New Book 2009
Chapter 1
The Miracle
Delroy gunned the big 25 horsepower motor and the heavy skiff headed toward the sandy beach. Then he cut the engine and tilted it up just in time to avoid the propeller gouging the bottom.
The boat slid up the sand and came to a stop. He jumped out and, holding the boat steady, he shouted to a boy sitting under a sea grape tree. “Come boy, bring dem rollers down heah. We haulin’ de boat up an’ I late for wuk a’ready.” The boy was Delroy’s 14 year-old son, Jemel. He laid the rollers out about three feet apart – two small tree limbs and three iron pipes.
Delroy unfastened the engine from the stern of the boat, hoisted it onto his shoulder and carried it to the sea grape tree where he rested it upright against a limb. Then they heaved the skiff up the beach till it was in the shade of the tree and propped it up with two boards, one each side under the gunwale.
The boy looked in the boat. In the dirty water in the bilge were a parrotfish, two small blue tangs and a squirrelfish. An old fish trap lay up near the bow with a hole in one side, in need of repair.
A half a calabash, for bailing, floated near the stern and a few rusty tools, knife and a length of line added to the detritus, along with an almost empty gas can. “Clean de fish an’ take them up to yo’ mudder,” said Delroy. “Save de guts. I mixin’ dem with bush fo’ bait tomorrow. When yo’ finish school come back down here an’ mend de trap. I see you later.” He hoisted his precious engine back onto his shoulder and walked off down the beach to a lock up shed where it would be safe.
He rinsed his hands in the sea and strolled out onto the road. A truck would be by soon to take him to work. The island of Dominada is mountainous and lush with tropical vegetation. Its volcanic soil supports fruit trees in abundance especially citrus and bananas and its volcanic nature is responsible for hot springs and boiling mud.
Mountain lakes and hundreds of rivers are supported by an annual rainfall of over two hundred inches. This “Nature Island,” as it is known, lies in the eastern Caribbean along the latitude of 14 degrees north and it is home to Delroy, Elma, Jemel and Jemel’s three brothers and two sisters. Delroy didn’t have long to wait. The small pickup truck stopped and he climbed in the back with two other workers.
They meandered their way along the pot-holed road twisting and turning forever upwards until they came to a turn off. A hundred yards further up a muddy track and they stopped. The building site was adjacent to a hot sulphur stream and the guesthouse they were constructing was designed around some giant boulders in the spring.
There was a grapefruit copse to one side and a stand of banana trees opposite, bearing fruit. The view off to the west was spectacular looking down over the narrow coastal plain and across the sparkling Caribbean Sea. At sunset it was breathtaking, and it was typical of Dominada. For Delroy the beauty was lost.
To him the place meant ten hours of back breaking labour for a paltry twenty-five E.C. dollars, the local currency, or about ten U.S. He was exhausted when he climbed into the back of the truck for the return journey. At the beach he checked on the fish trap to see if Jemel had repaired the hole. “De boy done good,” he muttered when he saw the trap, as good as new. He picked up a machete and a burlap bag from his shack and began the trek up the winding road to his banana patch.
He had about fifty trees and they were getting ready for harvesting. He was sweating profusely when he finally branched off onto a track and after about ten minutes of hiking through dense bush he arrived. He spent the next hour pruning the trees and propping up some with a stout limb of cedar cut with a “Y” at one end.
They were in danger of sagging and falling under the weight of the heavy fruit. He cut a couple of hands of green bananas and put them in his sack as he pondered his situation. Ten years ago Delroy had had a plantation of over 600 banana plants. Back then he could sell a kilo for over a dollar E.C. and the company, United Fruit, would buy all he could provide. He tended his fruit well, pruning away the flower and the bud and covering each stalk with plastic to protect it from the wind.
Each plant produced about 20 kilos of saleable bananas. His plantation and hard work gave him almost $300 E.C. a week. Now the only income his plantation provided was from the local market in town where Elma went twice a week, and from an occasional passing yacht: Jemel had a little tin boat and he would paddle out and offer fruit, vegetables and provisions to the rich white people. Now United Fruit didn’t want his bananas and those large farms still selling to them were getting about half the money they used to.
He had heard rumours it was something to do with the W.T.O... whoever they were, but he blamed it on the government. Delroy yawned. The day was drawing to a close and the sun was casting long shadows as he began the steep trek to his house. Mello’s rum shop and grocery was just down the road from Delroy’s house, in the hamlet of Riveforche, and he had to pass it on the way home. It was a temptation he didn’t need but he often succumbed to it. He reasoned in his mind that after a 14-hour day he deserved some small refreshment and often this reasoning got the better of him.
A group of men sat just inside the door playing dominoes on a rickety table. The game was in full swing with occasional shouts of jubilation and loud slapping of the pieces down on the table. He dropped his bag and cutlass in a corner of the bar and called out to Sooni, the help. “Darlin’, gimme a shot o’ Jack Iron an’ a cold Carib.”
She was chatting to a young dread-lock man at the other end of the bar and, in typical Caribbean style, finished her conversation first before she ambled over to serve a paying customer. Sooni was a sultry beauty of mixed blood, half Chinese and half Afro-Indian. Her coffee complexion was silky smooth and she wore her jet-black hair straight and shoulder length.
Her figure was an hourglass and she used it to good advantage. You could see her panty line through her tight shiny mini dress and she was bra-less, her nipples showing through enticingly. She bent down to reach inside a top opening refrigerator and as her skimpy dress rode up several eyes gazed at her upper thighs, imaginations running wild.