Chapter 6

Then came the labor:

The roof of the largest coral block building had lost a few stripes of corrugated tin. That had allowed waterborne sand to fill a couple of rooms to the bottom of the window cutouts.

Josie said: I did ... and she did something else. She showed me later. The two rooms were at the front of the mighty fine coral block building. Digging into the sand ... speaking of the sand ... waterborne sand is what I should say ... packed ... next up, in a geological manner of speaking, is sandstone ... digging into the sand was mostly digging under it and breaking off the unsupported top. Since there were no glass windows in the window-holes, I folded back the shutters and pitched everything out on the veranda.

I did discover the reason for the two rooms.

They were there for the retail displays. Hoes, scoop shovels, pointed shovels, three tined pitchforks, push brooms and sweepers, axes, hatchets, mattocks, all manner of saws ... just about everything an islander could use and some things to satisfy the wanter.

It certainly made the cleanup go faster.

"Hey!"

I looked up. "Hey, yer own self."

"Step outside and give the tin a shove?"

They may have been the original roof or Josie found new, but they were the same green and fit the holes. She had found some kind of glue and had slathered the crossbeams. The edges overlapped and she slowly lowered the sheet in place. Then she walked on it.

I couldn't have done it, but she was light and the glue seized on contact.

"Get all that sand off my porch," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

Rather than just chucking it, I shaped the big chunks into blocks and build a sand wall in front of the veranda. Josie looked out of the breeze hole and walked away.

Pretty soon, she came out with a pressure sprayer and sprayed a brown liquid on the sand ... it stuck. Then she sprayed ... with a second sprayer ... a clear liquid over the brown.

"Give it a minute," she said, "For the gods sake ... don't touch it! You're really not from here."

"Nope," I agreed.

I reached towards the sprayed on wall ... got my hand slapped for it, too. I could feel the heat of some kind of chemical reaction.

"When it's cool you can touch it ... couple three more minutes." She was counting in her head ... then she handed me a hammer. "Hit it. No! HIT IT! Now go pick up the hammer."

She stepped inside and flipped a switch. Ceiling lights!

"How did you do that?"

"There's a small hydro plant over by the mountain."

"Where's the power lines?"

"Buried."

"Oh."

"Come on," she grabbed me by the hand. "We have an unpleasant job."

The unpleasant job was dragging bodies out in the water and watching the feeding frenzy.

"Shouldn't we bury them?" I asked, "Plant a marker of some kind?"

"Why? Who is going to read the marker?"

"I don't know ... just seems callous."

"The dead serve a purpose ... just as the living. This batch are part of the ocean cycle. I mean, Daddy was processed and gave back to the community."

I had to think about that ... then I wished I hadn't.