Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 2)

The following is an excerpt from the second chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

As we drove, I learned that my cabbie, Berihun, had lived in Tortola nearly all of his 40-odd years, the British diacritic a result of his birth and rearing in South Africa. His father had served as a police officer on this, the largest of the islands, after bringing Berihun and his mother to the BVI in the late ‘60s. He proved to be a treasure trove of knowledge of the islands, and by a serendipitous stroke of dumb luck, he was my initial guide to paradise.

Leaving the airport behind, we crossed a small two-lane bridge connecting Beef Island to the primary mass of Tortola. According to Berihun, the new bridge had been dubbed Queen Elizabeth Bridge during the British Monarch’s visit to Tortola in 1967, the same year Berihun’s family arrived. So the legend goes, prior to the bridge, people crossed from Beef Island via a small wooden raft, just large enough for one car, that operators pulled back and forth between the two islands. A cross-breeze gusted through the windows of the makeshift taxi and I silently thanked Queen Elizabeth and Terrance B. Lettsome for replacing the raft-and-pulley system with this concrete causeway, which, although not nearly as romantic (at least in the Hemingway sense of the word) as its ancestor, felt far safer and imminently more reliable.

I glanced down at my watch, surprised that there wasn’t much traffic for just after 11:00 am on a Thursday. Then, remembering my pledge outside the hotel in San Juan, I slid the watch off my wrist and stuffed in it my small backpack with my cell phone. I made myself a small promise that I’d take them back out when I landed in JFK on the return flight (and not a second before). Berihun narrated as he drove, pointing and gesturing out the window with his left hand as we passed Buck Island, a tiny glob of greenery a few hundred feet offshore. Apparently Buck is a private island, and when its former owner began building a bridge connecting it to Tortola proper, he discovered that under BVI law, the bridge would’ve legally enabled the public to use the island’s beaches, so he abandoned the project.

“Some people very territorial here,” Berihun mused. “Most everybody very friendly, but some folks just don’t want to see nobody. They build big houses on the hills…” he waved his right hand at the foliage outside the passenger side windows, creeping straight up in a wall that towered high over the two-lane road. “They isolate themselves from the world.”

“I can understand that,” I replied.

“You one of those?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s no way for a man to live. People need other people. You listen to Simon and Garfunkel?”

“Sure.” I was practically raised on Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor and John Prine. My parents had a ton of vinyl, but my dad only had half a dozen cassettes in his car, and when we’d go on road trips, he’d listen to the same tape over and over and over, never caring that he’d just heard the same songs 40 minutes before, and 40 minutes before that.

“You know that song, ‘I am a Rock’?” Berihun asked into my memories.

“Yeah,” I answered, pretty sure I knew where my guide was taking this line of questioning. “A rock feels no pain and an island never cries,” I sang poorly. Berihun laughed out loud, but I took no offense. I knew I was a terrible singer, and my blurting out the lyrics was more for his value than mine.

“You got it,” he said, honking the horn as he rolled the cab to a gentle stop behind a beat-up pickup truck idling in our lane. “It’s actually John Donne,” he added, without looking back at me. I didn’t hear him clearly, so I asked him to repeat what he’d just said. Instead, Berihun leaned his head out his window to see what was holding us up and nearly had it taken off by a car speeding past in the opposite direction. He hooted and ducked back inside quickly, returning to our discussion as if he hadn’t just nearly been decapitated.

“John Donne. 17th century English metaphysical poet. He wrote ‘No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ Nobody is an island. You, me, we’re no islands; we’re part of the main. You’re not an island, are you?”

“I guess not.”

“You a rock?”

“That depends,” I said. “Sometimes being a rock is a good thing.”

“Like when?”

“What about Saint Peter? Christ told Peter that he was his rock. Upon Peter he’d build his church. That’s a ringing endorsement if I’ve ever heard one.”

“That’s true,” Berihun agreed, laying on the horn until the pickup finally lurched into motion, hiccupping its way up the winding flora-bordered road. “I suppose it can be a good thing. You know what I’m saying though, right?”

“Yeah, I get it,” I assented. Berihun rounded a bend, and as the tall trees parted, I caught a glimpse of the sandy reef, the three long rows of docks, and the big red-roofed buildings. I had arrived.

“Hodges Creek Marina,” my driver announced as he flicked his left turn signal and swung into the small parking lot. “Home of Sunsail.” I swallowed heavily and with some difficulty. Here I was, after a couple days on the go I already felt like I’d been gone a week or more. Leaving Santa Barbara was a distant memory already, and I still had another week ahead of me. Berihun shifted into park and retrieved my bag from the rear hatch. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t move; I just sat there, staring through the front windshield at the front (or back, I wasn’t quite sure) of the building before me. This was far and away the most impulsive thing I’d ever done, and even a few fated feet from the door, I still wasn’t sure I had the courage to go through with it.

“Hey, Saint Peter!” Berihun rapped on the roof with his knuckles.

“Thomas,” I replied, shaking myself out of my daze.

“No sir. Saint Thomas about 20 miles west.” He pointed off in the distance, towards what I had to believe was the west. “You are in the land of the turtle dove, named by Christopher Columbus himself.”

“Sorry,” I said as I climbed out of the back seat. “That’s my name: Thomas.” I paused for moment—hearing my full Christian name out loud for the first time since my mother passed, standing at the threshold of a great adventure (or an epic disaster), my head was swimming.

“Tom,” I corrected.

“Well, Tom, it has been a pleasure serving you.” He stuck out his hand and I reached for my wallet, not realizing what his gesture truly meant.

“No, my friend,” Berihun said again. “Handshake first. Pay later.”

I palmed my wallet with my left hand, meeting my right hand in his with a firm, gracious shake and a smile. Upon release, I paid my new friend and thanked him for his help. (I hadn’t bothered to ask how he knew so much about 17th century English metaphysical poets.) As I walked gingerly toward the main building, he climbed back into the cab and rapped on the roof again.

I turned and he pointed at me. “Remember,” he said, “no man is an island, including you.”

I tried to squeak out a “thank you,” but could only wave as Berihun pulled out onto the highway, the little car’s horn bleating plaintively as he drove away.