Fiction: Drinking Kubulis at the Dead Cat Café [15]

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15. The bats always came slapping

[This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual person, living, dead, or anywhere in between, is purely a figment of your own sick, twisted imagination. You really ought to seek professional help for that. Except for the cat, of course; that skin on the cover really is  t h e  Dead Cat, if that’s any consolation to you.]

The bats always came slapping and bumping into the rafters of the tiny concrete house just before the rain. The tin roof, roaring like a cattle train in the daily deluge, was supported solely by three-inch wooden slats two feet apart, and the bats wriggled their way under the corrugations and along the rafters and into their accustomed spaces. Kirk had explained that the bats couldn’t navigate in the rain. When the skies opened, which they did two or three times every day and night, the bats took refuge in their haunts until it stopped. Rita had hung a nicely printed sheet over the bed, done up with rainbows and unicorns, to prevent bat turds from falling on unsuspecting guests as they slept.
    His first full day in Dominica they had gone to the Emerald Pool, a magical combination of a waterfall, a pool, and a cave. The drive to get there amazed him. Dominica was a world of flowing jungle so green and verdant he was mesmerized for hours at a time. Paying to get into the park was an ordeal he would soon learn was standard operating procedure in the Caribbean. Visitors went to the first table, where Kirk and Rita showed their papers of residency and Ras showed his passport, and then their Dominican driver licenses, and they were asked why they were there. There was nothing else to do in the park but to hike to the Pool, yet they had to state that, in fact, they wished to visit that very Pool. Yes, Kirk and Rita explained, they had been to the Pool before. No, Ras told them, he had not, but he was looking forward to the experience. If the hefty black lady in the Parks Service uniform detected his sarcasm, she hid it well. She told them it was ten dollars EC each, and when Kirk handed her two twenty-dollar bills with the Queen’s ever-young face looking out from them, she frowned and asked if they did not have the correct amount. Kirk admitted they did not. After some time considering, she turned to the hefty black man at the next table, also in the Parks Service uniform, and asked him if he had change. He said he did not, in Kwéyòl so thick Ras couldn’t understand a word. Neither of the Parks attendants seemed to have any idea what to do. Kirk asked for one of the twenties back and walked the ten feet to the lady at the snackette counter and asked if she had two tens for a twenty. She smiled and said she did. He got the two tens, came back to the attendants, and gave the man one of the tens. The man looked confused, until Kirk took the ten back and gave it to the lady, who then smiled and gave each of them a pass to attend the park. Ras thought they would go on then, but Kirk put a hand on his arm and shook his head. Holding the three passes, he sat down in front of the man, who had been there to observe the entire transaction, and presented him with the passes.
    The man examined each pass carefully, then asked if the people who had bought these passes in front of his very eyes were present. Kirk assured him they were. The man asked to see their passports and Dominica driver licenses, upon which Kirk and Rita again presented their papers of residency and driver licenses, and Ras, barely able to hide an incredulous grin, again handed over his passport and driver license. The man examined each of these documents minutely, scrutinized the white people before him as if they were suspects in some horrible crime, and finally, reluctantly, produced a stamper and ink pad from a box on the table in front of him and, very carefully and deliberately, inked his stamper and stamped each pass in purple ink with the sigil of the Parks Service of the Government of Dominica. He then handed the passes back to Kirk, who gave one each to Rita and Ras and told Ras in a clear and serious voice not to lose it, or he might be fined for not having it. He could, Ras saw, barely keep from screaming with laughter, but for the first time, the large black man at the second table seemed to approve of their presence.
    Kirk suggested that, given the time it had taken to get their passes, they might do well to buy something for lunch from the snackette counter, as it often ran out of food if – for instance, if tourists from a cruise ship arrived and bought out its day’s supply of fried chicken and bakes. Bakes were little meat pies to which Ras was partial, common at Jamaican restaurants in Fort Pierce, so Ras bought two chicken legs and two bakes. The lady at the counter, the same lady who had watched their entire exchange with the Parks attendants and given Kirk the change, asked if they had come to see the Emerald Pool. Ras had just bitten into one of the bakes when the lady inquired, and it was all he could do not to spit the mouthful of beef and pastry ten feet across the shaded patio. Kirk held his arm and pounded his back while he coughed, explaining to the lady that the mild spices of the bake must have somehow disagreed with his friend. She responded with great concern, expressing her heartfelt hopes that Jah, the Rastafarian avatar of Jesus Christ, would be with his friend and keep him safe.

The author posed below
a water-gum gree

    They hiked to the Emerald Pool through towering forests of D’Leau Gommier, water-gum trees. Massive buttresses of their roots protruded in woody ridges to the ground, helping to support their immense bulk and height. Kirk had them pose for pictures inside the mossy caverns formed by the enormous trunks. Beneath the canopy were armies of la Fouche, giant ferns like fairy palm trees. There were massive stands of cycads, which also looked like palm trees but were a much older species, one of the oldest plant families on Earth. The tallest of the giant ferns stood perhaps twenty feet high, their waxy fronds describing perfect, drooping circles in the mild green leaf-light. The corduroy pathway under their feet was made of wood from the Fouche, harvested in the dark of the moon, according to Kirk. Cut at any other time, the spongy stem of the giant fern would rot within a year. However, taken in the two or three correct days of the month, the hardy sections forming the walkway would resist rot and termites for twenty years or more.
    The second day, they drove to Wotten Waven – “Rhymes with rotten raven,” Rita sang out, obviously a joke between them. Ras met Tia, owner of Tia’s Bamboo Cottages. He had learned right off to do the knuckle-bump instead of offering his hand to shake, as the islanders feared infection from hand contact, and, Ras thought, they were right. Ras brought his fist back, thumped his chest, and in a low voice said, “Respect.” Tia opened his mouth in a grin so broad Ras thought the islander’s small rows of perfect white teeth might attempt an escape. Tia thumped his own chest in return and repeated the traditional greeting: “Respect.”
    Tia was the architect of the bamboo house lived in by none other than the famous “white people in the bamboo house”: Kirk and Rita. Tia’s Bamboo Cottages were scattered down the steep slope to the River Blanc, which rattled comfortably over various rocks and any number of minor waterfalls along his property. On an island already considered a jungle paradise, it was heaven on earth. They ordered drinks at the Bamboo Bar, then explored the Bamboo Hut steam room and hot tub, another outdoor hot pool, several Bamboo cottages and a tiny concrete bathroom. The door to the bathroom consisted of a thick layer of passion vine in full and glorious purple bloom.

Cindy with the striped kitten
at Tia’s Bamboo Cottages

    They sat in a thatched cabana under a giant nutmeg tree drinking Tia’s famous rum and passion fruit cocktail. At least, the sign out front said it was famous. A grey-striped kitten ate coconut from a broken shell on the ground. Grey-striped chickens pecked at other coconut shells but kept wary eyes on the cat. Fat, grey, striped lizards three feet long gulped rotting coconut meat from the same scatter of shells, staring hungrily at the kitten, and keeping wary eyes on the chickens.
    In just the short time he’d been on the island, Ras was already considering staying here, buying land and building a house. Anyone in his right mind would have done the same, he thought; it truly was paradise. He asked Tia about his houses, and how his were guaranteed to stand for twenty years or more, while others rotted away or were consumed by termites and other wood-destroying insects.
    “Bamboo, my friend, and every odder plant and tree, dey have a time for de cutting. Not all de same, some on de dark of de moon, some on de waxin’ and some on de wanin’. Some wood you only cut on one or two days of de year. But whatever de time is, you cut it at dat time, it last as long as you need it, true dat.” They all took more rum drinks down the slippery stone pathway to the outdoor hot pool, and Tia went out of sight around the hillside to turn on the pipes. The hot water was fed by the sulphur springs nearby, the outflow of which caused the river to be white, thus the French name, Blanc. The steaming mineral water flowed through black PVC pipe and quickly filled the stone tub, which was more like a pool, about ten feet by six. Towering nutmeg and water-gum trees presided over them while the river sang from down the slope. Tia joined them and they all lay in the healing waters with their legs out to the middle of the pool and sipped on the devastating cocktails. Tia continued his explanation of the rules of natural forestry.

A sisserou parrot

    “You see de piles of trees on de way here, don’t you?” Ras admitted he had. “We cut dem two years ago on de first day of de new moon, and we will leave dem lay for another t’ree years more. When de proper time come, dey will be made into boards for a house and dey will last one hundred years. Maybe more; we don’t know.” Ras sucked at his drink, lay his head back and dreamed. He saw a pair of rare sisserou parrots, the national bird of Dominica, making kissy up the slope. They lived on the ground and were being driven to extinction by the introduction of housecats. Seeing them was supposed to mean good luck.

Copyright © 2020 by Roger Owens