The constable arrived within the hour. He browsed Papá’s tools with a seedy admiration, fingering the extra kitchen knives and massaging the nails Papá kept in the same biscuit tin from which the Rendóns ate the night the English invaded the island.
“Demas is the name?” The constable said Papá’s name as if it should rhyme with erase rather than toss. “Can you read?”
“Spanish, sir, yes.”
“So you can’t read.”
“I read Spanish words, sir.”
“Do you? Do you? You never read the Bible.”
“Yessir, I have. In Spanish.” Papá said this, though he now knew the constable was not interested in his answers.
“Certainly you heard o’ Tubal-Cain?” the constable said in his very heavy English accent. “Descendant of Cain? Cain who spawned a lower caste of beast on earth?” The constable lifted an axe from a hook in the wall. The felling axe served as a model for Papá’s clients to describe the customized elements of their orders. It was a shining example of the superiority of his work, with its tapered head and perfect weight distribution. The constable stroked the flat side of the blade, clasped the curved handle. “He was a blacksmiff too. Very strong. Very wicked.”
“He was also a chemist, sir.”
The constable bit down upon his tongue; his jaw jutted back and forth. He walked with the axe to the furnace and wiggled his fingers over the cooled coals. “You’ll soon leave off sayin’ that, ’cause it’s a fact that blacksmiffs make weapons of war. And you could be charged wif breaching the peace.” The constable held the axe against the furnace wall for some time before returning to the counter where Papá braced himself and hoped the constable might set the axe upon its proper nail, demand that he pay a fine and be done with him.
But Papá also knew hope to be a distraction for the hopeless.
“And if blacksmiffs are on the wrong side o’ the war”—the constable gripped the axe as if he saw before him a cadaverous tree—“then thems be the enemy.” He brought the axe down with such great force that it took Papá’s thumb as if it were a single hair in a virulent tidal wave.
Papá never spoke of the pain. The English took most of his tools, leaving him with only nine fingers and remnants of a business he’d built over twenty years. Before leaving, the constable had placed next to Papá’s bloodied hand a calfskin scroll from which Papá could make no sense. He warned Papá that the new governor, Picton, would be reviewing all assets held and taxes unpaid by coloreds and Negroes in the coming months.
7
1803
It took six months for the Rendóns to begin again. They had been forced to sell two fine-haired colts sired by Maravilloso and made smaller the horse stalls to ensure room enough in the stable for what little remained of Papá’s supplies. Papá didn’t know what the English would do next. With the cruelty of Spanish laws at their disposal, the English were impugning people for the most minor crimes. Beheadings, brandings, mutilations were becoming the norm. Papá knew that in every country they’d overtaken, the English goal was to whip up enough fear so that the order created from it would serve their ultimate intention of ensuring the greatest financial benefits to the homeland. Many of Papá’s customers feared the repercussions of continuing to patronize his business, so Papá had to set out to the sugar mills, cotton mills, coffee mills, distilleries to hire himself out. What he learned at these places was that raw goods would soon be hit with a heavy tax and that the English intended to turn all the inhabitants of Trinidad into purchasers of English manufactured goods. All sugarcane would be processed on the island, shipped to England, and returned to the island for sale. This would be true for every crop, and the English intended to twist the arms of the small farmers first.
Papá, of course, was no longer himself. Rosa was certain that even if he wished to be, that that self could never again be found. He never complained, for he was not a complaining sort, but anger swelled within him, like mist, clipping sentences, impeding joy.
Mamá, too, had grown weary, sickly with listlessness and a need for vengeance that none had seen prior. When news of the constable’s raid spread and people became convinced that the Rendón family was near its end, Mamá’s friends stopped calling. Men she passed along the road no longer tipped their hats, and workingwomen who’d once respected her avoided her eyes. Mamá wished for her neighbors to grow angry alongside her, for the English had taken from all of them—they had taken the pride of their merchant community and unsettled one of its most upstanding families. But none felt the losses as deeply as Mamá, and many mornings Mamá could not rise. And on those mornings Eve took charge, ticking off from a list of directives, until one day, at the start of the New Year, Mamá dressed herself, pinched her cheeks to a full blush, and told Papá that Jeremias was coming for lunch.
“He’s bringing the boy,” she said. “Please dig up a few carrots for the breadfruit stew and pick a tomato, even if it’s not fully ripe.”
“I’m gointa meet with Cordoza. I can’t be sure I’ll return in time to eat.”
“You will,” Mamá said.
“The carrots are too young.”
“I need them before you go.”
Rosa had not seen Jeremias since the night after the constable’s raid, when he’d come offering little Pierre as a balm for Papá’s quiet fury. After, Jeremias would only drop off the boy, who by then was five years, leaving before forced to initiate a conversation with anyone but Mamá. Pierre’s visits, however, soothed everyone, but most especially Rosa, who looked forward to taking Pierre to sit upon the great horses. After Mamá would give him his bowl of dessert crème, Pierre, with his excitement growing, would wipe his dirtied face and call out for Rosa by the name he’d invented when he was too young to know better. “Rotha!” he would shout. Rosa loved Pierre’s thin voice, loved the way he reached out to her as if nothing could satiate him more. He had taken her place as the youngest in the family, and she had dubbed Pierre the new Quite a Bit of Fun.
The afternoon Jeremias came, lunch was light and unsatisfying, though no one dared speak on it. And the talk about the table was as stiff and insipid as the bland stew of green plantains they’d eaten. After, Papá and Jeremias, who had yet to exchange a word, sucked stalks of sugarcane, while Pierre, with one long-tongued lick, consumed the single spoon of dessert crème that Mamá, with great shame, had offered him.
“Rotha!” Pierre called out, but Jeremias pinned the boy down at the hips.
Pierre, who had a slighter build than any child on either side of the family, squirmed beneath his father’s grip. “Non! I want to go!”
“But why not?” Mamá said to Jeremias. “He loves to ride with Rosa.”
The boy, now sulking, climbed atop Rosa’s lap like a Quite a Bit of Fun boy was apt to do when heartbroken.
“It’s not good to have a tired child near horses,” Jeremias said. “He hasn’t slept well for a few nights.” Jeremias gave the boy a stern glance, then rose from his seat while Rosa worked not to show her disappointment. “The stew is good, Mamá.”
Jeremias scraped the pot’s remains into his bowl. Leftovers had always been for Papá, but Mamá said nothing to discourage Jeremias, who ate what was left while standing, glancing at Pierre’s hair that lay flat and shiny like wet fawn fur.
“Papá, Monsieur DeGannes told me he has been hoping to speak with you,” Jeremias said. “He says he has some business to discuss.”
Mamá looked to Papá, her eyes in a squint of query. “Since when have you had business with DeGannes?”
Papá glanced up from his near-empty bowl, an expression of too-tired-to-talk upon his face. “The man knows I’m right here. He can find me if he wants.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” Mamá said.
“DeGannes may be lazy but the man knows people, and I need the people he knows to know me, Myra.” Papá sighed as if to let Mamá know he was growing impatient. “But now is not the time for this, is it? You have a guest.”
“
Your son is not a guest.” Mamá turned to Jeremias, as if she needed to mop up the mess of his feelings. “Next time, bring Francine. We are family. You and she are both welcome.”
“Merci, Mamá. I know,” Jeremias said. “Francine has been quite ill.”
“Did you give her the tea I gave you? People come all the way from town for my tea,” Mamá said. “I gave you enough for the whole nine months. Has she been drinking it? She shouldn’t be sick for this long. The baby’s coming in what? Two, three months? She should be feeling better soon.”
“The baby’s gone.” Jeremias watched Rosa and Pierre mash carrots into the tabletop. “We buried it yesterday.”
“Eh-eh? You buried it? You buried what yesterday?” Mamá roped her apron hem between her fingers.
“The baby. Une fille.”
“The child is dead? Did you christen her? Was Padre José present? You’re just now telling me this? After lunch? Un jour plus tard?”
Papá sat quiet, his arms folded before the empty bowl, as his stomach grumbled. Like Mamá, he too had lost a great deal of weight. His hair grew now like tarnished silver.
“Mamá, forgive me.” Jeremias set his bowl down and knelt before Mamá, his hands clasped between her knees. “Francine had to push the child out. And we just couldn’t keep it there. It was making Francine so upset. Still, she can’t keep from bawling.”
Mamá concealed her eyes with one hand and stroked her son’s cheek with the other. She could forgive Jeremias, even for burying the child without proper rites, but Mamá could never forgive Francine for not doing everything possible to keep that baby. “If only Francine had taken the tea,” Mamá would say later. Mamá never told Jeremias that the tea was intended to lift the curse that Mamá swore was upon that marriage.
Eve took Jeremias’s hand and led him back to his chair. She sat beside him while Rosa distracted Pierre, flicking another carrot toward him.
“Things are very hard,” Jeremias said.
Papá stared at Mamá, as if seeking her permission to speak. “For everybody,” Papá said.
“Ever since those English arrived …,” Mamá added. “They are a blight on this country. The roads are better, yes, but I can feel evil on the wind. Do you remember when they first came? How those soldiers left that Negro woman and her child for dead? They received only a few lashes for that crime. But they found the woman’s stolen goods in their barracks. The Spaniards would’ve taken their heads!”
“I thought bookbinding would be profitable,” Jeremias said. “But the English are not interested in books.”
“They are not learned people,” Mamá said.
“Many cannot read, even those who come with titles.”
“I can read!” Pierre said.
“Just because they English, you t’ink they educated? Listenin’ to that fool, DeGannes. He introduced you to the bookbinding fella? You really t’ink there’s a need for a second bookbinder on an island full of illiterates?” Papá rubbed the top of his head, then inspected his hands as if he hoped to find something more than perspiration. “Eh-eh, you expected what outcome?”
“I expected I’d have money to raise a family.” Jeremias paused as if he’d never thought of his dilemma in this way. “Almost six years I’m married and still depending on Tío Byron.”
“If you spit up in the air, it must fall on you,” Papá said. “You made the choice to leave the shop.”
“You lost the shop, Papá. How would my position be any different if I had stayed?”
“You would have a trade.”
“I have a trade. Just not one which you approve.”
“Just not one that allows you to support your family, which is no trade at all. You does always make unwise choices.” Papá glimpsed at Pierre, seeming, suddenly, to regret his words.
“Sí, you are right.” Jeremias pushed back his chair and stretched out his legs like floating logs beneath the table. Rosa remembered the first time she saw him do this. How it seemed that overnight Jeremias had grown taller than Papá. Bigger than anyone she knew. Now he was svelte, a man with half-moons beneath his eyes who always looked as if he felt cheated. “I’m not certain that baby was mine.”
Mamá was still wiping her tears from the news of the dead baby when she began to shake her head, almost violently. That was the sort of talk no longer permitted at her table, in her house; that was the sort of talk that had already caused the ruination of a family and the death of little Cheri (God would open the gates of heaven if a name was chosen, so Mamá had chosen “Cheri”).
“Pierre, can you run and get Mémé an egg from the coop?” she said.
Pierre leapt from Rosa and ran toward the back of the house. Papá waited until the boy was out of sight before he began speaking again. “You bringin’ me this story of dead babies and infidelity so I can pity you? Now you wish for me to let you come home? You ent t’ink I know Byron is catchin’ hell? Heat does be in Byron’s tail.” Papá sneered. “Byron thought that whitish skin of his would make him special? He’s a Negro now, eh? Them English don’t care about allyuh French blood. Not when Byron can’t pay the governor his taxes. He put you up to comin’ here, sí? You playin’ the jackass. Manipulative people … all your mudda’s family is the same.”
“I didn’t come for him,” Jeremias said. “I came por trabajo. I’m willing to work.”
“You kick down the ladder you was climbin’ and now you wanta put it up again?” Papá scoffed at him. “The English want people to buy, not earn a livin’. And if you work, you better work for them or they gointa try to starve you.” Papá reminded Jeremias that the English had begun taxing every import and export at 3 percent, not as much as in other countries, Papá said, but too much for an island with an economy just barely on its feet. “They want me to feed England before I does feed my own family.” Papá placed one finger upon his head. “If this land isn’t run properly, we will lose it. They wanta force small farmers like me into forfeiture so they can put their mills on our land, put us to work in their dirty factories, and have us eating goddamn breadfruit day and night.”
“Demas, please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Mamá said.
“Even if I wanted to give you a place here, this land now belongs to Rosa. She’s worked it. It’s the food she grows that feeds us, and them horses are being kept alive by she alone.”
“But I’m the eldest and your son,” Jeremias said.
“Entonces?” Papá said.
“By law, this land conveys to me.”
“Sí? You t’ink I didn’t study up before now? You t’ink you and DeGannes the only two gente de libros on this island? I does read too.” Papá moved his bowl next to the now empty pot. “A man like me does prepare. That’s what men do, Jeremias. Life doesn’t happen to a prepared man. You shoulda been learnin’ this when you was under this roof instead of lazying around waitin’ for my land to drop into your lap.”
“They won’t let Rosa own land.” Jeremias did not look at Rosa when he spoke her name. When Rosa thought of it, she could not quite remember if he’d ever looked at her straight on. “We don’t even know if they’ll let us own land and we’re men.”
“She will marry.”
“Who will Rosa marry?”
They all knew that what Jeremias wished to say was “who will marry Rosa?” Rosa saw that Papá hurt for her. She didn’t want him to. She felt she could bear it.
“There’ve been inquiries. As many for Rosa as for Eve. I’ve delayed, because Eve is the eldest girl, but she’s too damn choosy,” Papá said. “So I shall not delay with Rosa any longer.”
CREADON RAMPLEY
Leavin Rupert’s Land
Somewhere about 1807 to 1808
I was as free as I knew free to be. I walked for a year or maybe more, comin outta Rupert’s Land then west over the Rockies where I aint knowed much of the time if I was goin or comin.
I wasnt far from the Columbia River when I caught some rabbits and heard that wailin child. A
hand muffled the cry and when I heard a man say, “Dead man walkin,” I stopped right where I was.
The man with the rifle was David Thompson. A rugged lil fella with a scar cross his nose and dark hair sheared into a tipped bowl. He once worked for Hudson’s Bay and thought himself to be a great man of maps and geography and astronomy.
Thompson’s youngest child had got sick. He was a slight boy whose name I cant hardly member. When I got there theyd been camped for some days in a place them Piegans called “dead life,” where at that time of year mountain goats had to feed high and salmon beached on gravel banks.
Thompson was with his three children, his wife and six men. Theyd been ploddin their way toward the Kootenai River cause Thompson had been hired by North West Company to scout land and build tradin posts. His guide had died clutchin his chest and tween the men left there wasnt one decent hunter since theyd slayed a horse and was makin ready a second when I showed with my rabbits.
It was twilight when I started a fire and roasted my catch. Two of the children fell asleep bout as soon as that rabbit touched their lips. The wife, a good-lookin Métis with crowded teeth was holdin the sickly one in the crook of her arm, blowin cool air onto his farhead while Thompson fed himself the biggest cut a my meat.
Thompson chewed and watched me real good til finally he said, “Do you have a compass or are you more adrift than I?” Seemed like he wanted both to be true. Told me he lost his compass but had a sextant and a telescope and a thermometer and parallel glasses “all made by Dollond,” he said, like I knowed what the hell any of that was. I didnt tell him I aint never had no compass and that I wasnt headin no place particular that I needed to find but I figured he could tell that already.
Somehow, the next day I ended up guidin Thompson and his crew onto a hard-to-find trail that somebody would later call “Howse Pass” (after a nother David). Course, if I had knowed then that you could name a piece a dirt after yourself just cause you put your boot on it then the whole damn land mighta been called “Rampleyville.”
Book of the Little Axe Page 12