Vacation (20 page)

Then the luggage flew off the boat and into the water. Huge boxes, which broke when they hit the surface, and clothes went everywhere. Rain poured out of the sky like in the days of Noah, but they had to pull off the plastic and go back and the people not in the middle had to lean over into the water and fish the clothes out of the river and put them, wet-heavy, in the boat between their legs.

In truth, here is the story: A man leaves a place. A man leaves another place. And another. And another. He has to keep leaving and sometimes it is good and sometimes it is not, but mostly not. It is just a series of departures, of doors closing, a briefcase snapping shut. Nothing becomes clearer. Nobody changes. The man wants to change but cannot. The man wants to change the woman he loves and left but cannot do that either, stubborn stuck nails that humans are—failure of evolution or God. The man makes plans in any case. Between boats. He writes them out longhand, crumbles them up, writes them again, more carefully this time or in a different size lettering: The New Plan. Or: The Old Plan Revised. Or: Revised New Plan. Or: Second Revision of Second Plan. The plans are all the same. They all involve resolutions to quit certain habits (her, there, then), to resign himself to different ones (here, this, that), and then to commit himself to those habits of resignation, not to falter but to carry on, be resigned in the following ways, be the person those habits make one become regardless of former resolutions or habits, regardless of which sunny road it may lead away from. Each plan is based on one overarching resolution, the essential one, the one without which he can do nothing else, or he can but it won’t work because the first part must be in place before anything else can follow, anything other than frustration, pain, and maybe prison: Leave. Leave this place now.

This is what it came down to. He said that in his mind: This is what it’s come down to, what I’ve come up with, what I’ve come to. We all, he said, must shift our position immediately or else go down further still.

Does anybody have a boat? said Myers.

I’ll pay anyone with a boat, he said.

This was on the next island.

Come with me, said a boy. They walked on planks of wood thrown across the mud. They stood on a porch and called into the dark,
¿Disculpe, hay barco?
A woman in shadows shook her head sadly,
No, no hay barco
. They went everywhere—to the school, which was closed, to the office of stamps, to another office whose light swung in and out in the distance. The escort introduced him grandly. He is going to Bluefields. He must get out of this lake. His mother is sick. His wife worried. His boss apoplectic. The escort spoke long and eloquently. He used his hands to express the wife’s desire, the American’s duty, the escort’s efficiency. They walked back on a road as blue as Bluefields in dreams.

On the next island (he was almost there now), Myers would have to go to the other side to catch a boat, they said. He’d have to walk around. No, no, not cut through the grass like a fool (Myers was no fool), what did he want, a good old snakebite in those grasses? He’d be dead before he was found.

But he couldn’t walk all the way around, he said. It looked long, it looked far. He had an arm that was first broken, then patched, then hurting, now wet. And his side was sore too.

It really isn’t far, they said. But, okay, where’s Nico?

Where’s Nico? they said.

Nico careened over with his crazy limp, a man shining with youth. He took Myers’s briefcase and put it in a shopping cart. He put Myers in the shopping cart. He wheeled him away. The town lined up to watch as they bumped down the rock road. Everyone cheered.

The boat on the other side was six dollars and Myers had to bail one-handed with a tin cup the water that collected at the bottom, but it wasn’t too bad as far as these things go. No sinking went on.

And he finally did arrive.

And Gray? What about him?

Never made it to Nicaragua. He stayed on in David, Panama, a town so hot the fruit in the carts melted into wax and the large sheets of
loteria
that should flutter stayed pasted to the boards with wood sweat. A cool breeze ran through the dreams of citizens but never through the trees. The only tourist trinkets sold were the
molas
the Indians stitched and hung from the trees, but no one did that in this town because there were no tourists. Gray stayed. He slept in room 433 of the Hotel Central on the plaza for twelve dollars a night. He woke each morning and went to the café. He ate two eggs at the counter alongside the other men of the town. Then he walked to the iron benches under the trees in the plaza—the one place in town that offered respite from the heat—until sunset when the birds whipped up a frenzy and screamed across the sky. He ate chicken with
pejibaye
folded into a paper cone from a blistering streetside grill. He visited the Internet café on the corner, went back to his room. The people of the town accepted him, assumed he was one of the gringos left behind from the days when the U.S. controlled the canal. As his actions grew slower and his responses more erratic, they figured he’d been abandoned here, deserted like a sick animal or like a battered piece of machinery that could no longer be of use. There was plenty of that here, left by the U.S., further demonstration of the hard-hearted, handy mind of the North American.

He wrote home less and less, read his emails without comprehension, the frantic messages from his ex-wife, and when he wrote back he spoke of their coming to visit rather than his going home. He never left the town again, although as his dementia increased he believed he did. Once he woke thinking he’d ridden a sleeper car though the night and had arrived in a new place. Once he believed that in an ambling walk he’d gone straight to a new town, made new friends, settled in. And yes, he resolved to go to Corn Island after reading its entry in the guidebook. He never thought he’d arrived, but he believed he was on his way and urged his ex-wife, daughter, and Myers to join him. In this way his life seemed dull but his brain was not. After a time he couldn’t walk anymore, beyond a slow toddle to the corner and back, and after a time more, not even that. The owner of the hotel brought soup to him twice a day, stopped charging him rent. It was she who closed his eyes when he died. She sent the letter to the embassy but received no response. She ran an obituary in the English-language newspaper and she added what she correctly assumed to be true: Mr. Gray chose our country for his first and last voyage from home.

This was as far as the owner or anyone else went in searching for his relations. The ex-wife and daughter never learned of his death.

So Myers was finally in Bluefields. And now the question was: why Bluefields? He couldn’t recall. Certainly he must have had a reason to propel him forward each dawn. If not an original reason that he’d forgotten, at least a purported reason, one he told people over and over, one he emailed home. It couldn’t be that he thought he would find tourists at the other end. Bank machines and beaches and blue skies and song. Bring on the Caribbean dream. He couldn’t have thought that. Who other than he would come this far and go this long? Who other than he? He walked from the dock, numb-wet, wanting only the Internet. The main street was a pit of mud.

No, no, it’s not Bluefields itself that he wants. It’s the other one, Corn Island.

What is that?

Remember? It’s the island. The beach, the song, the sky.

What does he want with that?

Gray.

Oh, yes.

Also.

Yes?

The wife. She likes a beach.

Oh, for God’s sake.

At that point it seemed impossible that he could still be looking for the man his wife followed or be waiting for his wife to arrive, but he was. Maybe it was a different man or a different wife or maybe the same ones with different names. Maybe there was no wife anymore, only the habit of emails home. He took a room in the Hotel Caribbean Dream, of all things, for four dollars a night. He was the only guest.

That day in Bluefields, he didn’t see any tourists like he hoped. A truck like a tank wobbled down the street and sprinkled a great mist of repellant over them all. The earth rumbled with a minor quake and everyone held out their hands for balance. But then he came back to his hotel and saw a North American sitting on a step as if they were in Brooklyn.

I haven’t seen anyone like me in a week, said Myers.

A week? he said. Who’s like you? There’s no part of that sentence
I understand.

Where are the tourists, said Myers, the reggae bars?

I’ve never seen a tourist here. He studied Myers. Is that what you are?

No, I’m just here to check my email.

And lo and behold he and Myers were from the same town although the man didn’t know how to act like someone from that town anymore. He kept speaking the wrong language.

In the U.S. we speak English these days, Myers thought it fair to inform him.

Is that right? And what was I speaking?

I don’t know what that was.

And lo and behold the man knew just where Myers could check his email. As they walked through the streets to reach it, the man said, I can get you a girlfriend, a local, just so you know.

I have a wife, Myers said. (He wasn’t sure of that.)

That’s an angry arm you got there.

It’s a little crunched.

You looked banged up elsewhere too. You get in a fight?

I could use a doctor, Myers admitted.

Oh yeah, a doctor. Just be careful. Don’t let anyone do any voodoo on you.

Myers had no new messages.

It was on a hill they walked up that he told Myers what had happened, how he’d got stuck in this spot. They walked up that hill in the heat and drizzle for the same reason people ride rivers or sail out into the sea.

I was fishing off the coast of Bluefields, the man said. I had a crew of three. I was standing on the deck, looking out at the water. Suddenly they jumped on me, three at once, and hit me over the head with a pipe.

A pirate ship! said Myers.

Not a pirate ship, he said, a little annoyed. It was my fishing ship, my crew.

They jumped on me, he said. One was hitting my legs with the pipe and another was hitting my head. Blood everywhere. I wouldn’t go down.

Why not? Myers gasped.

I was screaming, I was crazy. I don’t know what I was doing. I went down at last. They tied me up with cord. Look, I have scars still. Look at my ankles. Still I limp from the pipe.

He still had scars around his ankles, thick, uneven rings.

They held a machete to my throat, he said. You’re going to fucking die, man, die in Bluefields, one kept saying.

Let me do him right now, another kept saying. Then they locked me in a room and left me there. I pushed the air conditioner out the window and jumped into the water. I escaped.

Factors in viewing from above a man going overboard into a temptuous sea: how far away the viewer is from the scene, what the light is like, what color the water is.

Imagine a particular case. The water and sky are the same storm shade. And the man himself is quite colorless. His clothes wet, muddy. The boat is leaden, and there are people on it and an animal on it. The light is dim through the clouds. Rain darkens the scene further. From very high up, anyone looking down would see only a shifting of various shades of the same hue, as the waves roll and toss the boat. The boat itself appears as an ink mark on the graywash. At most, one might see something coming off it, flying out across the waves, a narrow piece a shade lighter than the other colors, visible only for a moment before disappearing. A few minutes later, one might see a second piece, slightly smaller, detach from the boat.

Or if viewed from a little closer, the ink mark might resolve into some sort of military boat, the first slice into a figure. Closer, and one might see that the first is a man and the second is an animal, both flying into the sea.

It was freezing in that water, he told Myers. And shark-infested. I was bleeding. I was so far from land. I swam for hours. At last I made it and crawled up on the rocks. I ran to a door, a long trail of blood behind me. I pounded on the door and an old man opened it. I told him, I’ll give you five hundred dollars cash. I’ll go to the bank and give you five hundred dollars cash if you’ll drive me in your boat to the U.S. military base right now.

You said that? Myers gasped.

Well, first I asked him for a glass of water. I was immensely thirsty. Can I have a glass of water? I said, and then I said I’d give him five hundred bucks. The old man said, Five hundred U.S. dollars? All right, let’s go! And we went out to his boat but the damn thing wouldn’t start. He kept trying and finally I said, Old man, give me that thing, and
I nearly tore the engine off.