Chapter 25. Peacock Park

After landing at Miami International Airport, we hitched a ride to Peacock Park in Coconut Grove because we remembered panhandlers hung out there. Penniless. and homeless, in the same park where we had started. We weren’t alone and fit in with the other dispossessed. It seemed that Coconut Grove’s park was the place to go when there was nowhere else to go. 

I had no hustle left in me, but Stan did. Stan’s persona attracted people needing to buy pot or acid and he was enterprising enough to provide them with whatever he could get fronted to him by some of the lower-level dealers that hung out around the park by day.

I wasn’t all that good at dealing drugs. I did, however, try to provide my share of food by going to the supermarket and filling a shopping cart as though I was buying groceries. While I was doing that I would stuff a steak in my pants and snatch a bag of beans or rice small enough to fit in one of my pockets. I’d leave my cart as though I had forgotten something and walk out the door. On one such venture, as I was filling a cart, I was stopped by a very straight looking man in his forties who psst-ed me, and lowered his voice, so that no one would hear, “Don’t look around…Do you know you are being watched by security. If you're smart, put the stuff back and walk out the door.”

“Thanks,” I answered, and, as if he needed an explanation, “I’m not good at this.”

No one heard my confession because he was gone.

From then on, I panhandled and bought food from whatever I could beg-up. I wasn’t very good at that either. I had too much pride and it reminded me of Hollywood’s destitution of spirit that took me to New Mexico.

A group of people occupied a couple of tables at the far end of the park. They always had a pot of beans going and appreciated whatever else one could add to the pot. Sometimes it would start with an onion or a potato and evolve into a great stew. This was called Stone Soup.

It was at this table that Stan spotted Michael, “Hey look, it’s the guy from Hoss Bozz’s place.”

Michael saw us, sat down next to me, and began devouring a bowl of Stone Soup like he hadn’t eaten in a while. Between slurps, he asked, “So, you got off the island okay?”

Stan directly across the table from him, and, in the manner I liked about Stan, said, “Say, you don’t gots them zombie eyes like you did at Hoss Bozz’s joint. But, Man, you still don’t look so good… like you ain’t ate.”

I didn’t like this guy either, but I was curious enough to wonder what he was about now that he was in Miami with us.

Michael said flatly, “Not many survive a curse from Hoss Bozz. Bad things happen to them. But this time his curse on you must’ve backfired.”

“What do you mean, backfired?” Stan asked. He too was wolfing down a bowl of soup.

“Bad things happen to people Hoss Bozz curses.”

“No, I mean…” Stan fumbled for words, “We’re okay. You said his curse backfired?”

Michael looked at us incredulous, “You guys don’t know?”

 “We don’t know… what?” I was getting impatient.

“Hoss Bozz was shot dead right after you left his place,” Michael stifled a sob and wiped a tear from his face. “One of his cab drivers… shot him.”

I remembered Hoss Bozz crying-out that he was being swallowed… “Shot?”

“Yes, shot dead. They thought it was you guys that did it, but changed their minds after two of the detectives said they’d checked you out before you got there. They knew you had no guns.”

“When did they check us out?” Stan was uncharacteristically slow on the draw.

It clicked with me and I got it, “I’m thinking, remember the two guys in the Mercedes?”

Stan was direct, “He gots cab drivers on kickback and cops running security. What’s this Hoss Bozz dude about? Eh? He seemed like one crazy fuck to me.”

It was as though Michael was reliving a very painful experience. He sighed and then started a brief narrative like it was a script, “Hoss Bozz took us in. He fed us and took good care of us… the whole area. He’d send us off to… you know, cities, like Chicago and Washington DC, to connect his shipments with his people. I’m an accountant and helped Josephine manage the money. Josephine was the real boss.”

“What? Shipments of what?”  I was fishing but I’d figured it out regardless.

Michael’s demeanor reminded me of an impatient school teacher drilling a couple of especially thick students, “You heard him rant… ganja, that’s what.”

I wondered, “So, why did the cab driver shoot him?”

“He thought Hoss Bozz was holding out on what he got from you guys. He couldn’t imagine that white boys would come to his place without money. The drivers were to get a cut.”

Puzzled, Stan contended, “But we didn’t get there by cab. We walked and hitched rides.”

“You didn’t get there by cab but every kid on a bicycle, every cab driver, and villager, reported every move you made before you got there.”

I questioned whether there was anything to this story. I remembered how uneasy I felt that Josephine expected us. What could Michael have done for Hoss Bozz in the States? That he was an accountant made more sense than imagining the scrawny wimp as an enforcer.

Stan had gone on another one of his errands to deliver a few hits of acid. He came back with a rough looking biker character and two other youngsters.

I had been sitting under one of the coconut palms, going over in my mind what Michael had said. What of the curse? I felt, as absurd as the idea was, Mama Cat protected me from it. That protection might’ve had something to do with the curse returning to Hoss Bozz. If that was true, and curses do work, I wondered whether it would still be a problem for me even though it backfired.

Stan interrupted my thoughts, “Max, this is Ted. He wants to go into business with us if we know where we can get a kilo.”

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.

Chapter 23. The Honeymooners

The only vehicles I’d seen in the mountains were cane trucks, and buses. We saw more Mercedes rental sedans now that we were on the coast. The three of us, were still walking on the road in the morning, and trying to get to Ocho Rios, when a Mercedes with a newly-wed couple from Long Island stopped and picked us up. After exchanging hellos and pleasantries, the driver proudly passed a joint but, being used to big fat spliffs, a joint amounted to a paltry offering to us.

Dennis did the talking, “Where did you get this shit?”

“We got it from a guy in Ocho Rios… we’re staying at the Playboy Resort. One of the grounds keepers…”

“You should get your money back… this shit is shake. You ain’t on Long Island anymore.”

I was thinking Dennis was rude but knew Dennis had a sense for making a little money off the stash he managed to hold on to despite the maneuvers of Hoss Bozz’s clan.

The newly-wed wife was pissed at Dennis’ cheek too, “You got anything better?” she whined.

Dennis was already sorting out some tobacco from a pouch. He deftly opened his bag to spread the contents on a sheet of bread wrapper. The odor of ganja filled the car. Wifey could see she was in for an unusual treat while Dennis labored fondly with creating a masterpiece of a spliff.

“We don’t smoke tobacco,” she protested.

Dennis ignored her self-righteous tone and rolled another spliff, passed them up front to her and Hubby and smirked, “Light it up. You won’t notice the tobacco… I promise.”

It was amusing to watch her puff on the spliff and try to pass it to someone. The car filled with smoke and she looked confused when she saw that everyone already had their own. She got lost in her head wondering what the proper etiquette was for passing a spliff in Jamaica.

We all ended up at the Newly-Wed’s cottage in the Playboy Resort beyond Ocho Rios. We enjoyed a meal in the cottage prepared by the couple’s hired cook. The conversation spun around how much this, or that cost; where we went last; and everyone was perfectly lit. Despite the opulence, I felt I’d seen enough of this Americanized version of island living. I longed to be back in the hills with the Grower’s people.

I knew the locals needed to have a job and a job at a resort was high on the scale compared to the cane fields. But it seemed to me to be a difficult dynamic... the relationship between the condescension on one hand and servitude on the other. We went to the beach with the Long Islanders and were served as guests by what was called, Beach Boys. Yes, grown men called boys! I should have enjoyed the beach with Stan and Dennis but I felt uneasy. It could have been the Ganja, but I sensed a contempt hidden under the commerce of polite patois, smiles, and cartoonish laughter.

I watched the Long Islanders whose reciprocal, forced-tourist, smiles betrayed their uneasiness too. We swam regardless and listened to one of the “Boys” tell us about how we should exercise more as he did handstands and cartwheels in the sand... laughing and smiling his contempt.

Finally, Mr. Newly-Wed told us, as courteously as he could, that we must move on. We left the next morning before the couple awoke and headed back to Ocho Rios and Saint Ann’s Bay where Dennis had acquaintances with whom he’d arranged to rent a room before leaving Miami.

Those two towns had a vibrancy and island ambiance that was better suited to my sensibilities. I loved wandering down streets lined with houses painted in bright blues and greens… oranges, yellows and reds. I loved the market place with all the fruit and calls from venders. It was far away from sanitized Jamaican experience of the gated and fenced-off Playboy Resort.

Dennis led us to one of the houses where we were greeted by two white couples in their late thirties/early forties. One couple was British and the other two were from Chicago and Detroit and they called each other dear and honey so it wasn’t easy to tell which ones were with which ones. Both couples taught at a private school in Ocho Rios.

The afternoon rains came and afterwards we all sat on the porch discussing the current political realities going on in far-away Kingston. All four were committed to the ousting of Hugh Shearer by any means. Mr. Brit was most adamant, “Shearer… pshaw… he’s a black labor leader alright. But not all that enlightened.”

Ms. Detroit was more sympathetic, “He came out from the rough and tumble labor struggles of the thirties and forties. Don’t be so hard on him, dear.”

Stan was bored, “Hey, you know. I come from Detroit, too.”

She seemed equally bored, “Really, what part?”

Before Stan could answer, Mr. Chicago sneered, “What, after he used the government to put down student protests in Kingston.”

It looked like Stan was hitting on her, “South, near the GM… you know, Poletown plant.”

She smiled at Stan, “I grew up in Dearborn.”

Mr. Chicago was trying not to be uncool about the conversation getting away from him but was failing, as evidenced by the veins popping out on the sides of his forehead. He retrieved the argument, saying, “He fuckin’ squashed Rodney… made our Democratic Convention look like kid’s play!”

Ms. Detroit intervened, “Yeah, but he did some good. You know I agree with you dear. But our friends here might not know what we’re talking about.”

Mr. Brit took a pull off his spliff, “You see, even though Shearer was a labor leader he considered socialists such as Rodney to be dangerous. Then he pissed off the radicals when he put down the Walter Rodney student riots in 1968.”

Now, Ms. Detroit was indignant, “No, they were protests until the government… Rodney’s a historian and a supporter of the Black Nationalists. He’s been to Cuba and has Castro’s endorsement, for chrissakes. It’s a movement growing stronger than the passé labor union movement.”

Mr. Brit’s snobbery was in every word, “People are fickle. Michael Manley inherited the reins of the People’s National Party from his dad.”

Mr. Chicago expressed unbridled excitement about the prospects of the election, “Come on, people. You must see, Manley’s going to create a government that would be decidedly pro-secondary education.”

Ms. Brit’s enthusiasm was equal his, “Yes, it’s going to be a choice for liberal, social democratic, values!”

I sat quietly listening to the talk feeling completely estranged from their enthusiasm.

“Is Michael Manley white?” I interjected, trying somehow to become a part of the conversation. I wasn’t aware that I would have seemed to favor Mr. Brit’s argument.

With open distaste for her husband’s opinion, Ms. Brit was quick to answer, “Yes, he certainly is, but, until the education system in Jamaica can bring the people up, there is little hope for a black Jamaican Prime Minister.”

“You mean like Hugh Shearer?” I wondered whether the growers from the Cockpit Country were compelled to support either Shearer or Manley.

“You have to understand,” Mr. Chicago spoke with an air of condescension and was obviously irritated that this hippy questioned the consensus of erudite academicians, “that; to us, and most importantly, and the people of Jamaica, Shearer is an Uncle Tom.”

“Oh, I see.” I had no real reason to care one way or the other who ran Jamaica. It wasn’t my house but any fool could see that these were white liberals from Chicago and Great Britain that came to Jamaica, so caught-up in their academic importance, that it wasn’t likely the place would be run any better under their stewardship. “It is confusing to me… that’s all I’m saying." To make my case, I said, "A black man is Prime Minister now and a party with a white liberal wants to kick him out because he turns out to be against Black Nationalism. Just seems a little weird…”

They excluded me from all conversation from that point on by talking past me like I wasn't there. Stan fared better than me. He left with Ms. Detroit while the others were absorbed in debated the minutia of Socialist policy to be enacted when their party won. I didn’t care because I’d only learned as much as I had from listening to people talk and reading an occasional newspaper. I didn’t really care… except for the patronizing attitudes. It did seem strange to me, however, that the intelligentsia universally sides with communist dictators and leftists over any democratically motivated worker’s party. I suspected it had more to do with ideology than it did common sense. 
I remembered how my leftist pals down at the Red Lion coffee shop in Spokane after Kennedy and Khrushchev were eye to eye over the Cuban Missal Crises. They were all screaming hysterically, “Hands off Cuba!” They were oblivious to the threat of nuclear annihilation posed by Nikita and his alliance with Fidel Castro. Never mind that Castro was and has been a bloody dictator whose murderous oppression will never be fully reported until the day after he is dead and gone.

Chapter 22. The Belly of the Beast

Clouds gathered over the hilltops as we approached the gate to the complex of the Great Hoss Bozz. A creek ran through the property. Above it, overlooking the creek and road, was a sprawling house with a corrugated tin roof and a couple of out-sheds before it. A taxi was leaving as we entered. We watched the cab crawl down a muddy track from the main house, across a small bridge and stop there as we approached from the road. The driver leaned out the open window grinning, “Hoss Bozz is expectin’ ya.”

I thought I recognized the driver as one of the hustlers at the airport in Montego Bay. Dennis led the way over the bridge and up past an out-shed to the front door. A thin, elegant black man in his forties with close-cropped hair stood glaring at us.

“Lay down your packs, take off your shoes and my girls will take care of dem for you.” After a pause he shouted, “Josephine! Dey is here! Come, bring me a pan. Hurry now. Josephine, please hurry!”

We entered the house and I saw a very large, but well-proportioned blacker than black skinned, woman come toward us with a pan. One of her daughters brought a pitcher of water behind her. Hoss Bozz motioned to me to sit on a chair by the open-door entrance and proceeded to wash my feet. This was a gesture that I was aware of in from stories from the Bible in which Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at the last supper. It was not so surprising to me that it would be a custom on the island.

My eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw that the house, though large, consisted of one main room and a narrow hallway leading to a few other rooms off to the side. The front room had a corner partitioned off by a counter and a couple of tables that contained a kitchen sink, range, and refrigerator. There were a couple young girls in the kitchen area, not counting the one bringing water for Josephine. I noticed a couple others outside taking dry clothes off the line. Hoss Bozz finished washing my feet and toweled them off.

He caught my eyes appraising one of his teen-age girls at the clothes-line. The light cotton calf-length smock covered her body but could hide the silhouette of her ebony skin, as black as the darkest night, as her hips moved underneath the modest dress in an enticing rhythm as she gracefully carried a load of laundry from the creek for the others to hang.

"Off Limits, my friend! Dee girls is off-limits!” Hoss Bozz let out a manic laugh, “I have seven daughters like Job… jess like Job. But I am cursed with no sons, mon.”

We were asked to have a seat on the floor against a wall opposite the kitchen. Josephine and two of the girls brought dishes of curried rice, fried plantains and chicken. Dennis kept the bag of ganja from the day before under his Hawaiian shirt. I thought he might break it out but said nothing. Stan asked him what he planned on doing with it.

Dennis answered, “I want to wait and see what happens to our gear.” He gestured towards the door. “Besides, the host provides in most parts around here.”

Hoss Bozz approached us after we’d eaten and rolled up three spliffs. There was no small talk as he seemed to go into a trance state, rambling… in a trembling voice that grew louder, “I am the Great Hoss Bozz… I smoke de ganja, I take de LSD, I take de STP… I am de Great Hoss Bozz!”

He stopped and looked each of us in the eye. He stood, shuffled around the room and left down the hallway.  He came back with a boom box playing Jimi Hendrix. It was a nightmarish scene: Hoss Bozz ranting, a tinny boom box of a distorted cassette tape wailing away Jimmy Hendrix… Purple Haze interrupted by, “I am dee Great Hoss Bozz…. Deere is no one greater dan me. I am... I am. ... I am Jah. ... Jah! ... Now, Jah! ... Lion of de Tribe of Judah… I am dee spirit of Halle Selassie… Jah! Ganja liberation, ya know!”

He shut off the boom box and sat down in front of me... facing me a mere foot away. No longer in a trance state he spoke slowly and deliberately, “Hey, look here, mon. I have only few rules here. De rains is coming soon. We all sleep when de rain comes. De keetchen is off-limits. It is forbidden to go in dere. Job's daughters is off limits. Off Limits! Do you hear me! Don’t you even try to talk sweet talk to any one of dem!” then shouting at the top of his lungs; “Michael! Come here, you pussy-blood-clot, Michael!”

One of the doors in the hallway opened. A thin, blond, lightly bearded, and effeminate man in his early twenties wearing a white perfectly pressed and starched shirt, came obediently to Hoss Bozz. I had seen eyes like his at airports; at Tony and Sue’s place… that look in Michael’s eyes. They were glazed over… alive but somehow dead. A grin was pasted on his face like a Hari Krishna. His submissiveness bothered me.

“Yes, Hoss Bozz,” Michael submitted and bowed his head as he approached.

“Michael, you stay out here wit dese here boys.” Hoss Bozz spoke affectionately to Michael… patting him on the head and shoulders… and then retired to one of the back rooms with Josephine as the rains began hammering the tin roof.

The rain came down in a solid sheet. The rumble of the rain on the tin roof was deafening. I stood at the door looking out over the grounds of the compound the first half hour. The roar above turned to white noise. I went back to the place my gear was laid out to sleep. My dreams were full of foreboding. Lost in a jungle, I struggled with vines, feet mired in the soggy earth, as a mysterious set of jaguar’s eyes watched me through thickets of the tropical underbrush.

The dark belly of the clouds opened and poured ferociously every afternoon around three. Between the rains Hoss Bozz’s amplified ranting into a microphone of his tape deck boom box tortured the walls for two days and nights. If he had anything else going for him, I couldn't see it. We smoked ganja, slept, listened to Hoss Bozz rant, and ate, for two days and two nights. I had hardly any chance to ask questions or find out anything from Michael about this weird scene. I did, however, have a chance to walk around the compound. I kept my eyes peeled and wondered where our back packs, and boots, were stashed in case we decided to leave in a hurry. Stan wanted to go the first day after two minutes into Hoss Bozz’s rant, but I felt compelled to see what this lunatic was about, as long as we were eating his food and smoking his ganja.

“Stan, where do you think they stashed our gear? I’m kinda nervous to ask,” I queried in a lull from the rantings and the rain on the third day.

Stan answered, “I don’t know but our plane tickets and gear are with our packs. I’m gonna ask where mine is anyway. I wanna get outa here.”

The rain started coming down hard again and we watched Dennis get up.

Dennis heard us talking over the din of the rain and said, “Watch what happens next.”

He strode across the room and went into the taboo kitchen area, opened a few cupboards, and peered into the refrigerator. He was deliberately testing to see where and when the hammer would come down.

Michael got up and shuffled off in his socks to the back rooms.

I shouted through the constant pounding on the tin roof, “What the fuck are you doing Dennis? That Moonie is snitching on you!”

Dennis ignored me, and hollered an offering, “You want a banana?”

“I’ll have one,” yelled Stan. 

The banana arched across the room to be caught by Stan just when the rains stopped.

When the rains stopped Hoss Bozz came roaring out of his room and Josephine stood with her mass blocking the front doorway. I wasn’t so much afraid as I was angry that Dennis had crossed the line with our host. Hoss Bozz sprung toward Dennis like a lion but, surprisingly, Dennis didn’t flinch. Bozz was used to people cowering before him but Dennis was not so inclined. Hoss Bozz raised his fist and railed, “You pussy-blood-clot! You pussy-blood-clot! I told you to stay outa de keetchen, Mon.”

Michael came into the room with two packs. Hoss Bozz grabbed the packs from Michael and threw Dennis’s at his feet. “You must go. You must leave now!”

Dennis opened his pack and searched through it, “Hey, where is my plane ticket?”

Stan stood there before Josephine and, glaring at Hoss Bozz, ordered, “My ticket was here. Get it.”

Josephine nodded and signaled one of the girls to retrieve Dennis’s ticket. Bozz gave her a dirty look but her face showed that she was in charge of the house and common sense. She handed Stan his pack, but he didn’t look inside. She moved away from the door and let Dennis and Stan pass by her.

Hoss Bozz sat on the chair he’d so graciously sat on the other day to wash the feet of his guests.

I wondered where my pack was but, as I passed to get by him and Josephine, Hoss Bozz grabbed my arm and held me, pleading, “I want you to stay.”

“I can’t stay, where is my pack?” I turned to face him.

He put his hand on my shoulder to pull me down, “Please sit. I must tell you how I soffur!”

I backed away holding my gaze on his face, “I can’t stay, and I need my pack and ticket.”

“Stay and abide wit me… My feet feel the fires of hell burning… I am slipping away into the lake of fire!” He fell to his knees before me.

I looked down at Hoss Bozz and tried to imagine the fire. I lifted my eyes, “I need to go with my friends.”

He stood abruptly, shouting out the door at Stan and Dennis, “I curse your friends! I curse them to hell… to burn forever! Dennis … he has no respect!”

 They stood there waiting to see if I was ever going to escape. He went back down on one knee and beseeched me, “Stay and help me, Max. I am damned… I am cursed… de hounds of hell are coming for me! I am... I am... I am sinking... swallowed up into the Belly of the Beast. My feet are already burning in Hell!”

“I need my pack.”

Josephine came forward with one of the girls holding the pack. I could see that it was soaking wet and the extra blue jeans in it were soaked as well. She held back waiting for Hoss Bozz to okay the transaction. “I must go with my friends.” I then imagined the curses that were to follow and the antidote for them came to me in that same moment Hoss Bozz let out a screeching wail.

“Den, I damn you Max! You choose pussy-blood-clot… you go wit deez pussy-blood-clot… you go wit dem to Hell to burn!”

I steeled myself and saw the antidote was faith in that something that was with me on the peyote quest. I saw that the power of love was a higher power… high enough at any rate to defend me against any curse. I wasn’t superstitious. I just felt pity for Hoss Bozz instead of contempt. If anything was to be done about the curse, I realized that whatever I chose, I could not return it. I found the words coming out of my mouth. It was as though they weren’t my words at all, “Hoss Bozz, Jah loves you, but I can’t stay with you in your suffering. I have to go with my friends.”

I turned my back on Hoss Bozz as soon as one of his girls handed me my pack. It was eerily ominous the way that we could hear Hoss Bozz ranting, raving and hurling every possible curse at us as we walked back down the muddy path to the road. Once we got out of sight I checked my sodden bag for my ticket and found only a partial stub left of it. I realized then that this character had no intention of letting me go. My ears burned as I heard the Great Hoss Bozz curse me as I walked away: “I curse you more than the others Mr. Max! You pussy-blood-clot, I curse you with the fires of hell that are at my feet today!”

I started to turn back when Stan grabbed my arm, “Where the fuck you goin’?”

“I’ve got to get my ticket… the mother fucker has my ticket back there.”

“Man, don’t worry about our tickets: Mine is missing too. Do you think those goons at customs won’t let us leave here?”

“Yeh, you’re right. I never thought of that.” I laughed for the first time in three days.

Dennis was walking swiftly in front of us on the road. We passed pristine old-growth bamboo thickets with stalks having a girth of two feet and more. There were banana orchards and an occasional farm house. A cane truck returning from the cane fields loaded with workers stopped and gave us a lift through the winding mountain roads. The truck stopped now and then to let off a few of the cane field workers or take on a hitch-hiker.

Ours were the only white faces to be seen walking on the mountain roads. This caused more than a little curiosity and friendly questions were asked, “Where are you from, mon.

Another joined the questioning, “Have we ever been to Chicago? I have a brother deere.”

A large man with a giant’s hands was chewing on a stick of cane and passed one to us, “Where you going?”

I stuck to our original story we told at customs, “We were doing some fishing.”

“Where are your feeshing poles, mon?”

Oh, my god, I just then realized we left them with Hoss Bozz! So, I lied, “They are being kept by a friend.”

Another was suspicious, “White folks go places like Ocho Rios?”

Stan recued the conversation, “That’s where we’re going now.”

We stayed a night camped out above a place called Dunn’s River Falls of James Bond, Dr. No, fame. It wasn’t much of a tourist stop then… especially at night. We slept close to the falls upstream a little where the mosquitoes weren’t so bad. 

Chapter 21. Strangers in a Strange Land (pt.3)

There was still another place like

New Mexico where the transplanted, 

the outcasts,and indigenous 

people of the land, hung on near

 the edges of civilization with 

laughter and music

(pt.3)

There had been no spiders. That morning we held out our thumbs to passing trucks and vehicles that passed us by. One Mercedes with two Jamaican men, in starched white shirts and close-cropped hair, gave us a lift for a few miles to the next bread stand. I was concerned that they wanted to know too much about where three white boys were going and what they were up to in the hills.

One spoke directly to Dennis, “Hey, Mon, when you come to Jamaica did you bring guns?”

“Naw,” Dennis drawled, “We brought no guns, Mon.”

“Next time you come you bring guns?”

“What you want guns for, Mon?” Stan picked up on the tone of the patois.

“It’s some ting we need to have in dis here place… we need guns. Americans have guns… more dan we can have here.”

I had enough of this talk and was suspicious of these two men. They could easily be police and I was annoyed that Dennis and Stan seemed oblivious to this. I laid on the patois deliberately mocking Stan and Dennis, “What business you be havin’ drivin’ a big-assed Mercedes, Mon?”

The question apparently turned the subject from guns to whatever else we might be up to. Dennis cut-in to ask, “You know where Hoss Bozz lives?”

The driver, who had been silent up to then, volunteered despite the glare of his partner’s stern expression, “Yes, he up deer ‘yond Maroon Town… he has a place in the hills.”

He dropped the patois and spoke with a perfectly clear English accent and asked, “What do you boys want from Hoss Bozz?”

The other asked. “So, that’s what you are doing here? He’s more trouble than you need to deal with. You boys would be better off back in Montego Bay than to get caught up with the likes of Hoss Bozz.”

After that exchange, we were let off on the road to hike a few miles more. As we rounded a turn, one of many turns on the way, a boy on a bicycle approached and passed us. He turned back, peddling as fast as he could. We neared the town (if one would want to call it that) and arrived at a bread stand in what one might think of as a village. I could see that a village meant nothing more than a slightly denser collection of farm houses along the road.

Everything was green, and a stream ran through the valley below the road with round women and lithe girls in colorful scarves and dresses that were bent over stones in the creek-bed, washing clothes. The road and the green valley led to a bread stand. A bread stand was the community center equipped with a juke box and Red Stripe Ale on sale along with bread. Every available young man of the village was there out of curiosity… curiosity for and about the three white boys in the mountains where few tourists ever ventured in cars.

We ate bread and fruit and drank a few ales. Dennis told us to save the bread wrappers. The music that wafted from the juke-box was the same as at the club in Montego Bay. I was to find out later that it was, pre-Reggae Ska, club music, but I had no idea what either genre was in 1970. I just knew I enjoyed it. Ganga high… the next disc played… it was a slower beat… one I could sink into it… just moving to the subtle joy of it.

I apparently enjoyed it so much that one of the men hanging out at the bread stand stuck his face right in front of mine, grinning as he spoke in a cadence that moved with his feet and whole body from feet to torso, “You like to dance… You dance … go ahead and dance, Mon. Go ahead ‘n dance to de music, Mon, dance.” All in the tiny bread-stand room were dancing… all except Dennis.

I was sure I had found it. I could feel it in the music. There was still another paradise on earth like New Mexico where the outcasts, the transplanted, and indigenous people of the land, hung on to an earth centered culture near the edges of civilization. Dennis had one of the locals show us to a grower’s plantation up the road a few miles. He’d been there before, and knew the grower, but it’s always best to have a local along just in case. A tin roof over a veranda and house was nestled in the hillside beyond a clearing.

It was humbler than any image I held in my mind of what a plantation might be as we approached the place. We were greeted warmly and invited inside before the afternoon rains. The Grower had several sons and daughters who were happy to wait on their guests like princes from far away. Several other men from the surrounding village came around as we ate a curried chicken and plantain concoction.

After eating, the rains stopped, and the men sat on the steps of the front porch talking. Dennis brought out our bread wrappers and gave them to The Grower along with a pouch of tobacco. The old man’s calloused hands deftly fashioned a cone in which he mixed the ganja and tobacco. After crafting one spliff, he passed it to Dennis and began on a second. After passing a spliff out to each person, conversation took on a more serious tenor.

“So, Mon, wot you are doin’ here?” The old man spoke while the others directed their attention first to Dennis.

“I have dese tools,” He answered as he pulled a canvass wrapped set of wood carving tools from his pack. “I plan to carve wit dem.”

The old man’s eyes lit up at this, “Wot do you carve wit dese?” He tested the edge of a chisel with his gnarled forefinger drawing a slit of crimson on it.

He sucked on the finger a moment and turned to me, “Lemme see yer hand?” I held out my hand and the man took it in his, then turned it palm-up, asking, “Wot you do wit dis here hand?”

I was loaded. This was the most powerful pot I’d ever smoked. The best I could do was say, “What?”

“Are you a teef?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your hand has not seen work, Mon … are you a teef?”

I saw that it would do no good to be evasive or angry with him, but I had no good answer, “I’m no thief.”

“If you are not a teef, den wot do you do wit dese hands?” He held onto my hand more tightly as though he wouldn't let go until I provided a satisfactory answer.

After sticking the spliff behind my ear like the way the others did I pointed to my head with my free hand, “I haven’t found what it is I do with my hands. Maybe I am a philosopher who uses his head instead of his hands.”

All of the men laughed as the mood shifted to a lighter mode, “Max? A philosopher? Eh? A better kind of teef!” and there was more laughter. “You come here for dee troot? You get dee troot in you hands.”

“How did you know my name?”

“Your hands… dey tell me, mon.”

I didn’t tell him my name and I’d never been under this kind of scrutiny before… at least from people whose respect I dearly wished to have.

My belly filled with curried chicken, rice, and black beans, and my head full of ganga, I sat amid wise and good council on that sultry evening filling my starving soul. Something was revealed of my character there. These people were no longer cartoon characters of quaint locals. They’d become spiritual watchmen, gleaning what they could of what I was about before they sent us off the next morning with a bread-sack full of ganga. My Hands and mind had to find meaning of their own… to become calloused from hard work before anything of value would come of either.

The men went off to their homes and we laid out our bed rolls on the floor of the veranda where we’d laughed and talked earlier. Dennis asked the old grower, “So, what can you tell me about Hoss Bozz?”

“Oh, mon, you don’ want to know dat, do you?”

“I been hearing about him, I need to know for myself.”

I drifted off to sleep vaguely hearing words like; “gangster”, “evil-mon”, “scourge”, “Babylon”, as Dennis and the old man talked. The next day we lit out on the road with a gift of at least a half-pound of ganja, “Here, you will need this as you pass through these hills.”

Stan mentioned it first, “You ain’t goin’ to go find this Hoss Bozz are you?”

“You guys don’t have to go with me.”

Stan looked disappointed, “How about you, Max?”

I no longer cared, I was so high, “Sure, why not.”