The island was rocked by a coup two months after I left and Micah was involved in the storming of the — buildings. He was blasted on the front steps and I heard afterwards that he lay there in the sun for two whole days while plotters and hostages dueled it out. His quick note, written in pencil on brown shop paper, arrived ten days after news of the coup reached me.
A coup inside a coup. Not what I risked everything fighting for.
I won’t make it. Trying to leave but I’m in too deep. No hope, Geeta, my love. Another day for the wicked and one more for advantage that could never done.
I love you, you know. We might have made it.
I found myself writing and rewriting the song the day I got his note. “Nowarian Blues,” its grief deep inside the catchy rhythm of its lilting melody, is still a much-played jazz note twenty years later. Maybe we could have made it, through his ambiguous sexual inclinations, his ordinary human sexuality that threw me into such doubts. Maybe we could have made it if he had not been betrayed. The rustling in the bushes early in my visit — was he already marked? Did Legano, who disappeared from the face of the earth right after, I was told, did that snake do him in? The note had been mailed by Legano, though. His scrawled comment, stuffed in the envelope, was brief. Found this on Mikey. Sorry. Legano. I was grateful that he had sent it and also nervous that he had my address. He must have gone back to the house to find it. A survivor. Like me. Was I, God forbid, a factor in the equation surrounding Mikey’s death? Jealousy, maybe? The cold hand struck at my heart again. Mikey. Everyone I met during my stay in Trinidad had addressed my lover as Micah. Everyone except me and, I now realized, Legano. Maybe we would have made it because of our true connection — Mikey and Geeta, primal, uncomplicated, clean. But who knows, perhaps not even that could have saved us.
The day I left, we had lain in bed together for a long time. He had shifted between hugging me tightly and holding me at arm’s length, staring into my face. I grew uncomfortable. “Like if yuh trying to memorize my face,” I joked.
And he had nodded seriously. “Yes,” he whispered. It seemed to me then that we had reached an agreement beyond words, but I couldn’t tell if it was for all or for nothing at all, the silly words of that love song still ricocheting through my brain on the flight back, a flight I thought would never end. It wasn’t anxiety that I felt, just an inexplicable sense of belonging, though no such words had been spoken between us. No words; something else had taken care of that. Call it carambolas, gold-black nowarians, all-knowing, alien fruit standing in the rain.
Betrayal
by Willi Chen
Godineau
At Godineau, the sleek little boat shot out from under the canopy of mangrove branches like an arrow pointing toward open sea. The only glints in the moonlit ocean were the helmets that crowned the two men seated like robots in the narrow cabin of the speedboat. Painted black, equipped with two powerful 100HP Johnson engines specially assembled and mechanically assisted with turbo jets, the vessel was fast and undetectable as it roared to a destination only eighty miles away — a secret bay of the mainland where, unseen and with engines muffled, the men would pilot the craft upriver along banks whose trees cast an aura of gloom over the compound on the Venezuelan coast.
Balbosa, Manickchand, another Spaniard, Vasquez — who was as cunning as a forest quenk — and a Trini Indian of skill and courage had made countless trips into this dark camouflaged cave within the interior of the compound. Tonight they removed the lids that concealed the boat’s cabin cupboards and lifted plastic bags tied with red ribbons, then hoisted the cargo onto the trays of one-ton four-wheel drive Mazdas equipped with tools, hooded lamps, and extra tanks of gas necessary for perilous journeys through the jungle.
Expeditions from Trinidad by speedboat to the mainland took place at night. It was the cloth king of indisputable wealth and authority, Sabagal, who commanded this unlawful business that had made him a kingpin operator of devious courage, a figure of charm and power.
The strength of Sabagal’s dominion was in his dexterous voyages and skills deemed inherited from his father who had peddled blue dock jeans, colorful scarves, and head ties across the country roads in bygone days. His father had never worried that villagers were slow to pay for goods, or cared about the pain he experienced as ferocious pot hounds gnawed at his heels when he entered the yards through the mud traces of the country villages. His frequent visits had paid off over the years until he was able to purchase an Austin 8 that took him further inland, into secluded districts where he clothed the people with his cheap, colorful fabric.
Like his father, Sabagal also sold haberdashery of pots and pans, window curtains, miscellaneous kitchen implements, brass bowls, small mirrors, lamps — anything that attracted naïve housewives who spent time talking, laughing, touching, then eventually buying Sabagal’s goods. Sabagal would check his money, using rubber bands to hold his notes together. There would be a song in his heart.
Eventually Sabagal hired salesmen, bought two more vans, and as his business prospered, his wealth increased. He acquired properties in the city, at Bay Shore, Otaheite, along Trinidad’s central coast, and at Maracaibo, El Tigre, Santano, and Margarita. He sold a larger variety of clothes and other silken fineries which yielded immense profits. His name became well-known across the land, but his lust for power and wealth overcame him. Greed thickened his blood to craftier ventures, which became devilishly uncontrollable and all-consuming.
Lured by mainland drug dealers into the high woods of that vast countryside that bordered the shores of roaring waves, Sabagal found himself surrounded by hefty men, bearded like ancient prophets. Unsmiling and grave, they emerged from a cave where bats whirred with grievous squeals and over-flapping wings. On skids on the higher terraces of the grotto were bags and boxes of cocaine and other drug-related pouches and vials of liquids. Here in this secret lair was the stored bank of wealth, guarded by thieves and hoodlums.
Further into the cold dark corners of the cave were boxes of loot from vessels traversing the ocean — cartons loaded with electronic equipment, whiskey, radios, stoves, refrigerators, and heaps of massive bundles stamped with foreign markings in foreign languages. Sabagal was stunned by the vastness of this store of contraband that amounted to a countless sum. He stood between four men armed with Uzi machine guns who also carried radios and cell phones. He had come to see the evidence. He was satisfied. He opened his carry-on case and Vasquez brought the papers to be signed.
Sabagal realized that more lucrative drug deals involved higher risks. He was soon entangled in liaisons with unknown men of extraordinary wealth. He took his chances.
But tonight he was surrounded by his own men — Balbosa, Manickchand, and Teemul the Trini Indian — who had quietly entered the inner cavern with Vasquez, along with a band of haughty figures, their weapons hoisted overhead, their foreheads banded, their eyes clouded by the dark undertones of evil. The unsmiling strangers, together with his own men, seized Sabagal. The ruffians’ coarse calloused hands were too abusive for Sabagal, who stood surprised at the sudden violence.