After Hurricane David (August 1979, the most powerful of this century’s hurricanes to that date) passed through and over us I was alone and stranded in vast array of uprooted tropical forest trees. They were draped like jackstraws over the ravaged land surrounding our destroyed and partially destroyed buildings. I was destined to be there for five weeks. Fortunately, the rest of the family were up in the states at this time.
At dawn on the day of the storm the wind came up and within an hour it was howling. When the inexorable clamor finally ceased late that afternoon I had forfeited most of my reserve of emotional strength. Peering through a crack at the height of the storm I saw our house up on the ridge one minute and a few minutes later it was gone; everything—gone—vanished! The rest of my emotional reserve was eroding in the next few days as I forced myself to examine the site of our former home and personal possessions and what remained of the hotel and greenhouses. I found myself at once numbed, and angry. Any accumulation of tears was impossible because there seemed to be no check valve on the reserve pouch.
After a few days I began to work on recovery; of the property and myself.
Most of the adult villagers were on our payroll. When the storm was coming I tried to impress on them the threat that a hurricane poses. There had not been one on the island for about forty years and they could not grasp its destructive, life threatening capabilities. I offered to shelter them and their families with me in the main building which I reckoned would survive any storm, and when reports indicated the storm’s certain arrival I had gone to town and purchased food to tide us over for a day or two after the storm’s passage.
I certainly did not anticipate fully the events that followed.
The village had a few bad people; young would-be criminals. Intimidation on the island is alarmingly easy to accomplish and the threat of robbery at the hands of the bad element forced all of the villagers to stay with their homes rather than taking refuge with me at the hotel. I was not there to argue the point; to persuade them. They just did not show up at the beginning of the storm.
During the storm, as every last one of their little shack houses flew away in the increasing winds, they told me they lay on the ground, head to the wind, with their children sheltered as best they could under them. Some had their clothes blown from their bodies. It had to have been frightening and dreadful. One man died; hit by a flying board.
Island House was almost leveled, however, the estate house for Watten Waven Estate three quarters of a mile below us survived. It had been built into the end of an old mill set in a slightly better protected ravine and remained reasonably intact. The homeless villagers therefore moved further down the road to it for shelter. The bad element, however, like hyenas, crept up to our perimeter seeking things to steal. Fearful of the night, they watched from a distance during all parts of the day trying to judge my whereabouts. They scattered when I fired a shotgun load over their heads into the stubs of leafless trees still partially standing. The splat of the load was always impressive.
A strategic portion of the road to town had slid into the ravine and would take weeks of bulldozer work to reestablish. Certainly there were more urgent priorities in town so we would be cut off, perhaps for months.
The villagers were in a state of shock but food was airlifted to them by helicopter. A friend, who was the counselor officer from the US Embassy in Barbados, steered one of the helicopters up to me and gave me a present of flour, and a carton of US Army field rations. I traded the flour to the villagers for rice for our two dogs.
The dogs alerted me whenever the baddies intruded. I slept in twenty to thirty minute segments so as to properly guard our property.
Early on I noticed that the tiny farm hut across the river up from us had been quickly rebuilt. I always knew it was there but had never seen it or its occupant because of the tropical forest growth. I had been told that the fellow there was all right. A few days later a young Dominican came up into the parking lot. He called to me from a distance. He was tall, muscular, and reasonably neatly dressed. I watched him from cover. I came out onto the front steps, my shotgun in hand.
“I am James, from across the river,” he announced. He was pleasant of face and looked somehow out of place living in the bush. After some exchanges of information about the storm’s effects on the countryside, and relying on the appraisal of his character I had received earlier from trusted employees, I invited him in.
He immediately informed me that he usually lived in town but here he had several plots of Marijuana. He referred to the pot as ‘weed’. He explained that some of the villagers had robbed him just before the storm and he was on the lookout for any further attempts to purloin his crop. The fact that I had grown a couple of marijuana plants before the law against it was passed must have erroneously identified me as a fellow lawbreaker who therefore offered no threat.
“And, even if they come up to my garden I have my shallots” he explained carefully. He pronounced shallots with the last syllable emphasized as was often done on the island; Sha-LOTTS. I was having a little difficulty understanding him and was doubly puzzled as to the benefits offered by the possession of shallots. He continued to repeat his reliance on “My shallots”.
James left and I did not see him for a couple of days until he returned to ask if I had been able to contact anyone. I had told him of my failed attempts to set up a short-wave radio.
“Anyone trouble you since I saw you, James?”
“No, but I’m not worried, I have my shal-lots.”
“What is so special about your shallots?” I asked, my curiosity overcoming my reluctance to pry.
“What shallots?”
“The ones you say will protect you?”
“Mahn, I not understanding you, nuh,” he said, obviously puzzled.
“You said your shallots.”
He shook his head in the negative.
“You said you were not worried because, as you said, ‘I have my shallots’, James.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” he laughed. “Eh, eh, Mr. Brand, you’re not taking me on, nuh, Sir. I said I had ‘Marshal Arts’! I know karate too.” The way he pronounced Karate sounded like Bugs Bunny’s favorite vegetable made into a tea, but I did not point that out to him.