Excerpt from "The Last Gun Ship - History of USS Mullinnix DD-944"
A Historical Novel By Frank A. Wood
This port call was another in a string of diplomatic stops for Mullinnix. Other than the injury to J.A. Harper on 15 April when hatch 2-162-2 fell on him that landed him in the base hospital that is exactly what it was. Radm Stephan took time out of his busy schedule to conduct personnel inspections on board USS Hartley, Van Voorhis, and Taussig as well as calling on the Senior British Naval Officer of the West Indies, Commodore Parker.
Port of Spain, the capital city of Trinidad and Tobago, is the hub of Trinidad's booming economy, and the main port of arrival for many immigrants from other Caribbean islands. It is also the center of Trinidad's rich cultural life, with countless art galleries, bars, theatres, and nightclubs, while the narrow streets jammed with traffic, pedestrians and pavement vendors.
Tumbling down the hills to the east of the city are the poor sections of Laventille and Belmont, established by freed slaves after emancipation in 1834. Settlers from China, Portugal, Venezuela and Syria all came to Trinidad to try their luck at new lives. Descendants of these groups, and those of the French, Spanish, British, African and Indian communities, ensured that Port of Spain developed a mix of cultures and sub-cultures including fringe-religions, cults, remnants of cast systems and slavery, various superstitions, and multiple groups practicing forms of Shango, Santería, Kumina and Vodun from Haiti - Voodoo.
The crew was instructed to stay inside the main downtown areas and to stay out of the eastern foothills. At morning muster, reference was made that these areas were not safe due to some unspecified unsavory superstitions practiced by some of the locals. That was like telling honey bees to stay away from the freshest brightest flowers.
"Sometimes I don't like the world we live in." complained Bostic.
"Well, fuck me! Now what," responded his running mate Lister.
"Chief's always on my ass. I can't seem to please that prick."
Lister said "Fuck him Bostic. He's just a natural born asshole. Nothin' you can do about it."
"Chief" was Master Chief Byron Smalls. A bear of a man with an unruly mop of yellowish ivory hair the color of old piano keys and an animated red face that made him look like he was constantly on the verge of some vascular catastrophe. He was so mean he could eat sawdust and shit 2x4s.
Bostic launched a sticky, brown blob of spittle that skidded over the dry earth. Drinking an almost-cool bottle of local beer, sitting in an open-air bar, Bostic continued, "He's wound tighter than a knob on a cheap alarm clock. He's hell bent on getting my stripes. Tell me I'm not fucked."
"Don't get your skives in a knot, the man is going to retire shortly after we get back to Norfolk. Just hang in there and let his shit roll off your back. Don’t fuck with him, he'll win every time," cautioned Lister.
Barry Lister was a small man with a face easy to forget. The only notable features were a small scar near his right temple, near-straight gray-framed Navy-issued glasses, and a bushy but regulation moustache. Nick-named the Swordsman, because all he did on liberty was shaft girls, Lister was known to give straight forward down-to-earth advice, whether asked for or not.
Agreeing, Bostic said, "Your right. The guy has had a brilliant career in the Navy – as an asshole. Nothin' I can do about it but hang on."
Bostic's eyes were set tight against his nose like two knuckles of a fist. A slight man, he had a long face, a narrow mustache and shiny dark hair. "You ready to shit-and-get Lister?"
"Yup, let's get the fuck out of here. Were to?"
"I was thinking we should head east, just to see what they don't want us to see. What do'ya think?" said Bostic.
"10/4! We can be drinkin' a cold one before the sun goes down if we head that-a-way now."
Against orders the pair headed east, to the foothills and unknowingly, voodoo country. Their mantra had always been, "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". The hardships of ship life were balanced with the pleasures of liberty at every port of call. Ship life and liberty, heads and tails, black and white, comfortable companions. If you permitted one to overshadow the other, your life would be diminished twice. That ideology drove sailors like Bostic and Lister. They were going to experience all there was to experience while they had the chance. What they expected to find was the finest Trinidad house of instant happiness, not what lay ahead of them.
As they headed east, it was apparent that this port retained an undeniable charm with its narrow streets and picturesque harbor, sandy beaches, and well-kept houses clinging to the hills that climbed around the bay. Short stretches of seafront, shaded by ancient casuarinas trees, blocked out the setting sun but not the heat. Island mountains overlapped to the horizon. From tree-lined to outlined, from rough to soft, from realistic to surreal. The eastern foothills of Port of Spain was just a thirty-minute walk from city center and near were Mullinnix was berthed, but in atmosphere it was a world away.
They continued east. Spartina grass, a perennial the grows four feet tall with flowers that are borne in greatly congested spikes, two to three inches long, lined the narrowing roadway near the marshes, creek banks, and drainage ditches. The tree concentration thickened. As they trekked on, the grass gave way to Palmetto thickets, small native palms growing in large patches under old live-oak trees, giving them a feeling of being shut in between dense vegetation and the flickering shadows cast by the setting sun.
The roadway narrowed, shrinking now into a stretch that was barely wide enough for one vehicle, let alone two, then jagged right then right again. Around the last dog-leg, they found themselves in a section of the city that pulsated with street gangsters, smoky clubs, cigar factories, women, gambling and rum. Pimps, thieves, and painted young girls hung about the stalls and doorways, common as bricks. They could hear the occasion urgent rattle of dice.
"I’m chokin' dust here, man," complained Lister. "Let's get a drink."
"You’re a fuckin' mind reader," laughed Bostic.
On the left side of the dusty road, the trunks of trees made the entrance tunnel like. The canopy so dense that the light of the setting sun could barely break their cover. The resultant ambience made the bar, cool, dark and peaceful, the perfect location to acquire an early evening three-beer buzz and plan the evening's escapades.
They downed the first, ordered a second with a shot, and were taking in the details of the place. There was something different here. They couldn't put their finger on it. Just a uneasy feeling of something that was slightly strange, unknown to them. When they asked the bartender what the statue behind the bar was, he responded in a smoke-laden husky voice, "That's Bondye."
"Bondye?"
"Yes, Bondye, he is our god", eyeing the two of them like they had no business asking such a question.
Unable to shake the queer sensation they were feeling Bostic said, "Let's get out'a here." Lister chugged his remaining beer, crushed his still smoldering cigarette into the handmade ashtray, stood up, "Let's go."
Back on the street, "Which way?"
"We've come this far, let's keep heading east. It can only get better, huh?" challenged Bostic.
The sun was a half hour gone and a black-like shade fell across the landscape. The road narrowed further in the next half of a mile, to the point that only small carts could pass. The path, down which they had staggered in the near darkness, ended at a narrow iron bridge over a sluice, running gray and sluggish as oil, between high banks. They looked around. There was no one else out here, no one at all. It was claustrophobic - light and dark, light and dark, the trees fluttering the darkening sun light into shadows without substance.
On the other bank was a derelict Victorian-style pump house, the bricks tumbled in a disorderly heap beside a stagnant stream, the great wheel half visible through the ruined wall. Beside it was what looked like a tavern lying just above water level. Behind it, the scarred and sullen acres of abandoned fields that stretched to the purple and black of the evening sky. The landscape was saturated by weeks of rain, the grass sour and waterlogged, the trunks of the enormous trees sodden as pulp. It looked like a place on which the sun could never shine.
"Let's check this place out," said Lister.
As their feet rang on the iron bridge drums begin to play a festive but dark beat. All around them the undergrowth seemed to sway and dance, whispering in the echoes of the wind like disturbed voices.
They approached what passed as a front door, across a graveled area pooled with gray water and layered in flattened beer cans. The structure was oblong, built of cinder blocks and some wood with a corrugated roof the color of an old nickel. There was no back wall. In the center was a poto mitan, center pole, near which a mambo, the woman priest was crying for order. Most people had B.O. Bostic and Lister's noses felt like they had been snorting Drano. Staring wide-eyed, the sailors wondered out loud what kind of secret society they had stumbled onto.
Keeping to the shadows of the cracked wall, Bostic whispered, "What the fuck is this?"
"Shit-if-I-know. Shut up and watch," ordered Lister.
They both knew these people were a superstitious lot and didn't like outsiders. There were forty or fifty locals surrounding by an outside ring of flaming torches. The mambo appeared to be calling for the blessings of Bondye. Speaking in tongues, she then appealed to the Loa, the various spirits of family members. These are the spirits of the major forces of the universe - good, evil, reproduction, health, all aspects of daily life. Loa can interact with the people of the earth. The louder the drums, the harder the sailor's hearts seemed to pound.
The drums changed cadence and everyone began to dance, a dance that was both majestic as well as suggestive. Bostic and Lister slid into a darkened corner near a unused rustic window frame, there eyelids unblinking like reptiles on a flat rock.
The mambo again spoke, louder like she was barking orders. Several people broke from the crowd and danced near the center alter-like table. The two sailors didn’t know it at the time, but these people had been mounted by Loa and been given messages.
The drumming increased in intensity, the dancing more agitated as a hounganikon, responsible for directing the music and motion, led the madness. Several Hounsi, serving ladies dressed in white, were readying the alter for the service. Men and women began to disrobe, flinging their clothing into the brush.
Trying to moisten his mouth, Bostic choked, "Do you believe this shit?"
Lister said, "What is she doing?"
At that moment, four men appeared carrying a goat hanging upside down from a stout tree trunk, its four legs tied with thick straw-like grass. The drums grew louder. The Muxmen began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs, like being stalked by someone who doesn’t exist. As they laid the goat, grunting, squealing, and wiggling to get free, on the alter the dancing throng started chanting in tongues - a rhythmic chant that was dark and haunting. The Hounsi touched the goat with white linens and fern-like leaves, waving them back and forth over the agitated animal. The drums grew louder still. The mambo, in a flash, produced a two-foot machete, holding it high, carving circles in the night air while chanting at the top of her lungs.
Bostic groaned, "Oh fuck!"
The frenzied dancing became filled with rage and violence, demanding, fierce. The Hounsi wrapped themselves in red ceremonial cloth. The drumming became off-beat and syncopated. Wide-eyed, the two watch as the machete was driven across the goat's neck with one violent swing, decapitating it. It’s head rolling off the alter, bouncing into the dirt. The animal's arterial artery jetted blood into the mob in pulsating arcs.
Lister, grapping Bostic's arm, yelled, "Let's get the fuck out of here!"
The two jumped and crawled through the ancient window frame, crashing on top of each other on the outside. Simultaneously the drumming came to an abrupt halt. The silence was deafening. They froze in place, holding their breath, afraid to make a move.
From the direction of the ceremony, a barely audible rhythmic slow chant emerged. Bostic was the first to move. Up and running, with Lister on his heels, he headed to the far edge of the graveled clearing. Spotting three figures near the bridge, they turned, cut through the forest in an attempt to circle around behind them, driven by a strong sense of someone else in the forest.
Fighting their way through the underbrush, scratched and cutup, they stopped to catch their breath. Their imagination on an adrenaline overdose, they heard something. Wheeling about, they scanned the trees around them, but there was no one to be seen through the tangle of undergrowth and trunks. No one living anyway. Lister was about to speak when they heard a rustling in the brush about ten feet to their left. Then a faint moan. The hairs on the back of their necks stood stiffly against their collars. Peering into the night, a thin shaft of moonlight fell on what looked like a leg. A leg dressed in a Navy uniform.
Cranking their necks to see if they were alone, they cautiously approaching the prone figure. Pulling the brush back slightly, there on the ground was none other than Chief Smalls. Drugged, disoriented, and in big trouble. What the pair weren't aware of was he had ingested tetrodotoxin powder used for zombification. His uniform was muddy and smeared with blood. His face and hands bruised, swollen, and bleeding. He moaned again like he was catching his breath.
The Chief, drunk as a skunk, had stumbled into the same bar that Bostic and Lister had frequented earlier. Whereas the two had not made any comments about Bondye, the local's god, Chief Small had loudly proclaimed that the bartender could take his beloved Bondye and stick it up his Trinidad-ass. The next drink the Chief ordered had a slight milky color to it but he was too drunk to notice. That was the last thing he remembered.
"Holy shit!" cursed Bostic. "Let's get the hell out of here!"
"We can't leave him here," explained Lister. "Come on help me get him up."
Still cursing, Bostic grabbed Chief Small under one arm, Lister the other. They hauled the big man to his feet. His eyes fluttered, open slightly. He tried to speak. The gravel in his voice could have filled MT 51's magazine. He looked over at Bostic with drug-laden eyes and slurred, "Spent most of my life tryin' to decide whether to shit or go blind. Guess I’ve decided."
"Can it Chief, we've got to get you out of here, and fast," said Lister. There was a sound behind them, they whirled, almost dropping the Chief. Nothing. They continued circling, slowing closing on the bridge. The sound of a footfall somewhere behind them. Now that they had considered the possibility that someone from the ceremony might follow them, they were sure that they hadn’t imagined it. The forest was intimidating, with that ominous feeling of something there that was not natural, not human.
Keep moving. Again. This time the sound was nearer. They turned quickly, listening for the shuffle of feet in the dead leaves and broken twigs. Instead they heard a bird-like shrill, almost human, but not human. With renewed energy, they took off, half dragging, half carrying Chief Small, the toes of his shoes carving the damp soil like a moldboard plow.
Nearing the edge of the wash, close to the bridge, they stopped to catch their breath. Watching. The earlier figures were gone from the bridge. With one last gulp of breath, they struck out across the bridge as fast as they could, dragging the Chief between them. They didn't stop until they were in the eastern part of town where they’d drank their last drink. The streets were lit by a couple lamps that glowed inside the mist with a dirty iridescence. Ignoring the generous offers from the last of the lingering local talent, the hauled ass straight towards city center, the pier, and the safety of Mullinnix.
_______________
(23 April) There were a number of other changes in the crew's roster. A few sailors finally caught up with their ship in Venezuela and a number of shipmates completed their duty and flew back to the states with LCDR Murray. There was one other transfer as well. Several weeks before leaving Norfolk, Chief Small's only first class petty officer had requested recruiter duty in his home state. His orders finally arrived, but with no replacement. Small had a rather large division and only three second class petty officers to fill the void in his change-of-command. At quarters that morning, Small dumbfounded everyone by announcing that second class Kevin Bostic would, effectively immediately, be his second in command. Taking orders from Bostic would be the same as taking orders from the Chief himself. "Any questions?" challenged Small. "No? Then I want to see balls-to-the wall, we have a lot to get done! Dismissed!"
