At seven in the morning it’s already hot and sticky. Men stamp impatiently waiting for the putas to arrive. Christopher has not seen Juanita for two months. Today he will hold her in his arms. He’ll ask the question never far from his mind and heart since his revelation. If all goes well they’ll make a plan for a life together.
On La Luna Christopher has become a liability. He’s shunned by all but Checo and Ave Bonita. Also an exception is El Jefe who is still hungry for Christopher’s fish. Christopher’s beating at the hands of Fat Luis is a warning everyone else has heeded. If he doesn’t escape soon his time on Islas Tres Marias will end with his body rotting in the bone yard. He’ll fight for a future with Juanita. He needs to know. Does she have the strength, the will, to overcome these obstacles? Can we claim a future together? Does she love me? Does she know I love her?
Sitting on the bluff he spies a pair of parrots swooping through the tree top canopy. Their colorful plumage is iridescent. Ferocity radiates around them like a protective shield. Checo has told him, “Parrots mate for life.”
He jogs on the dirt trail leading to the dock. As Christopher approaches the area he feels something out of place. A west wind running; hungry, warm air brushes over him. Winds normally blow out of the south or east. And it’s kicking up whitecaps. It must have been a bumpy ride for Juanita to the island.
Thoughts fall away when he spots her. The air shimmers. There! Her swan! Juanita smiles, she is radiant. Christopher’s heart pounds with excitement. “Yes!” he shouts.
Juanita shoots him another happy smile while securing the shorelines. For an instant, just the blink of an eye, time disappears. Juanita immersed in Christopher’s love. Christopher feels Juanita’s love for him. Catcalls, boisterous shouting and pushing, slam him back into the moment. From the boat Juanita waves, “Hola Christopher. I’ll be up the trail uno momento.”
The woman crowd on deck and wave their dresses like flags. Lips pucker invitations. Men shout and feet thump the dock. It’s a circus. Christopher moves up the hill to wait for Juanita.
From this vantage point he notices the tide pulling out long over the rocks below. That’s peculiar. Even more strange, there are no birds. Typically birds are screeching a greeting at the arriving boat. No Frigate birds drift in the thermals.
Ominous gray clouds are building in the west. The air settles over his shoulders with the heaviness of a blanket. Absorbed in his upcoming conversation with Juanita, Christopher shrugs off his questions about the weather. Dark skies in the morning can turn into dazzling, hot afternoons. Weather in Hurricane Alley can be turbulent.
Climbing the cliff, finding Christopher waiting, Juanita smiles. Eyes wide and clear, skin toned and golden, standing tall and straight, Juanita’s heart reflected in her eyes. Christopher says, “I suffered in our time apart.” He rubs his chest, a remnant pain of their separation, and gives her a lopsided smile. Carefully he pulls out the amethyst rosary. Beads murmur softly as they pool in his cupped hand. “I found this in the chapel. The cleric gave it to me. It spoke to me of you.”
The swan looks over Juanita’s shoulder. Christopher knows anyone who hurts Juanita will answer to her. Since his beating he’s been on high alert. He wants to know Juanita is safe. Out of the corner of his left eye he sees the blue dragonfly, vivid with life. “Juanita, exiled on this crazy island, I found you. If I had to go to prison to find you, then I’ll happily do it again to…” He clears his throat, “To build a life together.”
Her eyes never leave his face. Juanita opens her palm receiving the rosary. The beads slip from Christopher’s hand into Juanita’s. They pool into a lake of amethyst and pearl. In her eyes he sees love mirrored back to him, Juanita’s love. Her face alight with joy, Juanita kisses Christopher. She slips the rosary looped over her wrist. She gazes at him in silence.
Taking her arm he guides her further away from the cliff seeking privacy. Troubled by her silence Christopher’s says, “What the heck Juanita! I’m trying to propose to you! Will you marry me?”
He cannot help himself. Leaning over he places gentle kisses on her cheek, her neck, trailing down her throat onto her chest, nipping at her collarbone. Their hands and lips begin to roam. Excitement shimmers around them. “I’ll marry you Christopher,” whispers Juanita.
In an alcove high above the sea, away from prying eyes, with soft sighs and fierce strength, they touch, sharing, in the most intimate ways. Later they whisper of their love, a miracle budding in captivity. A love nurtured in the harsh and deadly environment of Islas Tres Marias.
Christopher explains his timeline. They agree Juanita will immediately go to his parents. Even staying with her Tia in San Diego would put her under the control of her father. When they pause each one notices the dark sky pressing down. Thinking out loud Christopher says, “The siren will sound a warning for danger.”
With so much to share, touch and feel the outside world falls away. Christopher has prepared a letter for his parents, their address and phone number, all sealed in a plastic bag.
Juanita asks, “How will you cross the border without your passport or other identification?”
He soothes her. “I’ll have to be flexible. I have money saved.”
Rubbing his hand down the length of her arm, he asks “What does La Currandera say? ‘Goals and their corresponding acts create positive possibilities.’ I’ll have to trust in your Beneficence.”
Eyes bright with tears Juanita nods. “I’ll wait for you at your parents.”
Christopher takes both her hands in his, “I need to know your safe.” He pauses. “We could marry between the apple trees.”
Juanita laughs, “You’ve given this thought.”
Nodding Christopher says, “You’ll love my family, Juanita. And they will love you.”
He reaches a hand pulling her to standing. They are dismayed to see the skies have continued blackening. The island muffled in quiet but in the distance thunder rumbles.
Concerned, Juanita says, “I have to get back to the boat. My father will want to leave ahead of this storm.”
Christopher’s heart accelerates. Looking into Juanita’s eyes they are thinking the same thing. Juanita talked about it only once. Her older brother was lost at sea in a storm. He’d refused to wear a bow line tethering him to the boat or a life jacket. Juanita’s father, dispirited in the wake of his wife’s death, did not have the energy to argue.
Turning Juanita to face him Christopher says, “Let’s talk to your father. Why not ride out the storm here?” His heart pounds with fear for Juanita and her father’s reckless choices.
Juanita shakes her head. Her father has weekend plans that include the agave fermented, golden liquid, Tequila. She gives Christopher a kiss, then pushes the plastic covered papers deep into her pocket.
Christopher catches her, crushing her, pulling her to his heart. Love full and enduring wraps around them. The white swan spreads her wings surrounding, shielding Juanita in his arms. She whispers, “Our plan in place. La Currandera tells me ‘behaviors with dreams build our foundation.’ Then we’re reunited!”
Christopher knows nothing he can do or say will stop Juanita’s father from leaving the island. A sick feeling accompanies their goodbye. Instead of feeling hopeful, this parting is jagged and painful. Juanita’s final words are, “Trust Christopher, trust Beneficence.”
He sits on their cliff watching the sea. The long tide is pulling out further and exposing more rocks below. He studies the rocks thinking aloud. “I’ve never seen the tide driven out so far and still no siren warning.”
Sitting in the muffled quiet, observing the boat preparing to leave, understanding explodes within him. The hurricane is coming out of the west. The west! A hurricane is coming and no one is prepared. His thoughts are barely complete when the wind kicks up sand and the palm trees bend toward the sea.
Christopher runs. A black sky presses down. The low ceiling makes each crevice of rock stand out boldly. Can I convince the Captain to ride out the storm in El Jefe’s hacienda? El Jefe might not want their kinship common knowledge. But surely a hurricane is an exception!
He organizes his arguments while urgency propels him to leap from rock to rock. The Captain is thinking he can beat out this westerly storm. A trailing wind will speed up the trip home. Halfway down Juanita’s father blasts his air horn. Three quick bursts signal he’ll depart ASAP. Christopher is racing. Lightening blinds him. The crash of thunder so loud he tumbles down the last few feet.
At the dock waiting men oblivious to the weather yell insults. The Captain has already maneuvered the boat from the dock. He makes a rude gesture before turning his attention to the sea.
Christopher is too late. The boat has cleared the bay and is entering full speed into the stormy ocean. His ankle, bruised from his fall, needs attention. His chest is heaving. To catch the boat before it left was a futile effort. Head hanging he whispers, “Will I ever see the sparkles dancing around Juanita again? Will I hear her say, ‘I love you Christopher.’“?
The siren. With both hands on the ground to support him he yells, “Hurricane!”
Standing, turning from shore he begins searching a safe place to ride out the storm. But first he makes a quick stop at the shed near the dock. Grabbing a roll of duct tape and beginning at the arch of his foot, creating a base, he wraps the tape around his foot and ankle. Standing, his foot can bear his weight now.
Whipping wind pushes him to Fat Luis sitting in a jeep talking on the radio. Grabbing the driver’s door with both hands he screams to be heard over the now howling wind. Luis answers but his words fly by. All he can make out is, “hurricane… muy malo.” Luis puts the jeep in gear and heads for the town. Christopher can see the gates are closing. Inmates are every man for themselves.
The earlier quiet has been replaced with buffeting winds tearing the jungle apart. Christopher is bursting with futile rage. All he can think he’s carrying Juanita into a monster. The island will not sink, but his boat can flounder.
It is too painful to consider his task to stay alive and find shelter. I am no good to Juanita dead. He hears the chant she taught him, “Dreams, acts, faith in Beneficence.”
Most storms come from the south but this storm comes from the west. Could this be the devastating hurricane everyone fears?
It’s shattering to realize he was so wrapped up in his feelings for Juanita he did not translated, decipher, the danger to him, to her and their future. If I’d paid better attention I could have warned them. But who would listen to my gringo warning? Juanita has a six to seven hour trip ahead in the roughest seas of her life. He tries reassuring himself. The odds are this storm will head north.
But he can feel nothing but a terrible dread. The oppressive darkness has begun to leak fat raindrops. By the time he arrives at his chicken coop it’s raining sideways. The top half of a palm tree breaks loose from above crashing into the coop. Chickens flapping short wings rush into surrounding brush. “Don’t go far,” he yells to the departing chickens. “I’ll find you after the storm.”
Christopher sprints to his quarters. Adrenalin fuels his muscles masking the pain in his ankle. Checo and Ave Bonita stand at the entrance. Christopher yells, “Wait for me. I have an idea.”
Gathering clothes, shoes and bedding he wraps them in a tarp he’d stashed under his mattress. The green feather he’d saved inside a shoe. A tree falls. Ripping through the roof and filling the room with water and wind. He sprints for the door. Checo stuffs Ave Bonita under his shirt. Christopher yells, “Follow me.”
As they run Christopher prays for Juanita. He prays in his father’s catholic voice and his mother’s Hebrew voice. The prayers run together. A terrible ripping in his gut warns him, Juanita in danger.
• • •
“Juanita, aqui pronto, pronto,” the Captain calls. Juanita staggers to join her father in the tight cabin. From the locker below the console he pulls out a life jacket. “Put this on!” he insists.
Never taking her eyes from his face she slips into the vest. In the surging, foaming sea their boat is a mere speck. Pushed from behind in mounting winds the boat pitches and heaves, cresting waves over fifteen feet high.
Terribly sea sick the putas cling together on the deck. They are crying with terror and misery. Juanita instructed them to tie onto the boat railing. Cursing her they ignored the instructions. Instead they cling helplessly to each other.
Juanita pulls the inflatable life boat from the deck locker, it whips away torn out of her hands. She groans and stumbles back to the cabin, her father’s face stark with desolation. “This is a devil storm meja. It comes from the wrong direction.”
Taking her father’s rough and calloused hands in her own Juanita says, “Go back Papa. Go back.”
Shaking his head the Captain replies, “The boat will swamp if I turn it around. We must pray the storm tracks north… as they always do.” He whispers.
Instead, storm swells rise higher. The boat surfs the downward side of a twenty foot wave, Juanita thrown around the cabin. Hitting the trough, water pours in over the stern. The boat pumps cannot keep up. The women scream. Juanita cannot hear them but shadowed in rain their faces, mouths wide and distorted, are gruesome snapshots.
Yelling to be heard over the storm she tells her father, “I tried to get them to tie down on the boat railing.”
Her father grinds his teeth in frustration. His only daughter, his livelihood and his boat are in mortal danger.
• • •
Like a punch in the gut, bending him in half, Christopher knows Juanita is in dire trouble. His thoughts unwelcome visitors crash through his defenses. She will not escape this monster. This storm will eat everything in its path. It moves east toward the mainland not north and out to sea.
Pausing to yell in Checo’s ear, “We’ll go to the church. The walls are thick.”
The small chapel located just outside the closed gates of town. Checo grabs his upper arm pulling him. “Let’s go!” he shouts.
With every thundering step Christopher prays, help her lord. Help her. It’s both a demand and a petition.
Hurricane Olivia is building in intensity. The gusts toss Christopher and Checo like rag dolls. Driving rain obscures their vision. A full grown tree including the roots flies by them like a missile. At last they stumble into the chapel.
• • •
A thirty foot wall of water dead ahead and Juanita’s hand tightens around her rosary. She shakes with fear. Slate grey mountains of water surround the boat. How will this boat climb such a wall of water?
Her rosary and its smooth round beads filled with Christopher’s love steady her. She slips past her panic until the diesel engine stalls. The fishing boat slides back. It’s unable to climb the towering wall of water.
Sliding into certain doom, a gust lifts the boat. A stay of execution, the Captain grinds his teeth. Stepping around Juanita he slides her in between his arms and the wheel. Like a tiny toy, the storm gods deposit the boat on the wave’s crest.
The boat freezes at the apex, poised at the pinnacle, balancing as if on a teeter-totter. Inevitably the bow plunges. The vessel buries into the valley of grey foam below. The entire ship is immersed under water.
Clinging to each other for dear life, the putas are washed away when the vessel pops to the surface. Horrified, Juanita slaps her hand over her mouth.
Miraculously the engine putters to life. Juanita and her father make the sign of the cross over their hearts. They hug tightly and continue to fight the wheel. A calm in the howling wind has them looking at each other in confusion. One, two, three breaths of quiet pass. As realization dawns, terror replaces their bewilderment. A single ray of sunlight breaks over the boat exploding in prisms and rainbows of color. Open flat seas sparkle for a quarter mile ahead. Juanita shudders, did God spare us? Are we in the eye of the storm?
• • •
In the church Christopher huddles against the thick adobe wall. The chapel nestled in a small gorge. Surrounded by protective rocks it offers literal sanctuary. Adobe walls two feet thick buffer and muffle the storm. They keep the worst of the dangers at bay. Christopher is shaking with shock. He leans against the wall to subdue the tremors.
Outside the thunder of poorly constructed island structures thrown together in mindless abandon is the grotesque dance of Hurricane Olivia. An explosion of glass flies into the church. A palm tree, transformed by the storm into a torpedo, shatters the church’s most prized possession. The stained glass window depicting the last supper lies in fragments littered across the stone floor. The window and its beauty had survived countless other storms. It was a beacon of spiritual hope in the desolate surroundings of prison life.
A hush fills the church. Through the broken window shines a patch of sunlight. Gone is the howling wind and clatter of building torn apart flying in multiple directions. Is the eye of the hurricane passing over us?
Wrapped in his blanket and tarp, he slides down the wall and prays for Juanita’s safety. Shaking and rattling with fatigue Christopher stares out the open window. Fighting fatigue, against his will he falls into a half-waking consciousness. Through the open window he can see Juanita standing at the helm of the boat. He sighs, in the arms of her father.
At first the sea is quiet in his vision. He bows his head in relief. Juanita is safe. She is beyond the dangers of the storm. On the island, once beyond the eye the hurricane will still use trees as torpedoes. A supernatural streak of sunlight breaks across the bow of her father’s boat. Cascading into prisms, sunlight surrounds the vessel. Waterfalls of brilliant color are so bright they make his eyes tear. The flat sea glistens with sunshine. He whispers, “Yes! She is safe.” Christopher exhales. All is well.
Juanita lifts her eyes.
Somehow she can see him. She is looking directly at him. How they can see each other he cannot explain. Yet they are connected. In Juanita’s eyes he sees the reflection of her white swan. Behind her, within her, the swan reaches out its fullest wing span.
A grey wall of water fifty feet high roars toward the boat. Hanging his head Christopher knows there will be no escape for Juanita or her father.
He watches, as he bi-locates; his body in the church, his spirit with Juanita. He hears a whisper, when two hearts, in inner most heart, are joined as one. “Juanita!”
Condensed into a spark of eternity, Juanita’s arms are the outstretched wings of her swan. The giant bird lifts. Her powerful wings lifting higher and higher until she is immersed in sunlight and prisms of color refracted and broken.
The fishing boat disappears into the maw of the wave. Boards splinter, flying in different directions. Christopher falls. He falls long corridors filled with light. He falls past awareness, lands crashing into unconsciousness, safe from the storm and its tragedies.