tale #45

“Well, that was interesting,” I said as I came into Jaycee’s office and headed for the empty chair in front of her desk.  Lisa occupied the other chair.  Jaycee sat behind her desk with the entire contents of her file cabinet piled over the desktop and spilling onto the floor around her feet.  Lisa had a stack of files at her feet as well.

Jaycee looked up from the open file in front of her.  “How’d it go?”

I had been at a committee hearing of the Pohnpei State Legislature.  They were investigating the allegation that a foreign fishing corporation might have been Cyanide Fishing in Chuuk and Pohnpei.  Cyanide Fishing was something I’d never even heard of until recently.  Wanting to be prepared, I had cornered Stephan, the New Zealand fisherman a few nights earlier at Rumors.

“What is Cyanide Fishing?” I’d asked, setting two gin and tonics in front of him.

Stephan looked at the two drinks, gave me a sour look and then gestured to the chair next to him.  He was a lanky man in his early thirties with once brown, now sun bleached blonde hair and disproportionately large brown eyes.  His skin was the color of copper and he had the reputation of being a cranky loner.  “Cyanide Fishing is evil.” he said.  “It’s the devils way of fishing.”

I nodded.  “Could you be more specific?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “reef fishing with lines can be slow.  Pulling up one fish at a time.”  Stephan took a swallow of the drink he had been working on, drained the cup and set it aside.  “If you inject a reef with cyanide, it stuns the fish, which float to the top and can be scooped up in nets and transported alive.”  He picked up one of the drinks I had brought.  “You capture a lot more fish, much more quickly.  Plus, live fish fetch you a more attractive price in the Asian markets.”

“Makes sense,” I said.  “What makes it evil?”

Stephan blew out his breath.  “What doesn’t.  The amount of cyanide needed to stun the larger fish, kills the smaller ones, along with everything else in the vicinity.  It does irreparable damage to the reef, thus depriving all reef creatures the nutrients they need to survive, which in turn destroys the eco-system of miles and miles of water, leaving large swaths of our beautiful ocean dead and decaying.”

“So,” I said, “basically, it’s a bad thing.”

Stephan nodded.  “Only callous pig sodomizing bastards who have sold their souls and the souls of their grandmothers would engage in such behavior.”  He looked at me closely.  “Why do you want to know?”

I flashed on an image of Stephan, harpoon in hand, chugging his little trawler out to challenge the foreign fleet, who were rumored to be armed with something more than harpoons.  “Just curious.”  I moved away before he reached for the second gin and tonic.

When Jaycee had given me the assignment she had presented it as an opportunity to show that the national government could cooperate with the state government.  A chance to heal some of the rifts that had occurred between the two, over money.  “Be proactive,” she had instructed.  “Engage with them.  Ask questions during the hearing.”  Now, she grinned at me over her desk.  “How’d it go?” she repeated.

“I think it went alright,” I said, leaning forward and turning one of the scattered files so I could read it.  “Of course, since the entire meeting is held in Pohnpeiin, they could have spent the whole two hours saying insulting things about my mother and I’d have never known it.”
Jaycee burst out laughing.  “Everything sounds polite in Pohnpeiin, doesn’t it.  Did you ask a lot of questions?”

I gave her a long steady look.  “Pretty much, the only question I had was, what did that guy say?”  I reached over and pulled a sheet of paper from my briefcase.  “However, they did pass a resolution praising the national government for our cooperation.  They passed it in English.”  I handed the formally printed resolution to Jaycee.

Jaycee studied the piece of paper.  “Wow.  I never got a resolution.”

“You don’t smile as much as I do.”  I smiled at her.

“I don’t understand,” Lisa said.  “I thought English was the official language here.”

I turned to her.  “English is the official language of the Federated States of Micronesia.  But only because they couldn’t decide which of the sixteen documented languages in the country it would be.”

Jaycee set the resolution down on the desk.  I reached over and rescued it before it disappeared into the avalanche of paper.

“You have another problem,” Jaycee said.

“I didn’t know I had a first problem,” I responded.

Jaycee shook her head slowly.  “There’s always a first problem.  In this case, it’s hiring another attorney.”

I was gathering my briefcase and scooped up a file I planned to reassign to myself.  “What’s my other problem?”

“The Paliker Post Office has closed the Attorney General post box,” Lisa offered.

“What?”

“I went to collect the mail today,” Lisa explained, “and that sweet ol’ man told me he couldn’t give me the mail because the AG hadn’t paid its post box rent.  He was ever so sorry about it.”

The mail on Pohnpei was uncertain during the best of times.  It came with the passengers on the Continental flights.  When the flight was full, or overweight, the mail got left behind.  Recently, Continental had the reduced the number of  flights out here.  Less flights resulted in each flight being more crowded which resulted in the mail being left behind more often.  Mail was the only way I was going to find an attorney to take Jaycee’s place.

“We haven’t paid our post box rent?”  I don’t know why that surprised me.  “How far behind are we?”

“Three years,” Lisa said.

I sighed and thought for a minute.  “I’d better ask Tully the best way to broach the subject with Saiko.”

Jaycee nodded.  “That’s what we thought.”

I stood up and walked towards the door.  Jaycee said behind me “hey, good news though.”

I turned around.

“Lisa’s husband can’t get out here for another month.”

I looked over at Lisa.  Her face didn’t look like she thought that was good news.  I looked at Jaycee inquiringly.

“So, Lisa is coming with us on the Tchoomy Tchoomy this weekend.  And” Jaycee paused for dramatic effect, “Lisa can live in the studio apartment until her husband gets here.  Then they can take the house Kelly and I are leaving.”

I looked at Lisa.  She nodded.

“And,” Jaycee continued, “keep Susi with them.”  Jaycee ended with a big smile.

I looked at Lisa with sympathy.  Susi was Jaycee and Kelly’s crazy cat.  She had a severe case of agoraphobia.  A lot of Menwei had cats that started domesticated but went feral after a few months on island.  Susi arrived on island and after spending one hour outside, had come back into the house and refused to leave again.  She spent hours sitting in front of the screen door, staring out.  I had once opened the door for her.  She ran under the dining room table and hissed until I shut the door.

“I just love cats,” Lisa smiled.  “They’re so independent.”

I looked at Jaycee who gave me a severe look and a small shake of her head.

“Aren’t they?” I said, as I again headed for the door.

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