Over two decades later, most of the small fishing boats had disappeared. Ships larger than any Professor Cleave could have imagined on the day of the ribbon-cutting ceremony docked at the terminal. Larger tourists crowded the duty-free mall. Taller gates surrounded bigger houses on the southern peninsula. Professor Cleave had owned three cabs, each shorter of Desmond’s exacting standards than the last. His idealism had become a rebuttal to every insult and injury. His intellect had become a refuge from difficult emotions and disturbing memories. Helen Mudge, in that sense, had trespassed. When he emerged from his troubled reflection, she was still on the rampart, gazing out at the sea with her arms held aloft, walking with the careless step of one who could just as easily float away as fall.
He closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “Hell is other people.”
When he looked up again, she was gone. He shook his head and considered us.
“Someday, the meek will inherit the Earth, if the next storm does not sweep us all into the sea.” Our antennae probed the air for hints of disturbance. “Perhaps then everyone will pay according to conscience, whatever has not been dulled by repeated blows.”
The irony! An hour later, when Helen and Dave appeared, he hustled us beneath the hood without a hint of ceremony and flipped the vents closed. Hell, we thought, is people, with their irrational fears and crude manners.
“Anyone ever escape?” Dave asked, when the prison disappeared behind a line of trees.
“No one ever escaped, and very few tried. There would have been nowhere to go. Here, everyone knows everybody else. Nothing goes unnoticed.” Professor Cleave paused. “One can’t be acting the ass on the street, my father says. If you do, make sure the man next to you is acting the bigger ass.”
“Just got to choose your company carefully. Still don’t think I could last long. In a place like this. With nowhere to go if you mess up.”
“People mess up all the time.” Professor Cleave slowed to let a troop of monkeys cross the road. “They just stay among the same people they’ve always known.”
Dave remained quiet until the forest gave way to scrub. “I always like to think there’s somewhere new. To start over.”
The idea of starting over seemed a bit pie-in-the-sky to us. We’ve spent millennia crawling from one disaster to the next, cursing the world’s indifference. Still, clinging to the cab’s oily struts, with sunlight glinting off the ocean and the road opening up before us, we could understand his feelings.
Past the stone tower of an abandoned sugar mill, Professor Cleave pulled onto the shoulder before a derelict estate house. We crawled onto the cab’s bumper and splayed our wings. Graffiti and scorch marks covered the house’s stone foundation, and empty bottles littered its sagging porch. Trees rose from a gaping hole in the roof. Triangles of lead glass clung to the frames of windows overlooking untended fields. It was a glorious sight, a cornucopia of refuse and rot.
“That was once the largest plantation on this island,” Professor Cleave said. “In the 1930s, sugar prices dropped, and the owners lost their fortune. No one on the island could afford to buy the house, so they abandoned it. You can find the furniture all over St. Anne. I know a man with a piano in his chicken coop. He can’t read a note of music.”
“Reminds me of home,” Dave said. “Gutted houses. People who’d had their electricity cut off would be taking chandeliers from places like this. Burning them down.”
“My father and his friends would come here to drink. He claims they started the first fire. An accident, he says. A storm prevented the whole place from burning. He finds humor in it.”
“We’d probably get along,” Dave said.
“You’d be fortunate to avoid making his acquaintance. You can walk around the property, if you’d like.”
Dave glanced at Helen’s sleeves. “We should get back. See about flights.” He said little else until Professor Cleave parked before the terminal. “Streets always this empty?”
“Everyone must be inside. In the shade.” The furrow in Professor Cleave’s brow deepened. “I’ll wait here and take you back to the hotel when you’re finished.”
A few minutes later, Helen and Dave emerged from the terminal. On the way to the cab, they passed a man stumbling along the curb. The man tipped a can of beer in Helen’s direction.
“Pretty lady.” He drained the can and threw it to the ground. “Maybe not a healthy lady.”
Helen slid into the cab after Dave and twisted around to look through the rear window.
“The office is still closed,” Dave said. “Wasn’t anyone around.”
“The clerk at the Ambassador should be able to help you,” Professor Cleave said.
As Professor Cleave pulled away from the terminal, Helen was still staring out the rear window, and the man on the curb was still watching her. The still ship hadn’t moved. Our antennae quivered, and we felt a familiar sense of desperation—one we’d felt on the brink of so many upheavals.
SICKNESS
WE OFTEN WONDERED IF we’d erred in encouraging Professor Cleave with our enthusiastic response to The Treasures of Apache Canyon, a classic of its genre, but hardly recompense for some of the history lectures we later endured. The things we’ve done for a taste of pulp! Quite frankly, we got suckered. We’d already witnessed, firsthand, most of the events Professor Cleave recounted. We’d occupied barricades on the streets of Paris in 1789 and raced behind suffragettes shattering windows with sledgehammers in 1912. We’d napped with Leon Trotsky while Frida Kahlo painted monkeys in the next room. We’d seen it all, in a manner of speaking, including some things too dreadful to mention.
To be fair, Professor Cleave’s lectures allowed us to experience, however vicariously, the few places we’ve yet to venture. We viewed mountains of ice through Ernest Shackleton’s eyes and trailed giant squids through Jacques Cousteau’s undersea world. We floated weightless in outer space. The cost of our tuition, though, sometimes became too much to bear. Professor Cleave only rarely, and in the most begrudging fashion, tuned into Kingston’s 103.5 Jams. Then there were his recitations of The Flora and Fauna of the Lesser Antilles. At times, some of us dropped from the gaskets and made our way onto a cruise ship, if only to get a break from him.
In our worst moments, we had no interest in learning about ports of call or the ocean surrounding us (“Screw the undersea world!” we drunkenly declared, dunking our antennae in gin fizz). We craved the distractions of glittering window displays, glass elevators, and mindless musicals. We bathed in residue at the bottom of fondue fountains. Entirely against our natural inclinations, since scarcity was hardly a concern, we spent an inordinate time foraging. We ate to forget. We lost our good sense in endless buffets, consuming empty calories in our ongoing search for something new and better coagulating in the next chafing dish.
We were always disappointed. In each kitchen drain and dish tub, we found the same soggy tacos, iceberg lettuce, and bits of cake smothered in lard. This was the least of our problems. The ships’ cleaning crews, more murderous than Cora Cleave, routed us from every public space with insecticidal sprays. Truth be told, we spent the bulk of our “holidays” brooding in moldy air ducts beneath the waterline.
On fumigation days, when neurotoxins floated through the vents of every cabin and kitchen, some of us sought refuge in the engine room. Our wings slick with oil, we slid into drain pipes and septic bilges, only to be expelled and drowned in the ship’s filthy wake. The most fortunate among us sheltered in massive trash compactors, cozily pressed between mountains of garbage, gorging on waste and regurgitating in ways that recalled the vomitoria of ancient Rome’s most noble classes.
In the end, boredom and existential distress drove us from every ship. The same conversations and tasteless entrées wore on our spirit, and with no object of attention but the ship itself, we felt helplessly adrift, plagued by an odd sense of moving without going anywhere. We’d find ourselves ruminating on Sartre’s most despairing passages, drinking t
o excess and exposing ourselves to as much secondhand smoke as possible—doing anything to loosen our grip on the mortal coil. Then a small breeze or a bit of music would rouse us from despondency and remind us of hospitable shores and neglected possibilities. Some among us would disembark at the first opportunity—in Basseterre, Nassau, Kingston, or Portsmouth. In Portsmouth, at least, we could always find one unfumigated car, our classroom, waiting at the terminal. One cannot put a price on air conditioning, really, unless that price is education.
CHAPTER SIX
AFTER LEAVING HELEN AND Dave at the Ambassador, Professor Cleave parked at the end of the street and dialed Desmond’s number twice. We paced the dashboard, wishing he hadn’t, in one of his moralizing fits, removed the ashtray to discourage Desmond’s habit. Some of us might have ingested a few shreds of tobacco to quell our anxieties. By then, our antennae were receiving dreadful visions of sanitizing stations brimming with isopropyl, canisters of deadly chemicals, and rows of insect traps (veritable coffins for unsuspecting cockroaches). As so-called vectors of disease, we were already suffering.
“He’s too busy smoking to answer.” Professor Cleave searched the radio for news and muttered at a public service announcement promoting sexual abstinence. At the end of the dial, he paused. We drew our antennae inward.
“There’s not a bit of taste among you. Mighty Sparrow is one of the greats, but I confess there’s no time for him now. It’s the news we want, and we’ll be driving to town to get it.” He surveyed the dashboard. “You are shells of yourselves in this heat.” He took a deep breath and tuned the radio to 103.5. “I wouldn’t indulge your liking for this rubbish, but you’ve been model citizens today.”
In our anxiety, we scaled the windows and batted our wings against the glass. Naturally, he misread our mood.
“I’ll never understand the appeal of this music, but with expediency in mind, I am conceding to the philistines among you. If you have any honor, you will return the courtesy and behave around Desmond. He’ll know things with no small bearing on us all.”
Desmond, unfortunately, proved a perfect exemplar of the scapegoating behavior we’ve come to expect from humans. Professor Cleave found him smoking beside the terminal gates. We backed against the windshield when Desmond slipped into the cab.
“This car is a scandal, with these filthy things crawling about,” he said. “You should get them to move on.”
“You think I have them trained? Like circus fleas?”
“They’re a pestilent lot, and I’m of no mind to relax. All day, everyone’s been looking for news. I ignored them, but I’ll tell you things you’ll hear soon enough.”
Professor Cleave glared at those of us squaring off with Desmond, and we calmed ourselves. We were, if nothing else, attuned to the gravity of the situation.
“There’s an outbreak of some kind on that ship,” Desmond said. “There were twelve passengers dead this morning. Now eighteen. Bloody noses. Trouble breathing. Fevers.”
“They don’t know what it is?”
“There’s talk of terrorism. Anthrax and that kind of thing. Maiden Cruises requested clearance so sick passengers could go to the hospital, but Butts isn’t letting the ship into port.”
“They won’t infect the real cash cows of the Caribbean, but they’ll bring it here.”
“That ship wouldn’t be given clearance anywhere.”
“But they expected it here. Because St. Anne is already infected.”
“You’re getting ahead of the situation. They don’t know how it’s spreading.”
“That’s my meaning, Des. They don’t know. Yet they’d come here. And no one here has any voice in it.”
Across the street, shopkeepers stood in shaded doorways, contemplating the wasted afternoon. “None of them know,” Desmond said. “But they will. Port Authority is getting calls from networks. Passengers are already sending pictures. Giving interviews on their phones. Butts is making an announcement this afternoon.”
We lifted our antennae, hoping to pick up an odd transmission.
“When we’re in the news, it’s always bad news,” Professor Cleave said. Two police vans pulled to the curb, and he shook his head. “It won’t look good turning them away, but they must have a better hospital on the boat.”
“The infirmary’s full, and they’re low on supplies.”
“It could be all over St. Anne soon enough. We’ll need beds for our own people.”
“It starts like a cold, they say, and then you’re on fire.”
“So many of us have touched them in one way or another.” Professor Cleave pressed his fingertip to the cut on his thumb.
“A thousand came through duty-free yesterday,” Desmond said.
“Those two I picked up. The woman was pale.”
“You’re all right, Professor. We can’t assume anything.”
Professor Cleave rubbed his temple. “Butts should be getting the hospital ready to quarantine people. Drafting public health measures.”
“You should have been prime minister. Butts isn’t fit to handle a thing like this.”
“I was never so good-looking as Butts, and the years haven’t been kind.”
“To any of us.” Desmond patted his bulging stomach. The radio hanging from his belt crackled. “It’s time.”
Professor Cleave gripped Desmond’s hand. When he released it, he felt the chill of perspiration evaporating from his skin. We quivered, sensing the fear and mistrust spreading through the ship and making its way to shore, bouncing off satellites and moving through television screens and sweaty phones. Desmond’s cigarette smoke had left us cold, too, calling to mind the fumigations starting aboard the Celeste. It started with a cold, Desmond had said. For us, it would start with a stinging fog and end in paralysis and suffocation.
When Professor Cleave returned to the Ambassador, he found several Americans sitting in the lounge, staring at the television.
“The ship out there. It’s the one from yesterday,” the daytime bartender said. “There’s some kind of sickness on board. A regular plague.”
“I just heard it on the radio.” Professor Cleave contemplated televised images of overflowing trash receptacles and yellow quarantine tape and listened to three people at the end of the bar.
“Can’t believe the CDC’s flying down,” a woman remarked.
“It’s routine,” her companion said. “The CDC flies people all over. Anywhere you get an outbreak like this.”
“All that diarrhea. It must be something they ate.”
“But nosebleeds?” a second man said. “They don’t know what the hell it is. Closing kitchens and pools. They’re covering every base.”
“And rationing water. Strange asking people not to flush if they’re worried about germs.”
“I’d flush ten times in a row just to tell them where to stick it.”
“They said everyone’s making a run on stores for packaged food,” the woman said. “Shoplifting because lines are so long.”
“I’d steal water,” her companion said. “That’ll be the hot commodity before this is over.”
Professor Cleave peeled a sticker from a pineapple and watched an outline of Florida curl in upon itself at the tip of his thumb.
Little Butts appeared on screen, and the woman leaned forward. “He’d get my vote.”
“I’d cut my nuts off first,” her companion said. “Not letting passengers go to a hospital? Hell, they might have gotten it here. Something people here have all the time.” He examined a water stain on his glass. “Like malaria. They’re just used to it.”
The daytime bartender loosened his apron and glanced at Professor Cleave. “He’ll be another Patsy Williams if he keeps the port closed.”
“Butts just pulled out his best English accent.” Professor Cleave paused. “But he’s stirring the pot, and he’ll bring it to boil soon enough.”
He felt a tingle in the back of his throat, and without thinking, lifted a finger to his neck to palp
ate his glands. At a call for a Cane Cutter, he lowered his hand, and for the rest of the afternoon he battled urges to feel his forehead for signs of fever. When the sun set, he turned up the lights to block out the Celeste with the room’s reflection on the patio doors.
We were grateful. He’d softened our awareness of the world outside, even if the television continued to project images of deserted decks and perishable food rotting in orange plastic bags, and our antennae were still overwhelmed by visions of legs stiffening above upended shells. We eventually left the lounge to wander empty hallways. By then, the Ambassador’s guests had retreated to their rooms and closed their windows against nonexistent breezes, as if they could seal themselves away from illness, from each other, and from us. Who better than cockroaches to explain that the Ambassador’s cracked walls and warped windows were practically illusions, porous barriers against diseases that had little, if anything, to do with us?
The only guests who’d abandoned precautionary measures were Helen and Dave. Any precautions would have been post hoc in their case, or so their logic went. They spent the evening in their room, processing missives from panicked passengers and macabre footage captured in a crowded infirmary. At nightfall, they ventured onto the balcony. Dave rested a plastic cup on the railing and leaned into the glow coming off the pool.
“Lawsuits already. Nineteen dead, and everyone’s just working out how to spin it.”
Helen fingered a button dangling from her sweater. “Should we tell anyone we were on board?”
“Why would we? It’s here or it isn’t.” Dave contemplated the dim lights along the Celeste’s upper decks. “Looks like they’re trying to conserve power.”
“I was in the infirmary. You were everywhere.”
“If we were sick, we’d know. And who would we tell?” He tightened his grip on the railing. “I’ve spent enough of my life with people assuming I’m sick. The gay disease.”
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