Chickenhawk: Back in the World

We dragged out the inflatable dingy. Bob pronounced it stressing the g. Din-GEE. “Blowing up the din-GEE,” he said. “The dingers blow up the din-GEE.” Didn’t take long: we had a foot-powered air pump. Got the thing inflated and threw it overboard. John said Ireland should stay on board while he and I went ashore to get provisions. He meant he wanted to get some beers. He’d been out for two days. He was sober, joked around less, talked less doublespeak.

We were only a couple of hundred yards off, and it didn’t take long to row ashore. John rowed. “Tomorrow we go around to the south side, to the main harbor. I don’t like to come in around all those boats at night,” he said, stroking.

“There’s lots of boats there?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“What’s here?” I said, pointing to the moonlit beach.

“I don’t know. Never been this side of the island before. But I think those lights are maybe a marina or something. Maybe they have some cold fucking beer.”

“Say, John, do you mean, ‘cold fucking beer’ or ‘fucking cold beer’?” I said, laughing.

“Yes,” John said. “That’s what I mean: Budweisers with ice sticking to the cans; brew so cold your scrotum will shrivel.”

We saw a dock, a big house, but no marina. John rowed up to the beach and we jumped out and pulled the dingy up on dry land. The ground felt like it was moving and I almost fell over. When we let go of the dingy, I stood up with my arms out, like I was balancing on a tightrope. I laughed. “They’re right! Sea legs,” I said.

We stumbled across the sand and came to the house. I was laughing. I just couldn’t get over it. I could not convince my body that I was on land. The ground seemed to pitch and roll, like the sea. I walked stooped over, like I might fall off the earth. The house was a clubhouse, I think. We walked all around it. Nobody there. We walked through the club’s landscaped grounds until we came to a gravel road. We stood on the road and looked toward the only lights around, about a quarter mile away. The trouble was, neither of us had thought to bring shoes, and the gravel hurt. “John, you really must want a beer, to go through this torture.”

“Ice cold, freeze your nuts off,” John said, laughing. “Besides, isn’t this fun? Shore leave. Wanting; having.”

The lights were at a garage and it was closed. We seemed to be in a part of the island that closed up early. John was pissed, “Dammy! Wanting; but no having?” John was picking up Ireland’s manner of speech; so was I. I was saying din-GEE as soon as I heard it. John shrugged and said he’d make up for it tomorrow. We tenderfooted back down the road to our dingy.

There had to be two hundred sailing yachts in Saint Thomas Harbor. I was astounded. Where’d they all come from? What were they doing here?

“Some of them—a lot of them—are here for the same reason we are, Bob,” John said.

I think he was right. As we threaded our way among the anchored boats, I saw mostly men on board. Mostly three men on each boat, just like ours. They waved, we waved. When we got within six hundred yards of the docks, we found a spot big enough to anchor the Namaste. I went forward and dropped anchor at John’s command. The Namaste settled back against the anchor line. John stood up on the deck and looked at our neighbors. “Good. We’re clear all around. When she swings around with the wind, and they swing around with the wind, she won’t hit anybody.” Glad he thought of that; I sure hadn’t.

We put on clean clothes. A note Patience had stuck in the crotch of my underwear said: “Use it and lose it!” The little girl smiled, holding a knife. Damn, Patience, I’m not like that… then I remembered she had every reason to believe I was. We flopped the dingy overboard and jumped in. Bob and I decided I’d row in; he’d row back out. As we passed by the boats, we got questions: “Where you from?” “Jacksonville?” “Got some weather, eh?”

We passed a houseboat, or rather a house on floats. It was a rundown two-story shanty. You could see that it was built to be a cheap place to live; there was no fee to anchor off in the harbor. A woman on the front porch was hanging up clothes. “Lots of these people live in the harbor,” John said. “See that guy out there with the big windmill on his boat?” I looked and nodded. “He was here last time. Lives there, generates his own electricity with that windmill, distills his own water in a solar still, catches fish to eat; only comes ashore to sniff out women when he gets tired of jerking off. Neat guy, Mason. You have a lot in common with him. Oughta go meet him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You make him sound real glamorous, John.” Actually, I did want to meet the guy. This was just a tourist stop, wasn’t it? I wasn’t a pot smuggler yet.