(Editor's Note: I had planned to save this Gone and Back for a later edition, but as I wrote a Gone and Back for the last issue--and since we have a closet-full of Gone and Backs to publish in the next year or two--I thought I would go ahead and publish this in four parts on my blog.)
A Last Rave at the Bucket of Blood
"I built it in 1962 and called it 'The Domino Bar'," Clifford Woods, 80, told me one sweltering afternoon in his bar on Utila, an island off the coast of Honduras. "To celebrate the opening, I had a dominos tournament. There was a lot of drinking and arguing. Next thing I know, eight men were fighting with machetes. It took me a long time to stop it and I had to show my gun, but finally everyone cleared out. I told my man to clean up. After awhile, he said, 'Mr. Clifford, come look at this'. There was so much blood on the floor it turned the water in his bucket dark red. And so I renamed it, 'The Bucket of Blood'.
I loved this tough old man the moment I met him when the night before he grabbed the back of my pants and pitched me into the street. I'd stared at him in drunken disbelief. "And while you're out there, pick me up some of those empties," he called, patting the khaki trouser pocket where he kept his revolver in a zip-lock baggy. "They're worth more than the beer."
True, I'd been acting a little belligerent that night, though I'd like to think I had some cause. It was Tuesday night. Most nights, even Saturday, the electricity goes off between 8 pm and midnight and the island goes dark. Islanders and tourists drift along the streets like forlorn specters. But Tuesday's the day when the supply ship comes in from the mainland. It takes most of the night to unload and distribute the supplies, including oil for the island generators. As a result, the electricity stays on till two or later and the island indulges in an electronic fiesta. The bars set up their good sound systems and the dancing and partying rips full tilt till blackout.
There was a rave at the Bucket of Blood. Myron, a young Utilan, was dj'ing island sounds; Eric Donaldson, Lucky Dube and Lord Laro. The large frame, tin roofed shack was packed with swaying, sweaty bodies. The tile and concrete floor was sticky with spilled Cuba libres and the air thick with herb smoke and salty body odor. Then these Brits with big, black frame eyeglasses shoved their way into the alcove with fistfuls of tapes and demanded a turn. They played techno. Bad techno. The dancing stopped. People walked out to the road to finish their drinks and catch a breeze. They listened to the dance mix down at 07 and drifted away. The teabags had fucked the vibe. Myron told them to un-fuck it. A techno tape was ground under someone's heel. Observations were exchanged. The next thing I knew some strong little dude was quick marching me to the door.
When I'd finished my penance and stacked the cases in the backyard, the place was deserted. Mr. Clifford fished me out a Port Royal from the ice chest and we sat on the bar's doorstep listening to the palms rustling above us. "I hate that hippie music," he suddenly spat out, "Gives me a headache. Sometimes I wish you damn tourists would stay home."
Mr. Clifford was a paradigm of irascibility. An 80 year old bantam of gristle and bone, he could've looked fifty if he ever gave a smile a try. What he heard about the outside world struck him as foolish and a waste of time. He had ill-disguised contempt for tourists who came to his island and spent their time playing in the ocean and looking at coral reefs. On the other hand, they were a thirsty bunch so he tolerated those who brought back the empties.
I'd had no plans to visit Utila. I'd fallen in with some Italian hippies whom I met tripping around the Mayan ruins of Copan who urgently talked me out of heading to a little village in Costa Rica where I'd heard rumors of surfers living in sandy, expat paradise. Roberto, a communist vineyard worker from Bologna, insisted I go with them to the Honduran Bay Islands. "Rhoatan es bellisimo, es paradiso...es, como se dice? Fantasy Island!"
Rhoatan turned out to be fantasy island for gringos who've just won the division linoleum sales award vacation. It'd probably been paradise before vacationing entrepreneurs stepped ashore and saw the postcard perfect white sand beaches and palm trees, the pristine coral reefs and the laid back island ways and thought 'Let's sell time shares!'. West Bay Beach is reportedly the last laid back enclave, but there are just a few grubby dormitories where you get a hammock for about the price you'd pay for a luxury room on the mainland. Rhoatan has gained fame in the last 10 years as a cheap place to get a scuba diving certification...usually about $150 for a 4 day course with gear and air. The muddy road along West Bay Beach was jammed with testosterone-addled scuba instructors and hustlers shilling for overpriced cabanas. My first evening I went to a dockside cafe for a beer. Two sunburned, potbellied Americans took the stools next to me. "Well, I think it's a damn paradise!" one exclaimed. "It'll be a damn paradise," argued his friend, "When they get ESPN."
I fled the next morning. A sympathetic ticket agent sent me to Utila. The island is about 41 square kilometers and most of the 2400 inhabitants live along Main Street, a narrow road that runs along the crescent shaped bay along the island's east side. The one other road, Monkey's Tail, bisects the island and runs through the dense bush of the hills to the uninhabited west coast. The rest of the island is marshland. There is very little beach, an aspect which has thus far saved the island from massive development.
Legend has it the pirate Henry Morgan and a couple thousand buccaneers made Port Royal, Utila home until the end of the 17th century when irate Spaniards destroyed the port. With the pirates gone and the indigenous Paya people eradicated by epidemics, the island was deserted for half a century when immigrants from the Grand Caymans arrived. For over a century the islanders were isolated, preferring to interact with friends and relations on Rhoatan and Garanja and trading infrequently with the mainland. According to Mr.Clifford, World War II changed all that.
"The big boats would put in here. Merchant ships, most of them, and they was always looking for good hands," he said one afternoon in the Bucket of Blood when the only other patrons were two sleeping Utilans and a sunburned Dutch couple, painfully making out in the dark corner. "Utilans are men of the sea. The merchants recognized this and hired them on. Utilans have been going to sea ever since. Most men on this island been around the world a half dozen times. The best merchantmen in the world."
Mr. Clifford got his fill of the sea when as a young man, he'd make periodic trips to the mainland with other young Utilan men to pick up supplies in La Ceiba. Though only 32 kilometers away, the strong currents sometimes make a crossing nearly impossible. "On one trip, we had to tack for three days. We'd just come in sight of the mainland, and then the current would take us out again," he recalled. "On board was a young man my age, Jimmy Jackson, his name was, and a good sailor. But he'd developed a taste for rum early and could scarcely go a day without a bottle.
"Now, by the third day, there was nothing left to drink on the boat except water. The captain had thrown the last bottle of rum overboard when he saw Jimmy drunk. It was the evening of the third day and we were working hard to get out of that current, but Jimmy was huddled up on the bow, crying to himself. Suddenly, he stands up and says, 'I can swim there faster than you women can sail. I can swim to La Ceiba and get a drink of rum and be back before breakfast!' And with that he was over the side and swimming hard to the south. We couldn't believe it. So I jumped in the water after him and caught him about 50 yards off starboard. He didn't want to go back and fought me. Almost drowned us both. But he was so weak, he finally let himself be dragged after I hit him a few times. There were sharks around us and both of us bleeding from the fight. It was a miracle we got back on the boat alive. But then, during the night, Jimmy slipped back overboard to swim for a drink of rum and we never saw him again.
"I learned three lessons from that experience: The sea is unforgiving; a man with a powerful thirst will do anything for a drink; and never try to save a man that doesn't want saving. So I stayed on dry land, opened the Bucket and Blood and resolved to judge no man."
Mr. Clifford stayed on Utila from then on, saved his money and eventually opened his tough saloon to cater to thirsty men who'd sailed around the world. Yet, despite the unusual worldliness of its seafaring citizens, the island has been slow to change. The first television didn't arrive until the mid-seventies and the roads were paved for the first time four years ago. It's not that Utilans are less interested in progress than their brethren on Rhoatan, it's just that most of them realize if they sell off the island, there's nowhere to go. Austin Thompson, 69, went to sea for over thirty years before returning to the island to raise pigs and horses deep in the bush. "I went out to see the world," he states simply, "and left it there."
For now, Utila remains the backpacker island. Services, hotels and cafes are cheap and on the surface the island is somnolent. There are only a couple Japanese pick up trucks and a handful of two stroke motorcycles and ATVs. It's a bike and hike island when it's not too hot to move around. The Islanders wave and stop to chat to strangers, the tourists are generally respectful and even the Germans are bearable. Mornings I'd take a dive to one of the reefs and then wash up like waterlogged detritus on the beach. After a cheap, fresh fish lunch it was time for a nap in hammock and then in late afternoons I'd climb the hill up to the Bucket of Blood for a chat with Mr. Clifford. He muttered angrily whenever he saw me in the doorway, so I think he looked forward to it, too. On the third visit he let me mop, so I knew I was golden.
I learned not everyone on the island was enamored with Mr. Clifford. The Bucket of Blood's history of drunken brawls did not put Mr. Clifford in good standing with the majority of islanders who are devout Methodists and Christian Science. His wife was a Christian lady and when after her death 15 years ago, he married a 'Spanish lady', he seemed to confirm a lot of islanders more negative opinions. His relations with his sons and daughters from his first marriage, according to one local woman, "were a little strained."
But if Mr. Clifford was not universally loved, he was respected. He knew his own mind and went his own way. He worked hard every day of his life and provided for his family. Utilans respected his pride and ethic, even if they didn't enjoy his company.
At the Bucket of Blood rave I'd seen Mr. Clifford flirting with a couple freckly English girls and kidded him about it a couple days later. "My relatives," chuckled the nut-brown pubman. "This English girl found out my great-great grandfather was an Englishman named Morden Woods. And she came up to me at the dance to say she, too, had an ancestor named Morden Woods and the name was traditional in her family just as it is in mine. You see, Utilans consider themselves English and the Spanish on the mainland hate us for it. Always have. And now we got their violent ways."
Mr. Clifford paused and looked out the door. He looked back at me and narrowed his eyes. "I won't say that Utilans aren't violent. A Utilan settles disputes with his fists. Of course, there are exceptions. Did I tell you about Bob McField? It was back around the turn of the century. A bad man, but a great musician. He was in love with a married woman, Elsa Thompson. One night Bob McField follows her on to a boat, a Schooner it was, the Olympia. After they put out to sea, he sets about murdering everyone on board. 13 people, including a baby. He then takes Elsa and puts her in a rowboat and tries to row back to shore. They were on the north side of the island and she jumped out. He shot her and then bashed her in the skull with an oar. He rowed back to the schooner and set it on fire and put a sail on the rowboat and headed for Rhoatan. Meanwhile, Elsa made it ashore, barely alive. She had to walk clear across the island, past the alligators swamps and through deep brush that tore every bit of clothes off her. Finally, she stumbled into the yard of Freddy Gabriel, a minister. He took one look at her, figured her for a ghost and ran.
"Finally, someone sensible took her in. She identified Bob McField. As an accordian player he was always in demand, so they found him at a dance. He was brought back to the island, tried and taken to the big mango tree in the Methodist graveyard and hung. A week later, a commission came from the mainland and told the islanders that they had no right to try and hang a man without a Honduran official present. So they went and dug Bob McField up, put him in the witness box in, tried him and then took him back up to the mango tree and hung him all over again. That tree is now called the Bob McField mango tree."
Mr. Clifford chuckled softly and gave me a sidelong wink. "Since you tourists started coming, the Spanish have been coming over, thinking to get their share. But there's not enough to go around. So there's violence. There were 3 killings last year. All by Honduranos. No tourists, but they robbed and raped a few. I tell every girl who comes into the bar, 'you carry a knife or razor and mark that man if comes at you. We Utilans will find him and do the rest."
The Pirate Crew, a motley group of Floridian barflies on the lamb from federal drug indictments, shuffled into the bar and took their customary table. They'd been clearing some plots for 'farming' and were in a drinking mood. Mr. Clifford went to the cooler and came up with about 8 Port Royals wedged between his fingers. On his way back, he paused and said, "get lost now. I've work to do."
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