The Lacey Confession

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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.

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