When Michael hears that Baron McDonald is trying to steal his wife, Grace, he rushes home to Jamaica to salvage the marriage. But shortly after he returns home, so does Hurricane Gilbert, a Category 3 storm, and Grace, his wife, meets with a divorce...
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Chapter 1
Spokane Key, FL, Thursday, March 1986
"...a house divided against itself will fall." Jesus (NIV)
The sun was halfway across the sky above Spokane Key, Florida, and even the breeze seemed to be taking a break in the 85-degree weather. But as he marched through the cane field, chopping off cane roots with his machete, Michael Tennant looked like he belonged in Upstate New York in the fall. He wore a long shirt and pants to stop itching; gloves to protect his fingers from blisters; and metal guards for his legs.
The day before he'd stood along the edge of the property - as big as twenty-six thousand American football fields - with water trucks and hoses to monitor the big fire. He and his coworkers had watched the fire devour clusters of canes nearby. Starting at the cane roots, the flames crackled noisily as they overwhelmed the skinny plants. Eventually, the inferno grew into a giant ball and rose above their heads like a red tsunami, ripping off cane stems. After talking to his wife, Grace, for an hour last night, he'd told his mother, Veta, about the blaze. "Mama, it was like a thousand furnaces burning all at once. If a really strong wind had come and shifted the fire against us, we would all be dead." Veta said, "if youthink that fire burn hot, then you won't want to go to hell." This is the same warning he'd get when he was younger if he'd burned himself when using the coal pot or when he'd flirted with girls as a teenager. She'd say, "Flee youthful lust" or "Don't get nobody girl pickney pregnant". She would say these things with tears in her eyes and quote Jesus "...and the angel...shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth".
Harvest time in Spokane Key was complicated. Yes, the fragrance of burning sugarcane touched your lips and made you want to bite the air, but then the smoke would come. After the raging fires pruned the leaves off the sugar cane, a brown ocean of smoke settled over farmlands, houses, cars, and people. Then, as usual, it rained. Black, ash rain. For years the residents blamed the sugarcane industry for this demonic downpour that poisoned their fish and flooded the land. The toxic runoffs from the farms had turned nearby Lake Iowa into slimy algae soup. But none of the blame stuck. Big Sugar - as the residents called the powerful, wealthy farmers - said burning helped them harvest the canes faster and that they'd for sure gotten rid of the bad stuff that caused the lake to turn green. All that was left now of yesterday's fire were soft ashes. Some blew around in the light breeze. Others disappeared in the mud.
Sweat rolled off Michael's face - the only part of his body that wasn't covered by the costume. Standing near the skinny, scorched, twelve-foot sugarcanes, he reached for a handkerchief that Grace had given him. It was the color of the smoke, even though he'd washed it the day before. When she'd given it to him it was lily white. As he wiped ashes and sweat from his forehead, he got ready to chop, but the rain had mingled with the soil beneath his feet and turned it to muck. It slowed his movements. He hissed and tightened the grip on the machete. Instead of chopping and piling the canes, as he'd done in seasons past, he turned around. Machete in hand, he made a beeline towards Sam Sullivan, his supervisor.
