Adrift on St. John

by Rebecca Hale

  But César ignored him, focusing all his attention on Hannah. He wasn’t quite ready to let his fish off the lure.

  “I guess some of our roommates didn’t appreciate Kaká’s contributions to the apartment. They just couldn’t see how she was such a good rat.”

  He swiveled in his chair and glared furiously at Jeff. “They put out some poison,” he said accusingly. “That’s what killed her.”

  Jeff bent his head, threading his fingers into the tangled mass of curls as César pointed reproachfully at him.

  “I bet she had babies, man. Cute little rat babies, and now they’re wondering what happened to their momma. Like she said, it’s tragic, man. They’re going to hunt you down and get their revenge.”

  Jeff glanced up and sent me a pleading look across the table.

  I coughed lightly and tilted my cup toward César. “What did you do with the body? Is there going to be a funeral?”

  César nodded up and down, welcoming my contribution as Jeff sent me a withering glare.

  “I found her under the refrigerator. There was just the tip end of her tail sticking out on the floor.”

  He reached his chubby hand into the air over the table and wrapped his fingers around an imaginary tail. “I grabbed hold of it and tried to pull her out from under there, but the skin just—whomp—slipped off.”

  Standing up from his chair, he gestured as if his hand were still wrapped around the loose skin.

  Hannah looked as if she might throw up at any minute.

  Jeff sighed, finding one last comment. “That’s gross.”

  César plunked back down onto his seat. He reached into the pile of refuse at the center of the table, pulled out a cold limp French fry that Richard had somehow missed, and popped it in his mouth.

  “Aaaaye, Kaká, she was a good rat, man,” he said sadly. “I tell you, a good rat.”

  That was the first and the last time Hannah joined us at the Dumpster table.

  14

  On the Danish Slave Ship

  Just as Manto’s truck taxi pulled out of the resort’s driveway onto the main road to Cruz Bay, Beulah Shah scrambled into the last bench at the rear of the bed. She hunkered down behind the backrest of the next-to-last row of seats, her eyes level with the bench’s upper edge. Her gaze focused in on the two women at the front of the canvas-covered seating area: the resort manager and her new curly haired employee.

  All the way into town, Beulah maintained her hunched vigil, even as the truck bounced over the numerous bumps and ruts in the pavement. When at last the taxi stopped outside the Crunchy Carrot, she waited until Pen paid the driver and ushered Hannah toward the Dumpster table before making her own exit.

  Taking care not to be seen, Beulah circled around the block to the narrow alley that ran behind the Crunchy Carrot, her bony feet clunking in her loose rubber sandals as she crept along the rough dirt path.

  Ignoring the rancid odor, she crouched in the dirt behind the Dumpster’s metal wall and pressed an ear against its rusted iron sheeting. She gazed, unseeing, at the dusty ground as she listened to the conversation unfolding at the table on the opposite side.

  Tonight, Beulah was only marginally interested in the woman who called herself Penelope Hoffstra—she had recognized her as an imposter the moment she first set foot on the island nearly four years earlier. She had kept a close eye on the lazy resort manager and knew her routine. The phony Pen was, predictably, settling in for another long night of drinking with the other expats.

  Beulah spat at the dirt dismissively. On this particular evening, she was primarily concerned with the younger woman, the new arrival with the empty personnel file who was staying out at Maho Bay.

  Beulah rocked back and forth behind the Dumpster, listening to Hannah Sheridan’s debut with the expats. As the banter at the table followed its typical banal course, Beulah’s thoughts drifted back to a tale she had once heard as a small child—about an Amina Slave Princess with dark curly hair and skin a creamy cocoa shade of brown.

  It didn’t take long for Beulah to decide that she had heard enough. Dusting off the worn threads of her navy blue jumper, she emerged from the alley behind the Crunchy Carrot and hobbled the short distance to the ferry dock, where she joined the regular afternoon crowd waiting for the four o’clock boat to St. Thomas.

  The truck taxis had filled their designated line of parking spots on the road running perpendicular to the dock, waiting to pick up fares from the incoming load of tourists. The bright-painted metal and fluttering canopies provided a colorful contrast to the orange stucco building that contained the ferry company’s ticket booth and operating offices.

  A gated barrier stretched across the concrete dock, holding back the ticketed passengers until the ferry pulled into its slip. Several clumps of workers, most still in their service-industry uniforms, waited under the open-air pavilion attached to the building. Many more spilled out into the shaded park across the street where a half dozen green wooden benches flanked a statue memorializing the 1733 Slave Revolt.

  The iron bust commemorated the moment the Amina stormed the Danish fort on the opposite side of the island and sent shots from its cannon to signal the start of the rebellion. As cannon fire reverberated across St. John, the bellowing blast of conch shells passed the message on to every plantation, mill, and field.

  The memorial depicted the head and torso of a shirtless man, positioned defiantly on a plinth looking out across the Pillsbury Sound toward St. Thomas. One hand wrapped around the smooth curve of a conch shell, holding its horn piece to the statue’s firm lips, which were puckered in a defiant blow.

  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 tightl
y 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

  Something in the Air

  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

  Town

  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.”

  From our seats at the Dumpster table, we all turned to stare as Charlie hung out the side of his newly acquired Jeep, hollering—needlessly—to draw our attention.

  He wore his typical garb of cutoff camo pants and scuffed up Army-surplus combat boots, an outfit that appa
rently suited his daily activities as a building contractor.

  Charlie had plenty of regular full-sized vehicles, including St. John’s largest tow truck (if you believed the claim of the multicolored advert painted on its side).

  He was constantly transporting heavy machinery up and down the island’s steep and frequently washed-out roads, but he never drove any of his work fleet into town. Simply put, there wouldn’t have been any place for him to park.

  The dearth of available parking spaces was a long-running beef for the island’s residents. Cruz Bay’s narrow streets were tightly packed with shops, bars, restaurants, vacation rentals, and the occasional residence. The few legitimate parking spots were jealously guarded, leaving the rest of the island’s vehicles to compete over a handful of dubiously designated parking areas, most of which were far more vertical than horizontal in terrain. It was not unusual to see several vehicles left precariously clinging to a thirty-degree incline with half an inch of separation between them.

  Some of the most violent disputes between neighbors were rooted in the impossible parking situation—hence, Charlie’s use of the golf cart.

  Despite the constant mockery Charlie suffered for driving it, the golf cart was the perfect solution to Cruz Bay’s parking dilemma. It could squeeze into holes that stymied even the smallest model of Jeep—including the short space between the Dumpster and our table, so long as there were enough expats around to lift it over.

  The golf cart, however, had a few drawbacks.

  First, its miniature size made it a dangerous target on Cruz Bay’s busy streets. Charlie had been nearly flattened on several occasions by disoriented tourists who had temporarily forgotten that everyone in the Virgin Islands drives on the left-hand side of the road.