Pynter Bender (32 page)

Hard as it was, a pusson force demself to live with it. They fool demself into believin it not there – like a soreness you been carryin so long yuh mind make you ignore it. Becuz a pusson can't let a man inside demself the way she, Tan Cee, gone-an'-done, and then let him out so easy. Deeka was proof of it. A man was only gone when you let him die in you. But what if a pusson keep him there? What if even all the hurtin an' the hatin keep the love alive? How a woman s'pose to start to purge sheself of twenty years of that? Eh?

But over the years, something else had lodged itself at the back of Tan Cee's mind. It had made its own little nest in there, from the night Coxy started to sleep out. And it would not be shifted. It stayed in her head like this lil knife she carried.

This knife – she could not remember how she came by it; could not remember a time when she did not have it. Years of honing on the sandstone in the yard had reduced it to a bit of curved silver, bright as a first quarter moon, that felt natural in her hand.

She'd always felt comfortable with a knife. At nineteen she moved from grafting trees and harvesting the bark of cinnamon to things that bled. Had become so good at it no one within fifteen miles of Old Hope would have a tree or animal seen to by anyone else but her. She and the knife. They had made a name for themselves in Old Hope.

She began placing it under her pillow the week Coxy began to disappear on Wednesday nights. It just being there made her feel safer. S'matter o' fact, she hardly recalled she had it except on Thursdays. And if it wasn't for the occasional gelding, the grafting of somebody's fruit tree or the changing of her bed sheets on Thursday afternoons, she would have forgotten about it completely.

But there were a few times when she did remember it. Like the first night Coxy did not return from Anita's house. But that was only because she plumped the pillow a little too violently and it fell onto the floor.

She remembered it after the five men came and took Anita away, realising that, with her sister gone, Coxy had no intention of leaving Anita's house. That night she slept with the knife sitting on her mind. Shame did not allow her to tell the other women in the yard that exactly three days after Anita left, on that next Wednesday, he'd slipped the latch of her door and crept into her bed as if that space still belonged to him.

And she'd smiled in the dark and told herself that she was right in thinking that she knew him. That a time would come when the Laughin Girl would turn to someone younger, stronger and more interesting. That Anita would not always be there and he would return to her with what remained of the nothing that was left
inside of him, which in their early days of loving was worth something, because taking care of it made her feel he valued her.

Now here he was offering his emptiness again.

But the years of not being claimed as she had been by him in the beginning had done something to her. They'd dried her up and made her unreachable with men. But in other ways she had grown strong and wet and fertile. She had a turned-in-on-yourself, don't-take-no-chances kind of loving for the children in the yard, for family. For anything that belonged by blood.

That one last time, she'd allowed Coxy back to her house so that she could say what she needed to say to him. And that time was done.

In a way, her husband made her laugh. He was one of those men who wooed with gifts and smiles. And a pusson couldn't tell which was more important, because the smile was what they saw first and remembered long after the gift got used or worn, or eaten, or simply thrown away. A pusson remembered the way his hands held it out as if it were the Eucharist itself, and the look in his eyes that went with it. And if he really wanted you, if you began to settle on his mind, Coxy started building things.

Perhaps Coxy thought he would surprise them all when he built Windy a pretty blue cage for birds. He brought home eight little yellow parakeets the next day, let them loose inside it and hung the little house up on the veranda. They began whistling and chiming straight away as if he'd let loose all the bells of Christmas inside that cage.

The little gifts of gold for Windy were not so obvious: the ring topped with a tiny blue stone that glinted on the girl's finger; a matching pair of earrings seven days later. Then, just yesterday, the finest of all gold chains with its own little heart dangling at the end of it.

It might have been the memory of foreman McKinley and the young girls in the cane that stirred a bunch of women to come to Deeka's yard. They was just passin, they said, and it cross their
mind dat since they passin so close, they might as well drop by. And seein they already in her yard, it make sense to tell her what they been hearing about Coxy-in-dat-house-wit'-de-young-lady. Furthermore, nobody couldn say 'twasn't their business, becuz bad bizness is everybody bizness. And 'twas one thing to have dat foreman behavin like dog with poor-people girl-chilren. But this different. This inside a pusson yard.

Is help Deeka want? She want somebody to help her make dat dog-of-a-man see sense? Their men wouldn do it, cuz they follow Coxy like he's some kinda Christ. But they could. They could kick 'iz arse out right now. They could give dat sonuvabitch so much hell he wish he never see Ole Hope, far less come to play fowl-cock round here. They want some help right now? Cuz is help a pusson come to help.

There was not a person in the family who did not think that Tan Cee was going crazy. That in some funny way, Anita had passed her affliction on to her sister; for in that time too, the canes threw up their sweaty, rancid odour and filled her head with a dizziness that brought the chuckles bubbling out of her.

Tan Cee couldn imagine what Coxy was thinking. He really believe she was so sick-head-an'-weak she wouldn notice when he left for the rum shop? Or that when he returned some hour long past midnight she would be asleep? Or that she would not hear his hand brushing against the latch of the door? Or maybe he thought that she, Tan Cee, would hear him and not give a damn.

The girl was already struggling with him by the time she got there. And Tan Cee knew by the smell of him that Coxy did not have the guts to look his own nastiness in the face. Had to fill 'imself with rum to do it. Had to look for blamelessness in a bottle, so that he could explain his wickedness that way.

Men, they done worse than this wiv rum in them; they mistake nieces, daughters-in-law, even daughters for wives and got away wiv it.

She could just hear Coxy explaining it to all the fellas he sat with in the rum shop, with that smile that lied about his nature. She could see the look they would give him, the way they would shift their hips on the wooden benches, throw back their heads and knock back a glass of the hot white fuel to help them make a joke of the unheard of. A man joke. One they shared and laughed at 'mongst themselves, becuz Coxy Levid did for them what they didn dare to do themselves: leave de bed of yuh woman, take over her sister's, and when that sister gone, turn round an' take over de daughter. And they would reward him with a drink, because getting it second-hand was better than not getting it at all.

And he would not be blamed. They would ask him for all the details. Everything! They would part company in the dark after clasping hands and slapping shoulders. Laughing.

She found him in the dark, all right. Heard herself thinking even as she shifted the bit of silver in her palm that animals were more difficult. Pigs especially – funny creatures, dem! They always seemed to know when it was their manhood that her hands were reaching for.

S
AN ANDREWS WAS
like no town in the world. It could not die. Its face was turned towards the sea. It took everything that the hurricanes that came in from the ocean threw at it, fell flat on its foundations, then rebuilt itself straight after.

The people of Zed Bender's time had burnt it to the ground so many times they got fed up and turned instead to things that would stay destroyed. San Andrews simply took the punishment, shook the water and the ashes off itself and rose again like new.

Despite all his years of passing through it, to and from his school above the ocean, Pynter had never got accustomed to San Andrews. He'd been here three months with Tinelle and still he found the brightness of the place unbearable: the metallic heave of sea, the shimmering burn of rooftops, the dizzying strobe of steel and glass and paintwork.

Here, the houses clung to the hills above the harbour like barnacles – caught up, it seemed, in an endless tug-of-war with gravity – and when it was impossible for them to climb further up without falling back on themselves or taking flight, they flowed sideways around the hills.

Pynter would lie beside Tinelle listening to her breathing. Sometimes, to pass the time, he lit a candle and eased himself up on his elbow to watch her sleep. She was different from her daytime self: she dreamt aloud – laughed a lot and said his name sometimes – and when she woke she wanted him to talk to her,
especially about the women in his yard who seemed to fill up his head so completely.

With the lifting of the curfew, nights in San Andrews were once more filled with the smell of roasted corn, barbecued chicken and the arguments of stevedores from the harbour below them. Hugo, her brother, was hardly ever there. Their father owned a small beach house on one of the peninsulas in the south, which he went to whenever the fancy took him. Now that Pynter had arrived, he was there most of the time.

Tinelle walked him down to the waterfront to the huddle of bars and wooden buildings, where they sat on stools, held hands like children and laughed at the antics of San Andrews women manoeuvring drunken sailors into corners.

There was a barman down there who knew her. Tinelle called him Capes. He was tall in his white cotton suit and swayed like a palmiste tree. His mouth was so packed with gold teeth he sounded as if he were always choking on something.

As soon as they arrived, Capes turned his back on his customers, retrieved an empty glass, polished it and mixed Tinelle a drink. ‘Somefang new, Miss Lady,' he would say, ‘A lil somefang that take mah fancy.' He would rest the drink on the table before her and step back, his eyes on her hands, nodding at them as if they were sharing a language that only he and Tinelle's fingers were party to. She would bring the rim of the glass to her nose, close her eyes and inhale; then look up at Capes, her eyes bright with discovery:

or

or

She never got it wrong. They spoke of flavours and proofs and blends, of colours and styles and weight for a while. Capes would look down his nose at Pynter, his teeth glittering like street lamps. ‘Orange juice fuh de baby-fella, not so?'

And while Capes took his time fetching the juice, Tinelle balanced the glass in the palm of her hand and told Pynter about rum. It raised the hairs on his arms to hear her, for in the twelve weeks that he'd been with her, he'd never heard Tinelle speak more beautifully about anything.

‘Rum is cane in a state of transcendence, Pynter. It is the capturing of ghosts. That's why people right to call it spirits. Because, you see, rum is the result of a kind of resurrection, y'understand? Is bringing alive a poisonous soup of fermented sugar that people call a dead wash. Dead because that's what it do to you if you foolish enough to drink it in that state. It's got sulphur in there, it's got methanol and a whole heap of funny things called ketones. But,' she would flick a finger at the glass, bring it to her nose and inhale, ‘somewhere deep in the heart of all of that the spirit lives.'

And what did it take to exorcise it? A sorcerer. In the old days it was a fella somewhere in the mountains, with a couple of steel drums and some piping. He had something special. He had – she would sip at the glass and wink at him – a relationship with steam. That fella had an understanding of the exact point at which to capture steam, bring it back to liquid and trap it in a bottle. Because anything below a certain temperature was no good. Did he know that? That there was a temperature you started to catch the spirit from, and another that you must stop at? And the further up you go, the hotter the rum, the more flavourful and deadly?

Cane – cane was amazing. Did he know anything about cane?

Pynter would sip his juice, shake his head at Tinelle and laugh.

Rum did not change her moods or dull the quickness of her movements. Nor did it soften the bite she brought to the arguments he had with her.

During the day, she answered calls and made them – her voice dipping so low sometimes all he heard were murmurs: bits of conversation, fragments of words, small silences; nods and winks and sideways glances in his direction; toes curling around conversations that sometimes lasted hours with voices she would never put a name to.

They all added up to something big. A plan. A great gathering of youths the likes of which the island had never seen before. He thought of the picture of converging rivers that Paso spoke to them about in the forest above Old Hope. Only this time he imagined Tinelle and the people whose names she would not even say in her sleep, standing on some hill above it all, directing the flow of the flood.

It began as the root of an idea, which, over the weeks, grew so complicated he'd given up on following it. There were security and logistics to consider. There were warm-up speeches and keynote addresses and possible contributions. There were worst-case scenarios and exit strategies. There was also Paso. They were going to leave him for last. Paso would use those pretty words of his to erase the fears and stir the love. His words would draw them closer to the thing that everyone was heading towards. They were counting on Paso to send everyone home on a high.

She'd come to the end of one of those conversations which hadn't lasted long. She'd got up earlier than usual to make the call and at the end of it Tinelle put the phone down chuckling. She saw him staring at her.

‘What?' she said.

‘Take Paso out of it,' he said. He'd raised himself up on his elbows from the cushions. He spoke quickly, breathlessly about
the night he went for Arilon and what he knew for certain. ‘Sylus,' Pynter said. ‘Arilon tell 'im everything, especially 'bout Paso.'

‘You don't think we figured that out?'

‘Who figured?'

‘We did. Look, Pynter.' She dropped herself beside him. ‘It had to happen. Paso knows that too. That's why he's never on his own these days. Paso's all right, believe me.'

‘He not! Tell 'im I say he not.'

‘I spoke to Paso yesterday. You were sleeping when he called. He even asked me how you were. Listen, Pynter, you not made for this. It was the first thing Paso told me. You think …'

‘Lissen to me, Tinelle!'

‘Go easy, fella, you squeezing my hand.'

Pynter walked out onto the veranda and raised his head up at the Fort. Even in this sizzling brightness, it still looked grey and separate. It was the only thing in this town that did not throw back the light. He turned his gaze towards the corridor of islands that began where the harbour ended – a blue-black procession of rocks that pulled his vision northwards until their shapes were smudges in the distance. The first sun cut a bright yellow path straight through them, ending, it seemed, at the very foundations of the house in which he stood.

He was looking at the bright knife-edge of the horizon and thinking that Tinelle might be right. He'd imagined his way towards something that served only to frighten him. He was different in San Andrews. There were just San Andrews and Tinelle, and the way she wanted him to be. She wanted him to be like water, she said, and fit whatever shape she needed. That meant absorbing her instructions while pretending not to hear them.

‘You worry too much,' she said. ‘I want you to trust me.' She slipped an arm around his waist and pointed at the procession of islands. ‘El Dorado Road,' she said. ‘That is what I call it. That's the road that takes everybody off this island, even the planes follow it.'

Those rocks ended in a kind of hell a few miles further out. It was where the spine of the island dipped into the sea. There was a live volcano beneath the waters, the remains of the fire that had risen from the ocean and built the island. It made a cauldron of the currents that met there. Just beyond though, a little way past that, the ocean quietened and deepened. Its surface was so flat and sleepy a foreigner who saw it once had named it Dreamwater.

Tinelle tightened her arm around him. ‘Pure calm,' she said. ‘In the midst of all that violence. Like us.'

‘T,' he said. Her shoulders stiffened under his hand. ‘I have to walk. I have to go out.'

Apart from their night-time trips to the harbour, he'd barely left the house. He'd lain with her and talked. He'd fallen asleep to her music and her voice. He'd followed her with his eyes until he could tell what she meant or wanted just by touch or gesture. He'd uncovered ways to love her that exhausted and amazed her. But over time the yard had become a pulse inside his head, the absence of the women's voices a dull ache in his stomach.

‘Tired of this place?' She said it like a joke. He saw the worry in the way she looked at him.

‘I have to see my Aunt Patty,' he said.

Tinelle raised her eyes at the church towers on Cathedral Street. ‘You'll come back?'

‘That what you want?'

‘F'course,' she said.

He'd been sending notes to Patty at the store through the woman who came once a week to clean the house.

He always wrote the same three lines.

I'm alright
.

Coming home soon
.

Pynter

Patty would reply in the same style, almost as if she were mocking him.

We alright too
.

Take your time
.

Patty
.

His aunt spotted him across the street and came out of the shop. She leaned against the glass front and began fanning her face with one hand. She'd straightened her hair and pulled it up in a high bun, with a large silver comb on either side. Her face looked fuller, her gaze more distant. He hadn't seen his aunt for almost four months. Now he saw how much the baby she was carrying had changed her.

‘What wrong?' he said.

‘I tell you somefing wrong?'

‘How'z everybody?'

‘Who'z everybody, Pynto?'

Pynter stepped closer to her, peering into her face. ‘What wrong, Tan Pat?'

She angled her head away from him. ‘Is lunchtime,' she said. ‘Come wiv me.'

He walked with her through the market. She moved slowly – a careful sideways walk in which her shoulders took the impact of the people who pushed past them. He realised she was fearful for the baby and stepped ahead of her. Patty hooked a finger into his belt and steered him forward.

She did not speak to him until they were sitting in the little restaurant that looked down on the sea. She made him order her food and place it in front of her.

‘Is Celia,' she said. ‘She not awright.'

He almost asked her who Celia was. Apart from Deeka, he'd never heard anyone else use Tan Cee's proper name.

Patty said she was going to tell him everything. She dropped her voice. She forgot her food and fingered the buttons of his shirt while she spoke.

It happened a few weeks ago. How come nobody let him know? Well,' twas becuz that was what Tan Cee said she wanted.

‘She don' want you to come home an' see her like she is now. She don' want you to meet 'er this way,' Patty said.

‘What way?' Pynter made to get up. Patty closed her fist around his shirt.

‘I goin home,' he told her. He moved to get up again.

‘Lissen to me! You don' lissen! That's yuh problem. You never lissen! An' you make trouble fo' people when you don't.'

He tried to get up a third time. She pulled him down. Patty glanced at the bulge of her stomach and stared straight into his eyes, as if to say, she would fight him if she had to despite her heaviness with child. He sat back.

His aunt picked up her spoon and wagged it in his face. ‘You have to unnerstan this, Pynto, not everybody like de world to see dem naked. Specially de ones dey close to. Nobody kin love you like Celia gone and done. You unnerstan dat? Even I not sure I unnerstan it. But she tell me once dat you'z her child becuz you feel like dat inside of her. From the first time she lay dem two hands of hers on you and stain dem with your birt' blood, she make you hers. Not even Elena kin fight dat. Tan Cee don' want you to see her the way she is right now. She'll call you when she ready.'

She dropped the spoon and pulled a kerchief from her bag. She wiped the corners of his eyes.

‘I hope – I hope everything make sense later. So help me God, I not always sure. I not … Love an' hate, Pynto. They live in de same place sometimes. You say dat to Chilway once – that time he come for Birdie. Lil boy as you was, you teach Chilway somefing. I never forget dat.'