Adrift on St. John (15 page)

The figure’s bare chest rippled with muscles, the powerful physique accenting the item clutched in its opposite hand. Raised above the statue’s head, ready to hack, waved the menacing blade of a machete.

Beneath the sculpture, one word was written in bold capital letters: FREEDOM.

Beulah shuffled through the day laborers congregated around the memorial, slowly pulling one of the wooden benches behind her. Conversations quelled to a murmur as she climbed onto the bench to address the crowd. Her hoarse, dry voice began to tell the story she had recalled behind the Crunchy Carrot’s rancid Dumpster, the tale of the Amina Princess.

“Eeet waz thuh sum-mer uv 1733
…”

From the bird’s-eye view of the seagull gliding on the trade winds several hundred feet above the Atlantic Ocean, the Danish
slave ship was nothing more than a brown speck of wood tethered to a tiny mast of billowing sails. The gull circled, spiraling down through the clouds until the ship’s deck—and its miserable human cargo—came into sharper view.

Several hundred dark-skinned figures tromped slowly up and down the length of the boat, each tortured being anchored to the next by a heavy rusted chain. An army of bare, blistered feet pounded against the weathered floorboards as the human centipede snaked along its well-worn path. The harsh whip of the sun beat down on the sweating slaves, roasting their backs with its unrelenting heat.

The ship rolled on a passing swell, pitching sideways in a sickening heave. The column broke as the chain-hobbled captives scrambled to regain their footing. Then, under the sharp orders of the taskmaster, the dreary march resumed, an endless procession down a trail without purpose, without destination.

With each plodding step that
thumped
against the deck, a seething hatred burned deeper into the hearts of the oppressed.

Hours later, the Amina Princess huddled amongst her tribesmen in the ship’s dark fetid hold. The slaves had finally been given a reprieve from the day’s exercise regimen, but the stench below instantly made them long for the fresher air on the upper level.

As each day passed, one long effort of extreme endurance after the next, the restive warriors that made up much of the ship’s human cargo grew more and more agitated. The on-deck sessions, instead of letting off steam, only intensified the pressure-cooker atmosphere inside the hold’s sweltering enclosure.

The Princess kept her eyes tightly shut, trying to block out the sensory overload of her surroundings—a terrorizing mixture of stale sweat, decaying human tissue, and growing rage.

She reached her hand up to the bare skin of her neck,
fumbling at the empty divot at the top of her chest where her medallion had once rested. The iron emblem was long gone—she’d noticed its absence the moment she awoke in the holding cell of the Danish fort—but its image was emblazoned in her memory, its phantom weight a constant presence at the base of her neck.

As she concentrated on the medallion’s circular shape, its strength coursed through her body, giving her the courage and the will to survive the nightmare of the ocean journey to St. Thomas. After a long moment of fortifying concentration, she slowly opened her eyes.

In the dusky half-light, she spied the body of a dead rat. Its stiff, lifeless form sprawled across the damp floor just a few feet away, where a narrow crack of moonlight illuminated its long hairless tail.

15

Those early days of November passed slowly, seemingly the same and yet strangely different. The humidity continued to rise, an ever-increasing pressure without the release of rain. It felt as if the island were a pot on a stove, its liquid contents coming closer and closer to a boil, a suffocating prelude to the whomping storm headed our way.

I had little direct contact with Hannah in the days following her Dumpster table debut. There had been no more impromptu visits to my office, no more unsettling questions about my past. When our paths did cross, she was still painfully polite and sickeningly eager to please, but I sensed her opinion of me had diminished significantly after our afternoon session at the Carrot.

Her presence at the resort—and the coincidence of her name—remained disturbingly unexplained.

As for Hannah’s interactions with Vivian, I was similarly in the dark. Whatever exchanges passed between them were not reported to my ears. I was a week and a half into a Vivian-imposed silent treatment, my penance for breaching
the barrier of her office and breaking open her personnel files.

I had enough experience with the testy Bahaman to know that she would be the one to decide when I had completed my punishment. It was best for me to stay out of her way until then.

I was left to my observations.

Hannah and her rotating wardrobe of flowery sundresses appeared to be settling in nicely to her designated post at the reception desk. After quickly mastering the resort’s computer and electronic key systems, she now spent the bulk of her time diligently checking in guests, answering the phones, and fielding the numerous requests directed to her station.

Every so often, I noticed, she wandered away from the other interns—slipping into the break room when the housemaids were getting off from their shifts or down to the lawns when Manto and the grounds crew were working.

Slowly but surely, she appeared to be breaking into their closely guarded society. From the balcony outside my office, I heard her voice calling out names that were unfamiliar to me, and their, at first tentative, replies. Through the leaves of Fred’s favorite tree, I spied the timid beginnings of reciprocal smiles.

Hannah Sheridan was making inroads with the resort’s West Indian workers. For the life of me, I still had no idea why.

16

To first-time visitors, Cruz Bay might come off as a sleepy Caribbean hamlet, perhaps one that’s a little shabby around the edges with a few too many free-roaming chickens.

But to those of us who live on the island, it’s a thriving economic hub, a bustling harbor, and basically, the center of our universe. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in “Town”—as it’s affectionately known—you’d better find a boat.

Joe Tourist, fruitlessly punching buttons on his signal-less cell phone as he stumbles the wrong direction down the middle of a congested one-way street, probably doesn’t realize just how much he’s missing. Tormented by his flaming sunburn and the itch of multiple no-see-um bites, all our friend Joe wants is a nice cool drink and one of those fish sandwiches people keep telling him about.

So when Joe and his female companion collapse into their seats outside the Crunchy Carrot—at the table farthest away from the Dumpster—likely as not, they will fail to appreciate the significance of the beaten-up Jeep slowly bumping by on the main road.

The Jeep’s driver’s-side door is missing; the empty rusted
hinges welded to the frame are all that remains. The front bumper is visibly misshapen, the apparent loser in an altercation with a far more formidable opponent—given the concave shape of the compression, odds are, it was a tree trunk. The front windshield is cracked across its middle and in danger of falling out, and the fabric seats reek of a strange mixture of salt water and mildew that has somehow managed to compete with the Dumpster’s pungent odor.

Joe Tourist looks up at the Jeep’s driver—a grungy little man with wild mangy hair and several days’ facial growth—and shakes his head with scornful disdain.

An island junkie, Joe thinks, hopped up on the local dope. He reaches into his back pocket to make sure his wallet is still in place. Then, he glances nervously at Richard the welcoming rooster, who is strutting amicably toward his chair.

As the Jeep slows so that the driver can lean out the doorless opening to yell at the expat crowd seated a few tables over, Joe gives up on the fish sandwich, finishes off the slushy drink in his plastic cup, and says to his wife, “Come on, Maggie, let’s find a place with some air-conditioning. I’m dying in this heat.”

Sadly, our uninformed tourist will never think to issue a news flash to the residents of St. John, broadcasting the spectacular event he has just witnessed.

After five years of driving around town in an anemic put-put golf cart, Charlie Baker has just purchased a brand new Jeep—well, new to him at least.

Charlie was, far and away, the most senior member of the expat group in terms of both age and longevity. He had been living in the islands for almost a decade, and, at forty-five, he had more than twenty years on Jeff and the other dive shop boys, close to seven on me.

He was a short muscular man, more miniaturized than petite, a tiny lion shrunk down in perfect proportion. Beneath the ever-present layers of sweat and grime, his
facial features were delicate and refined—or they would have been with a thorough soap and scrubbing.

Charlie had thick eyelashes and a dark mane of hair that, in the few instances when it wasn’t bundled up beneath his baseball cap, fell down to his shoulders. Only a couple of gray hairs at his temples and a light creasing beneath his eyes betrayed his advancing age.

He had originally moved to the Virgins with his wife and two young children, the group of them intent on enjoying the good life in the tropics.

They’d bought a small farm on St. Croix, an island about forty miles to the south. Planning to live off the land while they built their dream home, they’d sold those possessions that were too heavy to ship and headed south.

Unfortunately, Charlie’s wife had never adapted to the reduced income that had come with their scenic views. After months of bitter squabbling, mostly over finances, she’d packed up the kids and returned to their hometown in Minnesota.

Charlie hadn’t seen them since.

He was a private individual and rarely talked about his troubles, but when he did, he tried to make light of the situation.

“I don’t have anything against
shoes
,” Charlie would sum up with a rueful grimace. A slight pitch in his typically rough, scratchy voice betrayed the underlying emotion. “I like shoes. It’s Mr.
Ferragamo
I’ve got a problem with.”

Then he would clamp his sturdy hands together as if wringing an imaginary neck. “I’d like to get my hands on that guy.”