Island Man

Joanne Skerrett

Description

A grieving Hector Peterson and his estranged father Winston Telemacque arrive on the lush island of Dominica in 2017 to spread his mother’s ashes when Hurricane Maria strikes. Amid the devastation, the fragile peace between father and son is tested as long-buried family secrets at the heart of Hector’s identity are unearthed. Hector faces down his failed marriage, shipwrecked career, and his own failures as a father, while Winston, after three decades of striving as an immigrant in Boston, seeks to reclaim the losses from a painful childhood and the bloody betrayal by his one true love. In Island Man, the ruins of past and present are reconciled and shattered generational bonds are restored.

Sujets

• West Indies
• World Literature
• Rastafarian
• Hurricane Maria (2005)
• Hurricane David
• General officer
• Rastafari movement
• General
• Caribbean
• Roxbury
• Family Life
• Dorchester
• Fiction
• Boston

Informations

• Publié par: Red Hen Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781636281315
• Langue: English

Extrait

Island Man
Copyright 2023 by Joanne Skerrett
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Book layout by Shelby Wallace
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Skerrett, Joanne, author.
Title: Island man: a novel / Joanne Skerrett.
Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2023.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023019099 (print) | LCCN 2023019100 (ebook) | ISBN 9781636281308 (paperback) | ISBN 9781636281315 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Fathers and sons-Fiction. | Family secrets-Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3619.K53 I85 2023 (print) | LCC PS3619.K53 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6-dc23/eng/20230425
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023019099
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023019100
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta George Rosenberg Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, the Adams Family Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

First Edition
Published by Red Hen Press
www.redhen.org
Acknowledgments
I will never be able to thank everyone who encouraged me to move ahead with this project. Without God, of course, nothing is possible and all things are indeed possible with Him. Much gratitude to my family in the US, Guadeloupe, Dominica (St. Joseph and Roseau), and France who never failed to answer my questions, corrected my faulty memory, and continue to keep me grounded. My sisters and Daddy, I have no words except that I will drive ten hours through a snowstorm to be with you all anytime. Marita Golden, for your brilliant and honest critiques; cannot thank you enough. And thank you also for creating a space for Black women writers to grow together. Much thanks also to my agent Sha-Shana Crichton for her determination and for being a great friend. And to my friends near and dear to my heart, you know who you are, much love.
In Memory of Curtis J. Timothy
Table of Contents
Hurricane
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Before Dad
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Aftermath
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Mom
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Aftermath
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Dad
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Aftermath
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Dad
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Aftermath
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Dad
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Aftermath
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Dad
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Aftermath
Chapter 46
Dad
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Aftermath
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Dad
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Aftermath
Chapter 57
Dad
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Aftermath
Chapter 61
Epilogue
Biographical Note
Island Man
Hurricane
Chapter 1
Canefield, Dominica
September 2017
The wind began to pick up around 9:00 p.m., but it hardly stopped our partying. We’d started early, around 6:00 a.m., boarding up the windows and doors, or battening down the hatches, as Dad described it. Cousin Eddie’s wife Missy brought us plates and plates of fried plantains, fish, rice and beans, and endless bottles of Carib and Heineken. By nightfall, we were sore and exhausted, but everyone was in high spirits. Eventually Missy and the girls went upstairs to bed, and Cousin Eddie reminded them to run into the bathroom stall if things got really bad. We all got a good laugh out of that one.
But by eleven, we couldn’t ignore the wind anymore, though not for lack of trying. Cousin Eddie kept trashing the United Workers’ Party, but our drinking had significantly slowed down. Dad had been holding the same beer for the last two hours. The lights flickered two, three times. “Everything okay?” Cousin Eddie shouted at the staircase.
Screw it. I called home. Leandra’s face filled up on my phone screen. “Hey,” I said, wanting to tell her how beautiful she looked. She was in a good mood, lucky for me. “Weather’s not too bad yet,” I assured her. “Where’s my son?”
I shared the video of Dante grinning in his SpongeBob pajamas. Dante lit up at seeing Dad’s face. “Goodnight, Grandpa!” he waved, and Dad beamed into the screen. “Don’t get eaten by the hurricane, Grandpa!” Dante grinned his three-toothed smile, holding up a drawing of a monster that I supposed was his rendering of Hurricane Maria.
“I won’t, little man,” Dad said, poking a wrinkled finger at the screen. “You keep safe in Boston, okay?”
I waved goodbye to Dante and tried to lock eyes with Leandra, but she, consciously or unconsciously, barely looked at me before hanging up.
Dad and I had arrived in Dominica just the week before. His victory lap—or “grand tour,” as I was calling it—took us the length and breadth of the island, introducing us to new family members and sites like the Boiling Lake and the Emerald Pool that earned the island its reputation as the Nature Island. Everyone said we looked like brothers, which reminded me that maybe I should shave my virtually all-gray beard and get a haircut.
Two weeks, I’d told him, then I needed to get back to Dante. True, there was really nothing waiting for me in Boston except watching the Celtics lose and the Patriots cheat their way to the Super Bowl. But I’d stalled long enough. The one-year anniversary of Mom’s death was coming up, and I had to keep my promise to her. Dad and I planned to spread her ashes in the bay in Roseau. Leaving her in this place of her birth, as she wanted, would not bring me any peace. In all honesty, I would have kept her with me, even to my own grave, where she could be safe. But a promise was a promise.
Then the weather warnings began. At first, I thought it would be kind of cool to be in a hurricane. I’d survived a lifetime of blizzards and nor’easters in Boston, so why not add a little tropical disaster to the mix? Still, when the weather forecasters began to try on their grim expressions, I called up JetBlue and bought Dad a ticket home. Of course, he refused. Why should I be the one to stay? Did he not have even more of a claim to Mom’s memory than I did? He had his own promises to keep, I guessed, his own guilty conscience to absolve. If I was staying, he would stay. And I’d learned over the years not to argue with the man.
So I got into it. Hurricane prep in Cousin Eddie’s neighborhood seemed more like tailgating than anything else. It was bright and sunny that morning with just a few pregnant clouds high in the sky. I was still getting used to the rhythms of tropical suburban life with the constant backbeat of soca music and its younger version, bouyon, which made Dad roll his eyes. “That is nonsense music,” he said, sucking his teeth. “These children are ruining our music, our traditions.” Shirtless men and women in brightly colored blouses and tank tops, shorts and dresses were out on their front lawns with planks, hammers, drills, and saws; eating, drinking, and boarding up or knotting down everything that could move.
Cousin Eddie’s house had large glass-paned windows on the first floor, and it took all day for Dad and me to board them up while Cousin Eddie and his friends secured the rest of the house. I had to admit, after twenty years of sitting at a desk or in an airplane seat, the physical labor was exhilarating. My atrophied muscles were springing to life again. At one point, Dad looked over at me and wiped his brow, grinning. “Boy, I haven’t sweat like this in a long time!”
The neighbors ribbed me without end. “Eh, eh! How a spoiled American like you going to survive a big hurricane like that? Is not like snow, you know? We don’t have no FEMA to come and rescue you, eh.” I took it all in stride.
Around eleven thirty, I went upstairs to my room, leaving Dad and Cousin Eddie in the living room reminiscing about the old days. Cousin Eddie’s house was large and modern, so I wasn’t too concerned. Over the years, Dad had taken care of his entire extended family on the island, so all had climbed out of the poverty that had plagued his early life.
I was so beat from all the manual labor that I collapsed into bed still in my shorts and T-shirt. The rain and wind were causing a ruckus outside, but I was too exhausted to care. I wanted to savor the events of the day: working with Dad and saying goodnight to Dante’s face on the screen. But in a few minutes, I was out cold.
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when a loud crash and wail jolted me upright. The wind, screaming like a banshee, had torn off the roof over my room, opening the black sky and vibrating through the walls. Suddenly I was in a wind tunnel with raindrops flying at me from every direction, into my nose, my ears, my eyes. Before I could cry out, the partition wall, liquefying before my eyes, caved in right next to my bed. I must have blacked out at that moment. When Cousin Eddie came running in to pull me out, I had a mouthful of concrete and my hearing was completely gone in one ear. Eddie’s strong hands on my shoulder jolted me awake, pulled me onto my feet. “Come on!” I ignored the dizziness, my unsteady legs and stood, groping around for my backpack. “Come on, Hector!” He was by the bedroom door, which was half off its hinges when I crawled aw