by Jacob Ross
There was a swamp that stood between him and the fence – a high wooden wall with nails sticking up from the top, and packed so closely they were like the teeth of a ragged comb. Pynter followed the fence around, chose a tree and climbed it.
The buildings below him were long and low. They were laid out alongside each other the way those of his school above the ocean were. He saw the shed a little way off to the left. It was quieter than he expected. The sound of an engine came up from the town below, throbbed the air, then faded. A moon, yellow like a slice of pawpaw, hung above the darkness beyond, which was the ocean.
He did not know how long he sat there, his eyes half-closed and listening, wanting to find a pattern to this silence and finding none. The tree he sat in threw a thick shadow just beyond the fence. He thought he would need to climb much higher. He could not be sure of the distance he was from the ground. He scrambled up, pulled in his breath, held it for a while, and jumped.
He hit the ground hard. Something gave way in his left shoulder. The pain curled him up on the earth. He lay there for a while on the damp grass, and then, his mind a throbbing, hurting drift, he pulled himself to his feet and began to move in fast lurches across the grass towards the shed. The terrible numbness in his shoulders grew heavier. He lifted the bar with his one good hand and eased himself inside.
Arilon lay face down on the concrete floor, his right hand under his stomach, the other stretched out like a dead snake along his side. Pynter could smell his fear. He grabbed his friend and shook him.
‘S’Pynter, Ari. Let’s go.’
He shoved his free hand under Arilon’s armpit. It was then that the first crushing wave of pain shot down Pynter’s side and froze him. He rocked back, closed his hand on Arilon’s arm and tugged.
‘C’mon, fella,’ he said.
They were out and running. The floodlights were bright enough to give some colour to the grass. They hugged the shadow of the fence.
Arilon was ahead of him, his upper body almost parallel to the ground. For some reason, he was following the curve of the fence while making urgent gestures at Pynter. It suddenly made sense when Arilon swung into the swamp.
Arilon lowered himself beside the fence. ‘Dig,’ he croaked.
Pynter barely heard him.
They worked against the stinking water that seeped into the opening they created with their hands. The pain and the smell of the rotting mud made Pynter choke on his breath. ‘Can’t go no faster,’ he said.
Arilon did not answer him. He threw himself flat on his stomach and with his elbows tucked against his side, began slithering head first under the wire. Pynter followed him.
Then they were out and running again. Arilon, in whichever direction his terror took him. ‘You goin nowhere full-speed,’ Pynter growled. ‘I come fo’ you, so you follow me, y’unnerstan?’
On their backs amongst the pile of reservoir pipes, they filled their lungs with night air. Arilon cradled his hand against his stomach. The throbbing in Pynter’s left shoulder rocked his body back and forth. From time to time, a whimper came from Arilon like the soft mewling of a pup. Pynter looked up at the moon, then down at the quiet spread of buildings below them. A sudden wind slipped into the rusting pipes and made them hum.
‘Sylus,’ Arilon said, ‘I goin to kill ’im, Pyntuh. Fuh sure. One day…’
Pynter turned towards him. ‘What Sylus make you say?’
He had seen the terror on Arilon’s face when he rolled him over in that shed. He saw how far his friend was already gone, and the desperation with which he’d dug his way out through the swamp mud and set off in a blind and drunken plunge through the trees. Arilon reached up to his shoulder and tore the sleeve of his shirt away; he tried to grip the cloth between his teeth but he could not do it. Pynter took the strip and wrapped it around the damaged hand.
‘Sylush wanf Pfasho, Fynter. Wanshim vaad,’ Arilon said. He was touching his lips with such tentative strokes it looked like he was patting air. ‘Y’hear me, man?
‘Sylus want Paso bad. Dat’s what you say?’
‘Like de Devil want your soul.’
The growl of jeeps from the road above pulled them to their feet. Headlights swept the trees. Arilon pressed himself back down between the piles of rusting metal.
‘We awright,’ Pynter said. ‘We awright, man. Let’s go.’
Pynter did not see Tinelle on the steps until he collided with her knee.
‘That’s him?’ she said.
When they entered the room there were three bodies stretched out on the floor washed in yellow candlelight. One was under the window at the far end of the room; another was against the wall under the picture of the grandparents. The third lay face down in the middle, using his folded arms as a headrest. Hugo was sitting upright on the sofa, his eyes shut and head thrown back, breathing heavily through his mouth.
‘Robert?’ Tinelle said.
The young man in the middle of the room lifted his head. He woke the others with a tap of his shoe against their ribs. Pynter watched him closely. Tinelle leaned over her brother and tugged the lobe of his left ear. Hugo came to life, staring wild-eyed about the room until he focused on Pynter.
‘How – how did it go?’ he croaked.
They turned to Arilon. His face was crushed, his lips and eyes swollen, and there was the stink of swamp mud. The three strangers rushed out of the room with Hugo after them.
‘I’ll prepare some water,’ Tinelle said and hurried off.
Arilon was leaning against the doorway, swaying slightly. And to think that Sylus had only just begun to work on him. At least that was the sense Pynter had made of Arilon’s chewed-up words up there amongst the pipes.
He was glad the others left them to themselves. There was something he’d begun to say to Arilon out there in the dark and now he wanted to finish it. Pynter traced the trail of mucus trickling down Arilon’s nose, settling in the crevices of his swollen lips. He placed himself in front of him, but Arilon would not return his stare.
‘You tell Sylus everything about us,’ Pynter said. ‘You tell ’im where we live and what we look like. You tell ’im all you know about Paso. And dat is worse, becuz till now, they didn know what Paso look like. Now they know.’ He stuck a finger in the hollow of Arilon’s throat. ‘You owe me a life, fella. In fact you owe me two. Yours, fo’ sure, an’ Paso. Cuz s’far as I can tell, Paso good as dead.’
Tinelle came back into the room with a handful of clothes and dropped them on the sofa. ‘For you,’ she said to Pynter. To Arilon she said, ‘I left yours by the bath.’
Later, washed and dressed in Hugo’s clothes, Pynter lowered himself onto a chair. He was aching everywhere. At his yard, they would have laid their hands on him. They would have scrubbed him down with bush or bark, in water laced with powders and herbs, to soothe him and help him sleep.
They gathered around Arilon. After a tense, uncertain glance at Pynter, the youth tried to tell his story, but he couldn’t do it.
Tinelle rested her hand on Arilon’s, briefly. ‘We got to get you out of here,’ she said. ‘First thing.’
‘Later, I’ll run them home,’ Robert said.
Arilon wanted to go right now. He blinked at them through his swollen eyes. ‘Trouble out there,’ Tinelle said. ‘And I should say this now.’ She brushed her nose and turned away. ‘Pynter’s not travelling with you.’
‘I take them together,’ Robert said. The youth began striding across the floor towards her. Tinelle stopped him with her gaze.
‘It doubles the risk,’ she snapped. ‘And besides, Pynter got that shoulder to look after.’
Robert lifted an irritated finger at Arilon. ‘You really want to go first, fella?’
‘I s’pose,’ he said. ‘In fact, I definitely s’pose I want to go first, specially if Pynter prefer to stay with Miss, erm, Miss Finelle.’
Hugo stood up. ‘That’s settled, then. Night all.’ Tinelle muttered something and Hugo remained where he was.
Tinelle pretended not to hear him. She reached for the phone and dialled. She asked for a man named Simon. There was a shoulder she wanted him to check, she said. Could he remind her what to do? And, oh!, there was a hand too. A thumb. Was there …
Tinelle listened with her eyes closed. She put down the phone and came over to Pynter, asked him to curl his fingers in then straighten them. She closed her eyes and slipped her hand along his arm right up to his shoulders. Nothing broken or dislocated, she said. Most likely a torn ligament. She would bandage it the way Simon said and wait till he came to fix it.
Tinelle did the same with Arilon. She said nothing to him, just gestured to Hugo, who went into his room and returned with a small box which he handed to her. She spent a long time over Arilon’s hand.
That night Pynter slept fitfully. In his dreams he was balanced on a high branch above the town and Arilon was calling him with soft gestures from below. When he woke in the middle of the night he saw that they had forgotten to blow out the candles. The room was washed in a reddish glow from two remaining stubs placed beneath the table. Tinelle was curled up amongst the cushions near the record player. Robert was on all fours above her, his head bent low, his whispers deep and pleading.
At first Pynter thought she was asleep, but above the breathing of the boys he could hear her saying, ‘No.’ Robert’s was a grumbling insistence. And then they both saw him. Robert retreated to the middle of the room.
Pynter lay back and imagined Sylus searching the streets and alleyways for them. He wondered what, if they’d caught him tonight, they would have done to him. What might his last moments have been like? Certainly not like his father’s – to whom death had seemed like nothing more than a willingness to shut his eyes on a world of which he said he’d seen too much. Perhaps he, Pynter, would have gone screaming in astonishment at his own blood, like Marlis Tillock, like Jordan. Like Zed Bender under that tree.
He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked over at Tinelle. Despite the presence of the others in the room, he felt alone with her. He mouthed her name and then gave it sound. Tin-nel-le. And when she stared back at him he knew then that he would never need to go down on all fours before her, and even if he chose to she would welcome him with those wide and quiet eyes.
33
I WANT TO BE with you, he’d said. And all she could think of when he left were his hands.
That’s what Tinelle told him afterwards.
And because she could find no way of responding to those words, she busied herself with caring for his dislocated shoulder. She asked herself who the hell was she to fight it, to resist him. He puzzled her. He was a shy fella, yet so full of himself. I want to be with you – he’d said those words to her again. He was the type who talked and touched, which was why she always asked the kind of questions that made him talk a lot.
It was a good time for loving. Sylus’s men were speeding through the streets, from late evening till the early hours of the morning, their jeeps making thunder along the Carenage below.
The grapevine hummed with talk of fresh arrests, more disappearances and Victor’s new and killing ways.
It was a good time for the soldiers too, because the rains that fell in heavy curtains erased the blood left on grass and asphalt and concrete, hiding their crimes. But in the enormous silence of the cushions in the house above the harbour, they felt secure.
She had to teach him everything. Everything astonished him: her nakedness, the contrast their bodies made, the impossible warmth between her thighs, the way they fitted, how close to pain the sound of so much pleasure was. Everything was new to him and that made her feel untouched and new too. They loved with an abandon that mocked the stiffness of the portraits on the walls. Anything could trigger them, for her especially, she said, the sweat beads gathered on his upper lip.
‘You know nothing about wimmen,’ she said. ‘What you been doing all this time?’
He paused from tracing circles around her navel. ‘Livin to stay alive.’
‘You nice,’ she breathed finally. ‘Nice enough to kill for.’
‘You the kind who kill for love?’
‘What make you think it is for love?’ A smile crept across her face. ‘You worry too much,’ she said, throwing a leg across his stomach.
‘I never worry,’ he said.
But he did worry. He had to have words with Paso. He needed to let all of Old Hope know what Arilon did not say to him up there amongst those rusting reservoir pipes.
Every morning he opened his eyes to Tinelle’s rafters, he told himself he was going to do it today, he was going to leave. But he did not count on the girl readjusting him in the way she did; making him want to close his eyes to everything but her. Because it was a good time; despite the curfews, it was an easy time. Love slowed him down, it was a kind of forgetfulness.
34
ARILON’S RETURN lifted the heaviness that had descended on Old Hope.
They greeted him with a new pair of trousers hung on the back of his chair, and a beautiful blue shirt laid out on its seat.
They wanted to know what happened. All of it. They begged him for the story behind every bruise and swelling on his body, especially how that bright-eye fella got him out. He must tell them what it felt like to get snatched back from the hell of Sylus’s hands and be driven home in a fancy silver car.
Pynter Bender – Deeka Bender gran’son – what a fella!’ Twas that young-fella eddication that saved Arilon. Did he know that? A pusson was sure of it. In fact a pusson know it. It didn have no other argument for it. He study a whole heap o’ science in dat fancy school of his, not so? He don’ have dem whiteman eyes fo’ nothing. Becuz everybody know that science is whitepeople obeah. They walk on water wiv it; they run the world wiv it. It make dem fly; it give dem underwater-boat-and-plane; and bullets as big as a house that mash up other people country. So, wicked as Sylus an’ Victor is, they don’ stand a chance against high science.
Besides, eddication is better than a ticket. It better than a passport too, cuz it take a pusson anywhere they like, includin the big-an’-soft-an’-wide bedroom of a nice-lookin girl in San Andrews.
It didn’t matter at all that Arilon barely answered them. They put it down to the terrible thing that must have happened to him. For they’d seen his face and the broken thumb and something in his eyes that was not so different from what they’d witnessed in Jordan’s the day Sylus’s men returned him to Old Hope.
At least Jumbie Boy was all right. S’matter o’ fact, he wasn’ no Jumbie Boy no more. He was Missa High Science. And Ole Hope better prepare demself for Sylus and his men, cuz when you snatch a bone from a dog, you expect dat dog to turn around and bite you. So the men’s attention turned to ‘preparations’ for the soldiers’ possible return. They talked about the storm of stones their jeeps were sure to meet as soon as they entered Old Hope.
During the weeks it took Arilon to recover, he filled their nights with song, until one morning, his finger cured, he left his yard and went up to the foothills. They heard the sound of his chopping for the best part of the day. He returned with portions of wood – twisted branches and the convulsed roots of trees – and piled them in his yard.
They counted the days and waited, for, as Deeka Bender told Old Hope, there was a pattern in every madness and if there was a story in there, time was going to unfold it.
And, sure enough, one morning a few weeks later, Old Hope woke, cocked an ear up at the hills and what they heard was just the argument of birds, the sigh of cane and the snore of the wind in high places. Arilon’s chopping had stopped.
He worked only nights with a masantorch, in the company of his own songs and the chipping of chisel into wood.
The morning came when word brought them down to the roadside. The twisted roots and branches had taken on the shapes of humans – people shapes whose bodies
followed the contours of the roots and branches: limbs wrapped around or turned in on themselves; heads staring down at backbones; heels fused with neck and collarbones; skin shivering with the teeth marks of the chisel that chewed into them.
They had no name for this. They had no words for all the things those faces said. They had no measure for the feelings that it left them with. Although Muriel started weeping.’ Twas as if, she said, Arilon was telling her that he got a glimpse of the place Sylus had taken her lil boy, Jordan, and this was what it looked like.
Perhaps Anita had been taken to a place like that too. Perhaps she hadn’t completely left it. A pusson couldn say for sure. What was certain was that she left her steps one evening, drawn perhaps by the gatherings in front of Arilon’s house, and went to see for herself. The few times Anita strolled up Old Hope Road, women never stopped to talk to her. For she moved and looked like no other woman in these villages above the canes: the rust-brown hair that rolled down her head in coils and settled on her shoulders; big, cattish eyes; all that flesh that hadn’t been firmed up by walking or hard work; and a smile that was too steady to be real. Still, they did not expect the screaming alarm with which she jumped back from Arilon’s creations and the haste with which she retreated to her house above Deeka Bender’s yard. And they certainly didn’t expect her to come back for them with a machete.
Anita was calling them by names they’d never heard before. And as Arilon watched those shapes of frozen hurt become chipping under Anita’s flailing machete, there was perhaps a glint in his eyes that looked like gratefulness. When there was nothing left but useless bits of kindling, he gathered the pieces and set fire to them. From now on, he would return to making beautiful furniture.
But those shapes that Anita destroyed did not seem to want to leave her. Evenings, she fought them in her yard. They were crowding her, she said. They were trying to get their hands on her skin. They wanted to steal her hair. She mistook mosquitoes for helicopters. She forgot her clothes sometimes, talked to people in the air, stood in the rain and danced and became a golden gloria lily with a singing voice more beautiful than Patty’s.