Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos Page B

trunk. It wouldn’t fit all the way in.
    I went to get some twine to tie the trunk lid down, and when I returned he said, “I’m a little low on bread, but I could pay you in hash if that would work for you.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “That’ll work for me.” Since I wasn’t paid anything from my dad, getting paid in hash was a good deal. Besides getting off the island, it was the only other thing I wanted.

    He snapped the bar of hash in half and gave me some. It must have been about two ounces.
    Just before he pulled away he said, “By the way, if you see a sailboat with red sails pull into the harbor, give me a call.” He told me the name of his hotel.
    â€œSure,” I replied. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
    As soon as he left I made a pipe out of some plumbing fittings and aluminum flashing. I got so high I passed out in the warehouse and slept on a sheet of packing foam.
    A couple of days later I looked down at the harbor from our hillside house. There was a sailboat with rusty red sails reefed around the booms of the fore and aft masts. A red jib was set and the skipper was carefully trying to steer it toward the dock. The boat looked to be about fifty feet long, and every few minutes the skipper had to let go of the wheel at the stern, then dash to the jib to make an adjustment, then dash back to the wheel, then back to the jib. It was obviously a job for two men, and it was equally obvious that he was by himself. As the boat slowly picked its way through the moored yachts, I thought of Rik. Then, just before I went inside to call him on the phone, I took one more glance down at the boat and watched as it drifted head-on into the dock at the Hotel on the Cay. I could hear the faint thud as the bow hit the pilings.
    After work I met Rik at the dock. We got in a dinghy and
rowed out to the boat. Beaver was painted across the stern. It was a sixty-foot gaff-rigged ketch with a wide beam—a real tub—but as I stood on deck it felt solid against the harbor chop. We were silently met by a tall well-tanned man wearing cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. He was British, and his name was Hamilton. I guessed he was forty years old, maybe fifty. He had a full beard, as bushy as a giant sea sponge, and intense blue eyes. He stood as still and meditative as a Greek Orthodox apostle. He didn’t say a word, and as he looked me over, top to bottom, I felt like I’d been rubbed with sandpaper.
    â€œWe have a proposal to make,” Rik said. I looked at Hamilton. He pursed his full lips and nodded.
    â€œFirst,” Rik continued, “before we get into the particulars, do you think you could help us sail this boat to New York, like, leave this week? And take, say, six weeks to deliver it?”
    The thought of it hooked me right away and I was ready to push off immediately. That night, if necessary. With so much around me going the wrong way, I figured the boat was my exit. Plus, I’d end up in New York, where all the writers ended up.
    â€œYeah,” I replied. “I can do that.”
    â€œThen here’s the deal. But if you don’t take it, you can’t say a word to anyone.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, glancing at Hamilton, who looked even more morose as he leaned over me.

    â€œWe have two thousand pounds of hash buried somewhere,” Rik said. He pointed toward the ocean. “I need to fly to New York and arrange the deals, and we need someone, you, to help Hamilton sail the boat to Manhattan, where I’ll be waiting. Your job is just to get the boat there, and for that you get ten thousand dollars. Cash. Of course, we can’t pay you until we’ve made some deals, so you might have to stick around and help out a bit.”
    All I heard was the number—ten thousand dollars, cash. This was the jackpot. The answer I was looking for. My exit from St. Croix and my entrance to whatever good school would have me. I