We walked in silence through the empty shipyard. I can feel my knees buckling. I could have passed out into a peaceful sleep, but I choke down the temptation and stuff it deep inside.
"You like you're tour today?" the man with big eyes asks.
"I loved it," I answered, and it was true. The city was beautiful. The countryside was wild and exhilarating. Seaside cabanas stretch into the warm waters below. The colors were bold. I heard music from every passing car. I saw more smiles on these crowded streets than any other place I know.
Yet I was a little unnerved by all the scheming on the streets. I couldn't understand their island language. I knew only bits about their customs and their culture. And I was standing on some unknown, abandoned shore in a foreign country, with two questionable men - two days before Christmas.
But I was in Jamaica, away from the daily routines that can strangle the vision of who we are, and what it is we desire. My time here would be like slipping the gears into neutral for the next mile, and giving the engine a rest.
"And the plantations? You like those?" the man with big eyes asks.
I nod my head approvingly and kid, "But not what I would expect from Jamaica."
I thought the comment would lighten the mood. They look at the ground, silent.
"Well, ya know this is how we make a little money for the family," the man with big eyes explains. "We do this everyday."
"I understand," I say.
"How much money did you bring on your trip to Jamaica?"
"Enough," I blurt, quickly. His gaze was steady like rain.
"How much were you guys thinking?", I say.
"$14,000," the man with big eyes says.
"What?! That's absurd!"
"It's $300 American."
"$300?!"
The number was bone-breaking. It was all the money that I had packed with me on this trip.
"How much were you gonna pay us?" the tall man says.
I tell them a $1000 Jamaican and they tell me it's only $18 American. He explains how they have to pay for the driver, pay the Rasta, pay for the weed, pay for the gas, and have money left over to pay them. The list was exhausting and made me wonder if I should mention the cigarette I bummed off the driver walking up to the fields.
"Alright," I say. "But I'm not paying that much."
The man with big eyes walks within a breath of me and asks how much I'm going to give them. I tell him I'm not feeling comfortable anymore, and walk away. They both shouted something about not being able to leave. But I kept moving. I didn't want to find out how they intended to stop me. I reach the wagon and the driver gets out. The two other men close in behind me, cornering me against the car. Their postures were unfriendly, hostile. I knew I had only one sentence separating me from unknown bodily harm. This had better be good.
"We're going back," I say, looking into his fire. The man with big eyes had an insolent stare that burned straight through the heart of gullibility. The sound of death cracked in his knuckles, causing my nerves to flee in quiet panic to the hollow canal running down my back. I expected the fist to come from the left. He was right handed, and he would surely lead with his strongest hand. I thought of how this would end. What the newspaper headline would be on tomorrow's paper. If I would have money left to drink off this dark moment. But he didn't strike. He just nodded his head and climbed into the car. I thought of running, but I was still a good 15 minute drive from my hotel. I got back in the car.
The engine starts and we drive up to the road and stop. The car idles patiently.
"So how much you gonna give us mon?" the man with big eyes asks, more gently this time.
"I can give you $40."
"Each?"
"No, for the tour."
"Shit, mon! This guy is an idiot!"
He tears the glasses off my face and I see a terrible slur of shapes and colors. I felt I was standing on the thread of some great threshold separating a man between honor and disgrace. I thought at any moment everything could turn dark and I would wake up a bloody mess on the streets of Montego Bay, broke and alone, without luggage or identification. I sit quietly, waiting, wondering. I was confused. What was I doing here? Why did I agree to get in the car with them? "I don't understand why you guys are doing this?" Wait. Did I just say that? Nothings happening. What's going on? Should I say it again?
Suddenly, the car pulls out into traffic and starts driving in the direction of my hotel. The man with big eyes shifts his weight towards me and I feel a gentle tap on my leg. It's my glasses. I put them on and see the bustle of downtown shops filled with crowds of smiling people.
"Just give us $100," the tall man said to me.
My thoughts were operating at thirty times the speed of light, but I couldn't settle on a proper answer. "I tell you what," I eventually say. "I can give you $60, but that's all I can do. $20 for each of you."
I unzip my bag and watch as the man with big eyes watches me count out $60. I place it in his hungry grip and say "One love?". The car pulls aside and stops across the street from my hotel.
A quick jump between cars and a few steps up the dark, mossy stairs, I was standing in front of my room at the Caribic House fumbling with the key to the door. I was feeling confused and depraved, as if I'd just been rescued from sea. It's a type of liberation that leaves a carbon copy of the word "Lucky" on your chest. I crashed onto the hard bed and stared up at the cracks in the ceiling. My muscles were tense, but I had an incredible sense of peace, one that can only come from a ruling chaos.
We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
ReplyDeleteSo now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. —Hunter S. Thompson, 1971.
Precisely my point - in so many words. We have now shared two revolutions with Jamaica. The 70s reclamation of identity. And now, a new breed of politics from our two governments.
ReplyDeleteThere's a difference, though. In '71, Thompson was looking back on the wreckage of hippie idealism that he'd shared and participated in, feeling complex emotions of regret, innocence lost, and the looming of a darker, more difficult future than the 60s had been able to imagine in their naivete. Because of this, the famous 'wave speech' is an elegy to a generation's lost purpose and promise written by a member of that generation.
ReplyDeleteWhereas here it looks more like you're appropriating Thompson's imagery to sketch a crude caricature of a country and culture to which you are alien— a culture which you accuse of having betrayed their promise that you also crudely sketched based on a pop song. The behavior of three men in a country of three million no more synecdochizes Jamaica than did a 31-year-old song. And even if it does, you aren't a part of that culture; you cannot make yourself the Thompson of Jamaica. You foolishly put yourself in a dangerous situation and then, when that situation revealed itself to be dangerous, condemned the entire island where it took place rather than recognizing your own foolishness.
Certainly there's a juxtaposition, but your language suggests that the juxtaposition arises from a failure on the part of Jamaica as a whole. While it is entirely possible that Jamaica has failed at something, you, as a tourist there, are not in a position to judge this, and certainly not because of a single situation involving a few opportunistic guys.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I understand why you think that claiming Jamaica's love, peace and respect lying like scattered, unclaimed promises counts as 'your story.' The stories you cite, that of the plight of Iraqis or Palestinians or polar bears, are empathetic stories. Yours is antipathetic. Do you see the difference?
ReplyDeletePoint taken.
ReplyDeleteBut when I say my story, I'm talking about a personal transformation that happened to me while on this trip. It would be insolent to imply that the Jamaican story, from whatever angle it's looked at, is in any way my story. That being said, there are elements to it that I identified with, movements in the mindset of the people that I'm interested in capturing. And in the arc of this journey, this death ride was a fitting place to begin.
Nice writing - you did a nice job of getting across the "cringe factor" of what you were going for. I found myself reminding myself that since you were writing about all of this after the fact then you must have survived.
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