A Place in Paradise: With linked Table of Contents

A PLACE IN PARADISE

By Wilson Roberts

Cover Image © Wilson Roberts

Wilder Publications, Inc.

PO Box 632

Floyd Va 24091

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or transmitted in any form or manner by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express, prior written permission of the author and/or publisher, except for brief quotations for review purposes only. A Place in Paradise is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. And resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5154-0280-0

FIRST EDITION

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue / 1917

Hank and Olga Part I / the Present

The Waiting,Part I 1731 -1743: The Terrible Knowledge of Pieter Lange

Anna Delinny / The Present

Hank

Anna

Hank and Olga: Anna

The Waiting, Part II 1734: The Redemption of Jean Delignery

Anna Delinny / The Present

Interlude

Ed and Claudia, Part I / The Present

The Waiting, Part III circa 1400: The Coming of the Others

Ed and Claudia, Part II: The Present

Interlude

Anna and Martin, Part I: The Present

The Waiting / circa 1080: The Scout Comes to the Island

Anna and Martin, Part II: The Present

Epilogue

THE WILD DONKEYS of St. John graze along the edges of roads, poke through people’s gardens and trash, eating whatever they find. Their night cries echoing from hillsides and valleys can sound like screeches of terror. Some St. Johnians believe the donkeys to be were-creatures who come in the night to steal breath from children and attack grown men and women, taking their lives and sending their souls into realms of continuous torture. Others see them as symbols of Emancipation. Most people tolerate them, amused by their presence.

The National Park Service regards them as nuisances, threats to endangered vegetation, marauders of Park garbage containers, potential dangers to tourists on the beaches, as evidenced by one sunbather waking from a nap to find a donkey standing over him. One well-placed kick could have done him in, tan and all. In the Cinnamon Bay Campground they destroy thousands of dollars worth of food, clothing and camping equipment, causing many people to demand something be done about them. Villa owners fence properties to keep the donkeys away from gardens and to prevent them from drowning in swimming pools. More significantly, others see them as integral to the character of St. John, symbols of enslavement and Emancipation on the island.

Whatever one believes about, thinks about St. John’s donkeys, the donkeys are ever present, living in the bush, grazing where they wish, sending their loud cries into the night and watching the comings and goings of humans.

WWH Davis, III, The St. John Night

Doylestown, Pennsylvania

The Intelligencer Press, 2010

Prologue / 1917

PULLING A HANDFUL of caapi vine shoots from the side of a cinnamon tree, Joseph Delinny held them out to his burro, speaking softly, petting its long nose with his free hand. Poppy blinked his brown eyes, gently nudging Joseph, licking his fingers as he nibbled at the green leaves. They moved along ancient trails, Joseph swatting wasp nests with his machete, quickly stomping the yellow and brown jack spaniels that survived his initial assault. Their stings were painful and could take long weeks to heal.

Ahead, to the left, stood the Langeberg ruins, the stone coral and brick walls remains of an Eighteenth Century sugar plantation. Overgrown with vines and trees, it was a place where no birds lived, a shadowed tangle surrounded by thick jungle into which he knew only a fool would venture and around which the trail made a wide detour so that not even the shadow of a shadow from the plantation’s shattered rock walls and crumbling bricks could fall across the path. The broken top of the windmill rose above the canopy, a ragged tower jutting toward the sky. Joseph shook off the involuntary shiver he always felt when near the ruins. Quickening his step, he followed the trail away from the place about which dreadful tales were still told. Fearful of what he might see, he did not look into the dark and tangled ruins of what all knew to be the malevolent grounds and rubble scattered about the abandoned and crumbling plantation.

Half an hour later he reached a high cliff at the edge of the island. It was a clear day, the hot sun flashing upward in glittering sparkles from the churning waves of the Caribbean breaking against the rocks below. The wind had been rising since the night before. Not a storm wind. Just wind. Wind which would get heavier, roil the seas for a day or two, then subside, bringing no clouds, no rain, nothing but high seas and the disquiet which always accompanies the tropical waves blowing from the coast of Africa across the Caribbean. Still, Joseph opened his arms to the welcome cool air.

Across the bay stood the white stucco walls and red roof of the administration building where the langfoged for St. Jan lived and conducted his business as judge in the lower court, bailiff, police-master, public notary, administrator of auctions and the probate court, postmaster and customs officer. It would be St. Jan for only a few minutes more. Amid the firing of cannons and carefully planned celebration, the Danish flag would be lowered from the pole in front of the administration building and replaced by the Stars and Stripes of the United States. The island where he and his ancestors had lived, through the cruelties of enslavement through Emancipation to the present day, would from then on be known as St. John. His people would be dealing with new governors, administrators, laws, languages and customs. He did not wish to imagine the ways in which their lives would change.

Joseph’s parents, his brothers and sisters, many of their friends and neighbors were gathered below, dressed in their formal best as they stood near the langfoged’s house, waiting for the ceremonial change of nationalities, watching for the langfoged to turn the house over to the new American administrator. Of all the people he cared about only he and Enid Marsh would ignore what was already known as Transfer Day. He did not want to see smoke come from the cannons, hear the roars as they were fired or the words of the proclamation. He had come to stand above the site where the transfer ceremony would take place in order that he could turn away before it began, a deliberate act of repudiation that no one would see, of which he alone would know.

What happened below would not affect his responsibility. He would not witness the changing of the order. Nor would Enid, although they had chosen different ways of ignoring it, she staying at her parents’ house in Coral Bay while he hiked the mountainous trails, passing the terrible ruins, to stand at last above Cruz Bay where he could briefly look down at the site where pageant of transfer would take place.

He pictured Enid working in the garden behind the house, prying rocks from the ground so she might plant a new flowering bush or make room for a small patch of vegetables, or perhaps sitting in the shade of the overhanging roof, sewing the quilt she insisted on finishing before leaving her parents to live with him and begin the family they planned to raise. The family he was obligated to raise.

She had spoken quietly to him as they held hands the night before, walking to her home from the Moravian Church. I do not wish to attend. To do so would be dishonest to my heart. Neither the Danes nor the Americans have any real part to play in our lives.

Joseph had nodded, silently. It is meaningless change. Nothing significant will change for the better as far as our lives are concerned.

Enid’s replay was to squeeze his hand twice, her shoulder lightly brushing his.

 Looking at the red roof below, Joseph thought of the American Navy controlling St. Thomas and St. Croix for its own purposes. Administration by the United States may or may not greatly affect daily life on the island, but he feared it could mark a change in the forces he was entrusted with keeping in balance. He watched the preparations from above, hoping St. Johnians would be able to continue living in the quiet harmony they had evolved since Emancipation. Sighing, he heaved his shoulders. Whatever happened, Langeberg would remain, its ruins a place of terrible occurrences.

After watching people mill around the ceremonial grounds, Joseph shrugged and turning away led Poppy back toward home. They walked along the trail, winding down the mountain and along the north shore for several miles before separating, one path turning inland, heading up along the steep rocky contours of Bordeaux Mountain, the other leading to the ruins of the Annaberg Plantation. Annaberg, like all the island’s plantations, had been built on the dreadful and grotesque abuses of human enslavement and the relentless and inexorable suffering resulting, but unlike the cursed grounds and ruined buildings at Langeberg, its ruins had no particular hold over him. At the fork Joseph began climbing Bordeaux. Halfway up the trail, muffled by hills and jungle, he heard the distant blasts of celebratory cannon fire from Cruz Bay, marking the islands’ transition from Danish to American ownership. He did not allow himself to think about the symbolism of that change.

Poppy looked wildly around. Stomping and snorting, the donkey calmed down as Joseph stroked his nose and spoke softly, feeding him another handful of caapi vines. Minutes later they came to where the trail skirted the outer limits of the Langeberg ruins. Patting the donkey, Joseph contemplated the forces centered there and the man the Delinny family called Uncle, he who had charged its members with responsibility for the balance at Langeberg, as if a balance were possible. Joseph shivered looking into the shadows beyond the trail to the grounds where night bats flitted about even in the day, their skriing cries rising above the shadows. St. Jan. St. John. The name did not matter. Langeberg remained. More perilous, the dreadful place where Langeberg had been built remained. Langeberg was a ruin and a name. It was the Place—he always thought of it with a capital letter—that was important, its essence and its history. From childhood the implications of that importance had been drummed into him, a knowledge of the Place he was bound to pass on to his children, teaching them to pass it on to theirs. There was no other choice.

He stood for a long time. Human changes go on. Some shifts in governments, in freedoms, in economies and alliances happen quickly, others so slowly one can almost ignore them. Many mean little except to the people behind their making. Others seeming small to most people, can result in chaos and disaster in individual lives. His eyes searching the shadows where Langeberg’s ruins stood, he thought how other things never change, despite appearances.

Scattered patches of sunlight hit the ground where they streaked through the heavy jungle canopy. Aside from the depth of shadow and the abnormally thick stems of vine, to the untaught eye there would seem to be little setting Langeberg apart from other ruined sugar plantations. Joseph stared into the bush surrounding the ruins thinking of the irony of the Place. Some might consider it beautiful, if they didn’t know it well. Know it as he did. Know it as his ancestors did. Know it as his descendants surely will.

Then curious for no reason he could name, he turned and walked back toward Cruz Bay, watching doves and bananaquits flush from the bush as he went, mongooses and lizards darting across the path. Joseph freed his mind of everything but the colors and movement around him. Leaves rustled in the increasingly heavy wind. Below, at various points, he saw the ocean rippling with whitecaps, surf foaming on beaches where palms and sea grapes grew. When he came to the hilltop where he had earlier stood above the langfoged’s house, he looked down again. The field in front of the building was empty; the ceremony over. Perhaps the langfoged had already taken a boat to St. Thomas, a first leg of the journey back to Denmark. The new American administrator was surely being toasted by friends and associates, raising glasses of rum in honor of his position and the new pre-eminence of the United States and its Navy in the Caribbean. Soon he would sit at a desk in the stucco building below, paging through papers and putting his signature on them, just as the langfoged did until but hours before.

A sudden sharp noise drew Joseph’s attention to the flagpole in front of the building. The American flag snapped in the rising wind, its heavy canvass clapping like firecrackers, echoing against the surrounding hills.

Poppy nibbled at the grass beside him, ignoring Joseph who, tired of walking the rocky, twisting path, swung a leg over his back and sat astride him. When the man urged him to move, the donkey continued eating.

Joseph slapped his rump with an open hand. Jerking his head up, Poppy snorted and turned back to the grass.

Move along, idiot. The softness of Joseph’s words did not reflect their meaning, and Poppy continued grazing.

Joseph slapped him again, harder. With another snort the donkey began moving along the path, taking them both toward Cruz Bay.

Tomorrow he would make the trek back to Coral Bay. Perhaps Enid would be finished with her quilt.

YEARS LATER, on an anniversary of the day the Americans took over St. John, Joseph told his granddaughter, Anna Delinny, the history of Langeberg, of the rebellion and the courage of the great Kanta, who had led the others in their attempt at destroying the plantation system. He told her how land that had been sold to individuals at the end of the Nineteenth Century had not been broken into smaller lots as the families grew, but instead came to be owned by the families as undivided estates. He took her to the periphery of Langeberg, pointing out the ruined buildings, the ovens, the refinery, the broken and terrible tower.

I do not understand what it is that dwells here, he told her. But it has been my lifelong responsibility to keep people away, to make sure Langeberg remains a deserted ruin, protected and isolated.

He lived to be an old man. Anna would always remember the last time she saw him. It was during a trip home shortly after finishing her doctorate at Stanford University. She was staying with her mother when Joseph came up the road with his burro, loaded with wood to burn into charcoal that he would sell on St. Thomas. Tying the burro to a tree, he walked up to the porch and calling to her, he sat on the steps, taking a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lighting it with match. Anna walked outside and sat next to him.

You do not plan to live on St. John, do you? His question had not been an accusation, although the sadness in his tone made her uncomfortable and she looked away from him, toward the sides of Bordeaux Mountain.

She took a deep breath before answering. I like California. Now that my studies are finished, I think it is the best place for me to work and continue my research.

And what of Andrew Thomas?

She shook her head sadly, thinking of the man she had loved since high school. We have broken up, Grandfather. I have not seen him in over a year, since he came to California for a visit.

Will you see him while you are here?

No. She had hoped he would drop the questions. Things had not worked out with Andrew. She did not want to discuss it with her grandfather. He would probably not understand and she did not want to go through it all with him, even if he did. The pain was too fresh. The past year in California, buried in her studies, partying with friends, enjoying the beaches, taking side trips into Mexico or to the Arizona desert, none of it had been enough to erase the memory of that last visit.

It had ended with Andrew being insistent that she come back to St. John, that they marry and have children. They had returned to her apartment after dinner at a new Thai restaurant, which had opened in the neighborhood. Stacking several records on the turntable, Anna opened a bottle of Bordeaux she had been saving. She had filled a goblet for each of them and sat on the couch next to him, their legs barely touching. He clinked his goblet to hers and asked her again, as he had every day of his weeklong visit, to marry him and come home to St. John.

She had told him she couldn’t, explaining, as she had explained each time before, that she had a year’s more work to finish her doctorate in econometrics, and how, once it was completed, she intended to use it, going to work for a university or some other idea generating institution.

She had watched him as she told him, her eyes soft as they roamed over his face. There was a quick furrowing above his eyebrows, gone so quickly she wondered if she had seen it at all. He told her how they belonged together, stroking the back of her hand as his deep voice spoke plaintively of his love for her and of the correctness of their union.

You can stay here with me, she had said, almost frightened by how soothing his words sounded. We could live out here, I could do research in my field and you could find work.

Shaking his head sadly, he said he could not leave St. John. His family was there, he had explained. So was hers. How could she leave them behind? Her family? Her people? Their culture? How could she not see how important all that was? How could she turn away from it?

He was a young man and they were a young man’s words, but she was a young woman with a young woman’s heart and she longed to hold him, to say yes, to comfort him, trying to find her own comfort in the act. She studied his face, thinking how beautiful he was, knowing that his beauty and her own would combine to make children of heart stopping loveliness. All she had to do was say yes.

But she had said nothing. Instead, she slowly shook her head, the sadness in her eyes mirroring that in his. She had tried explaining that she was her family and her people. They and her culture were within her, she said. She would take them with her wherever she went, as would he if he would stay with her, or come with her as she explored new interests and discovered new places.

Releasing her hand, he had looked at her through silent tears. Then, he stood, saying he was leaving.

Now? You are leaving now, she had asked. It is foolish to leave so late at night. Where will you stay until your plane leaves in two days?

  He had answered with a bitter voice, telling her these were not her concerns. He alone was his concern and she should not confuse herself or him by acting as though anything else were the truth. In silence he gathered his things and walked out, closing the door to her apartment quietly behind him.

She had called him several times since then, but he had not taken the calls. His mother would tell her he was not in, asking if there was any message. She would ask her to tell him to call her back, but he never did. Finally, she gave up, concentrating on her studies and her friends.

Several times during the post-graduation visit to her parents, she thought about looking him up. Once, she had even dialed his number, but hung up before anyone answered.

Her grandfather’s voice called her back to the present.

If you fail to have children, Martin will inherit my responsibility, he said.

She watched him silently.

He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. I suppose Martin will be fine. He is an intelligent man, a strong one.

Nodding, she maintained her silence, afraid if she spoke she would say something he might misinterpret.

Joseph kept his eyes fastened on hers. When it was clear she was not going to answer, he smiled, reaching over to pat the top of her right hand. Then Martin it will be. He stood and walked over to the burro, slowly untying it, whistling tonelessly as he did.

Martin will be fine, he said again, as though trying to convince himself. He is bright and orderly. You on the other hand are brilliant and creative, which is why I chose you.

Martin will be fine, Grandfather. Besides, the ruins at Langeberg are simply that, ruins. Perhaps it is best they remain undisturbed, as a reminder of the past, but the truth is, they are only ruins.

As soon as she spoke, she wished she could have taken it back. It was the statement of a graduate student, arrogant, sure of the nature of her knowledge. Even in those days of confidence in the intellect, she had moments of questioning, wondering if the scientific certainties her graduate work was based on were absolute and demonstrable truths, or if they were articles of a new and powerful kind of faith. She would spend most of her adult life fighting to maintain a belief in the primacy of the intellect. In the end she would be successful, but she would understand intellect and reason as tools rather than as an ends of themselves.

Joseph had looked at her, sucking in his lips as he bit down on them. He stood motionless for a moment, holding the burro’s tether in a loose grip. Then he walked over to the steps where she still sat, tucked the rope under his arm and took her hands in his.

His eyes were bloodshot, the brown of their corneas leeching into the whites. Old man’s eyes, she thought, staring into them. But they flared suddenly and he squeezed her hands just short of painfully.

The time will come when Martin will need you, your brilliance and your creativity. I expect you to be there for him.

Startled by his intensity, almost afraid his grip could break her fingers, she pulled away, staring at the porch steps.

If he needs me, I will be there. She snapped the words at him, startled, embarrassed by the impatience in her voice.

He smiled again, as though unaware of her rudeness. Then I wish you a good life, Anna. You shall be the true heir of my responsibility even though its daily mantle will fall upon Martin.

As soon as he spoke, he turned and led the burro away from the house.

Hank and Olga

Part I / the Present

THERE ARE TWO palm trees at the end of the drive into The Windmill Inn, a long winding, rutted and rocky two-track lane. Unused since Hank Longe’s death, it curves through deep mud puddles, products of weeks of rain, and over steep, sharp crested hills. Hanging from a rope strung between the palms is a ragged banner, the words WELCOME TO PARADISE hand painted on heavy canvas Hank bought at St. John Hardware, the letters fading but still readable.

He had made the banner and put it up the day before a party celebrating the opening of the hotel he had built on the ruins of the Langeberg plantation. Standing tiptoe on his stepladder, whistling as he knotted the rope around the trees, Hank was excited and happy. Things were finally going to be all right. There had been the nightmares, of course, the rustlings in the bush. The donkeys’ chilling cries at night. But now things were on track for him. He would have laughed at anyone who told him he’d be dead two weeks later, his body lying outside the bar he had built from the ruins of the old windmill tower.

Hank had come to the U.S. Virgin islands in ‘02. He had spent a year with the army during the Persian Gulf War, mostly hiding from fire to stay alive. The first month after his discharge he had spent in Cherry Hill, New Jersey staying with his parents, watching the grease from bacon and eggs harden on his plate as his father urged him to find work and his mother talked on about Marti Perkins. That lovely girl next door, Edna Longe called her, telling Hank what a fine wife she would make.

Neither Hank nor Marti was interested. They went into Philadelphia together several times to catch a Phillies or Eagles game, and during the initial stages of the invasion of Afghanistan Marti took Hank to an anti-war demonstration on the green up in Morristown, near where she went to college. He’d watched the half dozen chanting marchers, looking at the girls in their tight faded dungarees, knowing they were looking back at him, shirt unbuttoned to his waist, army dog tags nested in the hair matted on his chest. His thin muscular body and shoulder length blonde hair, the beard which grew to the middle of his chest and the wild look in his blue eyes, long practiced in front of the mirror, had gotten him all the attention from women he’d ever wanted.

But the demonstration was a bore. He’d smoked a few joints, a strip torn from an American flag tied around his head, and he’d stomped his feet raising his fist, yelling U.S. out of the Middle East at the top of his lungs, but it was all a pale and puny parody of the demonstrations of the Vietnam War that he’d seen in movies cobbled together from old newsreels they’d shown in high school history classes.

He’d meant all the out of the Middle East stuff, but he’d had a bad time with the weed and the demonstrations. All those college kids running around wearing latex Bush and Baker masks. Not that he gave a shit about Bush or Baker. Not that he gave a shit about the Middle East. What he gave a shit about was that he’d seen a bunch of guys killed and he’d killed a few guys. Not all of them the so-called enemy. And these college kids didn’t understand any of it. Never would. They wouldn’t understand the old lady he’d blown away, just before she’d been able to lob a grenade in his direction. And they sure as hell wouldn’t understand the things he’d done to the fucking towel head kids with their frag bombs. They might understand the American major who caught one of Hank’s bullets in the back, or at least they’d pretend to as evidence of their groovy anti-militarism.

He didn’t really give a rat’s ass what they might or might not understand when it came right down to it. The war sucked and they were right in opposing it. The difference was, he’d been there and they hadn’t. And he was stoned. It had been all too weird and he’d ended up sitting under a horse chestnut tree crying, a quart of lukewarm Black Label in his hand, weed spinning around his brain. The war had been a bad joke. He’d kept a low profile just to stay alive, smoked a lot of weed listening to hours of rock and roll, putting himself to sleep at night with fantasies of beautiful women creeping into his cot, running their tongues over him, whispering in his ear about the good times waiting when he got back to the States. The smoke at the demonstration brought it all back.

Trouble was, the States weren’t such a good time when he returned. The baseball was too slow, the demonstrations too weird, little pieces of theater put on by college kids trying to copy the excitement of the Sixties and early Seventies their parents had told them about. The girls he met were too far removed from his experience. He would like to have been interested in one of them. Hell, he’d have liked to be interested in Marti. She was a good kid, but it wasn’t right for either of them.

Just before leaving the Gulf he’d met Vinnie Ledford, a SEAL who’d been temporarily released from the Navy and attached to the CIA for assassination work. Vinnie had been right on the mark when he told Hank what to expect when he got home.

It won’t be home anymore, kid. It’ll just be a place you used to live, full of people you used to know. Maybe you can go back there and get to know them all over again, but they’re not going to get to know you. They’ll look at the guy you used to be and wonder what the fuck’s wrong with you, but they won’t know you. For crissakes, they don’t want to know you. Then they’d have to know what they’re paying for over here with their taxes and their votes that send all the assholes to Washington who send us assholes over here.

They were sitting at a table in a sidewalk café. Up the street a car bomb had exploded at another café‚ an hour earlier. They could still smell it. Fragments of glass, wood and metal glinted in sunlight on the pavement. Vinnie sipped at a bourbon and water, talking while Hank put half a dozen beers away.

I’ve done all kinds of shit. I was in Grenada under Reagan and Panama under Bush, and I tried going home to Tennessee a couple of years ago. It didn’t work and hell, I come from one of the tightest knit black communities in the state. There wasn’t a living person in the whole town who gave a good goddamn who Vinnie Ledford was. A shitload of them thought they knew who I was, and maybe they did know who I’d been, but it wasn’t any good. It didn’t work at all so I re-upped and when I finish up here they’re going to put me back in the Navy just long enough to get my twenty years in. Soon as I can do it, I’m heading out for the Caribbean, back to St. Thomas, where I did some of my training. It never gets cold there and nobody notices how much you drink, who you screw or how much money you make. They don’t even give a shit how you make it as long as you don’t give a shit how they make theirs.

He paused, took another sip from his bourbon and water and looked straight at Hank. Of course, you got to be a decent human being. Say good morning to people in shops and them that you meet on the street, and you got to help your friends when they need it.

After the first month back home, Hank said good-bye to Marti, packed his bags, left a note to his parents telling them he was leaving to find work, promising to write them as soon as he got settled, took a flight out of Philadelphia for San Juan, hopped a rubber band airplane to St. Thomas, and within three days was tending bar at a small place in Frenchtown. A year and a half later, Vinnie Ledford walked in, ordered a bourbon and water, recognized Hank, and they spent the next three weeks on a toot which gained legendary proportions every time they remembered it, or at least remembered those parts of it stored in undamaged portions of their brains.

St. Thomas has changed since I left, Vinnie said one day as they sat in the Normandy Bar. It’s too crowded.

Hank looked around and shrugged. Let’s go over to the Hook, Line and Sinker.

I mean St. Thomas is too crowded. It’s a great place, but it’s changed. The tourists have changed it and I feel like I don’t know the place anymore.

So, what’re you going to do?

Vinnie looked over Hank’s shoulder, watching a heavyset woman, nearly toothless, who came in and sat at the bar.

"That’s Sondra Allen. Used to be drop dead beautiful