“How much do they want?” I asked.
“Ten times what they paid for it. I should have somehow scraped the money together back then and just bought it instead.”
“Surely they can see the improvements you’ve made that have added value to the property?”
“All Darcy Trumbo sees is dollar signs. Besides, I hear that Tex Sex has dropped more than several rungs down the ladder of hot country artists, and rumor has it that the Chinese are interested in the property. Well, that’s enough time talking about my problems. Tully, what kind of business did you want to discuss?” He dumped out a drawer of fishing flies, sending hundreds of small feathers twirling into the wind.
“Buying a truck to replace the Jeep I sunk.”
“Tully, I told you, it’s no big deal.”
“It is to me.”
“Well, buying a truck ain’t work. It’s fun,” Bucky said as he rose from the chair behind the desk. It was piled high with letters, envelopes, and fly-tying paraphernalia. “This shit can wait.”
We took a seat on the porch, and I told him about Ix-Nay’s discovery in the Belize paper and that we wanted to go take a look at it in the off days ahead. It didn’t take long to work out a deal to split the cost of the Rover. He said that would be fair, and I didn’t argue. He went back in the office, opened his safe, and counted out $5,500 in hundreds from a bank envelope and handed it to me. “There’s my half,” he said. “When do you leave?”
“As soon as we can contact the owner and make sure it’s still there.”
Bucky looked at his cluttered desk. “Be my guest,” he said.
Well, business should always follow pleasure, and though I was dying to contact Sergeant Mercer in Belize, I had a show to do.
“You’re not the only ones who had a little adventure recently,” I began. Then I passed the photos around the campfire. My audience looked at the pictures by the light of the fire and flashlights, as I told the story of my lucky ride home.
After everyone had turned in, I went back to the office and spent nearly an hour attempting to contact Sergeant Mercer in Belize at the number in the ad. When I finally got through, I was told he was on safari. I asked about the truck, and the man on the phone said that it was still for sale. I left my message that we were coming to look at it. Then I checked on Mr. Twain and headed to my bunk.
That night, I was too excited to sleep, and I busied myself packing for the trip. Shortly after midnight, I heard the phone ringing in the office. I dashed to the lodge, startling Mr. Twain awake as I ran. Just as I got there and lunged for the receiver, the phone stopped ringing. “Shit!” I yelled, but then the whir of the fax machine began, and out came a letter. It was from Sergeant Mercer, a short, to-the-point set of instructions that spelled out the time and place to meet him three days from now.
As I walked back to my cottage, I was thinking that Belize was where I had promised to meet Donna Kay so long ago. Now I was going there to buy a truck. I hated to admit it, but I thought that said something about my priorities.
I sat at my little bamboo desk beneath my art collection, thinking about the tropical merry-go-round that I seemed to be sharing with a wandering pilot and a sea captain on a mission. I looked up at my art collection and smiled. Precious friends, unpredictable days, and colorful miles had put the right distance between me and the storms that had overtaken my emotions with the surprising arrival and sudden departure of Donna Kay Dunbar. I was fine with that, but I realized, as my gaze moved from one picture to the other, that it was the Lucretia and Captain Highbourne I missed.
I woke up the next morning with my head on the desk and the sound of Ix-Nay at the door.
“We’re going,” I said in a sleepy rasp.
“I know,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I dreamed it last night, but there was something strange in the dream.”
“About the Land Rover?”
“No, it was about something else.”
“Well, you won’t know until you get there,” I said.
“So I guess that means we have urgent business in the South,” Ix-Nay said with a smile.
“That we do.”
22
Any Place Named After the Holy Ghost Is Fine with Me
The way Ix-Nay had figured it, we could be down and back in four to five days, depending on the weather, and home a day before the next fishing party arrived. But buying a truck in the jungle ain’t like going out to the Ford dealer on the interstate back home.
Our journey started on a bright day as we buzzed down the lagoon from Lost Boys to Punta Allen. There, we caught the coastal ferry that would take us to Ambergris Cay and the resort town of San Pedro, where we would catch a few hours of R&R and then take the day ferry to Belize City, our final destination.
Traveling as a fugitive in the banana republics is not as dangerous as doing so back up in the good old USA, but the incident with the Stiltons had left its mark. Ix-Nay laid out a circuitous route that would keep us away from the main border checkpoints that had computers and more inquisitive customs officials, though I did have a fake passport. He also brought along a disguise. He said I needed to look like either a tourist or a surfer—not a weathered expatriate. I opted for transient surfer. My disguise was an ugly rayon Hawaiian shirt, baggy Jams, Birkenstock sandals, and a ridiculous porkpie hat. Let’s just say I was not happy with my traveling clothes, but I deferred to Ix-Nay’s wisdom in these kinds of things.
The coastal freighter was named L’Ostra Encantadora, or “The Lovely Oyster.” She may have been lovely at one point in her life, but she looked like she could use a shipyard face-lift. Still, she appeared seaworthy enough. Of course Ix-Nay knew the captain, Claro, and introduced me as his friend.
With two blasts from the whistle, L’Ostra Encantadora slipped away from the dock, and Captain Claro pointed her south. Ix-Nay ran into a friend on board, and while they talked, I found a quiet corner and unpacked my little CD player, slipped in a Van Morrison disc, rolled up my towel for a pillow, and sang along to “Cleaning Windows” as we headed down the coast.
I dozed off and woke up to the sound of children laughing and shouting. As I slowly came to, I saw that a group of small Indian boys had turned the fantail of the ship into a soccer field, and they were kicking around a beat-up ball. Suddenly, a stray header veered left at an alarming speed. Though I instinctively raised my hands for protection, the ball was coming too fast, and it hit me right between the eyes. I was seeing spots and feeling the sting of the shot, which had made me angry.
“Kids one, Cowboy zero,” Ix-Nay said as he sat down beside me. He said something to the players in Mayan, and they all laughed.
I didn’t get the humor. The kid who had kicked the ball stood like a little statue in a dirty T-shirt and shorts, frightened of how the angry gringo might react. The look on his face reminded me instantly of myself many years earlier. He was just a kid having fun, and then suddenly something unexpected happened, and he was about to be punished. I knew. I had been there enough times.
“What’s Spanish for ‘good shot’?” I asked Ix-Nay.
“Forget Spanish,” Ix-Nay said. “This is the perfect time to try your Mayan. It will make you less threatening.”
The little Mayan soccer player who had scored the goal by hitting my head seemed puzzled as I started to laugh instead of scream at him.
I picked up the soccer ball and looked at the kid. “Ba’as ka beetik? [What’s up?]” I asked.
“Ma’ya’ab [Not too much],” he mumbled.
I looked at Ix-Nay and he turned his hand slowly, signaling for me to continue.
“Bix a k’aaba? [What is your name?]”
“Carlos in k’aaba,” he told me.
“What’s the word for ‘foot’?” I whispered to Ix-Nay.
“Hatsutzi,” he said.
“Carlos, u yaan hun hatsutzti okkk. [You have a very good foot.]”
That broke the ice. We smiled at each other, a
nd I tossed him the ball. The game on the fantail instantly resumed.
“I am proud of you,” Ix-Nay said.
“My Mayan was that good?”
“No, it was pretty lousy. But I love to see terror melted away by a smile.”
Time passed slowly as we moved south, but the perfect day had begun to transform. The slate-gray curtain of a mackerel sky came out of the south, followed by a line of ragged clouds on the horizon, and the wind began to freshen. Also, the way Captain Claro addressed his young crew told me we might be in for a bit of a blow, but the passengers on the ferry didn’t seem to notice.
Someone produced a guitar, and we sang the sun to sleep as it dipped down away behind the landscape, and the dinner hour arrived. Ix-Nay and I were invited to eat with the families of the soccer stars, and we dined on fish tacos and fresh avocados.
Then, sometime after midnight, the weather arrived with a vengeance. The sky opened up, and the wind rose to near gale force in a matter of minutes. Flashes of lightning illuminated the deck of the ship.
Captain Claro had his hands full, so we volunteered to help batten down the hatches and get a few of the people still wandering around the deck tied to something that would keep them on the ship.
In the process, a huge rogue wave appeared out of the dark, towering above the bow of the ship. That is when I said my quick prayer to St. Barbara. The wave broke at the foremast and cascaded down the whole deck, slamming into the wheelhouse.
After it passed, we circulated through the passengers huddled on the stern, and fortunately no one had been swept away. While we were lashing more people to the rail, I looked up and saw that the radar antenna had stopped in place. Seconds later, all the lights on the ship went out. This was not good.
Ix-Nay took the wheel, and I accompanied Captain Claro down into the engine room to try and sort out the problem.
We were able to jury-rig a power source and then Captain Claro was able to fire up his GPS and determine our approximate position, which he showed us on the chart. From there, he somehow picked his way through the natural minefield of reefs and flats that lay between the fury of the storm and the shelter of the protected waters of Bahia Espíritu Santo. Somehow we made it and dropped our anchor.
Any shelter from that storm was fine with me, especially if it was named after the Holy Ghost. At first light, the storm had dissipated enough for us to get under way again, and Captain Claro steered L’Ostra Encantadora back out to sea. Even though we were still getting banged around, I couldn’t help but feel awe when I looked out at the vast deserted beaches that we paralleled on our journey. The rain-soaked day and night passed without incident, and by first light, we could make out the channel entrance to Xcalak.
The choppy sea provided a wild ride through the cut, but we finally tied up at the ferry dock. Captain Claro informed us that he would not be sailing on to Ambergris Cay and San Pedro. He needed to make repairs, and he would do so at a small boatyard in the village of Sartaneja, just across Chetumal Bay in Belize. He asked us if we wanted to come along.
The change had me worried. Ix-Nay had planned for us to clear customs in San Pedro, where he knew the customs lady. He had a brief discussion with Captain Claro, and I could tell that my situation was the topic of conversation. After a few smiles and handshakes, they concluded the discussion, and Ix-Nay told me that everything was fine. The captain understood and had a friend at customs in the border town of Corozal. It shouldn’t be a problem.
After he cleared us in, he would have his nephew take us to Belize City in the tender.
Back on board L’Ostra Encantadora, we used a combination of bilge pumps to noodle our way upstream through the channel. As we approached Sartaneja, a dugout canoe came toward us, and a small man climbed on board. He was the local pilot, and he directed us up the small channel to the village.
Ix-Nay told me that this part of Belize was more Mexican and Mayan than Belizean. It had been settled by refugees from the Caste War, a popular uprising against Spanish authority that tragically cut the Indian population by half. “It was one of the nasty wars that inspired no monuments,” Ix-Nay said.
As we eased the leaky freighter next to the town dock, a small crowd of Indians watched us tie up. Captain Claro said it would be better if I stayed on board while he and Ix-Nay hopped in a cab and drove up to Corozal to deal with customs. I busied myself reading the week-old paper from Belize, then drifted off to sleep in the cabin.
I was awakened an hour later by the sound of Ix-Nay’s voice. Before I could roll out of the bunk, he was through the door of the cabin.
“You’re in,” he said. He handed me my fake passport with the fresh stamp. “Just by chance, if a customs or immigration guy happens to come by the boat, act like you are blind and seasick. That is the reason the captain gave them that you had to stay on the boat.”
“I can do blind and seasick extremely well,” I said.
Ix-Nay had brought along the very precise fax from Sergeant Archibald Mercer that set the time and place of our rendezvous—0900 at the City Market, south end of the swing bridge. It sounded like an appointment that you had better not miss. Even with the storms and the diversion from our original plan, we still were on schedule to make the rendezvous. Captain Claro’s nephew would run us down to Belize City at first light, which would get us there in plenty of time.
The next morning, with barely a sliver of daylight in the eastern sky, we bid farewell to L’Ostra Encantadora and Captain Claro. Then it was over the side into the waiting Zodiac. The morning revealed itself free of the storm clouds of the past two days, and we continued down the channel through the offshore keys. Shortly before eight, we passed through the mangrove channels of the Drowned Cays and the weathered skyline of Belize City, accented by a large white lighthouse that marked the entrance to Haulover Creek.
For some strange reason, I felt right at home in Belizean waters. Maybe it was because I was a fugitive—this country had seen a few of those in its long and colorful history. Belize City was no cruise-ship port. It was one of the last real outposts of the Caribbean. It had thrived for nearly four hundred years through hurricanes, wars, and epidemics, and had been built and occupied by explorers, treasure hunters, slaves, convicts, criminals, missionaries, smugglers, pirates, colonial know-it-alls, Mayan gods, and, some even claim, space travelers. It felt alluring and dangerous at the same time.
We were immediately besieged by a swarm of street hustlers and cab drivers offering everything from crack cocaine to a four-hundred-pound stuffed blue marlin.
Fortunately, Ix-Nay took charge. He stood very quietly in the midst of twenty cab drivers, all yakking at once, and then he pointed at one face.
I followed Ix-Nay and the chosen driver to a weather-beaten old Mercedes and climbed in the backseat. We had an hour to kill before we had to be at the bridge.
“You fellas be needin’ some breakfast?” the driver asked. He was a short, stocky black man, dressed in a lime-green jogging suit. His head was shaved, and he had about three pounds of gold chains around his neck. “My name is Hornblower, like da British admiral in da books,” he said, extending his hand. “But I got da name ’cause I just love to do dis.”
With that, Hornblower jumped in the driver’s seat and leaned heavily on the half-moon-shaped metal part of the steering wheel.
“OOOOOGA-OOOOOGA!” blared out from under the hood of his car, and he drove away from the curb and down the street. “It’s from a U.S. submarine. I bought it in a junkyard in Miami a couple a years back, and dat’s where I got da name.”
“And I guess you have a spot in mind where we can get a bite?” I asked.
“Oh, you bet I do. I am an ambassador for my country and everyting in it. Dis you first time to Belize?” I could almost see dollar signs rolling like a slot-machine window behind his reflector sunglasses.
“No, we know your country well,” Ix-Nay told him.
“You just tink you know her well. But I really know her well and would
be happy to take you on a little tour in dis cool, air-conditioned Mercedes for the bargain price of twenty U.S.”
The decision wasn’t hard—an hour on the already sweltering streets of the city or breakfast with Hornblower and a tour of town in air-conditioned comfort.
“Breakfast first, then the tour,” I said.
“You are da boss.”
Several minutes later, we were enjoying strong coffee and munching on sticky buns, scrambled eggs, and cheese grits, sitting at a plastic table under a pink umbrella alongside the busy thoroughfare at a place called Pete’s Pastries. It was Saturday, which meant market day in the tropics. The wet streets were already crowded with trucks, pushcarts, bicycles, and a cacophony of wildly different musical styles coming from car radios and ghetto blasters. I bought a copy of the Belize Times and scanned the pages for anything interesting.
“All dat papuh be good far is wrappin’ mullet,” Hornblower snorted.
“Hornblower, you ever heard of a guy named Archibald Mercer?”
“Wooooo, he badass mon. One a dem trained limey killers from da jungle warfare school da Brits run here. He left da Army and has a safari business up da river, but he don’t come to town much. Why you want to know?”
“We have business with Sergeant Mercer,” Ix-Nay said.
“I can drive you up der afta da tour.”
“We just need to meet him at the swing bridge at nine.” I glanced at my watch. We still had a half hour left until our meeting, so we decided to take a tour of the town. We climbed back into the Mercedes as the electric windows slid shut and the air conditioner purred. Just as I began to relax, I heard the squeal of feedback coming through the speakers in the car, and I looked up to see Hornblower with a microphone.
“You have to tink of our country as a foot,” Hornblower began. His right hand seemed to be welded to the horn switch on the steering column of his old Mercedes. He blew it at everybody and everything that passed his view. “Da heel starts near Guatemala, and da toes are da islands dat dip into da Caribbean.”