I ASK THE DRIVER OF THE KING JESS Cab Company the way to the Ernest Hemingway bar. The man looks at the painting on his van of the king of spades and just smiles.

“He’s dead now.” The water across Bimini harbor shoots back turquoise, and there is a storm to the south where the sky holds charcoal smudges over the turtle rocks. The air cools as we sit and watch a big Morgan, yellow quarantine flag raised, nose into the Blue Waters dock. Just down the harbor the fat white American sport fishing boats hold court at the Big Game Fishing Club. The cab driver looks quickly at his gold Rolex, patting it reassuringly.

“Maybe Bozo can help,” he says. “Up the hill, the motor bike place.”

I walk north along the narrow chalky road. There are little shops and bars and a peeling pink post office next to the old jail. I stop in to dodge the sun and buy three stamps illustrated with bright island fish. When I come to a bread stand I ask a big woman weaving hats where the road to Bozo’s is. She doesn’t smile or look at me, but points up the hill. The heat is taking its toll and my shirt is stuck to my chest and shoulders as I walk straight into the sun.

On the way up, a young black man pads out of a squat block house. I can tell he wants to be friendly by the way he drifts up to me, paralleling my course up the hill and smiling wide before he says, “You need something, brother?” I tell him I am looking for Bozo.

“Whatcha want with that old fool?”

“Old stories, stories about Hemingway and the old Bimini.”

“There ain’t no old Bimini,” the young man says flatly. “Only what we got now.” I notice he’s just a boy with a tired face. He sees me looking into him now, reading him, so he says, “I used to be healthy before I got into this crap.” There is real guilt in his voice as he touches his nose softly and then fades back down the road and into his concrete box house.

I’VE COME TO BIMINI, A FEW specks of coral rock 45 miles due east of Fort Lauderdale. This is a famous place, made famous in the ’30s by Ernest Hemingway as the big game fishing capital of the world, and later the setting for his novel Islands in the Stream; made notorious by Adam Clayton Powell’s exploits in the ’60s; made infamous by the open drug trafficking of the ’70s; and, this year, made notorious again by Gary Hary and Donna Rice.

But here now, walking up the hill under the broiling sun, Bimini seems a different place, an island on the mend from wretched excess, a border town of friendly people looking to the future with that odd blend of hope and helplessness that characterizes so much of the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

“With drugs going out, people here are becoming more concerned with what we’re all about,” Ossie Brown tells me.

Ossie has seen it happen. His father bought the Compleat Angler, the official

Hemingway hangout, in 1973. He had started as a bartender there in the ’30s. The Angler is an authentic and quite charming Bahamian inn. Old photos of the famous clog its varnished walls. Ernest Hemingway fires his machine gun at sharks in the harbor, Jimmy Buffett holds a record-breaking bonefish. Gary Hart and Donna Rice sing on the bandstand where Sammy Davis Jr. used to play.

But most of all one notices the fish. They are giant tuna, fearsome makos and — the grandaddy of all deep-sea fish — the blue marlin, a monster that can weigh a ton and swims the Stream as fast as a car.

The fish are in all the pictures, they are stuffed and mounted on all the walls. They are supposed to be the reason everyone comes to Bimini. But the big fish are fewer in numbers than in the old days. Their showing, like the island itself, is weaker; the future is uncertain.

The Brown family’s roots grow deep into Bimini. Ossie, the manager of the Angler, admits these are tough times for the tiny islands, but thinks Bimini will pull through. Bimini has no choice; its stark alternative is the drug residue that hangs on, the island’s ugly side.

“For the most part,” Brown says, “the drugs are gone now, but it did get out of hand a few years ago. It all came through here, and you had teenagers making $100,000 in a day. We had wild nights, with the Colombians partying on their way back from a score. The kids here saw what was going on and just jumped on for the ride. There was money to make and it was rolling in the streets.”

I ask Brown about the young drug lords now and he smiles, sourly: “Most don’t have a penny, just their jewelry left, some not even that. It was just a party for them. Now they don’t do much; you can’t even get them to work regular jobs, not after the kind of money they’ve seen. Honest work doesn’t make sense to them. So you’ve got what I call the ten-dollar men, the men who just want you to advance them ten bucks so they can run up on the hill and get their crack. They even tell you that. ‘Jus lemme get ten first so I can go up and get my stuff, then I’ll be right back.’ ” Brown frowns out the window and scans the deep blue horizon of the Gulf Stream. “Of course, they never come back.”

A HALF-HOUR LATER, I AM sitting under the ceiling fan in Yama Bahama’s bar drinking a cold clear bottle of Becks.

William Horatio Butler is Yama Bahama’s real name. An ex-prizefighter and a good one too, Yama was a champion in 1953 and earned Bimini a lot of respect. His older brother Herman never made it in the States, but in a way he is more famous than Yama; it was Herman, nicknamed Trico, who fought with Papa Hemingway. He was actually Hemingway’s sparring partner and is shown in many of the old photos. Yama has a handsome broad face, with scars under both eyebrows that wrinkle as he smiles wistfully.

“No one knows me now,” he says. “The kids see the boxing gloves on the wall, but it don’t mean a thing to them. I was well known in Miami and New York, but not in my own country.” I tell Yama that I remember seeing him train at the Fifth Street Gym on Miami Beach in the early ’60s. He keeps smiling.

“Yeah, but there was another boxer training there then so most people don’t remember me much.” I smile with him and nod, remembering the other fighter well. His name was Cassius Clay, soon to be Muhammad Ali.

I SAY GOODBYE TO YAMA AND continue my walk up the hill. I am near the crest now, and can smell the salt air coming over the top from the sea. Then I see him. He sits tucked into a small pocket of shade behind a wall of white- washed block. The sign above him says Sawyer Honda Rentals. Eric Sawyer wears a blue baseball cap and wraparound sunglasses while he rocks a small child in a bright plastic stroller. Gray lizards with curly tails dart across the wall and the distant cries of seagulls weave a net of soft noise around the hill.

“Mr. Sawyer?”

He nods. “Yes, I’m Eric Sawyer, but people call me Bozo — like the clown.” Sawyer is an old man in his late 70s, but his voice is steady. He motions for me to come into the shade with him and the child who looks up at me and might want to cry depending on what I do next.

I ask about the old Bimini, about his days as Ernest Hemingway’s fishing mate. The old man’s face falls into a melancholy grin as he tugs gently at one of the white patches of bristly hair growing from his ears. I cannot see his eyes as he begins.

“Mister Hemingway was one of the old captains of Bimini. I know he was a writer, but we never talked about it. He came here to fish. All we knew here was reef fishing and of course he was an experienced deep sea fisherman. He knew the Cuban way to fish, what you call big game fishing; he made it popular on Bimini, showed a lot of the island people how to troll with heavy tackle, and he made Bimini a popular fishing spot because of it. The fish were big and that helped too.” Sawyer stops to rock the small child, a neighbor’s he has promised to watch. I ask about the difference between the old and the new Bimini and at first I don’t think he wants to answer, but then realize he is just thinking about what he has to say.

“Well,” he begins, and shoos a horse fly away from the baby, “for one thing, the fish done got educated, the ones that are left. It’s not like in the old days, when even a bad fisherman could catch a good fish. Now a good fisherman must have luck with him as well as his bait. And the people then were somewhat different, more courteous I suppose. There was fighting sure, but there were no guns. When there was a grudge a man would use a Bimini boxing glove.”

The old man smiles at me as I shake my head. I ask what a Bimini boxing glove is and he points down the road to an old, bleached conch shell. They litter the island, second only to beer bottles.

“You pick up one of them shells and you got better than brass knuckles. A man with two of them on will come into your house whether you want him to or not. More than a few men been killed, but that was just between the natives, you know.”

I ask Sawyer what Bimini is like now and he is about to say something when a young tourist couple approaches us. They are sweating and they want to rent scooters for $8 an hour. Eric Sawyer pulls himself up and walks slowly into the shop. I mind the baby until his business is done. When he comes back to the shade he makes no move to speak, so I ask again about Bimini today.

“As the fishing goes, Bimini’s peaked, but maybe the fish will come back. Anything could happen.”

Just then a deep rumbling makes its way up the hill and a gleaming silver pick-up truck, a nice one with chrome mags and spotlights with air spoilers, parks maybe six feet in front of us. Eric Sawyer pretends that nothing has happened, but I rise to admire the machinery. A handsome young man exits. He is dressed as nice as his truck, nice jewelry, snake skin moccasins. He smiles over my head to the old man,

“Hey, Pop.” Sawyer rises with the neighbor’s child and nods to his son.

“This is my son Vincent,” he says slowly. We shake hands and I express my interest in his beautiful truck. He is indeed proud of it; in fact, he says, he has come to put another spoiler on the hood. Then a young boy comes up and comments on Vincent’s shoes. Vince grins.

“Hundred and sixty bucks in Miami,” he says casually. His father looks for a moment at the ground, but not at his son’s shoes. I don’t need to ask him about the new Bimini anymore. It will survive on its own terms.

LEON ROSENBLATT is a freelance writer who lives on Miami Beach.