On the Way Back
Page 26
What there wasn’t, however, was much confidence. All the excitement of some hours earlier had dissipated, or had turned into fear and anxiety. There was an air of restlessness, which grew with every mile that took them closer to St. Kitts. This anxiety reflected not an eagerness to get on with the task at hand, but rather a muted regret for having taken part in a senseless operation, a desire to turn right back and be homeward bound. Alwyn Cooke could feel the reservation of his men, even if none of them dared speak it—he could hear it in their slow speech, he could see it in their downcast eyes.
The Rambler reached the lights of St. Eustatius round about midnight, more than an hour behind schedule. This was the time when they were supposed to reach Half Way Tree; instead, they made their way at full-speed-minus-a-couple-of-inches to the shores of Sandy Hill Point. The final leg of the journey would be done in total darkness, with all the lights of The Rambler switched off to avoid St. Kitts’s revenue cutter from spotting the rogue boat. So, as soon as they reached St. Eustatius, Alwyn Cooke summoned Gaynor Henderson, Harry González, Solomon Carter, and Rude Thompson to the bridge of the vessel. What he had to say, he knew, would incense Harry and undermine Gaynor, so he said it quickly, yet in stages: Gaynor here, he right, you know. Ain’ no sense in blowin’ up de fuel depot if we don’ need to, and before Harry González could utter a word, We mus’ leave de Kittitians do dey dirty job, if dey wan’ do it.
Despite the time of night, Alwyn Cooke still believed blindly in the figures that Dr. Crispin Reynolds had shown him six nights before in his residence at Island Harbour, still expected to find no less than one hundred supporters of Dr. Reynolds’s cause who would constitute the bulk of the force making their way through the streets of Baseterre. Alwyn Cooke was happy to distribute the spare guns between them, he was happy to appoint them with explosives, with instructions, and with plenty of courage. But Alwyn had decided that God had not intended him and his people to kick out the police task force from Anguilla, to declare independence and call the attention of the entire world, only to land in St. Kitts ten days later to murder a whole bunch of innocent people in an attempt to put another, more sympathetic autocrat in power. So, Alwyn Cooke called off the attack on the fuel depot, cut down to ten the number of men who would go into Baseterre, reduced the squads from three to two, with him leading the group that would head toward the police station, while Rude and the three American mercenaries attacked the Defence Force camp.
So where you wan’ me?
But Alwyn Cooke didn’t think it was appropriate to let Gaynor Henderson know yet that he would be left to protect the boat with some of the youngest members, awaiting the return of the troopers. I tell you later. That was as far as this first stage of reorganization would take him. He was prepared to face the exasperation of Harry González, but not the brutish temper of Gaynor Henderson.
His strategy worked perfectly, as Gaynor, still too embarrassed about his recent outburst to be excessively forceful, accepted Alwyn’s deferral without complaint. Meanwhile, Harry González, too far from hope to harbor any, simply delivered a tirade of insults that finished with: Twenny minutes before landing you decide to alter the whole plan? You’re all a bunch of morons. To which Alwyn Cooke simply reminded him, You job will soon be done, Mr. González.
The meeting was already over when Rude Thompson announced, Dem de last lights of Oranjestad. We soon be in de channel, meaning the short strait between St. Eustatius and St. Kitts. Alwyn Cooke ordered the lights of The Rambler, including the navigation lights, to be switched off, and he told the men to take their positions. An’ be quiet, nuh. It would be at least another half hour before they reached Sandy Hill Point, but given that they were over an hour late, there was no telling where the escorting boat might be at this stage, or whether the St. Kitts revenue cutter was on the lookout for them.
So The Rambler darted through the channel at full speed, cutting across the darkness of the night, while sixteen men, caught between whispers and mutterings, waited for a signal—any signal, from friend or foe—to put them out of their misery.
END OF EXCERPT
More about The Night of the Rambler
A gorgeously written and highly entertaining debut novel about a small island’s struggle for independence from Britain.
Selected by The Airship/Black Balloon Publishing as a Best Book of 2013
“Colorful detours into native lore, such as a rich Dutchman’s fabled courtship of a local beauty, strike grace notes that echo Marquez . . . readers . . . will be rewarded with the little-known tale of how the underdog country demanded its own place in the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly
“With tremendous humanity and humor, the novel articulates these themes through the power of the relationships and the urgency each character demonstrates in this quest for self-determination.” —The Caribbean Writer
“Revolution and historic change—words that can remain detached concepts unless we can somehow connect them with their human face and the lives behind them. This is what first-time novelist Montague Kobbé achieves in marvelous style and depth in The Night of the Rambler—weaving a Caribbean tapestry of places, wider events, the individuals shaped by them, and how they ultimately come together to shape events themselves in the times leading to a revolution on Anguilla in 1967.” —Maco Magazine
“However unusual this revolution is, it is a prelude to Anguilla’s eventual divorce from St. Kitts and Nevis, before becoming a separate British territory; its unconventional LOL factor could diversify an elective college course on revolutions with something bloody peaceful.” —New Pages
“[Readers] will be rewarded with deeper insight into the political and economic turmoil engulfing that region.” —Historical Novel Society
“This is a book about revolution and the underdog, about a small, isolated island fighting for recognition, opportunity and justice; it is a compelling tale about a curious historical episode, but also a vital look at priorities, perspective and the right to live in dignity, issues that, much like Anguilla’s rebellion of 1967, are all too easily forgotten.” —The Island Review
“Vivid . . . funny, and thoughtful. Much like the revolution it covers, it’s compelling.” —Columbia College Chicago/The Review Lab
“The Night of the Rambler is revolutionary, a reliquary, an impressionist tale of men who are by turns melancholy, raging, and often comic, their voices unique to this place and given a singular story.” —Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here
“This is a fine novel, a surprising novel, perhaps the first true novel I have read about the nature of revolutions. The Night of the Rambler is ambitious, smart, and successful. It raises all sorts of questions about what revolutions want, how revolutions fail, and why revolutions are necessary—challenging all the while how history remembers them.” —Percival Everett, author of Erasure
“The Night of the Rambler is exceptional. Riveting, deeply thoughtful, and constantly inventive, Montague Kobbé’s novel is part literary thriller, part revolutionary study, part epic historical narrative. Altogether, it makes for one profound read.” —Joe Meno, author of Office Girl and Hairstyles of the Damned
With echoes of Junot Díaz, Vargas Llosa, and Zadie Smith, an exhilarating voyage across the Caribbean during a time of revolution from debut novelist Kobbé.
On June 9, 1967, sixteen men from Anguilla, a forgotten island in the Caribbean, set sail aboard a thirty-five-foot sloop, the Rambler, to make the night-time journey to St. Kitts, where they intended to carry out a coup d’état and install a new government sympathetic to their separatist cause. Set against the turbulent background of world politics in the sixties, The Night of the Rambler tells the story of a misinformed and misconceived plan, carried out incompetently by a group of scarcely trained and ill-equipped amateurs who escape calamity by mere coincidence. And yet, somehow, the main purpose of their mission, the furtherance of Anguilla’s struggle to dissociate itself from the newly formed state of St. Kitts-Nevi
s-Anguilla and to return to the British colonial fold, is significantly strengthened by this, quite possibly the most outrageous episode in the history of revolutions.
Loosely based on the historical facts surrounding the Anguilla Revolution of 1967, The Night of the Rambler unfolds across the fifteen hours that lapse between the moment when the “rebels” board the motorboat that will take them across the strait to St. Kitts, and the break of dawn the following day, when it becomes obvious that the unaccomplished mission will have to be aborted. The novel consciously moves away from the “historical” category, purposely altering at will the sequence of “facts” narrated, collating fully fictional episodes with vaguely accurate anecdotes and replacing the protagonists with fictional characters. At turns highly dramatic and hilarious, Kobbé brings deep honesty to the often-unexamined righteousness of revolution.
With echoes of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Mario Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral, The Night of the Rambler touches upon the universal topics of freedom and self-determination with humor and sensibility, creating an alternative reality that is informed by real life but ultimately governed by the uncanny.
The Night of the Rambler is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2016 Montague Kobbé
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-441-8
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-453-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947209
First printing
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