The Greats

by Deborah Ellis

  “This one’s cooled a bit,” says Angel, holding a shell full of water out to Jomon. “Don’t gulp it, though. It’s still hot.”

  Jomon sips and feels the water flood into his cells. It is the best drink of water he has ever had.

  “Fish is almost ready,” says Hi.

  Jomon spots a mango tree and picks three ripe mangoes to add to their meal.

  The three boys sit around the fire. Hi hands a big leaf full of roasted fish to Jomon and another one to Angel.

  Jomon alternates fingers full of crispy fish with bites of sweet mango. Juice runs down his chin.

  It all tastes so good! He’s eaten only awful jail food for days. His mother taught him how to cook a little bit when she was alive, but he never really paid attention. Why had he never thought to cook food over a fire? He could learn how to cook good meals. Then he and Dad could sit around the fire and eat and —

  “Dev, eat your fish.”

  Jomon notices that Angel hasn’t touched his food.

  “Dev!” orders Hi. “I cooked that for you. Eat it!”

  Angel picks up the leaf with the roasted fish on it and hands it to Jomon. He gets up from the fire and walks away.

  “I did the best I could for you, Dev Fowler,” Hi calls after him. “There’s no pleasing you. What more could I do?”

  “You could call him by his name,” says Jomon.

  “His name?” Hi repeats. “Everyone calls him Dev. Everyone laughs about it!”

  “Just because everyone laughs doesn’t make it funny,” says Angel.

  Father and son glare at each other. Hi is the first to soften his face.

  “That’s just what your mother would have said,” Hi says thoughtfully.

  He stands up, takes the leaf full of fish from Jomon and holds it out to Angel.

  “We’ve got a long way to go,” he says. “Better eat up ... Angel.”

  Angel’s shoulders relax. He eats the fish. They put out the fire and head back out on their journey — walking, walking, walking.

  27

  Jomon and the great-grandfathers walk along quiet stretches where Jomon can almost hear the sea. They walk through villages busy with buying and selling and families hurrying between home, work and school. They walk along pathways with people on bicycles, goats chewing on weeds, and past homes where old people sit on the porches and watch the world go by.

  “Three boys, just what I need,” says an elderly woman at a roadside stand called True Love. Bob Marley is playing over a speaker. “Put these crates in the back for me, would you, and take the old ones out. They’re coming to pick up the empties tomorrow, and my back isn’t as strong as it used to be.”

  Jomon, Hi and Angel lift and carry and sweat for almost an hour while the woman sits on a bench under the shop’s awning, fanning herself and making comments like, “Pick up your feet, I’ve got customers coming,” and “The Lord sent you boys to me so there must be some good in you,” which makes Jomon wonder why they are bothering to work so hard.

  But when the job is finished, she brings them plates of the best chicken curry and rice Jomon has ever tasted, and cold bottles of soda to wash it down.

  While they eat, she tells them the story of her family, which she has traced all the way back to Mali.

  “Got a daughter now who works at the national zoo,” she says. “In charge of the ocelots. Always was wild about cats.”

  Customers start to gather as the boys finish eating. They return their plates, thank the woman and head back to the road.

  The sun sets and the moon rises. The darkness of the night mixed with the sudden brightness of car headlights or bare lightbulbs over a shop keep Jomon’s eyes adjusting to no light and then too much light. People seem to appear out of nowhere, slipping into his field of vision, then slipping back out of it as he, Hi and Angel walk in and out of shadows.

  Jomon enjoys the challenge of it, the way he has to watch out for dogs and children and donkey carts and trucks. It takes all of his concentration.

  The villages come to an end for a time and the boys walk on in darkness.

  Jomon has never walked this much, and he is a little surprised that he can do it. His legs are tired and his feet are still a little sore from the cuts, but it’s nothing he can’t tolerate.

  Guyana is a small country. Jomon thinks back to the maps he studied for the geography competition. Other than a few boat rides across the Demerara and Essequibo Rivers, he could probably cover the whole country on foot, from Corriverton by the Suriname border to Waini Point by Venezuela, and then south to where the Rupununi savannah meets the Kamoa Mountains and Brazil. He could get to know his country through his feet and through the people he’d meet. He could learn everyone’s language — all the Amerindian languages and the languages people brought with them from their old home countries. He could try all the foods, sing all the songs, and listen to all the stories.

  “You can’t do any of that if you kill yourself,” says Angel. “It’s an obvious point, but one worth mentioning.”

  “I like his idea,” says Hi. “Walk, walk, walk. If you don’t like where you are, walk to someplace else.”

  “It’s just an idea,” says Jomon. “Just a daydream. It wouldn’t fix anything.”

  He imagines himself walking, walking, walking with the heavy emptiness always in his head. He wouldn’t ever be able to really see anything, taste anything or appreciate anything.

  “You mean it wouldn’t fix everything,” says Angel. “No one thing fixes everything.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you do it?” Jomon asks them.

  Hi and Angel have nothing to say for a long time.

  Then Hi asks Angel, “Instead of killing myself, would you rather I’d just walked away?”

  “You were always walking away from me,” says Angel. “What was so horrible about me? What was so horrible that you had to kill yourself to get away from me? I was just a kid!”

  Angel is not quite shouting, but his voice is rising. Jomon sees a couple of houses just off the highway and doesn’t want anybody waking up and calling the police on them.

  “Let’s keep moving,” he whispers.

  Dawn breaks. They walk through another village.

  Just as they reach its outskirts, the sky opens up. Sudden, hard rains are a Guyana staple.

  The boys jump over a gully and dash into a Rotary playground. They head for a little playhouse built over a monkey bars and swing set. They rush into the playhouse and plop down on the floor, rain streaming down their faces.

  They look from one to another in the dim light. Hi starts laughing.

  “You two look like something that came out of the swamp!”

  Jomon and Angel laugh, too.

  “We’re the creatures from the black lagoon,” says Jomon.

  “Did you see that movie, too?” asks Angel. “I love that movie.”

  “What’s a movie?” asks Hi.

  Jomon and Angel tell him, shouting to be heard over the torrent of rain on the playhouse roof. They explain plots, mimic their favorite characters and sing bits of their favorite movie songs.

  The rain stops as suddenly as it starts. As the boys unfold themselves to leave the playhouse, a new sound reaches them.

  It is rhythmic clapping — jazzy and fun. Jomon and the grandfathers leave the playhouse and stand on the bridge of the playset.

  A boy is coming toward them from across the park. He is about their size. He is clapping and dancing and stomping his feet in the puddles to the beat of his hands.

  Closer and closer, the dancing fellow grooves his way to the playground. He looks like he is having a great time.

  The boy dances closer.

  Angel takes a quick, hard breath. Tears are rolling down his cheeks.

  The boy gets even closer. He is singing. Jomon can make out
the words. The boy is singing them brightly, not slowly, turning them into a celebration instead of a lullaby.

  Chatter monkeys in the trees

  Swaying branches in the breeze

  Sleep the hours of dark away

  Wake up to a brighter day.

  With a graceful twirl, the boy leaps up on the play structure and grabs hold of the bridge bar, swinging up to Jomon and the grandfathers.

  “I am Barnabus Bangla Fowler,” he says. “Stage name — Barnby. Which one of you is my grandson?”

  28

  Angel bursts into sobs.

  Jomon and Hi get him off the play structure. He drops to his knees.

  “I’m sorry,” Angel cries. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Pops, Pops, no,” says Barnby, kneeling beside him. “It’s all right. Don’t cry! I can’t stand to see you sad.”

  “I let you down.”

  “Pops, this is a happy day. It’s so good to see you. I need you to be happy to see me. Damn it, why can’t you ever be happy?”

  Barnby turns his back on his father and stomps away. He turns around after a few steps and shouts over his shoulder.

  “Well, come on!”

  Jomon helps Angel to his feet. Barnby slows down so they can catch up, but his back is stiff.

  They walk through one village, then the next. They reach the mouth of the Berbice River and rest on its shaded bank.

  Finally, Angel speaks.

  “I am happy,” he says to Barnby. “I am really, really happy to see you.”

  “Then show me,” Barnby says. “Show me that you feel more than just misery about things you think you’ve done.”

  “I do!” says Angel.

  “No, you don’t,” says Barnby. “But right now, I’m here for Jomon.”

  “We’re all here for Jomon,” says Hi.

  “You’re my grandfather?” Barnby asks Hi.

  Hi grins and holds out his hand. Barnby doesn’t take it.

  “You’re the reason my pops is the way he is. Well, part of the reason. So, thanks a lot.”

  “Who are you to talk to me that way?” Hi demands. “Who do you think you are? You don’t even know me.”

  “And whose fault is that?” asks Barnby. “You decided to take yourself out of my father’s life, and that made him so sad, he took himself out of mine.”

  Angel drops to the ground and hides his face in his hands. Hi and Barnby stand over him, chests puffed out, feet planted, arms tight. They glare at each other.

  “You can’t blame his suicide on me!” Hi shouts. “I wasn’t even there!”

  “That’s right,” Barnby yells back. “You weren’t there.”

  “How’d you do with your son?” Hi snarls at Barnby. “How good a father were you?”

  Barnby flies at Hi and Hi flies at Barnby and the pair of them hit the dirt.

  Jomon walks away. He’s done with all of them. They are just ignorant kids, not wise men or ghosts from another world.

  Jomon is on his own.

  His mother’s grave is somewhere on the west bank of the Berbice River. He is going to find where she is buried, tell her goodbye, then put this whole damn life behind him.

  He walks and walks and walks, leaving the fighting and crying behind.

  The rhythm of the walk calms him. There is something soothing about his feet hitting the ground, one in front of the other, again and again and again. He has no one to bug him, the sky is blue above, and the world is spread out in front of him.

  He sees a church steeple and heads for it. Next to the church is a cemetery.

  “Wait!”

  Jomon turns around. The new boy, Barnby, runs up to him.

  “She’s not there.”

  “I’ll check it out for myself,” says Jomon. “By myself.”

  “I’ll go with you,” says Barnby.

  “By myself means without you.”

  “You are never without me,” Barnby says. “You’re never without any of us.”

  Jomon walks on his own through the cemetery, looking at all the grave markers, searching for his mother’s name. He goes through the whole cemetery.

  His mother is not here.

  “I know where she is,” says Barnby. He is leaning against a tall headstone with the other two grandfathers. They seem to have declared a truce.

  “So tell me,” says Jomon.

  “I’ll take you there,” says Barnby. “And on the way, I’ll tell you my story.”

  29

  Grandfather’s Contribution

  My best memories are of making Pops and Ma laugh.

  You wouldn’t think there would be anything to laugh about in a leprosy hospital, but there was always something — and it was usually me!

  The home for kids who didn’t have leprosy was outside the hospital fence. It was run by nuns. So was the home inside the fence, but that was for the children who had leprosy. I snuck in there a lot. The first big routine I did, when I actually thought about it and planned it out in advance, was for the kids in that home.

  Here’s what I did. I helped out in the laundry, because I always liked my clothes to be just so, even though they were charity clothes. Especially since they were charity clothes, which were little more than rags.

  My father used to bring me new clothes, but I shared them around. It didn’t seem right to be wearing nice new things when no one else was. Most of the kids had no one to bring them stuff. When someone in the family has leprosy, it’s like the whole family has leprosy. Friends don’t stick around, and relatives forget they know you. My pops was one of the only fathers who ever came to visit.

  I remember the day he saw a shirt he gave me on some other kid.

  “That’s my son’s shirt,” he complained to Sister Carolyn. “Why is my son’s shirt on that boy’s back?”

  The boy — his name was Owen — shrank into himself. I watched it happen. He’d been so happy to see my pops because Pops was an actual father. Not Owen’s father, but still, a father.

  I’m off track already.

  I helped out in the laundry and that meant I had access to the nuns’ habits. This was in the full wimple days, before Vatican II, all gowns and long veils.

  I borrowed a habit, put it on and snuck into the children’s ward inside the fence. I hid around a corner until the nuns on duty left the ward for Mass, then I popped into the room and pretended to take a little boy’s pulse. At first he just stared at me in shock, but then he burst out laughing. All the kids did. It was terrific. I tripped over the hem of the habit, balanced a chamber pot — empty — on my head, did some sort of dance. All silly, but the audience loved it.

  I heard the nuns coming back and ran off before they caught me. I went to my mother’s ward and did a repeat performance there. Everyone loved it. Even the nuns, although they tried to hide it.

  Over the years, I developed the nun routine more and more, and when I grew up, it became a big hit in my act. I became Sister Barnby, a bit dotty but always the smartest person in the room, never afraid to put anyone in their place, especially the pompous. It always got laughs, but it was never mean or disrespectful. Those nuns took good care of us, and I never wanted to make them look bad.

  Ma just loved me. I could make her laugh or not. I could sit on her bed and do my schoolwork or just doze next to her on the cot until the nursing sister kicked me out.

  It was different with Pops. He was always so sad when he came to see me. I couldn’t tell him I missed him or that one of the boys in the dorm kept hiding my toothbrush or that I wanted him to find a job close to the hospital so I could live with him and still see Ma every day. I couldn’t say anything that might make him sadder, so I was always smiling, always joking. Sometimes, if I said or did something really funny, I could get him to smile all the way up to his eyes, but only for a few se
conds. I just wanted to see him happy.

  Mostly, Pops wasn’t there. My life was the children’s home, sneaking into the hospital cottages to see Ma and the kids with leprosy and coming up with new ways to make people laugh.

  It was all about comedy until the day it became more than that. Visiting hours were over in the hospital and all the kids were being rounded up to go back to the other side of the fence, the non-leprosy side. I wasn’t ready to leave Ma, so I just pretended to leave, then doubled back and ducked under the bed.

  The medical staff did their rounds. They came to my mother’s bed. In those days they treated leprosy with injections of chaulmoogra nut oil. The injections hurt. I heard my mother cry out. Then they changed the dressing on an ulcer that had opened up on her ankle. That hurt her, too.

  I’d never heard her cry before. I realized then that she was always being cheerful for me, just like I was always being cheerful for Pops.

  When I first heard her cry, I rolled into a ball and put my hands over my ears. Then I unrolled, crawled out from under the bed, sat beside her and put my hand on her shoulder.

  I sang her the Soothing Song — the song Pops sang for me when I was small and skinned my knee or had a bad dream, back before we moved to the hospital.

  I sang the song over and over. Some of the other women in the ward picked it up and sang it with me.

  The lines in my mother’s face softened. I could feel her let go of the tension the pain gave her. I’m not saying my voice had magic powers or anything, but it gave her something else to focus on, something good. Jokes are good, but they weren’t right for that moment.

  I decided right then that I would learn to entertain people in a lot of different ways, so I could give them what they needed when they needed it.

  Letting Ma know that I could see her pain and not run away from it meant that she didn’t have to pretend with me anymore. We could talk about things, really talk. I think that she thought her son might have some good stuff inside him. At least, I like to think that.

  I wish I had done that with Pops. If he had known I could see his sadness and that I loved him anyway, maybe that would have made things easier for him. He wouldn’t have felt he had to bring gifts every time he came to see me, and I wouldn’t have felt I had to have new jokes ready to make him laugh. We could have just been together.