“Pickney, all you do, don’t move. Them birds stupid, oui? Hold still, it will think you is bush or stick.”
“Chichibud, I frighten.”
“I know, pickney,” he said in that eerily calm voice. “All we could do is wait until the fire catch. That go scare it away.”
Tan-Tan nearly expired on the spot when the mako jumbie peered down low to look round the clearing. Its head was as big as their tent. A hungry, dead-cold eye rolled above its thick, sharp beak. Its snaky giraffe neck was covered in black feathers the length of Tan-Tan’s arm.
It swung its monster head right by her, so close she could feel the breeze as it passed. The sulphur-stench of carnivore breath almost choked her. The mako jumbie looked round the campsite, cocking its head to one side to see better, just as Chichibud had done. Tan-Tan didn’t laugh this time. It would take a step, it would crush them, she should run, hide. She heard her own prayerful whimpering, felt her body readying to flee. “Still, Tan-Tan, root yourself still like the halwa tree, like the lizard you see today. Yes, good pickney.”
She and Chichibud remained frozen for a lifetime, watching the fire slowly get brighter. Her neck ached in its twisted position, her poised foot was cramping.
The fire leapt into flame. Spitting, the mako jumbie pulled its head back up into the treetops and took a step out of the clearing.
“Just two-three second more, little one. You being brave.” The smell of its hot, sticky spittle in her hair was worse than its breath. It stepped over them and shoved between two trees. It was leaving.
Antonio flung himself upright in his sleep and shouted, “Get away! You can’t jail me!”
Quick as death, the mako jumbie turned and struck at Antonio. His scream turned Tan-Tan’s blood to ice water in her veins. It had him by one arm, was yanking him into the air when Chichibud leapt onto it, wrapping his legs round its neck. The mako jumbie dropped Antonio like Chichibud had dropped the killed rat-thing. There was a snapping sound. He screamed again. The bird threw its head from side to side, trying to shake Chichibud off. Tan-Tan ran to her daddy. He was moaning and rocking on the ground, his arm bent back on itself. A white tooth of bone was sticking through the skin, with a red spongy tip. In desperation, Tan-Tan grabbed his shirt collar and tried to pull him away from the battle. The bird screeched, thickening the air with its dead-meat breath. Still howling in pain, Antonio helped Tan-Tan by pushing and pushing his heels against the ground to move himself until the two of them reached a low tree to cower against. Tan-Tan looked up in time to see the mako jumbie scrape its neck against the trunk of the halwa tree, but still Chichibud didn’t drop off. He hauled out his knife from its holster and jooked it right into the mako jumbie’s throat. With a gurgle the bird went silent, but its thrashing became even more destructive. It stepped on the tent, piercing its own foot on the staves. It screeched its agony without vocal chords, a stinking harmattan wind. Chichibud dragged his knife right through the bird’s throat. In the firelight, its blood jetted out blackish in the air, thick and rank so till Tan-Tan nearly vomited when a gout of it, enough to fill a bucket, splashed to the ground nearby, splattering foul drops on her.
The mako jumbie’s legs collapsed under it. Chichibud jumped down quickly just before it hit the ground. Its head landed with a thump. Its rolling eyes were still. The slash in its neck, still pumping blood, gaped a wet black. Then the flow stilled. Chichibud had chopped the bird right to its neck bone.
He put his knife away and started to limp across the clearing, favouring one leg. “Tan-Tan! Antonio! Where allyou?”
“Chichibud, please—Daddy arm break!”
Antonio was moaning and crying with pain. The sound scraped at her ears. The smell of stale rum from him reminded her of nights when he and Ione would fête till dayclean, shouting and singing all through the mayor house.
“He been drinking that bitter liquid allyou does make,” Chichibud said.
His arm was scraped raw. He put a clawed palm on Antonio’s chest. Antonio quieted a little, looking pleadingly up at him. “Tallpeople,” Chichibud said, “I go help you, understand?”
Antonio nodded.
Chichibud went to the ruin of the destroyed tent and brought back a small packet and the water gourd from the wreckage. “Good the calabash ain’t break, we go need the water.” He unwrapped and picked out two-three pieces of dry bark. He put them in Antonio’s mouth. “Chew this. Is for sleeping. It bitter bad.” Antonio chewed, screwing up his face at the taste. He gagged. “No,” Chichibud said. “Don’t spit it out.” The douen stared at Antonio. “You is pure botheration. Without trail debt, I might left you here just so.”
Little-little, Antonio’s two eyes-them closed down. His head rolled onto his chest and the piece of chewed-up bark fell from his mouth. He relaxed into Chichibud’s arms. Chichibud lowered him to the ground.
“Little one, you must help.” He sliced Daddy’s shirt sleeve with his teeth, tore it away from Daddy’s broken arm. Tan-Tan felt woozy, looking at it. “Cradle his head. Hold he jaw back so he could breathe easy.”
Chichibud washed his hands then Antonio’s arm, using his claws to pick out grit and leaf mould from the break. When he was done he shook the calabash. “Nearly empty. Tomorrow we find some water vine. That bark your daddy chew does make you thirsty.”
He found a straight stick for a splint, and ripped the torn shirt sleeve into a bandage. Then he leaned over Antonio’s two broken ends of bone and spat into them.
“You nasty!” Tan-Tan said.
“It will heal faster so. Is so we mouth water stay.” He stretched Antonio’s arm out straight and gently moved the two ends of bone back together. Tan-Tan screwed up her face at the grinding noise. She looked down at her daddy’s face to see if he felt it, but he was sleeping peacefully.
Chichibud said, “Must reach to Junjuh before it start to rotten.”
He bound Antonio’s arm tightly.
“He go get better, Chichibud?”
“He go sleep quiet. The doctor in Junjuh go make he better.” He held Antonio’s head. “Take his feet.”
They were heavy, but she could do it. They carried Antonio back to the wreckage of the tent. They passed the stiffening corpse of the mako jumbie on the way. The scent of its blood was sweet and sickly, like rotten frangipani flowers. They laid Antonio down. Chichibud burrowed into the mess that had been the tent and surfaced with the yellow cloth.
“Lie beside he and keep he warm.” He covered them both. “Sleep now.”
She sat up, throwing the cloth off in the same moment. “You going and leave we?”
“No. I watching the fire. And it have fresh meat lying out there. I guarding it.” Chichibud laughed shu-shu. “Too besides, you musn’t waste the gifts Bush Poopa does send you. I go smoke the mako jumbie meat over the fire tonight; as much as you and me could carry. And I taking the feathers, for my wife to make a hat to keep the sun off she face. Everybody go know what a brave husband she have.” He made sure that Tan-Tan was comfortable beside her daddy, then covered them both with the fabric that had been their tent. Tan-Tan could hear him twittering and chirping as he tended to the bird.
They were safe. She closed her eyes.
• • •
“Tan-Tan! Tan-Tan! Wake up, nuh?” Antonio was cotched up on his good arm.
Tan-Tan sat up and blinked her eyes in the pink morning light. Daddy’s face was grey and haggard-looking. His eyes were red and bleary. But he was smiling.
“You doing good, doux-doux?” he asked. She nodded.
“Tell me that I only had a bad dream last night, nuh? Tell me that I ain’t see a bird big so like a mountain, and it ain’t try to pull off my arm.”
Tan-Tan giggled. Antonio made to sit up all the way, but he cried out and sank back down to the ground.
“It paining you, Daddy?”
“Yes, girl. It paining too bad.”
“I go get Chichibud.”
She scrambled out from under the canvas. The warm p
ink morning light made the whole forest glow. It had some things like big butterflies dancing in the air, gold and green wings flashing. They were tearing leaves from the bushes with their hands and eating them. A small something was working up inside the ground just in front of her. A head and body popped out of the little mound of soil. It was dark red and furry, with an intelligent face like a mongoose’s. It saw her, wheeped in alarm and jumped back into its hole. What came after five? Yes, six. She always forgot. The mongoose thing had had more legs than six, but it had gone before she could count them all.
Small busy beast noises came from the halwa tree; chucking and chuckling sounds. The air smelt better to her than it had the day before. The glowing light on everything made it hard to focus. Her head hurt a little from it. She squinted and looked round. There was Chichibud sitting by the fire, slicing at something with his knife and eating the strips he cut off.
The mako jumbie legs-them were jooking out of the bush, where Chichibud must have dragged its carcass. The branches over the spot were shaking and sometimes there was a growling and a scrabbling. Tan-Tan imagined animals tearing at the body. She would make sure to stay far away from the trembling branches. She wondered what Mummy was doing this morning, if she was getting ready yet to come and join them. This place ain’t go suit Mummy so good, oui; with no Nursie and no seamstress and no eshu, and all kind of wild animal only looking to make a meal on your bones.
“Father Tree shade you, little one.” Chichibud skinned his snout back in a smile. “You sleep good?”
“Yes.” Yesterday his snarly, snouty grin would have frightened her, but she was coming to like how his face looked.
Chichibud had used branches to rig a net of vine over the fire. He was smoking strips of mako jumbie meat in it. It smelt nice. But he had the mako jumbie head in the net smoking too, with its beak cut off, ugly as the devil he own self. The beak halves stood nearby, like a canoe that had been sliced in half.
“Why you cooking the head?”
Shu-shu-shu. “Not cooking; drying. I go jam it on a stake and stand the stake up right here-so in this bush, so anybody who pass by going to know that a fine hunter win a battle here. Beak coming home with me to decorate my entranceway.” His long tongue flicked out, licked his snout, the corner of one eye; slid back into his mouth. He held out a piece of gristle for her. “Here; piece of the mako jumbie tongue. The sweetest part to eat.”
It had bumps on it like on her own tongue, but big. And it was dark blue. Her gorge rose. “No.” Then she remembered her manners. “No, thank you, Chichibud.” Oh, but she’d come to talk to him for a reason: “Daddy arm paining he. Come and fix it, nuh?”
“Yes. I have some hard words for he too. We nearly all dead because of he.”
Chichibud stood. From beside him he picked up Daddy’s empty rum flask. He’d found the lid, transferred the water from his calabash into the bottle. He saw Tan-Tan looking at him. “Precious thing this your daddy cast away. I take it as payment for my trouble.”
The arm he had scraped the night before was all over scabs now. Tan-Tan wondered if he had spit on it the way he had spit on Daddy’s broken bone. He began to limp towards where Daddy was lying.
“Chichibud, your leg hurt?”
He didn’t answer. When he reached Antonio he stood by his head, making Antonio scrunch his eyes to look up at him in the sunlight.
“Tallpeople, you know what we does do to people who break trail debt?” Antonio said nothing.
“We does break they two . . . arms and leave them out in the bush.”
Tan-Tan’s skin prickled. Chichibud would do that? Hurt Daddy and leave him like that? It was her fault. She shouldn’t have made a noise when the grit fly bit; she should have just gone outside and lit the fire back her own self. Then Daddy wouldn’t be in trouble.
Chichibud ask Antonio, “What I must do with you? Eh?”
“You ain’t go do nothing with me. You go keep me alive so I could look after my little girl.”
Chichibud skinned up one side of his snout. That looked to Tan-Tan like a growl, not a laugh. Is so mad dog does do before they jump you. Tan-Tan went and stood close to Daddy.
“Mister,” Chichibud said, “best I leave you for Bush Poopa to take in truth. She go survive better without you.”
“No!” Tan-Tan leapt into Daddy’s arms. He cried out in pain. Horrified at what she’d done, Tan-Tan jumped up again. Antonio glared at the douen.
Chichibud jerked his snout up into the air two-three times, like a he-lizard throwing a challenge. His ruff started to swell out. Then he stopped.
“No. I liard. I not going to hurt you. Is just vex I vex.”
Antonio’s face was serious. “Look, you right. I do a stupid thing last night. I sorry. I make a long, long journey to this strange place, and it sitting heavy on my heart that I never going to see home again.”
His tone of voice was familiar. It was the same one he used to use on the narrowcasts back home come election time. Mummy called it “speechifying.” Antonio hung his head, looking shame. Tan-Tan felt bad. She was so much trouble.
“We could reach Junjuh today,” Chichibud said, “if you mind everything I tell you.”
“Yes. I go do that.”
Antonio made as if to get up, but he sucked air and sat back down. “Tan-Tan say maybe you have something for pain. Is true?”
“Same bitter bark from last night. I could only give you little piece. You chew too much, you go fall asleep. You go be thirsty too, after chewing it last night. First thing, we go find some water vine.”
• • •
By the time the shadows were getting long again, Tan-Tan was weary so till she thought she would drop. They had had to move slowly because walking jogged Antonio’s arm badly. He came close to fainting away a few times. Chichibud was limping heavily on his injured leg, but even so, he had a net vine sling at his back with the smoked mako jumbie meat, and was carrying the dead bird’s beak halves stacked inside each other and overturned on his head. He’d made a second sling in which Tan-Tan was carrying more smoked bird.
“For the way you was brave,” he’d said. “Food to share with your daddy until he could hunt for the both of you.” It was heavy. He’d had to remind her a few times not to drag it on the ground.
Junjuh village snuck up on Tan-Tan like a mongoose; one minute, the three of them were beating their way through bush, then the bush got less dense, fewer trees, more shrubs. Next minute they turned a corner to see cleared earth.
Two men were standing round a low round wall made of stone. It had a roller handle above it. A rope wound round the handle and extended down inside the wall. The wall had a thatch roof. One of the men, the big, brawny one, was winding the handle. So he turned so the handle creaked. Both men were chanting:
Oh, the donkey want water,
Hold him, Joe!
As Tan-Tan and Daddy and Chichibud approached, the men wrestled a dripping bucket up at the end of the rope. The bucket was strange, made of pieces of wood with iron bands round them. “Daddy, what they doing?” Tan-Tan whispered. By now she knew it was no point asking eshu. He’d gone and left her.
“I think is a well that, doux-doux,” Antonio replied tiredly. “For getting water out of the ground.”
Out of the ground? Why not from the tap in their house? One man picked up a large calabash, one of two round-bottomed gourd containers that had been sitting in twisted rings of cloth on the ground. He put the cloth on his head then sat the calabash in the ring. The other man carefully poured water from the bucket into the calabash. He gave his friend the bucket to hold. His friend wove his head a little from side to side to counter the sloshing of the water. The second man arranged his own calabash on his head then went down on one knee so his friend could fill it. He began to stand with the full calabash of water. He would spill it!
But no, he made it safely to both feet. The men rested the bucket on the lip of the well then, steadying their calabashes with one hand, they turn
ed and started walking down the path. Their hips and heads swayed like those of Bharata Natyam dancers as they balanced the shifting water. Tan-Tan laughed with glee to see it.
They stopped at the sound and turned, slowly, their heads sliding from side to side. One of them grinned. “Eh Chichibud, ain’t see you for a while. I bet you been up to mischief, ain’t, boy? And is who that with you? Like you mash them up bad, oui!” Tan-Tan frowned, confused. The man spoke to Chichibud the way adults spoke to her.
Chichibud said, “Evening, Master One-Eye, Master Claude. These two drop out the half-way tree.”
Master? Only machines were supposed to give anybody rank like that. The two men beckoned them over. Daddy drew himself up tall as he limped up to them. “Good evening, Compères,” he said in his official voice. “I name Antonio, and this is my daughter, Tan-Tan.”
One of the men had an eye cloudy in its socket like guinèpe seed. He nodded at Antonio. “One-Eye, me. This is my partner, Claude.” Claude said nothing, just spread his two feet-them wide for balance and stood there looking at them. He had a truncheon tucked into his waistband. One-Eye clapped Chichibud hard on his back. The douen man stumbled, favouring his injured leg. “Chichibud, you thieving little bastard, you!” One-Eye said. “I bet you you make these two give you something before you bring them here.”
Chichibud cast his eyes down at his feet and mumbled, “Is so trade does go. If people ain’t share their talents and gifts with each other, the world go fall apart.”
One-Eye laughed and turned to Antonio. “Superstitious. Is so douen people stay.”
“Boss,” the douen say to One-Eye, “this man need the doctor bad.”
Tan-Tan scolded, “He not your boss, Chichibud.” She repeated her lesson exactly as Nanny had sung it to them in crêche: “Shipmates all have the same status. Nobody higher than a next somebody. You must call he ‘Compère,’” she explained to the douen.
Midnight Robber Page 12
