Adrift on St. John (28 page)

“Actually, this vacation is part honeymoon and part fishin’ trip.” He shrugged his shoulders affably. “A bit more fishin’ than honeymoon-in,” he confessed with a gap-toothed grin that was as ragged as his toenails.

The man’s grisly neighbor had yet to register any indication that he had heard or understood this unsolicited information, but his stoic demeanor did nothing to dampen his new friend’s enthusiasm.

“I packed a whole extra suitcase full of miniature Jack Daniel’s bottles,” the Tennessean said, shaking his head remorsefully. “And then, in all the excitement with the weddin’, I forgot to bring ’em to the airport.”

I glanced wryly at the waitress behind the bar. Still awash in cheap rum over three hundred years after its first sugarcane distillery, the Caribbean seemed an odd place to bring a case full of Jack.

Tourists, I thought, always overpack.

“I’ve been having a great time anyway,” the man said cheerfully as the waitress refilled his shot glass from a bottle of whiskey that looked as if it might have been part of the Silent John’s original inventory. The label was peeling off, and a thick layer of dust caked the bottle’s exterior.

He nodded at his noncommunicative neighbor. “How ’bout one for my buddy here too.”

The waitress hesitated only a moment before bringing another shot glass from beneath the counter and filling it. The volume of liquid in the second glass, I noticed, wasn’t quite as full as the Tennessean’s, but neither man appeared to notice.

The honeymooner raised his shot into the air and suggestively waved it at his drinking partner.

Without a word, the second man suddenly reached for his glass. His bleary, bloodshot eyes honed in on the liquid with a raw intensity that was almost a terror to behold. A deep resonant voice poured smoothly from his chapped lips.

“Salute.”

The pair began the shot together, but the West Indian downed his in half the time as his sponsor.

The Tennessean finally finished the shot, smacking his lips to emphasize his accomplishment. “Ahhhh,” he sighed, leaning back on his stool.

His eyes scanned the dusty scene on the server’s side of the counter. Then his reddened face lit up as if he’d just received a liquor-inspired insight.

“You know what this island needs? Do ya?” he asked the other man, who had resumed his laconic, nonverbal state.

“An exterminator. Yep. A specialist in insect eradication.”

The Tennessean spun his baseball cap on the counter’s sticky surface and pointed to the cap’s front logo. It depicted a cartooned mosquito in sneakers that appeared to be running for its life.

“That’s me! I run an exterminator business back home in Murfreesboro. I’ve been talking to the missus about it. We could move down here, set up shop.”

The waitress looked down the bar toward me with a grin. She’d heard variations on this discourse hundreds of times before.

For most visitors, it doesn’t take more than a day or two before they begin asking themselves the inevitable what-if question: what if I just packed it all up and moved here?

Many dream about it, but few actually take the leap.
When faced with the true spreadsheet of plusses and minuses, only a handful of people are willing to commit to an island lifestyle—it was one that I was still desperately trying to hold on to.

There is nothing wrong, however, in enjoying the fantasy.

“I’ve got a name all picked out,” the exterminator said enthusiastically as he tapped the West Indian on the shoulder. “What do you think of this? I’ll call myself ‘The Bug Mon.’”

34

I left the bar and strolled out onto the balcony overlooking the street. For the last several weeks of still, dripping heat, the Silent John’s second-floor bar area had been an almost unbearable location—which was a shame, because the balcony that ran along its front windows was the best place in town to watch the action on Cruz Bay’s new roundabout.

Construction of the project had wrapped up a couple of months ago, but local fascination with the traffic structure had yet to wane. Located near the center of town, across the street from the main grocery store and not far up the hill from the Silent John and the Crunchy Carrot, the roundabout’s purported rationale was to alleviate traffic—but none of St. John’s residents actually believed that. Everyone knew the roundabout’s primary function was to provide entertainment.

According to my calculations—based on anecdotal evidence and a random sampling from several late-afternoon sessions on the Silent John’s balcony—at least sixty-five percent of the rental Jeeps approaching the roundabout entered it from the wrong direction. Luckily, the Jeeps were equipped with plenty of traction and maneuverability, so
the panicked, befuddled drivers generally wound up off-roading over the roundabout’s center or backing out the steep side slope against the flow of traffic. I’ve never seen such a snarl of misguided vehicles, terrified honking, and obscene gestures.

To clarify—the situation is lucky for those of us onlookers.

I can’t remember what we did for amusement prior to the roundabout’s installation; whatever it was paled by comparison to the action at the new traffic structure.

With the onset of the tourist season, huge throngs of locals had begun gathering around the spectacle, observing in bemused amazement. The front stoop of the grocery store was almost always filled with gawkers, while others crowded the surrounding sidewalk. But in my opinion, the Silent John’s front balcony was the best viewing position, one that came with both comfortable wooden stools and cool refreshments.

Of course, not even fascination with the roundabout could draw people out during weather like this. With most of the tourists hibernating at their hotels, there wasn’t enough traffic in the roundabout to warrant interest anyway.

Only one other person had ventured out onto the balcony that evening. A wiry little man hunched over a wobbly table tucked in under the eaves, near the corner of the building where it turned inward to accommodate a dart-throwing lane.

He was facing the opposite direction, so that I had a perfect view of his scraggly reddish brown ponytail. A hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his left hand; the plume of smoke hanging over the table reeked of marijuana. The New York hippie seemed abnormally serious as he studied a pile of tattered, dog-eared papers heaped up on the table next to a blue nylon satchel.

“Conrad Corsair,” I called out as I strolled across the balcony toward him.

I’d grown fond of Conrad in the years since our first
meeting. He was like a crazy neighbor whose eccentricities slowly grew on you over time. This tempered affection notwithstanding, I refused to go anywhere near the Maho Bay campground when Conrad was in town for fear I might be unwittingly lured into his infamous teepee tent. Here on the Silent John’s balcony, however, I felt I could easily evade his overamorous attentions.

Conrad’s bony head jerked up as I called out his name. The startled expression on his skeletal face quickly stretched into his toothy attempt at a seductive smile. If Conrad had one thing going for him, it was his eternal optimism.

“Pa-hen,”
he replied as he scrambled to scoop up the pile of papers. He tapped the bottom edge of the stack against the sticky surface of the table. Nervously, he shoved the pile into the blue nylon bag, pulled the top flap over the opening, and secured its latch.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite St. John resort director,” he said brightly as he jumped up from the table and swung his arms around my shoulders. I grinned through a grimace as he made a show out of dramatically kissing me on each cheek.

“So…good…to see…you,” I replied haltingly as I stepped back against the wall, suddenly remembering that a little bit of Conrad went a long way.

Conrad’s googly eyeballs bulged with excitement as he reached back to the table for the nylon satchel. “I’ve got something I want to show you…”

Before he could finish, the lights in Cruz Bay clicked off. It was the second power outage in as many days—always a bad sign. Likely as not, the temporary fix from the night before had just come loose.

The streetlamps that hovered over the road below stood lifeless, their powerless metal stems drooping like useless antennae. The windows to the Silent John and the Crunchy Carrot were nothing but black, empty sinkholes.

A bank of clouds moved across the moon, swallowing its meager light and leaving us in a moment of wet blindness.

Inside the Carrot’s kitchen, I heard the hiccupping hum
of a generator as its engine struggled to kick in, a hopeful sign for the prospects of my fish sandwich. But before the motor worked up enough speed to reignite the lightbulbs, a hand reached out for my left arm.

“Conrad, let go,” I said sternly, not the least bit amused.

A deep voice whispered in my left ear.
“Peen-ello-pee…”

I tried to release my arm, but the man’s grip was too tight.

“That’s enough, Conrad,” I replied tensely, wondering how such a tiny man could wield so much strength.

And then I caught a whiff of the body attached to the clenched hand. My nose filled with the sweaty, smoky stench of stale whiskey.

“Lees-en for thuh seeg-nul,”
the voice admonished firmly.
“Wens-day at noon.”

Before I could process the message, the hand released my arm, and the stench disappeared, as if its source had evaporated into the rain.

With a few strobing flashes, the lights inside the Silent John flickered on, and I found myself alone on the balcony.

I stepped back inside the bar as the television sets crackled with static while they attempted to reestablish their satellite connection. A white plastic sack holding a foam box with my fish sandwich waited at the end of the counter.

The Tennessee exterminator sat on his stool with a blank, expressionless look on his face. I wondered if he’d even noticed the blackout in his whiskey-induced stupor.

My gaze honed in on the empty seat to the exterminator’s right that had been occupied by the grisly haired West Indian. I rubbed my arm where the man’s fingers had wrapped around it, puzzling as I scanned the room.

Neither Conrad nor the smelly man who’d issued the warning were anywhere to be seen.

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