25Spanish Wells – The aftermath.
There has been some backlash for my writing of the shooting; mostly strong, beautiful women, protecting their Island. For this, I respect them.
.
After all the excitement I sat down. Within ten minutes I had the whole thing written out. I added every detail I could remember, even the seemingly unimportant ones. Then, I called Adam. My phone had very bad service that day and so I only got out, “You’ll never believe what just happened. Someone shot at the boat!…” before the line went dead. Poor guy. I sent him a message (which would get to him quicker then me trying to call) and it only took a minute or two for service to come back. His questions answered and his fears assuaged, he said something along the lines of, “this would absolutely happen to you.” He often refers to my Seinfeld Episode of a Life.
.
Then I headed to town to speak with Buddha, a staple in the community, at his bar where I frequently go to write. He would know what to do. As I relayed the story, in as little detail as possible, his eyes got big behind his light sunglasses, and he kept rubbing his bushy gray beard with his hand. I could see in his reaction, more than anything, that what happened to me was a rare occurrence in this little corner of the world.
.
Buddha called the local authorities. A little while later a man walked into the bar, laid his eyes on me, and came over. He was dark, tall, bald, had a kind face, and a confidant handshake. He introduced himself as Sargent Roker, and sat on the stool next to me. The first thing he asked me was: had there been any damage to my boat? I assured him there was not. Then he asked if the men in the boat had any guns. I could not answer but assured him I had not seen any. He wasn’t overly concerned with my account of things and his information was brief. He told me that the confrontation was over drugs, that they had been looking for the man when he had run into the woods near where I was anchored. The shooter was a police officer, he told me, and he didn’t want to me to worry that anything further would happen in regards to the incident. He was very kind to me.
.
The next day another kind stranger found and shared with me, this excerpt, from a local news site, about the shooting, “Shortly after 12:30pm, police assigned to the Eleuthera District were on mobile patrol on Russell Island, when they saw a man standing on the side of the road with a bag on his shoulder acting suspiciously. The man, on seeing the officers, dropped the bag to the ground and fled on foot. The officers gave chase but were unable to catch the man. The bag was searched and two pounds of marijuana was found.”
Apparently, they were not as interested in the details as was I. Aside from no mention of shots fired, the bag was not dropped on the road, but was retrieved from the water, by the shooter, after the boat had departed with the suspect.
I shared my writing of the incident on a Facebook group asking if anyone else had had this sort of trouble in the area. Most of the women (the page is called Women Who Sail) were very supportive of me sharing my story and added stories of their own. No one else had ever had any trouble in Spanish Wells.
Then one woman wrote this: “My understanding is the man with the gun was law enforcement and the other man was a drug dealer. My friend from Spanish Wells said the officer told him he was shooting at the boat engine, not the man. The officer did find a bag with marijuana. Have you thought about correcting your story now that you know the truth. I would hate to see Spanish Wells get a bad reputation for this incident, it is a safe place.”
First, and probably most important, I agree with her that this is a safe place. I can’t say this enough! It is why I have not moved my boat. Even though many people told me to do so; one memorable reaction from a beloved cousin was, “RUN FOR COVER!” I truly believe this was an isolated incident. I understand the love of a place and wanting to protect its reputation. As I said, I respect her for it. As to the rest of what she said I have thought long and hard. I wrote the incident exactly as it happened, from my perspective, when I knew no other details but what was happening in the moment. I write about what happens to me. This happened to me. I lived it. I didn’t add details that did not happen and I didn’t place judgment (at least not unfair negative judgment) on anyone involved. I was fully aware that I did not know the specifics of either the shooter, the man in the water or the man on the boat, and therefore could hold no judgment over them. I still don’t.
.
As to him shooting at the engine, and not the man in the water, there were at least five shots fired (he may have shot twice when the bullet whizzed by my head, I was a little preoccupied). If the police officer shot five times, at the huge engine on the back of a boat at least 12 feet long, from about 20 feet away, how could he have also missed the boat? Which I would surely have heard. I watched him very closely when he was shooting.
.
What I wrote stands, however, I can say this: perhaps he wasn’t as bad a shot as I had originally thought. Maybe he simply wasn’t trying to hit the other man. There would be no way of me knowing the difference. I had another thought I wanted to share: in my post I said he stopped shooting or ran out of bullets, but it occurred to me later that he may have stopped shooting because he noticed how close he had come to hitting me. If this was the case, I am grateful. All of this is speculation of course. It is simply more Wild West around here, and honestly, I vastly prefer it to America’s current Big Brother mentality.
.
While it is easy to throw people in boxes labeled Good Guy and Bad Guy, the man was carrying a bag of marijuana. A LOT of people in Spanish Wells use marijuana. In fact, it was one of the first things we were very kindly offered when we stepped onto land, by like the second person we met (we declined). The man in the water could have lost his life, and I very nearly had a lot of damage to my boat, and myself, over a plant that many of the islanders want available to them. Nothing is ever black and white. Not one person who voiced their concerns to me for “making the police look bad,” ever spoke directly to any of the people involved. I simply wrote what happened to me. Just as I always do. I feel for those that got upset by the story. I do. And I understand why.
.
These days I am a writer first. I am mostly here to observe.
