Gonna get some goombay goombay lovin’
Gonna find a goombay goombay girl.
A no-see-um bit Eddie on the nose.
They mounted a long rise, came down in a clearing. It was filled with head-high plants growing in rows. JFK stopped, laid a hand on Eddie’s arm. JFK wasn’t sweating at all, hardly seemed to be breathing, but his pulse beat fast and shallow, like faraway tom-toms.
“You understandin’ what you see?” he said.
“Marijuana,” Eddie replied.
“You got a smart brain. A college brain. Only here we say
A slow, heavy breeze blew through the clearing. The herb leaves rustled and then were still. The sun was high overhead. It seemed to have lost its shape, expanding to fill the sky, the way stars were supposed to do, Eddie recalled, at some point in their evolution. There wasn’t a sound until JFK spoke again.
“I don’t like no planes,” he said. “Give me a boat every time.”
“You said that before. Give you a boat for what?”
“A boat like
“Perfecto,” said JFK. “If you want to be earnin’ a little extra bonus.”
“What do you mean?”
JFK smiled. He laid his hand on Eddie’s arm again and was about to answer when something brown burst out of the clearing and crashed by. Too big for a dog: Eddie had time to think that thought. Then there was a blast that knocked the top off the marijuana plant beside him. JFK yanked him to the ground.
Eddie looked up in time to see the tall green plants part and Brad Packer stumble out in front of them, a rifle in his hands. He saw them, saw, that is, living animals, and raised the gun.
“Boss!” said JFK.
Packer checked himself, lowered the gun. “Christ,” he said, “I thought you were a fucking pig. What the hell are you two doing here? You’re supposed to be working.”
JFK picked himself up. “Looking for guava, boss. I be plannin’ guava duff for dessert.”
Packer glanced around the clearing. “There’s probably some around. This island’s a goddamn greenhouse.”
“Plenty around boss, plenty,” said JFK. “Mrs. Packer, I know she like it.”
“She doesn’t need it, not with those thighs. Neither do I, for that matter.” Packer turned to Eddie. “Him I pay to look for guava. You I don’t.”
“He be helping me, boss,” said JFK.
“Yeah? Well, he can help me now. There’s a dead pig the other side of this clearing. They like it in here, fuck knows why. You can carry him back to the hotel while I go after the other one.” He started for the path, stopped, indicated Eddie with the muzzle of his gun. “And get a haircut.” Packer disappeared in the bush.
Eddie and JFK found the dead pig. It lay on its stomach in a circle of marijuana plants, legs splayed, bleeding from a hole in the side of its flattened snout.
“He be tense, man,” said JFK.
“Rigor mortis,” Eddie told him. “It’s normal.”
JFK laughed softly. “Too soon for rigor mortis. We know all about rigor mortis in these islands, my friend. But I be talkin’ about Mr. Packer. He the tense one.”
“Why?” asked Eddie. An ant crawled across the bared eyeball of the pig.
“The investor, man. Big investor coming from the giant to the north.”
“To buy the place?”
“To supply the cash, man. Some friend of Mrs. Packer’s daddy. Gonna make Mr. Packer’s dream come true. The hotel eight stories, the restaurants, the condos, the time shares. Golf, tennis, a waterfall. Maybe Shecky Greene.”
“Who’s Shecky Greene?”
“You never been to Vegas, man?”
“Have you?”
“Not the question. The question be is I hip to Shecky Greene? And I most surely be. I plugged into the happenings of the world, man.”
The ant stopped in the center of the eyeball, antennae trembling. JFK gazed down at the animal and sighed.
“I could handle it, man, but not on the bike.”
“I’ll do it,” Eddie said, realizing that there was some presumption that if heavy work awaited, the black man was expected to do it. He squatted down, got a grip on one front and one rear foot, and rose, swinging the animal onto his shoulders.
“Ooo,” said JFK. “Great white hunter.”
“Packer’s the great white hunter.”
“He be white, white as white can be. No offense.”
They walked back through the marijuana plants, Eddie carrying the pig. The coarse hairs of its underbelly prickled his bare skin; blood dripped down on his chest, diluting itself with his sweat. They found the path, mounted the rise. Eddie felt the burden now, not so much the weight of the pig, but the weight of anything in that heat. By the time they reached the flamboyant tree by the side of the road, his heart was beating the way it would in the last length of the four-hundred free.
JFK got on his bike. “Don’t be calling it a pig if you run into any tourists. That be the famous wild boar of the islands. Ernest Hemingway he come to hunt them.”
“Bullshit,” Eddie said.
JFK laughed and started pedaling. Not slowly this time. Eddie realized that JFK wasn’t intending that he keep up. “Where do I take it?” Eddie called.
The answer came back, faint: “The kitchen, man. You be bringin’ home the bacon.” JFK was soon out of sight.
Eddie started walking. There were no tourists, no people at all. There was just the sun, the dust, the pig, still warm. After a while it stopped bleeding and Eddie stopped thinking about how soon he could be in the shower. On that empty road on the edge of the banana-shaped island he lost his revulsion for the touch of the pig and began to enjoy what he was doing, began to feel strong-absurdly strong, like a white hunter, he supposed, master of the wild. He ceased to feel the weight of the beast at all; by the time he approached the desiccated clay court he was striding.
Eddie heard the thump of a tennis ball and looked through the row of scrub pines. He saw a ball hit the backboard, bounce back, saw a racket swing and meet it, saw a tanned arm. A tree blocked his view of the rest of the tennis player’s body, but he knew who it was. He moved a little closer.
Mandy was working on her backhand. Eddie had played some tennis, enough to know she was good. She wore a white T-shirt and white shorts, both soaked, and white sneakers, reddened by the clay. She grunted softly with every stroke. Without realizing it, Eddie had drawn closer still. Soon he was standing at the side of the court.
The ball took a bad bounce. Mandy stretched for it, saw him as she swung. The ball flew over the backboard.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Look at you.”
“Don’t call him a pig,” Eddie said. “He’d be insulted.”
“I know what it is. Where’s your gun?”
“I didn’t shoot it,” Eddie said, surprised. He’d never shot anything, didn’t want to.
“Who did? Br-Mr. Packer?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is he?”
