February Heat. Wilson Roberts
my drink, I shook my head. “There are less than twelve thousand people on the whole island. How can you support an operation as expensive as a television station with such a small population base? And you’ll have to compete with cable.”
“It’s plenty big enough if Government will guarantee I’m going to have the only station they’ll license here and they’ll also guarantee me ownership and control of the cable system. It’ll be a goldmine, Frank. Everything picked up by the relay tower will have to broadcast through my station or my cable, and the station will be beamed to the BVI and the American islands. Maybe even down island.”
“Government has given you complete assurance?” I was surprised. It’s not easy for an off islander to get such cooperation from the Ursuline government.
“The Minister of Communications has already given it to my potential partners.” He hooked his thumbs under the sleeve seams of his tee shirt, tycoon style. “Besides, I’ve got to do something. The supply business is in trouble.”
“I thought you were doing well.” I was surprised. Chance’s three delivery trucks always seemed to be out on the roads.
“We were. Hell, we’re moving supplies like crazy, but goddamn Rodney’s a piss poor businessman and it’s time for me to get out before he drives us into bankruptcy by giving credit to everybody, regardless of the risk. He’s still giving credit to people who haven’t paid us for six months.”
“Then get out. But television? What good is television going to bring to St. Ursula?”
He dropped the swizzle stick into his empty glass and looked directly at me. “Your problem, Frank, is that you’re just like everybody who comes to the islands. You want progress and change to stop when you get here so things will remain the way they were when you were attracted to the place.”
“Wrong. I’m an idealist. The only thing a television station will do is undermine the culture.”
“Horseshit.” He crashed his chair to the floor. “It’s going to come. Besides we’ve already got television over the air from the US islands and Puerto Rico. You’ve got a set yourself.”
“But the reception’s too lousy for it to be a major force, and it doesn’t directly involve St. Ursula.”
He smiled, shaking his head. “Better me being involved with it than someone with no respect for this place. I’ve got the money to make it work for the island instead of just for making more bucks.” He paused, looking off at the lights in the harbor. “Of course, I want it to make more money for me, not lose it. I’m not just an altruist.”
We ate our main courses in silence. I had grouper with a light sauce of butter and Parmesan cheese. Chance had a thick rare filet of beef.
Following the meal we had three stingers apiece. Rumble lay on his side sleeping under the table, sated on our scraps, snorting, whining softly as he dreamed, his stumpy legs fanning the air as he chased imaginary beasts. We sat quietly, Chance staring at lights on the pool’s surface, me feeling sorry for poor old Frank James, sleeping alone again. Finally we paid our bill, said our good nights to Tobias, who pressed a last beer into each of our hands. Stumbling and weaving, we made our way back to the Land Rover.
“You’re wrong about television,” I said. It’s a mistake to bring it in.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Frank.” He fell into his seat and turned to face me.
Chance is a gentle man, but no one to mess around with, his muscles built over years spent lugging heavy boxes of pipe fittings, hoisting bathtubs onto trucks and rowing his dinghy out to his home aboard The Maybelline, a decaying wooden Chris Craft he anchored in the middle of Great Harbor, thus avoiding having to pay dock fees. He had been on St. Ursula for twenty-five years; sometimes making a lot of money, sometimes going broke in one business or another. He’s been in a number of businesses. He owned a small hotel on the north side for couple of years, but once it was a going concern he lost interest and sold it. When I first met him he was running a successful landscaping business, which he sold to raise the capital for his half of the plumbing supply operation.
Maybe he was right about the potential for television on the island. Chance is a talented and energetic person from a talented and energetic family. His father is the author of sixteen one thousand plus page topical novels, the first of which was made into a successful Broadway musical, later into a movie. Three or four others had also been made into movies. The mere mention of a new book by Chance’s father is enough to have publishers and book club executives running around with the intensity of Spock in heat.
By the time Chance was eight, his father, raking in proceeds from the musical, was pushing him to be the exemplary son of a rich man. Chance played the game until his junior year at Swarthmore. He dropped out to knock around the dens of the Beat Generation for a couple of months, got disgusted with nihilists jockeying for literary fame by embracing nothingness, and finally took a job as a crew member on a yacht belonging to a friend of his father’s. He jumped ship in St. Ursula after the owner discovered Chance was having an affair with his young wife.
Chance has his father’s ability to muster his energy to profitable ends. He does it in different ways, but he is always successful, at least for a while. He’s been rich, he’s been poor, he’ll be rich again, and his father always is ready to finance his plans.
“It’s the wrong business for St. Ursula,” I said.
“And I say you still haven’t gotten over your romantic crush on the island.”
“Like I said, I’m an idealist.”
“Idealist, romantic. It’s the same thing.”
We knew each pretty well and, aware of the pointlessness of arguing, dropped the discussion. He started the Land Rover, ground it into gear and drove weaving along Waterfront to Ocean Road. Resting my head against the back of the seat I stared into the star-broken vastness of the tropical night.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Go to bed.”
“I mean about the television business.”
“Who knows? Tonight I’ll go to bed. I do my best thinking when I’m asleep. Tomorrow I’ll have a better idea what I’m going to do about the television thing.”
We turned off Ocean Road, down the rocky, rutted, twisting, muddy drive to my place.
“You can sleep here tonight,” I said, getting out of the Land Rover.
He shook his head.
“You’ve been drinking as much as I have.”
“Not to worry. Look, I can still stand up and touch my nose.”
Shutting his eyes and keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he stood and brought his thumb rapidly toward his face, poking himself in the corner of the left eye. The car swung into a pothole, lurched through a growth of century plants and came to a stop in a hedge after lightly brushing a small coconut palm. He was thrown back on the seat, laughing as the engine sputtered twice and stalled.
“I didn’t do so well, did I?” He restarted the engine, backed out of the bushes and drove up to my front door.
“You should stay here.” I got out and walked around to the driver’s side. Stretching, I put my hand on his forearm.
“I’ll drive carefully and I promise not to stand up and touch my nose on the way home. I have things to do and miles to go before I sleep. Take care.”
Spinning his wheels, he turned the Rover around and drove rumbling and squeaking toward the main road.
THE CEILING FAN turning above us, Rumble and I lay on my bed watching the 11 o’clock news from St. Thomas. The picture jumped, fading in and out as the signal bounced off clouds and mountainsides. A tourist had been shot in the head outside a nightclub. A teacher had been mugged at the University of the Virgin Islands.