CHAPTER VIII

KICK ’EM OUT!

The weeks and months that followed the ghost-visit paid by the HMS Salisbury to the tranquil shores of Anguilla took the island into uncharted territory. Inspector Edmonton and his police task force had regained nominal control of the island and, indeed, an agreement between Sol Carter, Alwyn Cooke, and Rude Thompson had put a momentary end to the spells of violence that characterized the days (and nights) that followed the abortive Statehood Queen Show. Nevertheless, there was a palpable tension in the air that impregnated everything in the daily routine of the islanders, from the slow glide of the elderly woman on the edge of town as she stepped outside in the early morning to tend to her goats, to the parsimonious stride of the youths trying to look cool on the way to school, to the methodical strike of the fellow down the road breaking the ground with a sledgehammer to set the foundations of an extension to his one-bedroom house—everything seemed to be done under the burdening shadow of a suspicion, in the troubling knowledge that somet’in’ jus’ ain’ right. It was the end of February, and there was still a chill in the air, although the rainy season had come to an end; but in this lousy atmosphere everything seemed stale, and the days dragged with a surreal sense of being both long and short—short because nothing could get accomplished with this heavy load, this utter discomfort, on your back, and long because every minute that went by in this venomous environment carried the weight of an hour, of several hours, making every day an endless ordeal.

Alwyn Cooke was very much under the effect of this draining atmosphere when he sought advice from the only man he had come to trust in Anguilla in the midst of all this trouble: Solomon Carter. I see everyone goin’ crazy in Anguilla as de days go by an’ in no time at all we all goin’ dead under de rule of St. Kitts, you know. We mus’ do somet’in’ quick-quick.

And double-quick it was that Solomon Carter came up with the idea that would keep the whole island busy for the days to come. If Anguilla soon dead as you say, why we don’ go make a big funeral?

It was a stroke of genius. The idea spread around the island like a virus. Every sermon in every church in Anguilla, from O’Farrell’s Anglican congregation in East End, to the Methodist church in South Hill, to the Seventh Day Adventist temple down by The Valley, to the Church of the God of Prophecy in West End, and among the few Catholics around Wallblake, all of them, without exception, touched upon the small matter of a general strike to paralyze the island and to express, graphically, the unequivocal rejection of the Anguillian people, their sense of bereavement at the thought of forming a single state with St. Kitts, through a public, all-embracing funeral procession.

Even Rude Thompson, ever the antagonist, had to give it to Alwyn the day they met to discuss, as always, the corrections Alwyn deemed necessary with Rude’s use of colons and commas in his latest “Letter from Anguilla.” Disgusted, Rude let out an impolite I ain’ know why you always wan’ make changes like dat, like dis you piece or somepin’, but soon enough he loosened the frown on his face and brightened up with an enthusiastic Is good idea you have at last, Al.

Alwyn thought of giving credit where credit was due by admitting, “Is Sol idea, Rude—is Sol idea,” but he suspected Rude would be less convinced about it if he knew from where the idea had come, and Alwyn feared Rude might even try to boycott the whole plan, or come up with some alternative one, a violent version of a funeral, a sort of bandit’s farewell, or some other nonsense like that, and Rude hadn’t even asked who had come up with the idea, he just assumed it was Alwyn’s baby without Alwyn saying anything at all, so instead of turning Rude’s attention in a dangerous direction, he just took the credit and, You better not let you trigger-happy frien’s ruin everyt’in’ for us.

And he didn’t. Because Rude Thompson believed in this plan, in this new form of civil disobedience, in this challenge to the authorities, more than he had believed in anything he had done so far in the name of the revolution. Hence, on Monday, February 27, it was Rude Thompson who held the banner at the front of a procession in which thousands of Anguillians—Anguillian women, Anguillian children, Anguillians from West End, from South Hill, from Sandy Ground, from Blowing Point, old and young—came together at Burrowes Park, right at the heart of The Valley, and marched all around town. They walked past the small white building that was the government house, next to the simple wooden structure that read Courthouse on the outside, and up to the one-story police station, which was adjacent to the island’s only prison, recently visited by the likes of Gaynor Henderson and Whitford Howell. And then they crossed over to the near side of Wallblake Airport and went right past the old Wallblake plantation house, through the dusty roads that lead to the factory, the largest store on the island with its long structure divided into several aisles, next to the remains of the old cotton gin, where once upon a time the (meager) island riches were obtained. And then they continued northward, through a narrow road that led to the Landsome House, home to the island’s warden, who would be presiding over the raising of the new flag of the associated state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla—the very same green-yellow-and-blue flag which Alwyn Cooke had soaked in gasoline and set aflame while he hung precariously from the corner of his white Ford truck in the total darkness of the darkest night yet in Anguilla’s history, Saturday February 4, 1967, just three weeks before, during the failure of epic proportion that had been the Statehood Queen Show.

A failure, too, was to be the symbolic act during which the Union Jack would be taken down and replaced by the tri-island-state flag, as a representation of the handing over of power from the old colonial master to the new indigenous autonomy. But the thousands—quite literally half the population of Anguilla—who gathered in their most formal outfits, fully adorned to attend the largest funeral they had ever seen, to put an end to their wishes—to bury their dreams—would not allow the staging of a political transition that was already taking place. So, Alwyn Cooke, not in his usual gray trousers but clad in equally well-pressed black ones, with his trademark white shirt—this time with long sleeves—and wearing a discrete, narrow black tie, was joined at the front by an old matron from South Hill, Cleothilda Hart, whose slow steps set the pace for the sea of people behind them, as the elaborate arrangement that hung from her black wide-brimmed hat bobbled at the rhythm of her burdened knees and orchestrated the motion of the widows and widowers who carried over their shoulders the black coffin in which lay—dead—Anguilla’s future. Banners, old and new ones, crowded the street and voiced—in large black lettering—the same old concerns, the same old requests Anguillians had futilely expressed for months. But none was larger than Rude’s banner at the front, which he carried almost like a staff, and which read in huge, dripping red letters: ANGUILLA R.I.P.

All of a sudden, in the middle of the procession, an unintelligible wail broke out from the back of the crowd, filling the hot afternoon air with a sense of both hope and despair, which spread quickly among the crowd, until the tune became familiar at the front too, and Alwyn Cooke and Cleothilda Hart, hand in hand, sang in unison for God to save the queen. Rude Thompson, puzzled at the choice of words and uncertain as to whether this was really the message he wanted delivered that very instant, hesitated for a moment, when, from behind, emerged the thin figure of Glenallen Rawlingson, only just fifteen years old but already tall, if lanky, and with that anthropoid gait of his, and, with both hands, he grabbed hold of the wooden pole wherefrom hung the banner announcing the death of Anguilla, and he relieved Rude from his duty, not giving him much of an option, before moving ahead, pole in hand, shouting from the top of his lungs, “God save the queen!”

So it was that all through the day on Monday, February 27, 1967, a peaceful, though visibly volatile crowd of Anguillians stood before the warden’s house with the candid—almost childish—intention of preventing a (childish) representation of that which above all else they most wanted to avoid, simply because they were not entitled to do anything—not even give their opinion—about the real thing. And so it was, too, that three thousand Anguillians stood for hours on Monday, February 27, 1967 before the warden’s house, to prevent him from raising the flag of the new governing entity on the island, performing their defiance by chanting continuously a tune that prayed for the health, for the well-being, of the queen whose very government had been the main, the direct culprit of the neglect in which Anguilla had found itself for the previous three hundred years. Go figure.

The warden of Anguilla, intimidated by a crowd larger than anyone had ever seen on the island, thought better than lowering the Union Jack from its flagpole and, instead, let things be for a while. In fact, for a long while, well into the night, when no official flag should fly loosely at all. But this was a special case, and the situation was, quite literally, extraordinary, and so, to commemorate the occasion expediently, the warden of Anguilla awoke in the middle of the night and peeked out of his window, and he made certain that the crowd had dispersed, and indeed every single one of the three thousand people who had congregated before his house earlier that day—or the day before, even, because it was four o’clock on Tuesday morning—had gone home, or they had gone to the Banana Rod, or they had gone somewhere else, but they were certainly not there, before his house, and if some of them were still around, they were not enough in numbers to intimidate him, to mitigate his initiative, to stall his sense of duty, so he called on the police officer who was his guard for the night, and Constable LaRue, our utility man, rubbed his eyes open and shook his head out of its slumber, and he stood firm, attentive, rolling the sleep he had cleared from his eyes into a small ball with the fingers of his left hand as the warden ordered him to go outside, to lower the flag of the United Kingdom, and to hoist the flag of the associated state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, with its laughable three little palm trees in the middle, while he, the warden, officiated the act in his pajamas. (I kid you not. This one is recorded—go look it up, if you must, St. Thomas.)

Naturally, this did not go down well with Anguillians—so the warden made no friends among the people he was supposed to ward, and his days in Anguilla were numbered, and the dice had been cast, and the dice were tumbling. News spread around Anguilla with the speed of light, which is why in the total darkness of four o’clock in the morning on an island with little electric power, no one knew what had happened. However, as soon as the day broke on Tuesday, February 28, and the first rays of sunlight illuminated the horizon line far out in the east, the supple waving of the three silly little palm trees on a green-yellow-and-blue flag against the background of the warden’s house left its imprint of anger and indignation on the Anguillian population, most of whom had gone to sleep triumphantly the night before, filled with a sense that, for once, their wishes had been voiced clearly enough for somebody to listen, for the British to understand. But Lahrd, how so dey treat us so? How so de white man wait for Anguilla to be in she sleep to stab she in de back? I t’ought de man here to protect us! But he ain’ protectin’ nobody but heself. De man a Judas! De man a traitor!

Before the sun had lifted over the clouds gathered in the distance, right where the sky meets the sea, still during twilight, between night and day, every person in Anguilla knew foul play had taken place in the wee hours of the night. Spontaneously, a continuation of the previous day’s mourning was staged, and the banners were fished out from the yards, and the coffin was reassembled, and new garments were chosen by those who had so much, and the ones who didn’t took every step to make their black dresses, their dark trousers, their white shirts or blouses look as if they had not been worn all day, such that well before seven in the morning the crowd gathered outside the Landsome House was so large, it seemed as if it had never dispersed at all.

Except something was missing from the previous day—there was none of the expectancy, none of the vibrant excitement there had been. Absent, too, was the soft tune of “God Save the Queen,” replaced, instead, with a good degree of restlessness and a pervading sense that, coffin or no coffin, mock funeral, general strike, civil disobedience, and all the rest, it was already too late, as, indeed, it had been for the past two and a half months, since that fated meeting, belatedly called toward the end of December 1966, when Anguilla’s destiny had been decided without so much as the presence, let alone the consent, of the island’s representative, Aaron Lowell. Ever since that moment, Anguilla had been sentenced to rest in peace and desolation under the thumb of Robert Bradshaw and whatever shape or form his successor in the future might take, doomed to remain for the rest of its days an unrecognized colony of a “sister” island that could hardly be made out in the distance on the clearest of days, of a “neighboring” isle that was separated by five other islands, thus perpetuating an association rooted in the incongruous, incompetent, ignorant practicality of a colonial administration utterly disinterested in the state of affairs in Anguilla, now as then.

It might have been a lack of energy, or perhaps no one had the eloquence to express it in such words, or perhaps, even, no one was fully aware of the historical chain of events which, since 1825, had conspired to produce the situation in which Anguillians, clad in their darkest clothes, found themselves. So, perhaps the thought was not articulated in full, but the magnitude of the event, the scale of the treason, escaped nobody. Anguillians mourned their own death in stunned silence the rest of the day. But too much of their spirit—more than just energy—had been sapped by the latest blow for anybody to be ingenuous enough even to think about performing the same nonsense the following day. So it was that on Tuesday, March 1, peace returned to the streets of the island and a semblance of normality fell upon The Valley. Only just a semblance, though, because things were far from back to normal on that Tuesday morning and on any of the many mornings to come, because Anguillians felt betrayed, yes, but Anguillians also felt impotent and helpless and angry and played and at some point, everybody knew, something had to give.

Therefore, nobody was particularly surprised when, seven days later, the warden woke up to a sweltering heat inside the Landsome House, and to a distinct smell of charcoaled wood, and a dense cloud of black smoke that hardly allowed any oxygen to filter through his pituitary membranes and reach his lungs, such that the warden—choked, bright red eyes bulging out of their sockets, drenching his face in tears, throat tied in an impenetrable knot that presaged the very worst—abruptly stirred from his sleep and, invigorated with the resolve and the final thrust that spells alarm in an asphyxiating body, pulled himself out of bed, and, without bothering so much as to open his Demerara windows, threw himself, head and shoulders first, out of the top—second—floor of his lodgings, pulling off a perfect forward flip as he traveled down the fifteen feet that separated him from the ground. The pathetic whimpering that could still be heard close to an hour later, as the futile efforts by a fire brigade that consisted of simple civilians rushing to and from the Old Valley well with buckets that were roughly half-empty of water by the time they reached the Landsome House, was attributed to the left ankle the warden had sprained while saving his life, which he would be unable to treat in Anguilla, simply because there was no hospital.

No one was surprised when they saw the warden, clad in the same pajamas he had worn to raise the flag of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla for the first time, just eight days earlier, desperately running—or leaping, rather—for his life, and no one was surprised, either, when they heard the epicene sobbing that followed, out of terror more than pain, some suggested. But what really no one was surprised at all about was the fact that some angry young or old Anguillian had decided to take matters in his own hands and pay the British back with a pyrotechnical display that set the oldest building in Anguilla aflame.

No one was surprised, and yet, at the same time, no one was particularly pleased or proud of the deed, either. As soon as the news of what was happening in the northern end of The Valley reached Island Harbour, Alwyn Cooke looked for his gray trousers and pressed white shirt to pay a visit, not to the injured warden, but to Rude Thompson, whom he suspected would be behind the act of arson. To Alwyn’s surprise, however, it was he who broke the news to Rude about the warden’s near-death experience, which was greeted with a cackle and an exuberant Yeeeee-ha!

Alwyn Cooke was not amused by Rude’s approval of the methods and, indeed, questioned whether, truly, he knew nothing of the incident, yet Rude’s matter-of-factness returned to him as soon as his integrity was questioned: Is ’bout time someone teach dem English idiots a lesson, you know. I wish it was me come up wit’ de idea. But is not me goin’ say he ain’ done somepin’ he do, an’ it ain’ me goin’ take credit for somepin’ somebody else done.

Alwyn was uneasy with Rude’s position, but he knew confronting him was not going to help, so Wha’s done is done, Rude—bu’ we cannot have people t’inkin’ in Anguilla is no law an’ dey kyan do whatever dem please. Is you started all dis violence nonsense, and before he could finish his sentence Rude Thompson reassured him, An’ if someone from East End have somepin’ to do wit’ dis, I will know, you know.

But days came and went, and Rude Thompson did not know a thing, because whoever caused the wooden structure of the Landsome House to go up in smoke was either too frightened of the consequences or not terribly proud of his actions, because he or (rather unlikely) she was not letting anybody know that he had done it, and in an eminently boastful society such as Anguilla’s (then and now) that usually means something isn’t quite right. Hence, after being left out in the dark for four days, Rude went to Gaynor Henderson’s doorstep to ask him straight out, Who de hell done dis foolishness? This was the first time Rude heard the prevailing rumor that the Landsome House fire had been caused not by arson but by the carelessness of that darned warden, whose habits had remained unchanged since he had first been sent in exile by the Crown’s foreign office, still wearing the same satin pajamas to sleep, to which all of Anguilla had been privy following his more clumsy than great escape from the fire four nights earlier, and still, too, dining on his own at a fully set table with the steel cutlery carefully placed on red acrylic tablecloths, as if it were a set of Christofle knives and forks, and the full regalia of cheap china spread out on the dining table with the same elegance as if we were speaking of Spode plates, and a pair of copper candlesticks that sometimes had nothing finer than tea lights, though on the night in question, it was rumored, the warden had received a package straight from England with a box of long, thin candles, twelve of them, which had so excited him that he immediately lit two of them in the dining room and, straight after dinner, carried two more into his room.

De man fall asleep wit’ a book in he hand an’ next t’ing he know de curtains catch fire, de whole house covered in smoke, an’ he havin’ to jump out de window to save he life.

The warden had not helped his cause with the Anguillian people, and whether or not there was any degree of truth in this tale is completely inconsequential to our story, but no one ever stepped forward to claim any knowledge or involvement in the burning down of the Landsome House on March 8, 1967, and the only thing ever to come out of it was the warden himself, who hobbled onto a plane and flew to Antigua for treatment, never to return. Anguilla, meanwhile, lost yet another guise—another symbol—of authority, and was left to drift more or less boundlessly.

The situation, now beyond desperate, remained idle—stagnant—for several months. Aaron Lowell, a figure as helpless as he was powerless, seemed even more hopeless than usual in his efforts to communicate with a British senior official, who, constitutionally, no longer had any jurisdiction, any power, nor any interest at all, for that matter, in any affair whatsoever involving Anguilla. Sol Carter, Rude Thompson, and Alwyn Cooke met often during this time to discuss the possibilities, to work out a plan of action, to give the impression, at least to themselves, that they were working toward a solution. Then, finally, Rude Thompson could take it no longer. He descended upon his people, he questioned every soul he found in the streets of Anguilla, he demanded everyone get together to speak, to protest, to act, and all of a sudden a meeting was officially called to take place at the park in The Valley on May 29, 1967.

For wha’ dis meeting? Sol asked, full of suspicion.

We go figure it out right dere—de whole bunch of we. That was the best Rude could fashion for an answer, but it was enough to calm Sol’s greatest fears, and the word was spread at the pace with which it was always spread in Anguilla: the speed of light; and soon enough everybody knew about the meeting, and everyone was getting excited, and everyone wanted to take part.

A massive crowd of people gathered in and around Burrowes Park, not really certain of why they were there or what they were going to do, other than to express their discontent, other than to protest against the present arrangement, other than to take comfort in the fact that each of them was not alone, in the fact that the vast majority of people on the island suffered in similar degree. Early on the afternoon of May 29, 1967, hundreds of Anguillians arrived at Burrowes Park to listen to their leaders’ appeals, alternatives, solutions, ideas, and a dialogue began with each of the speakers, with Rude Thompson and Alwyn Cooke, but also with less actively militant members of the community, who took the chance to jump under the limelight, to take center stage and voice their opinions. There was John O’Farrell, the Anglican canon from East End, whose pipe danced frantically between his lips as he entreated the people to look deep within their souls to find the courage to face the challenges posed to them by the Lord, for regardless of their will, their fate had already been written since eternity and for eternity in the Book of the Lord, and therefore they should not be stifled by fear of earthly punishments, for nothing, not fear, nor pain, nor hunger, nor the total neglect in which Anguilla had been left since ever and ever, would be able to prevent the divine edicts from being carried out and each of their destinies from being fulfilled. And as the generalized Amen was echoed in Catholics and Methodists and Anglicans and Evangelists among the crowd, the imposing figure of Gwendolyn Stewart, firstborn child of Connor Stewart from Island Harbour, emerged with her commandeering voice: I does wan’ to fulfill my destiny, Father, but how I kyan do dat an’ not eat I ain’ understandin’ yet. And suddenly it did not matter anymore who was on the wooden speaker’s box and who was on the floor, because the discussion had grown alive, it had gained a soul of its own, and it made the rounds all through the cricket ground that was the original design of Burrowes Park.

But on this day, on May 29, 1967, Burrowes Park was anything but a sports ground, because the issues that were discussed within the stadium had nothing to do with wickets and runs but rather were fully concerned with the wishes and anxieties of the people of Anguilla, with their expectations and the way available to them to achieve them, with the future of the island and the well-being of its inhabitants. As a matter of fact, on that remarkable day, Burrowes Park was the closest thing the modern world might ever get to an ancient agora, where citizens would openly discuss the matters of their state and decide upon them through direct elections, and nobody in Anguilla might have known it at the time, and if they did, they might not have realized the magnitude of their achievement, but on May 29, 1967, as the afternoon dragged on and more and more people made their way to the park, and the discussions grew more heated and the opinions more agitated, more committed, more extreme, Anguilla put to practice a concept that for centuries had been studied and analyzed, that had been proposed, adopted, amended, discussed, theorized, developed, and redeveloped: the concept of Democracy.

Burrowes Park became the center of the most democratic process witnessed in any contemporary society, as the swelling crowd contemplated the events that had led directly to the state of desperation in which they had lived for the past four months, with each person exercising a right that was there in practice, if not in law, giving his or her views and affecting directly, without the need for representation, the course of the day and of history. This was the situation when Alwyn Cooke, suddenly aware of the potential of this forum, took to the platform and spoke through a megaphone: Fellow Anguillians, is today we mus’ show St. Kitts how bad we wan’ break up wit’ ’em. Is today we mus’ determine how we go split wit’ St. Kitts for good.

And before any possibilities could be explored, before the consequences of their actions could be measured, before, even, the meaning of the words sunk into the consciousness of the people, a slogan spontaneously devised by Rude Thompson, heckling Alwyn’s speech, grabbed hold of the collective imagination and spread like a wildfire from person to person, from one character dried out of any hope to the next, and the rumor grew into a chorus that demanded to Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out! and before anyone realized who ’em might be, Rude jumped right next to Alwyn and shouted into the megaphone, We ain’ wan’ no orders from St. Kitts! We ain’ wan’ no not’in’ from St. Kitts! and as the women looked at each other, and the men, and as the big dark eyes of one mirrored the enthusiasm of the other, the thought suddenly made itself clearer in the minds of some of the audience, and their eyes glowed with a dose of courage, and their fists got clenched in a sign of defiance, and the chorus now turned into a roar that was intoxicating, and the Kick ’em out! could now be heard as far away as the police station, and those who were not totally convinced by the resolution were persuaded by the general hysteria, and the few dissenting voices were drowned in the deafening unison of the chant, and those who were overcome by doubt or fear at the thought of outright rejection of the legal authority as stipulated by the new constitution were comforted by the thought, Wha’ dey goin’ do? Look how much people we be—or was that not a thought? Had Rude Thompson just uttered the words so many others were thinking that very moment? And, For real, wha’ dey goin’ do? Dey t’irteen, we some t’ousands, and no sooner had Rude Thompson announced that they should march toward the police station than the crowd was cut through the middle to allow him and Alwyn Cooke to make their way to the front, to lead the way toward the only bastion of Kittitian authority left on the island, to Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out!

Inspector Edmonton was as baffled when he heard the news that the mob that had congregated at Burrowes Park had determined that enough is enough, that the police task force should leave the island, never to come back, that the time had come for Anguillians to take care of their matters by themselves, as, indeed, was Aaron Lowell, the man whom Alwyn Cooke had chosen to deliver the nonnegotiable message. As the river of people flowed out of Burrowes Park in the general direction of the police station, Alwyn Cooke called on Aaron Lowell to take charge of things, because You de man de people choose to represen’ dem. Now, you go ahead an’ tell Inspector Edmonton wha’ it is you people who elect you wan’ you to do. And Aaron Lowell could not muster the strength to come up with a response, and all he could do was hide his small black eyes behind a fit of blinking that had his eyelashes fluttering away, and Alwyn, No worry, nuh, man—we have de Lord an’ de people of Anguilla on we side: wha’ could hurt us now?

And verily, Inspector Edmonton had precious little at hand to deal with a crowd of this nature in Anguilla that day, and the only thing left for him to do was buy some time and try to stall the situation in the hope that the wildfire of popular courage would choke itself, or grow weary with the passage of the hours, and if the authorities in St. Kitts resolved to act with the urgency merited by the situation the following morning, then maybe, just maybe, something could be salvaged out of all this mess, so How yer expect me to get me men out of here dis time of day?

And, indeed, it was almost five in the afternoon by then, and there were not enough planes to get all thirteen men out of the island simultaneously, and there would not be light for long enough to make two journeys to St. Kitts, and the last thing the people of Anguilla wanted was to send out just a portion of the contingent of policemen, for Bradshaw and his people to have all the details at hand to devise an attack on Anguilla overnight, so All right: you kyan stay tonight, but you leave tomorrow mornin’, before it turn to afternoon.

Thus, an initiative that had begun as a collective exercise to figure out what to do next turned into a rigorous night-long vigil outside the police station. The vast crowd thinned out progressively as the night settled over the Anguillian sky, yet Alwyn Cooke, Rude Thompson, and, now, also Aaron Lowell presided over a group of people that was never smaller than one hundred, camped along the main road in The Valley. Contrary to what might have been expected, it was not a joyous, festive, or even exciting night, but rather a bunch of tense, anxious hours during which sleep was not even a possibility. Anguilla had taken its leap of faith, but the fall would last all through that night and most of the following day, and it was anyone’s guess whether they would be able to land on their feet, or land at all.

Hour after hour the crow of the roosters reminded the men, sitting by a makeshift bonfire, around a game of dominoes or a bottle of rum, that time had not stood totally still, that the next day was approaching, until the first people from Sandy Ground, from South Hill, from Stoney Ground, started to congregate outside the police station again, even before the break of dawn. They brought with them some fish, some bread, maybe a banana cake or some fresh fruit—sugar apple, soursop, pawpaw, pomme-surette, mango—to share with the men everyone knew had stood guard all through the night.

Long before eight in the morning, Aaron Lowell went to speak again with Inspector Edmonton. By then, Diomede Alderton had readied The Pipe, his Piper Aztec, to take the first batch of policemen back to St. Kitts. The inspector showed himself less collected, less self-assured than the day before, and he had no other option but to order his men to leave him and his fellow officers behind, and I sen’ di men out shortly. It was not even an hour later when the Piper Aztec, full to the rim with members of the police task force, glided just above the heads of the crowd gathered on the main road at The Valley before turning sharply south to make the sixty-five-mile journey that put in motion an evacuating operation which didn’t even have a name.

All of a sudden, the unthinkable was happening in Anguilla, and as the ball kept rolling there was nothing, anymore, that could stop it. Not even the belated reaction of the central government in St. Kitts, whose decision to act came roughly at the same time as Diomede loaded his “Pipe” full of unwanted guardians of the public order, such that somewhere along the skyline between the two islands he must have crossed paths with a de Havilland Twin Otter operated by the Leeward Islands Air Transport and packed to the last seat with twice as many guardians of the public order as were being removed in the Aztec.

Luckily for the sake of the unthinkable and for the fate of Anguillians in general, there was absolutely no way the plane carrying the members of the police task force had arrived in St. Kitts, delivered its package, and headed back home in such a short period of time. Therefore, the most alert among a crowd that included many haggard and hungover members understood immediately, as soon as they heard the drumming of the Pratt & Whitney piston engines in the distance, that unwelcome visitors were on their way. Wallace Rey then provided the inspiration that would save the day when he jumped in his red pickup truck and drove it to the middle of the dust strip. From behind a cloud of smoke emerged the aging frame of Wallace, the old fox, wildly beckoning the rest of the cars parked near Wallblake Airport to join him in blockading the runway and preventing anyone from accessing the rebel island. A few minutes later, the Twin Otter approached the airport full of intent, seemingly unaware of the spontaneous barrier, or perhaps assuming that the drivers were still inside their cars and would be pushed into moving out of the way by the sight of this modern-day kamikaze. Except, nobody was anywhere near the cars, and no one had any intention whatsoever of breaking the blockade, such that the de Havilland Twin Otter arriving from St. Kitts with highly armed and badly psyched-out reinforcements for Inspector Edmonton was forced to fly in circles over the airport and its adjacent areas, searching in vain for a suitable landing spot.

The roar of the Pratt & Whitney piston engines got lost in the distance as abruptly as it emerged. Oil drums were sought to liberate some of the cars; for the rest of the day, and for many months to come, these drums would protect the island by making it inaccessible. Inspector Edmonton was left to face the fact that he would be forced out of the island that was meant to be his jurisdiction, and the group of improvised rebels made the arrangements to dispatch the rest of the task force. Three of them would board the weekly freighter that, like every Tuesday for the past twenty-odd years, would head to St. Kitts with the post. The other five would have to wait until the return of the Piper Aztec that would take them on its second run for their final banishment. Among those five was Inspector Edmonton, who was carrying a bag of guns and ammunition when he was intercepted by Gaynor Henderson and Rude Thompson, who told him to Drop de bag an’ go on. Then came the inspector’s reticence to obey, Gaynor Henderson’s need to restore his injured pride, and the .32 pistol he shoved right inside the man’s mouth, until it polished his uvula. You better drop de bag unless dis is da last t’ing you ever wan’ taste.

Escalation had, indeed, reached its peak. A few moments later Diomede Alderton would be on his way again, his dark gray flier sunglasses and wooden pipe clearly visible in the cockpit as he tipped the wings of his Aztec from side to side, flying low over The Valley in a saluting gesture to the men and women who had dared to rid the island of its oppressors. Just like that, an insignificant speck of coral in the northeastern corner of the Caribbean had revolted, and Anguilla found itself, very much by accident, “independent.”