A Trip to the Beach

by Melinda Blanchard

  I stood with my feet in the water, wondering what it would have felt like a hundred years ago if Bob had been on one of those boats going to cut cane for six months in Santo Domingo. I don’t suppose they had suntan lotion back then, I mused, picturing him fried to a crisp in the cane fields.

  “I’m hungry,” Bob said. “Let’s go have some ribs.”

  We wandered back toward the grills. One ambitious operation had erected a series of tentlike structures, with two-by-fours sticking up out of the sand covered with blue tarps; plastic tables and chairs were set up underneath. The tarps overhead snapped in the wind as we ate and listened to people speculate about which boat would win. After lunch the boats were far from sight, and the crowd on the beach dispersed to form a caravan of cars that climbed slowly up the hill from Sandy Ground. Curious, we followed.

  The procession continued west, tracking the race boats and stopping periodically at viewing points along the road. We, along with hundreds of others, spent the entire afternoon following the race by road. Nobody’s property was private during a boat race in Anguilla. We stood on people’s cisterns, on hotel balconies, in the back of pickup trucks, and even climbed onto someone’s roof for a better vantage point. Everyone pointed and guessed who was in the lead.

  “De Chan, she up fron’,” I heard someone say.

  “No, man,” replied another spectator. “She headed too far south. Hear me now. Light and Peace, she gonna win this race.”

  From so far away, the boats looked the same to me, but everyone else could identify them all. They rounded the western tip of Anguilla and then sailed nearly the length of the island, around a buoy, and back again. The Anguillian police boat monitored the race, making sure everyone sailed around the buoy, and at least a dozen more fishing boats, loaded with cheering fans, followed along for support.

  It was four o’clock by the time De Chan came into view at Sandy Ground, followed by De Wizard and then Bluebird. Nell the taxi driver owned Bluebird and had been at Blanchard’s the night before, boasting about his new sail from St. Thomas. Alwyn sailed on De Wizard, and we were excited to see one of our staff place in the top three. But Light and Peace had fallen back, and Stinger was nowhere in sight.

  The crowd had returned to Sandy Ground to cheer for their boats as they came in. Bets were collected, and arguments broke out over the amount of ballast a boat did or didn’t have, whether a particular tack had been a good decision, or if a new sail was needed before the next race.

  That night the excitement continued in the kitchen.

  “We woulda won, ya know,” Shabby said. “But our boom bent as we came by Blowing Point.”

  “Shabby, you always think you gonna win,” Bug said. “That boat ain’ nothin’ compared to Bluebird. Our new sail is the best in Anguilla.”

  “What happened to you, Lowell?” Ozzie asked.

  “Light and Peace the best boat, ya know,” Lowell answered. “She just go a little too far south, that all.”

  Alwyn’s boat, De Wizard, apparently hadn’t placed for a long time, so he was glowing. Everyone debated whose boat was in the best position to do well in the August Carnival races. These were the biggest of the year, with a week of qualifiers leading up to the Champion of Champions. Shabby said he and his brothers, along with a few other guys from Blowing Point, were thinking of building a new boat for Carnival.

  “I’d love to help build it,” Bob volunteered. “Do you think anyone would mind? Actually, what I’d really like to do is go out in a race too.”

  “No problem,” Shabby said. “You know how to sail?”

  “No, but you can use me for ballast.” Bob smiled.

  “You can’ beat Bluebird,”Bug jumped in.

  “Aya, Lawd,” Shabby said to nobody in particular. “Bug think he gonna beat us in August. He ain’ gonna win.”

  That night I fell asleep listening to Bob talk about boats. It reminded me of when our lives in Vermont revolved around ski racing and I spent countless days freezing at the bottom of a mountain watching Jesse compete. Sitting at the finish line on the beach in Anguilla had opened up a whole new world of competition.

  After Easter the island slowed down even more, and Bob took the opportunity to fly north to visit his father in Vermont. He was going to stop in Miami on the way back and buy a pickup truck to ship down. Our little red Suzuki had served us well but was having transmission problems, and we needed a replacement.

  He’d been gone for two days when the break-in occurred. I came home from work around ten-thirty and noticed the sliding glass door looked crooked as I went up the steps to the porch. I opened the front door but backed right out again after glimpsing the mess in the living room. My desk had been ransacked, drawers were open, and papers were strewn across the floor.

  The staff was still cleaning up at the restaurant, so I raced back to tell them what had happened. My mind replayed the people who had visited the house recently. Did someone know Bob was away? Had they been watching me? I knew I couldn’t sleep there that night. Maybe I would never sleep there again. I wanted Bob.

  Shabby, Clinton, Lowell, Bug, Ozzie, Alwyn, Miguel, and Garrilin were gathered in my yard in a matter of minutes. As Ozzie called the police for me, the whole crew began to investigate the evidence. The police arrived forty-five minutes later, and when they did, they ordered my staff to leave. They couldn’t have so many people at the crime scene, they said. I insisted I wasn’t staying there without my staff, and I explained that my husband was off island and they were there only for my support. Once the officers realized I was serious, they pulled out their fingerprint kit and went to work.

  The break-in was a little crime, nothing serious. Anguilla has almost no crime whatsoever, and I knew that this incident was probably just some kids fooling around. Oh, there are crimes of passion in Anguilla—lovers gone astray, husbands not behaving. But crimes affecting strangers are essentially unheard of. Not much was missing, but without Bob I was uneasy. When he heard the news, of course, he wanted to skip Miami and come straight home, but we agreed it wouldn’t do much good at that point. We also really needed a truck and couldn’t find one in Anguilla. Anyone with a pickup that ran was not interested in selling. Miami was our only shot.

  I spent the night at Malliouhana, and the next day Clinton and Lowell replaced the sliders with secure doors on hinges. “You safe now, Mel,” Clinton assured me. “Nobody gonna bother you again. I talk to Bennie, and he comin’ down to see you. He angry, man. He gonna teach whoever did this a lesson.”

  Bennie arrived now in the role of my guardian angel. “Anguilla has no crime, and we need to keep it that way,” he roared. He began work on a secret weapon, pounding hundreds of nails furiously through a sheet of plywood. He turned the wood upside-down and placed it nail points facing up, inside our patio fence where the intruder had climbed into the yard. “If he come here again, he gonna get two feet full of nails. I already alerted the hospital,” he said. “If anybody show up with nail holes in his feet, we got ’em.”

  After that, Bennie escorted me home from work every night and then sat in the shadows, watching my house. Determined to catch the thief, he spent his evenings parked in the bushes, waiting. In the end, it was the police who nabbed the culprits, and sure enough, they turned out to be more pranksters than criminals. They were sent to jail until a trial could be held by a judge who travels throughout the British Caribbean territories.

  Bob found, bought, and set up delivery of a great little Nissan pickup in Miami and returned on the afternoon American Eagle flight carrying a gift for Bennie. We drove from the airport directly to Blowing Point. Bennie was backing out of his driveway but pulled in again when he saw us coming.

  “Bennie,” Bob said, “we can’t thank you enough for all you did while I was away.”

  “No problem. You would have done the same for my wife if the situation was reversed.”

  “We brought you a little gift,” I said, handing over the box. Bennie tore into the package like a l
ittle kid; smiling, he handed the wrapping paper to Janet, his wife, for safekeeping. He admired the handsome briefcase, running his hand over the soft Coach leather.

  “You really made Melinda feel safe,” Bob said. “She wouldn’t have gone back to the house if you hadn’t been keeping an eye on her. Do you know the guys who did it?”

  “Not really,” Bennie said. “I know their families. Rest assured, though, they’ll be locked up for a long time. Anguilla doesn’t take this sort of thing lightly. We need to make an example out of this.”

  We agreed, said goodbye, and left Bennie holding his briefcase next to Janet, who was trying to smooth out the crumpled wrapping paper.

  “Let’s look for a different place to live,” I said on the way back to the house. “There has to be someplace nicer—and now I can’t walk into the living room without seeing everything strewn all over the floor.”

  “We’ll put the word out that we’re looking,” Bob agreed. “Maybe one of the staff knows of something.”

  The restaurant seemed painfully slow after the intensity of the holiday season, and when Frankie Connor called from his ferry one night to book a table of sixteen, we all were thrilled. Bug even did a little jig in front of his sink, singing, “Sixteen people comin’, yes, yes, yes. Plenty people fo’ true.”

  Frankie’s voice had been cool on the phone, but I could tell he was excited about something. “Where are these people coming from?” I asked him.

  “You know they been shootin’ a movie on St. Martin, right?” Frankie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, this is who’s doing it.” He paused, hoping I would catch on, but finally whispered, “It Sandra Bullock and the film crew. And she want lobsters on the beach. Can you set up a big table right on the sand?”

  “No problem. How soon will you be here?”

  “I just leaving Marigot now,” Frankie answered. “You got plenty of lobster?”

  “We’ve got plenty,” I said. “See you in half an hour or so.”

  We sprang into action. “Lowell and Miguel, you get the tables lined up and leveled on the beach,” I said. “Let’s put them as close to the water as possible.

  “Ozzie,” I continued, “you go up to Christine’s and get twenty-five of those little brown paper bags that she uses for candy. We’ll put sand in the bottom and candles inside. They’ll look great on the beach all around the table.”

  Shabby cleaned sixteen lobsters, each of them weighing a hefty two pounds. Alwyn lugged chairs down our path to the beach, and I arranged flowers for the table.

  “Who Sandra Bullet be, anyhow?” Bug asked.

  “Sandra Bullock, Bug. You know her,” Clinton said. “She was in Speed, that movie ’bout the bus that were outta control. Now they makin’ the sequel over in St. Martin ’bout a boat outta control.”

  “I ain’ seen it,” Bug said. “What else she be in?”

  “Bug,” I said, “did you ever see the movie called While You Were Sleeping? It’s where the guy is in a coma after getting hit by a train, and then the woman falls in love with the man’s brother.”

  “Yeah, man. I see that. I cry long tears when I see that movie,” he said. “That the lady who want the lobster on the beach?”

  “Yeah, Bug,” Shabby said. “You wanna see ’er?”

  “Yeah, man. Maybe I can help carry out the plates.”

  Frankie arrived on schedule to a beach setting that was itself like a scene in a movie. The white tablecloths ruffled gently in the breeze, candles flickered from the little bags scattered on the sand, and the crystal clear sky was jammed with twinkling stars. The diners had lobsters and good wine, and waves lapped only three feet away. As Bob poured them some rum at the end of the evening, he looked up and saw Bug motioning him feverishly from the edge of our path. Wearing his blue apron and yellow rubber gloves, he asked Bob in a whisper, “Which one she be? Which one Sandra Bullet be?”

  Chapter 11

  We’d gone from serving almost a hundred dinners a night all the way down to twenty or twenty-five if we were lucky. Time slowed down, and we returned to the unhurried pace that had lured us here in the first place. One particularly slow evening Shabby asked to speak with Bob and me privately. Outside, behind the kitchen, Shabby’s bulk all of a sudden seemed smaller. He sat on a wobbly step stool and hung his head low.

  “I gotta leave,” he said meekly.

  “Leave where?” I asked.

  “Blanchard’s.”

  “You’re leaving us? Why? Is something wrong? I thought you liked it here.” Questions tumbled out from us before he could answer.

  “You know I loves it at Blanchard’s,” Shabby finally said. “You people come to me like family. But I gotta spend more time at home. I work construction all day, rush to the house, take a shower, and then I here till midnight. I gotta see my wife an’ kids more. My two little girls, man, they gettin’ so big, an’ I always at work.”

  Bob almost cried, remembering lassoing for lobsters with Shabby when we’d first arrived. He could still see him in his black wet suit gliding like a giant fish along the bottom of the sea. For me, the kitchen wouldn’t be the same. We’d worked side by side and now knew each other’s moves without thinking. Shabby had perfected the job as grill cook and was a vital part of our success. His size-fourteen shoes would be hard to fill.

  The next morning I called Lowell and asked how we should go about finding a replacement for Shabby. Lowell understood completely that a job at Blanchard’s was not an ordinary position. We were a small, tight group and didn’t want a newcomer who would rock our equilibrium. We needed someone willing to learn our way of doing things on the grill but also eager to become part of the team.

  Lowell told me to sit tight. “Don’ make a move,” he said. “I find someone right away. I don’ wan’ you puttin’ an ad on the radio. If the word get out on the street, Blanchard’s would have people line up down the road for a job. Lemme do it my way.”

  One hour later Lowell pulled up in front of our house and tooted his horn. “Mel. Bob. Come,” he yelled.

  We walked out on the balcony, and Lowell introduced a young man. The two of them were beaming. “Melinda and Bob Blanchard, meet Huegel Hughes. He wanna be our new grill cook.”

  “That was fast,” I said.

  “I tell you it wouln’ be hard. Hughes here work Malliouhana, but he like the idea a workin’ somewhere small. He aks me ’bout a job a few months ago, so I go find him as soon as you call.”

  “Huegel,” I started, “what is your job now?”

  Lowell answered. “You can call him Hughes. He name Huegel, but we all call him Hughes. He work in the kitchen Malliouhana four years—since he sixteen. Up there they do everything, so he know how run the grill.”

  Hughes was a skinny, shy young man with an irresistible twinkle in his big eyes. His hair was tied in a dozen short braids sticking out in all directions. “I would like to work Blanchard’s,” he said. “Tonight’s my night off Malliouhana. Could I come watch and see what it like?”

  I was impressed already. He wasn’t going to jump in blindly. “Sure, why not? Come by around five so you can see what Shabby does before dinner as well.”

  “My hair a problem?” Hughes asked.

  “No,” Bob said. “Why?”

  “Some people think ’cause I plat my hair that I use drugs, but that ain’ true. I ain’ no Rasta.”

  Lowell nodded at me as if to say, Would I bring you someone who would cause trouble?

  Hughes came to observe for the night, and just about everyone on our staff knew him; it was as if he’d been in the kitchen from the beginning. He was a worker too. Shabby showed him what to do, and he went right to it. His idea of observing was a lot more active than I’d expected. Shabby approved of Hughes, said he would be a good replacement, and agreed to stay the two weeks until he could begin work.

  Shabby’s last night was slow. With only twenty dinners to serve, we had extra time on our hands in the kitchen, and he ask
ed me if he could make some pap for everyone.

  “Pap?”

  “Corn pap,” he said. “You ain’ try it yet?”

  “I’ve never even heard of it, but I like the name. Pap.”

  Clinton said, “Mel, pap like hot cereal. We does eat it in the morning, but it good anytime. Leave Shabby make you some.”

  Shabby gathered together cornmeal, milk, sugar, butter, and cinnamon and simmered it all in a big pot on the stove. He spooned the mixture into bowls and put out some brown sugar for people to sprinkle on top. It was heavy, warm, and sweet—like a sugared polenta. It was comforting. I gave Shabby a big, tearful hug, Bob shook his hand, and everyone watched from the back door as he drove away—but not before I made him promise to come back for a visit and make us more pap.

  At six o’clock one morning we were awakened by a tooting horn, rather than our usual reliable rooster. Whoever was outside was insistent, and the honking continued until we opened the door. It was Lowell with urgent information.

  “I got big news. Big news,” he called from his jeep.

  “Are you and Stacy getting married?” I asked.

  “No, man. This different kind a news. But it big.”

  Bob doesn’t focus well without coffee, so he just sat down on the front steps. “Lowell,” I urged, “what’s the news?”

  “Follow me” was all he said.

  “Now? In the car? Do you know what time it is?” Bob asked.

  “Yeah, man. Follow me. I got somethin’ to show you.”

  Bob and I trailed the jeep over the dirt road to Long Bay village, past Christine’s shop, then by Lowell’s house, where his mother was hanging clothes. She hailed us with a cheerful “Good morning.” The road curved around several bends, and palm trees lined the edges as it dropped down toward the sea. Lowell pulled over alongside some men working on an unfinished building. He saw me looking at the spectacular view and said, “It yours if you wannit.”