Marcia Talley - Without a Grave

I was nearing the end of the script.

‘Clearing up now, is there anyone with any unfinished business for the Net this morning?’ I removed my thumb from the talk button and waited, holding my breath, listening to white noise, counting one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, before rushing on with the rest of Pattie’s script.

‘Thank you for taking the time to listen. We hope that you enjoyed yourselves. Now please feel free to join our tradition of using this channel as a kind of spare calling channel, so that 16 can be used for hailing, distress and safety as intended by law. Remember to switch to another channel for your conversations and listen first. In Abaco we never switch to 22, 70, 72, 77, or 80. And 06 is reserved for taxis. Please respect these channel reservations. Don’t forget to switch back to low power when calling nearby, and if there is nothing further…?’ I paused, hoping I’d be done for the day. ‘The Cruisers’ Net is clear!’

With blood still pumping hotly through my temples, I rested my head against the back of the chair and let my breath out slowly through my lips.

‘Hard work, huh?’ Paul commented from behind me. He rested his hands on my shoulders and began massaging the tension out of my muscles with his thumbs.

I leaned into him. ‘Wait until I get my hands on Pattie.’

‘I thought she said that anchoring the Net would be a piece of cake.’

‘She did, my love. But she neglected to mention it’d be devil’s food.’

THE OLD SETTLEMENT OF NORMAN’S CASTLE… IN DAYS GONE BY… WAS A BUSY LOGGING CAMP, BUT IT WAS ABANDONED IN 1929. TODAY FEW TRACES OF THE SETTLEMENT OR THE INDUSTRY REMAIN AND THE ONLY INHABITANTS ARE HERDS OF WILD HORSES… The Yachtsman’s Guide To The Bahamas ,1992, p. 235

P ro Bono seemed to enjoy her outing, skipping jauntily over the waves for the three and a half mile journey from Bonefish Cay to Marsh Harbour. I sat near the stern, keeping one eye on the smoke that was rising over Abaco, thick as Los Angeles’ smog. The sun made a valiant effort, but only managed to hang high in the pinkish-gray sky like a pale-yellow dime.

I was excited about volunteering, but worried, too. Everything I knew about wildfires I’d learned from watching CNN, so I fretted about wind shifts, sudden gusts, back drafts, and smoke inhalation. But most of all, I worried about the horses.

It was Chloe who told me they’d been named after constellations. Stallions Achenar, Hadar, Mimosa and Capella; and the mares, Nunki, Acamar, Acamar’s daughter Alnitak, and the princess of the herd, at least in Chloe’s wise, eight-year-old mind, the winsome, blue-eyed pinto, Bellatrix II. Chloe would hate me forever if I let anything happen to Bella.

Paul charted a crazy course through the maze of docks at the Conch Inn Marina, then tied Pro Bono to the floating dock moored in the slip closest to Curly Tails restaurant. As usual, taxicab vans were waiting in the parking lot that served both the restaurant and the Guana Cay ferry landing. We had already charted a course for the van nearest the road when a vehicle pulled in that I recognized. I grabbed Paul’s arm. ‘It’s “Papa Lou.”’

I have no idea who Papa Lou is (was?) but the driver of cab #11, Jeff Key, is a Man-O-War resident, a driver who’d cheerfully rearranged his pickups in order to accommodate our trips to and from the airport, or help schlep my groceries between Abaco Grocery, Price Right and the ferry dock whenever I made a major grocery run.

We were about to inconvenience him even further.

Paul quickened his pace, reaching the van just as Jeff opened the hatch to begin unloading his passengers’ luggage. ‘Hey, Jeff, let me help you with that.’ From all the duffle bags and boxes of provisions the two men hauled out on to the pavement, I guessed the passengers piling out of his cab were about to meet up with the sailboat they’d chartered.

‘Where to?’ Jeff asked us as the cruisers trundled away with a pyramid of luggage and groceries piled precariously in one of the marina wheelbarrows.

‘Heard about the wildfires?’ I asked.

‘Did. Sounds serious. Usually the caretakers can handle it, but the weather’s been so dry.’ He sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Must be bad if they’re asking for volunteers.’

Something had been bothering me ever since Mimi’s early morning Mayday; I figured Jeff, as a native, might know the answer. ‘Where’s the Treasure Cay fire department while all this is going on?’

Jeff slammed the hatch shut. ‘They rely on volunteers, too. They’ve got one pumper truck, but they still don’t have a tanker, so unless the fire’s near the sea or a blue hole, not much point. Besides, if Colin’s got everyone out in the boonies fighting a brush fire, who will respond in a real emergency where property and lives are in jeopardy?’

‘Seems to me that saving the eight most endangered horses on the planet constitutes a real emergency, don’t you?’

‘There’s many who would agree with you, Hannah, including me.’ Jeff waved an arm toward the passenger door, still yawning open. ‘Want me to take you up there?’

I tossed the canvas bag carrying our machetes on to the floor of the van and climbed in. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

Jeff’s cab was immaculate, smelling like fresh-peeled oranges. He drove east along the familiar road that skirted the Marsh Harbour business district, turned left at the one and only traffic light in all of the Abacos, then carried on out the S.C. Boodle Highway in the direction of Treasure Cay. After driving for what seemed like hours, we left the main road and turned on to a dirt track surrounded by pines, tall and straight as telephone poles. From my spot in the back seat, I gripped the ‘Help me, Jesus’ bar with both hands as we porpoised over the road, bouncing and dipping over teeth-jarring potholes so numerous they were impossible to avoid. After this trip, I figured we’d owe Jeff more than cab fare; we might have to pony up for new shock absorbers, too.

I hadn’t expected an upmarket horse farm like Middleburg, Virginia, of course, but Mimi’s base, when we reached it, was still a surprise. Carved out of a clearing in the middle of four thousand acres of pine at the end of an old logging road, it more closely resembled a rough-and-ready cattle station in the Australian outback. Instead of parched clay pan desert, however, the camp was dense with palm, briar, poisonwood and Brazilian pepper, luxuriously leafy, lush and rainforest green. Steam rose from the forest floor. No, not steam, I corrected. Smoke. Smoke hazed the air, obscuring the forest canopy and any glimpse we might have had of the sky.

Jeff pulled in next to an outbuilding, one of three shipping containers Mimi used for storage and staff accommodations, and braked hard. Through my window I noticed an oversized dog pen where Mimi housed her rescued dogs. I recognized one of the animals from Buck-a-Book – Bianca, a laid-back potcake with more than a little bit of white lab somewhere in her family tree. ‘Why is there a solar panel in the middle of the dog pen?’ I asked Jeff as I stepped out of the cab.

Jeff slid the passenger door closed behind me. ‘Would you steal a couple of solar panels with those fellas on guard?’ He pointed to the dogs.

Solar panels. Another hard-to-get item. Silly me to overlook the obvious. ‘Uh, I guess not.’

Seeing us approach, the dogs set to barking like crazy until they were shushed in rapid Creole by a Haitian dressed in a white T-shirt and torn jeans, carrying a blue, five-gallon water jug.

‘Bi-lingual dogs,’ Jeff commented in an aside before turning to wave at the Haitian. ‘Hello, Jean! We’re here to help. Where’s Mimi?’