“Sounds like Greek to me,” I joked.
“It is. Homer.”
“The Odyssey?”
“You think you had a tough time in San Pedro. That was nothing compared to poor Odysseus.”
“I don’t remember Scylla and Charybdis.”
“At one point during his epic voyage, Odysseus had to make a very difficult passage between two equally dangerous perils.” Cleopatra studied the sail configuration as she talked. “I think we can run up the fisherman, Mr. Solomon.”
“Aye, Captain,” Solomon said from behind the wheel. He called to his watch to set the big sail.
“Anyway,” Cleopatra continued, “Scylla was a beautiful maiden loved by Poseidon, god of the sea, but her rival, Amphitrite, fed her magic herbs that turned her into a monster. She was horrible to behold, with six heads, and each head had three sets of teeth.”
“That would be Thelma Barston in my world,” I said.
“I have found that dragons come in many shapes and sizes. To say the least, Scylla was not dealing with her fate very well. She was pissed off at the world, and she went to dwell on a mountain in a high cave overlooking the sea. When ships passed by, each of her terrible mouths would snake down out of the cave and have a sailor for lunch.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said.
Cleopatra kept one eye on the sail as it was raised. “That’s not all,” she went on. “On the other side of the narrow channel, beneath an immense wild fig tree, lay a huge and dangerous whirlpool called Charybdis. Three times a day, it sucked in and spit out the sea. The fate of Odysseus was to sail between Scylla and Charybdis.”
“Is there something like that where we’re headed?” I asked.
“You can never be certain.” Cleopatra looked off into the distance. “There could be a whirlpool or two ahead—like the one that just sucked you into all that foam and spit you out in the Dragonfly Cays.”
“I did feel like I was going under for the third time out there in the bush. But that was my own stupidity,” I said.
“I am not sure it was stupidity. You men have that inherent problem when the little head thinks for the big one. Or maybe it was because you forgot this,” she said and pulled the Lister’s conch shell out of her shirt pocket. “Whatever it was, the point is this: Like Odysseus, you made it through. You are still here,” Cleopatra said in a kind, counseling tone.
“That I am.” My fingers tingled when I wrapped them around the shell.
“Try and hang on to this conch, will you?” she added.
We watched the twilight sky and the first stars of the night pop through the dark, mysterious curtain of the universe. “Take up a bit on the staysail, Roberto,” she called out. Instantly there was a definite increase in our speed across the water. “Looks good, Mr. Solomon,” she said. Then she turned and looked me in the eye. “It seems like luck is on your side again, Mr. Mars.”
“Looks that way, Captain.”
“Son, I have been around a long time, and I can tell you that in saving one’s self from his own devices, there is luck involved. But it is more about friends. You better thank your lucky stars and that shell of yours that you have a few. They came to your rescue because you were worth saving.”
“Thanks.” It was about the only word I could say.
“We weren’t just socializing here, you know. We are going to get Thelma out of your life. Sammy Raye seems to think there are a few skeletons in her closet that she might not want to share with the public.” I didn’t even ask what they were up to. I just wanted to do my job on the boat, whatever that was. Cleopatra continued, “So now it’s my job to keep you out of sight and out of trouble for a while. I figure with all of your expert knowledge about lighthouses, you can help me find the soul of the light.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Mr. Solomon!” she called out. “Let’s take a look at the chart for a second. I am thinking of stopping at Port Antonio. Mr. Mars can take her.” Solomon gave me the course to steer and moved from behind the wheel. I stepped in.
“You are heading for the Windward Passage. Cuba is on one side and Jamaica is on the other. Try not to hit either of them,” Cleopatra added.
“Aye-aye, Captain,” I answered with a smile.
My hands again welcomed the feel of the spoked wheel.
I scanned the whole ship from the bowsprit to the stern. There was just enough daylight left in the west to make out an object in the water just outside the wake. I grabbed a pair of binoculars and focused on the object. It was a long, dark tree trunk covered with barnacles and knots. Sticking up at one end of the log was a branch about two feet tall; it looked like a tiny mast. At the tip, a small green cluster of new-growth leaves swayed in the wind.
I ran my fingers over the little wooden gecko hanging around my neck. Johnny’s words came instantly to mind. He had told me to become a seed and ride the winds and the tides—to follow the song of the ocean to my appointed shore. Johnny’s prophesy had come true.
I had thought that Lost Boys was the beach where I was to take root, but the weeds of my past had grown larger and more threatening than I had realized. That little branch sitting atop that water-soaked old log told me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be—floating along on the winds of time a little bit longer.
I was not yet quite ready to come ashore, but the Lucretia was not a bad-looking piece of driftwood to be floating on.
37
The Spare Bulb
To: Tully Mars
Cayo Loco
From: Willie Singer
Vanuatu
Dear Tully,
If you thought my practice letters were long before, you haven’t read anything yet. Hold your breath and stretch out under a palm tree. Do I have a tale for you.
Somebody once told me that you don’t have to go looking for stories. The good ones will come to you. I think that just happened to me.
But let me back up.
It all started with our departure from New Caledonia, which of course Monsieur Parfait orchestrated.
To sum it up, our departure from French Polynesia was not subtle. We circled the lighthouse at Amedee in the company of not one but three helicopters and several private planes. When I talked via radio to Parfait, who was in one of the helicopters, and asked him what in the hell was going on, he just smiled, waved at me across the sky, and said, “Willie, Willie. By now haven’t you learned that we French don’t do anything simply?”
That was an understatement.
Well, with the day starting like that, I should have known it probably wouldn’t end any differently. Parfait had mentioned a contact in Vanuatu. It does get my curiosity up when a Frenchman tells me to go and look up someone named Waltham.
We plotted a direct course for the most northern island of the chain, Espíritu Santo, and the town of Luganville. That’s where my search for Waltham would begin. A look at the chart showed that the chain of islands that make up Vanuatu resemble the Windward Islands of the Caribbean. The difference is there are a lot more bigger, active volcanoes on this side of the world.
The weather remained beautiful for the whole trip, and we actually had a slight tailwind, so we stayed at about three thousand feet, where the air was cool. In a couple of hours, the peaks of the highest mountains began to rise above the horizon, and we went down on deck for a better look.
The island was easily identifiable from the air; I had read about it in my pilot’s guide, and it truly did look like a small dog sitting on its hind legs. We ran a systems check as we neared the coast, which was prompted in part by Parfait’s parting words: “You’ll love Vanuatu. They haven’t eaten anybody there since 1969.”
All systems were go, and it looked as if our risk of falling out of the sky and into a boiling cauldron was quite remote. I pulled the power back, and we descended to slightly above treetop level, which revealed rain forest canopies, driftwood-littered beaches, and a multitude of palms bent by the trade winds. From the cockpit window, I
could see that the string of islands gave way to the open waters of the Bougainville Strait, and puffy cumulus clouds signaled a large landmass beyond the horizon. That would be Espíritu Santo.
These were historic seaplane waters we were flying over. After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the rapid conquest of the Philippines, the real-life chess game for Japanese control of this part of the world went into full swing. The battle for Australia and New Zealand was on, and that is when the pawnlike Solomon Islands—and the amphibious aircraft that flew in and around them—suddenly took on enormous strategic importance. As a result of the ensuing conflict, the natural harbors and bays of Espíritu Santo had been transformed overnight from sleepy backwater ports to major staging-and-support areas for the pivotal battles on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Savo. At one time, eight Navy and Marine airfields and several PBY squadrons were based on Espíritu Santo alone. After all these years, I wondered if there was any trace of that seaplane legacy still left. It did not take long for my question to be answered.
Espíritu Santo is a bit too Catholic a name for the locals, who refer to both the island and the main town of Luganville as simply “Santo.”
“November 928WS, this is Santo Tower. Welcome. Welcome” came the excited voice of the controller who fed us our landing instructions, interspersed with compliments about our plane.
After landing, we were directed to a remote corner of the airport, where we were met by a customs officer, a policeman, and a film crew from the local TV station. A large crowd of curious bystanders aimed their video cameras at the plane. Unlike the welcoming committee from our initial arrival at New Caledonia, where it looked as if we might be deported before Parfait saved the day, the Vanuatu officials were quite pleasant. They asked questions about the plane and wanted to have their pictures taken in front of The Flying Pearl, which of course I happily agreed to.
When they asked what we were doing, I just said, “Passing through on the way to Hong Kong.” It never raised an eyebrow from the official. He stamped our inbound docs and passports. I paid the landing fee, and we all smiled for the camera.
Things were so friendly that, at one point, I was tempted to inquire about Waltham, but my instincts told me to hold my questions.
Like everything else in these islands, the heat has a way of shortening the time it takes to do anything that isn’t protected by shade or air conditioners, so our jubilant welcome was over in about five minutes. I had told the crew that we would stay the night, and if I wasn’t able to contact Mr. Waltham, we would follow our original flight plan to the Solomons and the Philippines, and on to Hong Kong.
I called in our fuel order to the tower, and they replied that the truck would be right there. I just crossed my fingers and then ducked under the wing of The Flying Pearl, away from the sweltering heat of the tarmac, praying that the truck would actually come. To our astonishment, it appeared within minutes of our call.
“I am Jetfuel Joe!” a jolly man shouted from the open window of the fuel truck. It came to a halt in front of the left wing. “Welcome to Vanuatu. Dis is a beautiful plane you have here. We don’t see many like dis no mo.” He was a small man with no front teeth and a bushy Afro under his grease-stained Dodgers baseball hat. He wore surf Jams and a Bob Marley T-shirt. I liked him already. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“Well, Jetfuel Joe, I am Captain Will, and we are happy to be here. You think you can come up with about a thousand gallons of avgas for this old girl?”
“No problem, mon. I am way ahead of you. Dis here is da avgas truck,” he said with a huge, gapped smile.
“Well, let’s fill ’er up,” I said, and I climbed up on the wing.
Looking around the airport, I could see that the presence of more than half a million U.S. soldiers, sailors, and Marines sixty years ago had left a lasting impression on the town.
As we fueled the plane, Joe showed no more than the usual curiosity that The Flying Pearl always creates, but when we finished, and after I had paid the bill, I invited him inside. I know a plane freak when I see one. We walked through the aft cabin where all our gear—from life rafts to fishing gear to surfboards—was bundled up and cinched down. Then we passed through the small galley—the bunk beds and the gallery of photos attached to the bulkhead—to the flight deck. Taking it all in, Jetfuel Joe said, “You have come a long way.”
“You’re right,” I told him.
We made our way to the flight deck, and Jetfuel Joe let out a whistle when he saw the instruments and gauges. “Go ahead. Sit up there,” I said and pointed at the pilot’s seat.
He cautiously wiggled his small body up into the seat and put his hands on the wooden yoke. Then he stared straight ahead and immediately became silent—as if he had gone into a trance. Suddenly he looked up at me and said, “You from Florida in the U.S.—Pensacola.”
“I am from Mississippi,” I said.
“But in dat pitcha out der you in Pensacola,” he said with a strain of confusion in his voice.
“This plane has been to Pensacola many times.”
“Florida a good place.”
“You ever been?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. Then he paused before adding, “But I do know about it.”
There was something about the way he said those words that rang a bell. It’s that sixth-sense thing you develop if you spend a lot of time in not-so-populated corners of the world where one thing actually means another. It is the code of the road, a way of saying “All is not what you think it appears to be here, and we probably ought to have a beer and discuss it.” So that is exactly what we did.
The crew grabbed a cab and followed us into town. I rode through Luganville on the back of Jetfuel Joe’s moped. The waterfront looked like an aging World War II movie set, with numerous rusting Quonset huts, steel walls, and the remnants of a different time scattered along the road.
I had traveled eight thousand perilous miles across the Pacific without ever feeling the kind of danger I felt on the back of Jetfuel Joe’s moped as he weaved his way through trucks, cars, and tour buses. Finally we pulled up to a place called the Coolidge Bar.
The bar was not a tribute to the thirtieth president of the United States. I don’t think it was the kind of place Mr. Coolidge would have frequented. It was named for the old passenger liner that bore the boring former president’s name and had been converted to a troopship in the war. The ship had been sunk entering the harbor after it hit a couple of friendly mines and was now a big attraction for scuba divers.
The Coolidge Bar was a little of the Complete Angler in Bimini and Le Select in St. Bart’s, one of those waterfront bars that serves as a gathering place for sailors, pilots, travelers, and the occasional reprobate. All of the above seemed to be present in the Coolidge Bar that afternoon.
Jetfuel Joe disappeared, and almost instantly he reappeared with a couple of Tusker beers wedged between his fingers. He pointed to a table away from the bar. We sipped our beers, and then the crew took off on a tour of the town. I agreed to meet them later for dinner.
I still had to try to contact Waltham, and I knew from our short time together that Joe would be the right guy to ask.
We ordered another beer. Joe’s father, like most everyone on the island, had worked for the U.S. Navy during the war. He asked me where I had been, and I told him. “You should land in da harba in da plane. Make an air show for everybody. People here love seaplanes. Most people, dat is.”
The way his sentence trailed off from happiness to anger aroused my curiosity. “What people?” I asked.
With that, Jetfuel Joe looked around the bar and then stood up. “Captain Will, let’s please take a walk,” he said.
To anyone with good sense, this request for a “walk” should have been politely turned down, but it bounced off me like a Ping-Pong ball. Off I went with Joe, pushing the envelope one more time.
It took us about fifteen minutes to walk back through town. We passed Chinese stores, kav
a bars, dive shops, and government buildings on our way to a small park near the river. I followed Joe to a corner of the park behind a giant ficus tree, and when he was sure we hadn’t been followed, he turned and said, “You bring a message from Captain Keed?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Captain Keed from Pensacola.”
“The only Captain Kidd I know was a pirate from New York who was hung by the British three hundred years ago,” I said.
Jetfuel Joe didn’t see the humor in my answer. “Der annuda Captain Keed, and he is a god.” There was reverence in Joe’s voice. He continued, “Captain Keed was a seaplane pilot from Florida. You are a seaplane pilot from Florida. You come from Captain Keed.”
“I told you. I’m from Mississippi.”
“But da plane from Pensacola.”
Joe was expecting me to understand something, but I didn’t quite get it. I figured this was the perfect place and time to ask my question. “Joe, have you ever heard of somebody in Santo named Waltham?” The smile instantly returned to Joe’s face, and he waved a finger at me. “You pilots. You very much smart.”
“You know him?” I asked.
“I know him, and he know you. But he not in Santo. He on Dalvalo.”
“Where’s that?”
“South, much south.”
“Can we fly there?” I asked.
That question started Jetfuel Joe laughing loudly and shaking his head. “You could, but you can’t,” he answered.
That one threw me for a momentary loop.
“Tings on Dalvalo are different from Santo. Waltam, he not so liked by da gubment people. It not be wise to take da plane der. Could be trouble for you. But if you really want to meet him, der is annuda way,” he said with a smile.
My initial hunch to keep quiet at the airport about Waltham had proved to be right. He seemed to be some kind of dope dealer or conspirator, but why would someone with a pedigree like Philippe Parfait tell me I should contact him?
The easiest choices in life just aren’t that fun or interesting. The practical voice in my ear was saying I should let the whole Waltham thing go. He was probably a smuggler or a revolutionary and somebody who could cause me problems simply by my mentioning his name to the wrong people. This was clearly another wild-goose chase—it was time to go crank up the Pearl, forget about lighthouse hunting, get back on course, and move on to our original destination of Hong Kong. But that other voice in my head, the mischievous, reckless, romantic one, kept saying, “Things don’t add up here, and you need to find this Waltham guy. He has a big answer to some kind of big question. And if the route to his whereabouts takes you down a back alley in the middle of an island with a long history of cannibalism, then right on, man. That is the way you are supposed to go.”