Emily Reef

Chris Augusta

I sometimes sit, sometimes squat on the makeshift seat in the stern of our 22 foot dugout as it surfs onto the reef plateau. Tony rides just ahead with Noel in a large blue dugout or dory. Noel stands in the stern facing forward; controlling the engine throttle of his 30 horsepower Suzuki with a 3 foot extension of PVC pipe. His dark brown skin glows in the brief tropical twilight, against the emerald sea.

We pass a long mangrove island to the west and Noel veers more easterly, toward the barrier reef. I see nothing ahead across the relatively calm waters of the plateau as we skim a bottom of turtle grass, dead coral and sand. I glance back toward the Southwest; the engine spins a luminous white trail as the setting sun on the horizon describes the toothsome summit of Mount Victoria forty miles to the Southwest. Looking back toward the East a cluster of thatched huts has risen from the shallow sea.

We cut our engines and glide over dead coral into the camp. The fishing camp consists of a crude oval of ten pole and thatch huts built on stilts out of thigh deep water. The huts are no more than thatch pup-tents. A couple of the huts are covered with large blue plastic tarps instead of the more traditional thatch.
Sitting on the porch of the first hut we pass are two scrawny dogs tethered together by a short wire; one dog stares to the East, the other to the West. A huge set of shark jaws gape from the hut's ridge pole. Noel yells something about the dogs being wired for current. Dark men peer from their huts as we bring our dories up to the largest hut in the camp.

Noel's younger brother Matthew, their father Jim and two other fishermen, Masco and Cabo, emerge from under the thatch onto a shallow porch. Matthew calls out Tony's nickname "Nyagle," Garifuna for raw or crude. Jim urges us to unload all our gear into the hut and onto the porch; he offers us a supper of rice, beans and grouper and in a haze of blue cigarette smoke chuckles away our concerns about imposing.
Somehow we manage to settle into sleeping spaces-four with heads to the rear of the hut the other three perpendicular with heads near the center of the hut. I'm closest to the open end of the hut laying on my side. Someone snores in the back and the thatch clacks in the breeze. I roll slightly and peer into a dark crack between two floor planks; two feet below rippling is the water, the sea, the Caribbean Sea.

·     ·     ·

"Tony, take my picture," A dark thin man named Prince from the next hut wades by his boat stark naked loading gear into a sleek dory for the morning's fishing. A 727, bound for Honduras, glides mutely down the reef, its pink tail dissolving in the morning sun. "Tony take my picture, give it to the pretty girls on the big airplanes Tony. I'm a loving man Tony, Tony right here, Tony take my picture." Victor, Prince's beefy partner sits under his big straw hat in the stern changing gas tanks. Other men in other dories arrange gear, fill gas tanks and pull starter cords on their engines. Prince gets in the dory with Victor and pulls his pants on. Evinrudes, Johnsons, Mariners, Suzukis and Yamahas power boats carved from single logs to the Blue, the deep water beyond the reef. Tony sleeps.

The day is calm as Tony and I anchor inside the reef crest a couple hundred yards from the camp. The huts of the camp are set like thumbtacks into the shallow reef plateau which glows like a long green light table as far as the eye can see. Several hundred yards north of us a half dozen dories sit at anchor fishing grouper in the deep water outside the barrier reef.

We swim into a narrow cut in the reef toward the deeper water beyond, free diving and spearing what fish we can. A strong current sweeps into the mouth of the cut and the water is clear and full of life. We dive in less than thirty of feet of water-the flashes of blue, gold, and red drifting between and above the coral become grunts, parrotfish, angelfish. A flash of silver, a fleeting thin silhouette, a curious black eye-a barracuda. Large schools of blue tangs flutter like leaves; squirrelfish hang under staghorn coral; and fleet schools of bar jacks dart in the mid-depths. A jolthead porgy swims lazily toward me in twenty feet of water; I dive and make a lucky shot through its orange forehead-the fish shakes, stops, shakes again, then sinks to the bottom with a stainless steel spear in its head.

Gigantic fingers of coral point toward the deep, toward the darker world beyond the barrier reef-the Blue. Just below the surface the light in the clear water is refracted by the wave patterns on the surface into a brilliant, clear shimmering web. As the water deepens the web dissolves into unrefined ripples of light and shadow, and in greater depths-the world of the grouper-the light dissipates and veils of blue define all distance.
A green turtle lifts from the sandy bottom, rolls a wary eye, flaps its stubby wings and disappears into the deep cobalt. Several medium-sized hogfish glide almost invisibly along the sandy bottom; they rise over a series of boulder corals turning a blotchy red-brown, and then cascade down onto the bottom, again taking on the white of the sand. Tony descends on a single hogfish which lays over on its broadside extending a formidable array of spines-more than most predators would attempt. He shoots the fish through the head as easily as if it were in a barrel.

Before long fish in a given area become wary and increasingly difficult to spear. An hour passes battling currents and the wilyness of snapper and triggerfish. We shoot no more fish.

I stand alongside the porch of the hut washing dishes and rinsing them in the sea. Around the hut the turtle grass, the conch shells, and the fish skeletons of the shallow bottom pulse in the afternoon heat. Tony sits cross-legged atop a five gallon bucket; Noel leans against a fifty gallon blue plastic water container; Cabo and Masco sprawl inside the hut. Noel's brother Matthew and their father Jim pull alongside in Jim's green dory; four brilliant orange jimmy hind float upside-down in a foot of water between two bulkheads in the middle of the dory, their swift ascent from the ocean bottom having caused their air filled swim bladders to inflate grossly. I ask Jim if he has caught many grouper. He motions toward his pen, "one and one and one." Matthew steps into the crystalline thigh deep water by the porch to clean a large barracuda for supper. A rising afternoon breeze riffles the sea surface, it shatters the sea bottom and Matthew's legs flicker like brown flames.

·     ·     ·

Tony and I go with Jim to Long Cay to collect firewood and catch sprat, a small schooling baitfish. Long Cay is a mile long, mangrove island about five miles from Emily reef. The afternoon is warm and breezy as we motor around to the lee of the island soaring over beds of turtle grass. In the distance the shallow fore-reef plateau runs to the horizon tinting the fleecy undersides of the fair weather clouds a luminous green. Two osprey glide effortlessly down the length of the cay as if on a track.

There is an explosion in the water just to starboard and a spotted eagle ray, bluish, immense, and momentarily airborne, crashes with a slap and disappears. Tony sits near the stern wearing a cheap white painter's cap and smoking a cigarette whispering expletives.

Jim lands the boat and we hack, break and chop dead pieces of the dense red mangrove. We fill the center compartment of the dory with enough mangrove for a week's worth of cooking back on Emily reef. I wander along the mangrove looking for signs of crocodiles which were once, Jim fondly recalls, his game.
We chug through a cut in the island and loops back along the south side looking for schools of sprat. In about ten feet of water Jim cuts the engine, cocks it out of the water and unfurls his cast-net.

A large school of the four to six inch fish glide under the boat as Jim stands on the stern. Jim tosses his net, the fish detonate and he firmly retrieves the net. About a dozen sprat. Jim repeats this several times, each time bringing up fewer fish until finally he comes up empty. "Bitch!" Tony hands him a cigarette.

Jim instructs us to paddle the boat down the mangrove and he tosses the net again. No fish. He tosses again-again no fish. Jim chuckles, "they wild Tony, they wild." Jim looks at his catch thus far and announces, "we no have sufficient." We are somewhat on the lee side of the island so the air is still and the surface of the water is flat and clear as the air; in the heat, in the sun, the water appears thick and viscous.

We paddle down the mangrove to a deep green pool. Jim throws the net and he chuckles as he retrieves it. The net shimmers, alive with dozens of silvery sprat. Jim continues to throw the net but as before he comes up with fewer and fewer fish. "They making fool for me Tony, they making fool for me." Jim folds his net taking care not to tangle its lead weights in the mesh and lets down the engine. We have sufficient.

Most everyone has gone to sleep but Jim and I sit on five gallon buckets fishing off our little porch with handlines and cut sprat. The moon is rising in the East and a rising tide washes over the turtle grass. Generally we catch small snapper of about one pound apiece though occasionally we catch larger fish.
Big sharks-tiger, black tip and hammerhead-cruise through the camp at night which doesn't seem to cause much concern. Jim however tells me of a rare and gigantic whale shark he had seen the week before while fishing off a remote atoll called Glovers Reef.

"I was in the blue dory, fishing by myself with Matthew. And I feel this womp," Jim whacks his bucket with his palm, "and I look . . . Bitch!"

"How big?"

"Big big, Bigger than the boat." The blue dory is thirty three feet long.

"I don't like that. He was going to dash it up. His tail was stout," Jim forms a large circle with his arms, "stout, stout, stout. And he have spot all over." Jim face broadens "Matthew was shake up. He thought that fish gonna eat him up."

I make a reference to the story of Jonah and the Whale as my line goes taught. I pull in a medium sized snapper and toss it into the bottom of Jim's dory which is tied off one end of the porch.

"One time I was in the church," Jim continues, "and the preacher he was preaching his sermon and he says, 'Jonah swallowed the whale.' So I yell out, 'The whale swallowed Jonah.'"

The preacher ignored Jim and continued his unfounded sermon but Jim interrupted again, " 'it was the whale who swallowed Jonah, Jonah didn't swallow no whale'.

"Well the preacher stop right up and he look to me so I yell again 'the whale swallowed Jonah.' And the preacher he stop and think for a while, then he said, 'Well all I know brother is that there was a whole lot of swallowing going on.' And so the people all says, 'Amen brother, Amen.'"

As we fish into the night Jim catches more and bigger fish than I do. As near as I can tell we have identical equipment and we use the same bait. Jim says I don't have the "art" of it. I pour myself a little rum and offer some to Jim.

"No, no, I don't drink. I took the cure." He waves his finger at me.

The cure?

"One time when I was young I was drinking rum and drinking rum and my head all block up. So I was staggering and I fell to sleep on the beach. I was dreaming and an old woman comes to me and she gives me a glass and I said 'what this is?' And she says 'this medicine' so I drink it up, I drink it right up".

He pauses, "I wake up and I sick and vomiting."

"Then what?"

Jim looks at me and sucks on his cigarette, "I cured of drinking."

·     ·     ·

The wind moves around to the north during the night and a dense, grey low pressure system swirls above us. The grouper fishing has been poor thus far for Noel and the heavy seas beyond the reef uninviting so Tony and I go with him to catch some live baitfish with handlines.

We motor in Noel's dory several miles to the west and drop anchor over a large patch of coral in about twenty or thirty feet of water. The rain begins lightly then more heavily so Tony and I put on our ponchos. Noel wears the severed end of an old zodiac pontoon which has been cut to fit like a poncho. The pontoon begins as a bizarre rubber cone resting on the top of Noel's head; the heavy rubber fabric then sweeps down over his shoulders to his waist. I tell him that he looks like the Grand Dragon himself.

"Mister bald heads, excuse me mister bald heads." Noel replies in mock obsequiousness.
Using cut sprat for bait we catch a who's who of mid-sized reef fish in a couple of hours-grunts, squirrelfish, rockhind, graysby, puddingwife, snapper, triggerfish-though mostly grunts and snapper which are the preferred bait fish for fishing grouper. Noel sings impromptu reggae verses of fish, Ja and baldheads and the weather continues unsettled.

To the East, how far away I'm not sure as distances are deceptive on the water but somewhere just within or just beyond the barrier reef, a tremendous smoky funnel drops from the grey sky. Another funnel, more crudely shaped, ragged and inverse rises from the grey green sea defying all common sense as the ocean seems to be sucked skyward. The tips of the funnels meet hundreds of feet in the air and an ominous waterspout staggers toward the huts.

We return to an inviolate camp where we learn that one of the fishing dories has capsized while at anchor beyond the reef. Apparently the owner, a deaf mute, hadn't allowed enough rope on the anchor line and the boat couldn't ride over an especially huge swell; the bow buried in the wave, the boat filled and capsized; the outboard was totally submerged. The deaf mute and his partner were rescued and the engine retrieved.

The deaf mute watches as Tony disassembles the 15 Hp Yamaha; wrenches, sockets and screwdrivers flutter around the engine. Tony flushes the corrosive salt water from the heads, valves and carburetor then reassembles the engine. He yanks the pull cord three times the engine sputters, then whines with no memory of the Blue.

A swamped thirty foot dory remains at anchor in 100 feet of water.

·     ·     ·

One-eyed Benacio cuts the guts out of an unusually large grouper he refers to as a "double-head" and tosses them into the air. He doesn't take his eye off his work as large, graceful frigate birds pluck the offal from the air and the surface of the sea. The blue plastic covering his hut ripples in the breeze as a white five gallon bucket, hanging askew on a post, fills with morning light.

Two ruddy turnstones take flight from the stern of Noel's boat as I step onto the bow. Noel's 30 hp Suzuki is cocked on the stern, flashing silver. The wind blows relentlessly from the East, beyond the reef. I help Noel load gear and bait for a morning fishing grouper.

As Masco, Cabo, Noel and I pass through the cut in the barrier reef the bow slams over the steepening waves and Noel motions me away from the bow to a single plank nailed from gunnel to gunnel about ten feet from the bow. Huge waves break over the coral on either side of us and tremendous sheets of spray soak us all we crash over near cresting swells. I can barely sit let alone stand which Noel and Masco find quite humorous.

Several boats rock dramatically at anchor; the men fishing the depths for grouper are not unlike the creatures in the depths below, indifferent to the chaotic surface of the sea.
The capsized dory is still at anchor though upside-down. It occurs to me that there is no reason to do anything about the boat right away; the weather will change, the sea flatten, and in a few days it can be towed to shallower water.

We fish for an hour but with little success, I can barely bait a hook in the heaving seas, though I seemed to have little trouble baiting my fingers. From one of the nearby boats a powerful man with a heavy beard leaps into the sea and swims to the capsized boat. He dives and unties the bow line from a submerged float; then rights the boat and swims towards us. He hands Masco the bowline and says something to Noel in Garifuna. Noel says nothing. The man swims back to his small dory, hauls anchor and heads toward the cut. His dory is powered by an eight horse engine, ours by a thirty horse-we have been selected to tow the swamped dory through the cut to the shallow lee of the foaming reef crest.

Masco runs the line under the seat in the stern and ties it securely to the single plank on which I sit toward the bow. We begin towing with the boat righted but full of tons of water and with huge waves at our backs; only about thirty of forty feet of rope separates us from the dory. Noel proceeds cautiously. A wave surges our dory forward and the rope springs taut-several tons of water and dory yank on the seat, fastened with a mere six nails driven into the gunwales. I fear the rope ripping the seat from under me, so I move and sit on the floor by the bow, chagrined and uneasy. Noel laughs and asks me if I am scared. I curse what I feel is their insanity and try to warn them of the imminent danger of the forward seat being torn loose and decapitating them. They ignore me.

We move slowly, diagonal to the seas. The line slackens and tightens with each passing wave. As we approach the reef crest the waves become steeper and more frequent. A huge swell picks up the swamped but upright dory; the dory surfs down the swell toward us and the rope slackens; the swell lifts us, the rope springs taut, the dory in tow rolls over and our stern is yanked several feet to one side.

The next wave repeats the process only worse; this time our boat is yanked almost ninety degrees, the dory looms broadside above us in a mountainous swell-an absurdly rotted and old boat, clearly I see large makeshift patches of plastic and sheet metal. Noel straightens our boat; the surf rumbles a hundred feet ahead-we must be near the cut. The rope again stiffens, again our boat is swung from the stern-we are almost broadside to the waves. I look to port, twenty or thirty feet, a swell lifts the capsized dory and threatens to pummel us; to starboard waves crash on the jagged coral-I can't see the cut. In the trough coral heads loom beneath us just below the surface. Noel swings the engine around; we ride up and over a steep wave; the engine whines helplessly as the propeller is momentarily out of the water. Still, I can't see the cut-we are about to be crushed by the dory or ripped by coral and surf. I prepare to leap into the sea.

"Cut the rope! Cut the rope!" Noel screams, "CUT THE ROPE!" Cabo saws the line with a butcher-knife; our stern is yanked; Masco falls, Cabo stumbles-like a cable the rope snaps and springs toward the capsized hulk. Noel points our bow beyond an ominous coral head and guns the engine as a gigantic solemn wave raises us like an offering; he turns the engine and the boat pivots around the coral. The stern describes a neat arc and we glide through the safety of the narrow cut as the capsized dory disappears in the troughs just beyond the breaking waves.

Anchored just inside the safety of the cut is the bearded man. He stands on the bow of his boat leaning on a long pole. He stares out to sea as we pass him in silence, having little desire to acknowledge or witness the final destruction of the dory on the coral. I ask Noel if he thinks there is a chance the boat will miss the coral and wash through the cut. He smiles weakly and says nothing.

We return to the hut where I clamber onto the porch and look toward the cut several hundred yards away. To my surprise the bearded man leaps into the water and swims toward the open sea-from where I stand the cut is not visible, I see only a ragged chain of foam. I get my binoculars and stand on the ice chest for a better view. A black head bobs and disappears in troughs, he dives, surfaces and dives again. Waves break all around him, meaning powerful currents and ripping coral. I lose sight of him.

Minutes pass-Noel begins making tortillas, Cabo chops firewood, I look for the bearded man.
A head appears swimming toward the boat at anchor-I still can't see the swamped dory. The bearded man stands in waist deep water just inside the cut with a black rope. Hand over hand he pulls the forlorn dory to the safety of the calm water inside the reef.

"Noel, what's that man's name?"
"Pirate."
"Why do they call him Pirate."
"Because he's a pirate, that man's a pirate."
"Is that his boat?"
"No, it isn't his boat."
"Why did he save it?"
"Because he's a pirate."

·     ·     ·

I awake to the sun hanging just above the horizon. The wind of the last two days has died. The fire coals smolder as Jim and Matthew have left well before dawn to fish grouper. A squadron of pelicans streak along the pink sea and crash to the water as if on cue; they rise in unison, drop again and rise; successful or unsuccessful I can't tell but all of a common mind. A lone osprey sits on a log a hundred yards behind the hut. Noel squats on the stern of his dory defecating and singing songs of Babylon.

Across from our hut about fifty feet is an unthatched frame of another smaller hut. The floor is crudely planked and used for the storage of water, gasoline and kerosene. The shadows of a half dozen plastic containers are a deep cobalt in the orange morning light; the containers themselves are of various sizes and shapes and colors-synthetic reds, blues and oranges-all frugal, purposeful, and dazzling.

Cabo throws his dive mask and a pair of flippers into a small dory and paddles to the Southwest in search of conks.

It strikes me as a good day to hang around the camp, sketch and check out the grouper pens. There are about as many pens as there are huts, and like the huts, in thigh deep water. The pens are about ten feet in diameter and made from poles and chicken wire. The surface of the water throbs and the groupers stretch, rip, and reform.

I climb into a pen which holds about two dozen grouper-black, tiger, yellowfin and Nassau, ranging from one to almost three feet in length. I squat in the water with my dive mask and watch the fish, which crowd to one side, all eyes fixed on mine. I'd always thought of groupers as dull in color but even within the same species they display a stunning variety of pink, purple, red and grey splotches and spots, large yellow to red eyes. Grouper mouths are downturned and capable of swallowing whole fish; dour, proud, the look of the eternally pissed off.

A powerful man with grey flecked hair cuts and salts grouper meat and roe. George Castillo drapes the ochre, cucumber sized, flaccid roe on a lower pole of a drying rack, with rows of drying meat above it. I had met George the year before on a cay on remote Glovers Reef. He had an upset stomach and I gave him some Rolaids. George is called "Nigger" or "Happy Nigger" around the camp. Legend has it that as a young man George had been wild, rowdy and fearless. Noel told me that George was a citrus picker in Pamona Valley with a reputation in his youth for heavy drinking and brawling, "I am George Castillo, son of Clemente Castillo, I live for rum and I fear no man. The happy nigger never die", said Noel pounding his chest and bursting into laughter.

"Alright, alright, alright," George greets me with his irreducible smile. His eyes fix on mine as he slits the belly of a black grouper and with a thick hand pulls out the guts, the gills, the roe.

A little after midday Cabo returns from diving conk. His small dory is full to the brim with queen conks. Cabo only laughs when I compliment his catch-I don't even know if he speaks English. He tosses all the conks into a grouper pen then falls asleep on the wood pile alongside the hut.

The air is dead and the sea is still, the groupers are motionless in their pens; the sun is branded to the sky. Prince sits on the stern of his dory. The shallow sea bottom ripples with chains of light, which are reflected dancing on the underside of the dory. Boat, engine and man are levitated above the sandy bottom. Prince squints at the sky as his shirtless shoulders rest against the engine case of a cocked Yamaha and his left hand dangles in the water. The two ruddy turnstones alight on the bow, dance along the sheer and fly on.

Masco, Noel and I lie in torpor inside the hut, availing ourselves of the insulating powers of thatch. I stir and rummage through a box of food looking for a snack; a huge cockroach scurries around a bag of flour, and under some potatoes; I move a potato, the roach hides behind a bottle of Jamaican ketchup; I flick him out of the box and brush him through a large crack in the floor; he lands in the water below and swims undaunted toward the mainland.

Masco and Noel pass a joint between them and on the porch Tony splits mangrove for firewood with a small hatchet. Noel warns Tony to be careful with the ax.

Tony balances a piece of wood on end with his left hand; removing it just as the hatchet drops, splitting the mangrove perfectly with a single blow.

Masco drags on the joint and further taunts Tony.

Tony makes another perfect cut. Noel warns him again.

"If you had any idea how many times I've done this," replies Tony referring to his Northern Vermont background. "If you had any fucking idea..."

Later, I, like everyone else, am amazed to watch someone stitch his own hand. Squatting in the sun Tony pulls three stitches through the back of his thumb. I tie them off using the tweezers in my Swiss Army knife.
We, all seven of us, manage to find comfortable seats on the floor eating our supper of beans, rice and fish. In times past the Mayan Indians had travelled and somewhat settled the waters of Belize so I ask Jim If he has ever found any artifacts and to my surprise he reaches into a sack and pulls out a peculiar clay plug, obviously man made and seemingly quite old. He found it with pieces of what must have been huge pots on an island south of here. This is quite feasible as the Mayans collected salt by evaporating sea water in huge pots.

"And one time I was on water cay and I see this bone. In the mud, it was right there in the mud. And I think "bitch" what is that? So I dig and I dig in the mud. And I pull out one bone. And I pull out two bone. And bitch! It was the whole skellington.

"So what did you do?" Asks Tony.

"I didn't do nothing. I leave it right there, I don't mess with those human bones." Jim made a short choppy sound of disgust, "Cho".

Tony laughs and tells Jim that he and I are going to explore some caves on the mainland and hopefully find some evidence of Mayan people. Jim admonishes Tony about fooling around with the dead. Tony scoffs.

"Don't you believe in ghosses, Tony?" Asks Matthew.
"I don't believe any of that spirit shit."
"Tony," Noel interjects "Don't you even believe in the Holy Ghost?"
"Bullshit."
"What about the Blessed Father, Tony? " Masco and Cabo giggle. "What about Jesus, his only begotten son?"
"Tony," Masco sits up, "You don't believe in the Blessed Mother, the Holy Virgin Mary?"
"Its all a bunch of crap. Its a fraud perpetrated for thousands of years to get people's money and keep them dependent and scared. I don't believe in Jesus or his fucking Blessed Mother or Holy Ghosts. I don't believe in any of it. I don't believe in nothing, abso-fucking-lutely nothing."
Noel is sitting behind Tony; he leans forward and taps him on the shoulder, "Tony, Tony, do you believe you're alive?"

Tony's eyes flash and he grins.
"Nyagle, Nyagle." Cabo laughs as he lays stretched out near the open end of the hut with his head resting on a can of Dano powdered milk.

A single kerosene lantern lights the hut as Jim begins his story. He sits with his legs folded wearing purple shorts, a yellow t-shirt and a white cap with a string tied around his chin. As he speaks he punctuates the air with "bops" and "cho's." The orange light of a kerosene lantern flickers on his dark skin, water laps under the hut and the thatch rustles in the evening breeze. Nobody else speaks or moves-we listen. Jim mimes the slashing of throats, sudden attacks, the howling of a dog, sickness and the sinister movement of a snake. The worldly Masco and Noel hang onto every word and Matthew stares wide-eyed at his father. All eyes are fixed as the story uncoils and slithers through the hut.

Jim finishes, the hut is silent. I turn to Tony who shrugs his shoulders. I shrug my shoulders. Jim told his story in Garifuna and Tony and I haven't understood a single word.

·     ·     ·

It is mid-morning when Jim and Matthew return from a successful morning's fishing-ten groupers and one large barracuda which will be cut up for lunch and supper. The day is hot, clear and still-the smoke from Jim's cigarette drifts vertically as he splits the barracuda's skull with a hatchet. It's a perfect day for snorkeling so with a five gallon bucket I bail a foot of water out of our dory, planning to motor several miles to a patch coral to the west. I discover some salt water has gotten into our gas container which was stored on the unthatched frame across the way. Jim, who is about fifty feet away on the porch of his hut notices my predicament and motions me toward him. Our boat is tied in front of Jim's porch so I push it out of the way and bring the gas container over to Jim. He cleans a five gallon bucket and instructs me to pour the contents of the gas container into the bucket, apparently he has some method of separating the few ounces of water from the gasoline. I stand in thigh deep water pouring gasoline into the bucket which is about chest high and on the left side of the porch. Jim steadies the bucket as I pour. Fumes rippled thickly in the brilliant morning heat. Gasoline trickles down my arm.

Unknown to me cooking coals are smouldering just out of sight in the cooking tub about six or eight feet to our right. There is a tremendous "whoosh" as the gasoline flashes above and around the bucket; Jim yells "Bitch!" and jumps into the water as gas burns on and around the bucket. Fearing the imminent disintegration of the bucket and the gallons of gas washing over the decking I grab the bucket and dash it into the water in front of the hut. The gasoline skids across the water and bursts into flames-my forearm is on fire so I dive into the merciful sea. I emerge to a roaring wall of flames rising a full twenty feet from the water, dissolving into plumes of sickening black smoke and obscuring the whole front of the hut. The flames are curiously dark and orange against the brilliant blue of the sky and the green of the water. A wave of exhaustion shudders through my body, my legs are heavy and the water is thick.

The stern of our boat is on fire. I struggle toward the boat amid yells and confusion-Tony and Noel tear right through the side of the thatch which has yet to ignite. I untie the boat and pull it out of the conflagration then douse the burning stern and engine.

I turn back toward the hut expecting the thatch to flash. Jim is splashing water on the flames in front of the hut deliberately and quickly; I join him and to my surprise the fire begins to subside. On the other side of the withering flames a large shirtless man becomes visible; he too splashes water on the fire. George Castillo grins and gives me a reassuring nod as the flames shrink into the sea.

"You are a very lucky man," Noel understates. Only the hairs on my forearm are singed and Jim also has escaped serious burns. The hull of our boat is scorched and the engine case of our Evinrude is blistered, but the engine itself is unharmed. The thatch of the hut is singed but apparently salt saturated thatch doesn't ignite easily. A few small plastic containers and some polyester pants have melted beyond recognition but the large water containers are unharmed. A t-shirt of Masco's which was on the deck is burnt and I sheepishly offer him one of mine. I retrieve our red gas tank floating upside down about a hundred feet from the hut-the fuel line and gauge are intact as the tank had endured the near holocaust in the water upside down, but the tank itself has melted into a grotesque red snot of plastic.

The men who where fishing beyond the reef have returned at the sight of the flames and black smoke. The whole affair is to them quite amusing which I find quite irksome. Jim, despite his own complicity in the near disaster, jokes in Garifuna. "Effl, Effl" Cabo yells over to me as I sit dazed in the stern of our dory. The men in the camp laugh and I look quizzically over to Noel. "It means 'burnt', Effl is your name." Noel looks over to Tony who is sitting on the porch, then smiles back at me, "Effl and Nyagle." Cooked and Raw.

A boiling sun settles on the horizon and from the distant hut with the two wired dogs a man called Thinskin who wears horn rim glasses and a necklace of shark's teeth blows a long mournful note through a conk shell. The dogs howl and for a long moment the sea and sky to the East are of identical tones of green and purple; the joint to the vault of Heaven invisible to all creatures blind of color.

That evening I have trouble sleeping. I am shaken by the day's brush with disaster and embarrassed by my stupidity. I turn the whole event over and over in my mind, detail by detail, the sounds, the smells, the colors as if it all is inscribed on a wheel.

I awake in the night to a piercing pain in my upper back which is repeated every few minutes. Before long a similar pain begins intermittently in my lower back. I feel as if I am being pricked with a needle from the inside out. This continues the remainder of the night.

·     ·     ·

It is still dark as country western music broadcast from a Honduran station drifts through the camp. I get up, having slept fitfully, and eat johnny cakes with Jim and Matthew who shortly leave to fish grouper. By sunrise Noel, Masco, Cabo and Tony are up and about. I hike up my t-shirt and ask Masco to look at my back. He begins laughing and says something in Garifuna to Noel and Cabo who lean over, glance at my back and also begin laughing.

"You got the beefworm. Two of them," announces Masco. "Tony, give me a cigarette."

Allegedly beefworms are the hatched larvae of a botfly which have been injected into the host by means of a mosquito's proboscis. This preposterous combination of circumstances results in breathing, defecating and burrowing worms up to an inch long living in the flesh of a host-in this case my back. The beefworms therefore live in little swollen mounds of flesh with open holes or spiracles for breathing and defecating; the mounds appear not unlike little flattish volcanoes. These peculiarly spiral shaped creatures live with their anuses nearer the surface and anchor themselves within the host with an effective hook or barb-hence the pain.

Masco instructs me to lie on my stomach and he drags deeply on the cigarette. He pinches the beefworm mound between his fingers and applies the burning ember of the cigarette alongside the little hole in my back hoping to coax the worm to the surface with the excessive heat. Noel, Cabo and Tony hover like visiting surgeons. I wince, squeal and chew on a blanket. Out pops one worm. Out pops the other.
Tony examines the worms with a small single lensed microscope as we crowd around for a better look. They are elegant and fuzzy little spirals, not easily imagined turning into flying creatures. Done with them we flick them into the sea.

·     ·     ·

George Castillo, shirtless, wades in a grouper pen holding a wooden gaff; alongside the pen, on the bow of a large unpainted dory stands his big footed partner with a wooden club. Groupers, according to Noel, require discipline. Noel yells to George in Garifuna and chatters with Cabo-it's a good day to go to town and sell fish.
George expertly hooks one grouper after another and swings the startled fish out of the pen and onto the bow of his dory where it is dispatched by his partner with a deft, severe blow to the forehead. Before long the bottom of the boat is filled with dozens of green, grey, brown, and red fish, half submerged in their own blood; their color draining with their lives. The two men then set to work cleaning the fish for Noel to carry in his ice chest the thirty miles to Belize City.

Noel's boat is tied alongside another pen where he, Masco and Cabo clean their few fish and their significant catch of conk. Gingerly I wade barefoot across the turtle grass and broken coral toward Noel's boat. A soft-spoken man named Robert paddling a small dory offers me a ride. A middle-aged man in seemingly perfect physical condition, he wears sunglasses and a brilliant orange construction helmet; his manner is measured and graceful as a cloud.

I climb onto the stern of Noel's beefy dory and Robert sits on the bow. Cabo delivers a sharp blow to each conk shell at precisely the point necessary to break the large mollusc's muscle anchor in its shell; he pulls the defenseless and quite alive snail out of the shell and tosses it toward Noel and Masco. Shortly a pile of shell-less orange snails squirm at their feet; bewildered black eyes sway on long stalks searching their surroundings. Noel and Masco joke in Garifuna as they cut the eyestalks and peel the guts from the edible parts of the snail. They toss the guts over the side of the boat. A five gallon bucket fills with pale orange meat-one dollar a pound.

With the ice chest full of several hundred pounds of conk and grouper Noel, Masco, Cabo and George head Northwest along the reef for the market in Belize City. The day is still young and the skies clear; a slight breeze blows across the reef. As the boat chugs through the shallow water of the camp Jim yells for someone to bring him cigarettes from the city. He yells again.

During the day the breeze becomes a stiff late afternoon wind whipping whitecaps even inside the reef. As the sun drops the wind dies and just before dark, four cold and soaked men return to the camp from their trip to the city. Jim stands on our porch and nods greetings. Noel drops George at his hut before tying up to ours. Noel, Masco and Cabo, beat from a day of fighting rough seas in an open boat, climb onto the porch as Matthew dishes out supper for each. Jim asks if they bought cigarettes for him. There is a moment of silence as the three young men look at each other. Noel shrugs. No expression passes Jim's face; he says only "oh" and looks out across the dark water.

From inside the hut Tony produces half a pack of cigarettes and offers it toward Jim. Jim takes one. Tony urges Jim to take them all. Jim takes the pack and stuffs it in his shirt pocket. He thanks Tony two times.

This evening, our last at Emily Reef, Jim and I fish off the porch. The night is still and moonless and the fish don't seem very hungry. Jim and I talk, as we often did at night, of the people and creatures of the world-the ferocity of wolverines, the wilyness of jaguars, the eating habits of the Japanese. I tell him of a man somewhere in Europe who ate a school bus. Jim asks me in which country the Cyclops live.

My line leaps out of my hand and I kick an empty bucket as I scramble for the spool. The line is charged and wired to the darkness; it cuts my hand as I struggle to haul in my catch. Jim instructs me as I work the line in; the fish sneaks under and around the porch; I knock over some pots and pans but I hold the fish. Jim raises a pale lantern and out of the miraculous sea I yank a wild but puny bonefish onto the porch.

Jim chuckles, returns to his bucket and rebaits his hook. His cigarette glows just below his lower lip; I see only his dark silhouette against the starry sky, against the starry sea.

·     ·     ·

As Tony and I load our dory a few men drift by on their way to the grouper bank to say good-bye though most have left the camp hours ago. Victor stands bent over in his dory arranging gear bantering with Tony about photographs. A faint favorable land breeze blows toward the mainland. Jim gives us a dried and salted barracuda and a large coral crab. Noel, Masco and Cabo sit on the porch drinking Milo and coffee warning us about "jaws" and getting lost on our twenty mile passage to the mainland.

We pull a green tarp over our gear in the center of the boat and tuck in the edges. I get in the bow and Tony climbs onto the makeshift seat in the stern. I pole away from the hut as Tony uncocks and lowers our 9.9 Evinrude and pulls the starter cord. The recoil spring breaks.

We return to the porch where Tony digs out his tools and begins to disassemble the engine. He hands me his small gasoline fired camp stove and asks me to fill it. I climb onto the porch and pour gas from our spare tank into a funnel set into the small tank on the stove. Gasoline dribbles over the funnel, over my wrists, over my hands; I don't look up to shrieks of "Effl, Effl".

Tony heats the end of the broken spring on the gas stove then hammers a new tab to substitute for the broken piece. Within five minutes the engine rips to life.

The dory skims off the pale green water of the reef plateau onto the bluer deeps closer to the mainland. Spray fans from the bow and the engine sings. Two ruddy turnstones streak from bow to stern and the huts of Emily Reef sink into the sea.

Reef | Home

About the Artist | Purchase a Painting | Permissions | e-mail