Documenting the entire event through his zoom lens, Bob found it amazing that the storm wasn’t even over yet and looting had already begun.
John Hope reported that after a day and a half of hammering the islands of Anguilla and St. Martin, Hurricane Luis was finally moving on. He had no word of specific damage, but the worst was definitely over. I had told Bob we’d be back in Vermont waiting for news after the storm was over, so Pat and I drove home that afternoon. We sat in the living room, still glued to CNN and the Weather Channel, hoping to hear some bit of news about Anguilla or St. Martin. As initial reports trickled in, I imagined the worst.
By two o’clock, the wind had calmed even more, and Bob desperately needed to get out of the room. He unlocked the back door, removed the waterlogged sheet from around the jamb, and opened the door for the first time in nearly thirty hours. He stared in disbelief at the devastation. Lush landscaping had been reduced to rubble, with not a green leaf or a palm frond in sight. All of the trees had either been snapped off near the top, leaving what looked like a telephone pole, or had been uprooted. The poolside bar was simply gone. The furniture in the pool appeared still to be there, but it was hard to tell because the crystal clear water from the day before was black and filled with leaves, branches, and awning material from the bar.
Bob climbed over tree limbs and broken boards that had been blown against the back of the building. As he made his way down to the main level, his first thought was to get to a phone and let me know he was okay. He went around the corner of the building and saw two men turning toward the shore. He followed them and watched in shock as they pulled a man out from under some debris. Before he knew it, Bob was helping to carry this battered man back over to the hotel, where they stretched him out on a couch in the room where the buffet had been.
The man’s head had a terrible gash, and he was babbling in French. He looked like Robinson Crusoe, with a long furry beard, leathery skin, long silver hair, and only a pair of boxer shorts on. A small crowd had now gathered around as more and more guests ventured out of their rooms. A short fat man came around the corner announcing he was a doctor, and everyone moved out of his way.
“Mr. Spittle,” the rotund doctor said, “I will need a needle and thread to sew up this cut.” The Frenchman was wailing as Mr. Spittle returned with a sewing kit from the laundry. One of the other guests was interpreting, and trying to explain to the injured man that a doctor was going to stitch up his head. Mr. Spittle had produced a first-aid kit, and after the doctor sterilized the needle and thread with some brown liquid, he sewed up the gash in front of the crowd. The old man screamed; Mr. Spittle held his head, and Bob and several other guests held his arms and feet. His head was then bandaged, and he sat up and stared at everyone in disbelief.
The interpreter translated his story, and Bob and everyone else listened as the man described the events of the previous night. He had been living on his catamaran, sailing around the islands for years, and had come to St. Martin to weather the storm in a safe harbor. During the night he felt his boat being lifted out of the water and found himself flying through the air and thrown against the shore. His catamaran was completely demolished, and he was pinned under a section of the hull with water up to his neck.
He spent the night trapped under the debris, hoping the hull wouldn’t shift and drown him. When the storm finally died down, he started to yell, and the two guests had heard him and dragged him out from under the remains of his boat. He was lucky to be alive. He also said that his radio was going all night and he listened to people pleading for help as their boats sank.
Bob was beginning to realize the magnitude of the disaster. Sunken boats were everywhere. An unimaginable number of masts stuck up out of the water. Down in the far corner toward the airport, a pile of boats lay tangled and destroyed beyond belief. Hundreds of motor yachts, sailboats, and barges were heaped on top of each other in a tangle of ropes, masts, broken glass, hulls, sterns, and keels.
He had to call home. He imagined pictures of the devastation on CNN and knew I would be frantic with worry. All the lines were down at the hotel, and Bob thought maybe he should start walking to Marigot to look for a phone. As he headed out the long, winding entrance to Port de Plaisance, stepping over branches and other debris, a car pulled up behind him. “Need a lift?” a man asked.
“Where are you going?”
“I know where there’s a phone,” the man said. “I’m going to call my wife and tell her I’m alive.” It was as if he had read Bob’s mind.
“Great,” Bob said as he climbed into the backseat.
There was a man in the front passenger seat talking on a two-way radio. Bob couldn’t help but notice they were wearing dark suits, unusual attire for the islands.
“Are you policemen?” Bob asked after listening to a little of the radio conversation. It was clear that the storm had disrupted something they had been working on and that the chances of resuming their project were not good.
“We work for the DEA,” the driver said. “We’ve been coordinating a drug bust here for two months with Scotland Yard, the French police, and the Dutch police out of Curaçao. This damned storm screwed everything up.”
“So how do you know about a phone?”
“Some of our men are staying at another hotel, and they told us by radio this morning that there’s a USA Direct phone in the lobby that still works for some reason. Here it is now.” The car pulled into a parking lot in front of the Atrium Hotel near the airport.
Inside the lobby there was a tremendous crowd waiting to use the phone. Bob stood behind the driver of the car and waited patiently for his turn; the line was long but moving quickly. The woman behind the front desk was collecting a dollar a minute for the use of the phone in addition to the charges put on everyone’s calling card. She had a thriving business going.
John Hope, by now my arbiter of all matters of importance, said phones and power would be out for an extended period of time, so I knew we wouldn’t be hearing from Bob right away. Pat and I went out for pizza, and when we returned home, we were surprised that Bob had left a message on the answering machine.
“Hi, it’s me. I’m alive and well in St. Martin. I’m fine, but there’s mass destruction everywhere. Don’t worry about me; just worry about the restaurant. I’m going to try to get to Anguilla now. Bye.”
I called Jesse right away and we talked for an hour about how relieved we were. Jesse was anxious to speak with Bob directly and made me promise to let him know when I received more information.
As Bob hung up the phone he looked around for his newfound friends, the DEA agents. They were nowhere in sight. Bob walked back outside and spotted the car. Knowing the men were in the hotel somewhere, he sat on the railing of the parking lot and waited. After almost half an hour he went back inside and walked up to the counter, where the girl was continuing to collect her dollar per call. The line was still about twenty people long as each person reported in to their loved ones. Bob asked if the girl had seen two men in dark suits with a two-way radio. She said, “A whole bunch a them on three.”
Bob made his way up to the third floor and walked down the dark hall toward the end where he could hear voices. He was standing outside an open door, trying to decide if he should knock, when out came the two men who had given him the ride.
“Ready to go?” asked one without surprise, and Bob followed as they walked downstairs. The three climbed into the car and drove back toward Port de Plaisance.
“I guess that’s it, then,” the driver said to the other man who simply stared out the window.
Bob sat in the backseat, sympathizing in silence with the men and their failed sting operation. He looked out the windows at the damage. The shacks on the hillside were demolished, and he wondered if people had gotten out in time. Store windows had completely vanished, and cars lay upside-down in yards. He was grateful to have gotten a ride to a phone.
Back at the hotel, the guests were now out walking aroun
d the grounds, inspecting the damage. Suddenly famished, Bob went to the room that had held the ice cream freezer. There he found Mr. Spittle and his assistant putting out food for the guests. They were dragging a large barbecue grill outside but had no charcoal. Bob offered to build a fire using some of the branches strewn on the ground. As he gathered bits of boards, broken chair legs, and branches, other guests joined in, and soon they had the grill heaped with wood and palm fronds. Hungry guests lined up while Mr. Spittle cooked steaks and chicken salvaged from the hotel’s freezer.
It began to get dark, and Bob decided to get some sleep. He would have to wait until the next day to get back to Anguilla.
Up at five-thirty the next morning, Bob noticed that the boats that had survived the storm moored in the Pond were finally beginning to move around again. He ran down to the pier and saw that one of the Anguilla ferryboats was cruising in circles around two others. Just then a little rubber dinghy with an outboard motor came shooting out into the harbor. Bob waved his arms frantically to get its owner’s attention. The man in the dinghy turned toward the dock and, pulling alongside, asked Bob what he needed. Bob said, “Can you take me out to those boats?”
The man shrugged and said, “Get in.” Abandoning his luggage in his hotel room, Bob climbed into the dinghy. It was only about five feet long and barely held the two men.
The man said he had been living on his sailboat, which had sunk during the night; he was lucky to be alive. He had managed to get off his boat into the dinghy and had cut the rope between the two just before the sailboat sank. He told Bob the only thing he had left in this world was the rubber dinghy. Even his wallet had gone down with the sailboat. Bob pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and gave it to the man as they approached the Anguilla boats.
Hubert, the captain of one of the ferries, spotted Bob coming and shouted, “Blanchard! Blanchard!” as if Bob were bringing a rescue crew. When Bob climbed from the dinghy up onto the big steel ferryboat, he realized there were about ten guys on board. Inside, the floor was covered with empty soda cans, beer bottles, and potato chip bags.
Hubert said, “We been here for two days. Only three of us still floating. Look there.” He pointed to a small island about a hundred yards away, where a ferryboat had run aground.
“Look there,” he said again, pointing toward the airport. Another ferry was out of the water and sitting up on the road by the runway.
“Some a these guys come off the other boats. We goin’ home now, soon as Lady Maria get her engines goin’.”
They continued cruising in circles around Lady Maria. Finally her engines fired up in a cloud of black diesel smoke, and the three big ferries motored toward the channel that leads out of the Pond.
“How do we get under the drawbridge?” Bob asked Hubert.
“Oh, they lifts it up for us,” said Hubert.
“But there’s no electricity,” said Bob.
“I think they gots a generator,” Hubert said, clearly hoping this was true.
The boats cruised over to the drawbridge that spans the little channel, which leads out into the open sea. They stopped and drifted while Hubert tried to raise someone in the small building by the drawbridge, first by radio and then by yelling from out on the deck.
There was nobody in the little booth, and after about half an hour Hubert announced, “We drop anchor an’ wait.”
“But they’re talking about the power being off for weeks,” Bob said. “There must be another way out of the Pond.”
“This the onliest way,” said Hubert, and he threw the anchor over the side.
“Okay, I have to get back to Anguilla,” Bob said. “You guys can stay here and wait if you want, but there must be a smaller boat that can fit under the drawbridge.”
Hubert shut off the engines and sat down on a bench to think. One of the other guys aboard said, “Grandfather.” He was pointing to a small, stubby boat chugging slowly across the harbor.
Hubert jumped up and yelled, “Grandfather, Grandfather.”
“Whose grandfather is he?” Bob asked.
“He jus’ call Grandfather,” Hubert replied. “Yo, Grandfather,” he yelled again, and the boat turned toward Hubert.
As Grandfather pulled alongside, Hubert said, “You wanna take the man to Anguilla?”
“Gonna cost ya,” Grandfather said, grinning at Bob.
“How much?”
“How much you got?”
“How about a hundred dollars?” Bob offered, knowing this might be his only chance of getting home for days.
“I ain’ goin’ Anguilla for no hundred dollar,” Grandfather replied, and crossed his arms. “Seas still pretty high.”
“Look,” Bob said, “I only have three hundred dollars, and I’m going to need some money when I get there. Don’t rip me off.”
Hubert jumped in and said, “He okay, ya know, Grandfather. He a friend a we.”
“Okay, since he a friend, I take two hundred.”
“Let’s go,” Bob said, and after he climbed down onto Grandfather’s boat, the rest of the men followed. Bob was apparently paying for the trip, and the others were coming along for the ride.
The seven-mile voyage, which usually took twenty minutes, took two hours. The boat chugged along slowly; its engine stopped twice, and each time Grandfather would tinker for a while and get it going again.
Bob had never seen waves like this before. They were easily fifteen feet high, but without any crest or whitecaps. They were just huge swells that rolled along, and Grandfather’s boat would work its way up one side, over the top, and down the other side, only to head up another one again. At the bottom of each roll Anguilla would disappear from sight, and then it would reappear as the old boat made its way to the top again.
Approaching Anguilla, Bob could begin to make out a huge crowd standing on the dock and up onshore, waiting for the boat to arrive. As they got closer, voices from the crowd started shouting, “Look, it Hubert.” Several other names were called out as more faces were recognized. “I see Blanchard. Blanchard comin’.” It was Clinton. Bob realized they were probably Anguilla’s first contact with the outside world since Luis had attacked, and everyone was at the dock to hear the news from St. Martin.
The sea was rolling so hard that Grandfather could not tie up. He motored up as close as he dared, and as each man jumped off the bow onto the dock, Grandfather would reverse and back up again to prevent his boat from being smashed against the cement pier.
Bob leapt off and the crowd caught him, pulling him onto the pier. As he made his way toward Clinton, he felt a bit like a celebrity as everyone pressed around him, eagerly asking about the condition of St. Martin.
“What ’bout Marigot?” someone shouted. “You see my brother?”
“How the Pond? Any boats sink?” another called out.
Bob and the men from the ferries were deluged with questions and did their best to answer. Most people wanted to know about relatives who lived in St. Martin, but there was little information to give. Bob was afraid to mention the shacks that had been blown away on the hillside near town.
Clinton patted Bob on the back several times, happy to have him home. “Lowell tell me you couldn’t make it to Anguilla. Where you sleep during the storm?”
“It took a while, but I found a hotel room at Port de Plaisance. It was scary, though. They didn’t board my windows, and I was right on the water. What about your family? How is everyone?”
“Everyone cool at home,” Clinton said. “We get a lotta water in the house, but everything cool.”
“What about the rest of the staff? Have you seen them?” Bob asked.
“I see most a them,” Clinton said. “They okay. An’ the radio say nobody hurt here in Anguilla. But lotta boats sink. A big cargo ship mash up Sandy Ground. She sittin’ right up on the beach. An’ there an empty container up by the airport. The wind blew that thing right on top a Harrigan’s rental cars. They all mash up.”
“Have you been to the res
taurant?” Bob finally asked.
“The restaurant ain’ so good,” Clinton said quietly.
“What happened to it?”
“Dining room gone,” Clinton answered as they got into his white minibus.
“What do you mean, gone?” Bob asked.
“She blow away. Whole roof came off. All them shutters gone. Just the floor leff. An’ the plants mash up real bad. Mel gonna cry long tears when she see it. The sea come right through the restaurant an’ into the salt pond. Meads Bay flood out.”
The drive to the restaurant took twice as long as usual. Clinton had to drive off the road to avoid broken telephone poles and uprooted trees; electric wires were strewn in tangles everywhere. As they pulled into the parking lot at Blanchard’s, Bob felt numb. There had been four large, stately palm trees right in front of the restaurant, and all but one were lying on the ground.
He stepped over one of the downed trees and onto the walkway that led through the picket fence and up to the bar door. Several sections of the fence were broken off, although tangled bougainvillea vines held the pieces in place. There were tiny scraps of the teal shutters scattered about. The side of the building facing the road looked amazingly intact, but all the paint had been sandblasted off, in some places right down to raw wood. Whatever paint was left was no longer clean and white but yellow and dirty.
Bob wanted to cry as he inspected the gardens. The lush greens and vibrant flowers were gone. Not one palm frond. Not one leaf. Not one petal. Only broken stems, roots, and bare tree limbs remained. As he made his way around the side of the building, the big sea grape tree came into view. It was on its side, split down the middle. More full-sized palm trees that we had brought in from Florida lay tipped over, roots in the air. All the path lights were missing, and the fountains were black with leaves and murky water. There was nothing living in sight.
A Trip to the Beach Page 27
