Authors: Tom Connolly
“Let me work on it,” Strong said. “Thank you, Mr. Ford.
Ford rose, shook CJ’s hand and showed him out.
Immanuel Kant once wrote that, “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” Kant may have been thinking of Parker Barnes or his father. But he was not thinking of the Strong men. CJ was the seed of the Strong soldier, Curtis Strong who pushed his friend Willie Stevens down and ended up taking shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a renegade Arab American solider during Desert Storm in 1991. And here was his son, Curtis Jr., being loyal for almost seven years, first to a friend and cousin he believed committed the crime and willing to stay loyal now knowing who did commit the crime, but unwilling to turn on the son of his mother’s employer.
Mr. Kant’s crooked timber metaphor worked in thinking about the Barnes: Jonathan and Parker, the former a selfish bully to his son; the son, a drug-addled, ungrounded child of twenty-seven. The crooked timber of this father and son covered up a murder by the son and allowed an innocent boy to go to jail.
Chapter 47
The tide turned. And as the moon tugged at the sea, the waves clawed at the shore, like a stubborn child refusing to leave the beach at the end of the day.
The real child, who was three, walked along the shore carrying a yellow bucket in her left hand. She picked up small shells and found a few pieces of sea glass. Every few minutes she wound her way back to her mother, Silvana DeLuna, who was sitting on a red blanket about ten feet back from water’s edge. They were alone at this end of the beach although a group of children could be heard further back towards the high rise condos. A mile away, at the opposite end of this mile long crescent, stood the luxury hotels of Isla Verde beach, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Santa Alba had called her lifelong friend, Silvana DeLuna, and invited her to stay at the Intercontinental Hotel for four days.
“There’s a bachelor party for one of Edward’s friends. They’re staying for four days, and I’m coming along to protect my interests from all you Latina lovers. Ha!” Santa Alba laughed.
“I can’t, Santa, but thank you so much for asking,” Silvana said of the request, made one month earlier.
“Why not? It will be wonderful for us to catch up on the world,” the beauty queen of Coamo pressed on.
“First of all, who would mind Mare? Second of all, I have a business, customers. They pay for my work. I cannot just close the door on them.”
“Do you mean you never take a vacation?” Santa asked.
“Not in the three years I have been doing this by myself,” Silvana replied.
“Does this mean you will never take a vacation?” Santa said, almost cynically.
“I don’t know; I haven’t thought much about it.”
“Suppose you had to close, what would you do?”
And that was the right question. Silvana answered, “Well, my aunt could cover for me for a few days, and I would take Mare with me.”
“So?” Santa waited.
“I’ll ask.” Silvana replied. “But what about Mare, where would she stay?”
“Out on the beach somewhere,” Santa laughed, almost hysterically.
And the two young women giggled at the thought of spending four days together at Isla Verde.
The child was a copy of her mother—the same gold olive skin, the long black hair and black piercing eyes. Both mother and daughter were sinewy but strong. Now Silvana, wearing a Sienna orange bikini filled with curves that could barely be contained, touched the little girl’s head as she came to show her mother her shell and seaweed treasures. Silvana exhibited delight in her child’s discoveries. They laughed. They sat next to one another looking out at the sea.
After a while they shared a sandwich; both sat cross legged and talked softly to one another. The sun was hot. They rose, ran to the water and let the ocean cool their bodies. They returned to the blanket and lay down. Mare used Silvana’s outstretched arm for a pillow while the mother rejoiced in the salt water wet body of the young child she gave birth to. The steady cool breeze coming off the water kept them comfortable. And Silvana thought of Juan; how he would have loved a day like this.
Silvana turned to Mare and kissed her head, and as she did the little girl raised her right arm up and around her mother’s neck. She softly touched her mother’s cheek and slowly drifted off to sleep to the quiet roar of the waves.
Tray Johnson, running along the beach, observed this mother-daughter tenderness occurring before him. He saw the resemblance of mother in the daughter. He thought about a beautiful woman like that, only occasionally though, as thoughts of battles and strategies and his men always occupied his mind. This respite to celebrate Winston Trout’s imminent demise as a bachelor was good. Granted it would only be for four days, but just to be able to see the scene he had witnessed refreshed a part of him that was in mothballs. Now thirty yards past the mother and daughter, he recalled details of the two of them; he even noticed that the young mother did not have a ring, thinking that may not be unusual today as many young couples do not bother marrying or sharing traditions. He saw the mother placing a tender kiss on the child’s head and felt the love pass to the child. Something stirred in him, something missing. As he neared the end of the beach, it rose up in an eroded slant making it more difficult to run on; he turned and headed back, hoping to see the mother once again.
When the girl awoke, her mother packed their things in a beach bag; they began the walk back to the hotel.
Up ahead Tray saw the mother and daughter holding hands and walking in the same direction he was headed. The girl dropped her bucket, and she pulled her mother’s hand to stop. Johnson, now right behind them, bent down, picked up the bucket, and handed it to the girl. She smiled at him. As Johnson, still kneeling, looked up he saw the full measure of this woman before him. She looked down at Tray, and he rose up, now above her five-foot-seven-inch frame. At six feet two inches, he smiled at the mother; she smiled back and said to Mare, “What do you say, Mare””
“Gracias,” the three-year-old, who was multilingual like her mother, replied.
Wanting to continue some form of conversation, Tray said, “A beautiful day.”
“Yes, it is,” Silvana said now taking Mare’s hand once more.
Stymied, Johnson began his run again, turning and waving to the child.
Silvana watched Johnson run ahead. From the back he looked like Juan only stronger. She thought of her running man, and then she thought of what a beautiful day this was. And she looked ahead at Johnson.
Silvana now knew this was a good idea that Santa Alba had for her and Mare to join her at Isla Verde. Only arriving this particular morning, she felt as if she had been away for days. She felt renewed. This was the beginning of a wonderfully brief vacation.
Back at the hotel, as Silvana and Mare came up the sand by the cabanas and beach umbrellas, Santa was waving furiously, calling to her. She was surrounded by six pale white bodies.
“Silvana, come, meet Edward,” she called as she ran to her friend and linked arms. Santa Alba had arrived the night before, alone, wanting to make sure everything was as she had arranged. She wanted this first trip to her homeland by Edward and his friends to be memorable. That night she drove a rental car to her parents’ home in Coamo and spent the night. In the morning she drove to the San Blas barrio and retrieved Silvana and Mare.
“Sweetie,” she said to Silvana, “if it’s the last thing I do I’m going to get you out of this place.
Silvana laughed, “What, the barrio is no good for the beauty queen any longer.”
“We can do better. There is a bigger life out there waiting for us,” Santa said
Silvana laughed, “Well, we better get going before it changes its mind.”
At the Intercontinental, Santa booked a two-bedroom suite on the top floor for them. It had an enormous living area facing the beach with a bedroom on each side, each with its own sumptuous bath.
Silvana flushed at the luxury. “These things exist? These things exist right on our own island?’
They laughed; crazy laughs thinking that this part of island life had been kept from them as children. And now here they were enjoying the sea.
“You go off with Mare for the day. Later on the boys will be here, and you can meet them,” Santa had said.
“But, “Silvana began and paused.
“What,” Santa said
“Um, is Edward staying here with you?” Silvana asked and immediately regretted it.
“No way,” Santa laughed the throaty laugh she had learned in New York. “The boys are in the other rooms going down the hall. Two to a suite, like us. They can look out for each other. I’m just here to keep my man tame. We will see them at the beach during the day, but the rest of the time they have put together their own plans.”
“Don’t you want to spend time with him here?” Silvana said looking out towards the sea through the wall of glass.
“Just a little bit,” Santa said, continuing, “I have my best friend in the whole world here, and I want to catch up on Coamo. Besides, those friends can be big bad wolves. You can protect me.”
“And…who’s going to protect me?” Silvana said striking a pose with hands on hips.
“I will, Mama,” Mare said somewhat seriously.
The two friends laughed loudly, and Mare joined in, pleased that she made her mother happy.
“And Edward, this is the only friend I have ever needed besides you,” Santa said, gently nudging Silvana into the semicircle of beach chairs and umbrellas that faced the sea.
Edward stood up to shake hands, with his right hand covering his eyes from the afternoon sun directly behind Silvana’s head.
“I have heard so much about you from Santa,” Edward said with a sweetness that made Santa proud of him. “I am happy to finally meet you.”
The other partners in the Brunswick Fund all stood as if called out for revile by a morning bugle. One by one Santa did the introductions adding something unique about each man. Each of them invariably noticed the stunning beauty of Silvana and gave each other knowing glances or discreet smiles. Silvana and Santa both noticed it as if the wolves were eyeing a prey. They just smiled at each other broadly, almost proudly. Santa thought that Edward’s second glance at Silvana lasted a little too long.
“This is the poor dear who is leaving us,” Santa said flirting with Winston Trout,
“He is the guest of honor here.”
“And last but best; I’ve saved our protector and a US Navy Seal. This is Tray Johnson,” Santa said, and noticing a more fixed look from Silvana towards Johnson, added, “He flew in from Afghanistan just to meet you,” Santa concluded and moved to sit by Edward.
The over-the-top introduction snapped the diminutive Silvana DeLuna out of whatever it was that intrigued her for the moment, an earlier thought.
Tray Johnson never heard a word Santa said. He could not believe who stood before him. It was over. This was never going to work. Not in four days, not in four lifetimes. How, he wrestled with himself, was he ever going to leave this island and this woman.
He put his hand out to shake hers, and as he did he smiled and he trembled. He had killed Taliban and taken fire to divert attention from one of his wounded men. He never flinched, until now. He felt weak in his stomach.
Johnson looked down at the mini-me of the vision before him. He knelt down in the sand and put his hand out to the small child. “Hola,” he said with a smile that Mare returned along with her hand.
“Mama, it’s the nice man who picked up my bucket.”
“Yes, honey, I know,” Silvana said as she knelt down in the sand, the three of them almost in a huddle. She looked at him. “Oh, my God,” she thought. Her eyes welled up with tears, she looked away.
“What’s wrong,” Tray said quietly.
Over the next four days, the boys showed up at various times at the beach and with different combinations of new friends. Parker Barnes and Sebastian Ball came on the second day with twin sisters, gathered the previous evening from the dance floor of the El San Juan Resort and Casino next on the beach to the Intercontinental. On the third day, Eddie came to the beach with the former NLF star Dijon Sanders and a Sanders fan following that doubled the size of the Brunswick beach huddle. On the fourth day, Gideon Bridge came arm and arm with the most handsome Latin man any of the friends had ever seen.
Later Gideon remarked to Santa, “My goodness, in Puerto Rico, even the men are beautiful.”
“Gideon, you truly are awful!” Santa said as the two of them laughed.
The evenings always began sanely with dinner at a different restaurant arranged by, but not attended by, Santa Alba. Limos picked the seven up at the hotel and returned them at night. The one precaution that Santa gave the friends: “This is not the upper east side. There are serious criminals looking for you. You go out at night together, and you come back together. And you don’t leave paradise. Isla Verde beach and these resorts and casinos have everything you need.”
They agreed.