by James Gray
After all the deals had been made, she began to find that living on the boat bored her. All I did was sit in the cabin and write. One day, she packed her bags and went back to Tegucigalpa. After she left, there was a long silence in my life. It was all my own doing, I admit. Her departure shook me up so much that I almost lost it. Most evenings, I went ashore and hung out in the cafés and bars in the village trying to fill the void. There were new faces and music, and I tried to meet another woman. But there weren’t any who could ever come close to Valeska.
As time slipped by, I was slowly returning to the life I had known before I met her. I had money, time and all the freedom a man could ever wish for. Maybe I had just lost my nerve, and returning to the mainstream was my only option. I could always sell my boat and go back to Québec City. But something told me that I still wasn’t ready.
There came a time when I would go down to the ferry dock and watch people arrive from the mainland. Most were tourists, but I always kept an eye out for that intriguing, sensuous woman to show up again. After a while, I gave up and stopped going. I had really let her slip through my fingers. I was beginning to hate myself for it.
Another month passed and I decided it was time to move on and find some new adventure to write about. It was that or just keep on wasting away. So I began to pick up the broken pieces and started to prepare my boat for a long run to some far-off place. I didn’t know exactly where. For days, then weeks, I buried myself with endless preparations for a departure that never seemed to happen. It became a running gag among the yachties anchored in the lagoon. But everything has to come to an end sometime.
A few days before going to sea, I was working under the chart table, trying to wire up the last loose connections, when I heard a boat bump up against Numada, then a knocking from outside.
“Jack, Jack Legris. Are you there?”
I froze for a second. I went out on deck. My heart skipped several beats. It was Valeska De Sela. She was standing on deck with a small bag at her feet.
“I miss you, I miss Numada and I’m still in love with you, Jack. You won.”
I thought a second.
“Valeska, I think that we both won.”
As we embraced, I felt the ground shift beneath me. For a second, I mused on the butterfly effect, that theory of chaos: a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and the slight displacement of air eventually births a hurricane somewhere in the Caribbean. As I held this woman in my arms, a butterfly began to flutter its wings in a distant geography of my heart. And the world was never the same.
EPILOGUE
Two days later, Numada was well offshore, right in the middle of the Gulf Stream and heading south again. It was early morning, and as a burning pink sun rose out of the waves, I sat on deck beside Valeska. I looked at my watch, went down into the cabin and penciled in the boat’s position on the chart. Then it dawned on me. The boat was in exactly the same spot as the last time I’d come through the Strait of Yucatán. But now things were very different. I was not alone and Numada wasn’t going to stop in Honduras. The plan was to sail south to Panama, do the Canal, then gradually head southwest to the Polynesian Islands of the South Pacific. Valeska and I wanted to be part of the wave. As old Ben at the boatyard back in Puerto Cortés used to say, “It’s all about choice.” I guess that he had something there.
HURRICANE MITCH
Hurricane Mitch is considered one of most destructive storms ever to have hit the Caribbean. Born just off the coast of South America, it headed north toward Jamaica, then turned west and began to follow Hurricane Alley toward the Yucatan. Near the eye of the storm, winds were recorded at 290 kilometers per hour (180mph). Unexpectedly, like a wild animal hunting its prey, this well-formed weather system changed directions and chased down a two hundred and eighty-two foot, four-masted schooner named the Fhantom. Hammered for two days by mountainous breaking seas, this magnificent seventy-two year old windjammer gave up the ghost and sank just east of the island of Roatán taking all of its crew of thirty-one with it. But Mitch was just getting started. Its next target was the Island of Guanaja where for three days the cyclone sat almost stationary and tore the tropical paradise to shreds. When that was done, the enraged cyclops continued its path south toward the Mosquito Coast where it began to chew up the mainland of Honduras, dropping more than two meters of rain, which caused severe damage to most of the country’s road infrastructure and destroyed more than seventy percent of the country’s crops. Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Americas, was ripped apart. More than thirty thousand homes were levelled and at least fourteen thousand fatalities were counted. The same apocalyptic mayhem was felt in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and as far south as Panama. As the storm headed northwest, it also created havoc in El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, leaving massive death and destruction in its wake. Then it headed east. After crossing the Gulf of Mexico, this monster’s exceptionally high winds and heavy rain pummelled the State of Florida leaving more causalities and destruction. As if this was not enough, Hurricane Mitch had its final say after it crossed the Atlantic Ocean and smashed into the British Iles, bringing with it horrendous seas and torrential rain. In all, this epic storm caused more than six billion US dollars in damage and left close to twenty thousand people dead. Generous donations to rebuild the crippled nations of Central America came from all over the world, and gradually all traces of the storm will vanish. However, the vivid stories of the human struggle to overcome the misery that hurricane Mitch brought upon these valiant people will never be forgotten.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Gray was born and raised in Montreal. Attracted by literature at an early age, he wrote poetry and short stories until he became a filmmaker in his twenties. Lately, Gray has returned to writing. This novel was inspired from an adventure that he lived through while visiting Honduras.
James Gray lives part of the time in Québec City and the Magdalen Islands, and somewhere else when he’s not. This is his first novel.
