In the next six month’s Mike’s crack habit spiralled out control, with him spending most of each paycheck on it, not eating right, just going on three day binges every Friday in some hole with like-minded buddies, avoiding Rachel. He began to look sickly and couldn’t work well, either not showing up or too weak to do much when he did appear. Then he sold his hand tools and belt for more crack. That was the end. He was such a nice kid he’d made many friends in Rincon when he first arrived, clean. So we came together and collected the money for a plane ticket back to his parent’s home in L.A.. Dave, his closest friend, did the convincing and drove him to the airport. Rachel was heartbroken but saw he had to go. The island was one big, ridiculously cheap, drug emporium.

The problem in P.R. (and St. Croix) was that crack was so cheap. Vials were sold in every projects right on the curb, small ones for three dollars and larger ones for five. You just drove up, rolled down your window and scored, day or night, open twenty four hours, like a pharmacy. A bag of pure coke, about half a gram, was twenty dollars. An eight ball (three and a half grams) sold for a hundred. Heroin was equally cheap, and at every projects you had your choice of everything, like a drive through, only faster than McDonald's, a two minute transaction. The nearest projects to Rincon were in Aguada, fifteen minutes away. In San Juan I knew of at least five such stops but there were probably fifty. When you pulled up, not just one dealer ran up to your window, but two or three, holding out their goods in their palms and you’d pick the fattest ones. The police hardly ever raided them. They were paid off.

Only twice did I witness a raid, both times driving home to Rincon on a Friday night, and both times with Frank sitting beside me, our black drywall finisher, the best in the business, so good that he accompanied me to New York three years later for two jobs there. He’d lived in New York city growing up, so he spoke perfect English.

The first time we had a close call we had just pulled into one of the largest projects in San Juan, starting out on our long drive home. We turned in, conveniently only a few blocks out of our way and scored our two twenty dollar bags. But on the way out a sudden police raid closed off the only exit. We were five cars backed up on the street and the police were checking every one, asking questions, searching too. Because I was in a brand new Vitara and white and had a cell phone, I put it to my ear, as if I were making some important call, put on my sunglasses and drove over a curb and a lawn and around the police blockade, waving at them as I went by, as if on urgent business. They even waved back, letting me through. All the other cars in that line-up were old wrecks with young Puerto Ricans in them.

The second time we were working in Ponce, a town on the South side of the island, ugly and dry. We stopped at the nearest place and I waited inside a bar to drink a beer while he went into a huge apartment complex. Fifteen minutes later he returned, breathless, grabbed my arm and off we sped. They raided the building and entered the second floor hallway right as he scored, standing in line at a door with tens of others behind him. He ran with the crowd to the back fire escape, barely making it down in the crunch, one officer a few steps behind him. But once down he jumped into bushes nearby and the officer raced by to catch another. Two minutes later he made it back to me, huffing and puffing, telling me his story. Both episodes were purely humorous and we laughed while we snorted a line.

These two times were my only close calls with the police in the seven years I spent there. Every Friday evening I bought a small bag. So let’s see, let’s do the math: five years, at least forty weeks a year, makes two hundred times and two run-ins, not bad. It was my small self-reward for the week of hard work. It wasn’t much. I’d always be back in Rincon by nine and in bed by two a.m., ready and eager to pick my son up early Saturday morning for a day of games.

I also bought a six-pack of Heineken for the ride home, for me and my other passengers. I hardly ever drove back alone as so many of my co-workers lived in Rincon and needed the ride, just as I appreciated their company. It was legal to drink and drive there. Many a time a police car passed me on the two lane highway home as I had the green bottle tipped to my lips. They didn’t care. You could only be arrested for that charge (drunk driving) if you had an accident under the influence, a sane law which should be adopted everywhere.

One other smart rule they had, after dusk all police cars turned on their red, flashing lights, so you could see them coming and hide whatever illegal things you were up to before they arrived. This prevented many arrests. They hated paperwork. They were there to serve, not incarcerate.

North America would truly be a better place for all of us if such sanity was adopted here, with the police force not bent on incarcerating the poor and shiftless, but helping people, as their motto states. But that was a thing of the past, of the forties or fifties. If I ever leave this land, it will be for that reason, escaping a more and more totalitarian state, and a state of fear. And P.R. will be my destination.

After Mike left, Rachel moved into a cheaper, dirty, basement apartment under Jim’s house. He was a friend of mine and Will’s, some ten years older than me, a Vietnam vet, wounded there, living off his slim disability check in a cheap two floor house, retired. He had a long gray ponytail and a slight limp, also a motorcycle. But he was almost always at home at his computer, an early internet addict, (before A.O.L.), I.R.C. chat, typing to his friends all day long.

He was the nicest guy, with gentle manners, and always pleased to have guests, (as he had very few) drop by. I took Willy there after I bought him his computer (better than Jim’s) and he’d show Will all the tricks he knew, Will sitting on his lap soaking them in. I’d bring over a bottle of rum, (which he could rarely afford) and we’d talk and drink.

One Saturday he heard the Rachel story from me. He arranged for Rachel to move in downstairs for free. It had been empty for five years and was dark and moldy. But Rachel’s money was running out. So Jim and I did a major clean up. I even installed more lights to brighten up the place. Then we helped her move in, with her few furnishings. We supplied whatever she lacked. I found her a T.V. and stand, a couch, and gave her daughter my old T.X. computer with the black and white monitor, nothing special with few games on it, but an addition at least. In the end they had a two bedroom apartment, well furnished.

Jim loved having Rachel there and her company. She’d spend hours upstairs with him in his much brighter living room, having coffee with him and talking away the hours. I came by as often as I could to see them both, bringing Willy over for awhile and then take Vanessa off to my place to play with him.

She stayed there about five months but told us one day she was running low on cash. The next Saturday night I brought Will for a sleep-over with Vanessa downstairs. I also brought three bags of coke and a large bottle of rum. We invited Rachel upstairs and sat her down at Jim’s kitchen table and convinced her to do some lines and drink rum with us. She was in a depressed state and needed cheering up, so she agreed. The lines perked her up and she listened and talked with us all night, till dawn. Jim and I took equal turns talking about our positive attitudes and philosophies on life, at great length, and how important that was in getting us over our own griefs, Jim with his war memories and me with my recent divorce. She listened intently, keenly, asking questions and wide-eyed. She pretty much had to, being wired on coke for the first time in her life. But that was our plan.

We then told her there were no opportunities for her here, only poverty, and that she should fly to the States and start a new life, as much for her daughter’s sake as her own. The public schools here were terrible, teaching next to nothing. Vanessa went to one because Rachel couldn’t afford any better. If she stayed longer she would find her fifth grade here equivalent to a third grade in the States.

I knew this because in our first year in Rincon we sent Will to the public school just up the street from our farm rental. After three months we pulled him out, realizing he was learning nothing in this ‘supposed’ first grade. Sanita promised to home school him the rest of the year but that experiment fizzled out in a few weeks. Then we heard of the English school in Mayaguez from Laura and sent him there. But he was always a year behind (for his age) from this experience.

I remember picking him up at this local school one afternoon to drive him home. I walked into the fenced schoolyard and saw all the teachers and children huddled in a circle. It was a small school with five classrooms and five teachers in a dingy, low cement structure. As I pushed into the crowd to find my son I could see what was going on. They were all spectators to a fight, the young, the women teachers watching just as eagerly as the children. Two eight year-old boys were duking it out, the whole crowd cheering them on. It must have been a long fight as everyone, especially the teachers, were captivated by it. As I pulled Will out of this rabble I thought to myself: ‘why aren’t the teachers breaking up this fight?’ Then I realized, these low-paid, ignorant Puerto Rican teachers had the same mentalities as their eight year-old wards, and hardly any more knowledge. That’s when we pulled him out of that pit. I told Rachel of this experience. Her daughter was attending the very same place.

At dawn she agreed and thanked us profusely for that night’s long, kind, talk. She said she’d never had anything like it in her life, (or the cocaine, and rum). Men usually talked to get into her bed, not two older men truly looking out for her, giving her wise advice and explaining it at great length, like two fathers. And it was just that, altruistic, because we both cared for her and her daughter. Sending her away was a loss to the both of us, and her daughter to Willy. But it was the solution she needed.

She took it and left Rincon two weeks later, by taxi, taking her to the small airport in Aguadilla thirty minutes away, with a few suitcases and her girl, while I was working in San Juan. I would have driven her there on any weekend, but I think she realized that the parting, with Will and Vanessa too, would have been too tearful.

Jim received a postcard, but I got a phone call, a single, long one years later, when I was back in Canada just starting with my Union work and before I bought my house. I don’t know how she found my number but one night the phone rang and I heard her voice again. We talked for over an hour. She was living in Denver, finishing up a nursing degree. Her daughter was happy in school and they had a nice place to live. But Rachel sounded a bit sad or lonely. She said she’d made friends, (no serious boyfriend yet) but nothing like Jim and I were to her, true friends, and never had anything close to the deep conversation we shared that one night. She thought of it often and said she missed us both and wished we could visit her in Denver, all three of us, though she knew that Jim probably couldn’t afford it.

She asked about Will and how I was doing. At this stage I was still in deep negotiations with Sanita over him, still in Florida and near broke, a single mother with a minimum wage job. I told her I was doing fine with work and ever closer to gaining full custody of Will, still in talks, and that we’d love to visit them when that concluded. She ended by thanking me again and to say how much she missed us. I asked her to stay in touch. She gave me her number but she never called back. So I didn’t call or visit. Our past was over, our ages too far apart.