Restless Me - Alternative Travel

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Autumn 2005

Restless Me Base Camp for the Global Traveler

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Refuge Among the Exes (cont.)

I didn’t know about the Taínos, the pirates, the exes or the strays before I sat under Jerry’s tent. I did know that sailors in this time find Culebra’s protected harbors a good place to drop hook when the trades get feisty or hurricanes threaten. I also knew about a wildlife preserve that includes portions of the island and all but one of the archipelago’s cays.

Theodore Roosevelt established the reserve in 1909 and it totals more than 10,300 acres. It is, for endangered leatherback and hawksbill sea turtles, 13 species of seabirds and more than 100 other kinds of birds, what the island has been to many others: sanctuary for creatures with no place else to go.

When the refuge was set-aside, it was one of the first in America, but there was a catch. The terms allowed the U.S. Navy, as it had since 1901, to use parts of the island for target practice. Once WWII started, the military extended its operations to bombing the bejesus out of many of the nearby islets. In 1975, locals got a court order to send the Navy packing, but souvenirs from the military’s presence remain: submerged, unexploded ordnance; two battered, corroding armored tanks turned beach icons; and underwater utility lines, which provide the island’s only source of fresh drinking water and electricity.

We got caught up in the refuge business ourselves one night. We were renting a small, wood-trimmed, concrete cottage overlooking the harbor. It came with a studly, time-challenged rooster that woke us long before the sun cracked the horizon and didn’t stop er-er-er-ing until the orb blinked out. Wild chickens scratched incessantly in the yard. One, a fat, mottled bantam, mothered eight tiny chicks. The family disappeared every evening at dusk, to a nest in the undergrowth near the waterfront.

Something must have spooked momma that night because she left a chirping, black toddler just below our deck. He stayed put at first. Then he panicked, frantically hop-running toward the gate. His neck strained and his wings stretched unnaturally horizontal. His cries worked the heart over, translating easily from fowl- to human-speak: “Mamma! I’m here! Come back! Come back!”

My son panicked, too. He was near tears and making circles around the chick. “How could she leave him? She’s a terrible mother!” I don’t know which of the two was harder to watch.

We searched for momma and the sibling chicks: three yellow; two brown with a yellow stripe; a brown with white spots and another solid black. But they were gone.

We named our terrified guest Peep and offered him comfort and warmth best we could. We bedded him in a plastic bucket lined with a towel. When it was time for bed we locked him in the outdoor laundry closet to keep him safe from the crazy-eyed, fatheaded, yellow cat that prowled our yard after dark. We gave him a jar lid with a little water and another with the crushed crackers he and his family couldn’t get enough of earlier. But he was inconsolable and ignored all of our efforts.

When I was four, a family friend gave my brother and me a dozen dyed chicks. We kept them in a large cardboard box in the dining room. We fell hard for their day-glo colors and soft fluff, but the scene inside the box turned ugly. The chicks trampled and shoved and died one by one. Only a dark green one survived long enough for us to get it to my dad’s younger brother’s farm, where it outgrew its dye and thrived until it was large enough to feed my uncle, his wife and their four kids.

Peep chirp-cried all night. I didn’t sleep much either, remembering those balls of shrieking, dying color from long ago.

Momma and what was rest of her family returned at first light. Joseph was ready. He put Peep beside her, but the chick toppled over. Joseph’s wailing got me up.

“No momma! No!” Tears spilled down his swollen cheeks. “She’s ignoring him and he’s so weak he can’t even stand!”

“Honey, Let’s just give it some time. Put out some crackers. Maybe if we can keep momma nearby it will give Peep time to rest and he’ll be okay.” But Peep was near death. Momma knew it, I knew it and Joseph knew it. Momma had seven other relentless beaks to fill and wasn’t going to bother with a spent chick. When she stepped on him, I went after her with a swim fin.

Peep seemed to give up after that. He laid his head in the dirt, stopped pleading and stilled his wings. When he could bear it, Joseph buried the tiny body in a shallow grave and marked it with a dried coconut.

– – –

The night before we left, we climbed a steep, winding road above the beach at Punta Melones. We parked the car near the hill’s crest and stared at the panorama. Tiny Louis Pena, with its perfect sand and lush reefs, lay straight ahead, chiding us for not coming back for a second helping of snorkeling. The turquoise Sonda de Vieques arced to our left; Puerto Rico’s high wattage eastern coast burned across it. Ensenada Honda, the main harbor, was behind us, dotted with sail and powerboats. The lights of Vieques seemed close enough to touch.

“Hawaii without the people,” my husband said.

The next afternoon we were scheduled to leave on the 1:30 flight to San Juan, but our commuter airline was down one of its two 9-seaters, so everything was backed up.

While I dickered with the counter staff about the delay, my husband returned our Samurai. Jerry came back to the airport with him to keep us company.

He told us he once made a comfortable living in the Florida Keys running his own water sports operation. He married a Puerto Rican native who hadn’t seen much of the U.S. and they traveled for a time touring the country. “But she got homesick, so we moved to Vieques and started another water sports business. We were doing great, too, making lots of money. Until Hugo.” Jerry shook his head. When the category 5 hurricane struck in 1989, Vieques and Culebra were hit hard. “We all went to this little concrete grocery store on a hill. We had food and alcohol. None of the old-timers seemed worried so everybody treated it like a big party. When the storm was over, we came out and everything was gone. The party was over.”

To Hugo, Jerry lost a home, business, boat and an airplane. And the $40,000 in cash he was hiding from his first wife. He had stashed it in Ziploc bags in the foundation of his frame house. “I thought for sure it’d wash up there in the reef. I went diving every day for two weeks looking for it, but I never found it,” he said.

Insurance?

“No. I just moved here and started over. I don’t have insurance now. Costs too much. If something happens, we’ll start over again.”

When we were finally in the air, I thought about a guy, “Kokomo Tim” we called him, because he lived at a place called the Kokomo Hotel: "Hey," he told us. "You need anything, just come over to the Kokomo. Ask for Tim." He was a contractor from someplace with seasons, who came to Culebra expecting to find his tropical promised land. Had it worked out?

“I’ve never been poorer,” he said with a shrug.

“But are you happier?” I had pressed. He shrugged again. Another enigma.

From the sky I tried to see the snake. The island got its name because it’s supposed to look like one. “Do you see it?” I asked my husband.

“Nope,” he said. Now we were shrugging.

“I think Culebra is one big nut to crack,” I said over the whine of the engines.

“Or one big, cracked nut,” he replied.

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Karolyn Stuver is a writer, sailor and communications professional living in Alexandria Virginia. She is on her way back to Culebra, Puerto Rico and is
seriously thinking of joining the ranks of the exes there herself. She will be taking with her "several pounds" of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, a special treat for Jerry, who doesn't live for café con leche like she does.