2004

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE

So it’s ’04 and I’m in Caratenga, Colombia still enmeshed in my nesting planning dinghy project, (see Claudio and Heads) with the help of my Panamanian lady friend, English teacher, Indira, we’re working at Claudio’s factory and the project seems to be coming along well, the molds are almost complete and we usually come back to Club Nautico hot, tired and itchy from the fiberglass we’re using. The best thing for it is an Aguilla beer, so we belly up to the bar and join our friends John and Dennis a couple of other cruisers. As Steinbeck wrote “The 1st beer only lays the dust, the 2nd one is for the taste.” He was talking about quarts though. John and Dennis are well ahead of us and I know from experience not to try to catch up, it’s not possible and will only lead to pain. John is an ex fisherman out of the Fl Keys, whose favorite story is how he lost his entire crew when he showed up with nothing but Chef Boyardee ravioli for their 2nd trip out provisions. Since it’s all they had on the 1st trip it wasn’t surprising to anyone but John. Dennis is from somewhere where they talk like the Kennedys and has a family that pays him to stay elsewhere. Good gig I figure and often inquire about adoption possibilities. They are both staying on their boats with a Colombian working ladies, Dina is with Dennis and Emmy with John, these ladies have been working the docks for yrs, I think, but not a conventional form of hourly employment, if you know what I mean and they hate each other. John is chatting with Dina, a good trick as he has no Spanish and she has no English, but then neither do Emmy or Dennis. Emmy strolls into the bar and sees John and Dina and Dennis, Indira and I talking in groups and reflexively goes into the standard Latina response of “I’ll prove how much I love you by showing you how jealous I can be.” I’m pretty sure this is hard wired into them genetically or maybe taught at birth, a fairly ugly trait for an attractive group of people. Just watch a Latino novella. Emmy goes nuts, it’s pretty hard for me to follow but I got that she was going back to the boat to get the gun and shoot at least Dina, but maybe everyone as long as the ammunition held out. We ask John how much he followed and explain the gun promise. “Yeah she’s pissed alright.” He drawls laconically “And she knows where the gun is, but she doesn’t know I unloaded it and hid the bullets, this ain’t the 1st time.” I’ve always thought Emmy was nuts and I know she’s from the mountains and her brothers are FARC and I know she knows how to use a gun, hell, she got the gun for John from her brothers for $200, apparently a good deal John thought. I’ve lived on a boat for a while and know that there is no such thing as a safe hiding place from anyone else living on the boat. Indira and I look at each other and decide it’s really a good time to return to Thalia and make dinner, we finish our beers and leave.

The next part of the story is here say we weren’t there for it, but we got the same account from so many people it’s got to be gospel. Emmy returned with a fully loaded 9mm 15 min later and by now the front door is locked, they did it every night, so you can only enter and leave through the man door with the security guard, but the front door is constructed of wooden slats with wide openings. People became aware of Emmy’s return when she opened fire at Dina through the slats, John jumped up and ran out the man door, people were diving for cover behind these big terra cotta planters, that could have probably stopped an RPG. John ran up to Emmy demanding the gun and she shot him in the stomach from about 10’ out. John went down on the sidewalk, bleeding heavily and the police arrived almost instantly, there’s a huge police presence in Cartagena which makes it a very safe place, well, sort of, and arrest Emmy, she was still holding the gun. They have trouble getting a taxi to risk it’s upholstery with John’s blood, but finally get him to a hospital where he underwent immediate surgery and lost about a meter of lower intestine/colon. John was the only person hit, maybe Emmy should have practiced with her brothers more. The police took Emmy away in handcuffs, but there’s a peculiarity in the Colombian legal system as I understand it, unless a complaint is made to the Alcalde’s office they can only hold a person for 24 hrs, no one knew to make the complaint, in 24 hrs Emmy was headed back to her heavily armed family.

Indira and I returned from work the following day and tried to visit John but his condition was too dire, peritonitis was killing him. Once he was stable we visited him every couple of days until after 15 days he simply wasn’t there, no one could say where John was or if he was alive. Finally a nurse followed our frustrated selves into the elevator and whispered that he’d checked himself out 2 days prior against all advice. We went to John’s boat which fortunately was in a marina as opposed to the anchorage like most of us and found him in bed lying in his own waste, he’d been there almost 2 days, no food or water, he was too weak to get out of bed. “Oh John, tell me where to find clean sheets.” Cried Indira and immediately started cleaning him up and told me to go back to Thalia and come visit her on John’s boat after work the next day. She’s successfully raised a couple of nice kids as a single parent and had things well in hand. After a few days Indira no longer had to live on John’s boat, but for the next 2 weeks she stayed days. John was visibly better, so much better that when he found his cell phone he called, yep, Emmy. Indira says they chatted in weird Spanglish for a week and John said Emmy was coming back. Indira knew to the hour when to expect her and cleared out so Emmy could take over ministering to “Gut Shot John,” because by coming close to killing him she’d demonstrated conclusively that she loved him. Go figure. George and Thalia

“If I’m lyin’…”