When I rouse myself, the shack empty. I runs down to the beach and I spies the launch passin trough a break in the reef. Ain’t no use yellin after them. They too far off, but I yells anyway, t’ough who I yellin to, my daddy or the butterfly girl, be a matter for conjecture. And then they swallowed up in the night. I stand there a time, hopin they turn back. It thirty miles and more to La Ceiba, and crossin that much water at night in a leaky launch, that a fearsome t’ing. I falls asleep on the sand waitin for them and in the mornin Fredo Jolly wake me when he drive his cows long the shore to they pasture.
My daddy return to the island a couple weeks later, but by then I over in Coxxen Hole, doin odd jobs and beggin, and he don’t have the hold on me that once he did. He beat me, but I can tell he heart ain’t in it, and he take up wreckin again, but he heart ain’t in that, neither. He say he can’t find no decent mens to help, but Sandy Bay and Punta Palmetto full of men do that kind of work. Pretty soon, three or four years, it were, I lose track of him, and I never hear of him again, not even on the day he die.
Mister Jessup have predicted I be hearin bout him in a few years, but it weren’t a week after they leave, word come that a Yankee name of Jessup been found dead in La Ceiba, the top half of he head chopped off by a machete. There ain’t no news of the butterfly people, but the feelin I gots, then and now, they still in the world, and maybe that’s one reason the world how it is. Could be they bust out of they shapes and acquire another, one more reflectin of they nature. There no way of knowin. But one t’ing I do know. All my days, I never show a lick of ambition. I never took no risks, always playin it safe. If there a fight in an alley or riot in a bar, I gone, I out the door. The John Anderson McCrae you sees before you is the same I been every day of my life. Doin odd jobs and beggin. And once the years fill me up sufficient, tellin stories for the tourists. So if Mister Jessup make me a present, it were like most Yankee presents and take away more than it give. But that’s a story been told a thousand times and it be told a thousand more. You won’t cotch me blamin he for my troubles. God Bless America is what I say. Yankees gots they own brand of troubles, and who can say which is the worse.
Yes, sir. I believe I will have another.
Naw, that ain’t what makin me sad. God knows, I been livin almost seventy years. That more than a mon can expect. Ain’t no good in regrettin or wishin I had a million dollars or that I been to China and Brazil. One way or another, the world whittle a mon down to he proper size. That’s what it done for Mister Jessup, that’s what it done for me. It just tellin that story set me to rememberin the butterfly girl. How she look in the lantern light, pale and glowin, with hair so black, where it lie across she shoulder, it like an absence in the flesh. How it feel when she touch me and what that say to a mon, even to a boy. It say I knows you, the heart of you, and soon you goin to know bout me. It say I never stray from you, and I going to show you t’ings whose shadows are the glories of this world. Now here it is, all these years later, and I still longin for that touch.
DAGGER KEY
The seagull’s wing
divides the wave
the lights of Swann’s café
grow dim…
…and morning comes to Cay Cuchillo, a dagger-shape of sand and rock off the coast of Belize, a few miles southwest of the Chinchorro Bank. Nine miles long, seven wide at the hilt. The gray sky is pinked in the east, bundles of mauve cloud reflecting the new sun. Venus low on the horizon.
Rollers break on the beach at Half Shell Bay, the waves sounding like a giant breathing in his sleep. Crossing the tidal margin, a ghost crab pauses in its creep as the thin edge of the water inches up to erase its tracks from the mucky sand. The fronds of a coco palm twitch; the round leaves of sea grape appear to spin in a sudden freshet. Hummingbirds hover beside the blossoms of a cashew tree.
Near the hilt of the dagger, shielded from the winds by a hill with a concave rock face, lie the white buildings of a resort. Treasure Cove. A skull-and-crossbones hangs limp above the office, a stucco faux-colonial that also encloses two luxury apartments and a bar-restaurant. It’s set close against the hill and, among palms and jacaranda and flowering shrubs, bungalows are scattered beneath it along the curve of the beach. From the eastern end of the beach, a wooden pier extends into the water—moored to it are several sailboats and a cabin cruiser. Dark-skinned women in head wraps and blue uniform dresses mop the patio that abuts the beachside bar, a construction of poles and thatch. A radio plays softly. Solo tu…siempre solo tu. Astringents mask the smell of brine.
Swann’s faces the Belizean coast, about two miles from the point of the dagger. It’s a low, derelict building with a thatched roof, a packed sand floor, and boards painted red, green, black. A hill rises inland and clinging to its side, about halfway up, is a shanty with boards painted in identical colors. Inside the café, Fredo Galvez, a slender, small-boned man of middle years, is sweeping up broken glass from last night’s riot with a twig broom. He wears a pair of ragged shorts and a T-shirt from which all but the word Jesus has been bleached. His features and coloration are a mix of Spanish and Indian, yet he has sharp blue eyes and his hair is crispy. Once he’s finished with sweeping, he stows the broom in back of the bar and rights an overturned stool. He surveys his work and, satisfied, steps out onto the beach and lights a cigarette, stands looking at the sea, at the dark coastline melting up from the morning haze. The sun has not yet cleared the horizon and already the morning freshness is burning off.
Beside the café is a palm tree stripped of its fronds, its trunk shaped roughly like an L, growing more-or-less parallel to the ground for eight or nine feet, then shooting upwards. Fredo sits on the horizontal portion of the trunk to finish his smoke and plan his day. He has to fetch fuel for he generator, meat for the kitchen. They have enough rice and potatoes to get through the week. He spots a solitary figure off toward the point and, though he can’t make her out, he recognizes her by her clothing—a white blouse and tan leggings—and by the thrill that passes across the base of his neck. It’s been three years since she came to him, and he’d been hoping for at least three more. She’s been up in the hills, keeping company with animal spirits and duppies, with the soul-shell of an old Caribe wizard.
“What you know, Annie?” He whispers the words; she could not possibly hear them, but she does. Neither can he hear her—the words tumble into his head somehow.
They seem to mingle, the edges of two clouds interpenetrating, yet he has no real sense of her, no clue as to what sort of woman she is. She never lets him near, except when she wears him like a dress and then he can remember no more than bits and pieces. He knows her story, but it’s only a story and has little personal context. The vague apprehension he has of her is fading and, though her image lingers, motionless on the beach, if he turns away for a second, if he even blinks, she’ll be gone. He lowers his head, worried by what she has told him.