“Things don’t look too good,” Lisa agreed tentatively.
“You got to joy, man. These are the last days. Let go!” He smiled at them and gave Janice an awkward hug. “If you want to get stoned the communal pot supply is in this first shack here. I’m afraid it’s rationed too.”
“No thanks,” said Lisa.
“Joy, brothers and sisters,” Thunder pronounced, opening his arms in a belated welcome. “Joy in all you do. The last days are here.”
“Joy to you too,” said Lisa shyly in a soft voice as Thunder strode away after two women who were following a path off to the left.
“May the last days find you soon,” said Katya, so low that only Lisa could hear.
“Hey, Oscar asked me to get some pot,” said Janice. “You go on ahead. I’ll join you later.”
Lisa and Katya walked on. When they emerged several minutes later from the shrub oak onto the beach they found themselves surrounded by six or seven other young women and girls and one man, all but two of them black, all watching a long powerful motor yacht slowly approaching a large mooring about forty feet from shore. The black women were wearing blouses and shorts, both so frayed in some cases they were almost in rags. The hot wind was blowing offshore at this point, and the water, despite the strength of the breeze, was calm.
“Excuse me,” said Katya to the lone white girl, who was wearing only a bikini bottom, her small naked breasts a light stripe in her brown torso. “Where can we get something to eat?”
The girl frowned. “The boat,” she said, pointing. “They bring it on the boat.”
Lisa could see that two men had successfully tied their yacht to a mooring about fifty feet out.
“I say, are you girls coming or not?” one of the men yelled from the bow of the yacht.
“Bring us the little boat, mon!” one of the black women shouted back.
“Oh, no,” the man shouted back, grinning. “You can swim out today. The exercise will be good for you.”
“Put the boarding ladder down!” shouted a pudgy black girl, slipping off her brightly colored but tattered blouse, and putting it down neatly next to another woman’s basket. The woman then ran four or five strides into the water, made a clumsy dive, and began swimming out to the yacht.
“Ah, shit, I can’t swim,” one of the other black girls said as two more prepared to swim out.
“Hey!” shouted the white girl to the man standing on the bow watching the swimmers. “I can’t swim! How about a lift?”
“Later, sweetheart,” the man replied. “We’ll let these ladies row in with what they buy.”
“Oh, shit,” said the white girl to herself. “By the time we get there they’ll be tough to bargain with.”
“Who cares?” said a black girl. “We’ll eat anyway.”
“Shit, rotten mangoes and fish.”
“It food, I eat it.”
Lisa and Katya stood just behind these two, watching the three women who had swum out to the yacht. One by one they climbed up the boarding ladder on the starboard side and stepped down into the huge cockpit. The yacht’s bow was pointed directly at them, so Lisa couldn’t tell what was happening on board. The man who’d been on the bow went aft when the women began climbing aboard.
Three of the women still on shore now moved off along the beach and seemed to have lost interest in the yacht, leaving only Lisa, Katya, and the black girl who was desperate for any kind of food. When Lisa looked out again, she saw two of the men peering over the top of the high windshield and examining her and Katya through binoculars.
In another few minutes a dinghy appeared from astern, and a black woman climbed down into it and paddled toward shore. The girl in front of Lisa and Katya walked down to the water’s edge to meet her.
“Fucking white pigs!” the returning woman said, throwing the oar up the beach. She retrieved a small cardboard carton half-filled with mangled fish from the bottom of the dinghy and came toward them.
“You want food,” she said to Katya as she approached, “go get it. They tol’ me to tell you they feeling generous. They like white girls.”
Lisa began to walk down the beach to the dinghy. As she did she noticed the men had tied a line on the dinghy’s stern, which was attached at the other end to their yacht. Katya had been slow in following, but now she stood beside the dinghy just as the last black girl had sullenly climbed aboard.
“Coming?” she asked Katya gloomily.
Lisa looked at Katya.
“Who are these men?” Katya asked slowly as if calculating.
“They bring food and stuff every few days,” said the black girl.
“Is there ever any rough stuff?” Katya asked.
“Why they use rough stuff?”
“Do they have guns?”
“I never seen none. You, June?”
“Oh, they got guns,” said the women who had been on board. “They pirates, mon.”
“Pirates?” Lisa echoed.
“My God, that’s the Mollycoddle,’” Katya exclaimed suddenly, remembering Neil’s presentation the night before.
“Sure. They famous,’” said the black woman.
“You stay here,” said Katya to Lisa. “I’m going out to take a look.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Jim?” Lisa asked.
“I’ll be all right,” said Katya. “The only thing I’ve got they might want to take can’t be permanently removed.” She laughed nervously and then walked down the beach and after a long hesitation dove into the water.
As Lisa watched Katya’s slow progress the last black girl was having trouble pulling the dinghy into the water; Lisa helped her and, when the boat was afloat, impulsively jumped in beside her.
Katya had swum past the boarding ladder to examine the yacht’s transom—to verify that this was indeed Mollycoddle—so that Lisa and the black girl arrived before her. When they boarded, they were greeted by two white men, dressed neatly in blue Bermuda shorts and clean white sport shirts, and immediately offered a lit joint. The older of the two, a pale white man in his late thirties with sideburns and a baseball cap, paid special attention to Lisa. One of the two black girls still aboard was lounging topless on a cushioned chair in the huge open area aft, smoking woozily. She seemed disoriented when the joint was passed to her. When Katya pulled herself up the ladder, her wet T-shirt clinging to her breasts, the other man looked at her with frank interest.
“I say, you look better clothed than most women do naked,” he said to her. “I’m Michael.”
Katya shook her curly blond hair and with both hands squeezed the water out of most of its length.
“Hello,” she said coolly, looking carefully around the boat. “We’d like some food.”
“Why certainly, darling. What would you like?”
Katya accepted the proffered joint as Lisa had done and took a distracted puff. “What have you got?” she asked.
“Over here,” said Michael.
“How old are you?” the man with the baseball cap asked Lisa. He was short and thickset, with powerful forearms, and though Michael seemed to have an English accent, this man was American.
“Fifteen,” said Lisa, feeling self-conscious under his frank appraisal of her figure.
“That’s nice,” the man said. “You been in the commune long?”
“No, I’m just visiting.”
“You’ll love it,” he said, grinning. “Everybody loves it.”
With Katya and the black girl looking into some cans and boxes on the other side of the deck, Lisa became aware of a loud male grunting coming from the main cabin forward. A woman’s suppressed little half-screams occasionally accompanied the grunting.
“Sounds like Robert must be selling the whole stock,” Lisa’s admirer in the cap joked to her.