West of the Quator

by Cheryl Bartlam DuBois

  Regarding power tools, Rob still felt somewhat emasculated by the fact that Alex didn’t trust him with any voltage higher than a D-cell battery, but then to be perfectly frank, Rob didn’t really trust himself with any modern conveniences that could slice, dice, or chop vegetables, or digits effortlessly. But still, that didn’t change the way Rob felt about Alex’s assessment of his inadequacies in the power tool department. After all, weren’t all men supposed to be capable of screwing things fast and efficiently? Meaning, any man who was still reliant on a hand held driver, was likely not getting a satisfactory job done. So what in the end resulted from Rob’s limping ego, were his unceasing attempts to impress her in other ways – like climbing a palm tree to pick her green coconuts and conquer his fear of heights only to find himself hugging a nest of centipedes. It wasn’t until he had regained consciousness from the fall that the sensations from the double spotted sting marks all over his chest began to feel like something akin to being poked with a 110 volt cattle prod, not to mention the fact that Rob’s rapidly swelling body was now beginning to resemble the Michelin Man, ala rouge. Needless to say, a trip to the local hospital was critically in order and had it not been for the visiting Miami dermatologist, there to borrow a needle and thread to stitch up his son’s split forehead, Rob might have easily died of anaphylactic shock. Since, after all, it was Sunday and all of the local doctors were off on Sundays and nowhere to be found. Their theory was, since it was a day of rest – no one should get hurt, right? Grandma, Grandpa, Raymond, Alex, and Lambchop waited impatiently in the waiting room as Rob was given a shot of epinephrine and put on oxygen. It was touch and go there for an almost unbearable hour while Rob’s breathing gradually returned to normal and the swelling subsided to resemble somewhat more of a Frosty the Snowman appearance, since his body was now in shock and he was whiter than the stained, yellow sheets covering the hospital bed. Unfortunately, no one had warned him that in the case of any life threatening ailment, the vet or a jet were usually a safer bet than the town hospital.

  Even though Rob’s acrobatics had nearly killed him, his gallant intent had not gone unnoticed by Alex. In fact she was well aware that the gesture was entirely intended to please her, since Rob knew that Alex’s favorite treat was green, jelly coconut meat. She recognized the fact that he had finally found the courage to climb the tree of life to offer her a taste of his fruit, even if he had failed miserably in the attempt. Alex felt somewhat guilty knowing that Rob was laying in that archaic hospital bed in critical condition due to an attempt to impress her and win her favor. She had definitely been too hard on him, and now it might even be too late to make it up to him. Not to mention the fact that Alex was starting to realize that she might actually even be in love with him.

  “In love with him?” thought Alex. “Did I hear myself correctly?” repeated Alex to herself. “Is it love or just concern for his life, or even guilt that I’m responsible for what happened?”

  “Oh Grandma, what am I going to do if he doesn’t wake up,” cried Alex sometime around sundown.

  “Well child, love heals just about everything,” assured Grandma. If you just talk to him and tell him how you feel you might just find that you can get him to row his boat ashore. After all, without love in our lives we’re all adrift without purpose. If you give him a reason to live, I think he’ll come around.”

  Alex looked at Grandma and squeezed her hand, thankful that she had found such an understanding soul. Alex never left Rob’s bedside throughout the night, even when he started to talk about Sydney in his delirium – she sat, slept, and ate next to his bed, holding his hand and telling him how she felt and that everything was going to be all right if he would only wake up.

  Of course, Rob was in Never-Neverland and it wasn’t visions of sugar-plum fairies that were dancing through his head at that moment. In fact, had he been born about fifteen years earlier, his vivid dreams would have likely qualified as a microdot flashback. But since he was not a contemporary of the Leary and Kesey era, nor a participant in “The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test,” one would have to attribute his hallucinations of being chased by giant centipedes and huge rolling coconuts, to the concussion he had suffered from falling fifteen feet from Grandpa’s palm tree onto his head – laced of course with copious amounts of centipede venom. Life it seemed was indeed offering up Rob his share of pain and brick walls this time around. In fact, it seemed to be trying to tell him something. After all, painful was short for pay-in-full, to be credited of course against that over-extended laundry tab that I mentioned earlier.

  This wasn’t the first time Rob had fallen on his head which could attribute to his current hard headedness. I remember when Rob was eight, he and his cousin Marie had decided that since there were no mountains to climb in Iowa – they would get a better perspective of their little world from high above the town via the local water tower. Rob had gone first, and before he had gotten to the third landing he had made the mistake of looking down. Frozen, hanging there from that ladder on the Iowa City water tower, Rob had realized how big the world outside his little one truly was. It had taken two hours and the local fire department to get him to come down, since he was stubbornly determined to do it on his own. It was the first time he and his parents realized the severity of his fear of heights. One step at a time, Rob had eased himself down rung by rung. It wasn’t until he reached the fifth step from the ground that he had unfortunately looked down again and painfully took those last few steps back to earth in one fowl swoop, unfortunately landing on the unforgiving concrete on his head, requiring as many stitches as his father’s switches that were used later to teach him the lesson he’d already managed to learn on his own.

  Luckily, this time Rob had landed on a stretch of somewhat soft sand, which prevented him from suffering any serious brain damage, or the need for stitches to any body parts other than his ego, which was still in tatters from his original balls-up with the Island Fever. However, it had taken a great deal of courage for Rob to climb that tree for Alex, since it was the first climbing he’d attempted since his Iowa City water tower excursion to see the world.

  Rob was in the midst of a dream about grinding large gaping holes into the Island Fever’s topsides, with an electric rotary sander, when he heard the faint calling of Alex’s voice, begging him to wake up. It wasn’t until he dreamed he heard her saying that she was in love with him that he put down the sander long enough to listen to what she had to say. Suddenly, the sun had come out in his dream and he was at the helm of the Island Fever, sailing through crystal blue water and sipping a tall rum & Coke. Alex was busy on the foredeck coiling lines and asking him if there was anything more that she could do for her Captain.

  “Captain,” thought Rob now in a state of semi consciousness. “She actually called me Captain!”

  For the first time in months Rob actually felt in control. He was about to take the helm of his life, and his love life, or specifically, his insecure relationship with Alex. He knew then that she loved him and that they would be together, forever, sailing off into the sunset and – –

  – – “CRASH!” went a metal bedpan as it hit the floor, ejecting Rob’s amazing dream abruptly from his memory bank and catapulting him back to reality and a somewhat foggy state of consciousness. Since his body was still swollen to least twice it’s normal size, he found it difficult to open his eyes to anything more than tiny slits, which were sufficient enough to find Alex leaning over him, with eyes closed, ready to kiss him tenderly on his swollen lips. Being of sound enough mind to recognize a fortuitous opportunity when he saw it, Rob lay there continuing to feign his state of unconsciousness until the moment that their lips met. Well trained in his line of work to be prudent in never making a move prematurely, and to always wait until one was assured that a commodity was ripe for the picking, Rob saw his opening and grabbed it, and laid one on her.

  Alex was shocked and embarrassed to be caught in the act of openly demonstrative affection to a member of th
e opposite sex, which had been totally unsolicited, since it was entirely outside of Alex’s mode of operandi – totally against all her years of training in aloofness where men were concerned. Alex jumped back with a scream, utterly caught off guard by Rob’s unexpected recovery – knocking over the antiquated IV stand which fell to the floor with a another crash yanking the IV drip right from Rob’s arm. Rob screamed as he bolted upright in bed right into the tray table which was stationed over Rob’s chest, knocking the wind out of him. Aside from the fact that he was fighting desperately to catch his breath and the fact that blood was streaming down his arm from the disconnected needles which still hung from his puffy, bruised flesh, Rob was a happy man. It was at that moment that all hell broke loose as Grandma, Grandpa, Raymond, three nurses, two doctors, and Lambchop burst into the room to see what all of the ruckus was about – finding to their surprise, Rob and Alex in a lip-locked embrace that would have knocked the socks off half of Chicago’s baseball team.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Black-Out

  “You can make the world go round,

  or you can watch it turn.”

  Grandpa

  One thing the Caribbean has always lacked in the way of First World efficiency is an adequate infrastructure –thanks to the care-free attitude of the West Indian culture. Not to mention the rapid growth of tourism which has inspired the ever ending building of more and more hotels and those cursed time-share resorts sought after by American tourists desperately seeking a brief taste of that very state of indifference so well honed by the West Indian. Like the phone system or lack thereof, which is always beyond maximum capacity due to a lack of needed phone lines on the island, the other, utilities such as power and water, equal communi-cations when it comes to being inadequate. On the island of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin, Dutch residents living at the end of the water main nearest the French side, have gotten used to going without water for weeks on end just prior to the start of tourist season when all of the major hotels between their house and the water plant decide to fill their cisterns1* at the same time. Likewise, one never quite knows when the electrical plant is going to be shut down, due to either West Indians to run it, or a shortage of fuel.

  So, when Alex returned to the boatyard from the hospital once Rob had been released, she was not surprised to learn that the power on that side of the island was indefinitely off due to a strike by the barge crew that brought the power plant’s fuel to the island every week from the storage containers in St. Eustatius. Keeping Alex and her crew from operating any of the helpful power tools as aforementioned in order to quickly and conveniently expedite their progress on the Island Fever’s repairs.

  What was one more delay in Paradise? Progress on the boat may have slowed, and the island may have been in the dark, but Rob had finally seen the light, at least where Alex and love were concerned. Up until now Rob had been in the dark about love in general. He had grown to believe that he would never find true love again, at least not love like he had felt for Julie Anne. What he had never realized was that he hadn’t really been looking, he had simply settled for other less important things in a relationship. What he hadn’t been able to understand due to that gapping black cavern in his chest, was that once one finally starts to seek true love, it begins to seek them.

  Thanks to the lack of power on the island prohibiting the use of power tools, Rob was on equal terms with the workers in the tool department. Rob’s self-esteem was soaring as he happily sanded away at the inside port hull, feeling as if he were finally being useful to Alex. After all, Rob had to do something that made him feel worthy in his new found love’s eyes. Having sworn off tree climbing, not to mention putting himself anywhere near the proximity of any creature with more than four legs, and the lack of electronic devices, Rob was relatively safe at this point, at least from himself.

  Grandma and Grandpa were pleased to see the electricity sparking between Rob and Alex in the love department, even if Rob still had a torch waiting to be ignited in the area of self love, self esteem, and ultimately true happiness. Rob didn’t yet understand that one couldn’t fully love another unless he had learned to love himself. Grandpa was aware that he still had his work cut out for him in the task of mentoring Rob, but in the meantime he knew that new love would keep Rob content for a while and quite possibly even deceive him into thinking he’d actually discovered Paradise. But Grandpa knew all too well, that until Rob learned to love himself and be happy within and not just without, or more accurately, with another, he would never be able to discover true happiness. In the meantime, it gave Grandpa and I a short respite while Rob happily went about being in love.

  Rob was indeed feeling pretty happy at that moment in time, Paradise or not, having gone to the brink of death and back again only to find love waiting for him at the other end. He was now beginning to truly appreciate what he had, and the fact that he had been given a second chance to enjoy it. He finally understood what Grandpa meant by learning to work with the hand that you’re dealt in life instead of always looking to draw another card. Of course, it helped that Rob had finally drawn a Royal Flush instead of his usual pair of deuces.

  Now that he had finally slowed down to enjoy life instead of letting it pass him by, Rob was feeling like a million bucks even if he was down to his last thousand. Finally, Rob had stopped sacrificing the present for the future and was learning how to live in the moment. He was beginning to realize that Grandma and Grandpa were right. Giving and receiving love and learning to enjoy life were the only things in life that truly counted. And to my relief, he was stopping on his walks with Lambchop to the marine store to chat with the Universe and to smell the hibiscus, as Grandpa had suggested, even if they didn’t emote any fragrance. Maybe now he’d start to listen to what I had to say to him.

  “Well Universe, or whomever’s in charge up there. Isn’t life beautiful? I mean what a lucky man I am. Grandpa was right, it seems my luck has started to change,” said Rob to nothing and everything at the same time. “So I don’t have a lot of money in the bank. I’ve got all the wealth that counts in the world. I’ve got people who love me. But more importantly, people I love in my life. Boy, did Sydney ever do me a favor when she left. She made me wake up and realize that I’d been pursuing her dream instead of my own. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt I’m worth more than my portfolio.”

  “YES!” I exclaimed thrilled that he was finally starting to understand, “Now you just have to start investing in yourself instead of in the market.”

  Rob looked around puzzled as if someone was there on that beach with him. Slowly, he looked up as if it were finally sinking in about the source of his intuition in business. It had, or rather, I had always been there for him, even if it hadn’t ever been acknowledged.

  By the time Rob arrived back at the boat yard, a smile of contentment graced his face, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.

  “You see, it not be necessary to be dead to see the light, contrary to popular belief,” said Grandpa noticing Rob’s peaceful expression as he poured their first rum and Coke together since Rob’s accident, “Even if it sometimes takes being faced with death.”

  “You know, at one point there in the hospital I felt as though I were in a tunnel drifting towards that realty bright light everyone talks about,” Rob answered distantly as if he were caught up in reliving the experience. “But I wasn’t scared. It was almost as if I was an observer. I knew it was my choice… you know, whether to go or to stay, but I knew it wasn’t time. And besides, how could I leave Alex. I mean she was sitting there begging me to come back. Actually, I think I stayed longer than necessary because I was enjoying listening to her talk. You know it was weird but it was as if I was able to really take a look at my life for the first time. Like that vantage point outside of my body, made it all clear.”

  Nodding his head as if he understood, Grandpa grew quiet for a moment remembering a time long past “You know, I be just
about your age the first time I came close to dyin’. Until then I never understood what living really be about. I took life for what worked at the time… I was always waiting for something better to come along instead of appreciating what I had. When you get too close to something like life, it be hard to make out the picture real clear. You know, it be like one of those impressionist paintings, where you need to take a step back for the picture to make sense.

  Rob looked at Grandpa with a knowing look as if there was suddenly a deeper bond between these two men who couldn’t be more different on the surface, but had just connected on some inner more meaningful level.

  “We all pass up opportunity because we think we have plenty of time to go back and do all those things we always wanted to do,” continued Grandpa. “But then one day we wake up and realize that we be either too sick, too tired, or just dead and we never had the chance. You have to take life as it comes… like what you’re doing here. You saw a chance to live the life you wanted and you took it. Good and bad, you’re living it, right here, right now.”

  “How does he do it? Why is it that this man always seems to know what I’m thinking and feeling?” thought Rob staring at Grandpa.

  Rob froze, suddenly realizing that he was actually feeling something. And, like an appendage that had been asleep too long he felt a tingling sensation run up his spine as if his soul had just reawakened after a long winter’s nap.

  “He’s right, realized Rob, I have always taken life for granted – knowing that everything would just be the way I expected it to be. I guess that just doesn’t work in this part of the world. I guess this was a wake-up call for me to realize that I have a lot to be thankful for and that I’m a pretty lucky guy when it comes down to it,” reasoned Rob to himself. “I mean, look at what I’ve got. I’m alive and healthy, all of my appendages still work, even if I am a little bruised. I have a beautiful woman who’s in love with me and half of a million dollar boat. Even if it does have a few holes in the hull. That’s where I went wrong with Julie Anne. I took her for granted I believed that she would just be there for me and then one day she wasn’t. I guess since then I just didn’t believe I deserved someone who truly loved me, since I hadn’t taken what was given me seriously the first time around,” finally admitting it to himself.