Page 94 of Troubles in Paradise
Margaret, Rhonda, and Linda go back down to the studio basement.
Margaret traces the storm on her laptop. It’s coming. She hears the wind screaming like a woman in labor (it must be the situation with Dougie’s wife that puts this image in her mind). Then the lights flicker, and the power goes out; the studio’s generator comes on, but the lights in the basement are low and there’s no longer any air-conditioning. Things outside the studio crash, smash, shatter. Margaret can’t see what’s making the noise because the windows are shuttered.Dear Lord,she thinks,please don’t let the windows break. Don’t let the roof blow off. Don’t let the place flood. Please don’t let anyone die.But as the minutes pass and then the hours, as the wind gets so loud that Margaret can’t hear her own voice praying, as her cell signal cuts out, as she lies on her back unable to even read the book she brought, she marvels at how profound the weather is, how mighty, how inexplicable and unpredictable.
Life on these islands is changing right now, right this second, she thinks. Maybe forever.
St. John
After Inga left us—as definitively as someone leaving a room and slamming the door behind her—we picked up our heads and looked around.
Let’s start with Cruz Bay, our “downtown.” It was…ruined.Wharfside Village lost its roof; the Beach Bar’s dance floor was buried under two-foot drifts of sand; the palm trees along Frank Bay were snapped in half, reminding us of gruesomely broken bones. Someone’s boat,Nell,landed upside down on the deck of High Tide, where so many of us had enjoyed rum punches during happy hour. The Lumberyard building—home to the Barefoot Cowboy, Driftwood Dave’s, the barbershop, and Jake’s—looked like the proverbial cake that someone had left out in the rain; the building simply caved in on itself. Homes were violently torn apart, their contents thrown out into the yard, the street. Who could tell what had been a ceiling or a wall or a bathroom door? There was plaster, glass, metal in heaps and piles everywhere. It looked like a bomb had detonated; the damage was…atomic, nuclear.
Word started rolling in from the North Shore Road, Chocolate Hole, Gifft Hill. One family of six survived by hiding in their laundry room. One man crouched behind a table on its side for three hours as the sliding glass door across the room bowed in and out as though it were breathing. Multiple witnesses saw telephone poles flying through the air like missiles. Cars were flipped. A couch ended up in the neighbor’s front yard; a refrigerator ended up in the bedroom; a hot-tub cover was caught in the high branches of a tree.
What about beyond the stone gates at Caneel Bay? This was, perhaps, what most took us by surprise. The genteel, elegant resort had been ravaged—roofs ripped off, trees uprooted, buildings flooded and filled with sand, the entire place simply annihilated.
The Centerline Road was impassable due to downed trees. The hillside between Maho and Leicester Bays looked like a winter landscape; all of the trees were stripped bare, broken, left a burned-looking brown.
Eventually, we heard from our friends on the “other side of the world,” in Coral Bay. Shipwreck Landing, one of our favorite places to order coconut shrimp and listen to live music, had been decimated. Concordia, which had such delicious breakfasts, was blown away. Boats were dashed against the rocks, or they capsized and sank. The carnage in Hurricane Hole turned our stomachs.
Few of us realized that tornadoes are a common phenomenon when a hurricane hits land. The friction between open ocean and hills can cause spin, especially when the feeder bands roll through. The spot on St. John that saw the most tornado activity was the East End because it has elevation and because it’s so exposed. There were thirteen tornadoes recorded on the East End alone. Unlike a hurricane, a tornado’s path is unpredictable. One villa remains untouched while the villa next door is turned into kindling.
The compound belonging to Duncan Huntley was pulverized. When his closest neighbor saw the damage, he said, “It seemed like Inga had a personal vendetta against the place.” A cast-iron planter that must have weighed seventy pounds had smashed through the roof of Dunk’s garage and crushed Dunk’s G-wagon. Every building lost its roof; the 140-inch screen from the home theater ended up in the swimming pool. Nothing was salvageable. The neighbor said that even if Dunk lost his shirt in Vegas, he was still a lucky man. “If he’d stayed in the villa,” the neighbor said, “he’d surely be dead.”
Imagine our relief when, the morning after the hurricane ended, theSinging Dogcame sailing into the harbor. Captains Stephen and Kelly had successfully outrun the storm—and not only that, they had a working satellite radio that allowed many of us to contact our relatives back in the States to let them know we were still alive.
At first, that’s all we could claim: We were upright and breathing.
The satellite radio also brought news that help was coming; the National Guard and the U.S. Navy were on their way.
There was no power, no water. Never mind rebuilding it; just cleaning it all up would require a Herculean effort.
Someone discovered that if you stood on the third-floor balcony of the Dolphin Market building downtown, you could get a very weak cell signal. Hey, it was better than nothing, and before we knew it, that balcony was as crowded as the bar at Skinny Legs after the Eight Tuff Miles race. A line started to form because someone wisely pointed out that the balcony would hold only so much weight and the last thing we wanted was for someone who’d survived the hurricane to plunge to his or her death trying to call Cousin Randy in Baltimore.
The balcony and the line to get to the balcony became the place where we connected not only with the outside world but also with each other. Nestor from Pine Peace Market let everyone know that he would open the store. The owners of the Longboard would cook a community dinner, everyone welcome. There would be stir-fry and Chinese noodles over at 420 to Center.
Someone declared that what he really wanted was Candi’s barbecue—but, alas, Candi’s didn’t survive.
Those who had generators and gas offered assistance to those who didn’t. Other items we needed included chain saws, bottled water, shovels, and insect repellent—because the heavy, still, hot weather that arrived in Inga’s wake brought all the familiar bugs as well as larger, flashier, meaner bugs that looked like they’d escaped from some exotic tropical zoo. Because money had no immediate value, people bartered. Overall, there was a spirit of gratitude and compassion for our fellow islanders, even those we had previously disliked. The hurricane had happened to all of us—West Indian, white, Latinx, Catholic, Episcopalian, evangelical, Cruz Bay, Coral Bay.
Had anyone seen the wild donkeys? Where, oh where, did the donkeys take cover in the storm?
No sooner does the storm clear than someone sees Margaret Quinn herself in a pair of Hunter rain boots and a bright green anorak broadcasting from the Cruz Bay ferry dock. Margaret Quinn! Candice from the St. John Business Center and several others saw Margaret’s broadcast from the night before Inga hit, but the rest of us, of course, were too busy preparing for the storm to casually watch TV. After Margaret Quinn finishes her spiel on the dock—what can she say but that St. John sustained monumental damage that will take a long time to recover from?—she insists on walking over to the Dolphin Market building so she can talk to real people. We see her producer and even the camerawoman trying to dissuade her but Margaret Quinn strides ahead. That’s why we love her, after all; she’s a strong, independent woman who will do what it takes to get to the beating heart of a story.
Margaret sees a couple about her age waiting at the end of the line. The woman—nice-looking with a neat chestnut braid—is handing out what appear to be cookies to the people ahead of her in line.
“Lemongrass sugar cookies,” Margaret overhears her saying. “Homemade.”
This will be her first interview, Margaret decides. A woman who brought homemade cookies to share while she stands in line to maybe get a cell phone signal is someone Margaret would like to meet. “Excuse me,” Margaret says, touching the woman’s elbow.
The couple turn and the woman’s eyes widen. “Why!”
The man says, “Holy smokes. Margaret Quinn!”
The woman holds out the platter. “Would you like one? They’re lemongrass sugar cookies. Homemade.”
“I’d love one,” Margaret says.
Their names are Captain Huck Powers and Irene Steele. Margaret had pegged them for a long-married couple but she’s apparently mistaken. This must be one of these magic relationships—not unlike Margaret and Drake—where people of a certain age find love later in life.
