Pynter Bender. Jacob Ross

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СКАЧАТЬ before I got in trouble. You see, de time I was workin fo’ John Defoe, dis fella used to come buy dynamite becuz dat Béké man was de only one allow to sell it on de islan’. I used to watch ’im from de kitchen without ’im noticing. I s’pose ’twas because I never see a man like ’im before. Most times a fella come to Defoe he stay outside the gate. But this fella walk right in. He put hi hand on hi waist and look round him, like a surveyor. Big fella, strong fella – the kinda man God build to last.

      ‘When he talk to Defoe he watch ’im straight in hi eye.

      ‘He was there when I come out with de washing. He look at me like if he surprise. He look at me like if he jus’ make up hi mind ’bout something. It cross me mind dat for me to get to the clothes line I had to pass under dem eyes of his. Not only that, but I was wearing one o’ dem cotton dress without no sleeve, and for me to hang up dem clothes I had to stretch to reach de line. I didn like dat. I didn like no man making me feel so confuse without my permission. I was vex like hell. I look at ’im an’ tell ’im, “What de hell you looking at?” He look back at me like he more vex than me and say, “Tell me what you don’t want me to be looking at and mebbe I won’t look.” An’ den he laugh.’

      Deeka laughed out loud at the memory.

      ‘I never hear man laugh so sweet. He start comin more regular for dynamite, till I got to thinkin that he mus’ be plannin to blow up de whole islan’ o’ someting. Missa Defoe get wise to ’im and start refusin to sell ’im any more dynamite. An’ den one day that Béké fella tell ’im straight, “Oi’m never going to sell you no more dynamite.”

      ‘“I’ll come anyway,” John Seegal tell ’im.

      ‘“Then Oi’ll have you arrested for trespassing, or shoot you moiy-self,” Defoe say.

      ‘“Make sure you succeed first time you try,” my husband tell ’im back.

      ‘Lord ha’ mercy, them words frighten me. Them frighten me to know dat I become a woman dat a man prepare to kill for. He keep comin like he promise. Used to stand up on the lil hill across the road an’ watch me. I never talk to ’im. But if I look up an’ he not ’cross dere, I start to sorta miss ’im. It last a coupla months till he couldn take it no more. One day he stay ’cross the road an’ call me. Was de kinda call dat make you know dat if you go, you was sayin yes to a question he didn ask you in the first place. Was like sayin, “I give in, I’z yours.” I never go. I should ha’ gone. I didn go. He call my name again an’ tell me if I didn come to ’im right now, he never comin back.

      ‘“I tired holdin on,” he say. “You wearin me down,” he say. “Dat lil Béké man ’cross dere make it clear he want you for himself. I could break his arse as easy as I look at ’im but you have to give me reason. I won’t bother you no more. When you ready, you come to me.” He stay right across the road and shout it. Then he leave. Was de last time he come.’

      Deeka had been standing all the while. Now she sat on the steps, her elbows resting on her knees. She seemed to have forgotten they were there.

      ‘Still, it don’t take a half a man to have a woman come to him from jail carryin a child that not his, far less a child for a man who was threatening to shoot ’im. He cuss me, he even bring hi hand to me face. But was de beginnin of a kind of forgiveness, although he never accept the child. A woman know these things. Is what a man don’t say. Is how he look at that baby when he think you not watchin. Is how he dress an’ undress dat chile if he have to. Is how he look at it when it not well, that sorta thing. Must ha’ strike ’im, every time he look at her, dat it ain’t got no way dat lil red-skin girl could pass as hi own child. And in Ole Hope here, a man who take in a woman dat carryin another man seed, he either born stupid or born wrong-side. Is all of dat must ha’ got to ’im in the end. And of course my lil girl, Anita.’

      This was the place they were waiting for her to arrive at. Perhaps this time she would go past it and tell them the bit that seemed to stop her right there every time. Over the years she’d been inching closer to it. A word here, a sentence there, softly mumbled sometimes, like slipping on pebbles at the edge of some precipice. She always recovered at the last minute. She became herself again, the weight of all her years settling back on her shoulders and bowing them very slightly. The light in her eyes receding.

       3

      THE TALK OF WOMEN taught Pynter Bender one thing: men walked.

      The women spoke of it as if it were an illness – a fever that men were born with, for which there was no accounting and no cure. It could come upon them anytime, but more likely halfway through the harvesting of the canes in April – those months of work and hunger that Old Hope called the Stretch, when the children were thinnest.

      A man stripped and cut the canes for ninety-four cents a day. A woman tied and packed and lifted bundles onto trucks for seventy-eight. And with the coming of the first rains, the tractors with the ploughs arrived. They walked behind them for a month, clearing the valley floor of stones and the diseased roots of last year’s crop.

      That was when their men started looking southwards at the triangles of blue between the hills. Over dinner, the man would not really hear his woman when she told him something trivial about their child: that it would have his lips or eyes and be as good-looking as him. He might nod or stare through her, wondering aloud if she’d heard that another stoker in the sugar factory south of Old Hope, or in one of the little mills further east, had lost an arm to the machinery. That some quick-thinking friend had the presence of mind to cut the arm off at the shoulder before the cogs could pull him in. Or that an overladen truck, carrying a couple of tons of cane, had rolled over and crushed the loaders – boys really, boys barely old enough to earn a wage.

      It was not always the rumour of an accident that started the man off daydreaming. One ordinary day he would look up from pulling ratoons from the earth and suddenly see nothing but the canes, stretching all the way to the end of his days, beyond life itself. And he would imagine himself walking on streets with lights, or standing at the foot of some tall glass building with cigarettes and money in his pocket, a coat around his shoulders and a newspaper tucked under his armpit. His woman would sense the change in him because he was irritable with her all the time, raised his hands at her more often, couldn’t stand to hear the baby crying.

      Over the months, the savings, the borrowed money, would go towards the beige felt hat with the widish rim, a couple of thick Sea Island cotton shirts, two pairs of heavy flannel trousers, that started narrow at the heels and got looser all the way up to the waist. And of course a coat. Nothing was more confirming of his intentions than that coat. It would be the last thing that his friend – the only person he’d trusted with his plans – would hand over to him as they stand on the Carenage in San Andrews with their backs towards the island. And he would promise that friend, over a quick and secretive handshake, that he would make a way for him as soon as he got ‘there’.

      ‘There’ was anywhere, anywhere but home. ‘There’ was wherever in the world someone wanted a pair of hands to do something they didn’t want to do themselves. ‘There’ was anywhere a man could turn his back on cane. And it all started with that walk which, one quiet night, took him past the small dry-goods store with the single Red Spot sign, past the crumbling mansions that sat back from the road, their facades half-hidden by ancient hibiscus fences.

      At Cross Gap, the last and only junction that marked Old Hope from the rest of the world, the man would begin to walk faster, the beige felt hat pulled down over his eyes, his last journey up Old Hope Road, his arms swinging loose, the walk of no return.

      There СКАЧАТЬ