Is Just a Movie

by Earl Lovelace

pam pam pam paddam pam

  Pam pam pam pam

  that when he hear them is the melody of the hymn that for years had been sounding in the ears of the hill from the church of Mother Olga and Mr. Trim:

  I am a warrior out in the fields,

  and I can sing. And I can shout . . .

  And everybody waiting for the absent sounds to enter the world, to enter life. And his father, hitting each note to establish its presence searching for the sequence of notes that would produce the melody of the song.

  And I can

  And I can

  And I can tell

  And I can tell it tell it tell it,

  And I can tell it

  and I can tell and I can

  I can I can I can,

  the sounds called forth from their slumber, sparkling, clear-eyed into the world:

  And I can tell it

  And I can can can tell it

  And I can tell it

  And I can tell it all

  About . . .

  And everybody waiting for those notes, like a family waiting for a relative they had never seen but would recognize when she came:

  And I can tell it all about

  that Jesus died for me

  When I get over yonder

  In the happy paradise,

  When I get over yonder in the fields.

  And Sonnyboy hear the notes flying out like flocks of birds from the nest of the pan, like a sprinkling of shillings thrown in the air, like a choir of infants reciting a prayer. He hear them again, like a rush of butterflies in a swarming dance, angular and precise like sharpened steel knives, soft like rain falling on a galvanized roof, like dragonflies dipping their tails into the water of a pond, the first steelpan notes in creation. And his mother grip his hand and stand up there, looking on as if this man, his father, was a stranger she was seeing for the first time and he knew, Sonnyboy knew, without a word from her that she wasn’t going to ask his father for the taxi fare to Maraval. After he play that tune, people lift him up off the stone into the air and when they set him down, they put the pan in his hands. And like the congregation was waiting for this occasion, fellars pick up their own drums, some of them bring out pieces of iron, some dustbin covers and anything that could sound, could ring, and they went out on the street and down the hill, everybody following, Sonnyboy and his mother standing there on the same spot; until, with the crowd gone, she hold him round his shoulders and he put a hand round her waist and the two of them set out to walk back home to Zigili Trace, the two of them so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t see Miss Catherine at her window looking down at them in the quiet street, until Miss Catherine called out to his mother, to them, with the gentleness of a blessing, Lystra and her big son, the words remaining long seconds in the air, Sonnyboy hearing them too, huge and gentle, fulling up his head, his heart, his belly: Lystra and her big son. And his mother answering, yes, in that moment hugging him with all her fear and fragility and her wanting and her love, “Yes, me and my big son.”

  And they didn’t good reach home when they hear down the hill the police siren wail and the sound of scuffling and the metallic clang of pans hitting the ground and after a while screams and grunts and the animal panting of men running, and, coming up the hill, a relay of voices shouting the story in the one word: “Police!”

  A little later Sonnyboy’s father came to the house to ask his mother if they were all right. He was barebacked. His head was bandaged with the jersey he had been wearing. He was smiling as he tell them how he get away from the police by pushing the pan under a house and crawling in beside it. He was lucky. Sonnyboy felt his head grow big and his eyes begin to burn. He was waiting to hear the rest of the story. But that was it.

  The day of creation was the day of humiliation. His father was angry, but nobody was outraged. Nobody. Sonnyboy felt his heart drop into his belly. And that was when the words that would pass his lips many times in his lifetime entered his heart, unfurled like a banner, “I not fucking taking that.” Next day he carried them with him as he walked to school with the awkward elegance of a king sailor dancing on a stage by himself alone. Later that day as he discussed with Blackboy, Redman and Ancil and George the events of the night before, he said the words that in repeating he was claiming, “I not fucking taking that,” only to be overheard by the headmaster Mr. Mitchell, who called him up to be punished. Asked to stretch out his hand to receive six lashes from the strap, Sonnyboy put his hands behind his back, shook his head and made his announcement to the astonished schoolmaster that was his declaration to the world, “I not taking fucking that,” and he walked out of the school never to return.

  Two weeks later his mother get the letter that she had been waiting on from her aunt from the States. On a Saturday afternoon she take him and Alvin and walk with them up past the savannah by the Botanic Gardens and the zoo. She buy each of them a snowball and sit down between them, on a bench and read for them the letter that she had just received from her aunt in the States. Her aunt was sending for her. She had to go. She would leave Alvin with her mother and send Sonnyboy to stay with his grandmother in Cascadu.

  Remember the Singing

  Rooplal and the Cascadu Years

  In Cascadu, Sonnyboy would get a work first on the Carabon cocoa estate, where he would do some cutlassing and weeding, addressing his tasks with a sullen labored care, slower than nearly every other worker, but twice as neat, the grass he cut piled in different-sized artistically shaped heaps, the hedges trimmed neat, the tools washed clean after use, his mouth pushed out, his face severe, his manner abrupt, as if he needed a mask of grumpiness to compensate for the extraordinary diligence of his work. He would carry his slow spiteful thoroughness to the variety of odd jobs that fell to him thereafter, as a yard boy at Choy’s grocery, as a helper at Tarzan’s tire shop, as a laborer at the building sites, where he mixed cement and sand under the impatient supervision of his uncle McBurnie who found his thoroughness commendable Yes, but, Jesus, man, at the rate you working you will put me out of business. Sonnyboy happy to leave that job for one in the sawmill where he could take whole day to clean the machinery, tidy up around the building and bag sawdust for sale. Later as he grew in strength and years he would take his ceremonial thoroughness to the grappling of logs, and canting them, mora, crappo and tapana, onto the platform to be cut into boards or scantlings, as dictated by the owner. On a Saturday afternoon he would head for the river that flowed through a lullaby of bamboos, where with the same labored care he would wash the sawdust out his hair, excavate the sawdust out the cup of his ears and from underneath his fingernails, and fresh and clean set out for the Junction with the tiptoeing walk of a king sailor, muscles rippling, his chest outlined in the new jersey he had bought from what remained after he give his grandmother money from his pay, arriving at the corner to stand and watch cars pass and to smoke a cigarette and drink a beer with Gilda and Terry and Dog, and if he still had money left, cross the road and join the fellars gambling under the Health Office building. And when – not if – he lost, return to the consolation of the Junction to listen to Dog talk about the exploits of badjohns from the city, Gilda tell again the story of To Hell and Back and Shane, Gilda demonstrating the action and whistling the soundtrack to Shane, becoming Audie Murphy crawling on his belly through a hail of bullets, or Jack Palance, with the smooth stutter of a footballer taking a penalty kick, getting off his horse in Shane. He would draw closer to the circle of fellars listening to hear Terry, with subdued laughter, his hand over his mouth at the choicest parts, tell of his adventures with the women he had encountered in the hot dimly lit gateways of the city, detailing the time he and Ralphie meet this woman in a gateway and after haggling with her over the price of her company, following her on tiptoe up some rotting stairs into a dingy room on George Street where, with a lighted cigarette burning in her mouth, she lifted her dress and perched herself open-legged on a stool, blowing out smoke leisurely from the cigarette between her lips
while Ralphie did his furious business between her thighs. When it was Terry’s turn and she saw the equipment he was toting, her eyes opened wide and her voice rose in rebuke, “Where you going with that?” And, in a sterner voice, “You not putting that here, you know,” closing her legs, getting off the stool, fixing her dress, I better get out of here, clattering down the steps, grumbling with an intimidating fierceness about their inconsiderateness, their money tucked away in her brassiere.

  With nothing sensational to contribute to the evening’s entertainment – he did not have the gift of retelling movies, and the intimate experience he had with women was almost nil and so not something he wanted to reveal – Sonnyboy found himself telling of the first time his father went on the road with the steelpan he had tuned and was attacked by the police, of his own astonishment and outrage as he watched the people unable or unwilling or afraid to retaliate, establishing that episode as the basis of his own resolve, I not fucking taking that, a declaration that even the fellars recognized as his way of sharpening his determination to stand against humiliation from any agency, be it individual or the state. They didn’t burst out laughing like at Terry’s salacious tales or feel the need to draw imaginary guns from their hips as at the adventures of Shane. They listened somewhat uneasily, sensing that Sonnyboy was waiting for the occasion to prove how ready he was to confront the world and they took note to make sure not to be the ones to give him the provocation they believed he was seeking.

  And he went on growing into his manness, nurturing his resentment at the world, waiting for it to provoke him, ironing and seaming his trousers and stepping out with what would become his trademark neatness, his long sleeves folded at the cuffs, his handkerchief flapping over his back pocket, his hair in a muff, a little face-powder to take the shine off his forehead, making his way to the fêtes in the RC school, daring the girls to refuse to dance with him, waiting for a fella to oppose him and so provide the confrontation he was inviting. But he was lucky, and the only trouble he get in was a few skirmishes with fellars over gambling and a few over girls at a dance, nothing major, until the stupidest thing get him the trouble his grandmother tell him he was all the time looking for.

  One night he and some fellars see this drunk Indian man by the shop, one of them search his pocket and they shared the few dollars found on him. Robbery with violence was the charge. His grandmother couldn’t save him. That was the first time he went to jail, to the prison for youths where he would learn to box, would discover his aptitude for drums and his ability to wring a thrilling delighting power from his favorite percussive instrument, the iron. When he got out two years later, he had this nervousness about him as if he was spoiling for a fight, with a kind of aggressive listening and an ear tuned to pick up any slight, and it would be that keenness of hearing that would get him in the next set of trouble. Some obscenity about his mother. In this one, Marvel had a bottle and he had a knife. Marvel get cut. When he come out of jail, he had added a greater deliberation to his movements and stillness to his stance. He became a fella who although he did not appear to be looking, took note of everything around him. Later, this alertness would grow to become the foundation of a new sense of ease that helped him to control his aggression and banished his nervousness when he began to speak. For this development he had to thank Victor Rooplal, a dougla fella, who the first day he appeared in Cascadu, approached the Junction with a sense of ease, his two empty hands swinging, the pale flabby muscles of his arms displayed in a sleeveless merino, with a tailor’s measuring tape hanging around his neck, and beside him, but not looking at him or speaking, as if they were having a disagreement that they had not resolved, a good-looking, brown-skinned woman, a Spanish, with long black hair, Marissa, a thin noisy battleax of a woman, who could have been at least ten years older than him, carrying in one hand a paper bag with what the town of Cascadu would discover later contained the few clothes she had hurriedly grabbed when she made up her mind to run away with him before the man she was living with came home from work and in the other hand a cage with a young parrot that Rooplal had won some days before in a dice game from a woodsman in Navet, Sonnyboy and the fellars looking out from under the Health Office building where they were playing the gambling game wappie, uncertain of any connection between him and the woman until she stopped, reached into her bosom, took some money out of her brassiere and give it to him without a word and continued walking toward the gas station where it was discovered later a relative lived, while Rooplal crossed the road to the Health Office building, in his hand five single-dollar bills smoothed out and packed together to make them look like a million, fellars seeing him coming, thinking he’s easy pickings made a place for him. He find a place to sit down and begin to call his bets with the careless confidence of a man who know what he doing, and by the time the sun went down that evening he had everybody money in his pocket. Next weekend he would do it again, win-out everybody, leaving fellars to wonder if he was all that lucky or if he had a system of marking cards that nobody could detect. So that after that Saturday the only ones to bet against him were strangers and thirsty, impatient young fellars like Sonnyboy, who initially refused to be intimidated by his apparent skills, but who would in time discover that betting against him was throwing away money.

  Rooplal settled down in Cascadu in a little house not far from the RC school, making a living gambling and ministering to distressed women needing help in matters of love, the steady stream of them going to him for bush baths and love potions, women talking of him in whispers, his notoriety spreading among them as an obeah-man, a seducer, whose magical charms none of their gender could resist, and the young fellars of the town holding him up as their authority on women, politics, gambling and race.

  Rooplal was of mixed blood, African and Indian, this happy convenience making him welcome in each camp, entitling him to shower abuse on members of either group with a coarseness they tolerated from no one else, no side able to accuse him of prejudice since he shared his heritage with both; in his case, the two bloods canceling out each other, as equally potent warring and destructive poisons whose only virtue was to produce an offspring that was acceptable to both and that could be claimed by neither. Under his influence, Sonnyboy told the story again of the incident with his father, but where in earlier recounting he shared the blame between the people and the police, under Rooplal’s prompting, he now put the responsibility almost solely on the people. Rooplal, it turned out, was also a tailor of some reputation, but had to leave his sewing machine behind because of the circumstances in which he ran away from Navet. By judicious management of his funds, Marissa saw that he paid down on a new sewing machine and did her best to encourage him to give up obeah and gambling.

  He worked at tailoring for a little while, but he couldn’t sit still for long in what was his tailor shop while card was playing out in the town, and eventually he spent most of his time gambling and the rest of it dodging men who came looking for him to get the clothes they had paid him to sew. Marissa, who had to bear the brunt of their anger because she was the one they met when they went to his home, now began to appear at the gambling place to call him, with some sternness, to come and complete the work he had accepted down-payment on. She was also not happy with his relationships with the women. She herself had gone to him for help to get her husband to pay her more attention and had ended up leaving the man and running away with him. The less Rooplal listened to her, the more she nagged. She began to reprimand him in public and to do everything in her power to shame him into becoming the man she wanted him to be. They were well matched in the department of stubbornness, he with the ability to ignore her and she with the tremendous power to nag again. She would leave him eventually after years of pulling and tugging, the final straw discovering he and a woman, both of them naked, in a secluded area on the bank of the river, in what he insisted was part of a ritual of healing. That night during an argument with him she burnt herself attempting to lift a pot of boiling water off the f
ire to pour on him. After that, he became very uneasy in her presence, and their relation went further downhill. One day after another quarrel, while he was under the Health Office gambling, she gathered up her belongings and put them in a paper bag to publicly display how little she had profited from being with him, next, she poured kerosene over all the clothes he had in the house, piled them in the middle of a room and left a lighted candle in the midst of the pile so that by the time it burnt itself out and caught the clothes on fire she would be far away. In a rush of spite she opened the cage and let out the parrot that Rooplal had come to treasure since he had fed it hot peppers to make its tongue flexible and had taught it to use obscene language, but the bird flew around the house for a while and then returned and stood on top the cage. In the end she put it back into the cage and took it with her to the taxi-stand where she stood waiting for a taxi and relating to anyone willing to hear all the intimate business that went on between Rooplal and her, while the parrot who answered to the name Cocotte went on cursing in its cracked voice the private parts of everybody’s mother, until a policeman came. He couldn’t do nothing because the woman was not cursing and there was no law under which he could arrest a parrot. And she went on telling to the crowd that had gathered the terms of endearment Rooplal had used to woo her, the darlings, the sugarplum, the ointments with which he would anoint his body, the places on her own that he would kiss, what he would do with his tongue, where on the bed he would place her, her helplessness in the situation because of the powers to charm that he possessed. She was still carrying on when her taxi came. She had just put one foot in the taxi when the onlookers were attracted to the appearance of a stream of white smoke in the air, somewhere in the vicinity of the RC school. Thinking that it might be a fire, people moved toward it to be sure of what was going on. Marissa coolly completed her entry into the vehicle, the driver moving off slowly, to give occupants of the car the opportunity to see if it was indeed a fire and Marissa the occasion to wave cheekily at what was now becoming a blaze, then, speeding away in the direction of Cunaripo.