from the wall, flying aimlessly around the room. It caught me completely off guard as it unexpectedly switch directions and came at me. I stood up, backed up and fell over my chair.
“I’m going to kill you!” Dan screamed. Man he was pissed.
At that point Dan started to scare me; foam started coming out of the corners of
his mouth. Dan’s other flip flop came off his foot and then down hard guiding the
thing underneath his flip-flop. A soggy crunch exploded, shooting an art work of cockroach blood and guts all over the sink counter top. A masterpiece. Jackson Pollock would behave been proud. ”Die you motherfucker,” Dan said, grinding his teeth. “Damn, that’s the ugliest cockroach I’ve ever seen. Terrifying.”
“Christ Dan, we’d better have another beer. I think I have just been traumatized,” I said getting back up to my feet.
“Another beer? Nonsense.” Dan said reaching toward a lopsided night stand by the bed. “This will do the trick. It works great for all near death experiences.”
“Dan, I love you. Canadian Club Whiskey. Pour me three fingers.”
“You got it,” Dan said, smiling. I’m pouring five fingers for myself.” We both downed the medicine. I felt my frayed nerves relax and the inside of my gut became comfortably warm.
“I think we had better get to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow and Marty gets here bright and early,” said Dan, finishing his drink. His face had turned back to normal color.
“I agree.” I downed the rest of my whiskey.
I was in and out of sleep the rest of the night. Even though I was from sunny California, the Virgin Islands heat took a bit getting use to. The air was thick and sticky. At times it was suffocating. With no air conditioning in that delapitated place in Tutu, I was a steamy, wet rag doll.
I had to get up to piss for the sixth time. I was afraid to turn on the light in the bathroom. There could be more of those giant bastard cockroaches waiting to ambush me. I looked at my dive watch and could make out 4:45 on the hands. Good. I had a little over an hour to lay back down. Maybe even fall asleep. I took the three concrete steps up from the bathroom, then I heard it. A loud crash on top of the galvanized roof. I jumped and almost let out scream like a pansy boy. Another crash, followed by trampling from one end of the roof to the other. The trade winds were blowing outside making the foliage rake the outside of the wall. It sounded like gruesome things were trying to get in, to get me. Dan was right, I started to spook myself.
Soon I heard a different sound up on the roof mixed in with the trampling. Scratching! Lots of scratching. And then pecking. What in the name of God is up there, and what does it want? My brain was on overload. All hell was going to come crashing down through the roof at any second. I saw Dan standing in the bedroom door way. “See, I told you.” He said. “It’s the Chupacabra.”
All of a sudden a demonic cry came from atop the roof that made both of us stiffen up. But wait, I knew that cry. “It’s not the Chupacabra Dan,” I said. “It’s a fucking goat. There are goats on top of the roof.”
“Goddamn, I was about to shit myself.” Dan started to laugh. “There must be chickens up there too.” Then we heard the crow of a rooster.
Marty the Jew, a Brutal Display of Tourism
I was drifting off to sleep when I heard a raspy horn blow. Once, then twice. My head was starting to crack. If that horn blows again I knew my brains would separate from my skull and splatter the wall behind me. I looked out the window and saw an offensive day-glow yellow hat on top of a small Jew with the face of leather behind the steering wheel of a beastly looking vehicle.
Dan jumped out of bed and grabbed his flip flops that still had crusty roach guts on them. “That’s Marty,” Dan said. “I got to brush my teeth. My tongue feels like a
goddamn fur coat.”
I ain’t brushing my teeth in that sink. Christ, there’s sure to be cock roachleg hairs in it. Too much for my stomach to handle this morning. “I’ll meet you outside,” I called to Dan. I grabbed my dive gear and went out and met the driver of the ungodly vehicle who was now standing just beside it and adjusting the driver side mirror.
“My name is Marty,” he said holding out his hand. “I own the safari busses for the dive business and I am also one of the drivers.” He smiled, biting onto a cigar that looked like a dog turd. My gut reeled when I saw his nasty teeth; Just plain rotten. I shook his hand. Marty was small and skinny with a deep dark leather tan that told me he didn’t care too much about getting skin cancer. What looked like fine brown pubic hair puffed out from under his yellow florescent hat. And his nose met Jew specifications. I liked Marty. He was doing his thing, like I was doing mine. He and his wife Carol sold their business back in New Jersey or whatever and bought the transportation part of the dive operation. They escaped the rat race just like I did, just like the majority of the whitey’s you find living in the Caribbean.
“Eric,” I said, trying not to look at his teeth that were as brown as his wrinkly, old skin.
“Welcome to St. Thomas.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Dan said jumping into the cab of the safari bus.
I stood on the white sand of Coki Beach. The warm Caribbean water in front of me was like tinted glass, smooth and blue. I had never seen water this calm and clear. It was as though God dumped massive amounts of chlorine into the ocean. The clouds danced swiftly in the wind. Thatch Cay stood majestically across the channel. The small island seemed to hold a secret mysteriously hidden since the days of pirates. Coki Beach had only a few people scattered about it at this time in the morning. Mainly local West Indians. A few were walking the beach. Some were enjoying a nice early swim. A small group of kids were playing on and jumping off a jetty of rocks into the water: splashing and laughing with no worries in the world. Coral World stood in the background; an underwater observatory rising up from the shallow ocean floor with a huge, flattened dome like a flying saucer.
I was trying to take it all in, trying to savor the moment. But this was hard for me to do while I was huffing and puffing searching for my next breath of air. Dan and I, along with Randy, Taz and Beverly, had just spent an hour setting up the beach with dive gear, snorkel equipment and a small beach gift shop. Holy shit was I tired. We must have set up 29 SCUBA units - tank, BC and regulators. Plus we had at least fifty tanks ready to go that we off-loaded from our big blue coke truck we used as a mobile dive shop. I thought I was in reasonably good shape for being twenty six. I guess I was wrong, although the booze still in my system and the hot sun beating down on me didn’t help much.
Dan came over to me. He was in no better shape. He was soaked in alcohol sweat and his face looked like a cherry red tomato. “How you doing?” Dan asked.
“I’m fucking spent,” I said with a smile.
“Well get ready, because here they come.”
I turned away from the water and saw the first safari bus full of pasty white tourists roll onto the beach. Marty the Jew was behind the wheel chewing on his filthy dog turd. That’s when all hell broke loose.
St. Thomas is the cruise ship capital of the Caribbean. During high season it is common to see up to eight ships converge on this tiny 31 square mile island. It was no doubt an awesome sight. St. Thomas is a beautiful island with its red roof tops situated on top of white houses nestled in the lush hillsides, with windy roads up to scenic vistas that displayed the outer islands and the British Virgin Islands. The smells and tastes, the bars and beaches all made this island a small wonder to me. Ice cold beer at the end of the day and swigging Cruzan Rum late into the balmy Virgin Island nights, watching as the lights of the huge ships moved out to sea became my new routine. However, in the near future I would come to realize that I had manifested a hatred for the immense floating hotels and their ignorant passengers.
But with all its beauty and carefree ways, St. Thomas was also a very dangerous place.