PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

St. Croix, USVI, July 1996.

Hurricane season in the Caribbean is similar to the Christmas season in the Caribbean in that it lasts about four months, happens every year, and one can't help but take part in it. Every year, there are forecasts, lists of potential storm names, advertisements for supplies, etc. Many people follow the daily weather reports from August through November religiously, some have charts on the wall or software which they continually update with the latest information, tracking storm paths for example, like someone who follows the ups and downs of the stock market or the schedule of a favorite sports team. In random fashion, these high and low pressure events begin as weather formations up and down the west coast of Africa, spinning into storms of various velocities, inevitably building intensity while lumbering across the Atlantic, and then randomly shoot through the Islands like big, unaimed cannon balls- sometimes hitting here, next year there, sometimes squeaking between targets and all the while fluctuating from Tropical Storm strength to Category 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; sometimes building up to dangerous proportions, then subsiding to be 'downgraded' to some lesser measure of viciousness, causing a collective sigh of relief that can be read on every face. While I was living in those latitudes, I went through several storms, three Tropical Storms proper, 3 near misses of true hurricanes of one category or another, and one direct hit by a Category Two hurricane. Many more miss than hit, and the near misses cause 'peripheral rains'- water flying every which direction at once, areas of land flood, streets flood, all engineered infrastructural water handling devices, ditches, culverts, underground piping, etc., all choked and overflowing at the same time...and this is the mild event we hope for when we know one of these monsters is bearing down on us, but misses. The activity level of any given place in this otherwise tranquil, laid back part of the world changes when the possibility of being hit is announced- suddenly, the grocery and hardware stores are out of things, the gas stations have long lines, and everyone is urgently going places and doing things; all of the moored boats leave to sail out to sea, the ones that don't are sort of snickered at- 'well, that tourist picked the wrong time to be off-island' and inevitably ends up on the shore, in a street, or is just gone afterward (one guy I know secretly scuba-dived to a newly sunken sailboat with a box of garbage bags and an extra tank of air, got inside and inflated the bags one by one until the boat floated to the surface, then he got it out of the water, onto a trailer, and fixed and painted it in his remotely located yard; and had a nice little sailboat from then on...don't tell anyone). The first couple of warnings each season, everyone does everything they can to protect their property- plywood over windows, everything out of the yard, put important papers in plastic bags, get the generator hooked up, all kinds of things; after the first couple of misses, though, human nature sets in and the primary protection often becomes simply, 'Well, I hope it doesn't hit'. The stores are different than the houses in that they're braced for two shockwaves- the impact and damage of the storm, and the invasion of the looters, almost all of which are otherwise respectable citizens driven to frenzy by the sheer opportunity- I've seen security camera videos from 1989's Hugo, and everyone's involved, smiling, grabbing, running, the goal is to get things, of course, and the mood is manic. The owners of several of the shops were armed and in the stores for the storm(s), some getting on the roof (the Arab guys wore their black masks and had ouzies), all with it in mind that the aftermath of a hurricane hit was often worse than the storm as far as their business interests were concerned (there were reports of gunfire here and there, but I never heard of anyone actually getting hurt). Other business interests are quite well served- the construction industry, for example, gives a joy 'Whoop!' when things get damaged or destroyed, I, for example, made a fair killing in the damage estimation department working for insurance companies and/or property owners. Hurricane Luis, a Category 5 which severely damaged St. Maartin, Antigua, and Barbuda in 1995, caused the re-routing of Carnival Cruise Line's cruise ships to several destinations that weren't previously regular stops (St. Croix being one of these) and after they realized they could go there, they didn't stop- which made all the business owners smile that one 'We are so happy to see you!' smile. I'll also mention that it's a peculiar anxiety to approach a building which, as the culpable professional, I was responsible for seeing to it that a hurricane wouldn't blacken it's eyes or stop up it's nose (as much as possible, anyway- a real category four or five will cause damage to anything shy of a concrete bunker). All that said, the other significant activity which occurs (also human nature) is the hurricane party.

Bertha
Hurricane Bertha came very early in the season, in fact before the season was supposed to have begun, and while it never got (as far as I remember) more intense than Category 1, it was one of the biggest storms (in terms of area) ever recorded. I was living in the town of Frederiksted, on the western shore of St. Croix, in a house which withstood Hugo (a 'five') and Marilyn (a 'two', which I weathered in that house- but that's a different stor(m)y), so I wasn't particularly concerned beyond the basics, which meant I was prepared to go a month or so without power and without income (except for the potential windfall- pun intended- jobs). Allan, a good friend for a couple of years at that point (and an interesting character for more time than that), was between places to live and staying with me; he and I had known about the possibility of being hit, 'scheduled' for 10 or 11 that morning, and (this was maybe 8 in the morning) had decided to begin the festivities with a bottle of (what else?) rum. Some 45 minutes passed, us sitting in the living room, keeping our nerves in check with rum and conversation, all the protection in place, the cat inside, and this angel of mercy appeared and changed the whole edgy perspective. Will was a mutual friend who lived on the south shore, and when we first saw him pull up in the big pick-up, we thought he might need help securing something (he owns a fair amount of property here and there, including a house, now occupied by Will and his family, which the three of us- and some other characters occasionally mixed in- built on a hillside from scratch), and, yes, of course, we'd go help. Well, his entry was punctuated with a loud "Let's go boogie-boarding!" and this, as I said, changed everything- in a few seconds we were transformed from the jittery 'what's going to happen?' crew into the boisterous 'Let's poke that storm in the eye!' guys. The target was an unnamed but popular bay just around the northwest corner of the island, northeast being the direction the storm was coming from, and it was fitting for the three adventurous souls to head into danger (bottle of rum in tow) from the heavy gray of the sky here to the dark gray of the sky there. The rain had just started, so the ride was wet, and the winds had picked up noticeably, enough so that the streets were getting some tree branches and miscellaneous clutter on them. Just as noticeably, the ocean was raging- all clarity was gone from the water, it was as gray as the sky, and the surf was white and already pounding well up on the beaches. The power plant is always closed down some 4 hours or so before any given hurricane strike, so the streets and buildings were all dark. I recall someone leading a couple of horses to (presumably) some safer place than they were, and there were a couple of scrambling folks in their yards doing some last minute battening, but there was no other activity, and certainly no other traffic- who were these nut-cases out driving in this weather, anyway? The closer we got to the destination, the more of the storm we could see, and it was impressive- off to the northwest, the pseudo-line we could see which would've been the western edge of the cloud formation had now all turned black (or close enough to it), when we came around to the north side of the island, the sky was just that shade for as far east as we could see, too; the sky we were under was a medium gray.

Birds, Wind and Waves
There is a seabird called a 'frigate' which spends it's life, except for mating and rearing young, aloft, and one of the old island sayings is that if you see the frigates over land, there's weather coming. These birds are large in terms of wingspan, maybe 6 feet on average, black with some little white around their necks, angular wings and pronounced beaks. They were over land that morning- I estimated at the time that I saw 100 or more of them, all in the same updraft, facing the same direction, no wing-flapping necessary, calmly floating and intertwining with each other, just above the boogie-boarding bay, patiently watching to see which way the big bad wolf of a storm was going to go. Something about the black birds against the dark sky, and their silent, attentive presence, is a visual that perfectly depicts the pre-hurricane mood for me. The safety of our persons being the last thing on our minds, we drove onto the beach and dashed into the water, the three amigos whooping and laughing, hollering 'Bertha!' and 'here we come!'; the thrill of the moment overshadowing the fact that this is one of the most reckless things a human can do- certainly on par with exploring expelling volcanoes or underwater spelunking. The most prevalent memory I have once in there was the amount of (true) flotsam and jetsam in the water, like Churn Soup, there was so much stuff it wasn't like being in the ocean; I had part of a sizable tree branch expose itself some feet away, then the rest of it rose between my legs with a force that turned me sideways in the water and onto another part of the same branch- while this caused the merest inkling that I may be in some vague sort of danger, I was undeterred, and simply brushed off the sea creature as benign and continued my search for something dangerous. I did go under the water for a short time, and didn't do it again because of getting sharply cracked in the head by something which hit me hard enough that I had the thought 'Wow, I just got cracked in the head...' but not hard enough to bring me out of the wet revelry I was sharing with the other two champions of common sense. We were trying to ride waves, and since I can't really remember actually catching any waves, I have to say we were just sluicing around and enjoying the action. The swimming was treacherous enough with the mountainous waves, violently foamy, the wind blowing the foam around all different ways; the sometimes solid, sometimes stringy miscellany not so gently checking me out under the surface, at least once I had to untangle myself, but upping the ante by having a yelling, out-of-breath conversation with Allan simply had to be in the picture. So, there we were, a couple of bobbing heads, oddball grins and over-enunciated words occasionally interrupted by the sputter of having to cough out water in order to breath in air; Will was in the same sphere of activity- we could see him- but he was enraptured by the shear energy of the waves and his boogie-boarding prowess; we each watched for the other, and we were lucky, all we had happen to us was some fun stuff. Thinking back, we couldn't have been in the water for more than half an hour or so- more would just be too taxing, but the length of the memory is much more. Bushed, we sat and drank in the wind and rain, all smiley and jovial, some talk about the storm (where's it going?, its not picking up, and not letting off...but it has moved to the west...), but mostly just friendly bonding banter, and decided to head to (where else?) our favorite bar, The Lost Dog.

The Lost Dog Pub
Smack in the middle of Frederiksted (and the middle of King Street, the main drag, at that), this watering hole is one of the gathering spots for locals; the kind of place that should the night feel like it's carrying past the 2:00 closing hour, they simply shut the doors and windows, shuffling everyone in and out the back door, party intact. The main bar area opens to the street- and is unique in that aspect, the crowd can be the best mixture of people on the island, I think because it's so accessible and visible- the interior has dark stone floors and walls, the darkness being a luxury in and of itself; there's nothing quite like the shelter from sunlight- both the light and the heat- in the Caribbean, the temperature rarely goes above 90 degrees, but the sunshine is so much more intense than even Florida that it makes the climate harsh (hurricanes aside). The back yard is a restaurant, which has a covered, raised dining area built around several trees (one Thanksgiving Day, there was a casual, easy community dinner for 30 or so people and the flowers in these trees were being dislodged by the breeze, causing delicate purple flower petals to float down through the conversation and land among us as we ate), a patio area closer to the building which leads to a covered, but open, second bar...and, at the end of this second bar, there is a 12 foot by 8 foot mural of a Caribbean landscape, looking out over the sea. I painted this mural, it took 2 versions and a year and a half- certainly the biggest painting I've ever done- there are hidden portraits of myself and the proprietors, Andy and Jane, a couple of miscellaneous other hidden images, Chad wanted this one particular nude, for example, and, yes, there is even a dog, lost in the woods, taking a nap like the labrador model, Lizzie, who was napping on the patio one morning while I was painting. The second floor is a honeycomb of rooms surrounding a living-room-turned Den of Iniquity, which is where the cool people gather to escape the bar crowds, etc. Sometimes the second floor was a 'lounge' type place, nice, kempt, clean; sometimes it was a frat house-looking area with dirty dishes and bongs on the table- it depended on the people who were living there at the time. One of the interesting things about this place is it's connection to Cape Cod. Brewster, Massachusetts, located on the Cape, is the home of the Brewster Inn and it's associated bar The Woodshed. The owners of the Inn also own the Lost Dog, and the people who run the operation in the Caribbean have a rotation schedule whereby some number of them go to the Cape for a summer (the Woodshed only operates during the tourist season), then back to the island for the balance of the year. This connection has steered a number of people, some students, some others tentatively looking for land or opportunity, others might be musicians or construction workers who're down there to do their thing then leave; over the time I was there, the dynamic of the coming and going of people was a pleasant contrast to the 'same' nature of the rest of the places and people on the island.

Round Two
We knew the place would be closed, but we also knew all of the people who ran it, and knew they'd be having some form of hurricane party inside the shuttered windows and barred doors. We let ourselves in the back door, and entered on a somber scene. The bar had 4 people in it, two of them (Chad, Phil) sleeping on the floor, under the dart boards (there were mats over the stone floor there), another (Joe) was sleeping with his head down on a table, and the fourth, Kevin, we caught just as he was headed upstairs to go to sleep himself. Kevin's response to seeing me (being the first one in the door- all wet and giddy, probably some seaweed on me somewhere) was identical to Allan's and my response to seeing Will earlier- 'Yahoo!- there is light, life and hope after all!'...and he explained that the 'gang' had been up all night drinking and playing cards, and we waltzed in roughly an hour after their lights went out (at this point, we're probably at 10 am). Enter Sara and Nicole, who came in shortly after the three of us, nervous about waiting and storms and no TV, out to find some people and activity, or just something...and what do you know if they didn't find it. Within, I'm guessing, 8 or 9 minutes, all of us, (now with two trucks, Joe's being the new truck, this time noisy people riding in the backs, freshly rummed) were whooping and hollering, headed for that familiar, but untamed, unnamed bay on the north shore. This trip, there were some people out of their houses looking at the weather, or whatever, and they were witness to this ragamuffin convoy out to outdo what had boldly been done before; some waving (everyone knows everyone, understand), some calling for us to stop so they could join (which was out of the question- we were on a mission), etc. The roads were a little worse this time, though we wove our way there, a replay of what'd happened the previous hours (only this time I noticed the birds were gone- this could be taken two ways, a) the storm was coming in, and they'd found purchase in some safe niche in the rocks, or b) the storm was going to miss, and they'd headed off to get behind it), everyone gleefully running into the water, which, if anything, had gotten more turbulent. Somewhere around this time, I had the revelation- and I'm very glad I did- that someone in this shaky crew could drown. The storm was still at a certain intensity, the sky was still dark, and while it posed the same danger as it had previously, I had this intuitive urge to be the lifeguard. The winds were gusting to 50-60 mph, the water was quite foamy, and the way it works is this: the upper so many feet of water gets tossed around enough that the air can't escape fast enough and is mixed into the next disturbance- hence the foam- and this mixture is far less dense than calm, clear water. The danger in this case is that anything, including human beings, has to displace much more foam than water to maintain buoyancy; the physical nature of this fact also complicates swimming- imagine treading water in a backyard swimming pool (on a nice summer day), your hands and feet are pushing through a smooth volume of undisturbed water. This will allow the top of your head to be maybe one foot out of the water, and the buoyancy of your lungs' capacity (along with the displacement of your bodyweight vs. water weight) will displace a certain measure of water, all of which allows us to swim and/or float, no great effort required. Next, imagine the pool being churned into foamy froth by, say, a whipping, multi-directional wind to a depth of 6 inches. Right off the bat, the top of your head will be 6 inches closer to the surface, and the 'sturdy' water which allows us to push against it (both by swimming and buoyancy) is going to be that much deeper, too. Should the depth of foam get much deeper than that, the effort involved with keeping your head above water becomes frantic and quickly will exhaust anyone- even strong, experienced swimmers, like the guy from California who drowned off the coast of Puerto Rico during this very storm (he was surfing, exactly as we were swimming, and playing in a place that had the best waves- so the most turbulence- and he went out with a friend, they were on surf boards; the friend made it, he just disappeared). Anyway, should the person in the quiet backyard pool be lifted from that serene setting, be plunked into the roiling mess of 15-20 foot waves, miscellaneous undercurrents, all kinds of unseen debris complicating the picture (not to mention having been up all night drinking), it just seemed to me the responsible thing to do, short of party-pooping the moment by insisting they not go in at all, was to stay on shore and watch. So, there I was, walking up and down the shore, trying to keep track of the heads and arms that would come into view and disappear again behind another wave, sometimes passing the two women, who were engaged in some amount of the same activity, but mostly just chatting and enjoying the sight. The sky above us had gotten darker, and the wind had begun to be more directional, both of which meant the storm was getting closer; these observations being part of the lifeguarding purpose I was maintaining. The visual and audio of these events (not to mention how things feel- a separate sense, like an electrical charge free-floating from place to place, there is a noticeable (and talked about) feeling of simple disruption from the normal fabric of life- none of the things I might have worried about or planned for a day or week before is ancient history, more than that, even, the feeling of 'boy, was I wrong about all of that stuff'; the feeling of distance from places and events which were much closer and mundane is so...re-orienting...to the immediate location and time, somehow basic to our nature, I'm thinking of the protective role I felt necessary to fulfill, both concerning the joy-boys in the raucous surf and the women, arms crossed, not fearful, but not carefree, whom I occasionally passed in my back-and-forth; something primordial, a view encompassing our position on Earth, how things are at this point in Time, and what substance we humans have to work with given the scale of our existence in the whole of Nature. Visually, the clouds and movement of the water and flora, rain peppering the gray tone, tells of massive, complex activity, such an infinitesimal amount of which occurs any given place 'here'; the colors and, call it 'attitude' of everything was subdued and 'closed', each thing, even the rocks, looking out for themselves. Lacking sunlight, appearing a vortex without discernable center, yet drawing everything into it, the island- usually assailing me with bugs, heat, and thorns- was under siege. I was ignored, not involved in the defense, left on my own while she pulled into herself, preparing to defend against the assault her distant, more ethereal cousin Storm (Bertha, the hurricane-strength storm, in this case) was mounting. Other impressions include the volume of debris in the air, some man-made items (no, not plastic grocery bags), mostly plant material and unidentified dust, kind of a haze that was not effected by the rain; and strength- strength like the mythic might of earth-moving gods and cataclysmic events (which, of course, a hurricane is). The light has a peculiar effect, as well, similar to an electric storm stateside (the biggest scale thunderstorms I've ever seen occur in Georgia, and these have this look, though it's shorter in duration and specific to the time surrounding the actual thunder bolts, which are giants, by the way), which seems to come from every angle, not the usual spectrum from an intense source, diffusing itself the further from the source it gets. This eerie light quality is in tandem with a similar muffling of sound- as loud as the storm itself is, the waves and wind being the general noises, there is a howling which is more general- white noise, if I can get away with the inappropriate analogy- that's pervasive, yet distant, and seems to suck away the sound of one's voice or the truck engines, as if there is no echo, an invisible blanket thrown over the vibrations. Whyever the urge to protect came over me, I feel a moment of Truth in Life occurred, and I saw my good friend Joe, some 80 or so feet off shore, maneuver in some eye-catching way which indicated trouble; something about the pause in his motion and the accompanying expression, he realized he couldn't keep up with the speed and power of the current- if I can call it a current- such that he was going out after each wave more than he was able to come toward shore between waves, and I had that one moment of awareness that something had to happen right then. Well, it didn't; he turned toward shore, gave it a good push and made it in. 'I was going out more than I was coming in!' he said, and that was all the emergency events there were. Thinking back, the safety aspect of me staying on the shore had to do with being safe myself- in other words, I wasn't in the water, so I couldn't drown; if I'd gone in after someone who was in trouble, the odds are that I'd be in as much trouble as they were, maybe then two of us drown. That was the signal for the guys to all come in, and there was a replay of the beach banter for some short time, everyone happy and tired, seriously refreshed by the terribly fun swim (or should I call it a 'tumble'?). After this, the calamity which was us in two-truck, noisy procession headed back to town, stirring up interest in our activity here and there among some of the people along the route-'Hey!, We're having a party!- meet us you-know-where!'. There's this funny memory of someone throwing construction materials out of the back of Will's truck such that Joe had to swerve and dodge to avoid them, which, again, isn't the most responsible behavior, but is telling of the prevailing emotional surge of the moment.

Coconuts, Football, and Iguanas
We made it back to the bar, collected in the back yard, and performed a milling around social mix which had the air full of pleasant noises. There was a fair amount of fish which was taken out of the freezer to be eaten before it went bad (the power's off, and only so much generator juice to go around, remember), the cooking squad separated from the social crowd, and some food was on the way. The word got around that this was going on, and people who were close enough to make the dash home should the storm get closer started showing up. There was some odd humor to the newcomers running through the rain, and the ones that had raincoats on, etc. wandering through the wet people, whose shoes were squishy and hair all funny, a tinge of alcohol fog in their eyes, some choosing to go inside (the bar was lit by Coleman lanterns, the jukebox- running off the generator- was playing, but quiet relative to the wind and rain), and some staying out to watch, keeping touch with whether intensity was building or slowing. One of the trees in the backyard was a 50 or so foot coconut tree, and this tree was being whipped around pretty good, such that it lost all of it's coconuts onto and around the restaurant roof and deck. The fallen coconuts were gathered up, opened, and their juice poured into a big punch bowl. After the eight or so coconuts we emptied, the bowl was woefully shy of being able to serve the number of people who were around- the idea being that we'd make a rum and 'coconut water', which is what the islanders call the loose fluid in the shell, punch to further the hurricane party effort. Somehow, the inspiration occurred for some of us to go on a fallen coconut run- all through town- pushing a wheelbarrow, with a hurricane strength storm potentially bearing down on us; and while this is somewhat beyond me, I'm a witness to the fact that it happened. We (yes, I joined the effort) were running through the rain, from tree to tree, until we filled up the wheelbarrow, then running back to the bar, ceremoniously unloading, chopping them open (a machete is the way to go- just don't cut off a finger), dumping the contents in the community bowl, and running out for more. It was during one of these runs that Will, Allan, and myself noticed the waves breaking over the pier. The waves were coming up the waterfront onto Strand Street, but that was normal for this kind of weather; the pounding the pier was taking, however, was unusual. Perhaps an hour or more later, the punch bowl was at a good level to add a couple of bottles of the islands finest (Cruzan Rum is made right there on St. Croix), and the coconut shells piled in the vacant lot down the street were an impressive sight- I call that success. So, back to talking and smiling- the fish and veggies came and went- and while the crowd had been in flux for a couple of hours, there were still the core enthusiasts and a few others. Roughly in here is when Johnny Sullivan showed up, and while he wasn't there all that long, he single handedly rejuvenated what was otherwise going to be a falling off of energy. Johnny was an approaching 70 retired marine who'd been around the island for awhile, and something about him- it wasn't all the time- but when he was around, there was always something to talk about, sometimes it was the infinite number of jokes he came up with concerning his mother-in-law; 'life' stories about this and that; another item had to do with a man trying to rob him and another guy with a knife late one night while they were walking home, Johnny's beer in hand (it's still legal and acceptable to walk or drive with an open beer there), and it went something like: "What do you want?", "I want everything you got...", "You want everything I got?...OK...you stay right there and I'll give it to you..."; he then poured out the beer, broke the bottle over his head, and chased the kid down the street and into the woods, throwing rocks at him as he made noise in the woods, yelling: "This is what I got for you...here's another one I got for you..."; another example is the Ho Chi Mihn Trail, as he called it (which is, of course a Viet Nam term- Johnny was a Korean War vet, but, hey, it's his trail), which was a weeks-long project where he cut a trail from one point near town through the woods to his back yard that became an established thoroughfare (with some modifications by the people who were cutting through the woods to the beach- the trail allowed everyone in the area to save a quarter mile or so of walking around the woods (which they'd done forever) to get to the beach and fish market in the area). So, Johnny showed, which lent an extra element of justification to our antics, right when we needed it. The next hour or two, we had more hurricane awareness activities, like playing rough-and-rugged football in the restaurant area (there were some bruises, but no lost teeth or broken bones); someone 'rescued' a 3-foot-or-so iguana, who was running down the street, and the poor creature was entertainment for awhile, until he managed to get under the restaurant deck (good news for him); and then there was the inevitable search for more danger.

Journey to the End of the Pier
The serious risk of the storm hitting St. Croix was pretty much over- it had been scheduled to hit mid-morning, as I've said, and we were probably around 6 or 7 PM now (your average hurricane lasts 6-8 hours, though they can hover, change direction, etc- Hugo was over the island, at an intensity of 5 for 12 hours, which is part of the reason it caused so much damage), so we were all saying it was likely we were lucky and it missed us. The weather, though, had been quite constant throughout the day, maybe more intense from 1-4 or so, though it seemed to have traveled from east to west staying same distance from us, and now we were seeing the thing pass us (which it did over the next 4 or 5 hours). The dusk had begun, and the sun going just a little bit down, in those conditions, makes it get dark fast, though we had some light left, and what else is going to happen?- there's still light, there's still life. Looking around, the scene (except for the wind and rain) was starting to resemble a still-life, most people (all the smart ones) had gone home, some of the card players were in some similar position as when we found them all those hours ago, laying on the floor, laying on the table; the air, as active as it was, started to take on a sleepy quality. There were some stirrings here and there, but the human tempest had quieted down, nothing left to celebrate. Then, a spark of genius hit Allan, and he brought up the wonderfully spicy notion of going out onto the pier- which, as I said, was taking a fair pounding. This thought parted some little fog that had settled over my brain, and, hey, sounded like fun. Collecting our casualties, and sort of unceremoniously walking from the scene of such activity only a short time ago, the three of us were alone, walking in the rain, headed for the pier. Some months before this occurrence, I had been involved with a proposal to build a 'homeport' facility (where travelers fly to that location, go through Departments of Immigration, Customs, and Agriculture inspection stations, get on the ship, take their cruise, and come back to the homeport to fly home) for one of the larger cruiseline companies, and one of our proposal options had to do with building a building on the end of this pier. Having done the field measuring for the project myself, I know that the pier is about 1500 feet long, the last 450 feet is about 3 times as wide as the first 1150 feet, and the driving/walking surface is about 9 feet above sea level. Standing on the Customs Building porch looking at the thing, passing a bottle of rum, the three brazen characters who thought this was such a good idea a few minutes ago were having second thoughts. The waves were hitting the sides of the pier at least 3 feet above where we would be standing, and many of the waves (which, again, were not orderly affairs) were much higher, and carried all the way across the walking area. Facing the intimidating prospect of making it to the wide part (the end) did not look like it was possible, much less fun; but things being what they were, we started. Holding the guardrails along the edge, we were hit by these waves before they broke, holding still while it washed past, we scurried a few more feet of progress, held on again, etc. Tricky as it was, the technique was to hold on with hands while sliding along, when a big one came, hold with both hands and one arm clamped on the rail, head down, and one or both legs wedged against the lower rail, while the water washed over us. The pound and push sensation of having water wash over you, trying to drag, lift or trick an error in your holding-on strategy, is one to remember, another is the face-to-face feeling I had with the violence of the storm. When we were swimming in it, we weren't under attack, we could flow this way, that way, it was just being part of the water; this was the opposite, we were resisting a serious, unpredictable power with our strength, and using our vision and sense of touch to time the advances we could manage between waves. The mood was adventurous, though, and we talked, howled, took little huddle-up rum breaks (we were carrying a precious cargo to the end of the pier)- the picture of humans flying in the face of nature. I've always thought this scene would make a good painting. We'd made it to the end, and there was a feeling of freedom- we'd come across this field of confused motion, and now were (at the much wider end of the pier) safe and happy, an occasional, piddly ankle or shin-deep wave here and there, nothing for such worldly veterans to think twice about. The effort had taken maybe half an hour, and the sky had gotten that much darker, just shy of night, the foamy surface of the sea had a certain iridescent quality, a brightness that was a little more than it should have been. The second most significant event of the day then occurred. Without warning, without any previous discussion, Allan had the audacious notion (he told me later) that things just hadn't gone far enough for him; in other words, we'd conquered the pier...so, now what? We were standing toward one corner of the rectangle of the end of the pier, passing the bottle, when he took a good few bounding steps to the side of the platform, jumped to the top of the guard rail, gave a comical little gesture that I'll just describe as 'old timey', and dove in. Will had yelled something like 'NO!', but I didn't really hear that, I was shocked, looked at Will looking at me, and we ran over to see what was going on. I knew that if I'd gone in there, I was most likely dead, so the edge of the moment was a difficult one- how could he swim in there?...what if he knocked his head on the pier?...where the hell was he? When we looked down into the water, there was nothing but foam, sometimes down there pretty far, the next second or so swelling up enough to send us running back some feet, hold still till it passed, then run back to the edge to see if we could see our friend. I recall staring down there, blank, then I saw an access ladder off to the left (the pier was designed to allow kids- adults, too- to be able to jump off the thing, swim to one of these ladders, climb back up, jump again, climb again, I've done this many times), and that's how I was gauging the swale between waves, the bottom of the ladder was roughly 5 feet below the water surface on a calm day, and the waves were troughing deep enough to be several feet below the bottom of the ladder. (Then run away, dodging another water wash), then the ladder was exposed again. After what seemed a lot longer than the 6 or so seconds it probably was, this haggard anomaly figured into the scenario, appearing at the very bottom of the ladder, then the water swallowed the scene again, then reappeared, a little scramble up a rung or two, then inundation, then scramble; finally, this wet-dog looking head appeared (inundation, run away...), and finally, with some cheering involved, he made it back to good old terra firma. He had a pretty good description of what it was like in there, and said he basically got bashed into the ladder by luck. Retrospectively, I'm glad he did what he did as it is a fitting climax to the event; then there's the dovetailing the experience did with his character, he was an ocean guy, swam every day, had done a fair amount of open ocean boating, worked on ships, etc., so it was just somehow appropriate for him to get out as far into the ocean as he could and test himself...granted, he could have died.... The return trip was more of the same, and we made that, too, it being dark by this time, and splashed our way back to the bar. That's when the most significant event of the day occurred. There was a hammock sometimes set up between posts on the restaurant deck, and I had that as a target for the perfect location to end the day. This is one of those which has a piece of wood at each end, which makes it such that you can't sit on the edge, you have to balance your way to the central area, then you're all right. Well, I was in no mood or mind to be that meticulous about my hammock mounting strategy, plopped down on the thing, and it immediately flipped out from under me, basically allowing me to fall very awkwardly onto the deck below; this is not a terribly rare event- it had happened to me before (several others have their version of the same chain of events), but what made this time special was that I broke my right thumb. I recall lying there, thinking 'that hurt, I knocked my wind out, and boy(!), I broke my thumb, too'. I also remember thinking that I was in as good a spot as I could get- I couldn't fall off the ground- so I stayed right there and faded out.

Aftermath
I woke, fairly early, six or so, bleary-eyed, thumb pointing sideways, half wet with salt water, eyes focusing in on the bottom of the hammock, with that one special feeling: 'Where am I?...oh...oh, yeah...wow, that was a good one.' I rolled out from under the hammock, and stood to find Allan and Kevin, a couple of cherubs floating in paradise, peacefully asleep in it, nice and balanced. Will was looking much the same on the pool table, and the day was very sunny, calm, all those things it wasn't the day before. Allan woke up, that got Kevin up, and Will stirred because of the general activity. We smiled and laughed for a short bit, and then headed our different directions, which, for Allan and myself, meant we were walking up Hill Street, over to my house (Allan says 'That's an oucher' about my thumb), and then slept for a couple more hours. I woke again, maybe at nine, and decided I had to do something about my angular appendage, so I headed for the clinic in town to see if it might be open. It wasn't, but one of the doctors was in, so I went in and talked to her: 'I broke my thumb', holding it up like I'm giving someone the thumbs-up, but actually some hybrid right angle sign; she says 'You have to go to the hospital.' I turn to leave, and she says 'Hold on...let me look.' and does a little damage assessment, saying "I don't think it's broken, just dislocated...' and this little light goes on in my head. On the way home (not to the hospital), I stopped and got (what else?) a bottle of rum, and got back just as Allan was getting up. 'Hey, Allan', I said. 'My thumbs not broken, it's just dislocated. My theory is that if you pull on that end, and I pull on this end, we'll stretch the joint out, which will straighten the ligaments, and pop the thing back into place...ready?' Adventurous Allan, the sleepy-eyed wayfaring daredevil was for some reason less than enthusiastic about performing this simple task: 'It sure looks broken to me- are you sure you don't want to just go see a doctor and leave me out of it...?' After a short time though, he warmed up to the notion, and he gritted his teeth and gripped on the nail side of the knuckle, I gritted my teeth and pulled on the hand side, and after a brief getting-used-to-it moment, there was a crescendo of growling and a few cricky-cracky noises, it worked just like I thought. It moved like it was supposed to, 'Ahh,' I said. 'There we go.' We laughed and talked about it for longer than it was sore (which was about two weeks), and the sun shone on that calm day while everyone checked in with everyone else to talk about the near miss and other activities of the previous day. Every once in a while, I get a tight feeling in the thumb knuckle; the first I think is 'it's associated with the weather', so I suppose something's on the way, the second thing I think is the memory of my favorite hurricane party.