Pynter Bender

by Jacob Ross

  Tinelle walked him down to the waterfront to the huddle of bars and wooden buildings, where they sat on stools, held hands like children and laughed at the antics of San Andrews women manoeuvring drunken sailors into corners.

  There was a barman down there who knew her. Tinelle called him Capes. He was tall in his white cotton suit and swayed like a palmiste tree. His mouth was so packed with gold teeth he sounded as if he were always choking on something.

  As soon as they arrived, Capes turned his back on his customers, retrieved an empty glass, polished it and mixed Tinelle a drink. ‘Somefang new, Miss Lady,’ he would say, ‘A lil somefang that take mah fancy.’ He would rest the drink on the table before her and step back, his eyes on her hands, nodding at them as if they were sharing a language that only he and Tinelle’s fingers were party to. She would bring the rim of the glass to her nose, close her eyes and inhale; then look up at Capes, her eyes bright with discovery:

  This rum born straight from cane juice. Rum agricole, not so?

  Guadeloupe or Martinique!

  or

  Cane sugar rum, this one. Brazilian. I sure of that. Add as

  much Coke and lime as you want, Capes. I still know it’s Cachaça.

  or

  Not Bajan, not Trini, not anything from this side. Too frivolous,

  man. Too light. Virgin Islands more like – Cruzan?

  She never got it wrong. They spoke of flavours and proofs and blends, of colours and styles and weight for a while. Capes would look down his nose at Pynter, his teeth glittering like street lamps. ‘Orange juice fuh de baby-fella, not so?’

  And while Capes took his time fetching the juice, Tinelle balanced the glass in the palm of her hand and told Pynter about rum. It raised the hairs on his arms to hear her, for in the twelve weeks that he’d been with her, he’d never heard Tinelle speak more beautifully about anything.

  ‘Rum is cane in a state of transcendence, Pynter. It is the capturing of ghosts. That’s why people right to call it spirits. Because, you see, rum is the result of a kind of resurrection, y’understand? Is bringing alive a poisonous soup of fermented sugar that people call a dead wash. Dead because that’s what it do to you if you foolish enough to drink it in that state. It’s got sulphur in there, it’s got methanol and a whole heap of funny things called ketones. But,’ she would flick a finger at the glass, bring it to her nose and inhale, ‘somewhere deep in the heart of all of that the spirit lives.’

  And what did it take to exorcise it? A sorcerer. In the old days it was a fella somewhere in the mountains, with a couple of steel drums and some piping. He had something special. He had – she would sip at the glass and wink at him – a relationship with steam. That fella had an understanding of the exact point at which to capture steam, bring it back to liquid and trap it in a bottle. Because anything below a certain temperature was no good. Did he know that? That there was a temperature you started to catch the spirit from, and another that you must stop at? And the further up you go, the hotter the rum, the more flavourful and deadly?

  Cane – cane was amazing. Did he know anything about cane?

  Pynter would sip his juice, shake his head at Tinelle and laugh.

  Rum did not change her moods or dull the quickness of her movements. Nor did it soften the bite she brought to the arguments he had with her.

  During the day, she answered calls and made them – her voice dipping so low sometimes all he heard were murmurs: bits of conversation, fragments of words, small silences; nods and winks and sideways glances in his direction; toes curling around conversations that sometimes lasted hours with voices she would never put a name to.

  They all added up to something big. A plan. A great gathering of youths the likes of which the island had never seen before. He thought of the picture of converging rivers that Paso spoke to them about in the forest above Old Hope. Only this time he imagined Tinelle and the people whose names she would not even say in her sleep, standing on some hill above it all, directing the flow of the flood.

  It began as the root of an idea, which, over the weeks, grew so complicated he’d given up on following it. There were security and logistics to consider. There were warm-up speeches and keynote addresses and possible contributions. There were worst-case scenarios and exit strategies. There was also Paso. They were going to leave him for last. Paso would use those pretty words of his to erase the fears and stir the love. His words would draw them closer to the thing that everyone was heading towards. They were counting on Paso to send everyone home on a high.

  She’d come to the end of one of those conversations which hadn’t lasted long. She’d got up earlier than usual to make the call and at the end of it Tinelle put the phone down chuckling. She saw him staring at her.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Take Paso out of it,’ he said. He’d raised himself up on his elbows from the cushions. He spoke quickly, breathlessly about the night he went for Arilon and what he knew for certain. ‘Sylus,’ Pynter said. ‘Arilon tell ’im everything, especially ’bout Paso.’

  ‘You don’t think we figured that out?’

  ‘Who figured?’

  ‘We did. Look, Pynter.’ She dropped herself beside him. ‘It had to happen. Paso knows that too. That’s why he’s never on his own these days. Paso’s all right, believe me.’

  ‘He not! Tell ’im I say he not.’

  ‘I spoke to Paso yesterday. You were sleeping when he called. He even asked me how you were. Listen, Pynter, you not made for this. It was the first thing Paso told me. You think …’

  ‘Lissen to me, Tinelle!’

  ‘Go easy, fella, you squeezing my hand.’

  Pynter walked out onto the veranda and raised his head up at the Fort. Even in this sizzling brightness, it still looked grey and separate. It was the only thing in this town that did not throw back the light. He turned his gaze towards the corridor of islands that began where the harbour ended – a blue-black procession of rocks that pulled his vision northwards until their shapes were smudges in the distance. The first sun cut a bright yellow path straight through them, ending, it seemed, at the very foundations of the house in which he stood.

  He was looking at the bright knife-edge of the horizon and thinking that Tinelle might be right. He’d imagined his way towards something that served only to frighten him. He was different in San Andrews. There were just San Andrews and Tinelle, and the way she wanted him to be. She wanted him to be like water, she said, and fit whatever shape she needed. That meant absorbing her instructions while pretending not to hear them.

  ‘You worry too much,’ she said. ‘I want you to trust me.’ She slipped an arm around his waist and pointed at the procession of islands. ‘El Dorado Road,’ she said. ‘That is what I call it. That’s the road that takes everybody off this island, even the planes follow it.’

  Those rocks ended in a kind of hell a few miles further out. It was where the spine of the island dipped into the sea. There was a live volcano beneath the waters, the remains of the fire that had risen from the ocean and built the island. It made a cauldron of the currents that met there. Just beyond though, a little way past that, the ocean quietened and deepened. Its surface was so flat and sleepy a foreigner who saw it once had named it Dreamwater.

  Tinelle tightened her arm around him. ‘Pure calm,’ she said. ‘In the midst of all that violence. Like us.’

  ‘T,’ he said. Her shoulders stiffened under his hand. ‘I have to walk. I have to go out.’

  Apart from their night-time trips to the harbour, he’d barely left the house. He’d lain with her and talked. He’d fallen asleep to her music and her voice. He’d followed her with his eyes until he could tell what she meant or wanted just by touch or gesture. He’d uncovered ways to love her that exhausted and amazed her. But over time the yard had become a pulse inside his head, the absence of the women’s voices a dull ache in his stomach.

  ‘Tired of this place?’ She said it like a joke. He saw the worry in th
e way she looked at him.

  ‘I have to see my Aunt Patty,’ he said.

  Tinelle raised her eyes at the church towers on Cathedral Street. ‘You’ll come back?’

  ‘That what you want?’

  ‘F’course,’ she said.

  He’d been sending notes to Patty at the store through the woman who came once a week to clean the house.

  He always wrote the same three lines.

  I’m alright.

  Coming home soon.

  Pynter

  Patty would reply in the same style, almost as if she were mocking him.

  We alright too.

  Take your time.

  Patty.

  His aunt spotted him across the street and came out of the shop. She leaned against the glass front and began fanning her face with one hand. She’d straightened her hair and pulled it up in a high bun, with a large silver comb on either side. Her face looked fuller, her gaze more distant. He hadn’t seen his aunt for almost four months. Now he saw how much the baby she was carrying had changed her.

  ‘What wrong?’ he said.

  ‘I tell you somefing wrong?’

  ‘How’z everybody?’

  ‘Who’z everybody, Pynto?’

  Pynter stepped closer to her, peering into her face. ‘What wrong, Tan Pat?’

  She angled her head away from him. ‘Is lunchtime,’ she said. ‘Come wiv me.’

  He walked with her through the market. She moved slowly – a careful sideways walk in which her shoulders took the impact of the people who pushed past them. He realised she was fearful for the baby and stepped ahead of her. Patty hooked a finger into his belt and steered him forward.

  She did not speak to him until they were sitting in the little restaurant that looked down on the sea. She made him order her food and place it in front of her.

  ‘Is Celia,’ she said. ‘She not awright.’

  He almost asked her who Celia was. Apart from Deeka, he’d never heard anyone else use Tan Cee’s proper name.

  Patty said she was going to tell him everything. She dropped her voice. She forgot her food and fingered the buttons of his shirt while she spoke.

  It happened a few weeks ago. How come nobody let him know? Well,’ twas becuz that was what Tan Cee said she wanted.

  ‘She don’ want you to come home an’ see her like she is now. She don’ want you to meet ’er this way,’ Patty said.

  ‘What way?’ Pynter made to get up. Patty closed her fist around his shirt.

  ‘I goin home,’ he told her. He moved to get up again.

  ‘Lissen to me! You don’ lissen! That’s yuh problem. You never lissen! An’ you make trouble fo’ people when you don’t.’

  He tried to get up a third time. She pulled him down. Patty glanced at the bulge of her stomach and stared straight into his eyes, as if to say, she would fight him if she had to despite her heaviness with child. He sat back.

  His aunt picked up her spoon and wagged it in his face. ‘You have to unnerstan this, Pynto, not everybody like de world to see dem naked. Specially de ones dey close to. Nobody kin love you like Celia gone and done. You unnerstan dat? Even I not sure I unnerstan it. But she tell me once dat you’z her child becuz you feel like dat inside of her. From the first time she lay dem two hands of hers on you and stain dem with your birt’ blood, she make you hers. Not even Elena kin fight dat. Tan Cee don’ want you to see her the way she is right now. She’ll call you when she ready.’

  She dropped the spoon and pulled a kerchief from her bag. She wiped the corners of his eyes.

  ‘I hope – I hope everything make sense later. So help me God, I not always sure. I not … Love an’ hate, Pynto. They live in de same place sometimes. You say dat to Chilway once – that time he come for Birdie. Lil boy as you was, you teach Chilway somefing. I never forget dat.’

  Coxy was going to be all right, she said. That was if he could find something else to hold on to that make him feel like man. One thing was for sure though. He would have to learn to walk again.

  ‘The police came. A lot of them. And it was all Deeka could do to make Ole Hope wimmen keep their mouths shut. Didn have a woman in Old Hope who wasn’ there to help Tan Cee with a story of some kind. They left the police believing that Coxy used to throw ’imself at every woman in Ole Hope, includin a whole heap of ole-wimmen. S’matter o’ fact, Tan Cee didn need to say nuffing fo’ herself.

  ‘Dey got so much statement from so many of dem wimmen, police people run out of paper. They would ha’ been writing still if they didn decide ’twas too much information.’ Patty shook her head. A soft laugh came from her. ‘Dem police put it down to self-defence – self-defence of Windy.’

  Pynter frowned at her. Patty flashed him a dark, condemning gaze. ‘The problem wiv you is dat you think too straight – dat’s what. How’z de lady?’

  ‘Tinelle?’

  ‘That her name?’

  ‘Uh-huh, she awright.’

  Patty waved her spoon. ‘God not fair sometimes – an’ I don’ care if I burn in hell fo’ sayin dis. He wrong to make you an’ Windy family. One thing he do right, though – he make sure you wasn’ home when Coxy try to trouble her.’

  Everybody else was all right, she said. Even Deeka. And she, Patty, wouldn’t be coming back to work until she had the baby.

  ‘And then?’

  His aunt lifted her shoulders and dropped them. ‘Richard got to make up hi mind: I go to his house o’ he come to mine.’

  ‘He’ll never come to yours.’

  Patty soured her face. ‘One thing I know fo’ sure. I not goin be nobody woman-on-de-side.’

  ‘He got a woman on de side?’

  ‘You know a man who don’t?’ She seemed lost for a while in the thrashing of the water below. ‘S’not de govment that got to change first, Pynto. Is y’all, you fellas. If govment change and y’all don’t change is de same trouble we headin for.’

  ‘Richard done you something?’

  ‘Course!’ Patty giggled like a girl and gestured at her stomach. He laughed with her. She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Lordy! Girlfrien’ teachin you to laugh dem pretty laugh too?’ She was laughing so much now, she had to hold on to the chair.

  Patty quietened. She was assessing him with that deep-eyed, yard-woman look of hers. ‘She’ll try to change you, Pynto. You mustn’t let ’er change you, becuz…’ She touched her chest then brought the same hand to his heart and pressed it. ‘We stronger here. Unnerstan? Becuz of de life we live.’

  The gesture seemed to remind her of something. She pulled an envelope from her purse and handed it to him. ‘Somebody lef ’ it in de store fo’ me to give you. Nincy say it was a man. I been carrying it around fo’ weeks.’

  ‘What’s the real reason, Tan Pat?’

  ‘Fo’ what?’

  ‘Why y’all don’t wan’ me home?’

  ‘I jus’ done tell you, Pynto Bender.’

  Patty chose a different route back to her work. The street they walked on was quieter and cooler. Even here people passed and waved at Patty, or called her name and smiled. She pointed across the street. ‘Look in front of you, Pynto. What you see?’

  ‘Some people and some buildings, Tan Pat. This a new game you play after lunch?’

  ‘No, dere, look! I see “Patty’s”,’ she said. ‘Right dere. I see my name on dat place I goin fix up.’ She pointed at a small building at the side of the road. The wooden windows were the old kind, the ones that were kept open with a rod. ‘I see my own lil store, Pynto, wiv me an’ Windy at de counter. I work out de rent. I work out how much money I need to start wiv, an’ how much I got to buy an’ sell. I know who I goin to buy from an’ I know who goin buy from me.’ Patty lifted her chin at a group of passing people. ‘I follow a coupla dem sometimes, to watch what dey leave home to buy. A thousan’ o’ dem pass every day. I want only fifty in my shop. An’ if I can’t double dat number every day, my name not Patty Bender.’

  Her eyes were fixed on him.


  ‘In five years’ time, dat lil store right dere goin take all my famly out of cane, y’unnerstan? I work out every minute.’ She pointed at her head. ‘I got everyting in here. You – you believe me, Pynto?’

  ‘Course,’ he said. ‘Don’ jus’ believe, I know.’

  She’d turned slightly away as if she did not trust his answer. ‘How come you know?’

  ‘Becuz I hear you say it, Tan Pat.’

  Patty turned him round and wrapped her fingers around his belt. ‘That’s why I say it to you first, Sugarface. Gwone, driver! Drive me.’

  Dear Pynter

  This is a quick farewell and also a reminder.

  I’m leaving tomorrow for reasons which I can’t go into now.

  I’m handing this note to a friend of mine who will pass it on until, hopefully, it reaches you. I’m counting on the fact that it’s a small place and somebody always knows somebody who should know. I hope it reaches you in time.

  On the 5th of May, drop whatever you are doing, go to your school and register. Registration begins at nine. Be there early. Too early is preferable. You will receive your number and the dates of your exams. There are six papers. The dates are staggered. I’ve written them on the back of this note. Get there on time for each of them. Sit them.

  I’m not interested in good results from you. I want something better.

  You live, you think, you see, you feel. Bring them all together in those sittings. Remember everything. Read every question three times. Double check exactly what they’re asking you. Use every minute of the time you have to answer only what you’re asked. Don’t opinionate, substantiate. Don’t defer, refer. Make the facts work for you. Offer the examiner your mind. A foolish one might mark you down. A thinking one will reward you for your insights. You think you’re special. Prove it.