"Raul, take these tanks back over the shop and fill ‘em," I order. “I’m gonna hit the bank.”
Raul tosses me a nasty look, says nothing.
I slide on worn hurachis, sluff off down the powdery road toward Barclay’s Bank. Tuggy follows, jumpy, desperate to utter something, the words lodged somewhere in his esophagus. He stops short of entering the lobby. I look back at him, allowing him his chance. He shuffles, twitches.
I shrug, go inside. Celia is making photocopies in the public services area. Barclay's is the only place you can do large-scale copying on Grand Turk, still the machine is not much faster than the ancient library mimeograph. "Celia," I call.
Her head jerks around. "Oh, Mojo. I been looking for you."
"So I heard. What's up?"
"Well, good news. The tourist board has decided to meet about your documentary."
"When?"
She hurries over, grips both my shoulders hard. “Wednesday afternoon at three,” she says, her hot-coffee eyes searching mine intently. "I said you would be there."
"Why not?" I say. "I got nowhere else to be."
She nods, lets go, leaving rows of white finger marks, grabs her copies. I jog after her into the nuclear sun. "Roger?" I call after her. “Cal?”
"For sure. The sons of bitches will be there," she says. "But don't worry. Everybody is on your side. Especially me."
She smiles, white teeth ripping apart her dark leather face. Her chunky heels kick up dust-devils as she tracks back toward her hotel. Tuggy re-appears, eating fried plantains. "You gon' put me in your movie?" He grins, fidgets.
"Of course. You're the protagonist."
"De what?"
"The good guy."
"Dat me," he says, smiles broadly, his gold front tooth fires a lightning bolt of sun.
"Of course, in my shows, that's generally a bit part."
Grin flickering, he ambles out into the white sand road, climbs into his beat-to-hell station wagon, groans and clanks away. Dust hangs in the still air, fading the Haitian painting of Cockburn Town, one moment like ten thousand years.
**********
I sit at a rickety table in the large open-air tin shed known as Turks Island International Airport, peeling the remaining skin from my sun-tortured forearms, reading the local gossip rag, the "Turks Times". The nicely dressed islanders around me are here for the Big Event, the once-a-week flight from Miami. Most of them aren't here to meet anyone, they just don't have anything better to do.
The page one headline shocks: "Molasses Reef Shipwreck Site Bombed". Underneath are photos of the destroyed site, patrolled by police boats. There is a photo of Butch, owner of a local dive charter and amateur archaeologist, holding an unexploded pipe bomb, looking grim. Butch discovered the intriguing Spanish caravel wreck about 20 miles south of Providenciales while looking for new dive sites, and filed salvage rights. So when a sophisticated dig team from the University of Florida arrived to help, he was annointed "Project Director".
The Molasses Reef project is the reason I came here about a year ago, as a reporter for Channel Four in Miami. I produced a five-part series about the heated controversy among historians over whether this was the spot where Christopher Columbus actually made first landfall in the New World. There are many theories, as Columbus didn’t have a clue where he was at the time and could only describe what he saw. Several islands claim to be the first landfall site, including Mayaguana, Samana Cay, San Salvador and Eleuthera Island – and each has erected poignant monuments to that effect. Clearly, such an important historical confirmation would be extremely valuable to the tourism business of any island, as competition for visitors around the region is fierce.
Now it looks like a bumbling salvage crew tried to blow up the scant remains to uncover more artifacts, or more likely look for elusive gold, I figure, and in the process probably ruined any hope of proving the old wreck’s identity. My reasons for remaining here become sketchier by the day. The only thing I can currently claim is that in the process of shooting the news series, I fell in love with the Turks and Caicos Islands, and a local divemaster dog.
I quit a solid, good-paying reporter job – where I had recently been named weekend anchor - to produce an hour-long documentary about Columbus’s first landfall, and hopefully sell it to somebody. I was completely vague about where and how I could get it on the air. I blew my paltry savings and maxed out my credit cards traveling all over the islands, garnering financial support from various hotel