Blue Mountain Trouble

by Martin Mordecai

  Pollyread looked down at her book: Selected Poems of Louise Bennett. She glanced across at Jackson’s: New Day, by V. S. Reid.

  “Thank you, Miss Brimley,” they said again in raggedy chorus.

  “I hope,” said Miss Brimley, “that you’ll thank me even more many years from now, when I’m gone. You will both travel very far,” she said, quietly but firm-voiced, “like I did. And I don’t think you’ll be coming back — these are different times. But always take these books with you. Not for me. For yourself. They will help you chart your course because they will help to root you in your home.”

  Here it was again, that feeling like a fingernail scratching the bottom of her stomach. Like everyone was sending her away — and Miss Brimley forever! For a moment, the bright afternoon seemed to darken.

  “Now run along and catch your wretched bus,” said Miss Brimley briskly, turning them toward the door. “I think I hear a rattling sound coming this way. Like rolling calf.” She chuckled. “You must come back and tell me more about that goat of yours.”

  Pollyread didn’t know what prompted her, but she kissed Miss Brimley’s cheek. It was cool and smelled of baby powder and lime juice. Miss Brimley was as surprised as she was. “Oh, dear,” she said with a little giggle. Jackson, Pollyread noticed, seemed uncomfortable, which she was sorry for causing but at this point couldn’t help. Miss Brimley put a bony hand on Jackson’s shoulder and squeezed. “And don’t forget to tell your parents about that plant. And,” she turned to Pollyread, “I’ll send to let you know when we’ll have that tea.”

  A raucous blast from Roadman’s horn, quite near now, set the twins scampering for their bags.

  “And take this with you,” Miss Brimley cried, thrusting a book at Pollyread. “Normally I don’t lend out reference books, but under the circumstances …” Her chirruping voice faded behind the twins as Pollyread grabbed the book with a shouted, “Thank you, Miss,” and they pelted out into the road.

  The whining and growling of the minibus swallowed all other sounds in the air — birds, breeze, the twins’ voices, eventually their very thoughts. When it had obliterated everything else, Roadman, named after its owner-driver, lumbered around a corner, moving slowly because of its sardine-packed load and tilting like a drunken elephant. It ignored the twins’ waving hands and growled on past them, blessing them with foul exhaust fumes and dust. As they coughed and spluttered, resigning themselves to the long uphill walk home — at least until Santos, the other minibus plying this route, gave them another chance at a ride — Roadman screeched to a halt thirty meters on. For a moment nothing moved, including the twins. And then, of all people, Poppa leapt out of the bus as though someone had thrown him. His clothes, crushed and sweat-streaked, were his Sunday best: He had been to Town. For something very important.

  “What you all doing down this way?”

  “Library, Poppa,” said Pollyread, finding her voice.

  “Is so late you coming back now?”

  “It not so late, Poppa. And Miss Brimley keep us.”

  “We have something —” Jackson began, before Roadman’s horn blasted his words to pieces.

  “Come,” said Poppa, waving his arm and turning back to the bus.

  Pollyread groaned aloud as they tracked behind him. It looked like a solid piece of machinery with parts of wriggling humans embedded. There wasn’t a chink of space to be seen within Roadman.

  * * *

  Jackson found a breathing space in the bus, under Poppa’s armpit and centimeters from the damp breastplate of a large woman whose face he couldn’t even see. Pollyread was somewhere close, perhaps under Poppa’s other arm, but he couldn’t search for her without his face bouncing the woman’s sweat-stained chest. As it was, the jolly-riding of the bus, as Roadman took it around and, unavoidably, through the potholes, brought him perilously close to embarrassment several times. He was hardly aware of the green hillside flashing by outside.

  “One stop, driver,” someone called out, and Roadman-the-bus came to a juddering stop, rearranging the bodies inside willy-nilly. Poppa held on to his children as people were reshuffled by the need to release one or more bodies. Then off again, with a rasp of gears and a belch of exhaust in all directions that the inmates inhaled as they passed through it.

  “Roadman,” Poppa shouted, startling Jackson. “One stop.” They hadn’t properly reached Cross Point, much less Stedman’s Corner.

  Poppa looked down at him. “You and Pen go on up. Tell Mama I soon come.”

  Jackson caught a glimpse of where Roadman had stopped: right opposite the Cross Point police station. Was this where Poppa was going? Before he could think to ask him, Poppa was through the bus door, one of several passengers bouncing and jostling their way down the steps. The doors clanged shut and the bus lurched forward again.

  Now able to see each other around the body of the woman, thick and solid as a tree trunk, Jackson and Pollyread looked at each other: Something had to be done.

  “Roadman!” Pollyread shouted.

  “What?”

  “One stop here!”

  “Please,” Jackson added loudly.

  “Wait,” Roadman called from the front of the minibus. “Next stop.”

  “I need to pee-pee,” Pollyread shouted.

  “Hold it,” came the immediate reply.

  Before Jackson’s astonished eyes — and to his complete embarrassment — Pollyread squeezed her eyes tight shut, then blinked twice quickly, then erupted in a caterwauling that made his neckback shiver. “Whaiiie!” she screamed, grabbing her head.

  It was like letting loose a flock of parrots in the bus. Everyone — except Jackson — started talking at once, some beseeching Pollyread to hush up, some trying to shush her, the loudest voice shouting at Roadman to stop the blankety-blank bus and let off the blankety-blank pickney.

  Roadman agreed. Abruptly. If Jackson hadn’t managed to grab her, Pollyread, still screeching, would have fallen into the little space that had cleared around her and into a bankra basket that held a dozen or so little yellow puffs of week-old chicks that would be somebody’s livelihood in a few months. Behind them, the door flew open and in a few seconds they were out on the bankside inhaling the stinking diesel exhaust of the disappearing minibus.

  It took Pollyread two swipes of her sleeve, one to each cheek, to dry the few drops of crocodile tears on her face; her eyes weren’t even red.

  Without a glance at Jackson, she set off in the direction from which they had just come.

  * * *

  They both knew what this act of rank disobedience might mean.

  Rank — usually pronounced “renk” — was Mama’s word for things, and people, that she strongly disapproved of. She would probably regard her own children, after their sweaty walk from Marcus Garvey to Cuthbert Ridge and their sojourn on the bus, as smelling renk. But that would be the least of their renkness because it wouldn’t be their fault. Disobeying a direct parental instruction, on the other hand, was about as renk as a child could get, in skin or soul.

  But there was no going back now. Except back to the police station where Roadman had let Poppa out.

  The Cross Point police station was an old cut-stone building raised off the ground so that — the legend said — prisoners could be chained underneath. Not even the oldest person in the district could remember this happening — in fact, there was a concrete-and-zinc oven of a lockup round the back — but the story had sufficed to wrap the quite attractive building in an aura of dread. The solid wood front door looked as though if it shut behind you, you’d never be readmitted to daylight and home — never mind that the door was never shut, even late at night.

  Pollyread’s firm step slowed as they got closer to the station. Jackson drew alongside her.

  “You tell Poppa,” she said. “Miss Brimley said you was to tell him.”

  “And you will tell him how we get off the bus?”

  “Why is always me?”

  Jackson didn’t respond.
They were practically at the foot of the five steps that led up to the station entrance. Jackson listened carefully but heard nothing except the country sounds around them, and even they seemed quieter than usual. Too late now, he thought, and walked up the steps, Pollyread one step behind.

  “Can I help you?”

  The young policeman sat behind the counter on a stool almost as high as the counter, resting his elbows on the biggest book the twins had ever seen. They marveled anew at it each time they visited the station. It was called simply the station book, and every station in the island had one, so Corporal Letchworth said anyway. Everything official that happened inside the station was recorded there, inscribed by one of the several pens that decorated the pocket of this young policeman’s uniform shirt. He was new to the twins. Where was Constable Ranglin, who had been there behind that counter from they’d known themselves? This was going to be really difficult, Jackson thought.

  “We’re looking for our father,” Pollyread said, trying to sound official.

  The young policeman’s head was like a black egg, his nose and lips barely protruding, his oblong eyes only slightly indented. His skin glistened. His lips parted sufficiently to display tightly packed white teeth as he said, twice as official as Pollyread: “Are you here to make a missing persons report?”

  Jackson felt his sister bristle beside him and jumped in before she found her next set of words, which were likely to be sharp-edged. “Mr. Gilmore. He come to see Corpie about a business.”

  The policeman’s words pounced on Jackson. “What kind of a business?”

  “Police business,” Pollyread said.

  “I am police,” said the young officer. “What is the business?”

  “He never tell us,” said Pollyread, not giving an inch. “He only tell us is police business.” Jackson’s breath caught in his throat: Poppa had told them no such thing. Not even that he was going to the police station to talk to Corporal Letchworth. He could be anywhere in Cross Point.

  The policeman removed one of the five or six pens that decorated his shirt pocket like an extra set of teeth. He removed the top and, with a theatrical flourish, brought it to rest, poised like a knife, above the big book in front of him. “What you name?” His voice had deepened, becoming even more official. He looked at Pollyread with bright eyes, his pen hand moving above the page as though stirred by a slight breeze.

  “Why you have to know we name?” Jackson’s own voice startled him.

  Pollyread glared at the policeman. “We don’t do nothing.”

  “I am police. I can ask you anything!”

  “Not if we not here,” said Jackson, grabbing Pollyread’s shoulder and pushing her toward the door. Behind them the policeman growled.

  “Halt!”

  In truth, Jackson reflected afterward, his legs had been none too strong taking him out of the station and down the steps. And probably Pollyread was as frightened as he was at their boldness. Stopping halfway down and holding on to the nearest railing was a relief.

  “You want me to place you under arrest? Eh?”

  “For what?” Pollyread muttered under her breath.

  “Eh?”

  “Who you arresting, Constable Phillips?”

  The twins were still facing out onto the road that ran past the station. The voice, big and imposing, came from deeper inside the station and turned them around as though it were Corporal Letchworth’s hand. Constable Phillips, who had grown taller by some means to shout his command at the twins, was subsiding back onto his stool, pen still in hand. Corporal Letchworth was walking out of the darkened interior of the station where the offices — and the cells — were located. Jackson felt a flutter of relief. For just a moment. Because behind Corpie was Poppa. Whose eyes flickered with warmth as he saw his children. Then shut down cold like a door slammed.

  “That is what they teach you at police college, bwoy?” Corporal Letchworth’s voice was a knife. “To arrest pickney?”

  “Them diss me, sir.” He was glaring at the twins as he spoke.

  They were looking neither at the constable nor at Corpie but at Poppa’s face. And he was watching them. There were no questions in his eyes, just the accusation: You disobeyed me.

  “How them diss you?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me what they name.”

  “You have reason to ask them them name?”

  “They come to make a report about them father.”

  “What the father do? Beat them?” Jackson’s quick glance at Corporal Letchworth told him that his aggressive attitude to the younger policeman was only partly serious.

  “He missing,” Constable Phillips said, still staring at the twins. They had stepped back into the station now.

  “We never say he missing.” Pollyread’s voice was defiant.

  “Hush, child,” Corporal Letchworth said quietly. “Show respect.”

  “We said he come here,” Jackson chimed in, “and that we come to find him.”

  “That is what I am saying,” the young man insisted, “that he missing.”

  “And now he is found,” Corpie intoned like a preacher. “See him here.” He indicated Poppa.

  “That is what we was telling you,” Jackson said.

  “Jackso, be quiet.” Poppa’s voice was quiet but firm. “The constable wasn’t here when I come through to Corporal Letchworth, so he never see me. He just doing his job.”

  In the moment’s quiet that followed Poppa’s rebuke, Jackson felt as though he had been put on a stage with a strong light shining on him. He needed to explain why they were here, and before Poppa asked him. He felt giddy from all the excitement and anxiety of the past hour. Summoning all his strength to hold Poppa’s eyes, Jackson said, “I have something to tell you. Important.”

  “Very important,” Pollyread said.

  “What?” The line of Poppa’s mouth softened. “Something happen at school?” He looked from one to the other.

  “No, Poppa,” Pollyread said quickly.

  Jackson said, “Jammy,” and saw both Poppa and Corporal Letchworth quicken.

  “Jammy?”

  “What ’bout Jammy?”

  Jackson took a deep breath. “He growing drugs.”

  Corpie exploded. “Drugs?”

  “Drugs?” Poppa’s frown returned. His eyes told Jackson that, for all the sense he was making, Jackson might have spoken in French.

  Jackson could only nod.

  Corporal Letchworth took a half step toward Jackson. “Jammy growing ganja?”

  “But is not ganja I see growing up there,” Poppa said. The farmer in him was thinking aloud.

  “If is ganja he growing, you can’t protect him, Mass Gillie.” Corporal Letchworth was sounding official now.

  “Worse than ganja,” Pollyread piped up.

  Poppa looked from one twin to the other, still mystified. “Worse than ganja?”

  “Coca,” said Jackson.

  The three adults bounced puzzled glances off one another, and then all looked intently at him.

  “Like cocoa tea?” Corpie asked. He sounded like his son, Dylan, in class. “That kind of cocoa?”

  “Chocolate?” Constable Phillips asked.

  “No,” said Pollyread in her teacher voice. “To make cocaine.”

  * * *

  The adults looked at her as if she was crazy, especially Poppa.

  “Cocaine?” Corporal Letchworth’s mouth opened in disbelief. “Here?”

  “But you don’t grow cocaine,” Poppa said, his words overlapping the corporal’s.

  “I never know you can make cocaine from cocoa,” Constable Philips said, his eyes widening in amazement. “Blow-wow.”

  “C-O-C-A,” Pollyread spelled it out, trying to keep a straight face. It was a lovely feeling, knowing something important that adults, even Poppa, didn’t.

  “Like Coca-Cola that you drink?” Constable Phillips was even more confused.

  “No,” said Pollyread. “It spell same way. But Jammy not
growing Coca-Cola.” At the image of cans and bottles growing out of the ground, Pollyread couldn’t help but smile broadly, which didn’t please the young policeman.

  Beside her, Jackson wrestled with his schoolbag a moment and produced the piece of bush that had started the whole confusion. “See it here.” He held it up like a trophy.

  Poppa took it from him and examined it closely, the two policemen waiting silently for his verdict. “Yes,” he said, “it look like what I see up there. But how you know is — coca?”

  Like a magician, Jackson pulled the National Geographic magazine out of his bag. He had even marked the pages with one of the coca leaves. Pollyread was impressed.

  The station house was quiet for a moment as Poppa and Corpie stood shoulder to shoulder reading the magazine, which Poppa held. Corporal Letchworth’s breathing grew louder the more he read, and became ragged as his inner agitation grew. Poppa, in contrast, was like a tree beside him.

  “That bwoy!” Corpie flung his arm at the ceiling as though brushing Jammy away. “He gone too far this time.” He was practically shouting. “Cocaine! In this place. I going to —” Corpie stuttered into silence.

  Poppa seemed oblivious of him. Holding the bush up, he was looking directly at Jackson. “How you get this bush?”

  Pollyread held her breath. She wanted to know also, but Poppa’s interest was more than just curiosity.

  But to her surprise, Jackson grinned. “I tief it.” His eyes glinted with pure mischief. Which made Pollyread anxious because she didn’t think Poppa was in the mood for mischief.

  Indeed, he was dead serious as he looked at Jackson. “From who?”

  Jackson tossed his head in the direction of the mountains. Poppa understood immediately and, to Pollyread’s further amazement, smiled.