THE BULLDOZERS APPEAR OVERNIGHT. THEY STAND IN PLACE like resting mammoths, their blades like curved tusks. It’s as though they landed from the sky or were washed ashore. One by one they begin to knock down trees in the cove and along the river. They also take a chunk of the hill, cutting down the trees that cradle the limestone, which they chip away. Their big engines grind two-thousand-year-old tree trunks—trees the ancestors once hid behind, crouching in search of freedom. The workmen, imported from overseas, gather the fishing boats and load them on a truck. The men fold the earth in ways Thandi would have thought impossible. Bits and pieces of rock scatter as trees are uprooted. When they collapse, the earth shakes. A huge silence follows. Thandi always knew that the sky would fall. The clouds gather together, and the sun stands still and watches her world crumble. People begin to snatch their things from their shacks, forced into the unknown, leaving just the John-crows that brood like hunchbacked witches sniffing death under their armpits. The men rope off the fishing village, right where you go when heading to Miss Ruby’s or Charles’s shacks. Those shacks are marked to be destroyed. But Thandi has an inkling that her side of the river might be next.
Rumor has it that Miss Ruby, interrupted from rubbing cream on her face one morning, stood outside her shack and cussed the men. “Ovah me dead body! Oonuh tek everyt’ing else, but not me house! This is mine!” The men must have taken one look at Miss Ruby’s white face and decided she was an obeah woman wielding spells with her wild hand gestures and that strange language that she spoke. All of a sudden the earth started to shake. The shaking was harder and longer than the tremble of the falling trees. The men clutched their helmets and searched for safety. They ran for cover, diving behind bushes and under sheets of zinc. After the shaking stopped, they came out slowly, cautiously, and surveyed the damage around them. They then looked at the white-faced black woman, who appeared just as stunned as them. Later it was reported that what they had experienced was an earthquake. They decided to halt the construction until a later date. They left the bulldozers where they were, the engines baring their teeth like a threat, leaving the residents of River Bank to wait for whatever will come next.
Currently there is yellow tape all over town. The warning is as clear as the sun. In a matter of weeks, River Bank will be no more. Everyone gathers to meet at Dino’s at night to discuss the development. They talk and talk, the men pounding fists on tables or countertops and the women shaking or holding their heads. Macka offers them hard liquor, like he offered the farmers when their crops had started to die, and they take gulps, not sips, throwing their heads back and wiping sweat from ridged foreheads. Little children play hide-and-seek under the tables and chairs, avoiding the grown-ups, who are beside themselves in panic. Even if they block River Bank Road in protest, the developers will still proceed. Look what happened to Little Bay. They have already erected hotel resorts on top of people’s homes, and they will do it again and again.
In the midst of their chatter, Verdene Moore appears in the doorway. A hush falls over the bar. Even the children stop playing to look. She glides inside Dino’s without a pause, as though she has always belonged. As though she hasn’t noticed the women shifting to avoid touching her, the mothers hissing for their little girls to move away, and the men clutching their bottles like a neck they want to strangle. Thandi, who is seated beside Delores, watches her with curiosity. Verdene smiles at Thandi and she almost smiles back before remembering not to. Verdene sits next to her. “Hello, Thandi,” she says, her voice laced with familiarity. An agitated Delores grabs a slipper as if to hit Verdene. “Get behind me, Satan!” Delores shouts.
“I’m not going to let you run me off again,” Verdene says calmly. She doesn’t move away from Delores and her slipper. “My mother didn’t raise a coward. This is my community too. I was born and raised here just like you.” She glances around the room. “Just like all of you.”
One by one people take their hands from their jaws or lolling heads to look. They become animated in their disapproval again, Verdene’s presence seeming to revitalize their spirit. “Yuh crazy?” Macka asks Verdene. “Why yuh t’ink yuh can come in here an’ stan’ up like yuh own di place?”
“This problem concerns me too.”
“It might do yuh more good to leave.” Macka moves closer to her like he’s about to do something.
“I’m not the one to blame,” Verdene says. “Why don’t you focus your energy on those who are responsible?”