The Crimes of Jordan Wise

patois.

At some point after midnight we all piled into the Mini, four sardines in a can, and drove down to the Sub Base harbor marina so I could show off Windrunner. We partied on board, Pearl singing another song, to radio accompaniment this time, Bone and his woman joining in—the first time I'd heard Bone sing. He didn't have much of a voice, but he made up for it with energy and a high-stepping island dance. They got me up and dancing, something I would not have done if I'd been sober. The rum went down like water, very fast, and time got lost in a heady, rollicking swirl. We were all pretty drunk by then.

I don't remember Bone and the big woman leaving. The four of us were dancing, laughing, drinking, and the next thing I knew, Pearl and I were alone on deck, snuggled together in the moonlight, and I was shaking the last bottle of Arundel and it was empty. She said, 'We doan need any more,' and kissed me, and murmured snatches of another song in my ear, something soft and intimate, and kissed me again, and pretty soon we were down in the cabin, naked on my bunk.

Mistake.

I wanted her, all right, and I wasn't too far gone, and she was willing and eager. She had a good body, hard and soft at the same time. And pubic hair that was sensuously abrasive, like a fine grade of steel wool. With her help I managed to get an erection, but it was only a three-quarters salute, and neither it nor I lasted very long. Thin, almost painful little spurts.

Afterward I kept telling her how sorry I was, and she held me and said, 'Doan worry, doan fret,' in a crooning voice. More lost time. Then we were trying again, but it was no use, I was impotent. I apologized again and I think I might have gotten a little maudlin. The last words I remember her saying before I passed out were 'It's all right, honey, it's all right.' But it wasn't all right, for her or for me. In the morning, when I woke up, she was gone.

I lay in the bunk with my head throbbing, berating myself for getting too drunk to do either of us any good. And not believing the Ue, even then. It wasn't the rum. It wasn't Pearl, and it wasn't me.

It was Annalise.

Windrunner was out of the water for more than two weeks that summer, for scraping and minor rudder repairs. I did some of the hull work myself to keep busy. Bone let me bunk with him for the duration, and helped out with painting and varnishing chores after the yawl was relaunched. By way of repayment, I talked him into joining me on a long cruise to the Turks and Caicos. It was an iffy time of year for that kind of sail on the Atlantic, but summer storm activity was light that season and the long-range forecast was favorable. Bone said we'd be all right. I trusted his instincts, with good cause as usual. Other than a couple of light squalls, we had fair weather and light-running seas.

As usual we stood watch and watch, four on and four off, except when there was a weather helm to be held. On clear nights, when one or the other of us wasn't tired enough to sleep, we'd hang out on deck together. Bone still used words sparingly, but at sea he was a little more voluble than on land. Some subjects opened him up more than others. One was boats and sailing, another was the destructive effects on the Virgins of tourism and overpopulation.

St. Thomas was becoming a shadow of the island it had been twenty years ago, he said, when he first came there. The changes were evident to me after just five years. More cruise ships clogging the harbor every season; big new resorts going up and more planned where once there had been quiet bays and pristine beachfront; fancy vilias springing up on the north shore and the mountainsides of the West End, to spoil undeveloped forests and fields. Crime, racial friction, environmental problems. The island was losing its appeal for Bone. One day he'd have his fill of the new St. Thomas and move away, he said. He could feel the time coming.

'Where will you go?' I asked him. 'Back to the Bahamas?'

'Same things happening there.'

'Entire Caribbean's changing, they say. All the islands.'

'Not all yet. Some still pretty much the way they were.'

'Such as?'

'St. Lucia. The Grenadines—Carriacou.'

'How long since you were down there?'

'Two years,' Bone said. 'Going out again next summer.'

'Why next summer?'

'Promised Isola a three-month cruise when her graduates from college. Just the two of us, get to know each other better.'

He'd told me once that his dalighter was studying to be a marine biologist. I said, 'You must be proud of her, Bone.'

'Yeah, mon. Her mama be too, if she still here.'

I asked him how long it had been since his first wife passed away. He hadn't volunteered the information before.

'Twenty years. Isola was a baby.' He sat silent for a time. Then he said, 'Dengue fever. Two days sick, that's all. Just two days.'

'Must've been hard to deal with,' I said.

'Real hard, Cap'n.'

'Is that why you left Nassau?'

'Didn't leave then. I stayed two more years.' Pain had come into his voice when he spoke of his first wife; now it was replaced by bitterness. 'Seemed right for Isola to have a new mama.'

'Your second wife.'

'Yeah, mon. Bad mistake.'

'What happened with her?'

It was a question I'd asked a couple of times without getting an answer. He took so long to respond I thought he was going to stonewall me again. But then he said quick and hard, spitting the words, 'You ever see a coral snake? Pretty, mon, pretty snake. But underneath that pretty skin, full of poison.'

'She must have hurt you bad.'

'Never been hurt worse.'

'But you survived.'

'Poison don't get in deep enough, that's why.'

'I guess we're both lucky that way,' I said. 'So when you found out the truth about her, that's when you gave Isola to your sister to raise and left Nassau.'

'That's when.'

'What did you do about the woman?'

'Nothing, Cap'n. What should I do?'

'I don't know. Seems like there ought to be some way to keep a woman like that from hurting somebody else.'

'Snake bites you, what you gonna do? Beat on her or get away quick so you can suck out the poison?'

'You could do both.'

'Too late then. You can't get all the poison out.'

'I suppose you're right.'

'Right enough,' Bone said. 'Only smart thing to do with a snake is stay out of her way, don't let her fangs get in you again.'

That was all he'd say about his second wife, then or at any time afterward. I never did find out exacdy what it was she'd done to him, and he never once spoke her name.

From time to time I ran into one of the people I'd known when Annalise and I were together. On an island as small as St. Thomas, that kind of thing is unavoidable. Twice I encountered Royce Verriker, once near Emancipation Garden and once on Waterfront Drive during Carnival week. The first time, he spoke to me in his glad-handing way, making a snotty comment on my regrown beard and long hair, and I turned my back on him and walked away; the second time we made a point of ignoring each other. Maureen Verriker passed me without speaking in Market Square. I exchanged stiff hellos with Gavin Kyle in the Dronningens Gade liquor store, and with the Potters, the British rum connoisseurs, at the Yacht Club regatta.