by Jacob Ross
whose hands
have spanned
so many nights
His voice was as soft as Missa Geoffrey’s too, and it was as if he were talking to himself from a bellyful of sadness.
Paso stopped, looked up. He didn’t smile. Pynter shifted under his stare and before he lost the courage, before it became impossible to say what had been sitting on his heart from the moment his fingers retrieved that strange little book from his uncle’s grip, he turned up his face at Paso.
‘I wan’ to make wuds like dat too, I want … I …’ Something desperate and quiet fluttered in his heart. He turned his head away.
Paso steered him towards the steps and sat him down. ‘That book was the most interesting thing you find in there, not so?’
Pynter nodded.
‘Why?’
‘Don’ know.’
‘I tell you something. Once, it cross my mind to take it. Yunno – copy all of it over to this lil book and make meself believe is mine. I start doing it. But then, that same night, I had a dream. I was walking down some kinda road. Long road. I couldn see the end of it. The more I walk, the more I see road in front of me. When I was close to givin up, I realise I had somebody walking beside me. It wasn’ Michael. It was hi friend, the boy.’ Paso threw a sideways glance at him. ‘Yunno what that young fella was to ’im?’
Pynter shook his head.
‘One day it will come to you. Right now nothing in life ain’t prepare you for that kind of … of awareness. Mebbe you’ll never work it out. Don’ know … Anyway, that fella say something to me that I wake up with in me head. It come like a realisation. I can’t forget it. Now I going to pass it on to you. “Find your own words” – that’s what he say to me. “You done have all of dem inside you; you just got to take dem out and put dem in de order that make your living and your thinking and your feelings make sense.” Y’unnerstan?’
Pynter nodded, even though he wasn’t sure he did.
‘When you try to steal a pusson words, s’like you trying to steal their soul. You want to make words work like that? Then feel with your eye and see with your heart.’ He elbowed Pynter gently. ‘Now tell me, Uncle – what is the colour of my eye?’
Pynter looked at him, a shy sideways glance. ‘Black.’
Paso shook his head, worked his mouth as if he’d just munched on something awful.
‘Nuh! That’s seeing with your eye, not feeling with it. Now feel – turn your mind to all the things the old man must ha’ tell you about me. Talk to me, fella, jus’ … ’
‘Night.’
‘Wha’?’
Pynter smiled, tentatively. ‘De colour of your eye is night.’
‘You sure?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘The colour of yours is water. History too – a lot o’ things looking out at me from dem eyes o’ yours. What’s the taste of cane? Think of your mother, think of all your people down there. What’s the taste of cane?’
Pynter lifted dreamy eyes up at the Mardi Gras. ‘Bitter. Cane is bitter. An’ dat mountain up dere is ah old, old man, quarrellin with God.’
He felt Paso’s eyes on him. ‘Them your words?’
‘Dem my words,’ Pynter told him.
‘Well, dem is words – y’hear me, Uncle?’
They laughed out loud together.
For the second time that day, Pynter watched his nephew walk away. So strange. So different, so, so … bee-yoo-tee-ful.
The next morning Pynter’s sister called him to collect the old man’s breakfast. He came out and took the plate. He noticed an extra helping of sweet potatoes. The food was also warm. He didn’t trust her smile. The rest of her face wasn’t smiling.
‘Gideon stay with y’all a long while,’ she said.
‘Yes, Miss Maddie, with Pa not with me.’
‘First time you meet him?’
‘Yes, Miss Maddie.’
‘He talk about a lot o’ tings?’
‘Fink so.’
‘You think so – you didn’t hear what he say?’
‘Culatral,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Culatral, o’ something like that.’
‘Collateral – the sonuva …’ Her voice retreated into her throat and kept rumbling in there. ‘He say for what?’
‘Say what fo’ what?’
‘Collateral – he say collateral fo’ what?’
‘Don’ know.’
‘Is the land, right?’
‘Which land?’
‘Never mind, you hear de word “land” come from deir mouth?’
‘Who mouth?’
‘Paso say you smart – I wondering which part o’ you he find the smartness, cuz …’ She sucked her teeth and began walking back towards the house.
‘Thanks for de two extra piece o’ fry potato,’ he called after her, remembering his manners.
She stopped short, shook her head and continued walking.
6
WHENEVER GIDEON CAME, Pynter left the house for the gully. Now he knew he shared Eden with two people. They came from the other side of the hill, where a cluster of small, brightly painted houses were huddled beneath a line of corse trees whose branches swept the sky.
They arrived together, the woman holding the front of her dress high above the water grass and crestles. The man was the colour of the mahogany chairs inside his father’s house. His hair rested on his shoulders. The woman stepped onto the boulder so that she was like a giant butterfly above the water grass, and called his name.
‘Geoffrey!’ she said, and the words came out like a bird call, like the beginning of a song.
He called her Petal, sometimes P, or Tilina, and from where he sat in the nest of elephant grass, Pynter gathered that her father’s name was Pastor Greenway, and that Geoffrey herded sheep somewhere in the valley beneath Morne Bijoux. He spoke of his sheep the way the women in the river spoke of their children. He learned that Pastor Greenway would kill Miss Petalina if he knew she ran away to meet Geoffrey here. The fear was there on her face when she arrived, coming off her like the perfume she was wearing.
Pynter always got there before they did. He would listen to the man sing to himself with that heavy bullfrog voice, watch him gather leaves before Miss P arrived. Sometimes he would close his eyes and feel the man’s low thunder vibrate deep inside his head – a rich voice, dark and thick as molasses, bouncing around the gully.
He liked to watch Miss Lina coming across the sprays of light pouring through the undergrowth, falling over her yellow dress, making her look pretty as an okra flower. She would come to rest beside Geoffrey on the nest of leaves he’d made for them both.
Pynter waited until their wrestling was over, until her chirpings had subsided, and Geoffrey’s croakings had grown low. And then he crept away.
Back at the house, with Gideon gone, he would find his father quiet. He knew it was a kind of war between them – a battle in which his father was struggling to hold on to something that Gideon wanted badly. It left the old man sleepy and exhausted. Pynter would reach for the large black book, lower himself on the floor, his toes resting lightly on the old man’s feet, and begin to read for him.
Pynter loved this time of quietness, when the last of the evening light poured into the room and settled like honey on the bed, on the wood of the long canvas chair and on his father’s arms. He loved the feeling of lightness that rose in him when he knew that Gideon would not come again for another week.
But a shadow had crept into these moments, something his father had been keeping from him and Gideon. It was there in the way the old man avoided signing the papers brought to him each week, how he passed his hands across his face more and more these days. Their father was going blind. Pynter saw it approaching the way night crept down the slopes of the Mardi Gras. He saw it wrap itself around the old man like a caul and settle him back against the canvas chair. He saw how it made his gestures smoother, softer and less certain. How it steadied his head and made his body
slow and unsure of the spaces it had been so accustomed to.
There were times when the old man spoke to Pynter of his days on ships in Panama, his journeying through the forests of Guyana searching for gold in riverbeds and streams, and his time in tunnels that ran like intestines in the belly of the earth. It was down there in one of those mines that he’d walked into a metal rod and damaged his left eye, had lived with that injury most of his life – a small white scar like a tiny worm against the black of his left eye that had suddenly come alive.
The questions his father asked him now were always the same. What was it like before Miss Santay gave him back his eyes? How did he manage when he needed something and no one was there to help him? How would he have felt if he had had to live his whole life with nothing out there to see? And so Pynter taught the old man not to fear the coming darkness. He told him about his own time of darkness, when, for him, the world was just a roar at first, how he’d come to use the sounds around him, how he’d learnt to recognise the things that touched his skin.
It was the other way around for him, his father said, for while he was heading into darkness with a clear picture of the world inside his head, Pynter, having just emerged from it, had only light and colour to look forward to.
‘Not all of it goin to be pretty,’ his father said. ‘But it can’t have pretty without ugly. It can’t have bright without dark.’
He was silent for a long time and so still it was as if he’d gone to sleep. When he spoke again, it was with an emotion that Pynter did not recognise.
‘One thing I’ll carry in my head to the end of my days is the first time y’all mother bring y’all to me. I didn know she was comin. I was weeding corn. I lift my head and see her walkin through my garden with two bundle in she hand, one on eider side. When she reach, she didn say a word, she just hand y’all over to me. She didn have to say nothin, you see? Was the way she do it. Like she was sayin, “Look, I givin you what’s yours.”’
He passed his hand across his face.
‘Gideon – as far as he concern, my funeral done happm and now is time to hand everyting over to him. Like y’all don’t count. Like y’all come from nowhere. Like somebody pick y’all off a tree. But when the time right, I got a nasty shock for him. Let’s hope that he kin take it.’
7
PYNTER COULDN’T FIGURE out how a person’s clothes could remain so smooth and perfectly pleated. It was as if the khaki shirt and trousers of the little man had just been taken still steaming from a hot iron and gently placed on him. He wasn’t walking up the hill – not as normal people did – he tiptoed as if he hated the idea of touching the ground with the soles of his glistening leather shoes. Pynter caught glimpses of his white socks as he lifted his shoes and carefully set them down on the patches of grass that dotted the concrete road. The man carried a little brown case under his arm. It matched his jacket and trousers exactly. In the other hand he swung a beautiful stick with a curved silver top. Despite the heat, he was not sweating.
‘Is there a Mister Manuel Forsyth living here?’
‘What you want my father for?’
‘That’s his place?’ A fat little finger shot out before him.
Pynter didn’t answer at first, but then asked the man to follow him.
The man walked across Miss Maddie’s yard and straight into his father’s house. He entered the bedroom as if he visited every day. His father sensed the stranger’s presence as soon as he stepped in.
‘Who’s it?’ he grumbled.
‘Mister Manuel Forsyth?’
‘I is he. Who you and what you want?’
‘My name is Jonathan, Mister J. Uriah Bostin, Schools Inspector for the parish of San Andrews – urban and suburban, that is – as well as the, er, outer peripheries.’
‘A what?’
‘Schools Inspector, Jonathan U. Bostin.’
The old man’s body relaxed, his face became vacant. ‘I name Manuel. Shake my hand.’
The man seemed to be thinking over the invitation. He stepped forward quickly and stretched out his right hand. Pynter’s father felt the air and got hold of it, his hand almost swallowing the man’s. He seemed to be examining the man’s wrist with his fingers. The stranger didn’t like it. He made an attempt to get his hand back, his large eyes bulging.
‘You short!’ Manuel Forsyth said, letting go. ‘You short-breed people. What you say you name was?’
‘J. U. Bostin.’
‘Those Bostins from Saint Divine – you one of dem?’
‘There is a connection there, I think. I’m here to see you about the boy.’
‘What happen, you not sure?’
‘Well, er, my father is from there – Saint Divine, I mean.’
‘And you?’
‘Well, I was born there, er, if you don’t mind, Mister Forsyth, I am very pressed by the matter at hand. This boy here, your, er, er…’ He frowned at the sheet of paper he’d slid out of the case. ‘It says here that he is your son. Sorry, a typing mishap, I should think.’
‘You shouldn think. He my son. What he done?’
‘Turned truant, I believe, aided and abetted by yourself.’
‘Pynter, get a chair for ’im.’
Bostin placed the brown case on the seat of the chair and the stick beside it. Pynter could see that the silver handle on the stick was the head of a lion. Bostin reached into his right pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief. He wiped not just the seat of the chair but also the back. Finally, with a smooth and curious sideways movement, he took up his things and slid onto the chair.
‘Well, er, yes. It has been brought to my attention that in relation to the education of this boy, and you might be quite unaware of it, you are contravening the law.’
‘Which law?’ His father seemed almost pleased with the man.
Bostin creased his forehead. ‘The law of the land, Mister, er, Forsyth. The one that bequeaths me the powers to bring this matter to your attention and to take the necessary action if my recommendations are not adhered to by yourself and …’
‘Which law you talkin ’bout, passed when, by who, under which sub-section of which article of which Act?’
‘Well, er, we don’t have an Education Act, per se, but …’
‘Then we don’t have no law which kin force me to send my child to school. That is why you come – not so?’
‘You kin say so.’
‘Is so or is not so?’
‘Depends on how you interpret the matter.’ The man lifted his case and placed it on his lap.
‘You a very frustratin fella, y’know dat?’ Manuel Forsyth had pushed himself forward in the chair. ‘You come here to tell me I breakin a law dat don’t exist an’ threaten me in my own house. I have a mind to report you to the head pusson in your place an’ make you lose your job!’
‘I am the head person, Mister Forsyth. You’ll have to, er, report my misdemeanours to me!’
‘Good. I’ll make you fire yourself then. You finish your business with me?’
‘No, sir.’ The man slipped his hand into his case and eased out a green notebook. He studied it for a moment. ‘Truancy is a punishable offence in, er, the, er,’ the notebook moved closer to his face, ‘in the case where parents have been informed and they persist in, er, withholding the subject of the enquiry from going to school.’
His father laughed. ‘Tell me, Bostin, what is de definition of truancy?’
‘Pardon me?’ Bostin wiped his brow.
‘Define truancy fo’ me.’ Manuel Forsyth was directing a kindly gaze in his direction.
Bostin folded the handerkerchief and dropped it on his lap. ‘I don’ wan’ no argument, sah! I jus’ doin my job, okay? Is confusion I tryin to avoid right now.’
‘Truancy occur in instances where – you lissenin?’
Missa Bostin nodded, sourly.
‘He lissenin, Pa,’ Pynter cut in gently.
‘Good! Truancy is when a child, for any kind o’ reason, decide not to go t
o school. An act of will on de part o’ de child. It imply an unwillingness to learn on the part o’ de child – a voluntary act of self-deprivation. You agree?’
‘I hearin you.’
‘Well, let me inform you that Pynter don’t need to go to no school. It is I who decide not to send ’im.’
‘Can you say that again?’
‘Pa, he writing down what you say in a lil green book.’
‘Let ’im write! I got a lot more for Mister Bostin to write down. I hope your book big enough. Tell dem fools who send you that de purpose of schoolin is to learn – to be educated. It don’t have no other reason for goin to school. Now once I kin prove dat Pynter here is not missing out on his education, you don’t have no case in a court of law against me. In fact, I would like for you to take me to court so’z I kin make a fool of every single one of you. Then I will take y’all to court for taking me to court and causing me a whole heap of stress I didn ask for. You out of place to come here in my house and call my child a truant. What I really want to know is who report me to you. Who do it?’
‘I cannot expose that, sir.’
‘I hope to God dat is not who I think it is. Pynter, get me the Bible. You a believer, Bostin?’
‘A regular churchgoer and a family man, sir.’
‘Well, listen to the boy read and be blessed at de same time. C’mon, Pynter – Matthew, chapter uh, lemme see, seven. Yep! Matthew, chapter seven – start from verse three.’
Pynter took the book and threw the man a sympathetic glance. He began to read. ‘“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”’
‘Skip verse four,’ his father said. ‘Jump to five and six.’
‘“Thou hypocrite,”’ Pynter continued, ‘“first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”’
‘Good.’ Manuel Forsyth smacked his lips. ‘You see my boy can read and with feeling besides.’