by Jacob Ross
He will stand at the gate and call. Bo, the massive Alsatian, will come tearing across the lawn at him, showing his teeth behind the iron bars of the gate. Mrs. Ducan will slide open her big glass door, push out her head and shout at the dog. She will throw him a bone or something and with her nice voice say, ‘Stop it, Bo.’ The dog will follow her into the house and the lady will lock him in.
He will enter the gate only when Mrs. Ducan tells him to. Little Robby, her son, will be standing just in front of the big glass door, watching him come up the driveway.
Missa Ducan might not be in. He works for the government and drives on the road anytime he likes. The soldiers never stop him or shoot at him.
Missa Ducan’s wife will hand him a small knife and he will go behind the house, walk into the small swamp there and begin cutting calaloo leaves for her. He will cut until he has a bunch bigger than himself. The turkeys in the yard will crowd around and gobble, shaking their long pink jowls at him.
Missa Ducan loves the turkeys. He has given each one a name. He rears bantam chickens too and has got the boy to clean their coops for him many times. The turkeys have no coops; they guard the yard like dogs. Mrs. Ducan says her turkeys never sleep.
That was true because, before the curfew started, he used to see them strutting beneath the floodlight on the lawn.
‘You bringsing.’ Sip snaps at him.
He draws his hand a few inches back to appease the angry boy. The others are losing all their marbles to him too, but they do not seem to mind.
Mrs. Ducan will pay him twenty-five cents for cutting the calaloo and, if he is lucky, some food wrapped in a piece of foil. She is doing him a favour. Mrs. Ducan always tells him that, just when he begins eating. Little Robby’s voice would chime in: ‘That was my food; I ate that today.’
His mother will fondle Robby, ask him to be quiet, but he will go on: ‘See where I bit that piece? There. There is where I bit.’ He will smile because Robby is just three, plump, and very cute to play with. Missa Ducan though, never looks pleased when he tries to cuddle Robby. He’d even slapped his son once when he boasted: ‘My daddy has a gun – a big, big one; everybody knows he has a gun.’
‘Last game,’ Sip growls.
‘‘Kay,’ he says.
A blast of horns shatters the mid-morning calm. A Land Rover has come quietly coasting down the road. The boys have just enough time to fling themselves into the bushes and go pelting down the hill. The soldiers’ laughter rises in the air and dies with the passing of the vehicle.
He halts with his friends in the shade of a large mango tree. He gives each of the boys a quarter of the marbles they have lost to him. Twenty remain in his pocket. Sip is not satisfied.
‘Tha’z all?’ Sip says.
‘I could give you back all of yours,’ he says. ‘Or more.’
‘Gimme then.’
‘Nuh.’
‘You say you was goin’ to gimme back all.’
‘I never say so. And who the hell you bawlin at. You can’t fight me like you fight Tomo an’ dem, yunno.’
‘Because you got dat slingshot,’ Sip says.
‘Soljers have gun; I have slingshot. Lissen, Sippo, we could make a bargin. You gimme them four ironies, I give you all your marbles back.’
‘Naw.’
‘I give you fifteen – seven veinies, one extra.’
Sip shakes his head.
‘Eighteen,’ he says. ‘Take it or leave it, I don care.’
Sip is working his mouth like a fish.
‘Twenty. No more. Ten vainies for four ole ironies. What you say?’
Sip surrenders with a nod.
‘What you want all dem ironies for, Kenno?’
‘C’mon,’ he says. ‘I think I hear the old lady callin me. Mebbe she want water o’ something.’
There is a low moon over Hope Vale – yellow like an over-ripe paw-paw. It hangs on the crest of Mont Airy as if it were about to roll down its slopes and burst at the bottom.
He would have preferred if there were no moon, no soldiers patrolling the night, no sound to listen out for except the pit-patpattering of his feet on the mud-path through the fields of sugarcane.
The night is chill. The sugarcanes glitter silver in the moonlight. On the road above him, jeeps growl past, their headlights cutting a white path through the canes.
His granny does not know where he is. He told her he was going to the latrine a few yards from the house; that he could be some time since his gripe was very bad. She would be calling him now, wondering why he was taking so long, sitting in the dark listening for his footsteps. His granny never complains. Tonight though, she spoke of food like something remembered, and it made his heart feel heavy.
Earlier this evening, he visited Mrs. Ducan who asked him to sweep the yard. The driveway was packed with big, bright cars.
Men in jackets and women in long, pretty dresses were laughing in the verandah. They drank from very slim glasses and poured their frothing drinks from pink bottles with slender necks. Mrs. Ducan told him she was busy so he must leave as soon as he finished sweeping. She looked pretty in her long blue dress and the chain of beads around her throat.
Bo barked at him from where he was chained beneath the house. The turkeys crowded around his legs and gobbled among themselves, polite and genteel, like the people on the verandah – only they didn’t have glasses to drink from – mebbe because they didn’t have no hands to hold them with.
Mrs. Ducan must have said something about him because two of the pretty-looking ladies looked at him. The one in red muttered something nice – he could tell that by the way her lips moved and her smile. But Mrs. Ducan gave him nothing. She was too busy with her friends.
Emerging from the canes, he finds himself at the foot of the hill on top of which sits the Ducan’s house. A cool wind comes up the valley from the Kalivini swamps, bringing the scent of crabs, frogs and rotting cane.
The boy pauses in the shade of a french-cashew tree; takes out his slingshot; tenses the red rubber straps. He pulls the bird he’s shot this evening from under his shirt and wonders if one lil ground-dove is enough to keep Bo busy. If Bo doesn’t get him, Missa Ducan’s gun might.
First, he must get through the barbed-wire fence, crawl along the ground on his stomach – the way Sip said the soldiers did in wars. He flattens himself on the grass and inches beneath the lowest rung of wire. His lips are chafed with dirt, his stomach bruised with pebbles but he clears the fence. The Delco is putt-putting away. The Alsatian is standing near the steps, its nose pointing towards the fence. He thinks he hears the dog’s deepthroated growl.
The fence would shred him if he tries to throw himself back out.
He is sure now that the dog’s body has gone rigid. Its ears upright, its nose directed at the fence.
The boy eases himself off the ground, swings his right arm high. The bird’s small carcass sails over the grass and drops with a plap! just behind the dog. Bo growls once, turns to sniff the object on the ground. The dog lifts his head, sniffs again and, still growling, takes the bird between his jaws and retreats beneath the house.
He slips along the grass and stops just outside the rim of light. The turkeys seem to sense his presence. They are in the centre of the lawn. They lift their heads with jerky movements, chuckling among themselves as they scan the perimeter of the fence. The tall gate is a little way to his right. He checks for the dog.
He strains against the rubber, aims at the biggest bird and releases.
He’s shot the turkey exactly where he aimed – just behind the jowls. But it does not lie still; it begins thrashing on the grass, raising a noisy, chuckling protest that brings the dog leaping from beneath the house.
He knows he cannot run; besides, he does not want to. He edges backward until the barbs of the wire begin to nip his skin. The dog leaps at his face; he throws himself aside. The growl becomes a yelp as it crashes against the fence, and gets tangled there. That is when he shoots him with the s
econd marble. Bo scrambles to his feet and, still yelping, bolts for the shelter of the house.
There is a stirring in the big house: chairs falling, a man’s deep voice, lights switched on in the rooms, a woman’s voice pitched high. He remembers Missa Ducan’s gun but does not move. He takes his third marble, aims at the blazing bulb and fires. The light explodes in a shower of sparks and tinkling glass. Only the moon shines now; its light is soft on the grass.
The turkey is a dark heap where it has come to a stop against the gate. Sprinting across the lawn, he lifts it, opens the gate, just managing to throw himself flat as the man comes out on the verandah.
Missa Ducan is a giant shape against the half-opened doorway. The gun is in his hand. The man is shouting and looking into the night. The boy lifts his slingshot. It is his last marble. He narrows his eyes, aims and fires. The night explodes with the shattering of the glass door. Missa Ducan ducks and with flailing arms throws himself backward into the house.
The turkeys are a huddle on the lawn. Bo is somewhere behind the house, gone silent. He slings his load onto his shoulders and is soon bouncing with quick, cautious steps along the mud track through the cane fields – his ears tuned for the sound of the soldiers’ jeeps.
THE ROOM INSIDE
The doctor wouldn’t come. Said he was tired. Didn’t they know that doctors needed sleep too?
Yes-yes! Of course they’d told him that the nurse wasn’t there, that the Medical Station was locked because a man had half-killed his wife in Roebuck and Nurse Finchley had gone there to look after the woman.
They’d thought the doctor might’ve changed his mind, but his wife came to the doorway and reminded him that he’d just finished having the car fixed and it had only enough petrol to take her to the wedding the following day.
Yes! That was what she said. She had to do the flowers o’ somethin. She complained ‘bout the weather too. Impossible, she said. All this rain and thunder made the road bad for cars. Besides, a doctor could break his leg climbing that slippery hill. Old Hope was a bad place anyway – yes, that’s what she said, a bad place, even in the best weather.
She even blamed the doctor. Hadn’t she often warned him about spoiling those people with kindness? It didn’t pay to be so nice to them.
Yes, they did tell Dr. Raeburn that Elaine was a sickly girl and the child was coming early; they couldn’t get her to the hospital in time. He became really angry then; said nobody couldn blackmail him; no two so-and-sos could open his gate, walk into his yard and stand there in his verandah, trying to make him do what he didn’t have to do.
He was a doctor, not a midwife. That’s what he said.
They were in the yard – a tight circle of men, women and children, the rain beating down on them in hard white sheets.
The two youths who had run the five miles to St. Paul’s and back, fidgeted and dug their naked toes into the wet earth.
The three women drilled them until they learned the details of the boys’ trek through the storm, to the Medical Station, the doctor’s house and their even hastier return. Only Ray and Mike had returned. Jim had taken the road for St. Georges, to the hospital. He’d done so after he’d called at two houses with telephones. The lines, it seemed, had been broken by the storm. Cars were hard to come by, their owners even harder to persuade to venture down the road.
St. Georges was ten miles away.
Nana lifted her eyes to the sky. The pelting rain hit her in the face. She did not shift her gaze until she appeared to find what she was looking for. Patsy, Elaine’s mother, was quiet, her eyes dull as the pools of water settled at her feet. Aya, Nana’s older sister stood slightly apart from them, making and unmaking beadloops with the chaplet around her neck.
Gigi knew something was wrong. She thought Cecil, Elaine’s boyfriend, was weeping, but it could have been rain washing down his face. Why was everyone standing here in her mother’s yard talking about Elaine when the girl was, according to them, close to dying in the little house further up the hill?
She realised that she was standing exactly as the adults were: arms making handles on her hips, feet buried in the mud.
‘Okay,’ Nana said. ‘No choice! We have to bring Elaine here.’ She rested big dark eyes on the women’s faces. ‘De only person I know who could do something now is my modder. But first, I want Patsy to agree, ‘cause I dunno what might happen. We could leave Elaine up there to dead or we could do something.’
She turned to Miss Patsy, ‘You agree for my modder to try to deliver the child?’
Patsy shifted her feet, looked down at the stones. She raised her head and nodded.
Nana turned to Aya. ‘Go talk to the old woman. Tell er – tell er Elaine baby comin early and we ain got nobody qualify help. Tell er you know is years she stop deliverin – since that blasted nurse report her, sayin’ she ain’t qualify. Careful how you say dat, ‘cause it still does hurt her. And mos’ important, let her know dat Patsy agree to have her deliver the baby. If she refuse, tell her I say she must do it. Dis is stickin-togedder-time. Gwone!’
Aya looked at Nana’s face and, still fondling her chaplet, drifted into the house.
Nana raised a finger at the boys. ‘The men – where the men? Go to every house on dis hill and tell the men I want them. If anybody drunk or sleepin, leave dem ‘cause I don’ want no more problems. I want four strong men. Tell dem to meet me at Patsy house and bring the stronges’, cleanes’ sheet they got in deir house. Y’all still there? Gwone!’
The boys scattered, shouting commands at each other.
Nana glared at the children. ‘Go home!’ she snapped. ‘Y’all want to ketch cold? Y’all modder know where y’all is? Break that stick for me, Gigi – Gigi what you doin’ there, child? What the…!’
Nana lunged at them. The children bolted off. Gigi had nowhere to go. Nana didn’t have to tell her that once the men brought down Elaine, her mother’s house would be out of bounds.
She sought shelter beneath the ant-blighted grapefruit tree beside the little house. Her teeth were chattering, her dress dripping.
Cecil stood beside her. His eyes were swollen, his thin hands fluttering at his side. Water was streaming down the dark-leaved tree. Cecil took the dripping onslaught while Gigi strove to dodge the heavy drops. At another time it would have been a game.
‘Missa Cecil?’
The young man did not look at her. He was rubbing his small growth of beard as though it was bothering him.
‘Miss Elaine sick bad?’
He did not answer.
‘She deadin – she goin dead?’
‘What de hell you askin’ me, gyul!’
‘Nana say she makin’ a baby.’
‘Dat don’ mean she goin dead.’ Gigi heard the tremor in his voice. She raised her face at him.
‘You know what I been thinkin, Missa Cecil?’
She tried to hold his gaze but he would not look at her. ‘I been thinkin dat y’all could tell Papa God to take back de baby; not so? He don’ bung-an-compel to send it now if it make Miss Elaine sick. Y’all could ask ‘im to keep it for you till she get better; not so?’
She couldn’t understand why he was smiling. She was trying to help de stupid fella and he was makin joke ov her advice.
Something else was bothering her. ‘Missa Cecil – how come Elaine sick and you not sick? Is only cry you cryin’, but you ask to be de baby fadder; not so? So, you should be deadin too…’
‘Shut up! You don’ know what you talkin ‘bout. What likkle gyul like you want to know ‘bout dat anyway? Move, before I clout you.’
‘You touch me, I tell my modder – she break you’ head wit’ one cuff!’
Cecil turned his back to her, brushing the water from his hair.
‘Next month,’ Gigi informed him, I goin’ ask Papa God for four baby. But I don’ want ‘im to make me fat like Elaine. Besides, I want only girls – dolly-girls. What Elaine ask for – a boy?’
Cecil didn’t answer her. Aya was
at the doorway calling: ‘Gigelle, come in from de rain – look at the child clothes, Lord! Cecil, why you don’t shelter below de house? Don’t worry, son. Elaine goin be awright.’
Aya’s voice was always soft – as if forever on the verge of song.
‘Come here, Gi!’
Gigi ran into the house.
The woman set about stripping her and drying her with an old towel. Her grandmother’s mumbling came from the little room next door. Hers was a never-ending conversation with herself, broken only when she was eating or speaking to someone else.
Aya dressed the child in her best dress, stepped back, eyed her and said, ‘Dunno if you modder goin like this, Gi. Nana have she ways and I have mine. But we goin need you. I don’ think de lesson too big for you either! Light the coalpot – yuh granmodder goin’ need hot water, plenty of it. Make sure your hand cleaner dan a whistle when you boil that water.’
Moments later, the fire was going and the largest pot in the house sat on it. Other pots were filled and waiting. She worked with the sense that she was fighting to stave off something terrible.
There came a babble of voices above the sound of wind and rain. She beat Aya to the door.
They brought Elaine down in a sheet. Each of the four men held a knotted corner of the large white square of linen. Uncle Arthur, the giant, and Mr. Joe were at the front. Mano, the mute, was straining beside Nathan at the back. The swaying sheet ballooned inwards with the weight of the girl.
During dry weather, the narrow dirt-track led all the way to the top of the hill. Now, there was only slipping mud and running water. Sometimes the men sat down on the wet ground, holding the makeshift hammock above their heads, and slid down on their behinds till they reached a lower, more secure level.
Every now and then a sharp cry came from the depths of the swaying sheet and Nana’s voice became insistent, urging the men forward.
When they were in the yard, Cecil hung over the sheet like a condemned man. The men brought Elaine inside, then returned to the yard – their breathing low, their eyes avoiding each other.