Chapter FourHannah drives me home at 8 in the morning on her way to work. I’ve become completely incomprehensible, largely due to the fact that I’ve been pouring booze down my throat and shoveling coke up my nose at an alarming rate for the past 9 or 10 hours now. I passed out for a couple of hours at her house after an aborted attempt at sex. She says she understands after I tell her about what happened at Sky High, but I’m betting that I won’t get to fuck up with her again if I want this to end well. My mom is cooking breakfast and yelling at my Stepdad to get ready to drive her to work as I stumble in the door. 30 seconds later, after a halfhearted attempt at a greeting, I’m face down in the couch, dead to the world.
I wake up around 1 in the afternoon to a dog’s tongue studiously lapping at my forehead.
“Unngh…Odie, get OFF of me!”
The dog complies. I sit up and look around. My head is definitely still very fuzzy, but considering the abuse I subjected my liver to the night before, I feel surprisingly good. No one is home, so I help myself to the bacon in the fridge, toast an English muffin, and hop in the shower. Freshly scrubbed and shaved, and outfitted in my finest tank-top and ratty cargo shorts, I’m ready to face the day. What’s left of it, anyway. I pick up the phone and punch in a phone number from the depths of my memory. IT rings a few times, then someone picks up. One of the strangest and most unmistakable accents in the world is that of the White Boy with Stateside parentage who was born and raised in the Islands. Not quite the same as the Calypso dialect spoken by the West Indians, not quite the same as the Frenchies (who are the descendants of the original white French settlers of St. Thomas), and nothing like any other form of white-boy speak you’ve ever heard. This is what greets me over the phone, and what confirms that the number I dredged up out of long gone times is still valid, and the dwelling on the other end is still inhabited by the correct occupant.
“Hello?”
“Devin! What’s up, dawg?” “Who dis?”
“It’s Justin, bro.”
“Justin? Justin who?”
“Uhh, Justin from Maine…Justin that’s been best friends with you since we were born…Justin that you haven’t seen or talked to in 9 years…”
“Oh, SHIT!! Bro, how are you? Y’arright? Man, I’na talk to you in YEARS, bro!”
“ For real, dawg. It’s good to hear your voice, man. It’s been WAY too long. Listen, what are you doing today?”
“Y’on island, aren’t you? You muddascunt, don’ go nowhere! Don’ move from dat spot, I go be right ovah! Y’at ya mudda house, right?”
“Yup. Same place. Hull Bay Road.”
“I go be dere in 10 minutes, d’man. Holy shit, bro. Tim know you here yet?”
“Nah, I don’t know how to get ahold of him.”
“He go shit heself, m’sun! I ain’t go tell him. We go surprise him, no, I tell you, bro, he go fall right ovah like Jah strike ‘im dead.”
“A’ight, man. I’ll see you in ten. Bring road sodas.”
He pulls up in a no-frills Toyota pickup truck about 15 minutes later. After much hugging and back-slapping, I hop in and we head off. We stop by one of the local radio stations so he can drop off this week’s edition of his show to the program director, then we head out towards the East End.
“Where we headed?”
“We ga’ go by muh boy house. Ga’ pick up some ganja, bro. He live just past Havensight, almost to Limetree. He ga’ a ounce waitin’ fuh me. Some good shit, too. You go be all fuck up aftah dis, m’sun.”
“Sounds good. We should stop in Havensight so I can pick up a disposable camera or two. And some sunglasses, since I seem to have left mine in Maine.”
“Yeah, yeah. Ain’t no ting.”
We pull up to a house up in the hills overlooking Yacht Haven and Frenchman’s Reef. As we walk up to the door, a voice calls out.
“Come on in! I’m on the back deck!”
We walk through the living room and through the sliding glass door to the back deck, where there are both a pool and a hot tub. This is nice digs.
“Devin! J!”
It’s Jake, the bartender from the Old Mill.
“You been here one day an’ already you know everyone?”
“Yeah, he was tending bar at the Old Mill last night. Him and Cuz are tight boys, so he took care of me quite properly.”
We head towards the pool. Jake climbs out and dries off enough to make sure he won’t get water on the huge-ass spliff that he’s about to light. We puff and shoot the shit for a while. Devin takes the pot, Jake takes the money, and Devin and I head out.
“So wha’ ya wan’ do now?”
“I dunno, man. I’d be perfectly happy to just drive around the island, but I’m sure that’s not your idea of fun…I know…let’s go out to Magens Point, man. I haven’t been out there since I got back, and that was pretty much ground zero for our crowd when I was here last.”
“Yeah, we co’ do dat. I ga’ warn you though, bro, da’ place ain’t like it was before. Change big-up, d’man. The very end of the point still good, but they fuck-up everything out to about a half mile from the end.”
“Yeah, I could see the new houses from my Mom’s porch. Still, it’s a special place for me, man. More so than anywhere else on the island, or maybe anywhere else on the planet, for that matter.”
“Nah, man, I ain’t mean we can’t go. Just don’ want it to be a surprise, das’ all.”
“Nah, it’s cool.”
Turns out, it’s not cool. What I see when we get to the end of the point almost makes me cry. This is a piece of land that should have been protected, not defiled. There are new McMansions crowding to within a half-mile of the end of the point, and a road has been cut in to within a quarter-mile of the end of the point. Devin tells me that the lots along the end of the road have already been bought up, and it’s just a matter of time before they are developed too. When I look down over the edge of the rocks, I can see the usually crystal-clear blue water of Magens Bay have turned a cloudy bluish-brown color, fading to almost completely brown right up against the shore. There have been heavy rains lately, and with all the vegetation cleared to make room for the houses, there’s nothing to stop the runoff from choking the bay. I look out past the end of the point. I can see the deep blue Atlantic Ocean. I can see Inner Brass and Outer Brass, Hans Lollick, Thatch Cay, Frenchmans Cay, Jost Van Dyke, and countless smaller unnamed rocks and cays. I am standing at what is basically the end of the world, at this latitude. Jump in and swim east from here and you’ll wash up in the Canary Islands. This is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on Planet Earth. I turn back around.
What I see is our end. It is the result of unmitigated capitalism combined with unregulated development. Palms get greased, backs get scratched, and an environmental and social catastrophe unparalleled in the American Hegemony is allowed to go on unchecked. My sole small comfort is the certainty that the rest of Fat City will follow suit soon enough. I make a mental note to myself to plan for fomenting a native insurrection on St. Thomas within the next ten years, and get down to the business at hand, which is sitting on the rocks at the end of the point, smoking lots of joints with my best friend that I am seeing for the first time in 9 years, and trying to forget about the view behind me.
The sun sets over the other side of the bay, setting the hills of paradise ablaze in orange and purple, and making the sea burn an angry red, as if bemoaning its fate. As the thumb-thick spliff burns down to a stubby roach, I savor what turns out to be the last moment of peace and relaxation that I am to find in the islands.
Tomorrow’s sunset will ignite a fire that is neither lyrical nor metaphorical in nature, and which will not stop burning when the sky goes dark.
Chapter 5
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