Without a Grave

by Marcia Talley

  Swivel, turn, a dazzling smile for me. ‘One of the twins has appendicitis, Mrs Ives. I’m sure you understand.’

  Step, turn, a hair flip for Henry. ‘But I’m here to represent the family, and I’ll be happy to address any of your concerns.’

  ‘Is your brother here?’ I asked. I was impervious to hair flips.

  ‘No. Just me.’

  That was a relief. I watched as she coasted back down the aisle, taking a seat in the rear.

  Henry, too, seemed relieved at the news that his meeting would proceed Jaime-less. He stood taller, straighter. Cool eyes appraising the audience. Acknowledging individuals with a nod, or a wave.

  Paul had been saving a place for me, so I eased myself into the second row between him and Molly.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ Henry began. ‘Most of you know me. I’m Henry Allen, warden at Out Island Land and Sea Park. As you know, ever since we learned of El Mirador Land Corporation’s purchase of the old Island Fantasy property, we’ve been concerned about the impact their planned development will have on our island, our reef and our livelihoods.’

  Henry aimed a remote at the laptop and clicked over to his first slide, a picture of two men climbing into an airplane, a bright-yellow, two-seater Savage Cub. ‘First, I want to show you how Hawksbill Cay looked two years ago, prior to the commencement of construction.’

  I wasn’t surprised by the slides, which had been taken about the same time as the aerial photographs Paul and I had seen at the art show in Marsh Harbour. As Henry paged through the slides, Hawksbill’s small settlement stood out clearly over the wing of the airplane: a simple grid of narrow streets beaded with cottages, its marina and shipyard piers delicately fringing the water, with a scattering of pleasure boats moored like sequins in the harbor.

  The northwestern end of the island stood out in jewel-like perfection, too, like a brooch of emerald green, trimmed with a brilliant strip of sand, all set in the translucent turquoise of the sea.

  ‘Before,’ Henry said simply. He aimed his remote and pressed the button. ‘Now we come to the “After.”’

  As one slide transitioned to the next, there was a collective gasp as the audience gradually came to realize what they were seeing. I was prepared for the gash of the runway, of course; I’d seen it from Windswept. But the extent of the damage that construction had brought to the interior of Hawksbill Cay was astonishing.

  From the raw end of the runway a long tongue of silt curled into the sea. ‘Where are the silt containment curtains we were assured would be used during all phases of construction?’ Henry asked. ‘Only in the El Mirador brochures, apparently.’

  The next slide was even more alarming. The mangroves that had formerly grown thick along Tom’s Creek had been bulldozed and burned, the gently curving shoreline turned into mud flats, desolate as a moonscape. To one side of the photo a backhoe crouched, its bucket resting on the ground, looking almost apologetic for the damage it had caused.

  ‘I come from Kentucky,’ someone in the audience behind me shouted. ‘Our strip mines look better than that!’

  Henry acknowledged the interruption with a nod, then clicked to the next slide. ‘This is where the condos are going to be built,’ he continued.

  I realized I was staring at an aerial shot of what had once been a hillside leading down to a pristine creek. El Mirador’s hungry backhoes had scraped the earth bare, literally wounding the island, leaving ugly brown scabs. ‘This is not hard land,’ Henry continued, highlighting the hillside area with a wavering beam of a red laser pointer. ‘It is porous limestone directly connected to the wetlands. Destruction of our mangrove and sea grass nurseries will have a hugely negative impact on the reef communities that support our local populations of commercially important fish as well as our lobster and conch.’

  ‘I suppose this is what El Mirador meant when they advertised that all the bungalows will be nestled within a lovely mangrove forest,’ Molly grumbled.

  Gabriele was on her feet. ‘Naturally we have to clear land if we are going to build houses,’ she said as she glided toward the front of the sanctuary, addressing the audience to the right and to the left of her as she made her way up the aisle. ‘But the impact on the ecosystem has been shown to be minimal. Our environmental impact statement is already on record and has been approved by BEST. As you may recall, we hired an independent researcher led by Adam Hardin, a top marine scientist.’

  ‘What’s BEST?’ I whispered to Molly.

  ‘Bahamian Environment, Science and Technology Commission,’ she whispered back. ‘They’re supposed to review environmental impact statements and coordinate between developers and the government. They’re supposed to be on our side.’

  ‘That’s a crock!’ someone wearing a red ball cap shouted. ‘Your so-called scientist is the son-in-law of one of El Mirador’s major investors!’

  ‘Is this true, Henry?’ someone else asked in a more reasonable tone.

  Gabriele answered for him. ‘Yes, but Hardin’s credentials are impeccable, and so is his report.’

  The guy in the red ball cap wasn’t buying it. ‘Ha!’

  Henry raised both hands. ‘Calm down a minute. No need to shout.’

  From the back of the sanctuary, Vernon spoke up. ‘What I want to know is what happened to that fellow from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Wasn’t he supposed to testify tonight?’

  ‘Thanks for asking, Vernon. Yes, he was, but I’m afraid Frank Parker’s been delayed.’

  ‘If he can’t be here, why don’t we have a copy of his report?’ Vernon wondered.

  I elbowed Paul. ‘That’s a good question. Do you think Frank sent a copy of his report to anybody?’

  ‘Regrettably, we don’t have a copy of his report,’ Henry continued. ‘As some of you may know, we were expecting Mr Parker to speak here tonight, but his vessel is overdue. He and his wife are missing.’

  Lots of murmuring agreement from the audience, many of whom had probably been following our efforts to locate Wanderer on the Cruisers’ Net each morning. Some had probably overheard when Northern Star reported a sighting of Wanderer in Poinciana Cove. But there was only a handful of people who knew that Wanderer, the sailboat, had been found without her captain and first mate aboard, and that she was now rechristened the Alice in Wonderland and in Jaime Mueller’s possession.

  Winnie stood, shoulders back, arms to her sides. ‘One thing that the El Mirador environmental impact study doesn’t adequately address is the impact that their desalinization plant will have on our island. Have there been any studies on that?’

  ‘Nothing on the federal level,’ Gabriele admitted. ‘Most of the studies of desalinization have been funded by private business.’

  ‘Well, we all know how unbiased that would be!’ Winnie’s eyes went on scan, making contact with everyone in the room, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘We have a state-of-the-art facility,’ Gabriele assured the audience. ‘Please, tell me. What are your specific concerns?’

  ‘You have to get the water from our sea,’ Gator boomed from the back row. ‘I’m worried about the impact your water-intake pipes will have on the fish, particularly with such a large-scale plant.’

  Gabriele managed a straight-lipped response. ‘We have been assured that that isn’t a concern.’

  Gator pressed on. ‘In what way isn’t it a concern? Fish will be sucked in through the pipes, isn’t that so?’

  ‘The pipes will be screened.’

  Gator looked up, rolled his eyes, as if seeking patience from the cross. ‘Then organisms will collide with the screen, Ms Mueller. Fish, and smaller organisms, like zooplankton will go right on through.’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ A suntanned arm attached to a petite islander was waving for attention. ‘Once you take the salt out of the water, Ms Mueller, what are you going to do with it? You can’t tell me that pumping that stuff back into the ocean wouldn’t have an impact on our reefs.’

  Gab
riele sighed. She’d obviously fielded this question before, and was boring even herself with the answer. ‘The salty sludge will be combined with post-treatment sewage plant effluence and injected into deep wells.’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ The girl jumped to her feet, bouncing on tiptoes to see over taller heads. ‘Doesn’t the plant run on electricity? And how do you plan to generate that electricity, Ms Mueller?’

  ‘I’m sure you know that at Tamarind Tree we have our own power generator.’

  ‘Doesn’t it run on diesel?’ the girl pressed. ‘Doesn’t diesel generate greenhouse gasses?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ the postmistress chimed in without budging from her seat. ‘You just need to use less water! You rich people are spoiled rotten. Can’t live without your bathtubs and your dishwashers. Bet you still run the tap for five minutes while you stand in front of the bathroom sink brushing your teeth.’

  ‘Well, I’m all in favor of the resort,’ another woman announced from one of the side aisles. ‘I think they’ve been nothing but environmentally responsible and upfront about it from Day One. And my house is adjacent to the Tamarind Tree restaurant.’

  A guy wearing a red tropical shirt shot to his feet. ‘Well, of course you’re in favor of it, Arlene. You’re so much in favor of it that you’ve put your house on the market. Isn’t that right?’

  To a chorus of that’s rights and uh huhs, Arlene sucked in her lips and sat down.

  ‘Your father promised he’d hire Bahamians,’ Mr Red Shirt continued, addressing Gabriele. ‘All I’ve ever seen around the place is foreigners. Damn Haitians and those boys from that fancy college in Florida.’

  ‘He is hiring Bahamians, Alvin,’ Arlene grumbled from her seat. ‘My son is working as a supervisor for one of the contractors.’

  ‘OK, Arlene. You just ask your boy how many of his workers are Bahamian. Go on, I dare you. I hear there’s nothing but Mexicans over there.’

  ‘We work exclusively with Bahamian contractors,’ Gabriele assured him using her best anything-to-appease-the-natives tone. ‘But to be perfectly honest, we have little control over the people that our contractors hire, including the various subcontractors, so if you have any issues with the make-up of our contract workforce, you’ll have to take them up with the individual contractors.’

  I thought about the lovely waitress who had brought me my iced tea the other day. That’s one Bahamian. I was trying to come up with a second Bahamian when Winnie shouted in exasperation, ‘And another thing! Who has been stealing our signs?’

  For the first time that evening, Gabriele Mueller wrinkled her flawless brow. ‘What signs?’

  ‘Our protest signs.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that, but surely you aren’t suggesting . . .’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m suggesting!’

  ‘I’ll look into it.’ Gabriele raised her hands in an attitude of surrender. ‘Look, we’re not hiding anything. If any of you are still skeptical, please, come see us. I’m issuing an open invitation to all of you. Come visit, tour the facilities. I am speaking for my father when I say we are committed to keeping the Tamarind Tree Resort and Marina as environmentally safe as possible. You have my promise on that.’

  ‘They think that if they promise to take our garbage away, we’ll fall all over ourselves to welcome them,’ Molly muttered to the guy sitting on her right.

  ‘Money talks, and we have no money,’ he grumbled back.

  While Troy Albury gave an update on the legal efforts of Save Guana Cay Reef to halt the Baker’s Bay Development on his tiny island, I stared at the aerial photo that remained on the screen following the conclusion of Henry’s presentation. Troy was giddy with the news that the Privy Council had agreed to hear the case they had filed against both the developer and the government of the Bahamas, but I was more interested in Henry’s slide. It showed the pier at Tamarind Tree Resort as it was now, undergoing repair. Something was bothering me about it. When the meeting broke up and everyone was gathering on the church steps to analyze and dissect it, I pulled Henry aside. ‘Henry, do you mind if I look at a couple of your slides again?’

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘Can you page back to an earlier slide for me?’ Henry picked up the remote and moved backwards through his presentation.

  ‘No, not that one. Uh, uh. Stop!’ It was another picture of the pier, taken just before the repairs had begun. ‘When was this picture taken, Henry?’

  ‘That would be two weeks ago, I think.’

  ‘Can you put that slide next to the last one?’

  ‘Sure.’ I watched while Henry copied the photograph, paged forward to the final slide, and pasted it next to it. ‘There.’

  ‘What’s this?’ I said, pointing to an odd discoloration in the water, a blue oblong just to the left of the pier.

  Henry squinted at the screen, took a few steps back and looked again. ‘I don’t know. Didn’t notice it before. Some sort of fish trap?’

  ‘How big do you think it is?’

  ‘Hard to say. Compared to the pilings, I’d say twenty, twenty-five feet.’

  ‘What’s curious to me, Henry, is that whatever this thing is, it was in the water two weeks ago.’ I tapped the screen where the later photo was projected. ‘Now it’s gone.’

  Henry pointed out, quite correctly, that a golf cart and a dune buggy appeared in the earlier photo, but weren’t present in the later one. ‘Could be related to the construction, or to the pier repairs, I suppose.’ He rubbed his chin where a five o’clock shadow was just beginning to make an appearance. ‘Could be junk, too.’ He tapped the more recent of the two slides. ‘And they cleaned it up.’

  I thought about all the discarded refrigerators, sinks and water heaters I’d seen at the bottom of the Sea of Abaco and thought, maybe he’s right. Tube-shaped. Could be a water heater.

  If hot-water heaters are blue.

  FOURTEEN

  DO YOU LIKE FISH? WELL, HE LIKES YOU TOO . . .

  Jaws (1975)

  After seeing Henry’s photographs, I knew what I had to do.

  Conditions had to be perfect: high sun, calm sea, gentle wind, and the tide as near to low as possible. That these conditions coincided with lunch hour at the Tamarind Tree Resort and Marina was a welcome plus. Jaime and Gabriele would be busy at the restaurant, and their workers would have abandoned their backhoes for lunch somewhere in the shade.

  Wearing my bathing suit and a long-sleeved T-shirt, I waved to my husband from the living room doorway. He was thoroughly occupied on a marathon Skyping session with Brent.

  ‘I’m off for a swim. Want to come?’

  I waited for Paul to look up from his laptop, holding my breath, hoping he’d be too busy consulting with Brent to say ‘yes.’

  Paul put Brent on mute for a moment and said, ‘Where to?’

  ‘I’m going to collect more sand dollars.’ In way of illustration, I raised my bucket. ‘I’m thinking of turning them into Christmas tree ornaments.’

  That part of it, at least, was true. I wasn’t much of a do-it-yourselfer, but even I could thread a red ribbon through one of the five holes on the sand dollar’s shell and tie the two ends of the ribbon into a decorative knot.

  Paul waggled his fingers. ‘Have fun!’

  I blew him a kiss and headed off.

  Frank and Sally had last been seen in Poinciana Cove, so that’s where Pro Bono and I headed. Poinciana Cove was very like the cove Molly and I had explored earlier, but a bit more was going on ashore. The runway was still under construction to the left, marked by the addition of a windsock. To the right, a construction crane was poised over an extension to the Tamarind Tree Marina. I’d heard they planned to add thirty slips.

  There were no condos on shore – yet – but three cottages had been built for the Mueller family on Poinciana Point, a bluff overlooking the cove.

  I throttled down and pulled as close to shore as I dared, skirting the edge of an extensive reef a me
re fifty feet from the beach. To my left, run-off from runway construction was obvious. To my right, where the marina extension would soon be, mangroves were already being ripped from the shore. A backhoe was parked there, and from the look of it, his job was only half done.

  Repair had begun on a section of the old Island Fantasy pier. A barge carrying a piledriver was lashed to the middle of the pier at a spot where the row of new pilings ended. Each had been capped with white plastic dunce caps. The clean white of the new planks stood out in sharp contrast to the gray of the seasoned wood.

  A sign posted at the end of the pier said, ‘Private Property. Keep Off. Unauthorized Vessels Will Be Towed,’ so I guided Pro Bono to the edge of the reef and dropped the anchor in about ten feet of water.

  I eased my feet into my swim fins, put my mask over my face, and slipped overboard.

  It was immediately clear that the reef off Poinciana Point was in distress. Beneath me grew a brain coral the size of a Volkswagen. Normally a mustardy brown, large sections of the coral had died, leaving behind a bleached white skeleton. Elkhorn showed evidence of white band disease, working its way up from the base of the coral in ever-widening stripes. Everywhere, algae flourished. The only creatures that seemed happy about it were the parrot fish, scraping the algae off the skeletons with their teeth.

  Broken twigs of acropora.

  Purple sea fans brown with fungus.

  I wanted to weep.

  Half buried in the sand, a cable the thickness of my wrist extended from shore and disappeared into the infinite blue of the Sea of Abaco. I decided to follow it ashore. I swam over an oil drum, abandoned and rusted out, empty except for a squirrelfish pecking away, and a bathroom sink, ugly, but not a particular threat to sea life.

  A sea turtle swam by, checked me out, then continued on its way, surfacing for a moment to gulp air, then dive again.