Adrift on St. John (26 page)

Carefully, he steered the truck around a hapless couple wading across the street, trying to reach the protection of the next building’s eaves.

Both figures wore thin plastic ponchos, the kind sold by the local trinket shops. The vendors had done a brisk business in disposable raincoats over the previous twenty-four
hours. This storm was predicted to last a couple of days, and few tourists brought rain gear with them to the Caribbean.

Inside the truck’s front cab, Manto was safe and dry, but not making much money. Even though it had been several hours since his last fare, he had not been overly enthusiastic when this call came in.

On the north side of town, he pulled over onto a wide shoulder next to the national park’s welcome center. Gulping, he ran a trembling hand over the receding hairline of closely cropped hair scattered across his scalp’s dark skin. Then, he leaned across the wide bench seat to the glove compartment. With the push of his thumb, he released the latch and reached into the bin. Next to a plastic jug of candies, he found a small paper bag.

The rain blurred the windshield as Manto pulled out a bottle of rum, unscrewed the lid, and tipped the bottle to his lips. He shook his head back and forth as the liquid burned down his throat.

“S’okay, Bessie,”
Manto said soothingly to the truck’s dashboard,
“we’ll be in ’n out ’fore you know it.”

His resolve strengthened, he screwed the lid back on the bottle and returned it to the glove compartment.

He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew the driver needed the convincing much more than the vehicle did.

Manto shifted the truck into gear and angled it up the hill toward the brown and white wooden sign marking the national park’s entrance. The truck’s windshield wipers slapped back and forth at maximum speed, its souped-up engine chugging easily over the crest.

As Manto approached the first narrow turn into the dense woods, his thick lips began to roll inward toward his gums. He kept his face pointed directly over the rim of the steering wheel, trying to keep the area beyond the curved stone gutters that lined the edges of the road out of his line of sight.

Even without looking, he could feel the presence of the spirits that lurked in the trees. He sucked nervously on the
inner meat of his cheeks, certain that he was under the ghostly surveillance of countless spying eyes.

Manto thought of himself as a practical, rational man. He didn’t put much stock in the island’s local superstitions—most days.

But every November, when the old timers pulled out their stories of the 1733 Slave Revolt, he found himself giving the ghosts a little more credence—this year more so than usual. Not in Manto’s long memory had the tales been as vivid as those that had been recounted in the last few weeks.

The details of the rebellion, of course, he knew by heart. They had been seared into his consciousness at an early age—along with that of every other school-age child on St. John.

Every so often, however, a new tidbit of information emerged from some far-off archive, illuminating another aspect of that dark, tortuous time. The Amina Slave Princess was apparently just that sort of discovery, or so he had heard from one of the drivers at the picnic tables in the Trunk Bay parking lot. While her tale was a recent addition to the rebellion folklore, it had quickly captured the local imagination.

The Princess’s tragic story was haunting enough all by itself, Manto thought with a shiver. But in recent days, several drivers had begun reporting actual sightings of the Princess’s ghost. This wasn’t just the typical idle speculation generated by an errant cool breeze on an otherwise hot and stifling day; it was something more concrete than an odd, unsourced sound in the woods—each of the men claimed to have seen the humanized embodiment of the Princess’s spirit.

Numerous supernatural beings were believed to populate the island. Even Manto’s skeptical mind allowed for that. The undeveloped stretches of the north shore as well as Ram Head, along the southeastern rim, were heavily trafficked by those of the metaphysical world. But of all these beings, no ghosts were more feared, their presence more dreaded, than those of the Amina, the slaves who had rebelled against St. John’s plantation owners and exacted a bloodthirsty revenge.

It was enough to get under anyone’s skin, Manto told himself with a second headshake as the truck continued farther east along the North Shore Road, navigating like a boat through the pavement’s waterlogged dips and gullies.

The full beam of the headlights barely made a dent in the drenching sheets of rain; the windshield was nothing but a dark blur of wooded browns and greens. Massive mounds of volcanic rock occasionally popped up along the side of the road, the chalky gray stones hazardously coming into view at the last possible moment of evasion.

Manto felt his pulse rising; he was driving more out of memory than sight. He gripped the wheel, cursing the phone call that had brought him out into this treacherous night.

He had been in the break room, chatting with the housemaids, when the resort’s concierge found him. A guest had called in from a cell phone, requesting the pickup. The group had been out on the trails all day, apparently hiking through the rain, and had lost track of time. The five stranded tourists were supposed to be waiting at the Cinnamon Bay parking lot, about a fifteen minutes’ drive from the national park’s main entrance—more like twenty-five under these weather conditions.

Manto would have declined the job, but he knew no other driver would dare make the attempt. The truck taxis that plowed up and down the North Shore Road during the daytime hours had long since vacated the park. Few would venture into the forest after sunset.

None of them, save Manto, would be caught dead out here on a night like this.

Manto slowed the truck to a crawl as he came around the last corner before the parking lot’s turn-in. The truck’s heavy treaded tires squealed against the pavement. He drew in his breath; his face skewed with concentration.

“Keep it togetha, man,”
he muttered to himself, desperately
trying to prevent his panicked nerves from overcorrecting the steering wheel.

He sighed with relief as the truck taxi rolled to a stop inside the parking lot’s empty U-bend. He tapped the horn lightly and waited.

The rain beat down against the truck’s flat metal roof, a deafening sound that played tricks with the mind. Manto took another sip of rum from the glove compartment as he anxiously scanned the deep wet forest surrounding the lot.

Several times, he thought he heard footsteps approaching, and he braced himself for the expected knock on his window. But after fifteen long and fearful minutes, his passengers had failed to appear.

At long last, Manto had had enough. There was no one out here; the call had been a prank. He had been a fool to come.

Somewhere on the other side of the island, he thought with chagrin, someone was having a good laugh at his expense. Grumbling bitterly, he started the engine and shifted the truck into drive.

Manto reached for the radio’s walkie-talkie as he steered the truck back onto the North Shore Road. He pressed a button on the side of the handheld receiver, the cranky grouse of his voice barely audible over the rain’s ceaseless drumbeat.

“…Thees here’s Manto. There’s no won at Cinn’mon Bay. I’m leavn’ dis gud-forseken pless…”

His voice caught in his throat as a human figure dashed across the road in front of the truck.

“What een thuh…”

He blinked his eyes, furiously focusing on the flooding black tarmac. It had happened so quickly, he wasn’t sure what he had seen.

“Eye gut yu now!”
he exclaimed as a woman’s soaking form suddenly ducked into a bank of trees near the parking lot.

He stared at the greenery where the woman had disappeared.
Despite his confident shout, a shiver of apprehension was working its way down his spine.

It had to have been one of the tourists he’d been sent to collect—no one else would be out in this weather.

But why would a tourist run from his truck?

If she wasn’t a tourist…he refused to think it.

For a few seconds, Manto’s eyes remained glued to the side of the road, searching the forest for another glimpse of the fleeing figure. Then he swung his head forward, shifting his vision back to the front windshield—but he had left it a moment too late.

During his brief distraction, the truck had veered into the right hand lane. The right front wheel dipped into the trough of the road’s curbed gutter, tipping the truck sideways.

Deftly, he cranked the steering wheel to the left. He could feel the back wheels skidding across the frictionless, water-slicked surface, even as the truck’s front end remained lodged in the gutter. A mounded clump of wet leaves lodged beneath the gutter-trapped wheel, preventing the rubber from gaining traction.

“Oh, no yu don’t,”
Manto reprimanded the truck. He stamped on the brakes, fervently hoping to stop its rotation.
“We’re nut gettin’ stuck out here. Nut wid that ghost, we’re nut!”

After a stomach-tossing swerve, the truck rocked to a screeching halt.

Manto touched his fingers to his lips and then pressed them against the roof of the cab. The vehicle was positioned at a forty-five-degree angle facing into the gutter, but three-fourths of its length was still on the road—that, he thought gratefully, was a blessing.

He would back it out, nice and easy. Simple as that. He didn’t know what he had just seen, but he had no desire to investigate further.

“Cum on, Bessie,”
Manto pleaded. Eyes focused on the side mirror to ensure he didn’t overshoot the gutter on the
road’s opposite side, he straightened the steering wheel and pressed his foot down lightly on the gas pedal.

Just as the front wheel found the rocky surface beneath the leaves, the ghostly figure streaked across the reflection in the mirror. Manto cringed at the sight; instinctively, his foot stomped on the gas.

The truck lurched backward, the burst of speed taking its back wheels into and over the left-hand gutter.

Manto punched the brakes, but he had already run out of road. He braced himself as the rear taillights illuminated the stone and mortar columns that marked the boundaries of the Cinnamon Bay plantation ruins scattered across the woods behind the careening truck.

A moment later, a jarring
crunch
reverberated through the cab. The truck came once more to a jarring halt, this time its momentum absorbed by the back bumper as it collided with the nearest stone column.

Manto heard the hiss of a puncture, accompanied by a slow dip in the truck’s left rear corner. He reached once more for the bottle of rum. This time, he took a long deep swallow.

Grimacing, Manto picked up the dangling radio receiver from where he had dropped it during the skid. His fingers shook as he changed the dial to a different channel.

“Char-lee
…
”
his shaken voice called weakly into the receiver.

There was no response. Terrified tears streaked down his face as he repeated the name.
“Char-lee, Char-lee…”

A grumbling static finally responded, “Manto, is that you?”

Manto collapsed in relief against the back of his seat.

“Charlie, mon, you gut to cum git me. Eye’ve gut a flat. Eye’ve…Eye’ve run off thuh road.”

“You ran off the road?” Charlie’s sputtering voice replied immediately. “What in the heck are you doing out in this weather? Manto, where are you?”

Manto’s face beamed a relaxed smile as he heard the
clack of Charlie’s keys in the background of the transmission. He flashed the windshield wipers for a second confirmatory look at the brown and white national park sign that marked the entrance to the parking lot where his troubles had begun.

“Eye’m jus’ past the entrance to thuh Cin’mon Bay parking lot by thuh sugar mill ruins.”
Licking his lips, Manto glanced at the stone column in his rearview mirror.
“Vaarey close to thuh ruins,”
he added, a note of grim humor in his voice.

“Okay, stay where you are,” Charlie replied grumpily. “Don’t move. I’m leaving right now.”

Manto sighed happily into the receiver.
“Charlie, mon, you’re thuh bes…”
But he stopped short as the woman’s image flashed once more across his side mirror.

“Noooo…”
he moaned in dismay.

Her clothes were plastered to her skin; she was soaked through from the rain. She wore a sleeveless beaded vest and a soggy sarong. Manto couldn’t quite make out her face, but she had a distinctive mop of dark curly hair with ringlets that fell to her slim shoulders. Around her neck hung a silver amulet, whose circular tooled surface glinted in the beam of the remaining taillight. She seemed a bit pale, but otherwise, the description matched that of the previously reported sightings.

It had to be—the Slave Princess.

“Manto?” Charlie broke through the sudden radio silence, his voice registering concern.

“Eye’m seeing a…
” Manto replied. He felt lightheaded, as if he might pass out at any moment.

Then his eyes narrowed and focused in on the item the Princess held in her right hand. It was a long wooden spear with a multipronged attachment at its end.

“You’re seeing a what?” Charlie yelled through the radio. “Manto, what is it?!”

“That wo-man stole my rake,”
Manto spat with disgust.
“Charlie, yu’d betta cum git me,”
he added hastily. Then
he dropped the receiver, leaving it dangling from the steering wheel.

Manto’s forehead crinkled with a mixture of consternation and confusion as he crammed a baseball cap onto his head, grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment, and wrenched open the driver’s-side door.

He was rapidly drenched from head to foot. His sandals slid in the mud and wet leaves as he flicked on the flashlight and aimed it toward the ruins at the edge of the road. Through the sheets of rain, he could just make out a network of evenly spaced stone columns, one of which was flush with the truck’s dented back bumper.