Adrift on St. John

by Rebecca Hale

  From the elevated perspective of Pesce’s verandah, the town of Cruz Bay took on a far more pristine glow than its reality deserved. A neat and tidy collection of shops and restaurants skirted the edge of the peaceful harbor. The clutter of dust, debris, and vagrant poultry disappeared beneath the colorful canvas of low lying trees and brightly painted buildings.

  To the west, St. Thomas benefited from a similarly glamorizing gloss. Distance and the span of the Pillsbury Sound hid its hordes of humanity. The twinkling lights that had begun to pop on across the island’s low shadow were the only evidence of their existence.

  Hannah wandered through the dining area, drawing a few curious glances as she made her way to the edge of the balcony and looked down on the harbor. Several brown pelicans swooped low across the water, diving in and out among a collection of small bobbing sailboats.

  She stood, silently watching the feeding frenzy, as she listened to the murmurs of the other diners.

  “…we’re putting together our bid this weekend…”

  “…still some questions to resolve…”

  “…fear the price may be too steep for us…”

  Taking in a deep breath, she straightened her shoulders and approached the open chair next to her patiently waiting dinner companion.

  “…striking girl…”

  “…something familiar about her…”

  As Hannah circled to the opposite side of the table, she glanced up at the sky where a streaming bank of clouds led the front edge of an advancing storm. The air was so thick with moisture, she could almost taste it.

  The rains are coming, she thought as she leaned over the table to plant a kiss on the cheek of her beaming relative. Her face curved into a sly smile as she hooked a blue nylon satchel over the back corner of her chair.

  “Hello, Uncle.”

  29

  Bannanquits

  I returned to the resort that night carrying half a fish sandwich still in its take-out container.

  As I walked along the ground-lit path to my condo, pondering my meeting with the formidable Hank Sheridan, the wind began to bellow in from the ocean, summoning the forces of nature to this tiny speck of earth that had dared to rise up out of the sea.

  A rabid confluence of seething energy swirled above my head. The sky that most days seemed so vast, so voluminous, was now crowded with rowdy boisterous characters, bumping and elbowing each other for space, edging their way closer and closer to the ground.

  Inside the condo, I turned off the lights, the air conditioner, and the small rotating fan plugged into the wall. I didn’t want any artificial inputs distracting my thinking. I crawled into bed, lay on my back, and listened as the long-awaited storm finally arrived on St. John.

  Rain began pattering against windows and splashing into gutters. Across the island, water catchments opened wide, drinking in the downpour. The little concrete wading pool on my back porch that had been empty all summer started to fill with runoff.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw Fred and his iguana friends inching slowly across the glistening grass, moisture beading up on their thick leathery skins, their lizard mouths munching in peaceful robotic bliss. As my head sank into the pillow’s comforting cushion, I could almost hear their happy ruminating stomachs through my bedroom walls.

  A strobe of lightning flashed across the nearest window, momentarily illuminating the condo’s interior.

  Even after four years of residence, there was little to show in the way of personalization. The unit was sparsely appointed with decommissioned resort furniture. The pictures on the walls, along with the knickknacks on the dresser, were all generic island chic.

  Through the angle of my open bedroom door, I could see the back of the living room couch, whose faded tropical pattern was decorated with too many stains to count. In front of the couch stretched a glass-topped coffee table, inlaid with seashells and pebbles from a beach—probably not one that was anywhere near our island.

  Opposite the table sat a wicker chair, whose rattan wrappings were peeling away from the frame. Many of the spines threaded into the chair’s back were missing, and the lumpy discolored seat cushion had been soaked endless times by wet swimsuit bottoms.

  Beyond the living area, the curve of a tiled counter marked the edge of a small kitchen. It was equipped with a mismatched collection of rudimentary appliances: a microwave, a micro-fridge, several mugs, a few shot glasses, a toaster, and a rusted-out oven I had never attempted to turn on much less cook with.

  The lightning-lit scene returned to darkness as a wave of thunder rocked the building, more evidence of the tempest brewing above. A tiny popping sound followed by the hum of the resort’s reserve generators gave the subtle indication that the island’s power had just gone out.

  In the weeks since I’d first met Hannah Sheridan in the corridor outside my office, I’d spent a great deal of time wondering whether her appearance was a signal my time on the island was drawing to a close. I’d worried for countless hours that the man from Miami would be coming to relieve me of my post.

  But now that he was here, now that I knew at least a portion of the next phase of this journey, my focus had turned to a different issue.

  In the four years since I’d hopped that flight to St. Thomas, I had deliberately avoided thinking about the real Penelope Hoffstra, the woman whose life I had stepped into, whose identity I had assumed.

  In my head, I’d convinced myself that if I didn’t ask about her—if I didn’t know what had become of her—I could somehow limit my culpability in her disappearance.

  Now, lying in my bed beneath the storm, Hank Sheridan’s cryptic words were all I could think about.

  I have several Pens…

  How many of us were out there, I wondered, living under this pseudonym?

  What had happened to the original Pen? Had she ever even existed?

  The front door creaked open, letting in the rain.

  Wet feet squished against the living room’s tile floor. After stopping in the kitchen for a glass of water, the footsteps circled behind the couch and crossed the threshold to the bedroom. Then a damp shadow crept through the darkness toward my bed.

  I set aside my concerns about the fat man and his other Penelopes as the intruder leaned over my pillow and kissed my forehead. All notions of Hannah, her bouncing curls, and her silly spinning sundresses left me as I drank in the smell of his skin, a wild, wet essence of the sun and the sea.

  As I reached up my hands to run my fingers through the nest of his thick tangled hair, all I could hear was the twittering of bananaquits.

  30

  A Wet Morning

  Saturday morning, Manto sloshed through the puddles along the resort’s front drive as he headed toward the designated parking spot for the flatbed golf cart he used when working with the grounds crew. The rain from the night before had yet to let up, and the floppy hat crammed onto his head was already damp from the drips accumulating on its brim and seeping through its worn cotton fabric.

  With a groan, Manto climbed into the cart’s wet front seat and plugged the key into the ignition. A moment later, he turned off the main driveway, steering the cart down a narrow brick path that curved behind a fence of bushes to a shed attached to the south side of the reception area. After unlocking the shed’s door, he began loading the morning’s gardening tools into the cart’s back bed.

  First went a plastic bucket full of hand clippers, quickly followed by a collection of larger limb-lopping hedge trimmers. The long wooden handles of several pointed hoes and rakes were stacked in next.

  As the shed emptied out and the golf cart filled up, Manto leaned back and placed his hands on his hips.

  He stared at the pile of tools for a moment; then he pulled the soaked hat from his head and used it to wipe a coating of moisture from his face.

  Raising a crooked finger in the air, he counted the poles laid out on the cart.

  “Dahg, blast it,” he muttered with consternation. “Some-mun’s
run off with a rake.”

  Jeff had long since left the condo by the time I stumbled through the living room, intent on seeking out a fresh pot of coffee from the resort’s breakfast bar. Almost as an afterthought, I grabbed Hank Sheridan’s file on my way out the door.

  My sleep-soaked brain had yet to devise a plan for getting the fake memo “into circulation,” as Hank had put it, but, I reasoned, you never knew what kind of opportunity might present itself after a waking cup of coffee.

  Five minutes later, I wandered into the breakfast pavilion by the beach. After sniffing at the coffee container on the buffet line, I sidled through the doorway to the busy kitchen area.

  As I had suspected, a fresh pot was percolating in the pavilion’s industrial-sized coffeemaker. I grabbed a foam cup and diverted the stream to fill it.

  Sipping on the energizing liquid, I looked out into the dining room. The majority of the resort’s guests had already wrapped up their morning meal, but one remaining table contained a few easily identifiable real estate types chatting over the last bites of an omelet and a Belgian waffle.

  With a quick glance at the folder tucked under my arm, I flagged one of the passing waitresses, an older West Indian woman wearing a GLENNA name tag.

  “Excuse me,” I said conversationally. “Uh, Glenna.”

  She stopped and stared at me for a moment before answering.

  “Ga mornin, ma’am,’” she said with a decidedly wary look.

  “Hi, er, good morning,” I replied uncomfortably. “I was wondering if you could help me out with something…”

  Her right eyebrow cocked suspiciously. Her face crimped skeptically.

  I decided to take a more assertive tack.

  “Ahem,” I said, straightening my shoulders. I summoned my best Vivian imitation, assuming a stoic, no-nonsense expression and deadening my voice to a monotone command.

  “When you clean off the table out there—the one next to the two men with the briefcases—leave this file on the surface.”

  She gazed dubiously at the folder I handed her, and then at me. Her eyes flickered whimsically, as if she had recognized the impersonation. Instead of being intimidated, she found the whole scene amusing.

  I cleared my throat and then pleaded in the manner that I always ended up using with Vivian. “Please, I need you to be discreet.”

  “Dees-creet?” she repeated dubiously.

  “Yes, discreet.” I nodded, cursing myself for acting so impulsively. It was a good thing, I reflected, that Hank wasn’t here to see me bungle this.

  But the second strategy apparently worked, as Glenna suddenly relented. I caught the glint of a smile on her face as she picked up a tray, positioned the folder flat on its surface, and covered it with one of the resort’s laundered linen napkins.

  I watched from the corner of the kitchen as Glenna shuffled into the dining room.

  As luck would have it, I had picked a pro as my accomplice. Not one of the diners seated nearby appeared to notice as she cleared the dishes from the empty table, swept up the crumbs, and re-centered the salt and pepper shakers. If I hadn’t been staring right at her, I would have missed the sleight of hand she used to slide the envelope from her tray onto the clean tablecloth.

  She looked across the dining room and winked in my direction before continuing about her duties.

  I took a sip of coffee and sat back to see if the ploy would work.

  I didn’t have to wait long. As one of the businessmen stood from his chair and brushed the crumbs from his shirt, he noticed the manila folder lying on the next table.

  Grinning widely, I looked on as he reached over and, with a guilty glance around the breakfast pavilion, snagged the folder. The look of excitement on his face was easy to read as he pulled out the papers and realized he had scored one of his opponents’ work products.

  His gleeful expression soon darkened, however, when he scanned through the information detailed in the memo.

  As he pulled out his cell phone and began frantically calling his colleagues, I refilled my cup and headed toward my office for a late-morning session on the balcony.

  My scaly confidant clawed his way up the tree as I stretched out in the lawn chair, rinsing down my second cup of coffee with a shot of Cruzan.

  “Well, Fred, it couldn’t have been easier,” I boasted over the balcony about my file-transfer experience.

  Fred issued a silent but sarcastic blink as I pulled out the piece of paper on which I’d written Hank’s phone number. I was about to start dialing it when a pair of cleaning ladies stopped to chat on the sidewalk below.

  Always intrigued by the tidbits of information that floated up to the balcony, I paused to listen.

  The women’s conversation quickly transitioned from obligatory greetings to the coming holiday. Not Thanksgiving—that was a minor celebration marked only by expats and tourists. The November 23 commemoration of the 1733 Slave Revolt was nearly upon us, and with it, the annual revival of the tale of the Slave Princess.

  It had been a busy couple of weeks for the Princess’s ghost. In my four years on St. John, I couldn’t remember the Princess ever being credited with a single in-person appearance. However, the man I’d overheard in the Caneel Bay sugar mill ruins was but one of many who had sworn that they’d seen her ghost in recent days.

  I took another sip from my shot glass, shaking my head as one of the maids on the sidewalk below launched into her own testimonial. But as the woman continued to elaborate on the Princess’s description, I dropped my cynical stance. Setting down the drink, I leaned my head toward the edge of the balcony.

  The woman spoke of a slim young beauty with creamy cocoa-colored skin and dark curly hair that bounced around her shoulders. It was an eerie match to our new employee, Hannah Sheridan.

  As the women’s gossip continued to float up toward my chair, I reached once more for the shot glass, struck by a second observation.

  I wasn’t the only one to notice the similarities.

  31

  The Proposal

  Later that afternoon, a catamaran powerboat rocked in White Bay’s gentle waters, a few hundred yards off the coast of Jost Van Dyke. After the morning’s intermittent rain, a brief window of sunshine had allowed the dive shop to run its regular Saturday afternoon trip, to the delight of the tourists who had signed up earlier that week—if not all the members of the boat’s crew.

  A freckled man with a mound of wild frizzy hair sat on the vessel’s lower deck, pressing his face against a pair of binoculars as he watched the passengers who had just jumped overboard paddle ashore to the Soggy Dollar. Each of the swimmers gripped a plastic ziplock baggie holding damp bills that the proprietor of the Dollar would soon hang out to dry on a clothesline behind the counter where he served his famous Painkiller cocktails.

  Jeff’s steely blue eyes concentrated on the bobbing life jackets, counting the number over and over again as the group floated toward the beach.

  It didn’t take long; the tide carried the bodies inland without much effort. The return trip was a more challenging task, when the swimmers would be fighting the current with bellies full of alcohol.

  As the last bar-goer stumbled onto the sand, Jeff sighed and dropped the binoculars, leaving them to hang from the strap around his neck.

  He walked into the boat’s kitchen area and began wiping down the counter next to the sink. After an afternoon of mixing and pouring drinks, a sticky residue of rum and punch coated almost every surface. Shaking his head at the mess, he slowly worked his way down the front of the cabinets beneath the counter. The gummy pool of liquid on the floor, he decided, would have to wait until they returned to the resort, when he’d take a pressure hose to the boat’s entire guest area.

  Brushing a grimy hand across his sweating forehead, Jeff returned to the boat’s open back landing and leaned his body against one of the metal side railings.

  The sun played soothingly on the rough brown stubble that covered the bottom half of his face a
s he settled into the boat’s rocking, swaying motion. The waves were a pendulum that swung in time with his inner equilibrium, a comforting rhythm that had been deeply imprinted on his sailor’s soul. He felt more at home on the water than off it.

  He glanced across the bow at the furry green mounds of the islands that surrounded the bay. The water acted as a natural scaffold, balancing the boat at what would have been cloud level of the volcanic mountains that rose from the ocean floor, several thousand feet beneath.

  He knew it was a rare and beautiful treasure to be taking in this scenic channel, enjoying the watery, rooftop view of the liquid-filled canyon below. No matter how many times he swore he couldn’t take another whining tourist, he’d be a fool to ever give this up.

  His mother wrote to him once a week, detailing all the latest gossip from their small New England town. It was a charming place; he didn’t have anything against it. He’d spent the first twenty-four years of his life there, and the New England coast was where he’d learned to sail.

  But his mother never failed to mention the weather—particularly when they’d received a foot or two of snow. He couldn’t ever go back to those icy cold winters, he thought with a shiver.

  It was as Jeff reflected on the dramatic climate differences between his hometown and the Caribbean that he noticed a figure seated on one of the boat’s rear benches.

  A large, extremely obese man lounged on the plastic cushions. His face was difficult to make out beneath the straw sunhat covering his head and the wide mirrored sunglasses protecting his eyes, but Jeff didn’t recognize the man from the afternoon’s list of passengers. He was oddly unfamiliar.

  Jeff puzzled for a moment, his startled emotion barely registering on his otherwise blank expression. He could have sworn he had accounted for all of his human cargo as the swimmers waded onto the beach. He scratched his chin, perplexed, and then shrugged. He must have missed one.