Pynter Bender

by Jacob Ross

  John Coker was there against the doorway of his office with a book in his hand during the lunch break, with a little smile on his face, when word reached the school that Tillock had been lifted off the road. Sislyn returned to the staff room, sat at her desk making circles in the air with the pencil in her hand.

  The school went silent. Their eyes were on the white shirt in the office, the hard, dark curve of the telephone pressed against John Coker’s ear, the rapid rise and fall of his arms. His voice came high and sharp just once before subsiding into something softer. And then there came the sense of frozen time as the headmaster stepped out of his office, reached for the bell and rang it.

  He told them to go home.

  Pynter watched the boys file out of the courtyard, their humming mixing with the drumming of the sea below. Now he sat alone and watched Coker, his shoulders squared and stiffened, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up past his elbow. He’d dropped the bell on the chair beside the doorway, brought the palm of his hands up to his hair and brushed it vigorously. It was a Marlis Tillock gesture. And for no reason that Pynter could point to, he felt his heart flip over. Coker rested his elbow on the railings and stared out into the empty yard. Now he seemed almost at ease, as if the troubles of this morning had never really happened.

  Pynter pulled his books together and stepped into the courtyard. It was early. He didn’t want to go home. He might walk over to Patty’s store and spend some time with her.

  A flash of white at the corner of his eye made him raise his head.

  Coker was on the veranda above him, looking down as if he’d never seen him before. And then the voice, relaxed, matter-of-fact. ‘Tillock, he was, er?’

  ‘In my class, sir.’

  ‘And you’re, er?’

  ‘Pynter Bender, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, as if the name was so obvious it was foolish of him to ask.

  ‘Uhm, Painter Brenda? You remember what Hegel said about, er, cabbages and, er, death?’

  ‘Don’ know nobody name no Hegel, sir.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I’m not aware of the existence of anyone called Hegel, sir.’

  ‘French Revolution?’ Coker cocked a chin at him. ‘The coldest, shallowest of, er … ’

  ‘I still don’ know, sir.’

  Coker stroked his head. ‘Tillock would have known,’ he said.

  He walked into his office and closed the door behind him.

  The next day they were chewing on their lunches when the bell rang. The school already knew that the night before Coker had travelled to Marlis’s home. Whatever he met there was still in his eyes when he stood before them, haggard, his white shirt a pale bloom against the gloom of the large hallway. From now onwards, he said, they were going to leave the chair of every missing boy in every classroom empty. No one would use those chairs. There was also a small blackboard beside the door of his office with a mark on it for every one of them who, for reasons other than delinquency or truancy, did not return. Word of this slight modification in school policy must not go beyond these gates, of course. Did they understand that?

  He rested his elbow on the edge of the stage. He’d been thinking about Troy and the early days of Christendom, he said. He’d been thinking about the Seven Ages of the World and the Ravishing of Lucretia, all worth talking about in some detail, of course, but it wasn’t the point of this assembly. He’d been wondering, you see, not so much about the marvellous things that Jason of the Argonauts did, as about why so many of his men, certain of the death he was taking them to, still wanted to follow him.

  They should think about that, he said. That was worth thinking about.

  And in this glass-walled hall, the images of blood and fire Coker fed them seemed to meld with the layering hum of the boys and the sound of the sea thrashing against the rocks below.

  Outside, their teachers were standing in small groups when they left the hall. They seemed as sober and adrift as Coker. Sislyn curled a finger at Pynter. He followed her to the back of the school. She sat on the grass above the lagoon and patted the earth beside her. He sat down and pulled up his knees.

  ‘You wrote this?’ She held up a sheet of paper.

  Something the sea says

  Deep in my night of blood

  Of some coarse pain the ocean moans

  Some hollow rhythm, slow …

  ‘They my words, miss.’

  ‘What’s all this end-of-the-world-o’-God-my-belly-hurtin thing with you? And you so young for all o’ that? Eh?’ She waved the paper at him.

  Pynter kept his eyes on a schooner in the distance. The mast was leaning low, the bottom of the boat turned halfway up towards the sky. Sislyn followed his gaze. For a while she too seemed to be absorbed by the struggles of the boat. She folded the paper and rested it on her lap.

  ‘I like your mind. I like your restlessness. I always did. And I don’t like that. I don’t like looking at you when I’m not supposed to. I’m a teacher. There are boundaries. You think you special, but you not. You … ’

  ‘You like the poem, miss?’

  A current of irritation flashed across her face, and then she laughed. ‘Well – “the clashing of wet shackles” – that’s not bad. The rest, well … the rest is history. You been doing this a long time?’

  ‘Since Jordan.’

  ‘Since … ?’

  He told her about Jordan. He was not sure that she was listening to him. She’d lifted her chin and seemed preoccupied with the thrashing of the rocks against the water below them.

  ‘Methuselah gone mad,’ she said as soon as he finished. ‘Old men – Victor and the people who surround him. In this country old men don’t give way to the young. They rather consume them. I don’t like old men.’ She turned towards him, her forehead knotted in a tight frown. ‘Promise me one thing, Bender. Stay as you are. Keep your cool. Watch your words. Don’t do anything reckless. I listen to Coker stuffing y’all head with those, those … you know what a trope is?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Meme or theme or motif – it’s all the same. Nations respond to tropes. In some places it’s rape; in others it’s their flag. Fire, darkness, land – whatever their history makes them desire or fear the most. Use it in a certain way, you can make a country go to war or wreck itself. Clever politicians know this.’

  ‘What’s ours?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘Meme or trope or … ’

  ‘Listen to Coker – he’s using it on y’all. Anyway, you know it. You’re full of it, you just don’t realise it.’ She flicked the paper in the air. ‘This is the only thing I’ve read from you where I see no sign of it.’

  Sislyn glanced at her watch and got up. She plunged a hand into her bag and brought out the pen she’d held up to the class the first year they arrived.

  He was surprised she still had it. He could barely remember the question she’d asked them; he’d never forgotten the pen. It glowed like a stick of honey in her outstretched hand.

  ‘A present from a man who didn’t want me to forget him,’ she said. ‘I didn’t. I wanted to have his children.’ Sislyn looked away briefly, then angled her face towards him. ‘Y’unnerstand that?’ She was looking at him closely.

  He nodded.

  ‘He went home to fight a war that didn’t need him. Y’know anything about Angola?’

  Pynter shook his head.

  ‘Anyway, I promised. I wanted to. I thought returning here would make the waiting easier. It’s five years now and between that place and here – it’s not just that.’ She pointed at the sea. ‘It’s – it’s a whole heap of silence. Problem is,’ Sislyn pulled her feet together and wrapped her arms around her knees, ‘waiting can become a habit.’ She stuck the pen in his shirt pocket and got up. ‘I’ll tell you what I told him the night before he left. I told him war is not a place for poets. And for what I believe is coming, I hope to God you prove me wrong.’

  Over the years, he had come to k
now her face – the expressions that flowed across it – almost as well as he knew Tan Cee’s. The pupils were her project, she said. Which was why she’d ‘owned’ every class they had progressed to. He was eleven when he first walked through the gates of this school. Now he was fifteen. In those four years of watching her and listening past all the things she said, he’d realised that Sislyn was always crying, even when they managed to make her laugh.

  Pynter reached into his pocket and handed her a bit of paper.

  ‘S’for you,’ he said. ‘S’how – s’how I feel.’

  She looked at the paper in his hand, then at his face. She shook her head. Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.

  ‘I can’t take it, Pynter. I’m not s’posed to and I won’t.’

  He watched her shifting shoulders as she strolled across the courtyard.

  It was the first time she had ever called by him by his first name.

  He went to meet Patty at the store in the hope she would lighten his mood. He was doing this almost every day now, since Marlis Tillock was no longer there to sit on the wall of the courthouse above the town and have long arguments with him.

  Pynter leaned cross-legged against the building on the other side of the street, watching his aunt through the moving gaps in the traffic. She was chatting with three young women at the counter and making dainty arcs above their heads with her hands. Her store-girl friends were prodding each other and laughing. From here, with the grating of the traffic making a wall of sound around him, and the chattering of gulls over the far end of the street, Patty looked as if she’d always been a store-girl.

  She looked up once and saw him; waited for a gap in the traffic then fluttered a hand at him.

  Over the months, his aunt had replaced her hill-woman walk with small, high-stepping movements that reined in the swing of her hips, stiffened her spine some more and pushed her chin up further. Patty jingled when she walked. She’d taken to gold bracelets and earrings, until one morning she asked him how she looked. He said that silver would suit her better. She’d soured her face at him. So, to show her what he meant, he went into the house, brought out the little bag he kept his steel marbles in and dropped some water on it.

  ‘Rainwater on dark velvet,’ he said. ‘Same like silver on yuh skin.’

  She’d looked at him, a strange expression on her face. ‘Lord ha’ mercy, Pynto! No wonder …’ She’d shaken her head and left.

  He did not go over to Patty straight away. At the bottom of the street he stood on, the sea had taken on the colour of a burst pawpaw; and above him and the market square, the courthouse was glowing like a wedding cake. It was up there, on the brink of the hill that led down to the centre of the town, that he had often parted company with Tillock.

  His aunt stepped out of the shop. She winked at him, then looked up and down the street. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘We getting a ride part-way.’

  He followed her to a courtyard at the back of the building. There were seven cars, parked one beside the other. Patty leaned into the one nearest to the exit.

  Dark-brown eyes in a light-brown face looked up at him. Slim arms in long white sleeves rested on the steering wheel. Pynter pretended not to notice the man’s brief smile.

  ‘Richard,’ Patty said. ‘He offer to drop us off. Richard is the boss.’

  Richard mumbled something and Patty swung her head back towards him. The man said something again and Patty flicked a finger at his ear and laughed.

  Pynter pressed his back against the seat and stared at Patty’s bobbing earrings. He listened to her new laugh. He studied the hands of the man describing little circles above the steering wheel, rarely ever gripping it, except when they turned a corner.

  Once, Richard looked into the rear-view mirror, as if he suddenly remembered him there. A smile hovered around the man’s lips. It faded when Pynter’s eyes met his and held it.

  The man offered to take them all the way. Patty shook her head and said she wanted to walk a lil bit.

  The car swung round at Cross Gap Junction. His aunt fingered Richard’s shoulder as she eased out of the vehicle.

  The man waved at him.

  Pynter nodded.

  He listened to the clicking of Patty’s heels on the road. She smelled of something wonderful and foreign. From time to time he felt her eyes on him.

  ‘Talk to me, Pynto.’

  ‘’Bout what?’

  ‘’Bout anyfing. Tell me what you finking.’

  ‘Right now, I not finking.’ He glanced at her and shrugged.

  ‘Tell me ’bout the trouble with the fellas in your school – what happenin ’cross dere?’

  ‘’Cross dere? You make it sound like if is overseas.’ He was surprised that she knew about Marlis Tillock and the others.

  ‘Deeka been watchin you, Pynto. She see something buildin up inside o’ you, she say, an’ it goin to break out soon. And,’ Patty put some of Deeka’s gravel in her voice, ‘God help Ole Hope when it break out, y’all hear me?’ His aunt prodded him and laughed. ‘What you plan to do to us, Pynto?’

  ‘Deeka talk too much,’ he said.

  She threw him another quick glance. ‘See dat girl on the counter next to me – Nincy? She look at you like if she want to eat you whole. An’ I tell ’er, tall as you is – as you, erm, are – you still a boy. I tell ’er … ’

  He smelt her perfume again – and the nervousness beneath it. Both her hands were holding the clasp of her shiny blue bag, which hung down from her shoulder.

  ‘S’not my business, Tan Pat, y’unnerstan?’

  ‘What you sayin?’ she said. She’d turned her head away from him.

  ‘Don’ gimme no “what-you-sayin”. I look like if I stupid?’

  ‘Don’ talk to me like dat, boy.’

  ‘Don’ boy me neider! And don’ take me for no chupidee.’

  She turned on him abruptly and leaned into his face.

  ‘Pynto! Don’ talk to me like dat. You talk to me like dat again I cuff you, y’unnerstan? Right now! Cuz I your flippin aunt and I want to know where all yuh respect gone!’

  Her voice had risen with her hand. He was sure she could be heard several houses away. She was wide-eyed and close to tears. Patty would never strike him, he knew that. And she knew he knew. What he had wanted to tell her as soon as they’d closed the door of Richard’s car was that he did not want to hold on to anything for anyone which could not be said. He wanted no part of secrets. They were the worst kind of lie, specially when they concerned the people you were close to. Becuz a pusson live with you believin somefing different from what really is the case.

  What he didn’t like about the people of Old Hope was the way the women made tight circles around the awful things that happened so that their children would never witness them, the language of blood and blades that the men of this valley had invented for themselves with their vocabulary of nods and winks and gestures that kept everyone out but themselves. The stories they kept buried in dark places in this valley, of which Zed Bender was just a small part.

  Now Patty looked hurt. She hadn’t taken it the way he meant it and he was too upset to explain. He watched his aunt slip off her shoes and dust the soles. Her hands were trembling slightly as she placed them in her bag. She’d painted her nails. He hadn’t noticed until now the small silver chain around her left ankle.

  ‘Tan Patty,’ he said. ‘I don’ wan’ nothing to happm to you, dat’s all. I don’ know what I’ll do.’ He was surprised at the knot in his throat, and this new and quiet fear that had come to settle in his heart. He had never imagined a world without them, could not think of any of them not being there.

  She reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. She beat her fingers – like the fluttering of a bird against his ear.

  Patty did that with her fingers when she was wrestling with words. He could see her trying to shape them in her head. ‘S’like a lil hill, Pynto – dis job. You climb a lil way – you see better what’s ahead o’ you. A pusson
realise dey got a few more road to choose from. Dey want de one dat take dem furthest. Dat my fault? Dat not natural?’ She looked at him as if she really wanted to know. ‘I meet people, Pynto. Dey nice; dey different. Now I … I find …’ She made a little frightened sound. ‘I find dat love is not enough. I find … ’

  Patty placed a hand against her mouth.

  A young man passed and sang out her name. Patty glanced across at him and waved. She straightened up as if the voice had dragged her from a daydream. They started walking.

  Pynter reached into his bag, pulled out a book and handed it to her.

  Patty scanned the cover. ‘Mar-tin Car-ter. Fo’ me?’

  He nodded. ‘Got the poem you like in it: “I come from … ”’

  ‘Nuh-nuh, lemme say it.’

  She was excited now, the words slipping from her lips in short cascades, her hand making solemn, chopping arcs in the air. He lengthened his stride to keep up with her. And while he listened and laughed, it occurred to him that even if there had never been Leroy, she would always insist that Richard drop her off at Cross Gap Junction.

  Patty stopped at the beginning of the track that took them up to the yard. The nervousness had returned to her hands. ‘Pynto?’

  ‘Won’t say nuffing,’ he said.

  His words did not relax her. ‘Leroy,’ she said. ‘Y’all don’ know how he is. If y’all know how he could be, then … ’

  Later that evening Patty would not look at him. She sat with his mother and Tan Cee joking about the ole-fella who stood at the storefront every lunchtime to stare at the girls at the counter. Sometimes she fell quiet, her fingers worrying the silver hoops that hung down from her ears. And when their meal was over, and the night-time chill crept in and made their conversation sparse, Patty still sat with them, her small talk peppering their silence in little fitful bursts.