Our first year on St. Thomas, and most of the second year, we took the ferry to St. John a couple of times a month to eat and shop in Cruz Bay, to soak up sun on the powdery white sand beaches at Maho and Trunk and Hawknest bays. Now and then we took the longer ferry ride to Tortola, where we visited the Arundel Estate distillery and Annalise bought an antique music box and I bought a small brassbound mahogany chest that was supposed to have come from a Soper's End pirate's den. She didn't seem to mind riding on the larger ferryboats; it was only the pitch and roll of small craft that made her seasick.
We flew to Puerto Rico and spent five days exploring San Juan and the outlying areas. We took interisland flights to St. Croix, Culebra, St. Martin. We went snorkeling and tried scuba diving in Coki Bay. We attended parties, gave a couple of parties of our own. At the Royal Bay Club I played handball with Verriker and she played tennis with Maureen. One or two evenings a week we ate out and then went to Bam-boushay, Annalise's favorite nightclub, named for an old Calypso tourist phrase that means "Have yourself a fat old time"—a dark, noisy place that featured steel Calypso and Fungi bands and exotic native dancers. In April there was Carnival week—music and dancing, masquerades, costumed stiltwalkers representing the legendary West Indian spirits called jumbees—and the St. Thomas Yacht Club's annual regatta.
Some afternoons when it wasn't too hot and the trades were blowing soft, we played sex games. In one corner of the living room there was a daybed that Annalise had piled high with white throw pillows trimmed in blue. We opened the jalousied doors in that corner and moved the daybed over close to the sill, so that it commanded a view of the harbor and the sea beyond. Then we'd take turns sitting propped up naked against the pillows, while the other—
Christ, why did I bring that up? I don't want to talk about that.
Some things—
No, forget it, I'm not going to say any more.
Annalise liked the beaches more than I did; too many tourists to suit me. On the days I worked or sailed with Bone, she'd go to Magens or Coki or Sapphire alone or with Maureen or one of the other nonworking wives; swim, sunbathe, sit under an umbrella with her sketchpad designing swimsuits and beach attire. Occasionally she and Maureen would take an off-island trip together, or spend an evening at Bam-boushay when I preferred to sit home with an iced Arundel and watch the sunset and the harbor lights.
No one asked any questions about our past life that we couldn't answer with a few simple lies. No tourist or island resident looked at me as anything but another well-to-do expat. We spent money, but not as much as you might think. The cost of living wasn't all that high on St. Thomas in the late seventies and early eighties. And the return on my investments had exceeded expectations, so much so that I added another $100,000 in blue chip stocks to the portfolio.
I can't say exactly when Bone and I stopped being just tutor and pupil and became friends. It was a gradual thing, built on mutual respect and ease in each other's company and our shared passion for boats and the sea. One of those curious, not quite explicable, almost symbiotic relationships that occasionally develop between like-minded men of different races and cultures. But I can tell you when I first realized it and knew that he felt the same way.
It was a day near the approach of hurricane season in '80. The kind of humid day where you can almost see the moisture dripping in the air, feel it wet in your lungs every time you breathe. We'd been belowdecks on Conch Out all afternoon, installing a rebuilt chemical toilet and a new water Une in the head, and when we finished we were dehydrated and sweating like pigs. I suggested we head over to one of the waterfront taverns for a cold beer, as we'd done a few times before. Bone nodded, but when we were up on the seawall he asked if I'd brought my car today. I said I had, and he said, "How about we go to another place I know."
The place was on the edge of the native quarter, a rust-spotted Quonset hut that must have dated to the early years of World War II. The only indication that it was a tavern was a painted sign over the entrance that read "Bar"; if it had a name, I never heard Bone or anyone else mention it. And if any curious tourist had ever walked in, he'd likely have turned right around and walked out again. The interior was dark, with a plank bar and mismatched tables and chairs and a pair of vintage ceiling fans that did little to stir the sluggish air. The customers were mostly Thomian blacks, one of whom turned out to be an Obeah woman who dispensed charms for love and luck and to ward off jum-bees. You had the feeling that trouble brewed there now and then, and that you wouldn't want to be around when it did.
The dozen or so drinkers that day wouldn't have tolerated me half so well if I hadn't been with Bone. They all knew him; a few spoke to him; the bartender called him by name. This was his regular watering hole. I understood that was why he'd brought me there: he'd decided to let me into a corner of his private world. For a native black man to do this for a white expat was not only an expression of friendship but a privilege, and I didn't treat it lightly. He bought the first round and when I bought the second he raised his glass in a toast and for the first time called me Richard instead of "mon" or Mr. Laidlaw.
After that day, he wouldn't take any more money from me except for gas, oil, and provisions when the two of us went to sea together. "No, Richard," he said when I offered. "Remember when you first come to see me? You said you have sailing in your blood, I said we'll find out. Now we both know. Bone won't take pay from a mon same as him."
We went to the Bar fairly often. And now and then to one of the native cafes for fish chowder or conch fritters or callaloo. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we just sat and drank beer or iced rum. Occasionally he would reveal snippets about himself and his past. He'd been married twice; his first wife had died and he refused to talk about his second, even to speak her name. He had a teenage dalighter, Isola, he visited from time to time in Nassau. He'd attended college for a year before the sea called him. He'd once worked as a deckhand on a Panama-bound tramp steamer, once been approached to smuggle a ketch-load of weapons to a group of Puerto Rican insurgents (he wouldn't say whether he'd actually done it), once spent two years island-hopping his way around the Caribbean.
I envied him his free spirit and his adventures, and part of me wished I could tell him about the one bold, daring adventure in my life. It was just as well that I couldn't. For all his knockabout ways, Bone had a strong moral code to go with his intelligence and his dignity. He might have understood what had led me to do what I'd done, but he'd have thought less of me and probably severed our friendship. Would he have turned me in? No. He wasn't the kind to involve himself with the law. His duty was to himself and those he cared about, not to white or black society.
After a while I was more or less accepted by the Bar regulars, though I wouldn't have wanted to walk in alone after dark. In Bone's company I felt as comfortable there as I did at the Royal Bay Club. I was acquainted with a lot of white people on the island by then, the Verrikers and the Kyles and Jack Scanlon and Dick Marsten and several others, but the only man I considered a friend was a West Indian black sailor with a single name.
Bone.
He was the only real friend I ever had, before or since.
Hurricanes are always a concern when you live in the Caribbean. The hurricane season runs from June through November, but historically more storms—and the worst ones—occur in September than any other month. Most are Category 1 or 2, sustained winds of 74 up to 110 miles per hour, and if any of the islands is in the path of the blow, you can expect relatively minor damage such as flooding and what the official notices refer to as "moderate defoliation of shrubs and trees."