‘You a damn fool, mon,’ said a rumbling voice above him.
He sat up with a start, blinking. Tully was a black giant, looming into the sky, hands on hips.
‘A true damn fool,’ said Tully. ‘I wastin’ my time teachin’ you dat block, ’cause dere you sit, winkin’ on and off like a fuckin’ caution light. What you doin’, mon? Daydreamin’?’
‘I…’
‘Shut your fool mouth. Now dis’—he tapped his chest—‘dis a good block. And dis ain’t.’ As if a furnace door had been slung open, Tally’s heat washed over Mingolla. ‘And dis what you doin’.’ The heat ebbed, vanished, flared again. ‘I should put my foot to you!’
The sun hung directly behind Tully’s head, a golden corona rimming a black oval. Mingolla felt weak and weakening, felt that threads of himself were being spun loose and sucked into the blackness. Panicked, acting in reflex, he pushed at Tully not with his hands, but with his mind, and he was panicked still more by the sensation that he had fallen into a school of electric fish, thousands of them, brushing against him, darting away. Tully’s fist swung toward him, but that electricity, and the attendant feelings of arousal and strength, was so commanding that Mingolla was frozen, unable to duck, and the blow struck the top of his head, knocking him flat.
‘You ain’t got de force to war wit’ me, Davy.’ Tully squatted beside him. ‘But, mon, I just been waitin’ for you to make dis breakt’rough. Now we can really get started.’
Mingolla’s head throbbed, grass tickled his lower lip. He stared at the tips of Tully’s tennis shoes, the cuffs of his blue trousers. He struggled up, leaned against the wall, groggy.
‘Caught me by surprise, mon, or I stay from bashin’ you.’ Tully grinned, gold crowns glittering among his teeth, his good humor given the look of a fierce mask by the deep lines etched around his mouth and eyes. He was huge, everything about him huge, hands that could swallow coconuts, chest plated with muscle, and had about him an air of elemental masculinity that never failed to unsettle Mingolla. His hair was flecked with gray, his neck seamed, eyes liverish, but his arms—straining a white T-shirt—had the definition of a man twenty years younger. Above his left eye was a pink hook-shaped scar, startling in contrast to his coal-black skin, like a vein of some rare mineral. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘You goin’ to be somethin’ special! You almost ’whelm me wit’ dat touch.’
Mingolla turned his gaze to the hotel roof, watched a string of pelicans flying above it, appearing to spell out a string of cryptic syllables.
‘I know you wary, mon,’ said Tully. ‘You like a little boy, and you got to be strong ’fore you go to facin’ up to me… and dat’s natural. Dese drugs, dey put you in a new world, and dat’s a trial for anyone, ’specially somebody been t’rough it like you. But I for you, Davy. Dat you can count on. I just got to be hard wit’ you, ’cause dat’s how you goin’ to get hard ’nough for dis new world.’
Mingolla’s distrust must have showed in his face, for Tully let out a laugh as guttural and toneless as a lion’s cough. ‘Dis t’ing ’tween you and me gettin’ to be a bitch,’ he said. ‘’Mind me of me and my father. Now dere was a harsh mon, lemme tell you. He come home drunk for he supper, and he say to me, “Boy, you so ugly you make me lose my appetite. Get under de table! I no want to be lookin’ at you while I chew.’’ And I don’t do what he say, he put me under dat table!’ He gave Mingolla a friendly punch on the leg. ‘S’pose I tell you get under de table? What you goin’ to do?’
‘Tell you to fuck yourself,’ said Mingolla.
‘Dat right?’ Tully scratched his neck. ‘Lessee if dat’s de case. You stay outside tonight, Davy. Don’t come back to de hotel. Stay out here and t’ink ’bout what’s ahead.’
‘How’m I supposed to know what’s ahead?’
‘Got a point dere. All right, I give you a glimpse of de future. Once you t’rough wit’ trainin’ dere will be a test. We be sendin’ you to La Ceiba, and you goin’ into de Iron Barrio and kill a mon wit’ de force of your mind.’
The concept of killing as a test left Mingolla unmoved, but Tully’s mention of the Iron Barrio drained him of belligerence.
‘Stay clear of de hotel tonight, Davy.’ Tully stood, un-kinked his back, twisting from side to side. ‘Study on how you goin’ to deal wit’ de Barrio wit’out my help. And if I catch you inside ’fore mornin’, it will go hard for you. Dat much you don’t need to study on.’
Tucked into a corner of the concrete wall was a tin-roofed shed that had once been a dive shop, and later that afternoon Mingolla entered it, intending to wait there until everyone was asleep and then sneak into the hotel. As he stepped through the door, a ghost crab scuttled from beneath the wooden table that centered the shed and vanished down a gap in the boards, leaving a trail of delicate slashmarks in the dust. Golden light slanted from rips in the tin, painting splotches of glare on the floor; dust motes stirred up by Mingolla’s tread whirled in the light, making it appear that something was about to materialize in each of the beams. Resting on the table were four rusted air tanks, bridged by spans of cobweb and looking in the gloom like enormous capsules of dried blood.
Mingolla sat against the rear wall of the shed next to a stack of yellowed scuba diving magazines. To pass the time he leafed through one and was amused to discover ads for various of the island’s resorts in the front pages. Pirate’s Cove, Jolly Roger’s, and such. Their buildings now abandoned, beaches cordoned by patrol boats, tourists driven off by the threat of rockets… though the island had never come under attack. Which was perplexing. Roatán was a logical target, being isolated, home to a CIA computer base, and well within range of rockets, bombs, or even an assault. The fact that there hadn’t been an attack made no sense, but sense, he thought, was not something war made in any great quantity, and he supposed that some absurd reason underlay the island’s security, some meshing of Marxist and capitalist irrationality, maybe a trade-off of immunities, an agreement to leave each other’s computers alone in order to provide both sides with the capacity to mete out death and destruction along predictable lines. That he could have this thought, which seemed a very adult thought, the type of caustic and dispassionate judgment that people often characterize as symptomatic of a mature disinterest, was, he decided, a sign that he was on the mend, that he was growing inured to the corrosive passions of war, becoming capable of clear-sighted progress.
He turned to a photo spread of divers in red and yellow wet suits floating in a turquoise depth, lost among thousands of brightly colored fish. Something about the photograph struck him as familiar, and he recalled his experience with Tully earlier that day. That was how it had been: he had been a driver in Tully’s mind, hovering in those electric depths, surrounded by the fish of his thoughts. And he was certain there had been a greater depth beyond. A place he imagined to be as labyrinthine as a coral reef, housing thoughts as intricate as sea fans.
Dusk made it impossible to read. Storm clouds blew in from the north, a freshet of rain spattering the roof; darkness slipped in under cover of the clouds, and moonlight filtered through the ripped tin, daubing the floors with lavender gray. Mingolla noticed a light fixture above the table. He went to the door, flipped a wall switch, and was surprised when the bulb flickered on, shining a white radiance into every corner of the shed. Moths began batting around it, casting a shrapnel of shadow over the walls. He sat back down and returned to reading, half-listening to the wind, the crashing on the reef. Then something creaked, and, glancing up, he saw a thin black woman standing at the door, wearing a threadbare dress that had bleached a pale indefinite brown. Alarmed, he reacted as he had with Tully, pushing toward her with his mind. Again that feeling of immersion, of power and arousal. But this time, meeting no resistance, he found himself swimming—it was the only word applicable—swimming in a pattern, a convoluted knot, and instead of penetrating an unknown depth as he had imagined, it seemed he was tunneling, that the stuff of the woman’s thought was aligning around his pattern, hardening into form that he was dictating. He moved so rapidly, he was unable to trace the complexities of the pattern; however, satisfied at last by some intuitive criteria that it was complete, secure in this, he pulled back from the woman. An erection was ridging up his trousers.