us wondering how they would affect the winter’s tourist crop.
“It will be a little better than last year.” Moses Riley, whose family owned most of the land around Pelican Cove, took the rum bottle with one hand, gesturing with the other as he spoke. “Your presidential election is over. I have noticed over the years, whenever there is a presidential election in the States tourism is down a bit here. People in the United States do not care about what happens in the Caribbean as long as events here do not affect them directly. But the people with money to travel are also those who are most involved in political affairs. They go away less during important election years.”
Moses smiled as he delivered his lecture. The rest of us nodded, making noncommittal grunts in response, or simple comments such as ‘oh,’ or ‘interesting,’ and ‘I didn’t know that.’
“None of it matters anyway,” said another man, a lanky West Indian named Robert Brady, who chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes and refused the bottle each time it came to him. “Nobody in American politics gives a damn about what happens in these islands. Someday maybe it will be different, but now they do not care.” Several of the others nodded in agreement. “And it is all right they do not give a damn,” he continued. “We do not want them to give a damn. They give a damn and we lose our land, we lose our control of the island. Look at the American islands. They give a damn and somebody pays them twenty-four dollars worth of Hong Kong beads and the island is lost.”
“Yeah, that is the true thing,” another man said. “My brother in St. Thomas, he lives in a housing project which does not have running water six days out of seven, and his children get beat up at school all the time and the crime is out of control. Kid with guns, man. And the drugs, and I do not mean Ganga, man, I mean real drugs. It is very bad there. Very bad.” He shook his head and made a sucking noise through his teeth.
From there the conversation turned to local politics and which of the two major parties on the island would be most likely to side with American authorities should they ever want anything from St. Ursula.
“Up on the top of the mountain, there is our problem now.” Robert’s voice was angry as he spoke, his face in a stiff frown as he pointed at the side of Wise Mountain. “That antenna will change us, man, and it will change our children even more. After a few years of watching the programs and advertisements from the States they will want the States. They will want us to be like the States. They will want cruise ships in our harbors. Trinkets in our gift shops. Television will bring us down just as surely as American troops brought Grenada down.”
After an awkward silent moment, someone raised the topic of poker. Politics were forgotten as he took a worn deck of cards from his pocket and began shuffling them. Someone else broke out a fresh bottle of rum. I reminded Chance of dinner.
We said good night, shook a few hands and got back into the Land Rover.
As we started to pull away, our stomachs growling, Willis Penn, a man of sixty, known through the British and American islands as a particularly wise obeah man and canny politician, put his hand on my arm. “Weird night, Frank.” His voice was as natural and even, as if he had just commented on the coldness of the beer.
Willis Penn wasn’t given to playing a role with his reputation of being wise in the ways of sorcery, hidden truth and ritual. He was a practical man, one of the most politically astute people on St. Ursula, and the founder of the Ursuline Progressive Alliance, a political party built on the principle of strong local control of the island. The urgency of his voice and the intensity of his stare held me for several long seconds after he removed his hand. Then, falling back in with the other men, he joined again the talk about the day’s fishing as they tried convincing one another of the strength of their poker hands. “What was that all about?” Chance asked when we were back on the road.
“Damned if I know.” I shivered slightly in the warm February evening.
“Willis Penn’s no idle chatterer. When he talks it’s almost always about something he considers important.”
“Weird was his word. ‘Weird night, Frank.’ He didn’t say anything else.”
“He chooses his words carefully.” Chance pulled at his beard and looked over at me. “Strange. Really strange.”
It was after nine when we pulled into town. Chaucer got its name when the British took the island over from the Dutch. One of the first governors suffered from a literary streak. It’s a failing English speaking people rarely tolerate in their public officials.
We parked in front of the Tabard Inn, a white concrete and stucco building, its windows large shuttered archways shaded by lush vegetation. Red, blue and yellow spots lit the palm fronds around the Inn. Passing a small kidney shaped pool, we walked around a group of tourists listening to Ken Tindall, a local dock hanger on, giving a slide talk on humpback whales.
I knew Ken casually. He lived in a rundown hut in the valley between Salvation Hill and Wise Mountain, earning his living doing odd jobs and cooking on charter boats. Most of the time he was a knee-walking drunk who wore ragged denim shorts, a tee shirt and a wool hat, like those that Rastas pull over their dreadlocks. Ken’s hair was graying blonde and flowed down around his shoulders. When he wasn’t hustling a few bucks from tourists with his slide talks on nature in the Caribbean he could often be found at the Quarterdeck, the favorite bar of expatriates, where he would hold forth with endless boring stories in one of the thickest West Indian dialects on St. Ursula.
Nodding to him as we passed, we passed through a large interior courtyard to the verandah dining room where we found an empty table and sat down. Tobias Gaines, owner-manager of the Tabard Inn, came over.
“I say, you chaps dining with us tonight?” Tobias was less than five and a half feet tall, stringy black hair looking as though it had never been washed falling over the collar of his black polo shirt.
“Only if you spring for a pre-dinner drink,” Chance said.
“It’s on the house, chaps,” he said.
Chance ordered a Sambuca. I wanted a screwdriver with Stoly.
Tobias wrote the orders down in a yellow newsprint pad.
“Jolly good.” He bowed slightly at the waist, then spinning around half ran, half hopped toward the bar.
Tobias was an Australian who had learned to be British from watching American B-movies. He was a repository of Jolly Goods, Rightos, Bloody Blokes and Good Shows. The only classic phrase I had never heard him say was Tally-Ho, and it was missing only because Monica Whistley-Gore’s attempts at starting a local hunt club faltered when Government had refused her permission to import foxes. Wild sheep, goats, donkeys and mongooses running over the hills and through the island bush were trouble enough. Over the last three years, the goats have gotten so bad, so out of control, that people have had to fence their properties if they want any kind of garden or shrubbery.
He returned with our drinks and we sipped them, our legs stretched out, feet resting on the extra chairs at the table. Boat lights bobbed on the waters of Great Harbor, halyards clinking against aluminum masts. The evening air was sweet, filled with odors of flowers and cooking.
At the far end of the verandah two young women, obviously college students on vacation, were playing guitars and singing “Judy Drownded.” They wore identical hand printed blue cotton caftans and leaned over their guitars, fiberglass Ovations designed to look like medieval lutes. Hair fell over their faces and brushed the backs of their hands as they played and sang in thin reedy voices, just on the edge of
