Belize

Chapter Nine

One of the nice things about his job at the marina was that he got to work outside for most of the day. He had always enjoyed being outside. Working indoors really didn’t suit him. On the plus side, he had developed a pretty good suntan in the first few weeks working there, and his skin had a healthy bronze glow now.

At Rebecca’s insistence, he used sunblock if he was going to be in direct sunlight for an extended amount of time, but Rebecca’s skin was so pale that she got a sunburn if she stood outside for more than five minutes. Billy didn’t think he’d ever had a real sunburn in his entire life. He enjoyed being in the sun.

He and Ricky spent the entire morning cleaning the supply shed. They dumped everything out onto the dock and organized the pile of jumbled items into some kind of system. They untangled the nets and tied up the ropes, and cleaned up the tattered life preservers and other items to be properly stored elsewhere. Some of it might get thrown away, but their boss Santiago would have to make that decision. Billy grabbed a broom and swept out the shed. Among the trash, they found the remains of a dead seagull and even an old disposable camera.

The other nice thing about his job was that he had specific orders to follow. He rarely had to make any judgment calls on his own, since Santiago was always there to tell him what to do. In a way, it was like being back in the Army again. There was a structured kind of discipline that Billy liked. He came to work, got his orders, and performed them to the letter, and that was all he needed to worry about. He was part of a unit – his squad, he sometimes thought of it – and they worked together to achieve a goal.

Obviously, working in a marina wasn’t very much like the Army at all, but it made it easier to do his job when he thought of it that way.

Ricky was Santiago’s nephew. He was twenty-two and he didn’t really like working there, partly because Santiago always gave him lousy jobs as a way to prove that he didn’t play favorites with his employees.

“Hey man, you ever see like really big concerts in America?” he asked as he wheeled out the gasoline generator in the shed to start working on it.

Billy shrugged. “I saw the band Aerosmith at a festival when I was in high school. My sister saw Jennifer Lopez in concert once.”

Ricky perked up. “Oh wow, Jennifer Lopez? That sounds so cool. My girl really likes pop singers like her. She likes the Backstreet Boys too. She would love to see them in concert, but they never come to Belize.”

“Bands like that only play big cities like New York, I think.”

“Is that where your sister saw Jennifer Lopez?”

“No, that was in Denver.”

“Where is that?”

Billy chuckled and set the broom aside. “It’s in Colorado. That’s one of the states in America, it’s where I grew up.”

“I think the only state in America I know about is California,” Ricky said. “That’s the biggest one, right? It’s where Los Angeles is?”

“Yeah. Colorado is sort of close to California, I guess. I think the distance from Denver to Los Angeles is probably about the same as the distance from Belize to Mexico City.”

“Wow!” Ricky blurted. “Man, America is just so huge, you know? I don’t know how one country can be so big. It’s like Mexico and Belize and the countries around here all put together.”

Billy had traveled to many countries in his time in the Army, from Europe to Asia to Africa. He’d done training exercises in Germany and Finland, been stationed in Saudi Arabia and Japan, seen action in Iraq and Somalia, and been to a dozen other countries besides those. And all of those countries were a fraction of the size of the Unites States. Belize – the entire country – was smaller than the state of Massachusetts. It really put things in a weird perspective.

The people of Belize knew all about the events in Raccoon City, of course. It was global news. But sometimes Billy wondered if a similar event in Belize would be talked about in American media to the same degree. His time in the military showed him just how often huge events in foreign countries were all but ignored by the American media.

He took a moment to look at their progress so far. They had emptied the shed, but they still had to put everything away. There was a row of metal hooks screwed into the wall to hang things on, but at least half of them were bent or broken. Santiago had given them a package of new plastic hooks for Billy to install. He started to unscrew all the damaged metal ones while Ricky cleaned up the generator and got it running. Billy wasn’t even sure the generator would start, but it fired right up when Ricky turned it on.

Once the hooks were all replaced, they wrapped up all the ropes, chains, and cords, and hung them up. They stacked most of the other assorted contents of the shed in the back as neatly as possible. The gasoline generator and other large items went against the back wall where they could be easily wheeled outside. Anything that Billy wasn’t sure about went just inside the door, so Santiago could look at it to decide if it should be thrown away. Items like rusted metal buckets, ratty old life preservers, and even some old fishing poles, would all probably be discarded.

Billy checked the time. It was just past noon. Ricky brushed his hands on his pants and said, “You think the boss will let me leave early too?”

“I don’t know, did you ask him?”

“No.”

“Well, probably not then.”

Ricky shrugged. “I can always hope.”

Together, they walked back to the main office. They waited outside for a few minutes while Santiago spoke with one of the men who stored his boat at the marina. After he left, Billy came inside and told Santiago they were done with the shed.

“All right,” Santiago nodded. “Ricky, be a good kid and go help Louis prep number sixteen. The ladder on eighteen is loose, so this afternoon I want you to secure it and check all the others.”

“Sure thing,” Ricky said. He patted Billy on the arm as he left. “Catch you later, man.”

“See you,” Billy replied.

Santiago put his hands on his hips. “So, you’re leaving early, then?”

“If it’s okay with you, sir.”

“Well, I already told you it was, so I can’t change my mind now.”

“I really appreciate it.”

“Okay then, go on and get out of here. But after today, no more surprises, all right?”

Billy nodded. “Absolutely, sir. No more surprises.”

He left the marina and looked at his watch again. It was twenty minutes past twelve, and he knew it would take at least an hour to walk all the way to the clinic where Rebecca worked. He probably wouldn’t get there until after 1:30. That was later than he wanted, but there wasn’t much he could do about that aside from getting a taxi, and he wasn’t going to waste money on that if he didn’t have to. So he stuck his hands in the pockets and started walking.

Normally he only carried a few dollars in cash so he could buy lunch. Rebecca handled their finances for the most part, since she was the one who actually had a bank account and a legitimate credit rating. In time, once Billy established his new identity here in Belize, with the help of his family back in the states, he would get some credit and open an account of his own, but that was still some time away.

He often thought about the future. He didn’t know if he was going to live in Belize for the rest of his life, but he honestly doubted it. His long term goal was always to return home to the United States and reunite with his family. But that was years down the road, maybe ten years or more, he didn’t even know. He had to make sure his identity here in Belize was good enough to make it through a detailed background check when he tried to re-enter the states. Leaving was one thing, but entering the country was altogether different.

Halfway to the clinic, he passed by some office buildings and noticed they had some flower arrangements in the landscaped garden area beside the entrance sidewalk. Billy looked around, but nobody was looking, so he quickly hopped across the grass and plucked a few of the flowers. Then he hurried off before anyone saw him. He had wanted to get Rebecca some flowers, but he doubted he could afford anything with only the few dollars in his wallet. He didn’t know what kind of flowers they were, but they looked pretty enough.

He hoped Rebecca liked them. That morning, she gave him his favorite movie as a present, so he felt he should do something nice for her. When she showed him the DVD, it was a strange moment, and at the time he didn’t really know how to react. He always had the impression that getting someone a surprise gift meant that they had bad news and were trying to soften the blow. But maybe that’s just because his parents always did that. But the more he thought about it, he decided that there was no ulterior motive. She found the movie, knew it was his favorite, and bought it for him as a nice gesture.

By the time he made it to the clinic, it was nearly two in the afternoon, much later than he had wanted to get there. He had hoped to take her out for lunch, but her lunch break was probably already over by now. He hadn’t eaten, and was thirsty after the long walk in the sun, so he figured that he could get something to eat after he met with Rebecca.

He entered the clinic and stood for a moment in the air-conditioned lobby before walking up to the front desk. The woman sitting there had curly brown hair and a bit too much makeup, and she smiled when Billy walked up.

“Hello, how can I help you?”

Billy said, “Hi, I’m actually here to see one of the nurses that works here. It’s a surprise, she doesn’t know I came. Her name is Rebecca Chambers, she’s got red hair and –”

“Oh!” the woman said, perking up. “Yes, I know Rebecca. Oh my goodness, are you her boyfriend? Is it Bobby?”

He chuckled. “Uh, it’s Billy. Yeah, I’m her boyfriend.”

“You came to see her at work, that’s so cute!” the woman giggled. “Listen, you stay right here and I’ll go find her, okay?”

“Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that.”

“Oh, it’s not problem, honey.”

She left the desk and went down a hallway into the clinic area. Billy waited awkwardly in the reception area, holding the flowers in his hand and wondering if he was making a fool out of himself. He had always been bad at this spur-of-the-moment romantic stuff. But it felt right, and he had the feeling that even if he was making a fool out of himself, Rebecca would find that even more charming.

The woman came back out. “Okay,” she said, “Rebecca literally just left here a few minutes ago. She went to one of the storage rooms to refill some of the clinic supplies, but I can show you where she went.” She leaned over her desk and pointed. “Go down that way through those doors and pass a few rooms until you come to a big set of stairs on the right. Down the stairs and just to the left are the storage rooms. That’s where she should be, okay?”

“All right,” Billy said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Go and surprise your girl,” the woman giggled. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to see you!”

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