Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

The docks where we tied up the dingy were shared by the Islander, an island-rustic bar and restaurant, and the Harbor View, a large, modern hotel. We blended into the tourist traffic—mostly people sightseeing off cruise ships—looking in the shops that ringed the plaza between the hotel and restaurant. They sold tropical T-shirts, palm frond hats, conch-shell lamps, ice cream—tourist geegaws and whatnots. I was looking for a pair of sandals and a place to develop some slides I’d taken. I found a photo shop and asked the guy where I could use a phone. He said the hotel had pay phones. We found the phones. John and I called our wives; Ireland called his girlfriend.

“I miss you,” Patience said.

“Me, too. How’s Jack?” Jack thought I was just working as a sailor.

“Oh. He came in second. Cross-country race.”

“That’s great,” I said. I’d seen Jack run in two races. A lot of fathers were at every race. Now one of the fathers was on a pot run. There was one way out of this trip, but Patience hadn’t mentioned it. I asked anyway. “Heard anything from Knox?”

“No. That last letter from Norton was it.” An editor at Norton had said he thought my manuscript was very well written, BUT: the usual stuff about no one wanting to read about Vietnam.

We didn’t talk long. I told her a little about the storms and stuff, said we’d be home in a couple of weeks; I’d call before we left Saint Thomas.

Outside the hotel compound, Saint Thomas was pretty scruffy. We walked along a busy, litter-strewn street to a place John said served great hamburgers. We’d been talking about hamburgers for days. The street reminded me of the crummier neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I was really impressed by this. Saint Thomas was a tropical paradise, yet the citizens buried it in trash. Also, no one smiled. If you tried smiling at someone, you got a sullen stare back.

We got our hamburgers and fries and milk shakes and sat down at a table covered with catsup, pieces of dried onions, relish, and a hundred flies.

“Man, what a dump,” I said. “Why’s everything so dirty?”

“The people don’t give a shit,” John said. “They’re all on welfare and they’re pissed off at those white people living up on the hills.” He pointed to a mansion that hung out on a cantilevered deck off the side of Crown Mountain. “They’re pissed off at them because they’re rich, and if you’re a white tourist they’re pissed off at you because you’re white and, since you’re a tourist, probably rich, too.”

“Hot dammy!” Ireland said, flicking his eyebrows at the hamburger he held in two hands. “Living good, Juan!” He bit into the hamburger, squishing out catsup, smiling as he chewed.

While we ate, John said we would spend a couple of days getting supplies, and then sail to Thatch Cay, just to the east of Saint Thomas, to keel-haul the boat and install the depth finder. We needed the depth finder because we were going close to shore in Colombia, and the last thing we needed was to be pinned there, waiting for the Colombian navy.

We walked to a grocery store and bought four bags of groceries, six cases of beer, a case of Cruzin rum, and ten cartons of Winstons. We filled a cab with the stuff and drove back to the docks. John had Ireland wait with the supplies while John and I went into a marine supply store and bought a new fitting for the fuel line, plus spares

We loaded up the dingy and rowed back to the Namaste.

That afternoon I replaced the fuel-line fitting and then just loafed around the boat watching life in the harbor. Some people sunned themselves on the decks of their boats; others polished brass, painted bright work. Everybody was laid back. I wasn’t laid back. I was plagued with doubt, tense with worry. I wondered if I was really able to go through with the scam.

At dusk we rowed back to the docks and went to the Islander.

The Islander was the kind of place they keep dirty on purpose. The ceiling was fishnets tacked to beams with dusty seashells and starfish drooping down in the nets at odd places. A stuffed sailfish nailed to a driftwood plank had cobwebs in his open mouth. We sat at a table on an upstairs balcony, with a good view of the harbor.

It was sunset, and the island was beginning to look good. Lights flickered along the harbor’s edge, ringing the dark water like a glittering necklace on velvet. Two hundred yachts basked in a calm harbor. We decided that the Namaste was one of the best-looking boats in the basin.

I sipped a beer, my second, and began to think of Saint Thomas as a pretty nice place to be. After a while, you barely noticed the trash and stopped trying to be friendly with the natives. And the weather was terrific. Here it was, the middle of December, yet the breeze was soft and warm, balmy. Perfect weather.

I had a bowl of conch chowder and another beer.

Ireland and I stayed out on the boat the next day, cleaning and making repairs, while John rowed in to phone the scam master and find a place to fix the loran. He’d taken the radio with him.