Adrift on St. John

by Rebecca Hale

  “Pucker your lips,” she ordered briskly.

  I held my mouth as still as possible until Vivian finished with the lip liner and leaned back to check her work.

  “Smile,” she demanded curtly.

  I posed a stiff grin while Vivian stared critically at my face. Finally, she seemed satisfied and dropped the applicator on the counter.

  Ham held up his newly constructed boat. “Look what I made,” he called out sweetly.

  The faint shadow of a proud smile crossed Vivian’s serious face.

  Ham pushed the little boat in a circle around the upended shoe box, adding his own motorboat noises to the scraping sound of the plastic against the tile.

  “My boat is sailing around the island,” he explained with a loud “vroom.”

  “A sailboat is much quieter than that,” Vivian replied with a sternly cocked eyebrow.

  Ham revised his toy scenario. “My motorboat is motoring around the island,” he proclaimed loudly with an impish look at his mother. His little lips vibrated, spitting wildly as his boat made faster and faster turns around the shoe box.

  “Here, my boat is going past Chocolate Hole,” he said excitedly, pausing his motoring noise long enough to give us an update on his location.

  Vivian sighed and returned to her makeup kit.

  “And here, my boat is making a pit stop at the ferry building,” he added, twisting his toy perpendicular to the side of the box.

  Eyeliner in hand, Vivian grabbed hold of my head and tilted it toward the ceiling. “Look up,” she murmured, her concentration focused on my face.

  Ham’s squeaky voice continued in the background. “And here, my boat is zooming around Caneel Bay…”

  Vivian botched her first attempt with the liner. After blotting out the mark with a tissue, she pulled back from my face and picked up a sharpener from the counter. As she stuck the pencil’s pointed end into the device, Ham let out a squeal.

  “And look, there on Turtle Point—it’s the Slave Princess!”

  There was a sharp crack as the eyeliner stick broke off in Vivian’s hand.

  24

  Caneel Bay

  The Amina Princess lay atop her mat on the dusty floor of the lean-to, her eyes tightly shut, her body curled into a ball, waiting for the rest of the meager settlement to retire for the evening. The sun had yet to fully set, but an air of exhaustion soon fell over the camp, and the area quickly grew silent and still.

  The surrounding structures bore a closer resemblance to ruins than newly constructed buildings. The jungle’s voracious vegetation had consumed many of the stone walls, filling the roofless rooms with a dense layer of vines.

  The Princess cracked open an eyelid and carefully examined the shed’s sleeping occupants. One of the humped forms sighed out a snore. From another came the involuntary grinding of teeth.

  Summoning all her hunting skills of stealth, she rose from the mat and quietly crept outside, ready to begin her nightly explorations.

  She allotted a few hours each evening for sleep, either immediately following sunset or just before daybreak. Despite the lack of rest, her strength and power continued to build. Any tiredness she experienced was overcome by her growing sense of independence and her increasing curiosity for the island that had become her new home.

  With every step that increased her distance from the decrepit lean-to, her spirits began to lift. During this limited time span, she owned herself, and a small ray of hope began to swell in her heart.

  Each trip, she grew bolder and ventured farther afield. At this point, she had covered almost the entire north shore; its hidden trails and secluded coves were all mapped in her memory.

  Sometime soon, she would leave the camp’s wretched confines and not come back, but she wasn’t yet prepared to make that permanent break.

  As the Princess skipped along through the trees, her toes gripped the rough topography of the trail beneath her feet. The island was made up of a much younger soil than that of her homeland. This brash, gritty composite had not yet learned to obey the hand of man; it was filled with sharp-edged rocks that cut and slashed the unwary.

  She had hated this dirt when she’d first arrived, violently lashing out at it in those early days as she worked her designated rows of the farmer’s plot. The dark volcanic loam had received every ancestral curse she could mutter.

  But as the weeks passed, she had found herself gradually coming to admire its stubborn resistance, its formidable front against nature and man.

  The island and its resilient earth would outlast the fledgling farmer and his domineering wife—so would she.

  After a half hour’s brisk walk, the dirt gave way to sand, and the Princess reached the water’s edge. The top curve of the setting sun glowed through a growing bank of clouds while the ocean lapped at her feet, showering her legs with its gentle foaming spray. She set out along the beach, dancing in the day’s disappearing light.

  Twenty yards from the shoreline, she spied the tiny ripple of a turtle’s bald head, splashing up for air before it sank back beneath the surface.

  After a short invigorating swim, the Princess continued on, traveling west until she reached a narrow peninsula of rocky land that stretched out into the water to form the sweeping curve of an inlet cove. She happened upon a trail leading through the woods and instinctively began to follow it.

  After leading her up over the slight roll of a hill, the trail opened out onto a clean, manicured lawn overlooking the peninsula’s pointed tip.

  The Princess took in the view, slowly turning in place to assess her surroundings. To her right, the sun-bleached sand of the island’s north shore flickered in the sun’s diminishing rays. To her front, the peninsula’s top edge dropped off to an ocean channel that separated her island from its nearest cousins.

  To her left, in the distance, she spied the low-lying buildings that made up the Caneel Bay resort, each pathway and entrance discretely lit by ground lamps.

  A brown and white sign posted next to the clearing where she stood contained a simple label: TURTLE POINT.

  The Princess spied a small herd of donkeys, grazing on the clearing’s grass. The group paused in its munching and looked up at her quizzically. A cuddly foal peeked tentatively out from behind its mother’s hindquarters. The largest member of the herd made a curious whinny and trotted toward her.

  The Princess froze as the donkey drew close enough to touch. Her green eyes met his enormous brown ones. Slowly, she reached out her hand to pet the beast’s soft sniffing nose.

  As she stepped tentatively around the donkey’s shoulder to stroke his mane, she noticed a far more human shadow standing on the well-groomed lawn, next to a white gazebo about twenty feet away.

  Her breath caught in her chest, spooking the donkey. He jerked his head away from her hand and retreated to his herd. As the hard black hoofs thudded across the lawn, the Princess stood, transfixed, staring at the figure in the distance.

  It was a man with skin as dark as the night sky. Strangely fashioned clothes draped over his body; heavy clunky shoes encased his feet. In his right hand, he wielded a long wooden spear whose end had been modified with a terrifying multipronged attachment. His face transmitted the same shock she felt coursing through her body.

  For a long paralyzing moment, the Princess couldn’t move. She’d broken the cardinal rule; she’d been discovered off her designated plantation. What should she do?

  Finally, her legs regained their motion. She turned and ran, top speed, all the way back to the planter’s crumbling encampment.

  Heart pounding, she slipped into the lean-to, curled up on her dirty mat, and fitfully drifted off to sleep.

  25

  Miss Hoffstra

  Once Vivian finished her beautifying efforts, I walked up to the resort’s reception area to wait for Hank Sheridan’s driver. A slight breeze filtered through the late afternoon sun as I took a seat on a bench by the truck-taxi stand. I had just smoothed out the wrinkles in my dres
s when a black town car pulled into the front drive.

  Not a limousine, I noted, thinking of the vehicle spotted in Cruz Bay the previous week. Perhaps Sheridan was keeping that ride for his own personal use, I mused crassly.

  A short Hispanic man dressed in a simple black suit and white cotton gloves leapt out the front of the car seconds after it came to a stop. The man’s dark hair had been slicked neatly back; every strand was combed perfectly into place.

  He trotted briskly around to the rear passenger-side door and, with a polite bow, swung it open.

  “Miss Hoffstra,” he said, with a white-gloved gesture.

  “Where are we headed?” I asked, amused at his formality but nervous nonetheless about the final destination of this flamboyant ride.

  “If you please, Miss Hoffstra,” he replied without answering my question.

  I hesitated for a moment on the curb, considering.

  I had no choice, I told myself. After four years of playing the part, I had to see this through to the end—or at least to the next act.

  “Miss Hoffstra, it is,” I thought as I climbed into the sedan.

  The door snapped neatly shut, trapping me inside, and I turned my head to glance up at the resort. The building’s facade was as quiet and relaxed as ever, but I could sense the sea of eyes watching my departure.

  Returning to the front seat, the driver started the engine, and we sped off down the driveway.

  A group of iguanas were spread across the wide grassy lawn near the turnout for the main road, enjoying the early evening shade that had begun to seep across the island.

  As the car braked, waiting for traffic to clear, one particularly bright green lizard lifted his head and gave me a reassuring wink.

  Fifteen minutes later, the town car entered the outskirts of Cruz Bay. From the backseat, I looked out the tinted windows that I knew had done more to announce my arrival than mask my identity.

  A number of expats lounged around the Dumpster table outside the Crunchy Carrot. Richard the rooster perched on the table’s edge, near where César was stuffing down a fish sandwich. The Puerto Rican waved the last bite at the car, a jocular smirk on his face.

  A couple hundred yards farther down the road, we turned the corner in front of the ferry building. The truck-taxi drivers gathered near the Freedom Memorial all turned to stare at the shiny black car, their faces stony, their postures stiff, straight, and unambiguously accusing.

  Past the police station around the next bend, we came upon a bustling crowd of Thanksgiving-week tourists strolling along the sidewalk. They stopped and gawked in a starstruck manner, several pointing as if they thought the island’s local country music celebrity might be hidden behind the car’s dark glass.

  All the while, the driver peered blithely through the front windshield, seemingly oblivious to the attention we were drawing.

  We crossed through to the opposite side of Cruz Bay, which had one more row of restaurants, but the car didn’t slow before entering the sweeping turn up the hill. I leaned tensely back in my seat as the driver steered us into the climbing curve. We weren’t stopping in town, at least that much was now certain.

  The sedan continued on over the hill’s crest, passing the brown and white wooden sign that marked the entrance to the national park. Beyond this point, the road disappeared into jungle, descending into a leafy green tunnel that blocked most attempts of the fading light to breach it.

  All evidence of Cruz Bay evaporated into the surge of vegetation, and a quiet stillness fell in around the car. Despite the headlights that had clicked on up front, the vehicle’s flat rolling motion had the eerie feel of a creature creeping stealthily along the road, hoping to avoid detection.

  I was immune, I told myself, to the restless spirits the local West Indians imagined inhabited these dark woods—to the vinelike arms that dropped down from the treetops with the coming of nightfall. But as I sat with growing discomfort in the town car’s rear seat, I felt an unwanted shiver skim across my shoulders.

  The driver slowed to a snail’s pace as he struggled to squeeze the car’s long line around the tight curves of uneven asphalt. The road was much more suited for vehicles with shorter axles, like the rental Jeeps that sped through here with terrifying frenzy, or those with elevation and extra engine power, like the truck taxis that navigated the steep hairpins with relative ease.

  The chauffeur’s white gloves gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel as we traveled deeper into the road’s knotted corkscrew. I wasn’t sure what type of driving conditions he was accustomed to, but I suspected this was one of his first forays into St. John’s national park.

  As the bottom of the front bumper scraped against a steep curving upswing in the pavement, I found myself hoping he wasn’t taking me on my last.

  I sighed with more relief than I cared to admit when the trees pulled back from the road at Caneel Bay’s front gates. The driver paused briefly in the stone-flanked left-hand lane before a uniformed attendant inside the turreted guard station pushed a button, activating a lever that raised a red and white striped barrier to let us through.

  The place hadn’t changed much since the days of its founder, Laurance Rockefeller. Its modern-day updates were carefully disguised behind the original rustic elegance.

  Rockefeller had designed his resort as an escapist retreat, a back-to-nature experience intentionally isolated from the stress of everyday life. Even today, over fifty years after it first opened, the individual guest rooms didn’t have telephone lines to the outside. Low one-story cabins were sprinkled across the property, their earth-toned facades fading into the landscape of flowering shrubs and low-lying trees.

  Whereas my resort was set up in a typical generic Caribbean style, the kind you could find on almost any island between here and Miami, Caneel was unique, and decidedly upscale—the nightly price was almost double that for my establishment.

  As part of the leasing arrangement with the park service, Caneel was required to hold open a portion of its beachfront to the public. For those willing to ignore the disapproving looks of the staff and paying guests, the snorkeling off Caneel’s west-facing beach was some of the best on the island—although when I’d brought Jeff to the spot, he’d been spooked by the stingrays that patrolled the reef, and he quickly abandoned for the shore.

  The gray phantomlike creatures had a habit of sneaking up on snorkelers. They seemed to enjoy causing a fright as they crowded in on the humans’ floating flippers—I know Jeff’s panicked retreat had given me quite a chuckle.

  The stingrays weren’t the only wild creatures at Caneel that had tormented Jeff. He’d been equally leery of the rabbit-eared donkeys that roamed the grounds. The furry beasts trekked all over the island, but they appeared to use Caneel’s vast manicured acreage as their home base. Their fast lips munched down leaves, grass, and whatever food guests left unguarded for more than thirty seconds. On our trip, they’d made off with three-fourths of Jeff’s brown bag lunch.

  My previous trips to Caneel Bay had been far more pleasant in nature, I reflected with a short grin as the town car motored past the guest parking lot and veered right toward a six-foot rock wall blooming with bougainvilleas.

  But my humorous mood evaporated with the memory.

  We had to be nearing the meeting point. One way or the other, I was finally about to come face to face with Hank Sheridan.

  The town car motored slowly past the crumbling remains of the manor house from Caneel’s 1700s-era plantation. Perched on a short rise, the dwelling was optimally positioned both for the widest view of the bay and for catching as much of the ocean breeze as possible.

  A wide flight of stone steps led to the main level, which, like the rest of the ruins scattered across the island, was missing much of its upper half. The stone walls were all that remained, the roof, doors, and window coverings having long since disintegrated.

  A testament to the creativity of those early builders, each wall was constructed from piles of volcan
ic rocks and sun-cured coral. The various shapes and sizes were pieced together like a master puzzle, and then fixed in position with a gritty sand-based mortar.

  Beyond the manor house, just over the crest of the hill, we slowed to a halt next to a much larger, bulkier, and far more intact ruin. The late afternoon sun blazed across the clearing, its near horizontal angle glowing against the gray stone walls, scattering on the rough surface of the embedded stones.

  Once more, the driver jumped out of his seat to assist me.

  “Please wait for Mr. Sheridan by the sugar mill ruins,” he said with the same stiff and maddeningly uninformative decorum.

  After stepping out of the backseat, I watched from the side of the road as the town car drove off into the resort.

  “That’s Miss Hoffstra to you, buddy,” I muttered with a sigh.

  26

  Turtle Point

  During my chauffeured drive from the resort to Caneel, a slight turbulence had begun to ripple through the island’s upper atmosphere. A brooding cloud mass dominated the skyline to the east, a giant billboard forecasting the evening’s coming rain.

  Weather moved across these islands like a checkerboard, hopping from one to the next in a predictable hopscotch fashion. The storm would be on top of us within the next few hours.

  I glanced down at my silk dress and high-heeled shoes.

  “Should have worn a raincoat and sneakers,” I sighed with a grimace.

  I teetered slowly from the asphalt into the grass, the tiny pointed spikes on the bottoms of my shoes threatening to sabotage each step. With difficulty, I made it to the entrance of the sugar mill ruins. Seeing no one in the immediate vicinity, I wobbled through the stone archway of the mill’s upper structure.

  Inside, I found the cane-crushing arena, which was designed so that the resulting sugar pulp would flow by gravity through stone troughs into boiler cauldrons in the attached rooms on the hillside below. The remains of a smokestack that had been used to heat the sticky juice towered seven or eight feet above the walls’ top edge.