We took our stand round St. Ant’ony’s Key. There wasn’t no resort back then. No dive shop, no bungalows. Just cashew trees, sea grape, palm. It were a good spot cause the reef close in to shore, and that old motor launch we use for boarding, it ain’t goin to get too far in rough water. My daddy, he keep checkin’ he pistol. That were how he did when t’ings were pressin him. He check he pistol and yell at ever’body to swing they lanterns. We only have the one pistol mongst the five of us. You might t’ink we needs more to take on an entire crew, but no matter how tough that crew be, they been t’rough hell, and if they any left alive, they ain’t got much left in them, they can barely stand. One pistol more than enough to do the job. If it ain’t, we gots our machetes.
The night wild, mon. Lord, that night wild. The bushes lashing and the palms tearin and the waves crashin so loud, you t’ink the world must have gone to spinnin faster. And dark…we can’t see nothin cept what the lantern shine up. A piece of a wave, a frond slashin at your face. Even t’ough I wearin a poncho, I wet to the bone. I hear my daddy cry, Hold your lantern high, Bynum! Over to the left! He hollerin at Bynum Saint John, who were a fisherman fore he take up wreckin. Bynum the tallest of us. Six foot seven if he an inch. So when he hold he lantern high, it seem to me like a star fell low in the heavens. With the wind howlin and blood to come, I were afraid. I fix on that lantern, cause it the only steady t’ing in all that uncertainty, and it give me some comfort. Then my daddy shout again and I look to where the light shinin and that’s when I see there’s a yacht stuck on the reef.
Everybody’s scramblin for the launch. They eager to get out to the reef fore the yacht start breakin up. But I were stricken. I don’t want to see no killin and the yacht have a duppy look, way half its keel is ridin out of the water and its sails furled neat and not a soul on deck. Like it were set down on the rocks and have not come to this fate by ordinary means…
You t’ink you can tell this story better than me, Clifton? Then you can damn well quit interruptin! I don’t care you heared Devlin Walker tell a story sound just like it. If Devlin tellin this story, he heared it from me. Devlin’s daddy never were a wrecker. And even if dat de case, what a boy born with two left feet goin to do in the middle of a norther? He can’t hardly get around and it dry.
Yes, sir! Two left feet. The mon born that way. Now Devlin, I admit, he good with a tale, but that due to the fact that he never done a day’s work in he life. All he gots to do is set around collectin other folks’ stories.
The Santa Caterina, that were the name on the yacht’s bow…it were still sittin pretty by the time we reached it. But big waves is breakin over the stern, and it just a matter of minutes fore they get to chewin it up. I were the first over the rail, t’ough it were not of my doin. I t’ought I would stay with the launch, but my daddy lift me by the waist and I had no choice but to climb aboard. The yacht were tipped to starboard, the deck so wet, I go slidin across and fetch up against the opposite rail. I could feel the keel startin to slip. Then Bynum come over the rail, and Deaver Ebanks follow him. The sight of them steady me and I has a look round…and that’s when I spy this white mon standing in the stern. He not swaying or nothin, and it were all I could do to keep my feet. He wearing a suit and tie and a funny kind of hat with a round top that were jammed down so low, all I seein of he face were he smile. That’s right. The boat on the rocks and wreckers has boarded her, and he smilin. It were like a razor, that smile, all teeth and no good wishes. Cut the heart right out of me. The roar of the storm dwindle and I hear a ringin in my ears and it like I’m lookin at the world t’rough the wrong end of a telescope.
I’m t’inking he no a natural mon, that he have hexed me, but maybe I just scared, for Bynum run at him, waving he machete. The mon whip a pistol from he waist and shoot him dead. And he do the same for Deaver Ebanks. The shots don’t hardly make a sound in all that wind. Now there’s a box resting on deck beside the mon. I were lookin at it end-on, and I judged it to be a coffin. It were made of mahogany and carved up right pretty. It resemble the coffin the McNabbs send that Yankee who try to cut in on they business. What were he name, Clifton? I can’t recollect. It were an Italian name.
Who the McNabbs? Hear that, Clifton? Who the McNabbs? Wellsir, you stay on the island for a time and you goin to know the McNabbs. The worst of them, White Man McNabb, he in jail up in Alabama, but the ones that remain is bad enough. They own that big resort out toward the east end, Pirate Cove. But most of they money derived from smugglin. Ain’t an ounce of heroin or cocaine passes t’rough Roatan don’t bear they mark. They don’t appreciate people messin in their business, and when that Italian Yankee…Antonelli. That’s he name. When this Antonelli move down from New York and gets to messin, they send him that coffin and not long after, he back in New York.
So this box I’m tellin you about, I realize it ain’t no bigger than a hatbox when the man pick it up, and it can’t weigh much—he totin it with the one hand. He step to the port rail and fire two shots toward the launch. I can’t see where they strike. He beckon to me and t’ough I’m still scared I walk to him like he got me on a string. There’s only my daddy in the launch. He gots a hand on the tiller and the other hand in the air, and he gun lyin in the bilge. Ain’t no sign of Jerry Worthing—he the other man in our party. I’m guessin he gone under the water. The mon pass me the box and tell me to hold on tight with both hands. He lift me up and lower me into the launch, then scramble down after me. Then he gesture with he pistol and my daddy unhook us from the Santa Caterina and turn the launch toward shore. It look like he can’t get over bein surprised at what have happened.
My daddy were a talker. Always gots somet’ing to say about nothin. But he don’t say a word til after we home. Even then, he don’t say much. We had us a shotgun shack back from the water, with coco palms and bananas all around, and once de mon have settled us in the front room, he ask me if I good with knots. I say, I’m all right. So he tell me to lash my daddy to the chair. I goes to it, with him checkin the ropes now and again, and when I finish he pat me on the head. My daddy starin hateful at me, and I gots to admit I weren’t all that unhappy with him being tied up. What you goin to do with us? he ask, and the mon tell him he ain’t in no position to be askin nothin, considerin what he done.
The mon proceed to remove he hat and he coat, cause they wet t’rough. Shirt, shoes, and socks, too. He head shaved and he torso white as a fish belly, but he all muscle. Thick arms and chest. He take a chair, restin the pistol on his knee, and ask how old I am. I don’t exactly know, I tell him, and my daddy say, He bout ten. Bout ten? the mon say. This boy’s no more than eight! He actin’ horrified, like he t’ink the worst t’ing a man can not know about heself is how old he is. He tell my daddy to shut up, cause he must not be no kind of father and he don’t want to hear another peep out of him. I goes to fiddlin with the mon’s hat. It hard, you know. Like it made of horn. The mon tell me it’s a pith helmet and he would give it to me, cause I such a brave boy, but he need it to keep he head from burnin.
By the next morning, the storm have passed. Daddy’s asleep in the chair when I wakes and the mon sitting at the table, eating salt pork and bananas. He offer me some and I joins him at the table. When Daddy come round, the mon don’t offer him none, and that wake me to the fact that t’ings might not go good for us. See, I been t’inkin with a child’s mind. The mon peared to have taken a shine to me and that somet’ing my daddy never done. So him takin a shine to me outweigh the killin he done. But the cool style he had of doing it…a mon that good at killin weren’t nobody to trust.