Pynter Bender (26 page)

‘Patty believe is Deeka,' he said. ‘Is what she been tryin to tell me when I wake up in her house.'

He thought she sensed it too, the urgency he'd been feeling when he left the yard. The knowledge that if they were ever to
come up this hill again and be together, they would never see what lay below them in the same way. That last look of Tan Cee told him so; they'd already decided amongst themselves.

Pynter reached for a stick and drew four figures at Windy's feet. He scratched each woman's name beside them. He erased the names and connected them with lines.

‘You gotta think o' dem as one person, not four,' he said. ‘This is Deeka.' He pointed at one of the shapes. ‘She the eyes: she look at things, she read them. Tan is the feeling part. Patty'z all the niceness and the softness. My mother…' He paused, lifted the stick and pushed it in the soil. ‘My mother is de hammer. When nothing else don' work, she hit.'

Windy was shivering. She'd folded her arms around herself and was leaning into him.

Did she think that when Anita arrived with her, said nothing about themselves – where they'd lived and why they came – that all they'd brought with them were their names? The women weren't interested in Anita. She, Windy, was the one who told them everything. They knew she was a town girl and that she wasn't from San Andrews. It had to be some place like Trinidad. Her feet told them that, her heels were soft as her hands and she always reached for slippers. Those hands had never lifted a bucket of water. She had no marks on them, no scars from lifting or peeling things. Her arms were like she'd just sandpapered them. Too many things surprised her and she ate too carefully. And they knew, he said, they knew even before it happened that he was going to like her, like he'd never liked no girl before.

‘And what you know?' she said.

He took her hand and folded his around it.

‘That your mother didn come to stay. She come to leave you here. She don' know what to do with a full-grown girl who she been standin between and any man who try to come near her. She lock you in so tight you hardly have a scratch on you from life. She follow you everywhere. She – she killin you wiv love.'

He lifted his head at the wall of borbook plants and cactus some way beyond the trees. He didn't tell her that the women also knew this, and that even if Anita wanted to take her somewhere else, they would not allow it.

The yard was quiet when they returned. His mother sat on the top rung of the steps with a grater and a bowl. Tan Cee sat in the shade of the large iron platter that John Seegal had placed there. Deeka was busy with the fire.

Patty would be in her house paging through one of his books for baby names.
Somefing different; somefing pretty. A name a
lover goin like to call
.

He glanced at Windy briefly and went into the house. From the window directly above them he looked down at the jigsaw of his mother's plaits, and the neat crossroads that the partings in Windy's hair made. Tan Cee saw him there watching them and turned her head away.

Elena patted the wood and offered Windy a smile. Windy perched herself beside her, one leg pushed forward as if she were about to start a race.

‘S'nice up dere, not so?' Elena said.

Windy nodded and said nothing.

‘Nice an' quiet, and if you close them two pretty eyes o' yours is like de whole world turn a big wide cradle, rockin you to kingdom come. Ain't got no right or wrong up dere, especially when you with Pynter. Becuz that son-o'-mine kin make a pusson believe anything. Problem is,' Elena popped a piece of coconut in her mouth, kept it there at the back of her jaw while she adjusted herself on the step, ‘problem is, Miss Winny, it
got
right an' wrong. You an' my boy is first cousin, blood o' de same Bender blood, y'unnerstan? Dat's de first ting. De second is Pynter ain't got no knowledge of no girls yet. De time don't reach for dat, an' like I say, is jus' not right.' Elena began chewing. The coconut made a terrible crunching sound. ‘And third – God give me eyes
dat see everything. I see when nobody think I see, so if you and, er – ahem!'

Pynter had shifted his weight against the sill and they all looked up at him. ‘Tell 'er, Windy, that she can't kill a dead thing twice,' he said. He hopped out onto the steps, rested a hand on Elena's shoulder and squeezed his way past them. ‘See what I tell you, Windy? My modder is the hammer; she the one that hit.'

Elena flung the bowl at him, but he shot out an arm and caught it, glaring at her rage and laughing.

T
HEY'D BEEN FOUR
months away from their yards when Paso came. Paso was the nephew who had taught him about poems and had shown him a way to see. From their perch on the hill above Old Hope, they'd watched the slow emergence of the human shape on the road below. As he came closer they could make out his red canvas shoes, then the thread of silver at the wrist, and his bright belt like a rainbow around his waist.

Pynter couldn't contain himself and began running to meet him. His nephew saw him coming and started laughing too. They met by the old iron bridge over which stood the dead stone mill. Paso made a doorway of his arms and Pynter stepped into it. The old dance was there, the same flash of a smile. ‘Maan, you gone aall taaall and bee-yoo-tiful,' he said. ‘In fact, you look like sumbady Ah know.'

The accent was American, a tease. Paso mimed a mirror with his hand and laid an arm against Pynter's. They laughed and back-slapped some more and then Paso's smile dissolved.

‘Your people tell me y'all down here.' He looked about him and waved an arm at the trees. ‘Which one is your mother?'

Pynter shrugged. ‘I ask meself dat question all the time, cuz all of them believe that they my mother.'

Paso laughed again. ‘Where the others?'

Pynter pointed at the hill above them.

‘Gwone. I follow you.'

‘What you want wiv them?'

The question stopped his nephew. ‘Call me a reaper, Uncle. Make me a gatherer of rage.'

Pynter shook his head at Paso.

‘I travel the island. I follow the troubles. I find people like y'all. I organise them.'

Pynter had heard about people like that in school, from bits of whispered conversations amongst the students from the north. He remembered the furtive lunchtime gatherings at the back end of the building. He pointed a finger at Paso. ‘You one of them?'

‘S'where de action is,' Paso said.

Pynter brought a finger to his lip. ‘Marlis Tillock,' he said. ‘Y'ever hear the name?'

He thought Paso would never answer. He remembered that expression: the tiny frowning hesitation, the steady eyes, the smile. The last time he saw it, his nephew had answered his question with a poem.

‘Tillock,' Pynter repeated.

‘He was one of mine.'

Pynter was suddenly aware of the babble of the river beneath them, the shivering of the old iron bridge under their feet. ‘Yuh mean, you the one that, erm, gather 'im?'

‘Organise, young-fella. Organise. Somebody have to do it. You goin take me to the others?'

Paso greeted them with jokes and they accepted him warmly.

‘You look like him,' Frigo whispered.

‘Nuh, he look like me,' Pynter replied. ‘I'z his uncle.'

They took Paso past the belt of flowering white cedars, where the trees plaited their branches together and made an endless suite of rooms. It seemed perfectly natural that they should take him to that high place where they could light a masantorch at night and be certain that the light would not leak out. He shook their hands, asked their names again and wanted to know how their families were doing.

He told them why he was there. He asked them to lift themselves above the high green spine of the island and see themselves as part of a swelling tide of young people who ran from their homes at night. He made them see two streams, one flowing southwards from the north, another in the opposite direction. And they, he said, whether they were aware of it or not, had always been a part of these streams. They were part of others everywhere on the island, from the small, grey houses of galvanise and wattle that stood facing the sea, to those high on hillsides or locked in valleys full of ferns and boulders. Even the ones hidden amongst the lianas and the foliage further inland, they were all part of it, tributaries if they liked, that made that river what it was. And when those rivers met …

Paso brought his hands together, and in the silence that surrounded them, its effect was like a clap of thunder.

Pynter looked at the faces around him, the twitch of lips as Paso shaped his words, the catches of breath in the pauses between sentences.

Pynter slipped away and went outside. Darkness had grouped the hills together so that from where he stood they looked like the hunched shoulders of giants brooding over the cane fields. He whispered Windy's name, remembering something he'd told her. The sound of footsteps broke through his thoughts. Paso came and stood beside him. Pynter glanced at his nephew's face. He was looking out ahead of him, perhaps at the bright fleck of moon that hung over the hill.

‘You do this all the time?' Pynter said.

Paso stirred. ‘S'bigger than you think, not so?'

Pynter closed the front of his shirt. ‘You say the same thing all the time?'

Paso cocked his head at him and smiled. ‘All the time,' he said.

In all the years of not seeing Paso, it was the thing he remembered most about his nephew: the open smile, the beautiful teeth, the flash of eyes that went with it. He'd never stopped missing him.

‘You didn finish it,' Pynter said.

‘I don't follow you.'

‘The metaphor, the river; you didn finish it. You didn tell them de colour of the water, when the two rivers meet.'

‘You think I don' know that? Word reach me that you don't only have my face, you smart too. I been lookin forward to seein you. Don't spoil it for me now.'

Pynter shook his head, ‘All I sayin is … yunno …'

‘What you learn 'bout history in your school?' His nephew's voice was calmer. ‘That all of it is in the past, not so?' Paso's arm made a quick contemptuous arc at the darkness before them. ‘So how come it still right there in front of us? How come your people still killing demselves in it? For us, young-fella, history not something we look back at. History is now. To put it behind you where it belong, somebody have to break it. Get rid of it. An' yes, for that to happen, we goin have a few more Marlis Tillocks.'

Paso stuffed his hands in his pocket. In the distance beyond the hills, the soft white arc of headlamps brightened the sky from time to time. Dogs too, a long way off, were arguing with the dark.

‘Tell them that then,' Pynter said. ‘Not no story 'bout no river.' Pynter turned to face him. ‘And you?'

‘What about me?'

‘Feel with your eyes, see with your heart. You 'member that? Well, they tellin me right now dat Victor want you more than all of us put together. Not so?'

Paso flashed a smile at him, turned and went to join the others.

O
LD HOPE BEGAN
dreaming and it was Patty who started it. She came down the hill each morning, her eyes dark and heavy with the disturbance of the night, and spoke to them in whispers.

She told them of women whose hair was a nest of snakes, dark rivers that ran backwards, gatherings of clouds that rained down scorpions on Old Hope, men as tall as palmiste trees covered in robes of flaming red, pregnant boys, rocks that bled, bloated babies with messages in their cries and fierce hot winds. The older folks tried to unravel these dreams. A brown and muscular river meant confusion, spiders promised money or deliverance, scorpions were spite, and a red-dressed man who danced the dance of palm trees meant that Shango, Orisha of all Orishas, had been awakened by the troubles in Old Hope and would not go away.

‘Y'all talk like if trouble went somewhere,' Tan Cee said. ‘But in dem dreams, you fly, Patty. You always fly. Dat mean … dat mean you not beat-an'-defeat, y'unnerstan? You not.'

These days Tan Cee hardly talked. She sat alone with her back against the iron platter watching the world through half-closed eyes. She lifted her head from time to time to look up at the house that her husband was close to finishing for Anita. They chuckled a lot, Anita and Coxy, and the sound of them together would turn Tan Cee's head, as if however often she heard them, their laughter never ceased to startle her.

Anita brought Coxy's meals to him. She sat beside him on her new step, dipped bread into her plate sometimes and held it up to his mouth. It was the only time that Tan Cee would not look.

Pynter felt the sinking of his auntie's spirit, watched the detachment with which she looked on the rest of them now, the flat-eyed daze of someone who had collided with something they could neither walk around nor climb over.

It was worse when Wednesday nights arrived and Coxy did not leave the yard. The first evening it happened, Coxy came down in his usual Wednesday get-up: the pleated trousers, the two-tone leather shoes, the soft white cotton shirt smelling of Cussons Imperial Leather soap and Alcolado Glacial. He stood at the edge of the yard with his chin pulled slightly inwards. He took out a cigarette and brought a fizzing match to it. His eyes met Tan Cee's and she stared back at him. There was a slight lifting of the corner of her lips, the tiniest thread of a smile and Pynter saw a shadow briefly cross his auntie's face.

Elena was leaning against the doorway.

‘Somefing have to happm,' Pynter said, wrestling for words. ‘Somefing…'

‘Time,' she breathed softly, barely moving her lips, ‘give my sister time. He not Leroy,' she said, lifting an eyebrow at Coxy's retreating back. ‘He worse. You tol' Winny I wicked, not so? Well, I tellin you now, Tan Cee worse. Jus' give 'er time.'

She lifted Lindy off her shoulder and handed the child to him, just as she did every time he came home. While Windy moved around the yard, laughing with Peter, and glancing at him from under heavy, lidded eyes, he could not move. There was no one he could pass Little Lindy over to, since the child would not be held by anyone but his mother and himself.

He ruffled her lettuce-curls and grinned at her. This baby girl, so partial to the hands that held her, who laughed a lot in her sleep and would not eat meat, was, he believed, the picture of the stranger they had never seen: eyes dark and wide as river
pools, limbs so slim and long they made him think of bamboo, and toes as supple as her fingers.

Elena kept her greased and prettily clothed all the time. He would watch his mother pause over the child sometimes with her head lifted as if she'd suddenly heard her name. She would finger the baby's hair, and then catch herself with a little start before turning back to whatever she was doing.

He loved to lay Lindy on his chest and talk, while she busied herself with parts of his face, or with pulling at his hair. Talking became easier because, these days, Lindy agreed with everything.

‘You'z a wicked lil baby-girrrl!' he said. The child nodded. ‘A nice one, though. The best. You'z a star apple, dumplin'-an'-fry-bakes and sapodilla chile.' Lindy poked at his ear and nodded. ‘Yunno what a metaphor is? Is a lil bit like a parable – sometimes. Yunno what a parable is? Well, is a kinda metaphor. You goin stop squeezin me nose and lissen? Well, I been thinkin. Me an' Paso had a big argument about history. Yunno what history is? S'awright, I tell you next time. I tell 'im that de story about Sodom an' Gomorrah is about us right here in Old Hope. Y'ever hear 'bout Lot's wife? Dat's all dey call her. Lot's wife. She didn have no name, but she's de one everybody remember. God chase them out of Sodom and Gomorrah before he turn the whole place into smoke-an'-ashes. In them days, that fella,' Pynter wagged a finger at the ceiling, ‘he used to lay down a whole heap of unrealistic conditions for ord'nary people. Y'hear me? He tell them don't look back, else they become a pillar of salt. De whole heap o' them keep their head straight. You kin imagine Missa Lot and all hi people runnin up dat mountain ketchin arse to hold their head straight, except the wife. She didn just look back, she turn round. She face it. And she was the only one who know what she see before she freeze up and stay right there and become seasoning for food, y'unnerstan? My father used to call that foolishness. I say the woman brave. I say that p'raps what she see worth all the salt she turn to, an' p'raps a
damn lot more. She not like we. We don't look back. We 'fraid dat it … it … petrify us. Uh-huh. Yuh hear de word, Star Apple? Petrify! You wan' hear me say it again? Petrify! Well, none of Old Hope, in fact none of dis whole flippin island – they don't wan' to look back. But me! I'z Lot's wife. Uh-huh – dat's me. I'z she. I have to look back, y'unnerstan?'

Outside, they were choking on the laughter. As if he cared! Straight-head-people, all of them! He adjusted the sleeping child and closed his eyes.

Coxy's hammering woke him. The week before, Coxy had brought his Fire-Flyers to the yard, built Anita's roof and lifted it in place. There were windows now, a little veranda that overlooked a small garden. The floorboards had been laid in a single afternoon and the whole yard was steeped in the smell of paint and pinewood. Coxy promised Anita that he would finish the house before the hurricane season hit them. And he'd done as he promised. Already the river had become brown and muscular. And the mists that clothed the Mardi Gras were rolling down its sides in thick, grey swirls. They could hear the swelling ocean making a church organ of the rock caves beyond the Kalivini swamps.

Now that the house was almost done, Anita had no time for them, not even for Deeka. Apart from her daughter, Windy, the only person she laughed with was Coxy. She barely left her steps, although her laughing seemed to make her presence larger in the yard.

Lindy would lift her head and cry sometimes, and it brought on a kind of lethargy in Deeka, who moved in an aimless orbit around Tan Cee. His mother talked less, stood in the doorway more often, turned her head at every sound, exactly like Deeka used to.

Wednesday nights, Coxy stayed on Anita's steps with her and smoked. Sometimes they shared a cigarette. One evening, she eased herself up on the rung above him, made an arch of her
body and covered his head with her hair. And while Coxy and Anita sat and laughed above them, all Deeka talked about was water – river pools and oceans – the kind of water a pusson got drowned in. Did they know there was a lil bit of sea east of where she came from that people called Nowhere? Waves did not rise and hit the rocks there. The ocean pushed against the land like a man heaving with his shoulders. The water was an indigo so deep you dipped an oar in it half expecting the sea to stain it blue.

There was a river that ran beneath the sea there too, that came all the way down from the north. The fishermen had a name for it, they called it the Cradle, although ignorant Old Hope men, who returned from building the Panama Canal, brought back a different name for it, Neenyo-something-or-the-other. A lot of careless man up north fall asleep in their boat sometimes and when dem wake up an' look round, de Cradle done gone and rock dem all the way to Venezuela. It happen to Deeka's uncle. It happen to him twice. And it would ha' happen to that foolish fella all the time if he didn decide to remain in Venezuela second time.

And past that far place where the Cradle ended … Deeka turned to Pynter, her eyes all hollowed out and pleading. Did a pusson know what was past that far place?

Nothing, Pynter said. Ain't got nothing past that place, just the underbelly of the world.