Crown Point February 13
The national bird of Tobago is emphatically not the rare and majestic Scarlet Ibis. It is the Coc’rico, which Latinos call Chachalaca, a beagle-size, dull-feathered sort of turkey, but only if turkeys could balance on a tree. They tend to imitate Red Howlers: traveling in groups, leaping from canopy to canopy and yelling their names at the top of their lungs, even now. It must be time to wake up.
In Tobago, the water is hard from the calcium of coral and lime. Bars of soap lather like slick bricks. The air is slightly cooler, but everything else is softer and warmer, such is country life. Goats and chickens abound. I pay my respects to George, the surfing ambassador of Mount Irvine, and the ageless Kaiso-man is happy to remember Oli, my son, on a board in December. The lapping tide is rising on the coral beach, surf is low.
Connections are easy on this island. Anika will drive you to the Sunday School lime in Buccoo. Neville can manage any request for a cash rental. Wayne makes the best breakfast at the House of Pancake, specializing in shark ’n bake, curried bode, eggs galore, pumpkin porridge, and, if the name is to be believed, exactly one pancake.
Marylin takes care of our rented house and prepares savory chicken and rice. She comes from the lee village of Castaro up the coast. She finds life here in Crown Point too hectic, too aggressive, too afflicted with hucksters and other urbanized outsiders. She, like Wayne, and I suppose all of us, miss the better days. She prays at the Pentecostal church, donning a black dress of exquisite mourning. Wayne is not so sure about religion, but Marylin says it helps.
With respect, I ask her to move to Westmoorings and cook all of my meals. “It’s just a short puddle jump. I have an extra bathroom. My apartment building is behind bars. You could abandon your family.“
She covers her mouth to laugh, mustering only, “No righ’ now.“ The lady speaks more British than the Trini does—who does not speak like anyone else on earth—but both she and the Trini would disapprove of the implication, so I will say no more. Marylin is mostly relieved that I am not quite the typical weekend visitor, so dismissive, demanding and deluded. Meanwhile, I am relieved simply not to be scolded by yet another absolute stranger, such is city society.
Americans and Europeans concentrate their holidays near this port of entry, on the south end of the island, facing Toco some 10 miles away. Crown Point is the fastest-growing town on the island, much of it within walking distance of both the airport and Pigeon Point National Park. Sandals would have ruined this place. Nevertheless, subdivisions are subdividing. Backhoes and cement mixers raise white dust during the dry season, pouring foundations for cookie-cutter home rentals cut into the jungle. Two bare-backed preadolescents take a wheelbarrow handle and lift away a large bird cage full of newly recycled metal fixtures.
Crown Point was where the Royals used to visit, to inspect their colonial assets, and where, in 1955, Princess Margaret scandalized her divine sister with a racy comment about the seawater being as clear as a nylon stocking. The old plantation has since transformed into Coco Reef, a rolling estate of mature palm, silk cotton, and nutmeg trees, manicured to a tee, harboring an exclusive marina, and offering the other 99% a deprived buffet breakfast for 30 USD. When young Elizabeth and her seafaring Prince Phillip landed, a service class from the African and Indian schools of etiquette roamed the premises. Manners were important. Not today on the manor. The Trini manager comes out to inform us that the kitchen is unaccountably closed.
It is well after sunset, and Marylin has gone home. Most birds should be settling down for the night, but the forest around the new excavation site is alive with squawking, call-response stye. The sociable if homely Chachalacas, Tobago’s very own Coc’rico, consider the habitat alterations and future livelihoods. Branches of the surviving trees bounce like diving boards underfoot of the hefty beasts. Sling-shot hunters swear they taste like game hen. On the big island, this chatty congress often indicates monkeys in the area, but monkeys here tonight would have to swim from Toco, way out across the treacherous channel.
These birds are agitated by something different, which the crescent moon barely illuminates. The earth smells of reduced compost exposed to air. Tire tracks become serpentine incubation pools for mosquito larva. Severed limbs are strewn about in leafy piles, each moistened by a signature cutlass chop. The plaintive night resounds with onomatopoeias from two languages: “Chachalaca! Coc’rico!“