A Salty Piece of Land
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Solomon answered as tears ran down his cheeks.
“Dr. Malta, you haven’t been with us long, but you did keep me breathing and got me out of that damn hospital. That clinic you want to build in your village in Pakistan? You have it.”
The young doctor bowed his head to Cleopatra and then looked at us, asking with his eyes if what he just heard was true. We nodded our heads.
“Tully, that leaves you, and of course your situation is a little more difficult than the rest. You have done the task I brought you here to do. The soul of the light shines on and my final resting place is built. I am trusting you and Solomon to see to it that Cayo Loco never gets into that state of disrepair again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered as I tried to control the trembling that swept over my body.
“There’s one more thing. You are also fired,” she said as she sipped at her rum. In an instant, Solomon went from crying to laughing at her sense of humor.
“It’s no joke.”
At first I thought she had just gone delusional in her last hours, or it was the rum talking, but then I looked in those eyes I had come to know so well, and I could see she was serious as a heart attack.
I had no idea how to respond. At that moment, the Lucretia carved into a huge rogue wave that jolted the hull and sent a forty-foot cascade of spray flying across the deck, drenching the cockpit. Solomon held the wheel steady as the cockpit, which now looked like a swimming pool, quickly drained.
Cleopatra laughed. “We are all survivors—even you, Dr. Malta; you have survived your first real storm. But the trouble with being a survivor is that you find yourself dancing alone a lot. It is a tricky seesaw on which the survivor has to sit. On the one side is your ability to be comfortable in a world inhabited only by yourself. And on the other side is your desire to share your time with others. How do you balance? Being a survivor is not a bad thing, but you do run the risk of being the last one at the party when the punch bowl is empty and the confetti has turned to dust—like me.”
Cleopatra closed her eyes and was silent. At first, I thought she had gone. But her breath frosted in the cold air, and she popped her eyes open again and picked up where she had left off. “Tully, I don’t want that to happen to you. That is why I am firing you from Cayo Loco and giving you Highbourne Hill as a place to plant yourself for a while. You have done more for me than you will ever know, and this is a small way to pay you back. Have parties, find a woman, raise some children, and fish a lot. Key West ain’t the cultural center of the universe, but it will do for starters.”
“Light ahead two points off the starboard bow,” Roberto called from the foredeck.
Cleopatra twisted her head but couldn’t see the light. Solomon let the boat fall off to starboard and brought the light to her.
“There,” I said and pointed.
“It’s the darkness that brings out what is sacred,” Cleopatra said. Then she added with a smile, “That would be the Cayo Loco Light.”
The whole crew stared out into the darkness, and when the piercing white light cut through the night, cheers, howls, and whistles reverberated across the deck.
I counted the seconds between light and dark. “Four flashes at four-second intervals,” I said, turning to Cleopatra. “You’re right, as usual, Captain. It’s Cayo Loco. We’re home.”
Suddenly we were distracted from our celebration as the wind, which had hauled steady out of the north-northeast since we had departed from Key West, started to back off. Then it veered every which way, as if it couldn’t make up its mind what to do. The sails began to luff, and the rigging chattered loudly as Solomon held the ship steady, expecting some kind of sudden blow.
The opposite happened. The wind dropped to nothing, the howling stopped instantly, and the Lucretia righted herself. Then in the sky to the east, a falling star, with a fiery tail that stretched halfway across the sky, tumbled through the dark and then disappeared.
I was watching the path it had taken when I heard the sound of something shatter on deck. It was as loud as a broadside from a ship off the line. When I turned and looked at Cleopatra, her eyes were closed. There was a smile frozen on her face, and the coffee mug lay in pieces at her feet. I knew she had stood her last watch aboard the Lucretia.
41
On the Back of a Crocodile
When a queen died in ancient Egypt, it was said that her soul sailed down the Nile on a golden ship to the afterlife, where she would hook up with Ra, the sun god. The supplies for her heavenly journey would have been prepared here on earth years in advance of her departure. The funeral barge, a wooden ship 150 feet long and painted with gold dust, was packed with coins, jewels, food, royal flip-flops, books, musical instruments, a few unsuspecting loyal servants, favorite cats, and star maps etched on sheets of papyrus. The Egyptians seemed to believe that in fact you could take it with you.
I am not saying that a woman who had been named for a mural in a Cuban barbershop was in some way related to the ancient rulers of Egypt, or that the Lucretia was her royal barge, but like the Egyptians, she sure as hell knew how she wanted to leave this world. Riding in the hold of the Lucretia was a mahogany coffin that Cleopatra had commissioned in Key West. There were also bags of conch shells and earth from the Malecon in Havana, the wooden toy box from the barbershop, and the baseball that El Cohete had signed for her the night we had spent with him in Cuba; and of course there were instructions as to how it would all be utilized in the celebration of her life and departure from this earth.
True to her pragmatic view of things, it was short and simple. The shock of seeing her motionless behind the wheel never really had a chance to register.
Dr. Malta and Solomon carried her gently back to her cabin. We had no time to cry or grieve or reflect on what had just happened. The winds had returned, the beacon on the horizon was getting larger, and the business of getting the ship safely to Cayo Loco took precedence over our emotions. Life moved on, even as we dealt with death.
Once the anchor was dropped at Cayo Loco, with the exception of the oarsmen for the dinghy and Roberto, the crew set about putting the Lucretia back in order after the harrowing run before the cold front from Key West. Roberto supervised the lowering of the dory over the side, then he and his crew loaded all the keepsakes and cargo and finally the coffin aboard, and the oarsmen took their places at their sweeps. Solomon and I piled in the packed dinghy and found standing room near the tiller. Roberto gave the order to cast off, and we took our captain ashore.
Once clear of the boat, Benjamin, the young drummer, tapped out a cadence on his turtle shell, and the oarsmen began to sing the song Cleopatra had requested.
Well, she sailed away on a bright and sunny day
On the back of a crocodile.
Can’t you see, said she, he’s as tame as can be;
I’ll ride him down the Nile.
Well, the croc winked his eye as she waved a sad good-bye,
Wearing a happy smile.
At the end of the ride, Cleopatra was inside,
And the smile was on the crocodile.
When they finished, Roberto shouted out, “Dead stroke on the mark—now.” The oarsmen pulled in perfect cadence as the blades of the sweeps took the dory toward the shore. The oars were then feathered, and on the second stroke, they glided in unison through the air just above the surface of the sea. Once again they were feathered, and the following stroke bit at the water. The alternating pattern was continued all the way to the beach.
I asked Roberto if the choreography of the sweeps was something Cleopatra had asked for. He told me no, that it was an ancient Garifuna custom that was reserved for chiefs and shamans—it transported both the body and the spirit of the special person to their burying place. It was a send-off from the crew to Cleopatra.
We were met at the shore by Diver, Ix-Nay, and a small group of local families who had already gotten the word. Solomon had radioed his son with the news of Cleopatra’s dea
th and instructions to gather a large pile of driftwood and stack it near the salt pond at Osprey Point. Per her instructions, Cleopatra would be cremated there, and her ashes were to be put in the toy box she had received from the barber in Havana. Then the toy box was to be buried under a palm tree on Osprey Point with a view to the southwest toward the shores of her not-so-distant birthplace—Cuba.
As if by design, Mardi Gras Day had fallen on the day she was born—and the day she died. We loaded up a wagon with the coffin, the toy box, and the other items Cleopatra wanted buried with her, and we harnessed up Mr. Twain. The crew laid piles of red, pink, and white hibiscus on the coffin, and Solomon climbed aboard to steady the load. On his signal, I gave Mr. Twain a slight tug on the reins, and we walked along a spiderweb of footpaths to the one that led to Osprey Point.
The winds of the cold front still glazed the morning with a slight chill, but once we descended to the shoreline behind the protection of the dunes, the warmth returned. The outgoing tide had exposed the flats, and that pungent smell of the shallows mixed with the perfume of night-blooming jasmine and the pine-needle scent from our five-tree forest. At the edge of the water, inch-high waves unfolded onto the beach as if they were trying to sneak ashore. The reflection of the sun on a scattering of tails gave the location of a school of bonefish traveling in the same direction as the funeral entourage. The usually skittish fish were not spooked by the noise of the wagon or the song that the crew sang as they followed along.
At the end of the beach, the school of fish became clearly visible as we climbed the path to Osprey Point. As we watched, the bonefish slowly banked around to the left like a fighter-jet squadron, then made a complete circle before disappearing into the blue water offshore. Circles were being completed all around me, I thought as I walked with my horse. It seemed like only yesterday that I had waded ashore with Cleopatra.
Roberto set a ghetto blaster on the wagon and pushed the power button as we all gathered around the grave site. The now-familiar voice of Carlos Gardel could be heard above the waves lapping against the shore. The mahogany coffin was placed on the stack of driftwood, and Solomon lit the fire.
So it was, on a clear, crisp morning on a salty piece of land in a hidden corner of the world, the orange-and-yellow flames of Cleopatra’s funeral pyre burned brightly on Mardi Gras Day. A flock of pink flamingos that had not been seen on the island for several months suddenly returned and flew in several circles around the flame, then repeated the maneuver around the red-and-white tower of Cayo Loco.
Cleopatra Highbourne had not only found the soul of the light. She had become a part of it.
42
Gone Fishing
I don’t want to sound superficial about losing my friend and mentor, but when I finally stopped running at full speed after dealing with the details of death, it was time to take a quiet, thoughtful ride across the island on my horse. I experienced a bit of long-overdue silence, and what came to me was this: Life is, and always has been, a struggle. The fishing pole bends heavier for some than others, and nobody has yet to figure out why—just as you never know, when you make a cast, if what attacks your fly is a finger-size baby snapper or a tiger shark that can turn you into bait. Still, we struggle with the rod just the same. Life to me is like a fish on the line. When it is there, you feel it. You fight it. You gain line. You lose line. But if that line suddenly snaps, or the pole breaks, or a thousand other problems occur that fishermen use as excuses when the tension is gone, you feel it even more.
I was looking out at the ocean when the annoying sound of a cigarette boat interrupted my thoughts. It took me back to a day when I had met the not-so-delightful present-day patriarch of the Diamond branch of her family. I had accompanied Cleopatra to Miami, to the Highbourne Shipping Company slip and dockside facilities that Cleopatra’s father had built to maintain her boat.
“My father, God bless his soul, was wise enough to protect the things he loved most—me and my boat. If it was up to that moneygrubbing, social-climbing, lucky-sperm-club extended family of mine, run by Donald the Turd, this dockside would have been turned into luxury condominiums long ago.”
I burst out laughing at the name. “Sounds like a royal shithead,” I added.
“Exactly,” Cleopatra said. “His real name is Donald H. Diamond the Third, but ‘Turd’ seemed more appropriate than ‘Third.’ He is the kind of man who makes you instantly think that public flogging should be reinstated into the penal code of South Florida and carried out during happy hour at any of a dozen sidewalk cafés on Collins Avenue.”
We were about to leave Miami for Cayo Loco when a big Mercedes pulled up to the dock and out stepped Donald the Turd. I could tell by the serious look on his calculated face that he was not there for a “bon voyage” party. Decked out in a blue blazer, white pants, and velvet loafers, Donald carefully crossed the grimy concrete wharf as if he were navigating a pile of poisonous vipers.
“I heard you were here and wanted to know if you could take a moment to chat about the last of your stock options I mentioned in my recent letter,” he called out. Cleopatra ignored him and was in the middle of commanding Solomon to cast off when her voice was drowned out by the deafening roar of the straight-pipe exhaust stacks of an approaching cigarette boat.
“I hate those fuckers,” Cleopatra hissed. “They’ve been glamorized by TV shows, but there’s only one reason they came into existence, and that’s to get large amounts of cocaine from Colombia to Florida as fast as possible.”
So around the bend in the river comes this penile extension–looking thing loaded down with several overweight, bare-chested males with obvious testosterone imbalances. The boat was painted bright yellow with the words PAR-T-ANIMAL scrolled down the side in metallic orange letters. The men, surrounded by a bevy of what appeared to be aspiring porn queens in small bikinis, were passing a bottle of champagne.
The boat sped by our mooring, throwing a huge wake that seconds later hit the Lucretia broadside and sent the hull crashing into the dock and the crew scurrying for fenders. Several of the teak planks of our deck were splintered, and naked bolts sat where the big cleat used to be. At that point I turned to look at the culprits, and that’s when I saw Donald wave to the driver of the boat, who grinned, then turned around and shot us a moon.
Cleopatra was not amused. She waited until the Par-T-Animal had moved about a hundred yards downriver, and she watched as three men climbed onto the stern of the boat and peed into the river, shaking their flabby asses out of time to the blasts of heavy-metal music, while one of the women shouted at the trio to pee in the direction of the lens of her video camera.
That’s when Cleopatra asked Roberto for her gun. He appeared instantly with her M16. From the dock, Donald the Turd screamed, “No, no, Aunt Cleo! I don’t think we should be firing off semiautomatic rounds on Sunday!”
She shot Donald the bird, snapped the clip into the gun, walked to the bow, knelt down out of sight between two large sail bags, took aim at her target, and fired.
Next, we heard the sound of a seriously badly running engine rev up as the driver of the boat tried to speed up with no success. Smoke billowed out of the lower units of all three engines. And as if that weren’t satisfying enough, a two-ton freighter and several tugboats suddenly filled the narrow river as the party monsters abandoned the Par-T-Animal and swam for their lives through the grimy water before their boat was crushed by the freighter.
In all the commotion that followed, we slipped by the scene relatively unnoticed, which is something for a 142-foot boat.
As we sailed off, Cleopatra turned to me and sighed. “Tully, this is not the same city I knew as a teenager, when my father and I raced from Martinique. Hell, there were rapids on the river not far from where we sit. Miami was just a trading post then, where the Seminoles would bring their fish, fur, and gator hides down to market. Tully, I am damn near as old as this city. Age is like an opium dream. I’m not quite sure what is real and what is not anymore.
I find myself rambling more, and I think I talk to as many ghosts as I do humans.”
It is that kind of wisdom that I already miss. I hope my memories will help to fill that empty hole in my life now that Captain Cleopatra Highbourne has boarded her golden barge and sailed off to eternity.
Sitting on the beach last night, I twirled the Lister’s conch shell in the palm of my hand and pondered Cleopatra’s words. As the boys cranked up the light, I watched the beams sweep the horizon. In the west, Venus appeared hot and bright, just south of the setting sun, and it seemed that our light was connected to it. Call it a cosmic moment or a simple sunset, but it was at that instant that I understood why Cleopatra had fired me. She knew that if she didn’t, I would never leave the island.
She was right. I needed to.
43
A Gang of Lady Pirates
If being fired by Cleopatra on her deathbed was not enough to get my ass in gear, then being fired by my horse could not help but get me moving.
My greatest concern about leaving Cayo Loco had been my horse. Though he seemed to thrive on the island, and the kids from the neighboring islands kept him pretty well occupied, I often saw Mr. Twain standing alone at the fence at night, staring back toward the west and Punta Margarita. I worried about him.
One night I dreamed I discovered a machine that could shrink him to the size of a golden retriever. He could climb up on my lap, sleep on the porch of the cottage, and hop in the skiff with me. I had even thought of contacting Donna Kay and Clark Gable to see if I could send him back up to their farm in Alabama, but something better happened.