Blue Mountain Trouble

by Martin Mordecai

  Jammy was leaning against the cedar tree that stood sentinel to Miss Liza’s yard, around which the path wriggled. They would have to go past him to get to Stedman’s Corner, to Marcus Garvey Primary. They both paused.

  “I couldn’t be your missus, Jammy,” said Pollyread without missing a beat. “I too young and you too ugly.”

  At Pollyread’s facety remark, Jammy stepped out onto the path, blocking their way, scowling. He was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday. They were dirtier, and his eyes, framed by filthy dreadlocks decorated with leaves and twigs, were red.

  “You mouth sharp, little girl,” Jammy rumbled. “Mind you don’t cut youself with it.”

  Pollyread, to Jackson’s relief, said nothing in response, but resumed walking. As she made to step around Jammy, he grabbed her arm. She yelped from the shock.

  “Leggo me,” she cried out, wriggling, trying to get away. “Leggo —”

  “Take you hands off her,” Jackson heard himself saying loudly as he came up to Jammy. It sounded in his ears like Poppa with a squeaky voice.

  “You have big mouth too, eh, Jacko,” Jammy said, and laughed. His eyes, caught in the bright morning sun, glinted brown and red. Close up, Jackson smelled the man’s frowziness, sour sweat mixed with the sweet fragrance of ganja, and saw, as if there was nothing else in his sight, Pollyread’s scrawny arm in Jammy’s hand, which, in a flashing change of channel, became one of Poppa’s sweet pepper trees that Jammy — Jackson was sure of it now — had smashed in the storm on Saturday night.

  “Yes!” Jackson screamed, still hearing himself from somewhere far away, and then watched, as though it was happening on television, as he lined up Jammy’s crotch like the goal mouth in a soccer game at Marcus Garvey, and swung his right foot for a free kick. Goal!

  Jammy jackknifed and fell, clutching his groin with both hands. Jackson jumped over him and ran, pushing Pollyread ahead of him. They pelted down the twisting path, which was a dangerous thing to do, especially with their schoolbags like things alive on their backs. Sheer terror held them upright, feet barely touching the ground, and the terror increased when Jackson heard the grunts and roars from behind, which told them that Jammy was up again and coming after them.

  They burst into the open space of Stedman’s Corner, aware of Miss Clarice to one side of them opening up her stand, and Mrs. Shim on the other side raising the shutters on the grocery. Children were always moving across the square at this time of morning on their way to school, so no one was paying attention to them. Until Jammy appeared, roaring with anger. On open ground the twins, who were slowing down as they fought for gulps of air that seared their lungs, couldn’t match his big strides. He caught up with them in the middle of the space and grabbed Jackson’s shirt collar from behind, which brought Jackson down hard on the solid ground and Jammy falling on top of him in a suffocating pile of sweaty stinking flesh like a huge crocus bag of manure.

  “Ketch you now, you little rude-mouth bwoy,” Jammy panted into Jackson’s ear, his breath rancid. “You and you sister think oonu better than everybody, well, I going show you.”

  Jackson, squashed under Jammy, felt the impact of something that crashed down on his captor, snapping Jammy’s head into Jackson’s.

  “Whadde rass —!”

  “Get up off him,” Jackson heard Pollyread cry out. He could see only her shoes dancing excitedly, and then her schoolbag rolling off Jammy’s shoulders onto the ground near Jackson’s head. “Leave him alone!” Jackson saw a foot swing back and kick, heard Jammy grunt.

  Jammy seemed to be considering which of them to beat up first. He held down Jackson with one hand and swung the other at Pollyread, who skipped out of reach.

  “Let him go, you dutty dawg, you!” she shouted.

  Then another voice cried out, “Jammy! Get up off the pickney.” It sounded farther away, and then another pair of shoes came to stand beside Pollyread’s, men’s shoes with the toe caps and heels cut away. “I say to get up off the little bwoy, Jammy,” Miss Clarice said. “You don’t hear me?”

  “Mind you business, old woman,” Jammy said angrily, right into Jackson’s ear.

  “Who you calling old woman, bwoy? If you don’t get up off that little bwoy right now, I going to mind me business with this beer bottle. Right in you head!”

  There was a moment when everything seemed to hang in suspension, like a lightbulb about to be turned on. Jackson found himself wondering, for some reason, whether his school khakis were torn.

  “I say to get up!” Miss Clarice shouted into Jammy’s ear. “You deaf or what?” Jackson saw Miss Clarice’s feet move apart as she stepped back. He didn’t need to see her arm raise the beer bottle on high. Perhaps Jammy sensed it too. He eased himself off Jackson and stood up, followed by his squashed prey. Whose shirt was torn.

  Immediately, Pollyread began fussing, dusting off Jackson’s clothes before he could even think of it. “Look what you do, Jammy,” she quarreled. “You have money to buy back this uniform?”

  “Polly, hush you mouth,” Miss Clarice commanded quietly, not taking her eyes from Jammy. Pollyread said nothing more, continuing to brush at her brother’s clothes even as Jackson moved several yards away from a panting, dust-spotted Jammy. Who was glaring at Miss Clarice. Miss Clarice, more than twice Jammy’s age and a foot shorter, stood her ground for the long moment it took for Jammy to look away from her.

  “What business you have fighting with two little pickney, big man like you?” Anger and disappointment were mixed equally in her voice.

  “Dem diss me,” Jammy said, as though that were sufficient reason for any action he felt like.

  “He grab on to me, Miss Clarice,” Pollyread accused him.

  “I tell her good morning.”

  “You have to hold on to her to tell her good morning?”

  “No. But when I tell her good morning, she diss me.”

  “I tell him say him ugly,” said Pollyread quickly, as though stating a fact.

  Miss Clarice laughed. “She diss you in truth,” she said. “You not that ugly. But you dirty. And you wutless.”

  Jammy chuppsed.

  “And what you doing up these parts this early morning?” Miss Clarice asked, her tone serious again.

  “I-man can roam where I-man like on Jah earth,” said Jammy, crossing his arms across his sweaty chest.

  “Don’t bring that Rasta talk to me,” said Miss Clarice dismissively. “You is not no Rasta, so speak English to I-woman. I been out here from daylight and I don’t see you pass. You sleep out last night up so.” She gestured with her arm in the direction from which the twins and Jammy had come.

  “Me is big man,” said Jammy angrily. “Me can sleep where me please.”

  “Maybe so. But you can’t trouble people pickney as you please. Look what you do to the bwoy clothes.”

  Jackson looked down at his own clothes like a spectator. The top two buttons of the uniform shirt had been ripped off by the force of Jammy’s grab on his collar from behind, and the pocket hung like a flap. The trousers, thankfully, were merely filthy, less so now thanks to Pollyread.

  “He can’t go to school like that,” Miss Clarice protested to Jammy. “If Shim did sell khaki shirt, I would make you go over there and buy one back right now.”

  “Me?” Jammy had regained some of his cockiness.

  “You, yes. Who else is here I could mean? And is who tear the shirt?”

  Jammy had no answer for that.

  “If I was you,” Miss Clarice continued quietly, “I’d make myself scarce for a while. When Mass Gillie hear what you do to him pickney dem, your corner will be so dark …”

  Jammy looked scornfully at Miss Clarice and then at the twins. “I look like I ’fraid for Mass Gillie?”

  “You don’t have enough sense to be ’fraid for anything,” she shot back at Jammy. “That is why you is always in some trouble or other.” Miss Clarice snorted as though clearing something bitter from her throat. “Still, if I was
you, I would take one of your little trips.”

  “I not going anywhere,” Jammy declared. He tightened his arms across his chest and widened his stance. “I live here too.”

  Miss Clarice chuckled. “If Mass Gillie catch up with you today, you going live here forever and ever.”

  “How you mean?” asked Jammy suspiciously.

  “In Riverbottom Cemetery.” Miss Clarice thought this a great joke and cackled.

  Other laughter came from behind Jackson, who, turning around, realized that they had an audience. People from under the poinciana tree, which served as the bus stop for transport going down. Men and women going to their ground. Some of the twins’ schoolmates on their way to Marcus Garvey Primary. Twenty or so people. None of them fans of Jammy, as Jammy himself realized, looking around at the faces and picking up the voices. “What a way the bwoy shirt tear up.” “No, Jammy do it!” “You never see how him hold down the pickney?” “Is a sin.” “Big man like that.” “Mass Gillie a-go kill him.” “Unless Miss Maisie ketch him first.”

  Jackson glanced at Pollyread. Her eyes shone with more than the morning sun: She was enjoying Jammy’s dressing down.

  Jackson, his body beginning to feel normal again, and remembering his kick, felt a slight jolt of pity for Jammy. He shouldn’t have grabbed Pollyread, but Jackson didn’t think that was what he had planned to do. Jammy was a thief and a troublemaker, but he’d never actually brought violence to anyone in Valley, as far as Jackson knew. And Miss Clarice’s roughing up … just what he deserved. But still … why was he waiting on the path for them? Because of Jackson’s plant-gathering expedition yesterday? In which case, why did he speak to Pollyread first?

  “Jacko,” said Miss Clarice, reaching out to hold Jackson’s shoulder, “take yourself home and make Miss Maisie give you a new shirt.” Her voice was normal again, briskly organizing her fiefdom, Stedman’s Corner. “Polly, you tell teacher your brother forget something important at home and have to go back for it.”

  “Yes, Miss Clarice,” both said.

  They walked away from Jammy, aware of his anger following them, glad to leave him to the small crowd of Valley people — and Miss Clarice.

  * * *

  Though carrying no backpack and sure to be late for school, Jackson didn’t hurry up the path to home. He walked deliberately, eyes down at the path, ears turned backward, as Mama would have said, to listen. Just in case …

  On the way up, he passed schoolmates on their way down, who looked at him curiously and asked the matter. He mumbled, “Fall down …” and hurried on. He didn’t want to stop and explain to each one. He didn’t want to say that he had kicked Jammy in his balls because he wasn’t sure now that he should have done that. Jammy shouldn’t have grabbed Pollyread, but maybe Pollyread shouldn’t have been so bright with herself. But then what was Jammy, whose home was clear over the other side of Valley, doing up this side at this early hour of morning? Why was he waiting, as Jackson was certain he was, for them? Was it really Jackson that Jammy had wanted to ambush? Because of Jackson stealing the bush the afternoon before? Running it through his head, over and over, Jackson always came back to the dread vision of their wasted backyard in the early-morning light, the little trees and bushes savaged by a wicked force.

  At the same time — and to his own surprise — he no longer felt furious at Jammy: He really wanted to know why he’d done it.

  His head seemed to throb, inside and out. He had a headache, something he hardly ever had.

  Poppa was walking toward the gate on his way to ground. Mama was standing in the doorway of the house, shaking out a duster. They both froze, their mouths falling open.

  “What happen to him?” Mama called from the doorway.

  “Look like him and the ground ketch up,” Poppa replied, not taking his eyes from his son, whose steps had slowed.

  Poppa was carrying his lignum vitae walking stick but not leaning on it. A smaller stick, one he used to poke holes in the soil to put seeds, was clasped together with the cutlass in his other hand. The old T-shirt he generally worked in, what was left of it, hung on his body like a strange second skin. Jackson saw the half smile on Poppa’s face that asked: Say something. Why you not in school?

  Jackson’s throat was dry, and no words were to be found in his head. Poppa didn’t agree with fighting. Animals fight, he told the twins. There’s usually another way.

  As he came close and smelled his father, Jackson felt something in him, a tightness he hadn’t known was there, dissolve and rise up inside like hot water to overflow through his eyes, onto his cheeks, and into his mouth, sweet and salty. Embarrassed and suddenly angry with himself, he stood there stiffly and cried, silently, watching clinically as a teardrop fell into the dust between his scuffed shoes. He rubbed it out with his shoe but another one fell, and then another. One fell on Poppa’s dusty right foot, all but bare in a misshapen flip-flop. Jackson was mortified.

  He was aware of Mama coming down the steps into the yard and coming toward him. A subdued Cho-cho appeared and squatted close by, looking up at him.

  “You fall down?” Mama asked.

  Jackson shook his head, still not looking up.

  “You was in a fight.” Mama wasn’t asking a question.

  Jackson nodded. He heard a joint intake of breath, and gasped: “Jammy” before either parent could say anything.

  “Jammy?” they said together.

  “You and Jammy fight?” Poppa asked, unbelieving.

  Jackson managed a shrug.

  “No mind,” he heard Poppa say above him, and felt his shoulder squeezed. “If you fight Jammy and still upright, you could cry.” A little chuckle lifted his voice, and Jackson’s spirits.

  “What you fight about?” Mama’s tone was not as gentle.

  Jackson was about to say “Pollyread” when he looked up and saw Mama’s fierce eyes and knew that would be the wrong direction to take.

  “He was down by Miss Liza,” he said frantically, tears forgotten, moving out of Poppa’s warm arm. “Jammy. Behind a big tree.”

  “What he was doing there?” Poppa asked.

  “He grab my schoolbag as I was passing —”

  “What for?”

  Jackson shrugged. “I don’t know. But I give him a good kick” — another activity his parents didn’t approve of — “and I grab back the schoolbag and run, and Jammy take out after me down the hill….” As he told them the rest of the story, mostly as it had happened, Jackson found himself reliving the terror of the chase down to Stedman’s Corner, and of being stifled by Jammy sprawled on top of him. Except that this time, in the retelling, he wasn’t trying to escape from Jammy but to lead Poppa and Mama away from the beginning of the story, and Pollyread. Jackson didn’t want to think about what would be the reaction if they knew that Jammy, for whatever reason, had put hands on Pollyread. His eyes bounced quickly from one face to the other.

  “So where is Pollyread now?” Mama asked sharply.

  “She at school,” said Jackson, hoping to reassure.

  “And where is Jammy?” asked Poppa.

  Jackson shrugged. “Miss Clarice dealing with him.”

  “I going to be dealing with him when I ketch him,” Mama snorted. “Jammy owe me money! He think he can just go around tearing off people clothes because he feel like it? Who never do a day’s honest labor in him life!”

  “Him owe me more than money,” said Poppa, his voice soft and dark.

  “Come,” Mama said, pulling Jackson’s dirty sleeve and turning back toward the house. “Come tidy up yourself.” She led him away, quarreling with Jammy under her breath.

  * * *

  When Jackson came back out of the house, presentable again, Poppa was sitting on the big stone by the gate, smoking a piece of jackass-rope. From time to time he bought a coil of the strong-smelling tobacco down at Redemption Ground market. Mama only allowed it inside the house at Christmas and on his birthday. Mostly after the day’s work, or if one of his fri
ends came by and drinks were out, he’d cut off a piece and light up. The aroma was one the twins had known for as long as they could remember; it was the smell of calm.

  “Soon come, Maisie,” Poppa called out when he saw Jackson. “I going to escort young warrior here down to school. Before him beat up anybody else.” He winked.

  “Move lively, warrior,” Poppa teased, and Jackson, hurrying to the gate behind his father, heard Mama laugh from the house.

  “You not going to ground again?” Jackson noticed that his father was no longer carrying his usual things for a day in the field. And he’d changed his clothes.

  “Change of plan,” he said in a flat voice.

  Miss Brimley.”

  “Yes, Penelope.”

  There was no one else in the little library. Pollyread was glad of that. Cuthbert Bank Library was one of her favorite places in the world and Miss Evangeline Brimley, the librarian, a very special person. All the way down here from Marcus Garvey Primary, dragging a complaining Jackson along, Pollyread had prayed for privacy.

  She took a deep breath. “You ever hear of rolling goat, Miss Brimley?”

  The old librarian looked at both of them before responding calmly, “No, Penelope. I’ve heard of rolling calf, of course, but —”

  “No, Miss,” Pollyread interrupted, “rolling goat.” She knew it was rude to interrupt adults, but Miss Brimley loved to talk and she didn’t want her taking off in a direction that would only confuse things.

  “Rolling goat?” Miss Brimley said with a smile. The old woman tried not to show it, but she was clearly puzzled by her young client’s request.

  “Is a duppy goat, Miss,” Jackson chimed in.

  “Ah,” was all Miss Brimley said for a while, looking straight ahead. Then, quietly: “Have you seen this … animal?” Her eyes bounced from Pollyread to Jackson and back to Pollyread, where they rested.

  They nodded. Pollyread didn’t trust herself to say anything.

  Miss Brimley was again quiet awhile. Pollyread thought she heard her own blood pumping its way around her body.