copyright Jason and Lorna Cromwell got out of the mini-bus taxi in front of the Caribbean Cottages. The hotel consisted of a collection of eight newly built bungalows (two still under construction) that stood a hundred yards off the highway in a jungle of tropical vegetation. A battered green pickup truck sat in the shade of a clump of banana trees beside a shed marked "office." An elderly man emerged from the makeshift office and helped the couple carry their baggage to cottage number seven. From the front, the cottages were nondescript: beige stucco with windows bordered in blue. Once Jason and Lorna stepped past the fronts of the bungalows, they saw a lawn that swept down to a rocky precipice. A trail led down the rocks to a crescent of golden-brown sand beach in a grove of coconut palms overlooking a horseshoe-shaped inlet of turquoise water. The ocean was so clear they could see its sandy bottom stretch nearly half a mile to where the water turned indigo blue above a coral reef. The view from the back of the hotel was breathtaking, and Lorna—initially disappointed by the forlorn little cottages—dropped her bags, turned, and put her arms around Jason’s neck. "Oh, Darling," she said. "It’s beautiful." She let her eyes soak up the swaying palms, the shimmering water, the purple reef, the thin green lines of atolls and keys farther out to sea. Above it all loomed the volcano—Soufriere. "It’s a postcard!" Lorna exclaimed. "We almost didn’t make it here, Honey," Jason whispered. "I know." Despite the spectacular scenery, the hotel was nearly deserted. It stood half-way up the windward coast of the Caribbean island of Montserrat, between the airport and the town of St. Johns. Jason Cromwell had carefully planned the honeymoon, researching various Caribbean locations. He wanted something comfortable, but not too commercialized, and Montserrrat with its low-key resorts and verdant hills seemed ideal. A British colony in the Leeward Islands, it was known as the "Emerald Island," because it had been originally settled by Irishmen. Although African culture now dominated the island, visitors' passports were still stamped with a green shamrock when they cleared customs. Jason had bought their tickets and booked the cottage long before Sourfriere began spewing ash and steam and pelting the southern half of the island with volcanic rock. "Not to worry," they were reassured in a letter from the hotel after the capital of Plymouth was evacuated. The cottages were out of the "no access zone." Not even in the "limited zone." Officially they were in an area prepared for "possible evacuation." But they were still far from the volcano. "Sounds dangerous," Lorna had said. "Don’t you think we should find another island?" The danger, Jason assured his wife, had been blown out of proportion by the press. As in many other things, from psychology to quantum physics, Jason claimed authority on the subject of geology. Although he was an assistant professor of English at City College, he prided himself on the breadth of his knowledge in all disciplines and never hesitated for a moment to pontificate. Most geologists, he told her, believed the volcano would continue spewing steam and ash for years, but would pose no further threat to the island. Nevertheless, since the first rumblings of the volcano, tourism to Montserrat had come to a virtual standstill. "I don’t know. I think we’d be a lot safer in the Bahamas," Lorna insisted. "Do you know statistically," Jason had asked, "what the chances of that volcano erupting again are?" "No," she replied, her mind elsewhere, as it often was when he lectured. "About one in a million." Still, only one other couple, and the elderly caretaker who opened their room for them and spoke in a nearly incomprehensible West Indian patois, were at the hotel. Despite all that, the gorgeous setting immediately chased any doubts that Lorna had from her mind. The turquoise water and verdant hills seemed also to soften the difficult days that had preceded their much-anticipated honeymoon. She put her suitcase on the bed and opened the blinds to a view of the ocean straight ahead. To the right, she could see the road they had climbed in the taxi that twisted and curved through hairpin turns and switchbacks up the side of the mountain. She turned and walked into her husband’s open arms. "We made it." He held her so tightly she could barely breathe. "I’m glad we did," he said. She broke free of his smothering embrace and kissed him on the chin. "Me too." *** "I can’t do it," Jason Cromwell had said three days before, when he called his fiancee at her mother’s house. "What?" Lorna O’Brien held the cell phone against her right ear while her mother pinned up the wedding gown in back. "I just can’t go through with it. Not yet. Not now." Jason’s voice shook and he sounded on the brink of tears. "What are you saying?" "Who is it, Dear?" Lorna’s mother asked. "Nobody, Mother. Can we take a break?" "You want to take a break for nobody?" Lorna held her hand over the receiver. "Mother, please, can we just stop a minute." Mrs. O’Brien stood up. "Okay, okay. I know when I’m not wanted." She kissed her daughter lightly on the cheek. "Tell ‘Nobody’ I said hello, and that I think he’s going to be a very handsome groom." "Mother!" When her mother left the room, Lorna raised the phone again to her ear. "What are you talking about?" "I’m just not sure." Jason hesitated. "I’m not ready for this." "Why?" "I can’t do it. It’s not you. It’s just that I don’t think I’m ready for the commitment." "It’s a little late for that!" His voice took on a tone of resolve. "I’m backing out." Lorna sat stunned, her heart thundering. "Lorna?" She heard the voice come over the phone as if it were being transmitted from another dimension. She felt devastated, worthless, embarrassed about the guests and gifts. When she had regained her balance, anger swept over her. How can you do this to me?" There was a long pause at the other end. Finally, Lorna shouted. "Say something!" "Honey, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry." "Don’t call me Honey." She choked back tears, running her fingers along the smooth satin of her wedding dress, and calmed herself. "Why, Jason?" "I met someone." Lorna felt the room spinning. She reached out, found the back of a kitchen chair, and lowered herself into it. She shifted uncomfortably in the cumbersome wedding gown, trying to control the vicious thoughts that swept through her mind. "Do you know what this will do to Daddy?" She finally managed. Her father, Paul O’Brien, had been diagnosed two years before with lung cancer. Radiation had failed. Chemotherapy had failed. Radical surgery had cost him his right lung, but saved his life. Six months later they took another tumor from his left lung. But the surgeons shook their heads. He was not expected to live. It was a miracle he had lived long enough to see his daughter engaged. Lorna had prayed that he’d have enough strength to walk her down the aisle, but that seemed out of the question now. She was just grateful that he’d be alive on the day of her wedding. "Do you have any idea at all what this might do to him?" She asked again. "Honey, I..." "I said don’t call me that," she hissed, surprising herself by the violence in her voice. "I’ve thought long and hard about this. It’s not an easy decision." "Poor baby. Did you lose some sleep over it?" "Hon...Lorna..." "Who is she?" "Don’t, Lorna. This is for the best." "The best? My father and mother have spent a fortune on this wedding. They’ve been up for weeks addressing invitations. And what about all the people who have already sent gifts? We’re not as rich as the almighty Cromwells." Lorna envied her husband’s upper class voice and his polish. She had been the first in her family to go to college and she fell in love with Jason in her senior year when she took a course in the Romantic Poets from him. Oh, yes, he was quite the catch, Jason Cromwell. Now, she shuddered at the name. Her working class family was Irish-Catholic from Brooklyn. Jason came from a well-to-do family in northern Virginia. His father had "invented" the paper that goes in the bottom of a package of meat to absorb the blood. Lorna laughed when Jason had told her this. She hardly considered it an invention. After all, it was just a piece of paper. But apparently, the Cromwells had made a fortune from it. "Every package of meat in America is sold with my father’s invention in it," he bragged with an ironic tone that suggested he understood the absurdity of building a fortune on such a product. But he bragged, nevertheless. Lorna’s father, a first-generation Irishman and bus driver for all his life, had joked good-naturedly about her marrying a Protestant. But when he had heard the name was Cromwell, it really did upset him. Oliver Cromwell, the British general, was the ancient enemy of the Irish people. Ironically, Lorna learned one night as Jason read aloud from a guidebook to the island, that following his victory over the Irish in 1649, Cromwell had shipped his prisoners of war to Montserrat. But any misgivings her parents may have had about Jason were quickly forgotten. Lorna’s parents loved their prospective son-in-law like one of their own. *** When Lorna and Jason had settled into their room, and packed the groceries they’d bought from a small store on the way, they mixed drinks from a bottle of Mount Gay rum and collapsed onto the bed where they kissed and embraced, then soon fell asleep. It had been a long week. The next three days fell into an easy rhythm of snorkeling, walks in the nearby hills, drinks on the balcony, lovemaking, and simple meals prepared in the kitchenette. The sunshine, the crash of the surf, and the salty breezes seemed to have washed away, like the waves on the beach, the events leading up to the day of the wedding. *** Lorna had spent the night after Jason’s call crying and hiding her grief from her parents. Then, when she had finally come to terms with the fact that Jason no longer loved her, that she had been jilted, she approached the problem with the cold objectivity of a scientist. "You will go through with this," she told Jason the next morning on the phone. "I don’t care what happens afterward. I don’t want anything from you when this is over. But you are going to that altar with me. I won’t let you do this to my father. He will live to see his plans go through." "Lorna, please..." "Just listen to me. You are going to stand in front of the priest and say ‘I do’ and put that ring on my finger. I will not disappoint the hundreds of people we’ve invited. But most of all, I won’t let your selfishness break my father’s heart in the final days of his life." "Lorna, this is crazy." "Shut up, " she commanded. "You’re going through with it." "I can’t." "Oh, no?" Lorna paused. "Maybe you’d like me to share our little secret with your parents, then." "What?" "You know what I’m talking about." "You wouldn’t!" "Try me." Jason, racked with guilt over what had been called the accidental death of his younger brother when they were teenagers, had finally confided one night in Lorna. "We were on vacation with my parents on Lake Superior. My brother and I had been fighting for days. We were just kids. Every morning we would take out the old Boston whaler. One morning I told him to go on without me. The night before, I took the life-preservers out of the boat and drained most of the gas tank. Just before he shoved off, I loosened the plug in the boat." Jason had broken down halfway through telling the story. "I’m so sorry. We were just kids. I was just playing a joke on him." They found the boat first, floating belly up in the middle of the lake. It took two days before they recovered the body of his brother. His parents never knew the truth of what had happened. Lorna, shocked by the story, had serious reservations about continuing to see Jason. But when she realized how sorry he was, she had comforted and forgiven him. Now, Jason couldn’t believe what she was saying. "That would devastate my parents. You can’t do that." "You can’t do this to me! And after that ceremony is over, I don’t want your ring, and I don’t want to ever see your face again." *** "Do you take this woman, Lorna Kathleen O’Brien," Father Ramos had asked, "to be your lawful wedded wife, to love and cherish, in sickness and in health, ‘till death do you part?" Jason Cromwell, who’d spent a sleepless night before the wedding, said, "I do." Lorna had also been up most of the night with one of her bridesmaids, a Jamaican woman who’d been her roommate in college. They listened to reggae, drank wine, and talked into the early hours of the morning. Perhaps it was the ceremony itself, or the fact that the stress of the wedding preparations and the wedding were finally over. Or perhaps it was that both of them were now bound, not just by marriage, but by collusion and deceit. But when Jason lifted the veil and kissed his bride, something passed between them. During the reception and the cutting of the cake, that hatred that had hardened inside Lorna like a piece of ice, began to melt. "I love you," Jason said as they danced to the twelve piece Big Band her father had insisted on. "Will you ever forgive me? Can I ever forgive myself for what I almost did? It was crazy. She means nothing to me. I love you." It had been the stress, Lorna concluded, that had nearly driven both of them mad. She, too, felt guilty for having used that painful information about Jason’s past against him. She forgave him, of course. "But can you ever forgive me?" "I love you, Darling," he said. "I love you, too." "Shall we go then?" Jason asked her. "Shall we still go on the honeymoon." "Are you sure it’s safe down there?" Jason laughed. "Of course it is, Honey." The next morning they flew to Montserrat. ** "I’m going snorkeling," Lorna announced the morning of the fourth day. "Want to come?" Jason looked up from the paperback he was reading in a deck chair on the balcony: Animal Instincts by Eleanor Hyde. "No, you go ahead. I’m reading." "Would you like to listen to some music?" She carried the portable radio she had brought out on the balcony and turned on the local radio station, Radio Montserrat. "How did you do that?" He asked. "I couldn’t get any reception on it this morning." "It’s better out here on the balcony. Besides, I fiddled with the antenna. One of the connections was loose. Here, I’ll set it up for you." "You have grease on your hand," he said as she set the radio on the balcony rail. Though Jason claimed expertise in all things intellectual, Lorna was clearly his superior mechanically. He made fun of her ability to fix the TV when it broke, change her own oil, or do a brake job on her car. Lorna took his mockery good-naturedly because with his know-it-all attitude, she knew it humbled him to realize there were some things at which he was not an expert. Jason lovingly wiped the smudge of grease off her hand with his thumb, and adjusted the volume on the radio. The station played reggae, then a local DJ, Island Lady, announced the next selection in her lilting dialect. "It’s 90 degrees this morning on our beautiful island of Montserrat. And here’s a hot number from..." Jason watched Lorna pick her way down the rocky trail that led to the brown volcanic beach. He went inside for a moment to mix a rum and coke, then came back onto the balcony, turned up the reggae, and watched his wife paddle out in her fins and snorkel to the coral reef. Jason sipped his drink, and listened to Bob Marley’s "Red, Red Wine." The music broke off abruptly, and the announcer’s voice came over the air. "Emergency, emergency," she shrieked. "Soufriere is blowing. Sourfriere is blowing. All areas of the island south of Cudjoehead, and St. Johns are to be evacuated to the northern tip of the island." Jason sat up, his heart hammering. "Boiling lava and ash are spilling over roadways throughout the Spanish Point and Bramble Airport areas. You must leave your homes immediately. You must leave your belongings. This is a dire emergency." Jason stood and looked to the distant volcano. It crackled like thunder, and clouds of smoke billowed from its crater. He looked out to where his wife swam peacefully above the reef. "Lorna," he screamed. "Lorna." But she couldn’t hear him. Then he was seized with panic. How could they evacuate? They’d come by taxi. There was no phone in the room. "Lorna!" He grabbed the radio, dropped his drink, and ran back through the hotel room, opened the sliding glass door, and went outside. The only other couple staying in the hotel had left. Their car was not in its usual place in front of their bungalow. "My God!" Then he remembered the green truck. He ran to the shed that served as an office. The old man slept in a lawn chair just inside the door. "...must be evacuated immediately. Do not go back after your belongings. Evacuate immediately to the north of the island. Sourfriere is erupting." Jason’s mind flashed back to the night before the wedding. I can’t go through with it, Jason had said. Not yet, not now. I’m backing out. He glanced quickly out to sea where his wife swam placidly above the reef. The volcano crackled in the background. After the ceremony is over, Lorna had said, I don’t want to ever see your face again. "All persons in the limited and evacuation zones must leave immediately!" Jason moved to wake the old man, then said to himself, screw him, and ran to the truck. The keys were in the ignition and he started it. He looked again to the reef. And screw her, too! He pulled away from the hotel onto the highway. Soon the rightness, the justice, of what he had done began to settle over him. He drove the truck like a madman along the precipitous road down the mountain, frantically pumping the brakes while in the privacy of his mind, he rehearsed the stricken looks, and the sorrowful speeches of the recently widowed. *** Lorna walked leisurely across the hot, black sand of the beach. The island was quiet; the hotel abandoned; the green truck gone; the old man still asleep in his lawn chair. "Thank God!" Lorna found the silent radio where Jason had dropped it. She went into the hotel room, poured herself a straight rum, sat out on the balcony, and watched the switchbacks and curves of the road below. Lorna popped open the back of the radio and pulled out the microcassette player she had wired into its guts. She removed the cassette of reggae music she’d recorded with the help of her West Indian bridesmaid the night before the wedding. "A little practical joke," she had explained to her friend who recorded the evacuation broadcast in her Jamaican accent. While swimming over the reef, she had thought that yes, she had forgiven Jason, and she did love him, but the sudden memory of his phone call invaded her mind, and his words came rushing back to her like a subway train entering the station: "I just can’t go through with it. I’m backing out." She had shuddered as she swam above the swaying sea fans and coral, struggling to drive the betrayal from her mind. Lorna laughed. "So, he would have left me after all," she said aloud, taking a sip of rum as she scanned the road below her. Then she saw the runaway truck barreling down the steep road. It careened around a sharp bend, disappeared, and emerged moments later, hurtling out of control down the winding road. A swirl of dust rose up behind the truck as it veered into the next curve, its wheels sliding onto the narrow shoulder, and back onto the road again. She thought of his brother, and how Jason had denied to his parents any knowledge of the boating accident. He probably even cried at his brother’s funeral, until he had convinced himself that he was innocent. The truck took a hairpin turn too wide, its wheels passing onto the narrow shoulder, then it jerked back onto the roadway, took another curve, and disappeared. It emerged again on a long straightaway with a sharp right curve at the bottom, a hundred feet above the sea. Lorna smiled as the truck gathered speed, slid into the curve, broke through the guardrail, and was airborne. She saw it hang for a moment in the air. She imagined the look of terror on Jason’s pinched, smug face as the truck tumbled end over end. It hit the sea with a crash, floated belly up for a moment, then sunk beneath the waves. Lorna took the bleeder screw she had removed from the wheel cylinder of the truck that morning to drain the brake fluid. She took a sip of rum, and rolled the screw in the palm of her hand like a pair of dice. To think I might have spent the rest of my life with him. She laughed again, and tossed the screw with all her might into the bright green waters of the Caribbean sea. *** Copyright by Jonathan Harrington All rights reserved