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“It’s the weekend, right?”
He nods.
“And we don’t work on the weekends?”
“No.”
“Maybe today you can pretend we’ve never met, and I’ve never been here, and you’re giving me a tour of the island. We can take the day and see where it leads us.”
He takes a long moment to consider. The only noise is the clack of the blocks as Sean stacks them one by one.
Finally, McCormick lets out a long breath and his muscles relax under me. “All right.”
I smile up at him and he gives a hesitant smile back.
22
The breeze sluices over me,running warm hands through my hair and tugging my shirt behind me. I speed down the hill, my bike tires hissing through the sand. Overhead the elegant casuarinas bend in the breeze, casting shadows across our path. McCormick and I slice through the shadows, and the light and dark flicker over us as fast as the turning spokes of my bike wheels.
I grin over at McCormick as we sail down the hill. The wind whistles nimbly, my stomach rises at my speed, and I feel just like I did as a little girl on a playground swing, kicking my feet in the air, suspended over the earth, my pigtails flying behind me. This is that moment, the exuberance of free fall, where you let yourself go and trust that when you hit bottom you’ll spring back up to the sky.
A laugh is pulled from me. I haven’t felt so free in years.
We’re at the highest point on the island, a seventy-foot rise on the eastern edge. Laid out before us is the entirety of the island. It’s a green pearl rimmed by lustrous white sand, set in a flat turquoise sea. Four square miles—tiny—with a long, thin strip of sand off the northwestern edge.
McCormick claims the thin strip of land connected to the circular island made explorers name this place Frying Pan Island.
Far off, toward the southwest, there’s a coral reef off the shore. The waves hit and then crest in white froth. The water is indigo-blue until it reaches the reef, and then, with the calm, it settles into a gentle translucent green-blue. I think I’d like to create a watch dial enameled that exact shade.
Past the reef-calm beach, on a half-moon of sand, the cottages line the sea. I can pick out the white and turquoise of our cottage and the salmon-pink, sea-blue, and coral-orange of the others. They sit under waving palms, their porches facing the sea.
Then, through a stretch of green, along a snaking yellow-sand road, the little beach runway and the congregation of marigold-orange and goldenrod-yellow concrete buildings glimmer in the sun. That’s the town, and it’s just as small from above as it is down below.
Beyond that there’s only green. Vibrant, jewellike, lush, leafy green. It’s the dark green of the mangroves, filled with life and deeply shadowed mysteries. It’s the lime green of the palms, their narrow leaves flipping in the breeze like the fluttering of a hummingbird’s wings. It’s the rosemary green of the casuarinas, coolly elegant and noble, sending hints of evergreen and Christmas pine through the air.
I take a deep breath of it now, pulling in the subtle pine scent. The speed of my bike slows as the slope evens out then crests into another rise. I pedal, pushing to climb the small rise. Needles from the casuarina trees—the whistling pines—crackle under my bike tires. The path narrows here and my bike bumps over the shallow root system of the pines.
A drip of sweat trails down my neck, then down my chest, pooling under my breasts. My cheeks are hot—pink, I’m sure—and a line of sweat beads my forehead. My heart pumps from the effort of the climb, and I drag in another pine-rich breath.
At the top of the hill, beneath the dappled shade of a tall, wide-limbed casuarina, McCormick pulls to a stop.
His skin gleams with sweat and his black hair is messy from riding through the wind. His sun-dark cheeks are pink from the sun and the heat, and there’s a happy “just sped downhill with the wind whipping around me” contentment radiating from him.
I wheel beside him, setting a foot in the sand to prop my bike upright beneath me.
We stand quietly for a moment, our breath loud, the wind whistling through the needles overhead.
A dove-gray bird with a white-striped tail perches in the boughs overhead. It lets out a melodic song and then launches from the limbs, its wings flapping loudly, seeking another spot to shelter.
My heart rate has slowed and the shaded breeze sends a cool hand over my prickly-hot skin.
After I showered and ate a quick bowl of porridge for breakfast—made by McCormick—we kissed Sean goodbye and thanked Amy for babysitting. She promised to enthrall her baby brother with poetry and then visit their Great-Grandma Essie for lunch.
McCormick pulled two bikes out from behind the cottage. They were old beach bikes with dented frames and sun-bleached seats. But the tires were thick for pedaling in the sand, and when I rode the hills it flew, and when I braked it screeched to a stop.
When I first saw the bikes I laughed and asked where the car was, and McCormick gave me a funny look and said, “There aren’t cars on island,” so I said, “Remember, we’re pretending I’ve never been here. You have to tell me everything.”
So while we biked along the sandy gravel road that circles the island, McCormick pointed out the large rectangular metal generators that power houses and businesses (they don’t always run—often the islanders go without power), the large circular cisterns that collect rainwater, the vegetable gardens growing glossy peppers, sweet potatoes, clusters of dangling green bananas, fat mangos, and papayas. The names of trees—ironwood, casuarina, silver palm—and the names of the beaches—Moon Beach, Bloody Bay, Turtle Grass Beach—as well as the name of the town—Charlestown—and the names of the people—Junie and Jordi, Essie, Maranda and Dee, Robert, Frank, Erol, Aldon, and more—and it all whirled around me like the wind kicking up behind us.
