The Chickcharnies

The Chickcharnies are mythical beasts — sort of airborne leprechauns — who, according to native legend, inhabit Andros Island in the Bahamas. If you’re nice to them, they can be mighty nice back. But if you cross them, they’ll put a hex on you. The story told by my script is about an actual, world-famous historical figure who went to Andros Island in his youth to start a plantation and ran afoul of the Chickcharnies (pronounced chik-CHAR-knees). This, the natives still insist to this day, had disastrous results not only for him but the world at large. This is a kind of reality-based dark fantasy with a surprise ending and a cautionary message — when on another man’s turf, tamper with his belief system at your peril. The story begins ordinarily enough in a stand of tall scrub pines on Andros Island in the Bahamas in 1891. A white man, 22, and a black man, about 30, are addressing two dozen black men, armed with axes and machetes. The white, who the natives address as “Mistah Chimblin,” is an Englishman and the owner of the plantation the men will be working on. The black by his side, Joshua, is his trusted manager. The field is full of tall, slender pine trees, all of them ram-rod straight except three in the near distance. These lean in toward one another, their tops commingling. They resemble a huge tripod. After a moment, we are viewing all these men from the tops of the tripod trees. The branches shake eerily and mysteriously (with appropriate music) as if someone — or something — has become physically agitated while watching the men. The Englishman and his black manager will soon set the workers to cutting down the pines, so sisal, the plant used back then to make rope, can be planted. After weeks, the field is finally cleared of the pines — but for the aforementioned three “tripod” trees — which the natives refuse to fell, insisting they hold a Chickcharnies nest. Even his manager won’t do it, so the Englishman cuts them down himself. Five years elapse. And the young Englishman is forced to concede to his father that the sisal crop has failed. “Do the men blame me for the failure?” the Englishman asks his manager. “No, Mistah Chimblin, they blame the Chickcharnies.” But the manager doesn’t blame them. He points out that all the sisal plantations on the island failed. “No, Mr. Chimblin, the Chickcharnies have not begun to wreak their vengeance upon you. When they make you fail, it will be at something far more important than this, and there will be no other causes to blame it on — the Chickcharnies will see to that. You'll have only yourself to blame.” We flash forward to a movie theater in September, 1939. We are watching a newsreel entitled, "The German attack on Poland!” and hear the narrator speak. “In a massive, unprovoked attack, German forces invaded Poland last week. Three days later, Britain and France, honoring their treaty commitments to Poland, declared war on Germany. It hardly seems possible that just one year ago....” Some newsreel footage from 1938 now appears on the screen, showing a small "British Airways" plane of the late '30s stopped on a runway. A man in his late 60s emerges. The narrator continues: “British Prime Minister, the Right Honorable Neville Chamberlain, returns from his historic meeting in Munich with the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.” Although now 40 years on, it is obvious that we last saw this man when he was parting ways with his manager on Andros Island. The young Englishman the natives, in their lilting island patois called "Mistah Chimblin," was the future pre-war prime minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain. The Englishman/Neville Chamberlain steps forward and speaks into the newsreel microphones. “I have here in my hand ... (waving a piece of paper) ... the agreement Herr Hitler and I signed last night. It reads, in part, as follows: ‘We regard this agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again ... and thus to assure the peace of Europe.’” OVER BLACK. SUPER: The day England declared war on Germany, Neville Chamberlain spoke before the House of Commons. “Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed in ruins.... I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been reestablished.” SUPER: Chamberlain resigned as prime minister in favor of Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940. SUPER: Neville Chamberlain died six months later. He did not live long enough to see the Allies even begin to turn the tide against Hitler and Nazi Germany. FADE TO BLACK.