Swimming in the Volcano Read Online Free PDF

beach at the edge of the coastal plain. Mitchell wobbled out of the back of the Comet and stood with his hands thrust into his pockets, trying to think of what he could say to Isaac that would not sound like eulogy. Nothing but the bleakest remarks came to mind. Isaac, without
Miss Defy
, owned nothing. He sat like a deposed carnival king in his chariot, the strips of pomponsfrom off the windows draped over his shoulders like a tawdry royal stole.
    They walked away from the car as if they never had any business with it, as if the misfortune it represented, the perils and the fear, had been sustained by others. The Comet was something done with,
finish up
, that national litany Mitchell heard whenever he turned a corner, like the brake fluid in the weird island garages,
finish up
, like potatoes or milk or soap in the markets,
finish up
, like schoolbooks for the children, like the phone service that only went to one out of every four customers who wanted it, like the Carib Indians and the secret language of their women, like slavery, like the old regime of crooks and thugs Edison Banks had disposed of or co-opted so shrewdly, like the plantations and the plantocracy and the sugar industry and last night’s bottle of strong rum and like a thousand other pieces of junk pushed off the narrow roads of St. Catherine into the embrace of the bush, the Comet
Miss Defy
had joined the chorus of this collective destiny, had run itself into the ground and was now for all time
finish up
, bequeathed to scavengers, jerry-riggers, scrap revivalists, trash hobbyists, bugs, birds, lizards, rain, sun, moon, and myth.
    â€œCoconut oil,” Isaac mused. He refused self-pity. “Why I believe daht shit, Wilson?”

Chapter 2
    The LIAT desk had not yet opened although there was laughter and short-wave radio garble coming through the closed door behind the ticket counter, nor was the Customs staging area preparing for operation as it should have been, because Johnnie’s flight was scheduled to arrive momentarily. The souvenir stand, purveyor of inexpertly screened tee shirts, coconut shell ashtrays, and conch shell lamps, was still locked up, as was the Batik Boutique, a mystery shop which Mitchell couldn’t recall ever seeing open. In fact, the Brandon Vale airport had all the charm and credibility of a foreclosed and abandoned warehouse. It was a venue of pathos and prayers, a wretched place for passengers concerned with their welfare. At one end of the long flat salmon-colored complex stood the control tower, an edifice modeled along the lines of a prison fortification. On the opposite end of the building, constructed as an entrepreneurial afterthought, a hand-hewn timber and thatched roof parasite living off the sluggish metabolism of the terminal, was a bar, and the bar was open for business.
    Saconi was in there at one of the tables, blithe and ambivalent in the diffused natural light. His companion of choice, a Michoacán acoustic guitar inside a tattered cardboard case, was propped on the seat next to him, and an uncapped bottle of reputable scotch, a rudiment of inspiration, stood centered on the varnished plywood of the table. A master lyricist and a performer both hostile and seductive to the legions of his audience, Saconi had composed the “Edison Banks Calypso”—not for money alone—and was therefore much in favor these days, even though his current single lectured the coalition for acting like a jackass with a head at each end, its two mouths both straining to reach the same mango hanging from a branch. He had recorded in Trinidad, Port of Spain, the New York of the lowerCaribbean, toured up and down the islands, and received occasional airplay for his albums as far away as Toronto and London. He was a celebrity and a hero of upliftment. The success he had earned was as much a source of boasting as it was of envious disdain for the people of St. Catherine, his people, and his relative