Pynter Bender. Jacob Ross

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СКАЧАТЬ felt a movement from his father, more a stirring of the air about him, and then the hand, rough like bark, resting against his right brow. His father’s hand moved down and cupped his chin. Pynter eased himself away.

      ‘You’ll meet Maddie tonight,’ he said, swinging his head slightly at the large white concrete house a little way behind them. ‘Call her Miss Maddie, y’hear me? And when Pearly come to see me, call her Sister Pearl. As for Gideon … ’

      ‘Gideon – he – he come here?’

      ‘Sometimes.’

      ‘He my brother too?’

      ‘He my son, you my child. He your brother.’

      Pynter shook his head.

      ‘Whatsimatter?’ The man looked at him concerned.

      ‘Then, den how come …’ His tongue felt heavy on the words.

      ‘How come, what …?’

      ‘How come he try to kill us? Before we even born.’

      As soon as he said it, he knew that something terrible had come out of his mouth. So terrible it froze the shape above him. Made it lower itself before him, reach out solid hands that closed down on his shoulders. He felt the deep ruffle of the bag just before it struck the floorboards. The vibration travelled up his feet and made his heart turn over. Now he felt his father’s breath on his face.

      ‘Who tell you that? Who tell you that!’

      He feared the rage seeping out of that voice. He feared the strength he felt in those fingers.

      ‘Nobody,’ he stammered. ‘Nobody tell me nothing.’

      The fingers released him. ‘You never use them words again, y’hear me, boy. Never lemme hear you say them words.’

      ‘No, Pa.’

      His father stood up then, spoke as if he were addressing something that lay some place far beyond the walls of the house. ‘You call me Pa. I like dat. You must always call me Pa.’

      Pynter nodded, swallowing hard on the soft knot in his throat.

      He never asked his father who he left his rich garden to or why he gave it up as soon as his mother sent him off to live with him. Why so soon after Santay they were so quick to see him off again. Why they had chosen him instead of Peter. Why they would not tell him for how long.

      ‘Is you your father ask for,’ his mother said. But she could not hold his eyes. She couldn’t put words to the other things that her tied-up lips and drifting eyes were concealing from him.

      He never asked his father about the silence which sat like an accusation between Miss Maddie and himself. Why Miss Maddie looked past him the way she did from the very first morning he called out to her, made her leave her porch and cross her lawn to come over and see her lil brother.

      He was not sure she saw him. Her eyes had drifted skywards, over to the Kalivini hills, up to the Mardi Gras and finally down to some point above his head. They passed briefly over their father’s face and settled on the concrete steps on which they were all standing. Small eyes in a face as dark and swollen as blood-pudding.

      ‘Uh-huh,’ she grunted, and waddled back to her porch. He was sure she hadn’t seen him.

      Her son Paso came just when the small pre-dawn birds began to stir the early-morning stillness with their chirping, when the crickets quietened suddenly and altogether, and the silence they left behind got filled in by the humming of the ocean a couple of hills beyond and the whispery shiftings of the canes. He came like the tail end of a dream and seemed to disappear soon after, making Pynter wonder if he had ever been there at all.

      ‘A scamp,’ his father told him, ‘a child of the night, that Paso. I don’t remember what he look like now, becuz I don’ know when last I see him. You never see him in the day.

      ‘Not surprising when a pusson know how and where the boy was born. Maddie picked ’im up in Puerto Rico, see? Take a boat back home when she was big as a full moon. Bring the belly back with her but not the man. She didn make it back to land on time. Had him on the sea. Matter o’ fact,’ the old man slapped his knee and laughed, ‘she had him in the middle of it. Now, a chile that come like that can’t tell nobody which country he from, not so? Cuz he wasn’ born in one. Now that’s between me and you, y’unnerstan?’

      Pynter thought about his father’s words and began laughing too.

      The old man seemed surprised by it. ‘’Mind me of a uncle you had – that laugh.’

      ‘He here?’

      ‘He out there. In the hallway. Just the picture. He not with us no more.’

      ‘He … ’

      ‘Before you born. Sea take him.’ His father passed his hand across his face as if he were washing it with air. ‘Funny fella he was, your uncle. But nice. Dress like a king. Dress in black, only black. We used to call him Parlourman because of the black. Pretty face. Smooth like a star apple. Talk pretty too. Every woman he meet used to want to kill for him; but he never was interested. I could never figure ’im out. He didn have no children either. Sank with a boat between Curaçao an’ Panama.’

      ‘What dead feel like, Pa – it hurt?’

      ‘Don’ know. Why you ask?’

      ‘Jus’ want to know … ’

      ‘When it come, I s’pose the part of you that know jus’ not around to know no more, y’unnerstan?’ As he touched the boy’s face with the meat of his hand, a chuckle rose from his chest. ‘Even I don’ unnerstan what I jus’ tell you. Come eat some food. I glad you here.’

      Over the steamed yams, sweet potatoes and fried shark that Miss Maddie had covered up and left on the steps for him, his father’s eyes were on him again. This time it was a different look. It seemed impossible that the anger he’d seen there earlier could reside in eyes so soft.

      ‘You talk kind of funny too – like him.’

      ‘Like …?’

      ‘Like your Uncle Michael.’

      He wanted to know more about this odd uncle that the sea had taken. To understand the nature of the quietness that came over his father when he called his name. But all he got was a promise that wasn’t really one, ‘P’raps I’ll get the time to tell you about it one day, if I manage to find de mood.’ Or a statement that was so tied up it took him many fruitless days of trying to unravel it. ‘When a man put hi dog to sleep, then is sleep it have to sleep, y’unnerstan?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Well, I can’t explain no better.’

       5

      HE UNCOVERED HIS Uncle Michael in a grip in the room his father had told him not to enter. He also found his СКАЧАТЬ