The Polished Hoe

by Austin Clarke

  “Not one of them could lift me up outta the mud; outta the thick, black soil and the hot-sun that me and them lived in, and toiled so hard in, so long in, in the North Field, and in other jobs on this Plantation. Yes.

  “Mr. Bellfeels made a woman of me. I was made a woman of. Not in the proper manner. Of matrimony. Family-life. And hearthside-bliss. Such as we learned in Bible Stories for Little Christians, taught by Miss Smith in Sunday School. Or that I started seeing in the Illustrated London News magazine. No!

  “It was robbery.

  “And you ask yourself, year after year, as I have, for years, Why you let him do this to you? Why you let Mr. Bellfeels crawl-all-over you, Mary-girl? And only now, in the last three months, decide to take matters into your two hands?

  “You want to ask me that question?”

  Just then the Constable wakes. He rubs his eyes, roused from a dream he was having, and not knowing where he is, he looks around stupid, for a moment. His eyes are bloodshot. But she is kind and sweet to him; for she likes him; and does nothing to make him more uncomfortable.

  “Don’t you want to ask me why am I talking so much about my life, and nothing-much about my act?”she says. “Don’t you want to put that question to me?

  “I would ask myself that question. Yes. And get this answer: ‘I am talking this way because I am really talking aloud to myself, and nobody is present.’ And even so, you are here and yet you are not here. Yes.”

  “I would like to axe you a question, ma’am,” the Constable says. “Not as a means o’ curiosity. But as part of your Statement. A different question altogether, ma’am, that Sargeant axe me to axe you, concerning the . . .”

  “But where Sargeant is, though?” she says.

  “Sargeant had to visit . . . had to visit . . .”

  “The rum shop, I know. Manny told me. He’s preparing flying fish . . .”

  “The Selected Clienteles Room, ma’am.”

  “Today is a funny night!” she says. The Constable has a blank look on his face. “You ever heard that saying? Today is a funny night? ”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Today is a funny night was used the first time by men who pull lighters . . . big-big boats the size of a barge . . . with foodstuffs from off merchant ships, which they on-loaded in the warehouse bonds; and also by “spidermen,” men pushing wooden barrels of molasses, in metal-things the shape of a spider, working on the Wharf and the Interior Careenage. These is the men who played a big role in the Riots. Who started the 1938 Riots. Ordinary men and women of this Island, the first to seek freedom and political franchises. Later, full independence. The Riots of ’38.

  “A police, much like you or Sargeant, was the first to brand the statement I just used, today is a funny night, as a revolutionary statement, saying it contain a hidden code and meaning; swearing that today is a funny night contains threats against our rulers, people like Mr. Bellfeels, and the Vicar, and the Solicitor-General and the owners of Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries, and the members of the Aquatic Club on Bay Street. And with that simple statement, which Wilberforce tell me is complete with bad grammar, you should have seen the throngs of men and women, who the rulers got the police and the volunteer-soldiers to shoot-down and kill; and lock-up for using incendary statements. So, I always guard against using incendary language, from that day in 1938. But the men and women came within one inch of burning-down the whole blasted Island, beginning with the stores in Town! Yes! What a beautiful sight it was to see, too. Yes! Today is a funny night. ”

  “Sargeant should be here soon,” the Constable says.

  “Any minute.”

  “He soon here.”

  “You wanted to ask me a question.”

  “I can’t remember the question now, ma’am.”

  “So young and losing your memory?”

  “Is the police work, ma’am.”

  “Soon, Sargeant will be here. The lovely perfume from the lady-of-the-night, and there I was, walking along the track between the North Field and the South Field, flat for the most part, now that the canes’ cut; and all that is growing now is young canes and plants, yams and eddoes and a few holes of eight-weeks sweet potatoes . . . and the Plantation Main House, with its lights on, like the lights on a steamer, coming through the darkness, facing me. The bright lights reflected from the white marl and loose gravel, back onto me, was like a big wave coming towards me, and rolling over my head; and the feeling of weakness and being impotent that came over me tonight was the same feeling that I remember had-consume me that first Sunday in the Church Yard, when the position of the sun and the height of the man looking down from the saddle at me, knocked me to one-side, as if indeed I was struggling with a powerful wave.

  “That big powerful house, which hasn’t lost its affect on me, and which to enter the driveway, and walk-up the white marl and loose gravel path, and approach the verandah, brought in my limbs that first trembling sensation. For a moment, I was exactly like Ma, turned into a pillar of salt.

  “I remember thinking how the circumstances of my life hadchange, since from the time I was a field hand . . .

  “I grew up liking the Plantation Main House. And though time have passed, with no change of heart on my part, it is something I feel so shamed about still, that I can barely raise my head in certain circumstances, as I contemplate the change in my life.”

  Just at this moment, the ticking of a bicycle breaks in upon her words. Just then, they hear cling-cling! cling-cling!

  “Is Sargeant,” the Constable says.

  “Is Sargeant!” she says.

  “He come?”

  “He come!”

  “Let me look out, and see if . . .”

  Sargeant sat looking at the first shot of rum that Manny had placed before him in a short, stubby, thick-skinned glass. The glass looked like a bullet from a .38 revolver, magnified a few times. It reminded Sargeant of the day after Mr. Bellfeels became manager of the Plantation, and as a symbol of his new authority, how Mr. Bellfeels rode through the fields, wearing a revolver in a brown, large holster tied like a harness across his back. He had shown the revolver to Sargeant one Monday morning, demonstrating how fast he could, like Gary Cooper, pull the revolver from his back, in a flash, like a magician, “quick-quick as shite!” he said, laughing, “more-quicker than any fecking police ’bout-here”; and so it seemed: faster than Sargeant himself could flick-on his searchlight.

  “Like one-two-t’ree!” Mr. Bellfeels had told Sargeant, laughing. “More quicker than blasted that! I is more faster than any cowboy in any Western playing at the Empire Theatre! More faster than that!”

  And Mr. Bellfeels then snapped his fingers, for greater emphasis, to demonstrate the speed with which he could “kill any son-of-a-bitch who think he going-thief the Plantation things, and get off Scotch-free!”

  He had laughed some more. And Sargeant became more uncomfortable.

  He and Mr. Bellfeels and Manny were in the Selected Clienteles Room late one night.

  “I is the law, round-here, boy,” he had said, putting his arm round Sargeant’s shoulder, “and I intend to tek the law inside my two hands! I is the law round here, Sarge-boy.”

  “This-this,” Sargeant had stammered, “this thing, this thing could blow off a man’s head, Mr. Bellfeels!”

  “Clean-be-Jesus-Christ, clean!” Bellfeels had agreed.

  Sargeant did not, if he had been asked, know why all of a sudden, in this cozy, club-like Selected Clienteles Room, where he passed so many hours drinking and talking about his work, about discrimination in the Police Force, about the traps he laid for criminals, giving his drinking buddies confidential details about crime and criminals in the Island, and women’s secrets; he could not explain why all of a sudden he should be thinking of that one time, when he and Manny listened to Mr. Bellfeels talking about his .38 revolver, which he had bought from the Commissioner of Police.

  The shot glass now sat untouched before Sargeant. He knew he had to f
ace duty and responsibility because of his rank and his oath, his service in the Royal Bimshire Constabulary Police Force, acknowledge his allegiance to the Governor, and beyond His Excellency, in his loyalty, stretching to His Imperial Majesty, he had to assume that whatever surprise, danger, deadly confrontation, whatever the night might throw up, he had to face it. It was duty and loyalty and Scout’s honour. It was his duty.

  He sat fully dressed in his night uniform, long after the telephone call from Mary-Mathilda had roused him from his lethargy; and here he is now, in black serge, thick as the Plantation’s horse blankets, and as rough to the skin. Sargeant kept the neck of his tunic clasped shut at the throat, tight and almost choking him. He was a stickler for neatness and appearance, as he was fastidious about discipline and uniforms and duty. But tonight, he wished this cup of duty would be taken from him. Taken from his lips, and placed at someone else’s.

  He had sent the Constable to take the preliminary Statement, because he wanted the emergency to remain on the vine; and wait; and fall to the ground and be buried in the other heaps of untouched memories. He wanted to evade his duty. He knew he did not dispatch the Constable because he felt that his report, even preliminary, would be of much eventual help.

  He had no taste for this case. It was tricky, and dangerous. And if it turned out to be what he thought he heard Miss Mary-Mathilda say on the telephone, a lot of people were going to have their feet stomped on; and their balls squeezed. And his own career could wither on the vine; and fall in ruin. “Best not to get involve in chicken fight, if you is a cockroach,” his mother always warned him. He might have to start thinking about writing a letter to his daughter and ask her to sponsor him as an immigrant to Amurca, in case.

  He had no stomach for this taste of reality, as Manny called it. He was sitting stationary; not moving any part of his body; giving the impression there was no life in it; so still that even Manny was becoming concerned. It worried Manny to see him just sitting there, as if he was waiting for some spirit to tell him to move. It was as if he was a mechanical toy whose spring needed rewinding to provide the semblance of movement and “life.” Manny waited to see if this new life might bring his friend back to reason.

  “Is a hell of a thing, nuh?” Manny says.

  Manny moves from sitting at the unpainted deal-board table, and goes behind the counter. He is not looking at Sargeant. He is just staring ahead.

  “All o’ we was after Tilda, one time or the other, when she was more younger; from when she was a girl growing up,” Sargeant says. “We uses to play together. Me and Mary-Tilda, you and Clotelle and the rest o’ girls. Pounce. And Golbourne. Even Naiman, before he turn to crime. We all grow up together. Manny, good-Jesus-Christ, you know, man! You was there!”

  “I was there,” Manny says.

  “Playing games! Hide-and-Hoop. London Bridge. HobbinaBobbina. And, Ship-Sail, Sail-Fast. One moonlight night, remember? We was sitting in a ling, in a ring, in Mary-Tilda paling, remember? And I was in the ling, and Mary-Tilda was in the ling, and she pointed at me, remember? And said the part in the Hideand-Hoop game, you know . . . ‘My mother and your mother was hanging out clothes; my mother give your mother, a cuff in her nose. What colour was the blood?’

  “You remember Hide-and-Hoop, don’t you, Manny? And my God, Manny. Jesus Christ, I was only eight or nine at the time, and Mary-Tilda mustta been eleven or twelve. But when I tell you that at that moment when Mary-Tilda pointed the whip at me, and axe me, ‘What colour was the blood?’ expecting me to say, ‘Red!’, and then spell-out the word, red . . . r-e-d, red . . . Good-Jesus-Christ, Manny, you remember don’t you? I can still see Mary-Tilda eyes, and Mary-Tilda lil bubbies, her two breasts, and smell the way her body smell. And I can still smell the smell of the cologne Mary-Tilda had-on, a smell that is a mixture of seawater and Limacol. It was her mother’s cologne that she was wearing that night.”

  “You wasn’t the only boy smelling-round-behind Tilda, and getting-on like a ram-goat,” Manny says. He takes the forty-ounce bottle from the counter. The bottle leaves a ring on the unpainted deal board. And Manny pours some of the contents into a snap-glass. It is water. He holds his head back, and lets the water fall into his mouth. “Emmm!” he says, clearing his throat.

  He then takes up the nip-bottle containing half pint of Mount Gay Rum. It leaves no mark on the table where it had stood in front of Sargeant more than thirty minutes. He pours a shot of rum from the nip-bottle, right up to the rim. And he holds back his head, and allows the dark, golden liquid to fall in an even flow into his mouth. He closes his eyes. He shakes his head, from left to right, in two quick jerks, as if he is in the sea, and seawater has entered his ears. He shakes his head in two more sharp, powerful quick jerks. “Emmmemmm!” he says, in appreciation of the sting, and the strength of the rum. And then, he says, “Ahhh!”

  “We was all after Mary-Tilda, in them days . . .”

  “But she wasn’t for we,” Manny says. “She was already ear-mark for Bellfeels, that red-skin son-of-a-bitch! I think her mother make that decision. People like me and you can’t offer Tilda nothing, whiching, when you think of it, is true as shite, Sarge.”

  “Ear-mark is not the word, Manny. Not ear-mark. Reared for. Given to. A burn-offering. For Bellfeels. That is the way I sees it. Mary-Tilda was too good for either o’ we, for me, nor for you, neither. Her very mother as much as tell me so, down in Town one day. That’s before I join the Force.”

  “I won’t go suh-far, Sarge. I won’t go so far in that direction. Is fate and destiny. Fate and destiny have a way of levelling-out things in our lives that we can’t understand. But Tilda was one o’ the most prettiest girls growing up in this Village. And Bellfeels get there first.”

  “And none o’ we ain’t get the chance to foop she first!” Sargeant says.

  “None o’ we didn’t get tha’ piece.”

  “Neither you, nor me, Manny.”

  “Neither you, nor me, Sarge.”

  “Bellfeels get there first.”

  “And look wha’ happen to him!”

  “Wha’ happen? What happen to Bellfeels? What you mean?”

  “What I mean is what I mean,” Manny says.

  “You mean something that you not telling me, Manny.”

  “What I mean is what I mean, man,” Manny says. And then he adds, “Let we change the kiss-me-arse subject.”

  Sargeant fiddles with the stubby glass; crickets chirp in the darkness outside, and the singing of hymns from the BBC soothes the quiet night.

  Then Sargeant begins talking, his voice rupturing the silence.

  “It must o’ been my first assignment as a detective, when I was sent to guard the Plantation Main House, and the grounds, ’cause thieves was making the chicken coops shite. Every morning, Bellfeels calling in reports of thefts and petty larcenies; and going over my head straight to the Commissioner o’ Police. So, the Commissioner himself call-me-in and assign me to keep a’ eye on the Plantation, and catch the blasted fowl-cock thieves. And I remember the Commissioner winking to me when he give me the assignment. I got my first stripe, Lance Corporal, for carrying out that ’vestigation for the Commissioner—successfully. I just remember that, and I don’t know why.”

  “Bellfeels have been a pain in the arse, all this time!”

  Manny again raised the shot glass to his lips, and flung his head back in a sudden jerk. When the rum hit his chest, it was as if a man had landed a hard punch to that part of his body. He then flung his head from one side to the other, just as an unlucky boxer, stung by a jab, would do, to shake the sting out and to recover his equilibrium. And when he was finished, when he was done with this ritual for drinking rum, when his eyes cleared, and he could feel his blood surging through to his face, he was livelier and looked younger; and ready to do battle, whether with the remaining bottle of Mount Gay Rum, or with the conversation he was having with his old, dear friend Sargeant.

  “I never liked Bellfeels,” Manny says.

>   “Me-neither!” Sargeant says.

  “Bellfeels is such a avaricious, greedy man!” Manny says. “And whose secrets can’t hide. Can’t be hidden no more, in this Village. We can’t go on excusing Bellfeels, no more.”

  Sargeant passes the index finger of his right hand round the rim of the short, stubby, ugly shot glass. It makes a deep sound, deep as the bass part Manny sings in Sin-Davids Anglican Church Choir.

  “We sure not singing in the choir tonight!” Sargeant says.

  “Not tonight,” Manny says.

  He drinks another shot of rum. He makes his body shiver as if he is taking a dip in the sea, early morning, when the water is chilly.

  “Emmmm!” he says, making his body shudder.

  “‘. . . and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. . . ,’” Sargeant is saying.

  “‘. . . and with all thy strength,’” Manny says, completing this section from the Eucharist.

  “‘This is the first and great Commandment,’” Sargeant says.

  “‘This is the first and great Commandment,’” Manny says.

  “Was never a case o’ Bellfeels loving his neighbour as he love himself.”

  “A woman walking by herself, at a certain time o’ night, in the shadows, is a occurrence that does-happen in this place, all the time,” Manny says. “And if you put two and two together, you know, for-sure, that that woman meeting a man, at a particular rendezvous. In a cane field. A woman walking by herself, at a certain time o’ night, and on a Sunday night to-boot, and hiding something behind her back . . . I couldn’t make-it-out in the darkness! Man, Jesus-Christ, Sarge, that is a horse of a different colour, altogether!”

  “You saying something to me, Manny? You leaking evidence?”

  “Jesus Christ, Sarge! Me and you know one another too long for you to bring this shite to me, man! Leaking evidence? You calling it that? Man, I only recounting something that, now we’re talking, happen to me earlier this evening. I am trying to piece together and reconstruct certain strains, certain strands, to see what I come up with, in regards to my understanding how mankind does-act.