Adrift on St. John

by Rebecca Hale

  “Eye doon nut lyke thuh what-ter taxi,” she repeated vehemently. “Ack, what-ter taxi, what-ter taxi…oh, no.”

  Manto shook his head with a rueful grin as the women doubled over with laughter. Hamilton, despite having seen the performance several times before, stood spellbound, his gaze fixed on Glenna’s charismatic face.

  Glenna hunched over and began to circle the room, all the while wagging a crooked finger at the other women.

  “Eye doon nut lyke thuh what-ter taxi…Beeg sheep go down slowe…Small sheep go down fest…Eye wurk und Eye wurk, but steel Eye’ve gut to tek thuh what-ter taxi…”

  By the time she reached the end of the chant, her hoarse voice had been drowned out by the women’s loud cackles.

  “Bah,” Glenna said, straightening her shoulders as she approached her locker. “Eye doon’t know why you-all mek may do that a-very day.”

  Still letting out a stray guffaw or two, the group dispersed to their individual metal lockers to collect their belongings.

  Someone switched on a portable radio, and its broadcast added to the room’s overall background noise. A man’s deep voice intoned through the speakers, but he could barely be heard due to the ruckus near the lockers.

  “We welcome you to the proceedings of the Fifth Constitutional Convention. Today’s session is being held at the Starlight Hotel here on St. Thomas…”

  A young waitress walked up to Hamilton, holding her hands behind her back.

  “Tell the truth, Ham,” she ordered with mock sternness, a twinkle in her eye. “Were you a good boy at school today?”

  Hamilton’s round face contorted into a serious expression. He looked up at her and nodded affirmatively.

  “Well, then,” she said with a wide grin as she swung her arms out in front of her waist, revealing a small plastic-wrapped plate. “You deserve some cookies.”

  Manto threw his hands up as the little boy broke into a toothy grin. Hamilton quickly removed the plastic wrap and crammed a cookie into his mouth. The women all turned to coo at him, leaving the radio to take over the room’s primary audio.

  Through the speaker, the murmuring rumble of a distant crowd fell to a hush as the leader of the event tapped a microphone and began his opening remarks.

  “As most of you know, this is our fifth attempt to draft a constitution for the U.S. Virgin Islands. If approved by Congress and ratified by the voters, this document will supersede the current governing document, the Organic Act, which was put into place in 1954.”

  The break room’s cheerful atmosphere dimmed as a cloud moved across the occupants’ faces—all except for Hamilton, who was still munching blissfully away on his cookies.

  The waitress who had prepared the cookie plate tugged the worn belt of her shirtdress. Her smile disappeared as she returned to her locker.

  On the far side of the room, near the shelf holding the radio, Beulah Shah sat on a bench watching the group’s reaction to the broadcast. She crossed her right leg over the left and began kicking it up and down, causing the toe of her loose rubber sandal to thunk against her foot.

  “Speaker, speaker,” a female voice cut through the room’s growing silence. “I would like to make a motion.”

  Manto cleared his throat uncomfortably and leaned over to brush crumbs from Hamilton’s mouth as the voice continued.

  “I move to amend the draft to introduce the following language defining a Native Virgin Islander…”

  One of the housemaids sighed out a volume of pent-up breath. “It’s a very ticklish business, this.”

  Glenna slapped her hand against one of the lockers. “Eye doon’t lyke it. Nut wone bit.” She pointed accusingly at the radio. “Eye doon’t trust thuh people who are on it.” Then, she made a curdling sound with her mouth. “They should jus’ leave things thuh way they are.”

  She was seconded by a sharp-eyed cook with dark pitted skin. “Special privileges,” the woman said venomously. “They are trying to set themselves up with special privileges. They are going to take over the island. They are going to lord it over the rest of us.”

  A gavel pounded in the radio static as the leader of the meeting asked for order, but the heated discussion in the break room had now overwhelmed the convention proceedings.

  A third woman, this one with round hips and a heavy chest, stepped forward, shaking her head in fervent disagreement.

  “My grandfather was here at the time of the transfer. He didn’t have any say in the matter. That twenty-five million, the U.S. didn’t pay any of it to him. It’s time. We have to stand up and protect what is rightfully ours.”

  The cook spun around to face the dissenter. “And what about the rest of us? What happens to us? Are we second-class citizens?”

  The door to the break room suddenly burst open and Vivian stormed through. The women all stopped, some of them midsentence, and gaped as she strode forcefully across to the radio and flicked off the switch. Then she grabbed Hamilton by the wrist and herded him brusquely out the door.

  Manto quickly followed, fretfully stroking his balding skull. The rest of the workers silently filtered out, leaving only Beulah, who had watched the entire episode from her bench at the far side of the room.

  The old woman reached over and thoughtfully stroked the side of the now silent radio, her frail fingers twiddling aimlessly with the dial.

  “A tick-leesh situation,” she said softly. “In-deed.”

  13

  The Dearly Departed

  Hannah and I arrived at the reception area to find Manto’s truck taxi parked out front of the resort. It was already half full with women from the restaurant and cleaning crews who had finished their shifts and were headed into Cruz Bay to get on the four o’clock ferry.

  The women were abnormally quiet for that time of day. The afternoon ride into town was typically filled with their energetic chatter, playful joshing, and colorful recountings of the latest salacious gossip, of which, it seemed, there was never any shortage.

  The strained silence in the truck taxi deepened as Hannah and I climbed into a row of empty seats near the front of the bed. Something had clearly disrupted the group unity.

  Boyfriend troubles, perhaps? A petty jealousy that had blown up into a quarrel?

  I recognized most of the women’s faces, but I didn’t know their names. Vivian handled all of the hiring at this level. I glanced curiously over the back of my bench at the nearest stony-faced housemaid, but she merely swung her head sideways, so that her eyes stared blindly at a flower bed next to the curb.

  Thankfully, Manto scurried out of the reception area and slid into the truck’s front cab. The roar of the engine, with its loud disruptive rumble, broke the tension, and a moment later we were bumping down the resort’s front drive.

  I turned toward the still smiling Hannah, searching for some topic upon which to build a common ground through conversation. After studying her flowery sundress, youthful physique, and doe-eyed expression, I sighed and asked, “So, how do you like the weather down here?”

  The tip end of Hannah’s perky nose began to twitch as we hopped off the truck taxi and crossed the street for the Dumpster table.

  There was an extra pungent stench coming from the south side of the Crunchy Carrot that afternoon. The fumes from the trash bin were in fierce competition with the rank aroma of the two sweaty men collapsed in the white plastic lawn chairs. Even my Dumpster-hardened senses picked up on the unusually strong odor floating in the air.

  I cast a sideways glance at my new employee as we approached, wondering how well her perky enthusiasm would hold up against this crowd.

  Clearing my throat, I waved a brief hello. “Hey guys, meet one of the resort’s new employees.” With effort, I managed to force the name out casually. “Hannah Sheridan.”

  I grabbed two empty chairs and positioned them on the opposite side of the table, motioning for Hannah to take the one to my right. I’d given her the seat of honor, farthest upwind from the stench, but her face to
ok on a pale greenish shade as she stared at me with an expression of marked surprise and confusion. Her mouth guppied open and shut without making a sound, as if she were unable to find a suitable comment to express her thoughts.

  The two men looked up, their reddened faces showing a faint, wearied interest as I slid comfortably into my chair and Hannah perched gingerly on hers.

  “Jeff, César,” I said, making the introductions, “this is…Hannah.”

  Hannah smiled nervously across the table. Her green eyes passed slowly over the growing collection of half-empty beer bottles and paper boats that littered the surface, coming to rest on the rooster who was perched discreetly near the table’s edge.

  Richard’s sharp yellow claws gripped the table’s curved plastic rim as he stretched his scrawny black neck toward a few discarded French fries that had fallen out of their plastic basket container.

  César, a short balding Puerto Rican, was finishing off a blackened fish sandwich. My stomach rumbled at the sight of it—the Carrot’s fish sandwich was renowned throughout the island, by far and away the best item on their menu.

  César stuffed the last bite into his mouth and chomped uncomfortably for a moment, his chubby cheeks bulging from the pressure of the contents he had just crammed inside. After a stiff swallow, he tilted his head back and drained the last half of a bottle of Jamaican beer down his throat. Smacking his lips, he wiped the back of his hand across his grease-smeared face. Then, he reached across the table and offered Hannah a shake.

  “Welcome to the Dumpster table,” César said heartily in his pinched, slightly nasal voice. He nodded at the wrappings and debris that Richard was now nosing his way through and winked. “Finest dining in town.”

  César was the head sous chef at Pesce, an Italian restaurant on a bluff overlooking Cruz Bay. Pesce was one of the nicest restaurants on the island, but César took most of his meals at the Crunchy Carrot. Despite the culinary wonders of the Carrot’s fish sandwich, I suspected his frequent appearances at the Dumpster table had a lot more to do with escaping the pressures of Pesce’s stress-filled kitchen than the quality of the bar’s food.

  César had spent the bulk of his eight-hour day shift on prep work for the evening meal. A splatter of fish guts and tomato juice decorated his gray sweat-stained T-shirt. His already thick fingers were bloated and blistered from the lengthy chopping and peeling session.

  As a Puerto Rican, César wasn’t exactly an expat—at least, not in the way we all thought of the term—but he had been given honorary membership to the Dumpster table gang due to his hyper energy and offbeat sense of humor. He was a nonstop source of entertainment. With a stomach full of food digesting in his plump belly, I expected that, at any moment, he would launch into his latest shtick.

  My gaze shifted to his dining companion—the human one, not the rooster.

  Jeff was an entirely different type of character. A young man of few words, he wore the quiet subdued air of his native New England like a mask that concealed all expression of emotion. In response to Hannah’s introduction, he had simply shrugged his shoulders and grunted a greeting. That was his rendition of a warm welcome.

  A full head of frizzy brown hair towered over Jeff’s freckled face. The tangled matting suggested his head had gone several months without the application of shampoo. I often teased him to steer clear of the bananaquits for fear they would build a nest in it.

  My speech-thrifty friend worked for the company that ran the dive shop at my resort. He had been out on their sailboat all day, tying up ropes for the captain and slinging rum and cola drinks for the passengers. Per company policy, he’d turned his red dive-shop-issued T-shirt inside out, so that the logo wasn’t visible to the Crunchy Carrot’s other patrons.

  You wouldn’t know it from his scruffy, rumpled exterior, but Jeff dreamed of moving up the company ladder, maybe even manning his own boat someday. He was taking nautical classes in St. Thomas on his days off and would soon finish the necessary qualifications for a promotion to first mate—a job that focused more on tying ropes and less on pouring drinks.

  Jeff and César lived in a small basement apartment tucked into the side of a hill a few miles east of Cruz Bay—they were just two of many in an ever-rotating list of roommates.

  Long-term accommodations on St. John were expensive and hard to come by. At last count, there were at least seven people crammed into the apartment’s dark moldy living space; the number fluctuated between high and low tourist seasons.

  St. John wasn’t the kind of place where one spent a lot of time indoors, but in such cramped living quarters, the occasional petty conflict was inevitable. Roommate grievances were often aired out at the Dumpster table. As Hannah leaned forward and gingerly shook César’s greasy hand, I thought I sensed the friction of a pending dispute in the air. César, I mused, was about to let loose.

  “We’ve had a death in the family,” César announced somberly as Hannah settled nervously back into her plastic seat. “A member of our family has passed away.”

  Jeff took a long sip from his beer. The slightest hint of a question creased his placid expression.

  Hannah carefully studied César’s short round Hispanic face and Jeff’s long Anglo one. She rolled in her bottom lip, apparently sizing up the slim possibility of the two sharing a direct blood relative.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said sympathetically, opting for a neutral tact in her response. Despite her initial reaction to the trashy smell of the Dumpster table and the disheveled appearance of its occupants, she couldn’t tamp down her innate curiosity. “Was it someone who lives on the island?”

  César nodded emphatically up and down, as overemotive as Jeff was reserved. “Yes, yes, yes, she lived in our apartment, in our home. We were very close.” He sighed with exaggerated sadness. “She was like family to me.”

  Hannah leaned over the table, her tender face filled with compassion. “One of your roommates?” Perplexed, she glanced back and forth between César’s exaggerated show of grief and Jeff’s blank stare. “That must have been…tragic.”

  A quizzical wrinkle furrowed Jeff’s forehead as he rotated his chair toward the chunky Puerto Rican.

  César tilted his face skyward. His eyelids fluttered shut in remorse. “Yes, it is a sad day for Kaká.”

  I slouched back in my chair, watching the scene play out, as Richard gulped down the last stray French fry. He cocked his head toward César and clicked his beak hungrily.

  Jeff stared skeptically at his roommate. His blue sea-worn eyes narrowed suspiciously before he murmured a barely discernable, “Who?”

  César pouted in frustration, then huffed indignantly, “Kaká, Kaká! Surely you remember Kaká?”

  Hannah pushed even farther forward in her seat, her face muddled with confusion. I picked up the plastic cup of water our waitress had just placed in front of me and hid my face behind it, trying to straighten the grin tugging at the corners of my mouth.

  César strummed his thick fingers on the table’s sticky surface, reflecting.

  “Each day, when I got home from work, I would walk through the door, and there she’d be, peeking around the kitchen counter at me, welcoming me home.”

  He shook his head, his plump lips tutting with remorse.

  Jeff sighed, his expression one of silent resignation.

  Hannah ventured a tentative guess. “Was…Kaká…a pet?”

  César thumped his hands against his chest. “Aaaaye, yes, yes, yes, Kaká, you could say that. A pet. Yes, she was a pet.”

  He stroked the air with the point of his finger, his voice pipping coarsely up and down. “But, but, but—she had her own spirit. She was free!” He wagged his blistered finger back and forth in the air. “She never lived in a cage.”

  The left side of Jeff’s face twitched with the shadow of a grimace as César continued to build momentum. The Puerto Rican knew when he’d hooked a live one; he would take his time reeling Hannah in.

  “She co
uldn’t see very well, so she would sniff the air to tell if it was me. Her tiny pink nose would quiver, just like this.” César made a wet snorkeling sound into his beer bottle. “And I would call out to reassure her, ‘Kaká, I’m home!’”

  He let out another sad sigh. “But she will never be waiting to greet me again.”

  César thunked the bottle back down on the table, causing Richard to squawk and fly off. He leaned across the debris-strewn surface toward Hannah, the fleshy contours of his face squishing up around his mouth.

  “Kaká, she was always glad to see me. Her whiskers would wiggle back and forth…and the tip end of her tail, it would sort of rise up in the air. That was her way of saying hello. I tell you, Kaká, she was so friendly.”

  Hannah’s eyes widened. She thought she had figured out the species of the deceased pet. I moved the plastic cup even closer to my face as she began, “Was Kaká a ca—”

  Jeff sighed tiredly, cutting her off. His voice, flat and unemotional, rolled out, “It was a rat.”

  César fell back in his chair as if he’d been slapped. “But, but, but—she was a good rat, man. You know what I mean? A good rat.”

  Jeff rolled his eyes as César bounded forward again in his seat.

  “You remember, man. There was the thing she would do with her tongue, flashing it in and out.”

  César performed his best Kaká imitation, ending the effort in a loud slurp as Hannah’s face returned to its previous green pallor.

  “And her fur too,” he said, rubbing his hands together in the air above the table. “It was so smooth and silky. A rich brown color. She was very clean for a rat.”

  Hannah had now plastered herself against the back of her chair, but she managed to issue a second condolence, this one far more shocked than sympathetic.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Jeff slowly blinked his eyes in derision and muttered, “Dude, it was a rat.”

  This was turning into an extremely verbose afternoon for Jeff. In all his visits to the Dumpster table, he’d never been known to issue so many complete sentences.