Home by Another Way (4 page)

We were headed west and south out of the harbor and into the sea. After a few minutes, there was nothing at all to the west except water. On the right there was the headland of the southernmost tip of St. Catherine. By the time we passed the headlands, the sun was gone, gone to spend the night with the other side of the world.

Eventually we got out around the headland and then turned south and then east to hook our way into the bay at Bluewater Beach on St. Cecilia. There was this moment when we could no longer see the lights of St. Catherine, and the angle of the boat made it impossible to see the lights of St. Cecilia.

I had thought the whole trip would just take a few minutes, as it is only two and a half miles or so. But it took almost an hour because of the strength of the current in the straits. The Atlantic has been running hard and unimpeded by land since Africa, and it pours
through the gaps between these small islands with a considerable amount of speed. We were crossing the straits at a perpendicular angle, and the current fought us the whole way. We were trying to get to St. Cecilia, and the sea was pushing us toward the coast of Mexico as hard as it could.

Finally we could see it: Bluewater Bay and the lights that line its shore. We could just make out the shape of the hill that ran up and away from the beach and the lights from the bungalows scattered up the hillside. The hill is called Windbreak, and under one of those lights was Seastone, the bungalow that was to be home to us for a time. The rest of St. Cecilia was hidden in the dark. In an hour our world had been reduced to one boat, one beach, one hill, and a string of lights scattered along it.

In that hour it was as though one world went away and another world came into view. And time changed at the same time. We went from Central Standard Time to Eastern Standard Time to Atlantic Standard Time while
we were on the airplanes all day. But by the time we got to St. Cecilia, somewhere between the ride through the streets with Daisy and the ride on the water with Captain Christmas, we had gone to island time.

Water taxi is a relative term, I think. Most of them are actually deep-sea fishing boats. I have not been on one to go fishing, of course, but I know a fishing boat when I see one.

I gave up fishing when I was eleven. After my grandfather took my brother and me out one day, I discovered that if, in fact, you catch a fish—which can take nearly all day—then you have to grab the thing to take it off the hook. That was when I discovered fish have scales and teeth, and they bleed some, too, while being removed from the hook. They stare at you the whole time you are trying to take the thing out of their mouth that was used to trick them into being your supper. I
have heard rumors that before you cook them and eat them, they have to be cleaned as well, and the cleaning involves more than soap and water.

If I had realized that I was someday going to visit this part of the world, I might have attempted to overcome my squeamishness and continued fishing. They say that people who love to fish really love to fish here. People fish for the big five in these waters—tuna, wahoo, marlin, dolphin, and sailfish. Which to a fisherman is evidently akin to climbing all the big peaks of the world or playing all the major golf courses in Scotland or going to the World Series or something.

People also say that if you like deep-sea diving, this is a good place too. It is only about ninety feet down to the thermal vents, where water comes up out of the ocean floor at one hundred degrees or so. Which explains why the water is so warm, though it does not explain why anyone would want to go down ninety feet into the ocean to check on it.

You can also windsurf here, and you can snorkel,
and you can sail. You can also just stay on the porch with your binoculars and watch all of these things take place while being glad that you are not grabbing a fish by its gills or being eyeballed by one down near a hole in the ocean floor leading to a thermal vent that connects to the center of the earth.

You can just sit still here. You are on island time.

Other than the pace of the English language, which is used at breakneck speed here, and Tombow, a water-taxi driver who gave us a ride once when we could not get hold of Captain Christmas, one does not encounter
hurry
very often on St. Cecilia.

Tombow is trying to set a speed record for crossing the straits, I think. I do not know if our last trip across with him was a personal best or not, but I do know I was bounced out of my seat about every twenty yards for two miles. I was more than a little afraid that my
luggage or myself or both were about to visit the thermal vents. I suspect Tombow spends a lot of evenings telling stories to his friends about how much fun he had that day bouncing gringos, or whatever the calypso word for gringos is.

Sometimes early in the morning I will hear a boat speeding across the straits toward St. Catherine and beyond to the fishing grounds. I always look to see if it is Tombow or one of the other small boats that make up the fishing fleet on the island.

Tombow may well have been a fisherman before who has decided it is more lucrative and more fun to terrify tourists instead. And perhaps to fish for them when they fall out of his boat.

It could be the heat, of course, that slows everyone and everything down. That is one of the prevailing theories about the fact that life in the southern United States,
where Sara and I live, is slower than life in New York City or in Chicago. Centuries of moving slowly to avoid wilting in the humidity of a Mississippi June or an Alabama July or a Tennessee August may have affected our collective genetic makeup in some deep way. It could have happened here too, as warm as it is.

There are three seasons here. The two long ones—high season and low season—are named for the times when there are many visitors and when there are not as many. The third one is hurricane season, named for the time when the storms come howling across the Atlantic from the east. The storms operate on their own calendar, of course, which makes us feel right at home.

Generally speaking, though, there is only one sort of weather here—warm and sunny with occasional interruptions of rain. There is a saying in St. Cecilia that the weather is ideal for cricket 340 days a year; the other 25 days are reserved for rainstorms.

Just as there is only one sort of weather, there is only one pace. It is a pace that is perfectly suited to life
on the island. Island time is the proper pace for life in such a climate.

On island time, most things go slow. You hardly ever see anyone racing around. The only racing around on St. Cecilia, as near as I can tell, is connected to sports.

There is racing up and down the roads and trails that go up and down the mountain in the center of the island. Some is done by people on foot, and some is done by people on bicycles. If you ask them, they say they are having fun. I do not put much stock in what they say, however. Running and biking fall into the work category, as far as I am concerned, not the leisure category.

We have been told that there is horse racing down at a track on the southeast side of the island. We have seen the track, and we have seen pictures of races. But between the island time and the island calendar, the
races have not ever been held on the days we expected them to be, so we have not actually seen any horse racing.

The other racing sport is the unofficial-yet-fiercely-competed racing the taxi drivers do when a plane is coming into or going out of the island or someone is running late and demanding a quick trip from the driver. Any excuse to drive fast is welcomed by a taxi driver anywhere on earth, from Manhattan to the Leeward Islands.

When adjusting to island time, it helps to keep in mind that the major sport in the islands is cricket. It helps to remind yourself that a single cricket match can go on for days, and no one cares. And every couple of hours or so, the people who are playing and the people who are watching take a tea break. People who take tea breaks in the middle of a sporting event are people who are not in a hurry. The game will continue, but first you have to wait for the crumpets to be passed around.

Waiting is something one has to get used to on St. Cecilia.

We got a craving for nacho-cheese Doritos one afternoon while we were on St. Cecilia. We knew they sold them here; we had devoured a bag by the pool one afternoon the week before. So we got in the car and headed down the hill to Princetown to the supermarket.

After a few minutes of looking through all the bags of chips that were on the shelves and having no luck, we finally went and asked a cashier.

“Come back on Tuesday,” said a nice woman with a nice smile. It was the smile she reserves for newcomers who do not understand how the island works.

“Tuesday?”

“Yes, the ship comes in on Tuesday.”

There was a brief moment while I wondered whether or not the Doritos people had their own fleet.

“The supply ship comes on Tuesday,” she said.

“But today is Wednesday,” I said, hoping that my
incredulity at having to wait a week for nacho-cheese Doritos was not too apparent.

“Yes,” she said, ending the conversation. So we went home to wait for the ship to come in.