Home by Another Way (8 page)

When I do finally succumb and make the call, someone assures me that Victor has just left. Which likely means that the person who answered the call will now go and find Victor and tell him that we called. Which is his signal to go and figure out which car he will rent to us and see if it is running today and then drive across the island to where we are.

He honks cheerfully as he drives up the hill and then comes breezing in and lays out his papers and keys on the table. I have always felt it would be bad form to mention that he might be tardy. I have always secretly wondered if it might affect my discount. The price is always discounted when we show that we are prepared to pay in cash, in advance, and in U.S. currency. It is the size of the discount that is in question.

We fill out the forms for the temporary driving license. We get a map and a business card with all the telephone numbers that we may need to get hold of Victor when the car breaks down. We make a plan about where and when we will leave the car and where we will hide the key when it is time for us to go home. The car is always parked at the dock, and the key is always in the ashtray.

“Won’t somebody steal it?” I asked him once.

“This is a small island. Where are they going to take it?” he replied. “Besides, everyone on the island knows these are my cars. Someone will call me and tell me they have seen my car in someone else’s driveway. Then when I need it again, I will go and pick it up.”

Then we chat for a few minutes as though we are old friends. He asks me about the things that we will do while we are here, and everything I mention brings a recommendation to patronize a business owned by one of his family or close friends. I have a hunch that his discounts at those establishments are affected by how many visitors he sends their way.

Then there is another cheerful honk in the driveway, announcing that Victor’s ride is here, and he is off. Our first appointment is concluded, and we pretend the second one—the one where the boat starts us off toward the winter—will never come.

At least once during each week on St. Cecilia we will forgo the sunning round and go riding around. We put the top back on the Jeep and mop up the water that came in when I could not get all of the snaps done up before the daily rain. It takes less energy to bail out the Jeep than it does to figure out all of the snaps and zippers that hold the roof on. What we cannot bail out, the sun and the wind take care of.

Sometimes we have a destination in mind; other times we do not. We grab some binoculars and the camera and the map, and off we go. We wander our way down the hill and along the little lane that leads
to the main road. And then we make a choice—right or left.

St. Cecilia is not a very large island. It is only thirty-six square miles altogether, and a fair portion of that is rain-forest-covered mountainside that falls down around a volcano in the center of the island. The crater of the volcano is about thirty-two hundred feet above sea level. Rugged spines of hills—the shoulders of the volcano, so to speak—run down toward the sea and eventually spread out into flatlands.

There is only one main road, and it circles the island, pretty much hugging the shoreline from north to south, the leeward side of the island, and then running along the edge of the mountain back from south to north along the windward side.

The majority of the people and the shops and the restaurants are spread out along the western coast,
protected from the winds by the volcano and its surrounding hills. Along this leeward side of the island, the breeze is gentle, and the Caribbean glistens peacefully in the sun. It is also the side of the island where the road is smooth and well paved.

The eastern side of the island has a wild and desolate feeling. The wind blows hard and straight; the windward beaches are lined with rocks and not sand; the reefs cause the surf to crash wildly into the shore. The road has been neglected over here. There are potholes and bumps, and the speed-limit signs, which are ignored on the other side of the island, are unnecessary here.

The map of St. Cecilia is as much fun to look at for what you cannot find as it is for what you can find.

There are no shopping malls and no movie theaters. There are no water parks and no stoplights. There are no four-lane highways and no big discount stores. There are no restaurant chains and no casinos and no city-block-sized duty-free shops.

On the other hand, according to the symbols on the
map, there are two places to get ice cream, two places to shoot pool, three ATMs, and an egg farm.

At the stop sign at the beginning of the journey, we most often choose to turn right and head south down the leeward side, hugging the shoreline, headed toward Princetown, remembering our way around the island.

In only a couple of minutes or so, we pass by the Galley Door and then Cassandra’s Café and Domingo’s Beach Bar and Miss Lil’s Famous Cuisine. There are forty restaurants on the island, and we are eating our way through them. It is research that must be done, and we believe that we are up to the task.

We skirt the shoreline for a while, rolling past houses that sit by the bay, and then take the sharp curve that leads to the hill that leads up to St. Peter’s Anglican Church. It is where we go to church when we are here. Like the other four big Anglican churches on the island, it is a great stone structure that has been
here for hundreds of years. Each of them sits at the center of one of the parishes that make up the island, and each one is an official hurricane shelter. And each one takes your breath away when you see it.

Soon we pass the entrance to Three Palms, the one large Western resort on the island. It has large villas and a few thousand transplanted palm trees and enough restaurants and lounges and satellite televisions and day spas and tennis courts and tee times to ensure that the people who stay there never have to visit St. Cecilia. They come from the airport in specially marked vans and disappear into the gates long before they get to Princetown. It has all the comforts of the suburbs with better weather. It is a cruise ship with bigger staterooms and a golf course. It is like visiting another island, maybe another country, but it is not like visiting St. Cecilia. It is also the reason there is virtually no unemployment on St. Cecilia.

A little straight stretch of road through the palm trees that hide the bay from view and suddenly we are in Princetown, the capital city. It is an old city and a
small city, with narrow streets and low buildings. It bustles with life. For the most part it looks more like a village in the English countryside than a village in the English countryside.

We go through the town and through the roundabout on the other side and start up the hill toward the highlands. We are headed east now, and we are up in the hills on the southern part of the volcano. This is old plantation-inn territory here. There are a dozen or so of them, lovely vacation spots hidden in the rain forest and built in and on and among the ruins of once-great sugar plantations. We are too far up in the hills now and too deep into the trees to see the water anymore.

The last stretch of good road drops down the long hill into St. Andrew’s Parish, and at Midway the road changes, and so does the island. We are on the windward side now, and when we look to the right, we can very often see the Atlantic stretched out. Sometimes the view is so breathtaking that we stop the car just to look.

There are little villages and hamlets spread along
the main roads here. They have schools and small businesses; they have little chapels, and they have snackettes. You can go into Bruno’s or Culturama or the Mango Tree. All of them will serve you fried chicken or rice and peas or a curry that makes you grin every time you think of it.

We work our way along the road that runs along this eastern edge of the island, looking down across what were once cane fields and farms and plantations. We make the turn toward the west at the road that goes down to the shore at Three Kings Bay. Then through the little village at the top of the island and past the airport and back to the good road that will take us back to Windbreak. The land flattens out again, and the shoreline is no longer pounded by surf, and the breeze returns to gentle.

On our first visit, the first time we went riding around, we were just taking in the sights. Actually Sara was
taking in the sights; I was learning to drive again, or so it seemed. Driving on the wrong side of the road while sitting on the wrong side of the car brings a whole new meaning to the term “driving defensively.” And driving defensively is something you learn to take to heart on St. Cecilia.

Thanks to the English, you are driving in the left-hand lane and not the right-hand lane. So you have to be sure that your instincts as to which way to look and which way to turn do not suddenly kick in and put you in jeopardy. Every time we stop for gasoline, just before we pull back onto the road, the attendant will call out, “Stay to the left. Stay to the left.”

You also have to keep your eye out for a car that has randomly stopped in the middle of the road while the driver carries on a conversation with someone sitting on the porch of the house across the street. There are no shoulders to the road; the drivers just stop in the middle. I finally learned that you do not have to wait for the conversation to wind down—you just honk cheerfully and go around them, no matter how much
traffic is coming the other way—but it can still be a little disconcerting and very hard on your sightseeing. You can pretty easily ooh and aah your way right into the oncoming traffic or a ditch if you are not careful.

Besides cars, there are two other kinds of traffic that require constant vigilance. The first is made up of the buses and the taxis. Both of them look like passenger vans—a yellow license plate means that what is about to hit you is a taxi; a green plate indicates it is a bus. Both taxis and buses have brightly colored paint jobs for the most part, and they have names painted on them, like
Destiny’s Child
and
Killer Bee
and
Go Down Moses
. They race up and down the main road and the back roads with the reckless abandon of a seventeen-year-old who has just gotten his license and has been sent to run an errand in his father’s car. Which seems a little out of place for a crowd of folks who are functioning on island time, though I guess you have to make up time somewhere.