Wild Coast Read online

  I soon learned that much of this had sprung up in the recent goldrush. But, although Port Kaituma looked like the work of an afternoon, there was a pattern, of sorts. Along the top of the ridge was a rim of rickety churches. They had grandiose names like the Tabernacle of His Glory Revealed and the Assembly of God, and from here the town spread out, in descending levels of sin. First there was a strip of old British army trucks. This is where the miners worked, constantly loading up drums of fuel and roaring off into the bush. Next came the gas-sellers, who were always swearing and drinking and playing cricket in the sludge. Then there were the little people – the prostitutes, pedlars, rappers and junkies – who lived in a sort of human piggery of pens and stalls tumbling down the hill.

  Finally, at the bottom, was the long red scar left by the rails. During my three days in Port Kaituma it was always here that I felt most wary. Each of the rum shops played its own techno, enveloping everything in waves of interlocking sound. It was like being caught in some devastating electronic crossfire. Often people looked as though they’d already been mechanically deafened and now just stood and watched. Once a man who was almost naked came over and screamed at me, waving some wounds in my face. I couldn’t even tell what language he was speaking, but his breath smelled of paint.

  It was quieter up the other end, away from the port. Up here there was a large, clapboard guesthouse – where I stayed – and a matching clapboard shop. They were both owned by an African ironmonger, called Mr Charles. There was also a row of little eateries, each with stools around the stove. The best of these was called BIG D’S FOOD MALL. It was painted toothpaste green, and – instead of techno – it emitted gentle chirrups of gospel choir.

  ‘Big D’ herself – or Denise – was clearly not the woman she once had been. Life was constantly diminishing her. Now she just sat, looking small and surprised. First, she said, she’d lost her schoolfriends, then her husband (to a woman half her age), and then she’d lost a breast. Even now she wondered when the missionary doctors would return and take other bits away. All she had left was her mall and her skinny girls, who hung around like a pack of hungry whippets. I think she liked the idea of a new customer, as though I was somehow reversing the trend. Every mealtime she’d roar when I appeared, and the girls would scatter backwards into the kitchen and return with something new.

  Inevitably we’d talk about Jonestown, and this is the story she told.

  This community was smaller then. We was only thirty families.

  I remember Jonestown well. I was thirteen at the time. It was a real nice place. I visited on Sundays. They had a doctor, who used to see patients there, or you went to relax. It was a nice place, sort of normal. We were always given things to eat, good food like sandwiches. They had a nice band, played mostly church music. And there were persons dancing with snakes. I remember they had a chimpanzee too, called Mr Muggs. We were a bit scared of him. But, man, it was a nice place! Clean. Everyone worked hard. Sometimes, they also gave out foodstuffs, which was very acceptable at that time. We never had enough to eat.

  Yes, I think it was a happy place. I had some friends there who was going to my school. There was Tommy, who was a white kid. I’ll never forget Tommy. And Paddy! She was fat! A lovely girl. I still cry when I think of her. And Derek Lawson, and David George, who was Amerindian, and Jimmy Gale. Jimmy was adopted by the Revd Jones, but I think he died soon after. They seemed happy. It was a happy place, that’s what we thought. Later, I heard terrible things about what happened there, but we never see them.

  I didn’t hear the shooting because I was away at the school. It was a real shock for me, and I couldn’t catch myself. I am still wondering what could spark a man off to do such things.

  I never went back. Never went near it in thirty years. But now I want to, I don’t know why. I’d just like to see it again. Perhaps one day I will.

  While Denise was enjoying the sandwiches and snakes, Debbie Layton had a different tale to tell.

  People still don’t know what to make of the affidavit she swore on her return to the States, or the book she wrote much later. In them she describes an evil dystopia, a plantation of religious slaves. People are beaten, starved, bullied and harangued, and then punished with sex and stupefying drugs. Life is a brutal cycle of denial, and even toothpaste and knickers are banned. Work becomes a way of crushing the spirit, and the day ends at midnight and begins again at three. No one can escape; nobody knows where they are, and they have no passport and no money. Besides, everyone’s an informer, and the forest’s full of guards. Even if defectors do get away, they’ll be hunted for the rest of their lives.

  At the heart of this vision is Jones himself. He’s now fabulously mad and broadcasts six hours a day. There are even loudspeakers out in the fields, so that no one misses a word. As for ‘The Cause’, it’s now whatever he says. One theme, however, seems to recur: we’re surrounded by mercenaries, says Jones, the capitalists are closing in. He makes everyone practise for a grand, communal death. These drills are called ‘White Nights’ and involve little cups of coloured fluid. Refusing to drink this, says Jones, is an anti-revolutionary act, and no one dares to disobey. On the orders of its Prophet, Jonestown dies over and over again.

  In Debbie Layton’s account there’s no room for happiness or jolly Sunday teas. Like their parents, the children are repeatedly made to rehearse the moment they’ll die. Meanwhile, affection is outlawed. Even the youngest children are brutalised and taken from their parents. If they were to survive childhood, they’d never forget it. Often they’re dangled upside down in the well or nailed up in a box and left for days on end. There’s even a chimpanzee in this version, although now he’s a figure of terror.

  For many, Debbie Layton’s story was just too much. People assumed it was imagined. Writing years later, Shiva Naipaul said it was ‘beyond the reach of reason’, and that her Jonestown was an ‘incarnation of comic book evil’. This was a shame, because Layton had a point: something was rotten in this state within a state. When her affidavit was distributed, in June 1978, only one paper ran with the story, The San Francisco Chronicle. Even the US government remained unpersuaded. That year embassy officials paid four visits to Jonestown, and – although they were later criticised for their naivety – they never found anything wrong.

  But there was one man who wanted to investigate further. Leo Ryan was a large, slightly beaverish man with thick grey hair and an aptitude for trouble. Although he’d been a Congressman for years, he’d never quite found his cause. There’d been seal hunts in Newfoundland and abuse in American prisons, but Ryan was often on his own. Now here was something new, the People’s Temple. Soon he became a rallying point for those with relatives in Jonestown. Eventually he made a momentous decision that would change everybody’s life: he’d go out there himself.

  Nothing could persuade him not to go. He received over a hundred letters of warning, and Debbie Layton told him he’d be killed. But Ryan had already made up his mind. When the cult’s lawyers warned him against ‘a witch-hunt’, and threatened the US government with a ‘most embarrassing situation’, Ryan replied that he wasn’t impressed. On 15 November 1978 he arrived in Georgetown with thirteen of the relatives and nine journalists, including an NBC film crew.

  Two days later, they arrived in Port Kaituma.

  As Port Kaituma has only ever had one place to stay, most of the delegation ended up, like me, as guests of the African ironmonger.

  The old clapboard house now made an unusual hotel. It was a brilliant baby-blue, and along the front there were coloured lights and a large pink painting of a couple having sex. The blueness continued inside, although the pink people, it seemed, had long since packed up and gone. These days most of the guests were miners, Rastafarians with Amerindian girlfriends who padded around like cats. I always liked these miners. They were friendly and reckless and gave themselves nursery rhyme names, such as King Charley and the Golden Cat. They were like drop-outs in reverse, people who’d run a
way to lose themselves in work.

  ‘My father was a gold miner once,’ said Kenwin, the owner’s son.

  ‘But the money was better in iron?’ I ventured.

  Kenwin said nothing. He was unhappy. If his older brother hadn’t killed a man in Georgetown, he wouldn’t be here at all. He was a geologist and saw his life in stone, anywhere but here. He also knew he’d never be the man his father was. Before Mike Charles disappeared – to rescue his beleaguered heir – he’d been the biggest man in Port Kaituma. Not only was he an ironmonger but he also owned a transport business. ‘And he ran the trucks for Jonestown,’ said Kenwin.

  ‘And what about this place?’ I asked.

  ‘Also his,’ he replied. ‘Used to be a nightspot, called the Weekend Disco.’

  My room, as I soon discovered, had been built on the old dance floor. The walls were so thin and impromptu that, where they’d cracked, I had an unwelcome view of the room next door. At night I could hear my neighbour breathing and muttering in his sleep. It was almost as though the walls weren’t there any more, and we were lying on the dance floor – just as the Americans had, thirty years earlier.

  For the journalists it had been a pointless day. There was almost nothing to report. Soon after they’d arrived in Port Kaituma, Kenwin’s father had driven them out to Jonestown. It had taken an hour and a half, and they’d arrived in the dark. Jones’s wife had greeted them, and they’d all eaten sausages and sung the Guyanese national anthem. Congressman Ryan was impressed. Then Jones himself had appeared. He was eccentric but not obviously deranged. He’d said things like, ‘I understand hate. Love and hate are very close.’ The only troubling aspect of the evening was that – although he’d let Ryan stay the night – he made the reporters leave. Mike Charles had driven them all back in his truck, and had put them up at the Weekend Disco.

  That night, on the dance floor, the journalists drank and smoked and slept. One of them, Charles Krause, of the Washington Post, recorded his frustration. He didn’t believe the stories about beatings and automatic weapons. ‘I couldn’t understand,’ he wrote, ‘why there had been such fuss.’ His colleagues agreed. It had been a wasted day. What they didn’t know was that – for three of them – it would also be their last.

  At ten the next morning, Saturday 18 November 1978, Mike Charles drove them back again to Jonestown. Now they could see it in the light: a camp of neat white huts, with nurseries and classrooms, a large tin pavilion sitting in the middle. Another ordinary day threatened. There was no evidence of maltreatment or starvation, and Krause even found himself admiring the cult. It wasn’t much of a story.

  But then things took a different turn. Jones appeared, looking sickly and aggressive. When accusations were put to him, he would flare up with rage and self-pity. ‘That’s rubbish! I’m defeated!’ he’d wail, ‘I might as well die!’ Then people started to cry, and some of the families said they wanted to leave. Jones was now at breaking point, and in the tension a man appeared with a knife. He made a lunge at Ryan but was overpowered and cut himself, spraying Ryan with his blood. It was time to go.

  As Ryan prepared to leave, it was agreed he could take fifteen defectors with him. Jones gave them each their passports and a small bundle of cash. Then, when they were all aboard the truck, Debbie Layton’s brother Larry stepped forward and said he too wanted to leave. No one stopped him.

  Soon the truck was off. This time it was heading straight for the Port Kaituma airstrip. They must have made a curious sight: the weeping defectors; the reporters, unsure of what they’d seen, and a congressman spattered in blood. Did a flight from paradise always feel like this? And did it taste of sick and fear? No one seemed to know what to think any more.

  Nor did they realise that Larry had a gun in his pocket, and that behind them was another truck and a tractor with a trailer. On board were half a dozen men armed with the Prophet’s own peculiar brand of madness, and automatic rifles.

  For those that know this story – and perhaps live it every day – it now unfolds like a collision in slow motion. The impact will be catastrophic not because events happen quickly but because of their terrifying momentum. It’s like watching a railway line from above, and the ponderous piston action of two locomotives as they billow towards each other, gradually closing the gap. In the carnage that follows, you find yourself asking, what’s the last point at which this could have been prevented? And then you look down the line and there’s nothing there to see.

  One man who’d lived most of his life with this scene was Big D’s uncle. Fitz Duke had a face of sun-scorched hardwood, and his goatee was wiry and white like a clump of platinum filaments. One of his thumbs was missing, and he wore huge shorts and a pair of industrial boots that made tracks like a tank. But despite his demanding appearance, he was a man of reluctant words. At first I thought it was me, but then I began to realise that most things left Duke candidly unmoved. I now wonder whether it was the events of that November that had done this, and whether the shock of having felt so much so suddenly had now left him emotionally inert.

  My second morning he agreed to drive me down to the airstrip. It was only a mile away, along a road of brilliant crimson. As he drove, I tried to assemble a conversation from syllables and grunts. But then we turned through a gap in the forest, bounced through some barbed wire gates and there before us lay the airstrip. It was here that Congressman Ryan and his party had come to meet their two small planes.

  The sight of this weirdly open space had an immediate effect on Duke. He suddenly began to talk as though all the different strands of thought had now been gathered up as one. He told me where the planes had stood, where Ryan had waited, where the villagers had assembled to watch the planes, and where the gunmen had appeared, through the same barbed wire gate. At this point I suddenly realised that not only had Duke seen what happened next, but that it was all still like a film inside his head. ‘They shouted that they had a sick person on board,’ he said, ‘and then their tractor drove between the planes …’

  What followed is like the clippings off the editor’s floor, a series of events in uncertain order. A tarpaulin flies back, and six armed men appear. There’s smoke and a cackle of gunfire. Tyres explode with a perfunctory plop, and there’s the ding and thwap of holes bursting in aluminium and in human tissue. A camera whirrs blankly at the sky, its operator gone. Ryan too looks different now, with part of his head swept away. A man called Big Anthony is firing a machine gun from the tractor, expertly selecting Americans and punching them down. The dead look like rag dolls caught in a moment of flight. A diplomat is stumbling through the hail shouting ‘Get me a gun! Get me a fucking weapon!’, and the jungle clatters back. Larry the impostor pulls out his gun, but it jams, and he’s beaten to the ground. There are hats and shoes in the dirt as the villagers flee for the trees. Krause the reporter is tucked behind a wheel and can feel his teeth cracking, as he wonders if he’s already dead. Then suddenly it stops.

  ‘They’d accomplished their mission,’ said Duke, ‘they’d killed Ryan.’

  They’d also killed three newsmen and a dissident, and had left five others badly wounded. The bigger of the two planes no longer worked, and the pilots then took the smaller one and fled. The survivors were now alone. As the gunmen sped off down the road, people began to emerge from the trees and dragged the wounded clear. One of them had an arm that was hanging on only by a thread. ‘And we also found the camera, still running,’ said Duke. ‘We didn’t know what to do with it. We’d never seen one before.’

  There would be no more planes that night; it was dark and – just as now – the runway had no lights. The nearest settlement was a mining post at the end of the airstrip, called Citrus Grove. But despite its winsome name, there was little there, and it was better known as Bottom Floor. All that the survivors found were a few shacks and a grog-shop called the Rum House. Here the dozen or so Americans would spend the most frightening night of their lives, listening to cries of pain and the sound of a tropic
al forest screaming itself to sleep.

  But it wasn’t just that they were alone. ‘As the killers left,’ explained Duke, ‘one of them shouted, “We’ll be back for Port Kaituma”.’

  Bottom Floor has never forgotten that evening either. Little there had changed, except that the Rum House had long since burned down. There were the same lemon trees, the same stilted shacks and the same shadowy lanes. One woman I spoke to said she’d never been back to watch the planes, and that she dreamed about the killings almost every night. I also tracked down a lemon-seller called Poppy Speed. People told me he’d been playing football on the airstrip that day, and that he’d caught a bullet in the thigh. I found him hobbling around his trees, and I asked him to tell me his tale. His eyes narrowed, and his hands began to tremble. ‘How long will it take?’ he murmured.

  ‘Whatever you like,’ I said. ‘Five minutes?’

  ‘Five minutes is a long time …’ he said blankly, ‘but OK.’

  Then I pulled out my Dictaphone, and he turned and fled up his ladder.

  ‘I’m not saying nothing!’ he cried, ‘Not now! Not ever!’

  I suddenly felt guilt rise and catch me in the throat. ‘I’m really sorry …’

  But he’d gone, and all I could hear was him crying like a child.

  Duke wasn’t surprised by this, when I got back to his jeep.

  ‘People here are still frightened,’ he said. ‘They don’t know what happened, or who anyone is. They hardly ever seen any white men before. The only ones they saw were people from the Temple, who then starts killing them. Are you surprised they’re still afraid?’