Justin, a sloe-eyed fellow whom I met in Martinique, was a taxi driver. His mother was Vietnamese, his father French. We met when I hired him to drive me from a small hotel outside Fort-de-France to the foot of Mount Pelée, a West Indian volcano that erupted in 1902 and destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre.

Beyond those almond-shaped eyes in an otherwise very French face, there was nothing remarkable about his appearance except that he was small and looked much younger than his thirty years.

"I'm going to Saint-Pierre," I told him, thinking it better not to mention that I intended to hike up 4500-foot Mount Pelée after I got there. The hotel staff had warned me that superstitious islanders thought the mountain an unholy place. The manager had gone so far as to send for a priest who tried to dissuade me from attempting the climb. That failing, the priest offered me the Last Rites, which I refused.

Anxious for a good fare to the other end of the island, Justin agreed to drive me. Typical of a Martinican pilote, which translates not as pilot but as guide, he drove his cab as if it were a jet fighter weaving through an aerial dog fight. It occurred to me the greatest danger on the island was in traveling on its roads, which were very much alive. At least the volcano was dormant.

He showed me around the remnants of Saint-Pierre. There was a museum featuring artifacts of the eruption. Housed in its cellar was the old jail that had protected one of the town's two survivors from death on that terrible morning in May when the volcano burst apart. A shower of fire, gas and lava had killed 30,000 luckless inhabitants. We scrambled over the ruins of the church where terrified worshipers died when the roof caved in. Even ships had been blasted out of the harbor that day in 1902.

Justin blanched in horror when I finally mentioned climbing Mount Pelée. "I wouldn't have brought you if I'd known that. Nobody goes to the devil mountain. Besides, it's infested with fer-de-lances, a deadly snake. They hide up there to get away from the mongooses brought here in the 19th century to kill them."

"I know," I replied.

He gave me a piercing look.

"Why would a man, well, a man....." he began , but I read his thoughts and finished the question for him.

"A man my age?" I said. "Why would an old fellow like me want to climb the devil's mountain and walk right into hell?" I couldn't help but grin. "Because, young man, the devil's been on my tail for years and hasn't caught me yet!"

He shrugged and shook his head. He could see that I was a lost cause.

He drove me up the slopes until the road came to an end. I expected him to leave me there, but as I offered to settle with him for the ride and asked him to wait for my return, he pushed my handful of francs aside.

"You don't get rid of me so easily," he laughed. "First, we drink together. Come." He pulled a bottle of greasy-looking liquid from the boot of the cab, and a thoroughly filthy glass. "My spare," he explained, and poured a thimbleful of the stuff. "You should mix it with water, but under the circumstances I think we'll drink it neat" He downed it and poured another, handing the glass to me. "Piss probably tastes better," he said, "but this will have to do." It was island rum, thick as syrup and reeking of fermented sugar. Awful. It went down like boiling oil, but it hit the spot. We drank three apiece. I felt never felt so good.

"Thanks," I said, "and now I'll be on my way. If I'm not back by dark, forget it. See you in hell."

He grabbed my arm, lifting the bottle to his lips with the other hand and draining it. "You go nowhere without me. The devil takes us together, my friend."

He started ahead of me up the path which was gently graded and bordered by tall grasses. He chattered over his shoulder about the Martinican girl he had married when he first came out from France at eighteen. She had been fifteen. She was always pregnant. Another child was due any day.

A mass of clouds sat far above us on the mountain top like a soft crown. Meadows ran off to the side and tumbled down toward the sea. There was nothing menacing here, and I wondered about all the talk around the island that the mountain was dangerous. It was a leisurely walk upward for about a mile. The afternoon sun colored the grasses bluish when they bent in the breeze. Looking backward and downward, I could see the ocean glistening far below. Not once did a snake cross our path. My visions of adventure began to fade.

But the ease of the climb allowed time to watch Justin plodding ahead of me. The bright red kerchief he had wrapped around his head had turned dark with sweat. He wore a red-and-black plaid shirt with khaki pants and a pair of ancient sandals. Once, he turned off the path to urinate in a mighty stream that arched above the high grass and glinted like a rainbow in the sunlight.

He hooked his left hand over his penis, holding the tip with two fingers, his little finger lifted daintily in the air, and thrust his pelvis forward, spreading his legs far apart for leverage. It reminded me of a childhood game I had played with other boys, when we vied to see who could pee the highest and farthest arc.

Not until that moment, when I saw him with his eyes closed and his head thrown back in a kind of ecstasy, did I begin to want him. Despite a certain roughness and swagger, he had about him an Asian delicacy undoubtedly inherited from his Vietnamese mother.

He opened his eyes and looked at me. There was something in the way he quickly turned away that suggested he had caught the drift of what was on my mind. He zipped up his fly urgently. He seemed embarrassed and self-conscious. Then he strode ahead with occasional glances over his shoulder at me, as if wary of a more sinister menace than deadly snakes and a devilish mountain.

The going got rougher.

Justin seldom looked back at me then, neither did he stop to relieve himself again, nor did he speak. I concluded that he was frightened upon sensing that I was gay. My heart went out to him. He had been noble in defying island tradition by ascending this devilish mountain with me. It hardly seemed a fitting reward that not only did he have to fear satanic superstition and the deadly serpent known as fer-de-lance, but also the other human being hiking with him to the top of his world.

Finally, near the summit, we got lost in heavy fog, and once I stumbled against a rock. I felt Justin's hand grab my arm to steady me, but he didn't say a word. Then the sun penetrated the fog and cleared a patch in front of us. We stood on the edge of a dark crater still befogged in its depths.

"So that's it," I muttered in disappointment. "This is all there is? No sulphurous vapors, no leaping lava? Hell, Hawaii does it better!"

Justin made no reply. He simply turned and started back down the trail.

The sun was setting when we got back to the cab. Two boys sat on the bonnet sucking freshly cut sugar cane. They jumped down when they saw us. One ran to Justin and jabbered in Martinican patois. Justin swaggered slightly and smiled benignly at the kid, jabbering in return. The little guys ran off down the mountain.

For the first time since the pissing incident on the trail, Justin addressed me. "Thank you, my friend," he said softly. "I think you have made me a sort of hero around here. Those boys will tell it far and wide that Justin has gone up to meet the devil and has come back alive." He pronounced his name in the French manner, as "zhus-tan" He said it proudly and broadly in a throaty way that gave me a twist in my stomach. It made me want him more than ever. But I was shy about those things. I gave a macho nod and did not comment.

The famous "emerald glow" of the tropics struck just about then. The sun fell below the horizon; there was a startling, explosive flash of brilliant green, and then darkness. No twilight. A sudden rush from day to night.

In the taxi, Justin seemed more relaxed and cordial than he had on the mountain. "It's too late for sundowners," he said, "but now is the time to drink anyway. Let's go to a cafe."

A few miles farther on, he turned into what looked like a junkyard, but was actually a tiny Martinican village. The proprietress of the "cafe," which was really a rundown shack featuring half a dozen tables covered with ragged oilcloth, greeted Justin effusively in good French. They appeared to be old friends. The two of us sat down while the huge black woman fetched a couple of glasses that looked as greasy as the one he kept in the boot of the cab. Before us in the middle of the table sat an open bottle of the same reeking rum syrup.

"This is how it is properly done," he said, mixing two fingers of rum with a generous pouring of tepid water from a cloudy flask set on the edge of the table. We drank several glasses apiece.

After that, he lifted his final glass to me with a grin. "You hired me to drive," he said, "and that's what I plan to do."

We returned to his taxi. I got in the back seat. He drove slowly without talking, then turned off the road about a mile before reaching the hotel. We were on a heavily wooded point of land jutting into the sea. There were no houses, people, or other cars in sight. He cut off the engine.

It was obvious Justin had something on his mind.

Eventually, he turned quietly in the front seat of the cab and spoke through the darkness.

"My friend," he began, "I really like you. You were a brave man to go up the mountain after hearing all the tales they tell about it on the island. I only went because you shamed me by being ready to go alone. How could I let you do that? You are a stranger here. I feel responsible for you. I must admit I was afraid of you on the mountain after you watched me pee. I thought you might try to touch me, or do some strange thing to me, but I see now this is not your way. You do not take advantage. I am sorry I had such thoughts about you."

He spoke from his heart. It was difficult for him, I knew, and his words made me sad.

"It is no fault of yours, Justin," I said. "You cannot help the way you are, nor can I change myself. I would not have embarrassed you in that way."

Privately, I felt chagrin that I had behaved so obviously as to make him feel uncomfortable.

He sighed deeply and turned back to the steering wheel, but made no move to start the car. We sat in silence for a time until suddenly he got out and opened the boot. He came then to sit beside me in the back seat. In his hand was a towel and a bottle of export-quality rum he had bought at the cafe.

"You have done a favor for me today by making me appear to be a brave man like you," he said. "I want to return the favor in a way I think you will appreciate."

In the moonlight he looked at me sideways. His fingers gently stroked his fly. The meaning was clear. I nodded my acceptance of his "favor."

He lifted the bottle of rum and the towel.

"We took our baths this afternoon in mountain sweat," he explained apologetically. "I will clean myself with these first."

Removing his trousers and folding them over the front seat, he performed his ablutions with a ritualistic delicacy beautiful to behold. Then he leaned back, lifted his hand to the back of my head and guided my lips to his lap.

After that night, he asked if I could stay on in Martinique for a while longer. I was able to do so until his fifth child was born two weeks later. While we waited for the birth, Justin and I went out driving every evening after dark - with a bottle of rum and a towel - to perform the ritual of his favor.

The End