S. Jacques Stratton

Greetings prospective reader! Somehow, you found my bio page amid the static of the internet. To celebrate this minor miracle, I'll try to make your visit worthwhile, and offer you a sneak preview of some characters from my book, ISLANDS ON THE FRINGE: A Year of Micronesian Waves and Wanderers. THE THIRD-PARTY PROFITEER Sammy, the hotel owner's son, offers me a deal. Hire him as a guide, he promises, and he'll drive me to some waves. Go alone, he warns, and I'll find only flat tires and grief on the rutted, muddy road that leads to the island's far side. For such service, Sammy wants forty dollars. I counter twenty, settle on twenty-five, and on a torpid weekend afternoon, find myself riding shotgun in the hotel van, listening to bass-thumping rap, and following a road that, with each curve beyond Kolonia, progresses deeper into a King Kong landscape. Wanting "something for the drive," Sammy pulls over at a roadside stand where smiling kids, sheltering under a palm-thatched roof, sell coconuts and breadfruit. With horn-honks and a holler of "Daisyleen!" Sammy conjures from the shadows of the stand a heavy-set woman, her eyes like crimson bulbs behind the burnt tassels of her bangs. As the woman shuffles toward us, Sammy asks me for five dollars. I reluctantly hand him a bill, wondering how much such stops, repeated at other stands, might add to the day's expenses. In exchange for the money, the woman hands Sammy two joints bursting at the seams with Pohnpeian pot. Crimson bulbs focused on me, she asks if I want to be her "mehnwei husband." She then speaks to Sammy in rapid-fire Pohnpeian, setting them both to laughter--she with a wild cackle, he with nervous grunts. Resuming the drive, Sammy explains that Daisyleen may look scary, but grows some great marijuana. "What did she say to you?" I ask. "You look a bit nervous." "She told me she would make the rain fall so hard we would have to turn around and spend the day romancing her." "How can she do that?" "Witchcraft," Sammy says. . . THE BAR HAG As the standing winner, Colette elects to break, and spears the ball in a freewheeling style that shows little regard for shot sequencing. The break fails to pocket any balls, but rather scatters them haphazardly, and based on the carom action, I recognize the pool table as one known in pool parlance as "wet," its cloth and cushions rendered sluggish by humidity. "So Jacques," Colette says as I survey the table, "I guess you got tired of drinking with Barton and his gang?" "I guess so," I say "I see," she says. A smell of cigarettes permeates her breath and helps dispel a facade that had influenced my earlier perception. While glossed with a sultry allure in the dimly lighted bar, up close Colette's face displays the haggard sadness of a woman hopelessly clinging to the vestiges of lost youth. "Well, you look like a guy who knows how to treat a lady right," she whispers. . . THE DIVISION SECRETARY Teana's web of connections, my colleagues contend, will yield an island jalopy at the best price. Perhaps seeing in my car-search the prospect of a middleman's fee, Teana lights up, and gives me a smile slick with scheming--but a smile nonetheless. I take it as an invitation to her potential good graces. "So you need car!" she says, rubbing her palms together. "How much you wanna spend?" The deal she brokers leads me to one of Kolonia's back alleys, where, beckoning me into a trash-strewn yard, a shop owner unveils an old Mazda, its decrepit frame like the carcass of a dead beetle shriveled by the sun. Upon inspection, the Japanese sedan spews the white smoke indicative of burning engine oil, while its undercarriage bears numerous dents, testament to bruising encounters with island potholes. Predictably, as I drive up the road from Kolonia to campus, the car tests my faith with a new malady: a bad rear-wheel bearing. I accept it as a minor annoyance and wear a smile as I pull up to campus in a chaos of white smoke and rear-axle rheumatism. "So how you like car?" Teana asks, as I stroll past the Language Arts Office. "If car give you trouble, I know good mechanic!" Her eyes gleam with the prospect of middleman's fees yet to come. . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Intrigued? For more information about me, my travels, and upcoming projects, feel free to check out my blog at https://farjourns.blogspot.com . I welcome reader feedback and questions.