Chickenhawk: Back in the World

About two hundred yards offshore, I called out, “Ten feet, closing on eight real fast.” John shut down the engine and yelled to Ireland to drop anchor. The anchor hit the water with a green explosion, making an effervescent, iridescent green path to the bottom like a stream of glowing champagne. I went forward with some tools. Ireland and I undid the safety line on the starboard side so it wouldn’t get in the way when we loaded the bales.

The Namaste tugged against the anchor line and gradually aligned herself with the slow current. We saw the phosphorescent wake of a canoe heading out to us. On the beach we saw flashlights jerking around while the Indians got the load together.

We stood on deck and watched the canoe approach. A dark shape against the eerie glow of the water, it looked like it was floating in space. When the canoe came alongside, we could see that it was a huge dugout, twenty-five feet long and about five feet wide, carved from a mahogany tree. Indians chattered and laughed. The dugout was piled with bales of marijuana. When they reached out and grabbed the Namaste, a man jumped on board.

“Hey, John. Long way from home, eh?” the man said.

“Hi, Pete. Good to see you, man!” Ike’s name was Pete. John and Pete shook hands.

Pete turned around, called four of the Indians aboard—his cargo crew—and told them in Spanish to start unloading. The four Indians in the canoe tossed bales on deck. We all helped, grabbing the bales as they tossed them aboard. I grabbed one. Weighed about forty or fifty pounds, was cube-shaped, about eighteen inches on a side, wrapped in burlap. The bales varied in size, ranging from thirty pounds to sixty pounds. Pete called out the weights as they came aboard and John wrote them down, keeping a tally of what we loaded. I wrestled a bale to the forward hatch and dumped it below. I saw a dark man smiling up at me. He said, “Bonita, no? Beautiful, huh?” I smiled and said yes. In the lights below deck I could see the bales had boldly printed on the sides: product of Colombia.

In ten minutes the first canoe was unloaded and on its way back to shore for more. We could see another canoe drifting toward us on a phosphorescent cloud. I went back to the cockpit. John and Pete were sitting on the lawn chairs talking. “Product of Colombia?” I said. “They print that up for the pot?”

“Naw,” Pete said, laughing. “They make the wrappings out of coffee-bean sacks.”

“Pete,” John said, “this is Bob, a friend of mine. He’s a Nam vet, too.”

Pete sat in the shadows under the dodger and it was hard to make him out. I saw he was clean-shaven, wore casual tourist-style clothes—short-sleeved shirt, jeans—but I couldn’t make out his features well enough to describe.

As the second canoe approached, we heard the paddlers singing a native song. “Happy bunch,” I said.

“That’s right, Bob,” Pete said. “This is a fucking major event for them. This is payday. There’ll be big parties all night tonight, my friend.”

“This is what they do? I mean, all that they do?”

“You got it. Keeping marijuana illegal in the States is the best thing that ever happened to these people. Life’s never been better. They got refrigerators now, TVs, cars, trucks—putting money aside for the kids’ educations. They’re even buying up the land they used to work for the rich dudes who’ve been keeping them in poverty for the last couple of centuries. Tell the folks back home to smoke mo’ pot.” We laughed. The canoe came alongside and I went forward to help. John looked below and yelled to the Indians in Spanish to pack the stuff neater, it was taking up too much space. His Spanish sounded perfect. John and the head Indian jabbered about how to pack it so we could stuff more pot on board. We were going to take on as many bales as we could squeeze into every compartment except the galley. John told Pete we might be able to pack four thousand pounds into the Namaste, but it’d be tight. The Namaste could carry twice that weight, but marijuana, even compressed in bales, is bulky stuff and volume was the limiting factor.

Bob and I helped the Indians wrestle the bales to the forward hatch. Everybody was having fun. Much kidding, laughing, singing. During the next lull between canoes, I went back to the cockpit.

“John says you take care of the Colombian navy. How do—”

“I don’t do shit. Bob.” Pete struck a match to light a cigarette. I could see him in the light. His face was lean, smooth, friendly. He had close-cropped hair. He looked like a college kid working on his master’s degree in English. “Not a thing. These fuckers do it.” He swept his arm toward shore. “Their navy, any navy, has one critical link in its organization. The sailors. Most Colombian sailors are conscripts who come from villages just like this one. These guys just cut them in—pay ‘em about what they’d make in a whole year, just to keep the navy out of our way for one night. Never see the Colombian navy during the pickups.”

“How they do that?” I said.