If you wish to justify flying single engine aircraft over large areas of ocean, remember Frank Delisle’s words. “What the hell are you trying to do? Prove something that has already been proven? That some day your engine will fail and you won’t have any safe place to land?” Frank was a Caribbean bush pilot who started an airline out of Antigua and later sold it to the governments of the eastern Caribbean. That airline became LIAT; Leeward Islands Air Transport. Some wag dubbed LIAT ‘Leave Islands Any Time’ and its present parent company BWIA (British West Indies Airlines) ‘But Will It Arrive’. Frank quit flying single engine aircraft in the Bahamas and Caribbean and is around to make such sage comments.
I bought ninety Whiskey to do just that; fly regularly to Dominica and back to Florida.
After I had her painted red with gold stripes, and spruced up inside I did a very wise thing; I had good old US Navy type shoulder straps installed. These were the same kind that saved me when I cracked up a PBY Catalina flying boat some years back.
If you want to have insurance you must take a flight with a pilot experienced in the area and the route, which you intend to take, but I had already done that.
I would leave Lantana, Florida in the early morning, about dawn, and reach San Juan in mid to late afternoon or, if the wind was against me, it might be dark when I arrived.
If it seems foolish, to fly single engine over that route, that’s because it really is. I never left on a flight without thinking about what I would do if I had an engine failure. I read every article I could find on how to ditch in the water. Should you land cross wind and down the ocean’s troughs, or down wind and hope to skip off a crest just right? I had every reasonable life saving device from an emergency locating transmitter to a battery driven strobe light to help searchers find me at night. I had a life raft and a good life vest to keep me afloat. I knew the geography and the current directions and never had a thought that I would not survive if the engine failed.
Well, it finally happened.
I had taken ninety whiskey into a shop at the Lantana airport and had it “annualed”; a series of checks of each aircraft and its engine after a certain number of hours has been logged. This is a Federal Government requirement and must be done by a US licensed mechanic who has specially qualified to do this type of work.
I felt at ease with the work having just been completed and certified so I did not fly around locally to test everything before I headed, once again, down the island chain.
I had brought a pilot friend, brother of an expatriate American living in Dominica, up to the states so he could be certified for such flights, and he had joined me as co-pilot that morning for the flight back to Dominica.
We both were carrying a lot of things that were in short supply in Dominica or that friends on Dominica had asked us to procure. We had the extra two back seats filled with luggage and personal freight. It was the Saturday before Easter and I even had a large chocolate bunny sealed in a cellophane windowed box for my youngest on top of the pile on the back seat.
From South Caicos you fly over a stretch about as long as the distance between Key West and Cuba; about 90 miles, before you hit the coast of the Dominican Republic. This is a compass heading of about due south and the town you aim for on that relatively undeveloped coast is Puerto Plata, which has a large military field that is not in use. It looks inviting, but one time a friend attempted an emergency landing there only to discover that what looked like tire skid marks from a distance was in fact oil drums placed all over it so no one could land. Most inhospitable.
When you see the coast way up ahead you begin bearing to the left toward Puerto Rico and come in close to the Dominican Republic’s north coast near Nagua, a little rural town adjacent to the country’s north area prison.
Clouds ahead signaled the Dominican Republic’s north coast and began to obscure the land. I kept climbing to stay over the clouds for guaranteed visibility and the scud kept getting thicker. I finally got over them at a little more than eleven thousand feet. This is higher than you should fly for long because it soon gives you a headache. Much higher than that could cause you to lose consciousness.
I decided to turn and fly parallel to the coast from about thirty miles out when two things happened simultaneously; the engine noise stopped and the propeller became stationary, crossways, parallel to the ground. Silence is, on occasion, frightening.
I cranked the trim tabs for maximum hands-off glide and dialed in the emergency frequency on the radio. Many aircraft radios are good for only about thirty miles and we were too far from Grand Turk for them to hear us. I quickly gave up on that. I had a few important things to do, like land without killing us. No one else was around this desolate area to hear us so I handed the co-pilot the chart and said, “Here, find us a field, quick!”
In a few seconds I impatiently said something harsher than, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, give me the damned chart!”
No wonder he found no field; there was no field on this part of the whole north coast and we were too far east to turn back and make Puerto Plata.
A road ran east, close by and parallel to the beach. We could also see the single little road that ran south across the island toward the capital. It looked like an old narrow two-laner with the bush and trees over-growing it to the extent that made it an impossible option. There might well be power lines along it that we would be very unlikely to see from our altitude but that didn’t enter the calculations because of the width.
Beneath us, coming up, was the coast. Nagua to the right a few miles west and ahead a lovely deserted beach, except for a small clump of palm trees surrounded by a dozen or more vehicles, mostly trucks. This was probably an Easter weekend beach party.
Just off the beach I could easily see the reef through the Atlantic’s clear water. Way down the beach it came to its end at a grove of forbiddingly tall coconut trees. In from the beach, across the road, was a vast coconut grove.
My eyes narrowed, however, focusing on the road. It was under construction, quite wide. It had been recently cut from the edge of that big coconut grove. The stout-looking trunks and fern-like heads of these trees formed a gorgeous, but dangerous, dense green from which the sun reflected, sparkling below us.
Instant analysis suggested two options; the shallow water and reef in front of the beach partygoers. The beach was full of people at that one place. Or I land on the road under construction just behind their area.
I chose the road, because I could visualize our tripping over the airplane’s fixed landing gear as it touched the water, digging in and doing a front flip, nose-over. That meant winding up bottom-side-up, doors probably jammed shut, and trapped under water for longer than we could survive despite, perhaps, the best rescue effort of the people at the little beach.
I turned right for a moment to stretch the approach and bleed off some altitude and then swung around to the left and lined up for my landing on that road. I was still coming in a bit high and considered a moment’s side-slip to quickly waste some surplus altitude, but then I saw them! Two young people, arm in arm, walking blithely onto that road, facing the other way and apparently oblivious of the impending landing of our aircraft. With the engine stopped we made no noise. I had to abandon that selection,
The option of landing just off shore in the sea had passed eon-lengthed seconds ago.
It now looked like our impending demise.
I looked quickly up ahead, searching.
Past this now unavailable straight stretch of road was a short, multi-degreed angle bend of the same road, almost hidden by tall palm trees. It was probably twenty degrees more to the right. It did not appear to be long enough, but it was now all I had available. This was going to take some doing but there was no time for anything but positive thoughts, and action; plenty of action.
First those trees that obscured the bend were old trees. A fifty-foot obstacle at the beginning of the proposed new landing strip. I could not follow the road around that short little S turn. I had to go over those coconut trees but I was not on a course set for the run of that last piece of road. This second stretch of road did not seem to be long enough, but it was close.
Now I turned hard to port a little early to try and line up with that next piece of road, figuring I’d mush off to the left a little. This would be just for seconds. Just over that fifty-foot obstruction as tight as ninety whiskey would let me we were mushing to the left as I figured. The red light on the dash came on strong to the accompaniment of the “you are stalling out” horn. I knew all that. And I knew this was where a lot of pilot error does a heck of a lot of pilots in; usually when turning back to a field just exited upon engine failure. At the very last millisecond of the turning I dove straight for the ground. I held old ninety whiskey’s nose hard down like a maniac to get speed back. Then almost immediately I pulled that little plane’s head up by the hair as hard as I could, both feet pushing on the floor like a back seat driver with his teenager at the wheel and about to crash. I had a seriously felt wish not to mush too much and hit the bottom because I knew how close I was to really and truly busting my backside. Also, that pile of cargo was going to feel really awful as it lurched forward on top of us if we crashed.
Somehow old ninety Whiskey held together and compressed enough air between its stressed wings and that gravely road to keep us from actually hitting. Now we were inches from the ground hurtling down that road bed at seventy-five miles per hour and we had to get the speed spent down to sixty-five in order to coax the plane into starting to touch. Thick stands of tall coconut trees stood higher than us on each side of the road’s edge.
Now I could see that the road up ahead veered off to the right past a large pre-cast concrete utility pole at the beginnings of a low masonry and iron bridge. On the left, side nestled in the coconut trees, was a small raw concrete block beach house, about twelve feet square. Between them, straight ahead, was the open sea as the coast cut in, but the space was too narrow for me to fly through and still keep the wings. Nevertheless I figured that with us floating down the road like a bloody balloon refusing to lose altitude I would have to steer between them anyway, and sheer off the wings in the process. Surviving unhurt began to look considerably less likely.
Suddenly the wheels hit something.
Some of the rough rock on this roadway construction was as large as Valencia oranges and I guessed that if we hit anything we might then be able to ground loop. It would undoubtedly wipe out the plane, but this was eminently more desirable than wiping out its passengers.
I jammed hard right rudder and poor old ninety whiskey swung obediently to the right and seemed to stick out her legs to stop the nonsensical rush, but they buckled under her and she went down scraping down the road without a whimper. The landing gear sheered off and we proceeded a little way more down the road sideways on the plane’s belly with the port wing beginning to seriously accordion.
Then with a final jolt it was quiet.
A cloud of dust we had caused caught up and passed us, rose up into the palm trees, floated lazily off, and disappeared.
I sat there for a moment stroking those wonderful shoulder straps. I was intact and not even shaken.
I turned and stuck out my hand to my fellow plane crashee. “We made it, man,” I grinned and he grabbed my hand with both of his and began madly pumping it. I looked out my side and saw the fluid around the crinkled wing. “Looks like the gas tank has ruptured. I smell it, too. Let’s get out of here.”
“Pick up your shades,” he said, pointing to them on the floor at my feet. I had not felt them leave my nose.
Just then a new low cloud of dust along the road back at that S curve alerted us to the arrival of the beach goers who had seen our problem.
I had read a story in Yachting the month before about a yacht that had wrecked on this coast and was picked clean by the natives in a very short time. It had happened to me once personally when we lost the Dawn Star at Great Stirrup in the Bahamas so I thought, “Oh, boy, this does ‘not’ look good,” but I didn’t say anything.
The crowd arrived and they seemed pleasant. We did not feel threatened at all, but they could speak no English and we could speak no Spanish. They seemed to want me to go to the little concrete block beach house just ahead; the one I might have hit.
I decided to go with them and at the little house they motioned for me to enter. Inside I saw an older man sitting behind what I took to be a CB radio. He appeared to be focused on his efforts at the mike as he called “CQ CQ,” (seek you) a universal amateur radio ‘Ham’ call asking anyone listening to respond. I wrote the plane’s number on a piece of paper and held it up for him and I heard him put it over the air in Spanish. Actually he had a little 100 watt Atlas Ham radio, rather than the citizen’s band rig I had first thought. The little radio was so beat up that from the back I did not recognize it immediately. I later learned that he was the Ham who, through a Spanish speaking Ham in Miami, notified Miami Air Traffic, that we had crash landed.
In a short while this friendly group led me back to the plane. Poor old 90 whiskey had pretty much crossed the line into junk, but we didn’t have much time to think about that sad fact because down the road, in the next cloud of dust, heading our way at good speed, were three vehicles.
We were standing just to the west of the starboard side of the wrecked plane, watching the oncoming vehicles and wondering what type of officials they contained. The demeanor of the crowd had seemed to be alerting us to expect persons of importance.
In another moment we were engulfed in that swirl of road dust as the arrivals pulled up in great haste beside us, between the little crowd of beach goers and the wrecked aircraft.
As near as we could tell there were at least three different types of uniformed authority. A military jeep contained a short but rather stout, older army officer we soon heard referred to as Commandante by the three other uniformed noncoms in the jeep. The two other cars were marked with what we decided was the Spanish word for police but they were of different color schemes and the men wore different uniforms.
The language barrier continued to frustrate our attempts at a nice social visit.
They spoke briefly among themselves. We unlocked the plane door for them and they set about doing a cursory examining of the contents of the plane. We assumed drugs were their primary concern and they soon seemed to give us a clearance as to the contents. We looked at each other with some relief and expected them to whisk us off with a hospitable, courteous, on-the-government, two to three hour ride across the island to the capitol. The Commandante even ordered two of the soldiers who had arrived in the Jeep with him to stand guard on the plane and pointed to the rear seats in his Jeep with hand signs that told us this was our obligatory next move.
That ride was something I remember well. I had a splitting headache, which I assumed was caused by my flying a little higher than recommended.
We drove west, toward Nagua. This little economically deprived town was probably less than two miles away and I would guess the population at less than three hundred. The prison was on its other side, perhaps another half-mile west. The road on which we crash landed was under construction so it was understandable that the poorly sprung World War II American Jeep would provide a rough ride on that stretch, but it did not stop bucking when we hit the old paved road. Third world countries tend to have pot-holed roads and the more rural the area the more potholes. This area must have had very few voters because the road was almost one big pothole with a few specks of pavement here and there.
We bounced slowly through the little town of Nagua and on its western outskirts approached a walled enclave with a little guardhouse at the entrance. Over the wall, which followed the terrain and enclosed about ten acres, we could see an old Spanish Colonial building. It was a stubborn remnant of imitation colonial elegance, its whitewashed stuccoed walls flaking in a way that benefited the charm of its archaic construction. The ancient hand made red barrel tiles that covered its roof would have fetched a fancy price in Palm Beach for restoration of their Adison Mizner mansions. These were typically blackened by mildew at the edges. The building was perhaps two hundred feet long, most of it one story high, but with a two story portion at the center, over a wide, arched drive-through. This we would soon learn, was the government prison for the northern provinces; our new residential venue. Tough kabunskies for us and that government supplied ride to the capitol on the other side of the country we thought we were getting.
The guard snapped to attention as we approached, but the Commandante’ seemed too tired or bored to give him much heed. The driver proceeded through as though the guard post was some sort of mistake.
With my head pounding, I was relieved to have the jeep stop its incessant pothole sampling. We, as instructed by their silent signs, proceeded to climb a wide set of tiled steps on the left, ahead of our hosts.
At the top was the Commandante’s large, rather barren office. This old building had very high ceilings, stucco interior, and walls nearly three feet thick in the manner of very old colonial masonry construction. The mortar was made by burning coral to clinkers and then pulverizing it and its strength was often suspect.
The Commandante’s desk was roughly at the center of the south wall and impressively large though not well crafted. His identity on a nameplate was the usual Spanish hyphenated double name.
Across the room from the big desk was a little radio set-up that was manned by a soldier-clerk who seemed frustrated that it was not performing. The Commandante’ apparently thought it was the soldier’s fault that no radio contact was being achieved.
One encouraging sign was a plethora of Xeroxed eight and a half by eleven-inch posters every couple of yards on the walls around the room, which indicated in Spanish that Communism is the enemy. Interpretation was easy despite my almost total lack of knowledge of their language.
I held my head and looked pained as I repeated the word aspirin. The Commandante’ reached in his desk and produced two very large white pills twice the size of any I had seen. He bade one of the many soldiers standing around the room to get me some water. I don’t know what these giant pills were, but the headache was gone within an hour.
We stood around for a short while and then, frustrated by the language barrier, and the uncertainty, we sat down, while the radio operator seemed to fail in every attempt to get a response to his persistence.
My fellow State houseguest wandered over to the window on the west side, which was the back of the building, and immediately motioned me over. From his expression I sort of thought he might have spotted the Anti-Christ. Out back were several things, but the one that most impressive was the line of one story jail cells incorporated in a separate building behind the one in which we now languished. Out in front of that was a long windrow of pigeon pea branches that had been freshly cut somewhere else and brought into the prison yard for the inmates to strip of pea pods. These are the Caribbean equivalent of small black-eyed peas and the bushes generally grow wild as scrub on poor soil. A line of guarded prisoners busily engaged in this picking which we figured were for their upcoming meal or meals; maybe ours.
Freshly unsettled, we were thus instantly cognizant of the nature of the place in which we were being hosted by the Commandante’ and his men.
For a while we absorbed the pea-picking scene in morbid fascination. Just past the languidly plucking prisoners, inside the walled enclosure, spread an ancient, very large, rangy, undernourished Mango tree. From its massive limbs hung dozens of gourd-like bird’s nests about the size of a large grapefruit. Each hung by a single line and were the homes of very colorful chunky little Tanagers known as Blue-Hooded Euphonias, or Mistletoe Birds. I later identified them from my ‘Birds of the West Indies’, by James Bond. Ian Flemming met him in Jamaica and so liked the name, James Bond, that he made it the name of the main character in his famous series. Watching the birds coming and going provided a diversion for a while but we soon went back to the endless unexplained waiting.
We sat or paced patiently for the next two or three hours while nothing seemed to be happening that would decide our situation. Then several soldiers began bringing in all of the cargo and personal effects from Ninety Whiskey. These were arranged on a table in front of the Commandante’s desk.
I had brought many things we needed at our hotel, especially a roll of insect screening that I deemed the most essential. A wide variety of types of beverage glasses and fancy desert goblets were less important but made up most of the rest of the cargo. The chocolate bunny had been the only thing broken in the landing, and they had brought that along as well.
The co-pilot’s large, heavily laden suitcase, my briefcase, and my un-fired thirty-eight revolver, were given priority on the table in front of the Commandante’.
Some Spanish conversation was again tried on our uncomprehending ears. They were, however, most interested in my thirty-eight and that closed suitcase. The Commandante’ sniffed the barrel of my gun and made a knowing face and passed it around to several men to smell. All shrugged and nodded in the affirmative. I wondered what the point was. I knew it had never been fired and I thought they would surely confiscate it. Maybe they had tried it out at the crash site. I had no way of knowing.
I always preferred to travel light, usually carrying only a briefcase with room enough for a few toiletries and underwear. For flying I wore a South African gabardine safari suit with an ascot. My fellow prisoner, in contrast, wore casual shirt and pants. I was never asked to open the briefcase, but his suitcase was patted, with stern faced grunts and unmistakable motions for him to open it.
He dutifully opened it for them and they motioned him back away from the table as they peered at the bulging array. He must have jumped on it to close it before we left Florida. Right on top were: a simple, slightly decorated, beer can opener, a small transformer to bring Dominica’s electric current from 220 volts down to 110, a lot of phonograph records, and the list goes on. There was also a box of 3030 rifle shells that he had purchased for Bill Harris of the Castaways Hotel.
Naturally the box of 3030 shells seemed quite interesting to the Commandante’. I must admit to just a dollop of equal amounts of surprise and curiosity, however. There are no Elephants, Rhinos, or Alligators on Dominica and a handgun is better for doing in a burglar. ‘Vary’ or ‘shooting vary’ was the local colloquial for ‘showing off’ on Dominica and I guessed shooting vary to be the real reason for the grand sized shells.
The Commandante’ showed them to his small circle of nodding sycophant juniors. He then held it toward the co-pilot as though asking an explanation but the language barrier made it pointless and both sides lapsed into shrugs.
At that impasse the Commandante shifted gears and picked up items from the top, held them up high for all to see, and seemed to invite the study and comments on each item.
We felt it unwise to speak too much. They might well have been quite conversant in English.
The Commandante reached the phonograph records, stashed in between items of clothing to protect them from damage. His facial expression seemed to reflect an un-uttered “Ah Hah!” as he extracted one record to exhibit to all. He paid little heed to the care that one should exercise in handling the discs as he held it between fingers and thumb. The poor co-pilot could stand it no longer and he stepped forward saying “no, no, no”, and took the record from the surprised Commandante’’s hands. He showed how to hold it; thumb through the center hole and fingers only on the edge so that fingers did not contact the surface.
The Commandante had the good grace to smile and demonstrate that he was a fast learner, holding the record properly and matching the toothy grin with affirmative nodding.
The co-pilot matched the Commandante’s good grace with a nodding smile saturated in good vibes and the Commandante’s minions all joined in with good nods and chuckles.
When the luggage had been thoroughly examined and passed and no one seemed to want to play charades any more, things went back to the dull waiting.
In about an hour a man in mufti appeared at the office. The Commandante treated him with such respect that I assumed him to be most important. I tried English on him but all I got were scowls.
When I was a kid growing up in south Florida the United States was in the early stages of romancing Latin America. Fluffy sleeved Latin musicians made up the bands of choice for the cocktail lounges of the better Miami Beach hotels and among many others ‘Flying Down to Rio’ and Carmen Miranda added shine to the silver screens of the country. In those days we all knew a few words in Spanish. Now some were coming back to me.
I remembered words to a song, which went ‘Largo Distancia Telephono’. I knew it meant long distance telephone in Spanish so I added the word Senora, that I knew meant married woman and announced to the man in mufti in an impatient voice and body language “Senior!” I held my hand up to my ear and mouth like a telephone, “Largo distancia telephono… Senora!” and I patted my chest to show that it was my wife to whom I must speak.
He must have mistaken my chest beating as an aggression sign because the man in mufti looked fierce and jabbed his index finger at the ground several times while shaking his head in an aggressive negative.
I shut up and sat down.
Increasingly edgy, I finally decided to try walking down the stairs where the Commandante had gone a short while earlier. We both went and no one stopped us so we stepped out onto the floor of the drive through and stood around looking casual for a while. Three men stood at the entrance to the drive through and they looked back at us for a moment but quickly went back to their conversation.
A uniformed lower grade officer whom we had not seen before came walking into the compound on the drive from the little guardhouse at the gate. The Commandante seemed pleased to see him, engaging him in an animated conversation rich with gestures toward us.
“Maybe we better go back up,” the co-pilot offered.
“I vote for staying, and looking cool,” I countered.
In another minute they both broke huddle and turned to walk toward us. This new guy was smiling, which we took as a good sign.
Reaching us, still smiling, he addressed us in somewhat flawed English. He was the Dental Officer, back from a short local furlough. He told us he had gone to dental school in New York years ago. He was not fluent enough to be easily understood but it was good enough for our purposes. His US schooling had been more than a decade ago and perhaps he had little opportunity to practice his English here.
We anxiously quizzed him about the whole affair.
This seemingly gentle man told us that we were being held for illegal entry into the country and, because it was Easter Saturday they were finding it impossible to get guidance from the capital. Should it develop that we were well connected it would prove embarrassing if we were mistreated and the Commandante could thus possibly be held responsible.
We now felt the calming mantle of a little empowering. The failure to insist on my opening my briefcase was becoming clear.
It was getting dark and nothing had been resolved.
“Would you like to go to the hotel and have something to eat?” the Dental Officer asked.
I looked up, surprised. We hadn’t seen one building in the modest, bucolic village of Nagua taller than one story but we both eagerly agreed.
A large old American sedan, perhaps the only local taxi, soon appeared at the prison entrance. It bounded through the guard’s post without a detectable ‘howdy’ to the guard, and slowed to a respectful crawl as it pulled across the entrance to the drive-through and stopped. A villager was at the wheel.
The rather ample Commandante; after momentary negotiation, took the front passenger seat perhaps more in deference to his size than place in the pecking order with the man in mufti. We opened the back doors and competed with the man in mufti, and the Dental Officer in a two-pronged slide across the second or third generation glossy plastic seat covers. The co-pilot, bless him, rode on one hip, his bum against the door, without complaint. It was indeed a tight squeeze.
Through the pot-holed town we drove, although this time I did not have a headache and the driver seemed concerned about the longevity of his old vehicle. He eased the car in and out of the holes with cautious panache. The town obviously needed no law enforcement for speeders.
Shortly, still in the town, we reached the seashore. Still no multi-storied buildings were apparent. By now it was almost dark so I was on the lookout for the hotel. The driver pulled up to the end of a little dead-end dirt road and turned off the headlights and the engine. We weren’t more than three yards from the ocean’s edge. It was just light enough to see the small waves lapping gently at the wet feet of the sandy beach. The soft slushing sound of each tiny breaking wave was alone in the quiet night.
“Here we are,” the Dental Officer smiled.
“Where is the hotel?”
“There!” he explained, pointing to the adjacent building on the right. A sign proclaimed “THE HOTEL”. It was a smallish local restaurant.
A muted cacophony of latch clicking and squeaking door hinges accompanied the mass exiting of the vehicle.
We were a little too stressed to laugh so we dutifully followed the prison’s prestigious personages inside. The cafe’ was in fact an ample sized room, florescent light-filled and virtually bereft of interior design warmth. There were plenty of unoccupied tables for dining. The right rear quarter of the room was partitioned off with solid panels to wainscot height and clear glass above that to the ceiling. This part was, unbelievably, air-conditioned. The Commandante’ led us in and to a table in the northwest corner, large enough to seat us all in this air-conditioned section. This room was also empty, but a waiter found us immediately.
“Can we all have a beer?” I inquired of the Dental Officer.
“Oh, ‘you two’ can, but not us. We are here to guard you.”
“I’m paying, of course,” I said, trying to sound persuasive.
“We cannot,” he said simply and conveyed that to the waiter. “He wants to know what you want to eat,” he said to us with a smile.
I wanted something that would be the least likely to spread some disease from an unsanitary kitchen. I had no inside knowledge but I had lived in the West Indies too long not to be suspicious. I remembered when years before I visited Cuba, we had chicken and rice and for some reason I now vaguely remembered the spelling on the menu. The first word I seemed to remember was arros and the second compollo. In Dominica it was called palau, but it was always very well cooked and that sounded safe.
“Arrows come polo,” I tried. I don’t think I could have done a poorer job of pronunciation. The waiter stared back at me blankly. I turned for help from the Dental Officer who was as confused as the waiter.
“What are you really trying to order?” the Dental Officer asked.
I told him.
He laughed and turned to the waiter and said what sounded like arozz con po-yo. That sparked recognition in the waiter and he tilted his chin up, smiling broadly in recognition, and disappeared through the kitchen door.
He returned in a moment with our two beers, in bottles.
The silence hung on us as we two party honorees sipped our beers, but after a respectful silence there arose with a clatter some animated conversation in Spanish that seemed a running commentary on ourselves. We smiled embarrassed smiles but no chuckle was shared with us.
Out came the chicken and rice, too hot not to have been long cooked so we ate with confidence. It wasn’t bad.
Back at the prison we were directed to the now empty ground floor Company Clerks’ office on the left side. The doorway was just short of the foot of the stairs leading up to the Commandante’s office where we had spent so many hours earlier trying to have patience and having our patience tried.
The room was reasonably large and two ample heavily constructed desks, stacked with papers, had already been pushed out of the way one to the left and one to the right against the rear wall of the room,
The Commandante’ issued some orders and several men left to go out back to the prison’s cell area. They soon returned carrying a US Army cot type double-decker bed, two mattress pads, and an assortment of blankets, mosquito nets, and pillows. All of this was olive drab and marked as US military.
“You will sleep in the Clerks’ offices here,” the Dental Officer advised, as the bunk was set up for us in the center of the room.
As our solicitous jailers exited the door was closed behind them and we set about making our beds.
“This is one crummy hotel,” my cellmate said, deadpan., “No chocolates on the pillows, nothing.”
“Yeah,” I answered, but my humor was well into souring. I was still worried about what Margie might be thinking, as I had not called her from San Juan, though sometimes I didn’t. I was thinking how fed up I was with this whole affair. I had insurance on ninety whisky, but I had so much TLC invested in that old bird that I wasn’t at all sure I could duplicate her.
Curious, I went over to test the door to see if they had locked us in. It was not locked but as I pulled it open I sucked in a little tidbit of breath in knee-jerk surprise. There were two enlisted men, close and personal, standing guard with automatic weapons, one on each side. The lethal pieces were slung over their shoulders for comfort and thus not one thousand percent ready to take us out when and if we attempted to escape, but close enough for government work. I closed the door quickly and quietly like a drunk sneaking home after midnight from the bar. I shared the scene with my cellmate and added,
“Nagua must be a dreadful town after dark for them to have taken such pains to prevent our possibly going into it tonight without their protection.” I was performing a nicely forced chuckle, but all I got in response was a disgruntled grunt.
A single, low wattage, incandescent light bulb hung from the ceiling above the bunk.
“I want to take the top bunk,” my fellow guest said, “I’m too agitated to sleep, and I have a Travis McGee paperback I can read.”
I agreed and we finished making our beds. For each of us there was one sheet and a clean smelling blanket a tiny bit thicker than the length of a mosquito’s proboscis, a pillow, and a little military-type triangular mosquito net just big enough for the head. It wasn’t a cool night.
We stripped down to our skivvies and I was asleep in minutes. Mosquitoes generally don’t bother me unless their out of tune violins are played within earshot.
Suddenly I was called out of a sound sleep from the overhead bunk. “Pete, Pete! They’re calling you!”
I had been asleep long enough to be grouchy and I sat up, trying to wake up and understand where I was. Through the door I could hear the word Pilot (which was pronounced PEE-loat) repeated over and over.
I went to the door in my shorts, and pulled it open. “Well, God Damn it, what the hell is it now?” I growled incautiously.
The two soldiers still replete with uniforms, accoutrements, and weapon’s still stood on each side of the doorway, but in front of us was a happy looking little assemblage; the Commandante’, the man in mufti, and the Dental Officer. All were grinning broadly.
My fellow prisoner jumped out of the top bunk and came up slightly behind me.
“You can go!” the delighted Dental Officer advised, almost blurting it out, sure of our instant and undying gratitude. Smiles broadened to bursting all around the welcoming committee of three.
My response was not filled with the milk of human kindness. We were both a little short on warm fuzziness at the moment.
“What in the hell for?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully not to growl. “Are you ‘not’ going to let us go in the morning? I mean, what time is it anyhow?” I looked quickly at my watch. It was only about eight thirty. It seemed much later. “How long a drive is it to the capitol?” I continued lasering my gaze at the Dental Officer.
“About two hours,” he Dental Officer advised, having swallowed his smile in the disappointment of the moment.
“And the government is going to provide us transportation for us? Right?” I asked dryly. I think I was nodding yes for emphasis.
The Dental Officer’s smile remained submerged as he explained that this was not possible, leaving the impression that if it were up to him he would see to it immediately; but it wasn’t.
“Well, if the government is not going to spring for our trip to the capitol how do we get there?” I asked.
“We can get a taxi from the village.”
“Early?”
“Yes, early as you like.”
“Pete, Pete,” my cellmate whispered, tugging at the skin of the back of my right arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here while the getting is good!”
“Bull shit!” I replied, still angry, “And arrive at the other coast at midnight? And take an expensive room and get up at the crack of dawn to try and get a plane out to Dominica? You’ve got to be kidding. I’m staying bloody well here. Someone has been stirring the pot from our side, you can bet on that, or they wouldn’t be so damned pleasant to us now.”
“I have no local money.” I explained to the Dental Officer.
“US is good. They like US.”
“Traveler’s Checks OK?”
“Oh, yes. They are good.”
“How much is the fare?”
The Dental Officer’s tone subsided as though he were going to share a secret and he even looked around guiltily.
“Don’t pay more than forty dollars, US, but make sure you have it agreed upon before you start.”
“Will you be here to make sure?”
“I will.”
“Good, then. We’ll be up early and ready so just have the taxi here.”
All seemed agreed and we said good night and returned to our bunks.
“I wonder what changed the tune around here?” I said almost thinking out loud.
“Diplomatic channels?”
“Something!”
We stayed the night, got up before sunrise the next morning, and wandered out past the two guards who did nothing to stop us.
They got us a small cab, a sub-compact, with another passenger; a stoutish woman already ensconced. I carried the screen wire and my briefcase and the co-pilot had his amusement-filled repacked suitcase. We sardine-canned ourselves in and with raised eyebrows and pursed lips and the slightest of hand waves bade a somber goodbye to all of our seemingly relieved ex-hosts and wardens.
My fellow ex-prisoner, sitting snuggled against the roll of screen which separated him from the plump woman in the back seat, smiled and nodded goodbye through the side window muttering “F You, F you, F you,” under his breath as he nodded and looked toward each in turn. They returned his smiles, possibly saying the same thing, but in Spanish.
The ride across the country to the capitol was pleasant that early morning. The countryside was an ongoing tropical green unlike its geographical Siamese twin, dirt-poor Haiti, the ecological disaster that shared the island of Hispaniola with this, the Dominican Republic. It was discovered by Columbus in 1492 and originally called Española. The western part (now Haiti) was ceded to France by Spain in 1697.
A couple of hours later, upon reaching the capitol we instructed the driver to bring us to the US Embassy first. He obliged, soon turning through the gate at the entrance on the corner of a nice residential intersection. We eagerly exited the taxi and did a shortened ninth inning stretch on the way up the front steps to the relatively modest front door. We entered this little piece of our homeland away from home with a feeling of great relief. We were promptly and unceremoniously accorded Damn-All.
There was a handsome young poster-boy/Pepsodent-smile looking US Marine at a little desk. He could easily have been the great-grandson of the subject of one of those goody-goody thirties Coca-Cola posters every cracker barrel store in the US used to display. One might paraphrase “My Fair Lady” where Pickering sang; Oozing charm from every pore, our non-welcome this Marine helped us explore.
“I need to let my wife know I’m all right,” I explained.
“We do not allow calls from the Embassy, Sir,” he smiled.
“I have a telephone credit card,” I persisted, sure this little misunderstanding was going to be cleared up in a moment.
“I’m sorry, Sir. We are not permitted. I believe your family knows you are safe. I believe they were in contact with the embassy here.”
“Can’t you just call them to make sure they know?”
He nodded ‘no’ without diminishing his smile for long.
As we stood there, flabbergasted, getting nowhere, the Ambassador’s limousine arrived at the front entrance. The taxi had pulled up out of the way. We didn’t know who it was in that beautifully polished black limo, but he left a smashing young blonde who was sitting beside him on the back seat and came into the embassy. Entering, he passed us straight, and as he proceeded back into the embassy through an open doorway on our left he instructed the guard to follow him. As the Marine disappeared at the Ambassador’s heels his ‘yes, sir’ still floated in the still air around us.
Not two minutes passed before they both reappeared almost quick-stepping from the interior of the building. The marine peeled off of the short echelon to duck back into his station behind the little desk while the gent dressed to the nines exited the building and reentered the imitation Black Mariah with the young blonde.
Like spear carriers in a bad opera we turned a hundred and eighty degrees and dumbly focused our attention on the blonde as the door on the right side of the limo slammed shut and the chauffeur took off.
“I didn’t know they still had the gorilla charm school in the states, did you?” my co-pilot said seriously to me. It was a comment rather than a question.
“Who’s the Godfather?” I asked the Marine.
The representative of our military was really too goody goody. He didn’t get it.
“Was that the Ambassador?” I tried again more directly but not quite in special English. I was just a tad pissed.
“Oh, yes Sir.” The Marine replied and with deft perception he added, “The girl is his daughter.”
I thought I could actually smell fresh Pepsodent from the marine’s smile,
“He’s very lucky,” I said, smiling at the Marine.
“To have such a beautiful daughter?” the Marine asked.
“No, to get such a cushy job without being able to see or hear.”
“Sir?” the Marine stumbled.
“Just kidding, just kidding. He did know we were here, right?” I said feeling a little guilty. My fellow parolee chuckled rather robustly.
The ambassador had not deigned to speak to us, though we were told he knew we were there.
Despite all our ever-smiling Marine refused to allow us to see anyone, use the phone to call collect, or convey a message to tell our worried families what had happened to us. “You can call from the airport,” he advised, still disgustingly cheerful.
We did find out that though they were thousands of miles apart, son Pete had worked with Margie from the time we were overdue. Pete found out that when I was first down in the crash one of the locals was a ham and he told a Spanish speaking ham in Miami what had happened. In Dominica the phone at Island House was temporarily out and Margie had gone to Cable and Wireless in town to make calls. She was unable to get the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic to answer her questions or give her any information so she went to the Governor of Dominica, friend, Sir Louis Cools-Lartigue, and he tried, utilizing rank and office, without success to get any information from them. Son Pete, by much dedicated telephoning from Florida, seemed to have been the caller who finally effected our clearance and extricated us from incarceration.
We delivered our taxi-sharing woman to her home and proceeded on to the airport, and still not knowing of the failed efforts from Dominica, or the success Pete had in Florida, I began placing an overseas call to Margie. You buy special giant sized coins and then go into a booth set aside for the purpose. I had my booth door ajar while I was waiting for the connection. I heard my name being called over the public address system. I abandoned my place in the booth and went out to find an airport intercom phone.
“Well, hi,” a wonderfully familiar voice said over the phone. It was Margie calling from Dominica. She had done her own detective work and traced us to this place.
Relieved that all seemed well we immediately went to the airline ticket counters to try to get a flight.
A waiting list had about a dozen names on it already and little likelihood that there would be that many open or canceled seats. I sent my good-looking younger co-pilot to the counter to see what kind of magic he could work on the young woman at the counter.
He got us on as eighth and ninth, which was promising, but soon enough we got the bad news.
We were tired cookies and did not want to hear that the only flight out that morning had been canceled because of technical problems with the plane, but it was.
It was early afternoon and the sun was over the yardarm so we hit the bar.
We struck up a conversation with an employee of an airline who was just going off duty. He suggested that we rent a Piper or a Cessna and fly over to San Juan. We both quickly declined even though the water stretch between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico was relatively short.
“I can get you a charter for a ten seater, but it will be expensive. Maybe you could get some of the people who were disappointed by the morning’s flight cancellation.”
We declined.
Later in the afternoon our luck changed. The plane grounded that morning was declared back in service and we were on the list and better yet, in the airport, so we got out and over the short haul to San Juan.
I filed my accident report in San Juan and learned later that my insurance company had sold the wreck for a thousand dollars. A couple of my instruments were worth more than that, but then, maybe the buyer would have to get it past that Ambassador or the smiling poster-boy Marine at the Embassy’s front desk.
On the valley view side of the main building of Island House, in front of the vanishing pond, on the cliff edge, stands a Bois Bande’ tree. It is not a rare tree. There are plenty of them in Dominica’s forests. When we were building the hotel we almost cut this one down, but it was the only thing, other than the sky, that was reflected in the pool’s smooth surface. We also guessed that it would provide a topic of conversation for guests after they were told of the folkloric legends.