Is Just a Movie

by Earl Lovelace

  She turned to Jesus and to her church, hard work and dreams elevating her from Sister to Mother. The only man to interest her was a man she had to stand up on tiptoe to see if she could see. But she hear him in the meeting at the Junction, talking with the rough smoothness of a badjohn, of the changes he would bring to the islands. And just so, she fall in love with this man she didn’t even see, who people say was an obeah-man, Shango-man, Shouter Baptist leader and Oxford University doctor all rolled in one. So now she had in her life Jesus, and this brilliant man, who had come to make a better place not only for her but for the whole island.

  But things didn’t change, at least not quick enough for some people. Opportunity still had to do with the color of your skin, with a history that try its best to make you shame for the brutality somebody else inflict on you. You was in a place that didn’t reward you for your labor, that give you the worst of everything and expect miracles from you. And while it had a few people who make the miracles, it was too much to ask of everybody. And she was there to sing with people and to console and to cheer.

  In all her struggles, she had her child behind her until he reach the age to be on his own. The boy was Franklyn, and when she look at him she see the same smooth dancing movements of his father, except that where the father’s smoothness was in sweet talk and scampishness, the boy smoothness come out in the texture of his skin and the poetry of his batting.

  Franklyn could bat.

  Franklyn Batting

  In Cascadu, when Franklyn went in to bat, around the ground the talking would stop, people would look for a good place to sit, and from the savannah the word would go out, little fellars taking off running in different directions to make the announcement, “Franklyn batting! Franklyn batting!”

  Through the whole village it would go, Franklyn batting, and before she go out her door, Miss Dolly would pull out the firewood from the fireside and add some water to the pot she cooking so it would bubble slow while the wood glowed to ashes, Rabbit and Jerry would get up off the bench in front the rum shop, people buying in the grocery would hurry up with their message and even down Eight-mile it would reach, Kenny slowing down his taxi to shout out as he passing to the people bathing by the spring, “Hey, all-you, Franklyn batting! You hear what I saying: Franklyn. Franklyn batting. Franklyn batting,” and would drive maybe another five minutes, making the announcement, before he turn around and pick up those who ready and carry them back up to the cricket ground. Old cricketers like Housen and Montiqueu and Hercules would leave from in front Cyril house where they stand up talking and Bank and Pico and Copper and George, from different starting points, not even knowing exactly where they going, seeing people moving, would feel the tug of a grand event and begin to follow and only after they on their way they would ask, “Where we going?” and the answer would come, “Franklyn batting. Franklyn, yes, batting.”

  In the club, fellars playing knock rummy would take up their money and pack up the cards and head for the savannah and even Melda, clerking in Mendoza shop, would ask Ross to hold on for her with the selling so she could go and see Franklyn bat. Just for one over. Just one, holding up her finger, “One, Ross. One.” And Ross would hold up his finger too and his eyes would open and his moustaches would tremble, “OK. One, you hear. One.”

  And in the gallery of the house behind the savannah, Manick father, off today from driving the steamroller, sitting down in his hammock, would make sure he have a big cup of water and peanuts in a bowl beside him on the floor so he wouldn’t have to move while Franklyn batting. In the savannah, people there already on the mound of the hill that was the pavilion would dress-round to make room for old man Castillo and his two pardners and feel the pathos as these men contemplate then laboriously engage the herculean task of sitting down, their bones creaking as they hold out their hands, feeling for the ground and with a sigh in salute to the pain in their knees, in their bones, would ease themselves down, Ahhh! on the grass. The girls who had been modeling their lithe limbs and their Sunday fashion would settle down in front the community center near where my aunt Magenta was selling coconut drops and soursop icecream and nobody would say nothing, just watch Franklyn with the bat in his hands walk out to the ground with his slouching walk, bending and unbending his shoulders like the two ends of an accordion, lifting his knees high, one first then the other like the limbering-up exercise of a high-jumper. Then he hold himself down and walk off again, nonchalant, this time, like a prince who never see a day of trouble, his head in the air like he walking on a rope stretched across the sky, so confident his balance that he not even looking down to see where he putting his foot. After he mark with chalk the spot on the matting where he would take his stand, Franklyn would settle over his bat, casting to one side, with a shrug, the cape invoked on his shoulders and look now at the bowler run up to release the ball.

  People look at cricket for the runs, but with Franklyn it was the runs, yes, it was runs, but his batting wasn’t only runs, it was the spring in his step, it was the dance of his body, the confident readiness of muscles to move forward or sideways or back: to tiptoe or pivot or kneel or duck; and then the ball would come and he would leave it alone, just that, watch the ball and withhold his bat from it. And although it didn’t show in the score book, that was a stroke, that was a statement, that was an acknowledgment of the bowler and an announcement to the world that we here. We have eyes. We ready, just to hint to them that they can’t play the arse, that they have to put it on a length, we not going powerful-stupid chasing after wide balls. Put it on the stumps. Put it on the stumps. Until I ready for you.

  Franklyn had three leave-alones. He would leave alone in acknowledgment of a good ball, not even having to shake his head, not even doing nothing like that, just a ordinary leave-alone, and he would leave alone as a warning to say don’t put it there again. Sometimes with a smile, to mask his perplexity and to acknowledge that the pitch of the ball or its flight or its pace deceive him a little, a wee bit, he would leave alone, measuring the distance from the ball so as to know exactly what to do when the bowler put the next ball in the same spot. He had a lot of no’s, that is, when he actually play the ball for no runs, “Noo!” He had a lot of no’s. As if he knows that it have time in the world. And all that is batting and he ain’t even start to score yet. I not even talking yet about Franklyn going down on one knee and sweeping to square leg or climbing back on his back foot and slapping it back past the bowler, not a man move.

  I ain’t talking yet of Franklyn up on tiptoes, his eyes fixed big on the ball he been watching its whole journey from the bowler’s hand, and even after it pass his waist and look like it about to go past his wicket, he had already pivoted like he doing a bullfight dance and just when the keeper feel he have the ball in his fists, his bat come down sweet and long, long and sweet, slap, between the keeper and slips, How you going to stop we? How you go keep we down? And all round the wicket, each in its own time, each off the chosen and appropriate ball would be the music of bat on ball, punctuated by the chorus of our applause; though, it wasn’t Franklyn alone we were applauding. When Franklyn batting we were the ones batting, and in the mirror that he had become we would see ourselves in contest with the world. He was holding the bat but the strokes was our strokes and the bowler was England or Australia or Pakistan: the world. Yes, the world. It was ourselves we were applauding. And when he finish batting, when he get out, a curtain of silence would fall like when the evening sun that you know going to rise tomorrow goes down.

  Nobody would move yet, we would wait and watch him come back under the mango tree like a dancer who just finish dance a set and is walking the girl who partnered him back to her seat, and put down his bat and sit down and take off his pads and then you would hear the voice of a mother – Miss Ruby – calling her boy-child Glen to come now and do what she tell him to do so long before but which he must do now. And if you look across at the gallery of Manick house you would see the father putting on his slippers and taking u
p his cutlass with a sense of urgency, as if Franklyn’s batting had imposed on him and his family and indeed the whole community the need to do something, to exert on the world an equivalent force and style. On the mound, with the same herculean straining, the old men would push themselves up with their hands to their feet, making sure of their balance on the slippery deck of age. People would start talking again and Pico would reassemble the Four for the knock rummy and Melda would run past everybody, her slippers flapping, screaming, “Ross going to kill me,” but in her heart knowing that Ross will understand how she lose track of time, and a girl and a boy would walk slow close-close together and shy, their swinging hands touching, holding just briefly and letting go so as not to make a spectacle of their feelings.

  Rain could fall now. And gradually argument would start up again in the rum shop, the Four would reassemble in the club, music in the snackette next door would begin to play and the old men, walking slow, would lift up their hands in a hello, walking a little straighter today, and that night men and women would make love as if they have the world of time, paying attention to details, to the no’s and the yeses as of a Franklyn’s innings, and others, in company, over a nip in the snackette or with their elbows on the wappie table in the gambling club would take their time with one another, Nooo! And people would restore in themselves the patience, the un-hurry, to let a slight pass, to leave a bad situation alone, to not be inveigled by shit, to resist having to agree to stupidness, to say no, thank you. No, and lift a glass to their lips and down a drink in salute of each other, with the same smooth un-hurry of Franklyn dispatching a ball to the boundary.

  To my aunt Magenta and, indeed, to all of us in Cascadu, it was just a matter of time before they would call up Franklyn for a trial match to represent the country in cricket. We were waiting, all of us.

  Black Power Comes to Cascadu

  Then that Saturday afternoon. It must have been March month. Cricket in the savannah. The day bright, hot, sweating. Aunt Magenta is cooking, and she hearing from the cricket ground behind her house the noise of silence and intermittent applause from what she supposed was the supporters who had come with the visiting team, the noise too soft for it to be Cascadu team batting. Then she hear this other sound, of drumming coming toward her, like the wind groaning, the noise growing louder and nearer, until is like the drumming happening inside her house, inside her head, and when she look outside it was to see Blackpeople with flags and banners, marching in the street. And right away, Aunt Magenta remember the dream she had dreamed three nights straight: the flags and the people and she naked from her waist up, covering her breasts with her two hands, and a beautiful black girl with long hair and a long dress and beads round her neck walking with Franklyn. Still struggling to remember the details of the dream, she went outside to see, yes, the Black Power demonstration that had come to Cascadu. In one panoramic sweep of her eyes, she see Miss Janice in her yard standing up with her mouth open, holding the dress she was going to hang on her clothes line, Manick father out on his gallery with a cutlass in his hand, Miss Ruth who had some rice paddy drying on some bags in front her yard, rushing out to pick up the bags, terror in her eyes, one of the Black Power fellars saying to her, “No, Mother, we haven’t come to harm you, but to liberate you.” Cricketers and spectators were pouring out from the cricket ground to see this congregation of Blackpeople lifting their folded fists in the air and shouting “Power!” She watched the march go past and she go back inside the kitchen to finish grating the coconut to put in the pigeon peas she was cooking. And while she there in the kitchen, through the window she see Franklyn and Evrol (who had come out with the cricketers and spectators to watch the procession) coming back from the road, with them is a girl, beautiful, a stranger to her, with hair loosened and a long dress. When she look again, it was to see Franklyn outside by the barrel in which she collected rainwater dipping out water with a calabash. With him is the same girl drinking water, and Franklyn looking at her with a look she had seen before in the eyes of his father when she Magenta was the girl and he Franklyn was his father, Music. While she there watching, Franklyn looked up and see her and he call out, “Ma, this is Marcia. Marcia, this is my mother,” and the girl waved at her and she waved back at them and when she look again, she see him and the girl walking toward the road, slow and distant like is a dream.

  She never see the girl again. And the next time she see Franklyn was when the police bring him down on a stretcher, dead, with a cloth band around his head and his mouth still open. He was in the bush, they said, in the hills. A revolutionary in the hills. And five bullets in his body.

  And thank God for Clephus.

  One day before that Easter, she in her yard, near the front steps, throwing corn to see if she could get the chickens to come close so she could catch one, see this man, whose name she don’t yet know is Clephus Winchester, going by with his springy tiptoeing walk, his shoulders spread out around him, his pants stick up in his crotch, its seat tight across his bottom, as if he in the grip of the arresting hand of the police, saying good evening in his slow Tobago drawl and when he nearly finish pass in front her, he stop and look at her, his face stretched in his broad Castara Bay smile, his teeth, white like the surf, suddenly filling up his whole mouth, and his eyes on me, not as if he was looking at a Mother in the Church, but like he measuring me to see how much cloth it will take to make a dress to fit my body, and look at me again in a kind of worshipful confusion and I fighting to keep my face serious, like how a Mother in the church supposed to keep her face, asking in what I hoped was my stern Mother Magenta voice, “Mister Gentleman, is me you watching?”

  And she watched the most delighted smile bathe his face as he nodded, “Yes, Miss Lady, is you I watching,” his eyes open looking on her with such adventure and boldness, causing me to step out my prison:

  “Well, don’t stand up there watching, help me catch this chicken.”

  And from that beginning, through the terrible sorrow with Franklyn, with the police and the wake and the burial, he would be the man to stand beside her with the armor of his shoulders, the peace of his countenance and his shy Castara Bay smile, his pants stick up in his crotch and his two left feet spread out to balance him.

  She waited, after Franklyn’s death, for somebody from the government to come and tell her something. She went to party group meetings and she give her support. She went to rallies. And she waited. Aunt Magenta get thin. She put back on some size. She dry up again. She start talking to herself. Sometimes I would find her in the kitchen, talking to the absent Franklyn, asking him how he could do this thing, how he could run away from his future, how he could leave her in such pain and the cricket field without his light, or asking the Prime Minister to explain the reason for the killing of her son who was a good boy, who was only standing up for the same freedoms that you preaching.

  “How you expect him to be less than the man you paint in your speeches? What you expect when he hear you talking about what it is to be free? And how, if Franklyn didn’t bow down to anybody in cricket, who you expect him to bow down to in life?”

  She blame the crazy police, the trigger-happy one they call Kojak, with the bald head and the gold chain and the dark shades and his shirt collar turned up like a badjohn. She quarrel with Franklyn for allowing “the stupid company to inveigle you to go to the hills, Evrol and the girl with the long dress and the long hair that she see in her dream. Yes, Evrol, your pardner. Who the government take and make a senator.”

  Every time she speak, another name was added to the list of the guilty. The only innocent as far as I could see was the PM. What was she waiting on him for?

  To answer my query, she went to her Bible and when she open it, her left hand fall on Genesis, chapter 32, and her right hand settle on verse 24:

  And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of
Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

  The words that would guide her. She had to hold on to him until he give her the blessing.

  So when she hear people saying how he was acting like a badjohn, she tell them, “Yes, he’s a badjohn for the big shot and them, not for me and you.” And she point them to the Bible and she preach it as a sermon to let them know that Jacob didn’t get his blessing because he was a good man, it was because of his struggle. Whole night he had to fight with the very Angel that would bless him.

  Now, the PM was in Cascadu. She wanted to see his face when he say what he had to say about the killing of Franklyn. And how would she see his face, if there was no light.

  Confident that her age, size and status placed her beyond the necessity for modesty and in any event we is all big people here, she lifted her dress and tore off a huge strip of her cotton petticoat, which she then tore into smaller strips to function as wicks. These she gave them to stuff into the bottles with kerosene to be set alight. And there was light. The lighted flambeaux were handed out to the party faithful and they took up positions around the stage in such a fashion that the light would be cast upon the speakers on the rostrum.

  Except for the stream of smoke they gave off, the flambeaux gave good light; and the only manipulation needed to keep them from going out was that the bottles had to be tilted every now and then to keep the wicks moistened and the flame alive.

  The Fire

  Sonnyboy Apparicio was at one end of the stage, holding up one of these lighted bottles and fighting to keep his two eyes open. For the last twenty-one days, he had been campaigning with the National Party through the surrounding villages, supporting the candidacy of young Perry, the nephew of the owner of the van he was driving, announcing the meetings on the loudspeaker and giving out pamphlets with details of the place and time of the meetings. In addition, he had that very morning helped to build the stage, decorate it with dried coconut leaves, stems of green bamboo and giant heliconias and to erect the banner welcoming the PM and speakers to Cascadu, all of it done with the taste and thoroughness that in all his changes had not left him.