Tres Cheap - Page 3

White people-even those with nice tans-must come to terms with the role that color has played in the island's destitution. I had never felt particularly liable for the crimes of my ancestors until one day when visiting the Slave Museum at Port Royal. At a display case full of rusty chains and shackles, I listened to a Jamaican describe the leg irons to his son.

“De White Man, he do this to us, he put us in these chains,” he said angrily, as if he were still wearing them.

His young son, eyes wide with fright, stared directly at me, as if I still had the keys.

My guilt puts me at odds with resorts that romanticize the days of slavery, like the Jamaica Palace Hotel outside of Port Antonio, a white neo-classical mansion modeled after a sugar plantation.

“We wanted to recreate the colonial look,” the manager told me as we strolled through the marble lobby. How do they manage that, I wondered. Put flogging poles out in back? Have the staff shuffle around in leg irons?

One morning, I sat for breakfast in a small restaurant in Gustavia.

“You want Iron Shoes?” asked the waiter.

Iron shoes? It was probably a traditional slave breakfast. I wondered what was in it as I glanced down at the breakfast menu. Ackee, a tree vegetable, was the featured specialty. Enjoy it while you are here, read the menu, as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has placed a ban on ackees in all forms (canned, cooked, or frozen) from entering U.S. ports. Now that sounded like a real seal of endorsement.

“I’ve never heard of Iron Shoes,” I said. “Do you put Ackee in it?”

“You don’t know what Iron Shoes is?” he replied, “Where you from, Mars?”

“California, actually,” I said. “We never had slavery there.”

He rolled his eyes back in disbelief, then shook his head.

“Iron shoes, man. You pick de ironge from de tree and squeeze it to make de joos.”

“Oh, orange juice,” I said. “Never mind. I’ll stick with water.”

“I’d like a window seat,” I said to the attendant at the TransJamaica Air counter in Montego Bay.

“They’re all window seats,” she replied.

The Briton Norman Islander was built to hold eight passengers. Ours held nine. At the last moment, a huge woman wedged into the co-pilot’s seat, her fat knees just inches from the steering column, her flabby arms embracing a basket of codfish wrapped in newspaper. I sat behind the pilot. In the seats directly behind me were two Rastafarians with glazed faces who gave new meaning to the term red-eye flight.

It’s hard not to be a back seat flyer while staring over the pilot’s shoulder. As we hurtled down the runway, I wanted to ask why the autopilot had a sticker over the screen, “Not in Use.” And why did the fuel gauge read only ten gallons? As we disappeared into the thick fog shrouding the Blue Mountains, I especially wanted to know why the altimeter only read 800 meters when the mountains ahead of us rose to over 2,000 meters.

The flight only lasted 38 minutes, but the final approach was rough. As we broke out of the fog and swooped down over Kingston, the plane began to buck and drop violently in the thermals. The big lady in front began to panic. While the plane lurched and rolled, her hammy legs slammed around the cockpit, threatening any number of levers and dials, while her hands searched for something to hang onto, leaving the basket of fish perilously close to spilling.

“Don’t touch anything!” yelled the pilot.

Now is the time to pray, I figured...but what? With cod as my copilot? The Rastafarians in back were equally alarmed, and began to shout at the pilot.

“Why dis plane bounce, man. Can’t you fly de plane.”

The pilot didn’t say anything, but I could see his neck clench with tension.

“Was wrong wi’da plane, man. You gonna make us crash.”

The pilot still didn't say a word. His hands jerked at the wheel, trying to correct for each violet lurch as the runway loomed in the window. We came down hard on two wheels, bounced up at a terrifying angle, then came down again on all three.

The pilot was the first person out of the plane. He yanked off his fingerless gloves, and threw them down on the tarmac.

“This was a good flight!” he screamed at his tormentors. “You can’t judge a flight by the last two minutes.”

“You can if it crashes,” said one of the Rastafarians. “You almost kill us all, man.”