Pynter Bender. Jacob Ross

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       4

      FROM THE SETTLEMENT of twenty dwellings or so east of Glory Cedar Rise a man sat hidden under one of the houses, dreamily looking down on Old Hope Valley.

      The occupants did not know that he was there. He could have chosen any of the houses scattered about the hill, since they all offered the same view of the valley. After resting a couple of hours there, he’d picked up enough from the conversation that filtered through the floorboards to know that the woman’s name was Eunice and the man’s was Ezra, and that he worked in one of the quarries in the south.

      He had dozed a little and then woken up. His feet still ached from the walk from Edmund Hill. The eight miles had taken him longer than he’d anticipated, but that was because for many years he had lost the habit of walking distances.

      Having also lost the habit of sleeping a whole night through, he would sleep again for another couple of hours and then wake up to watch the morning come. By then, those above him would begin to stir. He would take the mud track down towards the river, or perhaps wait a couple of hours longer. The quarryman might find him there. He might move to say something, as any man would do to a stranger sitting beneath his house, but then the quarryman would stop and examine him more closely – the coarse old cotton shirt with faded numbers stencilled below the breast pocket, the heavy pair of leather boots, resoled and passed on to him as a present. And of course his face. The quarry man’s eyes would pause there and he would think better of whatever he was about to say and maybe go inside to tell his woman.

      It was what always happened when, every few years, a man found him beneath his house waiting for the morning.

      In the valley below, he’d counted the fires in the yards as they went out one by one with the deepening night, each bit of dancing yellow like a tiny signal of hope against all that darkness. He had watched the moon rise and smelled the morning, and had begun to wonder how they would receive him this time and what, if anything, had changed since he last saw them. And then the sky lit up a couple of hills ahead of him. It was in the general direction of where he wanted to go. He eased himself forward, thinking how strange it was that anyone would want to light a boucan this time of night, in fact so close to morning. He watched it burn till the flames died down, becoming no more than a glowing scar against the dark.

      It was daylight and the valley filled with birdsong. He got to his feet. He moved with the litheness of a man accustomed to hard work. It would take him a couple of hours to get there, perhaps longer, because on his way up the other side of the valley he would pause to gather guavas, water lemons, perhaps carve a spinning top or two for the children. He always brought home something for the children.

      He turned his face up to the morning, the almond-shaped eyes catching the soft, indifferent light. A gold tooth glimmered between his parted lips and his large head dipped down. He picked up a cotton sack, which he swung onto his left shoulder. The sudden flurry of air raised the scent of bread. His eyes were still fixed on the scar against the hillside when he started marching down the hill, the smell of yeast and hard-dough bread following him.

      He emerged into a bright, harsh day from the cocoa plantation near Cross Gap Junction a couple of miles away. And it was from there that he started greeting people.

      Tan Cee heard him first about a quarter of a mile out on the road. Somebody must have set him off laughing. Her head cocked up like a chicken’s and suddenly she was squealing, ‘Birdie! Birdie!’, running down the hill towards the road with the tub of washing spilt all over the ground and Coxy’s trousers trailing in the dirt behind her.

      ‘That sister o’ mine crazy,’ Elena laughed, but she too was dancing on the steps.

      Birdie brought Tan Cee back up the hill kicking and choking with laughter in between her pleas for him to put her down. He was holding her high above his head and tickling her at the same time.

      They collapsed in the yard together and before he knew it they were all over him. Patty arrived running and simply dumped herself on them. Elena almost took a flying leap from the steps and trusted Birdie’s body to take care of the rest. Tan Cee was somewhere between them. They pinched him, they bit him, they kicked him, they dug and squirmed their fingers in his ribs, which brought out thunder-rolls of laughter from him and set the whole yard laughing too. For Birdie’s was the kind of laughter that was in itself a joke.

      He rolled them off eventually and they sat in the dirt and stared at him, the giant they saw once in every few years. They reached out their hands and brushed the bits of grass and dust from his beard, wiped the sweat off his forehead with their hands. Tan Cee straightened the collar of the khaki shirt they’d just crushed while Patty and Elena rested their elbows on his shoulders. He got to his feet, bringing them all up together with him, like a tree might move with all its branches, and now that the children could see his full size they were open-mouthed.

      If Birdie had been born after his father’s passing, they would have said he was John Seegal born again, and he had the same effect on Deeka. She was sweeping up the fallen flowers of the grapefruit tree when she heard his laughter. The sound of him had frozen her. She hadn’t moved from under the grapefruit tree, still held the broom in her hand in mid-swing.

      She didn’t say a thing when he got up, eased the three women aside and turned around to face her with a grin as wide as a beach.

      Birdie lifted his mother off the ground and held her, broom and all, as one would do a child. The smile gone now, he looked down at her face and rumbled softly, ‘Ma!’

      Everything was in that single word, all the time and distance there had been between them. Deeka dropped the broom. She reached up and looped her arms around his neck.

      ‘Put me down,’ she ordered.

      He held her for a while longer then carefully let her down among the stones, passing his hands through his hair, his beard, then his hair again.

      ‘When you goin back?’ she asked.

      ‘I goin straight this time, Ma. No more jail for me.’

      ‘Until you break in somebody house again and clean it out? I try to straighten you out from small, but this son o’ mine born crooked. Come lemme feed you some proper food, you thief!’

      His laughter filled the house till evening. He ate everything they placed before him, and when he finished he kicked the heavy boots off his feet, reached for the canvas bag that hadn’t left his shoulder, even when his sisters were wrestling with him, and pulled out several loaves of bread.

      It was what they had been waiting for: Birdie’s prison bread. Pynter and his brother knew more about his bread than they did about their uncle himself. It was the taste of Birdie’s bread they talked about when they were really missing him. It was a way of talking about his strength too, for the secret to his making the best bread on the island – and a pusson won’ be surprised if it was de best bread in de world, Elena told them – lay in the power of those hands. She’d said those last words the way a preacher in church would say them. Only she didn’t get an amen at the end but a loud ‘Uh-huh!’ from Tan Cee.