Roughly page 326
I didn’t enjoy the fast ride from Chacachacare to Chaguaramas. We were doing about thirty knots into the afternoon chop and the boat sometimes came right off the top of a wave. We didn’t go through into the bay itself. The Dutch took their boat into the Trinidad coast guard station just west of Gasparillo Isle. I watched the corbeaux riding the thermals off that tall, tiny, heavily wooded rock and was glad that those black Trinidadian vultures weren't waiting for me. I felt bad but not so bad that death would be a relief.
Sergeant t'Lam gave me some morphine before the large police jeep powered off along the old American base road, blue lights flashing, past the factories and the marinas, past the Miss World debacle hotel, past the police station and the swimming beach by Pier 1 and into that tight right hander that had me sweating with sickness, and then through the tight left hander where the electricity wires are always down, fast through the pot holed roads of the fishing village of Carenage with the smell of the market and the flash of steel as a man portioned a big fish, and then I missed the bit from Bayshore and West Moorings, came to at the wide road beyond West Mall where we swerved for the underpass and were suddenly on the ring road and going really fast round the southern side of Port of Spain. When we passed the lighthouse by the old railway station the driver floored the throttle. The road side slums of the Beetham went by in a blur as we barrelled up the big highway to Piarco and its airport. Cars moved over. Maxi taxis thought twice before pulling out in front of us. If there was a faster way to get to Piarco by road, I didn’t want to be on it.
We swung off the highway by the big hoarding for cola and along the old pot-holed approach road till we hit the roundabout that fed us into the one-way circular road round the new airport terminal and we came round that tight right-hand bend real fast, the driver putting the big jeep through the bends on two wheels and when I saw the road splitting just before the new buildings I prayed we were going down the easy left fork but the driver took the sharper bend to the right. Cars were getting out of our way as we came in to the departure area. Airport police pulled the doors open and me out of the back seat and had us running through the security without bothering with X-rays or passport checks.
"Slow up, man," I said.
"Na man, plane waitin'," the big man in the blue uniform said as he pulled me along like a doll.
"Let the fucker wait," I said but the big man in blue just ran me hard and the blond Dutch sergeant came up from behind and shouted to go faster.
We were out of the building now and running on the tarmac. The little De Havilland Dash 8 was revving up. Chocks away, boys, mine are all but shot to hell. There must have been faces at the windows watching but I couldn’t get my neck muscles to tilt my head high enough to show them my smile.
"Cum on, uncle," the big man in blue said and I wanted to ask how old he fucking thought I was but he might have given me a clever answer and I had no repartee left.
We got to the bottom of the stairs at the front of the aircraft and the Dutchman took over, pulling me up till I fell and he had to slow down. The captain of the plane was at the top asking what the hell this was, he thought he was waiting for a NATO official, and was that blood on my head. I heard the Dutch sergeant say two words and the captain didn’t argue. The doors were closing. The boarding steps were pulling away. The co-pilot must have been revving the engines. Sergeant t'Lam pointed to the front row of three first class seats and the hostess said they were taken. The sergeant said he could see that but to clear them for his passenger. The hostess said no. The men in the seats pointed to their suits and briefcases to say they were the genuine first class article and I wanted to say to them, don’t worry, sirs, I can lie down right where I am but the sergeant just said "Move it" and they moved, the hostess saying there were no more first class seats available and the sergeant saying he didn’t care if they sat all together in the toilet but these seats were for us, and the three business men got up and moved.
The knights of business are no match for the real knights, with war in their fierce blue eyes instead of profit.
I fell into the seat and someone fastened the seat belt for me. I wasn’t caring. When the voices told me about the emergency doors I didn’t bother listening. I had gone through mine already. I was out on the ocean, blue skies and white sails and not a care in the world till I came back to consciousness and sergeant t'Lam asked if I needed more morphine. He had wiped the blood from my head with a pillow and I wanted to say that the next person in might worry about the stains but my mouth was locked and I couldn’t move my tongue.
"Morphine" I said. I wanted to say I had probably over-dosed but that was two words too many and he hit me with a needle in the top of my arm. I think I heard the words "NATO hero" but it could have been anything before the blue skies and white sails went dark and I didn’t remember.
We were hitting clear air turbulence when I woke. The air hostess was in the little seat right in front of us, her skirt pulled up her thighs and a smile on her face. It took me a little while to realise that she was watching the Dutchman. He was talking to her and she had that dazed look of a rabbit in headlights. The blue eyes, of course, and that personality.
I would have got up to leave if I had the strength but I doubt if she would have noticed. I wasn’t even on the same plane as her. She said where she stayed in St Martin at the end of the flight and how the Dutch side of the island was just a short drive away for her in her little car and how she would really like to meet his friends there at the weekend when she had the time and how long was he staying there and that wasn’t long but they could surely find something to do together.
I wanted to say it's Martinique we get off, not St Martin but I didn't have the sense or the nerve and by that time I had exhausted myself and fell asleep trying to ask her for a glass of water.
I felt the bump as we landed. This must be the first stop, I heard myself say but the sergeant said no we're here so get ready because we are the first to get off and I wanted to cry, my head hurt so much, and little voices were talking to me in my head and I knew it was the morphine but it sounded like me.
I looked at the sergeant to say I wasn’t getting off but his eyes said you do what I tell you and I tried to undo my seat belt to get up but the plane was breaking hard and the timing was wrong and the hostess moved over to stop me, I think, but ended up in the sergeant's lap and I closed my eyes and waited for the pain to get less.
I was going down the steps almost on the shoulders of the sergeant and he didn’t seem to notice my weight though I was taller than him, and the police at the bottom of the steps took our bags and tried to take me too but the sergeant said those same two words and they backed off and then I was walking, trying to walk on my own, and there was Inspector Bruin and Officer Leclerc by the terminal buildings and I waved like you're supposed to wave when you get off a plane and Annette came over to help me and the sergeant didn’t say his two words, he just let her put her shoulder under my arm and he took my other side and they had me in the ambulance and driving out of the airport with Inspector Bruin behind in his private car and I said this is Officer Leclerc meet sergeant-I-can't-remember-your-name and he shook her hand and said "Klaus t'Lam" and she looked at his blue eyes and then back at mine as though he didn’t exist and I said "Not this one, superman" but my lips didn’t move and my mouth didn’t work and I slipped into the darkness again.
Excerpt from the novel Summer Storms
I didn’t enjoy the fast ride from Chacachacare to Chaguaramas. We were doing about thirty knots into the afternoon chop and the boat sometimes came right off the top of a wave. We didn’t go through into the bay itself. The Dutch took their boat into the Trinidad coast guard station just west of Gasparillo Isle. I watched the corbeaux riding the thermals off that tall, tiny, heavily wooded rock and was glad that those black Trinidadian vultures weren't waiting for me. I felt bad but not so bad that death would be a relief.
Sergeant t'Lam gave me some morphine before the large police jeep powered off along the old American base road, blue lights flashing, past the factories and the marinas, past the Miss World debacle hotel, past the police station and the swimming beach by Pier 1 and into that tight right hander that had me sweating with sickness, and then through the tight left hander where the electricity wires are always down, fast through the pot holed roads of the fishing village of Carenage with the smell of the market and the flash of steel as a man portioned a big fish, and then I missed the bit from Bayshore and West Moorings, came to at the wide road beyond West Mall where we swerved for the underpass and were suddenly on the ring road and going really fast round the southern side of Port of Spain. When we passed the lighthouse by the old railway station the driver floored the throttle. The road side slums of the Beetham went by in a blur as we barrelled up the big highway to Piarco and its airport. Cars moved over. Maxi taxis thought twice before pulling out in front of us. If there was a faster way to get to Piarco by road, I didn’t want to be on it.
We swung off the highway by the big hoarding for cola and along the old pot-holed approach road till we hit the roundabout that fed us into the one-way circular road round the new airport terminal and we came round that tight right-hand bend real fast, the driver putting the big jeep through the bends on two wheels and when I saw the road splitting just before the new buildings I prayed we were going down the easy left fork but the driver took the sharper bend to the right. Cars were getting out of our way as we came in to the departure area. Airport police pulled the doors open and me out of the back seat and had us running through the security without bothering with X-rays or passport checks.
"Slow up, man," I said.
"Na man, plane waitin'," the big man in the blue uniform said as he pulled me along like a doll.
"Let the fucker wait," I said but the big man in blue just ran me hard and the blond Dutch sergeant came up from behind and shouted to go faster.
We were out of the building now and running on the tarmac. The little De Havilland Dash 8 was revving up. Chocks away, boys, mine are all but shot to hell. There must have been faces at the windows watching but I couldn’t get my neck muscles to tilt my head high enough to show them my smile.
"Cum on, uncle," the big man in blue said and I wanted to ask how old he fucking thought I was but he might have given me a clever answer and I had no repartee left.
We got to the bottom of the stairs at the front of the aircraft and the Dutchman took over, pulling me up till I fell and he had to slow down. The captain of the plane was at the top asking what the hell this was, he thought he was waiting for a NATO official, and was that blood on my head. I heard the Dutch sergeant say two words and the captain didn’t argue. The doors were closing. The boarding steps were pulling away. The co-pilot must have been revving the engines. Sergeant t'Lam pointed to the front row of three first class seats and the hostess said they were taken. The sergeant said he could see that but to clear them for his passenger. The hostess said no. The men in the seats pointed to their suits and briefcases to say they were the genuine first class article and I wanted to say to them, don’t worry, sirs, I can lie down right where I am but the sergeant just said "Move it" and they moved, the hostess saying there were no more first class seats available and the sergeant saying he didn’t care if they sat all together in the toilet but these seats were for us, and the three business men got up and moved.
The knights of business are no match for the real knights, with war in their fierce blue eyes instead of profit.
I fell into the seat and someone fastened the seat belt for me. I wasn’t caring. When the voices told me about the emergency doors I didn’t bother listening. I had gone through mine already. I was out on the ocean, blue skies and white sails and not a care in the world till I came back to consciousness and sergeant t'Lam asked if I needed more morphine. He had wiped the blood from my head with a pillow and I wanted to say that the next person in might worry about the stains but my mouth was locked and I couldn’t move my tongue.
"Morphine" I said. I wanted to say I had probably over-dosed but that was two words too many and he hit me with a needle in the top of my arm. I think I heard the words "NATO hero" but it could have been anything before the blue skies and white sails went dark and I didn’t remember.
We were hitting clear air turbulence when I woke. The air hostess was in the little seat right in front of us, her skirt pulled up her thighs and a smile on her face. It took me a little while to realise that she was watching the Dutchman. He was talking to her and she had that dazed look of a rabbit in headlights. The blue eyes, of course, and that personality.
I would have got up to leave if I had the strength but I doubt if she would have noticed. I wasn’t even on the same plane as her. She said where she stayed in St Martin at the end of the flight and how the Dutch side of the island was just a short drive away for her in her little car and how she would really like to meet his friends there at the weekend when she had the time and how long was he staying there and that wasn’t long but they could surely find something to do together.
I wanted to say it's Martinique we get off, not St Martin but I didn't have the sense or the nerve and by that time I had exhausted myself and fell asleep trying to ask her for a glass of water.
I felt the bump as we landed. This must be the first stop, I heard myself say but the sergeant said no we're here so get ready because we are the first to get off and I wanted to cry, my head hurt so much, and little voices were talking to me in my head and I knew it was the morphine but it sounded like me.
I looked at the sergeant to say I wasn’t getting off but his eyes said you do what I tell you and I tried to undo my seat belt to get up but the plane was breaking hard and the timing was wrong and the hostess moved over to stop me, I think, but ended up in the sergeant's lap and I closed my eyes and waited for the pain to get less.
I was going down the steps almost on the shoulders of the sergeant and he didn’t seem to notice my weight though I was taller than him, and the police at the bottom of the steps took our bags and tried to take me too but the sergeant said those same two words and they backed off and then I was walking, trying to walk on my own, and there was Inspector Bruin and Officer Leclerc by the terminal buildings and I waved like you're supposed to wave when you get off a plane and Annette came over to help me and the sergeant didn’t say his two words, he just let her put her shoulder under my arm and he took my other side and they had me in the ambulance and driving out of the airport with Inspector Bruin behind in his private car and I said this is Officer Leclerc meet sergeant-I-can't-remember-your-name and he shook her hand and said "Klaus t'Lam" and she looked at his blue eyes and then back at mine as though he didn’t exist and I said "Not this one, superman" but my lips didn’t move and my mouth didn’t work and I slipped into the darkness again.
Excerpt from the novel Summer Storms