A Salty Piece of Land Read online

  “He created a collection of painted wooden decoys: pelicans, egrets, herons, flamingos, and rosette spoonbills, and he set them along the outer edges of the channel, among the local population of shorebirds who gingerly scour these flats and reefs in search of food. When he needed to enter the harbor, he would do this.” Kirk pulled a knotted piece of twine that dangled from the little cannon, and a deafening roar erupted from the barrel of the gun.

  The crew let out a cheer and began laughing up on the bow. Even Mr. Twain seemed to have enjoyed it, but the suddenness of the explosion had sent my heart leaping into my throat.

  “There’s your channel,” Captain Kirk said, and as I looked to where he pointed, I saw that the live birds had taken flight from their perches, and the decoys that remained were a set of channel markers that laid out a path to Punta Margarita.

  As I weaved along the channel, there were secondary explosions from the cannon when birds started to make landing approaches to the poles. At first, the little island sat suspended in time off the bow like a distant planet, but then it materialized into palm trees, Norfolk pines, docks, faded Creole cottages, funky Caribbean clapboard homes, and traditional Mayan beach huts that lined a pink-sand beach. I felt strange, as if I had either been there before or simply belonged there all along. A gathering of well-wishers stood at the dock, watching and waving as Captain Kirk instructed me in the art of docking. Somehow I nudged her gently to the pilings, and the crew secured her with lines and fenders.

  “Welcome to Punta Margarita, Tully,” Captain Kirk said with a smile.

  The first thing we did was get Mr. Twain ashore. Dockside at Punta Margarita during the extremely low tide left a gap of about five feet between the deck of the boat and the pier. Mr. Twain was a great horse, but he was no jumper.

  However, we had an instant solution. Back off at the Dry Tortugas, before the beginning of our crossing, the crew had jury-rigged one of the big wooden stabilizers into a makeshift platform we could use to lower Mr. Twain into the water for a swim and a quick run on the beach.

  We used it again at the dock in Punta Margarita, but this time we drew a rather large crowd. Mr. Twain kept a watchful eye on the whole process. He was an instant celebrity. Nearly the entire village had gathered at the dock as we hoisted him aloft. Suspended between sky and sea, he simply seemed to enjoy the brief flight.

  There is something odd and unnatural about seeing a horse suspended in midair, and when he touched down on the dock, the children were referring to him in Spanish as the angel horse, which is a name that he still goes by among the locals in Punta Margarita.

  Once Mr. Twain was safely ashore and tied to a palm tree, an adoring crowd of young fans gathered to keep him company. We hosed down the decks, and cleaned up the boat, and Kirk inspected our work. Then he turned to us with a smile and said, “I think it’s cocktail hour.”

  5

  Land of the Lost Boys

  Johnny Red Dust had told me that people who nurture and love animals are better humans. So although Captain Kirk’s words about cocktails were of supreme importance to a person like me, who finds it very easy to reward one’s accomplishments, my first concern after steering through the storm and making landfall was for my horse.

  Captain Kirk understood. He and the boys headed to the bar, but before going, he made a call on the VHF radio and told me that he had made arrangements with a friend of his named Bucky Norman to pasture Mr. Twain at his fishing lodge. That is when he revealed to me that Bucky was the other cowboy from Wyoming who had, in a way, been responsible for my coming aboard the Caribbean Soul with Mr. Twain.

  When you’re on the run, which I was, and you’ve put a couple thousand miles between you and your past, it is a little disconcerting when you run into someone from your neck of the woods. Captain Kirk had mentioned a “fellow Wyomingite” several times on the voyage, but he had failed to mention that the guy was in Punta Margarita.

  If you subscribe to the theory that there are only about two hundred people in the world, and, everywhere you travel, you’re bound to run into somebody you know or somebody who knows somebody you know—well, in my case, with Thelma Barston’s warrant still on my tail, that could spell trouble. It immediately raised some bothersome questions. Is this guy’s brother a cop? Did he fish with Thelma Barston’s ex-husband? Is he an opportunist who could use the reward money I’d heard had been offered for my return?

  “What are you thinking about?” Kirk asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” I replied.

  Kirk then instructed me to just ride down the main street of town, which dead-ended at the beach. Then I would take the path south along the shore as far as I could, until I came to a green dock with a half dozen pretty little skiffs alongside. I was to look for a large mahogany log that had been carved into the likeness of a giant crocodile with a clock in its mouth. On it was a sign that read LOST BOYS FISHING LODGE. Bucky would meet me there.

  I started my journey with thoughts of turning and riding out of town the other way and not stopping until I found a village with no gringos anywhere. Somewhere out there I felt the presence of Captain Hook in the form of a pissed off poodle rancher. Paranoia was taking hold, but fortunately it was held at bay and driven from my thoughts by the little island as she revealed her beauty to me as I rode along. Step by step, I fell instantly in love with the place. It was neither the history that I had heard from Kirk nor the obvious charm of the town but rather a feeling of belonging that swept over me as I made my way to the lodge.

  I thought I would be viewed as a one-man Mardi Gras parade, drawing a crowd of curious stragglers who would fall in behind me as I trotted along the sand streets of downtown Punta Margarita for the first time. But though I was the only man mounted on a horse, cruising down a street occupied by golf carts, mopeds, and an array of island cruiser bicycles, I did not seem to attract any sense of astonishment from the locals. I was simply the guy riding the angel horse through town.

  It was obvious that old Jean Lafitte not only had a taste for stolen treasures of gold, silver, and jewels but was also a pirate with a green thumb. Kirk told me that, like many sea captains before him, Lafitte had studied and collected plantings in his journeys around the Caribbean and had brought them home. Here they grew and prospered and turned into a lasting monument to his vision of a tropical paradise. He was also a kind of conservationist, growing pine forests for firewood so that the hardwoods would never have to be sacrificed for fuel.

  Lafitte had traded with the Indian tribes in South Florida, and he had learned from them about natural hammocks and the healing and nutritional value of the wild citrus that grew in the swamp. Using this information, he had supplemented the native flora and fauna with orange, grapefruit, and tangerine trees. Added to that was a collection of guava, pomegranate, breadfruit, and ackee trees from neighboring islands.

  As a result of Lafitte’s green thumb, despite the ravages of two centuries of hurricanes, Punta Margarita was still shaded from the intense tropical sun by the ancient branches of rosewood, mahogany, cedar, lignum vitae, and dogwood.

  There was a delicious scent of barbecue on the wind that first ride. I could smell it, mixed with the wood smoke, citrus, and jasmine. I made the turn at the beach and felt Mr. Twain start to twitch. He wanted to run, and I let him. He wasn’t called a quarter horse just because it sounded good. He sensed the distance that he had been born to feel, and I just held the reins loose and let him go.

  As he galloped down the beach, my apprehensions about meeting a fellow Wyomingite flew away like the landscape we were passing at a fair clip. We splashed along the flats that had been uncovered by the falling tide until the green dock came into view around the right, where it was supposed to be.

  Mr. Twain lunged sharply when he caught sight of the giant carved crocodile under the Lost Boys sign. There were no Federales at the end of the trail—just another gringo.

  “You must be Tully. I’m Bucky Norman,” he said.

  I slipped o
ff of my horse and went to shake hands. I had been expecting to meet some lanky, bleached-blond, bronze-skinned expatriate in cutoffs and flip-flops, but Bucky stood there under a large straw hat that sat upon a collection of strawberry blond curls. Across the front of the hat the words NEVER GROW UP were painted in bright red letters. His long fishing pants and long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the collar covered nearly every inch of his six-foot-four-inch frame—except for his hands and neck, which were dotted with freckles. “Welcome to Lost Boys,” he said.

  Mr. Twain scanned the surroundings and seemed to approve. I tied his halter to a coconut tree.

  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” I said.

  “Pleasure’s all mine. What took you so long?” Bucky asked.

  “Sightseeing,” I told him.

  “That is a fine-looking animal,” Bucky added. “Most four-legged creatures we see on this island climb trees and have forked tongues. Anyway, we aren’t officially open yet, so there aren’t any guests to complain about a little horseshit lying around.”

  “I really appreciate you takin’ us in like this.”

  “Well, it ain’t brotherly love,” Bucky said. “Kirk tells me you are not only a sailor but a Wyoming fisherman. Where you from?”

  “Heartache.”

  “I’m from Simmons Creek,” Bucky said.

  “I’ve fished it!” I blurted out, knowing there were fly fishermen from all over the West who would gladly pay any amount of money, donate a kidney, or give up their firstborn child to get a spot on that stretch of cold, clear water when the caddis hatch was on.

  “An amazing piece of water, but you are in the salt world now. Let me show you around.”

  The Island of the Lost Boys was my favorite part of Peter Pan, and now as Bucky showed me his camp, I was seeing life imitate art. From the beach, we took a path through a small patch of dunes speckled with sea oats. This led past a cave that had been carved out of the rocky shore by the sea.

  The camp itself sat on a tiny peninsula and consisted of a group of small thatched cottages all painted in bright Caribbean colors. The smell of fresh paint and turpentine hung in the afternoon air, and sawhorses and stacks of lumber were piled near an unfinished cottage with a red thatched roof. A main clubhouse with a large screen porch had been built at the far end of the enclave facing the water. In the middle of the camp stood a colossal banyan tree with giant, thick limbs that sagged just a few feet from the ground, from which hung a cluster of rope hammocks. The tree was covered with vines, climbing nets, rope ladders, and a set of wooden stairs that ascended to the top. Up in the high branches perched a sprawling driftwood tree house. At the base of the tree, a weathered bamboo fence encircled a patch of thick green grass.

  Bucky pulled back the unhinged gate to the corral, and Mr. Twain strolled out of my grip and immediately began munching the grass.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked.

  “Kirk found it for me.”

  “How did you guys meet?”

  “That’s better discussed up there,” he said, pointing to the top of the tree. “You game?”

  “I’m game.”

  “Going up,” Bucky said as he grabbed a vine and swung over to a low limb where the ladder rungs began. Like Cheetah following Tarzan, I mimicked his movements.

  As I measured the distance to the ground, I realized that I was already as high as a tall ship’s mast, and there was nearly the same distance left to the top of the tree. The huge orange sun hung motionless out over the water as if it were waiting for us to get to the top before it traveled beyond the horizon.

  Bucky narrated as we climbed the wooden ladders and branches to the tree house. “It started out as just a lookout platform. Ix-Nay says that this tree has been used for centuries to scan the horizon for enemies and storms. We use it to check the wind conditions, watch the sunset, and point the telescope at the stars.”

  “Who’s Ix-Nay?”

  “He’s my head guide—and the only guide at the moment. He’s off island right now, but you’ll meet him soon enough.”

  When we reached the deck of the tree house, I was puffing hard. The view from the top of the tree was incredible. I could see all the way to town. There was an enclosed area with a guardrail and a ship’s ladder that led up to another level. Bucky led the way up the last steps, and we popped through a hatch into a makeshift observatory where a big brass telescope rested under a viscuine cover.

  “Have a look,” Bucky said.

  I shut my right eye, put my left eye to the lens, and turned the big wheel at the base until the blurry circle transformed into sharp images of the world below. I could make out the birds on the channel markers and the waves crashing on the distant reef. Directly below us, I spotted Captain Kirk out on one of the flats, stalking a school of mullet with a cast net, silhouetted by the falling sun.

  “He’ll be out there till dark,” Bucky said. “How about a boat drink?”

  Bucky slipped behind a little bar area and produced a bottle of Haitian rum, limes, and ice. He punched a button on a cassette deck lashed to a tree branch, and a familiar melody filled the air. I sipped my drink and gorged on the view, listening to the perfect background music. Joni Mitchell sang of beach tar and the Mermaid Café.

  “I love that song,” I said.

  “You heard that a lot on the boat, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Joni is the reason Kirk and I met.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Well, this ex-girlfriend of mine from Denver took me to New Orleans to Jazz Fest. You ever been?”

  “To New Orleans, yes, but not Jazz Fest.”

  “That was seven years ago, and I haven’t missed one since. Anyway, it was in this place called Café Brazil. My girlfriend had dragged me downtown, after a full day at the fairgrounds, to a bar called the El Morocco, where it was rumored that Boz Scaggs was going to jam with the Neville Brothers. Well, we weren’t the only ones who heard the jungle drums. The street outside the club was packed with people and stalled cars.

  “Georgia, that was her name, tells me she is going to get in to see Boz or die trying. I told her that I love Boz as much as anybody, but I was no good with crowds. She headed through the door into the insanity, and I wandered down the street to Café Brazil, which was much less crowded and where Joni Mitchell sat in a wicker chair on the stage with just a conga drummer backing her. It was magical. Joni had slipped up on the stage in between sets, completely unannounced, and was singing away.

  “Captain Kirk was standing next to me at the bar. As she finished her set, we both broke into roaring applause and coaxed an encore out of her. She headed from the stage to where we were standing and introduced herself. Then, when she learned we didn’t know each other, she introduced us. A salsa band came on, and we found ourselves dancing with Joni, sandwiched between members of an Italian wedding party and a pack of Air Force pilots on weekend leave from Biloxi. The crowd had discovered Joni’s presence, and she sensed it. She kissed us both good night and jumped in —”

  “A big yellow taxi,” I interrupted.

  “It was actually a Checker cab,” Bucky said. “Well, I checked back by the El Morocco and saw that Boz was indeed onstage, and the place was going nuts. I told Kirk I had about two hours to kill before I would attempt to reconnect with Georgia across the street, and he told me about a restaurant on the corner. It was there in the Port of Call, over a bowl of gumbo and red beans, that we discovered we both love fishing.”

  There was a loud splash in the distance. Bucky and I looked up, and down below was Captain Kirk with a net full of kicking mullet. A small sand shark was on his heels, observing the catch.

  “That shark would be better off finding a dead whale to gnaw on than trying to get fresh mullet out of that man.”

  I laughed out loud recalling my own experiences with mullet back in Alabama.

  Bucky continued, “Anyway, Kirk and I talked about the Yucatán, and that is when he told me he ca
me down here on a regular basis. He also said there were great, undiscovered flats for bonefish and tarpon in the bays along the southern edge of Crocodile Rock. If I ever did get down here, he told me, he’d take me out to the flats.”

  “Obviously you made it,” I said.

  “My family owns a very successful fly-fishing guide service and tackle shop back in Wyoming, and they groomed me to run it for the rest of my life and pass it on to my children, when I had them. That was before I ran into Kirk. I’ll never forget our first meeting. It fueled my curiosity. I read everything I could about fishing in the southern Yucatán. Finally, when I was guiding up on the Snake River, I met a guy who had actually been here. He told whopping stories about the place. He said that the waters of Ascension Bay and Espíritu Santo were jam-packed with bonefish and, even more exciting, with permit. But he said you had to fish with a gun strapped to your side to ward off aggressive crocodiles. It all sounded way too amazing. I don’t know if you know, but in the fly-fishing world, discovering tropical waters that hold large schools of permit is like finding gold.”

  Along with the fishing stories, Bucky ran across a few important facts. The Mexican government, he said, had declared the bays and nearly 2 million acres of tropical forest, marshes, mangroves, lagoons, and coral reefs surrounding them a protected biosphere. They had given it the Mayan name of Sian Ka’an. There was little development in the area, and the purpose of the biosphere was to make sure it stayed that way—which to a fisherman meant very little pressure on the fish. Bucky had counted the days until his next vacation, and then he’d hopped a plane to Mexico to meet up with his ex-dancing partner.

  Kirk met Bucky at the airport in Cancún, and they drove south, bouncing along the dirt road on a roller-coaster ride through world-class Mexican potholes until they came to an isolated ferry terminal in the middle of nowhere.

  “We caught the ferry to town, and Kirk drove me out here and told me the place was available. As they say, the rest is history. I was snagged just like a permit. I quit the family business and moved to Punta Margarita to fish.”