The Manifest

This is a short story I wrote based off of a real event that happened to some friends of mine earlier this month. 

Wham! Cara opened the door letting the morning sunlight eradicate any scant trace of darkness.

“Did you hear?” she snorted. I squint at her blurry silhouette trying to protect my eyes from the intruding light. Either her mass was constantly shifting or my migraine was still spinning from the abusive rum consumption only hours before. For moments, I was certain that she had grown horns and became the devil, bringing all the heat in hell up with her. The thick humidity had now filled the room like a vat of hot oil. Surely, I was going to drown.

It couldn’t have been later than 8 o’clock and I hadn’t heard her leave an hour or so before. She had gone for her morning walk on the beach into Pitt’s town a couple of miles away to pick up a loaf of Bahamian sweet bread that Mama Gibson bakes fresh daily. Catching the scent of the warm bread, perked me to sit upright and wipe the sweat from my brow. I grab for my sunglasses and watch her walking to the kitchenette in our bungalow.

“You look like shit.” She stared judging me then continued, “Your parents boat is being boarded right now by Bahamas Defense Force.” Speaking as if I should’ve known.

I blurt out the first thing that came into my head. “What? Why?” She just shrugged and sliced the bread. I’ve never seen BDF outside of Nassau. In fact, I was confident that the unremarkable fleet was permanently docked in Nassau Harbor attempting to convince people of how strong their country was. This was the last possible thing I wanted to deal with today. I throw on the pair of shorts, attach a zoom lens to my camera, and stumble out the door on to the beach. Why did I let them keep me up so late?

The night before we played a game of poker with the crew of the Sea Majesty that started just after dinner. Ken, Meghan, and Rob, friends from Florida, had chartered the boat for the week and invited us over for grilled hog snapper that they had speared off of French Wells earlier that day. It was a vintage 96′ shrimp boat gutted and refurbished to host any kind of sea adventurer. Hugging the Majesty’s port side was the Bear, a 44′ sport fisher that took the guests on daily excursions and brought home their bounty from the sea.

My parents had hosted my friends on their first night in Crooked Island on the back of their Wet Dreamer. My mother never really liked my dad’s sense of humor when it came to naming boats. It was a nice 65′ Burger yacht with two state rooms and a beautiful aft deck. Cara couldn’t sleep well on the boat so we decided to upgrade my younger brother from the outside hammock and rent a little cottage just a stone throw away on the beach. We had my famous conch salad as well as my mom’s tuna tartar. I should claim it as mine though, because I hauled in the gargantuan yellow fin. We drank and listened to Ken play shabby versions of Bob Marley on the acoustic guitar. When he attempted to break out the guitar for an encore last night, we suggested cards.

I brought a couple bottles of Havana Club Anejo to lubricate the evening and Ken went below and returned with a satchel of reefer and rolling papers. My dad’s eyes lit up and the game started. There was 10 of us gathered around the long table, including the chef, Vern, and the captain of Majesty, Josef, or Captain Jo.

Josef had a bald brown head and a short black beard with spots of gray that hinted his age. He loved to eat and like many of the other local Bahamians rarely wore a shirt. Tonight he donned a short sleeve shirt unbuttoned to let his large gut show. Having spent most of his entire life off in these waters, he knew every inch of every coral head around and was by far the most experienced captain around. While he loved to drink, eat, smoke, party, and tell stories, he “ran a very tight ship” and expected a lot from his crew.

We were midway through the night, smoke-filled air, alcohol covered the table. My parents were had left after my dad went all in and lost with 2 pair to Capt. Jo’s 3 of a kind. As consolation prize, Ken gave him a handful of joints to take back with him. Cara and Meghan had passed out on a pile of life vests and the conversation turned to the subject the entire table had been waiting to discuss.

“What happened with Jarrett?” Ken asked, referring to the first mate. Apparently, there was a shouting match between the Captain and his first mate that ended with Jarrett, storming off the boat in one of the small Boston Whalers.

“Nothing. I had to fire him. He had sticky fingers.” Capt. Jo apparently upset about what had happened. “Vern found an iPod, some traveler’s checks and some other belongings of guests under his bunk this morning.”

Jarrett and Josef were related through marriage and were second-cousins or some sort of distant relation. Captain Jo told us how he had hired him as a favor to his mother to keep him out of trouble and then quickly moved off the subject. By that time there were only three of us left in the game and we discussed fishing plans for the next day. We also upped the anti of our casual poker game by making the losers of each round take a shot of 151. We played at least 3 rounds. I don’t remember finishing the game, who eventually won, if there was a winner, nor how I got from the boat into my bed.

Looking at our skiff clearly beached above the water line brought back the faint memory of Cara screaming, “Oh my god, we’re going to die!” I apparently didn’t slow down.

From the beach, I could clearly see the black naval zodiac moored up against the Dreamer. I raise the camera to get a closer look and try hard to steady the lens in my trembling hands. On the deck are several Bahamian Defence Force officers strapped to the hilt with M4 Carbines, M16’s, submachine guns, grenades and everything short of a nuclear warhead. They wear dark blue pants, a blue button down, a black beret and sunglasses. Everything about them screams “we are not to be fucked with.” Everything except their ridiculous bright red life-presevers.

Next to the man holding a pump-action shotgun stood my mother in her salmon-colored night-gown and my father in his tightey-whitey’s. A sobering wave of embarrassment washes over me while he couldn’t look any more comfortable. Confused, but comfortable.

My dad, was a lawyer in some past life, deciding to retire after winning a class-action lawsuit against Probst Pharmaceuticals. In his youth he claimed to be a hippy and was never really an able seaman, although he like playing the part. Our first boat was Breakin Wind, a gorgeous deep blue 38′ Hinckley sailboat. Then came World Class Hooker, our 56′ Rybovich sport fisher that my father never caught a single fish from. We only had that boat for a year before my dad decided he preferred diving over fishing and bought the Wet Dreamer. We usually hired local Bahamian captain aboard our boat each summer to guide us around the Bahamas. This year was the first he’d decided to take the boat himself. I imagine he must somewhat be regretting that decision now. A captain like Josef would know the maritime laws of search and seizure or better yet, the lieutenant’s mother. Could they be bribed? I thought. If that was me out there, I’d give it a try but my father would never risk it.

I sit for the better part of an hour, watching as the guards seemingly questioned my parents and pointed at the cabin down below. Cara joins me under shade of the coconut tree, on the small island of crabgrass surrounded by a sea of scorching hot pink sand. She hands me a plate of french toast that she had perfected over the last few days. She claims that a dash of cinnamon and a pinch of seasalt is the trick, but it’s the sweet sugar-rich Bahamian bread that makes for the perfect hangover cure. As I eat, she glances through the camera. To the south she finds the Sea Majesty in the distance and to the north a Protector class offshore patrol vessel or OPV that bred the smaller zodiacs, another of which was pulling up to the Wet Dreamer.

Two more heavily armed officers dressed in the matching blue garbs and one in all white board the Wet Dreamer. The one in all white must be a high ranking official, an admiral of some sort. What would he want with my Dad? Even if they had found the joints from the night before, they couldn’t possibly be that bored that they’d go out of their way to come to the nether reaches of the Bahamas, search a boat top to bottom, all for a little marijuana. At most he’d get a slap on the wrist and they’d be on their way. They must be after something else.

From below deck, one of the BDF cronies hurriedly hands the admiral something. My mother is immediately cuffed and taken down to the zodiac by one guard, while another guard shoves a pair of short and a shirt he’d brought up. As my father has his hands cuffed behind his back, the admiral holds the object out in front of him. It’s a ziplock bag full of cocaine.

—

Peering through a tinted sedan from the mid-eighties, I can see the skinny police woman pulling my dad out from the bed of the beat up toyota truck. The derelict mutt that had kept him company on the bumpy ride from the dock jumps out and skips behind the admiral toward the faded pink police station. My mother still in hand-cuffs is treated almost as rough as my father and both walk barefoot with a funny limp over the uncomfortable gravel street.

The police station across the street from us is nothing more than a one room office with a holding cell and a porch deck. The roof has patches with different colored tiles and the chipped paint on the exterior reveals that the previous paint was light blue, or more likely a sun-faded blue. The wooden door appears to be falling off the hinges and I can see my dad struggling to keep his bermuda shorts up without a belt as the guard takes his cuffs off and places him on the other side of the rusted iron bars along with my mother. He has a smile on his face that clearly states his disbelief in the situation.

“That’s baking soda,” he yells at the guard. “Taste it!”

The guards ignore him as they filled out paperwork. I could barely make out the skinny police woman behind her desk talking to the admiral. After a short while he gets up and goes to the porch to make a call on his mobile phone. His Bahamian accent is so thick that it is hard to make out the exact conversation, but it has nothing to do with drugs or probably even my parents, as he is repeatedly laughing. The admiral is such a dick. Taking personal phone calls while my parents sit in a jail cell that I could only imagine being hotter than the bowels of hell. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and returns back inside to resume his conversation.

Cara, crouching next to me, attempts to reposition for a better view over the rusty car that conceals us. “Why are we hiding?”

“If they see us, they might put it together that we were on that boat. I don’t want to risk it.”

A moment later the admiral walks over to the cell.

“This is the affidavit you need to sign,” the admiral said handing over a paper to my father.

“You want me to admit to carrying cocaine? You can’t be serious.”

“This is very serious. Right now that paper is all you’ve got between you and freedom.”

“Don’t I get a phone call?”

“Sure, but I don’t think that this phone is gonna do you much good. The telephone hasn’t worked here for months.” The skinny woman chimes in.

“What about the cell phone I just saw you use?”

The admiral just smiles.