It’s a Tuesday evening in early February and I am sitting on the porch of my funky, remote Shackteau in Coral Bay, St. John staring at quickly fading sunset, the illuminated cumulus clouds floating placidly over Tortola, BVI. A pair of lonesome donkeys meanders slowly down the road below accompanied by the distant sounds of bleating goats and the occasional rooster crowing from the bush.
“Me donkey wan’ wattah,” I hum this old Bajan calypso tune to myself. I am privy to a twilight exchange between an awakening coki frog and some retiring doves. A steady breeze blows across Drake’s Passage from the BVI and in the gossamer light of a rising full moon I can easily see the surf breaking over the shoals out in the bay. Quite different from last night when it rained and blew so hard that puddles were left on the floor inside and a screen blew out of my window and sailed across the room. Subtle whiffs of roasting fish now ride the freshening wind up from the little restaurant below. I’ll be playing music there soon. I am tired, but very glad to be back.
My flight from Hartford seemed like it was long ago and worlds away. But it was really only yesterday. I was accompanied by a few dozen travelers bound for Puerto Rico who muttered prayers, crossed themselves and kissed crucifixes every time we hit some turbulence - of which there was plenty. A lively, muscular Latin gentleman with a broad, gold-capped grin and shaved head sat next to me. His noggin had become a canvas for some elaborately garish tattoos – crude vignettes of the Last Supper, angry panthers clawing their bloody way across his cranium and some script that may have been a Spanish poem. Or curse? He carried onto the plane only a long fishing pole. It sure was interesting watching him maneuver that into the overhead bin! His English was as sub-rudimentary as my Spanish. We grinned and mimed like monkeys amicably at each other as we settled in. I wondered if he was planning to do some trolling from 37 thousand feet? Ave, Pescadero!
The baby in the next aisle behaved as if she had fire ants in her diaper. Like feral animal, she spent the entire trip squirming, pulling, wailing, raging, against the restraints of her plastic carrier. Mommy seemed preoccupied with an electronic device that no doubt had its headphone volume turned up to 11. She didn't seem to notice the histrionics on dispaly only inches away from her. Another toddler in the seat behind me coughed like a tubercular octogenarian, barking incessantly as she kicked my seat back with the fervor of a linebacker.
When at last we landed in Puerto Rico, such jubilation and applause erupted from the plane you'd have thought our pilot had just discovered The New World. Maybe he had? And I was most ready to get off that plane to see whatever it was!
The next leg of the journey was to be in an aging, rickety twin-engine puddle-jumper that seats perhaps 30 passengers for a 25-minute, low altitude excursion from Puerto Rico that would hopefully land in St. Thomas, USVI without devolving into a sea-cruise! I always marvel how these tiny old planes can carry all that stuff and remain airborne, but they do! For the most part. But before I would find out how the flight would turn out, I would have three hours in the San Juan airport to wonder about it. And wonder I did.
My travel companions for this next leg of the journey were an odd lot. There’s a saying on St.
John: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd". And here they were! Three generations from two families of garrulous hillbillies from Kain-tucky were encamped in the small airport departure room awaiting the same flight to St. Thomas as I. They’d apparently been there for a few hours already - all thirteen of them, along with sundry and assorted gym bags, luggage, boxes and strollers. From their colorful declarations and exclamations I deduced that they had recently embarked on their first-ever, non-stop-fun-adventure-of-a-lifetime-Carnival-Caribbean-cruise that the matriarch, Loo-eese – who they all referred to as “Maw-ma” - had won by guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar at Piggly Wiggly! Their first stop: fly to Miami. Then, catch the “big ol' boat” to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Yee- haw! When cultures collide! Sure ain't nuthin' like that in Loo-ville or Ver-say-lees!
"Ah thought when they let us off’n that boat we'd a-had sumtime to see sumpin good, but no, sir" bellows Paw-pa the patriarch, a loose hearing aid dangling from one ear. “Jus’ a mess o’ t-shirts an’ ol’ buildin's is all. If’n ah wanted t’see ol’ buildin’s, ah coulda stayed raht a-home at Dink's Fork! Ah coont unnahstan' wut they wuz sayin', neither. Where you put that t-shirt I botcha, Oobie?”
“Y’all ain’ got no buildin’s like ‘at where you live at, Paw-pa” says a scruffy little boy about 9 years old in a torn SpongeBob t-shirt. He sports a bright green Mohawk and is in perpetual motion – the poster child for ADHD? He looks like he could use a good tubbing. He chews on something too large for his mouth while taunting a few other younger kids in the pack by sticking his tongue out to reveal a great wad of purplish goo. The other kids dash and tumble after him as he leaps about to escape their sticky grasps . This must be Oobie - I am assuming the short form for "Hubert"? I wonder how long it'll take before somebody trips over their untied shoelaces and spurts blood?
“Hell I don’!” shouts Paw-pa, who never did clarify what “sumpin good” actually was, leaving what that could be entirely to my imagination. Perhaps alligator wrestling? A sausage museum? A spittoon collection? A good 'ol pileup on Turn 5? Hooters? Yeah. Hooters.
At any rate, this bunch must have found plenty of “sumpin good” somewhere in San Juan to distract them because they were abandoned high ‘n dry yesterday when their Carnival cruise ship left port
without them. Maybe they had gotten lost, time just slipping away? Or, could it have been a ‘planned oversight’ on the captain’s part, having just spent an overnight sail with them from Miami? The results were that the family had had to find someplace for thirteen to stay in San Juan for the night. Now, that must have been an ordeal best left to one's imagination!
So here they were, sitting in the San Juan airport, having to find their sorry way over to St. Thomas to reunite with their cruise ship that was docked in Charlotte Amalie. It was sort of like a bizarre amalgam of the TV series “The Great Race” and “Survivor”. But this race did not present as so great, and it wasn't entirely certain whether anyone would survive.
Paw-pa - aka “Em-ry” - was probably pushing 70, though it was hard to tell. He weighed-in at about 85 pounds soaking wet. An oxygen canula protruded precariously from his beaklike nose. He sat in a walker-chair that had a basket attached to the handlebars, the basket full of cheap, plastic touristy trinkets and lots of empty soda cans. The walker-chair had a handbrake on it. It was difficult to imagine him ever getting up enough steam to require putting the brakes to that thing.
Paw-pa had a head of snowy-white hair that appeared as if it had been trimmed by a rice picker and a wispy, grey, too-long beard that ensnared his oxygen tube and tickled his trucker belt buckle. His grey pants were food-stained and the too-short pant legs revealed a few inches of Paw-pa's extremely shiny shins – did he polish those things? - that protruded from worn boots that looked way too tight. “No wonder he's in a walker-chair,” I mused, “He can't feel his feet!” Paw-pa wore a red t-shirt that was several sizes too large and embossed with the pronouncement: “I’M WITH STUPID”.
“You have quite a selection to pick from, mister!” I thought. His stentorian voice belied his diminutive size as his every word reverberated throughout the airline waiting room. He seemed to be this tribe’s red-neck Moses.
"Ah ain' feelin' so hot now, Maw. Prolly cuz ah finished up all mah pills yestiddy and now ah ain' got no more," Paw-pa told everyone in the waiting room. "Damn boat took alla ma pills las' naht."
"You ain' got no more witchu?" screeches Maw-ma incredulously, not masking her irritation with Paw- pa. “Now whatchu gone do? You ain’ better roon this here trip fer me an' the res’ of us, you stoopit ol' Sockbag!”
Maw-ma, who tipped the scales at around 300 pounds, had a dyed, sickly yellow-orange brush-cut hair- do - dark grey roots still showing - that bristled angrily above her slightly crossed, piercing blue eyes; eyes that were just a tad too close together. Maybe the extreme tightness of her new bejeweled, factory- torn jeans made her eyes cross? She paced back and forth pulling on her sleeves, her gravelly voice and pinched, wrinkly mouth betrayed her habit as a long-term, hard-core smoker - a smoker who was about to crash across her personal nicotine withdrawal ‘red line’.
"Nope, ah ain' roonin' nuthin',” caws Paw-pa. “Prolly just die rychere in this here airpoht. That'll fix that, if'n y'all lucky! But ah'm thinkin' ah jes' might maybe make it back to that big ol' boat fust though. Ah shore don’ wanna miss enny more o’ that real good eatin’, mmmm-hmmmm!” he declares, running a bony claw through his beard, perhaps searching for a leftover crumb? “Gimme one mah cig'rets, willya, Loo-eese?”
“Ha ha, you think yer so dam funny, you gitcher own cig'gret! Ya know why yer takin' ta feelin’ sick? Ah shore do! Ya ate like a damn hog yestiddy, stuffin’ yer pie-hole like there wuz no tomorra, that's why!" rebuked Maw-ma.
“Good thing I diddit then, cuz there was no tomorra, wuz there!” Paw-pa grinned at her, displaying a set of ill-fitting false teeth.
"Yeah, yeah, you jus' go grinnin' like a damn monkey," Maw-ma raved on, "but ah ain' goan be nursing the likes o' you all naht jus' cuz you ain got no moyer pills, ol' man!"
Paw-pa spit out a laugh, slapping his knee, "Ahm sho you won't! Ahma jus' gonna fine me anuther nurse, then! A real purty one this time!" Oobie grabbed Paw-pa's walker and shot across the waiting room, behind him a wake of hooting, screaming children.
"Ah jus’ cain’ unnerstan’ it!" she fretted, ignoring Paw-pa's barb, waving her bony arms around and pacing up and down like a caged tiger, sweat beading on her wrinkled forehead. "Why cain' they jus' lettus smoke inna airpoht? ‘Tain’ like we’s gonna burn the damn place down or nothin’. Already hotter'n th' blazin' hammers of hell in heah ennyway!"
Apparently Maw-ma had been several hours without a butt. "Ah’m-a goan hafta kill sumbody if ah cain' have me a smoke! Ah’m-a jus’ go outside, rahht through them thar doors ennyway, don’ even cair ‘bout no stupid alarms,” hissed Maw-ma, waving dismissively at the heavy security doors separating us from the tarmac as she stomped around in circles. “Mebbe ah jus' light up rychere! An’ ah don' cair if them stupid cops come or not. Wut they goan do, 'rest me?"
What followed was a lively inter-generational melee aimed at preventing - or perhaps inciting? - a TSA/security meltdown. The family erupted, ranting and railing at once. They reminded me of a flock of chickens who suddenly sees a hawk's shadow. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed, though I'm not sure which ones, and Maw-ma was dissuaded from lighting up and inciting a security riot. A few West Indian travelers waiting for the St. Thomas flight could NOT believe what was going on and we would catch each others glances and roll our eyes.
Paw-pa, who seemed to be receiving signals from another planet, obliviously interjected to no one in particular: "Ah know ah been on'y gone jus' a short l'il while. Dint ah leave y'all on Satiddy las'? By gaw', feels lahk been two weeks gone a'ready! Wut day is it ennyway?" It was only Monday. "Jiminy, thatus some grand feed they give us on that cruiser boat, eh?” reminisced Paw-pa as he repeatedly stroked his beard. “Too bad we hadda missit today don'cha think, Dick? Dick, you lissenin' to me, boy?"
Dick (perhaps Paw-pa’s brother-in-law judging from the close-set eyes and stubbly brush-cut) calls back as he’s rubbing his protruding belly, "Don’chu worry none, Em’ry," he hollered, "we'll make up fer it later in St. Tommy! You jus’ wait, you an’ me prolly nevah leave th’ table all dern week!" I wondered: How does Paw-pa stay so thin?
One of several daughters, Door-leen - around 40ish and not entirely unattractive like her maw-ma - nervously bounced her tattooed leg around as she and her husband(?) Luther gorged themselves on greasy, over-priced airport pizza. Door-leen stopped chewing long enough to proclaim to the waiting room that she apparently "had enough gas to blow this gawd-dern place right ta hell". This is not the kind of thing to be saying in an airport these days. “Luthah” - Door-leen's husband? - had a greasy red Mopar cap plopped backwards on his balding pate. He never stopped chewing. Luther had no neck at all. Never did he take his eyes from the pizza box that was dwarfed by his ample lap. A long piece of stringy cheese draped over the fender of Dale Ernhardt’s race-car that was emblazoned on the front of Luther’s too small and way-too-tight, faded NASCAR T-shirt. I am guessing that most of the herd of undulating children were the spawn of this breeding pair.
Door-leen’s announcement of her current intestinal status apparently distracted Maw-ma from her nicotine perambulations long enough to bark at her daughter, "Now you jes' listen to me, gurl! You may think yor smoort, but you don' know evahthing 'bout evahthing! Lay yerse’f rychere onna floor now, Door-leen. Raht is wrong, left is raht, 'member that? Jes' lie on yer lef' side rychere. That’s where yer gut is at. 'Member that?"
"Ah ain' doin' that," shouts Door-leen, rocketing from her seat as if propelled by a hot coal, sending pizza crusts flying. Luther, chewing uninterruptedly, silently looked over at her, annoyed that she’d just wasted some perfectly good crust. His eyes are dull, brown, vacant. I think: Bovine.
"Awright then, you jes' bloat up like some big ol’ dead heifer! Go 'head," yells Maw-ma, crossed eyes flashing, “see if ah even cair!” She returns to pacing, her pink imitation Nikes squeaking like there are live mice trapped inside. I am wishing that the control tower would give her permission to take off! Door-leen let out an exasperated huff, then unceremoniously lay down on her right side in the middle of the waiting room floor. "Yer other raht side, Door-leen,” chides Maw-ma from several seats distance. “Ain’ ah already tol’ you, raht is wrong, left is raht, Hon!”
Door-leen obliges and rolls over. “That's wut," says Maw-ma approvingly. "You ought be belchin' up real good soon." Door-leen looks up miserably at her mother and uncomfortably whines, "Ah don' think so, Maw-ma. Ah feel lahk ah'm-a gonna fort."
I could no longer contain myself and I burst out laughing. Several of the West Indians, including two elderly, dignified Bible-bearing women with large woven straw bags, got up and moved several rows away. A young dreadlocked Rastafarian joined them. A few more just sucked their teeth - a true West Indian sign of disgust.
The family circus continued unabated with assorted members coming and going, bickering and bantering, proudly and loudly, until at long last our flight was called. I was relieved that I didn't have to sit next to any of them - especially Door-leen! - on the flight to St. Thomas. But it was a small plane and I could still hear them yelling and guffawing in the back while a petite Latina stewardess stood in the aisle staring at them, dumbfounded.
Puerto Rico vanished beneath us, but over the roar of the twin-prop engines I could still hear Maw-ma hectoring her clan as we bounced and jounced through tumbling cumulus cloud banks towards St. Thomas. “Ah cain’ wait to git me a cig'rette. Ah’m-a smoke a whole pack soon as mah feet hits the groun’! Hope you got yer teeth all glued in good, Em’ry! Feelin' lahk sum seer-yus lumpy air. You awful quiet Dick...you talkin’ to li’l baybee Jay-sus again? Y’all ain’ gonna puke, are ya, Door-leen? This plane ain' so bad. Ah ben uther places in this worl' before ya know, like Sin-sin-atti. Losssss Vegas. Now they was some scary airplane rides, ah'm-a tellin' you!" I can only imagine.
When the tires finally screeched to the runway and we taxied to the gate at Cyril King Airport in St. Thomas, I gratefully left the plane, leaving this bit of southern culture on the skids behind. But not before I smiled at Paw-pa, who was wrestling with his walker-chair, and said, “Be sure to try the saltfish pate!”