Four poems Child Extra and the Screen Temptress (the filming of Bahama Passage, Salt Cay, 1941) Most afternoons, when school let out, Uncle Jude snuck him over to Salt Cay in his motorized dinghy-- to watch the movie sets. A child of eight, Osveldo had never been the Chosen One before: in the right place at the right time, the flic's Director spotted him hanging out by a team of saltrakers, and anointed him an Extra. A modest salary, day by day, would be vouchsafed to him. No mere subbie, he'd be first string, of the frontrunner cast. An Extra is a full-fledged principal actor ... Both honchos making money, hand over fist, so that wasn't it-- between them, they divvied up Salt World, more than enough salt ponds to go around. So the war between two Salt Barons wasn't about greed, it was about sex. And today, Osveldo struggles to recall-- was it three mistresses, five or seven, some odd number the feuding War Lords couldn't quite divide evenly between sides, so they fought over the one extra babe until dueling escalated into all-out mayhem... Most of the cast were transients, day commuters from Grand Turk like Osveldo. But the famous stars hung out day and night. They had a glassy- eyed look about them by mid-afternoon, as if hypnotized by the White Gold: light spears streaking to all sides from the multitude of salt prisms, sun glistening on that crystalline kaleidoscope... Off duty, they might while away hours entranced by the salt- rakers scooping up their quarry, filling their carts with bulk clumps of pure salt ore, the variety of shapes and sizes a wonderment, no two remotely alike. Salt Whites had frozen their eyes' pale glaze... At night, the lead actors slept on mats beneath squarish low tents, canopies of white canvas. And they huddled or snoozed in the tents for most of the day, tippling from casks of rum-- popping out for brief poses, shoots, then slinking back under the entry flaps ... One day, after a grueling scene of carnage (ladies and kids: bands of hostages shunted back and forth between the hostile camps), Osveldo himself portrayed a human hot potato clutched, alternately, by the two femmes faatles. He fell into a near-swoon when he lolled on the bosoms of the temptress Madeleine Carroll. After six repeats of this dimactic scene, his throat parched dry to a dull ache, the fledgling extra crawled off limits under the star couple's tent flap risking expulsion from the movie shoot's last days, mewling for a few sips of water. A groggy dazed Sterling Hayden-- forgetting about his unwieldy height--sprang erect, dislodging three tent stakes, the whole ruffly billows of cloudlike silks shrinking upon their heads like a pricked balloon. But Sterling, scuzzy-bearded, came up crooning & wryly snickering in that- deadpan monotone of his. Here, take your cool poison, Sport. And he handed a brimful mug to Osveldo, two colorless rocks thinkling the fired- clay rim. O what are these cold stones? the child whimpered. Do they hide dirt or bugs to make me sick?... Ice cubes. Pure clean water frozen. No bad creepie-crawlies lurking inside: He popped one into his own pursed lips. Oz nodded thanks, swallowing the turnblerful, rocks & all, in one gulp ... The last scene. Tricky bonding and peace bid between the pair of pirate-maverick male leads. Eight shoots, it took. They brokered a new deal, would trade whopping hunks of Salt Cartel for the fifth-wheel Sweetie's favors. Cut, said the Director. Dozens of corks popping, enough champagne for the whole cast ... But all alarm bells started tootling and buzzing at once. War breakout radioed. on the short wave-- real bombs were on a tear! Pearl Harbor's inferno of flames, timed to ring out their last camera takes. The Osprey Afterlives (Salt Cay, Turks & Caicos) Brian caws and gurgles and chants to the suddenly plunging osprey, then brakes to observe her fine swoop. She'd sprung from the power-pole-roost overhead, great wide nest a top-heavy clenched fist of woven sticks, vines and earth clods capping the upthrust arm of electric utility pole ... Now he's chirping calling as to a domestic house pet, tracking her swift course and guessing her mission She's spotted a fish to snatch from shallows and carry back to her nested brood. He caresses her moves with his partnering tenor hoots, cheering her on. Surprise! Wrong guess. She fetches up, her claws wrapped around one long gnarled branch toted horizontally in slowest ascent like a tightrope. walker's balancing rod, itself an ideal transverse cross-tie, cross-stay, for that squarish cage of her nest. What a find! says Brian On this barren sandy waste, denuded of forest, so few straggler trees remain, dotting the salt marsh and mangrove- lacy shores; but she's snared one of few fallen tree switches still greenly stiff enough to afford sure mainstay for her exposed floppy nest ... Her power-pole abode is a grim stand-in for lost palmetto, mahogany or manchineel upper limbs--amazing, it is, that many free-ranging families of birds, most loyal guests, never seem to desert this tiny outpost. All true forests, as noted by diarist Columbus, long since razed to make way for the one prized treasure--WHITE GOLD, the brids, normal habitat was swept away like mere arboreal dross. What homesites could replace the beautiful upswung limbs of trees, trees? O when has a country ever more frivolously betrayed its brood, its most ardent parti-colored and soft-feathered denizens?...Of some fifty-three species of birds, more hang tough, cling to these shores for all seasons. We humans have all but deserted this one-time bustling haven & world-class salt transshipment Mecca, by evacuation from 1,000 to 100 in the past 50 years, then slow attrition from 100 on down; while bird populations stay intact, the many varied flocks undepleted--some at record numbers. Old salt ponds keep refurbishing their food stocks: the plethora of brine shrimp and algae seem endlessly self-replenishing, as do those tiny invertebrates--unicellular and microscopic-- small enough to elude our human eye, slender enough to whirl through most fine- grade sieves of strianers. Now of the marvelous array of long-billed shore birds never stops bobbing and snaring their fill of the cloudy feed, aswarm--rife, teeming masses of wrigglers & floaters. Short-legged ingesters, most active at the salina margins where density of brine lives is thickest, are the true pond- pickers. Dozens of curlews, avocets and stilts line up in rows, near-equidistant, often seeming to bob and dip and scoop in concert like chorus lines of fowl--as if an unseen choreog. rapher guides the matched droopings of their bills, the tap-dancerly stalkings and prancings of their stark thin legs. But the tallest longbills--egrets, herons, cranes and glowy-orange flamingos--drift and soar near pond centers, each on a lone solo course. Dive and spear, or glide low for near surveillance and stab the surface fish, their stalking routes not restricted to ponds of the interior. They keep cruising offshore waters and reef shoals. by turns...Supreme fish-hawks, among local birds, are the princely ospreys. Of all stay-at-home-birds, hangers-on. of all Salt Cay clingers and landlubbers (whether they be indigenous or sweet feather-tailed expats--and who could say which were first settlers, which migrated from other sites, distant other climes?), the osprey surprises us most with her tenacity, her tenure in residence. The theft of her one-time lofty forest habitat; the dearth, the paucity of towering flora; that sudden decimation of trees with widest limb spreads, forked-branch nest anchors and roosting harborage-- if now sadly replaced by shattered old windmill tops--may leave the ospreys most deprived of all species. Legend of the Water Table Droll Percy, peerless Diesel mechanic and sometime prized engineer, was forced into retirement last year. Age sixty. Off the government dole and unpensioned after thirty years' lauded service-- he takes on freelance piece work one week. for a token hourly wage, then idly gestates for months (his noble gifts squandered, cast aside: hero sidelined with menials & duffers)...Salt Cay's Governor and his trim quartet of advance scouts, lay airport draftsmen, set about to unroll the prefab tarmac airstrip like a gravelly carpet on the isle's northeast corner, that one flat thirty-acre sand esplanade free of deep-set rock or rubble, as if made to order. Bare minimum of tractor work, grading or clearout of light debris and refuse would suffice. They hold lax confab with Percy, catch every third word of his shrewd counsel on the run, he pedal. biking slowly alongside their twin-jeep convoy: Beware of sink holes, he warns, to dim ears. Dull wits. Bad choice, he trills. Far better not to build runway on isle's low end--salt water table's too close to the surface. Poke shovel down three feet, you'll hit the drink... Too late, those Ox-Bridge lads, newcomers to Salt Cay's semi-desert climate, still insist on this patch of terrain. In such a dry, dry country, famous for arid days all-year-round, endless days of drought, water risk is low priority (and who can trust the local savages to have any smarts: know or advise)...Three months after a neatly squared-off airstrip is in place, two airlines bustling with multiple landings and takeoffs from lightbreak to dusk, a first big rain hits: two days of near-constant downpour followed by a third of steady drizzle... By midday, Percy ventures out on his rusty thick-tired bike to greet the Governor's entourage, both converging upon the tiny airport from opposite shores. The terminal slopes, collapses, one end sinking quickly as if in quicksand, the other holding fast to the horizontal (it could be a clipper ship drooping, sternfirst, in a turbulent sea), the roof settling at a forty-five degree tilt. As Percy nears the furrowing and cracked runway tarmac, he hops off his bike saddle: one leg raised up high in a graceful slow arc, with the aplomb of a master jockey elegantly dismounting some prize-winning steed at race end. He observes the approaching limo tires splash through deep puddles, water risen over the hubcaps. Percy waves his greetings to the Brits, who glare-- as if seeing his bowed and grizzly pate, those wizened neck-folds, for the very first time. All planes grounded today, I 'spect. Tomorrow, don't be forgetting to come out in the canoes.... White Gold I sample the topmost layers of gritty salt, scraping exposed crystals with my fingernail--Brian pulling back my arm: Wait, you must taste the pure White Ore. We avoid that grimy outer shell. So saying, he pokes a three-inch groove with his trowel & scoops out extra Virgin bright granules that I may pop between my teeth. Even the best Kosher- Deli salt, today, must pale beside this premiere brand that finicky George Washington always procured for his soldiers to best preserve their meats: no second-rate bogus substitute would be allowed in its place. He gladly paid the island salter Czars a pretty penny for their prime undiluted stock, though they kept hiking up the price. Twice, scam wholesalers had tried to palm off inferior grades on the fledgling President's scouts--swiftly both sellers of phony Grand Turk salt were nabbed, fined & jailed. And yes, the tart sting and pungent aftertaste of bits I sample, now, are keenly singular... The upper story of Morgan's saltworks rotted and fallen into the ground floor, both upper levels have collapsed into the basement storage shed at one end: more a tomb or mausoleum to that aborted Turks & Caicos' Salt Global Cartel than any historic showplace. The jagged, misshapen acres-wide hulk of mineral crystals--stillborn salt monolith two-thirds underground--gapes from two tunnels. Brian & other resident keepers of the flame help themselves, from time to time, to modest scoopings of pure white stock -- at most, a barely detectable narrow dent gouged from forty thousand bushels that were abandoned on the very day, hour, indeed minute when the company went bust: all overseas orders canceled, withdrawn at once. Then Bonaire and Inagua, whose deep harbors afforded much freer access to broad-hulled clipper ships, promptly stepped in and took up all market slack, dropping their export price by half. Salt Cay's three-million-bushel- per-annum lifeblood cut off at a single stroke...
LAURENCE LIEBERMAN's recent books of poetry include Flight from the Mother Stone (University of Arkansas Press, 2000) and The Regatta in the Skies: Selected Long Poems (University of Georgia Press, 1999).
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