Only wise men—and some newborn fools—
say they know what’s going on.
–Harry Chapin–
Cruz Bay was Walter’s kind of town. The capital city of St. John in the American Virgin Islands is more accurately a village, much too small to ever be called a city. It’s centered on and around the island’s largest port, hugging the shore, clinging to the mountainside. The Rock, as St. John’s permanent residents call their much larger neighbor, St. Thomas, is only a short twenty-minute boat ride, but for many who live on St. John, that distance is measured in months or years, not minutes or nautical miles.
Billy’s Bar is directly across the small square that fronts the slip where the St. Thomas ferry docks. For many years Walter Sherman had spent about half his waking hours there. Breakfast nearly every morning—a little later in the day now than when he was younger—a late afternoon lunch and, from time to time, dinner too if the occasion was special enough. He could always be found sitting in the second to last seat at the far end of the bar, near the kitchen, next to the large standing fan. Time didn’t change Billy’s much. Walter liked that. The same might be said for the whole island and he liked that too. Unless someone reminded him, it was easy for Walter Sherman to forget St. John was part of the United States.
The island can only be reached by small boat, including the ferry. The big cruise ships have to make port at St. Thomas. Tourists from those floating hotel vessels, and the Rock’s other visitors, staying at the bustling resorts on St. Thomas, often take the short trip to St. John for a few hours of shopping. Some come for the national park, many more for the beaches. Some come over just for dinner and catch the last ferry back to St. Thomas. For the more serious tourists, or bushwhackers as the locals called them, those with a special liking for St. John’s calm tranquility and truly magnificent beaches, and with no interest at all in doing things like playing golf, there were the island’s two large resort hotels. Walter and his fellow permanent St. John residents frequently thanked God, and the federal government too, for the absence of a golf course anywhere on the island. It had been the Almighty, of course, who in his inspired creation of the Caribbean made the island less than nine miles long and too mountainous to accommodate a golf course, a race track, or anything resembling the cursed Disneyland or any of its growing number of cheaper imitations. Theme parks they called them. What theme was there, Walter wondered, other than spending money? As an added stroke of luck, the federal government of the United States had accepted a gift of land, comprising nearly two-thirds of the entire island, and designated it a national park. John D. Rockefeller’s middle son, Laurence, the smartest and richest of his bunch, was the generous donor. No fool, the only thing Rockefeller kept for himself was the area called Caneel Bay—surely the loveliest part of the loveliest island—thought of by more than a few as the most beautiful spot in the world. It was here Rockefeller built the first of his famous resorts. The riffraff from the mainland, the back-slapping, heavy-drinking, cigar-smoking golfing quartets looking for an early tee time and a blackjack table, were forced to seek other venues.
In addition to the newer Westin, originally a Hyatt property, and the older Caneel Bay resorts, there are a handful of smaller hotels and guesthouses and about 400 hillside and hilltop homes, most of them for rent, all of them carrying expensive weekly rates. At high season, the island’s population of 4,000 doubles. St. John is not for the casual visitor looking for just anyplace to go on a package holiday in the Caribbean. Those seeking a taste of Europe usually go farther south to the Dutch-flavored Curacao. If excitement and adventure among the young, the rich, and the French is what they want, and if they have enough money, they go to trendy and chic St. Barts. And if they are looking for nothing more than to stay in America but get away from winter, they’ll head straight to Puerto Rico and be quite content with the hotels and casinos on Dorado Beach. St. John, on the other hand, is a place people come to, to be alone. That’s why Walter Sherman was determined to buy a home there the first time he set foot on its shore. That’s why his ex-wife, Gloria, called it St. Garbo.