Excerpt

PROLOGUE

1989

The Caribbean island Mabouhey is not large enough to appear on maps, but it is large enough for the purpose of our story. To Mabouhey, pristine and treasure-laden as the Twentieth Century drew to its close, fled an American of European descent, mourning the death of his nephew. When Matthew was a child, Travers had taken him to the playground, to the movies, the zoo. And then...? And then, like the coming of night, he let his nephew slip away, he let himself slip away.Travers Landeman was thirty-eight years old with nothing in Ohio for him to go back to and much for him to flee. On Mabouhey he was a fugitive from others, from the prison of a loveless marriage, from the lunacy of bureaucrats who tyrannized his failing business, from unknown and unnamed others who promised him harm, but no longer was he a fugitive from himself.

Who among us has not dreamed of going to the corner store for a carton of milk and simply disappearing? It was imperative that Travers Landeman seize the moment and seize it when he did, for it was still dawn and not yet full sun of permanent revolution. Yes, the good news was that Communism was dead, but the bad news was that Capitalism was very much alive. The new millennium would come and with it would come GPS, DNA, voice and face recognition, and, on viaducts and lampposts, the Cyclops blue light of surveillance cameras lurking, to track and tally men, women, and children in the far from unwithered State. In 1989 airplanes had not been crashed into buildings; Travers Landeman could and he did slip away. The question was: would he get away with it?

He had not happened upon Mabouhey by chance, for there was a direct correlation between his nephew’s suicide and Travers’ journey. He carried with him Bibles, prayer books, and hymnals, gutted and stuffed with cash, and, although he did not know it, his nephew’s diary, a tale of betrayal that would call from the past to have him break his vow that he would never go back to his old self, for it tells the true story of his nephew’s death.

His first nights on Mabouhey Travers sat by the fire in the middle of the central clearing. There was singing and dancing and stars. He had come to the island to bring provisions to a missionary, Father Chester, who, like himself, had fled a purposeless life. By the side of a dying fire, babies bounced on knees and Travers listened as Father Chester talked, of his priesthood, of Mabouhey, of the greatest sin of all, the failure to love, which is always the failure to act. From across the way, in the shadows, a woman named Marguerite sat on her verandah, between emotion and response, studying the priest and the intruder in the bitter ash of her withered heart. She was the color of coffee with cream, her hair was flowing and black, and her face was the burn of a wine-red rose. You shall know of all of this and more: how Travers was attacked by the great shark, Kintura; how Travers and Marguerite came to love one another and build their home on the side of a volcano at a place called Schugara.

For now it is enough to show that under a sky that was a net of stars Marguerite takes Travers to the bend of many rocks, where they hide a canoe—there, beneath the roots of the caoba tree that leans like a scarecrow into the water. Marguerite had selected this forested place, stepping stones of moss and root, because it is where the island of Mabouhey bends and its great river becomes sea, Caribbean currents churning the waters into angry whiteness.

"Once Hernando's boat is there," Marguerite said, pointing to beyond the white fury, "it will be swept around the bend. To return to search for you, Hernando's sons will have to fight the mighty currents."

"How long will that take?" Travers asked.

"There will be enough time," Marguerite answered, "if you do not drown.”

An image of his dead nephew came to him. "I will not drown," he said.

"Kintura..."

"The great shark will not harm me again. Kintura has had his way with me."

"How can you know?"

"I cannot say. But I know."

Travers reached for her. Under the thousand stars of the caoba tree's leaves they held each other.

In the morning the people of the village came to say their goodbyes. Then it was time. Father Chester raised his hands in blessing. He lifted his face, emblazoned with bold colors of bright paint on his forehead and cheeks, to the sky.

"Great Spirits," Father Chester prayed, "we thank you for our brother, Travers, for his kindness and generosity. Nourish his journey home with gentle wave and tranquil sky. Keep him close in the bosom of your sheltering warmth. We ask this in the name of the forest, in the name of the sea."

“Namaste, Mabouhey!" the villagers chanted. The Spirit in me respects the Spirit in you.

Marguerite put a ring of jungle flowers around Travers' neck, and he stepped on to the pallets that floated on the bottom of Hernando's boat. His left leg throbbed; the teeth of the great shark came again to his mind. With an instinctive touch he reached to his bandaged thigh. Its pain reminded him of the world he would leave behind. Hernando's sons poked paddles into the water.

Father Chester and the villagers waved.

“Namaste, Mabouhey!"

Marguerite was no longer on the beach. Good. Hernando's sons, Eufusio and Rafael, fussed and discussed in the patois Travers did not understand and then, in a staccato of white puffs, the small engine of the small boat coughed itself alive. Like memories, the people on the shore receded. Overhead came large white seagulls like kites and other birds whose names Travers did not know. The ocean burned like the brightest candle. At last—at last!—Hernando's boat approached the bend, just beyond the place of many rocks. Travers' heart was a land mine buried in the desert.

"I would like some water, please," Travers said. Eufusio opened the red cooler nestled between his knees. Travers stood to walk to him and then Travers was not in the boat. As he fell, his left leg scraped against the boat's side, ripping loose the bandage from his thigh. Is this what death and birth are like: plunging from a world of sky? The water took him and he felt reborn. Blood poured from his thigh as pain came, aftershock echoes of when the great shark had attacked him ten days before. Travers saw that there was blood in the water and he knew that it was his blood and he knew, too, that he should be afraid. He went under the water and stayed as long as he could. In the red silence he saw clearly: fish, coral, sand. He came to the surface near to where Marguerite waited in the canoe. Then he lay in its bottom as Marguerite paddled into the mouth of the river. Neither said a word, but their eyes spoke: now there was no going back; now we are together forever. My life was one of dying, Travers thought; now, by dying, I shall live. Marguerite's long arms danced with the oar as the canoe moved up the river and was gone.

Hernando's boat, as anxious as a crow, came back around the bend, just beyond the place of many rocks, straining against the currents, slow in its swiftness. The ocean was an unbroken spell, as primal as the eye of burning sun. Eufusio saw it first: grey sheen of triangle, lucent and lethal, a knife in the moon of the water's turquoise dream. Kintura! The Great White Shark! An instant later Rafael saw it too and its deathshadow also. "Kintura! Kintura!" Hernando's sons shouted in one voice. Then fin and shadow were gone. Hernando's boat bobbed up and down, a steadfast heart, as Hernando's sons stood together, shielding their eyes with salutes of their hands. There was blood in the water. There! A bandage! Eufusio reached over the side. Sudden clouds darkened ocean and sky, yet the ocean became still as stone. In the new calm of gray, Eufusio lifted the bandage leaking red. No longer young, Eufusio and Rafael locked into each other's eyes.

“Namaste, Mabouhey!” Eufusio said at last.

“Namaste, Mabouhey!” Rafael repeated. The brothers stood in the small boat, palms pressed together in front of their chests. Slowly they brought their hands upwards to the tops of their heads and bowed. There was blood in Eufusio’s hand and there was blood in the water.

"The American is dead," Rafael said. "Yes," his brother answered, "the American is dead."

* * *

Albert Sidney McNab took a final look at the lobby of the New Papagayo Hotel: stone floor with rectangles of pink marble, one of the few natural resources indigenous to the island of Frederique, the Caribbean island he had come to and come up empty handed; bench-like chairs and settees of hand-carved caoba; clusters of schefflera and palms, explorations of pothos and moonflower veining the thatched roof with trumpets of green fire. His look was one of instinct. He did not know what it was he was looking for, this stoop-shouldered white American who seemed, at first glance, like just another tourist. Had he stood straight, he would have been six feet tall. He was forty-five years old. His hair was in the crew-cut style of the nineteenfifties. He wore tan shorts, sandals with orange socks, and a bright blue short-sleeve shirt, crowded with multicolored geometric shapes: triangles, circles, trapezoids, rectangles. His brown hair was thinning. His glasses had thick black frames and thicker lenses. He was overweight, approaching obesity, and he had a weary way about him. He looked like a hastily made king size bed. With a tentative grasp of his suitcase, brown leather shiny from use, he headed to the front entrance, where a minivan waited to take him to the airport. Had he come all this way for nothing? To the smaller neighboring island, Mabouhey, he had taken Hernando's boat, a shack with a tin roof, water above his ankles. This risking of his life had continued, yes—there was no end to danger!—as ashore on Mabouhey he traversed jungle on sandals and mule through clouds of kamikaze mosquitoes. And for what? Albert Sidney McNab had no clues, no leads. Nothing. Day followed sunny island day in languishing Caribbean rhythm as if Travers Landeman had never existed. Five months had passed since his alleged demise. Maybe, as Eufusio and Rafael insisted with the intensity of youth, the Ohio businessman was dead. Maybe a shark had eaten him. Yet, even as this possibility skipped about in his mind, like a stone across water, Albert Sidney McNab felt the old feeling, the feeling that was never wrong.

He had to hit the big one and hit it soon. He couldn't go on much longer dealing with two-bit scams. He knew that much. His feet were too sore all the time and his back was too tired. He worked for a company by the name of Middlebury Adjusting, Fire, and Insurance Advocacy. The MAFIA. Working for such an outfit—he smiled at the pun—is a younger man's game, he thought. No question about it. He had to hit the big one and hit it soon. Why not the BIG big one? Why not indeed? Twenty per cent of three million dollars is a whole heap of money and in his pocket if...if he found the missing businessman and brought him back alive.

He supervised the manhandling of his suitcase into the luggage space behind the rearmost seat of the van. Then he stepped back to study the New Papagayo Hotel one last time. His eyes gave scrutiny to balconies stretching seaward. He searched the cliff that was the hotel's backdrop. Nothing. He looked out towards the sea and down to the beach, a horseshoe of green crystal cove. Nothing.

He stepped into the van. Albert always gets his man, he thought, ...eventually." Posturing or premonition?

"I'll be back," he said in a low voice. Premonition.

"Beg pardon?" the driver asked.

"Nothing." Albert Sydney McNab squeezed himself into the rearmost seat of the van, slipped off his sandals, and massaged his feet. "Nothing at all." Next time, he vowed to himself, I shall bring proper footwear.