such a weak light, when you’re staring straight into a candle.
**********
Tuggy waits outside, leaning heavily on his beater station wagon, swilling a Red Stripe. He sees us, starts forward, splashes some beer on himself. He yanks out a wad of tissue, frantically jabs at his shirt like he's spilled plutonium.
"You're awfully edgy today, Tuggy," I comment, open up the back hatch, sling luggage onto the filthy floor.
Tuggy helps Guicho and The Kid with the heavy stuff. "Ain't gon all fit in dis jalopy," he grunts, wipes his dripping forehead with tissue tatters. "Gon have leave some a dis, come back for it later."
"No can do, Tuggy," I say. "We'll take another cab, then."
"No, no," he complains. "Ain't gon do dat, den. Here, we jus gon put it on top, like dis..."
Tuggy gets out some frayed straps and we tie some of the boxes on the roof, precariously. The four of us pile in. The wagon, now drooping approximately two inches off the ground, moans forward, toward the deeply-rutted main road.
"Man, when have you looked at the shocks on this thing?" The Kid asks. "Damn!" he swears, his head thumping the roof.
Tuggy doesn't answer, sings softly, unintelligibly, to himself. "What shocks?" I say. "This thing hasn't had shocks since 1969."
"Well. We're here at least," Guicho observes, fishing around in his backpack.
"Here we are," I agree. "Wherever this is."
"The Gobi freaking desert," The Kid says, watching monotonous scrub and cactus buzz past. "This place is dry as hell."
"Not any more!" Guicho exclaims, whipping out a bottle of Barbancourt. "Want some?"
The Kid and I decline, but Tuggy takes a long, solemn swig. "Yeah, it dry," he laments. "Ain't rained one drop in two year. It dry, aright."
"Where do people get water?" The Kid asks. "Wells?"
"No," I say. "See those big wooden boxes on top of the shacks? They're cisterns. Water collectors."
"Ain't no water to colleck," Tuggy says. "People thirsty, dat sure."
"I really don't know what they do for water in a drought like this," I say. "But they're used to it. It doesn't rain here, like it does in the D.R. and Haiti. Around the turn of the century, the English cut all the trees down, so they could make salt. Just past this scrubby stuff here, see those huge gray pits? They dug canals around these big fields of clay. And they built windmills, to draw seawater in. After the water dried, they'd collect the salt."
"Salt-rakers, dat’s what dey was called. Long time ago," Tuggy sighs. "Ain't nothin but trash heap now."
"Stinking, cracking, gray muck," I continue. "An ex-pat I know once had an idea that he was going to make millions, selling that salty muck to exclusive health spas and resorts for mud baths. But they found so much bacteria in that shit, they gave it up."
"And now there's no trees," The Kid says. "Damn!" he curses, his cranium cracking the roof soundly.
Tuggy chuckles softly. “You a tall drink, ain’t you?”
"Just scrub-brush, weeds, some bougainvilla, and lots of cactus," I say. "The islands were named after the turk's head cactus. Looks like it’s wearing a little red turban."
"Cloud jus pass by," Tuggy mumbles in a faraway voice. "It rain not ninety mile from here yest'day, Cap Haitien. Cloud never stop here. Jus pass on by." Guicho silently passes him the rum.
The Kid pokes me in the ribs. "You still seeing that guy here? That dive boat captain, what's his name?"
"Kid, I am not, and wasn't ever, involved with a..." I start.
“Mike,” Tuggy offers helpfully. “Dat de man.”
"Mike, Mike, that's right," The Kid cajoles, poking me again. I poke him back, hard, as all four of us knock the roof, curse in synch.
"Mike and Miss Mojo done had a fight," Tuggy says.
I come alive in my seat, grab Tuggy's headrest, shake it violently with both hands. "How did you know that?" I demand. "Damn! News travels fast on this rock. But we didn't have a fight, exactly...”
"Dat what Raul say," Tuggy says, supremely confident that Raul's information is superior to mine.
"Raul is a card-carrying asshole," I say. "Everybody knows that."
"I know what I knows," Tuggy declares, winking at me in the rear-view mirror.
"Don't we all?" Guicho agrees seriously, as we slam over one last crevasse and lurch to a dusty halt in front of the Cecelia hotel.
Tuggy refuses my offer to pay for the ride. "Can't take you money, Mojo," he says. "You practickly residential."
**********
We sit on the upper deck of the beachfront shack called Auberge le Grillion, the island's French restaurant.