Obeah Gal (A Jamaican Story)

Part 5

MAREE WOKE UP with a start. Everywhere was still. Deathly still. She felt hot and sticky so she decided to go outside to look around and cool off at the same time. With a somewhat timid Lucky at her heels, she walked around the shack in the dim light from above.

Her banana trees had been torn down. She picked up a heavy limb of green bananas she'd planned to pick next week. When she straightened herself she looked up and found to her amazement a circular patch of clear sky with signs of early dawn. But only immediately above her. Beyond that, the scatter of a few pale stars disappeared suddenly and ominously.

Maree was not aware of the anatomy of a hurricane. She believed she'd seen the end of it and decided to have a 'look-see', not realizing that she was in the middle of the eye and that worse was yet to come.

It was not an easy walk in the dim light. Everywhere there was something lying in the way: broken branches, torn trees, buckled zinc sheets, all sorts of bits and pieces, twisted and torn from their respective locations. The coconut grove she sometimes used to pass through was partially flattened, there were so many coconut trunks she had to step over. Coconuts lay scattered about on the ground waiting to be taken up by her on her way back maybe. Without really thinking of where she was going, she found herself walking past the outskirts of the village – where she could only get a minor idea of the actual damage done so far, since all the lights were out – toward the seaside. As if her feet were taking her there all by themselves.

The fishing camp.

It was deserted. Most of it wasn't even where it was supposed to be, it had been carried further away from the water and the boats were chained to trees and cement blocks. When she came down to the beach itself she understood why. The water was higher than ever with the tide and the waves, leaving barely a narrow strip of sand and pebbles – no stones – between it and the bushes nearest to shore. The waves struck a sense of alarm in her. They were too high for comfort. Was the storm really over? She was not so sure anymore. She'd better get back home, quickly.

She turned to leave, but then Lucky's yelping caught her attention.

"No, Lucky, we muss go home now."

But the dog was run-dragging toward her and back again, obviously trying to tell her something.

"Okay," she said. Clearly Lucky thought it – whatever it was – was important, so she followed him. She was led to a sprawled form lying face down in the sand, the waves splashing over the body, threatening to pull it back into the sea. She looked around anxiously, but there was no one else in sight, and probably not within hearing distance either. She would have to manage by herself.

It was a small-sized man with hair bleached to various shades of brown by sun and salt water, almost the same colour as his skin. All he wore was a pair of glossily wet pants roughly cut off at the knees. And he lay there unconscious and hurt. She would have to get him away from here before—

Just as she thought so, something clouded over. The clear patch of sky was moving away. Quickly she got his arms over her shoulders, and half carried-dragged him away from the shore.

She only just reached as far as the last fisherman's hut that was still standing, catching her breath, when the winds returned with a vengeance from the opposite direction, the onslaught shoving her and her heavy load headfirst through bamboo doorway onto the sand and pebble floor. The man landed across her, knocking the breath out of her, and Lucky jumped with a yelp to the far end of hut which was just beyond Maree's head. 

For seemingly endless moments she lay there panting, unable to move or react, staring past her shoulder through the doorway as the sky quickly darkened with storm clouds, tree branches tossing violently in the wind with the sound of the sea roaring. The storm was much worse now and for a moment all she could think of was whether her goat and chickens would be safe. They had become invaluable to her.