Or maybe it was simply the sun that dragged us along. That enormous sun appearing, as I say, just as soon as we stepped from out the clouds—as soon as we stomped those clouds down beneath our feet. Because all-in-a-sudden there it was again, closer and bigger than we’d ever witnessed. That sun gave us new energy. It pulled us along as we walked towards it—as that same sun drew itself away—out over the bosé-backs of those mountains. So we marched a stretch of several hours without stopping a-tall. Without setting Papee down a once to rest weself. Because walking straight into that sun like that we didn’t need to rest. We didn’t need to drink.
Then the bottom edge of the flaming ball began to go black. A blue-black harsh and penetrating as the fire it filled up. All-in-a-sudden the bottom half was eaten-way—and the sun left us even faster, till only a chip remained. Then that chip extinguished itself too. And we felt the sting pull loose from out our throats.
But now it was night: cool, crisp, smoky-gray. Unbearably loud with all its magnitude of pulsating insects, its multitude of nocturnal animal-noises, its screeching & clacking & wee-what-weeing night birds.
___________________
We toted Papee into the night. Tireless. Till the ice-white moon rose up from behind where we knew the sea was hidden. Till exactly midnight according to Mr. Whitechurch’s pocketwatch—because Papee could read it, that’s how bright the moon was. Son, you could’ve read the Star by that moon! At exactly midnight we reached the top of El Tucuche Mountain. Highest point of the whole island.
Slowly, imperceptibly, we started down. Down through the layer of clouds whilst it was still night. Down though thick forest, tall trees, bush: Maracas Valley and Santa Cruz Valley. And still it was night. And just as the sun started to rise again behind our backs, we started into the low cocoahills behind Port-Spain. The ground painted that artificial pink of hard rock candy. Yet beneath our feet its surface was spongy-soft.
Now we found weself gazing out over the sleeping city. Like it had always been there. Unchanged for a thousand years: a ragged, breathing, sprawled-out animal. And beyond the city the sea.
We marched down out of those low cocoahills. Into St. Anns, Cascades. Now we followed a proper path—a proper dirt road—except this road upon which we marched was devoid of human travellers. Un-peopled. All the world asleep. All the world excepting the five of us, because now we were wide awake.
Before we knew it we passed the first sleeping shack—or it passed us—and slowly more shacks appeared. They passed us by. Then the shacks turned to larger slumbering boardhouses. Then concrete, masonry-walled houses. Houses with proper front yards and proper yards behind. And the soft brown dirt road beneath our feet changed to hardened pitch before we realised. Then we were marching down Charlotte Street—the very first named street that we encountered—me issuing directions to the others like if we were out taking a morning stroll—
Just ahead, I say. Just ahead. Just ahead.
Till at last I pronounced the single word with a finality that came from someplace outside my body, like somebody else was saying it, thinking it—
Here, I say. Here. Just here.
We turned between the two vaguely familiar rusted gateposts. Before the vaguely familiar little white boardhouse at #7 Charlotte Street. Turning in as cool & easy & unspectacular as if we were ducking between two clumps of balizier bush. Esteban and Orinoko mounting the three short steps of the stoop, with John and me still standing outside the gate. Still in the street. And Orinoko leant forward a little, bowing down his head a little, and he reached out shy and unastonished as the rest of us to knock on the door. We heard him knocking. All-in-a-sudden standing in one place, still, but still marching.
17
When Bazil Call
Amelia, the youngest, answered the door. Wearing her ruffled nightdress, flowerprint of sleep cross her blushed cheek: Amelia took one look at us and shut the door again straight in we faces—bram.
She opened again after a second, cautious, her single pale-gray eye peering past the doorcrack—
Dada? she says, pressing up onto her toetips to see over Esteban’s shoulder.
Amelia, Papee answers, his voice strained, scratchy. And as my father pronounced my sister’s name, I felt a hollow space opening up inside my chest.
Now began that awkward jostle of the four of us. Several frustrated seconds—like this was the most complicated predicament we’d faced for all these hours of toting and marching—before we came to the collective conclusion that the door wasn’t sufficiently wide to admit the stretcher. Suddenly Orinoko’s cutlass appeared—instinctive, flashing above his head—like the doorframe’s a balizier bush he’s about to chop from out our way.
Sweet Jesus! Amelia cries. She shuts the door again—bram.
Back up, I tell the others. We’ve got to carry him in off the stretcher.
Now the four of us shuffled backwards a few steps, Amelia opening the door a third time. Esteban and Orinoko stumbling off the porchstoop in three successive drops, backwards through the rusted gateposts. We set Papee down in the middle of the street. Then I reached under his wet armpits to take him up, his head cradled against my chest. And Orinoko—at this particular moment, of all others—Orinoko had trouble reholstering his cutlass: he tucked the blade quick between his clenched teeth, taking hold of Papee’s legs under his arms. Two of us toting him in through the gateposts again. Captain Taylor’s holeefied blanket still wrapped round him, corner sweeping the ground.
By this time Mum & Mary & Georgina had awakened too. Four white nightdresses crowding the doorframe, stares of panic in all they flushed faces. Particularly as Orinoko advanced towards them, Papee’s legs tucked under his arms—this half-naked Warahoon bearing his cutlass between his clenched teeth. They parted to let us pass. Mum leading Orinoko through the parlour, down the narrow hallway to her bedroom at the back. Orinoko and me creaksing over the floorboards, the entire little house shaking on its groundsills beneath us. Toting Papee into the small, dark, cool bedroom. Shifting him up onto the white mattress that seemed to me big and broad as a boat.
I’d heard my parents conversing together—greeting each other even before we could get Papee inside his room—though I was unaware of what they were saying. Both they voices calm & quiet & unemotional. Like they’d been separated only a few minutes, not twenty-three days. In contrast to the tears I could already see flashing on my mother’s cheeks. I watched her brush them away with the sleeve of her nightdress, sitting on the bed beside Papee. Leaning forward to strike a match and light the candle on the bedstand.
In the flickering yellow light I saw Papee searching inside his trousers pocket for Mr. Whitechurch’s watch. Reaching cross Mum to set it down on the bedstand beside the candle, goldchain spilling over the side like prayer beads. Fixing the watch with its face tilted up so he can read it. I saw him fumbling inside another pocket, removing first the notebook, then a little roll of papers tied up with fishing-twine. Setting them both down atop the bedstand beside the watch.
The notebook I knew good enough—the roll of papers I’d never seen before. Though I recognised my father’s cramped script curving cross the exposed sheet, wondering when he could have written it, what these papers might be: a letter to Mum? Papee’s last will and testament?
My attention diverted back to Mr. Whitechurch’s watch, its crystal catching the flash of Orinoko’s cutlass as he reholstered it behind me. I listened to the watch’s clear, sharp ticking—like I was hearing it for the first time—tac tac tac in little pebbles ricocheting off the board walls. Squinging up my eyes to make it out—5:47.
Papee took hold of Mum’s hand. Pressing it against his chest, against the brown stain on his filthy merino.
She hadn’t even looked me full in the face yet. Till now my mother had only been able to take in Papee.
I turned—
Come, I say to Orinoko, quiet. And I led him out the room. Closing the door behind us.
Georgina & Mary & Amelia wrapped th
ey arms round me as soon as I entered the parlour. All four of us hugging up together. I felt they cool, soft arms—yet the thing I was most aware of was my own stench. I smelt myself and I smelt Orinoko standing behind me. I could smell John and Esteban all the way out in the street.
Now I noticed, over Mary’s shoulder, that all along one side of the parlour were thick bolts of brightly coloured cloth. Piled perpendicular, stacked up tall as the ceiling. A solid wall of them, an array of textures and colours: multiple shades of blues & yellows & reds & greens. Mum and my sisters’ handiwork, no doubt—they’d set up a dyers’ workshop right there in the house.
After a minute I stepped back, looking at my three sisters. All three still too shocked and confused, for the moment, for tears.
Georgina, the eldest, spoke first—
How ill is he?
I looked at them, trying to think how best to answer this—
The truth is that we don’t know. I s’pose the doctor’ll have to answer us that. We don’t even know what he’s suffering from—jungle fever, black vomit—plenty of names for the illness nobody knows anathing about!
Already I felt I’d said too much, though I knew I hadn’t told them nothing a-tall. I knew I didn’t know hardly nothing to tell them, even if I’d wanted.
He looks so ghastly, Mary says.
And Amelia—
Why’s he that loathsome colour?
I turned my eyes to the floor—
There’re others in worse shape, I say, trying to soften it some. Mrs. Wood and her daughters . . .
I felt like I was digging myself inside a hole. And after another uncomfortable second I changed the subject. Addressing the three of them together again—
We’ve got to eat. What’ve you got to feed us? Anathing a-tall?
I was aware of pronouncing the anathing the same way Papee did—twice in the space of a couple breaths—but I couldn’t pause to contemplate it now.
It was Georgina who answered—
I’ll run to the corner shop. I’ll have to wake Miss Odette.
And with that she turned round to grab up a white kerchief sitting on the shelf, tucked under a book and knotted round some coins—I heard them rattle together as she took them up. And in the same breath she was out the door, barefoot, wearing only her thin nightdress—
Go in, please, I heard her tell John and Esteban outside. You must go in!
A second later John entered, timid, Esteban a step behind. They stood together in a corner of the parlour, not knowing what to do, they discomfort almost palpable. And I wondered how this could be—how a-tall?—after what we’d been through together? I watched John studying the settee a few seconds, like he was contemplating whether or not to sit on it. He crouched to the flooring, sitting atop his dusty heelbacks.
I reached down to touch his shoulder—
Come, I say, remembering the dining table at the back. Nodding to Esteban and Orinoko.
I led them down the short corridor—four of us trodding lightfoot as we could manage but creaksing up the floorboards nonetheless—past my parents’ bedroom to the little screened patio behind. John and me sitting on the bench at one side, Esteban and Orinoko facing us.
All-in-a-sudden I felt a warm wave of déjà vu—like the four of us were back sitting at our dining table in the compound, beneath the almond tree. Sacks of foodstuff hanging above us like a madman’s version of a Christmas tree.
But that feeling was blanked quick enough by another memory: one of me sitting here at this same dining table, not so long ago. Though a decade seemed to have passed since that night. Carefully dissecting my first hummingbird. I recalled Papee stepping out onto the gallery the following morning—almost at this same hour—I could feel him standing behind me. His breath warm against the back of my neck, watching me work. Studying the little bird over my shoulder.
Georgina returned with a brownpaper sack containing a dozen hopsbreads. Warm from out the oven. And I took in the smell of fresh-baked bread for the first time since I’d left—so thick and doughy it made me retch. Yet my mouth was watering just the same. In her other hand, together with the pouch of coins, Georgina held a thick chunk of guavacheese, wrapped in oil-spotted waxpaper.
She set the things down on the table. Meanwhile, Mary went to the kitchen in the yard to collect a knife and the corked bottle of drinking water. Amelia taking down glasses and porcelain plates from the cupboard in the corner—I marveled at the unspoken efficiency with which the three of them coordinated all this.
With the same efficiency Georgina prepared and served us breakfast: two hopsbread-and-guavacheese sandwiches each, peripheries of the thick purple-brown slices of cheese encrusted with granulated sugar. Glittering in the soft morning light. John and me inhaling our sandwiches—despite the shock of sweetness—soon as the plates were handed to us. I was embarrassed by the noise we made consuming them. Then we drank a couple glasses of water each, served to us by Mary.
Georgina prepared a breakfast plate for Papee too. She carried it to the bedroom and knocked on the door. I heard Mum’s voice, then the door closing again.
Esteban and Orinoko ate slower. Finishing only the first of they sandwiches, ripping off neat squares of brownpaper from the sack to wrap the other. Now I noticed they peculiar method of drinking without touching the glasses against they lips—I’d never seen this before, never seen them drink from nothing but a calabash cup. Dropping they heads back and pouring the water out careful inside they extended jaws.
As I contemplated this John rose, handing Georgina his plate, empty glass balanced upside-down in the middle—
Thank you, Miss Tucker, he says, like she’d given him a feast.
Then he nodded his head to my sister—a small, formal bow—and turned towards me—
We goin’ in search for Cap’n Maynard.
Now he smiled—
No time for skylarkin!
All-in-a-sudden I didn’t want them to go. All-in-a-sudden I was desperate, afraid for them to leave us—
What the hell! I say. You don’t want to bid farewell to Papee?
Then I realised I didn’t know what I meant by this farewell myself.
John steupsed. Smiling still—
Willy-boy, he says, you Papee go recover heself good ’nough. Soon as dat doctor come from de hospital to fix he up!
And with that the three of them were gone. Down the corridor and out the front door, Esteban and Orinoko carrying they wrapped-up sandwiches.
I got up too, hurrying back to the parlour again, watching them through the front window. Three bare, muscular backs, side-by-side together. One tall, narrow, ebony-black; the other two squat & broad & reddish-brown. Walking into the sun like a single retreating figure, snipped from a sheet of tin.
After a second Georgina brushed past, out the front door too. Carrying the sack with the remaining hopsbreads, the remaining chunk of guavacheese.
I watched John stop and turn round to take the sack. And I watched him smile and bow his head to my sister again.
___________________
That morning—sitting on the parlour-settee whilst Mum and my sisters tended to Papee in the back bedroom—that morning I did something for the first time which, inevitably, I’d take up as a lifelong habit: I slept with my eyes open. Just so. People find this thing peculiar. All I can say is from that morning we’d brought Papee home from Chaguabarriga, it has become a regular habit for me. The way I take my naps during the day. Sitting up with my eyes open.
How long I slept like that I couldn’t tell you. Maybe an hour? maybe two? But at some point I became aware of Mum’s voice—
Willy, Willy dear.
I could see her standing before me, slightly out of focus. Yet I couldn’t respond—my lips felt stuck together. I couldn’t make them work. My hand heavy as a brick atop my lap—I couldn’t raise it up.
After a struggle I managed to mumble something—
Wha?
Mum stared at me a few more seconds. T
hen she reached to hug me for the first time since I’d arrived, settling onto the settee beside me, still holding my shoulders—
You were sleeping like one of those jumbies the Grenadians talk about. Your eyes wide-open.
I sat trying to remember something, my head heavy atop my shoulders—
How’s father? I say at last.
But almost before I can get this out I realised I didn’t want to know. Now I was afraid for what she had to tell me.
Resting, she says, as I exhaled a breath. But he’s so hot, burning such a fever!
Until this point my mother’s voice had remained calm, steady. She looked at me again—
That detestable colour of his skin!
And now she broke down, all-at-once. Like the pivotal stone pulled loose from a crumbling wall—
William’s beautiful blue eyes—so swollen, stained that dreadful colour! Those frightful blisters on his buttocks!
I stared at her—
Blisters?
She nodded—
I found them cleaning him up. Removing his trousers. A terrible, horrid open sore on each . . .
She broke off, and I decided the sores must’ve come from the way Papee’s bamsee chafed against the bamboo braces of the stretcher. I couldn’t think of any other cause.
Mum removed a white kerchief from the sleeve of her nightgown, folded into a small roll—at first I confused it with Papee’s little roll of papers, the one he’d fished from out his pocket and left on the bedstand. She pressed the opened-out kerchief against her cheeks—
He defecated on himself, Willy.
I swallowed, remembering the night on the schooner’s deck, Papee lying atop the ghostly canvas. I shook the image off—
You’ve sent for the doctor?
Georgina’s just gone. I’ve given her all the money I have . . . I know those two doctors at the government hospital. The ones available to the general public—maybe if Dr. Bradford’s there? the Englishman? But that Frenchman—Dr. Blanc! He doesn’t make house visits for the likes of us. ’Less he’s paid in advance. The fact that I’m French myself only makes it worse—souris d’église we are to him!
As Flies to Whatless Boys Page 28