Adrift on St. John (35 page)

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.

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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.

Between the music, the truck taxi rumbling past, and the numbing effect of their drinks, the pair failed to notice the cannon-fire-mimicking explosion that ricocheted across the island.

After a long slurp from her strawberry concoction, the woman turned to her husband and said, “Honey, maybe we should think about moving down here.”

Fifteen feet away, beneath the Dumpster table, a black rooster with a plump belly and a colorfully plumed tail gobbled hungrily on a small pile of discarded French fries. Richard’s head bobbed up and down as he worked the long pieces of fried potato down through his stringy neck.

More alert than the tourists, the bird immediately picked up on the irregular nature of the explosions.

Upon the third booming blast, he scooped up the last of his treasure trove and took flight to the protection of the alley behind the Crunchy Carrot.

In Pesce’s hot, steaming kitchen, a Puerto Rican sous chef wiped his forearm across his greasy, sweating forehead and leaned back from a counter filled with the day’s fresh seafood delivery. Several dozen fish had been apportioned into
a myriad of piles, each grouping designated for a specific component in the night’s appetizer and entrée menu.

Stepping away from the counter, César used his elbow to turn the lever for a nearby faucet, then he thrust his hands beneath the resulting stream of water and let the cool liquid wash the slimy coating from his fingers. After wiping his hands on the nearest clean dish towel, he turned back to the fish and picked up his knife.

“Now,” he said, surveying the piles with a weary cackle, “who wants to go first?”

Swinging a pointed finger over the counter, he chanted, “Eeny, meeny, miny…”

On “moe,” the first explosion rocked through the kitchen.

Startled, César grabbed the edge of the table, in the process catching the tip of a finger with the knife blade.

Sucking on the wounded appendage, he left the fish counter and wandered into the dining area. From the verandah, looking east toward Coral Bay, he could just make out a tiny plume of smoke.

On the oceanfront side of the resort’s reception area, an elderly cleaning woman stood in the middle of a crowd of service workers. Several maids, waitstaff, maintenance workers, and members of the grounds crew encircled her as she cupped a hand around her ear, waiting for the signal.

When the first thudding
boom
echoed through the air, Beulah raised a pearl-colored conch shell to her lips and blew out a long mournful wail. Many others within the crowd followed suit. Someone began to beat a portable drum. One of the grounds crew slid a coconut-chopping machete from its sheath and raised it in the air.

Chants, conch wails, and drumbeats filled the air as Beulah led the group through the reception area, past several dumbstruck real estate attorneys, and out to the truck taxis waiting on the front drive.

*    *    *

Inside the storm cellar beneath the administrative building, a sweaty, seemingly deflated man sat on a plastic chair, eating a cold can of baked beans with a plastic spoon. A tepid bottle of water sat open on the rickety plastic table beside him. As he reached the bottom of the can, the man spooned up a small bean and bent down to the sand-covered concrete floor.

“Here you go, Stanley,” the programmer offered to the hermit crab ogling up at the chair. “It’s not in my regular diet either, but we have to keep our strength up. No telling how long we’ll be stuck down he—”

He broke off his sentence as the first
boom
shook the concrete floor.

As the third explosion rumbled across the island, the computer programmer heard the grating metal sound of a key scraping in the cellar door’s lock. Before he could leap up from his chair, the door swung open, and a young woman’s tentative face peeked inside.

Her green eyes shone, even in the room’s dim light. Dark curly hair hung down to her shoulders. She wore a flowered sundress made up of a light, floating fabric.

The programmer stared at her for a long moment before clearing his throat. He stood from the plastic chair and extended his hand.

“Hannah Sheridan, I presume.”

Across the Pillsbury Sound, on the second floor of the Government House, the governor sat at his desk perusing the local newspaper. He had read halfway through an article reporting on the latest proceedings of the Constitutional Convention when his phone rang.

Calmly, he set the paper on his desk, reached for the receiver, and lifted it to his ear. He listened for a long moment to the voice of the water taxi captain on the
other end of the line; then a serene smile stretched across his face.

“Thank you for the update.”

Back on St. John, a middle-aged woman walked through the Trunk Bay parking lot, intent on climbing into her vehicle and driving back to the resort for a quick shower and a change of clothes.

The triad of booms failed to break through her deepening concern as she stared at the empty parking space where she’d left her ride.

“Hey,” she cried out in disbelief.

“What happened to the Jeep?”

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