West of the Quator

by Cheryl Bartlam DuBois

  Panicking, Rob had to think fast. It was one thing for his life to be threatened but another all together for Alex to be in danger.

  “I’ve got it… buried!” Rob blurted out before he had time to think about what he was saying.

  Alex’s eyes grew wide in disbelief as she looked at Rob, realizing his tack to try and lure them away from her. Thinking fast Alex looked Rob square in the eye, “Boy if I’d known this was going to happen I would have stayed longer to see the rest of the fireworks,” she said winking at him to make him understand, realizing that she would have better luck getting the support of the French Police than the Dutch. Since after all, they did owe her a pretty big favor at this point.

  “Paradise Peak?” said Rob suddenly catching on to her coded message. “That’s where I buried it, at the top of Paradise Peak !”

  Looking at him somewhat suspiciously Guido tightened his grip around Alex’s throat.

  “I swear! I have this spot up there that no one knows about. I buried it in a cooler,” Rob said having seen one too many movies. “I… I’ll take you there if you let her go.” Of course, the movie running through Rob’s mind at that moment was the one where Guido cuts off Rob’s left ear and sends it to Alex to get her to pay up. However, Rob was having a tough time picturing himself going through life resembling Van Gogh.

  “She goes with us,” demanded Guido, “Then I let her go.”

  Standing firm, more from being frozen with fear than from bravery, Rob took a chance, “No! She stays here… I go… alone! And your gorilla goes with us!”

  Seeing the determination in Rob’s face, Guido realized that Rob meant it. Reluctantly releasing Alex, Guido gestured to Rob with the gun to climb down off the boat as he followed him – the gun pointed at the back of his head.

  Ah, wasn’t life on “The Friendly Island” fun. You just never knew what was waiting to greet you just around the next corner. Rob was about to make his second trip to Paradise for the evening, however, this one could definitely prove to be even more challenging than deciding with whom he would be spending the rest of his life. This trip could be the deciding factor as to whether he would actually have the rest of his life to spend.

  It was about now that Rob was finally starting to get the hang of communion with the big Kahunna, and he was desperately searching for that frequency which would tune him in to the help that he was so in need of to survive this new curve-ball the Universe had just pitched him. And I, was scrambling to round-up all the help I could find on this side. Sometimes even I don’t see these unexpected turn of events coming, since they are written into Rob’s plan to serve as much of a test to me as it does to Rob.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Heart and Sole

  “Have a care what you ask for,

  it might be given you.”

  Ancient Proverb

  Helpless, Alex watched as Guido led Rob away at gun point to their black sedan. Shaken to her core, she waited in the cockpit of the Island Fever until they had started the car and pulled out of the yard. As their tail lights receded into the darkness, Alex jumped from the boat, climbed into the Yellow Submarine, and drove to wake Luis (Loui) at his shack in Cole Bay – one of her reliable workers who was the size of a Sumo wrestler, black as a crow, and as solid as a rock, both in character and physique. Since he was French from The Saints,1* Alex knew he would have much better luck explaining to the Gendarmes the nature of the Island Fever’s latest need for police intervention.

  If it hadn’t been for Luis’ ability to explain to the police of the gravity of the kidnapping in French, Alex knew she would have never solicited their aid. She was grateful that she had this big, lovable hulk to rely on at a time like this. Alex had known Luis for years – in fact, she had worked side-by-side with him building the Island Fever in the St. Kitts boatyard. The minute she had realized that they would be in repair mode for the summer, she had called him to offer him a job helping her put the Island Fever back together. He had accepted instantly, respecting Alex’s abilities as a sailor and a shipwright,2** but had informed her that he first had to head home for a few weeks, since his wife had taken ill and there was no one to look after his five young children. With such a large family, Luis had found it necessary to move away to find work capable of supporting his brood. The only means of making a living in Petite Anse on Terre-de-Bas was fishing, and Luis was unable to take to the sea due to an inner ear problem which caused him to reel the minute he set foot on a boat on the water.

  Of course, the Gendarmes remembered Alex all too well and were hesitant at first to get involved. Unbeknownst to Alex however, Luis had managed to entice them into a little swat team and sniper action. By the time he had convinced the Gendarmes of the urgency of the situation, Rob and Miguel’s goons had gotten a pretty good head start on getting up to Pic du Paradis and Alex was getting worried. Riding with Luis in the back of the police van, Alex said a little prayer for the first time in as long as she could remember, that Rob was safe and that they would get there in time to save him before the thugs realized that Rob was only bluffing about the money. She also appealed to her dad, who she knew was looking over her to lend Rob a hand in dealing with his abductors.

  Her heart was aching at the thought of loosing him. Oh how easy it had been to not care about anyone or anything. But now that she had found Rob, she realized that she loved him with all of her heart and soul, and that loosing him might be the second most painful thing she would ever experience in life – the first being the loss of her father. Her only comfort was in knowing that the Universe couldn’t possibly be so cruel as to take him away from her now that she had found true love?

  Alex had always possessed an intuitive gift that sometimes allowed her to see the future. In her heart she searched for some assurance that Rob would be okay but found nothing there but fear. This was the most distressing part of it all – her intuition had deserted her and the only thing she was able to rely on was the faith that they were destined to be together. She was determined that their future would not be cut short by a couple of low-life, gun-toting drug dealers.

  When they arrived at the top of the road to Pic du Paradis the black sedan was the lone car parked at the end of the paved road. Before Alex could say a word, the French militia had swarmed out of the two vans and up the hill, wearing flak jackets and snapping ammunition clips into their automatic weapons. Panicked, Alex wondered what she had done. She’d unleashed the French Brigade – Rob now stood a greater risk of getting injured by the police than by his captors.

  If all hell broke loose, Rob might quite possibly get caught in the crossfire.

  Alex leapt from the van trying in vain to catch up to the Captain, but it was too late – they were well on their way to the top of the crest where she had clued Rob to lead Guido and Raul. By the time she arrived breathless at the top of the lookout, the Gendarmes had already surrounded the perimeter and had the outlaws pinned down behind an outcropping of rock on the edge of a precipice. Alex felt helpless –unable to do anything about the volatile condition of the moment.

  Through a bullhorn, one of the good guys shouted instructions in Spanish for the bad guys to lay down their weapons and reach for the sky, as if they were just going to give up that easy. Alex felt as if she had just been transported to Tombstone, Arizona for the “Shoot Out at OK Corral.” In the meantime, Rob was at the mercy of Guido who held him hostage behind the rock with the barrel of a small cannon pinned to his ear. All Alex could see of Rob, however was one deck shoe sticking out from behind the rock, and she unfortunately understood enough Spanish to garner the terms of the banditos – the bad guys were refusing to come out with their hands up, and they were threatening to shoot Rob if the policia didn’t back off.

  By that point, Rob had nearly soiled himself from the cold, hard barrel of steel pressed against his temple. And, Rob had been afraid of spending the rest of his life in jail due to Joey’s illicit calling. Right now a life sentence was looking quite preferab
le to the option currently at hand. He was wondering what he could have possibly done karmically to deserve the recent turn of events in Paradise and realized that he was quickly slipping over that fine line back into hell – surely he had already reached purgatory. Instead of thinking about the gun lodged tightly above his left ear, he tried hard to focus on his future with Alex rather than the thought of going through life, if he was lucky, resembling Van Gough.

  The situation couldn’t have gotten any more tense with an interminable wait, which felt like nearly an hour for Alex, and was for Rob, starting the forth re-run of the documentary of his life. Frightened to death, Alex was beginning to realize that someone or something had to give. She knew that her nerves had reached a point where she might not be able to make any clear judgments and worried that the bad guys might have reached the same breaking point.

  What she and Luis didn’t realize was that several sharp shooters had made their way around to another outcropping on the far side of the mountain where they could get a clear shot at the banditos. Alex’s heart stopped when the Gendarmes suddenly opened up on the rock behind which Rob and the bad guys were hiding in order to distract them enough from their hostage for the snipers to get a clean shot at them, taking them both out with one shot each. It was all over but the crying in that one deafening moment. Not even Rob realized what had hit him until all was quiet and he suddenly felt a throbbing pain in his left foot. Alex was afraid to breathe as she waited to hear something from Rob, not knowing if he was dead or alive.

  As I said before, it’s our job here on ‘The Other Side’ to protect the lives of the charges we are assigned when they return to a human existence. And as of late, myself and everyone I could enlist here on this side have been working overtime to protect Rob from his recent string of mishaps. Although we try hard, it isn’t always possible to prevent or even soften the inevitable events that have been written into one’s life-plan. After all – that is what they are here for – to experience the pain and suffering of human existence that simply doesn’t exist on ‘The Other Side.’

  It seemed that a bullet had ricocheted off the rock in the first volley of gunfire and gone clean through the sole of his deck shoe and out the other side of his foot. Once again, it was hard to believe, but Rob had actually written this newest setback into his recent package of calamity and mayhem that was rapidly speeding up his tutelage on the physical plane. In fact Rob was about to graduate with his Masters degree and move on to obtain his Ph.D.

  “Ah guys… I think I’ve been shot,” announced Rob flatly once he had finally gotten his wits about him and realized that he was indeed still alive, however, there was a gaping hole in his left shoe. Of course, that was all that Alex needed to hear for her to spring to her feet and rush to Rob’s side without regard at all for her own safety. After all she had no way of knowing for sure that the bad guys were well on their way back into utero of some poor unsuspecting mother who was about to give birth.

  Luis could barely pry them apart when he went to pick up Rob and carry him down the mountain. All the way down, Alex kept a firm grip on Rob’s hand until they reached the police van where they loaded Rob, Alex, Luis, and half the police, while the other half of the Gendarmes were busy carting the two stiffs down the trail to be taken off to the island morgue.

  Of course, Rob and Alex left out all of the particular details regarding Joey as they told the story of Rob being taken hostage in their debriefing by the French police. In turn, they simply wrote Rob’s involvement off to a case of mistaken identity.

  This time, Alex didn’t think twice about chancing the local medical care since the French hospital was twice as bad as the Dutch. Instead, Alex and Luis put Rob in the back seat of the Yellow Submarine and drove him up to the island vet where Doctor Don, cleaned his foot, slowed the bleeding, gave him a hefty shot of antibiotics and Demerol, then patched him up enough to get him to Puerto Rico. Refusing to argue with Rob, who was not up to going anywhere, Alex had him on the first plane out the next morning to San Juan were she checked him into the Pavia Hospital. By noon, Rob was in surgery having the gaping hole in his foot sewn up and the shattered bone grafted back together from pieces of bone taken from his hip. It would be a miracle if Rob would ever walk normally again, but Alex knew that he stood a far better chance in an American hospital than at the mercy of some French or Dutch Antillian surgeon.

  It was eight o’clock that night when they finally wheeled a semi-conscious Rob into his room where Alex waited impatiently for news. It seemed that the operation had been a success but it would be months before Rob would be healed enough to take the cast off, let alone knowing if he’d be walking like Hop Along Cassedy for the rest of his life. Nothing mattered to Alex other than the fact that he was safe and in her arms once again, back where it had all started – in a hospital bed waiting for him to come to his senses, in more ways than one.

  1*THE SAINTS – Les Saintes are eight tiny French islands off the southern coast of Guadeloupe, only two of which are inhabited – Terre-de-Bas & Terre-de-Haut. Originally settled by seafaring Normans and Breton Colonists, it is now owned by the French and is the epitome of quaint.

  2**SHIPWRIGHT – A carpenter who builds or repairs wooden boats.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tropical Depression

  “I have not failed. I have just found

  10,000 ways that won’t work.”

  Thomas Edison

  It was late July when Rob finally returned to Simpson Bay in St. Maarten with Alex, who had stayed with Rob confidently entrusting the repairs of the boat to Luis, whom she knew would be able to make progress without her. Especially, since they were down to the final stretch – sheathing the damaged hull and bridge deck to make it watertight, a job she knew Luis could handle in his sleep.

  Raymond was there to meet them at the Princess Julianna Airport to assist Rob as he hobbled off the plane and through immigration on crutches – returning to the island like a casualty of war. Back at the boat yard, Grandma, Grandpa, and Christian awaited him with a welcoming home party, as did Lambchop, who had grown to nearly double his size in the few weeks they’d been gone. He met Rob standing on his hind legs with his front hooves planted on Rob’s chest in order to give him a famous Lambchop kiss right on the lips – nearly knocking him off his crutches in the process.

  Being the later half of July, tropical waves were rolling through one right after the other, like cruise-ships in high season. But, since it was still early into hurricane season, the Atlantic had not yet spawned anything stronger than a number of tropical depressions,1* which rolled across the island bringing endless rain showers, gloomy skies, and the muggy, stale air of summer. These showers did serve to slightly cool the ninety plus degree temperature and blow away the mosquitoes which were multiplying at an alarming rate that the department of tourism wished it could generate tourists. But alas, it was off season in the West Indies and most of the expatriates were smart enough to travel elsewhere to spend the miserable summer and fall months and avoid hurricane season2** altogether.

  The island had been lucky the last decade or so, nothing stronger than a few ‘category one’4**** hurricanes had passed near the island, doing little or no damage. For that very reason, Alex was nervous this year. She understood the odds of keeping up this ten year stroke of good luck, not to mention that the water temperature was already hotter than normal for that time of the year, which disturbed her since warmer waters were usually responsible for a greater than normal tropical storm activity in the Northern Atlantic.

  Alex’s daily afternoon swims were hardly a relief from the sweltering heat and the total stillness that followed a tropical depression. However, she had gotten used to this time of the year and in some ways welcomed it, since the island was a peaceful place without the throngs of tourists lining the beaches and driving rental cars around the island roads in a manner in which a novice might drive the Indi 500.

  The good news was, they were well on their
way to finishing the boat. Alex figured that by late August they might actually have her back in the water before the peak of hurricane season. Alex was concerned that the Island Fever wouldn’t stand much of a chance getting pummeled on shore by the swells like a beached whale should a storm decide to clock in from the west or northwest, which was unlikely.

  Rob however, was in the midst of his own kind of tropical depression, since his uncomfortable cast and his throbbing itchy foot made life relatively miserable in the sweltering tropical heat. All he was able to do for relief was to scratch his left foot inside his cast with a piece of palm frond as he sat on Grandma’s porch watching the windsurfers come and go from the nearby watersports shack.

  Rob was bored since like all Americans, he felt it necessary to be doing something every minute, no matter how meaningless. He still hadn’t fully gotten the hang of three-quarter time and was getting antsier by the day, but at least some of his ‘sturm and drang’5* had subsided. Instead, he had simply found himself in the middle of the doldrums6** it seemed both literally and figuratively.

  Of course, Rob was able to catch up on a few games of dominos with Grandpa during his extended break. Once again being of little or no help to Alex, which was just as well since it prevented any unnecessary tension in their relationship and further potential injury to Rob’s person. For now, Rob was simply playing voyeur to the workings of the boatyard and a student of life as far as Grandpa concerned. Rob had even taken Alex’s advise on resuming his mariner’s course which would take some of the burden off of Alex to teach Rob all of the textbook nuances of sailing and piloting his vessel. As far as the practical application went, Alex figured that they had plenty of time ahead of them to work on that once the Island Fever was back in operation again.

  “Let yourself be bored,” said Grandpa one day over a challenging game of dominos, since Rob had at least learned how to give Grandpa a run for his money at his own game. “There be a lot to learn from just lettin’ your mind be still. That be when the answers cum,” continued Grandpa as he focused on his next play.