The Night of the Rambler

by Montague Kobbé

  Meanwhile, Alwyn Cooke had assembled an even larger group of some thirty or forty angry young men and women who would make certain they would let their Kittitian and Nevisian neighbors understand that things were neither joyful nor at all right in Anguilla. Rather than recycling old posters, Alwyn decided that a more striking, more hostile message had to be delivered. Therefore, he spent days devising powerful slogans, imprinting retailored pieces of cloth with texts that foretold the Death of Anguilla, that predicted War among the people, that claimed Sooner Dead for Free than Alive for Shackles.

  Then, when the placards were ready and the banners too, when the people had been chosen who would attend the Statehood Queen Show not to be entertained but to make a political statement, when the best place for the demonstration had been agreed upon—before the very entrance of the school, right where everyone could see—Alwyn Cooke came up with the final touch, the coup de grâce that would really define this protest: he got hold of a handful of green-yellow-and-blue flags, the flag that was meant to represent the associated state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla from February 27, 1967 onward, and he soaked them in gasoline.

  On Saturday, February 4, 1967, there was much activity on the eastern end of the island, long before anything was meant to happen at The Valley. Because the logistics involved in the transportation of twenty or thirty or forty people with hardly any vehicles was a matter that could not be accomplished inconspicuously. So, Rude Thompson and Alwyn Cooke crossed each other on the road several times that day, each looking at the other with more than just a bit of guile, and yet each playing along, waving as usual, blowing the horn as if one didn’t know the other was plotting something sinister, something neither could prevent without jeopardizing his own individual plans.

  The sun still hung up high, and the midday heat lingered in the yards, on the streets, inside the wooden homes of committed partisans and unaware bystanders alike, when Rude Thompson decided it was time to leave his green truck—white canvas covering its bed—parked in a hidden corner near The Valley, where it would remain until the signal had been given at eight o’clock sharp, until darkness had regained its supremacy on Anguilla and the real show could begin. Rude stepped outside his front yard and made the last preparations to take his final trip into The Valley for the day. He had already brought all the men into town where they would wait, with some friends, family, or simply at the bar, for the time to come when they would have to head toward the school.

  As Rude made his way to the truck, he heard two young girls, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, laughing and joking about how they would wear their hair that night, for the big occasion. Wha’ you two laughing for? Where you t’ink you goin’? Rude Thompson’s bark scared life out of the whole scene, left East End sunk in an uncanny and most unusual silence. De mouse eat you two tongue, or wha’? but the girls just looked at him with a blank stare, frozen halfway between surprise and horror. You better stay outta town tonight, if you wanna stay outta trouble at all, you hear me? And as he approached the girls, hands stretched out open, ready to clasp them, they ran toward their home. Da’s right, nuh—go home an’ tell you mamma if I see any one of you two at de school tonight, she de one goin’ get big trouble. But the young mother of the young girls was already at the door of her house—mop in hand, sweat dripping down her loose colorful dress, sticking the cloth by her chest to her haughty breasts.

  Watch your mout’, Rudolf Thompson, man—ain’ no one go tell me how to raise me choild, you know. Not even you rowdy piece of ass—I don’ care wha’ craziness you plottin’ dis time.

  Rude kept walking toward his truck as he roared, head tilted sideways, eyes partly turned away, You right, Verlinda Blake, but I know you girls since dey be not’in’ but a pea sittin’ in you belly, an’ like I know you a good mother I know you take good advice when it dere to take! Rude was no longer speaking to Verlinda Blake, nor to anyone else. He had already picked up the pace of his stride and had shifted the focus of his mind completely, when he let the world know with a deafening howl, Hell go burn in school tonight, you know!

  Alwyn Cooke never even tried to disguise his intention to stage a protest before the school on the day of the Statehood Queen Show, but he did fear the police would try to break up his concentration of people before the event, so he waited until sunset to come with his F-series pickup truck loaded to the rim with dissidents. He had already transported the placards, the banners, the posters, the flags soaked in gasoline, and the megaphone to Wallace Rey’s shop in George Hill in the hours prior to this final mobilization. He knew Wallace to be a committed detractor of the association with St. Kitts and a trustworthy character who would not raise much suspicion. He had also taken a group of young men into The Valley some hours before, instructing them to keep a low profile until he arrived with the women from Island Harbour. In his mind, a truck full of women would hardly alert the policemen to his plot, even though the women who had requested—demanded—to take part in the protest were as fierce and less fearful than any of the men on the island.

  Round about sunset Alwyn Cooke made his way from Island Harbour to The Valley. He dropped off the women near the entrance of the school, right next to the police security post, and continued along to pick up the subversive material at Wallace Rey’s shop. On the short journey from the Comprehensive School to Wallblake Airport and up George Hill to Wallace’s shop, he saw a good dozen of the guys who were supposed to drill the crowd attending the Queen Show that night with the simple message, No to association with St. Kitts! He gave them the signal to get the others and join the women at the agreed spot, where, he thought, they would be in full view of the authorities all night long and, consequently, safe from any involvement in whatever craziness Rude Thompson might be plotting.

  By the time the sun set in Anguilla on Saturday, February 4, 1967, Whitford Howell and Gaynor Henderson were already causing trouble inside the auditorium of the Comprehensive School. Stripped of stones, bottles, and anything else that could be used as a projectile, the two bold men relied on their mouths to stir the crowd into action. No sooner was the jester from Nevis onstage than the two troublemakers were throwing all kinds of venomous hecklings to and fro. Whitford and Gaynor had been drinking much of the afternoon, and to them it seemed later than it really was, and they were convinced something had gone wrong with the generator plan, so they decided to take things in their own hands—which is to say that Gaynor Henderson and Whitford Howell did their utmost to disrupt the Nevisian performer, to move the crowd to anger, to break up the whole affair from the inside. In fact, had this been anywhere else in the world, under any other set of circumstances, Whitford and Gaynor would have been quickly escorted to the exit, long before the jester took the stage. But this was not anywhere else in the world, this was Anguilla, on the verge of being forced into an unwanted status with the enemy, so if Gaynor Henderson, deliberately incendiary in his comments about dem people pulling de strings of dis show, was, perhaps, overstepping a line, there were few, very few, members of the audience who could not, at least to a certain extent, relate to the issues he kept bringing up; and if Whitford Howell was perhaps a tad brutal in his depiction of the situation, it was only because he’d had one Guinness too many, but that did not mean the man had no truth in what he was telling. Hence, generally speaking, the Anguillians gathered at the auditorium of the Comprehensive School might not have been tremendously amused by the spectacle provided by Gaynor and Whitford, but at the same time there was no danger that any of them would force the issue and kick either of them out.

  Until Gaynor Henderson grabbed a folding chair and answered one of the jester’s jokes by throwing it with all his might right at the man’s face.

  Luckily for the jester, Gaynor was too far influenced by the drinks to aim properly or even measure his strength, so the chair flew right over the man’s head, landing harmlessly at the back of the stage. Whitford Howell understood this was their last, their only, chance to create some sort of reaction,
so he too grabbed a chair and threw it in the general direction of the jester. Alas, Whitford Howell did not have the strength to make the chair reach the stage, so it landed instead on the head of some member of the audience at the front. From the first row an angry Anguillian rose and with a wailing cry promised to go bash he head in two, as she split open the sea of people that separated her from the frail frame of Whitford Howell. Amused by the implausibility of it all, and not yet threatened by the flying tempers, the jester sought to win over a crowd that had been hostile—even if not this hostile—all along, but his Yer ruinin’ de show, nah; yer s’pose’ to be all wex wit’ me fell on deaf ears, and he was halfway through telling the audience in the auditorium that No matter wha’ yer all crazy people do, show mus’ go on, when the flight of Dwight O’Farrell’s arms took the machete to the live high-voltage wires that emerged from the generator, as if they were a coconut he had to split open for his survival. The sparks that flew from the severed cables as the machete slashed forward through the final six inches of space to the wooden plank, once Dwight O’Farrell had let go of it, were the last traces of light that could be seen on the night of February 4, 1967 in Anguilla. Inside the Comprehensive School the jester didn’t quite finish his sentence, and if he did, nobody noticed, because nothing could be made out over the pure noise of arguments and threats on the one hand, and panicked screams on the other.

  Outside, pellets were directed at all four corners of the school, with a particularly heavy assault being waged on the entrance, where the police had been carrying out the security checks. Alwyn Cooke had already heard some of the loud jeers, the noise coming from the auditorium, which had warned him that trouble was about to be sparked. However, as soon as he saw the lights go out all at once he let out a long, if restrained, Shhhhhit. Seconds later people were darting out of the school whichever way they could find. Alwyn seized his opportunity and in an instant of lucidity provided his people with the image that, many years later, would commemorate the birth of the revolution in a series of stamps: he moved instinctively to the back of his truck, reached for the soaked flags, and with a Zippo lighter set them ablaze. In the absolute darkness of the night, no one could see what it was that Alwyn Cooke was burning, but as havoc reigned in The Valley, the image of this freedom fighter hanging precariously from the edge of his truck holding a wild ball of fire in his right hand remained forever imprinted in the collective Anguillian unconscious as a symbol of the struggle against St. Kitts.

  The gasoline burned violently, and in no time at all the cloth of the flags had been completely consumed and the flames were dangerously close to Alwyn’s hands. He dropped the flags and, preempting further trouble, moved to assemble his group in an area from where he could lead them out of danger. But it was already too late; seeing fellow Anguillians throwing stones at the Kittitian police, and inspired by Alwyn’s own heroic gesture, some of his most hotheaded recruits had run for cover, picking up bottles, cans, anything at all, to add to the arsenal and join the battlefield. Stray stones had landed near the demonstration too, prompting the more squeamish to dash away for safety. Alwyn would have given the order to head back toward the road, to start making way on foot while he took as many trips as were necessary to return everyone safe and sound, but suddenly his eyes welled up, his nose itched, and his breath felt like a fish bone tearing up the inside of his throat. When he looked up, all he could see was a thick cloud of yellow smoke blowing from the direction of the Comprehensive School, and people emerging from every corner like ants, coughing, gasping for air.

  Meanwhile, Rude Thompson had moved to the truck loaded with stones where he awaited the arrival of his comrades. He knew from before the start of the evening there would be serious confrontations with the police—he had prepared for this both with his plan and with the mind-set he had installed in his recruits. But even Rude Thompson could not have guessed—he couldn’t have even hoped for—the mayhem that ensued around the Comprehensive School on Saturday, February 4, 1967. Because, while Dwight O’Farrell dallied over the loose piece of wood and the live high-voltage wires he was supposed to sever with his machete, and Gaynor Henderson and Whitford Howell put to use the brazenness that a mouthful of rum and a head full of fumes had given them to cause havoc among the crowd inside the auditorium, and Alwyn Cooke and his lot verbally and psychologically abused the police, the stage was being set for the greatest success yet to take place in the history of a revolution that was about to start.

  As soon as the fracas caused by the impudence of an inebriated Gaynor Henderson and Whitford Howell started inside the Comprehensive School, the police force outside had suspected foul play. Therefore, as soon as the first signs of trouble could be observed—loud screaming in the auditorium, members of the audience departing the school before the start of the show, neither injured nor ruffled but full of anger and indignation—Inspector Antwain Edmonton, chief of the police task force, had already evinced a plan to evacuate the building and break up the mob. The decision to fill the Comprehensive School with tear gas was reached at roughly the same time that the blade of Dwight O’Farrell’s machete flew in the night and cut through the live high-voltage wires in the generator house. Then came the stones at all four corners of the school; then came the exodus, people like ants emerging from every possible escape route in the building; then came the yellow smoke, the coughing, the crying, the screaming, the itching, the sting in the throat, the gasping for air, the Lord, wha’ kinda curse You sen’ we from de Heavens? the chaos, the confusion, the shock, the terror, the desperation, the horror, and in the middle of it all Rude Thompson and some twenty young men entrenched behind a pickup truck, throwing stones blindly in the general direction of the police, hitting them with the same frequency as they struck random spectators, innocent bystanders, officials, cars, goats, chickens.

  The whole affair lasted, altogether, some fifteen minutes. As soon as Inspector Edmonton realized the real threat came from outside the school, he ordered his men to launch the tear gas against any pocket of insurgents they could identify. Which, in the middle of the darkness brought on by the blade of Dwight O’Farrell’s machete, was the closest you could get to a meaningless order. However, darkness or not, the police force had received so much abuse from Alwyn Cooke and his bunch of protesters that a canister was immediately launched in their direction. Alwyn Cooke, hanging precariously from the edge of his white Ford pickup truck, just barely visible through the light of the flaming flag burning on the ground, would have given the order to head back toward the road, but it was already too late for that, because now the thick cloud of yellow smoke coming from the Comprehensive School enveloped him, and the more hotheaded of his recruits had joined Rude Thompson to mount a new offensive against the established order, and the more squeamish had run away toward the relative safety of the East End.

  If Alwyn Cooke had been able to see anything—had the tear gas not blinded him almost totally—he would have glimpsed the placards he and his colleagues had so conscientiously made for the occasion scattered all over the ground, illuminated by the one headlight left intact on the front of his truck (the other one having been shattered by friendly fire). Sunk in the haze of the tear gas, Alwyn drove away at no speed at all, blowing his horn incessantly to warn people of his clumsy passage. A minute later, he was stopped by Adolphus and Kareen Thomas, a young couple, members of his group of protesters, who were able to take care of him and the white Ford.

  Once the water calmed the swelling in his eyes, Alwyn Cooke took control of the situation again, jumping back inside his truck and traveling up and down the only road that communicated the eastern end of the island with the “capital,” The Valley, looking for fellow victims of the police force’s heavy hand. After his first trip, where he found more refugees than he could carry and no police presence at all, he understood an unsigned truce had been granted by the authorities for the night. He continued his mission of search and rescue for two hours, until he was certain there were no more m
en and women trying to make their way back to the east. On his ninth and final trip down the road, he spotted Rude Thompson sitting under a tamarind tree. His face was swollen and his breathing heavy.

  See wha’ you crazy plan get us into?

  Rude had been hit by a stone and was suffering somewhat under the effects of the tear gas, but he was absolutely elated about the events of the evening. Al, dis only de start, you know.

  Alwyn Cooke didn’t know, and, in fact, he didn’t even want to know. But he still offered Rude a ride back home. De police hidin’ tonight, boy—but tomorrow dey goin’ come lookin’ for you. Is a good hidin’ place I go find, if I was you.

  Little did Alwyn know that, in addition to Rude Thompson, Gaynor Henderson, and Whitford Howell, the police would come looking for him too. Because even though, in practical terms, Rude Thompson and Alwyn Cooke had ceased to work together, and their ideological tendencies had drifted apart, their fates would again be joined by the police force, who would throw every suspect of raucous behavior on the night of February 4, 1967 into the same lot. In the coming days they would visit East End and Island Harbour with arrest warrants for them all—but things would not go quite as they envisaged.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE RECONCILIATION

  Alwyn Cooke was up before the sun the following morning, and his wife Ylaria was up with him, sipping from a cup of bush tea, when they received the first call of the day. Alwyn was not certain what to expect, as, during the night, the fear had grown inside him that the police would disregard the precautions he had taken in his planning of the protest and would try to blame him for the violence that took place at the Comprehensive School and its surroundings.