Free Swimming in the Volcano by Bob Shacochis Page B

most practical. Not a gal for shortcuts or even direct routes. He saw her squat like a coolie, draping her skirt between her legs, and tear through one of the handbags looking for her passport. Finally she lurched away from the luggage queue, swinging gear onto a processing table to be inspected by a rigid agent. Mitchell groaned when he saw her old backpack, utilitarian relic of hippie days. Where did she think she was? The Appalachian trail? You could feel the creepy gratitude of the customs officer as he shed his boredom and upended the pack, letting its contents rain out. Johnnie’s shoulders tightened and flinched under the loathsome and darkly violating caress of the procedure. The man scattered the pile of her clothes like a deck of tarot cards, pawing through it for signs of her fortune. He rubbed the black material of a bra between thumb and forefinger. He opened a pill bottle and inhaled its aroma. He unzipped her cosmetic bag and emptied it as if it were filled with jewels. When he selected her blue diaphragm case and was about to unclasp it, she snatched it out of his hands before he understood how to pry the clamshell edges open.
    In shock, Mitchell prayed for her to put it back down.
    What was she trying to do, the naif, in a land she had never been before and probably never imagined, painting herself a target for a man who ached to put his two-hour special training in the hideaways of the body to use, and here was Johnnie offering him an invitation to the full range of secret spots, not just physical access but unrestricted license to interiors, the attics and cellars of her identity. The Tourist Board needed more truth in advertising, a poster with a guy like this one with hammerhead eyes, his handsome braided tunic and officer’s cap, his grin studded with a gold tooth, a speculum in his breast pocket underneath a colorful row of bogus medals of honor, his left hand drawing a chalky surgical glove down over his upraised right hand, the fingers juxtaposed with the immaculate sails of a yacht, an umbrella of palm trees, a bikinied woman about to enter the periloussea. Regardless of the undertow of danger, Johnnie would not give back the diaphragm case. Not only would she not return it, she shook it like a safe pass in the man’s deadly humorless face. Her protest, inaudible through the glass barrier, made Mitchell so angry that he thought, whatever she got she deserved. But people in St. Catherine, even uniformed homicidals on the civil payroll, weren’t so simple, or at least you could say that their simplicity came with a tradition of ingenuity. They loved big mouths and big wind, they admired fights and fighters for the honesty of expression as long as no one pulled punches, as long as passions were ignited, and the fighter, especially the one who represented the rightful cause, was as blind and defenseless as Johnnie. A crab confronting the fisherman, a slave back-talking a master, the island romance with futility.
    The agent’s face became a small nova of pleasure and he accepted Johnnie’s tantrum as his light amusement for the day. He obviously enjoyed her show of fury and checked his fellow officers and even the head porter to see if they appreciated that he was the inspiration for this little white fuckable, beatable treasure of foolish defiance. Johnnie twisted an arm behind her to point randomly into the terminal, apparently giving Mitchell’s name as a counterbalance of authority. Mitchell saw the villain shift his eyes beyond her, scanning the crowd behind the sheet of grease-smeared window to locate the man she claimed as patron. Mitchell dropped his head, a lesser St. Peter, denying the challenge to be held accountable because of the outlandish judgment of this woman.
    Her passport was returned and the agent advanced down the table, automatically clearing the next three passengers in line, Johnnie forgotten except in mockery. She restuffed her belongings into the