Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

  “What a ugly, obzocky-looking thing! It come in more like a mountain than a tree. Michael, you sure is here the bitch went to?”

  “Is here the trail dead out,” Michael responded. “Best we check it out. Rahtid! You ever see a tree big so?”

  “What you think Tan-Tan would be doing here?” Janisette looked round, her mouth pursed up in disdain. She cupped her hand to her mouth and sang sweetly out over the bush, “Tan-Tan! You out here? You all right? Come, doux-doux; everything forgive. Mamee looking for you!”

  Gladys said, “You know, you is a two-faced woman. Trying to mamaguy the pickney with sweet words.”

  “Is no pickney that, is the bitch that killed my husband.”

  “Nobody know that for sure.”

  Janisette spat over the side of the car. “So is who do it, then?”

  “Maybe Antonio get into a fight with one of Tan-Tan man, oui? He had a unhealthy way to be jealous of he own pickney.”

  “Hush your mouth!”

  “No, Compère. Making this car for you was a good challenge, we learn plenty, but me fatigued with this nonsense now. Me and Michael want to go home.”

  Michael smiled at Gladys, shrugged apologetically in Janisette’s direction.

  Scowling, Janisette pointed back the way they’d come.

  “You want to leave, get out and go then, nuh?”

  “Like you forget who construct this vehicle? We ain’t see no payment yet.”

  Janisette kissed her teeth, looked away.

  But Gladys wasn’t done. “Maybe you bring we on this chase for nothing. That woman-pickney pants too hot for she own damn good, but I tell you, coulda be anybody do for Antonio. Anybody he cheat or insult. Cuffee, for instance. Chichibud. The rest of allyou does trust douen people too easy.”

  “And you does run off your blasted mouth too easy. Shit flowing out of it like out of duck behind.”

  “Oonuh don’t fight, nuh?” Michael pleaded with them. “It ain’t go help nothing.”

  Tan-Tan knew what she had to do. This was about her, she couldn’t make the douens get mixed up in it. She made to start down the nearest trunk, but Chichibud held her back.

  Michael got out of the car. He had to vault over the side; look like they hadn’t had time to make doors. He walked over to a trunk of the daddy tree. Is like tout monde in the daddy tree turned to stone. You couldn’t even self hear breath whisper from anybody’s lungs. Michael squinted up through darkness, cocking his head to one side. He laid a hand on the buttress root, made an enquiring noise. “Gladys, bring a lantern for me there.”

  By lantern light, the scuff marks on the buttress root were clear. “You see? Like if somebody went up there so.” He shone the lantern as high as he could, but it didn’t reach them that were hiding.

  He gave Gladys the lantern and jumped up onto the root. “Careful, dumpling,” she said.

  “Nah, is no problem; like walking up a ramp.” He reached the trunk, touched it. “Koo ya! It have handholds here so.”

  Quiet-quiet, the douen women started guiding pickneys and half-formed adolescents up onto their backs. Some of the little ones piped up to know what was going on.

  “You hear that?” Janisette asked.

  “Yes,” Michael replied. “Like birds chirping.” He was climbing the tree now. Those women with pickneys started flitting away under cover of the shade. The rest stayed with the men.

  Michael was well on his way to the first branch. Too close for anybody else to get away. Tan-Tan crouched on the branch next to Chichibud, praying to any god she could think of that Michael wouldn’t come no closer. She heard a soft swips from beside her. Chichibud had pulled his knife out of his belt. The other men did the same. The hinte-them had their beaks and claws to jab and tear. Oh, Nanny; like more blood going to get shed for me.

  Michael squinted up into the darkness of the daddy tree leaves. Janisette called out:

  “You see anything?”

  “Not too good,” he shouted back, frowning. Then his face went clear with astonishment. “But eh-eh! If you only see the size of the wasp nests it have up here, Gladys! Whatever live in there have to be almost as big as me!”

  “Nanny save we!” Gladys exclaimed. “You must careful, you hear, doux-doux? I don’t think you should go up any further. Suppose one of them sting you?”

  “Only a little more, sweetness. I go mind myself.”

  He took two more steps up.

  With a screech, a hinte launched herself right at his chest. Gladys screamed. Michael and the hinte plummeted to the ground, the hinte flapping her shrunken wings furiously. Michael landed with a thump. The hinte covering him was Taya, Benta’s sister. “Taya!” shouted Kret. Taya held Michael down with one clawed foot, pecked viciously at his eyes. Michael was only screaming, holding up his arms-them to protect his face. Blood streamed down his forearms.

  Fast as flight, Tan-Tan flung herself down the daddy tree trunk. “Taya! Stop it! Stop!”

  As her foot touched the ground the air round her exploded, a concussion so strong is like somebody had clapped two hands against her ears. She turned towards the noise. Scraps of blood, bone and beak were fluttering in the bush round the daddy tree. Gladys was standing up in the car, still looking through the sights of the rifle she had used to blow Taya to bits.

  “Taya!” Kret hurled himself from the daddy tree to the ground to where Taya’s severed head was lying, the beak still opening and shutting; reflex action as her brain died. Michael was curled up in terror on the ground like an unborn baby. Startled by all the movement, Gladys aimed the rifle first at Kret, then at Tan-Tan. Janisette pulled it out of her hands. “Don’t shoot she. She coming back to Junjuh with we. I want to hear she voice bawling out of the tin box, getting weaker and weaker for days.” Janisette brought her gaze like knives to bear on her stepdaughter Tan-Tan; cutting eyes on Tan-Tan’s person, like if she moved too sudden they would slice her.

  Squatting on his haunches, Kret picked up Taya’s bloody head and mashed it to his chest, cawing Taya’s name the whole time. The severed head’s second eyelids rolled over its eyes. The beak stopped moving. Kret put the head down, gentle, gentle, like putting a baby in her bassinette for the night. In terrible swift silence he rushed across the clearing at Gladys; a deadly shadow brandishing a knife. Calm like slow water, Janisette sighted down the rifle and shot him. The gunclap thundered. More blood. More scraps of bone and tissue flying through the air.

  “No, no, no! No more!” Tan-Tan shouted. Deafened by the sound of the rifle, she couldn’t hear her own words. The acrid smell of gunpowder got up in her nose with the sweety-salt smell of douen blood. A rage came on her, a fire in she belly. She forgot fear, forgot reason. In two-three strides she was on Janisette. She snatched the rifle away and trained it on Janisette. Janisette’s fearsome gaze never wavered. Uncertain, Tan-Tan dipped the nose of the rifle to the ground.

  Her hearing was coming back. Behind her, Chichibud was saying, “You just hold still now, Mister Michael. It have more douen here than you want to tackle with.” Tan-Tan glanced behind her. Michael cowered on the ground, surrounded by the sharp knives and beaks of douens.

  Janisette said to Tan-Tan, “So is here you is. Playing in the trees with the monkeys. Murderess.”

  Sorrow ground down Tan-Tan’s voice like river water does grind rockstone. “You know what he do to me? You know what my father been doing to me for the past seven years? I couldn’t take it no more, Janisette!”

  Janisette clenched her fists and leaned into Tan-Tan’s face: “You think I ain’t know? Slut! You woulda screw anything in sight, including your own father!”

  Shock filled Tan-Tan’s mouth up with bile. She started to shake. Janisette continued, “Is you drive he to it! You know what I had was to live with, knowing my own husband prefer he force-ripe, picky-head daughter to me? Eh?”

  To Tan-Tan, is like she could feel Antonio’s hands on her again, Antonio’s mouth, Antonio inside her, tearing her up. She had to spit so
ur slime from her mouth before she could choke out, “Is not so it go, Janisette! Is not my fault! Daddy hurt me!” All she could think was to erase Janisette’s words, to make sure she couldn’t say them any more. She raised the rifle and aimed point blank at Janisette. The blank look of fright that came over Janisette’s face was pure pleasure to Tan-Tan. With a surge of joy she pulled the trigger, blam! just as Chichibud’s clawed hand forced the rifle down towards the ground. A spray of dirt and leaves blinded Tan-Tan. She went cold with horror at what she’d just done. She let go the rifle into Chichibud’s hands. When her eyes cleared again Janisette was leaning against the side of the car, face grey with shock.

  I just try to kill my stepmother. Is what kind of monster I is any at all?

  “What a stupid-looking thing, only a tube with a handle,” Chichibud said. There was a slight trill to his voice. He wasn’t as calm as he sounded. “Who woulda think it could cause so much pain? What you call this, Tan-Tan?”

  “Is a gun,” she told him absent-mindedly. Suppose Chichibud hadn’t pulled her hand away in time? “Mind you don’t pull the trigger; you could shoot off your own foot.” Gladys was returning to consciousness, struggling to her feet inside the car.

  “And you point it and shoot it . . . so?” Chichibud aimed the gun at Michael where he was sitting.

  Gladys shouted, “Don’t shoot! Please, Mister Douen—don’t shoot my husband!”

  She didn’t recognise Chichibud. She saw him almost every month when he brought goods to trade, and she still couldn’t tell him different from any douen man. But me any different? Tan-Tan’s mind fastened on the thought, rather than dealing on what was in front of her. Sometimes me hard put too to tell he from the rest.

  “I can’t shoot at he? Not even for practice?” Though without human intonation, Chichibud made shift to sound regretful, ironic. “You don’t think when I bring this . . . gun to we ironsmith, I should be able to tell him how it work?”

  “I beg you, mister, I go do anything, only don’t kill he.”

  “And if I had beg allyou same way not to kill my people, what you woulda say?”

  He sighted down the barrel of the gun. Michael looked Chichibud straight in the eye, put his chin in the air, and just waited. Nothing else for him to do, Tan-Tan realised. The douens were in charge of the situation now—Chichibud and she and the rest of them.

  “Chichibud, let them get in the car,” she said. She heard a sharp breath in from Gladys:

  “Rahtid! Is Chichibud that?”

  Tan-Tan watched Michael climb in. Janisette seemed to have recovered from the shock. She stood glaring at Tan-Tan until the other two pulled her into the autocar. Tan-Tan told the hunting party: “Leave these people in peace and go your ways. You don’t have no quarrel with them. As for me, I tell you; I do what I do in self defense.” Liard! You kill he in cold blood! She shook her head a little to dispel the voice. “Leave me in peace, I going to a settlement where Junjuh laws can’t entrap me.”

  Chichibud still had the gun trained on Michael. Michael started up the car. It failed twice, started the third time with noxious poops of black air. With much yanking at the steering wheel he turned it round. Janisette pointed a threatening finger at Tan-Tan. “One day I go find you lying slutting self when it won’t have no leggobushbeasts to protect you,” she promised. “Then I bringing you back to Junjuh to roast like chicken in the box.” They left, the car farting every few metres of the way.

  The douens watched until they were good and gone. Oddly, Tan-Tan wished she could have asked after Melonhead.

  The hinte and some of the adolescents that had fled were starting to return, having left the children safely in the high branches of the daddy tree. Benta’s grief at her sister’s death filled the skies. It tore at Tan-Tan’s heart.

  “I have to leave oonuh and go,” Tan-Tan said to Chichibud.

  “How them know to find you here?” he asked.

  *Don’t make no difference, now them know is where we is,* warbled a douen woman. *Best allyou men had listened to we and never fast up yourself in tallpeople business.*

  Chichibud lowered the gun. He dropped his arms to his sides and said nothing. *Because you help that girl child,* the woman continued, *them will bring more tallpeople back here to hunt we down. Them will fight we with more of them gun and thing. We ain’t go have no peace from tallpeople again!*

  Chichibud said sadly, “How them know, Tan-Tan?” She couldn’t meet his gaze. “Oh, girl child,” he continued, “the time had to come when tallpeople come into the bush to look for we, but I ain’t know was going to be my actions that bring it.”

  “But you could fight!” Tan-Tan told him.

  The hinte replied, *We could fight, yes, but allyou tallpeople mad like hell. I think plenty of we would dead in that fight, and allyou would win.*

  She couldn’t stand it, she couldn’t take it. Everywhere she went she brought trouble, carrying it like a burden on her back.

  From behind Chichibud, the old douen Res growled out something in their language. Chichibud whipped round and chirped out a response. From his movements Tan-Tan recognised that he was amazed at what he’d heard, and he wasn’t the only one. Man and woman, the other douens gathered round Res, screeching and chirruping at him. Res tried to answer back. He couldn’t make himself heard. The douens were cawing and crowing at their elder. The women beat their wings in distress. A couple of the adolescents started to cry, that uhu-uhu sound that Tan-Tan had heard Zake make earlier. Even Abitefa was in the middle of the discussion, clicking her claws together in alarm. Res just held his ground, responded calm-calm.

  Tan-Tan touched Chichibud’s shoulder. “What he saying?”

  “He say we don’t have to make no more tallpeople find we.”

  Hope was like a bird in Tan-Tan’s throat. “How?”

  “We have to destroy we home and move away.”

  “What, your houses?”

  Chichibud didn’t answer, just went and huddled with his family. The argument with Res continued, but in the end they all agreed with him: they would cut down the daddy tree.

  All the rest of that day, everybody stripped their houses and made small packs of the things they would need most, only what they could carry on their backs. Benta’s eyes on Tan-Tan were cold like duppy heart and sad, so sad. Finally, everyone’s goods were packed up inside the foundry for them to pick up once the tree had been chopped down.

  Benta waddled over to Tan-Tan. Tan-Tan looked at her warily, sorrowfully. *Taya gone. We hatch from one shell, and she gone.*

  “Benta, I sorry too bad!”

  *Is not you make the gun, is not you fire the gun. But is your actions bring she to this path, so is good you sorry.* She squatted back on her heels, looked up at the daddy tree. *This work going to take we all night,* she said. *You stay here in the foundry, out from under the shadow of the daddy tree.*

  “What I could do?”

  *Help mind the babies.*

  Which she would have done, if they had let her. The douens had set up the foundry as a nursery for all the pickney-them, with the adolescents and the old people to look after them. But every time Tan-Tan moved towards a child, someone would sweep it out of her reach. Finally a douen man being harried by four pickneys of varying size thrust the youngest one into a startled Tan-Tan’s hands. The baby instinctively wrapped his toes round one of her arms and tangled his fingers in her hair. “I feed he already, he should sleep now. I have to go and help them chop. Somebody else will look after these three. Mind he good.”

  She would mind he like her life itself, she was so grateful to be trusted. She sat down on an anvil to rock the baby. He curled up his free hand into a fist on his chest and started to drop off to sleep one time. He didn’t look as ugly to her as when she had first set eyes on douen pickneys.

  A chopping sound was coming from up high in the daddy tree. Still rocking the baby, she went and stood in the door of the forge. In the dusk, she couldn’t see through the branches of t
he daddy tree, but she could hear. Up at the top of the tree, the douens were hacking away at its trunks. It was a shocking sound. With loud cracking noises, the tops of the tree broke off in rapid succession, letting in the dying light. All the douen women were in the air, circling, circling. Quick-quick, teams of them grabbed branches in their talons, tugged at them until they came away from the tree. The hinte flew away beyond her sight.

  The noise had startled the baby awake. He whined, “Uhu, uhu,” little ratbat face wrinkled up in distress.

  “Shh,” Tan-Tan whispered, rocking him. She sang, “Captain, Captain, put me ashore / I don’t want to go any more.” Then she clamped her mouth shut. Not that song. She stroked the baby’s forehead with a fingertip instead, like she’d seen the douens doing. He calmed down little bit. Tan-Tan stared out at the let-in sky. Benta had told her that the hinte would take the tree piece by piece to the sea and drop it in. She had never seen the sea on New Half-Way Tree, never thought to wonder what its oceans were like. Keeping body and soul together kept tallpeople too busy to think of exploring.

  Another level of daddy tree was taken away. Thick brown sap was welling up out of the chopped-off trunks. It dropped in gouts to the forest floor. The rest of the hinte kept circling, circling.

  The team of douen men with axes climbed down a next level and started chopping again. This level had some douen houses in it; the men just left them there so. Their owners had already abandoned them. Wasp nest houses. Tan-Tan had scorned them when she’d first seen them. Now, she would give anything to be safe back in Benta and Chichibud’s house; anything for the douens not to have to do this thing.

  The men chopped and chopped till they cracked off a next section of the daddy tree. Another team of douen women made off with it, heading seawards. And is so it went, level after level, until all that was left was the big stumps and buttress roots of the daddy tree. It had sticky sap all over the forest floor, and shards of douen houses.