Chapter 13

"After the Storm"

IT'S BEEN ABOUT A WEEK SINCE HURRICANE WINDS BLEW THROUGH THIS NECK OF THE WOODS. I DON'T KNOW IF THE WEATHER BUREAU GAVE IT A NAME OR NOT, ALTHOUGH IT CERTAINLY DESERVED ONE. IT DIDN'T JUST BLOW THROUGH THIS SIDE OF THE ISLAND. IT RAISED HELL UP AND DOWN THE LEE SIDE AND BATTERED THE WINDWARD SIDE AS WELL. (WHERE ALL THE FANCY HOTELS ARE).

THUNDER, LIGHTNING, GALE-FORCE WINDS AND RAIN PUMMELED US OFF AND ON FOR A FULL TWELVE STRAIGHT HOURS OR MORE BEFORE IT FINALLY SHOT ITS WAD AND LEFT TO GO PLAY WITH ITSELF OVER OPEN OCEAN. EVERYBODY SIGHED WITH RELIEF WHEN THINGS BEGAN TO QUIET DOWN.

I HOVERED CLOSE TO THE OLD RADIO, LISTENING TO WEATHER REPORTS AND METEOROLOGISTS' ANALYSES … TALKING ABOUT THE PATH OF THE STORM THEY'D NAMED "CHARLIE". APPARENTLY IT HAD PLOUGHED A PATH NORTH AND WEST AND BITTEN CHUNKS OUT OF ST. LUCIA AND DOMINICA AS WELL BEFORE IT DIMINISHED AND FINALLY DIED OVER OPEN WATER.

HERE ON BARBADOS THERE WAS SOME MAJOR STRUCTURAL DAMAGE LOCALLY BECAUSE THE SMALLER CABINS WERE MOSTLY CONSTRUCTED FROM CARDBOARD CARTONS AND BALING WIRE. THIS ONE WAS LUCKIER. IT CAME THROUGH THE GALE JUST FINE, SOME OF IT, I'M SURE, DUE TO THE BIG METAL TANKS AND THE HUGE GENERATOR OUT BACK. IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN AN ATOM BOMB TO DISLODGE THOSE.

ONE OF THE BIG PALMETTO TREES BACK THERE CRASHED DOWN AND JUST MISSED THE CORNER OF THE PORCH. MEN FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD RALLIED AROUND AND SPENT AN ENTIRE DAY CUTTING THAT BIG SUCKER UP AND HAULING IT AWAY TO USE FOR THEIR CAMPFIRES. IT WAS ONE OF THE FEW TIMES I CAN REMEMBER THAT I REGRETTED NOT BEING ABLE TO HELP. I DID SLIP A C-NOTE TO AMOS THOUGH, AND HE BROUGHT BACK CASES OF COLD BEER, SODAS AND SANDWICHES FROM HIS COOLER. I WARNED HIM THAT THE NAME OF THE DONOR WAS "MISTER ANONYMOUS". HE SHOOK HIS HEAD, SMILED AND AGREED.

HOOLEY WAS SAFE AND SOUND THROUGH THE STORM, AND HIS OTHER CLIENTS AS WELL. HE'D SPENT A DAY AT AMOS'S BAR HELPING TO REPLACE A PART OF THE BUILDING WHERE ANOTHER TREE HAD FALLEN AND TAKEN OFF THE ENTIRE CORNER. AN AWNING HAD ALSO BROKEN OFF AND SMASHED AMOS'S PRIZED 1954 SEEBURG JUKE BOX. THE GLASS FRONT AND DELICATE INSIDE MECHANISMS WERE SMASHED BEYOND REPAIR. HE SAID A BIG COCONUT PALM TRIED TO RUN AWAY FROM HOME AND ONLY MADE IT AS FAR AS THE FRONT OF THE BUILDING. SOME VALUABLE OLD 78/rpm RECORDS ALSO DIED IN THE CRASH. I CRINGED WHEN HE TOLD ME THAT. SOME OF THOSE THINGS ARE PRICELESS AND IRREPLACABLE. A DOZEN-OR-SO GALLONS OF RUM GOT SMASHED TO SMITHEREENS ON THE CEMENT FLOOR. AMOS SAID HE HAD TO LAUGH ABOUT THE WHOLE THING SO HE WOULDN'T CRY. FORTUNATELY HE WAS HEAVILY INSURED.

The crew that cut up the tree at my place and rebuilt Amos's place also prowled around the rest of the neighborhood and generally cleaned up and restored or replaced all the damage done by the hurricane. When I asked, Hooley and Amos both told me that these were the people who had lived on the island all their lives and this was: Just. What. They. Did! They cleaned up the mess with chain saws, hatchets, pickup trucks, hammers, nails, dirty jokes … and sheer muscle power.

Miraculously there were no human casualties … not even a laceration or abrasion. Just lots of property damage and tons of debris. There were palm fronds and half-ripe coconuts littering yards and parking spaces, all blown in from somewhere else. The beach was strewn for miles with broken lawn furniture, tattered awnings, kids' toys, odds and ends of clothing and laundry; even a couple of small cabana tents and plastic garbage cans.

Today, six days later, everything looks pretty much back to normal, and ennui has been fully restored. I still haven't found my cane from the night before the storm, and I think that, like a lot of other missing belongings, it's gone with the wind.

I sit on my front porch and look up and down the beach, sparkling in the sun again and back to being pristine. (I'm talking 'pristine' as in the condition that Mother Nature intends it to be, not like Martha Stewart is out there running a vacuum cleaner and dusting the palm fronds …)

There has been no further word on the whereabouts of the (alleged) drug dealing Latino dudes, one of whom I'd spotted sneaking through the bushes in my yard, and whose trail led directly between the generator and fuel tank. What the hell was the attraction back there? The cops found nothing, Hooley said, and the quartet seemed to have got their asses off the island lickety split. The fishing boat was gone from its moorings. More work to find out where it had got to …

The local constabulary questioned some of the other freelancers who had their own island-hopper planes, wondering if they'd had any swarthy, white-shirted passengers. The answers always came back the same: "No, Mon …"

I admit that my penchant for medical puzzles has been working overtime. Not about drug runners in general, but one nasty little sick dude in particular. I wondered whether the short guy was under any medical treatment for the mole on his face. I doubted it. Even from a distance I saw signs of imminent malignancy, and I don't give a damn who the bastard is, that thing needs to be tended to.

Late in the morning on the day after the storm, I was still in bed in the gloom created by shuttered windows and battened door. I'd thrown off the blanket, but was sore as hell and hadn't done my leg exercises. Hooley, of course, chose that particular time to stop by. He wondered how I'd weathered the storm, he said, and decided to check on me.

He would not let me lay around and 'feel puny', he said. He cajoled and ranted and raved and carried on like a midwife until I finally gave up, sat up and eased my legs off the edge of the mattress. When I had done that, he handed me the arm canes.

"Get up and take a hot shower, Mon!" he demanded. "You smell like a pail of dead fish." He held the damned things at arms' length until I grabbed them and eased to a vertical position. I still had no idea what had become of my cane. Angrily I clumped into the bathroom, barefoot and achy as hell, and billowed the curtain closed behind me. I heard him laughing to himself like he thought I was some stubborn child to be scolded and reminded to wash my hands and do my chores.

In the bathroom, piled neatly, I found fresh underwear, socks, an old tee shirt, cutoffs, and the dirty sneakers I'd worn to Amos's the night before, when the storm blew in. The bathroom itself had been tidied, and my wet, discarded clothing was gone. Damn him … he'd sneaked in while I was still asleep and straightened the place before he woke me.

*One of these days …*

When I came out of the shower fully dressed, he had thrown open all the shutters I'd closed over the windows. Amazing what a little sunlight could do. The floor had been freshly mopped and there was a laundry basket by the door, which I assumed contained my dirty stuff for the past couple days.

And Hooley … cutoffs, tee shirt, red sneakers and yarn hat with bell, stood in front of the stove, whistling along with a song on the radio, happily cooking us breakfast, complete with some heavenly smelling coffee. What the hell was I going to say?

('Thank you', I suppose …)

I was hungry and he was cooking, and somehow I managed to keep my big mouth shut over the insults in my head begging to be let out. Gratefully I plopped myself onto a chair at the table and let the arm canes hang on the chair next to me.

His only words were: "Kyle Calloway, where is your cane? It is not in the cabin."

I glared at him over the rim of the coffee cup he handed me. "I dunno. Couldn't find it."

*So much for a quick solution.*

When the meal was over and the dishes washed and put away, the two of us wandered out to the porch to check the lay of the land. The old rattan chair was pushed into a corner, and its stool was nowhere to be seen. Another gone-with-the-wind thing, we supposed. So I pulled out the chair and sat down in it. I dropped the arm canes on the floor and stretched my legs out in front of me.

We looked around, up and down the beach. Out on the water the restless ocean had already taken care of its own cleanup. The shoreline was pretty much back to the way it had been before the hurricane rearranged things. There was a little extra black seaweed strewn along the beach where the water con-tinuously lapped at the shore, and there were some broken palm fronds here and there, but most of those had already washed away.

There was a small pink sneaker sluicing and yawing between the wavelets lapping at the beach, but other than that, it looked as though the storm had never happened. This phenomenon, I thought, attested well to the fact that Mother Nature was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Human beings, on the other hand, were a different story entirely.

Hooley reached into the pocket of his shirt and extracted two cigars, handed me one and bit off the end of the other one and stuck it in his mouth. "Light?" He asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, thanks."

We sat quietly for a long time, puffing the cigars and enjoying the rhythm of the ocean as the sun slid behind the horizon. There was no calypso music floating on the air tonight, and we missed it. Only a few distant voices rode above the breeze … and the sound of waves gently slapping the packed sand.

"Where were you when the storm ripped through here?" I asked him finally. "I was hoping you had sense enough to hole up somewhere while trees and tents and lawn furniture were flying through the air."

Hooley smiled. "I was at the clinic in Prospect. My supervisor requested that we remain there in case of weather-related injuries. There were six of us assigned for the duration of the storm, but fortunately people remained indoors and we had no walk-in patients or reports of local incidents, other than some property damage. We were all released to regular duties this morning, and you are my fourth client of the day. In a short while I will leave here and continue up the coast to Holetown. I have three more clients to visit … all older than you, and physically challenged as well. I will likely be out all night." He turned to me with a skeptical eye. "Is there anything you need?"

I gave him a sarcastic snort. "Nah, not really. Just go ahead and see to your other people. They need you more than I do."

He frowned. "Say again?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

He smiled. "Oh. You were being kind. I almost did not pair the gesture with the man. That is quite fascinating. Do you need medication? I can bring new prescriptions from the pharmacy."

I glared at him again, trying to look insulted, but he wasn't buying it.

"No thanks. I still have some." Actually, I was rather pleased that I'd come across as sympathetic and he had noticed. Now all I had to do was try to make it believable. Someday, maybe even sincere.

The clinics on the island are run very differently from those in the states, I decided. I had not visited them first-hand, but the way he explained it, I supposed they worked quite well for the people in his charge.

"I sure wouldn't mind if you brought some more of these cigars though. If you want."

"I'll see what I can do, Kyle Calloway."

Shortly after that, he dumped our spent cigar butts into the metal container he kept in the closet and climbed into the dune buggy with my basket of wash. I waved as he backed out over the mounds of sand that the storm had piled there. He headed up the beach toward Holetown and the clients he would stop to see on the way. I had never met any of his other patients, of course, but in a strange sort of way I thought of them as kindred spirits.

I gathered the arm canes and pulled myself to my feet. I was tired and achy and had been that way all day. I knew why. During the storm and afterward and reviewing the whole experience in my head, I had not done any leg exercises, and I could tell.

As I clumped inside the cabin and secured the screen door behind me, the outward thrust of my right ankle moved stubbornly toward contracture. I needed to get back to the exercises soon or suffer the consequences.

I sighed and went over to sit down on the bed. All the life seemed to have drained out of me. I felt lonely and worthless and at odds with the world around me. Maybe a year in Barbados hadn't been such a good idea after all …

Since that day, things on this side of the island have returned to normal … whatever the hell that is.

Sometimes I wonder if there is some degree of 'normal' that I might return to also …

Probably not.

85