Adrift on St. John (34 page)

After a few minutes of reflection, Alden looked up from the documents, and a broad smile broke across the previously glum lines of his face.

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Shaking sand and ocean from my hair, I wrapped my towel around my body, gathered up the rest of my gear, and headed back through the Trunk Bay facilities to the exit. The ticket booth attendant was just arriving as I stepped over the chain by the kiosk. She gave me a simple wave as I crossed through to the parking lot.

Pausing to resecure my towel, I noticed the truck-taxi drivers had begun to congregate near the picnic tables. A thermos of coffee was passed around as someone plugged a radio into a truck battery. After a short squawk of feedback and a couple seconds of static, the audio cleared to a broadcast of the latest Constitutional Convention proceedings from a hotel on St. Thomas.

Thinking of the large man from Miami and his misleading memo, I wandered to the edge of the crowd and leaned against the side of the nearest truck, listening to the escalating ruckus emanating from the radio. Frustratingly, Hank Sheridan’s cell phone had gone straight to voice mail every time I’d dialed the number to try to reach him. Perhaps, I mused, he’d gone over to St. Thomas to observe the proceedings in person.

*    *    *

Angry voices spit out of the radio’s cracked and dusty speakers, incongruous against the serenity of the Trunk Bay parking lot. The drafting process had already taken far longer than originally anticipated. The budgeted funds to support the convention were about to run out—and the group was no closer to reaching a consensus on the controversial Native Rights language.

Every so often, a speaker came close enough to the microphone to break through the background noise.

“Only Native Virgin Islanders should be writing this constitution,” a man’s indignant voice shouted. “Only
they
should be eligible to vote for our government. We have been inundated enough with outsiders. This is the only way we will be able to protect our rights to our land, to our beaches—to keep them from being bought up by external interests and walled off from us.

“Native Rights
must
be in the constitution,” he concluded. “That is not negotiable.”

Several agreeing murmurs supported this sentiment, before a younger man’s thin voice objected.

“And how, pray tell, do you purport to define who is a Native Virgin Islander?” he asked plaintively. “We have heard from the lawyers. The language you have given them is not suitable.”

A woman’s voice cut in with a sharp response. “Who is writing this constitution?” she demanded, and then filled in her own reply. “It is the responsibility of the
elected delegates
—not the lawyers.”

A round of cheers almost drowned her out, but she persisted. “We have discussed the definition for many days now. A Native is someone who can trace his or her roots back to the time of acquisition. A Native has direct ancestry to someone living on the island on or before the transfer date—1917.”

The tone of her voice made it easy to imagine her indignant expression. “These are the people whose rights have
been trampled, who have never been compensated. They were simply bought and sold from one colonial power to the next.”

The thin voice returned again, sputtering in frustration. “We all understand. We all have the same concerns about the Continentals and the resorts that have come down here with their money and driven up the cost of real estate. There are many of us who are struggling to stay in our homes, struggling with the rising cost of living.”

He took in a huge breath of air, trying to keep his emotions in check. “But, your definition is so narrow. What about the people who have come here from other islands? People who have lived here for forty, fifty years? Some of them have been born here. They are a part of this community. How can you exclude them?”

There was a tense silence before the woman replied, her voice rigidly calm. “To my mind, they are not Native Virgin Islanders. If they do not like it here, they can go back to where they came from.”

The room erupted into a discordant mixture of applause underlaid with grumbling disagreement.

Another man sang out, “This is a question of our identity, pride in who we are, where we belong. These are the generational rights for the descendants of the people who worked as slaves on this island. We must honor our heritage, our history of enslavement. No compensation will ever right that wrong, but we can make a start…”

He paused to clear his throat. There was a jostling sound as someone apparently handed him a glass of water. After a quick sip, he continued.

“We can start by giving Native Virgin Islanders a property tax exemption on their primary residences. This is a small measure to protect our ancestral homes. Otherwise, we will be forced off our land by these extortionate property taxes.”

Other voices began to chime in. “What about homesteading rights—some land should be set aside where Native Virgin Islanders can set up homesteads.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Our land is being sold right out from under us. We need protection. America could sell us tomorrow if it wanted to. We are just bartered citizens to them.”

“It should be the best land on the island. This Maho Bay property on St. John the foreigners want to purchase for their next big hotel—that is where the Native Virgin Islanders should be living.”

The young man returned to the microphone, exasperation in his voice.

“Can’t you bend a little on this? Native Virgin Islanders make up less than half of the population. This language will never pass in a general election. You are proposing to give a minority of citizens special rights. We need to find some way to compromise.”

An angry voice howled from across the room. “The only compromise I have for you is a stick of dynamite!”

There was nothing new in the level of vitriol, the ardent opinions expressed on the matter, or even the suggested remedies. I had heard them all before—and had always assumed that the moneyed interests that controlled local politics would prevent the Native Rights proponents from taking any serious action.

But as I studied the stolid, somber faces of the truck-taxi drivers listening to this dialogue, I began to second-guess that assumption. To a man, I noted uncomfortably, they seemed to side with the sentiments of the dynamite-wielding commentator.

It was then that I realized the contents of Hank Sheridan’s memo might have been far closer to the truth than even he intended.

46

The Amina Princess drove the rusted red Jeep along Centerline Road, gazing at the stunning scenery from the elevated ridge that cut through the island’s middle. Peek-a-boo views of the neighboring Virgins flashed through the trees, while a steep drop-off showcased sweeping green valleys.

The red sticky notes fluttered in the wind, but the Princess had yet to appreciate the significance of their left-pointing arrows. Blaring honks from oncoming traffic caused her to veer from side to side. After a few close calls, she assured herself, she was starting to get the hang of things.

From the right side of the road, she waved happily at the frustrated motorists who dodged around her, receiving numerous emphatic pointed gestures in return.

As the Princess approached the island’s centermost peak, a familiar brown and white national park sign appeared on the roadside. Next to the sign, a family of donkeys nibbled the tender shoots of grass that had sprung up along the road’s shoulder.

The donkeys looked up from their grazing as the Princess turned in front of the sign and headed off on a rutted dirt
road that quickly disappeared into the forest. The donkeys’ bleached gray muzzles twitched silently while they contemplated the large round dent in the Jeep’s front bumper; then they resumed their eating.

About a half mile down the rugged lane, the Princess reached the remains of an enormous stone windmill. The wind-catching vanes that had topped the mill had long been destroyed, but the conical tower that had supported the spinning blades was still largely intact, giving some sense of the structure’s once massive size.

The Princess jerked the Jeep to a stop in a clearing beside the abandoned mill, and, jumping out, ran toward the entrance.

A stone ramp took her to an arched opening at the bottom of the tower. She stepped inside and positioned herself in the center of the circular-shaped floor. Curved stone walls soared thirty or forty feet above her, their top edges turreted like that of a castle.

Pivoting in a slow circle, she scanned the tower’s interior for the package that had been left by her accomplice—but the area was empty.

Undeterred, the Princess reversed course down the ramp and slipped into one of the tunnels that ran beneath the mill. An extensive network of cavelike passages had been built into the structure’s rock base, linking storage cavities for the products that had once been ground by the mill’s turbines.

Windows cut into the outer walls allowed in some exterior light, but the deeper the Princess ventured into the honeycombed base, the dimmer the rooms became. She was about to return to the Jeep for a flashlight when she finally stumbled across the item she’d been looking for.

Hidden behind a round column directly beneath the windmill’s tower, lay a small canvas toolbox holding the materials she would need for the next stop in her journey.

47