I couldn’t remember for certain, but I thought that the red and white beads that Ransom wore honored the God of Destiny. The meaning of the white and yellow beads, however had stuck with me. They were worn only by women and invited grace from Ochun, the goddess of rivers and love and female sensuality.
I’d always found that a charming combination: river, love, sensuality.
Judging from the way she’d fondle the beads while in thought, I guessed her to be a true believer, which was not surprising. More so than most religions, Obeah and Santeria both offer quick relief from emotional suffering without moralizing sermons. For every physical or spiritual ailment, for every lapse in luck or judgment, the priests can come up with a combination of herbs or spells or beads to make things right again. Obeah doesn’t have much interest in morality or ethics. Among the world’s poor, those two things can be an expensive indulgence.
“What I was telling you about was the bad man that Daddy Gatrell stole the gold from. You didn’t hear a word, did you?”
“Sorry.”
“I tell you one more time if you stop lookin’ at all the fishes down there. Why you like them things so much, man? Down in the islands, we got those things, but we don’t care about them. They just somethin’ nice to eat.”
“I like them because…” I let the sentence trail off. To describe what she considered food as a fascinating lineage of cause, effect, and ruthless adaptation seemed pompous. Same with the philosophical imperative: The microcosm can be a perfect mirror of the macrocosm only if the source of creation is the same. So I finished, “I like them because it’s always been a hobby. So tell me about the bad man again. I’ll listen. Promise.”
She put both her hands on my left shoulder. Gave me a little push, but not hard enough to hurt my arm. “Then you sit where I sit, and let me drive so’s you can concentrate.” When I hesitated, she said, “Man, I can drive a boat good as you any ol’ time. Out here, what I gonna hit? An island? ”
I shrugged and let her take the wheel.
The reason that Tuck’s attorney hadn’t contacted her until more than two years after Tucker’s death was that he’d been ordered by Tuck to wait until the man from whom he’d probably stolen the Spanish coins had also died.
Ransom told me, “He a very dangerous man on my island. Man by the name of Sinclair Benton. I kept askin’ myself: ‘If Daddy got them coins honest, why’d he have to hide them? Why couldn’t he take them off the island or just give ’em to me straight away?”
The reason, she’d decided, was that Benton kept a sharp eye on Tuck and Joseph when they visited, and an equally close watch on Ransom, whom the whole island knew to be Tuck’s daughter. Seven or eight times, Tucker had visited her during her childhood, and seven or eight times, island thugs had forcibly searched him before he left.
“I don’t think Benton know’d for sure who it was robbed him, but he always very suspicious of Daddy Gatrell. That why it always too dangerous for Daddy to go back and get that treasure. Benton, he was a big ol’ Obeah man, a gorilla man-what we call Mr. Bones, the Prince of Death. Benton, he a witch. A real witch who know all the spells and powders. Ev’body on the island scared of Benton, and Benton, he hated our daddy more’n he hated most white men, and that sayin’ something. Probably ’cause my momma love Daddy Gatrell so much.”
Just hearing that combination of words, “Daddy Gatrell” was still difficult for me to process because it was such an outrageous mismatch. I found the fact that he’d gone back to see his child surprising. I found the fact he’d actually remembered her in a will positively shocking. No one ever described Tucker as a thoughtful or sensitive man.
Ransom had one hand on the wheel, steering easily as she talked. “Judge Flowers, he was directed to wait until he got notice of Benton’s death before he send me these papers. Daddy didn’t want to put us in any danger, understand?” She pointed to the little storage box where her single suitcase was stored along with the papers that had been mailed to her. “That evil man died a month or so ago, and everyone on Cat Island was happy. Had us a big party, all the junkanoo bands, all the scrape-n-rake bands, we singin’ and playin’, dancin’ and drinking that ol’ rum. Two weeks later, these papers arrive from the judge, and I been searchin’ for you, my brother, ever since.”
At first, I thought she meant Cat Cay, a popular, highly publicized fishing destination. But, no, she meant Cat Island, a large, remote key in the middle of the Bahamian chain. The only reason I knew about the place was that a couple of the Sanibel guides had broken down while making their way along the islands and had to spend a few nights there. They’d told me it was one of the few places in the Bahamas that was pure, hadn’t been touched by tourism yet. Only one paved road, a few cars, mostly fishing and agriculture.
Ransom said, “I don’t know what Benton did to make Daddy Gatrell mad enough to rob him. I don’t doubt there was a very good reason for it. But know what?” She had very white teeth when she grinned; they made her skin appear darker. “I don’t much care the reason ’cause I got me the gold coins, and I got me more than that, too. Like I tell you before, I’m in the new part of my life. Many women my age, they look in the mirror, see their ass gotten big, their bubbies droppin’ down, they kids all gone. So they think ‘I ain’t gonna fight no more ’cause my womanly life, it all done.’ Not me, man! I done already told you about how I changed myself. Or maybe you didn’t hear that, either?”
Yes, she’d told me and I’d listened, impressed. Told me all about herself in the first hour or so, riding along in that slow boat. She wasn’t that eager to talk about herself. I had to keep asking. It is an old and favorite device: Keep asking the right questions, and there will be no need to talk about yourself.
Ransom was quite a bit older than she looked-thirty-seven. When she was fifteen, she’d married a Cayman Islander by the name of Ebanks, a turtle fisherman. She had two sons, one now twenty, the other, her firstborn, died when he was fourteen.
“The dragon got him,” she told me. “The mangrove lakes on Cat Island, they ain’t got no bottom. Flow right out to the big ocean, man, through caves. My son, Tucker-I named him after Daddy, understand?-my dear lil’ boy, he went swimmin’ in a lake we call ‘Horse Eatin’ Hole.’ That ’cause it got a dragon living down in its caves that come out at night and eats horses. But my young Tucker, he just laugh when people tell him that. He say, ‘That just superstition, man!’ Smart? That lil’ boy, he was smart! Readin’ books all the time, collecting butterflies and bugs to study. The islanders, they all laugh and call him a fool when he say they no dragon. So what that strong lil’ boy do? He go to Horse Eatin’ Hole and swim at night just to prove himself. Went down in the black water, and he never came up. Lil’ Tucker, he not a good swimmer and the dragon got him sure enough.
“That night right there almost kill me, too. It were the worst night of my life. When they come tol’ me, I don’t remember nothing for three or four months afterwards. Nothin’ except my throat hurting from the sound of my crying.”
I found that story touching on several levels, and not only because tears welled in Ransom’s eyes as she told it.
A woman who believed in dragons. A woman who believed in taking control of her own destiny and beginning a second life-her Womanly Life, she called it.
Which is exactly what she decided to do.
Looking at Ransom, it was difficult to imagine her fat and soft. No… it was impossible, looking at those legs, that hard body. According to her, though, the death of her son was the beginning of a physical decline that nearly ruined her. “I had me a job waitressing at the little restaurant down at New Bight. I’d drink goat milk shakes and eat sweets all day long, still always so tired I could barely make myself walk home to bed. Got so, my husband, he wouldn’t touch me. I strip my clothes off, man, he look the other way.”