The Conch Man of Bimini
A day with the locals on the North Island
The main road in Alice Town connects the South side of Bimini Island to the North. We walk along it. The road is only two miles long and narrow, just wide enough for two small Nissan Versas to path side by side. Versas are what we see the most, once in bright colors, now bleached by the Bahamian sun.
We walk on the right side to face the traffic. Our feet in flip flops step on dusty dirt and kick up small clouds of powder that resettle on our toes. Golf carts pass too closely and kick up more dust, which covers our ankles. Soon, it hides the tan and paints our limbs in the ghostly grey of a cadaver.
The dusty trail is the only path to walk along the road, a foot or two between the traffic and the bright buildings painted in tropical colors, blemished with the rust of neglect and the faded wood of the shuddered windows. The mopeds leave us plenty of room, golf carts less, and Nissans press us into the buildings, rub our shoulders against the walls, our sleeves collecting the flakes of orange, pink, or bright green.
We are on the south side of Bimini. The locals live here in tired homes, walk on potholed roads, and run their shops and stands for the tourists curious enough to sample beyond the plush Resort Village on the island’s Northside.
We walk North and, in forty-five minutes, pass through a concrete arch and an information booth. The Resort Village is a well-kept American suburb with sidewalks and manicured lawns watered with the scares water. The worst of American architectural diaspora. The soulless luxury of cloned ranch homes, with two golf carts in the stone parking spots, uniform boat docks in the back, and white fish-filleting tables.
“Let’s go back?” Alex says after two blocks.
“Get a local beer at every place we see on the way South?”
She looks at me. Mulls her answer, “Sure. Kaliks or Sands.”
The first three places cater to tourists. They have signs, outdoor lights, and chalkboard menus. They are local places with fresh conch salad made in front of guests, like sushi in sushi bars, but without fancy knife work, uniforms, or funny chef’s hats. They have TVs playing ESPN or American Network News. They have a local beer. They have no locals. We finish our Kaliks, pay with a credit card, and move on.
I hear the next place — loud Caribbean music and the voice of a DJ. The tiny cinder block building, painted bright blue, has no sign, but an open sign on the open door. I can see a liquor bar but no people inside.
“Check it out?” I pitched Alex.
“It’s loud. Can you stand it?”
“Probably not, but I am curious.”
Inside, the place is the size of a small kitchen, with eight chairs along the bar. Two loudspeakers made for the hall twenty times the size are next to a mixing deck, but there is no DJ. His words are a recording. A woman bartender is writing in her journal behind the bar. She sees us peeking in the door, and she smiles and waves us in. She is young, pretty, very dark-skinned, and voluptuous. She glides toward us.
“Two-for-five dollar drinks happy-hour special,” she says as we sit down.
“What drinks?” I ask.
“Whatever.”
“A Dark’n Stormy?” She looks confused, but she must know. She is very young. “Ginger beer with a splash of dark rum.”
“Dark’n Stormy,” she says. The music is very loud. She makes me dark rum with a splash of ginger beer. I cannot do two of these. Alex orders her drink.
Only one other woman is at the bar, two seats away. She moves in time to samba rhythms and the DJ’s words; her shoulders draw figure eights to the syncopated beats, and her head floats in a counter-motion. She smiles at us and at the young bartender, but her attention is given to the music. She lifts off the chair and dances on the empty floor. The floor could handle another five people, but I sense she would rather not have the distraction.
I want to ask the bartender questions and hear who she is, but the music drowns out my voice. I wave it off. Yet, somehow, I am not annoyed. Instead, I shout questions at Alex.
The song cuts off mid-word and the silence shocks my senses. Slowly, the sound of mopeds, golf carts, and cars resumes from the street.
“The power cut out,” the bartender says.
The dancing woman sits down. She orders the next round of two rum-and-cokes.
“Why does the music give you such joy?” I ask her.
“Oh,” she looks up, pointing her fingers at the sky. “The rhythm connects with my soul. It moves me. Dancing is so spiritual. I come here every day after church to dance.” She extends her hand. “Denise.”
“Neesa,” the bartender does the same.
“Or, call her fat girl,” Denise winks at Neesa.
Alex and I bait our breath. Neesa dances with her shoulders and laughs. She makes herself a drink, carefully measuring ingredients from many bottles. “No, that drink has no name,” she answers me.”My drink, that’s all.”
She pours us a thimbleful to try. It is nutty and fruity and pleasant.
Neesa is from Nassau but moved here four months ago for a quieter life, too many gangs in Nassau now, she says. Denise is local. Church is her life. And dancing. We chat, we laugh.
Neesa says they make food, but we must pay for it separately. She points to a shabby door into what must be the kitchen. We order wings in garlic sauce; there are no other options. They are the best wings we have had in two years. We pay cash in a combination of US and Bahamian dollars.
The music cuts in. Denise grabs Alex, and they dance on the floor. They dance to the same rhythm, move together, then misread each other’s minds and tangle in their connected arms. They start again.
A skinny young man walks in with a box of food. He is in boots, jeans, and a white tank top. He shares the food with Neeesa. She picks the slices of meat from the styrofoam box with her fingers and lowers them into her mouth. She nods. The man nods and beams, points a finger at his chest. We cannot hear what they say to each other, but he likes her. He leaves.
The music cuts out again. We chat more with the women and share a shot, but soon, we are ready to leave.
“Come meet my brother,” Denise leads us across the street. A few men sit in a circle on buckets between two mounds of spent conch shells. They reach into the bucket in the middle with one hand and, with a knife in the other, they clean the conch, separating the meat from the tendons and organs. They work and talk and laugh.
“Hey, Marvin,” Denise says to the older man her age. Marvin stands up without stopping the flight of his knife. “Meet my friends,” she says.
“Marvin is not my brother,” Denise explains. He was my first love before I met my husband. He is my first love. But Marvin is too shy; he would not dance.”
Marvin grins. He keeps his eyes on the conch. They banter with good-natured insults and compliments like a long-term husband and wife who kept the youthful love beneath the complacent familiarity. Every few seconds, Marvin reaches into the bucket to grab a new conch, flicks his pinky to rotate it in his palm, and faces the dark organs upwards. He slices once on each side and flicks the dark parts off the white meat. He flicks his pinky again to flip the conch over. He banters with Denise, the men, and us.
I ask him about fishing and he tells me the little secrets of the trade. Could I take a look at his boat? Yeah, yeah! He points me to the skiff. It is squarish, six by twelve feet or so. I begin to walk around the skiff in the water.
“Get into it,” Marvin yells.
I jump in. She is a tired boat. The paint is chipped off in places, and the earlier coats are showing through here and there. In other spots, the paint is worn through to the fiberglass hull. Two engines are in the back, each with separate control lines, batteries, and fuel tanks. Everything is neat and tidy, laid out in a clever way. I jump off the skiff onto the shore.
“Everything is redundant,” I say to Marvin.
“Yeah, we must be safe out there, we always have to come back.”
“You use the skiff just for conch?”
“And the snapper,” he points to the man hacking fish. “He comes with us.”
“I make all the money,” the fish man proclaims. There are boos.
The fish man has three large intact snappers sitting on the corner of the table. There is a row of clear plastic bags behind him, each filled with processed fish. He reaches for the new snapper, slides it toward him, slices the belly with a two-foot-long machete then scoops out the guts. He swings the sword and drives it into the fish below the head. Juices splatter in all directions and land on his shirt and face. His shirt is a Pollock painting of grease, blood, and scales. He jokes with the men through the splatter. The machete does not cut through the bone. He grabs a two-foot log and wacks at the machete to drive it through. One, two, three. The head is off, then he fillets a part of the snapper, hacks the other part into steaks. Another bag is now filled with the freshest of fish.
I think of the Resort Village and the neat, white filleting tables, the specialized knives and a myriad of expensive tools the people in the Resort Village must have to ply their fishing hobby. Then I look at this man’s machete, the log he uses for a hammer, the table made of old planks, soiled and splintered from the repeated blows. The table, covered in fish scales, lists from exhaustion, shifts and cricks from the weight its master lays on it when hacking fish. The fish man needs so little for his work. He makes so much with it.
I catch Marvin glance at Denise. A warm glance.
“Marvin, are you still shy?” I ask.
“No, not shy.” He looks back at the conch.
“Do you dance?”
“He dances,” Denise pitches in.
We say our goodbyes, and I thank them for sharing their fishing wisdom. As we walk to our boat, I feel envious of the joy these people show working together, a difficult labor done with humor and care. I can’t think of a time when my work gave me such pleasure. But at least I can buy all the fishing kits I don’t need. I want to visit them again next year. We know where to find them now. If they move, we will look for the mounds of spent conch.