Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

  “Your people tell me story. Where you come from, you could hire people to carry you where you going. You could go fast in magic carriage with nobody to pull it. Here, tallpeople have only your own two feet to carry you. By myself I get to Junjuh in one day. With new exiles, longer. Allyou making I move slow. Not reaching tonight. Tomorrow morning. After we sleep.”

  “And so is what? Where we going to stay?”

  “Right here. I go show you how to make the bush your home for the night.”

  “And suppose it rain?” Antonio challenged him.

  “It ain’t go rain. I woulda smell it coming. We looking for a clearing with a tree spreading wide over it.”

  A few more minutes’ walk. The douen passed one tree by; it had too many beasts living in its trunk. Then another; it would drop strange, wriggling fruit on their heads while they tried to sleep. Finally they came upon two trees growing close together. Chichibud pointed to lumpy brown growths in the branches of one tree. “Halwa fruit. Dinner.” The other tree was broad-trunked with fire-red leaves. It had thick spreading branches, the shade of which made a clear space in the bush beneath them. “This one good. Let we make camp,” Chichibud told them. He led them under its branches.

  The sun was setting. The dying light reflected off the tree’s leaves and made Tan-Tan’s eyes ache, so she looked down. Blood-red shadows were darkening and lengthening along the ground. She could hear things rustling in the gloom where they couldn’t see. She was frightened. She shook her head to clear its ringing.

  Antonio let Tan-Tan down. The douen told her, “Pickney, pick up as much dry stick as you could find for the fire. Don’t go far. Stay around these two trees.”

  Chichibud went to the halwa tree and shinnied up its trunk. Tan-Tan could hear him moving through the branches.

  “Down below! Catch!”

  Daddy went and stood below the tree, hands stretched out. Chichibud threw down two heavy round fruits, big as Daddy’s head. Daddy caught them, making a small explosion of air from his lips as he did. No sound came from the douen for a few minutes. Then from another part of the foliage came a wap! like something hitting against the tree trunk. He let something else drop into Daddy’s hands, something big so like the halwa fruit, but floppy and flabby. Daddy looked good at the hairy body he was holding, cried out, “Oh, God!” and dropped it on the ground. In the incarnadine evening light the blood covering his hands looked black. Tan-Tan shuddered. Antonio was only whimpering, “Oh, God! Oh, God, what a place!” and wiping the blood off on his pants.

  Chichibud sprang down from the tree, licking his hands. He peered at Tan-Tan and then at Antonio. “New tallpeople always ’fraid the dead.” He laughed shu-shu-shu. “Is meat for dinner.”

  Antonio flew at the little douen man, yanked him into the air by the throat, and gave him one good shake. “Jokey story done right now,” Antonio said. “What you do that for?” Chichibud snapped at Antonio’s face and reached for his knife. Antonio let him go.

  The douen’s throat was smeared with blood from Antonio’s hands. He wiped it off and sucked it from his palm. His tongue was skinny like a whip. “In the bush, you catch food when you see it. Manicou, allyou call that beast. Allyou bring it here.”

  The large rodent lying on the ground had a naked tail. Tan-Tan remembered the tail she’d hallucinated growing and losing again in the shift pod. The thing on the ground looked fat and healthy. Its head was all mashed up. “What happen to it?”

  “I kill he,” Chichibud replied. “Grab he quick by the tail and swing he head against the tree trunk. You hear when it hit?”

  “Yes.” She imagined the head splitting apart like a dropped watermelon. She felt ill.

  “Every noise you hear in the bush mean something. Bush Poopa don’t like ignorance.”

  “Bush Poopa?”

  “Father Bush, master of the forest.”

  Antonio had had enough of the lesson. “We setting up this camp, or what?” He helped Tan-Tan find twigs for the fire. They made a big pile on the ground in the clearing, beside the halwa fruit and the rat-thing. Antonio crouched down right there, just watching Chichibud. Tan-Tan knotted Chichibud’s wife’s cloth around her shoulders. She picked up one of the heavy halwa fruit and pressed her nose against it. The smell made her mouth water.

  Chichibud had come back into the clearing with three sturdy staves, fresh cut. He put them beside the trunk of the red-leaved tree and spread a cloth from his pouch on the ground. He jammed the staves into the ground round the groundsheet. They met and crossed in the air like steepled fingers. Chichibud pulled out one more cloth and shook it out. It was much larger than the others. How had it fit inside that little pouch? Like it was magic too, yes? Tan-Tan wondered what else he could have in there. He threw the cloth over the staves. It stretched down to the ground. He shook some pegs out of the endless pouch, looked round himself, saw Antonio watching at him. “Find a rock to pound these pegs in with.”

  Sullenly Antonio stood up and cast round until he’d found a good rockstone. “Here.”

  Chichibud pounded the pegs through the stretched cloth, solidly into the ground. They had a tent. Chichibud straightened up and stretched his back, just like any man.

  “If you ever sleep out in the bush like this by yourself, check the tree first. Any hole in the trunk, look for a next tree. Might have poison snake or ground puppy living in there.”

  Chichibud showed them how to start a fire with three sticks for kindling and a piece of vine for friction. By the time the fire had caught it was full dark. The dancing flames were pinkish and the burning wood had a slight smell of old socks, but Tan-Tan felt cheered by the circle of flickering light the fire threw. She moved nearer, rinsed her chilled hands in the heat flowing from the fire. The itching in her ears eased if she turned them to the warmth, one side of her head, then the other. One ear was more itchy.

  Chichibud built a wooden spit over the fire. He skinned and gutted the rat-thing. Tan-Tan’s stomach writhed at the sight of the raw, split-open rat, but she couldn’t look away. This was a thing she’d not seen before, how the meat that fed her was a living being one minute and then violently dead. The smell of it was personal, inescapable, like the scent that rose in the steam from her own self when she stepped into a hot bath. They had broken open the animal’s secret body just to eat it.

  Chichibud chopped off their supper’s head. He smeared the empty body cavity with herbs from his pouch, then with a quick motion jooked the spit through it. Tan-Tan started at the wet ripping sound. Chichibud put the meat above the fire to cook.

  “Here, Tan-Tan. Turn the handle slow, cook it even all around.”

  He wrapped up the guts and the head in the creature’s skin. “I soon come back,” he told them. “Taking this far away so other beasts don’t smell it and come after we.”

  He disappeared into the bush, rustling branches as he went.

  “Nasty little leggobeast goat man,” Antonio muttered. “You all right, doux-doux?”

  “I don’t like the dark. My ears itching me. Let we go back home nuh, Daddy?”

  “No way back home, sweetness. The shift pod gone. Here go have to be home now.”

  Tan-Tan sniffled and jerked the meat round and round on its spit.

  “I here,” Antonio said. “I go look after you. And I won’t make the goat man hurt you, neither.”

  Tan-Tan was more ’fraid ground puppy than Chichibud, but she didn’t say so. Antonio sighed and pulled out his flask of rum. He took a swig.

  Chichibud returned just as the browning, smoking meat had begun to smell like food. He praised Tan-Tan for turning the spit so diligently, then took the halwa fruit-them and broke them open. Tan-Tan’s belly grumbled at the smell. It favoured coconut, vanilla and nutmeg. Same way so the kitchen back home smelled when Cookie was making gizada pastry with shaved coconut and brown sugar.

  “It best raw, this meat,” Chichibud told her, “but oonuh prefer it burned by fire.”

  He hauled out thr
ee flat stones from his pouch and put them on top of some of the live coals close to the outside of the fire. “Far away from the meat, yes? So the meat juice wouldn’t splatter?” He balanced the fruit on the stones. In the firelight, Tan-Tan could make out the brown fleshy inside of the fruit halves. Little-little, the sweet gizada fragrance got stronger. It floated in and round the rich scent of the cooking meat till Tan-Tan could feel the hunger-water springing in her mouth. She feel to just rip off a piece of manicou flesh and stuff it down, half-cooked just so. She reached towards the spit, but Chichibud gently took her fingers. Antonio stood up and came over to them. “It hot,” said Chichibud. “You a-go burn your fingers and make me break trail debt.” From his pouch he took a parcel wrapped in parchment paper and unwrapped it. It had a square of something dry and brown inside. With his knife, Chichibud cut off strips for the three of them. He distributed them then bit into his own. When Antonio saw Chichibud eating, he started to chew on his own piece one time. Chichibud said, “Is dry tree frog meat.” Antonio cursed and spat the jerky out of his mouth. He tossed the rest into the bush. Chichibud just watched him.

  Tan-Tan bit into the dried meat. It was salty and chewy. She tore off a piece with her teeth. It tasted good.

  A little time more, and Chichibud told them that the meat was cooked. He set out three broad halwa leaves around the fire as plates. He pulled out a little brown cloth from his endless pouch and used it to juggle the hot fruit halves onto the leaves. Then with his knife he sliced off three slabs of rat-thing and put them beside the fruit.

  “Pickney, everything hot. Go slow until it cool. Use your fingers to scrape out the fruit. Don’t swallow the seeds, you might choke.” He put two long fingers into his halwa fruit and pulled out a shiny purple seed, round like a pebble.

  “I go be careful, Chichibud.” Tan-Tan scooped out a piece of fruit, pulled out the seed and put it on her leaf plate. She put the fruit in her mouth. It come in sweet and sticky and hot. The lovely gizada taste slid warmly down her throat. The meat was good too, moist and tender, and the spice Chichibud had rubbed on it tasted like big-leaf thyme. Tan-Tan began to feel better.

  Antonio picked up his halwa fruit half with both hands and dropped it again, blowing on his burnt hands. “Motherass!”

  Chichibud laughed his shu-shu laughter. Antonio glared at him and started to dig out pieces of fruit, blowing on his fingers and spitting the seeds out everywhere.

  “Don’t spit them into the fire,” Chichibud warned. But Antonio just cut his eye in contempt and shot one seed from his mouth prraps! into the middle of the flames-them.

  “Back! Behind the tree!” Chichibud grabbed Tan-Tan’s arm and they both scrambled quick to get behind the trunk of the tree, Chichibud hopping on his backwards legs like a kangaroo. But Antonio took his cool time, doing a swaggerboy walk towards them. “What stupidness this is now?” he grumbled.

  With a gunshot noise, a little ball of fire exploded from the flames. Only because the sound made Antonio duck that the seed didn’t lash him in the head. It landed on top of the tent. By its glow Tan-Tan could see the tent fabric smouldering. With shrill, birdlike sounds, Chichibud rushed over and quickly flicked the burning ember onto the ground. His ruff was puffed out full. Tan-Tan stared at it, fascinated. Chichibud growled at Antonio, who shrank back, muttering sullenly, “All right, all right! Don’t give me no blasted fatigue. How I was to know the damned thing would explode?”

  “I tell you not to spit it in the fire. I know this bush, not you. You ignorant, you is bush-baby self. If you not going to listen when I talk, I leave you right here.”

  Antonio made a loud, impatient steuups behind his teeth. He went back to the fire and continued eating his share of the meal. Chichibud inspected the tent. “Just a little hole,” he said to Tan-Tan. “I can mend it.” His ruff had deflated again. Tan-Tan ran her fingers over the cloth and was surprised at how thin and light it felt.

  They went back to their dinner. Antonio looked up as they approached. “All right,” he said to Chichibud. “It have anything else we have to know to pass the night in this motherass bush behind God back?”

  “Don’t let the fire go out,” Chichibud replied. “Light will frighten away the mako jumbie and the ground puppy, and grit fly like the flame. Fly into it instead of into we eyes. You and me going to sleep in shift.”

  “All right,” Antonio said. He looked unhappy.

  “You catch the first sleep,” Chichibud told him. “Little bit, I wake you up.”

  Tan-Tan and Antonio curled up under their shelter, sharing the cloth Chichibud had lent to Tan-Tan. The firelight danced against the sides of the tent.

  “Daddy? How Mummy go find we here? How she go know which Toussaint we come to?”

  But Antonio was already snoring. Truth to tell, Tan-Tan was missing Nursie and eshu just as much as Ione. All now so, if she was going to bed back home, she and eshu would have just finished singing a song; “Jane and Louisa” maybe, or “Little Sally Water.” Nursie would have had Tan-Tan pick a nightie from her dresser drawer to put on. Tan-Tan could almost smell the bunch of sweet dried khus-khus grass that Nursie kept inside the drawer to freshen her clothing.

  She would pick the yellow nightie. Then Nursie would have hot eggnog sent from the kitchen for both of them, with nutmeg in it to cool their blood. The smell would spice the air, not like in this strange red land where the air smelled like sulphur matches all the time.

  Tan-Tan swallowed, pretending she could taste the hot drink. Swallowing cleared her ears a little. Now Nursie was combing out Tan-Tan’s thick black hair. She was plaiting it into two so it wouldn’t knot up at night. Nursie and eshu was singing “Las Solas Market” for her. When the song finished, Nursie kissed her goodnight. Tan-Tan was snuggling down inside the blankets. Eshu wished her good dreams and outed the light.

  The wetness on Tan-Tan’s face felt hot, then cool against her skin. She snuffled, trying not to wake Antonio. She clutched her side of the yellow blanket round herself and finally managed to fall asleep.

  It felt like she had barely locked her eyelids shut when Chichibud was standing outside the tent, shouting, “Tallpeople man! Your turn to watch the fire.”

  “Why the rass you can’t use my name, eh?”

  “You tell it to me yet?”

  “Oh. Antonio.”

  “Time to watch the fire, Antonio.”

  “I coming, I coming.”

  In her half sleep, Tan-Tan felt Daddy move away from her and crawl out from under the tent. Chichibud crawled in. She heard him move to the opposite side of the tent. He had a strange, spicy-sharp smell; not human, but not unpleasant.

  “Chichibud, you want some blanket?”

  “You use it, child. The night warm for my blood.”

  His voice faded away. She was singing with Nursie: “Come we go down Las Solas, for go buy banana,” but when it came to the chorus, Nursie’s voice turned into a low, raspy buzz. Then Nursie bit her beside her eye with one tooth, sharp like needle. Tan-Tan woke up swiping at a stinging spot in the outside corner of her eye. A small, soft body popped under her fingers, leaving a granular smear. Grit fly? Tan-Tan scrubbed at her eyes, wondering if grit flies looked as nasty as they felt. It was pitch black in the tent. “Chichibud?”

  From out of the dark Chichibud said, “The fire.” She heard a whap! like a hand against flesh, the sound of Chichibud getting to his feet. He twittered something, then:

  “Your foolish daddy let the fire go out, child. Stay here so. Don’t come out.”

  She heard him crawling out, then silence. What was happening? She stuck her head under the tent flap to look out. The only light was the blue-red glow of the coals from the dying fire. If she squinted she could just see Daddy asleep beside them. Chichibud must have been looking in the blackness for sticks and dry leaves to stoke up the fire. He was moving quietly, except for the occasional thump or crackle.

  The fire ebbed a little more. Suddenly Tan-Tan had to be near her father’s war
mth. She crawled on hands and knees to Antonio, stopping on her way to swat at three more grit flies. She was at his side now. The breaths he blew out smelled sweet and thick. There were dark spots moving round his eyes. Grit flies.

  “Daddy. Wake up.”

  Antonio knuckled at one eye; mumbled, “. . . ain’t enough, Ben. Look, just put some more of the paste on the blade, oui?” He flung his arm out and caught Tan-Tan across her chest.

  “Oof.” The blow threw her backwards. She reached behind her to break her fall. She landed with a thump that set her ears to ringing again. Her hand touched the empty rum flask. Then Chichibud was there beside them. He threw some kindling on the coals and fanned them till the fire started to come back.

  “Pickney,” he whispered, “get back in the tent. Dangerous out here in the dark. I go look after this tallpeople man.”

  Tan-Tan was almost at the tent when Chichibud said with a low, urgent calm, “Child. Don’t move.” Tan-Tan looked back. Chichibud was holding himself in an alert quiet, staring up into the sky. Something rustled in the trees far, far above them. It sounded big.

  “Me say don’t move, Tan-Tan. Not a muscle. Don’t even turn your head again. Stay just how you is. A mako jumbie just come out of the bush.”

  “What that?” Tan-Tan’s voice was quavering out of control.

  “Sshh. Talk soft. A bird, tall like this tree here. Stay still like the dead, pickney. It don’t hear so good, but it eyes sharp.”

  Tan-Tan froze as she was, with one foot pointed in front of her and her head twisted back to look at Chichibud. Antonio was still unconscious on the ground beside him. From her blind side Tan-Tan heard the crash of twigs breaking. She shook with the effort not to turn her head to the sound. Snot filled up her nose. She panted shallowly through her mouth, tasting the salt tears that ran into it.

  An enormous clawed foot landed bap! in her line of sight. Tan-Tan made a small noise in her throat. It looked like a chicken foot, but it was the same length as Tan-Tan’s whole body. She turned her eyes up to follow the leg of the mako jumbie, long as a bamboo stem, but in the darkness she couldn’t see the body way up in the trees. It was high like a house. The next foot slammed down beside the first. Tremble, she just a-tremble.