“From there to here involved multiple steps, all fraught with the early-days angst of unknowable & invisible transmission. Getting off the Ferry in Red Hook on St. Thomas, we were forced into a crowded shared cab, no one wearing masks, the only disinfectant was the banana air freshener, giving a sickly undertow to the flop-sweat of visitors leaving for uncertain futures. Our West Indian driver was an evangelical listening to the Sunday megachurch sermon whose heavily accented preacher was decrying COVID-19 as a plot by Satan and saying the only cure was the panacea of Jesus.”
“As we navigated the 1.5 lane roads at a speed more falling than forward on the high, high cliffs, our driver would mutter ‘Hallelujah,’ in response to the radio’s bursts of static.”
“Reaching our resort, next to the Charlotte Amalie airport, the selective adherence to health & safety protocols further accentuated the certainty I was going to die, not in the displaced future-now, but the immediate now”
