Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [84]
When they reached a large pile of wood near the rocks on the far side of the beach, they began to place the branches that they were carrying on top. I was sure I smelled smoke. Then one of them saw me and began moving down the beach, stick in hand. As I scrambled for my sarong, I saw the headlines—NAKED ROMP: JFK GAL PAL RAPED, ROASTED AND EATEN.
John was nowhere to be seen, and my crutch was too far away to hop to. My hands trembled. I gave up on the bikini top, shoving it under the towel with the book, and pulled my sarong up over me, knotting it tightly under my arm. Before the men approached, I succeeded in getting the suit bottom somewhere in the vicinity of my thighs. My first thought was to keep the men talking until John got back.
The largest one sat near me, and the rest towered above. With his red hair and freckles, he looked like one of the locals from Treasure Beach, but his patois was harder for me to understand. How had I gotten here, he asked. I pointed to the boat, then realized they would see the crutch and know I couldn’t walk. The youngest sat on his haunches. Was I alone? Married? Oh, yes, I said, and my husband will be back any minute. The leader lit up a joint and offered me a hit off the enormous spliff. Jamaican hospitality and impossible to refuse. In return, I gave him the mango.
As we shared the fruit, they told me they were childhood friends and had fished off this reef as boys. The one who’d spotted me had gone to the north of England for work and had just returned after twenty years away. There would be a full moon that night, and they were here to fish and celebrate. They didn’t have poles, they said, but they showed me the small nets, sharp sticks, and tin cans rigged with string.
Finally, John arrived. He was happy and relaxed, greeting the men and handing me a present—a colored shell he’d found while diving off the reef. When he smiled, saying something to the effect that he’d found a way off Paradise, I pointed to the trail the men had come from. Dismayed to find that his mango had been eaten, he stretched out on the sand and finished what was left of the joint. Then he got a lesson in tin can fishing. As they stood in the shallows of the reef casting their lines, John was especially intrigued by the youngest, who easily skewered the small reef fish with his stick.
He inquired about the goat path. Steep, they said. A thousand feet up. We would have to abandon the kayak, that was clear, and I would need to be carried. He asked for their help, offering to pay them at the hotel, but the men didn’t want to leave before morning. Instead, they invited us to spend the night with them roasting fish under the stars. We stayed on the beach for hours but nixed the idea of sleeping there. As eager as we had been to arrive, we now wanted to leave.
Arguing for the devil we knew, I said we should return the way we had come, through the break in the reef.
“Not an option,” John said, shaking his head.
“But we made it the first time.”
“Yes, but even if we got to the end of the channel, even if we made it that far, we’d be slammed where the surf meets the reef.”
I looked out. He was right. In the distance, the waves hit the submerged coral with such force that they were tossed sky-high.
“My way,” he said, “we steer clear of the reef altogether.”
“How?” I asked. “It’s everywhere.”
“That’s what I thought. But when I was diving off the side, I saw it, I was in it. In front of the other beach, no reef, no coral—it’s clear.”
I tried to stall. “Can we walk there, so I can at least see it?”
Again he shook his head. “Mangroves. And rock. The beach there is lower, set farther back than this one. We’d have to climb down—you wouldn’t make it with your foot. I’ll take you in the kayak and you can see from there. The coral makes a ledge, and if we drop down, we’re home free.”
I looked away from him, my eyes catching sight of the crutch by the boat.
“Just check it out,” he said. “You can always say no.”
After we said goodbye to the fishermen, he picked me up and set me in the