Since Sliced Bread February 26
I am shopping in the Massy, which means I am in a bad mood. The produce section is exhausted and bruised, and the lights in the bakery are out until further notice. My loaf of whole-wheat bread is in a bag that cannot be resealed, in a humid environment where mold spores outcompete yeast as fungal monarchs. My raisin bread loaf is not sliced, again, despite a delectable slice of buttered toast pictured on the bag. This goes for hamburger rolls as well—unsliced rolls expressly made for hamburgers! I mean, what is the point? Does not everybody want two clean halves?
“Yuh slice it yuh self,“ says the indignant baker, from the darkened kitchen, posing with a serrated blade.
At the checkout, I discover why my trolley line has been moving so slowly—the cashier is preoccupied, with something clearly beyond these walls, anything perhaps, anywhere but here in the present.
To further depress spirits, I grab a copy of TT Newsday, and there are the usual suspects on the front page: a drunk cousin, once-removed, “chops“ a distant uncle with a “cutlass“ in Laventille; and, closer to home, shots are again fired up the Morne Coco Road, in Petit Valley, a mere thousand feet beyond Coco Ja and the Panyard:
“Mendez, 23, was sitting under a tree at Cameron Road when a lone gunman approached and opened fire. Mendez was shot several times about the body and died. Another man who was nearby sustained an injury to his right hand.“
In other other news, a woman who disfigured an Arima man with a sulfuric acid splash is the first female to be sentenced to a lashing, called “strokes,“ with cat o’nine tails, called “a device consisting of nine knotted thongs of rawhide.” Various juxtaposed photographs include colorful Carnival impersonators—vintage bread and circus. Meanwhile, this damned line has stopped moving. The cashier is nowhere to be seen. I weigh the costs of these ridiculous breads, then decide spontaneously to jump into my car.
Capuchin monkeys have returned to the Bamboo Cathedral, almost the same trees as two months ago. What are the chances? A crowd of school kids on a field-trip click away photos of the wonder. One inquisitive cellphone photographer monitors the scene on screen, while the subject rolls his fingertips like a harpist against an elastic branch. In the distance I think I hear Red Howlers, but they turn out to be armed soldiers, in training, very loudly, somewhere out there in the dense underbrush—one fierce call, followed by a crisp collective monosyllabic response. The school chaperons could care less about the military, but they complain that the monkeys are getting too close. They might fling excrement, like in the movies, they say.
The army has always occupied this westernmost peninsula. Since the Americans officially left in the early ’60's, Chaguaramas has been the major military base of Port of Spain, and it is served by just one puny road. I was told there is a secret alternate route through the low jungle hills, and that it is exceedingly rough travel, but no one knows where. If the Western Main Road ever did clog Carenage during a national emergency, just as on most sunny weekends, the army would be stuck on this pinky for hours, but then I suppose the navy might give them a lift.
A scraggly-grey man in jeans is pruning a remote stretch of trail above the Cathedral, for no apparent reason other than therapy. His wide-brim sombrero casts a long shadow across faded denim sleeves, but his creased face suggests a losing battle with the elements. His shears are so tiny, the wilderness of Tucker Valley so untamed, but he trims the wayward vines like a meticulous rose gardener, oblivious to troop movements in all directions.