Chapter 24. Fred C. Dobbs & Grub Money

"Can you stake a fellow American for a meal?"

We retired to Dennis’ room he paid for by trading the bulk of his stash. The room was an unfurnished, bare floor, ten by ten, room at the back of the house. Stan was still out with Ms. Detroit. Dennis asked me, “What are you guys going to do now?”

“Well, it looks like you’re set up here. We could just keep moving ‘til we figure it out for ourselves.” I asked, “What do you think of the Maroon Country caves you told us about?”

Dennis scratched his beard and sat quietly a few minutes before he said anything, “You have to have some kind of plan… somewhere you’re going to stay after your tourist visa expires.”

“Can’t we live in those caves?” I held onto a thin string of hope.

I saw what Dennis was getting at. He was set up here with friends in Saint Ann’s Bay and Ocho Rios. He had his carving tools and he could make a stab at surviving somehow.

“We don’t have much of a plan,” I had to admit.

“You told me that you knew how to live off the land and all that garbage, Max,” Dennis was not trying to be cruel. He was merely trying to shed some light on what we were facing.

I was defeated, and I knew before he said anything that I’d have to give up on staying in Jamaica much longer, I admitted, “Yeah, I had the impression that there was plenty of open land here but everywhere I’ve seen is planted… banana orchards and so on. We’d have to become thieves to make it here and it doesn’t look like these people take thieving lightly around here.”

Stan came in the room and picked up on the end of our discussion right away. Without giving it much thought, he ceded, “I guess we ought to go back to the States.”

Stan already grasped the situation.

It was more than resignation for me, it was a dream completely smashed. The land already belonged to other people. I’d lost all hope of finding a place to call my own, “We’d best start heading back to Montego Bay in the morning.”

I reviewed the trip in my mind. Undeserved resentments looked for someone to blame for my failure. Shit, I thought, Dennis took me for a ride. It was my unemployment checks that got us all here. I didn’t say anything because there really was nothing that could be said. Then I recognized, after all, Dennis had chipped in with his Hillman and gear for the trip. It wasn’t his fault that everything didn’t work out… that everyone didn’t get through customs. It wasn’t his fault that I had no idea how to make a living on the island. But the side-trip to the Hoss Bozz compound was Dennis’ fault because of our sojourn there… He could have made up for that by giving us his airline ticket, but he didn’t. I had my stub, but we had no money left and but one pair of blue jeans between us that we could sell. At the current exchange rate, dollar for dollar, thirty dollars would cover the $15 tourist fee we’d each need in order to get aboard a goddamned airplane back to Miami. It wasn’t an unreasonable price to ask. That is, if we found someone that could part with thirty bucks for old jeans and if I was compensated for the lost ticket.

Stan and I headed out on the road along the north coast back to Montego Bay. We walked but didn’t talk much since leaving Saint Ann’s Bay.

 Stan broke the silence, “Hey, what do you think of those curses?”

“Hoss Bozz?” I hadn’t thought about it. “Oh, I don’t know. Are you superstitious, Stan?”

“Naw, but Hoss Bozz was pretty pissed at you.”

“I know,” I had mixed feelings about curses. I didn’t believe in them, but I figured they must have had some power or people wouldn’t use them. I had a strange feeling that returning his curse with love came from somewhere else. It wasn’t me and it might have saved me from the worst effects of the curse. I said, “He probably is still ranting and raving.”

Stan clowned a perfect impersonation, “I am the great Hoss Bozz! Jah! Haile Salami! And I curse you, Max, to the fi-yers of hell!” he shuffled and held a banana for a microphone with an invisible boom-box to his ear, as we walked along the side of the road.

“Dennis cut me a little pot from his package. Wouldn’t it be nice to roll an old-fashioned state-side joint and smoke it?” I proposed.

Stan responded, “Yeh, you know, I gots real live Zigs Zags I never gots to use.”

“Man, oh man, let us praise Jah!”

“Boy, I was real tired of hearing Dennis talk that Jamaican pigeon talk like we all were supposed to be natives or somethin’. Ya know what I mean … Mon?”

We jived back and forth like that, getting American again… walking along side of the road, not even putting out our thumbs as an occasional tourist drove by and passing a good ole American style joint, as if to seal the deal; for, we were done with Jamaica.

Stan told me, “You know that Brit. She showed me a good place in the bush to fuck.”

“No kiddin’, I saw you leave.”

“She told me not to tell the others. Yeah, like why would I do that?”

“Let’s go back and tell ‘em.”

We laughed so hard I had to lay down on the road. There were no cars or trucks in sight.

He was still laughing, “What you doing there, man? You’re gonna get run over.”

 “I broke my back in the Navy.” I moaned, “Aaah, it feels so damned good with my back on the hot pavement.”

“Looks like no good place to make camp around here.”

The cane season was almost over, and the fields were burned, “Let’s get as far as Discovery Bay. It’s only a few more miles. Maybe we can sell those jeans and get something to cook.”

 “Hey, ain’t that the place Dennis said Columbus landed?”

“I think so. Yeah, he did..”

“I wanna discover some canned food. Man, I’d give my left nut for a can of pork n’ beans. I’m tired of fresh fruit and yams.”

At discovery Bay we could find no one willing to give us anything for the jeans. We held out until after sunset and one of the beach guys rode by on a bicycle.

 “I have eight dollars, no more than that, though.”

Stan said, “Twenty.”

“I said, no more than eight.”

Stan put the jeans back in his back, “Sorry, I can get thirty in Montego Bay.”

“This ain’t Montego Bay, Mon. I can give you nine.”

“Nope, no deal. Fifteen’s the lowest we will go.”

“You are killing me, I give you ten, that’s it,” and he walked away real slow.

I could have seen a question mark across the contour of his face. He wasn’t used to getting beat this bad at haggling. He shrugged, “What the fuck, I’m so goddamned hungry I could boil-up them damned jeans. I must’ve had pork and beans advertised on my forehead.”

“Might as well take ten for them. We won’t have enough anyway.”

There was a field a few miles out of town that hadn’t been harvested yet. So, we made camp among the tall cane out of sight from the road. One of the Jamaicans the first night showed u8s how to make a cooking fire no one could see. You dig two holes down about ten inches deep a foot from each other… one should have a slight oval shape one with two sides narrow enough to set a can on it and just wide enough to let the fire out. The soil was soft enough to dig out by hand. A tunnel is dug out and cleared at the bottom connecting the two. I pack some sticks to a few inches below the rim of one leaving the other empty and then cover the sticks with kindling on top the sticks and light ‘em. The tunnel causes a draft from the empty hole for an amazingly hot flame that burns for the longest time… Because the flame is started at the top it burned longer than the time it took to cook the beans in their cans that sat nicely over and to roast some wieners afterwards. Our last night in Jamaica, we cooked-up two large cans of pork and beans and some Jamaican bread with wieners. We had Hostess Twinkies for desert, and we finished off what pot was left of our stash of pot.

I was no longer concerned about tarantulas, but my dreams woke me in fits. One such dream saw me in a cage with an angry cat’s yellow eyes glaring at me accusingly from outside as if I’d somehow betrayed her.

The next morning, we caught a ride on a bus with almost our last cash going all the way to Montego Bay. At the airport I went to the counter to report a lost ticket. To my surprise, I was issued a replacement with no argument. However, the tourist fee had to be paid before we could proceed and board the next flight to Miami. Neither Stan nor I had more than a few Jamaican dollars; so, we did what hippies did anywhere: we panhandled.

It was incredibly hard to find anyone willing to part with a buck or two. Every longhair that passed our way was hit up to no avail and it was getting close to departure time for the last flight of the day.

The Montego Bay airport was too small to go unnoticed if we were to stay overnight. I hit up a man in a suit with an American flag pin on the lapel. He looked like the last person on earth that would give up any money to a hippy. Regardless, I tried, “Mr. can you help out a couple of fellow Americans?”

I felt like a sad version of Fred C. Dobbs hustling up grub money.

The man pulled out his wallet, flipped it open to display a badge. I figured we were being busted. In a way we were but, even though the guy was a cop, he parted with enough money to give us both the amount we needed. Then, without saying a word, he escorted us to the counter where he made sure we spent the money on the tourist fee. I could see that every Jamaican cop in the area was also watching us complete the transaction. We got our grub money, but,  humiliated, I swore I’d never beg for money again.

We boarded the plane and took our assigned seats apart from each other. I was seated at the back of the plane next to a matronly woman who wasted no time complaining, “Do I have to sit next to this?”

The stewardess wanted nothing to do with either me, or Stan, but informed the poor woman that she couldn’t change seats.

I smiled the best tourist smile I could and tried to give her some comfort in an extremely uncomfortable situation, “Don’t worry, Ma’am. I’m not so happy to be here either.”

She looked at me as though I’d crossed a line of some sort but I wasn’t sure what line it was. She made a grunting sound and I slept until the plane touched down in Miami.

Thus, our Jamaican adventure came to an end.