Pynter Bender

by Jacob Ross

  And then one night Birdie took Peter away. It was close to morning when Birdie returned – a night of lashing rain and the kind of cloth-thick darkness that made it impossible to see ahead – but he did not have Peter with him. Birdie dropped his bag, pulled off his boots, took the cloth that Deeka held out to him and began wiping himself dry. He sat amongst them without a word.

  For a while there was silence, only the snoring of the valley, the rain dripping from the trees and the rising babble of the river below.

  Elena turned on Birdie with quiet, unblinking eyes. ‘Where my chile?’ Her lips were twitching and she was studying his face as if he were a stranger.

  Birdie held her eyes, his face gone soft, held her gaze as if his life depended on it. ‘Out there,’ he answered. ‘I had to do something.’

  A sound escaped Elena – soft, deep-chested – a cross between a chuckle and a cough. She sat on the floor, crossed her legs, her eyes hard and bright as nails on her brother’s face.

  The whistle of the sugar factory in the south had already released the night shift when Pynter eased himself up on his elbow and muttered at the ceiling, ‘Peter coming.’

  They barely recognised him when he got home, mud-soaked and exhausted. Elena reached for him but he rushed past her and threw himself at Birdie. He struck out wildly, blindly at his uncle’s face; sobbed and cursed him at the same time. And when Birdie had judged it was enough, he caught Peter’s swinging arms and pinned them against his sides.

  Tan Cee and Elena exchanged glances, nodded briefly at each other. Patty sneaked a smile at Birdie.

  Not long after, Birdie staggered up the hill carrying a log of wood and dropped it near the giant iron platter at the end of the yard. They thought nothing of it until he dragged the log out to the middle of the yard, stripped it of its bark and propped it upright between a couple of stones.

  The wood was pink as flesh and gummy to the touch. And where the axe had left its broad tooth marks it seeped a milky fluid. He left it there for a week, covering it with plastic when it rained and placing it in the middle of the yard when the sun came out.

  The day he brought his axe to it they observed him under lidded eyes. Watched him move around the wood, his muscles roused and rippling, as if they weren’t there. And even from the safety of the house, with the rise and falling of that axe, they all felt exposed.

  ‘What you makin, Birdie?’

  Birdie leaned the axe against his leg, spread his hands at Elena and grinned.

  ‘A flyin machine.

  ‘A poor man plane.

  ‘A thunder maker.

  ‘A wood bullet with steel boots.

  ‘God shoe – just one side. De middle one!’

  He lifted the axe and tapped the log.

  By the following week, the sun had dried the outer surface white and the wood was bleeding no more.

  It took a while before they guessed his intention. For it seemed at first that all he wanted from that round, solid piece of wood was a plank. Seemed so much like a waste of effort, since he might have bought or stolen one.

  But then one morning he climbed the slopes of the Mardi Gras and came back with a length of guava wood. The following day he brought home a handful of four-inch nails, a couple of blocks of wood and knelt before the plank.

  He left the wheels for last. Two of them were identical, but the third was almost twice as large as the rest. It took another day for the machine to be ready.

  By then the news had travelled across the valley, so that by the time he’d fixed the wheels onto the axles, the yard was packed with boys standing at respectful distances examining the machine that Birdie said would fly.

  ‘Okay,’ he said finally, ‘I want de best hill on dis island. Show me de steepest, highest, smoothest, longest hill and I will show y’all how to fly.’

  And with hardly a word between them, they left the yard and headed for Man Arthur’s Fall.

  Man Arthur’s Fall was a ridge that ran between two valleys. It was the place where Old Hope Road briefly lost its footing against the hillside and plunged down towards an old iron bridge that protected vehicles, animals and drunks from falling onto the boulders of the ravine below. It carried the name of the man who had thrown himself down its slope because he owed the estate more money than he could pay back with his labour in a lifetime.

  From up there – where the man smell of the ocean reached them; where, ranged against the sky, they could see neither the bridge nor the gully where Arthur Sullivan fell – the road swept down and away from them in a massive, suicidal curve.

  Birdie held the thing aloft. The wood was as white as dough now and smelt of a deep and feral musk. And because they did not know what it was, or did exactly, apart from wha t Birdie Bender told them, his power over them was total.

  He placed a couple of heavy, flat stones on the plank and made the steering rigid with a length of rope he’d brought along with him. He attached another piece of rope to the rear axle then eased it over the edge of the hill, his muscles straining as if they were about to burst the skin. Then he let it go.

  The machine rolled off with a low, impatient rumble, the sound of it seeming to rise from the bowels of the earth. They knew it would not get to the bottom of the hill, but it had a good long stretch of road ahead.

  Halfway down, it began chewing up the asphalt, the sound of its metal wheels rising quickly to a wail. And then the machine struck the bank, spun several times in the air and landed on the asphalt with a terrible crash.

  Oslo and Arilon ran off after it, their shirt tails trailing behind them like wings. They returned running and placed the machine at Birdie’s feet.

  One of the boys looked up earnestly into Birdie’s face. ‘It can’t fly, Missa Birdie.’

  ‘How you know dat?’ Birdie smiled.

  ‘Cuz it didn,’ Oslo said.

  Birdie’s gold tooth flashed. For the first time he seemed unsure. ‘Didn, yes! Not can’t! Now, fellas, y’all see how short that road is. Besides, dat scooter didn have no rider. God shoe got to have a foot to make it run.’ He spoke briskly, irritably. ‘Y’all ever see a plane take off? Or a chicken hawk?’

  ‘It take speed firs’?’ Pynter offered.

  Birdie lifted a triumphant finger. ‘So! If plane and chicken hawk take speed to fly, what make y’all think it different wid dat scooter dere?’

  Birdie placed the tip of his boot under the machine and flipped it over on its back. Turned belly-up to the hot afternoon sky, the metal wheels burned with the brightness of the reflected sun.

  ‘Speed, fellas,’ Birdie chuckled happily, having regained their faith. ‘Dat’s what’s goin to make y’all fly.’

  He wiped his forehead, lifted the scooter, turned to Peter and laid it at his feet. ‘Peter Sweeter, I make it for you,’ he said.

  Peter stared at him, then at Pynter and then at all the others, and gradually his face softened. Envy travelled like a shot of liquor through the gathering. For a moment it also blinded Pynter, then just as suddenly he felt relieved. For his brother’s pain – which he’d carried in his eyes and in his silence during all that week – had suddenly been lifted.

  They knelt before the machine and felt the wood, assessed its weight, its size. They would not forget the way it had charged down the hill, and that instant just before it struck the bank, when the grumble of the wheels became a wail and then a scream. And there, in all its mute and disconcerting newness, it seemed impossible that this bit of wood and metal should do what Birdie had set out to make it do: to take to the air and fly.

  If Pynter allowed himself to believe his uncle, it was because he knew that Birdie never lied, not really, not even when he joked. Not even when he’d asked them to tell his mother how badly he’d beaten up Gideon. It wasn’t a lie. Hadn’t Pynter himself, on looking down on Westerpoint from Glory Cedar Rise, blinded Gideon a thousand times with that catapult he’d made? Birdie must have done the same or worse to Gideon every day in jail.

  Besides,
there were different ways in which a person could believe something. Like those times he imagined that his kites were messages, which, when he cut them loose, took with them some part of his longing to see the world. Perhaps that was what his uncle meant by flying, since Birdie had also told them on the very first night he sat and talked about the men he’d left in prison that anything that took your mind off pain, anything that made you lose yourself, even for a little while, anything could make you fly.

  14

  SCENTS WHICH EVERYONE else told Pynter weren’t there. People shapes that walked with him in darkness. Shuffling feet, like the whisperings of the canes. Presences that touched him softly, like the brush of clothing on the skin. Whimperings that came up from the canes on mornings. Muffled struggles in the houses that he passed at night. Voices. Things he was afraid to speak of because they would call him Jumbie Boy. Like the heaviness that Birdie carried inside himself which the loudest of his thunder-laughter could not hide. Like those early-morning dreams in which his Uncle Michael stood in the middle of the road calling him, a long brown coat flowing down his shoulders like dark water. Like the stirrings of the baby that his mother was now carrying for the man he smelt on her. He could have even told them that this man was foreign to these parts. A stranger who left the smell of nutmeg, sweat and cinnamon on his mother’s skin. That th at man would come to their yard one day and may never go away. He knew this by the urgency with which his mother left hours before the others stirred, the tiredness she no longer carried when she returned much later than the rest. The distance of her gaze even when her eyes were on them. He could have told them this weeks before Santay came and said it. But they would have called him Jumbie Boy.

  Pynter was also the first to see the five men emerge from the yellow car and walk up the hill to their yard. He pointed them out to Peter who ran inside and called the women. Deeka waited for them with her hands planted on her hips like the handles of a jug.

  ‘G’mornin, Miss Dee. Long time no see.’

  ‘Five years, two months and a coupla days, Chilway,’ Deeka said to the man who greeted her. He had a very large stomach and was breathing heavily from the climb. He pushed his right hand towards Deeka, from which she selected just his thumb and shook it briefly.

  ‘Where’s that nice fella who come with you last time?’ She did not seem to expect an answer, she just needed something to say while the yard adjusted to their presence.

  ‘You mean Layto?’ the man answered pleasantly.

  ‘No – de tall one wid de nice smile,’ Deeka said.

  ‘Layto, Miss Dee. He gone back to Kara Isle. Married a woman from dere. Left a lot of other wimmen deprive o’ dat sugar smile of his.’ He laughed.

  ‘Nice fella – we can’t afford for Birdie to go.’ She’d slipped in the last words hastily. They caught the man off-guard. He stared at her as if he’d just been cheated.

  ‘Wha you say, Miss Dee?’

  Deeka offered him a quick, dry smile. ‘Y’hear me first time.’

  ‘The watchmen bawling murder on Crosshatch estate becuz they losing provision every night, Miss Dee.’

  ‘What make them think Birdie take dem provision?’

  Chilway smiled. ‘One catch sight of ’im, Miss Dee. They threaten to poison every bunch o’ banana in sight. And dat,’ he looked with mock alarm around the yard, ‘dat can’t be good fo’ nobody.’

  ‘Poison don’ pick out poor from rich,’ Deeka answered drily. ‘Missa watchman might poison hi boss instead. Times rough and Birdie do what Birdie got to do to ease de time.’

  ‘Times rough fo’ everybody, mam.’

  ‘Den how come roughness don’ rough y’all up same way?’

  Chilway laughed out loud. ‘Is jus’ cool we coolin him off, Miss Dee. Soon as de pressure ease, we send ’im back. Besides,’ Chilway lowered his voice and nodded in Peter’s direction, ‘I hope you notice we didn’t even mention ’im!’

  ‘If is trouble you want den go ahead an’ mention ’im.’

  ‘No-no-no-no-no! What you take me for?’ The man looked genuinely hurt. ‘I never mention ’im. He’s a boy, not so? A juvenile who’s acting under, er, influence and…’ He splayed his fingers as if he were about to count them. ‘Duress – yes – a juvenile acting under duress.’

  He dragged a large green handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his neck and throat. He squinted angrily at the sun as if to lodge a protest against the heat. ‘Dat’s worth at least ah extra coupla years, Miss Dee. In fact, a malicious magistrate could make dat – lemme see – three or four, or even five.

  ‘And I not even mentioning all de thiefin yet. So is generous I definitely is today, mam, cuz I not includin influence-an’-duress. What you say, fellas? We not includin influence-an’-duress, right?’

  The fellas smiled.

  ‘Yuh see, Miss Dee – we tryin we best becuz we jus’ de servant of all dem law deh. Not so, fellas?’

  The fellas nodded.

  By then Birdie had come out. The big boots he’d arrived in from prison were unlaced, their canvas tongues hanging out as if they too found the heat insupportable. ‘What y’all want?’ he grumbled.

  ‘C’mon, Big Bird. I wan’ to make dis quiet.’ Chilway’s voice had hardened.

  ‘What de hell y’all come here for?’

  ‘Gwone, boy!’ Deeka shouted. She seemed angry now, impatient for him to leave.

  ‘I not goin nowhere!’

  ‘Yuh better go an’ put on some decent clothes! Cuz you not leavin my yard like dat.’

  ‘I not!’

  ‘Gwone, boy!’

  ‘I not no boy. I’z a big man an’ I not…’

  ‘Birdie, yuh do what dem warders say befo’ dey influencean’-duress y’arse in jail, y’hear me?’

  For a moment Birdie stood on the steps glaring at the men. Deeka was the only one who looked at him directly with that same still-water detachment she had greeted him with when he first arrived from jail. Birdie turned abruptly and slammed the door. The house quaked under his weight. They heard the table slam against the partition inside, chairs rattling, something heavy hitting the floor. When he came out he was dressed in the khaki shirt with the faded number below the breast pocket and the cotton trousers Tan Cee had given him. He had even combed his hair.

  Chilway rested his hand on Birdie’s shoulder. ‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘Big man like you! You think we like to come here and embarrass weself like dis?’

  Birdie blew his nose into his sleeve and wiped his eyes.

  One of the men rested his hand on Birdie’s, tentatively. ‘We didn bring de van,’ he told him softly. ‘Nobody will hardly know we come to take the Bird.’

  Peter began to cry. He wept as if he needed air. Shut his eyes while he stood there gasping. Patty was wiping her eyes and Tan Cee had turned her back on them.

  They’d stuffed Birdie’s bag with fruits and what remained of the delicacies they’d prepared for him. The wardens gave them time to get to Glory Cedar Rise, and from there they waved and shouted at the yellow car until it disappeared.

  Pynter turned to Deeka Bender. ‘How long he gone for dis time?’

  Her head averted slightly, the words seemed to drop out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Not as long as de last.’

  It occurred to Pynter that she’d been waiting all her life – waiting not just for John Seegal, but also for Birdie. Not like Miss Cynty, who at least filled her life with something in between while Birdie was away. Deeka existed like the dry season, many unbroken years of it, holding on for a man who came as scarce as rain, and another who would never return to her. And then he thought of Miss Lizzie quarrelling with life itself for the child they said she would never have, Patty the Pretty always trying, Miss Maddie holding on each night for Paso, Tan Cee watching Coxy Levid walk away from her every Wednesday night. Perhaps that was what all women did – wait.

  ‘Desert!’ he mumbled, which was all his grandmother heard, which touched, barely, on what was turning in his mind. But
she’d caught enough of his tone to sense his meaning and it made her turn those too-steady, too-dark eyes on him.

  Hers was one of the few faces that could frighten him, for it carried so openly his condemnation, as though every time she looked at him she was passing sentence. Which was why he often felt he hated her. He was sure she knew this, because she rarely said a word to him, and sometimes when she thought he was not looking, she licked her finger and made the sign of the cross above his head.

  ‘Watch out, you!’ she said.

  ‘S’what I always do,’ he replied, his tone like hers exactly, intense and murderous.

  For the rest of the day his grandmother stalked him with her eyes.

  It lasted months – that quiet, dark-eyed gaze. That surreptitious crossing of the hands above his head. That shadowy prowl around him. Tan Cee had taken to sleeping in the hallway beside him. She told him it was because she had to edicate him about the ways of the high-falutin, low-fartin school he’d just won a scholarship to in San Andrews. Still, she spent hours talking into his ear about the kinds of food he must never eat from anyone’s hands, especially his grandmother’s, and why his granny was the way she was with him.

  In that time of Pynter sheltering from his grandmother’s malice, and the yard trying not to remember Birdie, the Mardi Gras gave them special days near the closing of the year when the yam shoots eased themselves out of the earth and the purple-yellow blossoms of pigeon peas gave way to tiny hairy pods that would replace the meat Old Hope wouldn’t have during the months to come.

  Sorrel hung like drops of blood from the stems of plants that looked as if they’d soaked up all the pain the earth had ever borne. The blossoming corns stirred their hair in little winds with the fussiness of foreign women, and a new chill came off the ocean and crept along the valley floor at nights, leaving drifting skeins of mist and a heavy sprinkling of dew in the mornings.

  This was the time when the mountain reminded them that it was there, had always been, and that this valley in which the canes they worked in grew and thrived was as much a part of itself as the crown of mist that swirled around its head. It sent rain down its slopes like drunken marching armies and made Old Hope a dripping, tapping, drumming water orchestra. The canes were silent then, their whisperings replaced by the growling of the little river below, grown fat and fast and muscular from the water it was feeding on.