Edward rinsed, combed his hair back with his fingers and returned to the living room to put on his paint-splattered canvas shoes and another shirt he had made sleeveless.
A sea breeze blowing in under a sky raked by high cirrus clouds made it cooler outside than inside. He lifted the garbage bag, and made his way through dry brush, agaves and weeds along a sandy path over a back hill. The path led to an empty mailbox and a paved road that was barely wide enough for one car and dusted with sand. Following his duties booklet instructions, he dropped the trash next to the mailbox, and then started walking west.
The road followed the spine of the island, slowly rising and cutting through a mix of dry brush and jungle overgrowth. Thirty minutes later, he came to the highest point where the road dipped into a slope. Down this was a village of wooden houses and dirt yards littered with children’s toys and plastic containers. At the end were cliffs that dropped fifty feet into deep teal-green waters of a cove.
Edward followed the path to stairs and down to the wood planks of a wide boardwalk standing about twenty feet over the water. About a dozen tourists sat or strolled in front of the themed shops and small restaurants with varnished façades and weathered pane glass, pirate flags, ship rope, hurricane lamps, rusting anchors, floats, oars, and brass propellers. There were rustic woodcarvings, a pelican, a one-legged pirate captain and a bare-breasted mermaid, and a signpost with numerous boards pointing in different directions, showing distances to the cities. Miami 1,117 miles. London 4,142 miles. Rio de Janeiro 3,205 miles. San Francisco 3,708 miles. Beijing 8,415 miles. Sydney 10,000 miles. North Pole 4,950 miles.
At the end of the boardwalk, where it bent around jungle-covered cliff, was a large pier. Edward found a police officer’s stall at its entrance, under a large sign that read, Welcome to Pirate’s Cove. He walked up to what was nothing more than a fairground booth painted with a thick coat of white just as a number of tourists were boarding a docked ferry.
The officer sitting inside the booth was a middle-aged man, half asleep as he listened to a cricket match on a small radio hanging on the wall. Edward spent five minutes explaining that he wasn’t a tourist. Then ten making the officer believe that his power could be out. The boardwalk had power, the officer replied four times. Then Edward explained how that was possible. The officer waited until the match announcer finished speaking before acknowledging Edward’s point.
While policeman was on the telephone, reporting Edward’s information, the ferry boat engines growled to life. Workers cast off rope and the boat moved off the pier, heading straight out toward the hills of Tortola. Edward could just make out a spot of white, a cruise ship, inside the bay at Road Town.
The policeman hung up the phone, and then waited a few seconds for any important match updates before assuring Edward that the Electricity Corporation would fix things shortly.
Edward walked back up the boardwalk and wasted some time looking into the shops. Then he followed it around the cliff to where it ended at a set of steps leading down to the sand. There on the rail was a handwritten sign with the word BAR and an arrow pointing straight down. He walked down, looking out at an area of calm shoreline where a number of sailboats were at anchor, all pulling on their lines to face the same direction as if they were a school of fish.
Farther down the beach, Edward found another booth similar to the policeman’s, but this one was shanty and half-hidden by ferns and roots covering its roof. It took Edward two glances to realize that there was a man inside, sitting behind a countertop. The white man’s face was gnarled, his skin leathery, sunned the color of pottery clay. His frayed beard was like Spanish moss hanging off a tree branch. His clothes so sun-bleached, they were perfect camouflage against the weathered wood of the booth. The most colorful part of the man was the yellow of his bulging eyes. These grew as the man realized Edward was looking at him.
“Hi.” Edward lifted a hand. “Is there a bar around here?”
The man eyed Edward suspiciously and swayed in his seat.
“You puck’n look’n at it.” The man stopped moving.
Behind the man was a shelf with two Igloo coolers and a stack of plastic red cups. In front of the countertop were three stools.
“Oh,” Edward said like a boy forced to dance with the ugly girl. He turned away and bit his lip, looking out at half-a-dozen sunbathers lying on towels above the waterline, each had a plastic red cup planted into the sand next to them. Hesitantly, he walked up and took a seat on the middle stool.
“I guess when you say, ‘bar’, that’s all it is, huh?”
“You tryin be punny?” The man had a massive hole where his four top front teeth had once been. He reached out pointed at Edward, his tanned arm covered with curled grey hair and patches of pink sun damaged skin.
“You gonna drink or tell jokes?”
“Can I get a beer?”
“Huh? W’aint got beer,” he barked. “Rum punch.” His voice was harsh and abrupt like he was trying to scream while being choked.
“Well, ok. How much?”
“Sign say five doll’rs.” The man jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at a worn and completely unreadable sign on the wall.
“Five dollars? US?” Edward whined. He peeked down at thirty dollars he had in his pocket. He had about two hundred dollars that needed to last him until payday.
“Is that pounds?”
“Nope. I know you got dollars.”
“Can’t give me a discount—”
“Sheeeeet! I know a drink cost more on that boat.” He nodded in the direction of Tortola.
Edward looked at the man trying to figure out if he was angry or just joking, thinking the man looked more like someone he’d meet in the back alley of a grocery store, drinking liquor out of a paper bag than a bartender.
“I didn’t come on that boat. I’m not a tourist. I’m living in a house on Deadman Bay.”
“Deadman Bay?” His voice rose painfully. “Then you must be rich enough to buy it—”
“I don’t own the house. Just watching it—”
“Well, yah ain’t watchin it now, are yah?” The man turned his back to Edward. He picked up a plastic cup and put it under a cooler spigot. He pressed the button with a thumb, letting the red juice stream into the cup. Slowly he lowered the cup, making a longer and longer stream. The splattering grew more pronounced as he held the cup near his groin. When the cup was three-quarters full, he let go of the spigot with an exaggerated lifting of his hand and groaned with relief. He tapped the spigot two more times, producing two more drops, made a dramatic moan, then turned around and placed the drink down on the counter in front of Edward. He leered at Edward.
Edward smiled, shaking his head, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and pressed it down onto the counter.
“So, where are you from—”
“Mymudder. Who’s askin?” the man blurted, slapping away Edward’s money just as Edward let go of it. “Why yah askin so many questions – yah here to take my bizness?” The bartender produced change from somewhere under the counter.
“Hey, I’m just trying to be friendly here. My name’s Edward. From New York.”
The man sighed heavily, took up a seat on his stool, and then sighed again as he began a violent scratch of his underarm. “You gotta know, huh? Calihuana.”
“Where?”
“Caliphornia, Caliporniahhh, Calipornia, OK? My name is Joe, OK?” He huffed and blew air out the hole in his teeth as if trying to whistle. “Been workin at this beach por one year, OK? Someone say it a good job, steady customers. Dick marketin man told me I get rich doin dis shit. Said he workin on getting more people over here to the village. Everyone lovin it. Good views. Good restaurants. Lots of beach. They say they put it on a page in the ship’s magazine. Bullshit! Know how I know? I talk to the tourist. And man, no one’s seen no bullshit page in no magazine. They just tell ‘em when they get out the boat – that’s all.”