He had also spent the last seventeen nights not in love-making as that sensational scandal sheet, The Cannon, later reported as it sought to pin the blame for the fire on him (National Party Romeo Sets Meeting Ablaze), but walking back and forth and back again a total of eight miles each night between his grandmother’s house where he was staying and the home of the woman he was tracking, four miles to go, four to walk back; so by the time the meeting got under way that evening he was so fatigued that all he wanted to do was go to sleep. However, he continued to hold up the light, not only out of duty but because Aunt Magenta had confided to him that his name was going to be called publicly and the work he was doing on behalf of the party acknowledged by one of the speakers. He had remained attentive to the speeches so as not to miss his name, nervous like if they were going to call him to make a big speech or something, lifting the flambeau higher so that, without anyone noticing, he could check how under his armpit was smelling, wondering if when he get to the podium he should wave with a flap of his hand, open-palmed, as he had seen the PM do, or hold up his two hands like a hero, like a victorious weightlifter at the Olympics, or lift just his right hand with two fingers spread out in the V for Victory sign, like the leader of the Opposition did.
Up to the time the PM got to the podium, none of the speakers had mentioned Sonnyboy’s name; and the only person left with the option of paying tribute to his worthiness was the PM himself. However, as the PM spoke in the wobbly blaze of nearly a dozen flambeaux, of the monumental deeds to be undertaken by his government: the International Monetary Fund to appease, the National Debt to service, the civil service to downsize, the disease of rampant individualism left over from colonialism to eradicate, the African, Indian, Chinese, European, Lebanese and God knows what other peoples to weld into one nation, the commanding heights of the economy to wrest from the clutches of foreign interests, the restless Black youth seeking deliverance in mischief and slogans to be guided back to the path of responsible citizenship, Sonnyboy, listening to the volleys of applause that punctuated the PM’s speech, felt himself so reduced in significance and his claims for acknowledgment so minuscule, that he prayed there would be no mention of the little work he had done. And he stood at his post, heroically, tilting the bottle and righting it as the flame burned, no longer listening for his name, but breathing in and out deeply to dispel exhaustion, relax himself and shore up his energy for another night of adventure with the woman who of all the people he had met in Cascadu was the only one who, despite the misgivings of her mother, had seen him as the man he wanted to be and had encouraged in him the delightful idea that she could be his girl.
Sonnyboy Apparicio did not know when he dozed off with the lighted bottle tilted in his hand. The meeting observed that the backdrop of dried coconut branches and bamboo leaves behind the speaker was ablaze. Yet, not even those with him on the platform made a move, because they believed that the fire was a demonstration of the magical powers that for twenty-five years the people of the country were led to believe the PM possessed. He was credited with having the ability to change his shape to any animal of his choosing, a pig, a donkey, a ground dove, to disappear from one place and turn up at another at times nobody expected. And while there were the skeptics who believed that, even with his brilliance as an academic, he was still too young to have acquired the powers of a shapeshifter, a lagahoo, a number of people pointed to his close friendship with Mr. Buckett, the healer of Matura, and Papa Neeza, the most powerful obeah-man in the country, and the fact that he had never lost an election, as evidence of his special powers. As a result, people who were in any way opposed to him took precautions to ensure that he didn’t know their secret thoughts. Certain members of his own political party, who at that time were sitting around in their living rooms making remarks critical of him, seeing a strange dog appear in the yard, began to speak in whispers, members of the chambers of commerce seeing a black and white cat enter the room began to laugh loudly to obscure what they were saying, the Save Tobago Society and members of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union, the Sugar Unions and certain members of the civil service, so as not to be caught off guard by any of his unannounced visits, had adopted the stratagem of designating at their meetings one of their number as a watchman, arming him with a big stick and giving him the responsibility to alert them in the event that any strange person or unfamiliar animal appeared, the stick to be used to chase the creature away, not to hit it, at least not too severe a blow, since they had put too great a value on the Prime Minister to have him suffer injury. So they watched the fire blaze and continued to listen to the PM and to applaud even more vigorously, their applause drowning out the crackling noise of the fire. The PM unloosened his tie and continued speaking until, feeling himself broiling in the sweat of his black jacket, he looked around to try to identify the source of the heat and saw that the actual structure of the stage was ablaze. The PM let out an oath, turned and ran. It was then that the mesmerized onlookers felt power return to their limbs. Some followed the PM’s example and tried to get away from the stage, but others, believing that his attempt to escape the fire was simply part of a larger performance, stood their ground, applauding in anticipation of the spectacle they expected to follow, and they continued to applaud until my aunt Magenta pointed to Sonnyboy Apparicio at the far corner of the stage, leaned up against a post, sleeping, the flambeau that must have lighted a path away from him smoking on the ground beside him. People wanted to wake him, but others were holding them back from interfering, sure that he was part of the performance still to be completed, and it was only when Aunt Magenta, screaming at the top of her voice, with Clephus at her side elbowed her way to Sonnyboy, roused him from sleep and dragged him away from the fire that people turned grumblingly and reluctantly to see if they could put out the blaze. No one was able to call the fire brigade in the town fifteen miles away, since the only working telephone in the town was consumed in Lutchman’s blazing shop and the other one, the one in the police station, had been dead for months. It had no water in the taps. The night was dark. And by the time we were able to organize a bucket brigade to get through the track to the river the fire had spread. Wee Lee Laundry, Dulcie Roti Shop and the wooden float and accra stand where Eileen sold peppered pomme citre and fried fish and bake, were all ablaze, bottles of rum were exploding from Lutchman’s burning Rum Shop and Grocery, things were fizzing and bubbling and bursting in colors of red and yellow and green from the drugstore, and flames were roaring and leaping high from what a few moments earlier was Toro Tire Repair Shop.
But, strangely, as he watched the town ablaze, what he found himself thinking was that he couldn’t continue to walk those distances to see the woman he wanted to think of as his girl.
Sweetie-Mary
Don’t Make Me Stop Loving
A few months after Sonnyboy began driving the van, he had come upon her sitting dreamily behind the counter of the little shop run by her mother, a quiet place, one of a handful of houses scattered along the stretch of road leading to Cascadu, the shop itself an extension of what was their house, the little place stocked with fruit from the lime, orange, chenette and mango trees in her yard, the rest careful purchases, bread, cakes, sweets, sweet drinks, drinking chocolate, coffee, tins of sardines, nothing bought that would not sell, each lonely item of commerce laid out with space around it on the shelves like prizes at a village fair, the mother, meditative almost, her head tied with the cloth of her Shouter Baptist faith, her face serene, on it a kind of battler’s acknowledging smile, respectful of her marvelous opponent, a world that had wrestled her down and was watching her strain to rise again; her whole history there in her face, her good looks, the admiration from men, the parties, the good times, the first man, the first child, then the second, and now the chain of four remaining children, three daughters and a son, her beauty passed on to their faces now, the flare of nostrils, the full lips, the nearly sleepy eyes, her consolation and pride that this was her own place, something le
ss to develop than to guard, her few pennies lifted and weighed with a scrupulous accounting, the dribble of customers petted, fussed over and fed arresting bits of village gossip to keep them returning, and all the while, her eyes open, sizing up the men who passed through to discover which among them she would find acceptable for her daughters, and who the good-for-nothings that had only trouble to offer, interrogating them if they so much as glanced at one of the girls, “Who is your family? What job you doing and for how long?” Questions she should have asked their fathers, her judgement immediate, so that some men passing through, truck drivers transporting gravel to Cunaripo, drivers of vans laden with plantains and sweet potatoes and dasheen, going to the Port of Spain market, found her hostility unaccounted for and others, in a hurry to get on with their journey, found themselves delayed by her offer of a drink to quench their thirst or her plea to sample the cake one daughter made or taste the crab and callaloo cooked by another, she herself doing all of this with a delicious charm that revealed more and more of herself until first one, then another, of the men began to eye her as a prospect for romance, a regard that when she realized it brought first a smile then made her look at herself again, the idea of her desirability tempting her, and eventually taking root in her mind, so that she took to wearing dresses that revealed the heft of her bosom and outlined the thrust of her bottom until the men went beyond admiring to putting question to her that she pretended not to understand. For months she was the star of the show and was on the verge of surrendering to Alphonse, who every day dropped in to see her and who she had begun to believe she could share a life with, when, pressed to declare his intentions, in a fit of honesty, he confessed that he was already living with a woman. This brought her back to her senses and although she tried to smile it off, her spirit was damaged and she looked at every man that came in with suspicion. That was the state she was in when Sonnyboy Apparicio came driving the same van, which would later be used in the service of the National Party. He was distributing chocolate bars, black pepper, seasonings, red mango, and paradise plums. He had stopped the van and got out to sell to the woman homemade chocolate bars and black pepper and paradise plums; and, still facing the van, had called to her in his important salesman’s voice to find out what else she wanted and to reel off for her the other items he had for sale. He had turned toward the shop, the goods she ordered in hand, and with one foot flat and the other on tiptoe was about to step toward her. And there, in the shop, leaning over the counter, her hand under her chin, was this girl, woman, her eldest daughter, he would learn afterward, one he had not seen before, looking at him, seeing, he thought, when he replayed that moment later, everything his pose of importance was trying to conceal, that his right foot was shorter than his left, that his effort to sound clever was to let people see the man he was, that he was lonely and dying for someone to love.
And don’t you know, said her smile, that I am here waiting? Don’t you know? But he couldn’t be sure, as he called her mother to come for the things she had requested, whether her smile was part of the general disposition with which she faced the world or a greeting composed just for him.
He stand up outside the van not daring to move because he didn’t want the girl to see that one of his legs was shorter than the other and that he limped like Legba. And before he had time to argue himself out of his deception, he drew himself into a military straightness, made the few steps forward, careful not to reveal his impediment, and after the transaction, the selling, stiff as a toy soldier, made the same effort to get the few paces back to the van and go on his way.
As Sonnyboy tell me, he dreamed of her.
“I dream of her,” he tell me, amazed that something like that could happen to him.
“You dream of her?”
“I dream of her,” a wistful astonished delight at his own surprise that she could so get under his skin to his feelings: “I dream of her,” surprise turning to the confirmation
of the possession of capacity that had not shown itself before . . . “I dream of her.”
For weeks, he stopped at the shop without a word spoken by either of them. Just her eyes seeing inside him. He listened to what her mother called her, so he learned her name was Sweetie-Mary. He put together bits of conversation he heard and deduced that she had lived away from home for a number of years and had come back here at her mother house after her failure to make a life of her own; though, from looking at the set of her body, at the dreams that would cross her face, it was clear to him that she had come for shelter, not in surrender. She did not speak, yet he felt her watching him, not knowing whether she knew of his limp and was secretly laughing at his efforts to hide it. He would know better if he heard her speak. He wanted to hear her speak.
“Talk to her,” I tell him.
“In front of her mother? The mother don’t trust me. I am not you, you know. I don’t have a set of woman running me down.”
“Write her, then.”
“Write? I will talk.”
Away from the shop, in the van on the road, Sonnyboy practiced what he would say to her to show himself serious. He would tell her that she made him feel he was real, that the salesman’s voice of importance with which he had armed himself was not his true voice, that he was searching for his real voice. He had disguised his limp because he was afraid she wanted a perfect man and he wasn’t the perfect man.
“This love business is hell,” he said.
But he couldn’t shake her from his mind. In another mood, as he drove the van through the shady roads past the cocoa estates and the immortelle trees of the countryside he practiced jokes he would make with her, to calm her. Silly nonsense, things like Habla español? Bien. Gracias, claro!
He had to laugh at himself. Still, when they were alone, he continued to present the salesman self, the bluff, the loud, the confident self, feeling himself sinking deeper into a pit of deception, while his real self remained hidden away like his limp without the confidence to be revealed.
Every time he returned to the shop, Sonnyboy Apparicio felt transparent and under suspicion, and from how they watched him, he suspected that between the mother and the girl he had become a subject of conversation. Then he noticed that whenever he arrived the mother managed to find some reason to absent herself and he would be left alone with the daughter. He wondered if that change was something that she had argued for, or if it was a test set by her mother.
In the beginning, when he found himself alone with her, the very thought that he was being given an opportunity that he was expected to seize, that he wanted to seize, made him cautious, self-conscious, and he did what business was to be done not so much with indifference as with circumspection, watching as she cleaned the counter and rearranged the shelves and swept the shop, and wiped out the icebox and attended to customers, in her eyes an amused superiority at the blindness of people who did not see the wonderful world of her dreams.
“And are you one of the blind?” asked her eyes.
He felt transported in her presence to another place, another world where he dangled in space, uplifted by the light that flooded the shop at her smile that stretched her lips, tentative at first, like a careful bird poking its head into the open. He studied her, what she was wearing, the polish on her nails, the curve of her breasts, the music of her movements, the teeth in her smile, her butterfly eyelids. He inhaled her scent, watched her hand giving change to a customer, her fingers closing around a reel of thread; he watched everything, and he stepped out of the shop, resolutely trying to hold himself straight.
On one of the days that he found her alone, although neither of them said a word, he felt, as he steadied himself and walked toward her, that she was seeing right through him and he went into the shop, exaggerating his limp, and when he saw her looking, he reached for one of the jokes he had developed to ease his embarrassment.
“I was in the war,” he said, with half a laugh, bending and touching the calf of one leg. “Lucky they only blow off a piece of t
his leg, but my other legs are good.”
“Legs?” she laughed. A little too loudly, he thought, with a sliced sweetness that displayed the space between her upper front teeth, dissolving his fears, giving him the opening he had been seeking, making him want to keep her interested. And he began to talk, in the falsetto of importance of his salesman’s voice, about his leg, of his schooldays, the nicknames they give him, Pretty-foot, Hop-and-Drop, and of his mastery of repartee in order to counter the jokes made at his expense. This very exercise had sharpened him, had given him the mental quickness to extemporize as a calypsonian. As demonstration, he made joke after joke just for the delight of watching her suppress her smile.
“I bet you don’t know this one,” he said. She raised her eyebrows.
“Why is a post not like a sleeping man?” Of course, she didn’t know because it was something he had made up. With a show of knowledge he told her, “It is standing up, comprendo? Habla Espanola?”
She shook her head.
“Just say something and I have an answer,” he prodded. “Just say anything.”
And she did smile.
Now he said, “There are two things I want. One is to claim my life . . .”
“And what is the other thing?”
“To meet a nice woman like you.” And he could see behind her half-smile the wondering if he was a man she could take a chance on.
Is Just a Movie Page 9
