by Jacob Ross
She scooped up the bottles and held one out to him. He shook his head.
Pynter looked her in the eyes. ‘I comin back, not so?’
‘You intend to?’ She flicked an irritated wrist at him. ‘I don’ know why you askin me! You don’ have to go for nobody call Marilon. Nobody sendin you.’
‘I have to go,’ he said.
30
HE EXPECTED Miss Maddie to topple over the edge of the veranda any minute soon. Most of her was already over the wall. She was shielding her eyes with both hands. Sounds were coming out of her, rapid and indecipherable. She was pushing her body further and further out.
‘Coño,’ she said. ‘No créo … que.’
‘I’m Pynter,’ he said.
Her face was even more swollen than he remembered it, her eyes more puffed, and what before had been a hint of grey at her temples was cotton white now.
‘Lord ha’ mercy, I see you comin, an’ I thought … I thought …’
Pynter offered her a smile.
‘Cucaracha!’ she muttered.
‘I come to see Paso,’ he said.
‘Coo-nyo! De other one, he same like you?’
‘He name Peter.’
She nodded. ‘He same like you?’
‘He name Peter.’
Miss Maddie swung her head as if he’d slapped her. ‘Peter – he …?’
‘He more like yuh brodder, Gideon, but Peter much-much better lookin.’
‘He not here,’ she said. She lifted a hand to touch him, checked herself and dropped it quickly.
‘Blood never lie,’ she said. ‘I mistake you fo’ my boy.’
Her house looked smaller than he remembered it. The glistening white of the concrete walls had been replaced by the creeping brown of water stains. A fissure ran along the concrete walkway. The yellow walls inside the veranda had been clumsily repainted in places.
There was no trace of his father’s house. No sign of the fire that had destroyed it. Weeds grew there now, and tall stems of honeysuckle held together by a riot of nettle vines. She’d planted peppers and sweet potatoes, red cabbages and pum-pum yams.
If he and Peter had children, they would say their father’s name to them and tell them who he was. But it would mean little to them, even less to those who came after them. Rememberin was like watchin a pusson walkin a long road, losin them in the distance, disappearin with time. He looked back at Miss Maddie.
‘You,’ she said, turning her head to where the house had been, ‘you had de best part of ’im.’
‘Miss Maddie?’
The woman lifted her chin.
‘Gideon, he got anything in common with my – with our father?’
He thought she wasn’t going to answer him. She’d turned her head away. ‘Love all yuh chilren same way,’ she said. ‘If you can’t do dat, is better to pretend.’
She turned and left him there.
Later, he stretched out on the wall of the veranda and watched the night pass. Miss Maddie had stood behind the curtains of her window for a long time looking out at him. She’d brought him a bowl of soup and laid it on the little wooden table in the corner of the veranda. ‘Paso not comin,’ she said. ‘Sleep with de window open.’ He did not ask her why.
In the night Pynter thought about what she had said to him, that he had got the best part of their father. Those words reminded him of a walk he had taken with Tan Cee once. They’d come to a cool green place over the ocean, a place that seemed far removed from anywhere he’d ever been, as if they’d stepped into a dream together.
Tan Cee had nudged his arm. But he’d already seen what she was pointing at. There, amidst a small crowd of guineps, stood another tree. It was paler, wider and straighter than the rest, with leaves that shivered at the slightest breath of air. It stood back from the precipice that fell in a wide white plunge all the way down to the bottom of a cliff. The guinep trees were like a huddle of dark-limbed people round it.
‘See?’ she had said.
Tan Cee had nudged him closer, and he realised that it was not the tree that she was pointing at but small mounds of stone that stood up from the earth around the trunks like the piled-up heads of children. Here, she said, beneath this tree, on the lip of this precipice, was the place from which their people, the people of the canes, used to launch themselves.
‘An’ die?’ he had asked.
‘An’ fly.’
‘To where?’
‘’Cross dere.’ She’d lifted her chin as if the ocean itself was a destination. To that place they had been brought from.
‘A stone for each one that make it – an’ I not askin you to believe it.’
If people didn believe that any more, she’d said,’ twas because they forget how to believe in things that used to come so easy once.’ Twas what happened to chickens, she s’posed: still had their wings, but ’twas long time since they forget how to use them.
She’d shrugged. It didn matter, though. ‘What matter is, we the ones got left behind. Mebbe we the ones who ’fraid to fly. P’raps we didn wan’ to go back to face de ones who hand us over.’
She’d turned towards the tree. What was certain was that hands had planted that tree there, shimmering and silver even in this leaf gloom. They had no name for it and it was the only one like it they knew. Old, she said, older than memory. Old as the people who brought the root with them. P’raps it was a tiny bit of root that got tangled in a woman’s hair. Or it might have been the seed of some fruit that had slept in the bowels of a child. Maybe it was a special parting gift from someone, since it was the kind of tree you noticed even in the night. It guided you to itself, even when there was no wind. And it was true that in this quiet, windless day, he could hear it, in an endless conversation with itself.
He’d stepped back into the day with her, bleary-eyed and dazed. They’d looked past the cane belt up towards the foothills. Old Hope was no more than a gap between the rising hills, blue with distance. And he’d realised for the first time that a stranger to this island might lift their eyes up to those hills and never know that anybody lived there.
‘Your modder, the others – dey give you tings you goin forget,’ she’d said. ‘I give you someting dat can’t leave you.’ She said it quietly, fiercely. Was distracted, for a moment, by the flight of a pair of birds making slow circles over the tiny island just offshore.
‘Storm bird,’ she said.
‘Albatross,’ he said.
‘That the right name?’ She’d shaped the word with her lips.
‘Uh-huh.’
Tan Cee had looked at him. ‘What make de difference, Pynto? Wiv you an’ Peto? What make you get to go to dat high-falutin school an’ Peter never get to come wiv you?’
‘Was a mistake,’ he said. ‘A mistake dat y’all make. My father, when he left working in hi garden, he went home for good. The man I meet was not de man his chilren know. De man I meet was tired. He had enough of livin. An’ all of de time I spend with ’im, my fadder was jus’ waitin to die. S’like you standin here waitin to cross dat lil stretch of water to dat lil island over there. I was de one y’all send to help ’im make de crossing. Cuz thaa’z the place I come from, not so?’ Cross dere? Little as I was, I was s’pose to know dat place. To ease hi passage towards it. And yunno, Tan, I help ’im. An’ he pay me back. He used to tell me, he wan’ to teach me every useful thing he know. He try. Even after Bostin come and force ’im to send me to school, he try. Dat’s why…’
‘You carry dat inside you all dis time?’ she’d said.
‘All the time,’ he’d said.
The nasal tones of Miss Maddie and Paso’s fretful mumblings woke Pynter early the next morning. The door to the veranda flung open.
‘You didn bring ’im inside?’ he shouted.
‘He didn wan’ to come inside,’ Miss Maddie said.
Paso held him in a quick, tight embrace. ‘You had me soo worried, Uncle. Thought I was goin crazy. I see you got de word.’
‘W
indy tell me,’ Pynter said. ‘S’how I know you awright.’
‘I couldn give ’er a time. Jus’ had to pass the word for you to meet me here.’ Paso leaned suddenly into him. ‘I hear about de flippin foolishness you wan’ to do, and you can’t.’
‘Jus’ tell me how to get dere. Walk me through the place.’
‘You not goin nowhere.’
‘Who goin stop me? You?’
‘You might be me uncle, but I much older’n you – y’unnerstan?’
‘I still yuh uncle, though. Tell me how to get there.’
Their argument brought Miss Maddie hurrying out to them. They were pointing their fingers in each other’s face and talking in hot, rapid spurts. Her head moved with the wagging of their fingers.
‘Crica!’ she said, and went back inside.
Pynter finally got what he wanted out of Paso. There was a house above the Carenage in San Andrews, Paso said. He had people there, almost as close as family. Better than family in some cases. There was another house much further south in the Drylands, a relative of theirs that Pynter didn’t know. Paso listed the things that Pynter should look for in order to get to those places easily. Whatever happened, he said, and depending on where he was, Pynter should head for one of those houses.
‘You still write pretty words?’ Pynter said.
‘No time,’ Paso said.
‘How come?’
‘This, all this…’ Paso waved at the air outside. ‘Word reach me that you save a fella from burnin last Guy Fawkes Night. You into savin fellas?’
‘You would ha’ let ’im burn?’
His nephew straightened up. Even in the early-morning gloom, Pynter felt Paso’s irritation.
‘Tillock was your friend, not so? And that other lil one…’
‘Jordan, he wasn’ no other lil one. He was a fella big as me.’
‘You didn’t have Tillock and him in mind when you save dat fella, not so? Well…’ Paso pushed his back against the wall, shooting his legs out at the same time. ‘Next time keep both of dem in mind, okay?’
Pynter turned to Paso. ‘I tell you what I work out,’ he said. ‘To kill a pusson, you have to make dem different. You have to change dem in yuh mind; yuh need to make dem less dan you. You have to feel you have de right. You feel you have de right?’
‘If de reason big enough.’
‘An’ who decide de reason big enough? Not anodder pusson?’
Pynter slipped his hand along the waist of his trousers. He pulled out a small book and tossed it in Paso’s lap. ‘Page seventy-four. Wilfred Owen. English fella. Dey say h’was de greatest war poet ever live. In 1917, he join a war. Read what happm inside of ’im befo’ dat same war kill ’im.’ Pynter stood up. ‘S’matter o’ fact, I contend dat dat same war kill Missa Wilfred Owen twice. Keep de book, Paso. An’ tell yuh modder thanks fo’ me.’ Miss Maddie’s house stood on the northern end of the ridge that ended at Glory Cedar Rise.
It was a steady climb up through the gardens of pigeon peas and sweet potatoes. Further on, through the brushland of sage and borbook, the soil coarsened under Pynter’s feet, then became a trail of slipping gravel until he reached the small settlement above Old Hope they called Top Hill. He was less than half a mile from home, and yet the world was different here. The little wooden houses were as frail and brightly painted as kites. They seemed, in fact, to be held up by the winds that forever pushed against them, leaning into the blasts that came straight off the ocean.
The people up here were different too. They rarely came down to the valley. He felt comfortable under the children’s dark-eyed scrutiny which took in everything and gave nothing away. As he walked along the track, they did not give him way, not even the youngest. To get past, he had to step around them and yet they took no offence when his shoulders pushed against theirs. In fact, standing as they were in this high mid-morning wind, their heads tilted at the ocean and their clothing flapping like boneless wings around their bodies, they seemed to be contemplating flight.
These were the true hill people of Old Hope, born and brought up in the middle of this skimming ocean wind. It had flattened their stomachs and lengthened their limbs and left them with that dreamy, far-eyed gaze. At least that was Deeka’s way of explaining it.
Just when he was about to leave them, he heard the thud of naked heels behind him.
Pynter looked over his shoulder and saw a child – slim and long-limbed like the others, her hair piled up on her head like tufts of cus-cus grass – hurrying after him.
‘Where you from?’ she said.
‘Down there,’ he said, pointing past the trees to where he thought his home was.
She shook her head. She did not believe him.
‘You been away?’
‘Not been, I goin.’
‘You don’ look like Down-Dere people.’
‘What Down-Dere people look like?’
‘Not like you,’ she said.
‘How I look, den?’
She shrugged. ‘Not like dem.’
Someone behind her called a name, a woman’s voice, soft to his ears and musical. The child lifted a shoulder in acknowledgement.
She looked up at him. She’d tensed her forehead into a faint pleat. ‘I ask too much question, not so?’
‘That’s what they tell you?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘Nuh, dat’s what I know. Don’ know how else a pusson s’pose to unnerstan tings.’ She’d become fretful and slightly restless. ‘When you go away, you comin back?’
‘Don’ know,’ he said. ‘Don’ know if I wan’ to.’
Lil Miss Iona was smiling when she turned back to him. ‘My brodder Glendo goin make a kite fo’ me dis evenin,’ she said. She turned and left him abruptly for the others. Halfway there, she lifted an arm and waved. ‘When you come next time, I show you how to fly it.’
As soon as Patty saw him coming she came down her steps and pushed a finger in his face. Who the hell did he think he was to put so much worry in people head. And playing smart man wiv it too-besides, by coming to her place, knowing she was the one who could not stop him. But he shouldn fool himself, if she wasn’ as big-an’-clumsy as she was right now, she would do to him the self-same things that were playing on Elena’s mind.
She would stop him: she would break a leg of his, or hit him so hard he would go right back to sleep and she wouldn give a damn if he don’ wake up this time, or if it mean they had to carry him on their backs for the rest of their lives.
Becuz a man walked out of this yard once. He left his woman and three girl-children dying for him. He left a yard full of stones and questions, and, however much they tried to wipe them off their minds, in all their years of living they could not make those questions leave them: was it becuz of them that he left? What was the one little thing they might have done to make him stay with them? These thoughts found a way to stitch themselves into everything they did.
And did he, Pynter, know what it feel like watchin a pusson who fill you up so much with demself walk off to some kind of death that they choose for demself? Like if they had a right to. Like if a yard full of stones and a house on a hill over the road was enough to stop the hurting. Like if it didn have a pusson in de world who had a claim on them?
His mother took it hardest. Did he know that? Eh? Elena give up on speech for years and ’twas desire that bring words out of her again, not for Manuel Forsyth, but for the one thing she wanted out of him: chilren.
You’n Peto. Y’all two. Two of you. Y’unnerstan?
And in all dem years, what did he think been happening inside of people, eh? What he think been takin place inside his modder head?
Well, a pusson goin tell him right now what Elena feelin – that nothing she allow herself to love that much will leave like this again. She rather get rid of it herself.
Which was why he could not go down to the yard today to face his mother, cuz one thing a pusson was certain of. He would never leave it.
And one last thi
ng. Patty pointed a shaky finger at her stomach. She did not want to have to give this child his name. A pusson didn want to have to remember him like that.
His aunt’s words seemed to have exhausted her. She sat back on her steps and fixed wet, accusing eyes on him.
He left Patty when the gauldins were heading towards their roosts up in the foothills. He’d closed his mind down to her pleas. He did not look back.
The air was thick with bird cries when Pynter reached Glory Cedar Rise, the hills directly ahead were already blurring in the dusk. He had not prepared himself for this journey. Paso had told him where to go and how to get there, and the names of a few people that he could go to if he managed to get Arilon out and needed to find some place to ‘rest up’. There was a man named Hugo who lived in the only green-roofed building that looked directly over the Carenage in San Andrews. He could not miss it. That was the house he should head for first, he said. And if Hugo wasn’t there, he should take Arilon south with him through the alleyways of the town and keep heading for the Drylands.
Night came fast. The sky was still full of birds hurrying to escape it. A new moon squinted over the hills of Déli Morne. The sighing of the canes had softened. His mind must have been adrift, for he heard her only when her footsteps stirred the leaves.
He was still staring ahead when a hand curved around his stomach and tightened. All he had to do was turn and she was in his arms.
They said nothing at first. Patty must have guessed that he was still up here and sent her or perhaps she came here on her own sometimes at night.
He lowered his face into her hair. Her lemon smell entered his head and made him shiver. She said his name. It crossed his mind that no one had ever called him like that before. He murmured her name. She offered him her mouth. He cradled her face and dipped his head. She held him tight and rocked him in the wind and he drifted with her, past caring.
31
TAN CEE SAW Windy emerge from the night. She did not come straight over to them. She stood at the edge of the yard, the firelight lapping at the hem of her skirt like yellow water. She looked beautiful and lost there, standing in her red rubber sandals, her hair undone.