Ireland and I hooked the safety line back up and went back to the cockpit with John and Pete.
John had given Pete the package of money and he was counting it as Ireland and I swung around the dodger. The canoes were all back on shore, and I wondered how Pete was going to get back.
“They’re sending a canoe out in a few minutes. They got some stuff for you guys—jugs of fuel, a whole bunch of fresh fruit and vegetables, canned food, stuff like that,” he said.
Pete finished counting the money and stuffed it into a canvas knapsack slung from his shoulder. He said to John, “Well, too bad you didn’t get a bigger boat, Ace. We have plenty more.”
John nodded and looked at the tally sheet. “Yeah,” he said. “Thirty-five hundred pounds. Shit, this barge could carry five thousand if we could fit it in, no problem.”
I saw a canoe drifting out on a cloud of light from the dark shore. When the Indians pulled up alongside, they began handing us five-gallon, basket-wrapped, corked glass jugs of diesel fuel, bunches of bananas, and cardboard boxes of canned food and fresh fruit. When the canoe had been emptied, Pete jumped in. He said “Have a safe trip” and waved. He sat down in the canoe and we watched him being paddled away. His mission was over; he was home safe. Ours was just beginning.
“Okay, guys,” John said. “Let’s boogie!”
We cranked up the engine, hauled anchor, and were under way in five minutes.
At midnight we were under sail and clear of the Guaijira Peninsula, out of the glittery water. Apparently the area just off the coast of the peninsula is one of the few places in the world that sees such bright displays of phosphorescent excitement.
We were all awake, sitting under the dodger. The adrenaline rush was still with us and nobody wanted to sleep. It felt like we were in the process of making a speedy getaway. We knew we had two thousand miles to go, but that hadn’t sunk in yet.
When we were out of sight of land, John said we should smoke some of the product to see how good it was. Ireland and I cut into a bale and yanked out a handful of the compressed weed. The whole boat reeked of the pungent, stale smell of the stuff. We rolled a joint and smoked it.
“Tastes a little stale, John,” Ireland said. John nodded and held a pinch up to his nose. “We gotta make sure this stuff stays dry. Stale pot doesn’t get much money.”
I sucked down a lungful, held it, and let it out. It wasn’t very strong stuff.
“What d’you think?” John asked.
“It’s not the kind of stuff I’d buy,” I said. “Smokes like New York street weed. Nothing like home-grown.”
“Good. That’s fine. That’s where this stuff is going. What do they know of home-grown in Brooklyn?”
I looked down the hatch at the wall of pot. “What’s all this worth? I mean, back in the States.”
“Right now we’re getting about three-forty a pound, wholesale. What’s that? Thirty-five hundred times three-forty—little over a million bucks?”
I shook my head and laughed. This was about as artificial an economy as I could imagine. The scammers buy bales of compressed weeds in Colombia where they give it little value and now they figure it’s worth a million dollars? Free enterprise.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” I said. “This stuff is basically worthless. I mean, yeah, it’s hemp, maybe worth, what? A hundred dollars as rope-making material? A million dollars to you guys? It’s obscene.”
“Hey,” John said. “Who are you to question world economics?” He laughed. “Supply and demand is the name of the game; and the government sets the prices. Life couldn’t be better.”
“Man,” Bob said. “They should just legalize the stuff.”
“Wash your mouth out, Ramon. They legalize this stuff and a whole economic sector is put out on the street. I mean, what happens to the importers and all their employees? What happens to those poor villagers? And what about us hardworking smugglers?” John laughed. “Let’s see, now; if it was legal, priced what it’s worth, your share of the deal would come to about two bucks.”
Ireland laughed. “Two bucks? Elephant wages!”
We heard thunder and saw lightning to the east. In a half hour, the storm hit. The Namaste leaned into the wind and plunged against the building sea. John was right. Going against the sea was much tougher. Waves as big as the ones we’d cut through smoothly coming down now bashed the bow and washed the decks.
I went below and crawled up on top of the pile of pot and lay down. I slept on a pungent, lumpy, million-dollar bed.
The next morning the storm was gone, but the wind was still strong. Daylight showed what a mess we had below decks. The helter-skelter bales had to be repacked just to give us a couple of level places to lie down. The stale marijuana smell, which had been overpowering the night before, was now barely noticeable as we got used to it. I smelled something else, a faint odor of fuel. Maybe gasoline? I made some coffee and went on deck. A light rain drummed the dodger. I saw a bird sitting on the safety line. Looked like a heron, a freshwater bird. What was he doing a hundred miles away from land?
“Probably got blown out during the storm last night,” John said. “I’ve seen it before.”
I leaned out of the dodger and the bird flew fifty yards away, paralleling us.
“The poor bastard can’t fly back home,” John said. “And he can’t land in the water like a gull—soak up and sink like a feather duster. He’s fucked.”
We watched the bird flying for half an hour. He was getting tired, flying lower and lower. Finally he flew back to the boat and landed on the starboard safety line, jerked back and forth to get his balance, cocked his head, and eyed us suspiciously.
Ireland came up, singing, “I’m Popeye the sailor man—” John and I shushed him. “Quiet, Ramon,” John said. He nodded to our mascot, hunched over on the safety line, dripping wet in the rain. “Dumb bird will fly out and drown.”
“Dammy,” Ireland said, looking at the bird with concern on his face. “Maybe we should catch it and let it go when we get near the Virgins.”
John nodded skeptically. “Help yourself.”
Ireland spent a half hour stalking the heron while the bird watched every move he made. When Ireland got too close, it launched itself back over the sea and fluttered weakly nearby.
The sky cleared and we beat north through rough seas, the wind whistling through the Namaste’s rigging. The heron spent the day flying out, almost out of sight, looking for home, and returning, more exhausted each time, to his perch on the safety line. He’d rest for an hour and repeat the search for his flock. It was depressing. I made an entry in my notebook about, if the bird could think, how easy it would be for him to just decide to sit on the deck and wait until we got close to land and fly ashore. But then, he’d never see home again that way, either.
The next morning the heron was gone. Now and then we saw birds flying around, but they were gulls. The heron was fish food. At sunset we saw another storm approaching. A nasty one. We had to reef the sails. Spent the night wondering if the Namaste was coming apart. Had to go out and tighten a loose turnbuckle on the port shroud. The cable had stretched.
I woke up with a headache. The Namaste was being tossed extra hard; how could the storm get any worse? I felt nauseous. The gasoline smell, or something petroleum, volatile, was really strong. We figured it was spilled fuel from trying to top off the fuel tank from glass jugs on a rocking boat. But diesel fuel smells like kerosene. I’d had lots of experience with solvents in the silk-screen process when I made mirrors, and the smell was familiar. I hate solvents. I went above with John and Ireland under the dodger.