Without a Grave

by Marcia Talley

  ‘I found a sheet of plywood in the woods,’ I said, getting straight to the point. ‘I was wondering if it belonged to you.’

  ‘Could be. There’s a lot of trash in there. Found a sink once, and a rusted-out water heater.’ She grinned. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Down by your generator. Come see.’

  When Molly surveyed the plywood a few minutes later, she said, ‘From the nail holes I’d say it’s an old hurricane shutter. Washed ashore. Can you use it?’

  ‘Do you mind? I promised Winnie I’d find some wood she could use for a replacement “El Mirador Go Home” sign.’

  Molly’s blue eyes sparkled. ‘Why shu-ah. Need help?’

  ‘Thanks. I was wondering how I was going to get it over there.’

  ‘We can use my Zodiac. It’s a little wider than Pro Bono. And I have bungee cords we can use to strap the wood on.’

  I rubbed my hands together briskly. ‘Let’s do it!’

  When I get to be Molly’s age – seventy-two – I plan to be as spry and nimble as she. Barely one hundred pounds soaking wet, it was said Molly could single-hand her Zodiac inflatable in the worst of weathers, schlep bags to and from the grocery, and lift items so bulky that even Daniel stood in awe of her. ‘Miz Molly, she work like a Haitian,’ he had commented to me one day. It was a compliment.

  By the time Molly and I had wrestled the plywood sheet to the end of her dock, eased it down the ladder, and secured it across the back of her Zodiac like an extra seat, Molly had talked me into a picnic lunch off her favorite beach. ‘If you promise not to tell anybody,’ she cautioned with a grin. ‘Best beach in the world for collecting sand dollars.’

  The Zodiac gobbled up the distance between Bonefish and Hawksbill Cays in half the time it would have taken me to single-hand the plywood over in Pro Bono. We delivered the wood to the government dock where, with Gator’s help, we carried it down to the Pink Store and propped it against the bag ice machine. I popped into the store to let Winnie know where to find the plywood, then purchased sodas and chips to go along with the lunch Molly had thrown together. A few minutes later, leaving a rooster tail of water in our wake, we zoomed off in the Zodiac heading for Molly’s secret sand dollar beach.

  Wasn’t so secret, as it turns out.

  ‘Well, hel-lo,’ I said as we neared the shore. ‘Poinciana Cove, if I’m not mistaken. The very view from my porch, except up close and personal.’

  Molly let the Zodiac drift to a stop about fifty yards off the beach in eight feet of water. I tied a fisherman’s bend around the anchor rode, then, using the same knot, secured the other end of the rope to a cleat on the Zodiac, tying a couple of half hitches for good measure. When we had drifted well clear of the reef, I tossed the anchor overboard, and watched until it settled to the bottom and bit securely into the sand.

  Molly peeled off her T-shirt, revealing the top of a dark-blue, racing-back Speedo. ‘Back in the old days, twice a week sometimes three, Island Fantasy Tours would pack tourists into these honking big cigarette boats and haul ass over here from Treasure Cay. Put a lei around their necks and a beer in their hands and let them hang out barefoot all day. Dumb clucks thought they’d died and gone to Fantasy Island, for Christ’s sake, with Tattoo running out of the jungle shouting, “De plane, de plane.”’

  I smiled, remembering that old TV show. Come to think of it, if you put Rudy Mueller in a white suit, he’d look a lot like Ricardo Montalban.

  ‘Speaking of planes,’ Molly said, pointing. ‘There’s the beginning of a landing strip.’

  ‘Yeah. I can see it from our porch. You probably can, too. The silting is pretty bad, but so far, it seems to be flushing away from the reef and out through the cut into the Atlantic.’ I picked up a pair of binoculars and squinted through them at the runway. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I noticed that Mueller’s already using the airstrip. From here, it looks like it’d be a pretty bumpy ride.’

  Molly snorted. ‘He flies a Cessna 185 taildragger. Could land that thing on the back of a turtle, if he wanted to.’

  We bobbed in companionable silence for a while, sharing a bag of potato chips. After a bit Molly said, ‘Island Fantasy built tiki huts all along the beach. Set Porta-Potties out in the woods.’ She paused for a moment to take another swig of her Pepsi. ‘And a shark pen.’

  ‘A shark pen?’

  Molly nodded. ‘For sixty-five dollars and change, you got to go down and feed lunch to the sharks.’

  ‘What kind of sharks?’

  ‘Tiger. Hammerhead. Lemon.’

  What kind of crazy fool would think it was a good idea to swim with sharks? Dolphins, maybe, but sharks? I must have had skeptic written all over my forehead.

  ‘I can see you don’t believe me,’ my friend said. ‘But it’s true. And there’d be somebody there to take underwater pictures of you while you’re doing it.’

  ‘Sounds dangerous,’ I said.

  ‘It is. You’d suit up in diving gear. Go down. Then they chum the water. You wouldn’t have to wait very long for the sharks to show up.’

  I shuddered. ‘I think I’d rather walk barefoot through a nest of fire ants.’

  ‘Me, too. There’s a big distinction between feeding lunch to a shark and becoming lunch for one.’ She rummaged through her canvas bag and came up with a Tupperware container. Using her fingernails, she pried off the top and stuck the container practically under my nose.

  I inhaled deeply. Ginger cookies. ‘It would be rude to refuse, wouldn’t it?’ I said, reaching for one.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘The tiki huts are gone now, of course,’ Molly said, crunching into a ginger cookie of her own. ‘Hurricane Ivan took care of that. Or maybe it was Jeanne. You have to admit it’s an improvement.’

  ‘It’s what they haven’t gotten around to doing yet that concerns me,’ I said, not really expecting an answer.

  Molly had finished her lunch and was relaxing against the sides of the rubber dinghy with her hands folded behind her neck. ‘This place used to be a popular spot for cruising sailors.’

  ‘I can see why. The beach is spectacular.’

  Molly laughed. ‘It is, but that’s not what I meant. When Daddy was alive, he used to dinghy out to sailors and share his Big Secret with them.’ With her fingers she drew quotation marks in the air to capitalize the words. ‘He’d advise them to come ashore on the Atlantic side. Then he’d explain how to find the path that went over the hill and down to the Island Fantasy property on the Sea of Abaco side. As long as you were wearing a Hawaiian shirt and had a camera dangling from a strap around your neck, you could enjoy the luau. Who’s to know you didn’t come over with the powerboat crowd? You could blend, pig out all day on free food and booze, then waddle off into the sunset, fat and happy. Daddy did it all the time. Dragged me along with him, too. I thought I’d die of embarrassment.’

  I laughed out loud. ‘I think I would have liked your dad.’

  ‘What happened to Island Fantasy Tours?’ I asked after a while.

  Molly shrugged. ‘I guess they got tired of rebuilding after every hurricane. Sold out to El Mirador in 2006.’ She waved an arm, taking in the expanse of beach from east to west. ‘All that natural beauty under private ownership. There oughta be a law.’

  Molly busied herself putting away the remains of our picnic lunch. That done, she said, ‘Tide’s out as far as it’s going to go. Are you up for collecting sand dollars?’

  I picked up the canvas bucket that held our flip-flops and snorkel gear and held it aloft. ‘Ready, willing and able.’

  Leaving the Zodiac bobbing quietly at anchor, we stripped to our bathing suits, clapped the snorkel gear to our faces, and slipped over the side with me carrying the bucket.

  ‘Drift along in the shallows,’ Molly instructed when we reached the beach a few minutes later. ‘Reach down and comb through the sand with your fingers as you go along.’ While I stood in crystal-clear water that reached halfway up my thighs, she demonstrated, com
ing up a few seconds later holding a sand dollar in each hand.

  I waded over for a closer look. One sand dollar seemed to be outfitted in a maroon-colored suit, like a fuzzy cookie. ‘This one’s alive,’ Molly said, pointing out the tiny spines that covered the creature, obscuring its characteristic five-pointed star design. ‘We’re looking for ones that are already dead, like this whitish one here.’

  Before long, we’d collected several dozen of the shells, some as large as saucers, others as small as a quarter. After each find, we’d wade ashore and deposit our haul in the bucket.

  ‘That’s so much fun!’ I giggled as we sat resting on the beach with waves gently licking at our toes. ‘I can’t wait to bring my grandchildren here.’

  Molly lay back, half reclining on her elbows, eyes closed and face to the sun. ‘When you get the shells home, soak them in bleach overnight. Not too strong, or you’ll weaken the shells. That’ll brighten them up, get rid of any algae.’

  I’d closed my eyes and was soaking up the sun, too, so the next voice I heard was so incongruous with a deserted beach in paradise that I nearly jumped out of my flip-flops.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave now. This is private property.’

  When I could breathe again, I turned in the direction of the voice.

  Standing on the beach ten or fifteen yards behind us was a long-limbed, broad-shouldered security guard wearing the distinctive Tamarind Tree Resort and Marina uniform – khaki pants and a navy-blue polo shirt with the ‘TTR’ logo embroidered on the breast pocket, a stylized design of a man reclining under a pair of palm trees. Strapped to the guard’s belt was a holster for . . . I gulped. Could have been a VHF radio, could have been a cellphone, could have been a gun. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get close enough to find out.

  Next to me, Molly had pulled herself up to her full five foot three and a half inches and dug her feet into the wet sand. ‘Private? No. It’s not.’

  Had she lost her mind?

  The guard stepped forward. ‘Ladies, I must ask you to leave the beach at once. Please return to your boat.’

  ‘Young man,’ Molly bristled. ‘As a non-native, perhaps you are unaware of the laws governing riparian rights in the Bahamas. In the Bahamas,’ she said, taking a couple of brave steps in his direction, ‘one can only own land down to the high water mark. And as you can see, we’re standing in the water. Ergo, we are on public land. Quod erat demonstrandum.’

  The guard wore a puzzled look where his eyebrows nearly met. Perhaps Latin wasn’t offered at his high school. ‘Uh . . . look, lady. I have my orders. You and the other lady here need to turn around now and go back to your boat.’

  Molly scooped up our bucket of sand dollars, looped it over her forearm. With her free arm, she hooked mine. ‘Come on, Hannah. I’m in the mood for a walk, aren’t you?’ And we marched lock-step along the beach, splish-splash-splish, carefully staying below the water line.

  ‘You! Ladies! Come back!’

  Keeping me firmly in her grasp, her hip snug against mine, Molly leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Keep walking, Hannah.’

  I could feel the guard’s eyes burning a hole in my back. I imagined him drawing his weapon and taking careful aim. When nothing happened right away, I dared to look back. He stood precisely where we’d left him, waving an arm about while shouting into a cellphone, presumably requesting instructions from the mother ship. ‘Too bad he’s not using the radio,’ I said to Molly as we scurried around a rocky outcrop and out of the security guard’s line of sight. ‘I’d love to listen in.’

  ‘My radio’s back on the Zodiac,’ she reminded me.

  ‘Silly me.’ I collapsed against the trunk of a palm tree, slightly out of breath. ‘What do we do now?’

  Molly flashed a wicked grin. ‘Well, Hannah Ives. Since we are now standing on private land in clear violation of El Mirador’s property rights, we are already felons. So I vote we go exploring. I used to know this place like the back of my hand. Come on!’

  Molly tucked the bucket containing our sand dollars into a thicket of sea grape, then hiked off over the dunes, moving quickly through a stand of waist-high beach grass with me hot on her heels. Before long the sandy trail gave way to a narrow, twisted path of jagged limestone, making me wish I were wearing sturdier shoes than flip-flops.

  Ahead of me, Molly trudged doggedly on. The path zigzagged crazily up a long hill and wove through a stand of palms where it split. Molly took the fork to the right and continued up the hill. When I emerged from the trees, my breath caught in my throat.

  Molly had stopped on the edge of a headland that extended out over the sea. Balanced on a large flat rock, she twirled in a circle, arms flung wide like Maria on her hilltop in Sound of Music, and I half expected Molly, like Maria, to burst into song.

  She paused in mid-spin to motion me over. ‘Take a look at the view!’

  It was truly spectacular. Hope Town’s historic red and white striped lighthouse clearly visible in the east. The sprawl of Marsh Harbour to the south. Dusty yellow clouds to the south and west where smoke from recent slash and burn wildfires hung over Treasure Cay. Scotland Cay, green and lush, to the west and, to the north, the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Next stop, Greenland.

  ‘There used to be a house up here called Three-Eighty,’ Molly told me while I was still trying to take it all in. ‘Blew completely away in Hurricane Floyd.’ She hopped down from the rock. ‘But they had a snore box on the Sea of Abaco side, down in a little cove. I wonder if it’s still there?’

  Before I could reply, Molly practically skipped down the path we’d just come, but this time when she reached the fork, she turned the other way. Soon we were scrambling down a rocky trail, grabbing at bushes and holding on to tree trunks to keep our feet from flying out from under us. ‘Where’s Daniel when you need him?’ I said as a branch slapped across my cheek.

  Ahead of me, Molly had reached the beach. ‘It’s still here!’ Triumph in her voice.

  When I burst out of the undergrowth and joined her a few seconds later, we were standing on another pink sand beach at the base of a tiny cove. Behind us loomed the headland, dark and dense with vegetation. I squinted into the foliage. ‘Where?’

  Molly had her hands pressed together like an excited child. ‘See that speck of green over there?’ She pointed, but I still couldn’t make it out. ‘That’s a corner of the porch. Let’s have a look.’

  Although its paint was peeling, and morning glory and love-vine had reached out to claim it, the cottage was, indeed, still there. Of typical island board-and-batten construction, its windows closed and dogged down tight, the little house huddled in overgrowth, defying decades of often savage weather. I twisted the toggles that held one of the windows shut and tugged on the handle, but it refused to budge. ‘Damn. Must be hooked on the inside.’

  A woman after my own heart, Molly performed a similar test on the two remaining front windows with a similar lack of success. Undaunted, she moved around to the left side of the house while I nipped around to the right.

  Where I found a door. With a big padlock. A shiny, heavy-duty, spanking-new Brinks. ‘Molly!’

  She was at my side in a flash. ‘Well, what do you know!’

  I grabbed the lock and jiggled it, but it was secure. I bent down for a closer look. ‘Wish it were a Sergeant or a Master Lock. I could pick one of those with a couple of paper clips.’

  ‘Do you have any paper clips on you?’

  Since we were wearing only our bathing suits I started to giggle. I pointed at Molly’s hair, stiff with sea salt and standing out from her head in punk-like peaks. ‘Or, I could use a couple of hairpins.’

  Molly patted her head, then began to laugh.

  ‘If nobody lives here, why the locks?’ I asked a little bit later as we sat together on the porch, our bid for membership in the Breaking and Entering Club temporarily tabled.

  ‘Family named Kelchner used to own this property. Maybe they still do.’
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  I shook my head. ‘Nope. I’ve seen the maps. Mueller’s development company owns everything to the west of Hawksbill settlement, all the way out to the point. Where we were standing up there? I think that’s the ninth hole.’

  Molly reached out and gave my knee a pat. ‘Guess we better be getting back.’

  But neither of us made a move to do so. Sea, sand, sun and sky . . . inertia was a powerful thing.

  One grows accustomed to the sounds of the tropics: birds chittering, seagulls jeering, lizards scurrying and locusts keening. It’s when you don’t hear anything that you notice. All of a sudden, the silence, as they say, was deafening. ‘What was that?’

  Somewhere over our heads, rocks clattered and all nature stopped to listen. Someone was stumbling down the same path we had.

  Molly sprang to her feet. ‘Let’s get out of here. Quick! I know a short cut.’

  The only way out that I knew was back the way we had come, and already they were closing in.

  ‘Down there!’ a man’s voice yelled. Whoever he was, he had not come alone.

  A mini avalanche of rocks. A cry of pain. A curse.

  ‘Shut up, you moron! They’ll hear you.’

  Molly had already reached the beach. She ducked into the mangroves, as dense in places as the briar hedge that grew up around Sleeping Beauty. I followed. Shielded from view, we fought our way along the perimeter of the bay, breaking out at last on to the beach of the adjoining cove.

  Where Molly’s Zodiac bobbed quietly at anchor.

  I bent over, resting my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. ‘You are a genius.’

  ‘Local knowledge,’ she panted.

  We ran into the water, splashing wildly. I’d swum halfway to the Zodiac before I remembered the bucket of sand dollars.

  ‘Leave them!’ shouted Molly. Holding on to the side of the inflatable with both hands she kicked her feet and surged upwards, straightened her arms like pistons, and propelled her body neatly into the boat.