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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Lord, I got to keep on moving... Where I can't be found (Bob Marley)
9300 Nereid Street, Apartment 5H, Bronx, New York Summer 1988
Uncle Lester's eyebrows rose to heaven when Michael announced earlier that Sunday morning that he was going to church. He said he felt an urge to visit a nearby Nazarene church. After leaving Uncle Lester's apartment building around 9:15, he walked two blocks north, coming to McLeggan's Furniture Store at the corner of Bronx Avenue and 241st Street. He glanced across the street at Carlo's Car Wash where cars lined up and double parked out front, waiting for service. He passed a laundromat where a lady pushing a metal laundry cart missed his left foot by inches. The laundromat had just opened, and she raced through the front door. He turned west and walked another block. The all-white church building stood at the intersection of Officer Dennis Stanton Street and Hamden Place. He took the back entrance and sat in the last available spot on the wooden bench at the back, sandwiched between an elderly man and a boy no more than six years old.
The choir was singing, being directed by an excitable middle-aged woman in glasses. This lady's entire body rocked in time to the music. He glanced at the child beside him who sat as motionless as a statue. As a boy he had to do the very same thing for hours during church at Bramton Hill Holiness Christian Church. He'd sit next to his father Eunas, where Pastor Sinclair would preach for an eternity on hell and everlasting torment. He could hardly bat his eye or move his leg to ease a cramp or move his hand to wipe sweat from his forehead, lest his father reprimand him to reverence the Lord in His sanctuary. He had loved Sunday School, though. The teachers were nice, and all the children heard stories about all the miracles that Jesus did. He especially liked the story of the boy with the fish. He always imagined himself as that boy whose fish Jesus used to feed five thousand people. Five thousand people, not counting the women and children. Vacation Bible School in the summer was even better. The children would peel off sticky pictures of a long haired, fair Jesus and the disciples (also long haired and fair) from an activity book and paste them into another section of the book. Eunas had been a staunch member of the Holiness Church and had taken Michael to church with him every Sunday. Likewise, Miss Veta had brought him along with her to church every Saturday, first as an Adventist and then as she transitioned to being a Seventh Day Baptist. Michael had never seen his parents argue over which day was the best day to go to church. In fact, Miss Veta, a dedicated vegetarian from birth because her parents were Adventist, sometimes cooked pork and shrimp for her husband. This had upset some of her brethren at the Adventist church, but she'd told them, "The Lord said that is what come out of the heart of a person that make him unclean, not what him eat."
After the Nazarene choir and its bubbly conductor exited the stage, a handsome man in a collar approached the pulpit. He opened an oversized Bible at the lectern. Gray hair popped out at the pastor's temples, even from where Michael sat, but his face was as fresh as thirty-year old's. The preacher announced the Bible passage for his sermon was Psalm 51.
