“Can we at least get water free?” Neil asked. “We’ve got less than three gallons left.”
“Water’s rationed. You’ll get some, but not enough for a voyage.”
“Jesus, what’s happened to traditional Caribbean hospitality?” Frank asked, frowning.
“It was obliterated, Frank,” Sheila replied, her face as gloomy as the others’, “the day the white man began bringing disease and death south with him instead of tourist dollars.”
Her husband also frowned. “And of course the other reason is the plague,” he said.
“The what?” Frank exclaimed.
“You’d best watch where you get your water from,” Sheila explained. “There’s some sort of mysterious disease on the islands— not many cases yet and worst on Capo Gorda—that kills about half the people that come down with it.”
“Is that why the customs people took our temperature?” Neil asked.
“Yes,” Philip replied. “It seems the disease is carried by Americans from the mainland, or so they say.” He was frowning and didn’t raise his head to look at the others. There was an awkward silence.
“Rainwater’s safe,” said Sheila.
There was another silence.
“When it rains,” Philip added gloomily.
It only took them a few days on St. Thomas to realize that conditions were appalling. Black antipathy to white strangers was palpable in glances and gestures at every moment. In the month since the war the food shortages had already taken their toll. People looked gaunt, walked slowly, squabbled violently over the tiniest disagreement about food or water. They soon realized that the black men fishing at every bridge and breakwater and along most of the docks were not fishing for leisure, but for survival. The street vendor haggling over the price of two oranges was haggling not because of “cultural tradition” but out of economic desperation. The voluptuous black mother who spent twenty minutes in the store manager’s private office was not cold-hearted or neurotic but only a human being gratefully cashing in her last economic asset. In this world there were no luxuries, only necessities.
Human society on St. Thomas was falling apart. The government was still paying its employees in paper dollars, which were no longer being accepted by the few farmers, fishermen, and merchants who had anything worth selling. Consequently government employees, once the island’s elite, were now working for nothing, whereas most other workers—half the population was unemployed—bargained to be paid in food and water. Pot-smoking and prostitution were now public and open, since there were no facilities to jail offenders in, no food to feed them with, and only unpaid, disgruntled policemen to arrest and guard them. Bicycles and mules were the popular vehicles of the new world. The airport was usually empty of both planes and people, since most private planes had flown south and regular commercial flights to anywhere had ended when the fuel ran out or pirates made off with the planes. The sight of an airplane over St. Thomas two days after Vagabond arrived had sent such a rush of people from town to the airport that when Neil saw it he thought he was witnessing some annual island bike race: over a hundred people pedaling out to the airport as if their lives depended on it.
Everyone who could afford to leave either had left or was trying to. With the food inadequate on all the islands, the poor, with nothing to lose, were beginning to demand forcefully their share of what little was still left. On their first walk through the streets of Charlotte Amalie Neil, Frank, and Jeanne had seen the broken and unboarded windows of supermarkets and grocery stores, all of which were now empty and deserted. Some downtown blocks had so many looted and abandoned stores it seemed “the revolution” must already have occurred, and yet the local whites they were able to talk to still spoke as if they feared a black uprising and takeover. There were four old tanks parked along the waterfront. Except for the three white enclaves outside of town and the St. Thomas Hilton, Neil didn’t see that there was much left on St. Thomas of value to “take over.”
Settling on St. Thomas began to seem increasingly unlikely. In their first few days Frank was offered two different houses in exchange for Vagabond, but the desperation and hopefulness with which the owners made their offers sobered Frank considerably. He discussed with Neil the possibility of selling Vagabond to raise enough gold to fly most or maybe all of them to Brazil, but the prospect of arriving destitute in Brazil was unpleasant, and, worse, they would have to sell the boat before they could strike a solid bargain with a pilot.
And to complicate their situation still more, the news from the other Caribbean islands and from the rest of the world was dismal. Although the war seemed to be at a standstill, conditions worldwide were still getting worse. No one dared to declare the war was over. No government proudly announced victory or abjectly offered surrender, but reports of recent fighting had ceased—at least among the major powers. Battles for food and skirmishes between refugees and neutral countries trying to keep them out were increasing. U.S. government officials, still speaking from some unidentified underground headquarters, after three weeks of exhorting their fellow citizens to rally to defeat the Soviet Union, now spoke only of the steps that would have to be taken to save the surviving population. Although the government had spoken, there was no evidence that anyone was listening. From what could be gathered from the shortwave radio and an occasional newscast on the local AM station, the country seemed to be divided up into isolated pockets of survivors, each struggling independently to cope with their particular problems. Reports seemed to imply that more than two-thirds of the U.S. population was already dead.
Mass starvation on the mainland of the U.S. had not yet been reported. It was July, and survivors had plenty of natural growing things for nourishment—if they lived in areas uncontaminated by radiation—but throughout much of the rest of the world this was the problem.
Other diseases were now beginning to claim as many victims as radiation sickness and burns. Dysentery, typhoid, and cholera were becoming epidemic throughout those areas of the world where loss of electricity and overcrowding meant reduced and polluted water supplies. Worst of all, the mysterious disease from the western United States was spreading to places untouched by missiles, as it had to the Virgin Islands. Colombia, Venezuela, and four Central American countries had forbidden all immigration from the north, quarantining or exiling anyone caught illegally within their borders. The “flu”virus that had been talked about weeks earlier was now definitely more than a flu, but the etiology of the “plague” remained unknown. All that had been established was that the incubation period was between a week and ten days, that transmission seemed to have to be oral—through ingestion of contaminated food or water, or through mouth contact with someone infected. Flies that had been in contact with the sweat of an infected person could also contaminate food.
The prognosis was known now too. The disease began with stomach cramps, then a fever, then a high fever that might last five or six days, followed by either death or a remission of symptoms. Treatment was to reduce and control the fever—medication, ice packs, fluids, etc. Unfortunately none of them were very successful. Altogether about a quarter of the victims survived with no apparent permanent damage, and another quarter survived but seemed to be debilitated by the disease, lacking in energy and endurance, and about half died.
As a result, international travel and trade had almost stopped. Jeanne and Neil listened to a report that the Venezuelan air force had threatened to shoot down a Boeing 747 that had requested to land in Caracas after an eight-hour flight from Toronto, Canada. When the plane was almost out of fuel and circling outside the city, the air force did shoot it down. No one survived.