Coffee and Sugar

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It’s much better than I expected. The church is looking really good. We are in a great area, nice neighborhood; a lot of people are really looking to me for spiritual guidance. It’s just a matter of time now really. I’ll be sending money to you shortly. Yes, Joao is fine. You know, he is keeping himself busy. I don’t know, just being busy, doing his coffee. Well, you can tell him that yourself. Ok well, I’ll tell him for you. How’s the farm? And the service? Relax, I have to get my church set up before I try for television, but soon ok? It’s just a sore tooth, I’ll get it fixed. Because it doesn’t bother me that’s why. Well then, that’s very brave of you isn’t it? Listen I have to go. Do you want to speak to Joao? Ok then” said The Bishop, passing the receiver to Joao who stood wide eyed beside him, longing to tell of his adventures to his mother.

  “Hello Mother,” he said before The Bishop clasped his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver, looking Joao sternly in the eye and speaking in godlike reverence.

  “You mention nothing about last night to Mother” he said, wiping the blood away from his chin and easing himself towards his bed; wincing and limping through every step, cursing all and sundry under his breath as he hobbled past the kitchen towards the darkness of his quarters; hidden behind a sheet of red cloth.

  “No whores” yelled Mother into the phone before hanging up abruptly.

  Joao placed the receiver gently onto the table and walked solemnly towards his father’s room, resting his face lightly against the red cloth, his breath causing it to flutter lightly as his fingers turned over the bend in the wall and urged him forwards to mend his father’s broken spirit.

  “Sir, I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do” said Joao, trailing off with the sound of his father shuddering through every pained step until the old man was out of sight, cowering under his covers, drenched in shame and fueled by violated rage.

  “I could have taken care of it. You should have just left well enough alone” said The Bishop.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t drink as much.”

  The Bishop snorted.

  “Sir,” said Joao correcting himself.

  The Bishop lay curled in a ball like a sulking child but still spoke to Joao as if, even in this state, his son were less than him; his own child, less than his most fervent disgrace.

  “You’re bad luck Joao. I should have brought your brother.”

  “Which one?” asked Joao.

  “I don’t know. The tall one, thingy-me-bob, you know, what’s his name” said The Bishop.

  It was never easy to hear his father struggling to put a name to one of his children. Joao felt like a slightly bigger spoon in a row of spoons.

  “Maybe I could look for work,” Joao said.

  “Your work is with the church.”

  “But we need money. For those men and to send to Mother. She’s expecting us to send her money” Joao said.

  “You just do what you’re supposed to do. You let me worry about Mother” said The Bishop, falling asleep on the last syllable.

  The next morning played like the many mornings that followed. The Bishop moved not a foot from his mattress, hidden in the dark, refusing to come out into the light, speaking only through low grunts when his glass ran dry, finding peace only when consciousness became foreign to him.

  Joao did little except clean his mess and keep a strange order about the church, unsure what to say to make The Bishop feel better. The only thing he could think of doing was something he hadn`t done in a long time; not since they had arrived in the city.

  Nothing could cure a man`s pain than to well in his reflection and what better way than with a perfect coffee.

  Joao smiled to himself.

  It wouldn`t bring them money, but it would lift his father`s spirits and hopefully take him from this daily, darkened prison where he drank himself into oblivion.

  He went into the kitchen and took the coffee powder and boiling water and sat down on the floor where his father had been attacked. He lay down where his father had laid, looking where his father had looked and he closed his eyes and imagined what bitter memory he must be trying to blur in his mind.

  And the vision that came to him was of The Bishop; no younger than he, being brushed aside by swift busied hands that had no time to favour his musings or stories over the pressing need to whip a tired and worn ox in circles; his brother, slapping at the beast`s arse with his bare hands every time its legs pardoned to fail or begged upon a moment`s respite, turning like the hands of a clock in burning sand while his brethren; their backs kissed with cancerous sores, fed fields of cane with their stony hands into the giant metallic mouth, their unfortunate fingers just an indecision away from catching in the metal teeth that snapped down and dragged the cane inwards to be torn and eschewed out as a fine but thickly liquid.

  Joao; looking through the eyes of The Bishop, watched as the sweet cane juice trickled out from the rear of the monolithic machine, the kind sound of water touching stone frightened only by the constant churning of the long mechanical arms tied to the neck of the ox and the animal’s pained moaning; silenced only by the impeding bellow of his brother screaming for more; whipping and beating the animal, never satisfied, never tiring, always wanting more..

  As he lost himself in dream, Joao’s hands magically attended to the cup that sat lifeless beyond the tip of his idle hands and as his imagining eye painted a bitter consternation with a gentle and solicitous stroke of his heart, his hands opened like a spring flower, turning to take the cold inanimate cup from the table, embracing it delicately in his fingers as it were a part of own body; an extension of his molecular self, drinking from his conscious stream.

  In his conscious theatre, the massive animal was drudging through the hot sand like an old man on his last legs creeping across a cold, sterile hall to die somewhere more familiar than the bed that nursed his sickness. Slowly the animal turned and even slower, the massive crane like mechanical arm twisted around, scratching and screeching like the passing seconds of an interrogation.

  And as the animal trudged along, so too; the fingers in Joao’s hand slowly turned the cup so that the hot black liquid pouring into it ran along the sides of the cup and swam gently towards the center, the patient coming together of liquid; the building of a pool. It was more of a transient molecular dance than an abrupt violent incident.

  In his conscious theatre, The Bishop lifted his hands into the air to call to those of his father, only to have the course lashing of a leather strap; like the ox, releasing him from the bondage of his discerning desires, sending him back into the trail of his own footsteps, drifting aimlessly through his wanton existence. And it was this lashing that pulled Joao out of one dream and into another.

  This time The Bishop was much older and with much less ardor; his face hardened by the unremitting drought or maybe just toughened by all the lashes that were spent across his childish affection.

  He stood now in front of many people; maybe twenty in total and they were all looking towards him with their eyes and ears thirsting for salvation, hanging onto his every word as if each syllable were a fine thread woven by god himself that suspended them above their growing despondence.

  As he spoke, their spirits lifted. The light of the lord emanated from his eyes and carried high in the palm of his hands, washing down on them like a summer rain, cleansing them of the stains of doubt that dirtied and tightened their skin.

  And as their eyes widened, so too did those of The Bishop; feeding himself on the return of their love and devotion, on the spiritual echo of his own words; seeing in their eyes, his own reflection, more spectacular than he imagined in his own mind.

  And as he caught sight of himself catching sight of himself, a single tear welled in his eye and it held for a moment before running down the line of his face, building at the edge of his chin and dropping free from his body and splashing against the hot dry earth.

  As the tear released its grip on The Bishop’s contentment, it fell
into his struggle; the dry dusted earth, and as he imagined his father upon the podium in a moment’s grace, Joao followed the tear with a single pinch of sugar falling from the grace of his fingers into his father’s bitter struggle and just as the tear had vanished into the dry dusted earth, the grains of sugar; or the sweetness in his father’s life, fell into the dark coffee and delicately made their way to become part of the liquid, just as his tear of happiness would swim with the earth to become the plantation of his existence. Joao turned his hands slowly back and forth so that the grains danced with the coffee and those that wouldn’t, were free to sediment themselves at the end of the glass.

  When he stopped his dreaming, the coffee was done. He felt exhausted but having had lived and just as a miner might carry a single speck of gold after breaking his back with his spirit and a pick, Joao held; like a king’s crown, the coffee in his hands and shuffled towards his father’s room, knocking once on the wall beside the red curtain that kept darkness and absence about him.

  “Sir, I made this especially for you. Here you are” he said holding out his two hands, the steam from the cup and the bitter smell fermenting in the air and tickling the old drunk’s senses, rousing him from his foetal slumber.

  “What is it?” asked The Bishop.

  “It’s a special coffee. I made it thinking of you” said Joao.

  The Bishop reached out his hand and took the cup retracting it close to his body where his legs lay pressed against his chest, his face buried against the cold brickwork and his blanket, warming him from the horror that played out in his mind.

  He pulled the cup to his mouth a slowly sipped, making a long slurping sound as he sucked up the coffee and swilled it in his mouth, swallowing it with a thick gagging gulp as if he had just swallowed his own vomit.

  “What is this shit?” he screamed, throwing the cup in Joao’s direction, scalding the boy in hot coffee and then spitting against the floor where he stood.

  “You didn’t like it?” asked Joao, sinking into self-defeat, his stomach feeling like he had just eaten a bag of cement.

  “Too weak. Tastes like fucking tea. Bring me a real drink. No, just leave me alone” The Bishop said sulking.

  Joao bent down to the ground and picked up the pieces of the broken cup and then made his way back into the lit church and sat on one of the plastic chairs, looking mournfully into the broken pieces that he cradled in his palms, seeing his own reflection, shattered into a million fragments and beaten down upon by the savagery of his father’s depression.

  And as his fingers slid the broken pieces over one another; moving them in his hands like a set of dice, a single saddened tear ran down his cheek.

  Joao did very little the rest of that day except stare at his feet and dissolve himself into the conversations of people standing at the front of his church waiting for a bus to arrive. They all spoke of struggle and burden and slung every word out of their mouths like the swinging of an axe or a deer’s carcass from one’s back to a table. Their eyes looked heavy, weighed down by the sight of things they did not have and their fingers stung, itching for what things they could not touch.

  Joao picked himself up from his stupor. There was no reason to wallow, not when the city had so much to offer. All he needed to do was to go out and find some work.

  The church was making no money for now and most of their reserve was being drunk away by The Bishop’s floundering; with he, preferring to remain benevolently boozed than to admit that this parody was, in fact, a failed reality and change his predicament, accepting instead the much fashioned trial of god and penance of fate as a reason to bathe in his own negation.

  And Joao knew that he had to find a use for himself. He couldn’t find one on the farm; there he had always felt like he didn’t belong; a tomato amongst apples or a ‘y’ amongst vowels. But everything had a use and a purpose; every bitter end had its sweet reward and he knew that he would find his in the city; that his niche was something more than a bruised back and blistered palms.

  Spirited, Joao briefly checked on his father who was curled up in the darkness, solicited by unconsciousness. He took some money from a small jar beside the bag of stale bread on the counter; just a few coins so he could catch a bus should the need arise.

  Then, with his money and his good spirit, Joao left the church and strolled down the winding hill alone; engaging himself in wandering stares and vagrant smiles from all of the strangers who passed him by.

  The streets were so strange, but they were also so fascinating. Even the people; who reeked of precariousness with their questionable squinting eyes and their clamorous irking grins, were visual magnets for his blank cultural canvas. His every sense hinted at him to keep away from their reach, but his eyes could not keep him from painting the outline of their presence.

  When he reached the bottom of the hill, he felt he had come down from the mount of a concrete jungle, encountering every type of person imaginable with every second seeming so fictional to him, exactly like he had seen on the television. This world was amazing, so full of life and colour; unlike his farm which was starved of dimension and culturally anorexic.

  The first place Joao visited was a shop on a corner at the bottom of his hill. There was a large poster on the window advertising vacancies so Joao walked into the store with his smile wide and his mind open.

  “Hi, my name is Joao; I’d like to apply for the job. You have a poster on the window. I want to do that job. What is it?” he asked.

  “Motoboy? You deliver pizzas on a motorbike. Do you have a motorbike?” asked the greasy man behind the counter, flipping the pizza base with his filthy hands as he spoke, catching grains of dirt and dead mosquitos in the mix of flour and dough.

  “No” replied Joao.

  “Do you have a current license?” asked the greasy man, spitting on the table to soften up the dough.

  “No. You mean for a motorcycle?” asked Joao.

  “That would help also,” said the fat man sarcastically.

  “No, I don’t. I’ve never ridden a motorbike before, but I can…”

  “Fuck off,” said the greasy man now pasting the dough in a thin layer of red sauce and counting the specks of grated cheese that he spread across the base before dumping it into the fire and burying his hands in more dough.

  Joao turned to leave and was pushed aside by some larger men as he tried to exit through the door, knocking his head against the wall and being flattened by the weighted stare of one of the men whose eyes spoke of nemesis as if they had shared a thousand of such exchanges in the past.

  As he stumbled out of the door, a bus approached and pulled up by the curb. Joao didn’t think. He stepped up onto the platform and handed his money to the man at the turnstile and sat nervously but excitedly at the rear of the bus, painting every person with an observant brush as he made his way down the aisle.

  The windows were stained yellow and brown and through the dark smears he could see the flux of traffic whizzing about; cars and trucks cutting each other off, riding bumper to bumper and motorbikes zooming past, their rider’s feet high kicking at doors and mirrors as they zipped along; their arms waving famously in the air as they cursed silently through their helmets at the drivers yelling back aimlessly through the trail of their fumes; each and every one, pounding on their horns as if it made a difference, exalting their indignation like rice on the steps of a cathedral.

  It was all so exciting.

  The people were so alive and so vocal and they spoke with more than one syllable and they spoke with more than their mere words. They waved their arms over their heads to sing out their dismay, their disbelief and their disapproval and they nodded their heads and flicked their fingers in apposite conduction; inviting other drivers into accepting their grace and they flicked on their lights meaning ‘I give you the right’, they opened their palms as to pick a fight, but they never got out, they always moved on with a wave of their arm at whoever was wrong.

  Joao sat stupid and
smiling, like a young child watching an ice cream being poured; his hands pressed against the glass, his fingers spread wide, his mouth agape and his tongue limber in his mouth; almost licking numbly against the stained glass.

  He had seen this so many times before on the television and he had sat no different to this, pressing his face against the flickering screen and imagining the feeling that would accompany this sight. And now that he was seeing this, living this and experiencing this. The sensation he had so longed to acquire was now beyond narrative.

  Somewhere inside of his subconscious mind, new memories were being formed and his personality was changing, like the thawing of the tundra, he could feel for the first time, his whole body engaged and electric, a part of the universe; an opposable thumb, twitching to lock around anything that passed the lunacy of his sight and feeling for the first time also, himself in colour.

  At the fourth stop, Joao got off the bus and stood by the side of the road watching the manic bustle of cars, motorbikes, bicycles, buses and above him, queues of airplanes and froglike helicopters hopping from one building to the next; the air spinning around his feet, lifting the excitement from his toes to the hairs on his neck which craned into the sky and fluttered like the blades of grass on a river bank, trembled by an evening breeze.

  When he turned around, he saw another sign on a window offering work. It was a small corner café. Nothing to flash yet at the same time, timely enough to warrant a rows of beautiful people sweeping in from the busy sidewalks taking tables by windows, lighting their cigarettes, drinking beer from small glasses, laughing hysterically and canting jovially; their voices booming over one another, bumper to bumper with every syllable, each and every person talking like they drove, with necessity rolling off their tongues, raising their voices until their throats were red lining; adjacent analogies competing to receive their ovation first.

  The men were handsome, striking and particularly alpha, the women; disarming, demure, desirable and dangerous with their looks alone, sending the men into primal debate. And in the mix were down and weary workers, brushing off the dust that painted upon their skin, stretching their eyes and yawning out the day’s argument; a small glimmer of joy brimming in their eyes as more like them gathered around, leaning against the counter, resting their servant limbs and massaging a small glass of cold beer between their fingers.

  And as the animated roar built into a deafening exhilarating clamber, there came from the streets the shoe shiners; dressed in shabby clothes and their fight with hunger or drug addiction, evident in the scars on their faces and the invisible lead weights that had their eyes low and hanging.

  And like a swarm of jellyfish they came, almost out of nowhere, moving into the café and then table by table, they held up their wooden foot rests and dirty old toothless brushes and with saddened starving eyes and acquiescent mouths, they pleaded their service from person to person and they moved quietly like obedient dogs, squeezing past chairs and shuffling up to whoever caught their quiet musings or walked into their stare.

  And as quickly as they came, so too were they gone and the spirit of the eve accelerated with the clinking of glasses, the spilling of beer and the raising of voices in jovial cheer.

  “My name is Joao. Can I have the job?” asked Joao timidly to the large greasy man behind the counter; his white apron stained black as he moved from flipping burgers to changing notes.

  “Do you have any experience?” asked the man.

  “No,” said Joao.

  “Do you know how to work a till?” asked the man.

  “No,” said Joao.

  “Can you work a grill?” asked the man.

  “No,” said Joao.

  “Well what can you do?” asked the man.

  “I can make coffee, I guess,” said Joao.

  The large greasy man paused for a moment scratching his head and straining his face as if a migraine had just camped in his frontal lobe.

  “Are you gonna steal from me?” asked the man.

  “No,” said Joao.

  “I’ll have to take your word. The rest I can teach you. You’re hired. You start now. Here, wash these and cut some lettuce’ he said handing stained beer glasses to Joao and ushering him to the sink behind the counter.

  “You can call me Fatts,” the man said.

  “I’m Joao.”

  “You don’t say.”