Blue Mountain Trouble

by Martin Mordecai

  “I will talk to him.” Poppa pushed back his chair. “Remember to feed that dog,” he said to Jackson. The twins listened for any sign in Poppa’s voice that he knew the source of his troubles, but there was none.

  If I didn’t know better,” Corporal Letchworth said to Poppa as they surveyed the wreckage side by side, “I would say is Jammy. Or someone like Jammy.” They were still dressed for church, from which Corporal Letchworth, who lived on the other side of Valley, had sent his own family on without him and come home with the Gilmores.

  Jackson, changing swiftly into his yard clothes, had sauntered around the back, far enough behind Poppa and Corpie that he wouldn’t be noticed but close enough to hear what they were saying.

  “Could be Jammy, yes,” Poppa said.

  “But nobody don’t see Jammy this long while.”

  “I see him.”

  “What!” Corpie’s voice was almost a screech. “Where?”

  And Poppa told him about Morgan’s Mount.

  The corporal prided himself on knowing everything that went on in the district. And Jammy was a particular interest of his. Their paths had crossed continuously from when Jammy was a boy going under fences to pick fruits that, had he asked for them, would probably have been given out of respect for Miss Mildred, his mother. Angry farmers had enlisted Corpie to “speak” to the boy. No amount of “speaking,” even of the most forceful kind, had helped. It merely made the growing Jammy more cunning.

  Jammy’s activities had crossed the line from pranks to crime on his fourteenth birthday, when he and his friends decided on a curry goat feed for the auspicious occasion. It went without saying that nothing had been bought. As the party went on it got more raucous, and despite its remote location in the upper reaches of Bamboo River, it inevitably attracted the attention of someone who summoned the law. Jammy was escorted personally by Corporal Letchworth from Juvenile Court in Town to Rocky Hill Approved School for Young Offenders.

  Two years in Rocky Hill had not rehabilitated Jammy at all, merely widened his sphere of operations beyond Top Valley and enlarged the list of possible accomplices. But these new accomplices were no brighter than his first set. They kept making stupid mistakes that led Corporal Letchworth back to the tidy little front yard full of flowerpots that Mildred Trout presented to the world, as if to wipe the shame of Jammy from her eyes. As he grew older, Jammy had taken his activities away from Valley. Somehow, though, he always came back. And now here he was again, the perennial thorn in Corpie’s side, back, and foot bottom.

  The corporal looked to Jackson as though there might indeed be stones in his shiny Sunday shoes. He wriggled his feet as he listened and edged around until he was facing Poppa.

  “When you find him in Morgan’s Mount?” he asked sharply when Poppa was finished.

  “Saturday.”

  “Yesterday?” He sounded like he was interrogating Poppa.

  “No. Last weekend.”

  “And is only now you telling me?”

  “I will deal with it,” Poppa said, looking out at the ruined backyard. Jackson saw his back straighten slightly.

  “Squatting is against the law.”

  “Only if I lodge a complaint. Is my ground.”

  “Breaking and entering and malicious destruction of property is against the law also, Gillie.”

  “Is my property.”

  There was a warning in both voices. Jackson could only see the policeman’s eyes, but they were staring hard at Poppa, whose shoulders were rigid. Neither of them noticed him. He kept as still as possible, Cho-cho sitting at his feet.

  “You is the only person,” Corpie said grumpily, “who take up for that bwoy, apart from him mother. And not always at that.”

  And Bollo, thought Jackson.

  “I not taking up for him. I going to deal with Jammy.” Poppa sounded like he was explaining a homework problem.

  “You better,” said Corporal Letchworth heavily. “Or I will deal with him, my way. I tired of that bwoy.”

  “He not a bwoy anymore, Philbert,” Poppa said, still in his homework voice. “He is twenty years old.”

  “Then he old enough to know better.”

  “Yes,” said Poppa, so quietly Jackson barely heard him, “that is true.”

  “I’m sure Miss Mildred teach him better. She is a decent woman.”

  “That she is,” Poppa agreed.

  “And the other pickney turn out okay.”

  “Yes,” Poppa agreed again.

  “So —?” Corpie raised one eyebrow. He wasn’t looking so hard at Poppa now, but he wasn’t looking anywhere else either.

  Poppa gave a small chuckle. “A long story, Philbert,” he said.

  “Not a laughing matter, though.”

  “No, no laughing matter. Jammy is not a laughing matter at all.”

  Corporal Letchworth heaved his shoulders and sighed deeply. “Okay, Mass Gillie. I leave it to you. For now.”

  “If is Jammy,” said Poppa, waving his hand across the yard.

  “Who else it would be?” Corpie was in no doubt as to who was responsible.

  It was Poppa’s turn to shrug.

  Corpie looked at Poppa and rested a hand on his shoulder. “You can be a Christian, Gillie,” he said. “I-man have to be a policeman.”

  “Seen,” said Poppa.

  “Tell Maisie I will see her at choir practice later.”

  “Okay.”

  Poppa turned to watch Corporal Letchworth leave and noticed Jackson for the first time. He frowned slightly, but only said, “Time for lunch,” as he walked past Jackson back to the house.

  Jackson meanwhile was thinking about what Jammy was growing up at Morgan’s Mount. It’s something funny, he said to himself. Jammy is not a natural planter. Somehow he had to find out what it was.

  * * *

  Mama said grace again and then moved quickly, once they’d started eating, to question Poppa about his conversation with Corporal Letchworth in the backyard. She asked the same question: “Who else it could be?”

  “But it don’t have to be Jammy,” Poppa said, sounding a little defensive now. “Plenty bad boys in the district.”

  “None of them would do this,” she said roughly. “This is evil.”

  “You just come from church and calling somebody evil?” Poppa tried to make a joke of it.

  “Evil is as evil does.”

  There was only the clatter of knives and forks scraping on plates for a while.

  “So what is Philbert doing about … ?” Mama’s voice, sounding a little less angry now, drifted off, but everyone knew what she meant.

  “Philbert don’t have to do anything,” Poppa said calmly. “I dealing with it.” He sliced a piece of yam and put it into his mouth.

  They all waited for him to finish chewing, to tell them how he was going to deal with — whoever. He scooped up some rice and peas and a small piece of chicken, saying nothing further.

  “What you going to do to Jammy, Poppa?” Pollyread piped.

  Poppa’s voice lashed her. “You know is Jammy?”

  Pollyread flinched and put down her fork, staring down at her plate.

  “Gilbert.” Mama dropped Poppa’s name on the table like a stone.

  Jackson felt the piece of chicken in his mouth turn to ashes. When Mama and Poppa quarreled — and this could be the beginning of one — it was like a cold fierce wind caught inside their little house.

  Poppa put a forkful into his mouth. No one else was paying any attention to food. Jackson saw, as Poppa chewed, that his father’s jaw muscles started to relax.

  He swallowed, took a sip of water, put his knife and fork down on the side of his plate. He looked at Pollyread with sad eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There was no cause.”

  Slowly they began eating again, carefully, as though they were waking up.

  “I will talk to him,” Poppa said eventually.

  “You think is him, Poppa?” Jackson asked.

  “I don’t kno
w,” Poppa said. “That is why I will talk to him.”

  “You think he going to just tell you?” Mama’s words were like pebbles bouncing off the dining table. “You don’t tired to talk to that bwoy?”

  “I tired, yes,” Poppa said, chewing slowly. “But he not a bwoy any longer, Maisie. Hear say woman have pickney for him in Town.”

  “That don’t make him man,” Mama said scornfully.

  “Maybe not. But him have pickney, and him is twenty him last birthday.”

  The twins’ eyes rested on each other’s again: How did Poppa know Jammy’s birth date? Where was the anger of this morning?

  “Miss Mildred raise him bad.”

  “The other children she raise don’t turn out bad,” said Poppa. “Besides, Mildred not the only one who raise Jammy.”

  “You on that again?” Mama’s voice rose a notch.

  “Maisie …”

  Jackson knew well the tone in Poppa’s voice; sometimes it was in Mama’s voice, directed at Poppa. It was like a policeman’s hand directing traffic: Stop right there. They were trying to ensure that nothing further was said about a particular matter at that particular time. Because that matter had “story” behind it, and that story was “big-people business,” not to be discussed in front of children. But this one was a contention between them. Jackson watched Mama’s eyes flare at Poppa before looking down at her plate. Her mouth tightened to a slit, as if locking in the words she wanted to say. He felt the hot breeze of irritation around the table.

  Pollyread’s eyes on his were serious and unblinking. This story, they both understood, the one they had been denied all but a glimpse of, was to do with Jammy — and also with Mama and Poppa.

  Curiouser and curiouser, Jackson thought, the phrase from Alice in Wonderland rising like a smoke signal.

  Lunch was completed in silence.

  You think God love Jammy?”

  The words were out of Pollyread’s mouth before the thought had even begun to form.

  “How I to know what God think?” Jackson grumbled.

  Pollyread had not expected any other answer anyway. Jackson didn’t think like she did. Not about things like this.

  She didn’t really wonder whether God loved Jammy or not — that was God’s business. It was more that when she had something difficult to work out, she tried to look at it from above, to see everything at the same time, like a hovering bird would. Like, she imagined, God did. The question about Jammy didn’t really require a sensible answer.

  But Jammy was becoming difficult. Even when he was doing his badness up and down Valley, it was easy to ignore him most of the time. But he was getting closer and closer to the family now. Last night’s invasion — and Pollyread, despite Poppa’s apparent unwillingness, was herself certain that it was Jammy — was bad enough. But worse were the thoughts that had begun creeping around in her head like slimy things.

  “It sound to me,” she said, “like they know Jammy.”

  “Who?”

  Pollyread tossed her head in the direction of the house. “Them,” she said.

  They were sitting on the front steps, looking out into the yard. Pollyread’s bottom was on the floor of the house and her feet on the top step, where Jackson sat, his feet on the cool earth floor of the shed, really an extension of the roof propped up by two posts. It was where Poppa stored his tools for the field, and the bags and baskets that needed to be kept dry on days like today.

  The rain on the zinc roof sounded like gravel being poured by an unsteady hand. It had returned right after lunch, a balm on the valley — and on the little weeds of tension that had grown up during lunch. Mama and Poppa were inside their room, the door closed. The twins had quickly become bored with lying in their beds reading, though Pollyread still cradled a book, a finger marking the page.

  Nothing seemed to be happening outside either. No one was about on the path that ran past their house. Not surprising, with the rain.

  “Of course them know him,” Jackson said.

  “I mean —”

  “I know.” Jackson sounded grumpy, as though he wanted to sleep or had just been awakened.

  “You think so?”

  Jackson nodded.

  “How?”

  He shrugged.

  Pollyread heard Bollo’s voice in her head: Ask Mass Gillie. Ask Jammy. It was as though Bollo, and Trucky — and who knew who else? — knew something about her family, her father, that she and Jackson didn’t know. Lots of stories were always circulating in Valley, about almost everybody. Pollyread herself would carry story sometimes. It hadn’t occurred to her before now that people were saying things around Valley about Poppa, and possibly Mama. And about them and Jammy! How could there possibly be anything between her parents and Jammy? And Poppa sounding as though he was defending Jammy. After everything Jammy had done to them (Pollyread was sure it was Jammy!) … What did that mean?

  God, perhaps, loved Jammy; he probably had to, being God and all. But she didn’t have to, and she didn’t.

  “I going to ask Poppa,” said Pollyread. “When he get up.” She felt anger twitching her bare toes. Some of it anger at Poppa, for keeping secrets.

  Staring out into the curtain of rain, Jackson didn’t say anything.

  It seemed to Pollyread that it might well be raining not just in Valley or the island but over the whole world. It certainly felt like the world was draped in wet clothes.

  Then a sudden breeze, like a hand sweeping away a cobweb, created a space in which she saw a flash of white. Just a flash. Then the shroud of rain descended again. Pollyread focused on what she thought was the spot, and in a few moments, in another sudden shift of breeze, there was a second flash of white, this time more like a glowing.

  “Pel.” She heard Jackson whisper and felt his elbow jab into her shin. At the same moment there came, from beneath them under the house, a warning growl from Cho-cho.

  The glowing acquired a shape. A now-familiar shape, hovering in the rain.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Her knee bounced his shoulder and stayed there. Jackson’s hair, from the length of which he had skillfully deflected Mama’s attention for weeks, was suddenly held from behind in powerful fingers. Pollyread’s book landed in a clatter beside him on the step and then slipped onto the dirt floor. They didn’t even notice.

  It was hard to tell exactly where it was at first. It seemed to be dancing with the wind. Then, in an instant, the goat was right at their gate, twenty meters away, throwing its large head and those trumpet horns from side to side, looking at them. Yearningly.

  The great white head, with its untidy billy goat beard, brushed the air. Its eyes, bright like the large black buttons on Mama’s Sunday dress, seemed to be speaking. As though it was calling them to the fence, or asking for permission to come closer.

  Pollyread, bottom fused to the steps, felt her toes wriggle under Jackson’s bottom like they were hiding. Cho-cho had inched on his belly out to the edge of the dry space beneath the shed. The hairs on the dog’s spine stood up in a ridge, his whole body quivering in the direction of the goat.

  As if someone else were lifting his hand, Jackson waved.

  And the goat nodded.

  “Who you waving at?” Mama’s voice from behind startled them both. “Somebody out in this rain?”

  Pollyread heard Jackson struggle to answer, words tangling up in his throat. Her own mouth wouldn’t open.

  The goat’s eyes brightened and it nodded again, as though acknowledging Mama’s presence.

  “Plenty cloud out there. But I don’t see anybody.”

  Everything trembled: the smiling goat — yes, Pollyread decided, it was smiling now — the shifting uncertain light, the twins’ ragged breathing.

  Then a gust of rain threw a curtain across the yard. When it cleared moments later, the goat was gone.

  “No, Mama,” Pollyread finally said. “Nobody out there.”

  * * *

  Pollyread felt let down and an
gry. Angry at Mama for chasing away the goat. Disappointed that the goat had gone. She could not show her anger to Mama, who in any case had gone into the kitchen. And her disappointment with the goat was beyond expressing in words. All she could think to do was jam her feet farther under Jackson on the step below her, deriving a small satisfaction from forcing him to shift to one side.

  For fully a minute after the goat’s disappearance the twins said nothing, listening to each other breathe. Cho-cho had retreated back under the house, and was silent. It occurred to Pollyread that, just by breathing, they were inhaling Goat as part of the air; he was now a part of them, like food, or water. Her chest tightened.

  “Why you wave at it?”

  “ ’Cause it was nodding at us.” Jackson sounded as though waving at an apparition was simply the polite thing to do. “Besides” — he turned to look at his sister, a twinkle in his eye — “you was asking it question the other day.”

  Pollyread couldn’t answer. Everything Jackson said was true. She wasn’t frightened of the goat. The first time, yes, when it had reared out of the cloud on a perfectly normal morning walking to school. But it had also saved her from falling off the edge of the path. Then the second time, it had, in a manner of speaking, saved Mama by providing a glowing light for them to find their way home from Stedman’s Corner in the near-dark. And it had not tried to frighten them. Not then or just now. It had kept its distance every time. Just now, it seemed to her, it had been asking them to come closer to it, when it could so easily, she realized, have simply zoomed right up to where they were sitting. That would have been terrifying.

  But where did it come from? And, most of all, why? Why was it here? Why now? Did it have anything to do with Jammy, who had reappeared in Valley around the same time? And around the time that Mama started feeling sick — did it have anything to do with that? It had looked heartbroken at Stedman’s Corner when she’d collapsed. But why just the twins? No one else seemed to see Goat. Not even Mama. Though maybe Cho-cho … Some old people believed that dogs could see duppies.

  The rain was lighter now, coming straight down, and the wind had died. More of their familiar world was visible, though still no other people. The wisps of cloud left had no particular shape.