Adrift on St. John

by Rebecca Hale

  Having taken in the view, the Princess guided the Jeep down the opposite side of the hill into Cruz Bay. A few of the day workers milling about the ferry building pointed quizzically at the rake sticking out of the Jeep’s passenger-side window. Most, however, were focused on the gathering in the park across the street.

  An elderly woman stood on a green bench beside the Freedom Memorial, spinning yet another version of the tale of the Amina Princess who had arrived on a slave ship in 1733 and gone on to lead her people into a revolt that had—for a time—controlled the island. With a demure nod at the rickety woman on the bench, the Princess carefully maneuvered the Jeep through the crowds and turned onto the main thoroughfare.

  A dingy little bar came into view on her left. Several white plastic tables were arranged out front, one of which appeared to be awfully close to a blue Dumpster.

  The Princess turned her head to sniff the delectable smell of a hot fish sandwich floating out the bar’s kitchen window. She hadn’t had time to stop for breakfast…Then she slammed on the brakes to avoid a plump rooster brazenly strutting in front of the Jeep, a greasy French fry hanging from its beak.

  About a hundred yards beyond the bar, the roadway merged into a confusing circular traffic structure. The Princess spun the wheel, gunning the engine to avoid an oncoming vehicle. After a short detour that nearly landed her on the front porch of an adjacent grocery store, she veered onto Centerline Road, the main east-west thoroughfare across the island’s center.

  A green and white sign posted beside the roadway depicted an arrow, pointed east. Writing beneath it read CORAL BAY.

  Back in the Brown Bay ruins, Alden Edwards sat on the main structure’s second-floor landing, his long legs hanging off the crumbling wall of makeshift steps.

  Stroking his wild unkempt beard, he studied a sheaf of papers the Princess had thrust into his hands before making her dramatic departure.

  After a few minutes of reflection, Alden looked up from the documents, and a broad smile broke across the previously glum lines of his face.

  45

  The Convention

  Shaking sand and ocean from my hair, I wrapped my towel around my body, gathered up the rest of my gear, and headed back through the Trunk Bay facilities to the exit. The ticket booth attendant was just arriving as I stepped over the chain by the kiosk. She gave me a simple wave as I crossed through to the parking lot.

  Pausing to resecure my towel, I noticed the truck-taxi drivers had begun to congregate near the picnic tables. A thermos of coffee was passed around as someone plugged a radio into a truck battery. After a short squawk of feedback and a couple seconds of static, the audio cleared to a broadcast of the latest Constitutional Convention proceedings from a hotel on St. Thomas.

  Thinking of the large man from Miami and his misleading memo, I wandered to the edge of the crowd and leaned against the side of the nearest truck, listening to the escalating ruckus emanating from the radio. Frustratingly, Hank Sheridan’s cell phone had gone straight to voice mail every time I’d dialed the number to try to reach him. Perhaps, I mused, he’d gone over to St. Thomas to observe the proceedings in person.

  * * *

  Angry voices spit out of the radio’s cracked and dusty speakers, incongruous against the serenity of the Trunk Bay parking lot. The drafting process had already taken far longer than originally anticipated. The budgeted funds to support the convention were about to run out—and the group was no closer to reaching a consensus on the controversial Native Rights language.

  Every so often, a speaker came close enough to the microphone to break through the background noise.

  “Only Native Virgin Islanders should be writing this constitution,” a man’s indignant voice shouted. “Only they should be eligible to vote for our government. We have been inundated enough with outsiders. This is the only way we will be able to protect our rights to our land, to our beaches—to keep them from being bought up by external interests and walled off from us.

  “Native Rights must be in the constitution,” he concluded. “That is not negotiable.”

  Several agreeing murmurs supported this sentiment, before a younger man’s thin voice objected.

  “And how, pray tell, do you purport to define who is a Native Virgin Islander?” he asked plaintively. “We have heard from the lawyers. The language you have given them is not suitable.”

  A woman’s voice cut in with a sharp response. “Who is writing this constitution?” she demanded, and then filled in her own reply. “It is the responsibility of the elected delegates—not the lawyers.”

  A round of cheers almost drowned her out, but she persisted. “We have discussed the definition for many days now. A Native is someone who can trace his or her roots back to the time of acquisition. A Native has direct ancestry to someone living on the island on or before the transfer date—1917.”

  The tone of her voice made it easy to imagine her indignant expression. “These are the people whose rights have been trampled, who have never been compensated. They were simply bought and sold from one colonial power to the next.”

  The thin voice returned again, sputtering in frustration. “We all understand. We all have the same concerns about the Continentals and the resorts that have come down here with their money and driven up the cost of real estate. There are many of us who are struggling to stay in our homes, struggling with the rising cost of living.”

  He took in a huge breath of air, trying to keep his emotions in check. “But, your definition is so narrow. What about the people who have come here from other islands? People who have lived here for forty, fifty years? Some of them have been born here. They are a part of this community. How can you exclude them?”

  There was a tense silence before the woman replied, her voice rigidly calm. “To my mind, they are not Native Virgin Islanders. If they do not like it here, they can go back to where they came from.”

  The room erupted into a discordant mixture of applause underlaid with grumbling disagreement.

  Another man sang out, “This is a question of our identity, pride in who we are, where we belong. These are the generational rights for the descendants of the people who worked as slaves on this island. We must honor our heritage, our history of enslavement. No compensation will ever right that wrong, but we can make a start…”

  He paused to clear his throat. There was a jostling sound as someone apparently handed him a glass of water. After a quick sip, he continued.

  “We can start by giving Native Virgin Islanders a property tax exemption on their primary residences. This is a small measure to protect our ancestral homes. Otherwise, we will be forced off our land by these extortionate property taxes.”

  Other voices began to chime in. “What about homesteading rights—some land should be set aside where Native Virgin Islanders can set up homesteads.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. Our land is being sold right out from under us. We need protection. America could sell us tomorrow if it wanted to. We are just bartered citizens to them.”

  “It should be the best land on the island. This Maho Bay property on St. John the foreigners want to purchase for their next big hotel—that is where the Native Virgin Islanders should be living.”

  The young man returned to the microphone, exasperation in his voice.

  “Can’t you bend a little on this? Native Virgin Islanders make up less than half of the population. This language will never pass in a general election. You are proposing to give a minority of citizens special rights. We need to find some way to compromise.”

  An angry voice howled from across the room. “The only compromise I have for you is a stick of dynamite!”

  There was nothing new in the level of vitriol, the ardent opinions expressed on the matter, or even the suggested remedies. I had heard them all before—and had always assumed that the moneyed interests that controlled local politics would prevent the Native Rights proponents from taking any serious action.

  But a
s I studied the stolid, somber faces of the truck-taxi drivers listening to this dialogue, I began to second-guess that assumption. To a man, I noted uncomfortably, they seemed to side with the sentiments of the dynamite-wielding commentator.

  It was then that I realized the contents of Hank Sheridan’s memo might have been far closer to the truth than even he intended.

  46

  The Windmill

  The Amina Princess drove the rusted red Jeep along Centerline Road, gazing at the stunning scenery from the elevated ridge that cut through the island’s middle. Peek-a-boo views of the neighboring Virgins flashed through the trees, while a steep drop-off showcased sweeping green valleys.

  The red sticky notes fluttered in the wind, but the Princess had yet to appreciate the significance of their left-pointing arrows. Blaring honks from oncoming traffic caused her to veer from side to side. After a few close calls, she assured herself, she was starting to get the hang of things.

  From the right side of the road, she waved happily at the frustrated motorists who dodged around her, receiving numerous emphatic pointed gestures in return.

  As the Princess approached the island’s centermost peak, a familiar brown and white national park sign appeared on the roadside. Next to the sign, a family of donkeys nibbled the tender shoots of grass that had sprung up along the road’s shoulder.

  The donkeys looked up from their grazing as the Princess turned in front of the sign and headed off on a rutted dirt road that quickly disappeared into the forest. The donkeys’ bleached gray muzzles twitched silently while they contemplated the large round dent in the Jeep’s front bumper; then they resumed their eating.

  About a half mile down the rugged lane, the Princess reached the remains of an enormous stone windmill. The wind-catching vanes that had topped the mill had long been destroyed, but the conical tower that had supported the spinning blades was still largely intact, giving some sense of the structure’s once massive size.

  The Princess jerked the Jeep to a stop in a clearing beside the abandoned mill, and, jumping out, ran toward the entrance.

  A stone ramp took her to an arched opening at the bottom of the tower. She stepped inside and positioned herself in the center of the circular-shaped floor. Curved stone walls soared thirty or forty feet above her, their top edges turreted like that of a castle.

  Pivoting in a slow circle, she scanned the tower’s interior for the package that had been left by her accomplice—but the area was empty.

  Undeterred, the Princess reversed course down the ramp and slipped into one of the tunnels that ran beneath the mill. An extensive network of cavelike passages had been built into the structure’s rock base, linking storage cavities for the products that had once been ground by the mill’s turbines.

  Windows cut into the outer walls allowed in some exterior light, but the deeper the Princess ventured into the honeycombed base, the dimmer the rooms became. She was about to return to the Jeep for a flashlight when she finally stumbled across the item she’d been looking for.

  Hidden behind a round column directly beneath the windmill’s tower, lay a small canvas toolbox holding the materials she would need for the next stop in her journey.

  47

  The Cannon

  A festive atmosphere filled the Moravian church parking lot near the north end of Coral Bay’s sparse settlement. Volunteers busily distributed water bottles, granola bars, and pieces of fruit as Manto’s truck taxi pulled in with a last load of participants.

  The gathering point for the Fortsberg march had drawn a few community leaders, a handful of confused tourists, and a couple of visiting Danish anthropologists, but the majority of the crowd was made up of parents and their school-age children, the latter of which had been given the day off from classes so they could join in.

  Although the organizers had brought signs and banners for the marchers to carry, the children were encouraged to create their own. Hamilton and several of his friends gathered together on a sidewalk with paper pads and crayons, chattering excitedly about the Amina Slave Princess as they worked on their individual placards.

  With a flourish, Hamilton picked up his drawing and held it over his chest, proudly displaying it for the others to see.

  Vivian stood nearby, frowning as she watched her son’s enthusiasm.

  “You’d think she was Santa Claus,” she grumbled under her breath.

  The Princess drove the Jeep past the crowd gathered outside the church, slowing behind a flamingo-decorated truck taxi as it pulled into the lot. Half a block later, she reached Coral Bay’s main intersection—a T-juncture that marked the end of Centerline Road.

  She turned south and parked the Jeep in the lot of the boarded up gas station. Before stepping out of the driver’s-side opening, she reached into the rear seat for the canvas toolbox and the blue nylon satchel containing her costume. Gripping her packages, she returned to the intersection and veered right.

  Around the next curve, she slipped into the driveway for an emergency fire and rescue center, and then ducked into a dense stand of trees.

  Blocked from the view of the road, she quickly switched back into the Princess outfit. She buttoned the beaded vest across her chest, tied the sarong around her waist, and crammed the dark curly wig onto her head. After stuffing her street clothes into the satchel, she hid it in the trees. Still carrying the canvas toolbox, she headed up the path to the fort.

  The medallion, of course, had never once left her neck.

  As the Princess reached a small bluff, she paused to look back toward the church.

  The marchers had left the parking lot and were now progressing slowly along the path behind her. The children ran circles around the group, chasing one another through the trees. Their peaceful, meandering pace would give her enough time to complete her task, but not much extra.

  The Princess continued on through the cactus-strewn forest, following in the 1733 footsteps of the original Amina. She imagined their shadows walking beside her on the trail as they advanced on the Danish soldiers. The phantom forms bent beneath the bundles of firewood stacked on their shoulders, but the weight of the wood was eased by the knowledge of the machetes hidden inside. She felt buoyed by the presence of the ancient spirits; they accompanied her all the way to the fort’s crumbling boundary.

  There, the Princess waged her own hand-to-hand combat with the brambling bushes as she searched through the overgrown ruins for the sole remaining cannon. After a frantic hunt, she finally found its iron barrel, mounted onto a rock wall so that it pointed out over Hurricane Hole.

  The fort’s four hundred feet of elevation gave it a commanding 360-degree view of Coral Bay, the harbor, and the protecting arms of land that curved around it. The Princess’s eyes swept across the scene. It was from this location that the Amina’s signal of success had been sent far and wide across the Virgins.

  The cannon was old and long past the point of use, even if she had been able to locate a ball of ammunition to fit into its tube—but she had a far more expeditious means of communicating her message.

  The Princess unzipped the toolbox, reached inside, and pulled out a long cylinder, followed by a plastic-wrapped lump of putty.

  She unwrapped the putty, kneaded it with her fingers, and smashed it around the cylinder’s explosive device. Using a pair of the computer programmer’s pliers, she readied the device for action, then she attached the whole contraption to the cannon’s long outside wall.

  With a last glance back at the approaching marchers, she pulled a matchbook from her pocket and lit the fuse.

  The marchers were about a hundred yards away from the fort when those at the front of the crowd spied a figure sprinting headlong through the trees.

  Hamilton was the first to point and cry out, “There she is!”

  The boy next to him squealed, “It’s the Slave Princess! The Amina Slave Princess!”

  Vivian squinted skeptically at the fleeing woman. She wore a knee-length sarong tied around her waist
and a tight-fitting beaded vest over her narrow chest. She was too far from the group for Vivian to get a clear identification, but the mass of dark curly hair springing around her shoulders was unmistakable.

  “Whut is that wo-man doin’?” Vivian muttered under her breath.

  A moment later, a series of three loud booms echoed through the forest, shaking the ground beneath her feet.

  48

  The Signal Is Heard

  A bright green iguana dug his claws into the tree behind the resort’s administrative building, steadily making his way toward the limbs that reached out over the second-floor balcony. Fred’s long lizard shape blended seamlessly into the leaves, the multiple shades of green camouflaging his stiff jerking movements.

  When at last he reached his favorite branch, he settled in on a flat portion of the bark that his leathery body had smoothed down over repeated sitting sessions. One of his front legs dropped over the edge and dangled in the morning’s breeze. Turning his head toward the office, his beady eyes scanned the interior, searching for the woman who habitually sought his guidance, but he saw no sign of her there that morning.

  Fred stretched his neck toward a nearby stem and plucked off a plump red berry. With his tongue, he rolled the fruit in his mouth, expertly positioning it under the sharp point of his teeth.

  Just as he bit down on the juicy morsel, the first explosion echoed through the air.

  * * *

  Outside the Crunchy Carrot at the white plastic table farthest from the Dumpster, Joe Tourist and his wife sat soaking in the sun while they sipped on frozen fruit drinks in flimsy plastic cups.

  Music from inside the bar filtered out onto the street. A country music crooner strummed his guitar as he began his signature St. John song. A background track of waves lapping soothingly on a beach was soon replaced by the crooner’s smooth, slightly twangy voice describing his favorite blue rocking chair.