A Midnight Run in Tobago

Photographer Allan Weisbecker makes a suprise midnight run in Tobago

Islands, I’ve found, are good for dreaming, and Tobago is a doozie. It’s a delightfully surreal montage of lush, Rousseauesque flora, with basketball-sized papaya, avocado and coconuts, the sky above a canopy of evolving pastels, colours of hallucinatory richness. Cunning geckos, squeaking insects, crowing roosters, warbling birds …

Tap tap tap . . .

And oh, a woodpecker, calmly probing the trunk of a faraway palm.

Tap tap tap!

OK, a not so faraway palm.

TAP TAP TAP!

Hey, lighten up, pal. Come to think of it, what’s a woodpecker doing in this dream anyway? Woodpeckers are northern birds.

BAM BAM BAM!

The darnn thing is hanging on my door now.

“Allan!”

A talking woodpecker? How does he know my name?

“It’s time”

The woodpecker is starting to sound like my next-door neighbour, who’s known as McGuyver.

“Ann Marie is going to give birth.”

It’s McGuyver all right, a rude intruder on the dreamscape, mumbling some nonsense about –

“Can you give us a ride to the hospital?”

I’m awake now, at least I think I’m awake, and groping for my pants, but I’m all tangled up in something, a spider’s web it feels like, and boy do I hate spiders. No, it’s the mosquito net over my bed. Thrashing and stumbling, I make it to the door and throw it open, pants half on, no shirt, the shards of my mosquito net trailing behind.

McGuyver is standing on my porch smiling apologetically. A few feet behind him Ann Marie looms in the moony halflight, dainty little Ann Marie, big as a house now, holding her swollen belly.

“Ann Marie,” I manage to say, hastily buttoning up my pants. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Allan,” she replies calmly. “But it’s time.”

“Well, then,” I say, not so calmly. I’ll have to find my car keys.”

“Yes, Allan, that’s right.”

In situations throughout my life where cool-headed, decisive action is called for, I do two things in quick succession. First I freeze up, then, when that doesn’t work, I panic.

“Allan! ” McGuyver is still standing calmly in the doorway as I start a wild-eyed ransacking of my rented house.

“Not now!” I reply, rummaging through the refrigerator. “The keys are around here somewhere!”

“The keys are in the car,” says McGuyver. “I checked.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” I respond impatiently. “Let’s go! ”

With McGuyver and Ann Marie safely bundled up in the back seat, I fire up the car, back into the chicken coop, then plough headlong through the tomato patch. For some reason I’m having a difficult time finding the driveway.

“Maybe you should turn on the headlights, Allan,” McGuyver suggests.

“Good idea,” l croak, hitting the switch. “Yes, yes. That’s much better.” As we hit the bottom of the driveway and careen onto Black Rock Trace, I glance uneasily in the rear view mirror, wondering if Ann Marie and McGuyver have noticed that I’m a trifle nervous. Ann Marie, God bless her, reaches out and touches my shoulder reassuringly.

“Don’t worry, Allan, you’re going to be just fine,” she says.

“I hope so,” I respond, my voice cracking. “I really hope so.”

Later that night at Scarborough Hospital, Ann Marie gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

Allan Weisbecker, a frequent visitor to Tobago from New York, is also doing fine.

Funding provided by the 11th EDF Regional Private Sector Development Programme Direct Support Grants Programme.
The views expressed on this website are those of the the authors and do not reflect those of the Direct Support Grants Programme.

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