“Seen,” Jammy said, thinking he had finally made himself understood.
“Well, for your information,” Poppa said, “that is not the ground Royston was to have. That land that you is planting your funny bush on —”
“Poison bush,” said Mama sternly.
“Poison bush,” echoed Poppa, “is paid for by my money, for my son.” He pointed over to Jackson, who looked slightly embarrassed to be identified as a landowner. “You is trespassing on his land.”
Pollyread saw defiance and talk-back flare in Jammy’s face, hover there for a moment, and then fade.
“And then,” said Mama, “you add insult to injury. Come into people yard in the middle of the night and chop down everything like a rampaging beast. Why, James?” She seemed more puzzled than angry.
Everyone looked at him. Eyes falling to the ground, he wilted in their collective glare like a flower. They waited.
“Why?”
Jammy shrugged. “Weed twist up me head that night, Miss Maisie,” he muttered. “I sorry.”
She stepped closer to him and pointed a finger at him, something she discouraged in her children. “And after you see how weed can make people mad, you still persist in planting that pernicious bush up so? To make other people pickney even madder?”
“I never know what it was, Miss Maisie.” Jammy’s face looked about ten years old. “A man come and say that if I plant it for him, he will give me a big money. Him never directly tell me what it was.”
“What kind of man?” Poppa asked.
“A white man. He never talk English too good. I hear say he come from foreign. And he have other man planting the bush for him all about.”
The Gilmores looked questions at one another. “Up here?” Pollyread asked.
“No. But other mountainside here and there. The land have to be high up, he say. He send another white man to check us out, and bring money to pay for labor.” Jammy, for a moment, began to look like his old self, prideful and arrogant.
“And you take it buy weed,” Mama said scathingly. Jammy looked down at his feet, the little boy again.
“When I go to Town this last time …” He paused, looked embarrassed. “On the weekend. I hear say Babylon scrape up the white men, and some of the man that was planting for them.”
“Babylon looking for you too, James.” Poppa’s tone was solemn.
* * *
“What you mean, Mass Gillie?” Jackson was relieved that Jammy didn’t call Poppa “uncle.” He was still recovering from the moment of terror that had seemed to be an hour long, when he’d thought that Jammy was Poppa’s son, his and Pollyread’s brother. Even cousin would take getting used to.
“I mean, James,” Poppa said patiently, “that you assault a police officer. That’s one.” He held up a hand and ticked its fingers off with the other. “Two, malicious destruction of property, namely this property. Three, you are in illegal occupancy of property not yours. Sake of my brother, I will talk to Corpie and won’t press charges on those two. But four, you are growing an illegal substance, and is worse than ganja so the sentence will be longer. Five, you disarm a police officer in the lawful exercise of his duty.” Mama had a way to tease Poppa, when they were arguing, that he should have been a lawyer. Jackson, impressed by his father’s calmness, felt like saying that now. “Six, you resist arrest.”
“Him never arrest me,” Jammy said, voicing his own feeble defense.
“ ’Cause him never hold on to you,” Poppa said, serious and calm as a judge on television. “And is only because I talk to him why he don’t make a full report about you and set every police in the island looking for you.” Poppa paused. “Yet. But next time he see you, he might shoot you.”
Pollyread’s breath whistled.
“You are a wanted man, James. A fugitive.” The word hung in the air like an unpleasant odor. Jackson saw its meaning seep into Jammy’s eyes. It wasn’t the first time, of course, but nothing before had been as serious as this. Jammy’s eyes searched the darkness for escape.
“If you run this time, James,” Poppa said quietly, exposing Jammy’s thoughts, “nobody can’t help you again.”
Jammy’s eyes wandered the darkness a while longer, then came to rest on his uncle’s. “I need help, Mass Gillie.” His voice was broken, his bowed, newly shaved head a small moon under the shed.
Jammy — James still sounded funny in Pollyread’s ear — had been sent to make peace with his mother, after a solemn promise to meet Poppa at Stedman’s Corner tomorrow morning for them to go and see Corporal Letchworth and “face you music,” as Mama put it. And it was as she cleared the table after supper — warm cocoa and hardo bread, not really supper, they’d all eaten something at Stedman’s Corner — that Pollyread remembered the book Miss Brimley had sent home with her. In all the excitement of the last few days, she’d completely forgotten.
It was an old book, and as she put it on the table Pollyread got a whiff of mildew and dust. The smell of Cuthbert Bank Library. This, she always thought, if it had a smell, is what time would smell like.
The pages were brownish and speckled, somewhat like Miss Brimley’s skin. Some of the pages were eaten away at the edges; they looked like old plates that had been chipped. An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend, it said on the cover and title page. In pale blue ink on the inside cover was written Evangeline Brimley, Edinburgh, 1938. As Pollyread turned the pages carefully, there were illustrations of weird animals, half this and half that, and of men with beards wearing miniskirts and women in clothes, when they had anything on at all, that would have had them run out of AME Church any day of the week! She hurried through to the G section.
And as she found the correct page and opened it flat on the dining table, Pollyread’s breath caught in her throat and she spluttered.
“See him there!”
Mama called out from her rocking chair, her sewing chair as she called it, where she was settling down to mend something: “See who, Pen?”
“Goat!”
“Who?”
“Goat!”
“Who goat?”
Pollyread caught herself. Said nothing further. But Mama was already easing out of her chair and coming over to the table. Pollyread held her breath.
Her finger was also stuck. On a drawing of Goat. One of a dozen or so displayed across two pages of the encyclopedia. Just the heads, no bodies. Exactly like … Goat — the old man’s beard, the all-seeing yellow eyes, the towering Joshua horns arching back like question marks … their Goat!
“That is a pretty goat,” Mama said, standing over Pollyread. Smiling. “The prettiest one on the page. I wonder if Mass Cleveland have any goat look like that? I never see one look like that before.”
Yes, you have, Pollyread thought.
Her eye caught the sudden movement of Mama’s hand, dark against a pale yellow dress, which had been resting on her stomach as she looked at the book. Her fingers clutched at the cloth, involuntarily it seemed to Pollyread, with a life of their own. And then relaxed. Clutched. Pollyread looked in Mama’s face. Something like the shadow of a bird fluttered across her eyes, pinched her lips. And was gone.
“What happen, Mama?”
And as she heard her own voice, seeming to come from far away, Pollyread understood. About Goat. And Abeo. Even about Jammy. Most of all, about Mama. Finally.
She heard herself answer her own question. “You making baby.”
Mama’s eyes, calm again, swallowed hers like a cat swallowing milk.
* * *
Jackson, outside under the shed with Poppa, cleaning and tidying away tools, heard his sister’s shriek: “Is true?”
“What happen with you sister now?” Poppa asked as Jackson headed up the steps.
Pollyread heard her brother in the doorway and spun toward him, face ablaze. “Mama pregnant!” she announced. As though the information was her exclusive possession.
Jackson felt himself held and released, as if by a sudden hug. And he felt the rel
ief of finally knowing something he’d wondered about. But he didn’t know what to say. And Pollyread’s eyes clearly expected him to make some response to her declaration.
Poppa saved him by coming into the house. “What is all this commotion in here?” A little light in his eye told Jackson right away he was teasing.
“Mama pregnant,” Pollyread said before anyone else could draw breath.
“You don’t think I know?” Poppa smiled to soften the retort, but Jackson saw his sister shrink a little.
Jackson found his voice. “You sure?” he asked Mama.
“So them say.” Mama shrugged, and then giggled like a girl. “Shiels send a note from the doctor about the tests.”
The twins looked at each other. Doctor? Tests? Aunt Shiels was Mama’s big sister, a nurse at the university hospital in Town. When had Mama gone for tests? That time they thought she’d gone to see about Jackson and St. Giles? Parents could be sneaky.
“Everything all right?” Pollyread asked.
Mama nodded. Her eyes shone, her face seeming a shade lighter from a low flame just below the surface of her skin.
Jackson felt the shadows around him, the night enclosing the house, softening the lines of doorway and window. Shadows within too, like soft dark fingers tightening his stomach. The last time. The darkness of it, coming back at him from a long way, two years, shot through with pain like lightning. The excitement of the first news, like being plugged into electricity. Then slowly being unplugged. The long months of Mama in bed by doctor’s orders. Her body changing. Everyone on eggshells, for reasons the twins only hazily understood. But understanding one thing very clear: that something terrible could happen. And it did.
They were in grade four, learning new words all the time. That word, however, they didn’t learn at Marcus Garvey, and never discussed even between themselves. Miscarriage.
It seemed to Jackson, held for a moment in the hand of those memories, that a long silence had followed, like the coolest, darkest period of the night before first light.
And now, suddenly, there was an unknown presence in their midst. Again. Almost as if his eyes were pulled there, Jackson looked at his mother’s stomach. He wasn’t even sure that it looked any different, but now that he knew … maybe just a little fatter.
Abashed at his own thoughts, he looked away, down at the dining table. And saw Goat in the book lying open there. Exactly Goat. His head floating on the page … Like it had done … There was writing under the drawings that he bent slightly to read. Throughout history, goats have been symbols of fertility and life in many cultures, it began. Jackson knew about fertility. Poppa talked about the fertility of Valley soil, which made things grow well with a minimum of chemical help. Mama sometimes joked that “if you leave you finger in the ground too long, a finger tree would grow.” Now something was growing in Mama’s soil.
As Mama herself might say, Signs and wonders.
Jackson smiled.
You want a little brother?”
“Don’t matter. You want a little sister?”
“Most definitely not.”
“Why? Don’t you was going on so about Abeo?”
“Abeo isn’t my sister.”
“So, suppose mama have a little girl?”
“They have machine at University hospital that can tell you if is a boy or a girl.”
“And suppose is a girl?”
“Machine can be wrong.”
“Machine or no machine, boy or girl, baby coming.”
“I thought she went to Town to see about you and Saint Giles.”
“Me too. She fool us.”
“Well, Poppa going have to deal with it.”
“Deal with what?”
“Saint Giles.”
“What you mean?”
“Don’t play idiot with me. You know what I mean.”
“I talk to Poppa already.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He say to leave it with him.”
“Leave what with him?”
“ .”
* * *
“We lucky, you know.”
“We? How?”
“We never drop out of Mama’s belly.”
* * *
“Where you think they go?”
“Who?”
“The babies.”
“Which babies?”
“Mama’s.”
“Mama don’t have … Oh.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“What you think? They must go somewhere.”
“But they not alive to go anywhere.”
“How we know?”
“If they was alive, they would be here. Like us.”
“But maybe they here.”
“Where?”
“With us.”
“You see them?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I stupid. You smart. You tell me where they are, then.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well then, Miss Scholarship.”
“But they must be somewhere.”
“Why?”
“Everything is somewhere. Miss Brimley show me in a book. It say things cannot be created or destroyed.”
“What that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ask Miss Brimley?”
“She say is science.”
“Obeah.”
“Not obeah. Science. It name science.”
“Sound like obeah to me.”
“Old people say if spirit don’t have the proper burial, it wander. All over the place.”
“That is obeah. Don’t make Mama hear you.”
“They must go somewhere.”
“Who?”
“The babies. They can’t just wander around in space.”
“Astronaut.”
“That is not funny.”
* * *
“Maybe they in the same place with the goat.”
“How you mean?”
“The goat that —”
“I know which goat you mean.”
“We don’t know where the goat come from, right?”
“Okay.”
“And we don’t know where Mama’s baby go to.”
“Right.”
“Maybe is the same place.”
* * *
“Jackso.”
“What?”
“When we in Town, where the goat going to be?”
“How you mean?”
“Is it going to be here with Mama?”
“Or in Town with us, you mean?”
“Yes. Plenty wickedness in Town for it to deal with.”
“True word. We might need it more than Mama.”
* * *
“And we not going to be even here.”
“Here where?”
“You sleeping?”
“How I must sleep with your chatta-chatta right next door.”
“Well, excuse me for breathing.”
“We not going to be here when?”
“When the baby come.”
“When it coming?”
“February.”
“So long?”
“Ha-ha-ha.”
“What so funny?”
“You think baby is puss or dawg?”
“No. But it still seem long.”
“Well, is February.”
“If nothing don’t happen.”
“Don’t say that!”
“But suppose something happen to her?”
“Hush up.”
“But suppose —”
“Poppa!”
“What?”
“Jackso in here telling duppy story.”
“Jackso. Stop frighten your sister in there.
“The two of you say you prayers and go to sleep.”
* * *
“Why you do that?”
“You was trying to frighten me.”
“I just ask a question.”
“Is what you ask a
bout. Mind you put goat mouth on Mama.”
“The goat is Mama friend.”
“Not that goat. Old people say if you talk about something bad, it might happen. That is goat mouth.”
“I know that.”
“Nothing bad going to happen to Mama.”
“Okay.”
“The goat will see to that.”
“But suppose it follow us to Town instead?”
* * *
“Our Father.”
“Who art in heaven …”
“Hallowed be …”
I’m very grateful to the taxpayers of Canada, whom, unbeknownst to most of them, contributed greatly to the writing of this book through timely grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
Several people contributed critical support of different kinds at different times in the long gestation of this project. Some of them, alphabetically: Lori Bollinger, Marlene Bourdon-King, David Findlay, J. Fitzgerald Ford, Nalo Hopkinson, Hiromi Goto, Larissa Lai, Amanda Preston, Olive Senior, Jennifer Stevenson. Many others also provided insight and sustenance; they know who they are.
A special thanks to Jean Pollard, my sister, who paid for writing lessons when I was just a little older than the Gilmore twins; trees from acorns.
Thanks to Margaret Hart, my agent, who knew what she wanted from the start. Arthur Levine and Rachel Griffiths believed in the book when I wasn’t sure myself. More than anyone, Rachel has made it what it is, though I take all responsibility for what it is not.
I have derived much inspiration and encouragement from David, Rachel, and Daniel Mordecai, who, not generally patient otherwise, have waited most of their lives to see this book, cheering it along the way with opinions (generally correct) and suggestions (not always taken).
Pam Mordecai has been the most patient, most supportive, and least opinioned of all. What more can one ask in a life partner? One who writes so wonderfully to boot.
Give thanks and praises.
About the Author
Martin Mordecai was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica — far from Top Valley, where this novel is set. Martin’s professions have included television, radio, journalism, and the foreign service, but he has written all his life. Martin now lives in Ontario, Canada, with his wife Pamela. Blue Mountain Trouble is his first novel.
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