round featureless shapes of heads under the bedding, shrouded from mosquitoes and the distant lights of the pier. Toward the stern, placed flat near one of the sleepers, was a large suitcase. If the people on the boat were tourists they were a type Fish had never encountered before. Most visitors to Georgetown were decidedly less adventurous than this.

  He didn’t have to see Glasford’s face to know what was on his mind. Fish felt ambivalent but vaguely curious again, noting how easy it was for Glasford to exploit the vulnerability of the sleepers, as if Glasford were a ghost capable of pranks but not of harm. Sitting himself on the edge of the wharf, extending his legs carefully until they rested on the motorboat’s gunnel, Glasford seemed so adept with the stealth of his movements that Fish realized his friend had a talent for the act he was performing.

  Glasford put his hand on the back of the pilot’s seat to steady himself, stretching until his other fingers found the handle of the suitcase. He tried to ease the suitcase up noiselessly, but his position and the slight rolling of the boat made the task impossible. A scraping noise moved through Fish’s blood. Glasford stopped in slow motion as if he were underwater. But then he snatched the suitcase up and braced himself to toss it over to the quay. As Glasford corrected his balance, Fish saw a white man’s head pop wildly out from under the blankets, saw the shock pass into the muscles of the man’s face, and then grimness and determination engage as the man bolted upright and lunged at Glasford from behind. Glasford’s mouth dropped in astonishment. A spontaneous pose of innocence and victimization filled his expression. This not-guilty plea would have made Fish crack up if at that moment the suitcase hadn’t slammed into his shins and knocked him backward. He gaped down at its plaid surface, not knowing why it was there.

  “Take it up, Fish. Run!”

  Glasford’s voice was cut off by dread and struggle. The white man wrestled with him. Through the force of his effort, the two men heaved themselves into the water. Fish was about to turn and flee but he paused just long enough to witness the other sleeper appear from undercover. A woman. She was pretty in the sort of bare, hard way white women were. The confusion on her face intrigued him. He wanted to stay and look at her but with the immunity he had felt when she was still sleeping. Her hands desperately patted through her blankets until they discovered a pair of eyeglasses. With her sight came a flush of horror. Fish grabbed the heavy suitcase and started running.

  He hadn’t taken more than ten quick steps before the woman began to weep and call after him in a wet voice.

  “Please come back. Please. Oh, dear God, you’ve taken everything I own.”

  Fish kept going but he couldn’t run fast enough to get out of range of the despair in her voice.

  “Please, please,” she wailed. “All that’s in that bag is our clothes.”

  Each of her sobs seemed to add more weight to his feet. What the hell was he doing on this dock, with this suitcase in his hand, running away from a helpless woman who was miserable on his account while Glasford and a white man were thrashing each other in the bay? Fish didn’t have much sympathy for the troubles of other people—his own were enough for him—but he was always alert to the needs of a woman. He slowed down and then stopped altogether, unable to work his legs.

  Once stopped, he didn’t know what he should do. He remained motionless, the suitcase on the street, as if he were waiting for a bus. Glasford finally hoisted himself out of the water, a dark fearsome sea-thing flopping onto the quay. He spotted Fish and staggered forward, gasping and spitting, water squishing around in his leather shoes.

&n
bsp; “Daht womahn cryin a big tragedy, Glahsford. How cahn we go on so?”

  “He try to kill me!” Glasford shrieked. Fish had never heard Glasford sound this offended. He stood there pounding water from his ears. “She trickin you, boy,” he argued angrily. “Ahll dese rich people does cry a storm when dey lose a penny.”

  Fish wasn’t prepared to discuss the matter any further. He spun on his heels, lifting the suitcase, and walked back to the dock. By now the white man had hauled himself back into the boat, looking blood-wild as Fish returned the suitcase to him. Once he had his property back, the mistrust went from his face and he shook his head in wonder. He was younger than Fish and his longish hair stuck to his cheeks and forehead.

  “Brother,” he said, “you are twice crazy. What if I had a gun? You could’ve gotten killed, a decent guy like you. You’d be dead right now. I’d damn sure do it, too.”

  Fish was ashamed by the truth of what the fellow was saying. Robbery without a gun in such circumstances was ignorant. To avoid the judgment of the man, he looked at the woman, her eyes offering gratitude and a forthright curiosity that somehow made him feel proud and countered what the man had said. Maybe there was a better reason for bringing the suitcase back but Fish had no appetite to search for it. The world had become melancholic and too romantic.

  Glasford swaggered up, tough and unrepentant, once there was no obvious danger in doing so. The white man stared at him and trembled while he spoke, releasing the last of his anger and fear. “I know how hard it is for you people in the islands.” He gritted his teeth, pausing to decide, perhaps, what to say next or how to say it. He shook water from his sodden hair and combed confidence back through it with his hands. “You sons of bitches are going to get killed, though, if you keep doing this.” The woman, swaddled in a blanket below the waist, held out a towel to her companion, but when he bent to take it she would not let go until she had persuaded him of something. Fish strained to listen but could not make sense of her whispering.

  “Look,” the guy continued when she was finished. He dug into his soaked pants. “Here’s twenty bucks, you know, for bringing the bag back.” He shrugged unhappily. “Maybe it will help you stay smart. Who knows.”