Bermuda Schwartz (2 page)

“Why cut yourself short? You might hit ninety. Or a hundred.”

“I don't intend to,” she says.

Before I can come up with a suitable response, Aunt Trula says: “So how much?”

“Well, it's not quite that simple,” I say.

As palm trees go, Bismarcks are fairly cold hardy. So I'm not worried about their surviving winters in Bermuda, which, even though it is six hundred miles off the coast of North Carolina, enjoys the blessings of the Gulf Stream and gets no cooler than Minorca Beach.

Bismarcks are salt tolerant, so stiff sea breezes aren't a problem. And they're adaptable to a wide range of soil, so given a suitable pH range they can thrive in Bermuda's limestone marl.

The trouble comes with transplanting. Bismarcks don't take kindly to it. Once established somewhere, they prefer to stay put. Like too many people I know.

I spend several minutes explaining the downside to Aunt Trula.

“No buts, Mr. Chasteen. I want those Bismarcks. And I want them planted in my backyard in time for my party in April. How much?”

I come up with a price in my head. Then I double it. Because I don't really want to dig up eight specimen-quality Bismarck palms and ship them on a freighter to Bermuda. Especially if they are just going to die once they get there.

I tell Aunt Trula what it will cost her. It is hard to get the number out of my mouth without laughing.

“Splendid, Mr. Chasteen,” says Aunt Trula. “What say I add another fifty percent for all your trouble?”

“Deal,” I say.

But like always, I've underestimated the trouble part. And hauling palms to Bermuda is only the start of it.

 

Three months later, on an April afternoon eight days before Aunt Trula's big birthday bash, our plane touches down at Bermuda International.

The runway glistens from a midday rain. Barbara and I follow Boggy as we step onto the tarmac for the short walk to immigration and customs.

We are a dapper-looking bunch. Barbara is wearing something gray and silky from Eileen Fisher that manages to be casual and sexy and elegant all at once. I sport a brand-new blue blazer, nice khakis, and a relatively spot-free polo, all the better for impressing dear Aunt Trula. Even Boggy looks fairly dashing—this is Bermuda after all—in a white guayabera with baggy cargo pants and his best leather sandals.

Halfway to the terminal, Boggy stops dead in his tracks. We almost bump into him.

He slings his carry-on bag off his shoulder. It isn't really a bag so much as it is an old handwoven blanket into which he has stuck everything he thinks he might need in Bermuda then rolled up and fastened with bungee cords. He didn't check any luggage.

He reaches inside the bag and pulls out a leather pouch. He opens the pouch and takes from it two small, black, shiny stones. He sets down the bag and the pouch. Then he stretches out his arms, palms to the sky, a stone in each hand. He closes his eyes and sniffs the air.

Other passengers weave around us, staring at Boggy.

“Don't mind him,” I tell them. “He thinks he's a Taino shaman.”

Barbara gives me an elbow.

“Shhhh,” she says.

She's far more tolerant of Boggy's ways than I am. Still, I am glad he has decided to join us.

Boggy oversaw the delicate business of getting the Bismarcks ready for the road. We couldn't just pluck them out of the ground and ship them off. They wouldn't have survived the shock.

Boggy nursed them along. He spent a couple of hours each day with them, gently digging and nipping away.

Eventually each of the Bismarcks was extracted from the loam at Chasteen Palm Nursery. Its root ball, about the size of a VW Bug, was wrapped in burlap. And its fronds were drawn together around the crown and tied with sisal rope.

We loaded them onto two tractor-trailers and hauled them to the port at Fernandina Beach. Cranes stacked them side by side aboard the freighter
Somers Isles
for their four-day trip to Bermuda.

An excruciating amount of paperwork was involved, mainly from the Bermuda Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Parks, which wanted all sorts of guarantees that the palms were not infested with weevils and other vermin. As if anything coming out of Florida could make such a guarantee. We sprayed them with Dursban and hoped for the best.

The day before we were to fly out of Orlando, I got word from the shipping company that the Bismarcks had arrived and passed inspection. Aunt Trula had already paid the 3 3 percent import tax—even though I lowballed the value on the bill of lading, the levy still hit a low five figures—and the palms would be ready to plant once we got there.

But first, we have to go through immigration, get our bags, and clear customs, then get a taxi to Aunt Trula's. And here we are, still standing on the tarmac, while Boggy gets in touch with the freaking cosmos.

All the other passengers are long gone. The crew will soon be exiting the plane. They'll see Boggy standing there zoned out, in one of his trances—a short, round dark man with a braided ponytail that falls to the seat of his pants—and they'll call security. The authorities will lock us all up. You just don't screw around at airports these days.

I poke Boggy in the back.

“Move it, Mr. Mystic,” I say.

He doesn't budge, doesn't even seem to notice that we are standing there. Barbara shoots me a dirty look.

“What?” I say. “He's just going to come out of it spouting some crap about having one of his visions. ‘I see much darkness, Zachary.' Or ‘The way ahead it is very gray, Zachary.' It's always something goddamn gloomy like that. It creeps me out.”

“He's always right,” says Barbara. “Exactly right.”

I look at her.

“No, what he is, he's exactly vague.”

“How can someone be exactly vague?” Barbara says. “That doesn't make sense.”

“And that's what I'm saying. He talks mumbo-jumbo.”

“Oh, really? And what about that time in Harbour Island? He knew the hurricane was going to turn and slice through the Bahamas.”

“A lucky guess,” I say. “Even monkeys and TV weathermen sometimes make them.”

“What about last year, when you went down to Jamaica?”

“What about it?”

“Before you left, he predicted that everything was going to turn bad.”

“No, he did not,” I say. “I remember exactly what he told me. And what he told me was, ‘It will not be quite so easy as you expect, Zachary.'”

Barbara makes a gesture with her hands and her shoulders that says, “So, there.”

“No, no. That is not a prediction,” I say. “That is horse flop. Because nothing is ever quite so easy as anyone expects. And just because Boggy says it doesn't mean he's clued into the future more than anyone else.”

Barbara does this thing with her eyebrows that says: “You're wasting your breath, pal.”

Boggy lowers his hands, opens his eyes. He returns the stones to the pouch, the pouch to the bag.

When he turns to face us, he is smiling. Peculiar, since Boggy is generally pretty miserly with emotions and his smiles are rare indeed.

He says, “That which is planted here will grow strong.”

Then he picks up his bag and walks toward the terminal.

As we follow him, Barbara says, “Now that wasn't so goddamn gloomy, was it?”

“Just more mumbo-jumbo,” I say.

 

As promised, the Bismarcks are waiting in the backyard of Aunt Trula's house when we arrive.

It is some kind of house—a three-story Georgian affair with more rooms than I'll probably have a chance to see during the two weeks we plan to stay here.

And it is some kind of backyard—the length of a football field from the rear of the house to the bluffs overlooking the beach.

The whole place is called Cutfoot Estate. I figure there must once have been a Lord Cutfoot or an Admiral Cutfoot or a Rich Somebody Cutfoot who originally owned the property. I figure wrong.

“Named after Cutfoot Bay,” explains Aunt Trula, with a nod to the ocean. “The rocks down there are quite vicious, like razors. They make the beach rather difficult to walk on.”

After a pair of butlers haul away our bags—I am pretty sure we'll need detailed maps to find our rooms later—Aunt Trula whisks us off to a sunny terrace, where we sit having tea.

It is just the three of us—Barbara, Aunt Trula, and I—sipping cups of Earl Grey. Boggy has already joined Aunt Trula's chief gardener to inspect the Bismarcks.

A pretty young woman in a black-and-white maid's uniform serves us goodies from a silver tray—cucumber topped with a smidgen of salmon,
watercress sandwiches, and other dainty things that require you ingest them by large handfuls if you wish to gain anything approaching sustenance. I am hungry, my natural state, and I am trying hard not to make it look as if I am foraging.

We watch Boggy as he moves from where the Bismarcks lay on one side of the lawn. The chief gardener—a slender, erect man named Cedric, outfitted in a khaki uniform—follows Boggy, carrying a shovel. When they reach the general vicinity of where the palms are to be planted, Boggy takes the shovel and starts digging a hole.

Aunt Trula wants the Bismarcks planted in a V-shape, four on each side. They will start just beyond a big fountain off the terrace, bordering beds of lilies and amaryllis and opening onto the ocean.

The pretty young woman refills our cups and disappears inside the house. Aunt Trula takes a sip of tea, puts down her cup, and fixes her gaze on me.

She smiles. It is a thin, forced, I'm-still-sizing-you-up smile. That's OK. I'm still sizing her up, too.

So far, she has pretty much met my expectations. Sturdy and imperious, quite fit for almost seventy, her beauty still rigorously intact. Dame Judi Dench was born to play her.

“I must tell you, Mr. Chasteen, I am rather disappointed in those palm trees of yours.”

It catches me off guard.

“Oh?”

That is all I can manage, but I ennunciate it nicely.

“They seem rather unsubstantial,” says Aunt Trula.

“Well, that's probably because they're tied up and laying on the ground. Wait until we get them planted, then I think you'll like them just fine.”

“I don't think so,” she says. “They aren't as tall as you led me to believe.”

I look at Barbara. The way she wrinkles her eyebrows is barely perceptible, but it conveys boundless sympathy. It also conveys an unmistakable amusement. I am on my own here. I forge ahead.

“It was never my intention to mislead you,” I say. “Those Bismarcks are at least sixty or seventy feet tall, and that's just about as tall as the species gets.”

Aunt Trula makes a face.

“Disappointing,” she says.

She reaches for one of the cucumber thingies. She removes the salmon from it and takes a small bite of cucumber, studying me while she chews.

“Don't worry,” I say. “You're in luck.”

“How's that?” says Aunt Trula.

“I brought a palm stretcher with me.”

“A palm stretcher?”

“Uh-huh. We can hook it up and get another twenty feet out of each of those palms, no problem.”

Aunt Trula considers me. She purses her lips while she does it.

“You are jesting,” she says.

“I am,” I say.

Aunt Trula says nothing. I get the distinct feeling that she is not someone who appreciates a good jesting.

I reach for the watercress sandwiches and dispatch with two of them in rapid order. Enough to fuel a hummingbird for maybe fifteen minutes.

Aunt Trula says, “My niece tells me that you were once an athlete, Mr. Chasteen. Football, was it?”

“It was.”

“Rather a brutish sport, in my opinion.”

“In mine, too.”

It gets a raised eyebrow from Aunt Trula.

“Then why, Mr. Chasteen, did you play?”

“Because I'm a brute.”

Barbara covers her mouth, stifling a laugh. Aunt Trula scrunches her lips some more, then unscrunches them to sip some tea.

We turn our attention back to the lawn. Boggy puts down the shovel. He kneels by the shallow hole he's dug and reaches into it.

“Your man there,” says Aunt Trula. “What did you say his name is?”

I start to tell her that Boggy is neither my man, nor anyone else's. But I catch a look from Barbara. Behave, it says.

“His full name is Cachique Baugtanaxata,” I say. “That's why we call him Boggy.”

“And what is he exactly?”

“He's my associate,” I say.

“No, no, I meant what
is
he?”

“Well, he's an aggravation sometimes, I can tell you that. A damn aggravation.”

“Mr. Chasteen,” she says, “I mean … where does he come from?”

I know what she means. I'm just not having any part of it.

“He's from Hispaniola,” I finally say. “The Dominican Republic side.”

“He doesn't look Hispanic.”

“He's not.”

“And he's not a Negro.”

“No, he's not.”

“And he's no Chinaman.”

I don't reply to that.

“So what is he exactly?”

“He's Taino,” I say.

“Tie what?”

“Taino. They lived in the Caribbean long before any Europeans made it there.”

“Ah, I see,” says Aunt Trula. “He's an Indian fellow.”

“No,” I say. “He's Taino. Indians are what the Europeans called them. Because they had their heads up their asses about where they were.”

If I sound a little testy it's only because I am.

Cue, Barbara.

“Titi,” she says, reaching for her aunt's arm, “why don't we take a stroll?”

“Splendid idea,” says Aunt Trula. “I could use the fresh air.”

And she gives me a smile even thinner than the one before.