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RAISING CANEBY PHIL TRUPP |
Juliette's naked leg snakes around me, her damp body pressed against mine, and she whispers
as "me broddahs" alternately laugh and shoot their rum drinks.
"I make you howl crazy, " she sighs. I show ya' secret of Baja .... " She knows I'm looking for
the Barbados that transcends the comfortable luxury of the hotels that line the beaches;
searching for the secret of a place that cherishes Victorian civility-a civility leavened with
earthiness distilled from the sugarcane that blankets the island.
In this closet-sized open air rum shop in Oistins, along the south coast road,
shoulder-to-shoulder with the fishermen and the cane cutters and the poets, I'm a little crazy
from the rum -rum seeping through me like sweat, warm and sweet with the smell of oak and
cane.
Ain't you rumbustious, Mistah P?" Juliette asks. "You ain't rumbustious till you knowin' me
...."
Oh, Juliette, there are more than a thousand intimate rum shops in Baja, and many
women-black, tan, gold, diamond-queens and Madonnas of rum, and I am plenty rumbustious
here with the working men in the search for inner Baja.
Through the cane, down the sultry Caribbean coast, where the neon glows and Euro-Britannic
hotels spread their verandas on soft beaches that front a sleepy opal sea. Up the hilly, green
Atlantic shore where the ocean fetches unbroken and wild against the cliffs. Past the tiny
chattel houses to Oistins, I land at this fisherman's respite next to Sexy Lexes where the rum
and the fish-fry oil and the charcoal and the Havana leaf make the day's
A big gray Bentley, a ghost of former British rule, slides past men in overalls and women in
floral cottons, and one of "me broddahs" peels Juliette away from me as easily as one peels a
banana. He motions to the Bentley. "It is cat luck 'n' dog luck," he grins, pounding his fist
against mine. Yes. many levels of luck in Baja, but seldom a bitter brew. "Crave all, get none
at all .... Got smoke, me broddah?" Sure, a Royal Barbados from Herr Kautz's cigar factory in
Bridgetown. A civil exchange in this remarkably civil land.
"Broddah, drink now a Banks. Hurry-hurry nevah done. "
I shoot the last of the Cockspur White and chase it with the Banks. The beer is chilly, amber,
crisp with the fine coral-filtered water of the island. It mixes with the burning rum, and I'm
suddenly orbiting this delicious teardrop of an island, more determined than ever to know inner
Baja.
We arrive at the Mount Gay Rum distillery in St. Michael Parish feeling pretty good. The sky
is cloudless. It is hot. Willowy casuarinas slump against the heavy air. It is a little past noon. In
a place where rum is sacred, Mount Gay calls itself the "world's oldest and finest." It claims
Bajan birth and flashes a deed dated February 20, 1703, listing as part of the old Mount Gay
estate "two stone windmills ... one boiling house with seven coppers, one curing house and one
still house."
The company is rightfully proud of its antiquity. But was it really the world's first rum or simply
the first to be documented?
More than a hundred fine, soothing rum beverages are distilled in the Eastern Caribbean, each
part of an ancient gene pool flowing back to Malayan brhum, to Papua New Guinean kuk, to
the cane fields of the Indian subcontinent planted more than two millennia ago.
Baja's cane sprouts are relative newcomers, arriving from Brazil and Guyana in the 1600s to
produce "kill divill," a potent white lightning used to chase jumbies and inexplicable maladies.
Leave it to colonial America, in a supreme act of priggishness, to hand Bajan rum its bona
fides. A 1654 order of the General Court of Connecticut demanded "confiscation of whatsoever
Barbados liquors, commonly called rum, kill divill and the like ...." The order wasn't designed
to defend family values; it was old-fashioned protectionism for the local distillers. In creating a
forbidden elixir, the court inadvertently anointed Baja as the royal house of rum.
We tour the factory and marvel at the neat rows of wooden casks, each marked and dated and
stacked in the vast, stone aging cellar like prehistoric hippos. This is rum done the
old-fashioned way-by hand-with a charming, islandtime ethic, at the end of which a master
blender, imperious as a king, may shrug and growl, "Take it back!"
We make our way through the cellars, breathing the intoxicating aroma of molasses: a heady,
humid aroma, dark and time-warpish. We tiptoe past the casks. I realize we
are whispering. Why? Our guide, Judith Holder, tells me the rum is "sleeping;" we mustn't
disturb it or the angels who gather the evaporated liquid, known as eau de vie. "It's the angels'
share," she says.
We pause at a 14-year-old cask, a half-ton of liquid gold encased in charred American white
oak, dusty and brown as mahogany. I imagine a chain of casks reaching northward from
Trinidad to Puerto Rico- Fernandes, Doorly's, Old Brigand, Rivers, Jack Iron, Trois Rivieres,
DePaz, Simonnet, The Tot Club, SugarBird, Foxy's, Cruzan Gold, Bacardi - an archipelago of
aromatic liquid connecting the Antilles to the continent.
"This is as old as it gets," Judith says. "Come close. Touch." I press my face against the cask.
Is it breathing? "You believe in angels," she smiles for a long moment.
"I do now," I reply in the reverential tone of the convert.
Rum is a unifying elixir of jobs and trade and power. In democratic Baja it's also politics. It
matters what the Prime Minister drinks, and a political rally without rum equals an election
without votes. Drink a politician's rum and you best vote the party line.
Rum is moral. A black-tie wedding of two old island families is celebrated, yet beneath the
white tent and sprays of orchids there's no sign of "kill divill." A frustrated guest fingers a liter
of champagne bearing the gold label of Veuve Clicquot. "And this is what we must drink, " he
fumes. "The other family thinks rum is rebellion!" He whispers in my ear.
"Born Agains!"
Rum is miraculous. They say the pirate on the label of Old Brigand lost his eye patch because
the spirits inside were so good they caused him to see again. In Grenada they swear Clarke's
Court 138proof White, with a dash of Angostura bitters, will raise the dead.
Is there a "best" rum? Self-proclaimed "King of Rum," Edward Hamilton, author of Rums of
the Eastern Caribbean, replies, "Before you ask me which is my favorite, let me ask you,
which is your favorite island?"
Maybe the best rum is the one in your glass.
And rum is wealth. David Seale, owner of R.L. Seale & Co., distillers of ESA Field White Rum,
Doorly's, Texana and Staff brands, invites us to his home, Hopefield Manor, in the southern
parish of St. Philip, where he instructs us in the art of transforming cane into a delicate liqueur.
"Planter's cocktail," he calls it, a stand-in for wine.
The self-made tycoon, rum meister and breeder of horses mixes the magic recipe: two fingers
of rum over cracked ice, another finger of syrupy Velvet Falernum (it has a slightly tart,
ambiguous nose), a tot of water, and-voile! -ordinary rum is transformed into the Caribbean
equivalent of Bailey's Irish Cream, with more bite.
This 1833 estate is a world away from the rough trade of Baxter's Road. There, on a moonless
night, bodies gyrate around the bar and passionate black magic and strobe lights rake the skin.
The metallic beat mingles with the powerful overproof and beer-no Velvet Falernum here.
"So what d'ya think now, boy?" I'm asked in an odd moment of silence at Baxter's "No
Name" rum house. "Look aroun'ya. Yul ner see et agin."
"You're Scottish, aren't you?" I ask.
My companion roars, "I'm Bajan, man. Con va' no tell? Best v'u 'av'
Animal Flower Cave at North Point. A ramshackle craft stall and a little cafe are the only
suggestions of civilization.
Gloomy wooden stairs lead underground, where the limestone radiates a dull greenish glow.
The air is a little oppressive. A slippery carpet of stones leads to a gallery open to the Atlantic.
Big rollers thunder against the cliff, spray consumes the opening, the gallery trembles. Tube
worms, finger-sized creatures found on coral reefs, have taken residence in the tide pools;
these are the "animal flowers" for which the cave is named.
I'm taken by the contrast of sparkling sunlit sea and the dusky darkness of the cave.
Amerindians gathered here thousands of years ago seeking shelter: nomads leaving images of
slit-eyed gods, masks with wild staring eyes whirling like nebula, fearsome demi-gods and-like
that!-the nomads vanished.
We leave North Point and follow the road south through the interior. Walls of ancient coral
stand against the sky. Above the walls the cane makes the wind visible.
It's coming together now, taking shape, the genesis of Baja's colors and sounds solidifying as
we bear eastward -past the sun-stunned cows and goats unmoving in the fields, beyond the
fields the green-black forest, and the sea white with the wind around the gently curving coast.
An ancient sugar mill disappears into the ages, the unseen spirit of "kill divill" lurking,
grinning at the children tooling their pink bicycles beneath the "bearded fig" banyan trees.
Clouds scud across the sky with no hint of rain; egrets, prima ballerinas, wings a blur against
thickets of ixora and tall oleander. Keith Boyce Athletic Field is deserted, the national
"religion" of cricket on hold, the field given over to foraging goats. A red Moke zooms past St.
Nicholas Abbey, Baja's oldest plantation, and vanishes in a grove of giant mahogany trees.
The sea reappears. A high dune dominates the beach. This strange pyramid, is it a burial
mound?
I ask Bamboo, who is cutting wedges of cane at Morgan Lewis Hill. He shrugs. Juju, his
monkey, squeals and stares curiously.
"Chew carefully," Bamboo says. "Do not swallow."
The cane is rich and delicious, its fiber tough and sinewy and inedible.
"Thank you, Bamboo."
He grins, "Sure, mon. Go ye' good."
St. Andrews Church, cool and enclosing as the cave. Its graves are old, names melting from the
markers. We come and we go, and not even marble or vast wealth halts the inevitable
anonymity. It's humbling to stand upon the generations of Baja, seemingly as alive as the child
picking shells along the brambly line of sea grapes.
At Bathsheba, stone monoliths stare out to sea like the faces on Easter Island. It's spring, and
the rollers hiss shoreward. Surfers practice year round, and come January, the wind will reach
out of the north and surfers from everywhere will compete here, drink rum at the Roundhouse,
carbo-load on breadfruit, and swear their allegiance to the surfing life.
The sun nears the horizon. Small churches glow with light and clapping hands and singing: a
very religious people, Bajans, hardworking, hard-worshiping Anglicans, rich and not-so-rich, all
stirred by the cane. The whole spectrum of Bajan culture is painted on the side of a brick
building, the folk images making the unseen connections visible until wind and weather erase it
and another mural is painted.
Farther on, past the painted rocks, a man in a red baseball cap and checkered shirt is cutting
cane. I place my finger on the map. We are at the village of St. Jude, St. George Parish, the
heart of the island. I am closing in on inner Baja.
I make my way up the embankment toward the man. The field is a series of low hillocks
covered by a loose mat of dried cane cuttings. It makes hard going.
The man, whose name is Leonard, stares at the awkward figure stumbling toward him. His
machete is at his side like a black, hooked extension of his arm. We shake hands. He's short,
with a massive chest and shoulders, his palm the consistency of concrete. I'm astonished to see
he wears no gloves.
"Please, Leonard, show me how you cut the cane."
"Surely, boy."
He bends at the waist, digs the
hook at the tip of the blade into the tangle of dried leaves that obscure the base of the stalk.
Then, with one powerful blow, he severs the tough, pithy roundness. Spray flies in all
directions, raw, sweet sugar, warm and sticky, and it is a pleasure to lick it from my lips.
"You now," he says, handing me the heavy blade.
I imitate Leonard, clearing the leavings. The cane is so tall, and for a moment I feel I'm being
swept into a green ocean with just a trace of blue sky to remind me of where I am. I bend,
swing the machete. THUD! Leonard smiles patiently. The stalk is only partially severed.
"Put you' heart to it, boy."
I swing again, using all my weight. The tall stalk sinks softly to the ground. I am drenched by
the sugary rain. The cane forest continues, the leaves dangerously sharp, the stalks hard as
tree bark, gold and brown and aubergine with dark bandings, and in the thick of it the sun
disappears and it is cool and damp.
"Puttin' heart in it now, boy," Leonard urges. "Be tastin' it."
I move through the density, swinging the blade and sweeping aside the stalks as they submit to
the machete. All the while Leonard is speaking:
"Rum de life of dese islands. Go back long time. Slaves knew de cane all right. Knowin' it
good. Puttin' cane on de ground, on de roof. Sun do its wonders. Waitin' time. Week, two
weeks-de cane change, boy, an' we havin' some fun now! It lift a heart. Lift a spirit. Makin' ye'
smile. Cane ain't all, but it de root.
She bring islands togethah long time now, forever now ...."
I look up from the hypnotic crisscross of green and thatch; Leonard is grinning, a very faint
smile.
I cut furiously; the spray peppers my skin, my hands afire with the friction of the heavy blade,
leaves rasping as I move surely, urgently, each blow part of a dance, the pulpy slicing sound of
the blade the music I am dancing to-faster, harder- Leonard making little sounds of approval,
and then, like the warmth of Juliette's bare leg, like the strong hand of "me broddah" in the
rum bar, like the flailing bodies of Baxter's Road, the secret is revealed. The secret of Baja is
passion-for life, for satisfaction.