Marcia Talley - Without a Grave

Yet Daniel always seemed happy. Perhaps his faith kept him going. He certainly carried that Bible with him everywhere. One day at lunchtime I’d come upon him sitting on the porch of the bunkhouse, reading it aloud: Seyè a se gadò mwen, mwen p’ap janm manke anyen . I’d majored in French at Oberlin, so I picked up the gist of it: the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . From Daniel’s lips, the Psalms of David. I had hurried away before he noticed the tears in my eyes.

‘Votre famille va bien, Daniel?’ I asked as I joined him aboard Pro Bono .

‘Tre byen,’ he answered in Creole.

I cranked the engine to life, and before long, Daniel and I were racing back across the harbor in Pro Bono , the wind tearing at our shirts.

‘Quel beau jour!’ I shouted in French over the roar of the engine.

‘Bel jou, bel jou,’ he agreed.

At Windswept Daniel swung his Igloo up on the dock, climbed the ladder with the rope in his hand, looped it around a piling in a neat half hitch, then waited for me to climb the ladder, too. Then he picked up his Igloo and headed in the direction of the tool shed where he kept the machete, rakes, and shovels with which he held the tropical vegetation at bay. Daniel didn’t need any instruction from me. He’d been working steadily at Windswept for over a year.

I found Paul in the dining room tucking into a bowl of generic cornflakes. The VHF radio was on and tuned to Channel 68. It sputtered to life every minute or so as cruisers and local businesses called in to request spots on the Net. I toasted a slice of coconut bread, slathered it with butter, then sat down next to my husband to listen.

‘Good morning, Abaco! This is the Abaco Cruisers’ Net, on the air every day at this time to keep you informed with weather, news and local events. This is Jim Thomas aboard Knot on Call broadcasting from our peaceful anchorage in Marsh Harbour.’

‘Where’s Pattie?’ I pouted, disappointed that the regular anchor, Pattie Toler, wasn’t moderating the Net that day. VHF radios are like glorified walkie-talkies: you can pick a channel, but only one person can talk at a time. And everyone tuned in to that channel can hear everyone else, like an old-fashioned party line. Pattie, who invented the whole Net idea back in the mid-1980s, famously kept everyone organized, and was a natural-born comedienne, too.

‘Pattie’s dealing with potcakes,’ Paul told me.

I’d enjoyed many Bahamian dishes during our time in the islands – like boil fish and souse and Johnny cake and guava duff – but I’d never heard of a potcake. ‘What’s a potcake?’

‘It’s a dog,’ Paul explained. ‘A mongrel. A mutt. Heinz 57. Some creep abandoned a couple of potcake puppies behind the Buck-a-Book trailer a couple of weeks ago. In an incredible downpour, too. Pattie’s delivering them to adoptive homes in Ft Lauderdale.’

Poor potcake puppies. Did everyone have a hard-knock life in the islands?

‘Someone figured Mimi would take care of them,’ I said. Mimi Rehor’s passion was the wild horses of Abaco. The Buck-a-Book used bookstore – a dollar a book – helped to support that effort. But she took in stray dogs, too.

‘Gentle to moderate breezes, southeast to southwest at five to ten knots. Scattered clouds. High 86, low 72. Same for tomorrow. And the day after that. But what else is new? It’s July in the Abacos.’

When Jim moved on to the ocean passage reports, Latitude Adjustment called in from the Whale where the waves could be high and the going pretty tough if the wind and the tide were against you. But there were no worries that day at the Whale. ‘Flat calm,’ the caller reported. ‘You could waterski through there.’

‘Guitarist Clint Sawyer at Curly Tails on Friday night,’ Jim announced, continuing with local events. ‘Come hear the “Music Man” and watch the sun go down.

‘Steak BBQ at the Jib Room on Saturday. Music and dancing to follow.

‘Sunday pig roast at Nippers Beach Bar and Grill, starting at 12:30!

‘Nightlife as usual in the Abacos.’

I had moved away from the table and was busying myself with the breakfast dishes when an announcement on the Net caught my attention.

‘Here’s your invitation to an arts and crafts show and wine tasting this coming Saturday at Island Designs in Marsh Harbour. Starting at two thirty it continues till – well, until you’re done. Wine is provided courtesy of Brenda Claridge at Tupps, and Cassandra from the Cruise Inn and Conch Out is cooking up a storm, so bring along your appetites. You’ll find Island Designs near the turn-off to the Abaco Beach Resort, just down the road from Ziggy’s. No tickets required, just show up. US dollars, Bahamian dollars, or max out your credit cards. Be there or be square.’

Paul read my mind. ‘That sounds like fun, Hannah. Want to go?’

I shook out the dish towel and draped it over the oven door handle to dry. ‘You bet.’ The last event I’d attended in Marsh Harbour was a session at the Anglican Parish Hall on the predatory lionfish. It concluded (unexpectedly, at least for me) with a lesson on how to cook the critter without getting stung by its poisonous spines. Too much information, to my way of thinking.

‘A rubber dinghy lost somewhere between Hope Town and Matt Lowe’s Cay.

‘A boat seat cushion found floating at the entrance to Marsh Harbour.’

And the Net, for that day, was done.

Paul gathered up his papers and his laptop and headed off to the porch while I checked the water level in the cistern, the 30,000 gallon concrete tank that was under the front porch. This involved getting down on my hands and knees, lifting the two-by-two-foot hatch and peering into the dark, drippy depths where water bugs the size of mice were likely to play. Nearly full. So I washed a load of laundry and hung it out in the orchard to dry.

While Paul worked, I spent the rest of the day lying in the hammock reading and feeling guilty. But not very. I’d had a bit of a hard-knock life, too. I gazed over the top of my book, past my bare toes and beyond to the porch railing where a curly tail crouched, puffing up his red throat to attract the attention of some invisible lady lizard. In the front yard, Daniel was raking, drawing lines and gentle swirls in the sand, like a Zen garden. It was therapeutic just to watch him. Past Daniel was the beach, and beyond it, the vast turquoise expanse of the sea.

Yes, I thought, after all you’ve been through, you deserve a little time in paradise, Hannah.

HOW CHEERFULLY HE SEEMS TO GRIN,HOW NEATLY SPREADS HIS CLAWS,AND WELCOMES LITTLE FISHES INWITH GENTLY SMILING JAWS!Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures inWonderland , 1865

Saturday dawned sunny and warm, but the wind was piping up. With my morning coffee in hand, I stood on the porch and stared out at the white caps that were chasing from one shoreline to the other across the Sea of Abaco.

‘That’s a pretty good chop,’ Paul said behind me. ‘I don’t think we’ll be taking Pro Bono over to Marsh Harbour today.’

I agreed. The thought of powering an eighteen-foot outboard into the teeth of the wind, slamming into the waves – thwack, thwack, thwack – taking spray across the bow until water was ankle deep in the cockpit, made me shudder.

At eleven fifteen, Paul tuned to Channel 68 and hailed the ferry. We waited for the boat as usual at the end of Windswept’s dock.

The Donnie X was bang on time, with Brent Albury at the wheel. We watched, marveling, as Brent reversed engines and backed the big vessel slowly up to the dock where it idled, gently kissing the pilings. We hopped aboard.