Shark River

KALIK OFFICIAL BEER OF JUNKANOO RUM CAY, BAHAMAS

Her beaded braids were tied back with a pink ribbon, and I noted that around her neck she wore strings of cheap red and white beads as well as beads of white and yellow. From my trips to Cuba and the islands, I recognized them as Obeah beads. Or Santeria beads. Because to understand a people you must also understand their beliefs, I’d had to do some research for my work in those places. Obeah is a potent religious mix of voodoo, Catholicism, and old African superstition. The beads would have been blessed or empowered by a priestess, known as a Babalao in Cuba or, on most of the islands, as an Obeah “vitch” or witch.

I couldn’t remember for certain, but I thought that the red and white beads that Ransom wore honored the God of Destiny. The meaning of the white and yellow beads, however had stuck with me. They were worn only by women and invited grace from Ochun, the goddess of rivers and love and female sensuality.

I’d always found that a charming combination: river, love, sensuality.

Judging from the way she’d fondle the beads while in thought, I guessed her to be a true believer, which was not surprising. More so than most religions, Obeah and Santeria both offer quick relief from emotional suffering without moralizing sermons. For every physical or spiritual ailment, for every lapse in luck or judgment, the priests can come up with a combination of herbs or spells or beads to make things right again. Obeah doesn’t have much interest in morality or ethics. Among the world’s poor, those two things can be an expensive indulgence.

“What I was telling you about was the bad man that Daddy Gatrell stole the gold from. You didn’t hear a word, did you?”

“Sorry.”

“I tell you one more time if you stop lookin’ at all the fishes down there. Why you like them things so much, man? Down in the islands, we got those things, but we don’t care about them. They just somethin’ nice to eat.”

“I like them because…” I let the sentence trail off. To describe what she considered food as a fascinating lineage of cause, effect, and ruthless adaptation seemed pompous. Same with the philosophical imperative: The microcosm can be a perfect mirror of the macrocosm only if the source of creation is the same. So I finished, “I like them because it’s always been a hobby. So tell me about the bad man again. I’ll listen. Promise.”

She put both her hands on my left shoulder. Gave me a little push, but not hard enough to hurt my arm. “Then you sit where I sit, and let me drive so’s you can concentrate.” When I hesitated, she said, “Man, I can drive a boat good as you any ol’ time. Out here, what I gonna hit? An island? ”

I shrugged and let her take the wheel.

The reason that Tuck’s attorney hadn’t contacted her until more than two years after Tucker’s death was that he’d been ordered by Tuck to wait until the man from whom he’d probably stolen the Spanish coins had also died.

Ransom told me, “He a very dangerous man on my island. Man by the name of Sinclair Benton. I kept askin’ myself: ‘If Daddy got them coins honest, why’d he have to hide them? Why couldn’t he take them off the island or just give ’em to me straight away?”

The reason, she’d decided, was that Benton kept a sharp eye on Tuck and Joseph when they visited, and an equally close watch on Ransom, whom the whole island knew to be Tuck’s daughter. Seven or eight times, Tucker had visited her during her childhood, and seven or eight times, island thugs had forcibly searched him before he left.

“I don’t think Benton know’d for sure who it was robbed him, but he always very suspicious of Daddy Gatrell. That why it always too dangerous for Daddy to go back and get that treasure. Benton, he was a big ol’ Obeah man, a gorilla man-what we call Mr. Bones, the Prince of Death. Benton, he a witch. A real witch who know all the spells and powders. Ev’body on the island scared of Benton, and Benton, he hated our daddy more’n he hated most white men, and that sayin’ something. Probably ’cause my momma love Daddy Gatrell so much.”

Just hearing that combination of words, “Daddy Gatrell” was still difficult for me to process because it was such an outrageous mismatch. I found the fact that he’d gone back to see his child surprising. I found the fact he’d actually remembered her in a will positively shocking. No one ever described Tucker as a thoughtful or sensitive man.

Ransom had one hand on the wheel, steering easily as she talked. “Judge Flowers, he was directed to wait until he got notice of Benton’s death before he send me these papers. Daddy didn’t want to put us in any danger, understand?” She pointed to the little storage box where her single suitcase was stored along with the papers that had been mailed to her. “That evil man died a month or so ago, and everyone on Cat Island was happy. Had us a big party, all the junkanoo bands, all the scrape-n-rake bands, we singin’ and playin’, dancin’ and drinking that ol’ rum. Two weeks later, these papers arrive from the judge, and I been searchin’ for you, my brother, ever since.”

At first, I thought she meant Cat Cay, a popular, highly publicized fishing destination. But, no, she meant Cat Island, a large, remote key in the middle of the Bahamian chain. The only reason I knew about the place was that a couple of the Sanibel guides had broken down while making their way along the islands and had to spend a few nights there. They’d told me it was one of the few places in the Bahamas that was pure, hadn’t been touched by tourism yet. Only one paved road, a few cars, mostly fishing and agriculture.

Ransom said, “I don’t know what Benton did to make Daddy Gatrell mad enough to rob him. I don’t doubt there was a very good reason for it. But know what?” She had very white teeth when she grinned; they made her skin appear darker. “I don’t much care the reason ’cause I got me the gold coins, and I got me more than that, too. Like I tell you before, I’m in the new part of my life. Many women my age, they look in the mirror, see their ass gotten big, their bubbies droppin’ down, they kids all gone. So they think ‘I ain’t gonna fight no more ’cause my womanly life, it all done.’ Not me, man! I done already told you about how I changed myself. Or maybe you didn’t hear that, either?”

Yes, she’d told me and I’d listened, impressed. Told me all about herself in the first hour or so, riding along in that slow boat. She wasn’t that eager to talk about herself. I had to keep asking. It is an old and favorite device: Keep asking the right questions, and there will be no need to talk about yourself.

Ransom was quite a bit older than she looked-thirty-seven. When she was fifteen, she’d married a Cayman Islander by the name of Ebanks, a turtle fisherman. She had two sons, one now twenty, the other, her firstborn, died when he was fourteen.

“The dragon got him,” she told me. “The mangrove lakes on Cat Island, they ain’t got no bottom. Flow right out to the big ocean, man, through caves. My son, Tucker-I named him after Daddy, understand?-my dear lil’ boy, he went swimmin’ in a lake we call ‘Horse Eatin’ Hole.’ That ’cause it got a dragon living down in its caves that come out at night and eats horses. But my young Tucker, he just laugh when people tell him that. He say, ‘That just superstition, man!’ Smart? That lil’ boy, he was smart! Readin’ books all the time, collecting butterflies and bugs to study. The islanders, they all laugh and call him a fool when he say they no dragon. So what that strong lil’ boy do? He go to Horse Eatin’ Hole and swim at night just to prove himself. Went down in the black water, and he never came up. Lil’ Tucker, he not a good swimmer and the dragon got him sure enough.

“That night right there almost kill me, too. It were the worst night of my life. When they come tol’ me, I don’t remember nothing for three or four months afterwards. Nothin’ except my throat hurting from the sound of my crying.”

I found that story touching on several levels, and not only because tears welled in Ransom’s eyes as she told it.

A woman who believed in dragons. A woman who believed in taking control of her own destiny and beginning a second life-her Womanly Life, she called it.

Which is exactly what she decided to do.

Looking at Ransom, it was difficult to imagine her fat and soft. No… it was impossible, looking at those legs, that hard body. According to her, though, the death of her son was the beginning of a physical decline that nearly ruined her. “I had me a job waitressing at the little restaurant down at New Bight. I’d drink goat milk shakes and eat sweets all day long, still always so tired I could barely make myself walk home to bed. Got so, my husband, he wouldn’t touch me. I strip my clothes off, man, he look the other way.”

It got worse. On Cat Island, mail is delivered by slow boat, which works its way down the Bahamian chain. During one mail call, she’d had to deliver meals to the crew. As they ate, she overheard them laughing and joking about a man named Ebanks who had wives on at least three neighboring islands, lots of children, too. The reason it was so funny was because the postal service couldn’t keep all the Ebanks women straight.

“That a very dark period for me,” she said. “A time come in a woman’s life when we got the choice to give up, start living like we old and not womanly no more. Or we can fight back. Givin’ up, that the easy thing to do, ’cause you just keep sliding and sliding like you got no control ’til the end. That what I learned, my brother! People, they not afraid of dyin’. Dyin’, that be easy. What we really afraid of is that we not strong enough to make our living a success.”

Ransom decided to take the risk, find out if she was strong enough. Ironically, her pivotal moment was catalyzed by Sinclair Benton, Tucker’s old enemy.

Now, over the noise of my trawl boat’s burbling engine, she said, “That the part I didn’t tell you, but that Obeah man, Benton, he had somethin’ to do with me choosing to change what I’d become. What happened was, I was waiting tables at the restaurant when the big witch walk in. Sinclair, he always got two or three bad men with him, and he scary enough by his own self. They all three sit down at my table and Sinclair, he grabs my shorts as I walk by, holding me by the rump. Then he looks up at me with those lil’ berry eyes of his and he says, ‘Back when you’s a high yella girl, I tried to get you in the bushes many times even though you spawned by white trash, but you always run away. I tell you somethin’ about how the world changes. You still high yella, but now you a high yella cow. These days, you try to get ol’ Benton in the bushes, I be the one to run away!’

“Ev’body in the restaurant thought that very funny. They laugh and laugh. I laughed, too, on the outside. But on the inside, I felt something change in me. Something way down deep.”

I liked the flint clarity of her voice when she told me that story. Liked the unemotional resolve. It had been the final indignity, which made even more understandable the course of discipline she chose.

“What I knew was, I’d already lived a life for other people-it what I call my Motherly Life-which is the same as saying I’d lived as a person that was only part me. I decided, fuck ’em man! It were time I lived my next years just the way I wanted. I thought of it as my second life. What I call my Womanly Life. Every time I got weak or scared, I’d jus’ remind myself of Benton and all the others in that restaurant who laughed like I really was some ol’ cow, and that’s where I found strength.”

It took her several weeks to build up enough momentum so that she didn’t dread, day by day, her new routine of work and exercise. It was nearly six months before she came to actually enjoy it.

“That mountain where Daddy Gatrell hide the doubloons? I didn’t even know they was hidden there at the time, but every day, I’d walk partway up that mountain, huffin’ and puffin’ like I had a wagon attached to my big brown ass. But I didn’t quit and I’d get a little further and a little further each time.

“Something else I did was, we got a real pretty hotel on Cat Island at Fernandez Bay. It’s Mister Armbrister’s place, old British loyalists people, and the beach out front has water like glass over a bowl of sugar. I started swimmin’ along that beach. Doggy paddlin’ at first, kinda pulling myself along. It was just like climbin’ the mountain. I’d go a little further each and every time.

“I walked every day and swam two, maybe three times a week. I stopped drinking them goat’s milk shakes and eatin’ them sweets, and I didn’t smoke no more cigarettes, either, except for a lil’ ganja now and then to give me a smile. Missus Armbrister, she figured out what I was trying to do, and she showed me a little outdoor weight bench they got there. So I started lifting weights, too.

“After a year, I’d walk by a mirror and didn’t even recognize the strong woman I saw there. Man, I liked that woman! I could run up that mountain, clear to crazy Father Jerome’s monastery. I could swim all the way down the beach to where the surf hits the cliff. Missus Armbrister, she had to send off to Lauderdale to get more weights, that’s how much we was lifting.

“Only thing I didn’t like was my bubbies still had a little sag, but one of the guests at the Armbrister’s hotel, turns out he a famous plastic surgeon when he not sitting around drinkin’ rum and fishin’ for boneyfish. I danced with that nice doctor three maybe four nights, and bring him coconut drinks when he sitting out there under the palms. One night he whisper to me, ‘What you give me to meet you in Nassau and fix your bubbies for you free?’ I told him, ‘Man, you so handsome and sweet, I give you that anyway. But you fix my bubbies, somethin’ nice I also do for you is promise not to tell your wife.’ ”

She was Tucker Gatrell’s daughter, alright.

“Getting that letter from Daddy Gatrell was a sign to me,” she said. “It hurt my heart not to know that he’d died, but it also made me feel good knowing he cared. Benton, he wasn’t the only witch on our island. We got us a good witch, too, an old woman, Mizz Baker, who give me these beads for luck, and fix me up some special gris-gris bags. You know what a gris-gris bag is?”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little yellow pouch about the size of two tea bags, sealed with string. Inside, she said, were herbs and a magic potion that the witch had said a spell over, giving them power.

When she handed the pouch to me, I bounced it light in my palm, then held it to my nose. It smelled of turpentine and some kind of power. We were off Useppa Island, another of Florida’s exclusive, private islands. I could see men in white shirts and shorts playing croquet. I could see people eating lunch on the patio outside the Collier Inn. It was a striking contrast: a voodoo talisman and a Obeah believer backdropped by modern America’s affluent.

“That a gris-gris bag Mizz Baker made especially for good luck. When she give it to me, she say, ‘The letter from your daddy, that a sign it time to go out and start your Womanly Life.’ So that really why I’m here, my brother. And why I’m giving this gris-gris bag to you. The thing done already brought me good luck ’cause we together now. I hope it bring you the same good fortune.”