Pynter Bender (25 page)

It was then that Peter broke off his jostling with Windy and went into the house. He came out with Birdie's canvas bag and grumbled goodnight to them. At the edge of the yard, he looked back at Pynter, adjusted the bag on his shoulder and stepped into the dark. For he, Pynter, had started the trouble, not so? With a few words in Coxy's ear, he'd twisted the arms of the men. And instead of sticking around to see the problems that he left them with, he'd thrown himself on his back and played dead for all of three days.

When, the next day, Peter returned, he dropped his bag in the yard, waved at Windy, said good morning to the women and walked to the drum of water beside the house. He stripped to the waist and poured water over himself. His mother lifted her head at him, a trace of a smile around her mouth as she watched him scrub his face and arms. He was becoming a man. Brown as an over-baked loaf, the muscles already strained against his skin. There was the darkening smudge of a moustache which every now and then his fingers crept up to and paused over. When Peter raised his head, it struck Pynter for the first time that his brother had their father's eyes.

Anita passed all her joy to her bright-eyed daughter. Windy doubled the women over with her jokes, put her fingers in Peter's plate, fed herself and laughed with him. Peter crushed leaves between his fingers and held them under Windy's nose. The ant-blighted grapefruit tree was blossoming. Peter pulled the petals off the flowers and threw them in her face. She chased him round
the yard. He found a caterpillar somewhere and placed it in Windy's palm. Something about the wriggling creature seemed to hold her. She grew still, passing her fingers over the white hairs that stood out from the body of the insect, like the prickles of a golden-apple seed. It was as yellow as the ripened fruit, with streaks of black and white along its side.

Deeka and his mother stopped their conversation, as interested in the girl now as she was in the insect she was holding.

Pynter heard her slippers on the stones. He lifted his head from his book and looked up at her.

‘S'a butterfly,' he said, taking it from her. ‘A lil bit of sun. A lil bit of waiting. Then de colours break out, get dry, turn wings. If …'

Peter's laughter cut across his words. ‘He's a liar; don' lissen to 'im, Winny.'

Pynter handed the insect back to her.

‘If what?' she said.

‘If y'all let it live.'

Windy walked over to Deeka's rosebush and rested it on a leaf. Peter went to stand beside her. He held the tree and shook it, and the caterpillar tumbled to the ground. Pynter watched her face as Peter trod on it.

The next morning Pynter left for Glory Cedar Rise. Halfway up, he realised the girl was somewhere behind him, and that she wasn't alone. She rounded a twisty corner and did not seem surprised to find him standing there.

‘What you followin me for?' He did not hide his irritation.

‘I not followin you,' she said. ‘We walkin same direction, thaaz all.'

He'd never been this close to her. She was older than Peter and him by one year, Tan Cee said. She didn't look it. She wore a single earring in her left ear. When she tossed back her hair, it sparkled like a struck match.

‘Got a lot more hills round here to walk,' he said.

‘I like this one,' she said, and pushed past him.

He watched the slippers slapping against her heels, pale as the skin of the palm of her hands. She climbed carefully, reaching out to balance herself by touching the trunks of trees, stopping only to brush her palms from time to time.

She came to the high mud bank that stood between them and the top of the hill, and he climbed past her. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that she was holding up an arm towards him with an expression that was a mixture of expectation and reproach.

Without a word, he reached down and pulled her up. He could detect the pomade in her hair – the smell of lemons, and something else which came off her skin, almost like the smell of grapefruit blossoms.

She did not release his hand until they cleared the hill.

There was always wind up here. It came straight off the ocean, reared itself up, grabbed at their clothing and slapped them in their faces.

She was looking east, beyond the ridge of hills past which San Andrews lay. Columns of clouds, serrated like old sails, pushed themselves up from the ocean.

‘Morning start 'cross dere,' he told her.

Windy lifted her face at him. He was distracted for a moment by the fine hairs along the nape of her neck. ‘You laugh a lot,' he said. ‘You hardly talk and your modder not sayin where y'all come from.'

She smiled and pointed past his ear. ‘Wozzat?'

‘Westerpoint. Rich people and their dogs live there.'

He named the hills and places just above their valley. Pointed at the spread of trees at the far end, just above the river, which he called Grass Water Bowl. And over there, on the hill that looked down on the ocean, the huddle of trees from which the people who came before them used to launch themselves and fly.

He took her hand, aimed it past the old stone mill, over the grey cane road and up towards the green rock rise that hoisted the trees above Old Hope.

‘It got somefing up there,' he said. ‘One day I might show you.'

She sat beside him. ‘You talk pretty,' she said. She pressed her head against his shoulder.

He looked at her fingers and thought of cane. ‘We cousins,' he said.

She eased her weight off him and nodded. She passed a hand across his chest and stroked his throat, and her pupils were like open doors which he wanted to walk into.

He returned to Windy during the days, up there on Glory Cedar Rise where the valley slipped away beneath them in a dazzling, giddying heave. But in the nights he took his bag and joined the young men in Grass Water Bowl. His arrival changed their tones and brought out the resentment in Oslo. He walked too quietly, they said, turned up at their gatherings too softly. He never forgot a thing and slept sitting, with his shoes on. And the nights that one of them dared to strike a match, all they saw between him and the darkness beyond his shoulders were his eyes.

They stretched themselves out in the leaf caves and talked in whispers, dropping off to sleep one by one, until their snoring joined the murmurings of the river and the canes.

A low mist had settled over the canes one early morning when Pynter stirred and woke them. He told them they had to move higher up the foothills, straight away. They watched as the jeeps rolled up the old cane road, the dim shapes of the soldiers spilling out of them, awkward and stiff-limbed, moving blindly through the fields, their searchlights scrawling crazy arcs against the half-light.

When, later, the vehicles left, Arilon came and stooped beside him. ‘Dey practising on us,' he said.

It was true that as the weeks went by the vehicles came in more quietly. The men killed their engines and pushed them in more cautiously. They arrived at different times and approached from unexpected directions. They made wider circles and crept further up the hillsides. Pynter was worried then, especially when the Land Rovers drove off and his mind turned to the dogs that the soldiers hadn't brought yet.

During the days he would prepare Windy for the rumours that would envelope them. He told her how to look behind the soft words and the smiles of the women in the yard and follow the turnings of their minds. Right now, they were putting their heads together over them. They were searching for a way to kill their friendship. They got closer to it every time she left the yard to meet him on top of Glory Cedar Rise. When they struck, he said, it would be all of them together, even though the words would come only from the mouth of the one they'd passed the duty to.

And if anything, Patty's condition would be adding to their urgency.

His young aunt Patty was round as a full moon and the child in her was calling for odd things: the hard white flesh of green mangoes, the salty leaves of cheese plants, young June-plums so sour just the smell of them set the teeth on edge, strips of cinnamon and bitter mauby bark, finger-daubs of salt, Guinea peppers that were amber as the flame they carried in their hearts. Chalk and ash and charcoal. Patty strolled about the yard smiling foolishly to herself, her hands guided to the leaves of plants and the juicy stalks of grass. Deeka, his mother and Tan Cee spent their idle hours staring at her with still-eyed, dreamy fascination. They'd already started arguing over names: ‘Dalene,' Tan Cee said, ‘Dalene or Anisa or Melissa, or p'raps another Deeka. In fact, why not a second me?'

‘Nuh, boys,' Deeka said. ‘Another coupla fellas.' She would wave an arm at Peter and Pynter. ‘Twins! In fact, two sets o' dem goin be perfect. That make four in one go, not so? That was,
of course …' She rested bright, assessing eyes on Patty. ‘That was, if a pusson strong enough to manage it. Cuz this yard want more man. Any kinda man. A yard could never have too much man. Man good, even if dem turn good-for-nothing in the end. Man still good!'

They'd laughed with Patty throughout the evening meal, and somewhere near the end of it, they went quiet for a while. Leroy had to know, they said, cuz the last thing a pusson wanted was to have him meet her on the road like that and get surprised. Men go crazy over things like that, seeing a woman he convince 'imself belong to 'im, carrying another man child, so soon afterwards. Especially after all those years of nothing happening for him. It kill something in a fella. In these parts here – a fella who learn he got no life inside of him don't care no more for life. Not even his own. So, they should call him to the yard and Patty could let him know the nice way.

It was somebody else's invitation that brought Leroy to Old Hope. He was dressed as if he were about to start a new job. He stood in the road and called out Patty's name, his voice high and tight with anguish.

Patty leaned over on the steps, staring at her hands. She was shaking her head as if she were saying no to everything she saw there.

Leroy was calling her the way he'd been accustomed to, like they were together in a place all on their own. Patty only shook her head faster. When the calling became too much for her, she brought the heels of her hands up to her ears and kept them there.

He was a good fella, he shouted. Except for that last time. Was a mistake. He was upset. He would make the baby his. He would treat it like his own.

Elena decided to stop him from making a bigger fool of himself in front of all of Old Hope. She went down the path, stood on the bank above the road and called his name, the palms of her hand opened out towards him.

He did not come, but at least it stopped him calling, and apart from Patty's sobbing, and the crackling of the woodfire, the yard was very quiet.

They did not know exactly when Leroy left. They'd looked up and he was no longer there.

Deeka cleared her throat and Pynter was surprised at the sadness in her voice. Life happm, she said. People change wiv it. Besides, Patty was her daughter. And if she, Deeka, had to choose between a good man and no granchilren, or no-man-at-all and granchildren, she would always choose granchilren. Which didn mean her daughters s'posed to go off and bring baby home that way all the time.

It had Pynter wondering how his auntie's love for a man she'd been sleeping beside from as far back as he could remember could slip so easily into revulsion. Tan Cee had her eyes on him. There was a small smile on her face. ‘Man do it all de time,' she said.

‘You talkin to me?' he said.

‘Who else?' she said.

‘You tellin me what I thinkin?' He closed his book.

Something in Tan Cee's face retreated.

‘You don' know what I thinking,' he said. He rose to his feet, stuffed his slingshot down his pocket. ‘I takin a walk,' he said, and headed for Glory Cedar Rise.

Pynter stood with his back against a tree, watching Windy climb the hill towards him. The slingshot swung lightly between his fingers. He folded the weapon, shoved it into his back pocket and leaned over the brink of the hill to pull her up.

‘Trouble comin,' she said.

‘Trouble here,' he said.

‘I mean Peter,' she said.

‘I mean your mother,' he said.

‘He your brother an' he hate you so much? Cuz of …'

‘S'not that,' he said. ‘He still play wiv you, not so? He don' blame you for nothing. Yuh see, I deprive him of somefing. He – he never been inside our father house.'

Windy went still against him. He felt himself struggling with his own hesitation. He'd never spoken of this before.

‘I – I make somefing happm. I ask Paso to burn our father house. I went up dere one time, a lil time after he pass 'way, to make sure that Paso done it. And then I come home and tell Peter. I say to 'im the house was sufferin,' twas fallin down on itself, yunno. He look at me, quiet like I talking to you right now, an' he say, “I never been inside my father house, Jumbie Boy. I never see inside it.” Mos' times Peter don' remember in his head. But de rest of 'im remember all de time. And now, you come … and …'

Windy pointed past the trees to where their home was. They could see the roof of Patty and Tan Cee's house, and the upper skeleton of the new house Coxy was building for Anita. ‘Down dere,' she said, ‘who love you more, Pyntuh? Is Tan Cee, not so?'

She'd asked him that question before. He hadn't answered her. Now he felt he could.

‘When I got sick, yunno, I wake up wiv my mouth hurtin. Down here too.' He touched his side. ‘Deeka beat me up, she even force-feed me.'

Windy nodded.

‘Who love you more, Windy? Somebody prepare to kill fo' you? Somebody prepare to die fo' you? Or a pusson who will hurt you, just to save you from yuhself?'

She didn't answer him. She took his hand and laid it on her own, seemed to lose herself in the contrast that they made, his dark as the shell of nutmegs, hers the pale brown of mahogany.