“Hell,” Sala remarked, “chicken's expensive.”
I laughed. “Not out there. He shoots them with a speargun.”
“God almighty!” Sala exclaimed. “That's voodoo country -- they'll murder him, sure as hell!”
I shrugged. I'd assumed from the very beginning that Yeamon would sooner or later be killed -- by somebody or some faceless mob, for some reason or other, it seemed inevitable. There was a time I had been the same way. I wanted it all and I wanted it fast and no obstacle was big enough to put me off. Since then I had learned that some things were bigger than they looked from a distance, and now I was not so sure anymore just what I was going to get or even what I deserved. I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted it was worth knowing. Yeamon would either learn the same things, or he would certainly be croaked.
This is what I told myself on those hot afternoons in San Juan when I was thirty years old and my shirt stuck damply to my back and I felt myself on that big and lonely hump, with my hardnose years behind me and all the rest downhill. They were eerie days, and my fatalistic view of Yeamon was not so much conviction as necessity, because if I granted him even the slightest optimism I would have to admit a lot of unhappy things about myself.
We came to Fajardo after an hour's drive in the hot sun and immediately stopped for a drink at the first bar. Then we drove up a hill on the outskirts of town, where Sala puttered around for almost an hour, setting up his camera angles. He was a grudging perfectionist, no matter how much contempt he had for his assignment. As “the only pro on the island,” he felt he had a certain reputation to uphold.
When he finished we bought two bottles of rum and a bag of ice. Then we drove back to the turnoff that would take us to Yeamon's beach house. The road was paved all the way to the River at Lolza, where two natives operated a ferry. They charged us a dollar for the car, then poled us across to the other side, not saying a word the whole time. I felt like a pilgrim crossing the Ganges, standing there in the sun beside the car and staring down at the water while the ferrymen leaned on their poles and shoved us toward the palm grove on the other side. We bumped against the dock and they secured the barge to an upright log while Sala drove the car to solid ground.
We still had five miles of sand road before we got to Yeamon's place. Sala cursed the whole way, swearing he would turn back except that he'd be hit for another dollar to go back across the river. The little car thumped and bounced on the ruts and I thought it would come to pieces at any moment. Once we passed a pack of naked children stoning a dog beside the road. Sala stopped and took several pictures.
“Jesus,” he muttered, “look at those vicious little bastards! We'll be lucky to get out of here alive.”
When we finally got to Yeamon's we found him on the patio, wearing the same filthy black trunks and building a bookshelf out of driftwood. The place looked better now; part of the patio was covered with an awning made of palm fronds, and beneath it were two canvas deck chairs that looked like they belonged in one of the better beach clubs.
“Man,” I said, “where did you get those?”
“Gypsies,” he replied. “Five dollars apiece. I think they stole 'em in town.”
“Where's Chenault?” Sala asked.
He pointed down at the beach. “Probably sunning herself down by that log. She puts on a show for the natives -- they love her.”
Sala brought the rum and the bag of ice from the car. Yeamon chuckled happily and poured the ice in a tub beside the door. “Thanks,” he said. “This poverty is driving me nuts -- we can't even afford ice.”
“Man,” I said. “You've bottomed out. You've got to get some work.”
He laughed and filled three glasses with ice. “I'm still after Lotterman,” he said. “It looks like I might get my money.”
Just then Chenault came up from the beach, wearing the same white bikini and carrying a big beach towel. She smiled at Yeamon: “They came again. I heard them talking.”
“Goddamnit,” Yeamon snapped. “Why do you keep going down there? What the hell is wrong with you?”
She smiled and sat down on the towel. “It's my favorite place. Why should I leave just because of them?”
Yeamon turned to me. “She goes down to the beach and takes off her clothes -- the natives hide back in the palms and watch her.”
“Not always,” Chenault said quickly. “Usually it's just on weekends.”
Yeamon leaned forward and shouted at her. “Well goddamn you! Don't go down there anymore! From now on you stay up here if you want to lie around naked! I'll be goddamned if I'll spend all my time worrying about you getting raped.” He shook his head with disgust. “One of these days they'll get you and if you keep on teasing the poor bastards I'll damn well let them have you!”
She stared down at the concrete. I felt sorry for her and stood up to make her a drink. When I handed it to her she looked up gratefully and took a long swallow.
“Drink up,” said Yeamon. “We'll invite some of your friends and have a real party!” Then he fell back in the chair. “Ah, the good life,” he muttered.
We sat there drinking for a while, Chenault saying nothing, Yeamon doing most of the talking, and finally he got up and picked a coconut off the sand beside the patio. “Come on,” he said, “let's have a little football.”
I was glad for anything that would clear the air, so I put down my drink and ran awkwardly out for a pass. He spiraled it perfectly, but it smacked my fingers like lead and I dropped it.
“Let's get down on the beach,” he called. “Plenty of room to run.”
I nodded and waved to Sala. He shook his head. “Go play,” he muttered. “Me and Chenault have serious things to discuss.”
Chenault smiled halfheartedly and waved us down to the beach. “Go on,” she said.
I slid down the bluff to the hard-packed sand on the beach. Yeamon threw up his arm and ran at an angle toward the surf. I tossed the nut high and long, watching it fall just beyond him in the water and make a quick splash. He fell on it and went under, bringing it up in his hands.
I turned and sprinted away, watching it float down at me out of the hot blue sky. It hurt my hands again, but this time I hung on. It was a good feeling to snag a long pass, even if it was a coconut. My hands grew red and tender, but it was a good clean feeling and I didn't mind. We ran short, over-the-middle passes and long floaters down the sidelines, and after a while I couldn't help but think we were engaged in some kind of holy ritual, the reenactment of all our young Saturdays -- expatriated now, lost and cut off from those games and those drunken stadiums, beyond the noise and blind to the false color of those happy spectacles -- after years of jeering at football and all that football means, here I was on an empty Caribbean beach, running these silly pass patterns with all the zeal of a regular sandlot fanatic.
As we raced back and forth, falling and plunging in the surf, I recalled my Saturdays at Vanderbilt and the precision beauty of a Georgia Tech backfield, pushing us back and back with that awful belly series, a lean figure in a gold jersey, slashing over a hole that should never have been there, now loose on the crisp grass of our secondary and an unholy shout from the stands across the way; and finally to bring the bastard down, escape those blockers coming at you like cannonballs, then line up again and face that terrible machinery. It was a torturous thing, but beautiful in its way; here were men who would never again function or even understand how they were supposed to function as well as they did today. They were dolts and thugs for the most part, huge pieces of meat, trained to a fine edge -- but somehow they mastered those complex plays and patterns, and in rare moments they were artists.
Finally I got too tired to run anymore and we went back up to the patio, where Sala and Chenault were still talking. They both seemed a little drunk, and after a few minutes of conversation I realized that Chenault was fairly out of her head. She kept chuckling to herself and mocking Yeamon's southern accent.
We drank for another hour or
so, laughing indulgently at Chenault and watching the sun slant off toward Jamaica and the Gulf of Mexico. It's still light in Mexico City, I thought. I had never been there and suddenly I was overcome by a tremendous curiosity about the place. Several hours of rum, combined with my mounting distaste for Puerto Rico, had me right on the verge of going into town, packing my clothes, and leaving on the first westbound plane. Why not? I thought. I hadn't cashed this week's paycheck yet; a few hundred in the bank, nothing to tie me down -- why not, indeed? It was bound to be better than this place, where my only foothold was a cheap job that looked ready to collapse.
I turned to Sala. “How much is it from here to Mexico City?”
He shrugged and sipped his drink. “Too much,” he replied. “Why? Are you moving on?”
I nodded. “I'm pondering it.”
Chenault looked up at me, her face serious for a change. “You'd love Mexico City, Paul.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” Yeamon snapped.
She glared up at him, then took a long drink from her glass.
“That's it,” he said. “Keep sucking it down -- you're not drunk enough yet.”
“Shut up!” she screamed, jumping to her feet. “Leave me alone, you goddamn pompous fool!”
His arm shot out so quickly that I barely saw the movement; there was the sound of a smack as the back of his hand hit her cheek. It was almost a casual gesture, no anger, no effort, and by the time I realized what had happened he was leaning back in the chair again, watching impassively as she staggered back a few feet and burst into tears. No one spoke for a moment, then Yeamon told her to go inside. “Go on,” he snapped. “Go to bed.”
She stopped crying and took her hand away from her cheek. “Damn you,” she sobbed.
“Get in there,” he said.
She glared at him a moment longer, then turned and went inside. We could hear the squeak of springs as she fell on the bed, then the sobbing continued.
Yeamon stood up. “Well,” he said quietly, “sorry to subject you people to that sort of thing.” He nodded thoughtfully, glancing at the hut. “I think I'll go into town with you -- anything happening tonight?”
Sala shrugged. I could tell he was upset. “Nothing,” he said. “All I want is food, anyway.”
Yeamon turned toward the door. “Hang on,” he said. “I'll get dressed.”
After he went inside, Sala turned to me and shook his head sadly. “He treats her like a slave,” he whispered. “She'll crack up pretty soon.”
I stared out to sea, watching the sun disappear.
We could hear him moving around inside, but there was no talk. When he came out he was dressed in his tan suit, with a tie flung loosely around his neck. He pulled the door shut and locked it from the outside. “Keep her from wandering around,” he explained. “She'll probably pass out pretty soon, anyway.”
There was a sudden burst of sobbing from inside the hut. Yeamon gave a hopeless shrug and tossed his coat in Sala's car. “I'll take the scooter,” he said, “so I won't have to stay in town.”
We backed out to the road and let him go ahead. His scooter looked like one of those things they used to parachute behind the lines in World War Two -- a skeleton chassis, showing signs of a red paint job far gone with rust, and beneath the seat was a little engine that made a sound like a Gatling gun. There was no muffler and the tires were completely bald.
We followed him along the road, nearly hitting him several times when he slid in the sand. He set a fast pace and we were hard pressed to keep up without tearing the car to pieces. As we passed the native shacks little children came running out to the road to wave to us. Yeamon waved back, grinning broadly and giving a tall, straight-armed salute as he sped along, trailing a cloud of dust and noise.
We stopped where the paved road began, and Yeamon suggested we go to a place just a mile or so further on. “Pretty good food and cheap drink,” he said, “and, besides, they'll give me credit.”
We followed him down the road until we came to a sign that said CASA CABRONES. An arrow pointed to a dirt road that branched off toward the beach. It went through a grove of palms and ended in a small parking lot, next to a ratty restaurant with tables on the patio and a jukebox beside the bar. Except for the palms and the Puerto Rican clientele, it reminded me of a third-rate tavern in the American Midwest. A string of blue bulbs hung from two poles on either side of the patio, and every thirty seconds or so the sky above us was sliced by a yellow beam from the airport tower, no more than a mile away.
As we sat down and ordered our drinks I realized we were the only gringos in the place. The others were locals. They made a great deal of noise, singing and shouting with the jukebox, but they all seemed tired and depressed. It was not the rhythmic sadness of Mexican music, but the howling emptiness of a sound I have never heard anywhere but in Puerto Rico -- a combination of groaning and whining, backed up by a dreary thumping and the sound of voices bogged down in despair.
It was terribly sad -- not the music itself, but the fact that it was the best they could do. Most of the tunes were translated versions of American rock-and-roll, with all the energy gone. I recognized one as “Maybellene.” The original version had been a hit when I was in high school. I recalled it as a wild and racy tune, but the Puerto Ricans had made it a repetitious dirge, as hollow and hopeless as the faces of the men who sang it now in this lonely wreck of a roadhouse. They were not hired musicians, but I had a feeling they were putting on a performance, and any moment I expected them to fall silent and pass the hat. Then they would finish their drinks and file quietly into the night, like a troupe of clowns at the end of a laughless day.
Suddenly the music stopped and several men rushed for the jukebox. A quarrel broke out, a flurry of insults -- and then, from somewhere far in the distance, like a national anthem played to calm a frenzied crowd, came the slow tinkling of Brahms' Lullaby. The quarrel ceased, there was a moment of silence, several coins fell into the bowels of the jukebox, and then it broke into a whimpering yell. The men returned to the bar, laughing and slapping each other on the back.
We ordered three more rums and the waiter brought them over. We'd decided to drink a while, putting off dinner till later, and by the time we got around to ordering food the waiter told us the kitchen was closed.
“Never in hell!” Yeamon exclaimed. “That sign says midnight.” He pointed to a sign above the bar.
The waiter shook his head.
Sala looked up at him. “Please,” he said, “you're my friend. I can't stand this anymore. I'm hungry.”
The waiter shook his head again, staring at the green order pad in his hand.
Suddenly Yeamon banged his fist on the table. The waiter looked fearful, then scurried behind the bar. Everyone in the place turned to look at us.
“Let's have some meat!” Yeamon shouted. “And more rum!”
A fat little man wearing a white short-sleeve shirt came running out of the kitchen. He patted Yeamon on the shoulder. “Good fellows,” he said with a nervous smile. “Good customers -- no trouble, okay?”
Yeamon looked at him. “All we want is meat,” he said pleasantly, “and another round of drinks.”
The little man shook his head. “No dinner after ten,” he said. “See?” He jabbed his finger at the clock. It was ten-twenty.
“That sign says midnight,” Yeamon replied.
The man shook his head.
“What's the problem?” Sala asked. “The steaks won't take five minutes. Hell, forget the potatoes.”
Yeamon held up his glass. “Let's get three drinks,” he said, waving three fingers at the bartender.
The bartender looked at our man, who seemed to be the manager. He nodded quickly, then walked away. I thought the crisis had passed.
In a moment he was back, bringing a little green check that said $11.50. He put it on the table in front of Yeamon.
“Don't worry about it,” Yeamon told him.
The manager clapped his h
ands. “Okay,” he said angrily. “You pay.” He held out his hand.
Yeamon brushed the check off the table. “I said don't worry about it.”
The manager snatched the check off the floor. “You pay!” he screamed. “Pay now!”
Yeamon's face turned red and he rose half out of his chair. “I'll pay it like I paid the others,” he yelled. “Now get the hell away from here and bring us our goddamn meat.”
The manager hesitated, then leaped forward and slapped the check on the table. “Pay now!” he shouted. “Pay now and get outer I call police.”
He had barely got the words out of his mouth when Yeamon grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “You cheap little bastard!” he snarled. “You keep yelling and you'll never get paid.”
I watched the men at the bar. They were bug-eyed and tense as dogs. The bartender stood poised at the door, ready to either flee or run outside and get a machete -- I wasn't sure.
The manager, out of control by this time, shook his fist at us and screeched, “Pay, you goddamn Yankees! Pay and get out!” He glared at us, then ran over to the bartender and whispered something in his ear.
Yeamon got up and put on his coat. “Let's go,” he said. “I'll deal with this bastard later.”
The manager seemed terrified at the prospect of welshers walking out on him. He followed us into the parking lot, cursing and pleading by turns. “Pay now!” he howled. “When will you pay?. . . you'll see, the police will come. . . no police, just pay!”
I thought the man was crazy and my only desire was to get him off our backs. “Christ,” I said. “Let's pay it.”
“Yeah,” said Sala, bringing out his wallet. “This place is sick.”