The Polished Hoe

by Austin Clarke

  “Not knowing, from their distance aboveground, and their place in the kitchen shelling the pigeon-peas, if they could rightly say, or be certain of who the particular recipient of the lashes was, or could they make-out the owner of each pleading cry.

  “One man receive forty lashes.

  “The second man receive thirty.

  “And the third man got only twenty-four.

  “Ma and Gran counted all ninety-four.

  “When the last lash, the ninety-fourth plax! landed on that man’s back, Ma and Gran say it had the same sound, the same sting, the same echo, the same savageness as the previous ninety-three. Delivered by one man. That one man, beating three other big men, could have such consistency in his administration o’ violence . . .

  “And afterwards, Ma say, she had to wipe her hands in her apron, and pour Mr. Lawrence Burkhart, the Driver at the time, in charge of disciplines and floggings on the Plantation, a glass of cold Tennent’s Beer that she kept in the icebox, which was all the rage on the Plantation.

  “He drank-it-off in three big, long draughts. And then he said, ‘Ahhh!’ and Ma said a feeling of contentment came-over Mr. Lawrence Burkhart face, that she herself had a hard time understanding: how this Mr. Lawrence Burkhart could remain so cool and calm, after the screels that turn her blood to ice water.

  “Then she had to follow Mr. Lawrence Burkhart down these same steps. And come to the three bodies of the three men, barely held up by the manacles and the leg-irons; the whipping had disfigured their bodies almost beyond recognition; and if she didn’t witness with her own two eyes, that the whipping had-take-place in this underground cellar, Ma say, she couldda swear that she was looking at a tableau-type picture of the three men on the Cross, on Golgotha Hill, in Biblical times, crucified by that wicked governor, His Excellency, the Roman, Sir Pontius Pilate. The three of those men from history. With Jesus Our Saviour, in the middle. And two thieves, robbers, nicodemons, side-b’-side of her precious Saviour . . . one of them being none other than Barrabas who walked by night, Ma said.

  “Their backs was turned to Ma. And Ma knew then who the Plantation labelled the ringleader to be. Cross the whole-entire back of Golbourne father, also named Golbourne, she say she counted forty slashes going in all directions, formed a kind of star, a star that she had come-across somewhere, the Star of Bethlehem . . .

  “Ma say she had to throw a bucket of saltwater on Golbourne father, on Manny grandfather and on Pounce father, each; the same way, Ma say, she used to throw water on the hogs in the pigpen, to cleanse-them-off. With a few drops of Jays Fluid in it, to bind the wounds and clot the blood.

  “Not a peep came from one of those three men, crucified by the flogging Mr. Lawrence Burkhart gave them.”

  “‘Get a second bucket,’” Mr. Lawrence Burkhart tell Ma. ‘And when you up there in the kitchen, call the gardener and Watchie. I can’t lift these three heavy sons-o’-bitches, by my-one. These three bastards too blasted big!’

  “The blood was all over this underground tunnel. Flowing like rainwater running to reach a gutter, and pour-down. And only after buckets of fresh water, the yard broom and some crocus bags that Watchie bring, did Ma and Gran bring back that section of this underground tunnel to former appearances.

  “‘This for you, May,’ Ma say that Mr. Lawrence Burkhart said to her, using her Christian name, and handing her a bright, half-Crown, as if he himself had just minted it. ‘For your services. And keep your mouth shut. Nobody will-ever know about this, right?’

  “But he didn’t have to seal Ma mouth to that secret confidence. Ma would be a blasted fool to ever utter a word to anybody. Mr. Lawrence Burkhart give Gran one shilling.

  “I heard this, not from Ma. But from Mr. Bellfeels, after he got me pregnant the first time, with William Henry. Since then, pieces of this history, this pageantry of blood, have leaked-out through various cracks and crevices in conversations at the dinner table, back-there, back then in the times when times were sweet between me and him . . .”

  The story that duplicates this strange underground journey Sargeant is being made to take causes him to feel he is a foreigner, a stranger in a land in which he thought he had a straight course, but which he now knows is winding, if not circuitous; something like the alienation, the hopelessness and the invisibility Manny told him he felt, when he lived in Georgia and in Florida and in Philadelphia, working illegally, until that morning when a Trinidadian worker, himself illegal, bearing a grudge against another Trinidadian, went to the place of work, late the Friday; payday; and waited until it was five minutes to five, knocking-off time was five, and then he screamed, “Immigration!” One time. Just once. “Immigration!” he screamed. A second time. In one minute flat, the place was empty! Only the shocked, angry manager-owner of the factory that made bottle caps remained at the unattended machines, which whirred and ground and rattled to a halt. Manny spent that winter freezing in doorways, after he was chased out of the boiler room of a hospital; and it was after this, that he sought refuge in the sewer until he resigned his fate to the clutches of the U.S. Immigration . . .

  But another aspect of her story, the part about men dragged underground, comes in his recollecting it, from Nelson’s West Indian Reader, Book Three, his textbook in Standard Three. In this book, an animal whose name escapes him now, was burrowing in the mud, making a channel, from which it could not afterwards extricate itself. It was a channel of journey and of death. And he wonders if death underground, below the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and from the stars which he likes to point out to Gertrude, is to be his fate.

  But it cannot be. She is Mary-G. Mary of his dreams, a virgin woman, before tonight. Now, tonight, she is a woman with whom he has made love, in his imagination, making her no longer a virgin.

  But it is still imagination, and no matter what, she will never be able to know the carnal extremes he has performed over her body, over her.

  Sargeant is thinking also of reading exercises in Nelson’s West Indian Reader, Book Three, about a spider who bores a hole in the ground and covers it with a lid made of pieces of straw and mud, as a protection and as a guillotine. As a weapon. He remembers another exercise in the Reader, about an animal, a very small animal, who bores a hole underground and lives in it, with traps laid for intruders; and he remembers another animal, but not by name . . . why can’t he call-to-mind these important little animals at a time like this, when he thinks of himself as one of them? Understanding how vulnerable he is crawling through this tunnel, not on his hands and knees, but crawling nevertheless, being led in this slow passage? . . . this animal whose name he can’t remember is a worm that bores its home under the surface of soft mud, in tunnels which any intruder would get lost in, tire himself out in, and give up the ghost of spirit and of strength; drop dead from frustration, unable to extricate itself; then to be devoured by the worm. He is this animal. This bug. This fragile spider. “Come into my parlour, said the Spider to the Fly.” He cannot remember where he first heard this line; but he had to learn the entire tale by heart, in English Literature classes that were heard orally. Perhaps, it was Mr. Edwards, his private lessons tutor, who told him about it at Sin-Davids Elementary School for Boys. Perhaps in Sunday School. Perhaps on the Pasture playing cricket “firms”; and football with the big boys, who kicked the football made of a pig’s bladder, or a green breadfruit; kicking each other, anything; all day long, in the hot steaming sun, during the long vacation.

  “Come into my parlour,

  “Said the Spider to the Fly.”

  He does not remember who wrote these words. But he feels he is a fly in her hands.

  “. . . and, years ago, when Ma worked in the Great House, and she sent me to the Plantation Main House, in the long vacation, to buy large tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots; and walking by myself, it would take me twenty-five minutes to get there, from the Great House.

  “Earlier this evening, it took me ten. To travel the same distance. Perhaps because I
am a big woman. And can walk faster. Perhaps I had a reason for getting there quick. But I was telling you about the three men . . .

  “. . . after Ma brought the salt water to pour on the three men, branded as ‘bastards,’ for raising their voice to ask for a raise, the Plantation-people start whispering outta the hearing of the field labourers that Pounce father, and Manny grandfather, and Golbourne father were trying to overturn the Plantation, in spite of all the good things that the Plantation do for the Village and the labourers and the poor and the cripple; and here now, comes these ‘bastards’—the Plantation label them-so—plunging this decent, harmonious, law-abiding Christian community into chaos, into rebellion, in their imitation of an Amurcan Nigg-rah, one Nat Turner; “. . . shouldda shot the ma’-fecker, when we had-eem cornered,” the Commissioner of Police at the time said, in a conversation on the cranked-up telephone, to as many Plantation managers as he could reach in the heat of that night. “Make a fecking example of, I say. What?..Well, that’s all for now . . . keep your powder dry, if you know what I mean. The barracks have ammonitions, as much as you need . . . an example of, I say. Bellfeels, referring to an earler Bellfeels, have a cousin up in Southampton keeping us abreast of . . . meanwhile keep your powder dry . . .”

  “Even his Christian name, Nat, was a strange name to hear in these parts. We christen our thrildren—and even our houses— in particular, our male thrildren, with proper English names. Like Wilberforce. And Waddington. And Chesterfield. Nobody, in all the days that this Village of Flagstaff exist, nobody ever had the historical effronteries to christen a boy-child with a name that reflects slavery. Like Nat. Nat? Nathaniel, Washington and Jefferson are not names that are native to this Island of Bimshire.

  “Ma never told me much about the reasons the Plantation had for sociating the three ‘bastards’ to the name of this Nat Turner fellow. She only told me about the blood. Blood on the walls. Blood on their bodies. Blood on their clothes—what little they had-on, what little was left-on after the balata peal-off their flesh, and rip-up their flour-bag shirt and short pants. Blood on the ground.

  “Ma standing in this blood covering her two feet, and having to mop it up, because people had to walk along the same underground passage later in the week, bearing barrels of rum, and barrels of pig snout, and cuts of beef that were slaughtered and had to be cured in brine and pimento, and put there for curing; and all the other provisions that had to be stocked-up-on, and stored, in case of hurricanes, like Hurricane Darnley; against a rainy day.

  “Ma’s two feet walk through all this blood, to get to the three ‘bastards’ still lassoed by chains against the wall. The six pieces of iron chains, the handcuffs and leg-irons is still in the wall . . . I will show you them.

  “So, the Plantation accused Pounce father, Manny grandfather and Golbourne father of forming insurrections. Nobody hadn’t use the word insurrections before. It was only an Amurcan thing, an Amurcan word before this. A word that somebody who had-went to Amurca, working on a ship that dock in the South to take-on fruits and cotton, had-heard and brought back.

  “But it wasn’t that we knew much concerning the Negroes and coloured people in Amurca, those who were slaves and those who were free; or freed.

  “Ma, in her small way, used to tell me a narrative about a slave name Frederick Douglass who ended his slavery through what they called manomittance, and became a newspaper reporter and editor, and a speaker, and who ended up in Buffalo, the place I visited with Mr. Bellfeels, years ago . . .

  “Booker-Tea Washington is another such narrative. And there you have it, those Amurcan names that Negro and coloured mothers love to name their boy-thrildren with. Named after some great white Amurcan, such as a President, a doctor, a Senator, a abolutionist, or a Confederate general. Somebody big and important; so long as Amurcan Negroes can trace their history from the name to a person who exists, everything is proper.

  “So, through Ma, and then Mr. Bellfeels, and through Wilberforce travels, I got to know all these things. The Plantation label them insurrectionaries. And the Solicitor-General at the time would have henged them all, all at the same time through spite, as a example to others, to show that English law reigned in Bimshire, had it not been for the Vicar, Revern Dowd, not the present one, but the father who interceded on the ‘bastards’ behalfs, and said it was not Christian, or charitable, and certainly not English, to heng three felons, called ‘bastards,’ at the same time, back-to-back. His exact words. ‘It isn’t English to put the three insurrectionaries to their death, in this uncivilize and savage manner.’

  “But the boat to take them out in the sea, and push them overboard, was waiting. There is a section to this tunnel . . . I never ventured so far inside it, by myself before; but Ma told me, and later Mr. Bellfeels concur himself, that fifty to a hundred yards down from where we now are, there is another passageway, more secret than this, leading to a junction which they were going to use to take the three insurrectionaries through, after binding them with rope, hands-and-knees; and the skipper of the boat was waiting, and they had the cement already mix and the bags waiting, and they were going to stuff crocus bags in their mouth, to prevent alarms and pleas, and then tie-up their mouths with pieces of their very-own clothes, those that was not shredded from the lashes, and stuff the ‘bastards’ in the crocus bags, pour the ready-mix cement, the mortar into each bag, tie the end in a reef knot, and without waiting for the cement to dry, push each body overboard. The plan was to go out in the sea, off the Aquatic Club, in the dead of night, when the tide was out, and out-goes-you! Jesus-Christ, and in the silence of secrecy, no sign of the Cross, or without saying ‘ashes to ashes,’ the Vicar say he didn’t intend to give them Last Rites, nor read a word from the Bible to bury them in a Christian manner. ‘Just bury the bastards!’

  “It was the Solicitor-General who had-wanted Captain Frazer-Small, the owner of the motor-vessel, to take the three ‘bastards’ far-far out, out beyond the horizon, and throw them overboard, and leave them to the mercy of the lion sharks. But the Vicar prevailed. Warning them of their own salvation in the face of the brutality of such a deed, in case the sharks was full, and didn’t have appetite to eat the three ‘bastards,’ right-off; but just toy with them, biting off a foot this morning, nibbling-way at a toe in the afternoon, and leaving-back the bulk of their dinner, the torso, for the dead of night, when lion sharks really get hungry and mean. How would that look, the Vicar ask them? How would they feel, if they were one of the three ‘bastards’?

  “That did it. That turned the tide. They settled for a more painless and merciful death. Suffocated in cement, in the crocus bag, and thrown overboard . . .

  “So, this Amurcan Negro, Nat Turner, after who the Plantation-people swear the three ‘bastards’ had-pattern their rebellion after, intending to burn down the entire blasted Plantation, molest and rape the women, not sparing even thrildren, male, female, and old women, allegedly; cutting-off the heads of horses and mules and donkeys to prevent pursuit into the hills and gulleys of Sin-Thomas and Sin-Joseph; and Chimboraza; keeping the rest of the stocks in the Yard, after getting blind drunk offa their violence and offa Bellfeels Stades White Rum, and vengeance, according to the Plantation, for meat, and roast-goat; the Plantation said they had to punish the three ‘bastards,’ it was their bounden Christian duty, ‘bliged-and-bound,’ to make a example of these insurrectionaries.

  “That is one story. There’s more.”

  “And I, a policeman, never heard nothing about none o’ these, before! At least, that they ever happened.”

  “You are a stranger to the truth, to the history, and to the actions of the powerful in this Island, Percy.

  “You will certainly remember a certain Commissioner of Police, not the one you presently serve, but another one. You must-know who I mean!”

  “I don’t know if I know.”

  “No need to call his name. But he walked with a limp.”

  “I don’t know, if I really know the perso
n!”

  “Skip. I may as.Well tell you. He dead, anyway...Well, Skip come home one day, for his lunch, and found his wife in bed. With the gardener. And Skip took his gun from outta his holster. Hold it to the gardener head. And blam! All this time, the wife naked as she born. In the bed. Can’t move. Don’t know if to move. Stricken with fear and fright. With the blood splatter-over her body. Screaming her head off. And Skip take off his Sam Brown, take off his police uniform, the short-sleeve khaki tunic he take off; the short khaki shorts he take off. Roll down the three-quarter khaki stockings. Off went the brown leather shoes; and of course, as he was inside the bedroom, he wasn’t wearing the peak cap that police commission-officers wear.

  “And without saying a word, he climb on top of his wife. And he gave it to her. Going and coming. From the back, from the front, and donkey-style. Ride her till-thy-kingdom-come. And when he had his full, he say to her, ‘You satisfied, now?’ And she say, ‘Yes, darling. You always satisfies me, more better than anybody-else.” And he tell her, ‘Good.’

  “He went out the bedroom, and come back with his Sam Brown. Draw his police revolver. Cock the trigger. Put the barrel to the wife head. And pulled the trigger. Click! the revolver said. He put back the barrel of the revolver to her head. To her left temple, this time. She screaming like bloody-hell, now. And pulled the trigger a next time. Click! Then he put the barrel of the revolver to her private parts, her pum-pum, her pussy, then. And pulled the trigger, and blammm!”