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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
I didn’t sleep well the first night, having been locked inside the bed and breakfast where I was staying, so the next morning began with a steady IV drip of coffee and motivational mantras focused toward the previous day’s mission: to move the body of the dead dog found in the road the previous day.
I don’t know why exactly that I felt so obligated to move the body. No one on the island seemed to care and it certainly wasn’t going to help the dog one way or the other.
Maybe it was that I wanted to show her dignity in death where she hadn’t found it in life. Maybe I wanted to make this place better than the way I found it, secure in the knowledge that small gestures can be made grand solely based on intentions. Or maybe to run away from the concept of romantic grittiness I’d once felt on the battlefield. This wasn’t the time or place for that.
Still, I was driven to move her.
So, with latex gloves stuffed into my cargo pants, along with a bottle of water, I walked toward the bungalows where I’d be staying in just a few days, the morbid purpose belied by the bright sun that seemed to be celebrating island, beach, and a sapphire sea.
And this is what I found.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present:
After I took the picture, I turned around and kept walking, past the bed and breakfast with the delicious food and the prison fence, past the marina and Louis fishing for money with a crooked arm, and into the stray streets of Big Corn Island, where wildlife met with just a tinge of development.
I eventually reached the locally inhabited portions of the island, horses, cows, goats, pigs, dogs, and chickens all wandering around untethered, some trailing harnesses pointlessly unfastened and dragging on the dirt and the hot, paved road.
Shacks and huts pushed far into the lush flora of the island, sitting like fallen coconuts, disheveled and roughly hiding casual treasures.
Yes, that is one of my fingers blocking the lens. I'm not a photographer. I'm a writer. Stop laughing at me.
And these were peppered with beautiful ruins...
...which were, in turn, peppered with graffiti.
After about an hour, I heard a Caribbean beat, lazily put down on bongos and carried with guitar riffs wielded by men with all the time in the world. The closer I got, the more interested I became and as soon as I walked beyond the brush that was hiding the place, a howler monkey swooped to within a couple of yards of me and stopped, hand at his throat. This intelligent beast had a leash around his neck with a ten foot rope attaching it to a small hut that was built as his makeshift home.
Beyond him, a house and yard was brimming with people, music only as loud as the boisterous conversation, a universal happiness passed through the transaction of smiles. The juxtaposition of the restrained ape next to humans that were celebrating one another spoke volumes to me, each idea bleeding into something strangely familiar.
The motion was a quick-draw, phone out to take a picture, but the action was halted when their eyes shifted over to me and their gaze changed; as though I would literally steal the moment with a photograph.
I immediately put the phone away, smiled, nodded, and continued my journey.
This wasn’t my country and there’s a lot to be said for knowing when to Walk. The Fuck. Away.
So, eventually, I arrived at Big Fish, a restaurant whose quality of food was as impeccable as the view, which was of a large reef sprawled below a calm, clear ocean. After a couple of Tońas and a delicious meal of black beans, rice, plantains, fish, and garlic sauce, I decided to take a taxi back, the flip-flops I was wearing having eaten holes into the webbing of my toes.
Cabs drove by roughly once every five minutes, so hailing one wasn’t that much of an issue, however, once one pulled up next to me, they said something that immediately put me on edge.
He gestured to me to get in, then turned and flashed a peppered grin of teeth and silver and inquired “You going to pic-nic, bitch? Sally, bitch?”
From what my past has taught me, if someone is talking shit to you and smiling, you need to stay on your toes, so my hand closed around the knife in my pocket and I, in turn, started smiling, a nervous habit and a sure sign that I’m ready for violence.
“Say that one more time?”
He pointed in a direction toward the island and declared “Pic-nic bitch.”
Then he pointed in another direction “Sally bitch.”
And I replied “Oooooh. No, I don’t need to go to Pic-Nic beach. Take me to the marina and I can go from there.”
After he dropped me off, with me dehydrated from walking in the unforgiving sun, I decided that this trip wouldn’t be proper until I got absolutely wasted on local rum.
I remember a moment of clarity when I was balancing on a rickety toilet seat, trying to capture the perfect photo of a gecko that I’d apparently made friends with, when I realized “Holy shit. I’m one slip away from busting my head open while on an island devoid of first-world medication.” Then I laughed and kept taking photos. This one is my favorite:
Cheeky monkey wanted to play hide and seek...
After the gecko photoshoot, I plopped onto my bed and watched television, flicking my knife open-closed-open-closed, and texting the woman I was dating at the time. She was my tether to the world I’d left, reinforced all the more by the craziness happening on the television screen.
Hispanic television, man. It’s a hell of a drug...
Maybe it was the rum, but I’m pretty sure at one point there was huge musical number that involved a man dressed as a shark, another in a gorilla outfit, and a third in an E.T. costume, while half-hearted gymnasts did cartwheels and somersaults in white, bedazzled leotards.
It might have been the rum, though.
Regardless, when I woke up, my head was pounding in a way I hadn’t felt in years, the sonofabitch sun stabbing me in my frontal lobe, leaving my personality without patience or understanding.
So I stayed inside most of the day, and the following day as well, leaving only to grab some coconut bread, coffee, or cigarettes. Those couple of days were uneventful but I was patient. I knew what the coming days and the black rock jetty were going to offer.
And when the time came, I walked to the bungalows and to my destiny.