Deepwater

Oil and gas professional Daniel Ignatius Grace
enters a world of intrigue in the Gulf of Guinea…

Medicine, Man

Charity’s oddly beautiful. Her tight curls kiss her bent nose 

Two hundred twenty-nine pounds. 

Six-one. 

“You’re a big man, Mr Grace,” Charity says. 

He knows all to well: his height and weight are his downfall, not an advantage.

Her eyes smile at him, then she ushers him into a room. Charity lifts the color-coded flag outside the door for Dr. Bloom’s attention. Daniel, he’s blue.

He sits on the bed covered in white wax paper staring at the jars of tongue depressors and swabs and the box of rubber gloves. He drops off the examining table, the paper feely like foil, and chooses a magazine. Car and Driver takes on the latest SUVs on page 104. They look like giant tablets.

Charity returns shortly with a clipboard and form. “You’ll have to answer page one on your own, Mr. Grace. And could you please change into this gown?” She deposits the dab of soft fabric in his lap. 

He silently complains to the joke of a garment, keeping his ropers on. He settles onto the paper, slick under the fuzz of his butt.

Has he ever had any of the following? 

Heart murmur? 

Daniel’s all heart.

High blood pressure? 

What’s high? 

Broken bones? 

Plenty – football and car wrecks. 

Concussion? 

Twice.

Operation? 

Seizures or epilepsy? 

Anger, does that count?

Have you fainted or passed out? 

Many a time.

Have you ever been knocked out? 

Oh yeah. Broken nose too.

Have you ever had to stop running because of chest pain or shortness of breath? 

A man can never stop running.

Have you had any significant allergies (medication, foods)? 

Wives. Bosses. Lawyers. Priests.

Do you have a prescription for use of adrenaline, inhalers or other allergy medicine? 

Whisky? Corona? Not likely. 

Do you have asthma? 

Only pussies have asthma.

Daniel chuckles at question twelve: Do you have any missing or non-functioning organs such as testes, eye, kidney, etc.? 

I once had an extra organ that made me perfect and invincible, but it failed me.

The tetanus and Hepatitis B booster questions he leaves blank. He’s going to need a whole new set of shots anyway. 

His heart picks up over the word hernia.

He doesn’t hear Charity come back. 

“Before you urinate into this cup, Mr. Grace, I’d like to take a sample of your blood for the lab. You know what blood-type you are?” 

“I don’t know.” He’s staring. She does have nice – 

“If you were in a crash, Mr. Grace, it’d be a matter of life or death.” Her tone of condescension is smooth as honey. 

Oh, he wants to grope her. Is it the white uniform? Is it the life jumping around under his skin?

That’s crass, he concludes. And Charity looks like she can defend herself. 

At the sight of her manhandling the needle, his compunction droops to a nub of fantasy. 

Charity tightens the rubber tourniquet. She bangs on a vein. She washes the spot. She asks, to distract him, “What do you think about those Rockets losing?”

“Hakeem wasn’t up to winning,” he says as she levers the needle under. It’s abrasive and sucks at the liquid of his consciousness. 

“Man’s getting old in a league for young men,” she says. “That spot might hurt for a few days. I’ll put a band-aid on it.”

“Not only Hakeem,” he says. Daniel’s happy to see the puncture covered up. 

“Now I’ll go down the hall and you can pee in the beaker,” she says. “Don’t splash.”

Daniel twiddles his thumbs in the meantime. He stares at his jar of hot pee.

Dr. Bloom enters with a flourish. A patch of fluid mars his white coat. A stethoscope worms out of one pocket. His brow is slightly sweaty, and some facial hair clings to his upper cheeks like down. An Ahab-like beard inscribes the edge of his jaw. “How many days you been waiting, cowboy?”

“I’m here for a physical, doc.”

“Anything wrong?”

“They won’t hire a man who’s not 100 percent.”

“They want your body, do they?”

“Yep, this old bag of bones and shit.”

“Now, Mr. Grace, that’s no way to talk. You fill out the form?”

“Yep.”

“Um, Daniel, You’re going to be able to pay for this, I take it?” 

“Cash the right color?” His insurance is out.

“It’s always the right size.” Dr. Bloom often finds himself talking in clichés. “Anything bothering you, Daniel, since that tennis elbow?”

Dr. Bloom’s bedside manner delves deeper, but Daniel’s not overly forthcoming with words as he’s prodded, purpled and poked. The patient’s pliant as putty, mute in the examination between medicine and subject.

It’s awkward explaining what troubles him, and Dr. Bloom isn’t a shrink. Daniel  can’t explain that he’s as black as the inside of a goat, that he’s been eating garbage and plastic.

Dr. Bloom swivels on his stool.

There’s a scar on Daniel’s right retina.

The hot beam of scope roasts his ears.

His teeth and mouth look alright. 

There’s no significant deterioration to his eyes, ears, nose and throat. 

Dr. Bloom notes the patches of eczema on his elbows and knees.

“Charity will take you for an x-ray, momentarily.” 

Dr. Bloom moves on to treat another patient in the interim, changing the flag outside the room. Daniel reads Car and Motor before Charity escorts him to radiology. Can he afford a new truck?

When Charity leaves the room, he panics for an instant as if he’s in the flash of White Sands. His chest heaves nervously and he almost regurgitates from apprehension.

Once Armageddon’s over, she asks, “Mr. Grace, you’d like to do the healthy heart exam now or later?” 

He shrugs. It’s in tatters anyway. What does it matter?

“We’ll do it now then, if you don’t mind.”

He peels down his gown to his waist. 

She studies him from the corner of his eye as she tends to the machine. He’s one of the better-looking nine-to-fivers. Those arms and abs look like they’ve seen some iron.

Charity applies the cool gel and pads of the EKG, her fingers lightly grazing his chest, pausing over a blondish cowlick. 

“It looks like the kind of probe we’d drop down a hole,” he says, trying to reassure himself about the machine that looks way too much like a polygraph.

The electrodes adhere around his chest. The wires are cold like old pasta. Her hand is reassuring, but not enough to dispel the fear. 

“We’ll do you at rest, first,” she says, “Then the treadmill.”

His heart is racing and he’s nowhere near the outskirts of relaxed. Having ignored the warnings, he might as well be plunging towards the Bosporus, his wings torn and useless, his chest burnt by the sun. 

“You’re a mess, Mr. Grace. Take several deep breaths from your stomach, please.” Somehow her voice restores physical order as he obeys, gliding towards a landing. “That’s better.”

Docile, he slurps in the air as the EKG records his data. 

“Shall we try the treadmill?” Charity’s a great nurse, her commands all dressed as questions.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, rising onto his shoulders, careful not to rip off the ‘rodes, dripping wires likes a ‘manoid. 

She urges him onto the treadmill with a swat on the buttocks, and Charity starts him off at a steady walk. He jumps when she ups the pace. She can’t remember a mature male patient being so flighty. Daniel’s more horse than man. 

Running now, he’s sweating and having trouble with his robe. Of course there’s not a single indicator of a natural environment in the clinic, but he somehow can almost smell the prairie, that country that is not county at all, the coyotes and antelope fleeing at the sight of the naked wild man who moves nothing like the wind undulating the nap of grass. 

“Mr. Grace? You can stop now.” She warns him with her tone.

She’s right. The electrodes are off and he’s panting like a dog. You can’t hide from machines. That much he knows. 

“You can tie yourself up.”

He’s inviting, a big sweaty sexy white man covered in gel but she can’t do it – it’s best to leave married weirdoes alone. 

“I’ll be back to collect you in a sec,” she says, want in her voice like sugar. 

He knows what that sounds like.

Back in the examination room, reading the magazine, Daniel’s almost convinced he needs a new truck. Too bad the severance pay’s all gone. Guess that’s why he’s taking on something new and brash, a job that requires brawn not smarts. 

Bloom’s back and resumes.

“This is where your liver stops,” Dr. Bloom says, tapping along until his finger doesn’t thud somewhere under Daniel’s ribs.

Then the real examination begins: the hernia cough and the peek up his colon at his prostate. Even his wife Kylie doesn’t get to do that. 

When the finger’s gone, he almost takes a shit on Bloom’s floor.

Dr. Bloom doesn’t spot any chancre or wart on his genitals near the conclusion of the examination. “If you don’t use it, you lose it,” he chuckles, Daniel withering in the rubber glove.

Bloom assumes an authoritative pose in the examination room as he wraps up and disposes of the swabs, depressors and gloves. The chart’s almost full. “You’re in good shape, Mr. Grace. I can recommend you. You’ve got a good heart. But you’re losing some audio.” 

Guns? 

The Stones?

High blood pressure?

“I’ll sign it once I get the lab results. Until then, good luck. Keep fit. You’ll probably get that job. But you might want to get a hair cut.” Dr. Bloom extends his spongy hairy hand with a wink. “Reception will give you the score.”

“You can change back into your clothes, Mr. Grace,” says Charity, who has reappeared to gather the cold pee. 

Outside the clinic it’s humid.  His pocket’s much lighter thanks to the old doctor. Daniel pushes into oven-like interior of his scratched-up pickup. 

The AC cools it down quick. 

He thanks himself that Dr. Bloom can’t find out what’s really going on inside. Bloom can’t know that the old mountain’s sick. 

***

“Is that it?” Kylie asks. She can’t believe he needs so little, a duffel bag of socks and underwear. The Louis L’amour and Wilbur Smith novels are topped off with cans of Folgers and Planters peanuts. 

“I get a jumpsuit out there,” he says to her. He’s delighted about his new gig – that it’s so far away from home. He can’t wait to close the door. 

“I can’t stop you from doing whatever you want to do, but I do care,” Kylie says, pinching his bicep and flexing her calves for a kiss. Maybe it isn’t over-over.

 “Take care,” he says, preferring the ground to her eyes. “See you in six weeks.”

Looking at him, she can’t remember ever seeing him so erect with pride. Or stiff with fear? She hands it to him. She wouldn’t go offshore just because Danny Jr. wants an education. Her admiration is mixed up with her foreboding.

“I love you, Daniel.” Honestly, she’s glad. He’s been a stranger and she’ll take her time spending the signing bonus.

“Love you too,” he says, dispassionately repeating her. 

They’ve been way too stressed to fuck.

Hashes of light hatch the living room. The sofa’s mobbed with the clothes he’s rejected. 

A muted toot beckons.

“My cab’s here.” It’s the step to a new life. He doesn’t expect Kylie to come to the airport.

They clasp remotely. Nothing is more transparent or easier to digest.

“Bye,” he says, “Poseidon’s waiting. Say bye to Danny Jr. when he’s home from school.”

 The front door’s decorated with spider webs. They’ve avoided saying anything horrible. 

“I love you, honey,” she says again, deceiving herself, her voice dispersing over the lawn. He’s going to be better in six weeks? She’s apprehensive. Africa’s not Houston even if Daniel says so.

The Lincoln pulls away from the house. Daniel blows Kylie a kiss, his head stooped and worn. He takes one last look. The car passes the ditches that keep the flood at bay. He’s never liked the neighborhood. Who knows whom? Names, spouses or kids, they’re all confetti in commuterville. The taxi turns past Freedom Bowl and Spec’s Liquor to the freeway. 

Fuck ‘em! 

It’s best to leave like this, without drama, without too many feelings or words, because they’ll all have to get used to it.

He laughs looking at his bank and the old defunct drive-thru. He remembers those tubes of money that Kylie would order on Fridays in the days before ATMs. 

Wu-wu, calls the mournful horn of the locomotive and coal roaring east parallel with I-10. Wu-wu! Wu-wu! 

The candy-striped arms fall into place. Traffic halts across the frontage road. A loose truck skitters over the verge and joins the highway. 

The seams in the cement beat into his pelvis. The grooves make a trance-like howl.

He despises Houston. 

Sweat spreads down his clothes. 

The radio plays the white man’s blues, Stevie Ray.

They swing onto the belt to Intercontinental. 

He rolls down the tinted window to take a better look – steakhouses and gentlemen’s clubs among the home repair and furniture warehouses, something for the homebodies before they fly away.

The meter ticks big red barred digits as night comes, the sky colored like a beetle. He looks into the red dots descending into the airport, the intermittent flicker of aircraft. The music of the road amplifies and they pass through the security gates after a perfunctory glance. 

“So much for homeland security,” snorts the driver, anxious to be rid of the fidgety fellow tearing up the upholstery in back. Jerk.

The doors rotate ahead. Daniel holds the tongues of ticket and passport and strides to the monitors. He has a hard time finding World Airways check-in, but he’s in the right terminal. The interior is chipped, shabby, used and dull; people are the only bright objects. 

Still, standing in the queue of rough men in flannel, overalls and cowboy boots, he’s encouraged. He’s not just digging up the backyard and kneeling in the dirt day after day. The sweat builds under his arms like a storm.

“Good day, sir, may I be of help?” asks the representative.

He presents his ticket booked by Poseidon, his passport stamped with the inky remains of a few romantic Mexican getaways to Cancun, and his invitation letter to enter Equatorial Guinea, signed by the Minister of Oil and Mines.

“I’m afraid we’re overbooked in business class, Mr. Grace.”

“But I thought the whole point of business class was not to be overbooked?” 

“I’m sorry, sir, could you accept a seat in coach?”

“I know the drill, buddy. I’d like four hundred dollars in travel vouchers.” He can be impudent.

“World Airways is a charter, sir. We don’t do vouchers. But we can reimburse you. Or your company.”

Accept, he concludes, in the interest of diplomacy. One night’s bad sleep can’t harm a man.

He answers the obligatory questions. He’s packed it all and he doesn’t have any sharp objects. At the concourse he removes whatever they want: the suede jacket filled with peanuts and toothpicks, the white Reeboks rescued with odor-eaters, the old Timex, the quarters and nickels and the Motorola. 

Customs interest falls on his pills. 

“Those are Lariam and Malarone for malaria and those nondescript white fellas are melatonin,” he tells the two Joes. 

There’s no confusion when he shows Dr. Bloom’s prescription. 

He’s checked his pocketknife but they confiscate the batteries in his Maglite instead. 

He can’t figure that one out. Now batteries?

It takes some time to put it all back on. 

Relieved to be walking to the gate, Daniel’s way ahead of himself – lift-off! He hasn’t left the ground but he’s already gaping at the crop circles along the Third Coast, pulling away from the brown slurry of the Mississippi Delta to the blue waters of the Caribbean. 

On the concourse at Lone Star News he settles for Sports Illustrated, Texas Monthly and Playboy. Magazines aren’t his demise – he doesn’t care about buying stuff. He figures Poseidon will provide Internet if he’s serious about sports, politics and self-satisfaction.

The Victoria Secret’s shop is no lure at all. That’s for homeward bound.

Out of boredom Daniel eats four cheeseburgers at Mickey D’s. Without Kylie, he’s a garbage disposal. 

At the gate he keeps an eye on the old boob churning out Wall Street briefs. 

Go up! – his money’s somewhere in the stock market like every other Sam. 

He recognizes the type in the plastic chairs – rough men in jeans and t-shirts drinking cans of beer. Coming or going, that’s the only life roughnecks can live. 

The crescents tumble down his throat. Munch-munch. He loves cashews.

The crummy public address crackles. 

Luanda? 

Nouakchott?

It’s not their turn. 

No one calls Malabo.

Daniel glares at the smelly Playboy. It’s not for him, he decides, glossing over the logos and goods between the articles. Materialism isn’t working for him. His needs are dirt, meat and sunlight. A great waft rises from a Gucci ad. He tears it out but it’s not sufficient – peuw.

The area around the gate fills with extract and aroma. It’s stifling and he scratches his neck. 

A newly arrived woman in a sharply cut camel suit is clearly the source. 

Her or her people, he wonders, as he catches sight of her entourage dressed to the nines and burdened with name-brand shopping bags, cell phones and jewelry. 

Whitney Houston or Oprah? 

Some other VIP?

What celebrity would want to go to Malabo? 

Whoever she is, she won’t surrender her Louis Vuitton bag.

Maybe it’s a nice place.

Rather than stare, he ducks into Texas Monthly – reliable in its sly way for the scoop on the Lone Star State. He chokes when he sees the paparazzi shots of his old boss remarrying some young blonde at the Fort Worth Country Club. 

Asshole.

Flipping to the feature on Hill Country stud farms, Daniel’s intrigued. 

Is that arching eyebrow rising artfully in his direction?  Is that a studied smile of appreciation, acknowledgment or salutation?

Kylie? Who’s Kylie compared to these new eyes.

It must be his size-fourteen feet stretched out onto the adjoining chair that are attracting her attention. 

Or is his mango-like musk overwhelming the mixture of lemongrass, neroli and geranium seeping from the entourage obediently clustered around its queen? 

A gazelle-like shawl binds her shoulders. Her voice is a high musical French, toned with an authoritative resonance, and her people quiver when she speaks. She’s got an overbite and a flip in her hair. Daniel likes that. 

Must be time. 

The World Airways staff bustles around the gate. The intercom cracks with the first calls. The entourage and madam are first.

“Mr. Grace, I’m sorry, we really can’t put you in business. You’re still 19A,” says the mawkish World Airways representative from the desk.

No cloud-bed – that’s a bad omen. He would sacrifice an egg to guarantee a good journey. He goes in with the steers like any other piece of meatspace.

Daniel ducks through the hatch into the aluminum capsule smelling like plastic, kerosene and people. Business is already filled with expensive scent and fabric.  

The elegant lady occupies what he guesses was his seat. 

She’s clearly the center of attention. 

He can’t resist. “That was my seat, honey.” 

She studies him over the top of her chunky Versace shades and smiles pleasantly, her teeth stained with her aubergine lipstick, her cheeks pulled high over her cheeks.

Daniel smiles back from the corner of his mouth and almost extends his hand to introduce himself. 

The way to her is blocked by a Moroccan bodyguard in a designer suit. He nods no. 

Daniel should blunder on. 

He squeezes into seat 19A next to the escape hatch. At least it’s a bulkhead! 

A group of well-lubricated roughnecks begin to flop across the rest of 19, joshing drunkenly as they pass a Hustler centerfold back and forth. 

Nice one – nothing like a little sodomy to comfort the pre-flight mind.

The last one to arrive is the biggest and broadest. A large scar traverses his red face, his long black hair’s pulled into a pony tail. He’s in B and C.

Daniel’s shoulders do battle with his gigantic neighbor.

“You’re with Poseidon too?” the fellow asks, his voice dull with liquor.

“Yep,” Daniel agrees.

“No shit. They’re a pretty good outfit. Good bonuses. I know.” He cracks open a frozen Budweiser and empties the can in three deep gulps. 

“Last chance for the King,” he says, wiping the froth from his lips and disregarding the viperous glance of a flight attendant. It’s gone in a blink, the can crushed in the oaf’s fist. The cracks in his hands are impregnated with Penzoil. 

“No good brew out there?” Daniel ventures.

“It’s dry out there, Gomer. We don’t see too much of the beach, all that dark green jungle. Trawler might barter with us, and we give them whatever ain’t fastened down on deck for some palm wine or malamba rum. That’s some nasty stuff – worse than the ‘shine up Choctaw. And palm wine, that’s like drinking cum.”

He’d be wise not to ask. “Any advice?”

“It’s your first time, Gomer?”

“Yep.”

“Know the name of your rig?”

“The Jade.”

“Hey, imagine that! Hear that? JoJo, Chico, Gigi! Yo, guys! Gomer here’s a first timer comin’ to the Jade!” Bigfoot’s loud. This is his moment to brag. 

JoJo, Chico and Gigi vaguely wave and nod from their seats.

Their gleeful faces are threatening. What do they know that he doesn’t? It must be that they’re drunk.

“My name’s Bigfoot. Me and my buddies, we’re on Jade too. You’re the new manager? We could do with a new guy.”

It’s that obvious? Even without his old suit? “Nah, man, mud.”

“My only piece of advice, Gomer: don’t piss off Sherm the Worm – he’s the toolpusher. His buddy’s Egghead, the radio operator. They can make your life living hell.”

Daniel’s mashed against the window like a bean, but it’s Bigfoot who’s making the sacrifice. World Airways did give him three seats. 

Bigfoot reaches between his legs into his bag and extracts another can of Bud. He kicks off his size-twenty-two Tony Lamas. A leather holster is sewn inside the right boot. Thankfully, empty.

“A man never knows till he step offshore what he is. You find out but all you gotta do’s work.” 

Daniel rifles in his bag for melatonin. A series of satisfied hoppy burps resonate through the old MD-11, taut like a drum. He swallows a quartet of the white pills and waits for trans-Atlantic dreams to come. 

Bigfoot’s asleep before Daniel. The powwow’s over. 

Daniel’s obliged to reach over the giant to accept a Bloody Mary and plate of mystery meat. Bigfoot’s plaid shirt and denim overalls rise and fall as regularly as a metronome. 

He pushes his head against the cold, frosty window. An approximation of sleep underwhelms him. Anxiety and excitement about arrival are right beneath his eyelids. Objects and scenes incubate in his egg – his dead parents blowing apart like sawdust, lists left on his workbench, wind whistling through barbed wire, powertools and extension cords, clipped sentences like dry leaves, clouds and land melting into a surreal collage. 

It strangely makes him hard. 

Maybe he should see a psychoanalyst, like Kylie says.

Daniel climbs over Bigfoot sometime in the night. Folds of fat bind his neck in place. The alcoholic smell reminds him of Kylie, reeking of cigarettes and cocktails, home late from some raucous girls’ night out, sucking off male strippers or whatever it is she does for kicks. 

He leans against the escape hatch in his socks, a blanket-like poncho over his shoulders, his lungs dry. 

What bad things is she doing tonight? 

He closes his eyes and feels himself next to her warm, scented body, but it’s only Bigfoot. 

Crystals stretch over the double-glazed plastic window. 

“Can you not sleep, monsieur?” asks a high female voice. 

Daniel’s heart warms to the sound of monsieur, exotic and arousing. He turns to find himself blinking at the woman who took his seat. Her head is wrapped in a scarf decorated with palms and papayas. Her gown runs with the same pattern, what is not obscured by a shawl of crenulated blue silk. 

“You too, ma’am?” he replies.

“I’ve insomnia and it’s ‘orrible.”

“Too bad,” he says. “What happened to the suit?” 

“I’m going home to the traditional way,” she says, her hand pushing against the fabric from waist to hip.

He coughs. The air is crisp. “I don’t believe I know your name.”

“I’m Candida. Formally, I’m whatever the people call me.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s not important.” She’s testy.

“Well, my pleasure, Constance,” he says, “I’m Daniel. Daniel Ignatius Grace.” 

They almost step toward one another to shake hands but the protocol does not happen. He unconsciously remembers the block from the stiff who must be asleep.

“How you like my seat, ma’m?” he asks.

“What do you mean, monsieur?” Candida pushes her chin out in innocence.

“You’ve got my seat. I’d be sleeping comfortably if it weren’t for all those people.”

“Surely you are not angry with me?” She bats her eyelids a moment. 

As if that will pacify him. Daniel shrugs his shoulders facetiously. 

Candida diplomatically answers. “You’re going to Malabo for tourism, Daniel?”

“No, I’ve a job.”

“Ahh, another oil man perhaps?”

“Afraid so. I gather the plane’s full of them.”

“Make sure to see some of our country. Not many of you do. It’s a very nice paradise. We don’t eat one another. In fact, it’s we who find you whites so shocking, even after 400 years of knowing you.” Two little sponge-like triangles of spittle gather in the corners of her mouth. 

Daniel pretends not to notice. “I’m going home in six weeks.”

“Maybe you will like it so much that home is not so good. We have very nice girls. Maybe you will fall in love.” The last sentence weighs like lead.

“Fall out of love is more like it.”

“Oh la la! What troubles you, monsieur?”

“My wife.”

“Is she a nice lady? Or a bad lady?”

“That’s the problem. She’s too nice.” He says it so adeptly that he doesn’t realize he’s identified the problem.

“Probably you work too hard like my husband Teddy.”

Why’s he wasting his time talking to this cow? Is it loneliness? Is that why people talk so goddamned much?

“Come now, monsieur Daniel, you are not a man without charms.” She’s enjoying flirting with this man and wrings her hands together in a mixture of desire and woe.

He tries to be objective, at least as a cautionary measure, but he’s bursting with curiosity. So what if her lips are as full as two grubs, if a mole rests under her right nostril, if a cluster of diamonds on each earlobe dangles like berries. 

“Our country’s motto is Peace, Unity and Justice. I would like to add one thing, Love. Then we wouldn’t need justice. But Teddy won’t have it.”

What is it? They’re jiving just because she’s nice?

“How do I get in touch?” Daniel asks, almost embarrassed at his question.

“Malabo is a small town. You’ll find me, I’m sure. You can ask for Darius and he’ll refer you to me. I run several important charities in Malabo, so that might be the place to start. Bon jour, monsieur. See, the light is coming. It’s a new day.” 

Daniel impulsively reaches toward Candida but his hand glances off her Cartier bracelets. 

She’s faster and, recoiling, she says, “I shall see you in Malabo, monsieur Daniel. I cannot, how do you say, join the mile-high club.” 

Candida knows how to provoke and she disappears beyond the curtain to her people snoozing in business. 

He stands for a while longer. The light is coming faster, sweeping across the clouds in a line that eats up the darkness. 

Daniel straddles Bigfoot. The guy snores like a piece of granite, and Daniel pushes the behemoth out of 19A as best as he can. Daniel stares through the porthole. Why get any shut-eye now? 

His ears ring with her alluring French accent. Her words cascade high and tumble low through his mind. They are imported with double entendre and the possibility of the exotic. 

When it comes to women, he’s rash, vulnerable and predictable. He hasn’t learned.

Candida’s right – it’s a new day, a good day he might even warrant. He’s already meeting new people instead of frowning at the backyard bog.

***

Bioko Island is like a shoe washed from the African continent. Offshore installations are dotted along the coast like specks of mud – each one’s worth more than most countries. The Niger Delta and Mount Cameroon wallow like two turtles in water and ash on the mainland. 

Daniel anxiously fidgets in economy. He’s virtually burned a hole in his esophagus. Too much melatonin and not enough water. The rank OJ and rancid PBJ hasn’t helped. 

The sun’s bouncing off the flying tube. Bigfoot’s hooded eyes flicker and he stretches, his cudgel-like fist rotating in front of Daniel’s greasy nose. He lifts his head from the pixilated logo of the globe on the bib of his seat.

“Easy,” says Daniel.

“Oh, lay off, Gomer,” retorts Bigfoot. “What’s for breakfast?”

“You missed it… dude?” 

“Oh well, they got killer banana and cooter stew outside the airport.”

“Yuck.”

“You’ll develop a taste for it, Gomer. That and boiled bird. I love boiled bird.” Bigfoot massages his gut hungrily. “See anything out there?” Bigfoot leans across Daniel to the window, his face far bigger than the luminescent lozenge. “That’s Block O.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“And that’s Block H on the other side of the island.” Bigfoot sniggers at some private joke. “After that it’s Nigeria or Gabon. Take your pick.”

“You want three seats?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the idea – Eh, Gomer, got any booze?”

The plane locks to the coordinates of Malabo airport. 

“I’m not much of a boozer.” 

“You will be once you figure out there isn’t any out there. Last chance.”

“Whisky’s my thing.”

“Moonshine!” Bigfoot grunts. “Good medicine, man!” He grins like a goon. Bigfoot’s irritable and prone to violence if he doesn’t have some work, weed or alcohol-like liquid to distract him. 

His pals have woken up too. 

They punctuate every other word with fuck – a clear indication that they’re that much closer to their working environment. They quiet down to speak among one another in a strange raucous patois. 

Daniel wonders, are they Cajuns, Cherokee or Sioux?

The MD-11 levels. The flaps rise. The landing gears punch out. Seatbelts click into place. He’s ready.

There’s a bit of town clinging to the edge of a volcano and a prong of land jutting out into the gunmetal sea. Smoke clings to the sky like cotton. A strip of new buildings runs out to the airport. They’re stenciled with the logos of the internationals –  

When it touches down on the runway fringed with misty jungle, the aluminum shell shakes like a cocktail. Is he coke or tonic? Tequila or rum? Ice and milk? Whisky and water?

The heat and humidity prickles against the shaker. Grass pushes through the squares of concrete. A rank of Bell and Sikorsky helicopters are tethered next to a hangar. The air control tower is striped magenta like a cheap firecracker. There are two terminal buildings, one decrepit and forlorn, the other of glass and steel, the new VIP terminal. 

The engines toggle off and the hatch opens. 

A platoon of soldiers in white uniforms approaches the aircraft. Some hold instruments, others arms – a disconcerting mixture of brass, rocket propelled grenades, woodwinds and M-16s. A fleet of 4x4s is parked on the runway. 

A tornado of heat swirls down the aisles. The strident tones of the Equatoguinean anthem follow, strikingly inquisitional in its key and mood. A rusty ladder touches the white aircraft just so.

The passengers bump down the corridors, pass the galley reeking of Pillsbury crescents, Welches and Sanka, not exactly business class.

Is this a welcome? Or a show of force? 

Daniel strains to see President Teddy, if only for a moment.

Bigfoot’s frame blocks the light from the sun. “Watch it with the Customs fuckers, Gomer. Last time out those niggers confiscated 500 bucks of francs from me. Declare everything you got.” 

They step down the rickety ladder. The band is still looping through the anthem. They touch down on the runway, turf pushing through its cracks.

A tractor and trailer pull up to the aircraft. Carcasses of baggage are ejected. Simultaneously, a group of Moroccan bodyguards usher Candida and her entourage into the 4x4s. 

She’s greeted with low bows, kisses left-right-left and bursts of confetti. 

The green, white and purple Equatoguinean flag covers the bonnets of the mixed fleet of Range Rovers and Land Cruisers. A large color-saturated poster of the president, Theodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, scowls belligerently down from the executive terminal underneath the large type: Bienvenido a Paradiso! Welcome to Paradise! 

He’s not here in person but merely in form. 

Daniel bends down and gathers a grain of confetti. Even reduced to a little square, Teddy looks like he shouldn’t be trifled with.

“That’s for us, Gomer.” Bigfoot gestures at the collapsed terminal. 

The oil men step awkwardly towards the terminal. No cozy shuttle bus here. The humidity greets them with sweaty backs and the trickle of sweat over the lenses of their shades. 

In his flannel shirt and overalls, Bigfoot’s unperturbed. He could be standing in the oily fires of hell and it wouldn’t matter to him.

Daniel’s surprised to see one of his mates has a ukulele. 

“You boys with Poseidon?” enquires a squat fellow coolly standing against the bullet-cracked glass door of the terminal. 

“Yep,” quite a few of the men chorus.

“I’m Sean Coltrane, and I’ve been hired by Poseidon to expedite your passage, among other things. I hope you enjoyed that direct flight cuz it sure don’t get any better than that. Normally you’d be traveling over 36 hours via Europe, but we need you here quick and on time. Some of you know the drill. The rest of you should listen.” 

The guy’s bulky, macho and obviously packing a weapon under his casual uniform: Duck’s Unlimited baseball cap, Ray-Ban shades and Lacoste shirt tucked into a pair of Dockers ending in a pair of black Kenneth Cole loafers. Sean Coltrane’s not a Teva man. 

Bigfoot’s dodgy cowboy boot better not suddenly itch. 

“You guys got your yellow fever certificates and passports? Well, what are you buggin’ out at? Hand ‘em over.”

The procedure’s a breeze with Sean at the helm. They don’t have to bribe anyone. It’s all taken care of. Nonetheless, Daniel can’t help but notice the feral yet disappointed air of the Customs officials who inspect their bags once they’ve claimed their luggage – no carousel but simply a dozen porters plopping bags onto the broken cement of the terminal floor. No one loses a razor or a wad of bills with Sean in charge. He’s been improving things since he arrived. 

Daniel’s hesitant to ponder too much Sean’s role, even if he’s tempted. 

The men are escorted back to the runway. The heliport is separate from the terminal. There are already some other men waiting. This is the start of the trip and the end of the beach. 

The helicopters are waiting, their blades swiping at the air. The air is thick with decibels – whoop-whoop, whoop-whoop, part banshee, part siren, shrieking into thousands upon thousands of revolutions a minute. 

The men won’t need survival suits because the sea’s warm and there’s no risk of hypothermia. Life jackets will do. 

“No alcohol of any description, and no drugs except for prescribed medicines” is posted in the heliport. 

Sean Coltrane inspects the bags. 

“Hey, whose black bag is this?” he calls. 

An African roughneck rises from his plastic seat. 

Sean pulls out several kilo bags of sugar. “You can’t make rum out there, fella, you know that. It’s mine now.” 

Life’s dangerous and exhausting offshore. No one wants alcohol or drugs disturbing the hierarchy. No one wants to fight the next man. No one deserves disrespect or dishonor within the family of oil field Gypsies. Pleasures and dissatisfactions are private business, no one else’s. Either you fit in or you quit.

Daniel fans through an old Playboy dropped on a table. 

Don’t they ever tire of Norman Mailer? How about some new heroes? 

He flips past Norm’s aged wrinkly face interspersed between blonde, airbrushed T and A. 

The old copy of Offshore Oil Times definitely seems sexier, the boom in Africa running across its cover and headlining Horn of Plenty! 

The first paragraph gives him the first indication of what he’s signed up for. He scans the few words that count: billion dollar pace; the players like ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and Total; deepwater discoveries monthly; usurping the Gulf of Mexico!

Holy shit! He knew it was hot in Africa but not this hot. His mouth is watering. He’s hungry!

Daniel doesn’t even have time to digest the statistics on Nigeria and Ivory Coast, much less his new home of Equatorial Guinea – who’s onstream in what block at what depth with what production and what reserves – before his flight’s called and he scurries out to the Bell. 

Ever-present Sean watches the proceedings and singles Daniel out with a pat on the butt. 

“Have a nice trip, Danny Grace,” he says, delivering it like a warning. 

What does he know?

Sean then yells at the men. “Put on your ear defenders when you get in the aircraft!” 

Daniel’s among the first group to board a helicopter. It’s stenciled with the Canadian logo, a hummingbird. He sees Bigfoot jump into a different black, red and white aircraft; he’s almost upset to be separated from the giant. 

He knows who he likes and who he doesn’t like everyone else – lickety-split.

It’s cramped inside. He puts on his ear defenders, and the ground crew dumps Daniel and the others’ bags into the tail compartment. His seatbelt’s tight around his sweaty stomach. 

“I’m Guido and I’m your pilot this morning. I’ll be taking you to the Jade. Flight time is approximately twenty minutes. If we experience technical difficulties, there is a screw driver in the front pocket of your seat.” 

Guido considers this a great joke and he chuckles over the earphones. 

The greenhorns like Daniel laugh. The rest know what to expect from Guido. He’s like all the other air-taxi pilots: white uniform, gold epaulets, black Gucci sunglasses, clairvoyant attitude. 

The engine and rotors rise in pitch, rising to a painful squeal. The helicopter crouches like a cat, then suddenly lunges, airborne. If there’s no wind, there’s no lift. 

The struts of the helicopter pull away from the ground.  

As they levitate from the earth Daniel unexpectedly waves and beams at the handler Sean. 

Like kindness now will help him later. 

The Bell curtseys, dips its nose, swoops forwards over the peninsula pointing into Malabo Bay, the presidential palace sparkling below. A tractor pulls through the gates and tows a vast bale of Candida’s designer luggage. 

He looks down at the bay, the point housing the presidential palace, like any Houston mansion, and the placid green waters and black sand. 

Guido trims the Bell out. If he takes his hands off the controls they’re toast. The difficulty is part of the satisfaction. Go and fly is his motto. He checks the pitch, yaw, air speed, engine speed, altitude and compass as the helicopter settles at 2,000 feet.

Malabo disappears in the nectar-like humidity, haze clinging to the town like honey. 

Say hola to the Bight of Biafra, says Guido through the headphones. 

Daniel wouldn’t turn down a dip. Too bad he’s leaving what they all call the beach. 

Our Big Man, Our Great Lady

Teddy’s breath resonates like a moth, faint and fragile, struggling for the light. His wings drum against the paper, thin and petal-like, on his desk. Teddy’s groggy and moody. Like an old dog, he sleeps most the day and roams most the night. He smells like a dead car, as if he’s made of rust, plastic, rubber and oil. 

Moth, dog, car and man, Teddy lifts the books from the course battered package. His brow momentarily wrinkles into a sign like thunder. His eyes wobble in his head like two loose screws.

The package has been a long time in arriving. The humidity has eaten off the Belgium stamps. The string binding the books together is gone. They’re in a horrible condition, laced with mould and bugs. They couldn’t have been like this when they started. Along with bags of European post, they’ve been trapped offshore. Cargo ships have a hard time gaining berths in Malabo. It’s a small port. 

A lighter might eventually expedite the post to Malabo. After all, the president is waiting, but the books then languish in the customs office. Even Teddy has to wait for his own angels to clear his packages. 

The president muses over the new acquisitions secured by his agent. Books, like white men, don’t live long around the equator; they’re more likely to be found in the post-colonial hubs of Madrid or London than Malabo or Abuja.

Teddy polishes the yellow dust jacket with his hand. The feral boy on the cover holds a spear and shield. He’s running. Teddy studies the cursive font, Ngolo by Françoise Grunne. He smiles, the corners of his mouth lifting into the spaces in his jaw where he has no teeth, reflecting on his cache. 

For ages they thought we could not write books, that we could not tell stories. 

Bah! The whites and their color theory! 

We Fang don’t need intermediaries when it comes to vanquishing history! 

Teddy tucks it among the collection of boy’s adventure stories, patently displayed at eye level. He can hardly wait to read the scallywag Moreau, but he’ll have to do so later. He has appointments that he cannot avoid not matter how much he has the power to cancel them. At least he can delay.

Teddy can’t resist the story of Ngolo – he was once like that boy, full of destiny, drinking from a double-orifice clay vessel, full of the knowledge he must carry the keg of bones, the bieri, and found a new village. 

It’s puerile to love boy’s adventure tales at this advanced age, but he can’t help but succumb to his childhood and the adventures with his brother Army in the forest, the forest. 

They are both children. Teddy and Army prepare to fight in the clearing and reenact the rites of moon, Bokung, and sun, Elong. His totem’s the cock and Army’s totem is the stork. Imitating their father, they paint their backs with polka dots of white karolin. They fashion topis from reeds and splash them with blocks of red and white. They make white tails and beards of hair-like fiber to which they laugh heartily. They arm themselves with lances. 

Army shoves the back end of an arrow into his penis, insisting this is authentic. Teddy won’t do it. 

Poised, they attack the holy salamander-like figures built in the forest floor by their father but their strength only lasts so long against the dirt spirits. 

Teddy craftily sends his brother to fight a tree. Then he whacks him hard enough to knock him out. Teddy’s tree is far too strong an adversary for little Army.

Later, with Army woozy but conscious, they rest against the white skin of Elong, part mummy, part bird, and share a calabash of sugar cane juice, careful not to touch its taboo bottom, full of bad intentions like an anus. 

Then they hear grandfather’s warning, the words dropping in intervals like the notes of a scale bird – it’s time to go back through the glade to the village. 

The huts are lined up along the straight street. 

Grandfather won’t be pleased that they’ve being playing in the sacred grove again. But Elong and Bokung are no more than toys to Teddy and Army. They haven’t grown into spirits of significance yet.

A white man in a muddy smock stands on the porch of their hut. They clasp hands. He appears to admire Grandfather Obiang’s staff, its burnished head carved with four flat diamond faces resting under abstract chevrons. Other village elders of the Engomo clan stand. 

Grandfather Obiang pushes back the long red and blue beads of his helmet behind his ears and they jangle like bells. The Mohawk-like top is studded with cowry shells, buttons and copper studs. Around his waist he still carries his short broad sword, a pangolin embossed on its scabbard, rawhide wrapped around its handle, and filigree on its shank. 

That’s when grandfather says to Teddy, “I order you to go with this man to the school in Bata. We will guard the bieri until your return.” 

Who from Mongomo would have guessed that Grandfather Obiang’s decision would consummate in the black and white photograph framed on the mahogany desk of President Teddy? The faded figure in the creased uniform, a young Teddy, scowls as he shakes the hand of the dean and other Spanish officials at the graduation ceremony at the Saragasso military academy. How the shoes hurt his feet! He winces with the memory. The past is as painful as medicine.

Teddy collects the volumes on his desk. He puffs with a soft breath to the shelves, books interspersed with memorabilia: a rare Taureg bronze of a horseman, his scimitar raised, from Hussain II; an illuminated Bible, autographed by Bob Mugabe;  a swarm of betel nut boxes from Suharto, embellished with hammering and hatches; a wood level from Haile Miriam; jade ashtrays from Chang. His newest addition’s a pair of Mallard decoys, signed by George W., thanking him for opening Equatorial Guinea’s oil reserves; the birds swim around an elegant wood and gold neck rest from Bokassa, his old ally in these parts before the Americans came. He places them one by one and turns to the wall opposite.

A gallery of photographs from his presidential career is arranged in chronological order. The wall is almost full. Some at the beginning are losing shape and focus due to a furry patina of mildew. The young vibrant lieutenant who beat and executed his own uncle is disappearing. The shutters slap gently with breeze.

That his friends are the world’s pariahs doesn’t disturb him. They’re framed in gold like kings, and these men have given him such impressive gifts over a score and more of years as tokens of their camaraderie in rule and terror. During his years of international diplomacy, they haven’t eaten him, so what’s there to worry about. You can’t be guilty by association.

Debts? 

Disease? 

Development?

Rights?

Thanks to the timely and unctuous blessing of oil, these problems have been abridged. His star has risen, slick and fast. Once ignored as a human rights violator and even a murderer, now he’s a leader of civilizing and better influence. 

At the end of the gallery that’s Colin Powell on the wall next to Jacques Chirac. 

Larger mementoes are scattered around his study, so much so he has trouble negotiating the large spacious room. But his favorites are three tiny ivory charms from Seko-Seko: three men around a barrel, a dragon and a troll with a man for a hat. The squat figures remind him of his tribe’s own traditions of sculpture. Occasionally he puts one in his pocket for luck.

A junk’s wooden pulley rests against the wall – that’s from Burma – and he stubs his bare toe maneuvering around it. He hobbles past the mini refrigerator in which he keeps the cigars from Fidel he doesn’t smoke. 

He turns when the fax machines on the stool from Charlie Taylor beeps and spits out a bank confirmation. Abayak S.A., his real estate company, is currently pouring the foundation of Malabo’s highly anticipated Petroleum Club. 

Other men have made the mistake of delegating their power, but Teddy knows better. He is firmly and astutely in control of his family’s accounts. Everyone else can take care of himself.

The business charters are firmly locked in his desk. He has no trouble distinguishing between the companies and with whom he shares the take: 

Otong S.A. – offshore holding with Candida

Sofana and Somagui Forestal – timber with his son Teddy Jr. 

Sonavi – security with his brother Army 

Nusiteles – telecommunications with his brother-in-law

Geogam – liquid petroleum gas with his son Gabriel

Megi – a joint venture with ExxonMobil

GEPetrol – energy 

The money laundering investigators might tend to get confused but not him. So what if the US Senate unearths accounts in the millions at Riggs Bank. Like banks don’t accept money. Like the US has jurisdiction. He owns Equatorial Guinea and its resources, not them. 

It’s no irony that the wall behind his desk is decorated with a souvenir from Traore: a Dogon coffin door. Teddy can feel the outsiders closing in. They’ve surveyed the harbors and counted his security personnel. They’ve assessed his military and his family. They know when he sleeps and when he wakes. They’ll assault by surface or air. They’ll kidnap him or force him into exile or kill him outright and replace him with a nincompoop like Moto from among those opposition jokers in Madrid. Then they’ll freeze his accounts or indict him in a court. They think they smell his blood, the soldiers of fortune and the mysterious puppet masters. The attention’s fabulous but he’d rather smell his own blood first. He’s the one who knows if he’s sick. They will miss him, one way or another. 

As for the insiders, he’s made sure to eliminate them, not directly but through the actions of his administration. 

Bring-bring! Bring-bring!

That’s the first lady’s signal. The heat’s coming and he’d like to finish the engagement before the rain joins the fray.

He has prepared carefully, for he is anxious to see Equatoguineans help themselves. He is their closest link to God, his blood and representative. By his presence and engagement in their troubles Teddy helps them live. He slips on his loafers, the leather tight since the sweat has dried, and locks the door to his office. 

President Teddy has no obligation to do people, much less his wife, but as a philanthropist and devotee of the Virgin Mary, he too must honor the Spanish nuns who have opened a new clinic, something the incompetents in his administration could not achieve.

Darius is right behind him, guarding his slight body, his breath like fire rushing across paper, leaving his eyes black around the edges and red in their centers.

The fleet of black Range Rovers will take them. Candida paces on the steps of the presidential palace. She kisses the president on his hoary lips. He seems large and forthright on this day, whatever her reservations about the slight, sly man that is her husband. The little flags hoisted above their headlights wiggle in the wind. Security follows. 

“Justin and Pastor?” he asks her.

“Sleeping,” she says of their young twins.

Her skin has responded well to the skin abrasion in Paris. She is a ruby chocolate, a bonbon of delight to the president’s eye. Her diamond Movado and gold bracelet softly tinkle on her wrist. Her nails are blue like his suit. The engagement and wedding rings are in place on her left hand, clutching her red Dior tote, a little burnished trapezoid that she adjusts with her other hand, the heavily starched cuffs of her shirt flaring like gauntlets over her forearms. Has she turned Nokia off? She doesn’t want to disturb the day’s success. Pips of diamonds glitter around her neck. Two studs decorate her ears. Her body is arched with pride.

Darius drives with his hands in his gray linen trouser pockets. His loose fitting suit betrays casualness. He has a thin, fine chevron of mustache on his long, fine face, wide-pitched ears and tussled wiry hair. His jacket is unbuttoned; he wears a white v-neck jersey. A gun is definitely under his jacket. Darius knows where to go – the road has been cleared of problems well in advance. 

Vota a Obiang is painted in white on the road in big round letters. The pro-Teddy graffiti is everywhere. Who would dare voice anything else for so wise and fair a leader?

A man with a basket of dead rats he has clubbed in the forest waits on the road – fewer rats mean more snails. The villagers have been forewarned to line up when the motorcade passes. The man with the rats waves his paper flag distributed beforehand by anxious PDGE officials. Lethargically, he and the other villagers shout and dance; they return to the shade once the motorcade has passed. 

The sirens whoop like monkeys. The motorcade doesn’t deviate from Candida’s itinerary. Why make an unexpected stop? What new information are the people going to tell him? That mosquitoes don’t fly? That water is drinkable? That tax isn’t enough? 

Would he hear complaints about the coffee and cocoa rotting in the fields? Because the other Bubis and Fernandiños are afraid to work? Or because the Fang are jealous of their success as farmers and have scared them off? No, but someone might tell him a riddle, something to imply but not tell. 

President Teddy would not have any trouble using his paranoid intellect – he knows no one is to be trusted, certainly not his wives, sons or brothers. 

He asks Darius to turn down the thermostat in the SUV. His skin is tacky like a spiral of fly strip. He reaches for Candida’s hand. There should be at least this much affection between them. They’re beyond the well-paved streets of Pequeño España when he grimaces. The vehicle jogs over another pothole. It’s that pain somewhere in his groin as if some part of him is unwell. He pushes down the window to wave. 

Let them think I’m in excellent health. Let them think I’m immortal. Let them think that I hold their future like a god. 

He has to be careful. He shouldn’t go too far. No one dare warn him, except Stella. She’s waylaid in Sao Tome, her old home. He could make use of a helicopter, if only he weren’t afraid of flying birds. 

Dust steams around the car. They must be there.

It’s the day of Our Great Lady. Palm leaves have been bent in arches over the steps of the new health clinic for the ceremony honoring her. She’s been an important benefactor in funding the clinic in Quartier Los Angeles and a new branch in Newbuil. Even Teddy’s proud, because these are his children that he has protected from money, illness and war. Development has been the plastic bucket and the help of these nuns if anyone’s sick. Why should it be more?

A white ribbon has been drawn across the entrance to the clinic. 

Three male church officials are foremost among the crowd. They’re anxious to prevent the nuns from claiming too much credit or offending the president. There’s also a local representative of the United Nation’s Children’s Fund and a white woman from Catholic Relief straining to meet and greet the elusive president.

Patients and residents fill the background. Tufts of banana trees undulate with breeze where the fincas start. 

The bishop, the dean and the seminary smile in their white gowns, look approvingly through their learned eyewear at the arrival of the motorcade. The bishop’s scarlet cummerbund ends in a long sash. He holds his hands like his colleagues, fingertip to fingertip, equitable and pious. Diminutive, he does not need to hold a bible like the local seminary. The dean remembers his old student, always wanting to better his country, now touching down in Bruno Magli brogues.

The local crowd murmurs behind the cordon of officials and relations around the eucalyptus tree. Everyone’s clutching little statues. It’s the day of Our Great Lady, and they would like some holy water. The bottles are blue or white and have a crown for a cap. They’ve come from Spain, shipped in big and small sizes.  

Candida squints and smiles – it’s not the Virgin Mary they’re clutching, but little statues of her, Candida, the Dame de Cœur, suffocating the flag of Equatorial Guinea emblazoned with the letters of the PDGE between her praying hands. 

What is the use of a clinic here? She wishes she knew where they were. What doctor would sit in the bush? Candida doesn’t know where the people come from, here on the edge of Malabo, trying to subsist on rice and yams and rubbish. These people are no cleverer than children.

Her suit billows around her body, belies her years, large blue paisleys in a field of mustard yellow, splashed with chilis of red. A palm frond obscures her field of vision. A bandana in the same pattern is chignoned around her head. Her posture is erect, first lady-like. She is prepared to emit a gasp when the president cuts the white ribbon, but only after she gives a little speech on the efficacy of health.

“Fellow compatriots,” she begins, her voice uplifting and vibrant like a singer. “I would like to cordially greet all the people of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. On behalf of the president of the Republic, head of government and founder of the PDGE, His Excellency Teodoro Bingo, I thank God for this opportunity that has brought us together today….”

His eyes flutter shut. His breath deepens. He’s about to fall asleep standing in his buffed loafers in the dirt. Teddy’s heard it all before – Candida’s set piece, her little slice of credibility. It’s shopping she’s interested in, not charity. One look and anyone can tell. Her foundation is a joke. It doesn’t generate or give.

“In my capacity as special advisor to the president in matters of health and social welfare, I thank the authorities of the entire national territory for their collaboration in the success of this event and especially the great devotion of the Sisters of Miseracordia for their efforts in bringing health care to the people of Equatorial Guinea. As Chairperson of the Committee in support of the children of Equatorial Guinea – CANIGE – I would like to personally thank Sister Mary Banana for her dedication to the education and health of the children of our country….”

He glowers at the people. Judging from the features and colors, they’re not Fang. They’re ungrateful parasites, he acknowledges, these immigrant laborers – Kru, Yoruba, Ijaw, Hausa and other mainland peoples. They claim they’ve come to work because Bioko is short of labor, but they just sit around and breed in the slums like monkeys, like they would at home. They wouldn’t pick cocoa pods if they grew on their faces. Lucky the fuckers don’t live that long. He jerks with the thought and then tunes back in. The Fang would never submit to laziness like that. The Fang are kings.

“With my most open heart I would like to thank the people for the honor bestowed upon me today, but first and foremost I must thank His Excellency for his support in allowing me to continue our philanthropic and humanitarian projects for the benefit of Equatoguineans. CANIGE is the medium of action against the sufferings and the difficulties of the children. This NGO is convinced that all the children in Equatorial Guinea and in the world at large can benefit from a normal and sustainable development. Through its efforts, many educational centers such as Maria-Jesus Oyaregui of Bata and Nana Mangue of Malabo have been created. CANIGE counts on the support of international community, organizations and people of good will….”

He’s surprised to see a tall white face at the back of the crowd. Who’s that? The white man isn’t any of the cocoa plantation owners. Has someone new come to the island? 

Teddy nods at Darius, who instantly attends to Teddy’s gesture and leans forward for instructions. 

“CANIGE is also fighting against the sexual abuse of children and child labor. This phenomenon is gaining ground in Africa and the world at large. And the association hopes to obtain positive results in the short term, with the support of international organizations….”

When is she going to stop singing like a bird? She needs a proper job description. What is she? A stewardess? A secretary? She’s so affected! He could kick her at moments like this. God forbid what the crowd thinks. It’s humiliating having this superficial bitch for a wife! 

He looks at the dean. If only he would compromise with an annulment. 

He pauses. He’s being a hypocrite. She’s a formidable opponent and has her own spies, allies and resources – isn’t that why he’s still president? 

She’s his ear to the ground and mouth to the people. He has to pinch his toes together, despite the tightness of the loafers, as a reminder to look boastful and conceited.

“Thank you very much for your attention. If His Excellency will now proceed.”

Applause explodes through the crowd. Some people are crying. Others are fainting. Shouts of “Dame de Couer! Dame de Couer!” ripple through the multitude. As instructed, people surge towards the stage in an impromptu show of support before some gestures from the security detail quell the emotion. 

Don’t touch the president and first lady. 

Candida graciously curtseys and steps back from the lectern. She joins Malabo’s female mayor, Isabel, flustered and red due to arriving late, as well as Mother Mary Banana, anxiously anticipating the president’s speech. How she loves President Teddy!

The random white guy has somehow evaded Darius and is mingling with the two representatives from UNCF and Catholic Relief. The stranger presents his credentials and Teddy spies the Poseidon logo on the card. He’s leaning on a bicycle and talking animatedly with total disregard for the event’s host and hostess. Whoever he is, he’s got talent, acknowledges President Teddy. He could use a fellow like that – one who enters the revolving door last and comes out first. He breathes easier. Darius blocks the stranger’s trajectory.

Faces bustle back and forth. What will El Jefe educate them about today? Teddy’s president and they vote for him.

A long cough expands from his body. He’s suddenly bigger. 

The people hush. This is not the image of the president speaking, the man smiling from textiles, posters, calendars and portraits, but the real body of the president, king and chief, there to confer mercy or anger, as it may be.

He’s given a scissors to cut the ribbon. His aqua suit and brilliant tie shine in the sun. A white kerchief fills his pocket like a tooth. A white shirt closes around the folds of his neck. His skin is pocked around the jaw and cheeks; it is often raw and sore after he shaves. His teeth have been re-enameled since he quit smoking. His amber spectacles hold behind his kidney-like ears. He’s grinning, holding the scissors. A large diamond is wed to a finger. A heavy square-faced gold watch rests neatly against the socket of muscle and sinew, the presidential wrist. He can relax if Darius is here, which he is, his men posted around the perimeter, staring from behind their smoky glasses. Very kind.

Teddy steps forward. He must concentrate. Will he veer off-message to berate and harangue his opponents, real or imagined? The temptation is melting off him like fat.

He smiles at the men and women of the cloth. He dips imperceptibly from his knees. It’s almost a bow but one god doesn’t bow to another. He’s grateful to them for their support: the clergy have never cited him for his ruthlessness or betrayed him in any way. 

Teddy clears his throat one more time. He despises protocol, the irritating formulas and nonsense, and he’s already given up praising Candida in the sweet oozing terms he had in mind. He’s doesn’t want medals or honors, though he enjoys the prestige of being president.

“Like the First Lady, I too would like to extend my cordial welcome to all the people. On my behalf as the president, head of government and founder of the PDGE, I thank God for this opportunity that has brought us together today.”

He recognizes Jorge with his camera. Teddy’s not photogenic but Jorge insists on splashing his image in La Gaceta de Guinea Ecuatorial.  Teddy hesitates as he hears the shutter opening and closing like a sharpened blade.

“I would like to congratulate my wife for her hard work supporting development in Equatorial Guinea….” 

His voice runs out. His mind has already squeezed out as much of a compliment as he can bear. Why is he here? What did he want to say to these poor, ugly people? Is he feeling like this because he didn’t eat any breakfast? 

The people are silent and expectant. Surely this can’t be it? They strain to hear him, his breathy hasp-like voice hardly reaching the ears of his supporters.

His mind soars then stalls like an old half-riveted Dakota, gliding over the bush, engines kaput and pilot looking for a place to land.

Does he want development, peace and riches for all the people of Equatorial Guinea? No one will find out here on the hotly contested island so long as Teddy keeps the populace hungry, but not hungry enough. 

“He who controls Bioko Island controls the Gulf of Guinea,” he says. “Our friends the Americanos are exercising their navy in the Gulf. For now they are friends. On one hand we can count the friends of Equatorial Guinea and on the other the enemies.” Here he calculates and switches languages from the easy rolling tempo of Spanish to the sweet syllables of his native Fang. “The enemies we do not hesitate to kill.” He sweeps the air with the scissors.

A murmur of worry flows through the crowd. People know they’re being threatened. Human rights is not a domestic issue; it’s a foreign one. He’s safe to say what he wants in Malabo. It’s in places like the United States that help is needed, like the services of the Institute of Democratic Strategy that publishes glowing reviews of his life, policies and elections, not unlike Jorge’s La Gaceta de.

Teddy tumbles back to Spanish. “I would also like to thank the Sisters of Miseracordia for their assistance in providing medical care to Malabo. Thank you Sisters and bless you, Equatorial Guinea.”

With this he bows, instinctively searching for the arm of Darius, who is there, lithe and strong like a piece of the High Atlas. It’s been a stellar performance for Teddy. He’s in fine fettle, and everyone had better watch out.

The clapping gains in volume, muted cheers of El Jefe! El Jefe! El Jefe! 

He studies the ribbon. Candida helps him hold it, and he snips through. This time understated applause decorates the morning air as they walk under the arch of palm leaves into the clinic.

Appearing genuinely pleased, the representatives of the international donors stroll not far behind. It’s a sad affair, more ruse than improvement. Some local official has surely wrung out a few coins. 

Progress is a few rooms, two plastic curtains, a box of swabs, some rubber gloves and no doctor. The Sisters, they’re so old, afflicted with neglect or dementia, that it’s hard to tell what good they’re going to do. How will they dispense Lariam, anti-retroviral drugs or polio boosters? Teddy wouldn’t let them check his height much less his pulse. 

The misguided patients will come for a while believing in the foreign medicine, until they realize they’re better off with their witches, sorcerers or griot-griot. It’d be the same if they’d build a new church too. 

Teddy’s glad to escape through the fly screen door from the cramped, white quarters that vaguely smell like disinfectant. He gestures broadly at the weak building and gives the people a double thumbs-up, then retreats to his black Range Rover, Darius at the door. It strangely smells like acetone or formaldehyde inside. 

His part is over, and Teddy’s relieved to view it from the capsule of his vehicle. He was just starting to sweat.

The dean is laughing over something – an intrigue perhaps? The crowd cannot compete with well dressed with access to the presidential party. The local dignitaries and elites dominate the people from the neighborhood standing in their threadbare clothes, feet in flip-flops or calluses. 

Being the Day of Our Great Lady, the people are anxious to fill up their statuettes with holy water. People are crowding around the Dame de Cœur, but Darius’s men are keeping the adherents at a respectable distance. Some people have saved the butts of candles or boiled fat and rendered candles, something to burn in tribute to her. Everyone wants luck today. 

Mother Banana has waylaid Candida with her frothy but insistent tone. “I want to attract strong new minds and to make strong new babies in the bidonville.” Sweat has manifested itself in her habit in a border of salt.

Candida’s eagerly expects the visitors’ bottles in her effigy as much as her visitors expect her water. 

Mother Banana presents her with a bottle. This is Candida’s first chance to notice that the Candida and Dame de Cœur on the bottle is remarkably similar to the Virgin Mary. In fact, they have been cast from the same dies. There is no difference except for the flag and PDGE abbreviation rudely painted on her breasts. 

She moves towards the tap jutting from the wall of the health clinic in anticipation of buckets to keep the premises clean. The cement around the tap is as fresh as the center’s. 

Mother Banana, turning to Candida, says, “Dame de Cœur, there’s a problem. You see – ”

“What problem?” asks Candida. Her bile is rising. She’s losing her new abraded ruby color. In its place comes a fearsome garnet red.

“Senora, excuse me, Our Great Lady, you see, the trouble is that in Malabo there’s a no water in a neighborhood like this. We have to send to the Vatican for our holy water and it did not arrive in time. We have run out and there is no pump.” 

Candida can accept backhand flattery, but not this humiliating error. No water! In Malabo! Not even holy water! Why at home they have water all the time!

Jorge has just capped his last roll of film when Candida rips out two matching muffs of her own hair, the careful work of her Houston hair stylist. Her screams echo from the bidonville. He’s in no jeopardy. Luckily, he’s missed the shot and his editor would vet the picture anyway.

Tedddy!

From her lips, his name bounces like a boulder, flattening shacks, rupturing pipes and extinguishing cooking fires. The long, feral sob tumbles down into Malabo and rebounds off the sea. The cathedral sways and the caldera burps a deep disturbed note. The health clinic tremors but it stands, much to Mother Banana’s relief.

Teddddddy!

Ensconced in the Range Rover and enjoying the surround sound of Charles Mingus, Teddy doesn’t detect a ripple. Of course, he could lift his eyes from the yacht club menu that has momentarily distracted him. But he’s already anticipating lunch with Stella. She’s phoned to say she’s back from Sao Tome. 

Fish stuffed with crabmeat and a dessert of lemon tart should set the right tone for the two distinguished guests, of that he’s cruelly confidant. Teddy signals to Darius and the Range Rover’s instantly ignited into a trot by his Moorish caballero. 

Our Great Lady crumbles in her gown. 

She’s left to the comforts of Mother Mary Banana, who sprays Candida with drops of water from a plastic bottle of Evian she’s located in the Dame de Cœur’s Dior tote. 

Honey Attracts Bees

It’s rough up here. The window’s spattered with spit. Swells striate the sea. It’s a long twenty minutes. The Gulf’s surface, hot and red. In the distance, three rag-like blooms of flame. 

One of them is the offshore platform, Jade. She’s sucking block B dry. 

Her helper is Zafiro Producer, who, in turn, is assisted by Aleutian Key or any of the ships that carry Equatorial Guinea’s oil and gas to Houston’s refinery row.

Tankers come, tankers go. They sing to one another like whales, coasting along the African shipping lanes, wary of pirates and unpleasant surprises. 

Thick turbulent clouds blow down from the sky. Two snub-nosed maids, Eddie Kyle and Madonna Tide, serve Daniel’s new home.

Guido banters to the bird flying on his tail. Poseidon needs the extra chopper for Bigfoot and a new tri-cone drill bit. 

The locust gradually drops in altitude. The radio chatters. It kisses the tops of the waves by the time it banks and circles around the installation. Guido pulls wide of the flare and the bug perches on the green and yellow helideck. He rubs his nose with a free hand. Today, he’s got more drop-offs. 

Daniel unbuckles his belt and hastens from the 212’s cabin. 

It’s harder getting on than off. 

The rotor’s downdraught punches at him and he ducks. His feet catch in the mesh covering the deck and he falls onto his bag. No Smurf wants to blow into the sea. 

The noise presses at him. The beat of the chopper, twirling slow like a rubber band. Waves reaching. Machinery roaring. The flare howling like a hound. What an environment!

He pulls himself up. What’s the point of being a wet cookie on the helideck?

Greenhorn! 

His feet clatter down the flights of metal steps. Last, he follows the other men and the signs to Admin. Daniel ducks into a small office with a high counter. He hands over his boarding pass; it’s also a voucher for a Passenger on Board – POB. But it’s odd – this massive structure floating above the sea on pontoons does not seem like a vessel.

“Hiya,” says the clerk. “Take your POB and find your cabin and lifeboat muster station. Here’s a map, bud.” 

Daniel’s about to exit Admin when the clerk calls, his eyes rising from the passenger list, “Hey, you’re Luke’s friend, ain’t yah?” 

“Why, sure.” Daniel looks forward to seeing his old colleague from Colorado School of Mines.

“I’m Egghead, the radio operator. Lemme try him.” The clerk picks up a phone. “He can give you the gran’ tour.”

Daniel nods thanks. 

No one’s answering. “Doghouse’s busy.”

The next chopper’s descending with Bigfoot and the new bit. Another phone bleats. Egghead stretches for it. “Keep to this side of the boat and you’ll find your station. Later.” 

“Yeah, later, Egghead.” He’s relaxing. Egghead’s not entirely a pipsqueak. 

So far, so normal. It’s not that new. 

The spire onboard is the derrick. The two moving yellow structures must be the cranes. And the living and laboratory stacks, that’s where his legs are tethered like two pegs. 

Steel stairs peel down the superstructure. Whoever’s bigger has the right of way. The sea’s much closer than he expected and he’s standing on it – his two platters of flesh and thousands of tons of steel. It’s modern witchcraft, as much a test as making an anvil float on water. He might as well drink poison or dance with snakes. 

Big flashing shadows dart around the legs and there’s a yell from someone. Sharks and tuna aren’t the only predators in these parts. Off-shift men are fishing, casting into the mesmerizing, nauseating waves. 

Bow and stern are marked on the map. The Jade’s an installation and a ship. Two huge pontoons obscured by water are exactly what keep the thing afloat. Daniel feet clang on the metal planks and seawater from somewhere skittles over the deck. 

The air stinks. Under the overpowering tar-like scent of diesel Daniel distinguishes the bouquet of methane – they’re sitting on a producing field indeed.

Fans and engines incessantly burr, and ambient shouts punctuate the sound of metal dully clashing with metal. Could it be the sea speaking to Ulysses? 

The noise and power purees his organs to bits, blending liver with spleen and lungs with heart. Inside, he’s pâté.  

From the gangway Daniel looks at the three sun-bleached orange lifeboats lashed underneath the hoists – waterproof, fireproof, lifeproof, they say. 

No. 2 is his cute orange craft when it’s time to muster. Reading over the placard of evacuation instructions – beginning with “Open slip hooks in lashings” and ending with “Release when waterborne” – it doesn’t look encouraging. He adds his chit to the others on the board. 

It really reeks, not just diesel but something else. 

The wind’s blowing the wrong direction.

H₂S can flow from the flare. And sulfuric acid can be frequent in moist conditions.

An alarm squawks somewhere. Gas!

If that’s not an indicator of oil, he doesn’t know what is. It’s oozing underneath the sea, squirting up the wells and trees and seeping right into his being. 

No one seems particularly perturbed. No one’s running. It’s not the worst alert.

H₂S is sneaky. Being heavier than air, it can linger in unexpected places. A few parts per million can explode or kill. The pesky stuff can kill a man any time.

The alarm urges everyone: get inside or cover up that face with a Scott Air Pak.

Daniel doesn’t want a face full of snot and sweat. Who wants to inhale a pint of yellow battery acid on the job?

The nearest heavy steel hatch seals behind him. The growl of generators ascends to the hum of air-conditioners. His ears adjust to the different pitch. 

The few men milling in the hall all wear slippers or thongs. Boots and shoes are forbidden here. Daniel walks barefoot on the rubber carpet and ascends a steep, narrow stairs. His bag lolls behind him.

The bold white 2 decaled on the door means he’s on the right level.

The cabin numbers click by, descending.

He opens 202 and stoops inside. This is it, his new address, handily home for two men, not four. The metal door and shelves approximate wood as if the Jade is a galleon of yore. The other steel surfaces are also camouflaged with wood-like paint. Daniel’s gear is next to the door: a pair of orange overalls, leather knee boots and a yellow hard hat embossed with the Poseidon trident. Two green canisters are attached to the wall – smoke hoods for an emergency. The locker door’s imperceptibly swinging, the only sign that this isn’t the beach. 

The shared shower-toilet smells; the sink’s redolent of piss and dotted with beard. It’s saying, welcome to your new world of men’s men. He notices the sockets are flat and thin. He won’t need that plug adaptor set after all. It really is America!

A small window has a view of a metal wall. There’s a table and two chairs underneath it. He finds the thermostat and turns it up a notch. 

He sits on the wide lower bunk before throwing his duffel bag up to the free one. He notices the earplugs scattered next to the pillow and some candy wrappers on the floor. Upstairs behind the thick blue-striped curtains he has a reading light. 

The tan paint around the frame have been nibbled and scratched off. The sheets are a strange hospital blue. A vent and a fluorescent light mark the ceiling. The only distinguishable sound in the vibrating white noise is climate control. The light gives him a headache. 

Daniel won’t have long to catch up. Keeping men offshore is expensive. His shift is soon. 

He shakes his legs out of his jeans and stands in his skivvies. The door’s open but so what – colleague’s going to see his pencil dangling out of his shorts? A knock surprises him as he’s about to tuck himself back in.

“Boy, it’s Danny Grace! I thought you’d be VP by now!” Luke slaps Daniel on the back. “Sheesh!”

“Who’d guess,” Daniel says, a touch of glumness in his voice, reminded of his career. 

“Danny Grace on my dear ol’ Jade. I never’d believed that.”

He gives Luke a hug. 

The two old hands are as reliable as salt. 

“Damn, Danny, I ain’t seen you since, what, last time one of our wells gushered and coated my brand spankin’ new truck in Oklahoma crude.”

“Oh yeah, all these years.” It’s good to see this sun-burned do-gooder.

“What brings you out here to do a dirty job like mud?”

Daniel palls. Everyone has his own reasons to come out here. “I needed a change,” he says.

“Aw, shit, Danny, that’s just a code word for a divorce. So what!” Luke shrugs. 

So what – Daniel’s never asks himself that. 

So what. Get on with it. Say it.

Luke’s quicker with the biography. 

“My first wife, she was on me for smokin’ dope back in the day. The second for drinkin’ too much Jack. The third for screwin’ too many tittydancers. And the fourth, she’s moanin’ cuz I don’t talk! Crazy young gal loves my money and I love her cuz she’s hot. If it weren’t for Viagra, I’d be a lonely man!”

“My story’s not that colorful, Luke.”

“Oh, the shit it ain’t.” Luke admires trouble.

“I didn’t fuck her.” He’s letting the shame and angst out through the valve he usually keeps shut.

“What!” In indignation Luke pushes back his baseball hat. It’s made of foam and silkscreened Brown and Root. He licks his sun-burned lips. Scandal tastes so good.

“Luke, I lost my job at Champion for trying to…” He swallows and euphemizes. “For trying to bonk my secretary.” It’s no easier to admit he ever thought of Dawn that way.

“Wait a minute – you lost your job and you didn’t even fuck her? No way, bro’. That’s impossible!” 

With Luke, either you do or you don’t. There are no halves, no in-betweens, no almosts. His hands, poking from his check cotton shirt, are tucked into the vents of his OshKosh. He’s a smart hick.

“Whew, that stinks, Danny. You didn’t find out if it’s something else?”

“I think was ready to get out.” It almost feels good to air his dirty laundry so readily. Isn’t that what camaraderie’s about?

“Yeah, boy, so that’s why you’re doing mud, down there at the bottom.”

“Guess so. I need to start again.” 

“Danny, you’re a smart guy, probably too smart for that job. You probably heard about Sherm from the boys on the way in. We’re all afraid of him. He’s ornery and ex-military. He’s not like the rest of us who fit in as clumsily as we can, maybe cuz life stopped making sense on the beach and we came out here where the pay’s good. Sherman fits like a glove. Lip isn’t his style. So put your head down, work and be friendly no matter what the jug of shit say.” 

“Isn’t that what I’ve always done?”

“That’s it, boy. And next time you’ll be supervisor.”

“Um, Luke, Egghead mentioned you’d give me the grand tour?”

“Sorry, Danny, I gotta be back to the doghouse. We got a few miles of pipe to turn round.” Luke turns sharply on his heels. 

 “Later, Luke.” Daniel regrets mentioning his fall to his sole friend.

“Ditto, bud.” Luke hurries down the hall.

Daniel settles for a moment. His very room is part of a superb secret of cheek and skill, an essential component of the business of the world; it’s where men and machine meet to make oil cheaper than water. Who cares that you can’t drink it? 

But that neither elates nor lifts him. 

He should be keen. All you do is count. The money. The miles. The esters and olefins. The aromas and plastics. The economy high on oil. Call that piss-cheap slimy smelly liquid anything: kerosene, petrol, gasoline, benzene, diesel. It’s the only commodity the world really cares about, before it all ends.

His nose quivers and signals. He jumps into the orange overalls and tries on the boots – stiffer and heavier than his brown Jaeger suit and Church’s wingtips. The boots are a tad tight. He’s about to slip out the door when he remembers: no boots inside living quarters, not even clean boots.

His thighs and ankles chafe in the canvas suit. The wide rubber-carpeted hall sings with fluorescent lights. The cunning structural engineers can’t disguise that the whole thing’s prefabricated. He catches some food-like odor emanating from somewhere. He’s too wound up to chow. What’s food got on oil? 

He wags his chin in acknowledgment at the men moving through the living areas. Some doors are ajar, swinging lightly. Lockers and bunks are tattooed with cuttings of centerfolds and athletes. Some are filled with pillows or books. The cabins are neat and the conversations brief. 

He passes the cordial clank of weights and the distant hum of a pair of treadmills in the recreation area. 

This is it – no drink, no wife, no friends. 

Fourteen-hour shifts for two weeks, without a day off. 

Who needs politics, sex or religion when there’s mud, pipe and a hole?

Eat, work, sleep – without interruption or question.

Until he goes back: to drink, fuck and sleep.

The pile of footwear obstructing the door sets him off, the sneakers and sandals marked with the nightshift: Flyco, Oscar, Junkshop, Garfield, Kenny, Goofy, Guapo, Boots, Antone. 

God, he rues this trip. Where are Danny Jr.’s cleats or Kylie’s heels? 

His boots pinch the tips of his toes like ballet shoes.

He unseals the hatch with regret and the noise envelopes him. Wind rushes around his legs. The machinery pulls pipe. The rig floor is noisy and busy with engines, hydraulics and shakers. 

His jaw tightens – it’s better to keep his teeth in his mouth. His ears equalize with a slow ping.

He waltzes onto the metal grating, looking through the layers of perforated steel at the girders underneath the module deck. A bird or man cries somewhere – disembodied and unnerving.

Daniel reads through the health and safety notice posted outside in bold outlined type: 

Welcome to the Jade. This rig is operated and maintained by safety conscious people. We have operated 1,736 days with no accidents. Please help us continue our record and observe our safety rules. Thank you.

“You know this is the most expensive real estate in Africa!” Sherman shouts from his office. It looks onto the derrick and drilling area. His job, beyond managing the men, is the buoyancy and load of the rig, and keying the GPS coordinates into the dynamic positioning system. 

“Huh?” Daniel catches only some of what the large red aggressive face is shouting at him. This must be Sherm the Worm. 

“New here, boy!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Step inside, shit kicker!” Sherman breathes in great heaving strokes. 

Daniel ducks inside. “I’m the new mud guy.”

“Did I ask you who you are?” Sherman’s office is free of centerfolds. He must be important. The walls are covered with old-fashioned maps and charts. He’s not the kind of man to offer his hand to a lesser.

“You playing pocket pool, boy?” Sherm likes to disarm his victims. It’s his specialty.

“Huh?” Daniel’s slow on the uptake but he extracts his mitts.

“Keep a tool in your hands at all times. I don’t like seeing my men not working.” 

Daniel shifts from one foot to another. Sherm’s eyes are far too close together like a cyclops. 

“We assume y’all know the rules before y’all get here.” 

Uhh! Daniel hates twang. 

A section of pipe is being screwed into place. The roughnecks mosh around the dirty, hectic mound spewing mud and seawater.

“Day after tomorrow Schlumberger will fly in to run the probes. That’s means there’s work to do. Don’t mess up my mud!” 

“Luke told me,” says Daniel. Luke’s Daniel’s passbook.

“You a pal of Luke’s?” 

“We were buddies back at Colorado School of Mines. I helped the old guy pass.”

“You don’t say – a cheater. That’s worse than any nigger or cracker in my book of honor.”  It’s not incongruous to Sherman that the men he depends on most are laid out in neatly hierarchical bands of color. 

“Could say that.” Daniel shrugs. Who can argue with living and dieing in Dixie? It’s going to be a challenge to find a real friend on this hunk for a loner like Danny Grace with a sadistic goon in charge. 

“You might be home so fast y’all won’t even have time to get dandruff from the fresh air.”

“Sir!” interrupts someone in a scrappy South African voice, the door banging. “They’ve had an accident on the Eddie!” 

“How’s that concern us, kid?” 

“Eddie’s deckhand got squashed when we were backloading! The stern tipped and the container wasn’t lashed down yet and – no more deckhand.”

“It’s a white fella or a black one?”

“Black one, sir.”

“Then tell Flyco to keep working that crane. More supplies coming tonight. He’s the best man with a hook in the dark.” As an afterthought Sherm asks, “Y’all want Egghead to call a chopper for an evacuation?”

Daniel’s surprised that Sherman shows an iota of concern.

“I think it’s too late, sir. He’s all, um, manjuice.” The roustabout’s face turns squeamish.

Daniel flinches but Sherman seems pleased at the idea of the graphic gore on the supply vessel. “Tell you what, boy, you drive the crane now and give Flyco a break for now.” 

The roustabout vanishes on the double as Sherman hoarsely shouts: “Just don’t toss the whole thing into the drink! Unlike you, it’s irreplaceable!”

Daniel studies the maps on the wall. At corporate HQ in Houston Poseidon’s activities are top-secret but here they are day-to-day operations. His nose is itchy. He can smell the oil deposited by Africa’s ancient rivers in the Gulf. The perfume is evaporating off the paper like ambergris.

Fields and installations dotted are dotted around Bioko Island. They extend into the Rio Muni basin and to the tip of the Niger Delta. They reach to the coast of Cameroon and Gabon and down into Angola. They stretch across to Sao Tome. Almost every block is a host to Poseidon’s exploration. Only a few chunks of real estate are free in Equatorial Guinea. New technology is what’s makes it all possible. 

“See, Danny, it ain’t all kind out here. You could get hurt. It ain’t just cheap acreage and big finds, so don’t lick your big fat lips.” 

“The names are kind of exotic, huh?” 

To Daniel they’re evocative like poetry: La Ceiba, Zafiro, Matondo, Benito. They run around the island, join the likes of Eviondo, Mbini, Alba and Dorado, like stitches sewn into the side of the African continent. 

“You sure you’re in mud, Danny Grace? You look more like a manager to me than a mudman.”

“Did I tell you anything, Sherman?” Daniel inadvertently snaps. He’s unused to having this kind of fucker for a boss.

The phone trills. 

“Yep, Egghead.”

The UHF radio burbles in the background with shipping and aviation. “Can I piggyback that Halliburton guy on that Schlumberger chopper, sir? Save a thousand bucks.” 

Daniel peruses the module. He’s absorbed in the maps of play and formations posted alongside the nautical charts.

“Vendors shouldn’t have a problem. Sure we got room?”

Egghead’s lists rustle under the mouthpiece as he takes an ass-kissing breath. “Sir, I’m pleased to inform you that we still have vacancies.” 

“Cut the crap, Egghead. What about finding a flight for Danny Grace off this boat back to the beach? He’s sassy and sick.”

“You want me to look at what’s-his-face?” Egghead’s the rig’s medic too.

“He says he’s Danny Grace but I don’t believe him.” 

Sherman reaches for a tin of Skoal Bandit. He also tips a few pills from his desk into his palm. He pushes the tablets down with a gulp. The he adds the menthol sachet between blistered lip and gum. He’s thinking.

“Call Poseidon HQ and check this guy out.”

The radio squeals in the background as Egghead queries Houston. 

Sherman grins at the greenhorn in his orange smock and boots. 

“D.I.G., huh, boss?” 

“Oh, yeah, this guy’s a digger – of shit.” 

They snigger like children.

“Houston ain’t responding, sir. How about e-mail?” 

“Forget it. Luke’ll tell us what’s up with this chump.”

“Any small freight aside from Danny Grace and the mailbag?” 

Sherman drops the phone into the cradle. 

Daniel coolly turns from the wall when he hears this. Bigfoot’s right – Sherman’s an asshole and Egghead’s his proxy who takes the heat if Sherm forgets very basic requisitions, like toilet paper or toner.

Daniel has to turn this around. He doesn’t want to go home yet. He needs the bread.

Questioning Sherman must be better than answering. Surely Sherman’s secretly a show-off.

“And what if we want to, say, drill over here? Or here?” Daniel plants his finger by Sao Tome, then Gabon.

Sherm’s eyes light up. 

“That’s exploration, buddy, you must know – auctions, bids, the whole nine yards of greasing government hearts and minds. We’re onstream since 1996. We got a few more wells to drill to completion, then they’ll tow us somewhere else. But not until Luke’s finished writing his name underground with that drillpipe. There’s action everywhere.”

Daniel laughs in acknowledgment. “Uh-huh.” He’s got a proclivity for reading men and maps. 

The oil’s underneath, kegs hidden under caps, waiting for the Poseidon trident to tap. 

An arc of mud drums across Sherman’s window and Daniel’s startled. The roughnecks howl in anger on the slick rig floor. An ugly, searing, gray chemical splotch drips down. 

Oil’s here, where Africa’s old rivers have deposited her dead. The smell rises off the paper like manna. 

“Look, son, it’s good out here! I aint’ seen this activity and money since the Gulf of Mexico exploded years ago. Any industry spy can tell you.” 

Sherman gulps a breath for emphasis. He doesn’t mind swallowing tobacco juice. “Listen to me, Danny: this is just the beginning and everyone’s here.” Sherman spits some tobacco lather into a Styrofoam cup. “North of us in Nigeria, we got Edop, Etin and Ofun. But there’s more, way more, fields.”

Sherman is about to turn duke of puke, regurgitating on industry ecstasy: “Bonga, Kizomba, Amenam… Kpona, Yoho, Abo, Dalia.” He’s having trouble with his lungs. “Lombito, Tomboco, Nemba, Plutonio… Kudu, Moho, Bilondo, Baobab – and my fave, Coco Marine.” He sounds like a hasp.

 “It’s beautiful, Sherman, better than Frost, smoother than malt,” he says. Daniel’s ears sing with the names.

Sherm’s ears unexpectedly jolt. That’s the kiss-ass he likes.

Daniel’s eyes dart over Quest Research’s overview of West African exploration and production. Tan blocks of offshore real estate reach out into the green Atlantic. Gridded results of seismic surveys intersect with coded dots named for fields and producers. Refineries, pipelines and ports are clearly noted. It’s big all right. 

No one’s marked that it’s the beginning of the end – that oil’s soon over, that it’s peaked, that no one’s going to be living like no one ever lived before. 

Sherman can’t help but expand, pride growing in his dry throat. “Sure, we give most the fields a black man’s name to make the niggers feel better about it. But that crude, it’s ours,” says Sherman categorically. “We spend millions to make millions.”

Off the coast of Africa it’s not that much different than a century ago.

Daniel notices the pharmaceutical vials lined like bad soldiers along Sherman’s metal desk. They’re vibrating under the dirty window of the module. 

“This is the frontline. Try it out anywhere in the southern expansion zone or any other goddamn installation along this coast and you’ll see. It’s hot, man, this close to America. And it don’t get any better than with Sherm.”

Daniel feels his nose melting. America’s on fire. 

The rig shakes with several g-forces. 

“That’s Luke,” says Sherman. “The holes tight; he’s gotta work it.” 

Daniel smiles as he feels a warm amniotic blessing wrap around him, gooey and black as tar. It is good out here, a charmed life, snorting oil from under the sea.

Sherman picks up a phone. “Egghead, scratch Danny Grace from the passenger list. He’s gonna be all right.” Sherman emphatically spits into his cup. “Y’all be ready tomorrow. Don’t be too brainy, Danny Grace. And remember, KISS – Keep it simple, stupid. The hole, she won’t like you otherwise.”

“I’ll be going down to the mudroom then.” He needs to prepare.

“You do that, DIG.” Sherman reaches and pats Danny on the butt. “Welcome to the team.”

Danny stamps away and he’s drunk with conflict. Everything’s to despise and everything’s to admire in a cynical worm like Sherm. Racism makes him truly unpalatable, like his mammy didn’t give him enough loving, as if he were lower than a shoe, as if he needed people to hate him. Danny shakes his head. Go figure! Creep.

There’s no sound installation in the mudroom. 

The first few moments are overpowering. He dabs his ears against the decibels. Who can think in the attack of noise, so heavily layered as to be irreplicable. The Poseidon hardhat congas around his head, his head like the tongue of a bell.

Different days and different depths call for different mud. Mud is lubrication in the hole. Mud cools and mud stabilizes the walls. Mud is the weight that counters the formation pressures. From this room it travels all the way down the pipe. It emerges from the center of the bit and flushes out the cuttings.

Before the mud’s separated it’s degassed, stripped of the gases that effervesce in the skin of the ever-breathing earth. The mud’s then strained by a sequence of shakers and pumped down for another roundtrip. 

Under the steel grille floor black sludge creeps into stinking tanks.

That could be me, he says, watching the oscillating, gyrating, hypnotizing pans, cuttings shaking like coins. They’re clues bearing hints about the strata, traces of gas or oil like red and white corpuscles hemorrhaging from the vessel of the earth. They can hint at discovery or indicate there is more drilling to be done.

Daniel plunks down into the black padded chair. It’s wrestled next to the Teleco tool read-out panel encrusted with mud. 

***

Mud’s enemy or friend. It can drive a small turbine in the drill string to power the Teleco tool that emits pulses through the mud rising to the surface, which in turn guide the position of the bit and the angle of the hole. The Ferranti is an extra gift shoved down the hole and accurate within a few feet. 

Mud can spray in your eyes and cover your jumpsuit. It can scratch your new shades and drain from your ears and nose into your throat. It can taste like diesel or walnuts or funk. Mud is bentonite – sticky and viscous. Mud is barite – weight. Equally, it can have the consistency of melted chocolate or butter. Mud can coat everything. Decks, stairs, handrails, machinery. Mud is part of the cache of a roughnecks’ job. No mud, no glory.

The hole cannot dry and you don’t want to lose mud. Then there’re problems. The driller, he doesn’t have any more control of his descent than a brake, even if he’s got a fancy three-dimensional targeting system in the doghouse. It’s mud that suspends and keeps his bit alive. It’s mud that can cap the well and keep everything cool when it’s released from the trip tank. If the mud can’t handle it then it’s up to the BOP – blow out preventer – to contain the kick. And if it can’t contain the kick, you’ve got Piper Alpha – one big explosion of metal and men. 

The BOP is like Cerus. Clean, bevalved, armed with rams, clamps and mud, the BOP sits on the pipe. Hell may surge, mount or sweep up the pipe, but Cerus keeps the black hot fire down the hole where it should be. It’s there to stop the punch and if prompted can cut the pipe. It’s engineered to stop everyone’s nightmare coming true.

Mud isn’t immortal. The unused solids and liquids will be stored until they can be dumped in the sea at night when no environmental mobsters are watching.

It won’t be that hard – he’s responsible for two pumps, one working and the second standby pump. He’ll have to clean and paint and grease and maintain. Mud’s corrosive stuff.

Daniel can’t resist that strange workaholic feeling surging through him. Why not collect a sample for the laboratory to check the Ph and specific gravity too? What geologist can refuse a sexy, high-kicking go-go of a sample? Take a peek now?

It’s an odd moment and reminds him of his old job at Champion, the febrile waiting for the call, the call that invariably comes halfway through the steak, game or blowjob because you’re always working for the man. 

That’s how it goes if you’re Doctor Rocks.

Will there be a suite of Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks, full of oil? If so, will you alert the drillers? Will a full production test not alert the competition to what lies underneath when you flare off the excess gas? What’s really down there? 

And if it’s yes, how to keep your tail from wagging? Tape it to your leg? 

What to bid when the next auction of offshore blocks is imminent when you suspect you’ve got 400 meters of oil-bearing sands? 

Who do you tell, when you offer a twenty million dollar signing bonus to some cretin who is supposed to be a minister or a president? 

Your dog? 

He doesn’t have to prepare a slide to know. There’s something there, sure enough between the tiny panes of stained glass, a field of sand crystals, green, yellow and orange occlusions, outlined by something black and soft like lead – his livelihood and downfall. 

He feels grand in the mudroom, surrounded by the milky viscous liquid, almost as heavy as glass. Danny could stay here forever.

He sees the mudroom phone blinking next to the station of tools. He’d better pick it up.

“Mudroom!” He’s gotta shout.

“Listen, Danny, Sherm. You don’t mind doing a different job!”

“Huh?” He’s leaning hard into the phone but it’s not helping.

“I need y’all on a new job, Danny! My goddamn fat-ass, Twinkie-eating OIM’s got food poisoning. Y’all didn’t eat none of that omelet this morning, did yah?”

Daniel vaguely catches something about eggs. He hates omelet. He could use some ear guards. “I wasn’t here this morning, sir,” he says in an incomprehensible yell of mud.

“It’d be a trail by fire but I checked out your resume. Poseidon’s fine with it!”

“What?” He’s got to put the thing in his ear.

“You got a new job, buster!” Sherm’s not amused.

Danny’s moving back up. 

Break Open the Head

Joan rubs her bones. They’re knobbed and rheumatic, her joints like leftover fufu. Her eyes glower, two red and gold croissettes. She scolds herself, mutters and blows on her necklace of cowry shells. 

Easter’s coming. Many people want to join the chapel in time for the four-day festival. They need answers, not just the reassurance of resurrection. The social pressure is mounting – the lure of wage labor and the news of the oil industry bringing strange new people to the barrio. Disappointment and the need for knowledge pushes them towards the cult. They remind her of children and what it’s like to sleep. 

She’s beyond that – Joan doesn’t sleep. Her days and nights are dreams spent guiding her powers to achieve the goals of her god, Bwiti.

Who will urge the mute child to speak? 

Who will cure the distended belly of hunger and bad water? 

Who will cure burns from a hut in flames? 

Who will take away blindness or fever that turn a man to stone? 

Who will put back in the fields the people of SIDA?

Who will rid the mind of the devil who makes a woman mad? 

Who will make water from the well taste sweet?

Joan’s iboga powder brings everyone down to ground. Iboga returns them to the forest – if they open their eyes to the cooling ground root. When they return from iboga, they care less that they’re poor or sick. 

She’s already administered each initiate a teaspoon of iboga powder. Does it agitate or calm? Can they handle the drug or will evil spirits use the iboga as an excuse to kill their hosts? So far, she has not been negligent.

Joan dogs her arm out the window of the bush taxi that takes her through the abandoned cocoa and coffee fincas with long dead names like Holt, Balboa, Vivour, Prat and Kennedy. The fluffy white flowers of coffee decorate the air. Vivid green, orange, yellow and brown pods litter the untended rows of cocoa trees tucked under the resurgent forest canopy. Her fingers are stained red and white with blood and karolin.

Returning from an arduous call faraway in the night, her one bad walleye is swollen from the dust and bugs. They’re glued like tulle to her eyelids. She’s tired from battling evil powers but she can’t relax her guard – someone else’s magic might be stronger than hers.

Full of noble growth from the spirits and the ages, she’s wise to the spirits that lived before, who survived in the rainforest before any outsider dared step on the beaches of Bioko. 

A duiker scatters as the van rounds an eroded bend. 

The radio picks up some static fragments of state-owned 90.9 – the griots, she notes, sing a revised and politically accurate Chronicles of Engong – and she lends a smile to the Fang epic retold. The musicians and poets haven’t forgotten the big man, Teddy. Who can forget the years of suppression, downation and misrule? Who can forget the patron and boss?

Alone, except for her driver, Joan would like the prestige of exercising her mouth and demonstrating the badness of the night: how she unwraps the umbilical cord from the newborn’s wrinkled neck, her arms vigorously stirring the air. How the child is deflated, breathless and dead, red and limp, her bangles clacking like spirits. How she smears it with white karolin, the color of sperm and the dead, her breath deepening to the register of a god. How she warns that it’s a strange future.

She knows that shrub. It likes the edge of the forest and this one’s budged right along the track. The flat, waxy leaves glisten in the coming light. The silhouette is all too familiar. The plant grows everywhere but this looks like a good one. 

“Hey!” she says to her driver. “Hey, eh, stop the car!” 

Moving in a bustle of cloth, she touches down on the red dirt road.

Shapes can be discerned and worlds opened. Plants and objects with good intention are blessed with Joan’s august respect, then she picks them for her chapel. She also knows those plants that hurt or kill. She must understand what her enemies may preach. 

She picks a lantern-like fruit. 

A hyrax zithers in the distance. 

Her acme is to collect, divine and guide. She does not judge. Bwiti is her channel and clairvoyant.

It tastes like persimmon and groundnut. 

The shadow of the driver falls over her own.

“Make yourself useful, man! Give me a chain or rope!”

The driver dare not disobey the ritual specialist and nganga. Joan never quite disappears as a woman and never quite appears as a man. 

Joan stands in the dirt and pulls away the foliage. Some bulbous pink flowers drop to the ground. Perfect. 

The driver loops the chain over the hitch of the sun-bleached van. 

Monkeys boom and cough.

“It’s got long roots so wrap it up good. Yes, like that.” 

Impetuous, pointing with her long knobby fingers, Joan waits for the chain to tighten, to strangle the iboga and pull it from the dirt. The shrub struggles and the van scurries forward, the engine rumbling and the plant peeling. The chain tightens around its neck. 

“It’s  old and wise,” she says, rubbing her palms together. This is a valuable find. 

A scalebird slides through an octave. Peafowl cry. 

Everyone is coming tonight. The powder’s ready. It has been boiled and desiccated and will be infused to be made slightly more edible.

The bush taxi whirls its bald wheels, tugs with a steady pressure. The earth buckles around the shrub and explodes like a spot. The shrub twists loose, exposing the thick hirsute tentacle-like orange tubers. 

“Magnifico!” she cries, clucking and banging the large knot of roots to remove the dirt. 

It’s like a nest of spiders. 

She doesn’t have to be overly careful. She can take it all, not like the over-harvested plants around the chapel.

The plant emits a low inaudible throb in her lap. Only Joan can hear it. The initiates will notice it later, for only a few moments, and that will be enough. Hopefully they’ll want more. 

Iboga promises to be good in exchange for being revered. Iboga will bully those plants that are bad and feared. 

Her walleye fidgets in its socket. 

This is a good plant, says her god, Bwiti, let the pestle jump in the mortar’s mouth and make voice and music. Only Bwiti can effectively communicate its secret. 

In her absence the members have prepared the chapel. The members or banzie attend to it like a body. They dust the pale spinal beam supporting the corrugated asbestos roof. The occasional hoot of alarm indicates a tarantula, bigger than a hand. The raffia streamers are hung again around the central column, adorned with a five-pointed white star and a cross with a hole in its center, allowing souls to pass between worlds. The members sweep the dirt floor, moving from sacristy to altar, tabernacle to door, unworried by the few chairs present.

The heart of the chapel is carefully cleaned for the musicians. Without them the marathon of hypnotic syncopated beats will not occur; for now they are dreaming. It isn’t their time yet. 

A senior member, awarded the task of guarding the sanctuary, polishes the ceremonial spoons. He attends to the reliquaries and the bags of bones, bieri, carefully spitting palm wine, fresh and sweet, like champagne and coconut milk, over the three grimacing troll-like reliquaries. The liquid trickles down into bag, wetting the biscuits of bone – crania and fragments of femur, finger and jaw. 

He then directs the cooling of the beer, calabashes of palm wine and sugar cane malamba on the refreshing earth floor next to the crates of cola and orangeade for the women. Children cling to the perimeter, hoping. A little girl is sucking on a monkey skull.

“You know, people, the Bubis tell the same stories we do,” he says. “Mama  Joan told me.”

Murmurs of encouragement follow this introduction.

“Five friends walk, as they do. 

“One day the youngest says, ‘We can’t do this all our lives. Let’s find a house where we can sit and talk.’

“The next one says, ‘When the house is made, I’ll be in charge and decide where we’re going.’

“The fifth differs. ‘If you’ll rob, if you’re thieves, I’m going to separate myself.’

“So he does. He separates himself and finds a place opposite them. Without him, they can’t rob or steal.

“Then, these are the five friends: The small finger builds the house. The ring finger serves them. The heart finger’s hungry. The index finger robs. And the thumb is the one who left the rest.”

The group laugh together. 

When will Mama Joan be back?

The soldiers manning the roadblock are intrigued by the haggard woman with a root in her lap. 

“She kind of looks like Teddy,” says one of the guards, high and slapping his thigh in delight. 

“Me gusta Teddy,” says one of the others, wiping his Kalashnikov against his tunic, studying Joan.

She’s formidable and not to be trifled with.

The brute in charge waves his gun at his comrades. “He’s only out at night and he’s not this ugly.” He heehaws uncontrollably, waving her through.

Joan arrives at the well-placed chapel that affords a central view of the dirt street. Joan tentatively steps out of the bush taxi, the iboga root wriggling in her gnarled hands. Her assistant and kombo is first to report: there has been no trouble among the initiates. 

“What about that crazy girl, Yonni Progress?” she asks. 

“She’s with Shango and his sons, cleaning guns!” exclaims the kombo, worry trilling in his voice.

“They too are banzie. We cannot say no. But I must ask her again.”

Joan slowly shuffles to the edge of the clearing behind the chapel, but not before licking a spoonful of iboga powder against the fatigue deep in her body. 

“Is someone working against me?” she asks herself as she approaches the well-armed group gathered around leader and patriarch, Shango, elegantly dozing on a bed of leaves. 

Shango’s wiry hair pushes against his crushed black top hat, heavy and sacred like a bell. His business is not her business. His people are not her people. His chapel is not her chapel.

Nana, a red bandana tied over his dreads, a red Prodigy T-shirt pulled over his muscles and wearing a large London Fog raincoat, grins and squats. His teeth stick out from his mouth and his mustache tickles the white plugs. His cheeks are compressed around his nose and eyes. He’s a little high on bush. He’s recently chased some cheap, dirty heroin, numbing and effective too. Nana holds his tarnished Colt to Tino’s neck, right behind the jaw and ear. His finger is not on the trigger – that’s what he calls safety. 

With his other hand he grips Tino’s head. 

Tino’s mouth is pursed bashfully. He’s passive and keeps Nana at arm’s length. Six thick cornrow braids keep his head together. His collar is stained with salt and sweat. His knee is in his armpit as he sits against the mango tree.

Nana joshes him with the pistol before turning it on Figo, who is wearing a woman’s knickers on his kinky wig of straightened black hair. 

Figo’s neck is tied with a white kerchief too. He’s got a backpack for his Rollerblades and a live white rooster cinched over his white shirt. Figo’s veins run through his arms to his fingertips, right into a machete. 

Yonni has a whistle in her mouth and it’s with this that she will wake Shango. Her spray of wild hair is tied up in a red and green cloth. She’s got on a puffy vest painted with the words, NO MAN NO WAR. It’s zipped to between her breasts. She’s just replaced the firing mechanism to a Kalashnikov. She’s wearing corduroys, a baseball cap tied to a belt loop. Her yellow, glassy eyes do not move. She picks a piece of chicken out of her molars with a long knife. She likes the whistle and gives it a hearty toot. 

Her mouth gathers around her teeth. 

Tweet-tweet! Tweet-tweet!  

Yonni Progress is the law.

Joan sways before them, woman, totem and messenger. It’s her chapel, her barrio.

Shango stirs slowly. He smiles deeply at his three sons, Tino, Nana and Figo. He’s delighted his sole daughter Yonni will sweeten his tea after so long away serving her husband. 

Yonni’s face broadens as the old man admires his kids gathered together under the mango. 

Clop-clop, clop-clop, reports Shango’s top hat, his fingers booming on his skin and iron talisman.

Joan isn’t intimidated.

 “Yonni, you do want to join Bwiti, don’t you?” she asks, her authoritative voice penetrating through the group. Joan can deal with anyone. 

Yonni’s voice is hesitant but grows in mastery as she expresses her wishes. “I told Shango. I want to be a member of Bwiti. My brothers are Bwiti. My father Shango is Bwiti. My ex-husband Godbless is Bwiti. But he is always swimming since he has no children and I’ve left him.” She listlessly tosses the whistle in her pink hands.

Joan interjects. “It’s not enough to believe, Yonni, as the Catholics preach. In Bwiti one must see to believe.”

“I have come back. Shango’s disappointed that I wasn’t good enough for my husband. Bwiti will help me make a new marriage and have children. My divorces have come because I couldn’t have children.”

“Are you a witch?”

Shango listens attentively and the boys suspend the gunplay. 

“Mama Joan, I don’t know.”

“I cannot admit you if you are.”

“What  did Bwiti say last night?” Yonni pleads.

“Bwiti  did not give a negative answer. The otunga sapling easily came from the forest floor. Everything is auspicious and good. For you and the others.” Others’ fortunes are easy like milk.

Yonni Progress sighs in relief when Joan signals that she should be brought to the chapel for initiation. Cleaning guns and taking care of the men is exhausting.

Joan does not rest. “All I ask is that you receive Bwiti with an open heart, Yonni. You need nothing more.” 

“That’s why I’m here, Mama Joan. Godbless’s heart is closed to me and open to swimming. I hope he comes here later and sees that I am open too.”

“This is the real reason?” 

Shango delivers Yonni an eyeful of warning.

Yonni pauses. “Yes, Mama Joan.”

“Please tell me if you feel any pain, and if you cannot see.”

“Yes, Joan.”

Shango and his sons grunt in ascent. 

“Bid goodbye to your father and collect yourself.”

Yonni receives her first spoonful along with the other initiates. She’s seated in the front of the chapel near the central pillar. A cross and the reliquaries adorn the altar. A basketful of iboga is placed before her on the skin of a civet cat. A male and a female member of the chapel are appointed her papa and mama for the ceremony. 

Before noon Yonni’s eaten sixteen teaspoons. Her mouth is numb. 

At midday an antelope horn is blown. They must warn the ancestor that the new descendants are coming so they will have time to prepare.

She must eat more before she’s taken to the stream. 

Joan doesn’t seem worried by the thin girl. 

“She won’t fall under the spell,” she tells her pastor and administrator, the komba. “We must swell her soul on the tendons and veins of her body. You know, when you’re skin feels like silk, your soul will burst through and break free to join Bwiti.” 

Yonni’s papa and mama are careful with her doses. The pastor nods in consent. 

The procession walks down to the stream. Yonni is an ebin or initiate. Ahead of her is the griot, strumming on his mvet or harp, the sound looping, high pitched and hallucinatory. The pastor and others somberly follow. The last person is an old woman offering a plate of iboga. 

In a glade where the stream widens they halt. Yonni is sick from walking and she has to vomit. She’s struggling to complete what’s expected.

“She’s going to have to eat more if she is going to see Bwiti,” says Joan, running her hands through the vomit to see if there is any blood or evil there.

Yonni is stripped to the waist and she is asked to confess her sins. 

“If you have murdered and do not confess, you will surely die,” says her mama. 

Papa raises his voice to the forest.

Mama secures various leaves and powders on a leaf on the bank. Papa wades down the stream and he returns with a mixture of flowers and leaves, myan. Mama takes the leaves of the abomenzan. 

She’s trembling. Papa chews the myan and spits on her. He washes her with stream water to open her eyes to Bwiti.  

A strong narcotic perfume engulfs Yonni. Mama rubs her with the abomenzan. Its odor is attractive to the spirit of the dead and to Bwiti. It will excite them and they’ll pity her plight.

Papa administers the final packet of powdered bark. Mama has stripped Yonni naked. He rubs her with the powder made of the bark of twelve trees. These are described to her one by one, all good and all pure and well regarded by the ancestors.

 “Learn these trees! They are the hour of midnight, when Bwiti will come to you!” 

Yonni is admonished and then welcomed into the folds of a white initiation dress. 

She is escorted to the glade to present herself to the members. Mama and papa stand in the stream. Yonni is summoned again and must crawl through their legs. She’s afraid to go through. This is her birth in Bwiti. 

Joan strikes her over the head with a large phallic-shaped flower of the parasol tree, much to the amusement of the others. It opens Yonni’s head and then her soul might escape. Mama and papa also strike her with the flower. 

Yonni is left in the water and Joan walks upstream. She lights a cube of pitch on a manioc leaf. The burning soul boat floats through Yonni’s legs.

Eleven more doses are given. Yonni needs help. Mama and papa are talking in her ears and again she’s sure they are the voices of the dead. 

The procession circles the chapel and the central pillar once. The otunga sapling from the forest is now planted in front of the chapel. All the members present aid in tamping down Yonni’s ladder to heaven. 

A chicken is then sacrificed. Any blood from its beak is collected by the kembo as this is a healing agent. In heaven the chicken announces the coming of Yonni’s spirit. Yonni leans to the bloody neck and sucks the blood and feathers from the stump with her swollen tongue. Her head is dashed with the hot absolving life force.

Yonni’s body is taken away after the conclusion of this first part of the ceremony. She has to eat more if she is to see. 

***

Godbless Progress arrives late at the chapel. Salt from the sea squeezes his skin and creases his mouth and eyes. The young athlete and part-time fixer is exhausted after his training. In the candlelight he hesitantly peeps into his bag. 

Has he forgotten the manual from the Spanish Aquatic Sports Association? Godbless Progess has been following the guidelines for a winning breaststroke, but the diagrams and instructions are no substitute for a coach. 

He greets the white-robed kombo with a long shake and nods at Joan. She troubles herself to walk over and hug him. He’s her favorite. 

“Now, child,” she says, “Godbless ready for tonight?”

“A bit tired, Mama Joan, but, yes, I’m ready,” he says. The iboga will take away any weariness.

“Do you know that Yonni is here tonight?”

“No! ”

“You didn’t tell her to come?”

“Long ago, Mama Joan. She’s not my wife anymore.” This is a blow. “She’s with Shango and her brothers?”

Joan’s relieved he doesn’t want anything more to do with Yonni. It was a bad match, the forced pairing of the good with evil. “He’s a very rancorous man.”

“Tell me, does she have any children?”

“No.”

This is what he expects. She can’t have children. Yonni’s no good.

“Now, Godbless, get ready and join the other banzie. Iboga will help you.”

He changes behind the sacristy. The initiates are still inside, eating or barfing iboga. It’s vital they ingest as much as they can. 

Shango’s fire burns in the clearing but Godbless doesn’t bother to greet him. His top hat dances and Tino’s Colt flies like a bat. Figo rollerblades around the shadows, waving his machete and flying throwing his rooster like a yo-yo. 

They can be offended or disappointed. It’s up to them, no disrespect.

Godbless pulls on his white shirt and white trousers. Soreness is fixed in the length of his muscles. His lungs fill deeply with breath and his back flexes with each cycle. The cloth is clean, pure and reassuring, the easy comfort of submitting to something or someone greater than oneself. He finds a length of line, wrings out his red trunks, and hangs them up. They can’t mildew and they have to last. He doesn’t have to worry about goggles. He doesn’t have any.

In the chapel in front of the mirror Godbless paints his face with karolin. It’s wet and cold. Not all the pigment has diluted. It’s lumpy and course. He smears a band around his eyes like a bushbaby. He then divides his awry hair with an elegant curved needle of hard blond wood, the blunt end jutting out over his eyes, the sharp end over his crown. He’s ready. 

The initiates can expect music and dance tonight in the iboga stupor. Four musicians tune the drums and harps. They occasionally take slugs of rum. Godbless offers his hand to the other banzie, already in line and rehearsing the steps to come. 

Yonni and the other initiates are brought into the chapel. Their mothers and fathers sit behind them. 

His grip gathers Yonni’s hand. He wants to be kind, and she squints at him from her languor, slowly registering his presence. 

She’s bashful and filled with woe when she says, her tongue thick in her throat like a scarf, “I  fell from a palm. I wanted nuts for oil.” 

With an amount of empathy and consternation, Godbless’s brow knits together. It’s true. Her left side is clumsy and blue. “I’m sorry, Yonni.” Falling from a palm’s ominous. Women shouldn’t climb palms.

“Fever is coming but I’ve asked Bwiti to save me.” She feebly pulls him toward her for a hug and she presses her eyes into his chest. Her banana-like breasts point into his stomach.

“Did you tell Mama Joan?”

“Of course, husband.” 

Godbless calculates her designs – she’s sneaky! He doesn’t want another barren woman. A woman can’t possibly dissuade him from sport. 

“What will be will be,” he says, pushing her down, feeling her empty stomach that was never full.

Midnight’s coming and it’s time. Godbless approaches one of the baskets of iboga. He’s careful not to appear greedy. The powder’s red and gritty like dirt. There’s no recipe to make it truly palatable. The fatigue vanishes rapidly.

He feels confident and moves across the chapel to whisper in Joan’s ear. “I’d like to feel the ground.” 

“Are you strong enough, my son? ”

“Yes.”

“And Shango and his sons, are they?”

“They have bigger fish to fry.”

“Who shall be your mother and father?”

“You, Joan.”

“ Don’t have more than three baskets, Godbless. It can be fatal. That is my only instruction. I do not want you to die.”

“I want to be with Yonni when she sees Bwiti. Maybe she will become good.” He doubts it.

“I will have the thorn ready.”

The kimbo grunts and the claps the twelve beats that hold the trance – x o x o x x o x o x o x – calling down. 

The cowry rattles are employed – dasha, dasha, dasha, dasha. 

“Ah-hah-hah!”  calls the harpists at intervals, “Ah-hah-hah-who!”

The harps are silent. It is not yet time for the white-painted figures on their gazelle skin sound boxes to sing. After midnight, the harp’s wood no more but man.

The dancers unfold in a synchronized, repeating line. Shoulders tumble and waists dig, the moves expanding like a wave as the rhythm captures them. They change shape and coil around the seated initiates, bolt upright, ticking when the woodblock and rattles break into their wakefulness. 

The iboga pulls them down to where they’re staying, near coma and death. 

Yonni feels broken. The chapel is unfocused. The faces and chapel are gone, just outlines of sparky color. Her mind walks in the hinterland. He body reclines, distant, some strange boat built from earth. She’s bewildered that she’s from here. 

Her mama solicits the elements of her travels from her coded mumbling. She’s at the crossroads where the black and red roads meet.

They wet the floor when there’s too much dust. But still the dust rises. Rain drubs against the roof. The harps sing now, the air, chapel and bodies reverberating with the strange oscillating tune. It’s the ancestors dancing. The banzie float up and mingle with them. 

A drum is beaten in Yonni’s ear. The suffering of life pounds upon her spirit within her body until it can struggle free and fly. 

The ritual turmoil gains – dancers and drums, locus and logic lifting the chapel from the earth and calling the forest in.

She’s anxious. She’s shouting. Godbless! Godbless! 

He’s not coming and her soul won’t break free. 

Tears pull the karolin down her face in guano-like streaks

Shango and the others hinder her. She can’t get beyond the crossroads. They are standing in the way. She’s too drugged to figure out how to clear the road of Shango’s guns, wickedness and violence. Who can reason why Shango wants Bwiti’s blessing when he blocks the way? 

Godbless can’t hear her. He’s given up dancing. The tempo has increased too much. He’s swallowed so much iboga he cannot move. His stomach is dry and cracked like old clay. Three baskets are turned over in front of Godbless. He’s not letting go of the ritual spoon and oar. The dead are whispering in his ear. The dancers and drums are the crowds of the dead. 

Joan, noting the set and situation, signals that they may bring the mirrors. Godbless’s been sailing from himself and he finds his dead father in the tarnished silver rectangle. He mumbles excitedly. His spit is gone and his back is brittle. He’s the last one to capsize. 

Joan is overjoyed to see Godbless collapse. She pushes a thorn under his skin and he does not flinch – he’s close to Bwiti.  

She too must dance to celebrate. Iboga has brought her a disciple. She feels no tiredness in her steps. She sheds her blouse and dances in her white brassiere, her cowry charms and necklaces hissing around her. She leans forward and calls to the musicians, her throat wide open like a horn, her feet polishing the roots of the earth. Her eyes leak with white joy, her tongue and gums call down Bwiti. In one hand she holds a fan made from the rough skin of a flat fish. Each wrist jangles with a red bracelet and a white bracelet of coral. She moves with water-like grace.

Bwiti is coming to ask her to dance. He likes the narcotic smell of abomenzan  mixing with her sweat. She asks Bwiti to dance with her children, the members. Her limbs are liquid and grace and she ensnares him and brings him down. She knows iboga is a fuller universe. Why would it not be? 

Good trees crowd around the chapel and clap on the roof. Saplings sprout between the legs of the initiates and the toes of the dancers. The forest is one with the sect. It has come to them like the age of old.

Godbless is tied to the central pillar with a cord. His feet splay outward like the spokes of a wheel. His soul passes through the hole in the white cross on the pillar. He’s in the company of the ancestors, and they’re wending their way through the forest to the final place, the land of the dead. In this communion and getting down, he is not tasting but seeing. He’s the forest. 

The harps wawwaw in a discombobulating acoustic cream. The drums syncopate and layer like sonic cake. Dasha, dasha rattle the cowries like sprinkles of death.

Godbless travels, hardly breathing, hardly beating, close to an overdose, lost in the time immemorial of the trees. The dead dance behind his eyes and talk behind his ears. 

Three women are fishing bones from a river. They’re collecting them on the bank. Godbless floats across and there is a crossroads. He has a choice: silver, gold or red. 

Standing there is his father who says, “See where you have arrived with the power of iboga.” 

Godbless passes through his legs and takes the gold road. It’s brighter and brighter. 

He passes under a house of glass on a hill. Underneath is a man, Eyan Zame, shining on a cross. He knows the savior from pictures, he who sees God and brings word and vision to mankind. Some call him Jesus. The glass house belongs to the universe – she’s open and inside is Joan.

Mama Joan is a secretary and she’s working for one white man dressed all in white. She’s writing down his sporting accomplishments and his name as banzie. His name has not changed. 

Joan says, “You are Godbless. This man will coach you. He will help you swim.” 

They give him sugar cane to eat. He’s using up his energy like a dynamo.

A crowd of people whose color he doesn’t know surround the house. There is water too. The white man calls to him, “Come in the water! It’s nice!”

He looks at the water but it blinds him. He sees a path in the water, puts on a mask and jumps in headfirst. Others are jumping in too. But the water pushes him out. He cannot enter because he still has black skin. All the dead are white. When he dies, he will become white like them. Then he can go in. Then he can win. Once he’s in the water, then he can have more clients, a new wife, lots of children and a better house for his family.

Joan must bring him back from the brink to the exterior world, back from the death of the night, back to where things are real and not where they are unknown and unreliable. His head is broken and the door of death is closed.

Clop-clop!

It’s Shango’s top hat. 

Clop-clop!

Thunder passes under the roof of the temple and lightening lashes at the pillar. Shango knows and Shango’s angry. Bwiti does not want Yonni, and Godbless stands in the way. It’s best to leave those white men alone.

Petrology and Pollywogs

Mahi mahi patrol the perimeter. The Jade sweats and drips over the Gulf. The artificial reef and altar is sanctuary. Big schools of edible nature agitate in the deep, scales and skin below reflecting the orange fire of the flare boom. Everything’s attracted to the light. Then the fire winks and sputters out. 

Bigfoot loves his job. He points the emergency flare gun. Jade’s flare boom won’t spark up automatically. A fiery purple ball flies over the gassy wick dangling over the ocean, and with a heavy report the gas condensate flares, the orange tag of flame big like a man. 

The superstructure shimmers – its edges soft and melting, the flare boom burning and baying – steel hot to the touch, touch hot to the steel. A strong line of cloud draws the horizon. 

The water wallops with choppy menace, snarling and stretching for the moon hole in Jade’s middle, pulling at Daniel who stands on a catwalk under the drill floor, seemingly within reach of the tropical gulf. Polka dots of grease mollify the blue-green water in places. The pipe agitates upward. They’re surely going to change bits. 

On the way up to the drill floor he notices the mermaid. She’s on a girder, smiling, alluring, her hair pulled back in pigtails. Her figure’s a crude outline, the beads dropped from a welding torch. He touches the charm, the bumps of her breast and the dots of her hair. She’s cold, inanimate and no substitute for the yoke of a woman’s legs. 

Chico, JoJo and Gigi are smeared in dope and mud. They’ve been tripping for their last two shifts, yo-yoing sections of pipe. It’s disassembled in triples or trips.

“This, amigo, this trip is short, I tell yah.” Chico motivates his team with irony, and the team grunt in acknowledgment. 

There’s no mercy. The pipe’s coming out like a soft noodle. It’s flexible and pliant, almost tender and quite unlike steel. Chico, JoJo and Gigi have some help – a mechanical roughneck, their pet robot who helps break the sections. The men push the crab-like beast away once the joint’s broken. Their boots slip and skid over the surface when they rack the pipe. It weighs a ton and it’s worth plenty. 

The thing chatters and out comes more pasta and sauce. 

Chico clamps his teeth around a toothpick. He’s been gouging the tinned corn from his teeth since lunch. He’d like a smoke and he doesn’t like the look of Daniel at the perimeter. The wimp’s neatly attending to a bit of – ash? dandruff? – on his Perry Ellis shirt. Gushing seawater does Chico’s ire no good. Why doesn’t Sherm do something with that chump?

He guides the robot into position again. All pressure must be off the rotary table before the robot will activate and unscrew the pipe. Chico signals. 

Red tong-like arms suffocate the pipe. It twirls violently. Grease oozes from the string. Water and mud cascade over their boots and spits on their bibs and safety goggles. Chico, Gigi and Jojo are a unit, simultaneously tugging the pipe away from the rotary table into the pipe racker, Anton on the monkeyboard hanging in the beams of the derrick and helping above.

Still warm from its journey through the formations of the earth, the pipe steams as it falls into the racker.

Out jumps another triple.

Daniel leans with his hands in his pockets to one side of the driller’s doghouse. He’s sure Sherman can see him from his office. Sherman can admonish him all he wants. 

What’s he supposed to do? Work?

His clipboard’s pinned against his ribs. His legs shake from the vibrations and noise, thudding against his mouth, aching for a cerveza and a chance to shoot the shit. He leans into the cabin, a metal fan oscillating weakly against the heat. 

“Hiya, Luke, mind if I sharpen a pencil?”

Luke touches the screen of the active heave compensator. Sweat runs on the skin around his eyes behind his glasses. He’s concentrating. “Have at it.” 

Daniel inserts his blue HB into the metal hole and churns. 

The fuse box glowers, an array of red and green lights. A legend’s taped to each lozenge. The switches for some pumps have been tagged: 

Danger: Do not start this machine.

He asks, “Am I going to have my cores, Luke? We already behind.”

Luke raises his head. “Didn’t I personally drill the fastest exploration well this side of the old world?” 

“Did you?”  Daniel extracts his point. The ground graphite smells like a fresh-mowed lawn. 

“What, son?” Luke’s cagey about his record. 

“How long it take?” He’s feeling a little confrontational.

“Fifteen months. No one’s bettered that.”

The booth and drill floor are pulsating. Luke’s dial grins among the many gauges, shiny brass and chrome. One of Luke’s monitors shows his 3-D target. Progress is slow now. They’re close. 

“Big boss comin’ in with some government people, you hear that?” Luke wriggles with worry when he says it.

“Busy time.” Daniel nods.

“We need to run casing. The hole’s soft.”

“Mud can’t hold the formation?”

“I could make a dogleg.” Luke’s finger blots the image of his progress. “Problem?”

“So long as there isn’t a hiccup with the geology.” He needs the results for the Poseidon and government meeting. Since Sherman’s upgrade, he’s all manager, not mud. But the numbers he’s seen so far are puzzling: reserves are not matching production. A solution hasn’t been easy. 

“Look , Daniel, wait till tomorrow. Geophysical dropped a probe in this morning. You’ll get new data, don’t worry.”

“The big one that looks like a prick?”

“They  all look like that, hoss. On every well we’ve been in the zone, son. The Jade ain’t had a duster yet. You can trust ol’ Luke.” Luke rests one of his hands against the sloping stainless steel countertop. He takes a sip of coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Still strikes me as odd them Frogs and Spics couldn’t find no oil and we have so much damn luck.”

“Guess Poseidon knows better.”

“Guess so. Neptune’s a funny old guy. Best part of my life discovering these fields.” 

“That’s why you went quiet all those years, huh?” asks Daniel, pushing his hair off his forehead.

“Uh-huh.”

Daniel looks out to sea in the pause – the sky frowning, a squall touching the navy blue sea, the swells rubbing together like slush. No one can account for those years. How to explain the kids and women in one’s life? How to explain the cycle of battle and peace? These are things one man doesn’t tell another. 

Rainy wind twirls in his hair. It’s laced with the tropics. He takes a deep breath and takes a hit. It tastes like flowers: ylang-ylang, pepper and nutmeg – Women! Booze! Tobacco! 

He laughs at this. He doesn’t smoke. 

Gannets and terns snipe the shoals flocking below the storm’s approaching edge.

Luke’s the first one to speak. “Rockets made the quarterfinals.” 

“With an injured Olajawan, no chance.”

“Bet you a can of Folgers Rocket’s win?” He gambles out the side of his mouth.

They both don’t realize Bioko Island has oodles of fresh mountain-grown.

“You’re on. Cuz Lakers’ll smoke ‘em.” The tins of Folgers were packed for this purpose. 

“I didn’t know you were that queer.”

“Queerer than a three-dollar bill.” 

They laugh at that – fags are about as wanted as women offshore. No man is adorned with fresh hickies, scratches or other tokens of love. 

Daniel blows the graphite dust off the cone of the HB pencil and grabs his clipboard. What if he only talked in clichés? Would he then be an actor in a soap, admired by loyal millions? Or would he fit on this strange boat, loved by a loyal few? Instead, he feels like an outcast.

“You look mighty queer to me, boy!” Rocking on his toes, Sherman drools at the door of the doghouse. “As much as I’d like to get my head around who you are, Danny Grace, I can’t – you’re too fucking opaque.” He pushes back his baseball hat in puzzlement before venturing gleefully, “Y’all ready for King Neptune? He’s coming aboard next few days.” 

Daniel’s perplexed. What’s Worm on about? King Neptune? That’s a myth. There’s no lord of the deep. Who’s next, Zeus? He turns on his heels and brushes past abhorrent Worm. He suspects Worm’s the one in the closet – that would explain a lot.

“Don’t get lost, Pollywog Grace,” says Worm, his voice filled with lewd tones. 

Daniel walks under a crane, the load twirling over the ocean, wind pushing over and under the suspended world of the Jade. His head is moving fast and his white Reeboks squeak. He cuts along suicide alley to his living quarters to check on his supply of Folgers. Then he changes his mind and doubles back. 

What’s up with the coded language? Pollywog? Polyp’s more like it. 

Daniel re-passes the tetchy dirty drill floor. The first segments of drill collar are emerging. Any moment today a chewed-up head will wiggle from the sea, shooting seawater from its mouth like a rusty serpent, some odious dragon of the deep released from aqueous Hell. The grim thought encourages him to find his desk. At least he can pretend he’s back on the beach, looking down from his office window on Houston’s ship channel busy with very large crude carriers.

In the muffled silence of the computer lab and science lounge, no one’s had time to reboot the two PCs.

Nice, he thinks, nice, as he stoops for CTRL-ALT-DEL. 

The noise of the rig is dampened by the air-conditioning; weights clank in the gym some decks below. Somebody’s enthusiastic, he speculates, like those maniacs who run laps around the helideck before dawn. His heart beats against his ticklish lungs and he coughs for a moment. It’s hard to stay in shape on a magic carpet.

He logs into the system, humming with satisfaction that he’s outfoxed the moody LAN, and clicks the Eudora icon. Has Kylie written? 

His inbox fills with messages scrambled in transit.

“Egghead!” He picks up the phone.

Egg’s VHF radio chatter’s with insults: trawlers from the mainland.

–Hey, monkey, you Igbo monkey

–Hey, Fang pig, I shit on your bieri. 

–Hey, you lions, I spit on you lions.

“Yo, Egghead.” His follicles tightens

“All right, mate?” Egghead’s not English. He’s a poseur.

“Listen, Egghead, my messages are garbage.” Dannygrace@hotmail.com is hardly responding.

“Hang on, mate!” The VHF radio squeals over him. He bumps over the band and turns it up. He passes over between Radio Togo Libre, then Voice of Biafra International, when he snatches the Spanish broadcast. 

“Whoops!” Egghead says. Egghead pushes aside the time cards and helicopter crew list. Everyone should be listening to this broadcast from Bioko. “You understand Spanish?”

I was afraid there was no oil. There was oil to the north and to the south but none here. But I had faith, faith that Equatorial Guinea had oil.

“A little!” Daniel says as he notes the e-mail from Kylie. He doesn’t open it after all – too many dollar signs in the subject heading. Scrambled or unscrambled he’s not touching that. Apparently he isn’t feeling any regrets or loneliness. Communication technology can be a quick cure for the blues.

Multinational companies have asked for too much and they want more. They do not love us and we do not love them. Enemy powers are dressed as friends. Other countries have not helped us. We will renegotiate for the lost revenue from these colonial masters of the past, and like all our comrades in Africa, we seek justice, unity and peace!

Egghead’s radio sputters into another sequences of squeals, and President Teddy’s booming voice zooms away into the night.

“What? ” calls Daniel for the last time. 

Egghead calls over the squeals, “You understand that muppet?”

“Nah, didn’t get none of it.” 

“It’s President Teddy in Malabo. What a fucker!”

“Who cares?” He’ll turning into a copy of Sherm if he’s not careful with his emotions. Daniel drops the phone in the cradle. Enough of Egghead. He pushes away the keyboard and cuffs the monitor. “Fuck it!” he says with disgust. He swivels in the plastic chair and rises. He should be out of production. The gamble of exploration is what he loves. Jerking off behind the blue curtain won’t even help. He’s far away from the cure: a session in his beloved DIY workshop in his Houston garage. By now, the cockroaches probably know how to weld! 

His feet ping on the steel stairs of the gangway, and he passes into the silent laboratory module. It’s a skeleton crew here on the Jade. He misses the Champion technical support, a whole floor of people who helped him exercise his doubts: the chemistry nerds whining over the x-ray diffraction results, the geophysical geeks flabbergasted by the latest logs, and then that magical moment at an exploration meeting when everyone suddenly shuts up after he pushes them into an agreement of which way the oil lies, thanks to no more than his trusty honker. 

He leans over his work area, tucked in a corner of the production lab. At his disposal is what little there is. He hasn’t had time to personalize except for a diminishing jar of dry roasted peanuts. Kylie and Daniel Jr. are living as 2x2s in his wallet, thrown in the back of his locker in 202. He needs to do something! 

Daniel closes the door. He doesn’t want to be disturbed. Tubes of maps are banked in a large box in one section of the lab. He starts to unroll them on the light table until he finds one to the right scale. Sao Tome’s down in one corner and Bioko’s cattycorner. They’re not particularly current but that doesn’t matter, unraveled over the ambient dusted-green glass surface. He secures the independent-minded corners with an array of small leather weights. Daniel hikes up the cuff of his jeans and peels off his Reeboks. He climbs onto a stool and lifts himself onto the table. On all fours, he exhales deeply. His lungs fill with mind; his stomach fills with body. So far, he’s got the advantage on technology and the three-dimensional model map room.

The paper creases under him as Daniel lowers his nose to the surface and starts inhaling around St. Helena and Bonaparte’s smelly old bones. 

This isn’t like sniffing on land, his nostrils waffling along mountains and dunes. The water’s a barrier, cloaking the oil locked deep away under the dragons of the Atlantic. But he follows the long volcanic chain leading to the mainland. He skirts over Annobon and he sketches around Sao Tome, where he halts. His nose gliding gently over the pigments, contours and lines. Sao Tome’s worth some detail. 

God, it smells good, he muses, better than Kylie – barrels of oil, BOE.

Presently he’s snorting up oil, black and viscous like Biro ink, vaguely putrid like methane. It’s hidden under salt domes, stuffed into faults and fractures, and definitely within range of Poseidon’s budget if they haven’t been alerted already by seismic survey results. 

Sure, no one’s made a big discovery in years. That’s why he’s here in the end.

His face glows with pleasure. He’s intoxicated and decided, like a dog on the light table. The big panel of glass tremors, a fragile membrane underneath the big excited hound. Like him, it could shatter into a million pieces. 

Land and legal in Houston should know. He can smell the oil sealed in the earth’s dead varicose veins. Deeper down there’s more, beyond where Moby hunts for mega-squid. Sure, eco-worriers would have pea-brainers believe that the end in nye, just so they can flog some wind, for the future’s as dry as dust. But from those vague hints of wet plum and sauvignon he suspects it’s a different story, just past the range of today’s machines like the Jade and men like Luke. 

If they want it bad enough, they’ll find a way.

Delicately dismounting, he steps awkwardly into his shoes. Hs head is cocked with devilish assurance, and the scent of crude rises around him, as pungent as body odor. He’s revived. He hasn’t had a day this good in months! His nose receives a loving twist.

He approaches the cores he meant to research this afternoon with a new vigor. His clipboard slaps against the counter and he pushes on a pair of green surgical gloves. He glances over the coded ends of the cores in a wall that is the core archive; he identifies a long thin heavy box, carefully laying it in the worktable. The geological features and strata are carefully marked by a sequence of tiny flags. 

Cheese? Nations? Cocktails?  

“Where the hell is that Paleocene boundary?” he asks aloud, squinting at the morning’s research, reassuring himself with the gunpowder of his own voice. “Where on earth are those thin samples?” 

Today Daniel’s temper is a fluctuating and erratic mud of boredom, anger, excitement and now doubt. He wrenches the door to the lab open and marches down the corridor and twists the hatch open. This is area is where he autopsies the fresh cores of the earth. The core-receiving platform is an array of sinks, solution bottles, brushes and sifters. A large groove cradles the rock. 

Goddamn you, Kylie! 

Cold sweat trickles down his stomach, ending in a protuberance of good ol’ life. His body is a tense as a wet cat.

Like they know what work is. 

Assholes. 

You too, DJ 

Ungrateful shits.

He’s utterly premenstrual – alive with hopelessness and rage.

The first few eager sparks on Bioko Island begin to glimmer. Jade’s flare yellows the foreground. The island’s silhouette has merged into the sky as night gathers. The sun falls quickly in the tropics. Serpentina has replaced Aleutian Key, and she engages her floodlights over a half mile of steel sinking slowly into the sea until she’s full and ready to go home. Other installations and platforms in the Biafran Bight are turning on. The sky overhead is black. 

His skin pimples and the air’s as cold as dread. 

Teddy’s voice still echoes between his temples. 

I was afraid there was no oil. There was oil to the north and to the south but none here. But I had faith, faith that Equatorial Guinea had oil.

The president sounds as mad as Macbeth. How does Candida handle the Napoleonic squirt? 

Is he going to phone home and cry at three and a half dollars a minute?

Not likely.

The sky curdles as the light and barometer drop. The front’s purple, sucking and livid. Smaller craft plunge through the white caps, striking for the shelter of Bioko or the mainland. 

An odd white trapezoid shapes sails under the water, a large sunfish moving in the circulating conspiracy of currents and winds. 

A distant seismic whooping over Daniel’s shoulder reminds him. Chopper? 

Whoo-whoop, whoo-whoop. 

The sky changes in a flash, suddenly green and ionized. It’s a shadow first, then it chugs and wails. The air is spontaneously hazy, rain-specked. 

Banshee? 

Juggernaut? 

Daniel ducks as a vast turbulent shadow moves through his spine. He’s been so intensely out of it he hasn’t heard the warnings on the Jade’s PA. The helideck’s moving with shouts and color as the crew of Jade secure what they can.

The waterspouts dance over, slashing and blowing in a quartet. Neptune’s quartet of ocean-going Martians dwarfs their steely Trifid. A thousand hoses lash from the waterspouts. They are magnetic, cantering and wandering across the surface. Green lightening crenellates among them.

Daniel, soothed, enchanted, watches.

 “Somethin’, huh,” says Bigfoot nudging Daniel with his elbow. 

“You just got up?” Daniel’s startled from his reverie.

“Yup. We had ‘em a lot in the Gulf of Mexico.” Bigfoot’s about to shuffle off, clearly in the direction of the cantina. “Come eat, dude, it’s make-your-own-stir-fry all day today.”

Daniel tucks his blue HB pencil behind his ear and silently follows behind the abominable. 

“Dude, there’s barbeque on Sunday. Those Portuguese cooks are tops. I can’t wait.”

He’s not hungry when he recognizes the vaguely putrid metal bowls of peppers, celery and onions, diced meat, shrimp and bird. He’d rather eat his clothes and the plastic spices. 

Chico munches on a stir-fried rib. Vilely tearing at a slab of fat and meat, he hands Danny a greasy piece of paper. “Here’s a message for you, pollywog,” he says. Mud, lubricant and tissue are wedged under his nails. He has to go back to his shift.

ROYAL COURT OF KING NEPTUNE   From: The King of the Shellbacks To: Chico Mandell, Royal Cop Subject: ORDERS   His Majesty Neptunus Rex, Ruler of the Raging Main, King of the Shellbacks, welcomes you to his royal domain. Visit by His Majesty and royal court tomorrow. His Majesty is forwarding herewith subpoenas for delivery to all landlubbery pollywogs on board. Have all pollywogs ready for royal court at 1600. Treat all pollywogs in proper manner until his majesty’s arrival. Neptunus Rex will take over at that time.   1. When directed, you will take charge of the following wiggly, slimy things and post the lookout for His Majesty’s Representative, Lukas Ramp:   Klein Sumner Christensen Killroy Forbes Huard Challenger Beard Snodgrass Parsons Grace   2. The watch will be posted at 1600   3. The uniform will be jock straps, polar fleece and furlined helmets. Glasses will be provided.   4. All Pollywogs shall report at the Zodiacs.   5. Additional lookouts may be stationed as needed.   King Shellback

Daniel lifts his eyebrow, confounded, the wind whistling through his eyes. 

“What’s this about?”

No reply from Chico.

“How come my name’s on here?”

No one’s too forthcoming.

“What the hell is a pollywog?”

“It’s a kind of frog,” says Chico, sniggering at another bone. “King Shellback is Neptunus Rex. Mañana, gringo.”

“Can  anyone in this room tell me who is Shellback?” Daniel queries again. 

The crew and technicians pause with their trays of do-it-yourself-stir-fry under the fluorescent lights.

Bigfoot stammers. “He’s a tortoise. He has a queen. They have a royal baby.”

Chico rips some fat and meat from the rib. 

 “And why am I a pollywog?” ask Daniel.

The cantina is mum. Orders are orders. 

Daniel feels his diaphragm tightening. He starts to hiccup, breaks into a nervous, distrustful laugh a breath away from a scream as he calms himself by rising to the water cooler. The plastic cup vibrates in his hand.

He knows what this is. It’s some gay thing. 

Daniel grabs for his clipboard and removes a sheet of paper from the yellow legal pad underneath the core descriptions. He levers his HB from under the clip and starts to scribble, mixing cursive and print, caps and lower case. 

FROm: DanIEL iGNAtiUS gRACe, POllYWog tO: KIng SheLLBAcK SUbjECT: ORdeRS   Hear ye, hear ye, be it known by all who shall see his presence, that on this thirteenth day of May, in the year of our lord two thousand four there appeared before a tribunal of Trusty Shellbacks the Pollywog Grace of the Jade seeking petition and favor of his Royal Majesty King Neptunus Rex, Ruler of the Raging Main. Let it be known, that he shall be excused from all sundry wiggly, slimy, bloody rites due to outstanding duties.   DanIEL iGNAtiUS gRACe POllYWog

“Now give that to His Majesty’s Representative.” Daniel tears the sheet, folds it into thirds and hands it to Chico. “Catch as catch can.”

He fades from the hatch into the green aleph of light. He momentarily has no edges, and he stomps into the clamor on deck, hardly moving as the swells break against the Jade. Eight propellers and a computer keep her in place. 

The railing is sticky and it stings. Daniel’s put his hand into a spot of plasm, into what’s left of a jellyfish

It’s raining, raining with the creatures and stuff rejected by heaven. 

Mackerels, seaslugs, monofilament. 

Breams, men o’war, black sand and driftplastic. 

Kelps and cords. 

The stunned, torn and bloody drops thud against the topsides of the Jade. Some of the things flip helplessly. 

And then the rain abates. 

“Slimy, wiggling things!” yells someone, enraged, cutting away a net. 

“¿Que pasa?” calls a roughneck, the rig floor wet with fish. He’s not bothered. It could be raining birds. 

Nothing has a power of magnitude to disturb the spinning top. It will only stop when the hole is dead dry.

People are slipping on slime, scales and guts. Fish fall down the gangways and flop over the catwalks. Crabs wedge into the seams like rivets. 

Bigfoot ducks out from the galley, takes in the cataclysm. “Dude, God’s gotta be mighty pissed off at us.”

The Portuguese kitchen staff eagerly harvest from the superstructure, filling plastic buckets of what was lubricant with the fresh chum, illuminated under Jade’s powerful sodium lights. 

Jo-Jo screams as a familiar roar amplifies in the air and the wind dramatically increases. 

Incoming!

Everyone one grabs for a yellow railing and ducks with a collective whoa-shit!

“Global fucking warming!” Daniel curses into his hands as an aqua twister hurdles by to port. 

He turns to Bigfoot who’s crouched next to him. He says hoarsely, “Imagine the gales never stop. Never. That this is the first day of the winds of infinity.”

“Dude, don’t be talking like that. Fuck off!”

“It just occurred to me, that’s all.”

“Yeah… yeah… but, dude, we wouldn’t need any more oil, dude, if it was windy. The planet’d go nuts.”

“Wind everywhere, even in your head… dude!”

“Hey, Chico!”

Chico’s munching on a slice of melon that tastes an awful lot like refrigerator.

 He wants to pursue this idea. Why not fuck with them. “Dude! Hey, what’d you think if the wind’d blow for forty days and forty nights?”

Daniel, now pushing his butt against the wall of the stack, is not concerned about his clothes or his skin.

Not forty days and forty nights. Forever. 

His Majesty’s comin’, as graceful as the rain.

Forever. Oh, let it blow. 

Until the end of times. 

Until the oil runs out.

Black Beach

The street is steep in the slum of Los Angeles. The huts are arranged in terraces. There’s not much in the way of roots or concrete to keep the red mud in place. The houses tend to slide incrementally lower when it rains, which is often. Dwellings and trash shimmy together like a strange inedible cake. 

The sun breaks over Mount Pico, and Godbless Progress strums his guitar, carefully playing an island rumba, not paying too much attention to the chunk of plastic and transistors that spews music and the odd key word. The radio sputters with Ghanaian high-life music bouncing in from the Gulf. President Teddy’s voice is there too on the same frequency, warning and warring like he does 

His uncle, Joachim Progress, tells him, “Eh, quit for a moment.” 

With his razor-like voice, Teddy steps in and out of Bioko Island’s dreams. Teddy visits everyone, sewing his paranoia and terror in the furrow of their minds, traveling like old Scratch drunk on buckshot. As residents and entrepreneurs, it’s important to know Teddy’s frame of mind. 

Joachim and Godbless have an irregular and uncertain line in helping oilmen. Those oilmen are as choosy and slippery as fish. Whose bait will they bite from the ranks of young men dangling their lures in places like Pizza Place?

Godbless is unenthusiastic. How many times do you have to say Señor or Mister to some blanco before he’ll look at you? How many times do you promise or cajole? How many times does the enterprise work well and some sucker falls for a fishing, boozing or whoring trip? 

He’s sluggish this morning from smoking too much bush and drinking too much cane rum with Joachim. He chills on the porch of plastic crates and driftwood, the mosquitoes gone with the night – the silent deadly mothers, making music. The radio’s quietly accompanies him, pushing a rumba across the courtyard. Teddy’s gone with the moon.

“Where’s Yonni?” Joachim asks, his voice like soap. 

“Gone, stupid.” He rests his hand on the frets. 

“You’re not back with her, are you?” 

“No way, Joachim. She can take care of herself. She’s got some new friends. She’s not my wife no more.” 

“You’re wrong, son, she’s still your wife, and she’s part of the Progress family until the priest say so.” 

“Who’s left, Joachim? Since mama and papa were burned.” 

“Yonni’s just a child.”

“She’s nothing of the sort. Yonni’s not good.” 

Godbless leans against the mud wall sprayed once a year with DDT. It still smells of smoke, ever present in the courtyard hearth, a few eyes of coal glowing like the armor of a pangolin. He ducks into the cardboard hut and stashes his guitar under his bed. It’s almost a talisman. The key to Joachim’s shed near the beach falls from his pocket as he leans. Mainly, it’s for important stuff like the Yamaha engine for their pirogue. He retrieves it carefully, for when the door’s open, the snake can enter. When it’s closed, the snake cannot.

Teddy smiles above his bed. His portrait is ubiquitous and obligatory.

Godbless knows the story. President Teddy is divine. Supposedly, like many witches, he has a third lung or second spleen or some extra part, an organ that everyone calls evu. Many people do. It is he who created oil and brought it to his people, the Fang, who has led from the fertile interior, from dust to ecstasy. But he is a creation of the Family Council, the elders of his clan. And against their will he has recreated clan ownership in the form of the individual; some individuals in the clan are keeping well, others less. Teddy educates this evu, this organ, and his power seems immortal, coming every night like mosquito and mist. 

Because of Teddy’s wanderings, sometimes Godbless doesn’t want to sleep. And when he does, who he sees is awful.

Something’s wrong with Yonni. She’s been reborn in a fire. She walks with a cane, swinging a burned, emaciated leg in front of her, after she gets out of the president’s Suburban. She’s busty and fat. Her neck, arms and back ripple as she walks. Maybe it’s not her. He’s invited her from Club Náutico to the presidential palace. There’s a wing that only he has access to. No advisor or functionary is permitted. Only his brother Army has access. Teddy appraises her high buttocks as he offers her some fragrant Cabo Verde tobacco from his collection of snuff and betel boxes. 

“I liked Sukarno,” he tells her, as if she would know who is Sukarno. The room smells of mold and the walls are gold silk and match Teddy’s socks. Godbless sees him bend over Yonni and slip the tube top from her floppy breasts. He’s repulsed as the dictator commences to screw his wife, ex-wife. 

Teddy soon invites Godbless to a double penetration. Godbless won’t do it, he won’t get out of bed. Teddy calls his brother Army, who quickly appears and unbelts his cargo pants. Godbless watches the two lecherous men, aghast and unsure. 

She’s dry at first. That’s how they like it. 

Teddy leers at him through the bodies. Yonni smiles. Her tubetop is slung around her belly. Her poor leg doesn’t seem to be a disadvantage. She accepts them and submits. The two little agitated men are in violent ecstasy. 

Yonni grabs Teddy’s oily head and she finds a horrific knob, a horn in the back of his short Afro. Is this his evu?

Squirming, Teddy says, “Yonni, from now on you will work for us. Tell me everything you know about Shango and Godbless.”

She kicks back her head and laughs pleasurably, opening the knot-like wound in her withered leg – that’s when she fades from view, wiggling like a maggot on the two black pieces of flesh.

His eyes pulse against his skull; he’s aware of a threatening buzz, the cough of a goat, the scratching of chickens, the smell of blood, the beat of bats, the thud of a fruit, the burble of a throat, the roll of an eye. Teddy and Army visit the thrashing hot sooty restlessness of the people every night. What and who can happen in the dark? Certainly it’s them, no one else. 

Godbless wakes in the hut, grabs for Yonni, finds the empty space beside his body, blinks at the zinc roof. He reaches for his guitar, then leaves it. He steps over his brothers and sisters, civet cats curled into each other. He wishes they were his children. He pushes aside the curtain to the door and stands in the compound. The ringed tail of a bushbaby flees over a tin roof. The moon is a pale crack. The flare of the AMPCO methanol plant burns up the sky to the west. He studies the wind moving the silence. He scratches himself under the band of his red shorts. A silhouette of a pelican scoots across the sky. Wicks of light wink out. Yonni won’t come back.

Joachim drains himself in a patch of eroded ditch that skirts the Progress area. He asks, “You going swimming this morning?”

Certainly. Swimming is all he has. He ducks back in the hut. 

Godbless pulls himself into a blue mesh vest and a denim jacket. It smells like fish and salt. Keys jangle in the pocket. His baseball hat is folded up in a sleeve. He feels for the soft-pack of his uncle’s smokes. He sighs into his one pair of pants, cropped at the calf, the ripped crotch patched with a splash of red. His plastic sandals are near the door. 

A carillon chimes through the morning’s haze, languid, blue, scented with ordure and smoke. The bronze bells of Malabo Cathedral slur the notes. It’s seven o’clock. 

Godbless straps his feet into the blue plastic mesh of his sandals. There’s a bit of tape around one toe. He hits his head against the tin roof when he stands. His knees creak with growing pains. He smiles at malevolent old Teddy in the family room above a small reliquary with scallops for eyes and a strong belly. Godbless puts his swimsuit and newly secured goggles in an acrid plastic bag. He tears off two greenish bananas before he passes outside, a little vitamin K to stop the cramps, the sum of his precisely calculated sporting diet.

Joachim pounds corn in a mortar in front of the house. It’s women’s work but he doesn’t mind the shame. No friends are looking. Thuck-thuck the pestle sounds, hard and constant. Calabashes are scattered in the foreyard around him, rolling like heads when brushed by a chicken or child. 

Godbless looks in the mirror above the washbasin outside before he leaves. He doesn’t like it when the hair of his mustache touches his lip. That spot isn’t any good either. He has to drop the bananas to maneuver his fingers into place onto his skin. The muscles gather in his back, his biceps bump against his forearms.

 “What you pickin?” Thuck-thuck moves the pestle. “Leave what God gave you alone!” 

Godbless gives the whitehead a thrust and the pus splats onto the mirror. “See. I got it.”

“Wash your hands. That’ll get infected!” Joachim sweats at his job.

“The salt will cure it,” he says. “No need for precious soap.” Still, for posterity’s sake he splashes his face with some water. “Later, chico.” He backtracks for a blue plastic cup of water from a plastic urn.

A trace of cigarette blurs forward. It’s unhealthy, he knows.

He pauses at the wooden policeman erected in the road, so life-like as make him stop. If it weren’t for the wooden menagerie of other men and beasts scattered along the way, he’d have offered his papers to the wood cop. He taps his pocket – must have left them at home. 

A pair of hyrax duel gregariously left and distant right in the trees.

Descending, the plastic bag jostles around his knees. He sweats into the fragments of his cotton T-shirt. Where Norberto has his cobbler’s bench, Godbless takes off his blue sandals. Shoes dangle around the area, twisting on their own accord like strange fruit. Norberto staples some of the blue plastic together. Godbless won’t wear his like-new Nikes, smelling like antibacterial solution and melon, today. Norberto’s never seen anything like a Nike. A shoe is something no one would ever give up on in Malabo. 

Satisfied that the sandals are good, Godbless passes through the market that forms the entrance to Quartier LA. He walks slowly past the vendors – mostly women camped out on blankets on the hard mud ground – selling peanuts or yams, banana leaves filled with kola nuts or weeping shea butter, flagons of palm oil or rows of tomatoes. He discovers two francs in his pocket and buys a warm Coke from three women sitting on plastic crates under a large tattered umbrella. 

“Do you like soup?” one of them slyly asks. 

He stares at the bush meat – colobus, guenon, a pangolin – for a moment before he emerges from the commotion on Balboa Street. He sees Joachim, who is already haggling with someone over his selection of square mirrors that are strung around his neck like open books.

It gets hotter as he walks towards the AMPCO flare and waterfront. His pores open. The streets of Malabo are described by stockades, wattle and concrete, and the plants cannot be stopped. 

Godbless passes the hotels, the Bantu and Impala. The area around them smells like bleach. He crosses the Avenue of Independence. No need to worry about traffic. Traffic is as rare as snow in Malabo. But the police are out in force. They’re directing someone to chalk the mud street. 

Vota a Bingo, he writes in a white scrawl. 

A few barriers have been placed across the intersection. Will there be a political rally? Godbless wonders if he might present his case for sport and swimming to the president. 

The Atlantic is murmuring in the near distance in the Bay of Venus. Turgid waves strike at the beach. Godbless steps into the black sand where the turtles come at night. He drops his plastic bag next to a post buried in the beach.

He sheds his shirt and commences to stretch – windmills, pushups, bends – limbering his body. He touches his toes and his spine pokes against his skin. 

Godbless hurriedly steps out of his shorts and into his turquoise trunks. He spits in his goggles, slips the blue lenses over his eyes and wades into the sea. He can feel the undertow. The water and sand rush around his knees, pull him out and down the steep short slope that marks the movement of the tide. He knows what to expect and he slips into the salty foam. It bites like fleas. 

“Beijing  2008,” he says as the foam pinches at his mouth, reciting his vow as he does at every practice. Godbless knows there exists an initiative to open the sport to new competitors, and sometimes there are even invitations to swim a heat at the Olympics for developing athletes like him. The crowd roars acceptance and encouragement in the waves. 

Godbless crawls parallel with the shore. He does not pull away from the coast and gather in the view of Malabo at the foot of Mt. Pico, some points emitting smoke, and if he would listen carefully, drums. He’s kicking and swiping, pulling his long body through the water. No coach corrects him, for Godbless must divine his own techniques and regimen. Never mind the lines of monofilament and plastic bottles floating somewhere between surface and bottom. He rolls onto his back and cuts the water neatly with his paddles, undulating with the swells. 

A large group of kids play on the black beach. They’re doing handsprings over a gradually growing pyramid of tires, specks of child rotating through the air. One after another they run and flip, twist and pike, like jellybeans. 

The acrobats are still at it when Godbless emerges from the water. It’s been a battle swimming against the prevailing current. Godbless’s stomach is ripped and his thighs bulge over his knees. His chest is hard and red. He shakes off the water and rubs his feet in the dry sand. He bends into his shorts at a strategic moment. People are combing the beach. Something surely has come to shore. A group confers in an open circle under the palms. Godbless sits for a moment, resting. He has no way to calculate his laps so he can only guess how much he’s done for the main set. He peels one of his green bananas. 

“You’re a pretty fast swimmer,” says a foreign voice over his shoulder. “I bet you can be faster if you had some help.”

He dare not turn. Is this the moment foretold?

“If you had a pool that’d help. Me, I’m more partial to the sea – don’t like chlorine.” The voice is warm and assuring. “You understand English, kid?”

He nods, still staring hopefully at the sea. A jagged  shadow of palm undulates on the black sand. 

Should his pinky slip in first when he does the backstroke? Should he rotate his back or keep it stiff when he crawls. Should he lift his head like a prow? When’s the best time to breath? How to time his kick? On Bioko Island no one can answer his technical questions.

“You need a stable board to practice your kick-flips if you’re going to be a competitor – measure out the fifty meters no problem, make some lanes. What do you say? I’m no coach but I was a good swimmer when I was a kid like you. Could have been a pro, I guess.” 

He shakes his head – yes! At last! Godbless pushes his hands into the sand, about to spring to his feet.

“But I’m just here a few days, so you’ll be on your own after that.”

Is the blanco squatting or lying down? Why has he no shadow? Or is he not there at all?

“Nice beach. By the way, my name’s – ”

Godbless scrunches his courage and clings to his hope, that feeble, addictive currency of the poor. He turns his woolly head.

There’s no one. Not in the palm. Not hiding behind a stone or out in the water. And the sand’s undisturbed. It’s not even a cruel mimic’s joke. It’s worse – it’s his head.

His heart jumps and dives to the silent depths of his sorrow. He should go. He will come back in the evening if he can. Maybe his coach will be waiting with more good ideas.

Though his energy is as flat as a dead pulse, he still gathers his things and leaves the beach. He steps from black sand to red dirt and does not make the pleasant diversion along the azaleas underneath the well-placed Hotel Bahia. He has nothing to sell to a tourist or oilman anyway. He picks up the first block of asphalt, peeling another banana, his mouth feeling with the starchy sweet taste. He moves like a wet string, his muscles aching with acid, his soft feet scuffing in blue plastic. 

Lost in his dreams of glory, he careens to the ground with an unexpected bump. He collides with a streak of pale police blue. His sandal flies off, a strap broken. A policeman sprawls into the dust in front of his colleagues at the barrier erected at the intersection of the Avenue of Independence. Godbless is down too, masticating. He pulls himself up, then extends his hand. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says. It’s too late to turn back. 

The policeman dusts himself off to the ribald laughter of his colleagues. 

Someone from the group, maybe a superior, asks, “Are you one of the new people on this island looking for work? Where are your papers?”

Godbless, naturally proud of his athletic abilities says, “I’m Godbless Progress – the first swimming Olympian of Equatorial Guinea, sir.” Godbless feels his voice rising in pitch. “My papers are at home.”

The response is disbelief. A man may not have papers. But Equatorial Guinea cannot have an Olympic athlete. “Joachim Progress is your uncle, isn’t he?” Godbless can hear his interlocuter but not see him.

“Yes. He sells mirrors in the market. Sometimes batteries.”

“You’re Bubi, eh? Part of the The Bioko Island Self Determination Movement? Working for outside countries?”

“No, Fernandiño.” 

“You’ll have to come with us, kid.” 

Godbless is bewildered. Are his goggles foggy?

“There’s no point arguing. We took Joachim in this morning. We’ve had a good morning here at Barrier Banapa catching traitors. You must know where the others are.” The malice of reprisal colors the words.

Godbless is apprehended, part of the dragnet. No charges are read. He is not cuffed. He is not beaten in public. He is simply lead along the Avenue of Independence to Black Beach Prison by a policeman. For this he is lucky. He walks along the waterfront, past the port, the post office, the cathedral and the yacht club. He does not see his mother or a relative or anyone who can help. Not in La Bamba. Certainly not among the white faces in Pizza Place. Definitely not queuing for the Sylvester Stallone matinee at Cinema Marfil.

Black Beach Prison is inside the presidential compound. Godbless must pass through the gates onto the point, a presidential finger pointing out into the bay. Some men and women with broken bones are limping at the perimeter.

Godbless walks underneath the green, purple and white flag of his country. He finds comfort in the words quilted on its surface: Unity, Peace, Justice. A trail of blood drips from the gates of the executive compound to the entrance to Black Beach Prison, itself to the right of the presidential palace, overly ornate in the Spanish colonial style, both wings covered enormous posters of President Teddy. The ground floor surprisingly is bricked up. Two huge air-conditioners drone at low volume in the background. The ocean is just beyond the rocks. 

Before stepping into captivity, Godbless pauses. He’s confident his case will be clear. A handsome black SUV rolls to a stop. Teddy Jr., the president’s anointed son, steps down, his face mean and foreboding. TJ coolly rolls his shoulders in his jacket, clasps his phone in his hand like a little book, the freezes. Something’s not right. There’s some fur and blood on the vehicle. TJ hysterically flings his keys at a guard as if he was in Paris or LA and furiously yells at the man. 

“Clean it up!”

TJ mounts the steps to the palace and brushes past the guards. Gabriel, his younger brother, takes TJ’s hand under the columns of the fortified veranda. They’re a long time in shaking, clasping and saying hello. They spin, jab and dance like boxers in their fine clothes and thin shoes, their grins like blows. 

***

Black Beach Prison is hot and noisy. It rings with the clamor of starving men, men who have received so many hits that by now they tick in their cells like strange unsynchronized watches.

A blue face examines Godbless Progress. His subservient posture is reflected in the stark puddles on the floor. He is instructed to empty his plastic bag and it’s inspected on the metal table by the guard. It holds one pair of wet trunks, one pair of goggles and a Bebida Coca-Cola! El Sabor de Viva! towel. 

He states his name and occupation:  “Godbless Progress. Olympic swimmer.” 

The eyes smirk with the declaration, as preposterous as innocence. 

Godbless looks lovingly after his swimming accessories. They’re not going to take his shorts and t-shirt.

Then he’s shoved forward and banged over both ears sharply. His ears smart and ring. Seawater kicks down his throat. He veers forward and steps down, wobbly on his feet. The wet passageway smells like feces and blood. They didn’t take his sandals. Godbless follows the procedures, steps through the series of doors that incarcerate and divide.

Black Beach Prison opens before him, layers of humid cells with a guardroom in the center. Powerful sodium lights valorize the space. Godbless starts. Electricity at home flows once a week. Here it is constant and warm. This is where it must live. 

The cement floor of the recreation cum mess area is painted with white lines, perhaps for sport. Godbless is optimistic: with some basketball he should be able to keep in shape. 

He is not incarcerated directly. A damp dungeon is underneath the main cells. There are a series of iron rungs in the wall. It has a patina of pinkish paint and mildew grows higher up. The iron door booms behind him. The bolt slides into the catch. He is pushed away from his escort, fastened loosely to the cool wall, the chains rattling like bells, and left alone. There’s a metal table in the room too. His sweat cools down his back.

Bwiti is near, he can tell. He’s singing in his ears. Bwiti’s excited; he can smell the narcotic odor of iboga here too. Bwiti calls him to sleep, to the red road in the forest. Godbless drives to get there in his half dream. He cannot lose him.

A guard rattles the door. There’s no sleep down here, not for more than ten minutes when another one passes.

Four men stand in front of him. They’re so intensely black in their attitude that Godbless can hardly see them. Two are old and two are young. They wear expensive, uncreased suits. The lines around them are sharp and hard. They are generations of brothers. They register distinct cold amusement at their subject on the wall.

“We’re glad you’re with us, Godbless,” says the one, his voice reverberating in the room. This is the voice of President Teddy, like that on the radio. Teddy studies Godbless through his gold-framed spectacles. “We hear you like sport, Godbless. We like sport too – Army, will you help this young man?”

Army steps forward. Sweat beads on his brow. He unshackles Godbless and then his hands are secured behind his back with tight electric wire. His legs are tied too. He’s quick and professional about it. Army sheds his gabardine Van Saack jacket, pulls something long and black from the sleeve, and then saps Godbless across the neck with the heavy cable. 

Gabriel jumps for a second. TJ laughs. 

“Ohh!” Godbless cries, “Argh!” 

“It’s a mark so no one will forget,” says President Teddy, adjusting his shoulders in his suit, then his stub of real estate, then sitting on a corner of the metal table. Once he tortured his people with alacrity and ease: bars, positions, water, canes and lack of sleep. Now he can’t to do it alone. Teddy shivers. Mortality gives him the heebie-jeebies. That’s why there’s the night. 

“He’s going to tell us,” Army says reassuringly, stance wide and warlike. “You try,” he prompts Gabriel, then TJ with the end of the sap.

Teddy looks at his boys. Who’s going to do it? Who’s going to be it? They’re all undecided. He can’t. He’s too sick. He’ll be disappointed if neither Gabriel nor TJ participate.

“Patience, Army. Hit him again.”

Thuck-thuck sounds the cable. It catches Godbless over the jaw and it dislocates. Godbless screams in pain or anger, but the scream is cut short and comes out his nose. No one has hit him like this before. He rolls the dust of a tooth over his tongue. He should fear. 

TJ takes the cable. It’s plastic yet leaden in his hand, not as easy as a gun. “You need to help us, Godbless, and we can help you back,” TJ says in doublespeak. 

Army paces and clarifies. “You need to tell us what happened to your uncle Joachim. He disappeared today. He’s a very important man.” 

“Umm.” Godbless’s speech is garbled by pain. Contusion colors his neck and his carotid is visibly pulsing.

“Are you not going to tell us? About the boat? The ‘fishing’ trips? Why are you measuring the depth of the harbor? Why does Joachim have a camera?” 

Boom! Boom-boom-boom! TJ drives them down. Godbless breaks onto the floor on his knees and topples over. 

Gabriel flinches. TJ’s a beast, still whacking the guy. He admits he may not good, but he’s better than TJ. He’s not savaging anyone with his job as a junior official in the ministry of oil and mines. As far as he’s concerned, oil can help everyone win. Then he asks himself quite coldly: Do you learn cruelty? Do you have to be taught? How many times must he see Army dissembling the human spirit? It’s good the walls in Black Beach Prison are thick and dark.

Army has already reached for the next implement, two exposed wires. He’s in charge of new procurements under the supervision of the government’s new security consultant, Sean Coltrane. He wants to sample a nice clean American Tazer, but the old wires are as effective as anything. 

He pulls the moaning, contused kid up. The kid should say something about his uncle’s whereabouts. Usually his employees do this sort of thing – it’s at Teddy’s suggestion that TJ and Gabriel have come. Still he relishes an opportunity to exercise his security powers beyond visas, Equatorial Guinea’s territorial waters, custom and excise inspections, and most importantly, making money. If only machines could do that!

TJ dances around like a humanzee. He whips down Godbless’s shorts and bellows at the dot of manhood, a sea squirt on Godbless’s battered reef. “Look, brother!” He spins Godbless around like a top. 

TJ offers the cable to Gabriel.

They don’t really expect him to do this.

Teddy studies him. He can feel his father’s eyes burning him. Must he? He grabs the cable and gives the kid a light tap. 

Godbless howls catastrophically. It’s fucking hurts! Why are his ancestor’s this angry? Where’s Joachim? What has happened to Bwiti? Can’t Mama Joan send someone to save him? What has he done?

Teddy nods. It’s times like this that sinister vigor enters his throat. “Maybe you can help, Godbless?”

Godbless releases a colon-full of liquid over his legs. Urine then trickles down his thighs. He doesn’t like the sight of the wires.

“You nasty maricon!”shouts Army. He could further Godbless’s distress and empties a bucket of slurry over the prisoner. 

They men all look distastefully at the shit and piss. It’s like the lesser streets of Malabo. 

Army whispers in Teddy’s ear. “Shall we bring Joachim?”

Gabriel knocks him again, careful not to slip in the eau de bidonville. It fits in the kid’s anus and also in his face.

Blood and shit spins in Godbless’s mouth. This is not a funny sport.

“We haven’t even started, you coward.” Army warns him in a hiss. “But watch out for my Bruno Magli loafers, eh. Otherwise, it’s over.” 

Army trusses him against the wall like a bird. 

Blood drips on the shoulder of his shirt, but somehow Godbless regroups – two laps, hundred meters, lane seven, freestyle, Beijing. Split to beat: 48.54 seconds. 

On your mark! 

Army applies one wire. 

Get set!

TJ the other. 

Go!

And the circuit is complete.

And the starting gun fires.

Teddy does a little jig. TJ’s the one – he should be president even if the clan thinks otherwise. 

Godbless rips at the rungs. He can’t pull them out. His genitals are burning. One testicle peeps through the scrotum like an eye. He can’t see. His eyes are closed. He knows the president and his brother don’t really want his answers. Joachim is here with all the others. The wires move along his penis. He hears it popping. The wires pass over his chest and it sizzles on contact. He coughs blood, teeth and bile. His eyes and breath almost cease. He is one with the water. As cruel and as neutral. The goodness of Bwiti, Yonni and Joan are leaving him, chased away by the merciless spirit agents of TJ, Army, Gabriel and President Ted. He drips like a sponge, his manhood withered, burnt and for the present reproductively useless.

“We didn’t force to swim naked on the ground while we dragged you along like a woman. We could have said that we are investigating you and that you are an enemy. Imagine how bad that would be, Godbless!” Teddy always has the last word in Malabo. “Thank us for that.” He brushes his hand over the metal table. He has his answer. Either of them can be disposed of. The boys are his insurance. He’ll never walk alone.

Godbless fades into the subterranean silence of their footsteps. The Atlantic is percolating above – water, sand, lava, shell and pebble pinging beautifully like music, like swimmers in the 50-meter pool, bubbles, arms, shouts, breaths. 

What Comes Goes

Bigfoot is strapped into his harness and riding belt. He straddles a girder, a wayward rib jutting from the Jade. The platform is one of many dropped like loose change on the busy street of the Gulf. 

With both gloves Bigfoot holds the needle gun. He struggles with the jumpy high-pressure nozzle and hose. All day he’s blasted patches of rust growing deep in the steel. 

Rust is Bigfoot’s friend and foe. Bigfoot eats rust, dreams rusts and excretes rust. It’s in his hair, skin and bones. Rust sends him up the high derrick. Rust calls him down into the Jade’s hollow legs pumped full of ballast – oil. Rust romances him in the intimate center of the living and working modules. In these vertical extremes Bigfoot’s not trapped on that useless burger everyone calls the drill floor. 

His finger lifts from the safety trigger and the tool tautens. He drops the gun into its holster and pulls off his gloves. Time out!

Bigfoot slings a Chiclet in his mouth in place of a smoke. The little tablet crumbles in his mouth. The sugar coating’s flavor quickly expires.  The sweat drips from his terrycloth Oklahoma Sooners headband. His safety goggles are smashed over his broad nose, his face like a tire tread. The flecks of rust are even scuffed into the wear and tear behind his bloodshot eyes. He hocks an oyster of spit into the sea and it disappears into a new mouth. 

Something’s hungry.

An engineer working on the BOP signals – chowtime? 

He shakes his head, nah. What does a snobby engineer want with Bigfoot anyway? His jaw chews on. The work’s monotonous and trance-like. Where is he? Who is he working for? Does it matter? This trip should just cover the next trip of booze, drugs and broads back on the beach. 

Today, he’s red, sore and angry. He’s coming down and there’s no chance of getting high or drunk out here. And what better way to celebrate being passed for a raise and promotion again? As much as Bigfoot doesn’t care, he’d erase Sherm’s Mississippian color line. But he’ll never win – good, bad, fast, ugly, slow, no chance with the Worm. With the status quo, at least he isn’t confused: he’s the lowest of the low. He’s the same Gomer scrubbing shit that he was in army. No funny giants like him will ever be managers. That’s for college boys. What’s there to prove?

He re-aims his gun and flakes of rust and gray paint slough from the superstructure like skin. He has to be careful where he trains the scrubbing, cutting beam of air because of the wires – sneaky and ubiquitous, encased in hard rubber, and essential to everything. The needle gun could cut right through them. Or his leg. The risk isn’t made any better with the swim aids tucked under both his armpits.

Safety. Like it’ll save his stinking life – laboring on the topsides, counting the days. If there’d be a real blue alert, he’ll jump. He won’t be there when the Jade goes. 

His blaster’s loud but it mixes easily with the general cacophony of the generators, shakers and pumps, coming in waves, quadruplets of sonic chaos that reverberate in his organs like a gong. Even with his ear defenders on, it bores right into him. He shimmies up and down and moves across the superstructure like Tarzan swinging after the hungry Tribe of Rust.

He glances up at the jolly engineers tanning on the helideck.

Who are they laughing at? 

He’s not wearing anything weird like a scarf, is he? 

Bigfoot’s brain glides with the celerity of the yeti-like stoner and alcoholic he is. Bigfoot turns his head. Something’s wrong with that shadow – that mammoth fly buzzing among the hulk that’s him. 

He swings in his riding belt into the sun to get a better look at his head. 

He’s gained a Mohawk in the last two hours. 

Sonofabitch!

His hard hat is decorated in Styrofoam cups stuck on with dope – sticky, tacky, heavy grease. He could be a giant porcupine. A few epaulets trim his shoulders. 

The needle gun cuts off and kicks. 

He looks up and the guys are leaning over the rail, hooting and booing like chimps. Even that hoser Daniel is doubled over. He shakes his fist and notches his hand in the crook of his elbow.

 “Fucking fucks!” His oath is lost in the noise.

Bigfoot tears off his hardhat and knocks off the Styrofoam cups. They tumble to the sea like little tumbling people.

What a rotten sport! When he wins he celebrates and gloats; when he loses he pouts and reviles. Either way, he’s strong, simple and dangerous.

Why spare a can of whoop-ass now when he’ll reign at ping-pong in the recreation room tonight where his record’s hallowed and intact?

He hoists himself back on deck and disconnects from his harness. His eyes are nasty with gunk. Sulking, he knows soon he’ll have some revenge. The flange for the casing needs welding tonight. There’ll be time for fun then. He can bear the big shit-eating smiles of the crew. Still, they’re wary and unsure about when to expect retribution. He struts around the deck as if nothing’s wrong. He can’t really resent the stunt. The rig lives on pranks like most people live on air. At least they didn’t blast him into the drink with a fire hose. 

Bigfoot’s coveralls are a mess of dope and rust, and he’s quick to retire to his cabin to shower and shave without comment. Big weeping rusty puddles form behind him, Bigfoot, of the forgotten people. 

***

Refreshed and clean, Bigfoot orders a well-done steak in the cantina. The rage is returning. He bends his knife in half and his face is crusty pink.

“You sure you want steak, amigo?” asks the Portuguese cook who looks at Bigfoot worriedly. “You know the chow’s no good.”

“Dude…. I. Want. Steak.” Bigfoot’s one rung higher than the kitchen staff. “Dos steak.” He shows Pepe two fingers.

“Comin’ right up, jefe. Dos steaks – but I don’t t’ink you’re gonna like it.”

Bigfoot’s legs are screwed like twizzlers under the table. A bottle of A1 twirls between his fingers like a derrick. He could listen to some jazz, some Bud or Max or Chuck, Jimmy or Ornette or Muddy, anyone with a tune of blues, anyone to keep him from thinking he might live in a cave now or on a reservation later. Too bad that good jazz bar in Malabo doesn’t play the tunes loud enough to hear the strains of freedom., he thinks, sighing for a moment. But it’s rare that Poseidon will allow its men in harm’s way. That’s one hell of a place. The girls are astounding.

“Eh, Pepe!” he teases when he sees the planks of steak, “I changed my mind. I’ll have a Hawaiian!” He’s learned well from Sherm about motivating people by being an asshole. 

Pepe gives him a dumbfounded, putty-like look.

“Hey, but get me a few slices of pineapple, will yah?” 

“They’re in the salad bar, Bigfoot.” 

“Do I look like I eat salad bar?”

Pepe’s job is to satisfy everyone. He glumly retrieves a dozen tinned slices from his station. The branco’s too big to argue with. Give him a lot. Pile them up. Pepe issues a sigh of relief when he goes back. It’s good he’s not a vegetarian. 

“Pretty mean trick they played on you today, Bigfoot, but I couldn’t help laughing,” says Daniel. His tray slides onto the plastic table. “May I sit here?” 

What a jerk. No one sits with Bigfoot. Somehow Daniel fits across from him.

Bigfoot saws up his steaks with his fork. He munches. Who’s this goofy guy? Big ears, black hair, big nose, scrawny neck, the works? 

Daniel spins some coils of spaghetti in a tinned bolognaise. He tongs his salad. 

Bigfoot notices he’s got some kind of calorie counter with him – what a puss! The goofy dude can’t possibly do any work. 

“Can you sing?” Bigfoot ventures, his mouth full of beef and pineapple. 

“Pardon?” Daniel’s made the wrong choice about where to sit. 

God, the gringo’s even polite. That’s irritating. “Can you sing?”

Daniel’s startled. What to say to the freak?

“You know, like Do-Re-Mi-Fa? Like a fucking scale, dude?”

“The blues, Bigfoot. The big bad blues.” What part of him does the blues come from?

“Cool, dude.” 

“Then what?” 

“Cuz tomorrow you’ll get some practice, Gomer.” 

Daniel brushes it off. What’s up with the cryptic stuff? He should say something neutral. “This trash reminds me of school lunch.”

“Just put some more salsa on it, pollywog.”

“Uh-huh.” He looks at Bigfoot through the sides of his eyes. He doesn’t understand this pollywog crap at all.

“Make sure and get some sleep.”

“Oh, I’ve got a nice cabin. The curtain, that’s a nice touch.” He’s been having trouble closing the curtain. He likes to keep things open, not closed. Colgate, chips, Barbisol, aspirin, Planters, coffee, his closet, the fridge – he leaves it all open; closing is too much like rules, rules he’s none too partial too. At home Kylie loves him for it. Closing and counting are her specialty. How many and how much? Sometimes he can’t even find the treats, much less get the lid off or bag open. But out here no one cares, and his waist is beginning to show the effect of the free for all. He’s been cautious eating up to now, but a patty of ground meat has inadvertently launched onto his shirt.

“All you management tits do.”

“Thanks, amigo.” What’s with this big guy, bigger than him, bigger than everyone? Bigfoot’s temperamental behavior reminds him of himself after a dry hole, cross and grouchy like a candy-starved child. 

“De nada. And remember the blues’s four bars and five notes.” Bigfoot walks away, not without taking part of the table with him. Fed up, he swipes at a bowl of black cherry Jell-o on the way out. 

Daniel can sympathize: he’s overqualified too. Unlike Bigfoot, he compartmentalizes his frustration and keeps it down – deep down under the oil of his emotions, those sissy-like, excruciating doubts that are best ignored. They’ll have to drill to get it out of him.

Disinterested men circulate in the background and calculate what’s worth biting into. 

The reliable standards like Frito pie or chicken-fried steak?

Maybe some combination of beef and shrimp on the wok?

“How’d he last so long out here?” he asks the adjoining table, fishing for comments. 

Ambiguous gestures are the answer. The roughers can spot a slacker too. No need to discount Bigfoot.

From the solid silence Daniel might as well hit the sack. Neither vim, verve nor vitality are present. Is this part of the Jade’s etiquette and Sherm’s tyranny – flat briny noncommittal courtesy in the cantina, in place of what should be brawn and brio? Life on the beach has to be better if the rumors about the dark shore of Malabo are right – paradise! Maybe Guido would smuggle him over in the Sikorsky for a night? He might as well check the helipad for some real air. 

He gathers the remains and shoves it into the dishwashing station. “Hasta luego, amigos,” he says, waving flaccidly. 

Next to the door tonight’s features are posted: MadMax and Die Hard on screen one, Emmanual on two. Do these men really need such macho proxies? Do they have crushes on Mel or Bruce? Here it’s not about one hero. Here the team has to scrimmage and fly together as one single man. The job isn’t about pushing paper or saving the world but something in between, moments of teamwork and physicality aimed at one purpose only: getting the honey out of the ground and into the legs of honey-lovers in America. The project has no sympathy and no time for the oddballs around the edges futilely flickering like glass moths. But here he is, brittle and flying, looking for somewhere to land, feeling about as spiritual and soulful as a dried out pancake.

The flare unfurls – flag, beacon and spire – purling in the wind. It appears to emerge from his head as he sits cross-legged on the helideck, inscribed by the yellow circle, his mind tuned to a transcendental space with two audio inputs only: his crackling nerves and his booming blood. He leans back like a corpse on the big target. He clenches his legs and arms and face and torso, then relaxes, almost to quietus. His eyelids hover over his eyes, just registering the puce and pewter sky, as his tongue massages his palate. His body vibrates the throbbing beat of the Jade on the skin of the helideck. This is Kylie’s rare gift – yoga – that they sometimes did together: one slow stiff clown mimicking one fast flexible acrobat. He reaches down into the reservoirs of the earth and feels the amniotic comfort of the crude, the more meditative soul-letting moment of all. 

He rises inexorably, takes in the clouds licking at Mt. Cameroon like a turtle on the horizon, and Pico Basile closer in the foreground, the tones of the sunset reflecting off their steep lush volcanic slopes. 

Diamonds in those hills, he acknowledges, pulling himself up, dusting off, feeling better.

Walking back to cabin 202, he stops for a pleasurable five minutes of Emmanuel in the second screening room. Her body is the utmost joy, and a relief from the sluts in Jugs that are starting to look way too fine. It confirms his suspicions that he’s been offshore too long. He’s stopped feeling mortified jerking off behind the closed curtain, but this must be what it’s like in prison. 

Lying in his bed, he can’t spill what he starts. He coasts asleep with his wang in his hand. No baby batter tonight.

The rig’s weirdly quiet. Drilling has stopped. They’re welding tonight.

The knocks comes before dawn. 

“Jock straps! Polar Fleece! Skivvies! Helmets!” 

The hall’s moving with half-naked men.

Daniel grabs his wallet. If he’s dying, he’d like to have his ID. He calls stupidly, “Is this an emergency?”

“Shut up, Pollywog, and muster at the zodiacs. You have your orders.” Egghead’s organizing curtly. There’s a mustache taped under his nose. Bigfoot’s right, Egghead’s a collaborator. He’s the Royal Cop.

Daniel’s dazed and disoriented when he stumbles onto the grating of the deck in his Reeboks and shorts.  

A line of light is working at the horizon. The water slaps gently at the legs of Jade. The crane driver has already dropped the two boats into the sea.

The dozen pollywogs assemble, sleepy and unsure. Jolly Roger’s flying above and popping in the wind – black, ominous crossbones and winking skull. 

Roll call finishes with his own forlorn shout.

In groups of four the men step into a giant basket that resembles a netted condom. 

Bigfoot ogles from the Jade. He’s getting hyper watching the pollywogs, enfeebled, incapacitated, vulnerable and unaware. He can’t wait till they’re back.

The space in the zodiac isn’t that much different from the bed of Daniel’s pickup. It’ll load a half a dozen men or more.

Daniel’s hands and feet are duct-taped together; however, not before he receives a set of swim-aids. Each man is working capital after all. It’d be a shame to lose such an investment.

He’s made to bend uncomfortably on the floor of the black dinghy. The shellbacks don’t have too much sympathy for the pollywogs. The tape over the mouth he doesn’t appreciate. Real terror lights his eyes. His muscles are tight and resistant before he takes a deep Zen-like breath and assesses. It’s better to relax with the riptide. 

At least he’s not blindfolded – they haven’t gone that far. But as per orders, a fur-lined hat is stuffed over his head.

The gulf speaks in soft surface swells. 

Maw and monster, the Jade rises and keeps on rising, a vulture and goliath strapped to the surface like a burg. If Atlantis could re-emerge, it would look like this.  

The Mercury outboards dip into the water and the throttles are engaged. The two zodiacs speed away southward, their blunt noses rising, the water popping underneath like gunfire, the engines casually bubbling at 3400 RPM. 

The zodiacs’ spoilers have been fitted with Jolly Rogers that pop in the dark wind. The LED of the radar, the GPS and the green and red navigation lights illuminate the shellbacks’ faces. 

The turtle-ish ghouls have a few hours to cross the line, the equator, and turn these pollywogs into shellbacks. The sun rises rapidly through the haze. If he wasn’t bound and gagged, Daniel would feel like macho, like a mercenary, a pirate, a smuggler or a whaler. 

The Jade disappears quickly in the inky seascape. The installation’s there, a step beyond the horizon and then it’s not, as if she’s hoisted her sails and escaped west with her human cargo of yore.

The sun’s hot and heaving in less than fifteen minutes. He’s dehydrated. They’re panting through their noses. Daniel nods out – no chance of breaking the tape and overpowering the shellbacks. He could do with a hat and shades. It’s not going to happen.

The duct tape is squeezing memories out of Daniel like sweat. 

He remembers a reservoir high up in the Rockies. He’s water-skiing with his buddies, drinking and trying to get his girlfriend to take her top off. He can’t recall her name or even if she’s a looker except that for a college girl she isn’t as easy as he would have liked. Did she even go so far as a blowjob? Or is that an act of ill repute? Did she do it with all those other guys watching? 

Kylie would. That’s why he loves her. He’s surprised to find himself admitting anything like that, but out here, bound and speeding to the unknown, well, he can re-open the bond of his heart. 

The ocean’s character has changed as they pull away from the bight and continent. It’s rougher. The openness lends a longer amplitude and greater texture to the waves.

If he dies, he knows Kylie will sue Poseidon for all it’s worth. 

One of his fellow frogs, Snodgrass with the monobrow, is duke-of-puking through his nose. 

No princes or princesses here in the fresh air. 

Who of the pollywogs will turn from leatherbacks into men?

Daniel manages to scoot against the pontoon. His choice is to sit up in Snodgrass’s barf or absorb some more blows at the bucking bow. 

Who’s to know what will be the most benign substance of the day? 

Someone yeehaws in the next zodiac. Luke’s knuckles clasp the steel wheel. He’s delighted with the readings on the GPS. Soon the pollywogs will have crossed. The spray is salty and refreshing after a life in the doghouse avoiding it.

The zodiacs burst through a set of enormous swells when they jump the wake of a tanker. It’s the biggest class, a very large crude carrier, moving through the shipping smog – just four days from the American market. With each whump the captives are tossed like grain. 

The tanker, looming large like skyscraper, diverts with a surprising amount of speed and agility from the maritime lane. Cargo ships and tankers are wary in these waters. 

“One of ours?” wonders Luke, giving chase for half a minute before letting up on the throttle and rejoining the other craft. 

Daniel feels the bruises coming, his skin separating from his muscles, muscles from bones, his blood centrifuged into its component parts. He concludes that this captivity must have something to with Sherman – probably so sadistic that they won’t even get a top-secret beer at the end. 

Suddenly the boats decelerate to a stop. They’ve crossed the line. No one can see it, but that’s nonessential. They’ve stepped beneath the belt of the earth, belly-danced across its waist, fingered its nether sweet parts, changed from top to bottom and it’s spectacular. 

The two zodiacs drift together, kissing nose to nose. Nothing else describes the horizon.

“Before we go to the trouble to release you foul slimy wiggly things, I, as King Neptunus’s representative, have the pleasure of saying you have crossed the line! But before we exercise this act of liberation, we must make you ours! Please hood the pollywogs!”

This isn’t funny, thinks Daniel as the fabric falls over his eyes, slides over his mouth and cinches around his neck. 

“Shellback Gigi, please heat the branding irons with the torch.” Luke speaks slow and portentously like any quality torturer. 

Inside the dark and increasingly voluminous cavern of the hood, Daniel panics. What the fuck do they want with branding? You can’t brand amphibians. 

Inside the hood it’s like a chapel but it’s empty of God and belief. 

“The sign of King Neptunus is his trident and the secret to his power. This is the secret to crossing the line and you must keep this in the utmost confidence and secrecy until you shall sleep in the depths of Davey Jones’s locker! Do you’all understand me? There’s no turning back.”

Grunts of ascent snort from the noses of the pollywogs. Are they going to say no?

“Gigi, you may start the branding!” 

“We’ll do him first,” says some disembodied voice.

Daniel’s the first pollywog to be manhandled amid the others’ screams and yelps for mercy. 

Branding! Who’d have expected that?

No, no! His shorts are down. 

Nah, no! The scrotum can be hard to find, shrunken like a prune with fear.

Ahh! They’ve grabbed it and they’re rough. He’s writhes, twists and gnashes against the tape and hood. Who wants to be a eunuch? 

Then he’s pried into a bend with the encouragement of a cold crowbar.

His buttocks and teeth clinch together. Here comes the white hot metal.

Please don’t burn my – 

They’re about to apply the trident; it’s as cold and brittle as it’s hot.

Oh, my, ohmy… Godddd! 

He’s turns pink, then blue with apnea until he exhales.

Ahhhh! Ah-Ahhh! Argh!

Daniel doesn’t hear the sizzle of hair and skin as he sings a long, scorching guttural howl, primal under the equatorial sun.

The smell of his burning flesh overpowers him. It smells like steak. He could vomit inside his hood and shit himself simultaneously. Brutes wouldn’t be this cruel! 

He’s bucking spastically like an electrocuted bronco to roaring laughter from the handlers. Now it’s time for the others. It’s fantastic. Hazing is a hoot. What comes around goes around. You can sacrifice cattle or you can sacrifice men.

Daniel’s crying when they take off the hood. His balls are contused and painful. It’s then he sees the Igloo cooler. It’s smoking, emitting the wispy pale white smoke of dry ice. There’s no fire on board.

Those bastards! 

The hair and steak, that’s not so hard to organize. All you need is a lighter to make it smell bad, and they’re holding it right under Pollywog Killroy’s hood.

Those absolutely sick mothers!

The dry ice they can get from the lab. And the idea, Sherm the Worm’s written all over it in cunning, animal ink.

He could kill every last one.

The pollywogs are untaped. Hair and skin unpeel with the adhesive. Daniel’s not the only one who’s been weeping from the trauma. It’s been an ordeal that none of them imagined. Who would have thought one could cross the line so far?

Luke clambers between the two boats to have the last word. “Let it by known by all sharks, eels, mermaids, jellyfish and other denizens of the deep that his Royal Majesty King Neptunus will bestow special favor upon these otherwise useless pieces of flesh, and that wherever ye may see them, render them due respect as the favored of the Ruler of the Raging Main.” 

He good-naturedly offers some kind of clear yet cloudy booze along with a strong shake of the hand. “Some of our boys got a way to make liquor onboard,” he cheerfully says. “But I bet y’all Poseidon won’t never find it. Drink up, shellbacks!”

The sun obliterates the field of vision. It’s not blue or green or even gray. The sun burns through the atmosphere and scatters in a vast white triangle over the water as if it’s not the earth they’re floating on.

The alcohol’s raw, strong and pleasing. For this, the pollywogs can forgive. 

Until they figure out it’s not over.

***

The shellbacks happily leer from the modules, gangways and decks. The topsides are thick with men. A hypnotic wave of boos, stomps and metal percussion rises. A heavy foaming roar. A raw nervy bay. It could be dogs or gods. 

Daniel’s hoisted up in the basket, rising fast into the arms of the men.

The sizzle of the welding guns hasn’t halted. The hot, brilliant caterpillars move and inch over the casing flange. It’s slow, precise work for the welders, like making pupa.

At attention, the pollywogs wait. The shellbacks have access to their every motion and move as the Jade’s proverbial pond scum. What next? More sodomy?

The presiding official, a mop taped on his head, a fabric beard, a belt for a tail and his cock-eyed aviators, cools the crowd and says: 

“As His Majesty’s Representative and Ruler of the Raging Main, I confirm that all y’all wiggly slimy pollywogs have appeared for subpoena to the Royal Court. Before the arrival of His Majesty Neptunus Rex for y’all’s trial and sentencing, y’all shall receive haircuts from the Royal Barber!” 

Egghead, a rag mustache attached under his nose and a handkerchief over his egg, slaps the razor and clippers against his smock. 

He has them take off their shirts.

And the ‘wogs gingerly assume the stool for the Royal Barber’s scalping. 

Daniel’s dry-iced sack is weeping.

Egghead’s not particularly dexterous or choosy that chunks of hair go missing. 

The shadow of the derrick casts across the deck; the sun reflects and repeats in their eyes like big flaming crosses. 

Egghead doesn’t care if the tadpoles dry out. He’s not too kind with the straightedge and strop either. That gives the little frogs the heebie-jeebies – from their whiskers right down to their tails. 

Oil, paint, feathers, dope and flour are being mixed in a giant tub. Wooden paddles are fashioned from pallets. A locker’s opened and a mound of women’s undergarments and clothes are displayed on deck with squeals of excitement from the men. The mere memory of women has some of the shellbacks in ecstasy. Now is a good chance for everyone to mingle.

Daniel’s curious about all the men present. Where did the pipeheads come from? Have they been invited from other wells in Zafiro field? Have they come by supply vessel from Alba and Ceiba for the great pollywog festival? Have they flown in from Malabo? Are they really stiffs from Shell, Elf, Petronas and other players as their logos indicate? 

Soon he tucks his chin down for a butchering. He almost wets himself over the passing of the straight razor.

The shellbacks take the liberty to decorate the pollywogs. Managers or engineers are good targets for a pawn like Bigfoot. He’s been waiting to get to Daniel. 

His head is plastered with the smelly face of a mop. A giant red bow is added. He’s given a thick pair of glasses and a ridiculous red bra with wire curlicued over his  nipples. Bigfoot smears his face with lipstick and scrawls over his stomach, WHy QUit?”  

Daniel’s made to change into some diapers and he’s beginning to resist. Nonetheless, he improvises the garter to hold the hose, his leg hair swimming through, meshing exquisitely with his boots.

“Oh, you’re a looker,” says Bigfoot, salivating when he’s done. “My worst nightmare.”

He’s been spared. Daniel hasn’t faired that badly compared to the others. He’s the right kind of gawky sexy that another man might say yes-no-no-yes. He isn’t so corpulent or hairy. He’s not strapped into a conical bra and wearing a thong. He’s not suffocating in white-embroidered, one-piece frumpery either. Bigfoot hasn’t stuffed him into a bikini as if he really wanted Daniel to be a real woman – the last resort.

The men crowd around the girls. Then three blasts of the foghorn – bellowing, haunting and mournful – announce the entrance of King Neptunus Rex and His Majesty’s Royal Court. 

The Portuguese chefs lead the retinue. Pepe orchestrates the clanging of pots and pans as the King plods forward to the tattoo. 

A coconut-hair beard hangs dejectedly around his face. He’s block-lettered KING NEPTUNUS on his paper crown, in turn stapled into his foam Halliburton baseball cap. He’s strapped a pillow to his belly and donned a sea frock. He’s rushed shoe polish over his face. A bull-horn hangs from his belt. Formidable, Sherman steps forward as Ruler of the Raging Main and High Seas. Despite his comic appearance, the men tremor.

His old queen looks poorly despite the aluminum foil diadem rising over her brow. Perhaps it’s the black patch over her left eye – King Neptunus can be abusive as well as kind. The queen carefully totters forward, avoiding the train of her dress and any machinery that might tear the gauze. 

The Royal Baby, naked except for a diaper of fish skins, crawls between. Chico sits for a fit of hysteria, his belly hanging over his thighs, as he sucks his thumb and hiccups in distress. Chico makes a very nasty baby. He doesn’t know what pollywogs are, but he bets he can break them. 

The jostling crowd parts before the Royal Family, and the Royal Cop calls the pollywogs to attention again.

King Neptunus serenely inspects the dozen but one pollywogs. Some of the frogs are trembling. Others giggling. Daniel, feeling provocative in his sexy outfit, winks. 

Neptunus winks back. He’s got a soft spot for Daniel, but he doesn’t allow insubordination or flirtation. He might loose control. 

The men are heckling the pollywogs as Neptunus inspects the grinning line.

“Hey, sweetheart, I need a date!”

“Honey, you got back! Um-hmm.”

“Oh mamma, when can I get some of what you got?”

Neptunus grabs his bull-horn and calls order. Silence prevails. He castigates the Royal Barber and Royal Cop for allowing the haircuts to proceed without his presence. 

“His Excellency, King Neptunus, we followed His Excellency’s orders,” protests the Royal Cop.

“On this vessel we appreciate the effectiveness of carrying out orders, but the proceedings of the Royal Court cannot proceed without His Majesty’s presence,” says King Neptunus. He’s a stickler. “Where are the jockstraps, polar fleece and fur-lined helmets, as per my orders?” He loves finding faults.

“We improvised, His Majesty,” blurts Egghead, still clutching a scissors. “His Highness is not pleased?”

“That’s when trouble starts.” His Majesty gruffly coughs.

“Yes, sire.” Egghead stands stock-still.

Neptunus is clearly relishing his role. If every day could be like this. “Now, let’s see if these fellas can carry a tune. Royal Barber, lead the men in Amazing Grace.”

The pollywogs hum and haw through the title, but no one can remember anything beyond the first words to this old song: A-Maz-Zing Grace, how sweet the sound! 

Neptunus interrupts the din and it peters out. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You girls aren’t very churchy and you sound like a bunch of moral retards!” 

“Where’s Bigfoot and his ukulele? Who the hell’s in charge of mass communication?

He huffs, “Ask the Royal Cop to dispose himself to securing the lyrics to this dang fine song.”

In the interim, waiting for the Royal Cop’s downloading and copying, Neptunus goose-steps along the line, lifting a bra, wiggling his finger under, checking sex, squeezing falsetto, finding contralto.

“His Excellency, the song!”

The pollywogs reform, go up a female register as Neptunus stridently launches the conducting. Some of the crowd is also singing. There’s no point in avoiding the somber words.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,  That saved a wretch like me…. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now, I see.   T’was Grace that taught… my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear… the hour I first believed.   Through many dangers, toils and snares… we have already come. T’was Grace that brought us safe thus far… and Grace will lead us home.   The Lord has promised good to me… His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be… as long as life endures.   When we’ve been here ten thousand years… bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise… then when we’ve first begun.

It’s much better. He can see the pollywogs believe the words by the end, even as they struggle with their costumes and their voices break in the soprano. They are wretches. Every useless one of them. 

Wiping his eye, for he is touched, Neptunus then shouts through his static-filled bull-horn, “Royal Cop! Put these ugly, filthy, slimy things in stocks before they have the pleasure of kissing the Royal Baby!” 

The pollywogs break ranks and are at ease. They’re offered juice. No moonshine here. Good-natured joking rules the deck before the next trial. Everyone needs a break from the laughter, which they will soon receive running the gauntlet.

The stocks are in sight down the two rows of men expectantly lined up on the deck practicing their strokes with their paddles. 

Klein and Killroy are encouraged drink up.

They’re whacked on the thighs and whopped on the back. They’re nailed on the knuckles and jabbed in the guts. They duck and dodge but the swats can’t be avoided. Bigfoot’s winding up the hugest lash of all at the end of the line. 

King Neptunus and his queen hold hands in satisfaction. They’re glad to host and witness the old traditions of the sea. The queen gives Neptunus a peck on the cheek and adjusts one of her slaggy tits. It’s just like his old days in the Navy.

Daniel’s quaking. It’s not his turn yet. Whose laws apply out here during this crazy rite? 

He’d like to put that forth to the company lawyers, but they’re not going to believe any whistleblower with such a tall tale. Not with trusty Sherman in charge. Crossing the line is a game of male consent. 

He has a last sip of pineapple juice. Then he’s pushed forward. 

Daniel’s glasses break when it’s his turn. It doesn’t matter. They’re not his. The red bow loosens as does his mop. Shoves and blows form the chute. Daniel’s corralled by the turmoil and he resorts to defending himself.

He takes a smack on the ribs and jams his fingers with a badly executed block. 

Bigfoot, deliciously shadowing the pollywogs and delivering his blows with aplomb, doesn’t miscalculate. He swats Daniel so solidly on the neck that his heart stops. Daniel spins incoherently, dizzy and reeling, past the gauntlet where he bumps with revulsion and bafflement into an uncooked steamship of beef. He’s nearly out cold when he hits the white fat and red muscle with his face.

The men are visibly excited, howling and hooting and scratching with glee. They like the violence and incomprehension. The situation is rapidly degrading and Neptunus has no intention of halting.

At the last station they must kiss the Royal Baby. Chico’s stomach has been smeared with grease. It looks too much like shit. 

The pollywogs must worship and grovel in his greasy belly. They must lick and kiss, eat and tongue the hard, fat orb of Chico’s stomach. They’re so tired, they can’t resist. Why not enjoy it? It’s the closest they’re going to get to kissing anyone out here. 

King and Queen Neptunus supervise. They want the child to be loved and Chico needs it. His mother wouldn’t even kiss him.

Some pollywogs are sent back through the gauntlet. Some are placed in stocks and pelted with refuse. Some are tossed into a vile pool of swill like Daniel.  

It’s already warm from the sun. Sliding into the mixture of oil, paint, feathers, dope and flour isn’t so unpleasant. It’s a salve and poultice to his wounds. 

Getting out is nearly impossible. He slips. He slides. He’s skating on oily ice. He reaches and struggles, falls and wrestles with himself. He’s impregnated with paint and grease. 

Inspired, Pepe tips two buckets of chum into the mix. It’s been sitting in the walk-in anyway – skin and offal, blood and fat. A barrel of carcasses are also tipped into the circus for the pollywogs to fight over – the skeletons of goats, pigs, chickens and sheep. It’s a cold mixture of heads and hoofs and bones – more of what the picky men won’t eat. 

Tiers of men howl and hoot in derision. They’re wagering and smoking and breaking every rule every written about offshore safety. The sky seems to close around them.

At the perimeter of the melee the few African members of the crew have dissociated themselves. They can’t guess what’s going on with the old dead whites. Who cares about the equator? It’s just a line. The unknown power of night has seemingly conquered that of day. 

Something is welling from beneath the surface, a great gusher of violence. Daniel knows it’s coming and he can’t stop it. He’s not an actor. He lashes at the others. He pulls and yanks and bites, bulging with strength. He roars at his accusers and pulls them into the fold. 

The spectators are splashed with more and more blood. The air richens with the iron scent of it.

Daniel grabs a wet skin and drapes it over his shoulders with a splat. He shakes the head of a goat and presents it to the engrossed men. He gathers another bloody nut. He dances and stomps and grows and rises, bringing his spirit down to the Jade. He plunges on his knees and pulls lungs, trachea, liver, intestines and stomach from the bath. Men are kneeling before him and he’s baptizing them with the cold offal and blood. 

He dashes them over the head, lip, nose and face with the goat’s head and they are grateful and thank him with strange, libidinous, goading gestures. 

It drips down from the deck and splashes into the sea, scenting it with frenzy.

In mind Daniel’s left the Jade. He’s transmogrified into some ancestral, visceral agent for sacrifice and prayer. He’s close to divinations and cures, tricks as old as his genes. His entranced body is aggressively rumbaing with an accordion-like carcass of goat.

His penis ignobly slips out from his torn underwear. It’s painted blue and it’s primal and erect on contact with the wet, cold meat of the meaty bellows. He’s gyrating and thrusting, dancing with death. 

“Danny Grace’s fucking a goat!” cries King Neptunus, the first to notice any truly aberrant behavior and pointing at the paint-, blood- and grease-covered zombie who is Daniel gripping the carcass and savagely screwing the ribcage.

“Goat-fucker! Goat-fucker!” they chant, cautiously then with more commitment.

Neptunus is clapping their backs. The festival’s never been this darkly entertaining. The specks of blood on his gown are as invigorating for his mood as the nitroglycerine for his heart.

Daniel’s gone, deaf like the moment he lost his job – his boss’s lips move but not a single word comes out from old white Wallis; his secretary Dawn stands there before him, quivering, showing him her g-string; he packs his office in great swiping strokes, dismissed and disgraced; Kylie is waiting for the news from her ghostly man; he’s no longer the champ, he’s hunting for work and no one wants a good working man; it’s more than a fellow can take!

The immediate slippery cold wetness brings him back. With horror and relish he seems to levitate from the deck of the jade and hang from the stout, swollen derrick. 

The ring of men closes in.

Is it a beast or girl? 

Dawn or Kylie? 

His mother or his son?

The shellbacks and pollywogs hush. Daniel’s the only one moving. 

Drop-drop splashes the blood into the ocean, busy below.

He’s about to cum. It’s churning through his legs, rushing down his spine, and spewing out his tiny penal mouth.

Oh, ohhh, ah, oh, ahhh! 

His jism spurts into the animal and he moans like a whore, tears streaming down his face, his buttocks jiggling and screwing for every sacred drop, his poor tortured scrotum contracting into the cavity of goat. 

Daniel collapses in a heap, his blood pulsating in big heavy beats under his skin, his chalice filled with the fire and flames of Hell and the voices of the dead. 

The Jade sways silently in the epitome of quietude. The wind whistles through the derrick as gently as if it were a sail. A single splash speaks below. Even the welders have stopped working the flange of the casing, their bright visual caterpillars dry and out.

“Whoa,” says Sherman. He pulls away his beard, nudges his queen and mutters. “I never!”

Luke can’t believe what his old colleague Danny Grace has done either: OK, he’s fucked the goat, but that moaning – how humiliating! 

There are secrets and there are secrets.

Volume returns in a rush, elbows knocking and brows wiped.  It crescendos when the men register what they’ve enjoyed. 

Holy shit! Grace the geologist just skewered a goat! Gracy Geo Goat! 

G.G.G. 

6.6.6.

They survey their own ragged bloody carnival, the mess of arms and buttocks and liquids and embraces. Guilty, culpable eyes drift askance and away, the present’s deeds nearly tucked away in a fraternity of denial. They men rise from the orgy of mire and muck. 

They have no idea what to do with Daniel. They’ve got too much respect for him to lash him in the stocks like an ox. Why not wash the guy off? 

The fire-fighting canon is engaged. The water washes away the blood and antics into the Gulf. 

That’s when Daniel comes to. He looks through the grill of the deck. The sea is active and moving. He jolts in horror when recognizes it’s snarling with sharks, fins and jaws tearing at the surface of blood. They know what a meal smells like and they don’t hesitate to bite one another.

The force of the water is unbearable. Abrasive, it strips him to the bone and takes away the skin. Broken and compromised, he chokes on a lungful of water from hanging his head so shamefully low. But for his animal-like grip, he’s in jeopardy of being chucked right off the deck of the Jade to the seething water below. He’ll have to do better playing the game. He gapes and squints at the powerful spray: it’s worse than a dunk yet not quite drowning. 

Teddy Radio

Candida adjusts the visor of her white and blue batik hat. The crumbling cement roof of the VIP stand pushes against the pink sky. The sun is eating at the horizon of palm, banana and tiles. Her gown sways with the breeze. Rings of white and blue batik also dapple the casual, sporty swatch. Her eyes dilate behind her Versace shades.

Her wrist falls onto Teddy’s bony knee. The rock on her finger shines in his eyes, a warning. 

“What have I missed?” he asks. 

From his hard breath she can tell he has just returned. Where did he go? She looks at him fastidiously. She detects some lipstick and rouge-like mark on his pock-marked cheek. A length of straightened blonde hair falls from the lapel of his Gucci jacket. Stella perhaps? 

His smile is tight with appraisal. Mmmmmm, Stella. Candida can intimate all she wants with her touching. The stalwart members of PDGE in the stands won’t have any trouble confirming his alibi. Football is as cruel as politics and love, he chuckles to himself, his tongue moving over his teeth like cashews. Compassion is still alive in Malabo even if that is not quite as it should be. 

Candida stamps her foot into the crunchy cement. She can hardly breath, the knot of advisers, elites and flunkeys sucking up the hot stifling air in her stead. How much longer, she wonders as she flicks her wrist. 

A well-aimed flash of her Cartier dial is her signal: bored, boring, boredom. Neither Neiman’s nor Saks is around the corner to allay her ennui with sundry surprises. She’s worn out the last shipment.

The ball moves from player to player, leaving little imprints of stitching, leather and paint as it passes from boot to boot. It moves with preternatural ability. The men wade through the soup of grass chasing it. They knot and tackle around the buckeying, juggling ball, as mercurial as oil. 

Sometimes the ball bangs against the fence, tight against the sidelines of the pitch, topped with a beveled border of three lines of barbed wire. The spectators lean against it, spit and call and encourage the teams. A barracks runs along one edge.

When will Mongomo Town punch in the two goals needed to win? Can’t the referee call time now? Malabo FC is like an opponent that refuses to die.

An impact of boot and bone cracks over the pitch. Kaveri has downed Juan Pablo. The whooping catcalls and jeers of Malabo collide with Mongomo’s great collective boo. Kaveri’s already walking off the pitch as the referee unsheathes the red card. He’s played with none of the bare-shinned, bare-footed grace of the African game.

Juan Pablo clutches his thighs and beats the turf dramatically. He’s taken a serious blow going wide of Malabo’s four-man defense. That’s why Malabo is winning – defense, the one that has eliminated Bata, Kogo and Pagalu in the derby.

Teddy rises from his seat and Candida rises with him. The minister of sport and other functionaries rise too. A valet darts forward and hurriedly re-fluffs Teddy’s green, red and white pillow to receive the presidential posterior, guarding it from cold surfaces and piles, and soothing the presidential member, subject to inflammation and often sore.

Teddy’s wiggles up to see the kick. Will Juan Pablo have the necessary will to return from the kingdom of pain? He limps to the spot and confers with a teammate. The Malabo goalie shouts down his wall. 

The referee puts his whistle to his lips – tweet! 

All of Mongomo moves forward and crowds the goalmouth. Malabo is having difficulty covering with ten men. Juan Pablo rewards the team by glancing the ball outside the post. 

Teddy quietly smarts at the score, but it’s his nature to calculate. He’s had patience so far, the ball seemingly bounce in his dreams, off his spry feet, head and chest. 

Will Malabo FC realize the folly of a win against Mongomo, his hometown? They will have to lose credibly in the remaining minutes.

Candida gathers the cloth of her gown, her hands brushing the rough cinderblock ledge of the executive area. The chalice-like trophy for the league championship gleams in front of her. It’s etched with emblem of the republic, a tree and six island-like stars, above the slogan, Unity, Justice and Peace. 

She pulls Teddy down into his pillow by the vent of his metallic blue blazer. She whispers into his hairy ear. “Malabo are going to win!” 

Teddy tugs himself back up. “We’ll see.” 

Stella is away in Sao Tome again. Her new house is taking up all her time, leaving little for him, but he can take an investment in her happiness, and his.

The ball skips across the grass, crossed from the foot of Malabo, intercepted by the chest of Mongomo. It narfs grass and puddle. It passes between the gold and black trunks to the eager attack of the purple and white. 

The real estate in Cape Town, Los Angeles and Baltimore is far away. Stella’s suggestion to build in Sao Tome has been good. It’s that much closer to home and much more private. 

What did poor Hassan tell him, slight and sitting on the red Moroccan chair in Rabat? One is fine, two is good, three is problem and four is too much? 

Candida’s face is swollen, piqued by the close humid sky, oily from too much air-conditioning. Her red-letter deal on Teddy’s behalf with Poseidon representatives for the use of the Abayak S.A. compound has sapped her resolve. She’ll do anything for the old goat. “Take your time and take a breath,” she says as she catches the odor of sweet expensive perfume about him.

Juan Pablo crosses the danger area and pokes the ball into the net. The keeper flashes to life far too late. Mongomo’s supporters erupt, offering libations of fruit, beer, spit, wine and nuts to their team. Horns and drums accompany the goal. Malabo’s supporters subside. This is the end. The trees outside the pitch roar in disproval, the men standing in the branches, in the gods, tearing leaves and issuing threats. 

The president unexpectedly turns to his entourage looking for Teddy Jr. His son should be here. Where is TJ? Where are any of his boys? Pastor and Justo? Gabriel?

Malabo’s ten men cannot resist Mongomo’s second-half tactics. 

Presidential prestige depends on his hometown winning, not this upstart of a capital city of Malabo inflated with oil.

“It’s the second half that counts,” Teddy says, repeating the words of Mongomo’s coach from the afternoon. 

The trees outside the grounds are booing at the action. 

If anyone can help Mongomo, down two goals to three, he’s Juan Pablo. 

Malabo City knows the trophy is theirs. Only a few minutes are left.

Candida tips her white floppy hat. She takes a studious glance at Teddy. 

What is spattered across the cobalt tie? Is that blood under his chipped thumbnail? Doesn’t the idiot know by now blood only can be removed with cold water?

The keeper momentarily splats his cleats into a tacky disk – sandy, oily goop born on the field – and the tar fastens him in place. Juan Pablo dribbles around him and the ball’s slotted past the feeble keeper. 

It’s a tie, courtesy of Juan Pablo’s smooth, blessed move. The trees are whooping. The stands are hooting. Malabo’s supporters are deserting. Soon it will be unanimous. 

El Jefe! El Jefe! 

Just like an election.

Teddy wags his finger in joy. Everything is at it should be. 

The crowd knows – blood can come to your home if you’re not careful with your mouth and your vote. They recognize the warning, the bleached black stains of human ink splashed across the concrete wall and running on the hoardings – hand-painted advertisements for Felix Furniture, Two Pac Coiffure Mixte, Top Lotion, Cocoa and Coffee Agricultural Co-op, Miki Germicidal Soap and Rico Fly and Roach Bombs. 

It’s all over for Malabo in the closing half minute. The home crowd chants for Mongomo. The ball moves with divine pace into the net, an own goal. The blue-skinned Fang from the valley of the Rio Uoro have conquered Malabo once again.

Teddy smiles over the pitch and grins at his people. He’s a politician, not only a boss.

The crowd cries with laughter at the spectacle. They jump from the trees and rush from the bleachers. They have to be jubilant, drums and song adding to the evening’s mixture of dust and sweat.

It’s been a good sporting night for the Fang. They’re number one. There’s no contender. Another season will end with Mongomo tops. Who can lose with the sponsorship of the president and his many companies?

Some supporters hold aloft posters of Teddy and others don the blue, red or green puffy plastic baseball caps of the PDGE. They’re excited that he’s here.

Teddy knows the support is a farce. They’re afraid of him. The pawns can pretend all they want. 

Fruit bats glide over the field, moving from their roosts in town to the pawpaw, mango and breadfruit trees. It’s getting dark.

Juan Pablo approaches the executive area in his capacity as captain of Mongomo FC. The bodyguards make way. A flash breaks over the proceedings, as Jorge the photojournalist from La Gaceta, makes sure to include Teddy and Candida in the presentation of the trophy. 

Candida bites her lip as she bends over the barrier painted with Equatorial Guinea’s six sun-bleached stars. She holds the chalice. Her cheeks bulge with mock pride as Juan Pablo, first crossing himself, receives the trophy. He quickly bolts from the area to present the cup to his coach and teammates, dancing and showering one another with milky palm wine from a bucket. Teddy leans forward on his fist and radiates eminency. 

A shout cascades over the field – muchas gracias, El Jefe! 

Teddy benevolently bows to his people who have traveled from the mainland to be next to him in victory.  His power is his elusiveness – nowhere yet everywhere, knowing and anticipating, wise and ruthless and respected by his few living opponents – yet today he is here. 

The rarity of his appearances is an achievement. He has to be careful. The walls of his residences obscure his physical body. Rings of cronies, relatives and kleptocrats deny access to the illusive boss. But his image is everywhere. His visage keeps watch: stitched on socks, screened on shirts and skirts, sprayed on hats and flags, printed on calendars, placards and clocks. He reminds everyone: he is among them, that he is as good as God, that he is their cordial but dangerous big brother. Today, the people have been blessed with the good weather of a win. 

He excuses himself from the executive area. His bodyguard Darius keeps everyone apart. He spots baby-face, Gabriel, who has arrived in the last minute from the ministry. Hard worker, he notes, a tad disappointed. 

Gabriel, his tie still knotted and his hair coiffed into a fade, touched with some shea butter for luster, is more than a bureaucrat– he’s state secretary of hydrocarbons and mines. Despite his talents for administration, as Stella’s son and Teddy Jr.’s younger brother, he’s too weak to rule. 

Teddy’s shepherded into a black armored Suburban by Darius’s gang of Moroccan bodyguards. Darius coordinates the muscle and motorcade.

Candida will come in a separate vehicle, part of new security measures to ensure their safety. Darius did the improvements, more men, equipment and pay as recommended by international security consultants. His job is to protect the president. 

The convoy flashes towards the presidential palace, not without Teddy taking a envious gaze at Club Náutico for its mixture of jazz, girls, caparinhas and memories of Stella. 

Gabriel stares at the cavalcade peeling through the mud of Malabo. 

What will it take to gain his father’s favor?

He joins his own car and driver and retreats to his residence, frozen lime and pili-pili chicken in the deep freeze cooked by Stella for his benefit as president in training.

***

Teddy Jr. slaloms down the highway to Mongomo in his Porsche Cayenne. This in the only tarmac road on the mainland. But from the town square of Ncue it turns to red track. 

TJ’s bodyguard snores in the back seat. Jimmy the Moor usually can keep pace with the young oil prince, but a unexpected and powerful spell of sleep has quashed his resolve: to buffer the kid from his rasher, baser instincts.

President Teddy will do anything to succor his son’s confused yet promising hoodlum-like wishes and foreign tastes. The Cayenne is one such indulgence, and frankly Mongomo would be inaccessible without it. The only other things capable of navigating the mud are feet or a chopper.

The speed alternates between 150 and 170 kilos. That could be a donkey in front. That was certainly a cord of bananas. And that mash on the windshield is what’s left a cart of yams as big as bush rats. He can’t help but run over people’s wealth.

The señorita next to Teddy Jr. shouts in her Nokia in Spanish. The bangles on her arm rap together angrily. The air conditioning pushes through her feathered perm. She’s trying to confirm her flight on Iberia back to Madrid. It’s overbooked: apparently people want to leave than stay. For now, the señorita, a close replica of Farah Fawcett, is stuck with the brute. 

That’s not an accident. Since TJ’s purchase of a Belair mansion in Los Angeles next door to Farah, Farah’s had a hard time avoiding his stalker-like invitations. TJ makes do with the Spanish substitute, inadvertently bruised by a rough punch that punctuated his yes to her no.

“Yo, bitch, you should get that black dick out of yo’ ass.” he remembers uttering after that violent moment. He sniggers and lights up a stick of skunk from the ashtray. TJ’s gonna make some new records tonight.

The Spanish puta hasn’t stopped inanely gabbing so he touches play – old school Public Enemy, back to where it all started. She probably won’t relax until he sniffs some coke off her tits.

TJ slows for the herd of hump-backed Brahmin longhorns headed for slaughter. They don’t fuss about the high-pitched horn of the Turbo Capsicum, the wagon’s suspension damping as he touches the brakes with an out-of-the-box Air Kobe. There’s no way round.

The hotrod chili skids to a stop. Chuck D is raging about the state, and TJ finds his mind wandering as the putrid smell of skunk fills the interior. 

The Hausa cowherd clucks the semi-wild cattle along the track. 

A bush taxi without the benefit of anti-lock braking or airbags approaches far faster than necessary. Teddy Jr. pulls the Cayenne along the fecund verge. The slow narcotic smoke circulates in the climate control. 

The white dot approaches. Faces are pushed against the bug-smeared windshield. Arms flail. The driver waves a juju in his hand – it’s protection, the wet bloody tail of a dog on a necklace of fresh canine teeth. Sacrificing a dog is no harder than sacrificing an egg. 

The cowherd issues short sharp whistles and chases his herd from the few cultivated fields between the edge of track and jungle, the chatter of monkeys just under the canopy. 

The pepper doesn’t mind the heat or the red track. It’s ready to bite. TJ just has to touch it. He leans on the high-pitched horn and the cattle scatter into the fields. He giggles, anticipating brains and brawn splattered across the bush. The Hausa glares at the dark frosted windows, raps twice with his staff, “Oy!” 

There’s no reply but the sound system rattling the windows, burping and reverberating, Chuck D bashing the white man inside. 

The beef has panicked along the road. The bush taxi driver wags his bloody dog’s tail and the van skids on two wheels, lifts, then slides right through the steaks. Miraculous and safe, the driver laughs and the taxi regathers speed for the next obstacle for his powers.

The chica hasn’t noticed; it’s just another unreal scene in her captivity. She begs the representative at Air Gabon for any available seat at ten euros a minute. Libreville isn’t interested in the plight of the Bionic Woman.

TJ drops the clutch. The car comes to life as if the engine runs on cold blood. He turns into the cane, cassava and maize. He avoids the grove of palms.

Is that a hut, a face or a calabash at the window? 

TJ smiles sharply, the slug of gold glued in one tooth slightly pulling at his lip. Brooklyn 05 says his shirt in thick puffy script. His Valentino and René Lezard suits are secure in the trunk. 

The Spanish bitch is no longer chatting in her mobile. No luck. She coolly asks, “Como estas, Juniorito? Que pasa aqui?” 

TJ doesn’t have much to say. The first African oil prince isn’t interested in subtleties. She’s a poor substitute for the red-hot, fifty-year-old Farah Tap, but she’ll do. He slashes his droopy Comte de Garcons shorts open, and on cue the CD player shuffles Two Live Crew. 

OK, one more time – mas y mas.

Her face and hair settle on him as the car rejoins the tarmac, her lips kissing him, the turbo kissing the pavement, the Michelin’s shedding mud and matter in their wake, sugarcane macerating in the windshield wipers. 

Las senoritas rubias quieren el mal reyito de Isla de Bioko, he says, his teeth grinning in the rearview mirror, his eyes half-closed, unembarrassed about the tattered credibility of his father’s country. 

She’s gagging and he’s thrusting. With his broad hand he holds her head down as she spits and coughs on him, rubbery like a weeping tree, nearly tapped. 

This was not her idea of a vacaciones, hair and jaw sucking for an exit visa. 

TJ knows where is his father’s extra wedge in case there’s a power problem – that old fucker, he’s had his fun. A warm metal sense of powder and liquid drips into Teddy Jr.’s throat with the memory of being so high and finding all those Benjis. 

The room smells like disinfectant. It’s dark, tiled with marble and fitted with gold.

TJ quivers in his CK boxers, shirtless and examining his face in the unlit vanity mirror. Gabriel, standing in his torn Hilfiger slacks, his abstract tie knotted around his head, is ineptly cutting lines. Gabriel and TJ are test-driving the wraps of cocaine from Paris. 

Their arrhythmic hearts jump from the race to finish. TJ is winning and he vacuums up Gabriel’s lane. 

During the last lap TJ reaches underneath the marble sink and finds wedges of Benjis, tucked next to the pipes, wrapped in plastic. 

One or other brother twitches. 

Teddy Jr. clumsily knocks over a supply of pharmaceuticals from the counter.

The pills and bills are handy – enough to get Teddy to the Americas without being indicted or having an infarction in transit. 

The old man isn’t that sick. He’s just cautious about his dickey heart and nether parts.

TJ collapses on the tiles and fondles the slick C-notes while Gabriel struggles to read the pills skittering over the marble. 

“You fucking idiot, TJ,” Gabriel says. 

“It doesn’t matter. Papa don’t care.” Teddy Jr. isn’t afraid of papa.

“He’ll kill us if he finds out.”

“The old man’s not going to notice.”

“Bullfuckingshit, TJ. He’s a miser and counts every note himself.” 

Reestablishing order is paramount. TJ is a thief, that much Gabriel knows. He pushes the beta blockers, cholesterol managers and blood thinners into their respective orange tubs.

“The treasure is in the treasury, bro.” Teddy Jr. is staggered by the lucidity that cocaine allows.

“It’s not and you know it, TJ. Dad’s put all those signing bonuses in escrow for us since Poseidon hit. I do the math. I’m the co-signer at Riggs on 17-164-642, along with papa and Melchor.” 

“Not true, Gabriel.” 

“Where you been, nigger? Who pays for you? What do I have to do – call a maid to explain this shit to you?”

“Oh, like they’re not his spies.” TJ knows about his father’s methods. “I was just winding you up, homey. Shit, relax.”

Gabriel knows too. “Look, I’ll put the pills away and you get the money back under the sink. How the fuck did you find it anyway?”

“I just felt a shadow and I poked it.”

“You’re such a dumb nigger.”

“Either you’re my nigger or my ho – or else I don’t know you.” Teddy hazily smiles at the verse. Gotta be RZA. Certainly not Biggie or Tupac. 

 “Papa’s gonna make me president so don’t bother.” Gabriel might as well try.

“Hah! Yo’ momma’s from stinky Sao Tome and the Fang are never going to have you, nigger. You know that.” Teddy slings a few pills toward the slippery pile, cooling his sweating face with a flopping fan of Bennies. That’s a real insult.

The hard emotional edge of the cocaine makes their words seem much realer and nastier than ever before. Does either of them care to rule? Is this not their last naïve moment, rivalry breeding like the blues?

Gabriel’s fingers fidget with the tubes. He dusts the dirty ones with his father’s ivory and pig bristle shaving brush.

“You’ve got some margarita around your nose, maricon!”

Teddy Jr. bursts out in great guffaws. His pale-colored brother is spastically trembling like a mongoose high on snake. 

“Ahh,” TJ cries, “Ahhhh.” 

The Spanish chica is finishing him off, biting the thread. 

No one knows how long he’s gonna last. No one knows where all the money is. No one knows how much oil is left. Only old man Teddy who is privy.

“Professional,” he manages to groan through sticky mouthfuls of pleasure.

Farah rises to snowball him and he pushes her away. 

“Nasty, ho. You swallow that.” 

And she does, much to his awe.

“We at the palace yet, monsieur?” calls Jimmy’s curious voice lulling back to sleep. He detected something.

TJ’s hands relax around the steering wheel. Oral sex isn’t overrated in cars.

Farah settles into her seat and unwraps a piece of gum. She unfolds a tissue and removes some wayward drop from her disturbed, feathered hair. 

The headlights reflect off the black macadam and the Cayenne passes a timber mill. Teddy beams – those are his hardwoods. They pass a cocoa processing plant, defunct now that the price of cocoa might as well be the price of dirt – his old man screwed himself on that one.

The wicked purple dials on the dash monitor the 4×4’s progress. The climate control keeps everything cool, even TJ. 

Enough of positive hip-hop – the tuner quickly eliminates A Tribe Called Quest. 

The signal often doesn’t work on the mainland, but today he’s lucky. Piggybacking relays from the offshore rig radio operators have helped stitch together the reception in Rio Muni.

The preset settles on his own station, Radio Asonga, and after a lull in the Wu Tang Clan, a sports bulletin informs him that Mongomo has won the derby cup. An announcement follows fast on the heels of the local results: Equatorial Guinea and Gabon will co-host the African Cup of Nations in 2008. 

“In what stadium of light?” asks TJ, startled that he may have work in his capacity as minister for infrastructure.

The gravelly announcer’s voice quickly mentions a new presidential decree that has opened the way for state funding of all football federations and clubs in Equatorial Guinea beginning with the 2005 season. 

The bulletin finishes with the Radio Asonga jingle. He’s proud of that, the first mixdown. Asonga segues into the lyrical violence of Fifty Cent.

Does it matter? Does he care? 

The sooner he leaves, the better. Dr. Dre has expressed interest in a project. The Doctor isn’t beyond ghost producing, if consummated with the right amount of Bens. 

“You live around here, chica?” he asks Farah.

“Yo no entiendo, hermoso. No hablo anglais.”

A vent of red dust closes around the car. 

“Yo, Jimmy, get this tramp out of here! This is a drop-off!” 

“Señor TJ?”

“Vamos, pinche puta!”

He pushes the door open. Jimmy pumps his gorilla-like arms around the seat and slips Farah sideways into the road. On her knees, she’s mortified and confused. He’s worse than Augusto Pinochet. 

What, is that a Glock? 

She’s out, way out, sitting in a deep rut, and lashes her Blahnik high heels over her shoulder. No point in ruining her livelihood.

The Cayenne slips away. How TJ and Jimmy double over with glee! It’s not like he shot the bitch for entertainment like most kids. Looking back, he can see the forest reaching for Farah. 

Farah can’t possibly beat back the trees he has sent for her.

As both photographer and phonographer to President Teddy, Jorge pulls up the volume on the microphone. He tests the levels on the soundboard and mutes the output. Jorge trims the bass if Radio Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial is going to sound sharp and brassy.

During this routine task Jorge automatically recycles some of his favorite headlines about his eccentric chief.

Equatorial Guinea has a new president of the Court of Supreme Justice.

The Energy Secretary of the United States visits Equatorial Guinea.

The government wishes that the next election should be transparent in its integrity.

Jorge fades out tonight’s sixty-second news bulletin: seventy mercenaries bound for Malabo have been apprehended in Zimbabwe!

He loads the sample of the national anthem. It must be a special event if the president’s going live.

Teddy assumes his stool. The slinky material of his suit gathers in the polished hardwood trough. Teddy folds back the cuffs of his Armani shirt after removing his cerise Ungaro jacket. The desk is clear except for the microphone and his elbows. But he’s also brought along the Bible autographed by Robert Mugabe. He’s going to preach tonight. 

To one side the green, purple and white flag is pinned to the wall. To the other a large reliquary squats – elongated torso and squat limbs. The troll’s forehead is carved with lines and so are his cheeks; he stamps on his bedding of palm fiber, and under him is a box of bones, Teddy’s grandfather and the other powerful chiefs of Mongomo that came before him. The statue glistens from offering of palm oil and wine and scowls over the room. He is protector and spirit.

The cordless headphones leave Teddy unimpeded. He covers one ear but not the other with the gold and foam Sennheisers. A shallow whistling breath gurgles in his lungs and bubbles to his lips. He loosens his silk tie and breaths into the microphone, jutting from the desk like a paddle. He scratches his Versace socks. Or are those the pale green Dior ones that Stella bought for him in Brazil?

The last few bars of the national anthem are ending. Jorge opens the rose skin of his palm. He wiggles his fingers and Teddy notes the countdown as the final bar of the anthem fades out: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and AIR.

Teddy begins with an executive summary in Spanish, the fluid sensibility of the words rolling on his tongue like spirits. But it sounds like he’s been chewing on books in his paper-like quarters.

“Greetings once again.”

Teddy allows a long pause for effect. 

“Welcome to the history of man and earth.”

He knows dead air is the best air.

“The danger this week is the same as the danger last week, the same as the danger a year ago. 

“Enemy powers are trying to destabilize Equatorial Guinea. MI6, the CIA and the Spanish secret service are responsible. Permit your president to tell you –

“Seventy mercenaries have been arrested in Zimbabwe after a Boeing 727 left South Africa’s Wonderboom airport and made an unscheduled stop in Harare. The plane was impounded by Zimbabwe after officials became suspicious that all the cabin lights were dimmed. Its contents included seventy well-known soldiers of fortune and equipment for making war. Many are South Africans, and some are members of the famed Buffalo Battalion. The rest are Angolans, Namibians and Congolese. These men and the company they represent have purchased a fishing concession and even bought trawlers but they know nothing about fishing!

“In light of these development we have started our own investigation and arrested fifteen people, of whom seven are South Africans, in Malabo. They have admitted to conspiring to stage a coup. 

“In the course of questioning, we have found that they were financed by enemy powers, by multinational companies, by countries that do not love us. They knew of the coup but did nothing. Multinational firms operating here and outside also contributed to this operation and will be qualified as enemy companies.

“One of the coup leaders, Nick Dutoit, has admitted the coup attempt. He said to me personally that it wasn’t a question of taking the life of the head of state but of spiriting him away, taking him to Spain and then installing the government in exile of Severo Moto Nsa.”

Inevitably at the mention of Severo Moto there comes a point when Teddy loses his temper and the threats issue from his blue mouth, his tongue swollen with anger and too large for his throat. 

“These men have been abandoned by their governments to the justice of my friend Robert Mugabe!” 

Teddy bangs a strange flamenco of rhythms when he says, slowly enunciating each word: “I can decide to kill without anyone calling me to account and without going to hell because it is God himself, with whom I am in permanent contact, and who gives me this strength. Soon the soldiers sent by enemy powers and companies will find out.”

The glass of the windows reverberates as a helicopter passes over the presidential palace. It’s like a wart on the finger of peninsula and it points at Zafiro field. A cluster of rigs and ships are anchored to the Atlantic’s surface. Maybe they are guilty too? Do they imagine Teddy’s almost over?  That Radio Nacional Guinea Ecuatorial is short of entertainment value? 

The president’s broadcast is relayed to Pico Basile and it is from there he speaks – radios are breathing the breath of Teddy. His voice loops around the island like fire. He’s there, listening, thinking, ominous. Teddy in the volcano, Teddy behind the mountain.

He warns the people of outsiders. 

But it’s the insiders they fear – the jail with no jailer.

His voice booms over the jungle-choked slopes. The owner of Malabo, Port Clarence, Formosa, Fernando Po, Santa Isabel – he isn’t amused. Who dare jeopardize his country’s future when it is already leveraged and in his pocket? 

Teddy thumps his cowrie-like fingertips on his desk. He sounds his shaker-like jowls. 

“It’s like that,” he says, “and I want to personally thank my friend Robert Mugabe, his wife Grace and ZANU-PF who are as dedicating to benefit the people as the PDGE of this great country of the Fang. May God be with us, for the Fang are his men!”

The corner of his mouth cracks and he spits a little blood in the microphone, onto the ears of the people. His Patek Philippe falls under the left shirt cuff. The two gold links bear his emblem, a ruby tree and six diamond stars. He fidgets his gold ring and flashes his worn, stained teeth. 

“For everyone, friends and enemies, there are new procedures that will commence tonight in eight points – no, nine points: 

“Curfew from 8 pm to 8 am daily! 

“No motor, marine, air or bicycle traffic unless authorized by Ministry of Interior! 

“No defaming president or his family. 

“No gathering in groups of more than three persons.

“No opposition party meetings, publications or other communication.

“No mobile phone communication with mobile phone or other technology.

“No talking to foreigners or others deemed enemies of the state.

“No listening to foreign broadcasts.

“No travel between mainland and islands.

“All these rules will remain into effect until further notice.

“God bless Guinea Ecuatorial.”

He closes the Bible with a slap. In his excitement, he hasn’t used the white word of God. Teddy rues leaving the microphone. Rhetoric is his one accomplishment. He swivels on his stool, bewitched with himself. The stool pinches him, and he winces for a second, perhaps bitten for a moment by the memory of his uncle’s terror. 

Jorge ends the broadcast, fading in the brass of the Equatoguinean Army Band. It’s severe but Malabo’s used to a coup or two: they’ve been locked down before.

Once he’s closed up the studio, Jorge will moonlight, hopes to use his journalist’s pass to clear the roadblocks and avoid the bribes. If he can, he’ll repair TVs and any defunct audio-visual equipment. With oil most Equatoguineans have more than or at least one measly dollar a day.

The Silver Bullet

“Daniel, gotta a mo?” 

Luke’s shadow falls onto Daniel’s metal desk in the labstack. It’s late in his prefabricated office. The fluorescent light flickers. 

“Figure it out yet?”

“He spreads out his sketches of the tops and bottoms, the domes and anticlines for Luke to see. Nope. I can’t get past this one trap where I think the problem is.” His pencils are perpetually dancing across the table and twisting down to the floor of twisting resonating rig. Now they’re at rest – weirder still, there’s no physical noise except for Luke’s blue constricted breathing. No swing here. “I don’t think it’s physical but more technical.”

“Here’s some more bad news. I just broke the bottom hole assembly or something down there.” Luke’s glum. He prides himself on no extra costs.

“You were scratching that hole too hard, huh?” Daniel rolls some pebbles between his fingers.

“Chico’s about ready to explode so I thought I’d pony up to the bar while he cools his heels.”

“Funny one.”

“You need a break, buster?”  Luke pulls a little quart bottle from his overalls. He pushes back his foam hat and proffers some of his moonshine.

“I’m dry, Luke.”

“That’s why I’m offering, Danny.”

Daniel takes it and kicks back his throat. “God, it burns.” Jesus, like the memory of his sore icy nuts. 

 “Ever since you boned that goat things been going wrong on this rig.”

“Things were going wrong before I got here. And anyway, if I hadn’t poked the goat, someone else would’ve.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Never seen anyone relish a carcass like that before. I got to hand it to you.”

Does he have to be reminded constantly? He’s never going to live it down on the Jade and beyond. “Have a sense of humor, will you! And it wasn’t that terrible for morale. It’s not like Sherm’s separate-but-equal bullshit. I think I’m starting to really hate that fucker.”

“Hold your horses, Danny. He’s the boss and Poseidon loves him. Irredentist or not.” Luke produces a stammer pronouncing the big word.

“You’re afraid of him, aren’t you, Luke.”

“Yep.”

“He’d get rid of an old fucker like you.”

“Already tried, but I’m the best.”

“They said the same about me and look where I am.”

“Yep, with me.”

“Can’t be that bad, then?” 

“He’s more cocksure of himself than a goddamn beauty queen.”

“You think he’s queer?”

“Could be. Third world’s a good place for pedophiles. Lots of lonely little boys.”

“Let’s stop speculating. It’s not nice.”

“But you turned him on!”

 “Stop!”

“He might even say sorry.”

“For what?”

“For being an asshole. Anything to get some.”

“He’s never apologized in his entire life.”

“Once he said he was sorry for not lynching a black man who refused to call him Sir.”

“I’m not talking about regrets. I’m talking about sorrow, about realizing you were wrong.” He knows something about that.  

Luke gestures at the rolls of paper. “You think you’ll get anywhere with that old data?”

“Did Noah build an arc?”

“Sure did. But Sherm, he’d have you fly Dixie’s stars and bars from it.”

“You gonna give me another sip for that sour mash?”

“Pretty good, huh?” He hands Danny the bottle.

Danny rubs it lovingly. “Good medicine.” 

“We should close that door.” Plus, it’s cramped with even one man.

“Fuck the spies.” 

“Guess you’re right. They’d only know we run out of oil.”

“It’s not that dire, dude.”

Luke suggests some kind of disguise. “Coffee cup, do you?” 

“Good one.” He reaches for the cup of firewater.

“I never seen something like it, completed wells petering out in six months, looking like they need recovery, this in one of the best fields in West Africa. The separators can’t keep up.” 

“Could we put a ROV down, see our subsea?”

“They got one on Zafiro. When you get back from that meeting then we’ll paddle over and take a look. You’re done with your report?”

“Almost.” 

“When you’re printing money you don’t want problems.”

Daniel’s complicated recalculation of the play of the area has not solved anything. Daniel’s studied the logs, cuttings, cores and mud. He’s fretted over the measurements of spontaneous potential, conductivity, density, porosity, radioactivity and acoustic velocity. He rerecorded the tops and bottoms. He’s sketched out the completions of the wells and locations of the perfs. He’s reconsidered the source rock, domes, anticlines, legs and traps. But a solution refuses to give, Luke has broken the bottom assembly in his attempt to scratch a better hole in the Bonito formation, and Poseidon’s been yanking his beard in anxiety in Houston – this isn’t supposed to happen for another fifteen years. 

His reliable nose is clogged and lysing briny water with no tissue in sight. Has the field a cold? An allergy? What’s the diagnosis? Is someone fudging? Certainly the Gulf is less perfumed than upon his arrival. He rub on the Vicks and stimulate it, with water or acid or steam or fire, with injections of surfactants or polymers, nitroglycerin or propping agents, but it’s not the kind of gushing well he likes.

“What you gonna do when you’re done out here, Luke?”

“Partake in that third wife of mine – if she’ll have me. You?”

“I don’t miss Houston one bit. My home life is Archie Bunker.”

Luke gulps. “I’m gonna go back to the doghouse, Danny. Maybe Chico’s cooled his jets. We’ll fix that hole yet.” He doesn’t want to get too-too personal.

“You want some gum?” He offers Luke a stick of Dentyne.

“Don’t stay up all night worrying this data, Danny. Get your beauty sleep for President Teddy. He likes good looking girls.”

“Night, Luke.”

Daniel checks his terminal – no messages from home. He reaches for the phone. He’s in the mood. But there’s no answer again. Even the answering machine is off. It’s been the silent treatment from Kylie and DJ. With dad out of the picture, they must be having a grand time. 

***

“Have a great trip, dude!” Luke crouches under the oscillating blades of the Bell helicopter. “And watch out for the old cat Teddy,” he croaks. 

Daniel gains the jumpseat. He notices the flakes of paint and rust on the nose of the chopper, something he didn’t register during the excitement of arrival. He gives a thumbs-up to the driller as he dons the clunky ear defenders. Guido gives him a big grin. “Hola, cabrito!” No dog wants to forget an infamous bone.

“Buenos dias,” Daniel replies sternly. The Jaeger suit chokes his gut and waist. There’s no avoiding the chunky offshore diet. The worsted fabric smells vaguely sweet and nauseous, like the sachets of lavender Kylie installed in the pockets to keep out the moths. The helicopter bounces on its skids as more corpulent men climb in. 

The mud, oil and grit are like whiskers and cream under his wingtips. The flight controls are colored like toothpaste. The ride in the hovering powder room won’t take long. In fact, his bladder’s filled with anxious about his return to the beach. Already the air smells less like diesel and more like earth. He glances in his worn manbag to see that he hasn’t forgotten his Toshiba, home of his careful summaries of Poseidon’s dilemma. One doubleclick on the Geosoft icon and presto – months of data and dwindling results will be at hand for the government. 

He pokes his hand into a side pocket of the Moroccan leather, fishing for his penknife. The brass clasp rattles against the closure as Guido radios off. 

Guido chuckles into his headset as he wiggles the joystick and winks at Daniel. “See, amigo, the tool’s there for you. In case you get any loose screws.” He clucks a beat.

Sure enough, a black and yellow Stanley juts from the instrument panel like a cocktail straw. 

Daniel will present the production results to the government. That’s what the Poseidon executive explained over the sluggish connection of the satellite phone – the CEO likes Daniel’s diligence in resolving the reserve problem. He’s protested but Poseidon’s resolute: the Zafiro data has to be presented now not later. It’ll have more credibility if it comes from a field geologist – that’s the CEO’s gamble, if Poseidon is to monopolize the rest of the underwater real estate with the least concession. Thus President Teddy’s demands for a raise can be snubbed and ignored due to the highly variable factor of investment risk.

The shadow of the rotor fades into a Cuisenaire-like blur, and the struts are hoisted from the yellow circle of the helideck by dervish-like lift. Daniel ruminates over a piece of gum, easing the popping of his ears as the helicopter suddenly bows to the Jade and flies, a gray dot on the blue sea. 

Daniel fumbles over his penknife, the blade’s sticky with apple, but only after finding a Sheik condom next to the talisman. 

“How the fuck did you get here?” he asks the barrier, shakily touching part of his old plan to hook up with Dawn.

He fingers the nut bar next to the bottle of DEET and slips the penknife into his pocket. He jumbles the remainder of salty peanuts coagulated over sweet nougat into his mouth. It intermingles with the spearmint gum. The nuggets shake over his teeth. Daniel cranes his neck round to count the passengers. Egghead has passed on this part of the admin. 

He uncomfortably grins at the clean crew on the first part of their journey home, relaxed in denim and chinos, in overalls, jeans and cut-offs. Sucking in the kerosene influx of the rotor whining overhead, Daniel pulls his lips over his mouth in insincere camaraderie. A nagging sense of shame clings to him like body odor and its knotted under his tie, hardly disguised by his RightGuard aerosol. It prevents him from crossing from the formal, courtly attire of his suit to the informal casualness suggested by the postures of the men in the back, who he can’t help but admire, beautiful working bodies, faces scarred with a codex of dots and stripes, heads of tight curls and muscles finely cut, with manners full of kindness, thanks, regard and help. 

Say something, but what? 

He’s part of the dumb hierarchy, the company man pinned down by Poseidon’s trident in the front seat, where surely the Nigerians and Angolans are grateful to be caught in the Mergod’s net. A superficial comment about the slush in the cantina will not do. Insult them with his exotic African ideas informed by prejudice, distance and television: witch doctors, cannibalism, AIDS and slavery?  Offend them with the notion that oil is no more than Africa’s old dead ancestors? 

It’s his choice. He sighs futilely. Africa’s had well over four hundred years of colonialism. The current misunderstanding and clichés are poor harbingers for his appointment today with President Ted. Crumbling up the passenger list, he adjusts his jacket, fiddles with his polka-dot tie and the muffled comfort of the ear defenders.

Beyond the toes of his brown wingtips is the soupy Gulf – dotted with ships and rigs like mosquitoes on a wall, hungry and hunting for blood. 

The Jade is the first rig to feel the drastic hitch. Other Poseidon production wells have it too. The percent of water present in the crude has been a shock – the expectation of a stiff gin and tonic that upon tasting is devoid of any kick. The separators can hardly recover – too much water, not enough oil and gas. Was the penultimate three million barrels of oil drained from the belly of Zafiro Producer three days prior? He doubts it. 

The flare at the AMPCO plant outside Malabo burns brightly. A necklace of freighters is anchored in the ocean, buoyant and somber before the port. The wharves are tangled with goods, trucks and stevedores.

Guido clears the landing with Malabo’s flight control further west. They’re over land now, gracefully arcing over Pico Basile, the crater like a green wart growing on the skin of the Gulf. A herd of highland cattle panic at the whoop-whoop of the helicopter which rises unexpectedly; it twitches above the plantations of palm, coffee and cocoa, predatory in its flight like a dragonfly, ominous in its aspect, an agent of faster, greater, richer powers. 

Daniel admires the fluid view, which stalls for a moment. 

Then dips and accelerates unexpectedly. 

The whirring intensifies and pierces through the ear defenders as Daniel digs his hands into his thighs. He’s thrown into the nylon upholstery of his seat. His shoulder belt jerks around his neck. The screwdriver shakes out of the instrument panel.

The helicopter pitches upward and rotates, unstable, falls leeward and tilts. Guido shrieks into his microphone like a monkey, unable to force air under the blades, the hummingbird tumbling from the aircushion.

Daniel feels something stretch and burst in his head behind his ears; it washes into his mouth and tastes like fear and wax. He desperately searches for his driving license in his wallet wedged under his butt. 

Is Kylie my wife or my ex-wife? Where did I put that varnish? Did Daniel Jr., join Mu Alpha Theta? Did Kylie re-upholster that goddamn pink armoire? Trivia rotates around him in a smudge. The plastic rectangle of his license shakes in his hand; it’s a airsick reference point in the vertigo of chaos: Am I an organ donor? Am I? He’s signed somewhere. The text reverberates under the plastic of the ID.

A brisket sandwich smacks Daniel’s cheek; he belabors wiping the BBQ sauce off with his trembling hand. A box of Camels skittles against the door and he lurches for them. He’ll be thanked for that. His Casio watch swims in arm hair and the second column blinks a new digit. 

It’s wet in here, he notices. Shouts and puke and loose objects merge inside the aircraft.

The compartment swells with smoke. They can only hope the Bell is shock absorbent and fire retardant. This is not just turbulence, soaring over the bumpy currents with the condors of Malabo gorge, but something truly alarming. The instruments are fluttering and twitching to extremes with awful accuracy.

A plume of black and orange smoke jaggedly thunders across the sky like an envoy, and the faces of the town worriedly chatter below. 

A group of girls picks at the edges of Malabo’s dump, the refuse strewn in the creeks and slopes of the canyon that rises into cocoa fincasabove the town. The air is hazy with the smoke of plastics and cooking fires. The girls have yet to discover the valuable air-conditioners obscured by a mound of plastic and vegetable matter. 

The patrons of Bar Europe wave at the panicky craft scraping a gash in the sky.  Godbless Progress lifts his head from a game of table football. He pushes the foil ball through the slot, coolly passes and pokes it into goal with his front four, then stretches for a suck of a cigarette and a sip of beer. His hands are burnt and chaffed and he reaches across to shake the hand of his opponent. The helicopter reflects of the gold-mirrored surface of his Ray-Bans, a gift from President Teddy to cover his bad eye. 

The villas, red dirt and palms are approaching abruptly. Guido concentrates on the pedals and sticks that abrade his hands and feet. Their navigation’s wasted. Are they going up or down, left or right, spinning like a pinwheel? The engine shrills through the ear defenders. Daniel fidgets his legs – braking, breaking. He catches the Stanley screwdriver and jams it into the instrument panel, as if that will help. Guido finds time to smirk.

The floor’s scorching. So is the back of the cabin. They’re on fire. Someone has sprayed foam over the blistering panels. One of the seats is melting like Velveeta. It’s horrid to breath. The roof of Daniel’s mouth tastes of like sweet groundnuts. The men are screaming oaths. 

Guido aims for the football grounds, recently improved with a presidential suite and convenient to the hospital. Somehow he guides the deranged bird down. 

Below, balls are passed in a drill. The best half of Malabo FC scrimmages, practicing one-touch on the other half of the field. The players quickly surmise that the meteor is coming down. They flee to the perimeter of their training ground. The concrete walls of the stadium are stained with some black substance; it’s smeared over the garish advertisements for cosmetic services like blood or guts. 

In the last moment the ball boys scramble to gather their precious inventory of balls. 

Daniel’s briefcase rolls out of the wildly swinging cabin door. It explodes on the sidelines in a cloud of dust like a zit.

The fall is about to end with a splat not a splash. 

Townspeople are running to the field suggested by the trajectory of the wayward aircraft.

Daniel’s heart leaps into his toes. Deeper segments of his life are jumping before his eyes. When are they going to turn on the irrigation water at home on his dad’s farm? Doesn’t he know it’s the oil and energy we eat? Did mom buy a new car? Where did they bury the dog? 

One strut grazes the right goalpost. The helicopter drops into the goal area. It skids into place in the midfield like a gob of spit and whiplash. The flame retardant is on fire. Daniel’s ear is excruciating. 

Daniel reaches out of the helicopter, his arm caught in the buckles of the seatbelt. His tie licks around his neck. His steps are great intoxicated plops, amplitude out of synch. The men fall out of the helicopter, collapsing in the grass and crawling on the broken balance of their hands. They spiral from the burning thorax, suddenly sprayed in a whoosh of flame retardant powder by Guido. The engine crackles like pine cones, the blades decelerating to a slow swooping beat, the men calving like whales, giving birth to their fears. The men of Malabo FC pull the oil workers further away from the spinning burning wreckage. Number seven takes care of Daniel, pulls his suit and shirt open like a tin of sardines. 

He’s nearly unconscious, having enjoyed too much noxious smoke. Someone fans him with a big banana leaf. His chest rises irregularly and uneasily. A wedge of orange revives him and he blinks back into the eyes of his helper. Daniel manages to rock onto his elbows. 

Where’s his pickup?

Who mowed the lawn?

Who invited all the black people over?

Why’s that burning bird doing on the soccer pitch?

Did DJ’s team win the game?

Is that the neighbor’s burglar alarm going off again?

Did Kylie to the store for milk?

A Poseidon pickup soon bumps onto the field. Its bed is heavy with blancos. Some honcho asks, “We’re lookin’ for a Poseidon guy by name of Danny Grace. Any of you guys know him?”

Daniel cups his hand to his ear. “Yeah! Yeah, I’m Daniel.” Blood and little pads of ear-timpani trickle into his throat. He clenches his hand and his palm’s ticklish. “My briefcase?” His voice hollowly echoes in at least one dead ear.  “Donde esta mi pinche cartera?” he calls. That Toshiba is fucking important. He looks up to the honcho apparently appraising the situation. Slightly more aware, he says, “Look, dude… look at the others first. It was roguish.” Where is his tongue? The beefcake is familiar.

A pair of pickups skids in the background. Two groups of armed men rapidly disburse into the area.

“Give this guy a Coors,” says Sean Coltrane, not without a pause to deliver a word of warning punctuated with his stocky eyes. “Watch your step with island security services, Bubba.” 

Daniel doesn’t catch the can. He grabs for it but collapses instead. Lying in the grass he snuggles his finger under the aluminum tab and cracks it open. To his surprise it really is the Silver Bullet, a Coors Light. 

He hates Coors Light. 

“You up for that meeting, Mr. Grace?”

It takes him a while to answer to the boots in the grass. “Can you find my Toshiba? It fell out of the chopper before we crashed. I’d look for it, just it’s kinda hard to walk.” 

“You got it, boss.” Sean gestures to his detail. 

President’s Teddy’s security men quiz the other burnt and asphyxiated passengers in the periphery, some aggressively. 

“We sure fucked up on the meet and greet today.”

Daniel’s one eye is smarting and his teeth hurt. He absentmindedly finds the pack of Camels. “You got fire, buddy?” He notches a filter in his lips and reaches for the lighter tossed in the grass, clumsily grabbing it. He bends to the flame unfurling in his hand and roasts half the cigarette. He singes a length of eyebrow. Daniel slowly darkens like the blue cinnamon smoke, the smell a reminder of what could have been. His Jaeger suit reeks like burnt plastic. 

“You wanna get in the truck, Mr. Grace? While you’re waiting for your computer, you can go to the hospital.”

“Later.” He’s feeling bruised but tough.

Daniel turns to see a security meathead hitting one of the Nigerians on the feet with a sap. He’s not going to stand for this. They shouldn’t be touching his men. He struggles to get up but it’s like someone cut his big toe off. 

The savagery is being repeated around the defunct and now largely burning aircraft.

Sean Coltrane helps him onto his feet and Daniel says,  “Are you going to look after my staff? This is fucking nuts.” 

Sean answers as he tries to shovel Daniel into the cab of the pickup. “Mr. Grace, they’re subcontracted. It’s not our responsibility. I can’t intervene.” He’s loose like a bag of bones.

“I’ve heard this before.” Poseidon’s a callous old man.

“Anyone can do what he wants, Mr. Grace. You’re in Africa. You could beat them if you wanted to.”

“It’s not an excuse.” The oofs of impact are barred by the tinted windows and air-conditioning. 

“It’s like that,” says Sean with more intelligence than Daniel might give him credit for, “Remember, there’s no Equal Employment Commission out here, Mr. Grace. Either you’re a first lady or whore, president or punk.”

“Stop them.” Daniel better keep his mouth shut. “They can’t be beaten like this.” 

“Who are you, Mr. Grace? The ultimate white guy who can save the world? The government will be pleased to inform you of improvements. And you will be pleased to inform President Teddy of your improvements. Times are better here in Malabo, and it’s not your turf.” He signals to a member of his staff.  “Your bag’s here, Mr. Grace, and your computer’s fine, so we’ll be going. Why don’t you brush yourself off and do yourself up?”

Should he resign himself? Where does the Poseidon end and President Teddy start? He’s got to make a choice some time, but maybe he should find out more before he commits himself. He unbends his Toshiba and it flashes to life.

“Where’s your moral fiber, Sean? Surely, these men don’t a beating as proof of their loyalty to their job? You’re an ex-military man, aren’t you? You’re some kind of guardian angel, no? So have your puppet master stop these fuckers, huh?” 

“I don’t fuck goat.” Sean might as well make it clear: they know and they’re going to use it against him. “What’s gone on here, Danny? Have they buried people in a trench and waited for their heads to burst like melons when these grounds were the Auschwitz of Africa? Where were you then, wiseguy?”

 “You’d be surprised by what I can do when I want to.” The buttons are troubling him. His ears are ringing like cisterns. What’s there to fear from this stout brat?

“Okay, Moses. You part the sea on the way to the promised land. Be my guest.” Let him mess up. Danny won’t get out anyway.

Daniel struggles with his steps. His balance is out of whack. He slides from the polyester seat of the truck like a carcass. He pulls himself up in parts, but he really can’t amble unaided. “Oh, this infernal body of mine!” he cries. He’s at wit’s end. It’s barbaric.

Sean, not unkindly, slugs him back into the truck. Daniel slumps against the AC vents. The truck slides off the field into the newly asphalted streets of Malabo. Trash is piled on most corners, washed from one part of town to another. Sean unholsters his phone with a free hand and makes the call with the authority of his position. 

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Sean says in the way of compassion.

They move along the waterfront. Men on stilts are dancing to a range of thin drums among the crowd. A man blows through an antelope horn. The people are relaxing, unbothered by awry helicopters or angry presidential decrees. The chairs and tables under the mango tree outside Pizza Place are filled with teams of oil workers grazing on grouper and lobster calzone. It looks appetizing but the Poseidon vehicle rolls silently by. They bypass the ministry of hydrocarbons and mines in the center of town. The meeting will take place in the presidential palace. 

“You gonna make it?” Mr. Grace looks quite pale.

“You can’t squeeze blood from rocks.”

“Exactly, Mr. Grace. During that meeting, I would be very choosy about what you say.”

He nods. He’s impressed with the smart style of the old town. “You got another bullet?” “A Coors, champ?”

“Golden, Colorado tastes pretty good after two weeks.” He feels awful for capitulating to the sleazebag, but why not solve your woes with alcohol?

Sean yanks out a can of the piss-poor brew from his cooler. 

Daniel cracks it open. It’s smooth, bitter and cold, thankfully unlike the umpteenth twenty-ouncer of pop. “Business looks good at the yacht club. Nice chunk of real estate.” he acknowledges, noting the line of fancy cars and stumbling for something neutral to say to his unwelcome caretaker. 

“That’s a good start. It’s the President’s club. He owns just about everything on, around, in and under this island. Sleep, eat, drink, shop, build, swim, drill, fuck – it’s probably owned by President Teddy. Just wait until he puts the finishing touches on the Petroleum Club. That’s gonna be good.” His bunches his snub nose to push back his shades.

The truck rolls to a stop at the security booth outside the palace complex. There’s laundry drying on the veranda. 

“Show them your passport, Danny, and your company ID. Since you’re with me you won’t have to put any money in it.” 

Daniel’s too occupied allaying an attack of vertigo to notice if he gets his passport back from check-in. 

The truck rolls over the oyster-shell drive and the gray Toyota joins the rank of sedans and utility vehicles outside the palace. Daniel’s face reflects over the form of the cars, changing shape and color like a lollipop. 

 “I arranged for a wheelchair,” says Sean, pointing to the delegation of Equatoguineans on the steps waiting for Señor Grace. “Lemme straighten that tie.”

A knot of men in dark European suits envelope him as soon as he’s dumped into the wheelchair. A translator comes forward affably. “Señor Gabriel and the Presidente Teddy await Señor Grace with pleasure and find themselves good,” he says, his thin voice amplified like jeopardy. He offers a double-handed shake to which Daniel accepts. He almost topples forward. Everyone smiles in an accommodating manner. They’ve seen many a blanco incapacitated by climate or disease. This one’s no different.

Sean vanishes – surely to debrief the president.

His wingtips tremor on the wheelchair. Footsteps fall around him. He passes from the light and humidity to the cool dark dry air. The colonial façade to the presidential palace does not betray its modern interior, the sepia tones of browns, yellows, blacks and whites that define it, the meeting of aluminum, glass and wood that gives a modern edge to its colonial feeling of rule and order. It obscures its inhabitants, yet it is an object of respect and fear like a horseshoe stamped in the red earth. The delegation dissolves before Darius, lithe and spartan in his movement.

“Are you armed, Monsieur Grace?” asks Darius, his voice touched with the guttural accent of Arabic, his eyes fiery in their disregard for the delegation. His words emanate from under a soft pencil-thin red mustache. 

The Moroccan waves the delegation away. “Please excuse the nuisance. We do regret any inconvenience this may have caused,” he says. He then pats Daniel down. His red hands and flat shoulders move with a serenity near violence. Daniel sweats despite the recently updated air-conditioning system. His pocket is relieved of one souvenir: his penknife. The wand does not indicate any untoward metal. 

Darius pushes Daniel down a corridor. Sequences of multicolored glass tile the walls. Gradients of light dash the air with splashes of purple, green and gold. 

President Teddy sits at his mahogany desk. Gabriel casually sits on a corner of it. They assess their opponent, looking weak and unprepared in his wheelchair, clutching his attaché case.

The prone body of the volcano and its lover the sky blanket the background. Gravel surrounds a sequence of birdbaths and clumps of ornamental trees that skirt the maw of the swimming pool. A white cat mews at the patio doors opening onto a private terrace and the sea. A large cage holds an African gray, trilling like a phone, barking like a dog, then whistling, proud, calling: Teddy! Teddy! A row of old Spanish cannon faces the town. 

It’s a long time before Daniel registers the two trolls among the rich collection of memorabilia. Teddy looks better, bigger in the posters. His eyes are as black and fleeting as the moment when they started all of this.

Teddy rises from his chair, hydraulically hissing behind him and lifting him to his feet. He gestures with his arthritic swollen hands, twirling the gold seal of Equatorial Guinea ring around his finger. Gabriel slides off the edge of the desk, his loafers touching the black lacquered floor. Quiet and leopard-like that he seems like a heavy cat. 

“Señor Grace! Welcome to paradise!” says President Teddy. He welcomes Daniel into his beneficent arms. 

He’s mesmerizing. 

The climate’s cold and he can see Teddy’s silver breath, sweet and cloudy like pastis. There is the smell of onions and meat. A black squid-like orchid is tucked in his lapel. His eyes are like lodestones

President Teddy clasps the white man’s forearm, gnashes his teeth over Senor Grace’s ear and takes his inner compass with ease.

Daniel inadvertently touches Teddy’s head and feels the three growths. 

Everything slows to poker; the pitch of their voices bends, sheer like cutlasses. 

“You have something to tell us, Mister Grace?”

Danny pulls away. 

Gabriel slips his shoes onto one of Danny’s wheels. He rocks him back and forth, back and forth, forth and forth. “Señor Grace?”

“On the behalf of Poseidon Oil.” He’s stuck. He’s trapped in an envelope, sealed under a tongued adhesive and stamped wax. If he doesn’t do his job today, it’s five billion less commutes, forty billion less dollars. “On the behalf of Poseidon Oil, I’d like to convene this extraordinary meeting this afternoon between the Head of State, the Minister for Oil and Mines and Poseidon Representative Daniel Ignatius Grace.”

The Toshiba boots in his lap. He clicks on the Geosoft icon. He swallows his woe, tidings and fear. He levels his eyes with the two men and lifts his computer onto the thick wood desk. One deep breath. 

“For the last few months, production has been affected by a critical drop successful oil extraction. It is believed that the potential of the reservoirs may have been overestimated. You can see here a figure of our yields.” He turns his machine to Gabriel. The bars are falling, tumbling to drastic nothings. “Margins have been rising due to the unexpected production costs and Poseidon is in the opinion that it will lower its bid for the last and final auctions of deep water in Guinea Ecuatorial. According to our latest data, other producers are experiencing the same loss in production and revenue, as you may be aware of as part owners of GEPetrol. 

“I can go into a more technical description of the problems if you’d like.” 

President Teddy nods. “You have a bright future in Equatorial Guinea, Mr. Grace.”

“So do you, His Excellency.” Daniel glows with confidence but the sinister pain comes back. He swallows more of his own perforated ear, the conduit to his lies. These people are not amateurs. Luke, Sherm and Houston are right. They want more, more is never enough.

“We find ourselves good.” President Teddy is ambiguous, but he smiles inadvertently. Cheating isn’t his vice: it’s the lying. 

Father and son turn to one another. 

 “I shall communicate my government’s wishes with you, Mr. Grace?”  Gabriel does the details.

He chokes on the flowing earcake, then struggles to stand, pushing with his pecs and delts. “If this meeting is concluded and His Excellency is in agreement with my report, I’d like to go to the hospital.” He’s grounded. He feels his senses, toggling on and off.

“That’s most unfortunate.” Teddy purses his hands in front of his speckled lips. “But we have very nice bungalows in Cacahual Village. All the mod cons? I’m sure you will like it. I’m most sure, Daniel Ignatius Grace.” His voice rattles like husks. Teddy pulls the orchid from his lapel and places it on the Toshiba keyboard in Daniel’s lap. He sloughs in delight, dipping and displaying like a bird. The white man will be staying. How fun! He must tell Army. 

Off. On. Off. On. Off. Off.

Danny folds forward like a dart. He wallops his face on the mahogany plank – his mind and his laptop clatter, both fallen and contused. 

On. Off. On. Off. On. Off.

Danny’s ears leach a silvery neon beery blood.

Brettonwood

The big van is sunk low to the wet road like a ship. 

It’s raining. The roads are slick. DJ’s driving.

The softball games have been a hoot – hundreds of young adults swatting at the paper-like balls and glugging beer on the grid of diamonds in the park. Some morons tump over a Porta-cabin. There’s a poor girl inside, wet with chemicals and sludge. At the softball bacchanal anything goes.

The van’s filled with kids and adults, straddled across one another. It smells like brandy and Irish cream.

DJ’s not an expert. His license is fresh. He’s almost home when he realizes he’s going down the wrong side of the road. He pulls into a driveway and stops. It’s been difficult concentrating with the raucous mobile party. He maneuvers a three-point turn. He bumps a bush, rides a curb with a clunk. Peels of joy emanate from deep in the back.

The cops flag him down for a violation. No signal lights to start.

The officer asks, “Everything’s all right, boy? Have you been drinkin’?” His hands are on the waist of his tan jodhpur’s tucked into black jackboots. His buddy keeps the car covered.

 The night is decorated with crickets and frogs and the swoop of a passing car. 

“No Sir,” DJ says, “I’m just not so good with stick and I lost my way.”

“We’re going to Brettonwood!” calls a girl from the back.

“DJ! We want some ice cream!” requests someone. 

A passel of laughs.  

“You’re doing fine,” the cop says, “You could’ve turned back there.”

A parent speaks up from the back. “Yes, sir, it’s Brettonwood.”

That clinches it. They can go.

The van edges along the road, ditchwater and canals, mosquitoes and estuary beyond. The van whispers with conversation. Some people are drinking beers from a cooler.

DJ stops at the gates to the community. Its metal letters are decorated with flames: BRETTONWOOD. 

They’re allowed past. Security knows the score. The company isn’t to know. Dad’s happy to be the responsible entertainer. He’s the big shot anyway.

They pass the sports center and tennis courts. The golf course is opposite. 

DJ counts the passengers extruding themselves from the van. He wasn’t far off: twenty-one. Wendy’s dad is last, a thin man with a mustache. He’s an executive at Brettonwood. He says, “Thanks, son.” 

DJ has some difficulty looking him in the eye. The cement drive looks pretty good and keeps him from smirking. Wendy’s told him all about how her dad paid for her breast enhancement. Her uncle’s a cosmetic surgeon in California so they get a discount on high-class surgery. 

Wendy has a Mercedes cabriolet and a promiscuous eye. That’s why DJ’s here again.

Her mom, like her dad, chaperones the kids’ parties. She’d rather have them fucked up at her place. There won’t be any overdoses, guns or babies this way, she reasons.

The palms are scorched and ill-gotten in the smoggy chemical light of Deer Park. They rustle, crispy. The coast is bare but swampy. Vermin like nutria, opossum, javalina and foxes thrive. The rats are in charge.

DJ approaches the house. It’s up on stilts and near the shore, which veers down to the choppy water of the bay. 

Brettonwood’s a strange subdivision. Five service vessels have been pulled from the water not far from the house. The boats are orange and gray, tilted nose down like they’re sliding down the face of a wave. A buoy sways out in the water. There’s a diving bell too. And a pair of helicopters, held down by wires. 

Is there a storm coming? Good waves?

DJ goes back to park the van on the street. He checks his surfboard, if it’s still in the back. The door slides with a cha-chunk.

All the lights are on in the house, illuminated like a watchtower.

It’s showering and hot. 

Wendy’s mom totters inside, drunk. She’s got the ice cream out. It’s halfway melted. Spoons and bowls are distributed. She asks about the softball game. 

Wendy’s father corners DJ. It sounds like his own father’s answers, the same ineluctable fragments – hours, contracts, hotels, nothing that a kid can know like problems. There’s ice cream in his mustache. 

The kids have the top of the house. He’d like to go up and bite Wendy’s expensive chest, if she’d only catch his eye.

He spoons in some ice, sugar and flavor, biding his time.

Claude, Jesse and Mathis change the smelly bong water.

Someone offers him a tab of ecstasy but he declines.

Then he takes a half. He splits it with Wendy.

The dad takes one too. Who’s going to test the VP?

The mom collapses on the couch. Ice cream is everywhere, but who cares. They have a maid. “Anything else you kids like, help yourselves.” 

They’ve already damaged the liquor cabinet and store of Budweiser.

The dad turns in to his bedroom with a beer. The parents sleep separately. He wants to sleep before the ecstasy kicks in. He’ll deal with the therapy-like insomnia.

A train hoots like an owl far off in the distance. The windows rattle.

DJ walks outside on the deck. His eyes are dilated. He’s elated. His spine is creaking. 

Someone hands him a beer. It’s Wendy. 

“You wanna go for a drive?”

DJ says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’ll be fun,” she says. 

“Are you OK to drive?” He’s not the candidate for being in Wendy’s car, wrapped around a pylon. 

“Oh, right as rain.” She ducks her head cutely.

They’re getting wet. 

The night’s vapor closes around them. 

The lagoon is misty and smelly like methane.

He embraces Wendy and pushes. 

Whose ecstasy is this? 

It’s a dirty approximation. Past MDMA, near speed and half LSD.  

Wendy is kissing him again. Are her plump lips filled with collagen? Why couldn’t she address the pock-marks unfilled with orange foundation? She’s kinda nasty.

Led Zeppelin’s playing through the open patio door. Claude’s exhaling great clouds of smoke.

“Let’s go inside,” he says. 

Wendy understands. She takes his hand and leads him past her mom up to her bedroom. 

“Use a condom,” mom says, slurring as they pass.

Wendy keeps her bra on. She peels it the straps and cups down around her stomach. 

He breaths around them. He’s gentle as if he touch will break their pact with gravity.  

It’s great. 

Yeah!

She bites down on him. Her mouth is vulpine and sharp, then soft. 

This time he holds it. He sucks in his stomach and she dips her hands into the dimples in his ass. 

And comes up and kisses him, laughing. His mustiness is on her breath. It’s cool. 

Her tongue is clicking around in her mouth. Stud?

“Wendy?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I’ll put the condom on now?”

It smells like bubblegum and oil.

She opens for him and DJ’s in. 

It’s dryish then goopy.

They stir together like mice. 

He breeds into the plastic. 

Her nipples harden when she comes touching herself.

It feels great, resting some of his voluptuousness on hers.

Mathis walks in unexpected. 

“Your butt is bleeding, dude,” he says, not minding.

She’s gored DJ. 

“Thanks, Mathis,” he replies. 

“You wanna smoke some crack?”

“Mathis, get out of my room!” Wendy shouts. “DJ, do something!” She throws a book at his goofy face.

“Scram, Mathis” he says, rising with as much authority as he can muster. His sword is bent, hard and threatening, with the shield hanging from it. DJ’s ready for more, a Grace if there ever was one.

“Okay, dude!” he says, closing the door hastily. He then shouts through the door. “Don’t forget low tide’s soon and I got my boat!” 

DJ feels a little foolish naked with Wendy. But he bows between the altar of her eraser-like tits and that brief, thief-like feeling absconds.

Surfacing, he asks her, “Do you have the tankers schedule?” He has his board. It’s on top of the van. Brettonwood’s near the port. 

His butt really is bleeding from where she scratched him.

“Don’t you want to do it again?” she asks, pushing him down. It’s a bit much at first but she’s trimmed, short and sweet as veal. She kicks his shoulders as he licks her.

“I want to do it without,” he says. “I want to feel you.” 

“No way,” she says, crossing her hands over herself.

“In the ass?” He’s audacious – too much porno.

“I don’t like it.” Good answer.

Her bed’s stained with a patina cum. DJ, Mathis, Jesse, whoever. She’s a trooper. 

“From behind then?”

He passes into the veiny alabaster of her bottom and the two pink white cords of her lips. 

She squeals as they bend together. His thumb slips into her. She pushes back. 

He slides over her back and sucks a hard breast. He’s heavy and she’s petite.

“DJ, DJ, DJ,” she says. She curls her back like a cat to touch herself.

He pushes her legs further apart. It sounds and smells like sex.

When it’s over, he can’t stop thinking about Mathis’s tanker and surf report.

“Let’s go to the beach,” he suggests. 

“Okay,” she says.

Wendy’s drinking Amaretto, what she could grab from the cabinet. DJ drives the van out of Brettonwood and past the canes and ditches. Mathis and Jesse have their boards, wetsuits and lights. They don’t want to get steamrolled by a tanker in the channel. 

The beams pick up old opossum who smartly fakes death on the road’s shoulder. 

The boys want to get out. Might as well be a raccoon hunt. They walk back.

He’s a mimic all right. Jumping with fleas and no guts coming out. 

Jesse pokes him with a stick. “He don’t move.”

“Smart fucker,” says Mathis. “Wish I could play dead and fool my mom – old bitch!”

DJ recalls his promise to touch base with Kylie. She’s probably lost herself boozing with her friends again. She’s been sad, erratic and louche since Daniel left, expelled from the house by her temper and her bills. She hasn’t cared about DJ’s grades, meals, clothes, friends or finances, which she always insisted on supervising before. Instead the maid has taken over, feeding him tortillas and ironing his t-shirts on the days she’s there. 

He doesn’t feel or look any different, but with his dad gone, has he taken the reins? After all he feels a hint of remorse and concern for what’s been happening, even if it’s had real benefits like no curfew and unlimited night miles. 

“She don’t move,” says Mathis, who has dipped his hand into the opossum’s pouch. 

“Dude, you’re nasty,” says Jesse, reviled. 

DJ shakes his head too. 

The stilted phone calls from Dad are less frequent. Dad says he’s busy. The usual warm regard of his father’s voice is lost in the delay as the line bounces over from Africa. He likes when his dad talks about helicopters, less about cholera. He’s gung-ho to be an oilman too, flying around in bugs over the corpse of the earth. At least his old man’s doesn’t sound so low.

“You’ll get bit, dude,” Wendy says, walking up. Even opossum has limits. 

“Low tide?” suggests Jesse. 

Motivation’s a cinch sometimes. 

Galveston Bay’s murky green like toothpaste. The light is coming, still and sharp. Fishing boats dredge for oysters and drop their nets for shrimp. Yachts move from the marina. Gar, mackerel and drum churn under some of the waves moving over sunken boats, pipelines, stakes, piles and shoals. They tend the edge of the shipping channel, past the spits of sand that sometimes rise unexpectedly on the shifting sandbars.

“It’s my dad’s,” says Mathis steering the boat, the boards poking out like feathers. “Worth it, huh?”

“A beaut,” congenially mouths DJ, patting the fiberglass shell.

There’s a long wave that can break for three miles or more if the supertankers don’t have to brake for smaller craft. It might start at Seabrook and run to Red Bluff. It might peel along the shoals of a newly dredged section of channel along Atkinson Island. It might swell at Baffle Point and run along the Bolivar Peninsula. It’s chancy. But Mathis knows the incongruities and rewards of the Bay. 

The tankers anchor offshore in chains among the installations and platforms of the Gulf of Mexico. Having run halfway around the world, the ships must wait a few days for the pilot boat captains to guide them to their berths. This is the homestretch. On a good run the pilots can manage seventeen knots in lower Galveston Bay. Their propellers can suck anything up into the vortex of their screwing, turning chops. 

DJ’s lucky to be here. Jesse and Mathis are the pros. 

Deeper in the channel are the terminals and refineries around Deer Park and Baytown, the sky dark and ominous like accidents. Liquid chlorine and LPG spheroids speckle the landscape. Clusters of tankers are bunched together like bombs at the terminals. Their liquid cargo pumps into the thirsty refineries drop by drop. This tendril of water feeds the strange oil-brained fortunes of Houston and America. This is where Midas turns dinosaur shit into sapien gold. 

“The first few times we didn’t get nothin’,” says Mathis, the spray and noise of the outboards blowing into his words. 

Wendy attempts to light a cigarette in the salty, moist wind. 

“Dude, drive! It’s your boat,” says Jesse. He begins to exchange his t-shirt and shorts for a wetsuit. 

DJ jumps into his Billabong too. 

“Wendy, you wanna use my board?” asks Mathis. 

“Sure,” she says. “Can I use your springsuit too?” She exhales a violet smoke. She smells like wine coolers. 

“This is it!” says Jesse. 

Now DJ sees the chest-high swell looming in the water and running along the straightaway – the curled back of a serpent surging forward in loops of foam and slush. 

They’ve waxed up. Mathis needs to lift the boat over and beyond the wave and deposit everyone ahead of the break. It takes some skill but he manages to drop everyone off and get out of the zone. 

The three ducklings slide onto the longboards and dip into the turgid bluish water. Brandy’s a little encumbered by Mathis’s big suit. It’s quiet for a moment, the air turning with gulls and somewhere a squad of bobbing pelicans.

DJ avoids the polystyrene and tar. He thrashes and paddles to get the wave, the little set rolling off the bow of the skyscraper chugging forward beyond his eyes. He leaps forward onto his board. It’s pliant and agreeable in the water. The wave pushes him assuredly and with strength. 

Unbelievable. Waves when it’s totally flat! He gives a laugh to the ship, wishing it would pull its horn. 

Mathis has moved into deeper water. He’s in charge of collecting any wipeouts over the shoals. He drifts for a moment and opens up the caps to his field glasses. He dials in the name on the red bow and the white topsides: Aleutian Key. Mathis naturally is untroubled in distinguishing Aleutian from African. It doesn’t matter to him. The African Key also makes waves. He’s careful not to go to drive too close and threaten the ship. By the glint of glasses he can tell the sea marshall is watching carefully, the Coast Guard on standby. Despite the risk of terror, they’ve unimpeded access to the water. 

Wendy and Jesse flank him. His legs are already tired. The wax is softening under his toes. He ululates over the face, pumping and pushing for more speed and lip. He curls under to touch it, stable and sure. He hasn’t surfed this much in his life! Too bad dad doesn’t know what kind of fun he’s missed so far.

It’s his song, the song where his voice is a keyboard and he bawls during the refrain like an old Comanche singing his self and all the people that came to make him. He’s singing through the Big Water and calling DJ down, shaking his great fatty hump. The tears falls from his eyes in ecstasy for what he hears, for the song. His soul, body and spirit join in strong and peaceful union with nature, this strange artificial wave. Within him, DJ, is all the freedoms and opportunities, know-how and maturity to be everything that the world was, is.

He skids and kicks his fins deeper into the wave and slides his feet over the nose for hang-ten. He cruises with attitude, the fabric of his muscle rippling like the cloak of the sea breaking unexpectedly in the channel over the sandbar, a reef a few feet under. There are mullet in the wave and other fish flashing in the wall of water. He’s kinetic, millions of barrels of energy riding the mushy gumbo that is the entrance to Houston’s ship channel, petrodollars put to sporting use as a wet road.

For a moment he doesn’t have to concentrate but can smile at Jesse and Wendy, keeping abreast of the supertanker, each slashing in their way, and Mathis in the area, shards of water rebounding off the side of the boat, stuttering like a reed. 

This is not a beautiful sea. This is a stinking, toxic, soapy, tarred expanse of salt water in which some forms of life just happen to swim. It’s the home of scavengers and bottom feeders in a chemical sludge pushing against plastic sands. The most desperate of wave hunters congregate here.

His calves are burning and his feet are sore. He can give Mathis the signal any time. But to ride four miles on a board is a mean feat not often accomplished at any break anywhere in the entire world! 

The air is heavy with the emissions and smoke. It’s just starting to burn off. The sun is gaining. 

That morning they’ll all ride something. Enough tankers are coming in. They’ve got two hours for the tide to turn and the aberration of the long break to keep flowing. 

Everyone’s grinning and getting burnt.

DJ has to watch that he doesn’t drift into the channel when he drives the boat. A tanker could be coming at any moment, the hull bricked up to the hazy sky. Flares are burning down the channel at the refineries. A siren booms somewhere in the distance among the acres of pipes, valves and hot air. 

The earth is blood red with old stale oil. This is the home of the oil economy. There are splitters, crackers and the plants to make polymers, aromatics and monomers – facilities for diesel and benzene and napthama and gases. An entire chemical jungle is just beyond the sands in the scrub, the cement docks poured over blocked up creeks, and well-rehearsed lines of tankers cars and trucks loading ninety tons of danger. The dark steel forest of pipes pushes against the perimeter. 

The refineries are freaking him out. He’s grown up with lawns and pools, not this unreal dystopia of vinyl, rubber, steel, fluoride, molasses and waste. The tanker meets with the terminal and refineries in the background. At the end of this toxic sliver of waterway, ships are turning in the basin, finalizing their journeys to come. The spoon of water ends right in front of the shining tusks of downtown, lifting the oil to Houston’s chapped lips. 

“We’re all just vapor, ” he can remember his dad saying. “It’s the same handshake that clinches the deals.”  He recalls looking down on this scene from his father’s office on a weekend when he’s been asked to dork around with the maps. He pauses to stare at the Gulf Freeway loaded with traffic, the lanes grid-locked even at this weekend hour. The San Jacinto Monument pierces the haze, the obelisk like a derrick. The ship channel, Houston’s port and tract, is hardly visible through the smog. Boats can almost dock in downtown.

The Poseidon Oil Baytown facility is one of many volatile monsters along the channel. An army of men and women armed with hardhats, goggles, aprons, boots, tools, walkie-talkies and computers supervise the refining of crude and condensates into petrochemicals. They have a clinical regard for the mayhem of their manufacture. As far as they’re concerned oil’s even good to eat. 

It’s sick, he thinks, that his old man’s gone. He’d probably like the view. He registers the hands waving for him – better collect his charges.

He’s glad they’re back. But the cooler’s empty, a big oversight. There’s no 7-11 out here.

Jesse’s got a rash on his feet. Wendy’s scratching too. 

“It’s not funny,” she says, pulling down her wetsuit, wrapping a towel around her chest, then reaching for her smokes in the rocking boat. 

Mathis takes over the controls, likewise half-stripped. “Chow time!” 

The boat punches off across the channel. 

Jesse’s wet and strangely incoherent. 

“Jesse’ll burn at both ends if you let him,” says Mathis wryly. “We get him back on dry land and he’ll be all right. Could be that ecstasy or crack?”

“It’s the wave, dude,” says Jesse, his speech seized and dry.

“You wanna lie down?” asks Wendy.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

Jesse lies at their feet and the boat carves across the Bay. They undress him and have him huddle under their clothes. They shrug, mystified. 

“The beach’s that-a-way,” Jesse says obtusely. 

They laugh; how they know about the complaints about flat surf.

DJ parks the van along the road. The wheels nudge into the crab grass. 

His mom’s Supra is in the driveway. 

The backdoor is locked. Maybe she’s sleeping? 

“Mom?” he calls. “Mom, I’m home!”

Nothing. Nada.

It’s not the maid’s day either.

No one’s turned down the AC.

Where the fuck is she? 

He looks in her room. Outfits are strewn on the carpet and bed. He finds the wrappers of cigarettes, and oddly condoms, thrown across the dresser. The towels are still wet. The hair dryer and distributor are still hot. 

He tries her mobile. 

It’s turned off. This time of day she’s probably meeting her lawyer, outlining her grievances.

“Fucking bitch,” he says. 

He goes to the fridge and extracts some Randall’s tuna salad. He toasts some wheat-berry bread. He switches on the television and settles into Grand Theft VI. 

She won’t tell him what’s up, but it’s not too hard to deduce Kylie’s state of mind from the clues.

She’s gone. Wickedly gone.

***

The Atrium Bar at the Hyatt is quiet this early in the afternoon. Happy hour hasn’t started; rush hour has yet to come. Concentric stories of rooms are elegantly stacked above the drinkers’ heads.

Kylie cattishly mews. She arches her back, then settles into her comfortable leather chair. She turns down her inner thermostat in response to Hakeem’s inquisitive smile.  Her French nails clattering against her margarita glass; her nipples harden and tighten under her La Perla bra. Whether from the ire or excitement, she’s unsure. 

The hem of her Gaultier denim skirt just covers a bruise. A plate of mostly uneaten crawdads is on the table in front of them, a few discarded translucent tails.

“I hate those bastards.” She tosses her mane of curls at the table of Champion execs waylaid by an informal meeting.

“I still hate Larry Bird, Karl Malone, Doctor J.” His voice is fine and mellow. “All those guys.”

“They’re pretending not to know me.”

 Hakeem doesn’t know exactly what she’s talking about. All he knows about Kylie is there’s no ring wagging on her finger. Even if she did, she’s so smokingly fine it wouldn’t stop him. 

“It’s like that, babe.” He crosses his leg over the crease of his Versace slacks. “When you quit the game, no one wants you.” 

“Champion ruined my life.” And Daniel’s life, she adds, not forgetting. This is the first time she’s been in the Hyatt since he lost his job with the Champs. She shakes her head, then rises onto her tower-like cherry heels.

“I know what you mean, babe. You wanna go?” He moves for his wallet in his jacket.

She twirls in front of him. 

“You like me?” She’s looking for validation. 

“When you go down and stay down, uh-huh.” Most women like being complimented on their fellatio even if they can’t make it all the way down his post. She’s the rare exception indeed. They did have a good time upstairs, their naked perspiring bodies pressed against the glass of the window, a view of the channel, the turning ships, the flares and smoke like hell with the lid off.

She agitatedly rubs her lips – the felicitous kisses.

“Later, sweetheart. I’ve a little business in the powder room. You can wait?”

“Sure,” he says, twirling his slushy margarita like wine. He’ll wait again for her hard nipples and damp crotch. 

Her coy fingers cha-cha-cha on his ox-like tongue. His hunger licks at the exquisite confection of Kylie. 

“Promise?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Even if I’m bad?” She cocks her head and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Oh, don’t you worry, babe. I like bad girls.”

“Do you have a gun?”  

He’s repulsed for a moment. This chick is too good to be true. “Steady,” he says, hoping to placate her.

“Strap yourself in, cuz I do,” she says, feeling the muscles tense across her back and under her arms, her hamstrings like bows. She hasn’t been to the hot room and quick martial moves of ashtanga yoga without results. She turns and sashays across the atrium with her clutch. 

“Good day, gentleman!” she says to the table of sleepy execs from Champion Oil. Her tone is friendly yet intimidating.

Wallis is the first to recognize her.

“Mrs. Grace! What a surprise!” She’s lost weight and looks oh so fine – to think that Daniel wanted to bed Dawn in exchange for this honey pot.

The pasty overworked faces look away uncomfortably.

“How’s Daniel?”

“He left Texas, Wallis, after you fired him unfairly. In fact, he’s gone to Africa, so he says, but I’m not sure if I believe him.”

“He left for Africa?” 

“Surprised?”

“Well….” Marriages and oil don’t mix.

“When are they going to send you away, Wally?” 

“I got a promotion,” he says coolly. “I’m senior VP.” He reaches to touch her but thinks again.

She stamps her heels, wiggles her waist in her dress, pulls back her jaw. 

“You were worried Daniel’d get that job, huh?”

“Please, Kylie. You have every reason to be angry with Champion but you’re going too far with your overtures.”

“Wallis, warn your milquetoast colleagues about what you’re like: frame a man, fire him, shame him and then dump him back home with the wife and kid he doesn’t even know.”

“Daniel didn’t know where to stop.”

“You were fucking Dawn too?”

“Goddamn it, woman!” His neck flushes pink. “Call security,” he says to his staff from the corner of his mouth. 

She steps forward. She’s ready to pounce. “Don’t goddamn me, you lecherous Southern toad.” 

 “Who ate your balls, Wally?” She lunges forward and chokes him with both hands and she drops her tote. “Are you a big enough jug, Wally? Are you? Do you want me to fill you up with sperm some more?” 

Hakeem makes his move. This bitch is nuts. He has no need to tarnish his gentlemanly reputation with an altercation. Stringfellow’s is open anyway. Hakeem doesn’t do messy extramarital.

She wraps her legs around him and wrestles him to the ground and bashes him twice with a heavy glass ashtray. It thumps into his skull like a hammer. Sensibly, she doesn’t get her purse and the little Beretta lodged inside next to the condoms and cosmetics.

“You told Dawn to do it, didn’t you?”

His forehead is gushing blood from a wedge in his forehead.

“No, I –”

Neither Champion’s employees nor the Hyatt’s security detail can yank her off. She’s like a polecat and a vice. 

They appeal to the fuzz – one white woman assaulting one white man in the Atrium of the Hyatt. Possibly armed, maybe domestic. Usually, the Hyatt calls because of jumpers doing suicides.

“What’s better than hunting oil, Wally?”

She asks him again and again. Even with the conceivable pleasure of assaulted by a highly attractive but berserk woman, he can’t find the answer to the riddle – pussy, trout, javalina, quail? Being murdered by a sexy babe with an ashtray? He doesn’t smoke.

“Helping the poor,” she says, “You greedy fool.”

She asks him another question. “What’s got me down?”

“That’s a snap,” he manages to gasp, his breathing constricted by her coiling hands. “It’s you. Can I help?”

Four cops hustle through the revolving doors, past the oblivious guests, luggage and bellhops to the commotion of rolling victim and assailant in the great hall of the Hyatt Atrium echoing with slugs and cries. 

The notion of Wallis’s slimy help is the catalyst. Do you ask traitors for promises? Her wrath changes from the pleasure of punishment to that of death. She didn’t know the ultimate in violence could be this easy. No wonder death row is full. She kicks her head back and laughs, a laugh colored with tequila, sex and rage. She must tell Daniel about Wallis’s short-lived future.

“Can you repeat that?” Her conscience gives Wallis one last chance.

“Can I help?” he asks one more time.

She plunges the ashtray at him, but he manages to squirm away. The blunt edge smashes into the tile floor and not into his nearly obliterated face. He’s been patient up to now, and the fear is oozing from his pores, strong and stinky like a locker room. If only he had a golf club, he’d strike back. It seems logical that he’ll die because of a woman like Kylie. How many times has he come this close? He’s so sorry. It was his idea for Dawn to seduce Daniel. But he’s not going to admit it. That’s not how you play the oilman’s game. 

Kylie reaches for her bag. She and Wallis have somehow wiggled back to where they started. She pushes her knees across his throat and leans forward and inserts her hand in the purse.

He’s terrified. Is she going to slit his throat?

The cops move quickly. The novelty of seeing a woman kill a man doesn’t stop their sense of duty. 

“All right, ma’am,” the officer says. His partner applies the Taser to her kidneys.

After ten strange electric seconds, she’s out. Sprawled among the chips of tile and glass, the cocktails and mini-snack foods, Kylie wets herself like a downtown drunk at the last showdown. 

***

“DJ? DJ, pick up the phone. I’ve only got one call. ”

He’s nearly invulnerable at this point, having amassed cars, weapons, babes and loot. The disastrous sound of his mother’s voice doesn’t waive him from the pursuit of the highest of high scores in Grand Theft. He’s almost the all-time champ!

“DJ, you’ve got to contact my lawyer immediately and get me out of here. His card’s on my desk. I’m at the city jail and they’re about to transfer me to county this morning. They’ll set bail later today, they say. It’s cold in here.” She begins to realize her plight. 

He fumbles for pause. His fingers need a break. 

“DJ, your sweet momma’s in jail!”  She sounds like a refrain from Snoop, but it’s not a sample. 

His legs are stiff from being crossed. 

“Mom?”

“DJ! You’re there?”

“I was outside,” he lies.

“Where are you?”

“Well, I’m in jail, honey. I lost my temper a little yesterday and this is the result. Don’t lose your temper too. Just call my lawyer. His card is in my room. He’ll know what to do. You can look after the house, can’t you? 

He knows the drill. Most of it.

“You’ve got enough money?”

“I think so.”

“There’s more in the safe.”

“OK, I’ll call. Want me to tell dad?”

“Don’t worry him yet. Get my lawyer to post bail and get me out today, once I’m arraigned. I don’t want to go to county with the hard girls. It’s not funny sleeping on a metal table.”

“For what, mom? What’d you do?”

“I can’t talk about it on this phone.”

“What’s the charges?” He’s clever and warming up to the idea his mom’s a criminal. She’s wild certainly; his friends want her.

“Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder.”

Fat chance for a quick release, he thinks. She’ll be in way longer. At least she’s not in the morgue. “OK, mom, I’m in charge then. It’s a new game, dude.” There’s nothing like calling your mom dude – with her new status Kylie the Killer’s suddenly less authority and more friend. He’s so delighted with being the boss he has yet to recognize the repercussions of the charges. 

DJ’s seventeen and alone, and he’s not to open the letters for Mr. D. I. Grace. That’s not him, the bad dad, offshore and unable to help.

Woman to Man

The pain is chronic, biting and sharp. His ear won’t heal. He can’t concentrate on anything else but that kidney of cartilage and electric fur. 

He hasn’t dived. He hasn’t swum through excrement. He’s showered very carefully. He’s diligently applied the prescribed ear sauce.

Maybe a pair of flies made love on one of his Q-tips? 

Maybe he’s bewitched?

There are far too many disease-like possibilities. Until further medical notice, he’s marooned in Malabo. He’s disabled and can’t fly anywhere, not even home to rescue his wife.

Daniel sinks into the blue water to his chest. His feet splay in the black sand. Why resist any longer? Just a dip. He staunchly keeps his head above water – doctor’s orders. The salt and sand in the sea surely will irritate the otitis, but he must cool off. The fever is eating away at his sensibilities.

The waves slap loudly at his head, the current and the tide pull at him; his ear is a much more sensitive organ than he ever imagined. A straw of pain juts from his head like he’s a piña colada. He can’t open his jaw. To chew or laugh are painful. So is sucking. Yawning, no way. The otitis prods at his brain and digs into his neck. Some subsonic tool has jellied his brain and the extra dead space doesn’t resonate. 

He can’t put his ear near his pillow. The lobe hurts. Even the little forward nub is sensitive, like a clit. If he tries to equalize, pushing the air through his ears instead of his cheeks and nose, his ears squeak like mice. The cotton wool dabbed in rosemary oil makes his ear numb and deaf, angry and irritated. Drops of glycerin and painkiller make it better. The ear bubbles like a carpenter’s level, and every sound changes pitch, echoes and is dull. He takes antibiotics too, low on his list of favorite medicines, every eight hours. It’s harder than he thinks to dose at eight, four and twelve to ease the intake with food. He has to force himself to eat. He tilts his head horizontally so the stuff doesn’t squitter out at first. He dams his ear with cotton wool. 

Kylie’s tender loving care is out of the question and that makes the pain more poignant – if only he could throw himself across the Atlantic and skip home like a stone! 

He’s in the right place, paddling at Black Beach. His arms skim the water lapping at the shore. He’s reaching. 

It’s been engaged. When it finally rings, DJ picks it up.

“Where’s mom?” he remembers asking through the shell-like phone. He’s relieved to hear his son’s voice. He wants to tell them about his accident. 

DJ hums and haws. “She’s shopping.” A rasp of worry breaks in his voice. 

Someone must be over gaming – sirens, shotguns, shouts.

“Every time I call DJ, she’s shopping. She’s having an affair, isn’t she?” 

“Honest, dad, I don’t know.” Denial.

“When you say honest, son, you know something you’re not telling me. Where is she? I need to talk to her.”

“She can’t come to the phone right now.”

“She can’t come to the phone because she’s with someone or she can’t come to the phone because she won’t talk?”

“She’s with a lot of people.” He gives a clue. He gives up. There’s no escaping authority, even if it’s 5,000 miles away. “She’s at a party?”

“You’re lying, DJ. Don’t cover up what’s happening. Maybe it was a mistake for me to leave, but tell the truth.”

“I’m not sure if I can.” The boy chokes.

He calmly implores his son. “Go ahead.”

“Mom’s in jail.”

“DWI?”

“No, dad, worse; she told me not to tell you.

“So you’ve talked with her?” He adds some comfort to his voice. She always is a hell-raiser in her way.

“Aggravated assault and attempted murder, dad.”

“What!”

“Cool, huh?”

“What’s going on?”

“I wasn’t there, dad. She didn’t really tell me everything. She was mad at some Champion people, she said. Remember Wallis?”

“That fuck!” How can he forget his old boss at the Champ. 

“She tried to kill him, dad. In the Hyatt.”

“She wasted her time trying to kill that fuck?” He should have done it.

“Apparently.” 

He knows the rage. He knows the anger. He knows the very same irreconcilable emotion of revenge. 

“She was having an affair with Wallis?”

“It was at the bar, I think. At the Hyatt. I clipped the article.”

He knows that bar, the bar where he agreed to rendezvous with Dawn for oysters and Asti Spumante. 

“What the hell is going on?” 

“We’ve almost got enough money for bail. I’m trying to get her out.”

“How much is it?”

“Half a million. They want to make her an example. She had a gun.”

“The Berretta I bought her before I left?”

“Jesus, I dunno.”

This could touch him. She could. Does he, the aggrieved ex-employee, have an alibi? 

“You call me when Kylie’s home?”

“I tried, dad, but the Poseidon people said they didn’t know how to reach you.”

“I only work in their fucking Malabo office and live in their fucking housing. ”

“ Dad, I’m not lying.”

It’s Sean. Sean has to be responsible.

“It’ll happen. Soon, dad, I promise.”

This is the penalty for him working offshore. He can’t help.

“OK.”

“Are you OK?”

“Forget it, DJ. I’m fine and I’ll be in touch. Make sure you go to school, you hear.”

“I got into Mu Alpha Theta. They elected me vice-president.”

“You go get ‘em, kid. Good night.” He should hand it to the boy. He’s good at math. 

The phone is strangely hollow and empty when he puts it down. An ocean of air roars around him. He’s discombobulated and upset – Kylie the criminal? 

***

The butchery smells like cold fat and muscle. Castor and Nestor wave at the displayed meat with little cardboard fans to keep the flies off. They wave in time to the Afro-funk of Manudibango. The cassette tape is virtually erased to a single tune from overuse. Still they know the difference between the distorted songs. President Teddy smiles from a calendar.

Some of the meat glistens too much, even if freshly butchered in the alley. Bringing live hoof from the mainland via the mouth of the Kogo River by pirogue is a difficult enterprise– the beef moves and the boat rocks as the swells of sea hit the current of the river. The tongue of turbulent water runs out into the Atlantic, and the predators (sharks) and scavengers (gulls) pick at the edges. The Fang charge a premium to ferry the beef, sedated with rope, to Bioko, and Castor and Nestor neatly pass the price on to their customers. Bruised beef doesn’t live long in these parts. 

Castor and Nestor hiss at one another. Castor’s deliberately recycled some banned issues of La Opinion, and Nestor keeps a supply of the state-owned Ebano handy. Castor wraps some slices of liver in the censored La Opinion for a woman with buckteeth – this is one way to distribute a slightly dissenting voice. But Nestor rubs the steaks with the official print of Ebano for Godbless.

“Looks too much like an informer,” he says in Hausa to his brother. Nestor doesn’t like the look of the kid in denim and wearing Aviator shades who is leaning against the large freezer in the front of the shop. He can smell informers like chlorine.

Godbless won’t interfere. He asks them to put his meat aside. He’s just here to observe. He takes his time and more customers come for the prized Hausa beef gently herded from the Cameroonian highlands to the coast with the songs of boys. The freezer keeps the meat pleasurably cold. The generator is huffing away like a runner. The air trickles up his spine, tickles the base of his neck.

A dispute escalates among Castor, Nestor and their clients. 

Godbless doesn’t move. He doesn’t understand why the two Hausa brothers care – what does the internal politics of Equatorial Guinea have to do with them? 

“The town has eyes!” says Castor.

“The country has eyes!” says his brother, shaking his fist!

A man, a staunch lover of President Teddy and the PDGE, reaches over the counter and knocks Castor’s white skullcap to the sticky, bloody floor. 

Nestor wipes his cleaver on his white apron and adjusts his own white cap. Politics may come between them, but strangers not. He waves his blade in a way that means business.

The antagonist prepares to say something too, hitching up his trousers as if he’s ready to go. “Hey, you lions, I shit on you lions! I shit on your pride! I shit on your mothers, fathers and Simba too!”

At that Nestor vaults over the counter and the bucktoothed woman screams. He’s chasing the patriot through the mud streets of the bidonville, his temper quick, his feet faster, sewage splashing over his bloody apron. Nestor’s in no mood. 

“Hey, you Fang pig, I spit on your dead ancestors and screw your village!” 

Nestor catches the patriot and pushes him into the gutter, his cleaver over the man’s pulsating neck.

“You’ll be the next one,” the patriot says, spitting in Nestor’s face. 

Nestor’s about to raise his cleaver and deliver the guillotine-like blow, but Castor arrives, fat and panting. 

“Don’t, Nestor, don’t!” 

A banner of President Teddy watches over the market.

Castor whacks his brother’s poised arm, much to the disappointment of the crowd of onlookers, and the cleaver falls away. During daylight murder, magic or retribution are infrequent and a treat. It’s at night that people watch out.

Nestor rises from the patriot, recovers his weapon, tucks his cleaver into his apron and takes his brother’s hand. 

Without Castor and Nestor, blue flies buzz on the gelatinous meat. Godbless chills his backside in the butcher shop. He’s in heaven and it’s divine, too deliciously cool for vicarious pleasures and unpleasant duties. Why inform and insinuate when refrigeration is the best elixir, better than politics or money? But, after eying the stern portrait of President Teddy, he does walk around the counter and pocket a few samples of the anti-government broadsheet. He needs some kind of evidence.

***

The mountains are blue in the morning and gold in the evening. Sandbars glitter under the water. A few rags of flame reach from the sea, flares hotly blowing from the gulf. Daniel peels some course grains of black sand from his face. He pats his pockets. His dead phone and defunct ATM card are there. 

Daniel bundles them into the threads of his T-shirt. He puts the T-shirt in his Rockets baseball cap. It’s like a head. 

He should tap the sea again for a swim. Some enthusiast is already out there, crawling in the water, pulling at the surface with great wounded strokes. 

That guy needs some help. 

He slides into the water with alligator-like grace.

The town appears: a mix of bungalows, villas, hotels and barracks, the shining shanty of Los Angeles nestled against its border.  The ornate twin spires of the old colonial church are like two horns at the foot of the volcano. It could almost be Spain. 

Swimming delicately, he’s soon adjacent to the spluttering young man. Meniscuses of water cover his eyes. He’s got a nose clip. 

“Pull your arms and legs closer to your body,” Daniel advises, casually buoyant. 

The boy responds with a quizzical cock of his wooly head. “Like this, amigo?” Godbless gestures. He honks through the clip, spanks violently at the water and mimics Daniel’s stroke. 

“Yep.” It’s better, but he doesn’t want to be unkind. “But more like this.” Daniel stretches for a stroke, his legs like hammers, his arms like tongs. He’s the watersmith. 

Godbless peers underwater and it’s a revelation. This huge blanco is good. He’s like a dream.

Godbless takes a breath in two parts, fills his lungs then his stomach. He dunks his shoulders underneath the water and pushes his neck down. He spreads his legs apart and then pulls his legs towards his trunks, stirring the water like eggs. He glances at the tiles in the sand. His back bends like a cobra and his hands dart forward along his chest. He parts the water with his arms. His body glides like a turtle and his head emerges for a breath. This is evolution. Godbless kicks again and after a few more practice strokes he soon has the knack. He inadvertently smiles and sucks in half a lungful of water. 

“Careful,” says Hurt, swimming leisurely. 

“¿Se puede ayudar?” asks Godbless between coughs, his voice rising and interrogative. Most blancos speak English. “I mean, can you help? Mañana?” 

“Someone should videotape you underwater and then you’ll be a champ. Nothing better than video review,” says Daniel, encouragingly. He’s not going to promise anything to this wet scamp. He turns back to shore. “Next time I’ll show you backstroke, huh, amigo?”

Godbless nods. This blanco talks and swims too fast.

Daniel strokes out his anxiousness. No one will take anything, not his life, not his wife, not his family, not his being. No one except the water. When he’s tired, he strolls along in the shallows, dashing the water like a sprinkler.

Daniel unravels his head when he returns to the beach. His plastic card and phone fall into the sand. That’s my tongue and that’s my ear, he concludes.  He jams the technology into his wet pocket. He shrugs. He’s already in the mood for a cocktail and the sun hasn’t yet broken over the old caldera. 

He slips his feet into his yellow flip flops decorated with pink dolphins, pulls on the company T-shirt and walks away in his crusty shorts, not before good naturedly waving at the kid in the water. It’d be good to come here more often.

A pirogue pulls on the beach and fishermen commence to unload stiff carcasses of fish. No one is vying for a patch of sand. 

Daniel hikes up the steep, high bluff from beach to town. 

Malabo is serene and quiet. It’s too early for the touts, and there’s nothing he can’t sort out for himself. 

His feet kick up crescents of sand as he walks.

***

The ear gets worse before it gets better. He needs a second opinion. 

The hospital is one desultory building stranded on the hill. He fears that Malabo’s hospital will not nurture like the white-robed priests of the Houston Medical Center. 

He passes the booth for inquiries. It’s empty. 

He passes the concierges. They’re smoking cigarettes, watching television and surrounded by a ring of morose, smoking patients. He turns left, and left again. Some cats wildly bound after their kittens that scatter under his feet. 

The pain’s unbearable. His heart is throbbing in his ear. It’s like having another face. He finds the man who specializes in ear, nose and throat. The doctor is guarded by two pygmy-like assistants eating milk and buns, but Daniel wades through.

The doctor is tall and young, with long sideburns and little round glasses. He uses an old-fashioned doughnut-like mirror to peep into ears. It almost looks appetizing, and it’s clamped around his bald dome supported on both sides by wedges of hair. 

“Do you hear me?” he asks sharply. His shoes squeak.

Daniel nods – like he’s under a wave.

The mirror reflects the hot halogen light into Daniel’s ear. He flips the mirror down over one eye like a patch. The hole in the middle allows him to see in. The torus-like mirror defuses the light. No need to crispify patients like ants under a magnifying lens. The doctor pushes a little metal cone inside. The tips of his fingers are exceedingly pink, like teats.

The doctor clucks and says, “Oh, this is an outer ear infection, not middle ear. I was wrong. You didn’t need the antibiotics. I’ll give you these strips. You’re lucky it’s not perforated.” 

He removes the top from a bottle of gauze soaking in antiseptic. He puts it on a thick strip of metal and puts on two different ointments, a clear one and a white one. 

He says, “Hold this,” and Daniel opens him palms to hold the gift. 

The doctor pulls down his mirror again and pushes in the white wet salamander with his forceps. It crawls in his ear. It’s amphibious and moving. The metal stave and forceps go in a bucket of disinfectant and he winces. 

“You’re an oil worker?” asks the doctor. 

“Ah-hah,” Daniel says through his clenched teeth, his head askew.

“My profession allows me little room to have opinions, so I have questions, which are also dangerous, just safer. Why don’t you tell us what you pay Uncle Teddy for our oil?”

“Humph?” Good argument, he concludes, but why would the most hated companies in the world publish their investments in the unsavory and autocratic? At how many Houston cocktail parties has he found himself among people who disagree and insist he do something? So that drivers in America can tank up with a better conscience? So that shame can visit cold greedy companies and autocrats? So that the witch-doctoring activists can lift the resource curse? 

Why, it’s inane.

Sure, he scoffs, it’s important to open up the industry to transparency, but he’s just a cog. He’s not photographing tantalizing documents and blowing media whistles. He can’t stop the deep, powerful pockets of Poseidon or President Teddy. That’s not his job– that strange magical romance with oil, whereby rocks are messages and clues to the dark prone lover he can never kiss or see. Anyone who dare interfere is paid off one way or another. He’s not here to be fair or kind. He has no doubts. Poseidon is the king yet he must serve another lord. The doctor stirs his instruments under the base of Daniel’s brain. 

“On this small island the people have no chance to make their wishes and demands to President Teddy, who is isolated and out of touch. His wife is his ear to the ground but she is conceited and is not listening. Go to the slums and see, Mr. Grace, what it means to live in this wonderful paradise. Maybe you will make some friends. But don’t say I sent you. Making politics on this island is a very risky business.”

“Gracias,” he says to the igniting pain. His ear feels like a weeping, sore eye. “But I tend to go to the beach.” 

He’s enjoyed teaching Godbless informally, pointing out where he’s likely to shave off a few seconds, assigning drills for lengths in the bay, one handed and no handed, one legged and no legged, Godbless’s buoyancy aided by the convenient beach trash of Styrofoam and plastic. It’s been a riot but rewarding, even if the guy’s slow. 

“That’s the problem, Mr. Grace. Stay away from the water and your ear will heal,” the doctor says, still looking with one eye through his torus-like mirror. It’s blue and true. He looks at Daniel severely and his manner suggests his idea of a visit to the slums is compulsory. “Come back when you can.”

The intimidating suction machine and sharp metal implements haven’t been used, and the doctor has introduced nothing in his head, yet he inexplicably feels as if he’s been drained of one fluid and tanked up with another. 

He strolls somewhat uncomfortably down the corridor. Underneath the tattered awning of the hospital he tucks his head into a plastic bag. He’ll have to improvise. He can’t get that ear wet.

Rain slants down. Damp leaves tear from the trees. A trickle runs inside his collar. The lights of the rigs hover indistinctly through the cobweb of rain. The flame rises over the town like a hat. Water squelches under his feet. The corners whistle and walls speak, but nothing attracts his attention. He wants some pain relief.

A large framed poster of President Teddy holds a central position above the Hotel Eureca bar. In the official portrait, President Teddy seems to be adjusting himself; simultaneously, he fiddles with a ring on his finger. He looks displeased and dangerous – utterly indifferent to human life. He neither approves nor disproves.

The bar is banded in black and white stripes. Some high-life music clangs on the sound system. Along one wall the red booths are separate by screens, giving a semblance of privacy. Daniel doesn’t have much trouble ordering a cerveza from the ranks of waiters pulling the cold stubby bottles from the banks of coolers. The grill is burning outside and he’s happy to order a fan of beef brochettes.

Daniel preoccupies himself with the blue gingham tablecloth and glances out the corners of his eyes. The floor manager, swinging his hips under a checked blazer divided by a floral tie, moves the living, breathing girls from table to table. Then they can ask for a cigarette or a juice and make some small talk.

“Do you want sex?”

He has to shake his head no.  

“Are you sure you don’t want sex.”

What is he going to say – yes?

Daniel brushes the girls away. For the moment it’s his stomach not his heart that’s hungry. His appetite is partly ignited by seared beef. The dallying prospect of sex after his kebab is not the kind of salsa he hopes for.

The floor manager’s black tasseled loafers tap between the toilet and tables. It’s like magic. More girls keep coming from that zone. They come out in groups of two or four or even alone. They could be sixteen to forty, most of them obese and smeared with purple rouge, leering with uncertain eyes at the tables of men. Their thighs shine in the light. What cloth remains is tight and transparent.

Some groups of oil men are panting over their beers. They’ve washed off the mud and fatigue, received their pay. They’re ready to drill, core and complete. 

The girls stake their price: fifty bucks. That’s progress. They’ve learned that they’re irreplaceable on an island drowning in men. The oil companies can’t keep them all behind barbed wire. Neither can President Teddy nor his predecessors as much as they’ve tried to knock them off.

The men invite the girls over for a little diplomacy. They greet them, rapidly order a round of drinks, disperse cigarettes and make some small talk. Some are nervous, others agitated. No one’s neutral and there’s no love lost here. The Eureca is a great place to pick up money and a little bonus of information in exchange for alcohol and sex.

A skag lurks in a corner, alone yet politely acknowledging regulars, jangling her two gold bracelets, touching her layered curls.

The men burn, scrutinize, suggest, dismiss, touch, recommend, bargain and compliment. 

Daniel morosely sits and tries to dislodge any ideas. Would he like to buy Nora an Ice-tea or a Coke? Would he prefer the likes of Celeste, two tables away?

Another group of oil men are barging upstairs. It’s a real operation for the stags at Hotel Eureca. 

He’s not sure how long he stays in the bar, but it’s dark at the edges beyond the hum of the generator. The beers are cold and continuous, pulled from the old deep refrigerator. He’s tight and susceptible.

He’s had enough of eavesdropping but he can’t stop. 

Two medics are pushing against their stools.

“In case of a femoral bleeding you can step on the patient’s groin.”

The talk burbles into code.

“Medevac,” says one, “Medevac’s only interest is the delayed diers. The instant and late diers, they’re not of interest.”

Dying, that’s Daniel’s cue to try to leave for the toilet, avoid the clutches of the girls, and attempt to relieve the pain inside his spleen and head.

It’s throbbing again like a circus drum. In the mirror he compares them. The asymmetry is startling. One is pale, delicate and seemingly inert; it works that well. The other is swollen, red and angry, as sensitive as a hot wire. 

He has to take the plug out. It’s like an old locomotive disgorging excess steam to pass the rapids to the pool. Squinting, he inserts his finger and pulls the antibiotic gauze. His ear smokes for a second as he notices it decrease in size and hue.

Daniel remorselessly munches a few more outstanding brochettes, but he’s feeling ill from fantasizing about all that concha.

Every woman at Hotel Eureca is a whore. If she is independent or unaccompanied, she’s a whore. She’s wife or whore, daughter or whore, sister or whore. Distinctions don’t count. She might have an education but certainly not much experience. She definitely has no money. She cannot leave, so she’s a whore. There is nowhere for her to go but Hotel Eureca. It’s a strange segregation, part fear, part jealousy.

Febrile, he quickly gulps his beer, pays too much and jumps out into the road dashed with a red and white curb. So much for fornicating. The fact that the price of drinks has sneakily doubled at this hour is also a consideration. He sucks in great buckets of air. The shore is better.

Only a few whores are cruising the darkness of the drag, a breath away from the sea. All the bars are bordellos. If you want to drink, you want to fuck. 

Me gusta las putas, he admits, weak and capitulating, even at a distance from the walking girls, clustered like insects around the one or two streetlights that work. Daniel decisions are like water. 

Does he want an umbrella probably made in China? 

“No,” Daniel tells the mute hobbled boy. 

Another kid pushes around on a bamboo and wood bicycle. The kid doesn’t mind that the wheels are slices of logs and he has not pedals.

Palm flowers saturate the air with a nutty, wine-like scent. Some old man waters a lawn and rhododendrons between the buildings and the road. It doesn’t matter that it rained in the afternoon and that it will rain again before morning. 

There’s no traffic; people are on foot. The town is dark and the moon hangs over the old Spanish tropical outpost like moss. Packages of music whisper from the cracks and alleys, the beat of Evangelical drums, the slow rumba of a guitar. He wouldn’t mind a polka. 

At night he can’t go further than this. Towards the presidential palace the road’s off limits. Anyone’s future is uncertain that direction. He turns, feeling watched by the omnipresent eye of President Teddy, and strangely heads for the gorge and the inevitable slum that rises along its walls. 

The old sick jaguar has decreed that Malabo will have no locks. With so much freedom and joy in Malabo who needs old Arabian technology like that? With a party to rule, informers to witness and police to punish, thievery, like dissent, is not an issue. 

From behind the barrier the presidential guards, psychoactive and restless from too many cigarettes of bush, note the blanco through their night vision goggles. Sean’s updates to the security arsenal of Poseidon’s number one priority, President Ted, will make it much harder to surprise the spit of land comprising the presidential compound. 

The guards whisper among themselves. They’ve been ordered not to apprehend this blanco. He can stay above water, unlike the others in Black Beach prison. It’s too bad. He looks like he could use company.

***

Vota a Bingo is painted across the unofficial gate to the Quartier Los Angeles. 

Daniel struggles up the path, rough and zigzagging upward. Soil and water seep into the eroded gutter. Kids and people greet him with charges of buenos noches. It’s not so late that people are timorous. Trash has accumulated like caterpillars around the edges of the shacks, huts or houses – he’s not sure what to call the impromptu structures of tin, wood and mystery mud. 

Yellow fires and blue lanterns illuminate the medina-like streets. 

He twists and turns, going upward. 

The slum smells of boiled bird and shit. It smells of dirty hands and not enough soap. It smells of smoke and alcohol.   

Cobblers and tailors are hunched in their workshops, trying to do shoes and clothes better and cheaper than the Chinese goods flooding the wharves. 

On a piece of cardboard matting might rest a vacant, gaunt man or woman, suffering from malaria or AIDS or cholera at Daniel’s first guess. He won’t touch or ask to help. EG has everything, diseases unburied and uncured. 

A herbalist is posted nearby, bags of good and bad quackery open before him, dried animals, leaves, branches, fruits, nuts, seeds, hairs, organs. His modern competitor is further up the street: boxes of vitamins and superdrugs for all the ills, including bleaching powder.

Some walls are scorched; some dwellings roofless and abandoned. Cooking fires do their damage too. One wall is graffiti-ed: “When the banana is rotting away, we must not say it is ripe.” Another: “Breakfast on your enemies before they dine on you.”

By necessity, Los Angeles is self-sufficient. A private school echoes with children taking lessons, even at this late hour, for demand is high. He peeps in to see kids behind their rickety desks and colored, stained paper covering the chalkboard and a large map of EG behind the teacher. He ducks away before he’s interrogated. 

Life is precarious in Quartier Los Angeles. The houses are adhered to the gorge like miscreant dots. The dots are constantly afflicted by disease, malnutrition and death, and the dots are prone to clattering on the tile roofs of the rich villas below. But being resourceful and stubborn, the dots of Los Angeles have yet to crack into President Teddy’s precious sea.

He’s exceedingly popular for a man who spares no extra change for the poor. He’s strong and they parade in costumes for him, shout slogans for him, vote twice for him, El Jefe. His voice pours from the radio. His visage studies the streets. People have erected antenna to more closely catch his denouncements. Like a true friend, he might not give them much time to abandon what they build. Teddy’s total universe is his mind: innocent, untrammeled human will with no peer.

No development and little attention reach the people: the long-unemployed migrant workers of the defunct cocoa plantations, the few old Bubi who come down from the mountain hideaways and integrate into slum life, the traders from the mainland who sense the opportunities for smuggled goods, the people without the kin or ken to make them powerful and big.

Puzzled faces peep at him from doorways, some flickering with the light of television and emitting the silence of the transfixed. The bright new stories are winning over the old.

Girls and their babies leer at him from porches. A small monkey struggles with a bottle of beer. Win Twice it says on a wall. A bush meat poacher gestures to him: a choice of smoked wild boar, porcupine or pangolin? Or would he prefer a freshly shot guenon dangling in the shadows?

He nods no.

“You like fish, blanco?” clucks an observant woman. She shoos him with her big spoon, sucks from her pipe and wipes her hands on her Gold Fassl T-shirt. The women peel with laughter at the blanco stepping ominously through the forecourts of fires and stews, buckets and hoes. 

He’s struck by the tidiness. There are no weeds or dust or disorder for the convenience of quickly spotting snakes.

Men stare at him indifferently from their cards and conversations. He’s in the wrong neighborhood for handing out new jobs, cures or beliefs. With no proof of any improvement, no watery, healthy promise will convince the Angelenos to abandon sorting Malabo’s trash for the unwanted scrap and spoiled delicacies of the elite.

He squats for a moment in the throng of the slum. He’s careful to not appear aggressive or threatening, too white-like. He wants to talk. He can only see so much. No one answers when he asks, “Does anyone know Godbless? Godbless Progress?” 

It’s a mistake. Only an informer tells his name to the foreigners. Everyone else stays anonymous and mum. 

“The Olympic swimmer?”

A few hackles rise. Everyone knows the boy stirring the sea. 

It’s a small town, Daniel figures, but Godbless can’t be that unpopular.

The strange red children, sweating and serious, aren’t afraid to touch him. They have big eyes, Lilliputian teeth and fine broad noses. One child clutches a dental hygiene package from Proctor and Gamble. Some of the kids box around him, their right hands swabbed in thin torn rags. Others push around the ubiquitous whittled truck or motorcycle. They quickly part when accosted by a sweet but distorted voice. 

“I’m Yonni,” she says. “I know Godbless. I was his wife. Did Godbless send you for me?”

He looks up from the cup of his hands. She’s stunning and translucent, like an angel called down by the gods to the church of his emotions. She’s not crippled or frail in any way like Godbless described. She’s lean, muscled and tough. Sour grapes, he concludes, because Yonni is who he’s been looking for all night.

“You like what you see?” 

She smells like a charm, like a spirit. She’s made yet unmade. She is both incredibly ugly and incredibly beautiful.

Some food overboils in a pot and the water hisses on the fire. 

“Y-Y-Yes,” he says. 

“Then come with me.”

It’s a risk but what’s the worse thing that could happen?

He slavishly smiles at her and she ignores the attention. 

When he leaves with her, his hand slips through her well-oiled fingers. She doesn’t let go when she lifts him from the mud wall.

Walking through the darkness of Los Angeles, he sees a boy sleeping underneath a moped, his arm wrapped in its wheel like a lock, his mouth poised like a siren.

This is a divorce, Kylie, he thinks as Yonni lead him further into the slums. He’s shaking with nerves, his thighs, arms and butt, the noose of desire already around his neck and tightening, tightening.

The Word of the Night

President Teddy sits on his stool in his study. Leather-bound law books and a rescued library of tales surround his most intimate domain. He likes the laws, courts and constitution that laud his being, but he’s upset by the African stories told by white men. 

A ship sounds, its horn echoing on the bay. The blinds are drawn but the windows are open. Lines of light cross the room. He doesn’t want to see the morning. As he moves, one of Mobutu’s golden charms falls out of the pocket of his seersucker suit: the troll with the meal of men on his head. He pushes the monster back, this time in his jacket. 

Seeking the comfort of routine, he sets out his agenda and begins with a survey of the local press – La Gaceta, Malabo, El Patio, Africa 2000. His notes ruffle under his forearm as consorts with the stack and the censor’s list. He put a stop to La Opinion. He writes carefully with a spidery red hand. No word is good enough. 

On the front page of Ebano, the goat stares at him with great indignity. The photograph frames President Teddy at an old-fashioned publicity event in front of the leering crowd of well-wishers. He looks tired, confused and flagging as he holds the goat’s spiral horn. He’s missing his political pep, down instead of above the people. He’s not meeting a great world leader but shaking a rubbish disposal. The photographer’s name is accredited to his radio technician, Jorge. He’s forgotten about Jorge, that he’s his official photographer too. He’ll dock Jorge his eyes for that photograph, the eminent jefe-ness appearing unbig and unworthy. 

He yawns. He’s had a busy week before this day devoted to his health and leadership.

He’s stopped drinking and he won’t smoke. He enjoys colored water in its stead from a crystal chalice touched with a rim of gold. He feels completely mortal, vulnerable and exposed and seeks solace in religion on a weekly basis when he and Candida receive communion and take the ghost too, kneeling in Malabo Cathedral like two naughty children.

This Sunday, at the privacy of the Cacahual Country Club, the courts are clay and divided by strong nets. Ball boys are there to ensure a histrionic shot won’t fly too far. 

President Teddy’s a champ in his sport shoes, tennis shorts and Nike wristbands. He puts down his spectacles for the nine o’clock game. He’s aware this makes him look much like his dead uncle. He feels as unwelcome. He swats, he whiffs, he misses. He serves weakly at the charity tennis match that benefits efforts to curb juvenile delinquency. Two girls defeat him in two straight sets. Even with Candida rooting for him under a large floppy white hat, he cannot muster the vigor of old to flay his opponents. 

He takes the embarrassing loss like a gentleman. Most old men don’t leave the shade of their favorite spot. He shakes hands with the crowd who clap for his windy performance. His personal trainer slides his lenses over his ears and eyes and he can see again. Many of his children are here and he smiles in gratitude that they have come, especially the twins, Pastor and Justo, in their snappy Lacoste outfits.

The trees rise majestically around the grounds. The flare is reflecting off the low clouds. The oil companies have it good. Under the lights one can also play at night. A perimeter fence is further on from the courts. 

Darius is there too, there to protect him against the possibility that they will come in their masks with their guns and ferret him away by death or exile. 

He’s lucky to have his language, people, money, resources and country in the age of bigger interests. The attention of the oil economy brings many new demands on a man, foremost strength and wiliness. He may not be in OPEC but many Heads of State are his friends, and he’s often childishly happy when Darius reviews the security arrangements to come.

He’s to go to Senegal. He’s been to Paris, Washington DC and New York. He’s on good terms with Omar Bongo and his neighbors. 

Elections are regular and unanimous. 

His money is in America so the oil companies and the White House will know it’s safe. So are the majority of his houses to ensure he’ll be cosy.

President Nobody virtually until his silver jubilee, Teddy welcomes the limelight. Maybe the critics can help him improve Guinea Ecuatorial with good technical advice, rather than merely accusing him of corruption and evil he cannot control. The Fang are not meek vegetarians but warlike traders. Modernity cannot declare an end to the community rites of old. 

His poorly armed military is a priority. Ukraine is one of the best merchants for an end-user like him; it has already delivered attack helicopters. Teddy’s mixed bag of pilots is on hire too. 

The wartaxis’ rotors have been folded and the birds fastened down. They’re towed on the back of trucks for the people of Malabo to see during this morning’s great tattoo, the band striking a high march to keep the parade in step.

The streets of Malabo shudder in awe at the sight of the silent vultures that can shoot. The clean-cut pilot-instructors wave at the target-like faces of the crowd. The heavy equipment lurches over the streets in a journey fraught with jeopardy for the pilots struggling to stay aboard .

The weather is fine and dry. The clouds are high and affable. A high-ranking officer with a purple sash in a jeep with headlights on and white rims drives before the marching army. A man with a sword leads the male and female corps of marines. The Organization of Women of the PDGE carry their banner with red hats, blue shirts and green trousers. They’re followed by a long rank of children in pink and green, the marching white-costumed adults. The police goosestep and push along with their bulbous shields, their faces turned to the president. Claps ripple down the avenue. 

President Teddy and First Lady Candida occupy the center of the review stage. The banister is swathed in white damask. The family of military and ministerial officials stands behind him. They are stout and well-creased, made of braids and badges, berets and caps. Darius’s Moroccan security men are distributed around the area. His many children play at his tiny feet. He feels paternal and shepherd-like.

The president wears a large gold medallion over his buttoned pewter jacket. A handkerchief divots his heart with a splash of aqua. The seal of EG decorates his lapel. He has one gold watch and one large gold ring to occupy his worrying.  Candida sits in a peacock blue brocade dress, a spray of yellow flowers at her side. 

His suit is loose and he’s cinched in his trousers. He’s lost weight dramatically and become ambivalent about food, thin and slight. Nonetheless, Teddy reflects fondly on his presidency as a very rich and big man. No one has more in his country. He basks in the idea and laughs good naturedly when he shakes hands with the many people who approach the stage for a word with the great President Teddy. He’s sociable and doesn’t feel hated. He’s doing the best he can for the Fang. For the others he’s sorry.

More new installations are being assembled today on Bioko, at his new port, floated in from Scotland, Texas and Gabon. The companies make love to his waters and build the infrastructure for his oil economy; they must train his people in hydrocarbonology too. Growth is seventy-five percent. He is the one who steps over the building sites and explains in his hands, his mesh cowboy hat over shadowing his face, how everything must be built. 

He smiles with munificent feeling, and then quite unexpectedly swoons fast to the floor. 

 “Wake up, old porridge!” Candida hisses in his ear. She pinches him with a thorn, but he doesn’t react – nearly baptized by death, lost in epopteia, waiting for the final waters.

He’s much closer to the forest than ever before. He drives away from his dream of the people to the night, some spirit filling his body with cold white light. His emotions wink out, one by one his virtues snapping shut: faith, hope and love; the others struggle to keep alive: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, as the ambulance jostles and sirens wail. 

The national colors drape the background. President Teddy’s chair is empty, its back oval and open like a sun. 

***

The turf’s fresh. A grouting of red dirt tamped between the grassy tiles. The Petroleum Club is a warehouse trimmed with stone. A string of black cars are parked on the road, set off in industrial space. People have had to cross and dirty their shoes in the unavoidable mud burbling through the new asphalt. The rain is over. The wind blows on palms; they wave like dancing hands in a strong silhouette contrasted against the clear evening light. The drivers sit and watch DVDs in the cars. The security detail is spread around the front of the building. Inside on the cement floor are a bar and lounge, dining areas and kitchen. There’s an executive area for President Teddy. The vast doors are open to the night and the people battle with the bugs, reptiles and mammals attracted by the strong gas lights and feast. 

A long bank of stone forms the bar. Light comes from the monitors of the ordering system. Another forms the buffet. A purple bunting touches around its edge. 

Daniel’s too late for the musicians, bare-chested and mingling with the suits and dresses of the audience. 

He goes through a metal detector and is patted down. 

The hostess takes his name. She’s in a deft pale jacket and clutches a phone. 

The furniture is understated and hotel-like. People are struggling to anchor on to someone with prestige: politician, company executive, diplomat or official. Kids are bumping between the adults who are all nodding in agreement at the opening of the MPC. 

Formations of glassware are on the tables with the beer and wine. Daniel skims by the large buffet of stews and kebabs. Ice sculptures rapidly melt in the middle: a turtle battling with an alligator, two dwarves fighting with a crane. Despite the garnish, the display looks too much like rig food in such vast quantities. Nonetheless, he feels credible with an invite to the MPC. 

Bigwigs have been wooed from the swamp of Houston for the adventure: an extravagant meal pegged to the price of crude in Malabo. The smaller international fry are here, whispering the deals of Luanda and Nouakchott. He’s squeamish at first about the familiar industry faces whom he pretends not to know. After all, he’s a fast learner; he has the local insight. The extras don’t count. It’s the Teddy family he wants to talk to.

Daniel recognizes the big stud by the sound system along one wall, TJ, intimidating yet bashful, instructing the DJ to change the tunes. 

A short sleeve shirt and slacks are the right touch for the hot room. Tonight he’s made a point to be well groomed. He manages to lean into TJ’s range and say, “That’s some nice jazz you’re playing.” There’s a reservoir of suaveness in his manner tonight. 

“Sure. Lots of good tunes out there.” He sneers and one of the gems sparkles in his teeth. The record label is sort of coming together. He’s made some ring tones. The babes are happening for the Prince of Equate. The footprint of his Malabo station’s getting bigger. He’s recorded some party videos of the high life.

“That’s Hank playing?”

“Nope. It’s Hurt. You heard of him?” He’s a player.

Daniel takes a yellow beer from a waiter perusing the crowd of the Malabo Petroleum Club. He’s heard of hurt. He looks down his coarse cotton shirt. Oh the horns of hurt!

“What do you want?” 

He’s missing the shopping sprees, parties, cars and drugs of Paris and LA. 

“You ever worked for an oil company, TJ?” Daniel needs an angle to get back in with President Ted.

“Oil is an old-person’s game. Communications is the future. I’d conquer the world with music, not violence.”

He nods. Swell idea. 

TJ smiles broadly at his father, working the room like an old bellows.

President Teddy is clutching some doglike western official nearby, breathing commands. He pirouettes in high political style, revived by the outlook on his real estate.

 “Well, hah-hah, Mr. Grace! You’re still here?”

 “His Excellency?”

“Tonight, everyone wants a slice of the action! How about you, Señor Grace?”

“Good turnout.” 

He doesn’t want to endanger the Americano, just encourage him. 

“Have we done something to displease, His Excellency?” 

Teddy pulls him aside, pushes his sweet breath into his ear. “To be a millionaire, Mr. Grace, you don’t just have a million dollars, you spend a million dollars.”

Daniel can feel Teddy’s charisma expanding, tingling and reaching into his cupola and toes.

“US companies can’t do business with EG government officials or their family members. We pay at auction. It has to be transparent. We can’t continue like we have in the past. Some of us are already under indictment.” He’s learned the public company line for the top dog. 

“Americans must never excuse tyranny or corruption in Africa. Let that be.” He bends his finger and fades into the crowd. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Mr. Grace. I’m sure.” 

This Grace blanco is lying about the proven reserves. He knows about poker but he’s disappointed in this old partner sending the likes of Mr. Grace to represent its problems. Yes, Poseidon is the trailblazer. Yes, a decade ago he did sign the old contracts for three percent of revenues. But he’s learned from his peers: there’s only so much water and oil he can sell and it’s not coming back. For this he should be compensated.

He wants to sit on the sofa and take off his hat. He’s hot. The price is the price, and it can go up.

His son Gabriel begs to confer with him. 

He wants revenge for this lack of protocol and respect, not bad advice. He pushes his son away. Where’s TJ? This one’s no good. 

Daniel’s pleased really. There is no solution yet to the disappointing results. No nose has solved it. Production is becalmed. They’ve yet to strike the earth and light it on fire to push the oil into their thirsty roots. The mood on Jade may be heightened, but the field is temperamental.

Teddy’s angry. Who is this clown Grace? What’s he doing at his dance party? Why does he have on a big black bowtie?

These are technical problems to be solved by the companies. They have the money and the science, untouchables and zombies refining death. 

Oil is the almighty – deaf, dumb, blind. 

President Teddy laughs pleasantly at the guests. The grand opening of the Malabo Petroleum Club has been a gas. But by now he’d prefer to retire to his study. The many advisors, consultants, ambassadors, representatives and ministers have tired him. He’s glad for them coming to the parade, speech and social leading to this grand event.

The party segues into after-party. 

Daniel spends much of the time alone, breathing into his drinks, laughing to what he can of other people’s conversations. Opaque channels are open. But it’s a war of nerve and attrition; who is left, stands. Yet he’s no closer.

President Teddy’s velour trousers sway convincingly to the swing in his hips. He turns his ear upward to hear better the tune. His vest is of satin, the chest decorated with tine lame mirrors.

“Mr. Grace?” she asks. 

“First Lady?” he replies.

“Do you find yourself good?”

They’re pretty sociable for a couple supposedly so ruthless. He’s optimistic. It’s like a Bellaire party. He’s outfoxed a few green bucks to get here. 

Daniel sighs deeply. He’s feeling better. But now he must sit completely utterly still with the old cat. He’s pleased they’ve landed on the same sofa, but the man smells like rancid oil as if he’s off and past his date.

Teddy’s danced with the guests on the Astroturf of the pavilion stage of the executive area. His deep blue bowler sparkles with a light blue rim. 

Where’s Stella in these trying times? 

Candida knows that look. Her knees are tight together. She’s dyed her fringe blonde and she sits on the edge of her chair. 

“Mr. Grace, do you like to run?” she asks. 

“Yes, ma’am. I love running. But not as much as swimming.”

“My organization of African First Ladies will have a charity run on Mount Basil. Would you run in that race for HIV awareness? My son TJ will run. Many important people are invited.”

“I think I would,” he says. Mount Basil is steep and huge. “Maybe my company can sponsor some men.”

Exhausted, President Teddy lapses and is lost. 

Traveling in dreams through the years, he laughs with the other boys at the old men in Mongomo. The elders are cramped and bent over. They’d had nothing all their lives. They can’t walk. It makes them depressed, and they lose a lot of weight and die. In some villages everyone goes blind. 

TJ knocks his old man but he’s out, sleeping with Danny Grace on the couch in waves of jazz. 

***

The Ngil come at night. They roam the forest and bash from village to village. They are hunting witches. They arrive with rush flares. They are dressed in rough sisal cloth decorated with thick circles and wear the long ellipsoid masks on the crowns of their heads. The masks are covered with raffia strips and fiber ruffs. Their feet are clad in rattle grieves. They hunt with fire and dancing. The Ngil know what happens in the night, when the evu organs leaves their hosts and makes magic on body and objects. They repair the breach in the social tissue. When the mask points, the wearer may be intoxicated.

Some people have a hole in their head and they are mimje; they can ask the ancestors who is a witch. They travel with the Ngil. They are connected to the plants and dreams, nganga. When sick young Teddy goes to the nganga. He spits again and again on the bieri. It’s the color of coconut and champagne, fresh and sweet. The nganga call the Ngil. 

He has no books, no newspapers but a radio that he listens to at night on the swept floor, careful of snakes, where he dreams the nightmare real. 

“On the hill, at night, you can buy witchcraft. Even the whites are buying languages.” 

That is what the radio says.

When he leaves for the mission school he opens an egg near the river to make the journey good. Then his grandfather lets him go to school, to the female principle of the universe with a cigarette of beyama and a basket of eggs and black cloth.

At each village he offers eggs, but eggs don’t placate the Ngil. 

Death and scandal have visited the village he is passing. A man has killed another man with lightening because of his wives. The Ngil are there to judge this enmity. Can the deviant take this poison of the night? How long can he walk down the road? 

The brutish tops of the jerry cans frown at him. They need water. He waits for the pipe cascading water under a muddy cliff, and the forest grows into his anus. He’s a fruit like a gourd.

Young Teddy is surprised when the Ngil call him forward. He’s not a witch. He cannot know what happens when he is asleep.

A witch will live, but witches cannot always be recognized. 

The Ngil surround him. He’s strapped on a stool. They push him out into the river. He never comes up but breaks his bonds in the dark river. He swims and finds another body to put in the chair.

The deviant’s autopsied by a relative, opened like an envelope, a fold peeled from his groin to his neck. A ventricle on his heart is deformed. He’s witch. His blood is clotted in his heart. He’s eaten someone. They find the skull of a white woman in the bark basket of his reliquary. 

Its magic is good for conquering death, tombs and opening graves. 

Disguised, young Teddy smuggles it away, highly regarded like a grotesque Toby Jug. He puts the cranium in oil and rubs his hands with it daily. He’s nourished and empowered. With this object he can make good or bad. His grandfather protects him too. To make it work has to gather palm oil, copal resin, black mevina dye for the reliquary and he must abstain from sex.

The Ngil dancers wear suits. They have the heads of a stork, an antelope, a gorilla, a cock. The antelope has a wide gap between her teeth and she’s as beautiful as luck. 

Stella?

Her voice is thrown and unreal. His feet tap and he dances amiably with her. He tips his sequined blue bowler to the crowd. Stella pushes him to the ground.

They dance around his prone body and fix their masks on him.

Stella pronounces that he’s in excellent health. She sounds like the state radio and everyone understands: President Teddy is dead. 

***

Malabo is pregnant with President Teddy’s rotten odor. Disquiet strikes peoples faces. 

This is the first night of his new life. He’s buried and undead. He won’t stay down. His coffin battles upward from the crypt. He rises from a pile of garbage and walks to his funeral. 

The bells chime in Malabo cathedral. They peal in concert with the other bells donging around the island. Drums beat to a dirge and men and women are crying in the streets. Grief? Relief? Ted’s dead. 

The first four hours are important for TJ. 

Water. Moon. Sun. Fire.

He’s given oxygen and the dancers are pumping on his chest. 

The figure is built in a clearing, often under a hut of weaved leaf walls. It’s chest-high and sometimes scattered with sticks.

Air traffic control is put on a high state of alert. The attack helicopters are mobilized.

Ondundon mban a ne? Ototun mban a ne?

Are the long bones there? Are the long bones there?

Ondundon mban a majum, ototun mban a maja!

The long bones are to the left and to the right

Mban a wu(:anu) mban a wu (:a nu),

The bones are there? The bones are there?

Ondundon mban a majam ototum mban a maja;

The long bones are to the left and right

Mban a vui edu-medza, mban a vui mvo-bekono,

The bones are yours, Edu-Medscha, the bones are yours Mwo-Bekongo.

Mban ete wa wu.

The bones are the voice.

He dances for men, for couples, for individual, makes a proclamation, dances for the palm, Ngi and the dead. 

They anoint the prow-like belly of the mud figure in the vestibule. 

Is he dying or being reborn?

They’re pushing him down but he won’t go under. The gravediggers throw more soil and he sails to the surface. 

The soil drums on the lid of the coffin. The earth gains its purchase.

TJ is overwrought with grief. 

Stella throws the earth with her hands. 

Candida and Gabriel look on sternly.

The wake is bunched on the football pitch, waiting to start, the route draped with black bunting. 

TJ pulls his brother aside. “Gabriel, if you can do a better job, I want you to do it. Cuz your great. Did I ever tell you how great you are?” 

They stand on the cement apart from the military contingent. The military want to be near their next man.

TJ’s sly. Does he really mean it? What of the article in the in-flight magazine about an African record shop in Paris? “I’ve been looking in the wrong place,” he says. 

Gabriel laughs when TJ says, “Bioko is going to be an island of music and vinyl. I back off the NGA, if that’s what you want. We’re family.” 

“I take care of the NRG, TJ.”

They add their signature in skin and heart to the House of Teddy. House of Teddy is a land of music, not problems if this interregnum of uncertainty. Who has killed their old man? 

***

Crowds gather to meet the casket at twilight. They must pay their respects. They do not want him coming back. The earth tremors in a series of shocks. Coffins and bones spit and burp from the earth. The old boot of Bioko Island is shaking. The caldera belches ash like snow. The island won’t swallow the big man of Mongomo. The people jump on the coffin, muzzled and embalmed like an alligator. They tether the loose puck lunging and roaring to the earth. 

This night the curfew is over but no one dares celebrate – a big man too big for the earth is out. 

Teddy rises from the refuse on the street. He’s unpried his coffin and beat off the dust. He’s bruised and dripping an unkind fluid. The streets are empty. The dogs sniff at him. He walks alone, somber and rigid to the gates of the presidential palace. His body bobs with each aching step, stiff and sore. The nurses are full of spite. The tapsters will not sell him wine. The women will not talk like they do. The Petroleum Club is closed. So is the treasury. He can’t find his car. Or Darius. Or Candida. Or TJ. 

He’s looking for company. He hears the pitter-patter of feet, the rustle of voices. He’s slow and old but powerful in his aim. He’s neither ravenous nor monstrous, just misunderstood. He’s curious about what are the living doing without him, if the panegyrics mention him. 

He listens to the breathing of children. He sleeps in their beds. He watches women building fires or nursing babies. He watches the scratching of farmers. From the edge of the forest he hoes and he harvests, tills and cultivates, prunes and dries in unison with the weather-beaten hands. He listens to the long slow extinct songs of the cane cutters and cocoa pickers. He eavesdrops on the verandas of the plantations. He hears the march of white men making their business in the wharves of the port, delivering black men from slavery, freeing them before they’re journey. He sits in the mission school and takes his lesson with a thousand other pupils. He sits in a pirogue and paddles into a bay of sacred stones. He catches the murmur of other spirits, some sent to earth and some called back, exchanging messages like breath. 

No one will touch him or comfort him and the rejection summons his ire. He’s grows spiteful. He builds a vast playground of electric lights and ingenious rides but no one stops along his road. In anger he destroys his creation and sabotages the island with it. He empties sugar in the crude. He kicks over the generators and unplugs the radios and phones. He blows out the flare at the AMPCO plant and the other lights. He hides the spare parts. He closes the flowers and takes the fruits. He flies over and makes sure. He returns his island to the past as he has always threatened to do. It’s too late to learn. He shall reap what he has sewn.

The offshore the rigs are running like independent stars, and this angers him again. He walks confidently, knowing he has never been weak. His eyes are like two dots. His face is caved in like soup. He applies his shrunken maggot-ridden body with mud, dung, nails and shells. 

A putrid smell enters the air. The island is decomposing. The wells smell awful. The drink water is contaminated with collagens, mud and fluids. Crops, cattle, fowl, fish – all are sick. An acidic mist hisses over the landscape, burps from the vents of magma coiling underneath the dykes and sills of Mount Basil. 

The drums speak at Joan’s shrine. They’re alluring and mesmerizing. Joan never sleeps. 

He walks through the slum. Open windows send the groans and shivers of his people’s sufferation. They’re thirsty in their sleep like ticks and lice. They’re sleeping around a tree, on the pavement, against a light post, face down.

They must be punished too, he concludes. The darkness should be absolute. 

He who controls Bioko, controls the Gulf. 

He has no time to loose. A zombie’s life can only be so long.

TJ will understand. His mother loves him. 

He delivers a cake-like piece of skull for the rattle in the Teddy bieri. The eldest son takes the bieri, divides the bones and founds a new village and dynasty.

He sits on a beaded stool. The entrance to the cave makes a large star. A boulder and a single tree block the light. He makes a necklace of charms: wood, grass, cloth, bow, feathers, basket, burned wood, leaf, drum, tin, hoe, fish, packets of message. He has a dagger in a scabbard decorated with crab shells. The court sounds with the clanging of bells coated with blood and down. A helmet of colobus clings to his head, the tail a festoon around his chest, and cropped plumes rising over his crown. 

Behind him are baskets of wealth. A giant balafon ripples under the mallets of the court musicians. The split-drum calls: x o x o x o x x o x x o. He’s spooned soup from a halved shell. Someone blows a bone whistle plaintively. 

He feels great sadness that it’s slipped away. A field of dance opens to the dancers and drummers. He takes the relic and dances. His head is shaved and the blood of several cocks is spread on it. Antimony and karolin are applied to his body. He pushes a dowel through his tongue and it presses against his chin, lips, nose, eyes and brow. He sits on the drum and drums between his legs, kicking with his heels: x o o o x o o x o x o o. The dancers swing from the lianas over the fire. It’s a great night to say goodbye. His teeth clap his mouth and his lungs separate from his chest. 

He packs his trunk. He’s particular with his medicines for unexpected climes. He pats a bible, holds the word of Jesus, puts binoculars to his eyes, consults his charts and copies his treaties of commerce and friendship for which there is no contest. Like Christ he is not a scapegoat but a healer and mediator. He places a crucifix on top of his baggage. One arm is the boundary between this world and the afterlife; the other arm is the path of power between the worlds. The hole at the center is the grave itself. 

He’s glad the night has given him this much time to prepare. He cherishes his memories as they unravel like skin. 

He’s surprised that Daniel has come to take him away. Surely Darius has noticed?

He follows the big white man along a path. It’s lined with witchdoctors, nganga and priests. He likes secret passages. They cross by train, jeep and foot. The train takes him back into the old country of the Fang. The forests are gone and the ravines are deep. The wasteland turns to scrub and rocks. The jeep breaks down the in desert at night and he’s cold. The Taureg demands more money to go on. Daniel pays it. They avoid police and skirt borders. They cross two large fences with ladders at the middle of their leaving. From here, they rest before they cross the stretch of sea on a ferry. Many others are with them. They zigzag by land on buses over a giant peninsula and again cross a sea.

He arrives in a room and meets a panel of white men. No one is who he says he is but they are all familiar in their warm malice. They’re charming, amateurs, brash. Their friends know their secrets and they have already told Teddy outside. Teddy, stupefied to the words, laughs. Nonsense. A London taxi cab waits on the curb under the sycamore. No one will take his call to the Foreign Office. No one can help him at the State Department. He appeals the decision to no avail. 

The four white men unroll his thorax, reach into his guts and pull out his evu, his magic power organ. They share the living opus of power among themselves. 

It’s up to him now to stop the conflict of bigger interests and turn off the tap. 

Make and Learn

Trouble is circulating in Malabo and Daniel seems to be encountering most of it as his spell of disability lengthens. People are onto him. They suspect he’s just another oil prick and to a degree they’re right. 

Dinner’s expensive. Pussy’s expensive. Water’s expensive. So’s the booze.

Daniel’s not paying ten bucks for a bottle of water. It rains all the time. He’ll drink the volcanic muck out of the tap. If he shits like soda halfway up the volcano then so be it. 

The caress of his sacred mosquito net is a distraction and certainly no substitute for a woman. It not only keeps the translucent anopheles fuckers away. His bungalow’s too cold and the windows are sealed. His sheets are wet and he’s afraid of pneumonia. 

He’s sore by the time there’s a knock at the door of his bungalow. 

“Yonni?”

Daniel rises from his saturated bed and wraps the sheet around his waist. 

His maid has brought him ice for his beer. 

God, she’s cute, he notices. 

Would she say no or yes, he hazards? She doesn’t say no to cleaning his room. 

From the assent of her head, fucking is definitely more lucrative than cleaning.  

He’s becoming lax, the last thing he ever expected. Since the double blow of Kylie’s arrest and Yonni’s lovemaking, he can’t keep his cock in his pocket. It’s too bad about his wife, he quips, trying to quell his sense of disappointment at his own behavior. His own heartless heart is rash in its judgment, he knows, but until more information is forthcoming, Kylie’s a suspect in the second degree. She’s no good.

He moves the girl’s underwear aside and fingers her standing next to the bed. She’s brown, young, atrociously fine and unmauled. He spans her bubble-like butt with his hands. She’s fresh and wet. She doesn’t seem to know what to do, yet her body does. It’s carnal and exciting. They’re done later than he expects as if he’s been hindered in the act by some glimmer of conscience. 

She wants more and he says, “Hasta luego.”

The palms cut against the compound’s edge. The girl is gone and Cacahual Village is tranquil.

Daniel’s mildly ecstatic. He’s recovered some of his brio. Annoyingly, the sweat’s trickling down his back and into the fabric of his newly laundered shirt. He’s losing the battle with the humidity here in Malabo. Wetness is part of the experience.

Does he like the island a little better now? 

He can’t really answer.

He’s undecided, but the brash catholic colors of the street appeal to him, so far from the stern bleach of his childhood. The people promenade in slow evolving chains or squat on the porches, business in a remainder of shoe or clot of fabric. They are all now, of this day, moment and space, and nothing of the future, for the future is President Teddy and they have no choice in their strategy for survival. 

He too is a captive in President Teddy’s paradise, a paradise so far from the perks of the global economy that it looks like another planet. He’s cut off. 

He can’t use his credit cards. Banking and telephoning are complicated. Even at the Poseidon office, with every resource at his disposal, he suspects he’s not getting most of his e-mails and calls. They arrive cracked and half open, half said. He laughs when he remembers sending a telex from the PTT. All afternoon. And due to some administrative hiccup he can’t rent a car. 

“Sean, can you recommend a driver?” he asks Poseidon’s security man one day when his frustration with the sweaty obdurate clerks of the Equatoguinean government are at its height. “Before I go offshore again I’d like to see some of the island.”

“I’m busy. I’m about to go to sea,” Sean says, “To test out the Coast Guard.” His voice is high and whining. 

“They got one?”

“The US government donated a ship. Goes by the name of Hipolita Micha.”

“Some kind of politician?” Daniel needs to brush up.

“I don’t know but must have been a brave one judging by the condition of that boat.”

They laugh together. 

“Like everything here, man. Like everything. So what about a fixer if you’re indisposed?”

“There’s that kid of yours?”

“Who, Godbless? He’s useless.”

“You told me you took a shine to him.”

“It’s his ex-wife I like.” Daniel smiles again.

“He’s an informer.”

“He could be helpful for those pesky roadblocks, huh?”

“You know President Teddy tortured that kid?” 

“Yeah. He said something about it. I didn’t know if he was kidding or not, until he showed me his feet. I hoped swimming would help him cope, like therapy.” 

“You know, Daniel, you’re more human that I thought. I’d heard otherwise, that you weren’t part of the human race.” 

“How you know about that?” 

“I have my sources.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, you’re the one so close to the government that we can’t tell who you’re working for, us or them.”

“It’s your guess, buddy, who I work for.” Sean turns on his heels and marches off to his truck in the Poseidon lot. He heaves in some marine equipment from the yard before driving off.

Looking down from the Poseidon office, Daniel can’t decide if Sean’s a mercenary or a spook. Whoever he is, he’s about as trustworthy as a cop.

***

Godbless Progress appears like a savant. He’s rough around the edges and has a funny timid look in his eyes as if he’s not all there.

He’s learned his English from Radio Biafra and BBC, he says. He tends to use words like insurgency and succession in place of words like problem and election. He isn’t a polished young Fang acolyte sent to an American college on a Poseidon scholarship as part of his grooming for President Teddy’s bureaucracy. 

Godbless seems to know his way around the government offices. At least that’s what he says.

Daniel could use Godbless’s help. Sperm is flowing from his eyes as he bellies into the bar at Hotel Eureca and orders a beer and ice. He seriously needs his intermediary to whisk the girls off this morning.

The hot sassy girl in his lap doesn’t speak either English or Spanish. She gives him a kiss and a flirtatious promise. He presses down his mambo surf shorts.

Like everyone else who has come before him, Daniel will pay. Everyone wants a take. No one is in a hurry. They’ve lived this long without wealth. Plastic buckets have made their lives easier. The bureaucrats and the whores are less easily satisfied, and they don’t write receipts – bad news for the per diem. 

He obnoxiously studies some of the other candidates on the market. 

The gaunt woman in the corner is hideous. She must have AIDS. The buxom one is more appealing, fat as a doughnut. As if they don’t have it, he thinks, wishing he had stopped at the pharmacy for condoms. Where is that tough sweetheart Yonni? 

The girl wiggles in his lap. “You want sex?”

None of the girls have been that sweet or that good. 

Swilling the beer and ice, he pushes the girl off, and she casts him a disappointed look. 

Godbless might have some news about the progress of the tender. An answer has not come from the uncertain, rumor-fueled vortex of disinformation, the over thirty ministries of President Teddy’s administration. He’s unsure if Poseidon’s sleight of hand to the extrabeneficiaries will pay off. It smells good and oily to the east and west.

The font of payments to the Teddy’s sundry service companies isn’t the barrier. His tentacles are behind everything. Teddy’s a monopoly. Like any business in Equatorial Guinea, Poseidon needs offices, computers, food and accommodation. No shortage of receipts is dispensed from Teddy’s feel-good uncompetitive companies selling terrestrial and aquatic real estate. But new US laws apply to US companies like Poseidon, and now there’s no simple, clean way to log the deposit of five, ten or forty million dollars into Teddy’s Riggs Bank accounts. They’ll manage with another haven, a nice way of saying thank you. 

 “Who dare intervene?” wonders Daniel in a moment of insight. 

Teddy’s an ingenuous tyrannical fucker. He’s innovated as president and big man. He’s taken for good what was the Fang’s and sold it. What was communal is now Teddy’s. What was collective is also Teddy’s. That’s why the forests are standing. No critics last if they don’t cool it – animal, vegetable and mineral are all the property of the president, their god and father. 

Daniel’s mood is sour and his conclusion unavoidable about Godbless – slacker, no-show. So far he’s eschewed this moment, strolling through town looking for his fixer. The guy doesn’t have a beeper or a phone. His patience breaks into prejudice. He’s the minority, not the master. He can retire to his bungalow and start the barbeque, bound to make him some instant friends.

Teddy didn’t bother to erase “Todo por la patria,” a Spanish Fascist slogan, from the piedmont of an administrative building. 

Everything for the country.

He passes by the mercado. It’s just starting. Enrique from Todos Estrallas Desportivo is hanging out his merchandise – solely balls. Squads of brightly dressed women are readying pyramids of pili pili, rolls of cassava, heaps of yams and bunches of ferns. No one seems to notice the bloody right arm left on a piece of carton at one of the stalls. They’re used to fear and retribution. It’s not like it’s theirs. 

Jesus, he says. He gulps a beat and gallops on, his sandals flip-flopping to the best place where he can get a coffee overlooking the water.

On the Hotel Bahia restaurant patio Daniel enjoys a packet mixture of milk, sugar and coffee crystals. The patio smells like last night, like condoms, smoke and booze. He’s adapted quickly. He has no expectations. Sharp and spicy, the salt crinkles on his skin. The land is soon inundated with liquid heat and that’s all the encouragement Daniel needs to order a malt. Why wake up? 

The waiter says, “Today is President Teddy’s birthday and we don’t serve in His Excellency’s honor.” 

There must be a way but the man is adamant. No cerveza. 

He moves through the lobby, the fans stirring the air above, light delicately falling on the round blobs of furniture. 

 “Hi Yonni!” Hope paints his voice. 

She’s wet from the hotel pool and dripping on the carpet. She’s startled. Which blanco is this? She hazards a question. “It’s really hot, yeah?” 

“Do you want to go for a drink?”

“Bar Europe?” she says. She might as well make some business.

The streets are mellow with the slow crisscross of feet. 

Daniel can’t refuse some fish for breakfast. Down the steps of the Bahia and little along the hairpin of road, a man fries the blue oily fellow in a barrel. Yonni convinces him to buy more scrumptious fried minnows.

He removes a spine from his mouth and ponders the spiky sliver. Daniel experiences an uncanny moment: the larger secret. Unconstrained possibilities live within the balmy area of his mambos. What has he really done or accomplished with his nose but keep the honchos in business? Is he the big shot who drained North America dry? 

All the bars and bordellos of Malabo are well and truly closed for the day in the president’s honor. Thankfully the vendors are in business. Beer or palm wine or aguardente? 

Yonni asks the fisherman where they can find a tapster – anything to delay the inevitable security of his bungalow in Cacahual Village, his day behind doors. He can’t bear being segregated. It’s not for sympathy or curiosity he leaves the compound – he’s bored. As if the blender, cocktails and porch are more tantalizing? The Poseidon employee handbook exercises caution in recommending employees going in the field alone. No guests. 

Daniel will go back to the Jade anytime. He must make a tour of the fields, hopping from lilypad to lilypad. Every drink and kiss is his last. 

***

Godbless plays table football with a stone, alone, at the edge of Bar Europe. He grabs the football table: ten stones or nothing, over or over. He taps a stone in, runs around and around the table, playing himself.  It’s inept and supercilious but he likes it. His gecko-like hand are on the men: batman, gazelleman, hippoman, snakeman, deerman, buffaloman, birdman. The stone skips in the table. It whirls and banks in and out of corners, on and off the walls, his drink versus his cigarette. He’ll fuck around for another beer and bride. He’s comin’ up to the fantastic ivory white heaven.

He recognizes his ex-wife. Yonni didn’t look like this, painted and deformed. In his denim and shades and sweatbands, he’s someone new. No more lurking around Los Angeles. Daniel has no idea.

She’s afraid of the man she senses to be her ex-husband. She’s not sure, for behind the sunglasses it could be someone else, a brother or a cousin. Godbless seems dangerous, another ecumenical member and informer. She must watch what she says. They are divorced.

He spills a beer on a pretty girl, garnet colored and mostly teeth. 

Daniel’s careful to listen to the affable people in the beach bar. Once drunk he’s too loud. Yonni excuses herself and vanishes from the reed screens and booths of the premises.

Soon some Creole girls in thongs brush against him and he’s momentarily shaken. 

He accosts them and they’re friendly, too friendly, but he’s tall, moderately handsome, not too worn out. Why not procrastinate, he reasons. The disability is over, but the problem in the field remains, depletion. Daniel agrees to sneak them into his bungalow to party. 

They’re laughing together when they hear the seething hiss and the halogen is flashed in their eyes. 

The guard steps on Daniel’s flip-flop with the edge of his cleats. 

Far from irascible, he unintentionally returns the gaze of the guard stoned on glue or bush. It’s a bad idea on the strength of his documents, even with the pass. Teddy can revoke as well as grant favors.

“Bienvenido a Isla de Bioko,” he says, mocking the poster from the heliport. He’s insolent. The wine is a minor infraction. The two girls expected. A man can have many wives, so says President Ted.

Daniel takes a hard and unexpected slap on the collar from the halogen torch. His neck stings, hot and red. It’s not mortal but it hurts. 

If he continues, it could be more. He should stop faking that he’s somebody. 

The girls cutely drop a few key words. “We’re going to the fiesta at Paradiso in Pequeño España.”

Through sweet, claggy clouds of glue, cannabis and sugar cane rum, the guard checks Daniel’s pockets for contraband and cash.. 

Why is this guard touching him? Where the fuck is Sean? 

What are they going to do with his phone and cards? Daniel isn’t Daniel without them. 

“Phones are bad! There are magic numbers!” the guard shouts in disgust. “You’re a sorcerer!” 

The Head of State’s birthday is the sole day of amnesty and celebration of human rights in Malabo. He’s going to have to let this blanco go and smoke a garro.

Daniel can hear the waves aerating and pining a few blocks in the distance. His jug of palm wine drips along with ice in a burlap sack. After the slap, his hearing begins to realign.

The phone rings and vibrates in the guard’s hand. The transponder’s back on. He juggles the phone, pushes it into the blanco’s arms. He lowers his rifle.

Daniel touches Yes.

“Daniel?” 

“Kylie? Is that you?”

In rage, the guard snatches his phone and hurls it into the air like skeet. 

Daniel reaches for it.

But it explodes with a fast and loud report, and the smithereens of his Nokia are scattered into the road.

He claws his ear and doubles over like a hunchback.

He rises in a field of opal stars and concatenating sound. 

This is not what supposed to happen. People’s superstitions don’t become reality, do they? 

He recovers to insist on his SIM card and gathers the scraps to the phone procured by his helpful fixer Godbless. He shakes his head in disbelief. Did the guard shoot it? Can he too harness the power of the unexplained? Is there a spell on him?

The guard look on suspiciously, his eyes loaded with real fear. 

Daniel and the girls are hurried on with sharp waves of the gun.

Daniel’s relieved to arrive at the gates of Cacahual Village and his bungalow sequestered in the gated suburb, a replicant of any of Houston’s crime free enclosures. He’s conspicuous with the girls and he cringes at his copious guilt. It’s innocent, he cries to false reason. They just want to party and have a good time.

He passes Bigfoot who catcalls the girls. He shouts: “Mr. Grace, how come I don’t get myself no double-trouble!” 

“You’re too big,” Daniel says in the way of a reply, embarrassed yet grand with the two sexy señoritas.

Any notion of resistance and innocence disappears as soon as they’re in the split-level condo. Revolted and excited, he feels like a tourist when he bonks the girls in his air-conditioned bungalow. They’re upstairs in his bedroom and make a lot of noise. He’s thrilled that the girls enjoy it. He presses his awkward white skin on the two cocoa girls. There’s no ring wagging on his finger. Crow’s feet grasp at the corners of his glazed eyes. Age and experience suck, he concludes.

Late in the evening they invite him to penetrate them anally. He’s already had his fingers in their poop shoots for fun but he can’t keep it up. They’re good at encouraging.

I bet on black, he thinks somewhere in the reverie, but it’s pink I like.

They succeed with him in the morning, using the last condoms. It’s heaven, far, far better than goats. He’d love to have Yonni there too. It’s as if he’s turned into horn. 

***

Daniel hasn’t shed the odious feeling of disgust by morning. He hasn’t slept. Every little wrinkle of noise sounds like a ring or knock. 

The simulacrum opens and he’s back.

Dawn.

It’s worse when you don’t do it. 

Even after a shower, he feels unclean, oily and smelly like a lecher. 

He attempts to restore order. His black hair’s shellacked into place. His underarms are coated in antiperspirant. His shirt’s ironed, tucked in. His tie’s knotted and pinned. The Champion stallion holds it in place. 

This morning, the cornflakes and milk with four tablespoons of sugar, the two strong cups of Folgers that are his daily breakfast, are definitely unappealing. 

Didn’t Dawn bonk Wallis? 

He bluely spoons in the sweet gruel before gathering his bag. He doesn’t like the empty house, preternaturally quiet with Kylie and DJ on holiday in Cajun country. 

Or was it Wallis?

The kitchen clock sweeps by 6.30. 

Time to go.

The morning’s pungent and sweet. The refineries nestled along the Gulf Coast have been clandestinely spewing emissions over the whole of Texas. Daniel doesn’t mind the asthma of money and success – so what if it’s toxic. 

Daniel drives along the highway. He dips the visor down. The clapboard houses inside the Loop are no more than a blur at this speed. His whitewalls eat at the concrete. The fangs of downtown rise from the steaming bayou. His truck passes through the long shadows of the glass and steel teeth. Downtown is empty, devoid of humans and cars. He’s that early. He nudges his truck into place in the parking lot. 

Once on floor 33 he checks the fax. A new report from the Red River Basin has been spit out overnight. An exploration report from Wyobraska has also splattered onto the carpet. He glances at the papers when he turns on the coffee maker. Drip, drip, drip, it chortles. Progress, he notes, reaching for a Styrofoam cup, looking over the radioactivity, sonic, electrical and temperature readings for a new hole. When the seismic rabbit going to thump over the Red Desert?

Daniel leaves his door ajar. He expects Dawn anytime. Sunlight filters through the vertical blinds, hatching the interior of his office. He switches on his computer and checks his inbox. Legal has been working through the night. Champion’s landmen are scheduled to walk through the doors of the Bowie and Red River county court houses before nine a.m., part of the hoodwink of securing mineral rights. 

Gotta watch out for the competition. 

If no vampire has been there first. 

If everyone has kept his mouth shut. 

If Daniel’s nose’s right. 

The rest’s science. 

The mouse loosely scurries about under his hand. Daniel navigates to the Oil and Gas Report and reads through the industry summaries. He’s curious about Wichita and Wilbarger counties and downloads a set of maps from the Red River Authority. It’s faster than asking the geeks. 

Daniel hardly registers the gradual increase in traffic in the hall, the collegial Hiya’s and Howdy’s bouncing off the grid of cubicles and fluorescent lights. His phone rings: Legal confirms that the sections have been secured. It must be nearly ten. Where’s Dawn? Sick?

He kicks back in his leather chair and grins stupidly. He doesn’t know why he types in the letters, Clorazil, like a clue, and to his utter astonishment he’s reading about breath mints. 

Those weren’t breath mints. It wasn’t Chlorophyll. He hates plants. 

He tries the brand again in Google. 

Clozaril. 

Wow, he says, the pages accordioning down the search page – antipsychotic drugs.

That’s when the door opens. It’s Wallis, his boss in exploration, pale and droopy-faced like a catfish. 

“I was hoping to catch you,” Daniel says. “It’s about Dawn – ”

“I was going to say the same thing about you, son.”

“You need my exploration staff budget? It’s ready.”

“Nope, Dan, it’s more serious than that.”

“What,” he says. “What?” He’s stalling. He knows. He fucking knows. He’s the one.

Daniel looks at Wallis quizzically. “Fire away, Wallis. I’m all ears.” He’s in a great mood.

“I’ve had some face-time with your secretary, Dawn, this morning, after she’d spoken with the CEO.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And she told me about what transpired between the two of you last night. She’s already reported the incident and has filed with the Equal Employment Commission.”

“Sir, I didn’t touch her. You know that.”

“It’s not about touching, Daniel. You can’t threaten your employees with sexual relations.”

“It was a proposition, I admit.” He buckles. Never admit anything.

“Apparently, you told her you can either have an affair or you’d transfer her to another department? Tell me if I’m right, Danny?”

“I did, Wallis, and I apologize. I’d like to transfer her to another department. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I had to wait until now cuz I know you’re one of those guys who comes in late.”

“Dan, you’re not getting it. You don’t have a department.

 This doesn’t make a lick of sense. When Wallis moves from in front of his desk, then he notices – Wallis smells like Dawn.

“Look, Wallis, I already reported her to your department. She’s nuts. She’s on drugs, man… Wally, read her file.”

No better master of denial exists than Wallis. “If I was being harassed every day by a big guy like you I’d be on drugs too!” 

“Whoa, Wally! Please! That ain’t fair. She’s a real whore, you know that.”  Daniel shouldn’t have said that. 

“Dawn ain’t no whore.” The words fall like coins from Wallis’s mouth.

Daniel’s staring at the description of Clozaril on his screen, his brown eyes wider by the word, aching. It’s true. He doesn’t understand. Wallis cares?

“You can’t discredit Dawn.” Wallis loves Dawn?

A bead of sweat trickles down his temple, down his jaw – that psycho bitch.

“I’m afraid… I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to resign. And if you don’t we will fire you, effective immediately.”

“Wait a minute, Wally, can you repeat that?”

“Dan, resign or you’re out.”

“It looks like I’m out anyway, huh?” His voice lightens a notch.

“You’ve been a real asset Dan, a real asset to this company, but Champion can’t have the EEC on its butt. Not every hot-blooded oil dog can plug his secretary. Sometimes it’s called sexual harassment.”

“No more Champion, huh?” 

“Sorry, champ. Afraid not. It’s unfair, I know. You’ve got an hour to tender your resignation. Sign, clear your office and go.”

Screams, tears and gunfire clash under Daniel’s skin. 

He can’t believe it – Dawn, that fucking horny psycho bitch! Wally, that philander and hypocrite! Between them, they’ve no skin and no eyes.

Why didn’t I go to that goddamn restaurant? 

Why did I go home?

Why didn’t I call her last night? 

Why didn’t I stuff her panties in her mouth and fuck her behind-behind?

Daniel’s astounded by the depths of his violent misogynistic thoughts. He’s clenching his fists. His shirt is clammy, not with panic but risible anger.

“Finance will cut your last check. Goodbye, Dan.” 

Isn’t the industry in crisis? Aren’t the warning signs clear? No one’s made a major discovery in years. What are Champion gonna do without the nose?

“How was she, Wally?” 

Daniel’s a brave man. He’s gonna get punched. 

Wallis rears out of his resin-like skin. “Daniel, I know you’re an iconoclast, unusual even, and you might not like to think so, but you’re dispensable. Business will go on at Champion. Now, goodbye, bud.”

Wallis is gone – there’s no appeal.

It’s that quick.

Great, whooping circles of laughter, shot with blades of hysteria, issue from Daniel’s office. He laughs so hard his nose starts bleeding. 

Floor 33 shakes with nerves. The boss is either sick or high. No one considers it’s the miasma of disgrace.

His staff don’t know what’s wrong when they pop in to study the pale scarecrow convulsing in his chair, his nose stuffed with bloody tissue. 

Daniel tries to acquit himself with distinction once the blood has staunched. But he’s speechless, mute, fried by the damning electrodes of his choice. He mumbles and dribbles into his shirt.

Is it a relief that every workaholic moment’s over? 

He rackets the loss and counts the fall.

No more geology conferences. No more computer workshops. No more leadership seminars. No more art of rocks.

No more Petroleum Club – cornbread, chowder and blackened redfish pegged to the price of crude. 

No more bonus, work or respect.

No more good ol’boy in white hats brimming with fringe benefits – fish, golf, cards, women, tennis and javelinas on the expense account.

No more arrhythmia. No more lies or 24-7. No more dodgy business practices. No more ruining the earth.

Is this the price for being kind, for caring and for preserving his sense of self? 

He can’t handle the quick weak handshakes and peripheral glances filled with curiosity and nice-to-know-you in that last hour. It’s too much.

***

Daniel stares at the ceiling. The kitchen tiles are cool on his back. All the windows are shut against the heat. A ceiling fan stirs the air in the sitting room. Beyond the white corduroy couch Miles Davis is playing on television, the jazz not really cooling anyone. Daniel expects Godbless and his vehicle any moment. 

He’s surprised how readily he has adapted to the bungalow. It’s not been easy sleeping behind a mosquito net with only a ceiling fan weakly oscillating, his skin oily with the DEET he’s been applying to keep the bugs off. The highlight is the beach and the calm bay around Malabo. He’s a long way from delivering money-saving energy-sector strategies for the reservoir problem.

The doorbell rattles and Daniel rises. He pulls on his white mesh shirt. He waits a beat. He gets up.

The fax machine beeps and crawls a message in bubble script. 

His Excellency Gabriel asks…

It’s infuriating. The Equatoguinean government communicates to him through Poseidon’s head office in Houston. He’s living one big time delay. A bead of sweat plops on the paper. 

Godbless waits on the porch. It’s like the face of the reliquary, deep sculpted eyes and a thin long pillar for a nose and the blunt triangular cheeks. 

Daniel tears off the sheet and stuffs his pocket. He slips on his brogues. He gathers his briefcase, the paperwork for the port authority and excise in a clear plastic folder inside. Everything should be okay. Today there cannot be any excuses. The cargo has been assigned a berth.

Daniel’s wet by the time he gets in the Nissan van. It’s outlined in rust. There is no sea breeze on the flats of town. 

Godbless turns the ignition and the van coughs to life. They pass the few streets of bungalows, well kept, neutral. A pair of militia in camouflage double-check Godbless’s papers before they raise the barrier. They make Daniel take off his baseball hat. 

Daniel detects the sizzle and aroma of barbeque somewhere as they clear his tranquil neighborhood.

“What’s that statue?” asks Daniel, gesturing to the white-eyed figure pushed against the windscreen and dash. 

“This is Eshu. You don’t want to meet Eshu. We pray not to meet him. But he is our messenger.” Godbless talks with the sides of his eyes.

“He’s a god, is he?”

“Yes, Daniel, a personality. Be open-minded with Eshu. There are other explanations. Listen to me.”

A man saunters by with a bubbling array of multi-colored plastic vessels on his head. A few stands of bushmeat. Benzene. A table of cosmetics and medicines. 

The white van passes the airport on the Punta Europa. There isn’t much traffic so it can’t be Wednesday when most international flights arrive. A helicopter moves offshore. The offices of the oil corporations are near it. 

The trees soon close over them great and silent like a church. 

It’s not far to the next town.

Godbless Progress lets out the clutch and they roll down the red dirt track. He lays on the horn, warning the kids – joyrides! 

Bursts of child are descending on the bucking truck, but Dave’s too smooth for them as they buck, hop and clunk down the track dappled with large rocks. 

The town is subdued, its walls bleached of their original color, stained from the ground up with wet and mess. The town hall is a shambles, a veranda abandoned to rot, shutters weeping, beams sagging. A group of people gather around a sheet. The religious articles belong to the Church of African Unity. Four upholstered chairs are for sale in an empty lot. 

A peeling hoarding states: “Vote for the PDGE.” 

Another writes in bold capital type: “Wake up and grow more food. Be self-reliant. Your farm will yield more with fertilizer.” 

A child with a metal tray of papayas stands in the foreground. A woman walks by with a woven bag. 

The road curls around the coast, touches Basapu, passes the red huts of Balorei. Here they have to halt. A roadblock. 

They pull up beside a truck sagging with the strange, stocky mountain Bubi. The soldiers direct each bundle, cage, sack and chicken to be opened. The Bubi stare at the white van, emptied save for two sole men.

Godbless translates for Daniel and explains their business to the two bored, stoned soldiers. 

“Eh, Americano, you try La Rumba when you’re done,” one suggests as they pull away. 

The road’s ungraded and been punched on daily basis by the rain god. He lives on the rough fertile slopes of Pico Basile, wooly clouds gathering around the recently extinct volcano.

Daniel pulls his wet back away from the vinyl seat and peers through the windscreen. The van passes a group of women selling knots of snails.

 “You like those snails?”

“They’re overrated.”

“I guess so.”

“But fried they’re okay.”

“Uck!” Daniel rubs his neck. 

A group of monkeys moves across the track. Godbless accelerates towards them, mud slapping off the tires. 

“Easy.”

The canopy of the jungle hangs over the road. It rises into the interior and the lush volcanic terrain of Mount Pico. Mist licks at the trees and ferns. The van dips in and out of craters of black mud, whirring and probing forward. Daniel bounces against the door, the roof, the window or Godbless. They pass cocoa and banana plantations, sectioned by grids of dirt roads. Gangs of workers with machetes (Slaves? wonders Daniel) appear fleetingly between the gaps in the orange pods and green fingers. Godbless knows what he’s doing. The land echoes with birds, a scale bird predominant in the acoustic foreground, calling like a eerie slide whistle in the tingling noise. One of Godbless’s fingers divines with a piece of his coral necklace as he drives. 

“You like my ex-wife?”

“Which one?”

“Yonni.”

“You don’t get along with her?”

“She’s no good.”

Daniel catches his reflection in the side mirror. He realizes he’s not sweating. He must be sick. 

“You gonna help me make a mobile telephone shop because you like her?”

He hasn’t thought about it. Help?

“No problem if we stop?” Godbless asks.

“It’s all the same.”

Godbless soon pulls the van over. They step into the soft dirt. A collection of branches and a round pot placed over them mark the entrance. Godbless takes the lead, his feet padding along the wet mulch. Daniel sprays himself with some DEET and returns the soft plastic bottle to his pocket. They step into forest. There are fresh footsteps in the path. Black butterflies dart in the shadows.

The canopy vocalizes alarm. The drills are the first to bark a warning. The russet-eared guenons erupt in a chorus. The females chirp and the males hack. 

“Those tree frogs?” asks Daniel. 

A baby monkey squeals like a dog’s toy. The ground around them is pelted with excrement and rotten fruit. 

“Monkeys. If we had a gun, we’d have bush meat.”

“Can’t be too many left.” At this moment a large insect flies into Daniel’s mouth, and he struggles to spit out the mass of wings, chitin and legs. 

In a clearing some men strip a group of trees of their brown bark. The crowns of the trees are sick and thin. Bundles of bark are lashed together with lianas on the ground. 

“Hang on, what’s that about?” Daniel asks, his hands on his pelvis. “What are they harvesting?”

“They call it bihasa. They say it’s good for your dick. Come on, gringo.”

“You mean like Viagra?” Daniel’s comment filters into the mute foliage. “Hey, how long a trip’s this anyway?” 

Godbless’s shape seems to undulate in the leaves and creepers well behind his shadow. 

The men sit around the tree to smoke thick black cheroots. They look at him curiously. Plumes of blue smoke swell their heads. They nod.

Daniel fidgets for a moment and soon resumes the path, which moves into a dark zone of forest, the occasional hole of light boring through the canopy. 

“Why didn’t I take a fucking helicopter?” he asks his feet lightly pressing against the trail. 

Sweat falls into his eyes in copious, blinding quantities. Before he completes the answer bumps into what he thinks is a spray of wasps. It’s a mimic – an orchid. 

 “45 minutes by goddamn helicopter,” he says under his breath, which arrests in another moment of panic. He wants nature to be more contained. 

Godbless waits for him. He’s changed into a pair of red shorts. He’s taken off his multicolored coral necklace. 

The grove forms what could be a temple, trunks like columns, branches like vaulting, leaves like stained glass. It has been selectively culled of trees, only the most sacred and revered terrestrial wands of the spirits forming the living walls of the temple, their vitality a sign of the continued fecundity of the sacred spot. 

Two other men are here. One in red shorts kneels at a shrine, at a brass figure obscured by the shadow under the palm frond altar. It’s tied with a monkey’s tail, a black veil, a handful of feathers, two mixed handfuls of basil and cassava, a sash of blue cloth, a necklace of cowry shells. Two sooty spherical ceramic pots on a grid of branches rest on either side of the shrine. 

A juju man wears a stained smock and a green swath of cloth on his head. His forehead is scarred with three deep chevrons made permanent at manhood with a blade, dung and ash. He’s charge, chanting sonorously. He dips a tin can into a calabash of water and pours it over the devotee in red shorts, who hoots for a breath. The juju man beckons to Godbless. 

Daniel steps after him but Godbless is already receiving the waters, his red shorts darkening with the touch of wetness, and Daniel restrains himself at the edge of the ritual, peering into the shrine. Next to the brass figure is a dark mass of mud and bone impregnated around a monkey skull.  

The juju man reaches the end of his verses and stoops for his bag of charms. He promptly sits down and casts the bones or nuts between his legs, divining.  

Godbless beams. “Don’t worry, gringo. It’s a blessing for good health. Do you want one from the good old ancestors?” 

Daniel shakes and nods his head simultaneously. None of his folk are buried here. Eindhoven, maybe. Glasgow, possibly. 

He inhales the myth – the white man in Africa – so deeply that he faints. 

Daniel tips into the shrine and unseats the god of good health before anyone can react to prevent him. 

He swims through the god’s fire; he lands in the pot, he is soon cooking in oil.

Let the blanco walk, Godbless assumes, he’ll find what he’s looking for. The attention of the old priapic men has exorcized his malice. 

Stare at the Smell

Shango drives the fanboat hard and fast along the neck of water. His sons Tino and Nana stare at the gray narcotic water baffling under the flat craft. The terminals and tank farms fluctuating with the meniscuses of supply are behind them, through the dicing blades of the fan encaged in wire. 

The oil is red and rancid on the shore of the lagoon. The water is cluttered with lumber and trash, people hastily jumping from log to cup. The land is dying from the release of mud, cement and other mutant drilling fluids in the area. The bones of the mangroves stretch into the dead water defined by broken canes and a poisoned aspect, in some places wiped away by the advance of the drillers and their flat-bottomed barges chewing at the river deposits. The derrick shrieks at one blunt end and the helipad is mum at the other. Two tugs push the barge against the swamp. Ponds have been excavated for the boiling mud and the drillers have lit a flare to burn off the toxic gas kicking up from the earth. Swirls of oil and fluids color the water with a foul, deadly rainbow. The bank is ripped asunder and nothing is alive except for some villagers who have come by pirogue to trade with the oil workers sweating under their plastic hard hats. One rests on a big coupling hose. 

The graceful prows of the pirogues rest on the sandy shore. The village is battened down with woven reed walls and staked with poles. More boats float low in the water, laden with harvest and goods, some covered with yellow tarps. People stride on the shore, as unconcerned as turtles about the oil workers. 

Shango struggles with the wind and noise and the old charts of the pipeline network tucked into a sun-cracked plastic folder. He squints at the water and they turn over a creek. 

Unmarked barges lie in the lattice of waterways. They gather around many of the flowstations, junctions and manifolds of the pipeline network. Illegal valves and hoses siphon off the oil. The creeks are black and red with new and old. 

The muddy hole around the pipe has been enlarged. The pipe’s covering has been chipped off. This part of the network is off. 

Shango cuts the engine. The boat coasts to the shore. Water ripples to the bank. He pulls on his rubber boots. He has a tool to ensure the supply for the illegal lines. Shango shakes his head and pushes the saw’s trigger. It whines like a wasp. He must be careful with the sparks inside and out as the blade bites into the metal pipeline and he readies the holes for the valves. 

A valve bunkered into the pipeline may temporarily lift Shango’s people from their penury or be part of a larger systematic enterprise to smuggle the stolen oil to an adjoining country for refining. He’s here to supervise his sons, Tino and Nana, as part of their operations skimming the state and company revenues. They’re heads are tied with red bandanas. They keep scepters by their sides. Their arms are at the ready. They could expect a patrol of army soldiers in flak jackets with a machine gun mounted on a tripod between two giant outboards. The army knows not to come, but sometimes there are conflicts over who takes what. Shango pushes back his beaver top hat, today endowed with a white feather. He shakes the cork necklace around his throat.

The oil collects in pools dented with the marks of buckets. It’s magenta and orange and bleeds over everything like Martian bile. Stumps poke through the mud from where there’s been fire. White cocoons of bony ash are all that’s left of the many people who were on site when the explosion ignited. Some are recognizable, suffocated by the great fire, and others not. Many clutch funnels, cups and cans. 

Two holes are punched in the pipeline like eyes. His work with the flex is accurate and true. Behind the eyes is a wet shiny slick of oil, perfumed like spume and ambergris. Turnings of metal are sharp, screwed and twisted around the holes. He’s covered in sparks and tiny crawling maggots of metal.

Tino brings the valves and the welding apparatus from the boat and Nana struggles with the coils of line, stepping in and out of the rattling hoops of plastic. 

He squats and considers the empty leaky tricky sockets, cooling.

A woman with charred legs and a man with an arm burnt and wrinkled like a raisin approach them. Their hair is cropped. She has no more than plastic thongs and a piece of fabric. A dead baby is strapped to her back. The man’s shorts don’t cover his private parts. They offer Shango kola nuts, four white cocks and bean cake as tribute. He’s glad to take them and share them with his band. 

With a sure rip, Shango clips off the head of a cock and drinks the warm blood. Feathers decorate his mouth. He’s a believer in the restorative elixir. The cock trembles in his hand and he tosses it toward the boat. The couple bow gratefully that their offering has been accepted and gather round the operation. Despite their burns, it’s good to see the black gold freed from the government and companies again. This is compensation.

Shango ignites the hissing blue worm of the welding torch. Tino drops the valves into the eyelets and twists them in. Shango applies the solder. The beads drop and seal the circle of the illegal outlet. The metal cools quickly from white to red to gray, and Shango wipes his chin in satisfaction, the sweat falling like rain. 

Nana connects the hoses to the valves and unrolls the goofy coils towards the creek. 

A long solemn hoot turns over the water like an owl.

“Figo!” shout Nana and Tino in unison, looking up from their work. 

The barge slices through the buttery water, high and empty, hull rusty, uncared for and tethered to one of the band’s strong boats piloted by Figo. The barge pulls alongside the shore. Figo cuts the engines and leaps onto the barge. Nana and Tino gather the ropes and anchor it neatly. 

Figo, grinning, skates on his rollerblades over the deck, spinning on his tiny rink, the barge resounding like a drum. 

Shango wipes his dripping face. Once the tap’s turned on, he can pause to finalize his plans for the Gulf. 

***

Daniel leaves a hefty tip for the maid before his grand tour. She’s been far too kind to him during his stay in Cacahual Village so far. She’s stoically cleaned up after his recuperation of whores and drink. 

It’s been fun, of that he’s in no doubt. A rejuvenated bluster empowers his movements. He’s reborn, ready for his job, even his family. Whether obligation or folly, he’s adamant on fixing the reservoir conundrum first. The disability may be over, but the problem in the field remains, depletion, the word every petroleum geologist shudders to hear. It’s not quite time to rove home and make a robust restart.

He double-checks: he has no drugs, alcohol or firearms. 

The taxi bleats to the heliport. More foreboding Quonset buildings have gone up along sniper’s alley, the long straight shot from Malabo. The clean typography and logos of the international players are pinned on the metal skins. Arrays of pipes, pumps and shakers sleep in the industrial yards. The mood is threatening and dystopian. 

Daniel makes the metal bird with no time to spare. He gushes on with no thought of his preoccupying dread of the chipped up chopper. He gulps on takeoff. No amount of undoing will save him from the fact that he’s in a Cuisenaire again. For his peace of mind, it’s not Guido flying. 

The people disappear into dots, spots, suds. The Sikorsky rises over the horn of plenty. The rigs are everywhere, big chunks of sea junk, hazard and hive. They build and learn. They organize and evolve perfectly to their function. He shudders. In the pay of many masters, they make his living day possible. His nose wrinkles convulsively. The air’s redolent of ink, the black factories burning on the surface of the Gulf, beacons for the huge ships that are essential to coddling the oil to market.

He’s flying on a cardboard box trying to get there, sheltering his ear in his cupped hand, as uncomfortable as a cat in a bag. His ear whispers like a dry wind. His shirt whips around his head.

The chopper thumps around the Jade. 

Surely that’s Bigfoot waving from the derrick, unfurling a banner: Welcome Back Danny Grace!

The bird perches on the rig with a deft beat of its wings.

He unbuckles, sets aside the ear defenders it what is now routine. He nods to the pilot and alights with panache, pleased and confident. 

The chopper churns on the helideck, fluffing and compressing the heavy diesel air about the rig.

A violent hissing startles him and he quickly turns to the noise. The Sikorsky’s emergency flotation bags are expanding from its ribs like four large yellow growths. The pilot pummels the instrument panel in anger as the craft gently floats on the helideck. It’s a fiasco but at least it didn’t happen when airborne. 

Daniel wryly smiles. The pilot will need some help tucking those away if anyone’s to arrive or depart today. The difference a button makes. He acknowledges the merits of a commute by sea.

He retreats down the stairs and through the port to Admin.

Egghead eagerly slaps him on the back. “Hey, Danny, congratulations on making it back, bud! We had a pool going for your family in case you died – 2,413 dollars in pledges. Not a record but not bad, ace.”

“I’ll be glad to take it and leave now,” he says. It’s enough for a flight for his body home. 

“Nah,” Egghead says, conciliatory, “You stay put, Mr. Grace and help us out. We’ve had our share of accidents.” His thin lips turn at the corners of his mouth uncannily.

Daniel’s feet tap down the stairway welded onto the outside of the stacks. The high contrast of the olive and orange paint sickens him. He passes a group of technicians supposedly on the way out. Regret fills his steps on the gangway. He places his muster card next to the cute lifepods and ducks into the stacks to find his old home, cabin 202, the same metal box disguised as comfort zone. He’s drops his duffel bag on the bunk, has time to pee and plaster down his black hair when his extension rings – Sherm the Worm. 

“Welcome, Shellback Grace!” 

God, he hates the country-boy tone of the fucker. He’s not even worth the axe it’d take to chop up a cooter like him.

“Good day, Sherman,” he says, his voice saccharine and false.

“Report to my quarters immediately,” Sherm says sternly, a touch of prison warden to his request.

He writhes in his Reeboks with obedience. There’s no avoiding a showdown about Sherm’s mismanagement of the problem. “I was about to dispatch myself, sir.” 

At the hatch to the main deck, he drops his sneakers off and slips on his steel-toed boots.

Daniel crosses the drill floor. The rig has lost none of its gut-churning primal loudness. A roustabout is hosing down the muddy area cluttered with equipment. Chico directs a toothpick into his mouth with a grease-soaked glove. His men screw together a section of pipe, the threads shining and sharp, the derrickman swinging in the works of the derrick high above. The men stamp around the hole, dancing for oily rain. He’s surprised to not see Luke in the driller’s doghouse but someone else entirely. 

That’s not like Luke to avoid a temporary glitch, he thinks. 

He gives pause at the health and safety notice outside Sherm’s office. 

Welcome to the Jade. This rig is operated and maintained by safety conscious people. We have operated 0005 days with no accidents. Please help us continue our record and observe our safety rules. Thank you.

The Jade war room is Sherm’s office. He’s decked out his desk with an extra computer, more plastic buckets of pills and a large banana-like sonde. Images and maps are pinned down with textbooks on reservoir mechanics. 

“Look what Houston’s sent us, Danny.” He leers with his offhand manner at the probe and nudges him on the shoulder. “How you doing, boy?”

“Defying the odds,” he says. “Trying to think like a geologist not an economist.”

“Houston?”

“They’re ‘working’ on it.”

“Right.” 

“Those our rocks?” He nods at the chips. They smell too watery and wet.

“You want to take a look at the subsea wells with a ROV, huh? It seems superfluous to me when we can look right down the hole with this new puppy.” He pats the sonde on his desk.

“You asked Luke his opinion?”

“Danny, Luke’s no longer with us.” 

“By with us, you mean, Luke’s no longer with the Jade or no longer of this earth?”

“He got hauled up into the drawworks. We cut him down and medvaced him to J’burg.” He shrugs. He’s cavalier. “Luke lost a lot of chest. We had to stop drilling for a few days to get things right again. But I’m glad to report everything’s going smoothly now with the my new Bubbas so you can find us that slippery, slimy thing of a man underground.”

“That’s the bottom line, isn’t it?”

“Neptune don’t stop for no one. Luke’s lucky the Lord of the Seas stopped at all.”

It’s a terrible blow. His only reasonable ally is maimed if not dead.

“I say my prayer’s every day, boy. You should too.” Sherm spits a wad of tobacco juice into a cup. “You’re the hotshot geologist, Grace. You know somethin’ or not?”

His task is to listen and gather more information on the structure of the reservoir. It’s already a disaster. Malaise has spread in the formation. The work is sloppy and incomplete. They need an entirely new set of tools. He’s flummoxed.

“To start, I’d drop that sonde and ROV if it’s all right with you.”

“Be my guest.”

“The open hole you’ve been completing the holes with is the wrong approach. The arms of the reservoir are too watery.” He splays his hand over Sherm’s charts and leans towards the spitting fool.

“We tried cement and perfs too.” 

“Won’t work.”

“So what will?”

“An injection of patience.”

“Hydrophones told us where it was long ago. We waited enough, boy.”

“Was or is?”

“Is, that’s my hunch. We know it’s down there.”

“Like I don’t know that.”

“Danny, the beancounters ain’t none too happy.”

“Tell you what. You crack the topdrive and drop the whole string in the ocean. See if I care about your incompetence.”

This Danny Grace’s a jinx and insubordinate.

“That’s why I want to take a look, Sherm.”

“I’ll shove you in that goddamn pipe if you want and you can look all you want. You’d like that, goatboy.”

“Why don’t you crawl up your own ass and die, Sherm.” His collar’s hot and tacky.

“I had my eye on you all along.” He tone’s eerie, sexual.

Daniel runs his hands through his hair. He gulps. He might as well say it. What’s there to lose? “You’re doing it all wrong Sherm. And you’ve bullied everyone else into believing you too.”

“The production statistics don’t lie.” Sherm’s voice flattens.

“I’m not talking about statistics and how you rejigger them to justify your job, Sherman. Look at the Jade, your boat and kingdom, Sherman. Do you see any great morale among the men? Do you have any idea what your cracker-ass racist attitudes are doing? You’re a disgrace for ex-Navy. You’re past your date, Sherm.”

“Not my style.” He’s curt and uncompromising. He’s confident his tribe of men supports his mania for order and segregation. 

“Tell that to Poseidon HQ.”

“You’re threatening me with Houston, goatboy?” He glowers with his beady eyes.

“Look, Sherman, either relax and we find a solution together, or find yourself another geologist who doesn’t mind the colorline. Either way, there’s over four hundred rigs down the coast of Africa that can use me.”

“Make my day.” Sherm washes his throat with some tobacco juice.

“I’d prefer to turn things around here. Let’s see what’s down there.” Even if it’s a compromise, he really does care to see that liquid gold return in the quantities of yore.

“Shake on it.” 

“Frankly, I wouldn’t touch you with another man’s dick. But I’ll agree to disagree.” He stretches out his hand. 

“I can deal.” A black man would never give Sherman this much trouble. He’d have whipped him and lynched him first.

“Maybe it’s inevitable that this reservoir is almost done.” 

“Maybe. But the search goes on. They’ll just tow us to another hell. Don’t forget the Jade’s a boat.” 

Within range of the old redneck, Daniel notices a tinge of alcohol in Sherm’s breath, probably the same judgment-impairing alcohol that led to Luke’s misfortune, dangling from the derrick like an effigy. That’s his ace against the Sherm. It’s enough for Worm’s dismissal and blacklisting from the industry – not that he’d do to a man what was once done to him.

***

The Hipolita Micha slowly chugs away from Malabo harbor into the vast territory of Equatorial Guinea’s waters. Once neglected, forlorn and virtually scuppered, the rivets in Hipolita’s sides have been repaired and her engine restored, thanks to the attention and ingenuity of Sean Coltrane. 

It’s a very late launch for Sean, without pomp and without ceremony. On this sweltering evening no one cares about the droll resumption of the Hipolita’s patrol as the sole flagship of the Equatoguinean Coast Guard. The town fades into haze and humidity as the swells gently lap at the boat, the sea murmuring pleasantly like a lover. 

In his cabin Sean Coltrane is a little worse for wear from the affections of alcohol and hospitality of the local girls. His breath is still sweet with rum.

The razor scrapes against his face. He has to carve the whiskers out of his pockmarks.  His Remington’s given up in the humidity and heat and no use on the surplus boat free of modern conveniences. 

Where the hell did Army take him? La Bamba? Pizza Place? Rumba?

Who was that girl? Yolanda? York?  

He can only remember the girl’s sandals – they were black and made of tires. 

Whiskers drip into the tiny dirty sink, wiggle down his neck, trickle down his smooth chest into the bib of his vest. Sean wipes it off with a dirty towel. 

“Is this my razor?” he asks aloud. Looking at the nicks under his jaw, he says, “I’m gonna get hepatitis with this.” 

Today he needs to catch up with his dossier: the International Marine Bureau has issued a new index of pirate attacks. Pirates have been stretching their range from the Niger Delta, migrating into Cameroonian and Gabonese waters around the Bokassi Peninsula, Cross River and elsewhere. 

Only one hundred sixty kilometers of water separate Bioko Island from the trouble of the Niger Delta. The area around the Bight of Biafra has seen a surge of kidnapping of platform staff, bunkering of pipelines, piracy, drug smuggling, gun running and interethnic violence. Minor players like that shouldn’t worry a man like Sean Coltrane schooled in the big game of war, but they do.

Huge yet utterly vulnerable, the tankers are cautious. Small craft leap out from Africa like love darts. They hope to have enough speed and stamina to board and gut a big fish. The Gulf is a soft target. No navy yet protects the weak link in the supply chain. Electric fences on their decks or private armed escorts are the only precautions they employee against pirates, but the giant boats have no fancy guns to keep attackers off. 

Sean presses the creases out of his shirt and shorts and leaves his cabin, strapping on his shoulder holster and snugly cradled Gloc on the way. 

Even with a fresh coat of maritime paint, Hipolita is hopelessly outdated as the vanguard of security for the oil infrastructure. Despite Sean’s efforts at procurement, the boat’s not much use without radar, radio, fax, satellite navigation or arms. 

He boxes his own forehead in disbelief and it hurts. It’s not even a yacht. 

The fields are coming into range, the factories menacing and smoky on the water. Sean studies them through his binoculars, clearly able to read Serpentina and Harrier on one of the clusters gathered around a flare buoy. 

“That’s Poseidon’s block,” he acknowledges from the deck to the skeleton crew. Four reactivated Coast Guard men stand quietly around the skipper urging the boat forward.

Sean takes a position over the baby cutter’s bow. He leans and stares deep into the salty blue, guessing at the shape of the ancient coast and rivers buried below. The water smells like chum, oil and guts. The surface is dotted with plastic bottles, sandals, cups, tires, balls, toys, bags, nets and wrappers drifting from continent to continent in the oceanic whirlpool. It’s turgid in spots, mud covertly dumped from the rigs. So much for the word of the oil companies to shepherd the seascape. 

Other industry vessels ply the water: pipelaying barges unspooling the subsea networks; supply boats relaying pipe, drill bits, pumps, separators and chemicals; seismic ships towing their hydrophones; exploration vessels outlining the real estate, locked in place with dynamic positioning anchors over the lucrative formations. It’s a fast and commendable harvest, and no one seems to flinch about the drop in production rumored to be Poseidon’s bad luck. Everything is roaring ahead, no questions asked, for the petrocrats have declared the end of shortages. 

Hipolita bumbles over the soft swells of the sea and night wraps around the sky, the sun falling like a stone. The column of color reaches from the horizon; it’s broken into three separate bands by degree, current and water. Soon darkness cuts over the water like a knife. Mount Basil defines the glorious, alluring backdrop of Bioko Island coated in warm light. Mount Cameroon rises through the haze of the mainland, kinetic and massive.

The ships are bathed in floodlights, glimmering on the seas like glowing bees. Above the stars turn brilliant. The boat is idling, bobbing in the current. The compass slowly tracks their bearings.

Sean leans on the bridge. He talks with the skipper in a hushed tone. 

“We’d establish a patrol out here, buddy. You’d have radar to keep an eye out for, nonessential craft in the shipping lanes. In the military we used AWACS for twenty years on the Gulf Coast. Now it’s contracted out. Funny goddamn business.” 

Sean Coltrane laughs for a beat, his head swollen with alcoholic goo, the hard man reduced to a specter of himself. He takes a look at his Tag Heuer chronograph. The hammock in his quarters is singing his name. 

The skipper scans through the VHF bands. It is intermittently jammed with whistles, then hits bands of insults:

Hey, monkey, you Igbo monkey, I pour palm oil in your ears and anus.

Hey, you Fang pig, I make your brother fuck your sister. 

Hey, you lions, I kill you if you cry.

All is dark.

***

Their faces are encrusted with salt. Nana and Tino nod. The old man’s tongue is like a blade in the darkness, tattooed blue. Onboard a shrine flickers with candlelight. Shango leaves a coin, a token to auspiciousness, and passes a juju of human bone and osprey feather through the flame. 

“May you bless us,” Shango says, “May we not encounter you.” 

The boat is ready and refueled. The four 250-horsepower Mercury outboard engines have been muffled and the exhausts exit underwater. All the way from the delta they have hummed in silence, chasing the every present line, disk, then clearly mountains of Bioko Island to their meeting point beyond the flares of Malabo.

Shango’s boys have done well. He’s clearly content with the low technology arsenal of speed, bullets and grenades. He does not see it so much as hear it, his eyes clouded with the smoky cataracts that eat his eyes. 

They wait at the mooring in the mangrove creek. They miss one companion.

Figo distributes the fuel into drums. Nana checks the steerage of the boat. Tino has cleaned, distributed and stowed the rocket-propelled grenades, Kalashnikovs and machetes that will work for them. Shango makes the laws. He is the sacred and the undead. 

He clatters off some rounds from his machine gun that Tino has rebuilt. The rounds vanish into the dark, still brine; the reports merge with the noise of the night, the hunting, eating and mating of the forest, the fall of ripe fruit and the concert of tumbling leaves.

Footsteps and a shadow approach. 

The men gather their guns. Tino pushes back a dread.

“Yonni, my child,” says Shango. He stares at the sweet cannabis-like smell of Mrs. Progress. 

She’s welcomed aboard with high fives and slaps to the back. She’s lithe and tough and her fighting brothers look at her with desire. She changes quickly from her short skirt to her old corduroys. She retrieves her vest and pulls it over her tank top and pendulous breasts. The journey can be cold. She loops her crucifix and whistle over her head. It’s been updated with new graffiti: NO GOD, NO BLESS. 

She smiles ironically – God don’t bless, God don’t care, so don’t blame him. She’s dull inside – fucking foreigners for information hasn’t helped her sense of self since her divorce and the horror of trying to break open her head. Her husband is a fool.

“Give me my RPG!” Yonni commands Tino. 

The stick has a pale green cone, a large flange for the exit of the plume and a shoulder strap. She slings it over her shoulder and pulls her hair into a warlike spray. 

Nana trips the engines, the water bubbling with deadly silence.

Shango sighs deeply, delighted with his navy. He moves easily in the old camouflage of the Biafran army to his place behind the captain’s wheel. 

Clop-clop, clop-clop thuds his waffled top hat. 

The flume of water rises behind them, swallowed in the claws of the mangroves.

The fleet boat bounces over the swells. On occasion the exhaust rises out of the waves and deafens them. Dolphins give chase but they’re too lackadaisical for the watery bullet. It bucks and pitches. The warriors’ spines and heads compress with each leap over the waves. A hasty decision would be death at this speed. 

The rind of new moon is cold and black. 

Shango navigates by smell. He can sense the sweat of the white men out in the Gulf even if the flares make his targets very apparent. 

“Hey!” says Tino, “What’s that?”

They cut the engines. 

It’s not a pirogue fishing out far from the mainland, but something more substantial, its navigations lights dim, wounded and inviting.

“We shall practice, yes?” asks Yonni, looking forward to the threat of her RPG. 

“Take the pipe,” Tino says, handing her a hollow stick and quiver of tiny darts. 

Shango nods. Of course a warm-up would be good. There’s no traditional opponent out here. Equatorial Guinea is a sleepy place, its waters sleepier still. Shango remembers fondly the silhouette of the old ineffective vessel. Why not embarrass the Coast Guard.

Tino, Yonni, Figo and Nana scramble out to the bow. Shango hushes the boat and it coasts with finesse alongside the marooned craft. 

Hipolita quivers with a soft kiss. 

Sean turns in his anxious rummy sleep, half awake. 

What, he wonders, lost in the squall of his dreams. 

Friendly whale? Lost container? Submerged reef? Grisly nightmare? Sexy nameless? Slaver of yore? Dawn chorus? Post-traumatic stress?

Feet pit-pat down the port side. The thud of bodies falling soon accompanies that of disturbance. Agitated voices approach and Sean leaps from his hammock, his shoulders gaining in blood and tension. Sean pats the dark for his weapon. He locates his Gloc in the holster. Somebody’s on the boat. 

“Welcome!” he booms, bursting out the flimsy door. 

Sean has misjudged the scale of his opponents; he isn’t expecting a knot of kids, who burst for cover before he can decide whom to shoot. 

Yonni raises the tube to her lips and with a burst of her lungs ejects a dart.

Sean slips his fingers around the wound in his neck. His Gloc falls from his plastic hand, discharging, ricocheting among the metalwork, to which Nana responds with a burst of Kalashnikov fire – abrupt stunted shots. 

Tino clubs Nana behind the ears to stop.

“Must I apologize before killing you?” asks Yonni, her burr thick with colonial English, a cutlass drawn. 

“Yeah… no – yeah.” 

Despite all the training Sean has encountered, gaining seniority and diplomas as a Military Resource Professional, he isn’t prepared for feathers biting at his neck. He leaps from the plank of consciousness, snoring into the venom, harpooned and blubbering.

***

The Sealion ROV is retooled on the green aft deck among the drums, cables and rust. The clumsy bug rests on its skids. The technician wipes its eyes in their plastic housings and calibrates the sensors. Claws, lights and motors are tested for defects. Servos whir and arms click, rudimentary but useful if something needs fixing below. The frame of the underwater car contains all its instruments and mind, the connectors, hydraulics and compensators that make aquatic robotics possible. The merbot wears a yellow crown for buoyancy, for it’s reliable in theory. Another frame containing tools is bolted to its top. They might want to clean around the hole. 

Bigfoot’s hands rest idly in the pockets of his overalls. He’s engrossed. 

“Pretty cool eyeball,” he says to the technician. 

“C3PO,” quips the water nerd, not paying too much attention to the Wookiee over his shoulder.

It’s a bummer that he’s not a diver. Down below is where the real money’s at, so Bigfoot’s been told, breathing laughing gas and fighting fish. But the machines inexorably replace all the brawn below: they brush and clean the platform; dredge and plough the pipe; wrench together the subsea system; inspect with radiation and repair with friction welds. Bigfoot’s too late. The ROVs are winning: there’s no communication problem like with a diver; they never tire and they never need more food or air.

The winch is positioned carefully and the remote craft is hoisted aloft. It swings and creaks slightly on the metal wire.

The sea boils with the crawdad’s descent, foaming like salt added to the vast crock of roiling water. 

The ROV anxiously thrusts away from the platform, the operator at the controls in the stack. 

Daniel is on call, stoked for a vicarious adventure to the last frontier. He leans on a railing in the coring area. The deck is the best place to wait before the visual verdict: there’s no lies out here. He flips through his notes on his clipboard and ticks through his ideas about the solution with his pencil under the deck’s bright bulbs. It’s a foul strident environment – no need to pretend it’s home like in the canteen or rec room. He stares out at the water, blacker than the night. Fish, squid and birds bump together under the ambient light.

The Jade has drilled sixteen subsea wells; an additional five wells are for water injection to flush out the oil. From the trees capping the wells, the oil and gas moves through manifolds and over twenty-five miles of flexible and rigid flowlines on the ocean’s surface. They all collect at temple-like columns, the risers that tower from the ocean floor and pump the oil near the surface. The last part of the journey through a series of hoses brings the oil, gas and water aboard the Zafiro Producer. 

The vessel vacuums the formation day by day, the ultimate haven for oil. The topsides are dedicated to processing and the undersides to storage. Every few days a tanker, high in the water, comes to moor at its bow via the gargantuan hose floating on the ocean’s surface. Bleached by the tropical sun, Zafiro’s old name is just legible: The Swift. For now she’s leashed in place by twelve twenty-ton anchors for the next ten years or until the bone is dry. A cord of frothy displacement dumps down into the sea.

With a capacity of fifty million gallons of oil, Zafiro never stops separating and treating the crude, disposing of the water and flaring off the excess gas. Boilers keep her supplied with steam and energy to operate round the clock and constantly fill her half-mile of guts.

The tanker sinks incrementally, hour by hour, day by day, remorselessly asking for more. When full, as on this night, it emits a final burp and casts off for the ride to Poseidon’s Houston refinery, tooting a long melancholy goodbye to the men like Daniel, willing to jump off the deck for a chance to strike dry land. 

Looking out to sea, how he’s forgotten how claustrophobic is this wafer of mud, men and steel!

Another tanker soon moors to take its place, the navigation lights dancing the slow winking ballet of fireflies.

The Jade reverberates with noise, gargling, expectorating, rinsing like a sore throat. The flare boom is howling like a coyote. The high-pitch of the equipment is something he can never get used to. Daniel’s steel-toed boots clang down the corrugated metal stairs.

Past a metal hatch in the stacks, the noise dampens as soon as he opens the door to the subsea control room. 

“Hiya!” says the subsea operator, extending his hand from his swivel chair, “Sherm said yah’d be comin’. Welcome aboard my sub, C3PO.”

“Thanks,” says Daniel, wiping away the sweat of expectation.

“C3PO’s down at the surface now. Got a hand it to him, Sherman’s a puppy for good timing. You’ll be able to see the drillcone, wellheads and subsea pumps for yerself. Neat stuff.”

“I was catching up,” he says. 

On this night without wind and waves, Jade is self-contained, perfect, a cat unto itself purring, feeding on the warm lap on the ocean, drawing the dregs of Africa’s ancient rivers into her bowels. 

The operator asks, “Coke? Mars bar?”

Daniel shakes his head.

The bank of monitors stares back at him. What looks like dandruff and dust float on the screens, strangely circumscribed with light. 

“That’s the flowline you see there,” says the operator. 

He can’t make out a thing in the blizzard of blue darkness. 

“If we had a diver down, he’d be straddling that pipe.”

“What pipe?”

“Don’t you see it?”

“Go nuts, buddy. I was onshore before and easier to see what we were doing.”

“Now’s your chance!” 

He’s pessimistic about his submarine notions. The trace showed over three-hundred feet of oil-bearing pay, consistent with all the reports. 

“It don’t matter what you did tofore, Dan! Right off, you strike me as honest and we ain’t got too many salts like that out here. The pricks who end up offshore! They say you gotta be a little fucked up – double Y chromosomes in half of us, and head wounds in the rest, so you know somethin’s wrong. Let me turn up the lights and you can see better.”

The operator has ten monitors to guide him. A virtual-reality interface allows him to control the ROV. He’s got a trackball and an armor-like glove. The ROV follows a piece of pipeline some 3,000 meters on the seafloor. Depth, bearing and dive number are recorded on the screens. The sensors x-ray and inspect the flowlines for cracks. All is in working order around a manifold. They’re moving at a steady three knots.

Tubeworms sway appealingly. A lumpfish blinks back. A vent blacks the water with its mineral chimney. Coils of lava decorate the seafloor. 

“Welcome to the car park,” says the operator, pointing to a roof-like shelf of rock supported by columns and endlessly hollow. 

“That’s a drained lava lake, I’d reckon,” Daniel responds. “But what’s that parked in there?”

A carpet of spider crabs, pink and voracious, crawl over one another like cockroaches. The camera zooms and he can see them devouring one another. 

C3PO covers the deep seascape, without night, without day, and like the Jade in its hectic aspect.

Another monitor is sublime, beautiful and unexpected like a good dream.

Dolphins are darting around a half-suspended, half-deflated orb of plastic, passing it around in an approximation of the world game. They’re nudging around the ball, sounding and shrieking like mermaids, Poseidon’s fleet warhorses.

His mouth hangs open in wonder at all the horrors and all the joys stirring beneath the watery firmament. 

Without warning the blue siren starts shrieking and flashing over the Jade. 

The blue siren means business.

It’s time to muster and jump! 

In the distance the pipe is working the hole, stirring like a straw, turbulent like a whirlpool. They’re almost there! They can’t resist knowing what’s there before they evacuate! Daniel and the operator are fastened to their seats and nod together knowingly. 

The noise is rising, the alarm shaking them like an approaching train. 

Shouts run down the corridor. 

Glass breaks in a concert of panic. 

Shots boom into the tight, compressed air of the stack. 

The door is kicked open and it swings into the operator’s back with a soft whack. Yonni’s RPG is armed and she grips a cutlass between her teeth. A Nokia pokes from her the waistband of her corduroys, next to a Gloc. Her Tag-Heuer ticks neatly in the moment of surprise.

“Daniel?” she says, her voice sweet with peril, “You were looking for me in Malabo? After all you told me, sweetheart, I came looking for you. But before I kill you all, don’t cry.”

Figo skates down the corridor, twirling and shouting like a juggernaut, his Kalashnikov wildly blazing at the men, quarters and labs. 

Woo-woo! 

Woo-woo!

Then he flips over the taped clips, the shots and shouts turning into one single staccato horn of fear.

Woo-woo!

Woo-woo! 

Yonni seizes the cutlass when she sees the operator flinch unexpectedly. In one fast gazelle-like move she whacks once, twice and a final time through the man’s wrist. The blade meets the instrument panel and sparks. It’s severed. Then comes the blood.

The ROV’s cable recklessly tangles around the pipe. The mission is aborted when the operator’s hand falls from the panel to the floor and the blood gushes out, liquid and mud-like.

“Give it to Daniel,” she says, cold as fire. The sinews in her arm pulse.

The operator gives his hand to Daniel. 

“Put it in your mouth,” she says cunningly.

Generators still boom somewhere.

Daniel puts the hand in his mouth.

It twitches like a spider against his teeth. He’s nauseated, but danger keeps the spume down, the emotions whirling beneath the surface and that if given expression are surely his death. Boning a dead goat is simple in comparison.

“Assemble on the drill deck.” Yonni Progress gestures with the RPG and cutlass. 

Blood issues from the hand and the fingers have stopped moving. The operator calls in shock. 

“He needs a tourniquet.” Daniel manages to mumble around the fingers in his mouth, certainly not a microphone, thankfully not a penis.

“He’ll live. The others have. Now go.” 

No empathy colors Yonni’s squinty high eyes.

“Please be so kind to tell me who’s Sherm the Worm so I may visit him first with violence.”

Daniel doesn’t volunteer to help her. He hates Sherm too, but he won’t give such a sentence deliberately.

The operator talks. Like a traitor, he’s fallen into himself like a collapsed egg.

“Try his quarters – 303. But he’s tough.”

She laughs a deep hysterical note. The idea of a tough man is anathema to Yonni Progress. She knows they’re all soft. Even Shango. She doesn’t wait for them but idles down the corridor, rife with destruction and dripping with blood. Yonni double-checks the rooms as she goes but Figo’s cleared any resistance.

He reads “No God, No Bless” on her jacket. He wants to believe this is a different woman than Yonni Progress, but the slogan can’t be a coincidence. She really is Godbless’s ex-wife.

He removes the warm hand from his mouth when she’s gone. He spits methodically and gives it back to the disabled operator, who clasps it in the crux of his good arm, looking hopefully at the thing as if it can be sewn or melted back on in time. 

It tastes like a beard of sweaty yellow fear and he can’t get the gore out of his mouth by spitting alone. 

He tears a long strip of cloth from a discarded Texas A&M sweatshirt in the hall and tightens it around the operator’s forearm with the aid of a metal ruler.

“We should put that hand on ice,” he says.

“Yeah, while it lasts,” says the operator, grimly cradling his weeping stub. 

They detour to the canteen. No sign of Pepe. The equipment’s smashed to pieces but the ice-maker is full. Daniel finds a cooler and scoops up the ice and places the hand in the middle, not before wrapping it in a towel and loosely in plastic wrap to keep it from burning in the cold. It’ll have to do until they can summon help. 

“Take it or leave it?”

“Leave it,” says the operator, “But write my name on it before you stash it in the walk-in.”

He uses a marker from Pepe’s office to do so. 

It’s a cool and pleasant shelter behind the nickel-plated walls of the giant icebox and shelter. Tomorrow’s breakfast is already prepped on the shelves. He slides the cooler into place. It’s clearly marked: ROV operator’s hand. He doesn’t know the fellow’s name.

The operator washes his stub and fills the sink with blood. The last few inches are blue and purple from the tourniquet.

With some jeopardy, Daniel makes a scabbard from cardboard and tape, and slides a paring knife into it. He tapes it around his hairy calf – something for later.

The platform is hushed, the flare extinguished, the Topdrive and Kelly dormant in the derrick. The onshore lights of Malabo are also off, except for the AMPCO flare burning bright at the foot of Mount Basil. Zafiro Producer is blacked out too. Tools and pipes are askew around the cluttered deck. 

Daniel and the operator join the half-circle of hostages. Some are grazed or wounded. They’re all roughed up and ashamed, defeated by the element of surprise by the five pirates roaming the platform rounding up the stragglers. 

Sean Coltane lies in a heap before them, their example and guardian angel bleeding profusely from his chest. He’s been bayoneted on his right side. His ribs and lung tickle the bloody floor.

Nana stands guard. He’s terrifying in his countenance, grinning and smoking a hugely pungent joint. He has a white feather tied around his dreads with a bit of string to ward off bullets. His trousers are tied with a hasp and bit of twine; his feet are swathed in a new clean pair of Nike basketball shoes. The sea slaps in the distance.

“Your friends?” whispers Bigfoot insolently. 

Daniel wobbles his head. No! No way!

More scared men join them, quivering with seizures of fear. 

This isn’t the Jolly-Roger josh of crossing the line. King Neptune isn’t manifesting himself to save either the petroleum or Pollywogs. 

He slides through the men to the back of the circle. Why not hide? There’s no shortage of places. One place comes to mind. 

The boy is preoccupied. His gun has slipped from a position of vigilance to ambivalence. Nana’s mind is surely drifting: to the hope of looting and what the others have collected so far – he wants his take too.

With utmost care Daniel wiggles to the back of the crowd and crawls away from the rank of oil workers. No one stops him – it’s his risk. They’re resigned to chance.

At the edge of the platform, he crawls down a ladder to a lower deck. He twists open a hatch and pulls it closed. A circular stairway leads down descends into one hollow leg of the Jade. The space opens and expands. The fumes are overpowering and heavenly. He descends further down towards the pool of jelly-like crude stored inside the vast shell. 

He must notify Poseidon offices about the crisis, but his phone, it’s dead and without power. Crouching on his haunches in his cosy hideaway above the bones and matter of the ages, Daniel wishes he had never departed from home or President Teddy’s island of paradise. 

Interred, his breath echoes in the tranquil tarry tomb. His mouth is impregnated with bits of nerve and blood and bone, and he feels the emotions peel off him, looking at the glassy dark black shampoo of alchemy, his living and being.

Godbless for President

“Will you marry me?” Godbless Progress asks the ocean. He shivers, his sweat cold on the summit of Mount Basil. Though no mermaid or siren swims in the panorama of height and air, he’s deeply in love with the water, sparkling yet dull far below; he pines for a new first lady, a new Yonni to give him love and children. 

He’s wet and blue from the arduous run up the volcano. The morning has become evening and the sun is going down. Mama Joan has sent him to the apex of the island, close to the sun where he can stand naked and honest. She understands that he should decide for himself and not ask others, not even iboga.

Since his start, the ocean has made a dramatic change. Sloppy, humid whitecaps have given way to subsuming chop, then a clear, glass dotted with wavelets, the nodes too many to count. It takes time for the water to catch up with the clouds. 

He pants, short of breath after reaching the lip of the caldera, boldly lined with ferns and bromeliads, lush and painted rich colors of green. Altitude is as good for his lungs and blood as his vision. He’s cast the iboga powder aside. Fatigue is something he enjoys. Running through cramps, dehydration and pain are part of the game of winning.

Joan could be right with her warning. He must choose and improve. He should give up the foolery of swimming and learn to fly with the gods. Why dig at the complicit water of life past when he might ascend into the air like a flame of the future? Why go down atmospheres when one can glide over the globe as fractions of air?

He spreads his wings, pushes his shoulders down and out, his fingertips turning from solid and liquid to gas. Eagles soar on the thermals and scan the canopy of the steep slopes for bushmeat, monkey a favorite. The majestic birds are equal with him, their outlines also translucent with the strong outline of the sun.

The Atlantic tremors below, marked with the strange trails of slug-like service ships and the currents that move underneath the swells. The mirror of gunmetal water smokes and is pocked with flares. Wind blows across the choppy face. His bride-to-be is both beautiful and horrid, lying in expectation, his receptacle and mistress. 

A millipede crawls across his Nike and tickles his ankles. The luxury of coils, tablets, roll-ons, sprays, nets, DEET or DDT can’t stop a thousand legs, walking over this sacred place dashed with the blood of birds. 

Daniel’s parting gift, binoculars borrowed from the Poseidon office and emblazoned with the Poseidon trident, undulate on his belly, moving with the deep breaths of his diaphragm.

Godbless is two miles high, and his head coalesces in a mossy alpine summit. His feet are planted squarely in the black lava of old Rupe’s domain – not his god Bwiti, but the true spirit lord of Bioko Island and erector of menhirs, guardian of fecundity and goodness. 

Godbless relaxes the pose. He puts the field glasses to his face and zooms the lenses like Daniel. 

He blinks at the glass, everything closer than ever before and within reach, the violent surf to the south and the calm waters of the north. His eyes sweep down the volcano, over the highland villages of the bearded and long-haired Bubi – ageless and unworried except for any news of an invasion or new president who might be keen to prove his worth with the slaughter of Bubi blood – past their confident fields of yams and herds of suspicious cattle. He passes over the derelict cacao plantations and the crumbling fermentation and drying barns of the dead colonial economy, over the overconfident barricades of soldiers defending the red tile roofs of downtown and the nervous presidential quarter, over the shallows of his training ground, Black Beach. Godbless shudders in his shoulders for a moment, remembering the agony, his wand black and broken. He watches the kids kicking balls on the beach. Then he notices: those balls are heads and those goalposts are limbs, as black as any day of President Teddy’s wrath.

He trains the glasses to the town, the lazy walk and slow talk, hands and lips moving so predictably, mouthing submission and friendship. The faces along the street are familiar, the white letters in the street more so:  

Vota a Gabriel y Teddy Jr. Vota a industria y musica. Vota a PDGE. 

As if to underscore the point, a corpse is present, sweating and swollen like a dead flower nearby, its hand reaching for the party’s acronym. Even if Gabriel and Teddy Jr. have released all the political prisoners it won’t affect the result; they’re so mangled they can’t do any harm anyway.

There’s no sign of any opposition. No one’s arrived from exile in Spain. No unfamiliar faces smile from posters on the streets. The family and the interests behind it are still very much in control with a combination of paranoia, fear and retribution. A free and fair election is a formality in the election campaign. 

With these eyes he feels all-powerful and all-knowing, for nothing will change the tradition, nothing easy or kind on the poor of his neighborhood baking under white tin roofs, hot and loud inside. Life is squalid in the Quartier Los Angeles: manioc, goats, plastic, idols and shit. He need not worry that his children will live better or longer. No one’s going to intervene and eradicate poverty when living through threats and violence is the daily bread. 

Unless it’s him?

He finds Norberto’s corner. The cobbler’s shoes twist in the wind and the mirrors that were Joachim’s business. Maybe his uncle has come back from prison? Sadness plays across his lips; he recognizes that can’t be the answer. His own dwelling is obscured.

Buttons of fire limbo on the low horizon. Everywhere the installations flare fume and flame. Spectral, they emerge then vanish as the harmattan pushes the curtain of humidity and haze, the wind red with the mainland’s dry dust. The sun is red and beautiful in the pollution as it falls with rapid speed to the subtly arching hem of earth and sky.

“Will you marry me!” he shouts at his love, his voice rumbling with an ineffectual clank down Mount Basil.

The ocean doesn’t answer and the volcano scoffs. No one can marry salt, waves and water. He might as well take on old Mama Joan as his wife instead.

He turns in circles, waiting for a reply – to become one with Rupe, to lie like the island in the arms of its watery lover – hoping to corkscrew up or down, levitate or burrow, a whirligig of flesh and bones. 

Dizzy, every emotion has a color and every object has an emotion. He is hope, transparent and without color, the poorest emotion of all. 

He needs help. Joan squats somewhere below, drugged and useless. Daniel works somewhere out there, occupied and unreachable. The chapel is hidden at the edge of the gorge and forest. The writing on the rigs is out of range. Godbless flies above them all like a lost angel, forgetting help and power are inside, soaring on purity.

The eruption startles him, breaking the amniotic air. The curtain of dark noise arrives behind the flash of brilliant light.

Ships buck in the harbor. Restaurants and bars batten down.

It begins with a rising of the water. It mixes into a white green foam that touches the first black orange flames of the explosion that run under the Jade like a hot cushion, little comfort to the metal and skin in the vicinity.

His eyes seesaw with vertigo. He stumbles and falls on his hands and knees like a dog. Whether a godly fart or a burp from the caldera or ocean, it’s more of an answer than he anticipates, the sound roaring around his ears.

Godbless props himself up and takes the glasses again, squinting at the smoke and flames erupting in the foreground of the red sunset. The conflagration’s on the ocean, strong and massive, lashing and rolling like a continuous bomb from the legs of the Jade. 

He can just make out the figures, a few black lice herding white lice, the bugs scurrying on a vessel in the near distance, the shape of a ship he surely recognizes from Malabo – the Hipolita, Sean’s pet project. He remembers well the waddling march of the blanco cabron.

He dials in closer, squints with all his visionary might, calls on Rupe and Bwiti and Joan, for surely he can recognize that magical nose and dark widow’s peak being prodded by two familiar figures, Shango’s shock of hair and top hat, and Yonni’s wicked smile and painted vest! 

Black at its edges, white at its center, the fire boils under the Jade. Steam issues from the metal, quickly molten ingots worming into the ocean, rabid in expectation for the morsels. The heat licks at the slices and chinks and holes in the deck. It rises up the structure and into the generators, shakers and pumps. Mud and dope, diesel and grease, oil and lubricants, solvents and sundry drilling fluids. 

It licks up the pipe and lightening inexplicably issues from the derrick as if it were a volcano. It flattens and splits the decks. The rig buckles and tips and rolls. The dynamic positioning whirls and kicks to handle the unexpected changes. Blue lights are flashing and the siren calls, “Mayday… Mayday… ” to decks empty of hands.

The orange lifepods drops uselessly into the water. No one has mustered where they should – not with Shango and Yonni in charge.

The fire bites at the water, pinches at the surface, sinks below, attacks from underneath and then smothers from above. The fire blows out and up and over. A plume of smoke and blaze of flame touch the sinking sun. Wind gathers around the wreck, oxygen vanishing in the strong turbulent wind like fuel. Rain falls – not of water, but of birds: terns, pelicans, gulls and pipers, suffocated and roasted by the great fire, hotwings for the next big game.

Godbless is stunned with the realization that Yonni and Daniel are together, again. He spins, searching for a bearing, a point that clearly tells him the way. He clicks over faith and passes over love. He misses jealousy and nicks indifference. His body, like a needle, slowly settles on loyalty, with a slight course for justice, for without his family – burned to ash in the bunkerer’s pyre – what else is left but friends, even if they’re bad ones? 

He ties his slick laces. He sets his heels in the dirt and rock. He squats and cocks his legs into his neck. He waits for the gun, and starts with a jolt, running from where he has come, ricocheting down the mountain. He Simbas over the alpine terrain, cracking boulders and leaping lava fields; he Tarzans whole stretches of great old dark forest, leaving a wake of torn leaves, broken branches and smashed bugs. In doing so that night, guided by the vast torch on the ocean below, he tramps on fiery shrines and loses his magic iboga powder. He is Godbless Progress, one part angel and one part blessing, he who makes mistakes but thankfully learns. He’s fit and he needs to know. 

As he descends from the caldera, he campaigns, his progress as inevitable as lava. He hairpins through the Bubi villages, bowing and offering fire and water at the gates, asking for audience with the elders. He rips down the posters of President Teddy and his sons inevitably next to the headman’s television. He explains that the past is over and that the oil is theirs, to which there is much astonishment.

President who?

Oil?

They’re heard of it, vaguely, but it’s of no consequence to the premature death and primitive economy of the hills.

An oil company helicopter buzzes over, but the people do not run for cover like usual. That stuff is dispensable up here.

Everyone needs change but they’re unsure how to respond to the madman acting like a politician and speaking freedom. 

He shares drill and guenon and yam as a way of agreement. He mixes corn beer and palm wine with deadly effect. He eats iboga and its relatives, which he now clearly feels he has mastered. His ancestor likes this socializing. He lights the pipes and east the potions of the ritual specialists. He takes promises of betrothal and virginity as guarantees. The old ways are still valid up here in the equatorial forest among big and small men.

The closer he gets to Malabo, the easier the words and task. News travels faster than his great legs. 

Flyers stir in the wind, his wet grinning picture endorsed with the words, “Swim with Godbless. Win Gold with Godbless.” Sometimes his portrait is protected from the rains by a plastic bag. The bark of the trees is slick with his oily, black slogan too.

Everyone likes the newcomer and wild card, the friendly pawpaw-odor zombie emerging from the forest shaking hands and kissing babies. His political capital is his freshness.

Soon the finish line is in sight – Bioko is a small island after all. He’s invincible, tagged an informer but at his heart an opponent, and marches through the roadblocks posted with double guards at this sensitive time. He’s ready for a sandy splashdown in the black Gulf, irrespective of helicopters, airlifts or fireboats. The infrastructure of foreign help that has yet to appear – mobilized from Port Harcourt, Nigeria and Port Gentil, Gabon, and a pure embarrassment to the integrity of the nation. Health and safety aren’t items on Equatorial Guinea’s top-secret state budget, but Godbless is keen to display how anyone can win with sport. 

By the time of his arrival in Malabo the streets are lined in anticipation. Though no formal announcement of the event has happened, the people are out in force. They line the streets and clap and offer encouragement. They have no idea where is the end or what he’s running for, but the sight of such a stunning young athlete brings everyone to their feet. Elders nod – Godbless’s clean; he hasn’t passed on any favors. 

The malaise and fear is somehow dispelled and quickly people recognize that maybe it is Godbless Progress who may foment change. 

He must rest at the water’s edge. Sweat streams down his face and through is torn clothes. His totem-like Nikes are in shreds. He kicks them at the kids gathered around. Indeed, his run through Malabo has attracted attention and people parade behind him, wanting to know what’s the hurry – even if they too acknowledge the pyre burning offshore. He gives low tens and high fives. He sees Mama Joan and extends a sweaty hug to her kerchief and textile-bound body. She opens her span of cloth and reveals a Godbless for President T-shirt. He smiles in confirmation, for he definitely has his supporters! 

Truly, it already feels like triumph to the crowd. But he is savvy enough not to want too much. Countless times Equatoguineans have felt encouraged only to crash again with crackdowns and the same old political menu of fear and poverty.

He doesn’t explain but concentrates, putting his goal between himself and the noise of the crowd. He limbers up and stretches. He drinks bottles of mango juice and refreshes himself with bananas and salt. Fish filet baguettes provide the extra sustenance, for surely this wet leg of the marathon will be the hardest. 

With a giant splash, Godbless plunges into the sea, striking out precariously for the floating inferno. Much clapping follows the statesman’s kicking wake and the start of his extraordinary swim – goggles twined onto his head and feet roped to impromptu wooden fins.

He surfaces on a sandbar to see the crowd writing on the beach. He knows what it says: “Swim with Godbless. Win Gold with Godbless.” 

He strikes out, floating casually but with precision in a medley of measured strokes. Underwater is a faint white glow. He clears the point and makes for the bay as new slogans appear on the roads of Malabo, white and chalky. 

Vota a God. Vota a Bless. Vota a Progress. Vota a GBP.

***

Smoke from the Jade bellows over the deck of Zafiro. It’s a long, wide, complicated production vessel of pumps, dehydrators and dryers that package oil and gas for transport. 

Neither the electric fence nor other ordinary defense or precaution has stopped Shango. He’s even welcomed the newcomers aboard, greeting each one with a shake before inviting the two crews to socialize and then applying the shackles of old.

Shango studies the crumbled wet cake of the Jade from the bridge, stuck like an afterthought on the topsides. He posts his eyes on the horizon for incoming threats. He looks down on his hostages. Ruthlessly he hopes less will survive rather than more. He is malice and anger, the cancellation of debts due, the righting or perhaps wronging of the historical injustice of the past, if for only a venal moment when he serves the interests of his people and his pocket. 

He has calculated well: no response from the Equatoguinean military or coast guard to the crisis with President Ted dead. Equatorial Guinea is totally unprepared for a conflagration like this. Its fragile diplomatic pride would never invite ECOMOG on board. As for the oil companies like Poseidon, they don’t have the right proxies to endorse violence too overtly. 

A few RPGs casually lean against the wall: enough. He’s sure he has Poseidon’s attention from the solid mechanical drone of boats and birds attending to the toppled burning hissing wreck. 

The fire reflects on the pan of water. A fireboat plies the Jade with a spray of dried bull’s blood in the hope of coagulating around the blown out hole. A helicopter circles for survivors. Foam, mist and saltwater sizzle on the wreck like soda.

The UHF radio squalls loudly and constantly. Poseidon can surely see the whereabouts of its men. He has yet to hear a good offer.

The chains are tight. Each back is sweaty. Each shirt is dotted with patches of oil and salt. The men form two ranks and sit, their legs uncomfortably splayed before them on the hot metal deck. They smell of body odor and night soil and raw nerves and dead blood and burnt skin and bad circulation. But they can move their hands in the manacles, at least to feel the hands of their neighbors. Team Poseidon’s strength isn’t sufficient to break the thick metal hoops beaten at the anvil of Shango’s forge. Neither the men of the Jade nor the Zafiro has mustered the courage to fight back against these well-armed professionals. 

Their bags and boots are piled somewhere, already roughly sorted into keepers and losers. They’ve been ransacked of Rand, sterling, crowns and dollars; lightened of iPods, Gameboys and Nokias. Their credit card numbers have been faxed elsewhere so the real damage can be done. 

In retrospect, it’s not that bad. The boat’s quiet, dormant. No physical noise bores through their feet and into their heads like on Jade. Houston’s disconnected and no one’s barking in their ears on the satellite delay from the distant control room. Certainly not Sherm, who’s been left behind on the Jade, like any good captain, and swings from the derrick in a cage of his own making, immolated for his insolence and prejudice. Like him, they could be strangulating on toxic fumes. Or burning crisps, not even enough ash to send home to a loved one. Or onboard for the explosion, nothing more than carbon and vapor. Shango’s merciful to include them in his evacuation. 

In the movement of men from ship to shore and vice versa, a complete roster is hard to compose. No one has his POB. No one has been to the muster points. Who’s missing, dead, wounded or happily alive?

But the men are miserable. It’s hot, and the destruction of Jade has taken their will to live. They’d even go back to their ex-wives and former families, they’re that afraid, because they realize the danger. Zafiro is still connected to the subsea network and the fire can easily move within its manifolds and between wells. The fire rages and howls, a creature of its own accord, maybe even creeping along the seafloor, inching towards Zafiro. When the field ignites, they’re beyond cataclysmic toast. 

They wiggle their hands and feet but it’s no use. They can’t break the iron-like shackles of palm fiber rope, tougher than wire. 

Someone is reciting the word of the good book. The white men might now understand why Africans take their religion seriously – it’s a matter of life and death. 

God, sent help! Have not all those prayers in the cantina been in vain? It’s good to wait on God, but he sometimes takes too long to act. 

If they could make it to Zafiro’s lifeboats. If a squad of commandos would arrive. If a helicopter would dare come. 

Oil lifts a man heavenward to untold riches, to immediate, infinite possibilities, and even to souls. When there’s no oil, it’s cruel and terrible, and for this it is adored. There is terror and delight at the edge of the precipice. The logic is not theirs, for oil is the almighty–hard of hearing, slow of tongue, weak of sight. 

Figo blades around the men, keeping watch on the property, good strong working stock for sugarcane and swamps. He pulls on a red stocking cap over the broad leave tied to his forehead. His AK is at it should be, hot and loaded. 

Yonni’s seeks some fun before the auction. She sharpens her combat knife. When she passes, Yonni smiles at the ROV engineer nursing his stump dressed with blood, air and flies. She begins randomly in the middle of a rank of men. 

Some of the men recognize her from the Impala or Bahia or wherever she may have been before, collecting information. They’re right – she’s a warrior and she’s far more notorious than a sympathetic hooker. No player dare look her in the eye.

She opens the men’s legs roughly, breaking zips, shredding flies, cutting away what they can’t open themselves. She measures them with the blade to get an idea, its thick back calibrated in centimeters. She jerks some of them hard even if they’re ashamed and their erections last only a moment. No one makes an impression. They should all be docked.

Figo circulates, curious, crossing over in circles.

Nana’s feet clang from above on the bridge. He calls, “What you doin? Shango give you permission to mess these men?”

“Finding myself a husband,” she says, aloof. 

“Let’s bet on that big hairy fella.” He points at Bigfoot. Nana likes to gamble with Yonni. “He’s a good choice for you.” He secretly wonders when she will be his, for their band has no prohibitions on blood or relation.

“Figo, you want to play too?” she asks.

Figo nods and twirls on his skates.

“Whoever wins, gets it,” he says, smiling nastily, sliming mostly. “Be a shame if he loses.”

Bigfoot wiggles in his bonds. 

“Six when soft,” says Tino. “Twelve when tough. Big guy, small dick.”

“No way,” interjects Figo. “Nine now, twenty when he take his new wife.”

Yonni marches around Bigfoot. She kicks him in the feet sharply and studies the jolt in his package. He’s entombed in silence and mummy-like. 

Yonni chuckles, her mouth rattling like it’s full of coconuts. “He’s a twelve,” she says, fanning herself with her knife. “Thirty when I cut him and make him hurt good.” She pats her stomach appreciatively. She too wants children. “Those were your last offers?”

The two boys acquiesce. 

She stoops over the man. Her breasts dig hard like rocks over his chest. She reaches down into his crotch. He’s stiff with anticipation. 

“You like it,” she murmurs in wonder, struggling to find the end of the snake slithering to his knee. She traces it with her finger, then cuts the taut fabric of his coveralls, blood surfacing like wax. It bulges out like a bat. It’s longer than her arm. 

Bigfoot grins sheepishly. Who among them can swat a bigger lemon-headed bat? 

“You will be my husband,” she says to him, holding him strongly in her hand, now with tenderness and without violence. Yonni can’t deny the fertility of this huge man’s object, one that has never visited her. Maybe it will be long, hard and strong enough to make her complete, for even in times of ransom, she cannot forsake her boldest wish.

He recoils for a moment. But Bigfoot’s not repelled enough to say no considering the ampleness and beauty of Yonni. After all, back on the home reservation the tribe took black slaves as members too, an unacknowledged fact. Some of their descendents are even more clearly Indian than many of the others who have full-fledged voting and living rights on the reservation lands.

Yonni releases his chains and takes him to her quarters. It’s important to test the groom before their wedding. As a commander she knows not everything should be done in public. Terrorizing the crews is only part of the formula.

***

The blood moves slowly into his hands. The brightness of the sun, reflecting off the deck and bridge is blinding. Through the smoke blowing off the Jade he can the long forlorn chain of men, somewhere Egghead, elsewhere Chico, Jojo and Gigi, others who are nameless technicians essential to day to day operations, halted on this section of the field for now, all bathing in their own sweat, shit and misery. The vigil of the hostages’ hope has dwindled. 

An anonymous tanker docks against the Zafiro. Its name is wiped out. Another is moored nearby. Zafiro rises, slowly pumped dry. No ship dares challenge the activity.

Shango looms out of a grid of shadow. “Welcome, Daniel. Bigfoot tell Yonni you a good man, that you talk good King Poseidon, make ‘im know reason not rhyme.”

“I’m just trying to do a fair job,” says Daniel, “and I’ve got an open mind.”

“That be good, Mr. Daniel because I need your help with the King since your captain no good.” He speaks with a hard clip on his words. 

“I was t’inking of a message, you know, something to make the King understand I serious.”

“The Jade wasn’t enough of an impression?” He’s bewildered – a quarter of a billion dollars seems like a fairly large message.

“Jade is worthless rock, no? Man’s labor that goes into it that makes it value, no?”

Indeed, he’s right – it’s just green rock until carved and conceived into something beautiful. 

“I shall write Poseidon a new message. I pull up anchors today. The King of the Gulf says he will not negotiate. He does not reply.” 

Daniel tries to reason. “Hey, I’m reasonable. I’ll give you whatever you want. I don’t have anything against you. I just wanna do my job. And you gotta admit it’s kinda neat, all this technology so we got gas.” 

Shango snorts at this and gives Daniel a hard slap and spits in his face. 

“That’s not going to help you get what you want, buddy,” Daniel says, recovering, “I’m on your side.” 

“You dumb white!” Godbless swipes him properly even though he’s secretly pleased with the idiot.

Daniel’s never been hated before. Or so insulted. But he’s determined to take Shango for his word. He wants to know when he’s going back home. “What’s it you want?” He doesn’t often get to hear the complaints unmediated by the lawyers or NGOs. This is firsthand information.

“Money to buy my people freedom, money they haven’t been getting, money President Teddy and his family kept for their secret economy of cars and clothes and objects and houses, money for making a machine that makes money, money for inoculations and potable water, money for remedy to our woes.”

“I’ve seen it too, Mister Shango. Poseidon can help. They have a policy for helping relieve the impact on local populations.”

“It cannot!” Shango despises the white’s stoogelike impudence. “All of you never learn. You take and do not give. For over five hundred years this is the case for all Africans! Now I kidnap you to my plantation and you can work, sing, dance and die like us.”

His own disgust wells after saying this, flushing his neck with the itch of hives. Why disagree now? What’s the point of being a goodie employee when the lives of the hostages are clearly at stake? Who wants to vanish into the bush? Why keep on fucking that old tired industry goat? He takes a deep breath trying to expel the dogma spirit of oil.

“It’s an exploitative industry, I know,” he says. “I’ve read the reports too – but it’s just my job. Your complaints don’t reach anyone who matters, let me tell you.”

“But now they will with your help, Mr. Daniel?”

He shrugs.

“Do you know how to drive boats?” Shango paces, his body short, energetic, hard, cut.

“No, I don’t, but you do have to disconnect from the risers.” Already he can connect the dots and see that destruction is inevitable. “Don’t ruin it for everyone out here, including your people,” he says, defending oil’s interests again. “Who’ll invest again if it’s all gone?”

“It was better when we lived on cocoa and coffee, even if world trade is against us.” A tone of sadness colors his voice. “We lived better then.”

“Try organic. That’s what I suggested to a friend of mine.” He’s being glib about the unreasonable and irredentist views of his antagonist. The present is irreversible.

“Do you think we can afford pesticides or fertilizers?” The ire rises in Shango’s voice like a cat in his throat.

He hadn’t thought of that. Godbless Progress could help him breach the divide and miscommunication between values and cultures.

“I want you to moderate, Mr. Daniel. This fax tells me nothing.”  He wafts a sheet of curly blurred paper. “Our oil may be closer to the North American market than the Middle East’s, but this oil now belongs to the people of Shango and will not be sold cheaper than water.”

He swallows. He recalls his old office and job. He remembers the cold days of disgrace, his name black and unemployable, and the humiliating disregard with which the industry and his old colleagues treated him. He has nothing to lose negotiating on behalf of a pirate. This new gig isn’t working out for him anyway. Oil might be in his soul. Oil might be in his heart. But it’s not worth dying for.

“Mister Shango, I can’t promise to make your voice heard,” he says. “I’m as much a pawn as you are. The puppet masters are stronger than both of us. Nonetheless, I can call Houston on your behalf.” It cathartic and awful to say; it feels like betrayal, his oily bones turning to slush. He points to the bank of radio communications equipment. “That sat-phone in working order?”

Shango smiles, his teeth like sharp beans, the soft brow of top hat falling over his strange ivory-lensed eyes. “You come to my point of view, Mister Daniel, no? You a soft man not like suffering too much. A little noise of persuasion and you’re convinced like a woman, bah!”

Daniel rubs his wrists, then dials that superior and easy country code of one, the seven, one and three for Houston, the harder, stickier seven digits for Poseidon’s offices rising like a black incisor over the downtown loop, and the final resistant four-digit extension to the gates of the president’s office.

“Offices of the President James Hughes. May I be of help to y’all today?”

It’s Dawn. He instantly recognizes the sweet, girlish cheerleader-like drawl of his one-time secretary –stalker, accuser, black widow. He didn’t know she could say that much at once. 

He gawps. It sounds good. Like home. Well, the home he thankfully turned down. His dismissal must have had consequences for her too: Old horny Wallis must have kicked her out of the Champ after Kylie’s assault, but he’s so far away from events of people’s lives he might as well ask about the weather.

He pauses and Shango looks at him expectantly. “James Hughes, I’d like to talk to James. It’s Daniel Grace from Zafiro.” 

“Why I declare! I’ve been hearing a lot about you around these parts! It’s really you, sweetheart?”

“Dawn, look–”

Shango gives him a cuff with his fist and he grunts. 

“Danny?” 

He whispers quickly, hoping Shango won’t hear him, knowing full well this conversation is being recorded by someone. “I’m sorry Dawn. I’m sorry for what I did. And you should be too.” He hates her. Still.

“It takes two to two-step,” she says blithely before reconsidering. “I didn’t want you to lose your job, honey, honest I didn’t. It was a bad patch. My therapist sorted me out now.” 

“Congratulations, Dawn. But can you connect me? We’re experiencing an piracy emergency.” Dawn’s a nightmare. 

“Oh yes, yes, sir.” She giggles knowingly as she rings him through.

James, mid-way through a pastrami po-boy, is only too glad to receive Daniel’s call. His belly scrapes against his desk.

“Mr. Grace! How’re things with y’all on the Jade now that you’re back?”

He’s flummoxed. How to proceed? The executive’s callousness, ignorance, coolness and unconcern are blows. How can the President and CEO not know? Too busy chasing Dawn’s tail? 

“The Jade’s no more, nada, boss.”

James accidentally bites his tongue and stands up on the heels of his cowboy boots. He can see over the Houston ship channel to the line of refineries running to Galveston in the haze. This is also the people business and dead people make bad business. Daddy’s boy isn’t that great of a leader at a time of trial, but this is James Hughes time to prove otherwise.

“You with me, James?” At least Danny’s integrity is whole.

“Yep,” he croaks. The po-boy sandwich and jalapeno chips taste a lot less appetizing.

“You see, we’ve been taken hostage by a fellow called Mister Shango about 24 hours ago and he’s got a list. We’re currently on the Zafirobut I don’t know for how long. The Jade blew last night with some hands lost. We don’t have a list of casualties yet. I’m sure you’re your executives will know the details but for some discretionary reason have withheld this information. Platforms usually make the news when they blow and it seems like you’ve been caught with your pants down under your waist, James.

“As a consequence of Poseidon’s silence, Mister Shango’s asked me to represent him and though unfortunate and regrettable, I agreed. I suggest you listen to this list and see if you can’t maybe make it good and true. It’s been faxed to HQ here, in Houston and the government in Malabo and I’m surprised if a copy isn’t on your desk.”

Slowly, enunciating clearly and with precision over the static and delay, he spells out his demands to the Equatoguinean government and Poseidon Oil. It’s no trouble ad-libbing his own corrections and improvements.

“Poseidon Oil shall not interfere in the sovereignty of Equatorial Guinea.

“All payments to President Teddy, his descendents, family and immediate clan shall cease.

“All leases shall be renegotiated with a new percentage of revenues destined for Equatorial Guinea.

“Poseidon will enter in a joint partnership with Equatoguinean Cooperative Oil Fund for Development. 

“Assistance shall be delivered across the island in the health, education and public services with all the subsequent levels of capacity building and training

“Poseidon shall train and hire Equatoguineans for real jobs in the industry.

“Poseidon shall publish what it pays in leasing and production fees to the government of Equatorial Guinea.

“Equatorial Guinea shall join the IEEP initiative, and publish spends of extractive industry revenues.

“And finally and most importantly, Mister Shango will receive 200 million dollars to a bank account of his choice.”

James Hughes’s ears are ringing with the watchdog-generated terms and demands – hearsay in the corridors of the Houston Petroleum Club for those dick-faced environmental monkeywrenchers can’t touch the good ol’ boys, the slippery men in white hats. But some moron crusty must be feeding the Equatoguineans this granola of bullshit and false expectations. His bile rises, churning his red face into a sour mash. They comply with every environmental regulation and industry standard. Luckily in EG there’s none. He’s seen enough bored roughnecks feeding hundreds of large fat surface mammals who love the convenience of platforms spaced every ten miles. 

“Wet dream, Danny. We can’t do that without approval from my daddy’s board! Even in Nigeria they don’t do such deals.” 

“Then call them! You got a secretary. She’s capable, I know. It’s a small price for the dirty business we’re in, not much more than grand prize in the lottery.”

“Let me remind you we don’t have any leverage with the government. It’s in turmoil anyway since the unfortunate death of President Teddy. He was a saint.”

“Oh horse shit, James, your man Sean was in with the government giving them goddamn military advice. He’s not much to look at now. He had it coming. Your legal and technical people are here too. Who can tell who’s oil and who’s government?” 

“How much time Poseidon got?”

He shrugs. He gestures to Shango who replies: Clop-clop, clop-clop. 

Shango shakes his hat and signs the rise and fall of the sun.

“By dawn, your time. By then he wants your answer. Or else it’s curtains for all of us, not just here but all up and down the coast.”

“One last question, Danny: You help him write that list?”

“It’s all Mister Shango’s good work. He’s the begrieved party. You want to talk to him?”

“You’re the arbitrator, Danny. Keep your eye on the ball, not some seamonkey.”

“For god’s sake, hurry up. It’s damn uncomfortable for all of us. If not, tomorrow you can arrange the funerals of our men. Justify that to Poseidon’s board.” 

He puts down the phone. An unexpected and savory growl colors his voice.

Shango nods and clasps Danny around the shoulders in brotherly absolution and gestures with his arm towards the Jade. 

Daniel smiles at the irony. He feels no sense of loss or horror, but rather pride that the cursed Jade is ablaze. Shango’s bold action has reduced the supply by a factor of one. But why not go further? 

With encouragement, Shango’s might stage more attacks. Other rebels might join the cause if they saw the gain. 

In the name of the end, the edge of the entire African coast begins to burn. The fire spreads platform by platform, from tanker to refinery, from jack pump to pipeline to terminal, tectonic and total in its scope, spreading around the world like a celebration, the candles on the cake burning with joy, no one able to blow them out.

The campaign would hasten the inevitable, one fuming smudge of darkness and winter, the planet spinning through its orbit like a giant flaming tarball, the sole car moving on the solar highway. 

Daniel shudders. The vision is impossible and too fantastic.

Shango rubs his hands in anticipation: he can bring the future closer.

Clop-clop.

“Shall we winch up the anchors and embark, Mister Danny?”

***

The whitecaps rise and reach like mouths. The spray falls into his face, sharp like spit. Each bow, stroke and kick of his breaststroke takes him under the mercurial surface, shimmering and tossing with waves and wind. The last pirogue of support has left him long ago, for the fishing part of fish-and-rice needs to be done. 

The bottom of the ocean disappears into a ceaseless blue, unmarked by weed, reef or plastic. It’s pristine. 

He need think only of iboga, the wretched taste, its power like the strength of death, and he finds more kick. His strokes are purposefully long, deep and turtle-like. His target glows in the distance – not the sun but equally dark and hot. 

Alongside cruises a friendly leatherback, beating her wings and his newest nautical friend in a string of companions who have assisted him in the night – the kind bright words of the sunfish, the war-like advice of the mahimahi, the gaping docile smile of the basking shark. Each has urged him on as he paddles doggedly and doggles paddingly, buoyant and bobbing in the night, black man in black water until the sun rises over his swollen toes. 

She too is black and friendly, mottled with white blots and hard ridges of knobs. She’s surrounded by her fry, little orbiting stars of turtleness she guards with her fins from the schools of fish surfing the currents of the African coast. She grins at Godbless and gestures for him to hold her carapace; he’s thankful for the help, companionship and tow as his muscle and heart fatigue and beat down to a rest. 

“Let me tell you a story^[i] about a family, Godbless Progress.” Her voice is deep and aquatic, thick as molasses. 

He nods appreciatively. The voice sounds like that of his deceased mother.

Tortoise has Beetle as his wife. She is barren and no rare ingredient will cure her. Tortoise decides to visit a priest of Rupe, who is god of the forest and the whole island. Tortoise must bring a cock for ju-ju soup. His wife Beetle does not notice the missing bird. 

When tortoise returns, the priest of Rupe cooks the cock in one large crock. “It is forbidden for you to eat the ju-ju soup,” he says. He then asks Tortoise, “Are you not a liar?” 

Tortoise tells him not to worry. “I am no longer a liar.” 

“Let me make it clear to you that you are the middleman between your wife and me. Mind you, Tortoise, the soup is not free of charge. But it is prepared for other one of two terms: first, for my loss, but for you and your wife’s gain. And second, for my gain and your wife’s gain but for your loss. I am sure one of the three of us must be at a loss at the end. Good luck to you and beetle!”

Tortoise put the crock of delicious ju-ju soup on his head. It’s not long before he could eat some of the soup. He sits down without a second thought. He removes the lid and eats the soup with gluttony. Tortoise leaves a bit for Beetle. 

She is pregnant within three months. Tortoise is also pregnant. She is happy and he is not. 

The people in Tortoise and Beetle’s village are worried. It’s bad luck. They decide to sacrifice Beetle, Tortoise and their property to the goddess of the river. 

His friend asks, “Tortoise, how many ears have you?” 

“Two.”

“What are you doing with them? – Listen, leave the village.”

“Why?”

“Because you have conceived when you are a man.”

Tortoise escapes from the village and goes to the priest of Rupe to ask for an abortion. 

“Tortoise, this time you will pay for the ju-ju soup. I will beat you for three days with my ju-ju club of bone. After you will serve me for three years.”

“See my friend, Godbless, your problems are easy ones. You need only wish and act.”

Godbless nods dreamily. The ranks of lights that were blurred into one uniform blob and now are bright and clear. The Jade burns incandescent and white. Indeed, now at the end of his endurance, he feels like he has swum into someone else’s dream: a noisy storm-like wind swirling in the palms, dark cloud and patches of stars, the stutter of shutters and the dry turn of leaves over a porch, the crinkle of water in the distance, the wakefulness of a few raindrops on a hand, the arms and legs of a lover in a hot bed of messy cotton sheets, the slap of waves against one another, the faraway call of birds, the disembodied actions of a restless body beyond sleep and the comfort of the night. 

He wakes. His face is like a prow. It’s pressed into the barnacled surface of the leatherback’s shell. He’s roped on the aqua-bronco with strands of kelp. 

All he has to do is let go among the fingers of fire and the booms containing some of the spill.

He must be close, for on dawn’s horizon, purple and blue, is the silent shape of Zafiro cloaked in sleep.

He catches the distressed calls and the snores of those beyond worry. 

No one is treading water. No one is calling in the lifeboats. Two lone fireboats gush on the wreck nearby. 

The ship looms before him, his trophy, and before long he discretely swings a leg over a taunt anchor chain.

The fire feels closer.

The hostages on Zafiro are haggard, dehydrated and nearly dead. No smoko shack is on hand, no currency of Mars bars, Folgers or Cokes, nothing except the infernal sun, big and glowering like an ax.

White and black have been telling stories and singing the blues. What else to do but keep watch, pinned and helpless, waiting for the floating bomb to detonate, here, later. 

On watch Figo doesn’t notice the black dot progressing with surprising speed through the matrix of spilled oil and fires 

A few stinking blue corpses are among the two ranks of men, incontinent in their fluids and bad morale. Those unfortunate to be wearing synthetics find their clothes evaporating.

But as the worrying sun rises and a familiar yeti-like shadow walks forward, they all issue a collective hoot.

Wu-wu! Wu-wu! 

The cry’s pierced with catcalls and whistles.

A trace of that old Shellback camaraderie remains as laughter ripples down the exhausted tense line. Someone should have a good time.

Yonni marches proud before them, looking to punish for an infraction, a sly look, a gesture of disrespect. Bigfoot is bustled back in place by Nana and Tino. Her new husband is a prisoner not a freeman. He won’t look in the men’s eyes, his own shot with the bloody luster of smoking stones. 

The fire swirls closer, threatening to break like a storm from under. Already oxygen seems to be in short supply.

Nana and Tino recruit some volunteers to disconnect the risers and umbilicals. Their machetes are all that’s needed to collect the men. The volunteers are almost eager: it’s a chance for them to overpower the two violent stoned boys. The band disappears onto the gangway running like a spine above the maze of boilers and pipes. 

Shango is increasingly anxious. On the blue bridge he paces and turns, always moving, turning over objects, in particular the captain’s useful memento of an old spyglass, the brass sections comfortably fitting together. He fiddles with the charts and his options: the lanes marked clearly to the new Cameroonian terminus of the Chad pipeline, the best approaches to Shell’s Bonny terminal in the Niger Delta, the way through the shoals, the strobes, dumping grounds and precautionary areas that make navigation difficult.

He’s irritated, excited, curious and wants to know what the Texans will decide. He’s prepared for whatever they offer. All the crude has been siphoned off for transport to a refinery willing to ignore the source – that’s his bottom line; an adequate remainder of LNG and other liquids will allow the ship both to have power and to detonate. He’s militant, greedy and principled, and justice is his will. 

He clicks to his shortcuts on his Nokia. 

“Yonni, bring me Mister Danny.”

Though an insignificant distance from the bridge, it’s a long walk for Daniel, hoisted to his swollen feet from the metal beach by the rebel girl. He notices the ship’s rumbling rising through his feet; its engines are on standby, exhaust smoldering over the bridge. That must mean progress.

What would he like for his last meal?

Yonni regards him suspiciously and keeps her Colt tight under his scapula as he mounts the metal steps. He wants to apologize, his most useful tool for managing the women in his life, but he has neither the courage nor words to face Yonnipussy at this Dr. No moment. She smells wonderful, of cannabis and sex. Bigfoot must have had a rewarding time. He certainly did at Cacahual Village. Nonetheless, he’s been avoiding the conclusion: none of them are as good as Kylie, even if her love and K-Lo hardbody seems irreparably lost due to his absence, foolhardiness, obduracy and crises of masculinity. What’s left to prove? The scrumptious taste of breaking the rules with impunity and sure reward – and being Shango’s counsel and personal Iago – though a colorful choice, pales in comparison to getting as many men home as possible. Sherm couldn’t be saved but the others, certainly. They surely have sons and daughters like DJ too. 

Pushed through the hatch, he enquires of the old man, “Houston?” 

The scars gleam under his eyes. Shango’s applied white karolin to his face and he’s haunted in his aspect. Smoke and ash stain the sky. 

“Nothing, Mister Danny.”

The bank of controls indicates the risers and umbilicals have been disconnected.

“Institutions resist reforming too quickly.”

“Well said. But this is not the time to suggest new ways of making business.”

At that moment, gunfire clatters somewhere, followed by two pauses, enough time to flip the clips, as more rounds clatter, brunt and close. 

The flames rise quickly on the oily surface of the ship’s exposed guts. The fire detection system rapidly dispenses mist and foam over the area, the alarms calling like whores. 

Nana and Tino sprint and slip down the long gangway extending like a tongue from the mouth of their commander, Shango. 

Giving chase and pausing every fifteen paces, dripping puddles of seawater with each step, Godbless Progress levels a Colt and fires wildly. Godbless likes this moment. He is the boss. He is the almighty. He is helping. 

“To free the white man, you must free the black man first!” Godbless shouts over the roar of the gun, thinking of his once very damaged but now repaired self.

Daniel is happily surprised to recognize his friend and fixer. He executes a little dance in joy. Shango and Yonni curse at the sight of the amateur, nuisance, relative and intruder.

Figo skates around and shoots wildly at the two lines of captive men. They buck like broncos, whinnying and kicking, feral, tied to the corral as the bullets careen into them. 

Yonni pushes out a thick glass window on the bridge and empties her gun down into the men. Why show mercy to the ungrateful scoundrels? She reaches for an RPG among the armory. 

Daniel doesn’t abandon any appeal for peace and launches a punch, and he aims fairly for her beautiful jaw. His arm isn’t long enough. She throws a machete wild in response and backs out onto the gangway, pushing the site up and arming the grenade. 

He dodges the whirling blade and he rushes her with a cloak of nautical charts, smothering her in paper as her body hits the rails with a thick, resounding ufff. 

The weapon cartwheels four decks and explodes with fire and shrapnel.

The satellite phone burrs sharply, with long interminable pauses between each slow ring.

Shango reaches for it. He’s offhand in conflict. He has time to pilot Zafiro and heave her through the waves, straight at the next installation ten miles distant.

“Daniel Grace?”

“This is Mister Shango, Mister Poseidon. As we speak your Zafiro is going up.”

It’s not James Hughes impatient tried voice but that of Legal: “On behalf of Poseidon Oil, I’d like to speak to the arbitrator in this dispute, Daniel Grace.” 

The able-bodied men are unraveling on deck thanks to the wayward bullets and the strength of their resolve to escape. They unpeel into the bowels for cover as Figo folds over in the crossfire. Who cares about booby-traps!

He hears the request, tinny and unaware of the danger, as he urges the men to cover with his golden wish for everyone’s survival.

“Mister Grace?”

Shango tosses the phone. Daniel delivers Yonni a few kicks, anesthetic, his feet bruising as he connects with her hard bones. He doubts Shango’s going to touch him for punishing her; he’s surely already scanning for the whereabouts of his launch. 

Godbless lands a lucky potshot and pegs Tino in the head, the bullet exiting in an ugly stew of bone and brain. He falls to his knees in shock, dropping the pistol. Hunting isn’t a sport he likes.

By now, everyone’s implicated.

Nana goes down in a pummeling gauntlet of Poseidon’s angry men.

“Danny Grace. Who am I speaking with?”

Shango eyes him angrily. This is not the plan.

“I’m the proxy for the board. James Hughes and his staff are unavailable until the resolution of an in-house inquiry. Please tell Mister Shango that we’ve agreed to all the demands and intends to initiate them in all its countries of operation. Please tell Mister Shango that it will take time for this to be implemented but that his suggestions have always been part of Poseidon’s international exploration and production policy. We put people first but some people do get in the way.”

Daniel stamps his feet. The ass-kissing and twist are infuriating. The most hated companies in the world couldn’t survive without lawyers and marketing.

“That’s good news because your insurance is about to quintuple unless something changes,” he says throatily, the sirens shrieking everywhere as flames rocket in the ship’s volatile midst. 

“Well, we’ll be in touch in Houston. You could use some time on the beach, I imagine.”

He has no use for the last word and hangs up. 

He extends his arm around Shango, but the old man seems to be savoring what’s left of the commotion, dancing on his toes, spinning the production tanker round through the Jade’s columns of fire and smoke, the heat and soot entering the bridge like a wave. 

“The fire is heaven and hell and the fire is in our hearts, Danny,” he says.

As quickly as Daniel feels the urge to congratulate the old man with a hug, he feels him slip away, fleeting like accomplishment. 

“Goodbye, Mr. Grace. We, the African continent, thank you. We’ll be back.” Shango’s warning, distant, wahwahs like dub, to the slight drum-like grunt of Yonni, gathered in his fatherly arms. 

Shots ring along the gangway. Groans abseil over the gunwales

Gaining the controls, he realizes the entire structure is almost too hot to touch. They’re not all clear yet. The men are wowing and groaning over the din of sirens and fire and the puke of fear and relief. There’s a gap in the corral of fire, but he’s no master of navigation. He needs help steering this agile beast of half a mile!

The Zafiro’s crew have been planning for days by whispers for this very moment. The captain appears, protected by a knot of his men and quickly straightens the careening vessel as Daniel yields to the deck below. 

The men are strewn around like bread, some crumbs, others sliced, some wet, others stale, some broken, others moldy, some white, others wheat, some fresh, others toasted, some buttered, others plain, some jam, others paste. 

Then he notices the change, the nauseous tickle flowing from his nose to his throat: for the first time in his life, he wretches from the delicious, rich smell of oil. Wiping his mouth, the slurry of worry and victory, he continues; he’d like to congratulate Godbless on his mysterious appearance and valor. 

He gains the gangway, the fire licking and melting the middle of the ship, itself covered in foam retardant, sprayed from a recently arrived and well-armed fireboat, when he finds the collapsed figure of Godbless Progress, gray and swollen like a dugong, bloody in the guts and drained profusely from the face down. 

“Oh God!” he rages. Tears claw at his eyes. “Life, you are destroyer, an unkind and terrible beast!” 

Surely it was Shango’s vengeful hand, for like any rogue he does not tolerate interference and amateurs, even if his mode of subterfuge wins. 

The high-pitched song of the pirates’ launches hangs in the night.

Searching Godbless’s wet salty body for signs of life, his hands sticky with blood, he finds the flyer, and cries again in disbelief, repeating again and again in a loop of pain, anguish and betrayal: 

Swim with Godbless

Win Gold with Godbless

Godbless for President

God Bless the President

With that he kisses the boy and friend. His feet and hands are swollen like oars. Daniel strokes his skin, peeled, bloated and raw from the friction of the water, almost white.

How Hurt Hurts

It’s Daniel’s last night in Malabo when the power fails. There’s no fuel for the generators. Daniel Grace’s cut off: the supply is tight and in crisis. The offshore fires still aren’t out. More acts of pirate theater have been occurring along the coast. Reports about a giant puppet-like white – maybe Bigfoot, maybe Sean, both missing and presumed dead since the Jade and Zafiro incidents– among Shango’s band have yet to be confirmed. Poseidon’s promises have not yet quelled the sea. 

The AC’s dormant and humless. The windows to his bungalow in Cacahual Village are open but the air is wet, close and breezeless. It’s tainted with smoke and the vapor of the and it makes him vaguely sick.

The candles, drooping at their centers, burn too brightly above the faux fireplace. He can’t stare for too long at the nipples of orange flame. 

Still vigilant about bugs, he applies a film of DEET and hunts mosquitoes with a book, balancing a candle in one hand, the wax spilling into his hand, hot and complicating the search. 

Whack! 

He shakes the curtains and wafts the air with a towel, looking for more, threatening his single source of light.

Mother! 

They shouldn’t be on the walls. They spray them with DDT.

He squashes something bloody near the dead entertainment complex: TV and DVD player. He kneels to inspect the little mass, the translucent brown songless deadliness. Is it anopheles or not?

He pushes back his fob of hair, tucks it behind his ear and settles by the computer for an image search.

The half shell’s open and empty.

He curses.

The battery’s out in the laptop. That great cache of work, knowledge and porno is unavailable. The phones are kaput too: no wireless or dial-up or mobile.

He blows out with a long puff, and sits uncomfortably in the dark – fidgeting, ruing, stewing. 

Starving for energy isn’t fun. Practicalities are suddenly inconvenient. Life is untenable and unlivable. This isn’t what he had in mind.

He shuffles to the kitchen for a coffee. Naturally the appliances are electric and dormant too. No stove, no kettle, no toast. The refrigerator is vaguely dripping, defrosting. He stirs in a tablespoon of Folgers crystals into the bottled water and they partly dissolve in his paper cup. The drink tastes like ash, like the days since, flat and anticlimactic. He squeezes a ball of paraffin in and out of shape, procrastinating. 

Short, sharp bursts of nervous anxious energy bounce between his ears and eyes as he turns over his return. His sinuses are loaded and buzzing and he can’t get the stink out.

He doesn’t want to ask. 

He doesn’t want to know.

He doesn’t want to answer.

But the questions will come and have come.

To think or deny or admit or explain or act or lie.

Everything will be the same as before.

Surely.

Not.

That’s a comfort – the thought of those two implacable faces, of all the people in the world, leering at him across the dinner table and watching him spit the crawdads from his jambalaya, as sharp as glass.

He’s low and blue, stalled in the dark bungalow, the row of candles illuminating one wall and casting a shrine-like glow over the room. The idea of home and Houston fills him with regret but also a fair measure of hostility. They may be ungrateful and odious, but no matter what, they’re his by marriage and blood, no matter how much he’s tried to disentangle himself. He hopes that their principles are intact, maybe even strengthened by the great gap of waters between them. 

Out of boredom he throws some yellow down the toilet. He snaps on the light and curses once more. No watts up there either. He misses the pot and tinkles on the tiles, stepping on a lost puck of soap and nearly skidding into the tub headfirst. In the dark he can’t admire the slowly returning chest hair, the scalded redness inflating his face; he can’t study the sadness blacked into his eyes and the disappointment that he cannot share a last humble moment of heroic pride with Godbless, now interred in the waves – the boy was exceptional, could win in the pool and on the pedestal.  His thoughts run away to guilty extremes: Pan-African champ, beats South Africa and Kenya, enrolls at UCLA, clobbers the colleges, breaks records and swims to gold Godbless is lung, blood, breath, muscle and kick. 

His son DJ wouldn’t show that much gumption. Not that he’s had a chance, Daniel admits. Maybe DJ’s managed with the house and Kylie incarcerated? 

Nah, he says, pulling his tongue across his lips, both of them are like trouble before trouble had a name, and retreating again into his foul mood.

The electric-less dark hasn’t answers. Glum, despondent, pouting, he’s as dependent on the light as moody plants. 

He feels his way to the front of the house, stopping for a warm beer in the kitchen, crunching an insect underfoot. On the porch he can feel the eyes of the others watching. They must be as restless and disabled as him, but no one dares befriend a goat-loving pirate demoted to geologist. 

He leans against the bungalow near the door and yanks open a warm cerveza, the crisp sound as close and startling as the echoing thought of home. He dare not ask: What’s happened to his truck? The house? The tools? The bills? The the of his life? 

What have they left him? 

After a long trans-Atlantic tomorrow, he’ll find out. Unlike Godbless, he can walk away. 

The store of memories swims under his camel hump like fish – some kind and blue and others white and carnivorous.

The humid air grips him. The night resounds with noise. Contrary to what people say, nothing’s going extinct. Oil isn’t the culprit.

***

Daniel sits on the gunwale of a dugout canoe they find discarded on the beach. Its seats are gone and the cargo of fish and coconuts washed away. The palms have been cropped by the storm. Godbless’s own boat is pulled up in the shallows, its prow anchored carelessly at this calm leg of bay.

His white legal pad reflects the sun into his eyes and he squints, twiddling his pencil. His face is slightly boiled. His feet divot into the sand. The trees vanish in haze down the bend of beach and an island breaks offshore. He glances up into the hot washed air and the profile of a white steamer glides behind the mass of vegetation. 

Mirage? 

It doesn’t come back. 

He rubs his eyes, shakes his head and shrugs a shoulder. It’s totally primeval on the strip of gray sand, pinched by the deep and the jungle. Patties of oil stipple the beach in places.

Daniel rolls up the sleeves of his white T-shirt, something from Lost and Found on the Jade. The chubby fossilized logo of Big Fish Diner, Kemmerer, Wyoming is silk-screened over his breast. His brow wrinkles into his widow’s peak. He’s forgotten the zinc oxide. His digital watch shows 14.22. The red gumboots and smock are offshore. 

It’s been a long morning since the dawn departure from Malabo. They’ve been walking the beach in sections, driving the launch, anchoring, wading onshore, walking and combing for clues, turning when the boats like a bug, walking back, the ocean crackling and the jungle speaking with life. At certain moments he ticks his charts, confirming the suspicion. 

A particular unctuous gray rock would attract Daniel’s attention from the play and strata of the area are right. A gray parrot hoots in the interval. This is a wet and nasty as Houston, a twist of bayous and creatures under every leaf. Daniel prefers a deader landscape, not this desperate growth.

His geology hammer is in the boat and he wades out to retrieve it. He breaks off a lip of rock and inspect it with his loupe: hundreds of fossilized diatoms, as complicated and as beautiful as the precious muck he has been assigned to assess. He could collect a handful of the ocean and find the same result. Everything is clearly living under the glass. It gives Daniel the creeps. 

At a salty creek the mangroves poke the mud with their hairy fingers. The tide has run out over the mud and he’s horrified by the mudskippers, fish that breath and amble from puddle to ripple, their legs more ancient than his. 

Godbless collects snails in a bucket; collecting is an important substitute to one’s diet. The snails are parked on the mangrove roots. “Caracoles y arroz,” he explains. “Snails and rice.” 

Godbless expurgates one from his shell and offers it to Daniel who notes the vaguely swampy, greasy methane tinge to the salty air.

“Dude, the conche escabeche was great, dashed with the tomato that’s a good trick, but I’m not eating snails. No me gusta caracoles.” He rolls up his sleeves again.

The field has its rewards. He doesn’t regret taking the offer. He’s had enough of the fuckers anyway. So what if he has a behavior and authority problem. His mistakes are his nerves on a new job that could be filled by any of the mostly young men working on the rig. Or could they? He’s the one with the famous nose. 

He’s glad not to be cooped up in the prefab compartments, frozen by the air conditioning, moseying down to the bond to buy a tallboy of Coke or a tube of toothpaste or maybe doing a round on the weights in the Rec, careful not to outsquat his knees.

A shiny kingfisher dismantles a mudskipper on the prow of the pirogue. 

“Fair enough,” Daniel says, tagging his sample after dropping a flake of shale into a small off-white sack. 

You were so fucking optimistic coming into this job, he thinks, admitting the rashness of signing up.

A child appears somewhere on the beach and approaches them with a bundle. The child is hardly covered in a string shirt. The package of banana leaf filled with what could be lychees. Then he tastes one. 

Raspberries. 

That doesn’t any make any sense to Daniel, raspberries in Africa, but the aroma is grand. 

He gives the kid a pencil and some paper as thanks. He looks up at the mountain. They must be from there.

Godbless yanks the cord and starts the engine. Once back on the boat Daniel tries to crawl into his T-shirt to avoid the sun; he’s the white guy without any real skin.. 

The boat slaps over the swells. Other boats are tending the waters, netting mackerel, packing them into plastic tubs. A more sophisticated fleet works the horizon. 

“Spanish trawlers,” he says, “always fish in international waters. That’s two miles.”

A school of black spinner dolphins rise from the waters to greet them, screeching like birds. 

Godbless leaves it idling..

He’s over before Daniel can react.

He’s treads water for a moment, the dolphins cavorting in the area. 

“You drive,” he says, gulping, smiling, dunking. He pushes his head under and kicks away, breathing under his arms. 

Daniel can only follow, trolling, then gathering speed as Godbless sprints ahead. 

The kid’s oar, sail and steam. He’s turbine, motor and dynamo. He’s cooler than fusion and hotter than fission, superconducting and frictionless, beyond the speed of light and beyond the orbit of the electromagnetic effect. He’s Doctor Waterstein, and tide and current are trivialities to his splashless stirring sleek surfacing motion. 

Daniel, beyond himself, by now is chanting and roaring and hooting and calling, standing in the boat and slapping at his knees, red and hoarse, drawing and throwing every ounce of voice into the ocean. 

The boy lashes the water like silver rain.

Far beyond the Spanish flotilla now, Godbless glides, quivering, basking, gathering quiet breath, grinning quite big, grasping quick beats.

Daniel, in awe but overjoyed, looks at his digital watch, the timer stopped and blinking: OR! WR! 

The distance somehow measured and calibrated in his mind is clear – not just a dry encyclopedic digits of Spitz or Thorpe. Surely the world registers the coarse choir of the Krakatoan crowd, hollering and hooting, celebrating and congratulating, high-fiving and high, saluting and semaphoring, sold on the swimming wonder and prayer.

The speed, awesome. 

The record, amazing. 

The effort, astronomical.

The athleticism, aquaology.

Daniel peels off his shirt and whirls it around his head. He unlatches his belt and drops his jeans. He plunges overboard, the bubbles tickling and friendly. He chases after the manboy who cruises in easy Orka-like slaps. Nodes of white splash rock the pirogue. Daniel, with a lunge, hugs and beholds the slippery wet star.

***

He bumps along the track. The road has changed so dramatically he doesn’t recognize the route. The chunks of earth have warped into warehouses and offices. Civilization hits him as abruptly as foreign cold deodorant, coating him with the brands and billboards, the lights and noise, the snarl of cars and clash of faces. In the traffic jam they mass up against the window of the skycab to mesmerize him. 

Once at Spec’s Liquor he directs the driver pull through the drive-thru. He misses the old Kentucky mash – something to gargle in his tetchy throat. 

The mailbox is beaten. The driveway is weedy and untrimmed. The tubs of petunias are dry and dead. The trees are unkept. The lawn is hairy and scarred with ruts. The ditch is thick with trash. The van has a flat and is covered in pine needles. The garage door is jammed and ajar. The back door is wide open. The gutters are full of leaves. 

The array of fluorescent tubes blinks a sequence. It’s refreshing at 18 degrees C. The temperature is DJ’s policy. The air is tacky, almost moist.

DJ attacks a pungent sardine and onion sandwich. Potato chips are spread over the cracked coffee table like hubcaps. Two dead Cokes in a polystyrene cups are planted in crumbs of ginger snaps. The blinds rattle with imperceptible circulation.

DJ wheels and swivels for a jar of mustard and a plastic spoon. A blob of sandwich material drops onto the homework on his all-purpose table and desk.

The letter has frustrated him all morning. He can’t fathom what they want. 

What internship? 

Are Washington DC and Dick Cheney one and the same thing?

He’s gotta ask Wendy about her plans for the summer – most likely LA.

He bites down on an oil-soaked piece of crust. A dot of oil tips on his shoes screened with hundreds of Nike logos. DJ reaches for the phone and then idly picks up a roach clip.

“You’re going to rehab, young man, if you keep that up.” Daniel’s coffee-like voice flows with authority. 

His mind flashes. That’s really his dad’s voice. He wipes his eye but maybe it’s a flashback.

“DJ, you light that, you’re fucking dead, cuz it’s mine.” 

It feels good to be on top again. 

“Where’s mom?”

DJ fidgets with the roach, then the gaming joystick, then himself. Grand Theft’s paused. 

It’s a hallucination. Mathis or Jesse? 

He hears the bottle tip and the convincing male glug.

“No clue, Dad. Nada.” His nails clack on the glass table. He puts the roach down carefully. Dad knows what’s better for him than he does.

The whole house smells like tinned fish, condoms, toilets and weed – slobsville.

“Dad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re back?”

“Uh-huh”

“What day is it?”

“The day I’m back.” 

DJ turns around, slowly, ready for any practical jokes. His dad hates Houston and DJ didn’t seriously plan on him coming back. His mom, on the other hand, is nearly due now that she’s been arraigned. His eyes catch the shadow, smaller than he remembers. He leaps up when he sees his old man – big, tan, worn and gruff like Ulysses. 

“Whoa! Dad? What’s up? What are you doing back, dude?”

Daniel stretches out a hand and coils up his son for a hug.

“Where’s Kylie?” 

“What’s today.”

“Thursday?”

“Sure?”

“Only flight leaves Malabo on a Thursday,” Daniel says conclusively.

“Oh shit.”

“What?”

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit.”

“Say it, son.”

“Mom’s out today.” It’s more like a judgment than a celebration. “I think.”

“We gotta pick up.” He’s not afraid of her, yet. 

“Let her see what it’s like without a maid.” 

“You fired the maid, DJ?”

“I manage.”

“Oh, congratulations, DJ. You’re a great manager.”

“You think?” He’s oblivious.

“Don’t listen to your dad. He doesn’t know anything.”

His tongue pushes against the teeth bunched up in the front of his mouth. The sarcasm in his dad’s voice makes him laugh. A joke means it’s okay. 

“Would you go buy some your mom some flowers from Kroger?”

“Dad, I got homework.” DJ buffs his hand on his shirt.

“I do too – a wonderful wife who wants to be free.”

***

Kylie can’t wait to get home. Her sheets, her food. Not the Harris County Bed and Breakfast. 

Her car’s still impounded and her lawyer drops her off, not without asking for a date: Lake Conrad or Galveston, her choice. 

Her curly locks are bobbed and her body’s tough, worked out on the prison gym and practiced in deflecting bull dykes. She strides down the driveway, crunching cement under her stilettos.

She startles when she discovers Daniel near the garage working his forge, bending his bow. He’s the last man she expects to see here.

It’s like replay. Something’s wrong again from the look on his face.

“Honey, what are you doing home?”

The last few miles have been bumper to bumper.  

She spots the uncapped fifth of Wild Turkey.

Daniel’s forge glows like Hell, and Daniel – pearl-buttoned cowboy shirt soaked and torn, jeans marked with soot, face smeared with black – grips a hammer and tongs. The anvil’s plunked on the cement like a meteor. He looks like a sweaty, vengeful god. 

DJ’s watching.

Should she kiss the smith? She’s nearly as grubby as he is.

Danny Jr. dashes into the house. At the sight of emotion, he’s headed for Playstation. His thumbs are in withdrawal. 

“I got the day off,” Daniel says obliquely. He pauses from the chunk of iron that he’s flattened into something like a shovel or a petal. 

“It’s not like you to take a day off.” She reassures herself in the confident tone of his wife. 

He shrugs. He doesn’t want her empathy.

“What?” Her voice wavers over that one short word and her chin sinks into her neck.

“Kylie. I’m through.” His eyes soften, dampen. 

She really can’t tell where she’s standing. When is it? He’s said that before, he’s through. 

“I don’t get it, honey. With who?”

This reunion isn’t what she had in mind, and she instead of the present, she remembers the distant and bitter play of events months ago. 

***

Kylie puts her hands on her hips. She places one foot forward in reprimand. She’s sober and he’s being a mule. 

“They asked me to resign.” Disclosure – it’s never easy.

“You haven’t been fired?” She throws her head back and snorts with tension.

“I had a choice.” He didn’t have a choice.

“They gave you a choice?”

“Wallis said resign or face the axe.” It hurts. 

“It’s not that flirty secretary of yours, what’s her name, Dawn?”

“Kind of yes and kind of no.” 

Oh, this sneaky pride!

“Oh, that’s a guilty male answer!” 

There’s no going back now, Daniel.

He has to re-rehearse what happened. The iron in the forge is flaking and hot. 

“Listen, Kylie, I’m sorry. You’re perfectly right. Dawn came onto me again. I asked her what the problem was. It was late. She said it was me. I turned. I turned and I told her I could transfer her to another boss or we could have an affair. We agreed to meet. She must of thought it was a threat or something. But I didn’t go. Then Colin….”

Kylie slows him down but he nods on while she scrambles with the story. Dawn’s the one who went after Wallis. Colin’s the stocky loudmouth at the company parties. 

“Colin interrupted the discussion. And Dawn left. I didn’t turn up at the Ragin’ Cajun because I knew it was wrong. So Dawn, bless her heart, called Champion overnight. I was a goner by ten this morning. It’s a little unreal.” 

Kylie reaches for him. Of course they fucked. She doesn’t mind the vermin-like sweat. It’s their mortgage.

“I’m sorry, Kylie.” He’s trembling. He doesn’t expect it but something squeezes from his ducts.

She clenches him and she feels him clinch her back in the way that only he can, with all his body and all his soul. Their hearts and ribs nest together for that moment.

DJ momentarily looks up from Grand Theft and sees his parents’ embrace. The games helping him adjust to parental supervision. Weirdoes, he concludes as he shoots another cop. That Impala next to the Monte Carlo SS looks like more points. He can’t wait until he drives one of those. Only a few more batches of drug sales and he’ll be there.

“How are we going to manage, sweetheart?” she asks.

“I don’t know. But I don’t want to go back.”

“But you’re the nose of the industry.”

“A fallen one.” He admits too readily. So much for dignity. It’s metastasized into something else.

“Oh, you don’t have to be like that. It could’ve happened to anyone with a cunt like Dawn.” Her sympathy is a gift to him. He’s unsure whether he wants to open it.

“Please don’t mention Dawn.”

“I can’t help it. One look and I knew that woman would be your downfall.”

“What can I do?”

“Sue the bitch. It’s entrapment, reverse discrimination, whatever. Sue her. I’ve got Lanham’s cell number.”

“I don’t know, Kylie.”

“It’s the American way.” Kylie is always sure of herself at moments like this.

“I’m so ashamed.” He’s never felt guilty in his life until today. How to exorcise this new feeling?

“I know what work meant to you.”

“Do you?”

“Well, it’s not like you spent 80 hours a week with me.”

“But I’m here now.”

“I like that.” She dreads it. No more extramarital fun, that’s for sure.

“We’ll see if we like it or not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She penetrates him with her deep olive eyes ripped with lilac mascara.

“I mean that it’s going to take a while to find my ground again.”

“Come on, you can look for another job. There must be millions of companies that want you. It’s not the end of the world.” She brushes away the chestnut hair that has fallen across her forehead.

“S’pose so. But I want a break. And I don’t know what to say to DJ.”

“Sorry, honey, he takes after you. He wants to ball the dangerous girls.”

“Cheap shot.” His humor’s scant.

“Hon, I know your pride’s wounded, but we can still talk about sex. It’s not irreparable. Neither Danny nor moi are the enemy. Don’t forget that, no matter what.”

The forge is burping. An electric fan bellows over the embers. The iron is white, almost translucent. It’s time for Daniel to whack it some more.

She risks getting burned when she reaches round his waist and nestles her chin between his shoulder and neck. She kisses her darling blacksmith on the ear. She catches the vanilla aroma of the Wild Turkey around his throat. Kylie turns away and brushes past him into the house, cold air rushing out the door into the humidity. 

Daniel pulls the iron from the fire and bangs with all his might, sparks and chunks of molten iron splashing over the drive. He might as well set the house on fire while he’s as it. He doesn’t know why he’s making a shovel. Why not a skillet? For a mortal beaten, bent and low.

Later, pausing from shooting the cockroaches that roam the weeping-brick façade of the house with his air pistol, DJ comes to his dad. 

“Once you temper it, you can’t go back,” he says to DJ.

Daniel dips the finished blade into a bucket of cold water. Danny Jr.’s tongue does the watching for him. The metal hisses like a viper, the metal hardening in swirls of true-tempered blues. 

Neat, Danny Jr. figures, the temper makes it stronger. He resumes the hunt for roaches.

 “Guys! Dinner’s ready in ten!” Kylie calls from the backdoor. Black peppery smoke billows from it. “Wash your hands and go to the bathroom now not later!”

Danny Jr. and Daniel scoot inside, both still magnetized by the crafty cucharachas and hot forge. 

Kylie hates cold food.

At dinner Daniel and son are unable to eat the Cajun meal that Kylie has seared and informed with the lessons of portly Paul Prudhomme. Slimy okra and awry fish aren’t their favorites. A jug of sweet white wine makes it a degree less swampy. 

“Honey, did you tell DJ what happened at the office?” asks Kylie between determined mouthfuls. 

“I haven’t told him yet,” says Daniel, pushing his plate aside. It tastes too much like Dawn. 

“You don’t like it?” 

He shakes his knot. 

“Mom, we don’t have no Sloppy Joe’s?”

“Any Sloppy Joe’s.” She’s no push over. 

“What’s happening, dad?” He doesn’t pretend to care.

“DJ, I lost my job.” How many times does he have to repeat it? 

Until it doesn’t hurt.

“Where’d it go?” Danny Jr. asks. He hasn’t learned about consequences.

“Do you have to talk with your mouthful?” says Kylie, irritated with Danny’s poor joke.

“We have to move again?”  Danny Jr., he’s the new kid in class.

“I don’t know, son. Things are going to change.”

The kid’s callous.

At that moment, the red phone rings. Four times and the machine picks it up.

“People want to know,” Kylie says, looking over her fork.

“Let them talk.” He’s bluffing.

“I know they hurt your feelings. Do you want to talk to a therapist?” 

He doesn’t bother to reply. He’s not a headcase. He’s a hard man. He’s not weak.

“DJ, you’re excused.”  It’s a command not a request, and Danny Jr. sneaks off to his room. His thumbs are itching something else.

“Oh, Daniel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re not the first guy to lose a job. Come here, you beast. I still love you.”

***

Daniel hesitates and then he clasps her. She takes him by the hand – soft and a little burnt – and leads him to the master suite. Kylie skips a step. He follows, calf-like. She can redeem him in bed.  

She closes the door to DJ’s killing of more security guards and hoodlums, not noticing the hastily arranged rooms, the damaged lilies and carnations, the dust and grease of her absence. 

“Peuw! I’m not touching you, tomcat,” she teases him. “You’d better shower first.” She means it, pushing him towards the bathroom opposite the walk-in closet. 

Daniel unbuckles his belt, drops his Wranglers, peels off what’s left of his shirt and steps under the hot jets. He grabs the Ivory bar and works the suds over his body. It feels good.

Kylie knows where to start. She squirms from her slacks and underwear and pulls off her blouse. She leaves her camisole – he can bite it off later. She goes to the dresser and pushes her hands into a pair of gloves. Her bush brushes against the edge of the drawer.

It’s then she notices: she stinks so bad she could kill a man. She discards the camisole and gloves. 

She slides open the shower door and joins him in the steam. 

He’s shy at first. He lets Kylie wash before he’ll let her touch him. The water isn’t washing away his sense of pollution. 

She admires the muscular yoke of his butt and shoulders. They never fail to turn her. 

She washes his back first, attentively, and he washes hers, slowly. He relaxes. The weight of his cock in her hand encourages her to kneel and take him. With great gentleness and care she wiggles her lips down and Daniel moans.

He’s guilty and he’s being rewarded. How good is that! 

“Don’t,” he says, looking down into her searching eyes. “I’m not ready for this.”

She slips a soapy, independent-minded finger in him. She goes down simultaneously and he shudders. 

“Kylie!” he warns, pulling away. 

She’s determined. She can suck golf balls through a hose if need be.

“I can’t get her out of my mind. Just don’t.”

That’s enough to make her stop, the idea of Yonni and that he was apparently willing. 

Daniel steps from the shower and towels off. He’s brooding. And hard.

Kylie dries off quietly, watching him for signs of infidelity: the nervous smile, the absent eyes, crossed and closed body language – the art of denial she’s mastered.

“Come cuddle in bed,” she suggests. 

He’s willing to concede to marital wisdom. The duvet is soft. The air-conditioning purrs. She strokes the abrasive shadow of his face for a long time before she leans to him for a renewing kiss, and he responds, knowing the key to Kylie is kisses. 

That’s better, she thinks, reaching again for his softness.

He has to close his eyes. He can hardly look at her. He obligatorily holds a breast.

Kylie worms under the comforter. 

His body tenses in expectation. It’ll be warm and wet under there. 

She breathes on the flaccid nib, and it rudely offers no salutation, no ink. At the sight of her, it’s a flat fig.

Daniel’s embarrassed. 

“Stop,” he says listlessly, but Kylie is already straddling him and trying her best to get him inside her. She’s convinced a fuck will cure him.

“Goddamn it! Stop!” 

She’s frantic and doesn’t hear him. 

Something’s really wrong if they can’t fuck.

Daniel violently pushes Kylie aside into the mattress. He jumps from the bed onto the carpet. Like a silverback he shakes the cast-iron bed. His vision deteriorates. His strength multiplies. He beats his chest. He’s shouting a garbled litany of oaths. And then with one great movement he lifts the bed with Kylie on it. With a single explosive motion, he tears the bed in two. 

Kylie, aghast, screams at Daniel, a huge, green, silver and terrifying Hulk. He’s gone wickedly nuts.

He’s panting, deep hyperventilated breaths of Wild Turkey and crude, throttling two halves of iron bed in his hands, crushed and shamed.

“Daniel?” she hazards, “Daniel Ignatius Grace? DIG, are you OK?” to which he does not reply. The Hulk’s definitely not OK. 

She asks one more question: “Do you want a divorce?”

He’s still deaf and dumb, far away in the geegawing malodor of his emotions. 

There’s always the guest room. Kylie can have this one. 

He’s far beyond her tenderness and support.

***

The air’s strong with the heavy scent of the magnolias. A chain link fence circumscribes the property. It’s trimmed with defunct rose and azalea beds. A flying squirrel leaps from a peeling branch of the tree into a pecan crowned in purple wisteria. 

Squatting on the backyard turf, Daniel thinks of eating the Texan bushmeat. He stands quickly and kicks the shovel into the grass with his cowboy boots, jumps on and makes a divot. He lifts the chunk of grass from the earth. Goddamn Texans. He’s never liked Texans. His teeth grind together when he grunts.

He cuts at the lawn, levering the pieces and pulling the roots from the claggy soil, his heart pulsing with the exertion. He dare not ask if grass grows in these parts. He turns the dirt and deepens the hole. He piles the earth around it like a flange. Daniel expands the edges and the wound grows bigger.

DJ watches in disbelief from behind the plate glass patio door. Crazy old man, he surmises, before vanishing to the bathroom to peroxide his head.

Daniel leans into his shovel to catch his breath. He’s waist-high in dirt, definitely defeated, possibly triumphant. A derrick never suffered like this. The home therapy isn’t working. A side of Daniel’s hole slides into his boots.

 A diving board claps somewhere and then clatters again like a rattle. A concert of sprinklers and lawn mowers, barbeques and music describe what could be a quiet afternoon in the Houston subdivision.

He needs a break from digging up his backyard. He reaches for the hose to cool off, then moves into the house, more like a prison than a home, for a gulp of ice-tea. 

Some racket issues from the back – games. There’s no point asking in asking DJ to help dig holes. 

Presently, Daniel returns to his pit, the happy sounds of his neighbors splashing in the humid acoustic background, chasing a ball around the blue kidney. 

He ignores the blisters, which either turn puffy and drain or burst and refill. They’ll polish away as the hours turn into days and Daniel sinks into his backyard swamp. 

Water begins to fill the impression. Daniel has allowed for five islands to occupy his freshwater sea, one like a shoe, another like a spot, another like a ship. He rakes the muddy dikes that surround his dirty pool. He sows seed over the edges. He marvels at the mosquito larvae, as new to him as the idea that at mid-day Randall’s supermarket is filled with hot, available chicks. Now he knows.

The pool is a new glyph in Daniel’s alphabet. The letter bolds and italicizes and underlines with the movement of Houston’s epic rains. It changes gradually like the mustache mutating under his nose, bent and smell-less these days. It’s trimmed, combed, shortened, named and renamed; it’s never left alone. He admires his handiwork. 

One afternoon Daniel kneels at the edge of his new letter. The sycamore tree is tipping dangerously. He slides into his sea and ocean. Without a care for his clothes he plunks down on his butt and stares up from the filthy mulch. The crawdads tickle his toes. He scoots onto his knees, tucks his feet under and lifts his heavy hands to his chest. 

Kylie gawps at her alienated husband from the kitchen. She only wants a Saltine. What is Daniel doing? Is he praying? That can’t be – he believes in God like she believes in bankruptcy. 

She can’t bear it. What’s wrong with the man? He won’t explain or emote. He won’t fuck or talk. He won’t be touched. And what’s really weird: he just digs and burrows like a toad or badger.

Her anger’s so palpable she finds herself standing on the little bit of lawn that is left, dripping bile and sweat.

“Daniel, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m communing with the earth,” he says, assured, genuflecting, drinking a cup of water from the foul pool. “After all, this little patch is mine.” 

“No, honey, you’ve got it wrong – what’s mine is mine and what yours is mine.”

“Huh?” he says, swilling the sweet muddy water between his teeth. “There’s always a half for anyone.”

“Oh, don’t be so thick, Danny Grace. You’re ruining us.”

“What do you think about some catfish for our pond?” he asks, hoping to change the thread of conversation. “The nutria will like them.”

She shakes her head.

“The raccoons were here last night. Want to see their tracks?”

“How long are you going to keep this madness up? We’ve got mortgage to pay. We’re going to have to dip into Danny Jr.’s college fund if this continues. You want that?”

“Kylie. I made it. He can make it. He can get a loan and learn about money the hard way. Unlike you, he’s going to be independent. Let the ship sail.”

“Soon, honey, your ship’s going to sail.”

“Is that a warning or a threat, Kylie?”

“Why don’t you get a job? They call all the time. You’ll feel better.”

“We get another unemployment check next week.”

“You want me to get a job?”

“You don’t know how to work, Kylie. And the phone ain’t been ringing, other than the bill collectors. You know that. There’s plenty of Daniels out there.”

“What’s it going to take for you to get better?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Oh, honestly Daniel, you can stop this right now. Get. A. Job.” Does she have to scold him back to health?

“It’s like that, is it?”

“It’s like that.” Kylie’s feet are sinking into what’s left of the grass.

“I’ll have to start all over. But I like the physical work. That helps.”

“Well, dig up the house too.” 

“You made your point.”

Daniel rises from the wet pew of earth. Wind ripples across the letter. 

She’s already learned to accept. But in the bottom of her heart she hopes he’s learned. That’d be progress. 

“Come here, sweetheart. I love you. I don’t care about Champion or Poseidon or what’s happened. Just whatever you do, do it right. You’re only guilty of making the mistake of caring. Nothing more. Just shave off that creepy mustache.”

He tenses at the companies’ names. But Kylie’s right. He’s gotta get a job, any job, and this time he does not resist when she entices him to the master suite and conjugal bed – neatly re-welded, irreconcilably different. 

---

^[i] Adapted from: Amos Tutuola. “The Greedy Tortoise and Orisa-Oko.” In: The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories. Faber: London, 1990.