Buzzard Bay (19 page)

The parents solved this by buying each of the high school kids a Sea-Doo. In about twenty-five minutes, they could ride down Fresh Creek, which was connected by a narrow canal to the lake at the village. Only if the weather was bad did they have to be driven to school.

This project, even with all its problems, was starting to take shape. The Shonavons and Drinkwaters had not spent much time with Bob and July the last couple of months, so it was a surprise to see the two couples appear on their deck one evening. July went to get drinks. Bob was happy to see them. They had all been working too hard lately; it was time they socialized a little more. July brought the drinks, and they all sat down before Bill dropped the bombshell.

“Bob, Tom’s fired all of us.”

Bob thought they had all been pretty down, but never in his wildest dreams had he anticipated this.

His response was “Hell, you guys know Tom. He’s always running off at the mouth.”

“Not this time,” Bill said quietly. “He’ll give us a letter to this effect at the morning meeting.”

“So what do we do about it?” Bob asked them.

“We don’t know, Bob. We tried to reason with him, but he would not listen,” Dale said.

“Well, I’d say we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us tonight,” Bob told them as he reached for the company radio phone.

They all arrived at the meeting early, but Tom was already there. Tom handed each of them a letter, but they refused to accept it.

“I’ve listed what I feel you’re entitled to in these letters,” he told them. “I don’t care if you accept the letters, then you can get out with nothing.”

“Are you firing us?” Bob asked.

“You know fucking well I am,” Tom responded.

“On what grounds?” Bob asked calmly.

“Incompetence!” Tom yelled.

“In what way?” Bob again asked in a calm voice that seemed to agitate Tom.

“You’re not getting anything done.” Tom was mad now. “We’re way over budget, and the project’s way behind schedule.”

“What is not getting done, Tom?” Bob stayed with him like a bulldog.

“The dairy barns are way behind schedule. The hog barn, the land clearing, everything,” Tom ranted.

“All these projects are being done by APCO!” Bob said quietly. “Our land clearing is not up to your schedule, but it’s still adequate for what we can use right now, and we’ve outperformed APCO there too. You’re responsible to make them keep their schedule.”

Tom seemed a little apprehensive now. “We’ve also done a little checking, Tom. APCO is not only dogging it on these projects, they’re charging you an arm and a leg to use our facilities, and maybe it’s not us who are incompetent.”

“What the fuck’s going on here?” Tom yelled as he looked around at all the managers in the room. “This is my project, and I’ll do as I fucking well wish.”

“No you won’t, Tom, take a look outside.” Tom stepped to the open doorway to find everyone who worked on the project standing out in front of the building.

One of the men out front hollered at Tom, “Don’t fire them, or we’ll shut the whole project down.”

Tom was fuming, but he also looked a little scared. “You have me at a disadvantage Bob, but it won’t change things.”

“Things have to change, Tom, or we’ll shut you down,” Bob told him.

“We are going to start doing more work at night. APCO has to get the irrigation system in order right now, or we’ll never get enough produce to start shipping. Here’s a list of what we want,” Bob told him, “and we want it now.”

Tom knew he was in hot water. “I’ve got a contract to supply fresh produce to a couple of hotels next week, how in hell am I supposed to fill the order?”

“All we need is our own aircraft to haul the produce,” Bob told him. “You tell APCO the irrigation wells on section five have to be working tonight. If they are, you’ll have your produce.”

“Okay,” Tom said to them, “I’ll hold you to that. APCO can haul the produce, I’ll tell them to be ready.”

“No,” Bob was forceful. “APCO’s unreliable. You get us our own plane, and it better be a good one.”

Bob looked around the room, “All right, let’s get back to work.” There was a cheer inside the meeting room which quickly carried outside.

July watched with tears in her eyes. She’d never been as proud of Bob as she was now. “You’re one of a kind,” she thought, “even if you don’t know it.”

The APCO workers were sitting drinking coffee when Bob’s crew arrived. By noon they had the irrigation system working well enough to revive the plants withering under the hot summer sun. Dale had his people picking the produce that was ready. Bill was making sure the produce barns were equipped and ready for sorting and packaging. There was a good feeling in the air.

The plane Tom got them was an old crate but a powerful one. It would haul a big payload; produce was heavy, but when the pilot told him what he could haul, Bob was pleased. He didn’t want to have to make two trips in a day if he didn’t have to.

Larry Collins was the pilot Tom hired. He was a likable guy, about Bob’s age. He and Bob hit it off right from the start. Larry was chubby with slightly balding hair and a grin a mile wide. He seemed to sweat standing still but was a really good worker. Bob checked around; he had a reputation as a hell of a good pilot.

“At least, you still have that knack,” Bob thought about Tom. “You can still find good people.”

Tom did indeed have a knack for sourcing out good people or at least people who were good at what they did. Tom’s own morals, however, were somewhat clouded, as were some of the people he became associated with. His intentions were good but usually motivated by greed and shortsightedness.

This project had been his dream; he’d worked very hard to promote it. Banks and investors, however, saw that his business plan had huge flaws. Ton Newton had a hard time seeing why people would not fall over backward to participate in his dream. But dreamers are not usually good business people, nor are they usually willing to give up any of their ideas to accommodate others.

In desperation, Tom went to high-risk people for financing, spending all his resources. He thought he had been successful in his attempt, but there had been strings attached. He had been elated when Ken Holmes told him his project had been funded. When he had his meeting with Waddell, the ground rules had been laid out. Their rules certainly curtailed Tom’s power, but he had no intention of turning back, even if it meant riding on the backs of the people he had recruited for his dreams.

Tom went with Bob and Larry on the first trip to Nassau bringing in their produce. This was a big day; finally the fruits of all their labor would begin to pay off. Bob was in a tremendous mood, but Tom seemed remote, maybe because of our incident last week, Bob thought.

It took only about a half hour from takeoff to landing depending on how busy the airport in Nassau was. Bob could feel that the plane was heavy, but Larry brought it in perfectly than taxiing over to a corner where some trucks were waiting. Bob counted everything that was unloaded; shipments had gone missing before.

A car pulled up, and Tom got in. In a few minutes, Tom got out with a tall black man. Bob recognized the man right away. Tom seemed more relaxed and in a much better mood as he showed the black man some of the produce.

“I’d sure like to have heard the conversation that went on in that car,” Bob thought to himself.

Tom had been scared shitless when he saw the car pull up to the plane. Waddell’s mirrored glasses always intimidated him as they did now sitting next to him in the backseat of the limo.

“I’ll get rid of them, Manly, it’s just going to take a little longer that’s all.” Manley didn’t answer, so Tom went on, “I was sure once they saw the letters, they’d take them and run.”

“The way I hear it, they didn’t even look at the letters or they might have,” Manly said. “I think for $50,000, they would have fucked off, except maybe for Green. He’s too fucking stupid to know a good thing when he sees it.”

“Well, maybe we’ll have to up the ante a bit for him?” Tom compromised.

“No, we’ve changed our minds,” Manly told Tom. “We don’t want to attract any attention to that project right now. Those guys are too naive to know what’s happening anyway. Just keep them busy, so they don’t have time to nose around. Tell them the project’s running out of money. I don’t want to put any more into it right now.”

“They’re getting suspicious about APCO,” Tom told him. “They’re getting pissed off that they’re not getting anything done.”

“Fuck them,” Manly answered. “Tell them the government insisted they’re there. Tell them anything, but keep the produce coming in, that makes it look legitimate and keeps the cost down.”

“The books will soon show it’s not profitable,” Tom said. “Remember Shonavon and Drinkwater are into profit sharing, they’ll want to know how we are doing.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” laughed Manly. “The hotels have no choice but to pay a fortune for the produce, that way they actually finance the farm.”

Tom was amazed at Waddell’s influence. It also scared him, but he was in too deep to get out now.

“So for now it’s business as usual. Let’s have a look at your produce,” Waddell told him as he got out of the car.

Tom felt a lot better as he got out of the car; for now, the crisis had been solved.

Bob decided to pay a lot more attention to today’s operations on the project. He was suspicious that not all was right but couldn’t put his finger on anything concrete. The farm had shut down any expansion for the time being except for the completion of the APCO projects. Those were terribly behind schedule, but Tom had explained that the government insisted they do the work, so Bob accepted this even though they were a terrible drain on the project’s finances.

Bob had a lot more time to spend with his family now. One night he and July stopped at the Andros Hotel for a drink. Bob began to pay attention to a conversation going on behind him. The two men at the bar were black. They obviously had a few beers in them by the boisterous way they talked. Bob picked up the fact that they were loading some boats at Buzzard Bay in an hour.

It struck him funny as to why anyone would be loading boats especially at Buzzard Bay this time of night. Bob and July decided to follow the two men as they left the hotel in an APCO truck. Neither Bob nor July had been down to Buzzard Bay in a long time.

The main loading dock was just a man-made lagoon dug out of the shoreline used mainly by the mail boat and the owner of an old barge. The barge was one of the few ways the locals had to haul large items onto the island such as cars or farm machinery. In fact, Tom had hired it out from time to time to haul for the project.

cattered along the edge of the ocean both ways from the lagoon was a fairly large Bahamian settlement. The garbage from the settlement, plus the entrails left by the village’s fishing industry, made it a great place for buzzards to hang out, hence the origin of its name, Buzzard Bay.

Once you got to know the locals a little better, they would tell you there was something a little more sinister about how Buzzard Bay got its name. It was a place where you stayed away from at night, if you didn’t often or not you were the one who became buzzard meat. Bob had heard this story but brushed it off as folklore, tonight it kept creeping into the back of his mind.

This was the third port in North Andros. To the very north was Georgetown, where the big water boats came in hauling fresh water from Andros to Nassau. To the south was Fresh Creek, more of a remote area where the naval base was situated. Buzzard Bay was between the two about halfway down the east side of the island.

Very little but local produce went through this port making Bob very curious as to what was going on. They didn’t worry about staying too far behind the truck; they knew their way, parking as close as they dared to the lagoon and walking the rest of the way. Suddenly, through the trees they could see the lagoon. Although it was pitch black out, the lagoon was lit up by two small lights from the barge. Tonight there were two other boats in the lagoon. They were at least twenty-five footers and each had three two-hundred horse outboards mounted on the back. Two trucks were backed up to the old barge using it as a dock to load large bags onto the two boats.

“Do you think those bags are what I think they are?” July asked Bob.

“Yeah,” Bob answered her, “and those are APCO trucks from the project.” He felt July shiver beside him.

“You’ve suspected something for a long time, haven’t you, Bob?”

“Yep,” he said, “let’s get the hell out of here before someone sees us.”

The next evening they told the Shonavons and Drinkwaters what they had seen. They all talked it over, trying to decide what to do about it.

“There’s no proof it’s drugs,” Bill said. “Until we can get some proof, there’s little we can do.”

“We can keep our eyes open, and we all know until we get rid of APCO off the project, it’s not going to go well.” Bob told them.

“But,” Dale Drinkwater broke in, “we’ve got some good things going here. We’ve employed a lot of local labor and use a lot of local material. It would hurt a lot of people beside us if the project was shut down now.” They decided not to confront Tom just yet.

“Let’s see what we can dig up before raising too big a stink,” Bob told them. “It’s hard to know who we should go to. Anyway, for all we know, the government might be involved.” One thing they all realized, they were mixed up in something that could be very dangerous and might be just as wise to leave alone.

It was two years to the day from when Bob had arrived on the project that he and July took their first holiday. They visited his mother and tied up some loose ends while they were there. The rest of the time, they spent with July’s parents and Mindy in Minnesota. They returned fresh and relaxed, glad to have gotten away from the problems at the project, but now ready to tackle them.

Each season had created new problems for the crops and animals produced on the farm. Slowly they’d learned to overcome them. They’d had to use much more pesticides than they would have liked, and some fields didn’t have enough drainage during the rainy season, but all in all they’d hung in there keeping the contracts they had supplied with fresh vegetables and now with some dairy products.