Pynter Bender

by Jacob Ross

  She reached out and hugged him.

  ‘Dis mornin,’ she said, her face closing down again abruptly, ‘you goin spend a lil time wiv me.’

  The night had left a sheet of mist on the vegetation where the river was. He watched the sunlight reach down and peel it off, until the exposed parts of the river became glittering pools of silver. Santay waved the women off. They drifted down the hill, the reds and blues and yellows of their clothing a multi-coloured blaze amongst the greenery.

  He wondered what she wanted to tell him this time. Tan Cee told him once that the secret to this woman lay in a language that she still possessed, a language so bloated with old memories of those who came before them that the people of this island had decided to let it die. It was the language forced on them by the Frenchmen who destroyed Deeka’s people. But you couldn make a pusson chew on stones. You can’t compel the tongue to make words it had no taste for. So they’d changed that language and remade it, until it became their own.

  But every death deprives the world of something useful. Did he know that? Even wicked people had their bit to offer. For that language also carried the knowledge of the people of Zed Bender’s time: the plants they used to cure themselves with; the secret pathways out of cane; the songs they sang to lift themselves above the hurtin. The knowledge of how to fly.

  Pynter was conscious of Santay’s eyes assessing him like his mother. She went into her house, brought out a coal pot and lit it on the step. It was strange that here, right now, standing as he was in the middle of her yard, he felt completely at ease with her.

  She handed him a cup of cocoa. He held it before his face and drew in his breath. Nutmeg and earth and cinnamon and allspice. He glanced at her and smiled. She had baby’s eyes – the whites pure as the albumen of boiled eggs, her pupils depthless like Lindy’s. He remembered a time when he stood on this very spot with her, a boy-chile then, to whom the world had suddenly become a new place.

  ‘Osan, how long you got to …?’

  ‘Two,’ he said.

  She smiled. She was testing him. She would say or ask him something else, just to make sure he was with her.

  ‘And de lady … she from …?’

  ‘Englan’. But she born here.’

  ‘Yuh sleep wid yuh head on yuh brother las’ night. You love ’im,’ she said, glancing up at him, ‘but he – he not so sure ’bout you.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘He goin be a good man,’ she said.

  He wondered again what it was she really wanted to say to him. He followed her gaze along the valley to the hills beyond. They could see more of the ocean from here. And nearer still, the bright, tapering peninsula, pointing northwards.

  ‘Dat bother you sometimes – jus’ knowin like you know?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Her hands fiddled with her headwrap for a while. ‘De way I see it, Osan, some people same like bucket. Some collect more water. Dey don’ look no different to de odders, dey jus’ gather more of whatever it got out there to gather – and all of it make sense to dem a lot quicker. S’not worth de trouble tryin to work out how dat come to be. Is so it is – daa’z all.’

  ‘Is so,’ he muttered, turning his gaze towards the old dust road that led towards the canes. It was white now in the morning sun, and curving like a noose around the old stone mill.

  ‘It ever cross yuh mind, Osan, dat mebbe a long-long time from now, p’raps a young-fella an’ a lil ole lady might be standin right here on dis same hill with dat same river down dere. An’ them cane …’

  ‘Won’t be no more cane,’ he said. The words had slipped out of him despite himself.

  Santay looked up sharply and held his gaze for a long while. ‘What about them?’ she said, gesturing at the valley as if the place itself were people. But then she lifted her shoulders and dropped them, answering her own question better than he could have. ‘Life is a river runnin, son. It always find anodder way.’

  Santay took the empty cup from him, walked to the pot and filled it. She sat on the steps and held it out to him.

  ‘I been wantin to ask you, Osan. You a tall-for-sixteen fella, not so?’

  ‘Sixteen an’ four months,’ he said.

  ‘Elaine got somefing wiv you?’

  He shifted his weight and looked away.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I been askin meself what keep a big-woman lookin so hard at a sleepin young-fella dat she forget de plate of food in she hand and drop it every time? Keep lookin at ’im an’ droppin tings. So, later on, jus’ to make sure, I make ’er say your name, so I could hear de way she say it. I let her know dat if she make you lay down wiv ’er, your modder goin to kill ’er. Dat’s one ting that I sure about. It got woman like dat. Young as you is, dey’ll have yuh seed to have yuh.’ Santay gestured at the valley. ‘Your Patty Pree and dat Elaine – dey hardly different. They born inside o’ this. But they not make for it. They the same like corn. Corn can’t grow proper in a field o’ stones. Miss Patty know it, Elaine know it. Dey know it from the time they born. S’like half o’ dem still sleepin, and the lil part dat ’wake still cage up inside a house that they never step outside of. They see all dat sun and brightness out dere wastin.’

  She touched his arm, and he knew it was her way of asking him to trust her words.

  ‘Anyfing dat’s a lil different. Anyfing dey fink could bring a bit o’ what’s outside to them … dey want it. Dat’s why …’

  Pynter barely heard the rest of what she said. His mind had drifted to a morning by the river. Elaine had come down early to do her washing and had already covered the stones around her with a dazzling shoal of red and blue and yellow skirts and dresses. And there, with the bamboo making a fluttering green arch above her head, and the yellow spots of sunlight slipping along her naked arms and neck like a rain of yellow coins, he’d simply stood and stared. She looked up and saw him watching her. And in that moment, when all there was between them was the humming of the bamboo and the river, the yellow morning air, and the pulsing in his throat, she’d dropped the coil of purple cloth and raised her chin at him. Her voice travelled across the water and the stones.

  ‘Same fo’ me, young-fella. You nice.’ She’d lifted a hand as if to flick an insect off her shoulder. Then she turned back to her washing, her voice coming to him now from over her shoulders. ‘But Time an’ God an’ dem wimmen dat you belong to never goin allow it.’

  He’d left her there, knowing that she would never allow his eyes to rest on her like that again.

  And there he was, believing that he was the only one who knew this, that Miss Elaine was, for him, what Patty had been for Chilway. Something beautiful and strange and distant that a pusson wanted to sit beside and touch, although he’d never been able to understand it: the fullness and the fear, the melting warmth that clogged his throat whenever he saw Miss Elaine. His father had told him once that people needed this – to reach for things they could neither have nor understand. The miracle was, he said, that sometimes they actually got what they desired.

  ‘That what you make me stay to tell me?’ said Pynter.

  ‘Nuh,’ she said, and took the empty cup from him. He was surprised to see her smiling. ‘Careful how you carry it.’

  25

  THEY SAT ON the hill in darkness with their scooters lying on their sides beside them. They talked about Jordan, not what he became, but the way he used to be, how like a god he rode his blue machine, the little tricks he taught them, especially the way he could leap off it and land on his feet and turn around to face them laughing. They credited him with everything they ever learned about the tricks of scootering. The memory of Jordan sat on their hearts like an itch their fingers could not get at.

  Some evenings, a man made his boy-chile walk the length of Old Hope Road, all on his own. They announced the fact by setting fire to something at the same time, urging the smoke and flames to rise above the foothills. Nights, they lined the road with masantorches from Man Arthur’s Fall all the
way down to the iron bridge, and with their stomachs pressed hard against the wood of their machines, Pynter and the others launched themselves from up there.

  The curfews which had been creeping down the island from the north had finally reached San Andrews. But they ignored Old Hope. The nearest they got to them was Cross Gap Junction. And that was a problem, until a voice cut across the music on their little plastic radios and reminded them that gatherings were banned. From seven o’clock on evenings until further notice, all roads must remain clear.

  Guy Fawkes Night used to be a game. Men and children from the villages above the canes came together at Cross Gap Junction and threw burning balls of tar-soaked rags in each other’s direction, and it had always been something to watch and laugh at.

  When Tan Cee brought Coxy to Old Hope, he soon became one of the gang of revellers. They were like a secret society, with rules and a language of signs and gestures that only meant something to themselves. And when, over the years, they’d won enough battles against the villages above the canes to earn themselves a reputation, they called themselves the Fire-Flyers, and elected Coxy as Pilot. The fireballs became bigger, they started mixing the tar and slow-burn oil with fuel, and the fireballs became dangerous. It was these new fireballs that sparked the war between Old Hope and the villages above the foothills. For there was that night, some years before, when a beautiful youth from Déli Morne danced and laughed and burned.

  The game had changed from then, with the men of Déli Morne wanting a life back as repayment and Coxy and his Fire-Flyers daring them to take it.

  Pynter had no memory of the time before this war. He had grown accustomed to it, and like all the little boys, he’d drawn a kind of energy from it. These were the men, the real soldiers, that every boy-chile wanted to become, whose battle was not so much with other men as with the one thing that Old Hope turned to when nothing else would do: fire. For, like Deeka Bender said, fire was better than a friend. It was the enemy of cane.

  But Deeka would never forgive Coxy for corrupting the beauty of these men. Their slaps and sighs quickened the pulses of the village as Guy Fawkes evening closed in and, one by one, their torches came to life. Then the whole world would be ablaze and he, Pynter, and every other child in Old Hope would be right there amongst the men who had put the torch to it.

  The hours it would take them to cover themselves with strips of sacking soaked in a stinking fluid that prevented them from becoming living torches were a time of transformation. At some point close to midnight the magic would be complete. An army of padded zombies would leave their yard for Cross Gap, chanting:

  Somebody goin burn,

  Somebody goin burn tonight,

  Somebody backside goin see de glory,

  Somebody goin burn …

  By the time they got to Cross Gap Junction, the procession would be worked up into a frenzy. But this year, something in the men had changed. Perhaps their women had caused it. Perhaps they had resurrected in the heads of their men the memory of Coxy Levid’s best friend who, one Guy Fawkes Night, danced and laughed and burned. Perhaps they were finally saying out loud what they whispered in the river: about the part that Coxy had played in it. Maybe these men had listened to the worrying of their women, that to have Guy Fawkes Night at this time was like opening up Old Hope to all of Victor’s army. So now, a week before Guy Fawkes Night, they sat in ruminative circles in the rum shop, flushing glasses of spirits down their throats and waiting for their women to come and take them home.

  ‘Don’ got no way to make Guy Fawkes Night happm this year,’ Oslo said. He was a dark shape on the roadside amongst his friends. Pynter leaned against the bank on the other side of the road. Arilon detached himself from the group of boys and came to stand beside him. Peter had already left for home.

  ‘I goin to make it happm,’ Pynter said.

  A single chuckle from Oslo. ‘Can’t happm.’

  ‘I make it happm,’ Pynter said.

  ‘Cuz Coxy yuh auntie man?’

  ‘Nuh, cuz I say so.’

  ‘An’ how you goin do dat, Jumbie Boy?’

  Pynter felt Arilon straighten up. ‘You call me by dat name again, I stop you,’ he said. ‘I give you two occasions. Count this as de first one.’

  Oslo threw the name at him again.

  ‘I say two occasions, fella; I didn say two times.’

  Pynter heeled his machine, grabbed the axle and walked off. But he’d roused something in Oslo, and he followed Pynter down the hill, making a rhythm and a joke of the name. At the bottom of the road, on the iron bridge, Pynter swung his head around and smiled. And then he was at the back of the boy with an arm around his neck and keeling him over.

  Birdie told him something once. His uncle had taken him and Peter behind the house a couple of days before Chilway came to take him off to prison. He had said he wanted to leave them with a present, just in case they found themselves ‘up dere’. Becuz in that place ‘up dere’, men are themselves. They own things, including other men. They search for the weakness in a fella and close their hands around it. There is a cure for that, Birdie had said. You show the fella how easily he can die.

  Oslo toppled backwards. Pynter’s knee connected with his spine the way Birdie had shown them. Oslo screamed and hit the road.

  In the darkness Pynter turned to face the others.

  ‘Call me by my name,’ he said, ‘or don’ bother callin me. Next Sunday, Guy Fawkes Night goin happm.’

  Arilon dropped a hand on Pynter’s shoulder. He shook him hard. ‘Jeezas, Benderboy – yuh full o’ surprise!’

  Pynter shrugged off Arilon’s hand and said nothing. He was grateful for the friendship of this quiet youth who walked with a straight back, hardly talked and kept the others at a distance with his gaze. He believed that Arilon would stand with him whatever the size of the trouble ahead, as he had stood by Arilon when his mother left him on his own all those years ago. Old Hope women had tidied the house for him until he could do it on his own. They reminded him to sweep the yard. From time to time their men stopped by and changed a post, or fixed whatever needed fixing. Arilon ate in whichever yard he chose to. He carried buckets of water and bundles of firewood for anyone who asked him, but he always slept at home.

  They were children when Arilon had taken him up to Glory Cedar Rise one morning. He’d made a kite and said he wanted to send it up. But when they got there, he’d left it on the ground. He was frowning at the kite when he asked Pynter what it felt like to have a brother.

  Pynter looked into his friend’s face and saw the question which Arilon was too proud to put in words.

  ‘I’ll be yuh brother,’ Pynter had said. ‘If you don’ keep holdin dem hands o’ yours like crab-foot.’

  They went on the hill again the next day. This time there was a wind. Arilon sent the kite up and tied the string around a stone. He sat on the root of the glory cedar tree above them. ‘You serious?’ he said.

  ‘’Bout what?’

  ‘’Bout me an’ you. Brodder … yunno.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Arilon had stood up, brought his hands in front of him and tied his fingers together like a girl.

  ‘I kin sing,’ he said. ‘I do a song fo’ you.’ And even then, Pynter knew that this was an offer of repayment. For Arilon never took anything from anyone without finding some way to pay back.

  ‘We own song,’ Pynter said.

  ‘We own,’ the boy nodded.

  Pynter had put the words together and Arilon added the music to it. And by the time they left the hill, he’d looked at Arilon and wished he really was his brother.

  That evening, while chewing on his food, Arilon began to hum their song; then gradually the words started slipping out of him.

  Be a bird on a wind an’ fly

  Be de heart of a chile dat smile

  Be a bee, be a bird, be a butterfly

  Be all of a mornin sky

  Arilon didn’t notice that Patty had stopped eating; that E
lena had straightened up from the fire and was looking down on the boy’s head as if she were about to break into tears. His voice was like clean water; it poured out of him. Sometimes it fluttered against his throat like a hummingbird that wanted to break loose.

  Be de note from a rain-bird throat

  Be de flood dat float Noah boat

  Be a flute, be a song, be a pretty note

  Be de colour of Joseph coat

  The adults did not believe it was their song. They never did. It was like the offer he’d made to Arilon so many years ago, up there on Glory Cedar Rise. They were the only ones who knew.

  Arilon still made things with his hands: tables and chairs and bedheads, with mahogany so highly polished the wood shone like metal in the sun. He said he had no need for inches because he measured with his eyes. S’matter o’ fact, the only reason he’d ever touched a ruler was to make a better one for Pynter when he started his school above the ocean.

  He walked with the height and gaze of a man now, said he was happy living on his own. But his mother’s bed was rumpled the same way she had left it. Her nightdress hung above the mirror opposite the window. Her home-shoes sat on the old fibre mat near the doorway where she’d left them.

  ‘You don’ believe I kin do it,’ Pynter said.

  ‘Do what, fella?’

  ‘Make Guy Fawkes Night happm.’

  Arilon rubbed his head. ‘S’not dat, fella. Is how!’

  ‘Easy,’ Pynter said. ‘Jus’ watch.’

  A pusson did not need to look at Coxy Levid’s face to know what he was thinking. They watched his hands. Smiling came too easily, even when the rest of him was tight with anger.

  Coxy had the kind of hands you followed with your eyes. He’d perched the tobacco tin on one knee, dipping without looking into the tin, pulling out filaments of the brown stuff and sprinkling them on the flimsy square of paper in his palm. It did not require his attention; his eyes were always somewhere else, set deep, slow-sliding in a long, burnt-mahogany face, his fingers going about their business with that mindless delicacy that was so attractive to Old Hope men, for whom smoking only became interesting when they saw the way Coxy Levid rolled his cigarettes.