Pynter Bender

by Jacob Ross

  There was that other trick he did too: the quick flick of his wrist; the small explosion of a match against the box; the casual curving of his elbow, the glittering brown eyes looking past the flames as the widening curl of smoke rose up from his mouth and hid his face completely.

  And just when the smoke cleared, a pusson forgot his fingers and his eyes because they found themselves staring at the flame crawling down the matchstick, till it hovered above his fingernails like a wounded butterfly. They couldn’t help staring at that flame until it finally curled in on itself, dying a tiny, quivering death at the very tips of his fingers.

  Pynter remembered the hardness of those fingers around his throat and the voice that went with it the night he had followed Coxy to the far side of Morne Bijoux.

  Used to be times when Coxy looked at him – a passing glance, a smudge of a smile – and chided himself for not closing those fingers all the way. Over the years theirs had been a simmering, wordless attrition. From that time, Pynter had never spoken to this man who still came and went as he pleased, who, from as far back as he could remember, had left his auntie tugging at the hem of her skirt on Wednesday night until he returned the following morning, his whole bearing exuding a quiet laid-back certainty that, however much he filled her up with hurting, Tan Cee would never leave him. A pusson looked at him and knew that he was full of secrets. He talked that way too – his voice barely raised above a murmur, which, despite its softness, easily gathered Old Hope men around him. It made them nod and do the things he said. They gave Coxy Levid names, although the only one he responded to was Easy. Or the name that Deeka and the villages above the foothills hated, the name every man in Old Hope called him the first week in November: Pilot. Every year, the name cropped up the same way Carnival or Christmas did.

  He was sitting cross-legged at the edge of the yard. Pynter walked over and sat beside him. Coxy’s fingers paused over the cigarette he was folding. He lifted the tobacco tin off his knee, snapped it shut and dropped it on the stone beside him. He turned brown, unblinking eyes on Pynter.

  Pynter ignored the tightening in his stomach. ‘No Guy Fawkes next week?’ he said.

  ‘So?’ Coxy dropped his hand as if he were about to return to what he was doing.

  ‘Then I run Guy Fawkes Night.’

  That stopped Coxy’s hands. He sat up. Pynter felt his heart flip, even as he held the man’s eyes.

  ‘S’man bizness,’ Coxy said. He’d curled his lips around the words and turned again towards his tin.

  ‘Look like man ’fraid of ’iz own bizness, then. So I goin run it.’

  ‘Den go get kill.’ Coxy tipped the paper over, flicked the strips of tobacco from it and began to rebuild the cigarette.

  Pynter walked to the middle of the yard and turned his scooter over with his feet. He glanced at Peter. His brother crossed his legs and turned his head away.

  Over the next few days, word spread across the valley then spilled out beyond it that Old Hope was going to do battle at the crossroads. That whether or not the men of Déli Morne were brave enough to leave their homes and face them, Old Hope – the smallest village above the canes – was going to be there. And to hell with the curfew and the soldiers and everything else.

  They’d gathered the wads of mud-soaked sacking to protect themselves, and gallons of tar and pitch-oil. They’d dug a pond at Cross Gap Junction, half filled it with water and laid a few large stones around the edges.

  Coxy Levid sat in the middle of all the preparations, a cigarette smouldering between his fingers, nodding at the sheets of canvas and hessian the men passed over to him. He dipped a finger in the fuel mix and smelled it. He crouched over the things they pulled from sacks and shielded them from the view of curious eyes, flicking his ash and smiling.

  Sunday brought with it the sullen-faced anger of the women. There were quarrels everywhere across the valley – tearful voices overridden by the edgy belligerence of men.

  Late evening, Pynter went to the back of the house, stripped and tipped two buckets of water over himself. He turned round to reach for his clothing and saw Tan Cee standing in front of him. She’d made a thin line of her lips. Her eyes were red and staring.

  ‘You sempteen soon,’ she said.

  ‘Thought ’twas only Deeka believe dat,’ he said. ‘Thought ’twas only …’

  ‘Didn say I believe it. I want you to stay home, dat’s all I sayin.’

  He ignored the square of cloth she was holding out for him to dry himself with. He began pulling on his clothes. They were the loosest he could lay his hands on. He’d also taken his pair of running shoes.

  ‘S’why I have to go,’ he said.

  He felt the tremoring in Tan Cee’s shoulders as he brushed past her.

  He took the mud track down to the river through the canes.

  The clearing he stepped into was like the inside of a church, the tangled arch of leaves a fluttering weave of light above him. The smell of the place had changed – a mix of mould and mint – and there was no longer the print of a man’s body on the leaves. The light was bottle-green and shimmering like liquid.

  Arilon and Frigo were waiting at the entrance. In the fading light, they climbed the foothills up through the high forests then down again, pausing briefly amongst the wild breadfruit plantations of a dismal valley that Old Hope called The Stoop. Frigo had drawn his shirt close. Arilon was wiping his sweating neck with his bare hands. ‘What you fink goin happm, Pynter?’

  Pynter turned and headed towards the voices and torches at Cross Gap Junction. He could tell them, even before they joined the throbbing, wavering mass of people there, that if they survived the night, neither they nor Old Hope was going to be the same again.

  ‘Y’all know how dis Guy-Fox-burnin’ come ’bout?’ Frigo said.

  ‘Tell us,’ Arilon said.

  ‘Well, Guy Fawkes was one of us, yunno. A blackfella from dese parts, one o’ dem man who walk. He had a lil bizness wiv de Queen-in-Englan’. How you call dat, Paintuh?’

  ‘Love affair?’

  ‘Uh-huh! She was married to the King, you see, and he was de cook. So it had to be a love affair an’ nuffing mo’, y’unnerstan? Problem was de fella never satisfy. He feel dat since he the one to make de Queen feel good, he should get promote from cook to King. An’ ’twasn’t even as if he could cook proper food. S’only man food he could cook. Anyway, he get rude. He start makin fuss. He want mo’ consideration. He don’ wan’ to cook nobody no mo’ food. Is he dem s’pose to cook for. So guess what happm?’

  ‘What happm?’ Arilon said.

  ‘He challenge de King fo’ a fight. Well,’ Frigo shrugged, ‘de King bus’ his arse an’ jail de fella fo’ life.’

  ‘Thought dey burn ’im,’ Pynter said.

  Frigo shook his head. ‘Nuh! Is Old Hope people burn ’im. Every year we burn de fella fo’ de embarrassment he cause us. Fo’ de bad name he give to Ole Hope man.’

  Arilon dropped a hand on Frigo’s shoulder. ‘S’awright, fella; you get yuh revenge tonight.’

  Dusk had begun to smudge the leaves by the time they got to Cross Gap. It had taken them an hour to descend the foothills and another to make their way around the tiny village of Bayo above the southern valleys, where the river flowed away in a giddy haze towards the swamplands and the sea.

  The men had already lined up drums of fuel. At either end, dousers stood around a large metal tank of water, so that they could kill the runaway fires and stray flames which, unattended, would chew into the woodwork of the nearby houses and nibble at the dead leaves of the cocoa plantation and turn the night into a blazing disaster.

  There was a buzz in the crowd which seemed to rise up from the bowels of the earth and fill the air with a quivering expectancy. A voice just in front of them rose above the din.

  ‘Kelo, you sonuvabitch – go burn your wife.’

  ‘Nice night for burning all kind o’ wickedness,’ came the reply.

  ‘Perfect.’ The men hugged
and laughed, then lost themselves amongst the suck and surge of bodies.

  The two sides faced each other. The fighting men from Déli Morne had been coming year after year to try and wrest control of the celebration, so that Old Hope could be reminded of the youth called Solomon who danced and burned on Guy Fawkes Night in ’56, and the part that Coxy Levid played in it. They were there to rip that big red star from Coxy Levid’s padded crotch and crush it, the star on which Coxy would flick the match that would lick the wick that would make the flame that would pass the fire to the drum of tar and petrol.

  People began to rush away and Pynter moved with them, his hand on Arilon’s shoulder. He knew that the seconds it took Coxy to dip his hand into his drum and raise it with a fireball for the first explosive throw was all the time they had to find themselves some cover. They sheltered in the shadows of the cocoa trees that leaned over the road. From time to time Pynter scanned the edges of the crowd, his heart a hammer in his chest.

  ‘No soldiers?’ Frigo said, his forehead glistening in the gloom. Pynter did not answer him.

  A rain of fireballs brightened the night. A sudden uproar as one of the men caught fire, was dragged to earth, doused with water, then rolled rapidly in the dust.

  ‘Supposin?’

  Pynter lifted a staying hand at Frigo. Something in the sound, in the feel of the crowd, had changed. A woman pulled her stall of roasted corn from the path of the flow of people. Her torch toppled over and became a bright, amber bloom as it struck the asphalt.

  Pynter said, ‘They here.’

  The vehicles had rolled in silently. He had not heard the sound of engines in the distance. Frigo ducked into the crowd, disappeared a while before resurfacing beside him. ‘Twelve Lan’ Rover,’ he said. ‘Mebbe more. Dey cut off de engine. Dey push dem in.’

  The jeeps emerged like submarines from the mass of milling bodies. They stopped a little way ahead of Pynter and his friend, blocking the road from their end. Then, as if the soldiers had rehearsed it, the engines and the headlamps were switched on. The glare cancelled the yellow flickering glow of the masantorches and hardened the shadows on the faces of the padded men standing with their shoulders fused together.

  Perhaps the soldiers had not expected this: the padded men, so much larger than they really were. The oil drums filled with flames behind them. The steady gazes. Perhaps their months of warring with the people of the north had taught them something about this sudden quiet. That all of this – the slow circling of the crowd, the mild-mannered question from a woman somewhere in the crowd, ‘Which one o’ you deh murder lil Jordan?’ – was no less than their first step on the gentle road to hell. The soldiers froze and looked back at their vehicles.

  A shout rose up from somewhere, then a gasp – as if the air itself above them heaved. A streak of yellow turned their heads towards the sky.

  An effigy was sailing down from the coconut tree above the road. Veins of living orange had already begun to spread through the white jacket and trousers and consume the arms and legs. They recognised the figure of Victor, and felt the hurl of laughter hit the air. Two soldiers rushed forward to beat out the fire. The effigy exploded and sent them scuttling backwards. Now hands were pointing at the crab of a figure skittering down the tree.

  ‘Kicker,’ Frigo shouted. It was Jordan’s little brother.

  Three men in plain clothes leapt out of the crowd, almost as if they’d been spat out by the mass of milling bodies. Pynter launched himself after them, dodging the arm that shot out to drag him down. His eyes met the soldier’s briefly. He brought up his elbow, caught him on the jaw just below the ear. The man’s feet folded under him, his windmilling arms bringing down the other just ahead of him. The other man was bearing down on Kicker, but the boy reached the ground before he could get to him and scuttled off on all fours. Pynter had just about caught up with the soldier when all of a sudden the soldier seemed to be in a pool of yellow flames. He was alight from the moment the fireball struck him.

  Now the shouting stopped. Pynter grabbed the man and pulled him down. He rolled him on the earth, kept rolling him until a shock of water struck them. Then he was up, swinging right then left, as another figure lunged towards him.

  He allowed the soldier to catch hold of his shirt. And then he pulled the trick that every child in Old Hope knew from the time they learned to walk. He tore his shirt front open and slipped the garment off his shoulders, leaving the man standing with only the torn shirt in his hands.

  A sky-splitting roar swept him up as he plunged into the night.

  26

  FOOTFALLS ON the road below too smudged to make much sense of. The far-off soughing of the canes like a low receding tide. A woman’s laugher, then a girl’s, that were foreign to Old Hope. In this gloom, even the sounds of the house were different. The humming of the roof was harsher. The eaves protested in the wind. The floorboards creaked in ways they had not done before.

  Deeka’s face was above him. He lifted a hand, touched her, and it was real. When he looked again she was no longer there.

  This was not his mother’s bed. It smelled of camphor, Vaporub and methylated spirits. Deeka was a high dark shape above him again. She said something, and a hustle of feet rushed in and filled the room. His mother was holding a lamp in front of her. He could not read the expression on his brother’s face. Or that of the girl who stood beside him, with hair tumbling down the side of her face like black water.

  Deeka placed a finger on his chest and prodded him. He looked at her hands and nodded without knowing why. The girl stepped forward and rested a hand on his as if she’d always known him.

  ‘Pynto,’ Patty said.

  The girl pushed back her hair and smiled. She leaned over and stared into his eyes, switched her gaze to Peter then back to him.

  ‘I’z Windy,’ she whispered. She turned her head up at the women. ‘He – he …’

  ‘He awright now,’ Elena said. The girl straightened up and stepped back.

  Patty took the lamp from Elena’s hand and pushed them all out of the room. She sat on the bed beside him. She folded his hand into a fist, then cupped both her hands around it.

  ‘We thought … we thought you gone,’ she said. Her voice fluttered in her throat. She brought his hand up to her cheek and held it there.

  ‘Deeka bring you back,’ she said. ‘Yuh granny fight. She…’ Patty shook her head. ‘Now I know she de only one dat could ha’ bring you back.’

  He wanted to ask her from where.

  ‘We, we been movin you round Old Hope. You in my house now.’

  ‘How come?’ he said. His voice surprised him. Patty brought her hand to her mouth. A chuckle slipped out between her fingers.

  ‘Lordy,’ she said. ‘Yuh voice break in yuh sleep?’

  She moved to get up. He shook his head. Patty sat back.

  ‘Where’s Tan?’ he said.

  ‘S’not Tan Cee, Pynto; is Deeka bring you back, y’unnerstan?’

  He shook his head. ‘Tan not here?’

  ‘She gone get something for you. S’Deeka…’

  ‘Who de girl?’

  He felt the hesitation in her hand. ‘She yuh cousin.’

  Patty looked down at him, her eyes glistening in the lamplight. ‘Anita come home.’

  His aunt said nothing for a while. She’d turned up her chin at the ceiling and seemed to be daydreaming.

  ‘Las’ Friday, Cross Gap people bring you home,’ she said. ‘An’ then…’ The bed quaked under her shifting weight. ‘What happm t’you from school, Pynto?’

  He took her hand. He closed his eyes. ‘Nuffing,’ he said.

  They had examined his body, she said. They bathed him and found nothing wrong with him. There was no sign of hurtin anywhere. He looked perfect except for the sleep they could not wake him out of. And then he’d started slipping away – as if he’d decided to abandon them. As if he owed them nothing and they did not matter any more.

  His mother brought the baby to
him, thinking perhaps that if anything could bring him back it had to be all dat love he got for lil Lindy, cuz it didn feel or look like illness to nobody. The baby cried. Lindy would not stay with him. The chile behave like if she never know him.

  Santay refused to come. But Tan Cee would not leave her yard until the woman told her what to do.

  ‘Make war wiv ’im,’ the woman said. ‘Upset de sonuvabitch. Make ’im vex.’

  That didn make no sense. An’ besides, a pusson didn have de heart. Only Deeka did.

  Patty unfolded his fingers and laid her palm flat against his. She widened her eyes and chuckled.

  ‘She curse you, Pynto. She call you every dog-an’-sonuvabitch in Ole Hope and de rest o’ de world. She roll you on de bed like one of Birdie dumplin’. An’ what happm?’ A laugh broke out of Patty. ‘Is not fight you start to fight ’er back? An’ dat mean you ferget dat is dead you was deadin o’ something; not so? Three days, nobody get no proper sleep becuz of you. Boy! You really a dog for true.’

  There were terrifying moments when they thought they’d really lost him, when he seemed to be clawing himself out of the earth. He’d said unrepeatable things to Deeka that had no right or place in a decent yooman mouth. He’d argued with a woman whose name he did not call. And who was this uncle named Michael whose hands had been so freezing it paled his skin to ashes and shivered his limbs so much? They’d had to hold him down.

  Patty spoke as if the people he’d met in that place that the illness had taken him to were real. She was laughing now as if he’d just played the biggest joke in the world on them.

  He watched his aunt patting his hand, arcing her neck, smiling at the ceiling and the lamp, so taken by the story she was shaping with her hands it seemed to matter little whether he was listening or not.