The Night of the Rambler Read online

  Harry González was a small man with a strong, square body and an eminently forgettable face. His hair was short, his hands tough as a fisherman’s, and his clothes untidy. But there was something about his voice, deep and meaningful, or perhaps just evil, which demanded attention when he spoke. As Alwyn Cooke gathered himself and got ready to depart the post office, Harry González set off at full speed in a roundabout way that took him to the same exit that Alwyn was approaching, but from the opposite direction. The coming together that Harry González intended to make seem inevitable was, in fact, rather clumsy, and Alwyn Cooke, not the strongest-framed man by any stretch of the imagination, almost stumbled to the ground. Harry González’s apology as he helped Alwyn back to his feet was almost sincere. Mr. Cooke, isn’t it? and he looked wilily to one side, then the other. From the rebel island, the new Cuba in the Caribbean, right? Alwyn Cooke was perplexed, both by the blow that had nearly decked him and by the sudden notoriety he seemed to have gained since the expulsion of the police task force from Anguilla, just three days before. I’ve been following the case closely, Harry González whispered, in response to the shade of surprise which he saw cloud the eyes of Alwyn Cooke. Follow me—don’t be afraid, I’m a friend of your cause, and I think I can offer you something that will be of help.

  Harry González was making it up as he went along. He knew little about “the cause” and was not at all certain about how much he could help, but he sensed the opportunity to make a buck, and as he escorted Alwyn Cooke down to the harbor and back behind the docks, all he could think of was the prospect of a newfound benefactor. Hey, mister—da’ far enough, nuh. Alwyn Cooke, not quite versed in the art of revolution and liberation, suspended his judgment momentarily and allowed a perfect stranger to lead him to the darker part of town in the hope that he would find a clue, a tip, a helping hand. But enough was enough already, and had Alwyn Cooke not known that he carried just about nothing worth taking from him, and had he not been quite sure that the Lord was there with him to protect him and guide him onto the path of righteousness and deliverance, had Alwyn Cooke not been dead certain about the fact that God was on his side, he might have feared for his safety, because, despite the fact that it was the middle of the day in early June, the hill to one side of the harbor and the tall warehouses before the two men cut large, sharp shadows that fed an air of lowlife into the atmosphere. On the other hand, Alwyn Cooke thought this might be precisely the kind of setting, of environment, as it were, where Providence would have him find the help Anguilla needed right now.

  Just as Alwyn Cooke finally came to understand what Rude Thompson had been trying to explain all along, what he, Rude, had been trying to put to practice since the antics surrounding the failed Statehood Queen Show in February that same year—that, at least for the time being, Anguilla found itself on the side of the crooks, the hoodlums, the gangsters, and, indeed, the rebels—as Alwyn Cooke finally saw sense in Rude’s words, Harry González turned on his heels and burned right through Alwyn’s ingenuity with his fierce eyes. Okay, okay—you’re right. This will do right here just fine.

  At this point Alwyn Cooke half expected to see the knife or dagger that would turn this stranger into a Caribbean Mack, but the intentions of Harry González were far more mercantile than he thought, and as the man began his spiel, Alwyn became more comfortable with his skin, blood flowing back to his cheeks, the light brown returning to his complexion. You have a family? It was the third time Harry González asked Alwyn, but he was too immersed in his own thoughts to follow the conversation. Finally, Alwyn nodded gently and Harry González, Right. You love your family, right? You would do anything for your family, right? To protect your family, right? C’mon, man—talk to me, man. Stop being so paranoid. Alwyn Cooke nodded again, this time more vehemently. You own a gun? You need a gun to protect your family, right? You own a gun?

  Harry González gave Alwyn Cooke no chance to explain that things didn’t quite work that way in Anguilla, that violent crime was close to nonexistent, and that if anyone did anything to his family or to anybody else, everyone in the community would know who had done it, and where to find him.

  Yes or no, man—do you own a gun? Yes! There you go, man. This is no different than having a gun to protect your family. You need guns to protect your island.

  That’s where Alwyn Cooke’s recollection of the meeting blurred into a blank. That’s where the penny actually fell, where Alwyn Cooke became convinced that In trut’, no soul ain’ go hear not’in’ we says, only if we go make one big mess dem go hear us. That’s when he realized that the efforts by the fifteen-member peacekeeping committee governing the island since May 30, 1967 to attain international recognition—indeed, to attain a minimum level of respectability—had to be accompanied by a parallel statement that would firmly entrench the rebel nation within the quarters of the rogues for it to be considered seriously.

  Don’t you for a minute think they won’t attack you. They will attack, and if they know you’re unprepared they’ll attack even sooner. Think of Bay of Pigs—you think they won’t do something similar to you? So your island’s smaller than Cuba: don’t worry, they’ll just call it Bay of Piglets, or something, but be sure they’ll find a way.

  Harry González didn’t very well know who he meant by “they,” nor who Alwyn Cooke would associate with it, but it didn’t matter anymore, because Alwyn was already absent and incapable of answering anything Harry said.

  You need guns, you need a plan. You love your people, like you love your family—but can you protect them? I’m your man. I can get you guns, I can show you how to use them. Just call this number when you’re ready and ask for Harry, or just come around here when you’re next in town. Everyone knows who I am.

  Alwyn didn’t care to explain that he could not call, because there were no working telephone lines on the island. He just took the piece of paper Harry gave him, shoved it inside the right pocket of his pressed gray trousers, and turned back, without uttering a word, burdened by an urgency he had not felt before. Alwyn flagged the first cab he could find—Take me to de airport. He did not listen to the driver’s chitchat, nor did he answer any of his trivial questions. Once at the Harry S. Truman Airport, he tracked down Diomede Alderton, the pilot of the Piper Aztec that had flown him into St. Thomas earlier that day, and gave him unequivocal instructions: We mus’ get back to Anguilla tonight. Which meant before nightfall. And so, with the last light of the crepuscule, the same Piper Aztec that previously had ridded the island of its police task force landed on the dirt strip at Wallblake Airport, where the “ground crew” had recognized The Pipe, Diomede’s plane, named after his copious smoking habit, and had cleared the runway of the cars and oil drums that obstructed it for protection.

  As soon as Alwyn Cooke stepped off the plane he sent out a few boys to call the fourteen other members of the peacekeeping committee to attend an extraordinary session that night at his home in Island Harbour. By call, he meant, quite literally, Run to dey house an’ shout dey name till dey hear you. Less than two hours later, fourteen curious, confused, and even angry men assembled at Alwyn Cooke’s residence, where the rumbling of the generator indicated to them that he meant business. He had been sent to St. Thomas to put forward Anguilla’s position to the regional government, and to persuade the US Postal Service to provide Anguilla with a means of communication with the outside world other than through the antagonistic St. Kitts. Whatever the outcome of his mission, it was hard to fathom why he found it necessary to discuss it in the middle of the night. Then came Alwyn with his report, which did not mention the regional government of St. Thomas, or the US Postal Service. Instead, he went on and on about the threat of invasion, the need to obtain more and more modern weapons, and the even more urgent need to deploy a contingency plan, in case foreign forces (read, Kittitian) were to approach the island.

  Now, Alwyn Cooke could not have been aware of the news that had arrived from St. Kitts earlier that day, together with the four-man
delegation which had been sent there one day after the expulsion of the police task force, because Alwyn Cooke had been between flights when the men in question returned from their frustrating journey not so much empty-handed as openly challenged. On May 31, 1967, a four-man delegation headed by Aaron Lowell, the representative of Anguilla in the parliament of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, took a concise and categorical proposal to Premier Bradshaw in St. Kitts, to allow the secession of Anguilla from the tri-island state, and to encourage the rebel island’s return to direct British administration. The official government response delivered the following day not only ignored most of the proposal’s content, it also called for the end of violence in Anguilla and a return to the constitutional order of the nation. Disappointed, the delegation headed back to Anguilla on June 2, 1967 to report their failure to affect any kind of reaction from Bradshaw, together with their fear that, while the premier dismissed them politically, he would simultaneously seek assistance from other Caribbean countries to invade the island and take it back by force. The fact that Alwyn Cooke echoed the same fears on the very same day without any firsthand information of the events deeply impressed the rest of the peacekeeping committee, which unanimously and immediately reached an obvious conclusion and declared him the minister of defence of the island of Anguilla.

  Despite the fact that there was no newspaper, no telephone, no local radio station, news traveled fast around the island by word of mouth. It took less than eight hours for the leader of the opposition of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, who happened to be in Anguilla at the time of the revolution and who had been unable to leave the island since, to find out that his good friend Alwyn Cooke had become the island’s minister of defence. So, the very first visit Alwyn Cooke received in his new capacity on the morning of June 3, 1967, just barely after the crow of the first rooster had made its way past yards and fences and had been echoed in the throat of every competing rooster up the hill to the east, en route to Harbour Ridge, and in the opposite direction, along the shoreline toward Welches Hill, was that of Dr. Crispin Reynolds, leader of the opposition and editor of the Speaker newspaper, the only outlet where Anguillian issues had been discussed over the past four months or so.

  Indeed, that was precisely how long Dr. Reynolds had been acquainted with Alwyn Cooke, going back to the day when he, Alwyn, had approached the politician at his place in South Hill with a request to feature a regular column in the Speaker involving matters related to Anguilla. Hence, ever since the official birth of the “Letter from Anguilla” section in the newspaper, a visit from one to the other was not to be considered out of the ordinary. However, the time of day invested the occasion with a sense of importance that was mirrored in Dr. Reynolds’s somber, almost lugubrious tone of voice. The meeting was brief and, seemingly, inconsequential. It served only as a means to test the waters of the disposition of each toward the other. It had started with a statement of solidarity by Dr. Reynolds—whose party held the sole seat allocated to the island in the parliament of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla—with the Anguillian people, and had ended with an assurance that if the rebel government were to back Dr. Reynolds’s political initiative against Premier Bradshaw, he, in turn, would do everything in his power to grant the people of Anguilla their wishes, whatever those might be. Most importantly, however, Dr. Reynolds departed Island Harbour with the impression that his party and the rebels were on the same side, and that they could count on each other in the future. We mus’ meet again, Mr. Cooke. Dere are some important matters we mus’ discuss.

  Alwyn Cooke did not have to wait long for that next meeting to take place: later that evening Crispin Reynolds knocked again on his door, this time with a folder full of important matters they needed to consider. Alwyn Cooke did not expect any visitors at home that evening, and he had not slept a full night since the revolution of May 30, four days earlier, so the generator was silent and he was more than ready to crash when he heard the knock on his front door. He slipped back into his pressed gray trousers and his clean white shirt while his wife, Ylaria, attended to the call.

  Ylaria was more than ten years younger than Alwyn, but at twenty-eight no one in Anguilla would have said she was young. She had beautiful round features sharpened by the darkness of her skin, her eyes, her hair, gently coiffed into long plaits. Despite the beauty of her face, Ylaria’s temper had awarded her something of a reputation among locals. To go with her fiery personality, she had a full, plump body, which inspired intermittently extreme doses of lust and fear. Dr. Reynolds had not expected to find the corpulent presence of Ylaria Cooke on the doorstep of her and her husband’s home. Startled, he did what no one should ever do before a woman of her temperament: he hesitated. Wha’ kinda time dis is to come knock on a man’s door? Dr. Reynolds’s quick presence of mind provided him with the perfect riposte to get out of trouble, Di kind fo’ serious business, and before he could send Ylaria to go fetch her husband, Alwyn Cooke emerged from the shadows and asked his wife to start the generator.

  Neither man felt an apology was necessary. Jus’ come dis way, doctor, and business began in earnest. Wha’ I come to show yer, Mr. Cooke, is for yer eyes an’ yer eyes only. Alwyn Cooke was a man of his word, a man whose integrity had never yet been questioned, a man so proper very few people indeed had ever heard him utter an indecent syllable. Dr. Reynolds knew that if he was not stopped then and there it was because Alwyn, intrigued about what he had to say, would trade the information he came to offer for secrecy. So Crispin Reynolds took a short pause, gave Alwyn a chance to get out of the meeting, and, when he didn’t, continued his speech, explaining how Robert Bradshaw was a resourceful man, how He finally get to power, now he develop a likin’ for it, how people in St. Kitts were still too ingenuous to live up to the responsibility of democracy, how Robert Bradshaw was a loquacious speaker and an experienced politician who had manipulated the sentiments of voters in St. Kitts in order to favor himself and his cronies, Like dat good-for-not’in’ Paul Sout’well, the country’s deputy premier. Ain’ no one in St. Kitts go get rid of Robert Bradshaw by peaceful means. Alwyn Cooke listened quietly, hardly blinking, awaiting the moment when something in Dr. Reynolds’s speech would point in the direction of Anguilla. Maybe yer t’ink this ain’ got not’in’ to do wit’ yer an’ yer republic, Mr. Cooke, but yer republic is only four days ol’, an’ I coin’t see it reach di age of ten days ol’, unless yer do somet’in’ to stop Bradshaw an’ his men from comin’ over.

  Alwyn Cooke was far less experienced than Crispin Reynolds in political affairs, but he knew enough to understand that nobody would come knocking on his door late at night only to warn him—threaten him, almost—about the dangers that lay ahead on the road toward freedom, unless there was a benefit to be derived from it. So Alwyn Cooke waited a little longer, played his role expertly, and allowed Dr. Reynolds to unfold the plans contained within his folder.

  Le’ me show yer some numbers, Mr. Cooke. Dr. Reynolds produced a series of charts mapping the division within the electorate of St. Kitts, which made his party look a lot stronger than was evidenced in the elections of 1966, where despite earning the only seat awarded to the island of Anguilla, and the two seats appointed to the island of Nevis, the party had lost all the seats disputed in the seven constituencies of the island of St. Kitts. I ain’ questionin’ Bradshaw’s popularity wit’ di cane-cutters out in di fields. Yet Crispin Reynolds was more than keen to demonstrate how in the more urban areas of the country—hardly anything, not even Basseterre could merit the name city—Robert Bradshaw’s victory had been marginal, if at all legitimate.

  The hour was late, and Alwyn Cooke had had enough of listening to the political problems of an island with which he wanted his people to have no links whatsoever, but before he could ask what all of this had to do with him or Anguilla, Dr. Reynolds explained: I guess wha’ I tryin’ to say is if I organize a rally in St. Kitts, yer could count on one to two t’ousand people showin’ up, an’ if I demand more drastic measures, at least s
ome hundred of my supporters would take part.

  Throughout the year of 1967 the antagonism toward St. Kitts had escalated on the island of Anguilla, reaching the point where political intervention and pure lobbying had been sidestepped in favor of crowd mobilization and active protesting. Alwyn Cooke had been instrumental not only in the planning but also in the practical execution of a number of these protests. However, the goal behind the uncharacteristic activism that had dominated the lives of all Anguillians in the past five months had been to voice the dissatisfaction of the people, and to demonstrate to Britain, to the central government in St. Kitts, to anyone who cared to listen, really, that effective—peaceful—administration would be impossible in Anguilla so long as the island’s artificial association with St. Kitts remained in place. The ultimate consequence of this process, and indeed its greatest success—i.e., the expulsion of the police task force from the island on May 30, 1967—had been nothing more than the spontaneous resolution of an incensed mob, empowered by its size, encouraged by association, who had marched to the police station the day before, demanding the unthinkable. Escalation had reached its peak, and Anguilla found itself, very much by accident, “independent.”

  Even so, what Dr. Reynolds had come to suggest was an altogether different kind of activism to that in which Anguillians had been involved through the auspice of their leaders. Dr. Reynolds had come to propose a joint operation by Anguillian and Kittitian forces in an effort to abduct Premier Bradshaw and Deputy Premier Southwell, to neutralize the military forces of the island, to seize the media, and to install a new government, spearheaded by the leader of the opposition party, Dr. Reynolds himself. In short, Crispin Reynolds had come knocking on Alwyn Cooke’s door late at night to ask for his help in a sinister plan to carry out a coup d’état. Now, Alwyn Cooke was a man of principles, and in any other set of circumstances he would have shown his indignation in a forceful, brusque manner, before throwing his visitor headfirst out of his house. But Alwyn Cooke presently found himself in an unusual position, where he had to think about the good of his country, not only the categorical nature of his principles; and he was still concerned about the need to be recognized at an international level; and the threat of invasion from St. Kitts seemed evident to him, and had been confirmed by the rest of the members of the peacekeeping committee the night before. So Alwyn Cooke convinced himself by the minute of the need to make a definitive statement, to make one big mess, that would firmly entrench his rebel nation within the quarters of the rogues and be considered seriously.