Mac’s father Bluesy was an uneducated man who could neither read nor write, yet he had a way with words that planted vivid images in your mind when he spoke. He was a kind, generous man who would give the shirt off his back to a stranger in need, and the entire Island knew and loved him. He was the local sailmaker, and his loft was located directly below our house on Family Hill at Belmont.
One day Bluesy arrived for lunch to hear Mac and Nolly discussing a man who had cheated another, and on learning who they were talking about he exclaimed, “Aw Jaysus Christ, dat man shite out he heart when he born!”. This is just an example of the way Bluesy could use words to create images, to this day I visualize a little baby shitting its heart out at birth!
Greenpeace descended on Bequia after learning it was the only place in the Americas still permitted to hunt whales. A special dispensation had been issued by the International Whaling Commission because of Bequia’s indigenous past, giving the Island an Aboriginal Subsistence quota of four whales per year. The International Whaling Commission is the global body charged with the conservation of whales and the management of whale hunting, and Greenpeace wanted to see the little Island that had been granted permission to kill humpbacks.
The Greenpeace contingent heard about a man named Lincoln Simmons who butchered the whales once they had been caught, and found him at work in his sail loft. Bluesy was the only man left on Bequia who knew how to flense a whale, and he did so with skill and pride. He once told me that sitting inside a whale made him feel like a young man, and he was always willing to drop whatever he was doing in the sail loft when a whale was brought ashore at Petit Nevis.
Greenpeace had decided before they entered the sail loft that Bluesy was a wicked man, and badgered him relentlessly for quite some time. My father-in-law just sat and listened as they told him about his cruelty to animals, and what a terrible thing it is to kill a whale. They described his flensing as despicable, that it was a senseless act against an endangered species. Bluesy did not try to defend himself by pointing out that the people of Bequia used every bit of the whales they hunted and that it was subsistence fishing that had been handed down for generations. Bluesy just sat and listened to the Greenpeace members rant.
One man finally said, “Well?? What do you have to say for yourself??” Bluesy replied, “All I can say is you all must be ignorant”. “Ignorant?” replied the man, “What do you mean by that?”. Bluesy said, “You all must be ignorant and not listen to the radio. They killing PEOPLE in Haiti and they ain’t even eat dem”.
Yes, Bluesy really had a way with words that planted vivid images in your mind!