by Jacob Ross
His mother was the first to spot him at the bottom of the hill. She straightened up over the pot of oil-down on the fire and laughed out loud, which brought Deeka and Patty hurrying and they too started laughing when they saw him. Tinelle had cut his hair and parted it on the left. She’d greased and brushed it until it shone blue-black like a corbeau’s wing, with little waves laid out along the top like neat potato banks. He’d bought himself a shirt with copper studs around the pockets and cream buttons at the front which glowed like polished ivory. He’d left the top two buttons loose and tucked the tails of the soft white shirt into a pair of flared denims. The shoes he’d left the yard with all those months ago were as clean as if he had just taken them from the box.
They laughed him all the way up the hill, pointing out how fast he’d grown, how tall de fella look now. So easy-walking too! With a pretty smile and a body that only a whole heap o’ Town-Girl-lovin gave!
Elena licked a finger and brushed his brows, teased back the quick of his fingernails and studied them. She examined every inch of him. ‘Now you know what only man s’pose to know ’bout woman, you still believe you’z a man?’
Pynter smiled and wrapped his arms around her. His mother nudged him off and stepped back.
‘Lord ha’ mercy. As if I never see this boy before. Look what six months gone and do to ’im.’
He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Ma,’ he said.
‘You hungry?’ she said, and turned towards the fire.
Pynter didn’t answer her. He walked over to Deeka, who was leaning against the door frame, bothered it seemed by a thorn or something in her finger. She felt frail in his arms, all nerves and angles. He was reminded of the bird he’d pulled out of the sky up there beneath Zed Bender’s tree.
‘Kabinda,’ he said, calling her by the name he’d always used as a child, with the voice that belonged to that time.
‘Gloria Lily Boy,’ she whispered. She adjusted her headwrap and hurried into the house.
Patty had her baby in her arms. She told him that Tan Cee was not there, that this would be her third month at Santay’s. A woman in blue visited just once, she said. A couple of months after Tan Cee’s trouble with Coxy. She’d prised Tan Cee’s eyelids open, asked her a few questions and after a whole morning of talking to Deeka and writing things down, said that Tan Cee was a problem only to husbands who went off with the sisters of their wives and were bad-minded enough to want the daughters of the wife’s sister too. The village males, she added, should be exemplary for a couple of months, at least.
Patty passed the child over to him. The baby’s fingers curled around his thumb.
‘What you goin call ’im?’ he said.
‘Windy don’ wan’ to see you,’ Patty said. ‘What you done to her, Pynto, that night, that night you left?’
‘Same thing she done to me, Tan Pat. Everyfing and nuffing. I try to ferget her like y’all want. I can’t. An’ Tinelle don’ make no difference.’
‘What goin happm to Miss San Andrews?’ she asked.
‘I stay wiv Tinelle. Don’ look at me like dat, Tan Pat.’
‘Like how?’
‘Like you sorry fo’ me o’ something.’
‘Not fo’ you, Pynto, fo’ them.’
‘I done them somefing?’
He stood up, holding out the sleeping child to her.
Patty folded her arms and sucked her teeth. ‘You walkin off already? As soon yuh seat get hot you want to walk. Dat’s easy, Pynto. De hard part is sitting down and lissenin when I got serious tings to tell yuh. You should ha’ lef ’ Windy alone. Some things you don’t touch if it goin stick to your hand and stain it, no matter how nice it look o’ feel. You leave it alone. You walk ’way from it. Windy is your fault.’ She spoke without looking at him. ‘You don’ know the worry we had when we see the way that girl-chile fix she eyes on you. Cuz we know you. You not like Peter. Peter will do somefing foolish, check ’imself and run away in time. Not you, you want more. You want her head. So what you do? You find a way to walk inside it. You use all dem pretty words o’ yours to make a seat fo’ yuhself in dere. You siddown like a shadow inside that girl-chile mind. Now she won’t do sheself a favour an’ push you out of it.’
‘Tan Pat…’ he said. He was shaking his head at her. Patty stopped him with a quick impatient gesture.
‘Got a fella who pass in a car every day. Nice fella. He see her first time. He come back. He want to talk to ’er. He come back every day. He keep tryin. She look at him but she eyes don’ stop on ’im. All I see her doin is comparin. She lissen to ’im like she makin believe is you she hearin.’ Patty levelled a finger at him. ‘You know what dat feel like? To full up yuhself wiv somefing you can’t have? To know it there, and it never goin be yours? If you want to unnerstan dat, go talk to Birdie woman. S’matter o’ fact, go talk to Tan Cee about it. It sour a pusson life, y’unnerstand? It make dem want to quarrel wiv God. I askin you, Pynto, how it feel to have a woman any time you want her, no matter who she livin with or married to? Dat make a fella feel good, not so? But it blight a life, y’unnerstand?’
He raised his hand to try and stop her.
‘It ’mind me o’ dat Zed Bender fella you s’pose to be and dat Essa Bender girl who s’pose to come an’ take you back. If dat was true, I ask meself what kind o’ love could make a woman want to do dat, eh? To follow a fella even after death? I askin you, dat the kind of love you been after from Windy? An’ if so, what about her? Eh? What about Windy?’
He stood up. This time Patty took the child from him. ‘You cursin me,’ he said.
‘I tellin you de truth.’
‘You my aunt, so I can’t tell you what I thinkin now, the way I want to tell you.’
‘Well, Pynto, if … ’
‘Lemme finish! You talk a lot and I lissen. Now lemme put my coupla words t’you. I don’t know men. I hardly been around dem. I don’t even know if I like dem fo’ company or friendship. S’always been y’all – wimmen. If yuh want a different kinda man,’ he pointed at the child, ‘you got yuh chance with dat one. I tell you somefing else. What I feel ’bout Windy frighten me too. She not de only one dat ’fraid.’
He was on his way out when her voice came at him. ‘I name de baby after you, Pynto.’
And then he could hear her making bird noises at the child and chuckling to herself.
He’d come home during the time of the boucans when, late evenings, Old Hope piled high the carcasses of old crops and set the hills alight so that the smell of wood smoke clung to everything in the valley. Even food and water tasted like the closing of dry season.
Later in the evening, when the flutter around his arrival had subsided, he sat in the yard and looked up at the blazing hills. By then he’d washed off the Eddison Farley’s Supreme Cologne, and treated his armpits to a smack or two of stinging Alcolado Glacial. The smell of Topaz Hair Pomade, London Ltd had been replaced by the coconut from the coarse blue soap that Elena handed him with the order to, ‘Go wash dat town girl off you, boy!’
He’d watched Peter busy himself with the fire. He had changed, Pynter thought, or perhaps it was he who was different.
‘What you come back here for?’
‘Don’t talk to me like dat, Peter.’
‘I talk as I please. I don’t want you here. Is only trouble you bring and you don’ stay round long enough to see what happm after. This time I won’ ’low it.’
Pynter felt like a stranger in his yard. Peter was trying to protect them from him. If, in the past, Pynter had claimed their father as his own, Peter had made their mother his.
‘I’m not leaving now,’ he said. ‘Not until I ready. Put that in your pipe an’ smoke it.’
‘I make you leave if I have to, and not even Tan Cee kin change that.’
For what remained of the week, his mother told him, in every way but outright, that the yard was no longer a place for him.
‘You an’ Miss San Andrews fall out?’
‘Nuh.’
‘I ain’t got electric light.’
‘I didn born with electric light.’
‘You pass de age fo’ sleepin on de floor. Peter don’ sleep on de floor no more.’
‘I’z not Peter.’
‘Besides, I don’ want you to go near Windy.’
‘Is Windy not comin near me.’
‘And don’ start no argument with Peter.’
‘I not makin no argument wiv Peter. Is Peter hate my guts.’
‘Don’ say that! Peter is your brother.’
‘You sure?’
The canes were dying: the Otaheites, thin and hard as the people who had fed them with their lives, the dark-barked Creoles, the light-striped Caledonians, and the king of cane itself, the moving sea of Cheribons that had ruled their lives longer than anyone could remember, no longer made this valley shiver with their whisperings. They had been replaced with the new aggressive strains that had numbers – D625 and POJ2878 – instead of names. What Old Hope said to the man who came and made them change the way they planted cane was proving to be true.
In the first few years the Numbers thrived magnificently. But they were fooling no one. To grow so fat, so fast on ageing land meant their roots were doing something secretive and harmful underneath. And now it was there for all to see. The land had blanched and soured with the phosphates it had been force-fed. And wherever the rains had fallen and settled, the soil was iridescent with bacteria. There were bald patches everywhere, and the wind threw up the smell of chemicals and decay.
Men and women left their yards the usual fore-day morning and returned home in the afternoon to sit on their doorsteps and contemplate the fading green. For in the shifting of the hues, the yellowing of the green, the spreading, orange fire of the love vines and the purpling of the shade below the bamboo and the almonds, they saw not only the passing of the old things but the closing of their future too.
Pynter watched Frigo walking up the hill towards him so slowly it was as if his friend were wading through the odours of the rotting canes. He was wearing a collarless white shirt similar to Paso’s. He walked with the same dreamy-eyed distraction. He even wore a coloured belt.
‘How yuh, Pynto Bendup? S’a long time, fella.’ Frigo brought both of Pynter’s hands together and clasped them in his own, Paso’s gesture.
‘Seven months,’ Pynter said. ‘Where’s the others?’
‘Gone. Gone home. Drop de struggle, Pynto. Arilon, he come to see you yet?’
‘No.’
Frigo’s lips closed down like a curtain over his teeth.
‘S’awright,’ Pynter said. ‘People change. You too, Frigo. You change.’
‘What San Andrews like?’
‘Quiet.’
‘An’ de people?’
‘Quiet.’
Frigo turned his face up at the hills. ‘Dat’s de problem. It too quiet now. It gone quiet everywhere. We goin to change dat, Pynto Bendup. We planning a big one. Big! That burn we burn Victor last time ain’ nothin to compare. Paso call it a Gatherin. In Si-Monde. You know dat big place by de sea where dey used to race dem horses? We gonna call a rally of every man, woman and child on this island right there and we gonna put Victor on trial. Like they do in court, y’know? Put de sonuvabitch on trial for all de crimes he commit against we. Against me. Us. De people. We goin to try ’im for all de world to see. Try ’im in … in, er, how Paso call it? Oh! In absentia. Dat mean in the absence thereov! Not so? And when we finish try him with judge, jury, due duress and process; when we finish process de sonuvabitch, we gonna sentence ’im.’
‘What happen after y’all find Victor guilty?’ Pynter said.
Frigo’s smile was beautiful. ‘He stay guilty.’
‘Y’all been planning that a long time?’
‘Long enough.’ Frigo squinted at him. ‘You keep sayin y’all, like if…’
‘And how soon dat due to happen?’
‘When de right time come. Why?’
Tinelle answered him like that too, these days especially. Responses that were not answers. Now Tinelle and he preferred not to talk about these things. For it soured their ease. It made her wary and tight-lipped with him. It was one of the things he’d learned about the way they loved now: much of their happiness depended on avoidances.
‘Just want to know. Thanks fo’ coming, Frigo. I ’preciate it.’
Frigo seemed to want to say something but couldn’t bring himself around to it.
‘Say what you want to say, Frigo.’
‘De girl, she nice?’
‘Which girl?’
‘De red woman in town. De one who they say turn your head.’
‘Who say?’
Frigo grinned. ‘People. She nice?’
‘Nice is not de word.’
‘What is de word, den?’
Pynter got up, stretched and yawned. ‘She’s not de reason behind nothing.’
‘She nice?’
‘Like I told you, nice is not de word.’
Pynter realised that it wasn’t Frigo’s old friendship that had brought him here. A pusson just wanted to get a better look at the bravery or stupidity that made a hero of Pynter Bender in Old Hope. The villages above the canes had all heard of him. In front of the evening fires, they’d fleshed out the little they’d gathered from Arilon for the benefit of the children. They explained how Pynter Bender, Elena Bender’s boy, was born funny, born blind. He was a spirit-chile that found its way into the world by sneaking behind a natural-born; how he became a bat and flew above the fences of barbed wire and liberated Arilon.
Pynter cleared his throat. ‘You know where Paso is?’
Frigo shrugged. ‘Who wan’ to know?’
‘You one o’ the fellas that s’posed to protect my nephew?’
Frigo smiled. ‘People change, Pynto. You lookin at me an’ you thinkin I not up to it? You thinkin … ’
‘Tell ’im I want to see ’im.’
‘I not so sure ’bout dat, fella.’
Pynter advanced towards him. ‘I want to tell you somefing, Frigo. Paso will not live past this “gatherin” y’all planning. I know this. Nobody need no magic to unnerstan that. And if y’all just stop and think ’bout it, y’all will see exactly what I sayin.’
Frigo laughed. ‘Everybody want Paso life, like … ’
‘Tell ’im what I tell you, Frigo.’
Frigo turned. ‘I see what I kin do, Pynter.’
‘Don’ jus’ see what you kin do, Frigo. Do!’
‘You missing Tan Cee?’ Peter’s voice was a whisper in the dark.
‘Ole Hope is a different place without Tan Cee, Peter.’
‘Who’s behind it, Pynter?’
‘Behind what?’
‘De trial o’ Victor.’
‘Paso.’
Peter seemed to sense the worry in him. ‘What gonna happen?’
Pynter lowered his head. He touched his brother. ‘You remember that night before them soldiers come for Birdie?’
Peter nodded.
‘You left the yard. You was out there for a lil while in the dark. Then you come back. You went straight inside the house to tell Birdie he couldn go back to jail else he’ll never leave it. What happm out there in the dark? What make you know?’
Peter stirred beside him. ‘Don’ know. Didn fink it. I jus’ know.’
‘I tell you how you know. You do two things that night: you didn fool yourself and you went all the way. You saw dem soldiers come fo’ Birdie. You know Birdie mash up eight of ’em already before he break loose from jail. You know if they take ’im back to jail and hit Birdie, Birdie goin go crazy. Ain’t got no fella in de world goin strike Birdie an’ Birdie won’ strike ’im back. You add all o’ dat up in yuh head. So quick, Peter, you didn even know it happen. All you had befo’ you was de answer. Patty an’ Deeka see it too, but they didn want to believe it. They stop demself halfway. They fool demself wiv hoping dat it not goin happm. People do that. People do it all
the time. Dey fall back on hope, specially when the obvious is jus’, well … unthinkable. You, you didn let hope stop you. Dat’s how I know Paso wouldn come out of dis gatherin alive … and I can’t get nobody to lissen. Before I come here, I write it down for Tinelle. I left her a letter. I explain to her that in all them years that Paso been mobilisin, that gathering is the only place where Sylus sure to find him. They been lookin for him for years. He frighten the hell out of dem, y’unnerstand? They been tryin to put a face to Paso from time. Now they got a face for this one lil bright-eye fella who kin bring the whole island out in one place, point hi finger at Victor and convince everybody with a coupla words that he’s a criminal. Now they got this one chance to get ’im. You don’ think they goin do whatever the hell it take to do it? Put yourself in Victor place an’ tell me who you’ll go for first, the thousands dat make de trouble or the one pusson dat make de thousands make de trouble? An’ besides, who got the guns, eh? Who got the guns, Peter?’
‘Paso could leave dis place, not so?’ Peter said.
‘Paso will never leave this island.’
‘Why?’
‘Cuz he don’ feel he belong.’
‘Don’ unnerstan.’
‘Wouldn make sense if I tell you.’
‘You tellin me I stupid?’
‘Nuh. Paso wasn’ born nowhere. He born in the middle of the sea, somewhere between Puerto Rico and this island. Pa told me that. Paso carry dat knowledge wiv ’im all de time. He talk ’bout it even when he don’ know he talkin ’bout it. How a pusson make demself belong to a place, Peter?’
Peter shook his head.
‘They give themself to it. They commit.’
‘An’ I not s’pose to unnerstan dat?’
‘Didn mean it the way you take it.’
The fires on the foothills had been reduced to the fitful glow of embers that brightened with every passing wind, like the eyes of demons in the dark.
Peter stirred. ‘You know what people saying about you?’
‘No.’
‘You brave.’ Peter chuckled. ‘You know why?’
‘No.’