by Alex Wheatle
It was a Friday night in August when Amy, tipsy and bleary-eyed, had just returned from a visit to Carmesha’s. Not able to sleep, she made herself a coffee. She decided to sit just outside her front door and take in the nocturnal sounds of the chirping insects and catch the night breeze upon her face, hoping it might well induce sleep.
Through her reddened eyes, Amy thought that she saw someone approaching from the crest of a hill – a towering, black silhouette. She blinked rapidly, trying to focus and indeed, there was a man coming towards her. He was tall and wore a straw hat. A crocus bag was draped over his left shoulder.
His long strides reaching Amy before she could express her surprise, Joseph offered a warm smile. He raised his right arm and cupped Amy’s jaw with his hand. Amy clasped it and closed her eyes for a long second, pressing Joseph’s hand into her face. “Me here to stay,” whispered Joseph. “Nuh longer me foot yearn fe travelling. Me ’ave so much to tell yuh.”
Amy let go of Joseph’s hand and picked up her coffee. She drained half of the mug. “Joseph, ya hungry?” she asked.
“Yes, Amy. But de midnight hour pass an’ yuh sure yuh waan cook dis time ah night?”
“Nuh, sa! Yuh know where de kitchen der-ya an’ besides, me drink too much fire-water dis night. Me gone to me bed! Clothes affe wash ah river inna de marnin an’ me affe go up to Levi to give him ah money. Yuh cyan tell me wha’ yuh affe tell me when de rooster start holler. Nuh mek too much mess inna de kitchen an’ don’t drink off me rum! An’ furder more, before yuh start chat me ears off about ya disappearance, yuh cyan tell me where yuh grow ya sinsimilla. We run out an’ me need it! De people who ah live up near Levi charge plenty, plenty money. Goodnight.”
Joseph shook his head in admiration and laughed, sure in his mind that everything was going to be just fine.
After listening to Joseph’s full tale, Amy insisted to her husband that he must repeat it to the whole family. So a week after his return, Joseph let it be known that he would tell his tale in a ‘storytime’ session around Grandpapa Neville’s fire.
So eager and fascinated was Mr DaCosta by the prospect of hearing Joseph’s story, he sold one of his prize goats to Amy at half price for the occasion. Neville had to entertain fellow Claremont elders who knocked upon his door at all hours. They all wanted to attend his ‘story-time’ session, despite the warning he had given out that it was strictly for family. Even those who had hated Joseph for years found that their curiosity was provoked and wanted to attend. The least they wanted to do was to pour scorn on Joseph’s storytelling skills. After constant irritation and Neville concluding that it was about time Joseph confronted his accusers, he yielded and gave them permission to attend but warned them of interruptions.
Jenny, who had spent the entire week at home, worked the market stall with her chin held high, the return of her father giving her a huge boost. A spring was in her step and the men who frequented the bars had noticed in Jenny a blossoming sexuality. She walked by them and offered them sideway grins. A man would rise and say, “come here sister! Mek me buy yuh ah drink so me an’ yuh could talk an reason an’ mebbe forward ah bush to get to know one anoder.”
Grinning mischievously, Jenny would reply, “yuh t’ink yuh coulda satisfy me? Me don’t deal wid nuh t’irty second mon an’ besides, while yuh ah sit down drink ya beer an’ look ’pon me pretty self, Joe Grine is grining ya wife! Me not available. Me married now to Jacob so look an’ don’t touch.” She would flash her wedding ring and thought not even Hortense could cuss like her.
Jenny dismissed those Claremontonians who doubted that her father would ever return and she enjoyed doing so. Hortense, who was residing at Mr DaCosta’s, only came down on just the one evening to introduce her husband to her father; a nervous Cilbert was careful to be perfectly polite as his hat trembled in his hands. On their departure, Hortense confided to Cilbert, “dis story-time t’ing nah necessary. Me don’t waan people to know we business.”
As an appetiser to the main event, Amy’s mother, Melody, told Anancy tales to the children while the men fuelled themselves with rum, curried goat, fried grunt fish, bammys and rice. All eyes were upon Joseph who was quietly stoking the bonfire. Whispered conversations and sceptical eyes made Joseph wonder if this was indeed a good idea. He glanced at Amy for reassurance. Amy nodded.
Up to a hundred and fifty adults were ringed around the fire and a few gained a vantage point in the surrounding tree branches. Even a couple of market vendors had caught news of the event but they were soon sent packing by Neville. Hortense was laying down with her head in Cilbert’s lap, her eyes displaying apathy. Jenny was sitting beside Jacob, gazing proudly at her father’s every move. Isaac, parking his donkey at a tree, surprised all by his presence, for the more conservative of his Claremont parishioners thought that story-time sessions were bordering on paganism. The fire danced in the Jamaican night, illuminating everyone’s captivated brows.
“Everybody quiet!” shouted a gruff-voiced Neville, holding out his arms. “Story time dis ah story time! An’ tonight, fe ya consumption, Joseph will reveal himself to we. Nuh lie mus’ come outta him mout’! Mek him swear ’pon de Bible.”
Neville placed his old Bible upon the ground in front of Joseph. Joseph paused for a moment before placing his left hand on the book and closing his eyes. “Me swear nuh lie will come outta me mout’.”
“Alright, sa. Let ya story begin!”
Joseph cleared his throat, scanned the eager faces all around him and closed his eyes momentarily. “Some ah yuh t’ink me mad,” he began. “Mebbe rightly so. Becah madness ah shadow me life. But me waan to explain meself. So me waan to start wid de beginning. De Alpha as Neville call it. An’ dis Alpha start nearly two hundred year ago. Born ah free mon in 1765 in Accompong Town, near to Cockpit country where de bones of de very earth rip t’rough de dry ground, was me ancestor, Kofi. He was named inna de Akan tradition of ah chile born ’pon ah Friday. Pure Coromanty blood ah flow t’rough him veins. An’ Africa is de land of we forefaders. Some call his people Maroon but dat was de name de Spanish give we. Kofi’s story was told to me by me mudder an’ her mudder before her.”
Joseph could sense the hush as he paused. He could only hear the chinking of rum bottles against mugs and the patus hooting from the trees. He began to recite Kofi’s tale.
Tall like his father before him, Kofi was curious and headstrong. Disregarding the warnings of his elders who told him that on no account was he permitted to come within three miles of any plantation, Kofi violated this law on countless occasions.
Weary of trying to capture hogs in the wild and his curiosity getting the better of him, Kofi, roaming south into the parish of St Elizabeth, always trespassed within the forbidden areas of the plantation at dusk. Concealing himself behind bushes, Kofi sighted slaves at work cutting cane, defeated expressions upon their faces. Pauses were punished with cracks of a forked whip and at nightfall he witnessed women tending to the scored backs of their menfolk with soiled rags. Kofi learned that the slaves called these cloths ‘blood-claats’. He saw the overseers tossing the slaves chicken claws and cow foot; the women placed them inside a pot, mixing it with corn and scallion to boil a broth. On one occasion he witnessed a woman, sobbing uncontrollably, plunge the spike of a sickle deep into her belly, killing herself and her unborn baby. She was soon dumped into a sewage pit.
On another nearby plantation, Kofi couldn’t but be affected by the mournful song of the men who were ordered to chop down the giant silk-cotton trees; a handful of these slaves chanced execution by stealing mug-fulls of rum and sprinkling it over the felled trees while humming a lament. Kofi knew that to cut down a living tree would provoke demons and malevolent spirits. Why are they doing this? he thought. He could never understand why the slaves wouldn’t stir themselves into bloody revolution.
One afternoon, while lying in the long grass just outside the fenced perimeter of the plantation and refreshing himself with a water coconut, Kofi heard a melo
dic humming. He went to investigate and was struck by its source – a beautiful brown-skinned girl of about fifteen years of age. She was collecting felled sugar cane and placing it in two baskets that were balanced upon her shoulders with a piece of stick; her back bent beneath the burden. He watched her for many days, trying to capture her attention but couldn’t get close enough without being detected by the overseers.
Kofi decided to risk using his Abeng horn, hewn out of a cow’s bone. It was nightfall and Kofi had inched as near as possible to the perimeter fence. Seeing her, he blew softly so only she could hear. Startled and not detecting Kofi’s presence, she dropped her baskets and screamed, believing she had heard the agonised wail of a tree demon.
The next day, Kofi concluded that he would have to show himself. In the morning he had hunted and killed a boar with more energy and determination than he usually exerted; he sustained a wound in his side and treated it with a smoking, charred ember and herbs. He roasted the boar on a spit before carving it up and placing slices of the meat in cowhide pouches that were strapped around his waist; he suspended the remaining carcass from a tree for further use if he cared for it; the boar’s tusks were hanging from his necklace of twined reeds. He journeyed to the plantation, reaching it only when the sun was falling. He bided his time until he seized the opportunity when the girl he so much admired was isolated and no danger was in sight. He clambered over the fence, ran towards the girl and hurriedly presented his hard-fought game to her. He said nothing but gazed into her eyes for a long second, thinking if he uttered something she wouldn’t understand his Coromanty words. Stunned and before she could nod a thank you, Kofi was already climbing over the fence, his lithe legs and sculptured torso glistening in the moonlight. The girl smiled as she watched him disappear into the Jamaican night.
And so it continued for many days, Kofi waiting for nightfall before stealing cherished seconds with the girl he believed would carry his children, giving her ring-tail pigeons, land crabs, slices of hog meat and other game he had hunted in the wild. He would only half-smile at her, touching her cheeks and lips with his long coarse fingers, marvelling at her brown skin. Then he would scarper away without whispering a sound.
One moonless night, Kofi was finally seen by an overseer. Someone trained the barrel of a musket upon his back but the aim was untrue and Kofi escaped. Thanking the spirits of old African rivers for protecting him, Kofi decided he would have to think of a plan to free his girl. Two nights later, taking more care upon his approach to the plantation, Kofi was aghast at what he saw. Laying down outside her hut, which she shared with three other families, was Kofi’s girl. Kyeisha was her name. She was in acute pain for her master had cleaved off her ankle and achilles tendon, totally disabling her. The back of her leg, treated with fire to stem the bleeding, was a seared, dry, bloodied mess. An overseer with a musket at hand was patrolling nearby. Kofi, twenty yards away, blew on his horn softly, signalling to her that he would return, although he doubted if she understood. Kyeisha looked up, spotted Kofi and shook her head in despair, her cheeks smudged with tears.
In the next two days, Kofi roamed the wild, blowing his horn, using a tone and pitch that promised war to Maroon ears. It was a summons that no Maroon within hearing range could ignore. Twelve fellow compatriots from his settlement answered him, each responding with their own unique calling sound, each armed with spears, machetes, cleavers and sickles, all of them well apprenticed by their fathers and grandfathers in guerrilla warfare, ambush and covert raids. Two men raised doubts over Kofi’s proposed revenge, arguing that they were about to dishonour an agreement following the last Maroon war with the white planter class. Kofi talked them around, reasoning that the lands they had received as part of the contract were not bountiful.
Following the sacrifice of a hog, they invoked the spirits of the obeah underworld. Kofi and his band then marched barefoot and silently to the plantation in the dead of the night, their faces daubed with blood drawn from one another’s palms and their bodies covered in leaves and twigs. Only the patus, the gossiping crickets and the rasping cicadas saw and heard them coming.
The warriors found that four house-slaves were sleeping in hammocks on the master’s verandah. Oil lamps showered light upon the mosquitoes who buzzed around their faces. Awoken by the creak of timber, one of the house slaves was about to raise the alarm but before he could do so, his throat was neatly slit from ear to ear. The Maroons didn’t take any chances with the other house slaves. They covered the slaves’ mouths with their hands while severing their heads with three powerful swishes of their cleavers. The house-slaves were left to swing gently in their places of rest. Mosquitoes gorged on their blood.
Gaining entry to the mansion via a window, Kofi left six of his men to stand guard outside as he and the rest of his brethren crept upstairs, their minds fixed on revenge. Overseers were still asleep in their own homes dotted around the plantation; some of them sleeping with female slaves of their choice. Before the master was aware what was happening, a rough black hand was held tight over his mouth. Many other hands grabbed his body and he found himself being carried down the stairs. He could only watch from the base of the stairs as other raiders dragged his wife from bed, ripped off her night-gown and hacked off her head with five swings of a meat cleaver. The slavemaster’s two children, too afraid to scream, were hauled before their father. Their eyes spoke of a dread that Kofi was unable to dismiss from his memory to his last waking day. The boy was aged nine and the girl was no more than seven years old. They were soon efficiently decapitated. Blood dripped down from the bare staircase and was forming in a pool that was staining the slavemaster’s knees. Slivers of human tissue smeared the bannisters. Kofi then hacked off the slavemaster’s feet before chopping off his head. The headless bodies were dumped in a nearby pit toilet.
His thirst for vengeance satisfied, Kofi ran to collect Kyeisha and made good his escape. His brethren only followed him after they had daubed the front of the slavemaster’s house with the family’s blood. They placed four grisly heads upon the verandah, their faces angled in such a way as to face the morning sun.
Kyeisha, who was named ‘Firefoot’ by the Maroons, produced nine children for Kofi. She never walked again. Bent with age and after the passing of Kofi, she told the story of her rescue to her many grandchildren – one of them included Joseph’s great grandmother. Joseph’s mother, Panceta, had heard the tale from her mother and she had passed it on to all of her children. They were left in no doubt that it was Africa where they came from and they swore that they would never allow themselves to be enslaved again.
It was only after hearing this revelation that Amy and Carmesha guessed that David must have put up a great resistance in his Spanish Town jail – it was in his blood.
Finishing his mother’s tale, when he revealed that he was given the name of Kojo at his birth, Joseph paused and studied the eyes of his audience. He spotted Preacher Mon stealing away, shaking his head. Neville, sitting beside Joseph, took out a pound note from his pants. He held it aloft theatrically so everybody could see before slamming it against Joseph’s forehead – an African tradition that meant Joseph had told the story well. The audience raised their bottles and clapped their hands, shouting their approval. Joseph, relief flushing through him, told the remaining tale of his family’s history. Meanwhile, Amy looked on with a satisfied smirk, her pride recovered. Joseph concluded the story-time session by detailing his whereabouts for the last two years.
Following his disappearance, Joseph had returned to Accompong Town where he found that his mother was living alone and ill. Only one of his sisters, Shimona, had remained in the town and she had her own family but she looked in on her mother every day.
Seeing that the house needed repairing and that the land that his family toiled on was now barren, Joseph set to work. Daylight hours were spent ploughing grooves for new seed. He decided to plant corn and scallion because they quickly agreed with the soil. He also planted flowers aroun
d the home. At night, by the light of the kerosene lamp, Joseph patched the roof with long grass, dried mud and straw. He would then sit by his mother’s bedside and feed her with herb teas mixed with rum, but watched the strength of her body slowly depart. Trauma was still in her eyes and Joseph recognised the same loss of children that Amy bore.
Panceta revealed to Joseph that Abraham, his father, had always felt uneasy with the fact that his own father had died a slave and was owned by the white man. Abraham couldn’t offer heroic tales of his forefathers ‘putting up a mighty resistance’. He was unaware of what part of Africa his family hailed from and with the knowledge that Panceta could trace her roots back to the Akan districts of Ghana, Abraham banned all talk about Kofi and Kyeisha in his household. Panceta had to choose her moments carefully to inform her children of their heritage.
Every evening Shimona arrived with the evening meal – neither Joseph nor anyone else wanted to cook dinner in the outside kitchen. She continually rebuked Joseph for leaving at the family’s greatest moment of need but she finally forgave him. Breaking down in tears, Shimona said that she had thought Joseph was dead. She had imagined that his skeleton was hanging from a tree somewhere in the wild.
Bedridden and with the knowledge that in the Maroon tradition it was the women who worked in the fields while the men hunted game, Panceta’s final wish was for her to bless her eyes upon the family’s plot of land. Joseph carried her out and she saw rows of golden corn, scallion, yam hills, lettuce, pumpkin, sweet potato and callaloo. She managed a smile and kissed Joseph’s forehead. She said, “tomorrow me will bless me eyes ’pon Naptali an’ Menelik again at last. It’s been ah long time. Now, Kojo, yuh affe return to ya family. Give dem me blessing an’ nuh let nuh curse worry ya head. Like me yuh ’ave lost ya first born but yuh still ’ave ah wife an’ two daughter. Yuh ’ave fe live fe de living. Don’t worry ya head about de dead. Even when dey used to chop down de giant, silk cotton tree, de seeds find ah way to born ah new sapling. Remember dat. Now it’s time fe me final rest.”
