“Stop him!” Corpie cried out, struggling back to his feet. Poppa, momentarily frozen by the surprise attack, sprang after Jammy, who by now was several meters in front and propelled by frenzy.
And heading, Pollyread noticed immediately, toward them.
Before this registered properly, he was right there, a few meters away, and saw them. His eyes widened at the same time as Jackson and Pollyread, with a single thought, threw at him what they had in their hands: Jackson his planting stick, Pollyread her previously encumbering water bucket. Jammy, with a flurry of bad words, came crashing to the ground right beside them. And Poppa, seeing them for the first time, stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth hanging open — catching fly, as he himself often described it.
Poppa and the twins staring at each other gave Jammy the chance he needed to scramble to his legs and scamper up into the hillside into the woods behind them.
“What —?” was all Poppa could say, as though he knew no other words.
The twins got shakily to their feet. Pollyread, her legs weak and painful from being so long in one position, felt ready to collapse again. She held on to Jackson’s shoulder. She couldn’t look Poppa in the face, so she focused on Corporal Letchworth, running up behind Poppa and past him. He seemed intent on going after Jammy, and then was distracted by something on the ground beside the twins and stopped. Pollyread looked down.
Corpie’s gun.
She took a step back in recoil. She had never been this close to a gun before, and although it was just lying there on the ground, the images of what guns did flashed around in her head like a light show, frightening her into immobility. Corporal Letchworth stepped nimbly around her and picked it up. He brushed it off like he would a baby, Jammy apparently forgotten.
“What you pickney doing here?” Poppa’s angry voice scorched Pollyread’s thoughts. “Didn’t I tell you —?”
Pollyread felt two sets of eyes pinning her and Jackson to where they stood. For some reason, she looked around for Bailey and Josephs, but they had disappeared.
“How you reach up here? You follow me?”
“No, Poppa,” said Jackson quickly, relieved to be able to utter a simple truth.
“So how you reach?”
Jackson waved his hand in the direction Jammy had gone. Just at that moment they heard his voice falling on them out of the darkening air.
“Babylon! Mass Gillie! You going see me again. And feel me fire.”
Corporal Letchworth spun around and pointed his gun in the direction of the voice. “Feel that fire, you —” He fired the gun three times into the trees, varying his aim slightly with each shot. Pollyread felt Poppa’s arm press herself and Jackson to the ground. Her hands flew to her ears but even so, she heard the bullets burst through the leaves, and then tearing sounds as Jammy scuttled farther out of harm’s way.
Poppa’s heavy breathing filled the silence that rolled back down the hill.
The three of them were stiff on the ground, but Corporal Letchworth was chuckling. “It never ketch him, but him feel it all right,” the policeman said, pleased with himself.
How did Corpie know that he hadn’t shot Jammy? Didn’t he care? Pollyread felt, beneath the shock and confusion, a trickle of concern — for, of all people, Jammy!
“I still waiting,” Poppa said sternly, looking from one to the other of his children as though the interlude of taunting and gunfire had been an unnecessary interruption.
Neither of them had an answer, quiet or otherwise, that would turn away wrath. There was no such answer. Pollyread looked finally into her father’s eyes because to have avoided them any longer would have been insulting and angered him further. The fury she’d expected to see was there, like a little flame that danced between his flared nostrils and questioning eyebrows.
“Don’t be too hard on them, Gillie,” Corporal Letchworth said soothingly. “If it wasn’t for them, it would be Jammy firing gun down at us instead of the other way around. My gun.”
Having come to their rescue, however, the still-chuckling policeman then deserted them. With a pat of Poppa’s shoulder as he passed him, Corpie went back down the slope toward the river, leaving an angry, puzzled father to deal with his wayward children.
The twins had walked down from Morgan’s Mount in their own haze of anxiety, not speaking even to each other. Poppa and the policeman were walking behind, Corpie’s boots thudding ominously on the path down to home. Jackson was very conscious of the water container swinging from Pollyread’s hand, empty, banging against her knees, reminding them of their misdeeds with every step. The cutlass and planting stick hung heavy in his own fingers.
The first round of interrogation was behind them. But only the first.
“Is whose idea this was?” Poppa had asked, looking from one to the other. They were still by the tree where they had tripped Jammy. Corporal Letchworth had gone back to the other side of the river and was searching Jammy’s hut. “You, Pollyread?”
“Was my idea, Poppa,” Jackson jumped in before his sister could answer. “Is me bring her here.”
“You didn’t bring me,” Pollyread protested. “If I didn’t come, you would still be home now.”
“Not so,” Jackson said forcefully. “I knew Poppa wasn’t going to let us follow him up here, so I make a plan.”
“But you wasn’t going to come without me.”
“You did ’fraid to come.” Jackson’s tone was mocking. “Is me convince you.”
“Jackso, you can’t convince me of anything, and you know it. And you is putty for me.”
Jackson felt light-headed. The mixture of nervousness under Poppa’s merciless stare and the excitement of the long afternoon made him feel almost giddy on the path.
“Putty?” he shot back, stung by Pollyread’s taunt. “You did tremble like a breeze was blowing you ’bout the place.”
He realized, looking closely at Pollyread, that she wasn’t any more angry at him than he was at her. They were throwing words at each other to distract Poppa, and to delay the inevitable moment of reckoning. It was a hopeless case, they both knew, but it was as though they were in a school play with one of those strange unfunny scripts that Miss Parkinson wrote for grade six every year. They had to play their parts.
“Lie.”
The word was like a whip-crack in the cool evening air. They never called each other liars, because they didn’t lie to each other. They might keep information to themselves, or deflect a direct question with an indirect answer. But they didn’t lie, so they never used the word to or about each other.
“So tell me,” Poppa intervened, almost polite, “who must I punish first? Or the most?”
No more than a couple meters apart, Jackson felt as though wires joined him and Pollyread, and as though Poppa’s unexpected question had suddenly cut them. They looked at each other and then down at their dusty feet.
Poppa surprised them again by laughing. Not loudly, but the sound was like a warm brush of wind. “You two are a tonic. Come. We can settle this at home. Dark soon come down.” He half turned toward Corporal Letchworth, who was coming toward them with a crocus bag of things in his hand and, Jackson noticed, an entire coca plant, pulled up by the roots. Then Poppa turned quickly back to face them squarely. “But this matter is not finished.” There was no hint of humor in his voice or eyes now. “Understand that,” he said.
“Yes, Poppa,” Jackson said, speaking for both of them.
Judgment day was nigh, thought Jackson, who usually left biblical phrases to his sister. For what awaited them was a full recitation to Mama over supper.
But it could have been worse. A lot worse. Given all the circumstances, it was probably as good as it could have been.
Poppa began the story — what Pollyread afterward called the saga. Poppa was not the best storyteller in Valley. Even his beloved Maisie would tease him, with a gurgle of impatience, Hurry up nuh, Gilbert…. You want to hear or you don’t want to hear? Poppa would respond sharply and the
y would fall silent, the twins and Mama bouncing little smiles off one another as he collected his thoughts for the next elaboration of whatever had to be told.
This time, however, they all listened patiently. Poppa had information that not even Corporal Letchworth, who had accepted Mama’s invitation to supper, knew. So while the rest of them ate, they followed his story down to the courthouse in Town with Mr. Montgomery, a lawyer he’d done work for over the years, dressed up in his fancy court clothes in front of the judge sweating in his wig. The matter was dealt with very quickly because Mr. Montgomery had made sure that the judge had all the papers. (Besides, there was no one objecting because Jammy didn’t know what was being done — and wouldn’t have dared to show his face in courthouse, Corpie added with a cold laugh.) Poppa had come away with the envelope he had shown to the policeman, with which to “fix” Jammy’s business. An order for recovery of possession, it was called. Poppa rolled the words around on his tongue and put them on the supper table like a present. It meant that it was temporary, that Jammy could challenge it if he wanted. But around the table it was agreed that he was very unlikely to do that.
“And what hurt me,” Poppa said, looking at Corporal Letchworth with sad eyes, “is that I try and talk to Jammy.” This got everyone’s attention. “I try and reason with him. Show him the error of his ways.”
“There is no reasoning with that fellow,” Corporal Letchworth said. “He have to feel. Like this evening,” he chuckled, looking at the twins.
Mama asked, “When you talk to him, Gil?”
“Last week,” Poppa said. “I take a whole morning of my time to go up there and talk to him. Them was still sleeping when I reach. In the big sun hot.” He shook his head in disapproval.
“What you expect? Them is not serious farmer.” Corpie snorted with disdain.
“Them farming serious things, though,” said Poppa. His eyes were bright with sudden anger.
“True thing,” Corpie sighed as he took a sip of his drink. “I have to organize somebody to watch that place, see what else them doing up there.”
“What Jammy doing up there?” Mama, for some reason, was looking straight at Jackson, as if he alone knew. Her voice and eyes were sharp.
“Cocaine.” The word was out of his sister’s mouth before Jackson had time to think how to answer Mama.
“Cocaine?” She looked at Pollyread, but briefly, and came back to Jackson. “You mean —?”
He could only nod.
Jackson had once heard Mr. Shim say, in answer to a question from one of his tipsy customers as to why he was always so quiet in the midst of the noise and carryings-on in his establishment: “I am like cockroach. I stay close to the ground, no one notice.” A cockroach seemed a good thing to be just now.
But Pollyread couldn’t leave well enough alone.
When Mama said, “But cocaine is not something you grow,” still looking at Jackson, Pollyread chimed in, forever the teacher, “It start with a plant, though.”
At which point, fortunately, Poppa got back into the story. And managed to explain things to Mama without mentioning Jackson’s solo expedition to Morgan’s Mount to collect the evidence.
“So Jammy planting poison,” Mama exclaimed. “The bwoy need a big lick in him head.”
Corporal Letchworth humphed. “Him going get more than big lick when I ketch him.”
“You have to ketch him first,” Pollyread said, slightly miffed by being eased out of the storytelling.
“Don’t worry, child,” Corpie said, “me will ketch him. He always come back to these parts. The bwoy don’t have more sense than a mongoose.”
How, Jackson wondered, had Jammy ever thought of bringing this plant, which grew way up in the Andes, according to the magazine, a thousand or more miles away, to a little plot of land behind God’s back? If it had not been that the plot of land belonged to the Gilmores, and that what Jammy was growing was poison, Jackson, as a planter himself, would have been impressed. Still, in a funny way, and though he knew he couldn’t say it even to Pollyread, he admired Jammy’s initiative. But where had he got the coca plants?
“Jammy trying to set himself up as a Don-man,” said Mama with a dismissive laugh.
“Him laugh after me,” Poppa said, his mind still up on the distant hillside with Jammy. “Tell me is young people time now. Is dem to run things, him say. And the two jagabat bwoy with him laugh and say is so it must go now. Is that make me vex!”
“Look at this, eh?” Mama shook her head slowly as she spoke. “This is what Miss Mildred pickney come to.”
Corpie challenged Mama’s view. “Him bring himself to it, Maisie. Mildred is a decent woman. Her other pickney dem don’t give trouble. Jammy born giving trouble.”
“He wasn’t always like that, Philbert.”
Jackson and Pollyread looked at each other, ears wide open now.
“True. Him was a good little bwoy,” Poppa said, suddenly calm himself.
This was something new: Mama and Poppa speaking warmly of Jammy. Curiouser and curiouser.
Jackson had never thought of Jammy as a little boy, much less a good little boy. He had always been much bigger than the twins, and always the “bad bwoy” of the district.
“Well,” said Corporal Letchworth, “I have to deal with what come at me. Never mind what him was, that Jammy is a criminal now. I used to try to reason with him, you know, Maisie? Not once. Not twice. But the bwoy just own way. Him head hard like calabash.”
There was a moment of silence as they all considered the hardness of Jammy’s head.
“But the bwoy fast,” Corporal Letchworth resumed with a little laugh at himself. “He bounce me down and grab my gun before I know what happen.”
“Gun?” Mama’s eyes opened wide. “When was this?”
“Just this evening.” The policeman sounded almost casual.
Jackson’s belly tightened. He felt the world tilting toward darkness.
“This evening?” Mama was genuinely baffled. Poppa hadn’t yet supplied vital links in the story chain, so this talk of guns was very confusing.
Not for long, Jackson thought gloomily.
“Him was out to shoot you?”
“Is your warrior children disarm him.”
“Disarm?” asked Mama, hand going to mouth. “How you mean?” So caught up was Mama in the mention of guns and disarming that she didn’t seem to realize yet that her warrior children had been where they weren’t supposed to be. From all appearances, the twins had simply returned from the standpipe at the same time as their father and the policeman after a chance encounter on the road. Mama hadn’t noticed that the water bucket was empty.
Jackson had been watching his father, partly to avoid meeting Mama’s eyes. Poppa had, for the moment, resumed the meticulous slicing of his food and his careful chewing. His brown impassive eyes rested on the speakers, one by one. Now he put down his knife and fork and looked directly at Jackson. As Mama already was.
“You mean,” Mama began, “that you two pickney was up there with Corporal Letchworth and your father?” The formality of her speech was preparation for the sentence Jackson knew would be pronounced sooner or later.
“Jackso trip him up,” said Pollyread brightly.
“Pen too,” Jackson added, driven to say something.
“He throw the cutlass at him,” Pollyread cried.
“What cutlass?”
“And she throw the bucket.”
“Bucket?”
A heavy silence.
“A water bucket,” said Poppa.
“What water bucket —?” Mama’s hand returned to cover her mouth and her eyes opened even wider, as understanding finally bloomed. “I thought you was going to Standpipe. You was —?”
“Yes,” said Poppa. “We didn’t know —”
Corporal Letchworth cut him off. “Good thing too,” he said, winking at Jackson, whose face was frozen. “If them wasn’t there …” And he briskly related what had happened.
Jackson stared unwaveringly at the dish of boiled bananas that was halfway between himself and Pollyread. He knew that if he looked anywhere else, even at Pollyread, everything would humpty dumpty. All his transgressions — Common Entrance, bringing Cho-cho inside, sneaking up to Morgan’s Mount the first time to get the coca plant, then sneaking up there again this afternoon — descended on his mind in a foul-smelling cloud.
“Well, Mister Man?” Mama’s voice was soft, but not tender. “And you, Miss Lady.”
Jackson continued to stare at the green bananas. There was a piece in his mouth right now that tasted like wet newspaper.
“Cat get your tongue?” said Mama, anger curling the edges of her words.
The rearrangement of the table to accommodate the policeman placed the parents next to each other, and in the corner of a watery eye Jackson noticed Poppa’s hand reach out and cover Mama’s and squeeze.
“Well,” Poppa sighed, “maybe if they wasn’t there, worse things would have happened.” He spoke carefully. “Jammy is a desperate man. And a desperate man with a gun — who knows what terrible thing he might have done.”
A moment’s silence while Poppa’s words settled.
“True word,” said Corporal Letchworth. “Perhaps they were there for a reason.”
“They were there,” said Mama forcefully, “because they hard of hearing and only understand English when it suit them. If I did disobey my father like that, you think I would be able to sit on a chair now?” No one responded: The tone of the question gave its own answer. Jackson knew that Mama was not about to make their bottoms un-sit-downable-upon, but that wasn’t any comfort at the moment.
“My daddy too,” said Poppa. But there was a lightness in his voice that gave Jackson a ray of hope. “But maybe they save our lives too. Who to know?”
Mama grunted, not entirely convinced, nor entirely forgiving.
Blue Mountain Trouble Page 16