Baja Florida by Bob Morris Read Free Book Online Page B

in place.”
    â€œWe need some food, some other stuff.”
    â€œI’ll go into town this evening.”
    â€œCan I come, too?”
    â€œNo, you’re staying here.”
    â€œBut I’m going crazy, just sitting around.”
    â€œWe can’t leave her here alone, you know that.”
    â€œHow long will you be gone?”
    â€œI don’t know. Not long. I need to find an ATM, see if the bank card works.”
    â€œWhat if it doesn’t?”
    â€œThen she’s got a problem. A big problem…”

9
    Boggy emerged from his room about 5:00 p.m. and announced that he was hungry. We walked down Bayshore to Scotty’s Landing. We snagged a table near the seawall. A waiter finally made it our way. I ordered a cheeseburger.
    â€œSame for me,” Boggy told the waiter. “But I’ll start off with two dozen oysters. And a big glass of chocolate milk.”
    The waiter wrote it all down and stepped away.
    â€œChocolate milk and oysters?”
    â€œSuch cravings are typical at the end of a long journey,” Boggy said.
    â€œWasn’t such a long journey. We left home this morning, drove three hundred miles, and here we are in Miami.”
    â€œThat was a temporal journey,” Boggy said. “I am talking about a journey of a different sort.”
    â€œDid you go somewhere I don’t know about?”
    He just looked at me.
    â€œOh yeah, right,” I said. “One of your spiritual journeys. Off in la-la land. You sucked down that mojo yucko stuff…”
    â€œ Maja acu, ” Boggy corrected me. “It transports those who drink it to a different plane.”
    â€œCuckoo Kool-Aid.”
    â€œThe journey, it was long and difficult.”
    â€œBut now you’re back?”
    â€œYes, now I am back.”
    â€œWell, glad to hear it because, frankly, my strange brown friend, you’ve been a pain in my ass all day. Like some kind of zombie, like you weren’t really here.”
    â€œYes, and for that I am sorry, Zachary. Under ideal conditions, I would drink the maja acu while I am alone and not inflict others with the burden of the journey. But time is critical. We have only a week.”
    â€œOnly a week for what?”
    â€œUntil the full moon.”
    â€œAnd that matters why?”
    â€œThe naming ceremony, Zachary. That is when your daughter will meet her spirit guide and be shown the path of her life.”
    Ever since Shula’s birth, Boggy had been going on and on about how, when the appropriate time came along, he would conduct the ancient ritual that would bestow upon Shula her official Taino name.
    Boggy’s full name is Cachique Baugtanaxata, which in Taino-speak means “Chief of the Cenote.” Cenotes are freshwater sinkholes that descend through layers of limestone and connect to the underground aquifer. The ancient Tainos, who once lived throughout the Ca rib be an, believed cenotes were portals to the spirit world and their shamans often conducted ceremonies and made offerings at such sites.
    According to experts in such matters, the Taino were extinct by the early 1600s. Yet, despite overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary, Boggy contends he is full-blooded Taino, the last of a long line of shamans, someone who can trace his lineage back thousands of years.
    I’ve long since learned not to argue the topic with him. Besides, his juju, wherever it comes from, has gotten me out of numerous jams.
    And there was little doubt of his devotion to Shula. Boggy doted over her, was always strapping Shula into her sling and taking her for walks, telling her the Taino words for different plants and animals. It had gotten to the point that Barbara and I often joked that we had to vie with Boggy for time with our daughter.
    â€œSo,” I said, “on this little trip you took, you discovered Shula’s true Taino name?”
    â€œYes, Guamikeni,” Boggy said.
    That’s his name