Bad Monkey

He’d won the animal in a game of dominoes with a sponger from Fresh Creek. The sponger told him it was the same monkey from the Johnny Depp pirate movies, which were filmed nearby in the Exumas. Neville named his new pet Driggs and he fed him too much deep-fried food. Before long the monkey got wrinkled and tufts of fur began falling out. He defiantly refused housebreaking so Neville made him wear disposable baby diapers with holes cut out for his tail. Now the nearly hairless creature was hugging Neville’s left leg and chittering in dread of the voodoo woman.

She rocked forward to squint. “He sure dont favor you, suh. Bettuh talk to de missus and find out who she been messin’ wit, ha!”

Neville let it go. The Dragon Queen was either far-sighted or wasted, possibly both.

“Who dis white devil you wish to be rid of?” she asked.

“He go by de name Chrissofer.”

Neville presented a bottle of Bacardi 8, which he had traded for a bucket of conch meat and two hogfish with the captain of a yacht anchored in the South Bight. It was well known that the Dragon Queen was partial to good rum.

“You got any ting belongs to dis mon?”

“Piece a shoyt.” Neville unfolded a teal-colored part of a sports shirt of the vented style that American sportsmen wore to the bonefish lodges. Neville had recovered the fragment from Christopher’s garbage can.

He said, “I want you pudda spell on ’im.”

The Dragon Queen had a pink batik scarf swirled ’round her head, and a necklace strung with polished bivalves. She took the piece of the white man’s shirt and sniffed it.

“I do dis ting fuh you, he might go’n die,” she said.

Neville thought about it. “Whatever God’s will.”

“Where de white mon aht?”

“Bannister Point. Dey said yestuhdey he go eat lunch aht de conch shack in Rocky Town. ’Im and his woman.”

“He like dot place, huh?” The Dragon Queen opened the rum and filled a stained coffee mug. She didn’t offer any to Neville, which was fine. He was nervous being in the same house, her house, because of her reputation as a wanton man-eater. Three of her much younger boyfriends had fallen dead under murky circumstances. A fourth had fled Andros, supposedly to Cuba. Neville concentrated on avoiding the Dragon Queen’s gaze, which was said to bewitch even the strongest of men.

She asked about Christopher’s woman. “A white lady?”

“Yeah,” Neville said. “She come ’n’ go.”

“Wot her name?”

“I dunno. She keep to huhself, same as ’im.”

“So, tell me why you wish bod fuh dis mon.” The Dragon Queen was smiling now. She had a mashed-up nose and the overbite of an ancient tortoise.

Neville said, “Juss so he get off de island, no matter how.”

“All right, suh.”

She traced her callused brown fingers along the strip of fabric, which was coiled like a boa in her lap. “He not a Bahamian, dis white devil. He not from Freeport or Abaco.”

“No, ma’am, dot’s true. He from de States.”

“Den woo-doo must be extra strong. Cost more, too, you unnerstahn.”

“All right.”

“Bring me nodder bottle a rum.”

Neville nodded. “Dot I will.”

“And next time, you stay ’round to keep me comp’ny. But not tonight.” The Dragon Queen pointed to the door.

Neville’s heart was hammering as he got on his bike and pedaled away down the scraped coral path. The diapered monkey, riding on Neville’s head, maintained his perch by clinging fiercely to Neville’s ears. His tiny fingertips were moist and the nails felt sharp. Neville was grateful for the moonlight that helped him find his way.

Desperation had driven him to visit the voodoo lady. The white man named Christopher was planning to put up a resort for rich tourists on a stretch of waterfront where Neville lived, where his father and grandfather had lived before him. Recently Neville had been ordered to pack up and move. A letter was delivered saying his half-sister in Canada had sold the family property on Andros and upon closing would send Neville his share of the proceeds, which he didn’t want.

What he wanted was to live and die on the beach, under the shade of casuarinas.

Nobody at the government office in Lizard Cay or even Nassau could straighten out the situation, so with trepidation Neville had turned to the Dragon Queen. He was unaware that his problem lay beyond her supernatural powers and was in fact connected to faraway criminal events in the Florida Keys, including the cold-blooded murder that very evening of a foolhardy boat mate named Charles Phinney.

Neville’s bicycle jounced off a rocky divot as he coasted downhill, and a sharp pinch of pain caused him to cry out. “Bod monkey! Bod monkey!”

But the frightened animal kept his teeth buried in Neville’s scalp until they skidded to a stop in front of the house.

Yancy got home around midnight and rolled a joint. The stuff was called Trainwreck yet it failed to knock him into a proper stupor. Although he’d seen a number of dead gunshot victims, he remained disturbed by the pooled emptiness in Charlie Phinney’s eyes.