SUBJECTION
6
SUBJECTION
Ofa sudden the sun gave Ballet an excuse to unbend and straighten himself up, his young, perspiring back cricking in the upward swing. He hurled the pick furiously across the dusty steel rail, tugged a frowsy, sweat-moist rag out of his overall pocket and pushed back his cap, revealing a low, black brow embroidered by scraps of crisp, straggly hair. He fastened, somewhat obliquely, white sullen eyes on the Marine. Irrefutably, by its ugly lift, Ballet's mouth was in on the rising rebellion which thrust a flame of smoke into the young Negro's eyes.
"Look at he, dough," he said, "takin' exvantage o' de po' lil' boy. A big able hog like dat."
Toro Point resounded to the noisy rhythm of picks swung by gnarled black hands. Sun-baked rock stones flew to dust, to powder. In flashing unison rippling muscle glittered to thetask of planing a mound of rocky earth dredged up on the barren seashore.
Songs seasoned the rhythm. And the men sang on and swung picks, black taciturn French colonials, and ignored Ballet, loafing, beefing....
The blows rained. The men sang—blacks, Island blacks—Turks Island, St. Vincent, the Bahamas—
Diamond gal cook fowl botty giv' de man
"I'll show you goddam niggers how to talk back to a white man—"
About twelve, thirteen, fourteen men, but only the wind rustled. A hastening breath of wind, struck dead on the way by the grueling presence of the sun.
A ram-shackle body, dark in the ungentle spots exposing it, jogged, reeled and fell at the tip of a white bludgeon. Forced a dent in the crisp caked earth. An isolated ear lay limp and juicy, like some exhausted leaf or flower, half joined to the tree whence it sprang. Only the sticky milk flooding it was crimson, crimsoning the dust and earth.
"Unna is a pack o' men, ni'," cried Ballet, outraged, "unna see de po' boy get knock' down an' not a blind one o' wunna would a len' he a han'. Unna is de mos'—"
But one man, a Bajan creole, did whip up the courage of voice. "Good God, giv' he a chance, ni'. Don' kick he in de head now he is 'pon de groun'—" and he quickly, at a nudge and a hushed, "Hey, wha' do you? Why yo' don't tek yo' hand out o' yo' matey' saucepan?" from the only other creole, lapsed into ruthless impassivity.
"Hey, you!" shouted Ballet at last loud enough for the Marine to hear, "why—wha' you doin'? Yo' don' know yo' killin' dat boy, ni'?"
"Le' all we giv' he a han' boys—"
"Ah know I ain't gwine tetch he."
"Nor me."
"Nor me needah."
"Who gwine giv' me a han', ni'?"
"Ain't gwine get meself in no trouble. Go mixin' meself in de backra dem business—"
"Hey, Ballet, if yo' know wha' is good fo'yo'self, yo' bess min' yo' own business, yo' hear wha' me tell yo', yah."
"Wha' yo' got fi' do wit' it? De boy ain't got no business talkin' back to de marinah man—"
"Now he mek up he bed, let 'im lie down in it."
Shocked at sight of the mud the marine's boots left on the boy's dusty, crinkly head, Ballet mustered the courage of action. Some of the older heads passed on, awed, incredulous.
"Yo' gwine kill dat boy," said Ballet, staggering up to the marine.
"You mind yer own goddam business, Smarty, and go back to work," said the marine. He guided an unshaking yellow-spotted finger under the black's warm, dilating nostrils. "Or else—"
He grew suddenly deathly pale. It was a pallor which comes to men on the verge of murder. Mouth, the boy at issue, one of those docile, half-white San Andres coons, was a facile affair. Singly, red-bloodedly one handled it. But here, with this ugly, thick-lipped,board-chested upstart, there was need for handling of an errorless sort.
"I'll git you yet," the marine said, gazing at Ballet quietly, "I'll fill you full of lead yet, you black bastard!"
"Why yo' don't do it now," stuttered Ballet, taking a hesitating step forward, "yo' coward, yo'—a big able man lik' yo' beatin' a lil' boy lik' dat. Why yo' don' hit me? Betcha yo' don' put down yo' gun an' fight me lik' yo' got any guts."
The marine continued to stare at him. "I'll git you yet," he said, "I'll git you yet, Smarty, don't kid yourself." And he slowly moved on.
The boy got up. The sun kept up its irrepressible sizzling. The men minded their business.
Ballet, sulking, aware of the marine on the stony hedge, aware of the red, menacing eyes glued on him, on every single move he made, furtively broke rocks.
"Boy, yo' ain't gwine t' wuk teeday, ni'? Git up!"
Exhausted by the orgy of work and even-song, Ballet snored, rolled, half asleep.
"Get up, ni' yo' ain't hear dekorcheeblowin' fi' go to wuk, ni?"
"Ugh—ooo—ooo—"
"Yo' ent hear me, ni? Um is six o'clock, boy, get up befo' yo' is late. Yo' too lazy, get up, a big, lazy boy lik' yo'—"
Sitting at the head of the cot, a Bible in one hand, Ballet's mother kept shaking him into wakefulness. In the soft flush of dawn bursting in on the veranda, Mirrie's restless gum-moist eyes fell on her son's shining black shoulders. He was sprawled on the canvas, a symbol of primordial force, groaning, half-awake.
"Hey, wha' is to become o' dis boy, ni?" she kept on talking to the emerging flow of light, "Why yo' don't go to bed at night, ni? Stayin' out evah night in de week. Spanishtown, Spanishtown, Spanishtown, evah night—tek heed, ni, tek heed, yo' heah—when yo' run into trouble don' come an' say Ah didn't tell yo'."
To Ballet this was the song of eternity. From the day Mirrie discovered through some vilely unfaithful source the moments therewere for youths such as he, in the crimson shades ofel barrio, the psalms of rage and despair were chanted to him.
His thin, meal-yellow singlet stiffened, ready to crack. He continued snoring. Frowsy bodyfuses, night sod, throttled the air on the dingy narrow porch on which they both contrived to sleep.
She shook him again. "Get up—yo' hear dekorcheeblowin' fo' half pas' six. Time to go to wuk, boy."
Ballet slowly rose—the lower portions of him arching upwards.
The dome of the equator swirled high above Colon—warmth, sticky sweat, heat, malaria, flies—here one slept coverless. Mechanically uttering words of prayer drilled into him by Mirrie, he raised himself up on the stain-blotched cot, salaamed, while Mirrie piously turned her face to the sun.
When he had finished, Ballet, still half asleep, angled his way into his shirt, dragged on his blue pants, took down the skillet from the ledge and went to the cesspool to bathe his face.
"Yo' know, mahmie," he said to Mirrie as he returned, wiping his eyes with the edge of his shirt sleeve, "I don't feel lik' goin' to work dis mornin'—"
"Why, bo?"
"Oh, Ah dunno." He sat down to tea.
"Yo' too lazy," she blurted out. "Yo' want to follow all o' dem nasty vagabonds an' go roun' de streets an' interfere wit' people. Yo' go to work, sah, an' besides, who is to feed me if yo' don' wuk? Who—answer me dat! Boy, yo' bes' mek up yo' min' an' get under de heel o' de backra."
Peeling theconkeeoff the banana leaf encasing it, Ballet's glistening half-dried eyes roved painfully at the austere lines on his mother's aged face.
"Ah don' wan' fo' go—"
"Dah is wha' Ah get fo' bringin' unna up. Ungrateful vagybond! Dah is wha' Ah get fo' tyin' up my guts wit' plantation trash, feedin' unna—jes' lik' unna wuthliss pappy. But yo' go long an' bring me de coppers when pay day come. Dah is all Ah is axin' yo' fo' do. Ah too old fo' wash de backra dem dutty ole clotheselse unna wouldn't hav' to tu'n up unna back-side when Ah ax unna fo' provide anyt'ing fo' mah."
"Oh, yo' mek such a fuss ovah nutton," he sulked.
A stab of pain corrugated Ballet's smooth black brow. His mother's constant dwelling on the dearth of the family fortunes produced in him a sundry set of emotions—escape in rebellion and refusal to do as against a frenzied impulse to die retrieving things.
The impulse to do conquered, and Ballet rose, seized the skillet containing theconkeefor his midday meal and started.
A fugitive tear, like a pendant pearl, paused on Mirrie's wrinkled, musk-brown face.
"Son, go' long—an tek care o' yo'self."
Light-heartedly Ballet galloped down the stairs. Half-way to the garbage-strewn piazza, he paused to lean over the banister and peep into the foggy depths of the kitchen serving the occupants of the bawdy rooms on the street-level of the tenement.
"Up orready?" shouted Ballet, throwing a sprig of cane peeling at a plump black figureengaged in the languid task of turning with a long flat piece of board atacheof bubbling starch.
In a disorderly flight to the piazza one foot landed on the seed of a part-skinned alligator pear. He deftly escaped a fall. Quickly righting himself, he made for the misty, stewy inclosure—dashing under clothes lines, overturning a bucket of wash blue, nearly bursting a hole in some one's sunning, gleaming sheet.
Dark kitchen; slippery and smoky; unseen vermin and strange upgrowth of green snaky roots swarmed along the sides of washtubs, turpentine cans,taches, stable ironware.
Presiding over one of thetacheswas a girl. She was slim, young, fifteen years old. Her feet were bare, scales, dirt black, dirt white, sped high up her legs. The fragment of a frock, some peasant thing, once colored, once flowered, stood stiff, rigid off the tips of her curving buttocks.
Grazing the ribs of thetachewith the rod, Blanche, blithely humming
Wha' de use yo' gwine shawl upNow dat yo' character gone—Dicky jump, Dicky jumpAh wan' fi' lie down!
was unaware of Ballet slowly crouching behind her.
Becoming clairvoyantly tongue-tied, Blanche suddenly turned, and Ballet came up to her.
Exerting a strange ripe magic over him, the girl cried, "Yo' frighten me, Ballet, how yo' dey?"
"Too bad 'bout las' night," she said, in the low lulling tones of a West Indian servant girl, lifting not an eyebrow, and continuing to stir the thickening starch.
"An' me had me min' 'pon it so bad," the boy said, an intense gleam entering his eyes.
"So it dey," responded Blanche, "sometime it hav' obtusions, de neddah time de road are clear."
"Dat a fac'," the boy concurred sorrowfully, "it fatify decozaso dat a man can ha'dly sit down an' say 'well, me gwine do dis dis minute an' me gwine do dis dat, fo' de devil is jes' as smaht as de uddah man uptop."
"Up cose," said Blanche in her most refined manner, "Ah, fi' me notion is to tek de milk fom de cow when him are willin' fi' giv' it, wheddah it are in de mawnin' time or in de even' time—
"Wha' yo' are doin', Ballet, wait—let me put down de stick—wait, Ah say—yo' in a hurry?"
"Wha' Sweetbread, dey? Him gone t' wuk orready?"
"Yes—me don' know but it are seem to me lik' some time muss eclapse befo' dere is any life ah stir in dis kitchen—"
"Oh, Blanche!"
"Yo' bes' be careful, Ballet, fo' de las' time Ah had fi' scrouch aroun' fi' hooks an' eyes an' dat dyam John Chinaman 'im not gwine giv' me anyt'ing beout me giv' 'im somet'ing."
"All right—dere—Blanche—wait—"
"Yo' know what 'im say to me de uddah dey? Me wuz—wait, tek yo' time, Ballet, de cock is jus' a crow, it are soon yet—oh, don't sweet—"
"'Im say to me dat Ah mus' giv' 'im somet'ing. An' me say to 'im, 'but John, yo' no me husban'—'an' yo' know wha' de dyam yallahrascal say 'im say 'but me no fo' yo' husban' too'?"
Her hair was hard, but the marble floor of the kitchen undoubtedly helped to stiffen its matty, tangled plaits. And in spite of the water daily splashing over the tanks andtacheson to the ground, her strong young body took nothing diminishing from it. Only, unquestioningly the force of such a wiry, gluey, gummy impact as theirs left her heels a little broader, and a readier prey for chiggers, by virtue of the constantly widening crevices in them, her hair a little more difficult to comb, and her dress in a suspiciously untidy mood.
Emerging from the slippery darkness of the kitchen, Ballet dashed up Eighth Street. A Colon sunrise streamed in on its lazy inert life. Opposite, some of the disciples of the High Priest of the Ever-Live, Never-Die Sect sat moping, not fully recovered from the flowing mephitic languor of the evening's lyrical excesses.
All the way up the street, Ballet met men of one sort or another trekking to work—on tipsy depot wagons, shovels, picks, forks sticking out like spikes; on foot, alone, smoking pipes, hazily concerned.
Grog shops, chink stores and brothels were closed. The tall, bare, paneled doors were fastened. The sun threw warmth and sting under verandas; shriveled banana peels to crusts; darkened the half-eaten chunks of soft pomegranates left by some extravagant epicurean, gave manna to big husky wasps foregathering wherever there was light, sun, warmth....
Up on the verandas there dark, bright-skirted, flame-lipped girls, the evening before, danced in squares, holding up the tips of their flimsy dresses, to thecoombiaof creole island places. Creole girls led, thwarted, wooed and burned byobeah-working, weed-smoking St. Lucian men. Jamaica girls, fired by an inextinguishable warmth, danced, whirling, wheeling, rolling, rubbing, spinning their posteriors and their hips, in circles, their breasts like rosettes of flame, quivering to the rhythm of themento—conceding none but the scandalously sexless. Spanish girls, white ones, yellow ones, brown ones, furiously gay, furiously concerned over the actualities of beauty.
Over a bar of dredged in earth, Ballet sped. In the growing sunlight figures slowly made for the converging seacoast.
Work-folk yelled to Ballet tidings of the dawn....
"Why yo' don' tek de chiggahs out o' yo' heel an' walk lik' yo' got life in yo' body—"
"Yo' gwine be late, too."
"Yo' go 'long, bo, Oi ent hurrin' fo' de Lawd Gawd Heself dis mawnin'—"
Ahead a vision of buxom green cocoa palms spread like a crescent—from the old rickety wooden houses walled behind the preserves of the quarantine station all the way past the cabins of the fishing folk and dinky bathhouses for the blacks to the unseemly array of garbage at the dump. Out to the seacoast and the writhing palms swarmed men from Coolie Town, Bottle Alley, Bolivar Street, Boca Grande, Silver City.
As he approached the edge of the sea, Ballet waded through grass which rose higher and thicker, whose dew lay in glimmering crystal moistures. Beyond the palm trees opened a vista of the river, the color of brackish water.Empty cocoanut husks cluttered the ground. Sitting on upturned canoes men smoked pipes and sharpened tools, murmuring softly. All across the bay labor boats formed a lane, a lane to Toro Point, shining on the blue horizon.
Drawing nearer the crux of things, Mouth ran up to Ballet and put an unsteady, excited grip on his shoulder.
"Ballet, bettah don' go t' wuk teeday—"
Scorn and disdain crossed Ballet's somber black face.
"Wha' is dah?" he said, refusing to hear his ears.
"Ah, say, don' go t' wuk teeday—stan' home—"
"Why, boy?"
"Dah marine is lookin' fo' yo'."
"Lookin' fo' me?" Ballet stuck a skeptical finger in the pit of his stomach. "Wha' he lookin' fo' me fo'?" A quizzical frown creased his brow.
"He say yo' had no business to jook yo' mout' in de ruction yestiddy. Dat yo' too gypsy an' if yo' know bes' fo' yo'self—"
"Oh, le' he come," cried Ballet, "de blind coward, le' he come—"
A ruffian Q.M. paced up and down the water front, brandishing a staff, firing skyrockets of tobacco spit to right and left, strode up. "Don't stand there, boys, getta move on! Jump in this boat—another one's coming—no time to waste—jump in there!"
A marine lieutenant, pistol in hand, superintended the embarkment. A squad of khakied men paraded the strip of seashore.
Ballet joined the cowed obedient retinue limping to the boats. Curiously, in the scramble to embark the water boy got lost.
"Oh, Oi ain't do nutton. Can't do me nutton."
The passage was swift and safe through swelling seas growing darker and deadlier as the tide mounted. Glumly the men sat, uttering few words, standing up as the boat neared the other side of the river and jumping prematurely ashore, getting their feet wet.
Men gathered on pump cars and on the Toro Point river edge sawing wood to help clear the jungle or sharpening their machetes.
Gangs were forming. Driven by marines, platoons of black men went to obscure parts of the Toro Point bush to cut paths along the swirling lagoon back to the Painted City. Fierce against the sun moaning men jogged with drills on their backs, pounding to dust tons of mortared stone paving lanes through the heathen unexplored jungle.
In the crowd of men, Ballet saw a face leering at him. It was a white face—the face of a scowling marine....
Rockingly, dizzily, it glowed up at him. He was freckled, the pistol in his belt carelessly at hand and he slovenly sported a bayonet rifle.
"Hey—you—I'm talking to you—"
Afraid, unable to fathom the gleam penetrating the depths of the man's eyes, Ballet started running.
"Stand up and take yer medicine, yer goddam skunk," cried the marine; "hey, stop that man—"
Nothing for a black boy, probably a laborer, or a water boy, to do a hide and seek with a tipsy marine....
"Stop that man—"
Ballet flew. He scaled hurdles. He bumped into men. Ugly French colonial words, epithets deserving of a dog, were hurled at him. Impatient, contemptuous Jamaican, colored by a highly British accent, caught at him like shreds.
About to penetrate the dense interior of the jungle, the men sang, soothed the blades of their cutlasses, sang pioneer sea songs, pioneer gold songs....
Comin' Ah tell yo'!One mo' mawin', buoy,
There was a toolshed set a little ways in. Into it Ballet burst. But a hut, it yet had an "upstairs," and up these the boy scrambled wildly.
Behind a wagon wheel sent up there to the wheelwright to be mended, Ballet, breathing hard, heard the marine enter.
Downstairs. A pause. A search. The top of a barrel blammed shut. Imagine—a boy in a barrel of tar. Ludicrous—laughter snuffed out. Heavy steps started upward, upward....
"Where the hell are yer, yer lousy bastard—yer—come sticking in yer mouth where yer hadn't any goddam business? Minding somebody else's business. I'll teach you niggers down here how to talk back to a white man. Come out o' there, you black bastard."
Behind the wheel, bars dividing the two, Ballet saw the dread khaki—the dirt-caked leggings.
His vision abruptly darkened.
Vap, vap, vap—
Three sure, dead shots.
In the Canal Record, the Q.M. at Toro Point took occasion to extol the virtues of the Department which kept the number of casualties in the recent native labor uprising down to one.
THE BLACK PIN
7
THE BLACK PIN
I
"Wha'dah Alfie got in 'e han'?"
"It ent nutton," spoke up Din, "yo' is ah 'larmer, dah is wha' yo' is."
"Orright den," replied Mirrie, "oi muss be blin'."
"Like dah is anything de worl' don' know orready."
"Wha' yo' got dey, boy?" murmured April, bent over the washtub, soap suds frosting on her veiny brown arms. She caught up the bulk of her starch-crusted patchwork frock and dried her hands in it.
"Oi tell yo' de boy got somet'ing," Mirrie said, "yo' is such a ownway somebody yo' can't even hear yo' ears ringin'."
"Hey, it muss be a cockroach."
"Or a forty-leg—"
"It ent!"
"Look out deah, boy, yo' gwine stump yo' toe. Bam—tell yo' so! Go help 'e up, Mirrie."
" ... won't stay whe' yo' belong, ni? Why yo' got to be runnin' 'bout de gap like yo' ent got nobody? Like yo' is some sheep who' ent got no muddah or no faddah. Come yah, wha' yo' got in yo' han'? Lemmah see it!"
"Woy, woy, it nearly jook mah fingah!"
"Um is a black pin!" exclaimed Mirrie in terror.
"Wha' yo' get dis pin from, boy?" asked April, paling and pausing, then venomously seizing it.
"Obeah!"
"Heaven help mah!"
"Who giv' yo' dis pin, boy?" April insisted. Her brows were wrinkled; she exposed the pin to the sun.
"Open yo' mout', boy," she said, "whe' yo' get dis pin?"
"Miss Diggs giv' it to me, mum," murmured Alfie slowly, afraidly.
"Zink Diggs?"
"Yassum."
"Whelp!"
"Giv' yo' dis pin? Wha' fo'? Wha' she giv' yo' a pin fo'? Hey, boy, tek um back to she."
"Sen' he back wit' um!"
"Wha' she mean, yes?"
"Yo' too stupid," shouted Mirrie, assuming an air of worldly wisdom not wholly unsuited to her. "She is wukkin' obeah fo' yo', dat is wha' is de mattah."
"De bad-minded wretch!" cried April. "Hey, wha' Ah do she, ni? Did Ah tek wey she man? Did Ah break she sugar stick? Did Ah call she teef? Did Ah steal she guamazelli plum f'on she? Hey, Ah can't understan' it, yes. Wha' she wan' fo' giv' me a black pin, fo'?"
April held the ghastly symbol against the ripe Barbados sun. Moving in the shadow of the spreadingdounzshe stared at it long and hard. Dark April, a lanky, slipshod woman in a half-dry print skirt and old, sprawling, ratty shoes, stood up, amazed at the lurid import. "Ah wondah why she sen' me dis," she pondered, bewildered.
At her side one of the girls shuffled, cracking the dark, crisp dirt under her feet. "Yo' too stupid," she said. "Little as I is I know wha' um mean."
In something of a trance April went to the shed-roof. Cooing pigeons and doves swarmed upon it. Beaten by the rain, dung spattered upon it, ran white and dark blue. Under the shingled edges of the roof bats took refuge. White-spotted canaries sang to the lovely robins poised on the bowing limbs of thedounz.
" ... let she alone, sha', g'way."
"Eatin' de po' dog bittie."
"It ent."
"It is."
"Yo' chirrun, behav' unna-self!" April turned, an angry look flooding her dusky face. "Oi gwine beat all yo', yes."
Devil-symbol,obeah-symbol—a black pin. "Gwine stick um yah." She bored it into a sunless, rainless spot in the side of the shed-roof. "All yo' ent gwine tetch dis pin, unna understan'? Unna heah wha' Oi say? Nobody ent gwine tetch dis pin! If anybody tetch it, theybess get ready fo' tetch me. Oi tell unna dah f'um now."
"Oi know Oi ent gwine got nutton fo' do wit' it."
"Nor me."
"Nor me needah."
"Da, da, unna bess not, fo' Oi'll wash unna behind de fuss one wha' do."
II
Blue cassava—unfit for cakes—about to be grated and pressed for its starch; withering twigs, half-ripe turnips,bolonjaysa languid flush of green and purple, a graveler—a watery, cork-light potato endwardly dangling; a greedy sow, tugging at a stake, a crusty, squib-smoked "touch bam"—hand-magic, earth-magic, magic of the sun, magic of the moon, magic of the flowing Barbadian gap.
Soft, round, ash-gray, dark violet, purple peas—peas Alfie and Ona and Din and Mirrie ate raw; grown by her own nimble, prolific hands.
Only—the soft quiet of Goddard's Village. Demerara (Mud-Head Land) to Barbadoes... on a barque, owned by a West Indian "speckahlatah"—dealer in sweet and Irish spuds—aboard ship, ashore, January to December, wearing thick British tweed, baggy, hairy, scratchy and hot. On the zigaboo's boat April had taken flight. Soft nights; nights of ebony richness; of godless splendor. On the shining waters—blue, frosty, restful—a vision of Jesus walked.
An' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahlAn' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahlAn' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahlAn' crown Him!Crown Him!Lahd!Av!Ahl!
The bow of the ship jammed against a brilliant Barbadian sunset, April, a pique shawl swathing her aching body, saw a wigglingquerimanresist being dragged up on the smooth, spotless deck. Kingfish, sprat, flying fish—sprang, fought, grew enraged at the proximity of sea-less earth. On a half-dry mattress the childrenslept ... sucked on sour plums.... One more sunset, and the noisy, dusty music of Bridgetown.
All for the remote joys of a gap in Goddard's Village, and of a rosier one: sending the children to school and to St. Stephen's Chapel.
Accomplishing it had been a tear-drenching ordeal.
Up above the brace of stone, up above Waterford's, beyond The Turning, up a dazzling white dusty road, sugar canes on either side of it, an old ox cart driver at Locust Hall had had an empty shack crumbling slowly on the side of the slanting grass hill. Under the rigid hammering of the sun, with a strip of swamp land below—shy of lady canes, with a rich ornate green—the green of fat juicy canes—the shack was slowly perishing. On hot days centipedes, and scorpions, and white mice, and mongooses prowled possessively through it. On wet ones raining winds dumped on the roof flowers, tree-drips, soggy leaves.
Thirteen sovereigns the man had asked, and she had given him seven. Parts of the house,visibly the beams and foundations, of oak, fell to dust at the touch of the husky black movers, men used to the muscle-straining task of loading ox carts with hefts of loose sugar cane. Husky black movers moaning:
Jam Belly, Quakah Belly,Swell like a cocoa,Tee hey, tee hey—Sally bring grass in yah!
Untouched by the noise, and the heat, and swarming of cane dust, a centipede ran up one of the men's legs. Bawling. Scratching. Portions of the gabling roof lifted on to the dray sagged and dragged all the way to Goddard's Village. From Locust Hall it scraped the ground. Behind it, April, and Alfie and Mirrie and Ona and Din—sagged through the heavy oceans of stone dust.
Of the star apples anddounzsunset carved a framework of purple mist. Etched, flung upon the sky. On a stone step Bay Rum, a worker in marl, twanged a guitar; beyond the dingy cabin the ragged edges of an old mortar house were imprisoned against the glowing sky.In the imminent dusk cane arrows swung to and fro, on some peasant farmer's hedge. A donkey cart, wagged in and wagged on, down to the eternity of the gap.
April explored the waterholes along the gap for stones to prop her house on. Some had to be cut, shaved, made small. Hoisting it, smoothing the floor—was a man's job. Plenty of stones, dug up, stolen, at night or early dawn, from obscure vacant spots in the village, to be used in myriad ways. That done, the hammering began. At Locust Hall it must have been a magnet for rusty nails. It took more muscle than was at the command of a woman to swing them out of their sockets. Often an adamant one sent April reeling against the breadfruit tree. Did she have to take them out, at all? Yes. No old nails in her house for her. Wall pockets, too, had to be put in. The lamp, a brilliant one, was crowned with a violet dome.
III
Down through the spine of the lane was a watercourse. Fish—blue, gold, crimson—whirled languidly in it. And from the watercourse sounds came. Busy buttering the soft part that was not exposed to the sun, of the banana leaf into which she was to spread the cornmeal and spice and molasses and then tightly fold to make theconkee, April was quick to hear it. The kids squabbling again.
She put down the platter and made for the watercourse. Zenona, the nanny goat, scampered away at her rustling approach.
"Alfie, wha' is it?" she cried, running up.
"He hit my Crump," said Zink Diggs, bivouacked on the fringe of the land, a switch twirling in her hand.
"It ent!" the boy retorted, crying.
"Who tell he fo' hit my Crump?"
"He han' too fast."
"Are dat so?" said April, boiling with rage. "Hey, a big neygah uman like yo' hit a little boy like dis. Yo' ort to be ashamed o' yo' dutty self." She clasped the boy against her knees. He was slyly eying, through a shiny mist, Crump's mother with the rod in her hand.
"Evah sence yo' bin in dis gap yo' been pickin' 'pon me. Why yo' don' le' me an' me chirrun alone, ni?"
"Well, why yo' don't tell dem not to extafay wit' mine, den, no? Tell dem de little watah-mout' runts, not to come on my hedge-row an' pick an' mo' o' my tam'rin's. Oi'll set poison fo' dem, too. Why yo' don't feed dem? Why yo' don't giv' dem a good stiff ball o' cookoo so dat dey won't hav' to teef my tamarin's? Pack o' starved-out runts!"
"Who is any starved-out runt?"
"Yo'! Who yo' t'ink Oi is talkin' to, but yo'?"
"Yo' nasty t'ing yo'!"
"Yo' murrah!"
"Bad-minded wretch!"
"Call me all de bad-minded wretch yo' like but Oi betcha yo' don't hit mah!"
"Oi' don't hav' to low-rate myself fi' suit any field han' neygah uman like yo'."
"Hey," laughed Zink Diggs, her arms akimbo, "hey, anybody hear she talkin' would 'a' t'ink she is the Queen of England!"
"Come, Alfie, le' we go an' leave de wretch!"
IV
At serene peace with the Lord, April was sent one dusk, the reddish tints of a Barbadian twilight spreading a lovely fervor over the land, into a spasm of alarm.
"Hey, Miss Emptage—"
A high-pitched neighbor's voice rose above the music of the wind humming over the cane piece.
"Wha'm is, negh?"
"Zink Diggs tek up yo' goat."
"Pig!"
"Go quick befo' she chop awf she head."
"Run, mahmie—"
Chasing through the corn April went to the end of the boundary line, just in time to see Zink Diggs tethering the goat. She was singing and an air of joyous conquest was about her.
"Giv' me my goat," said April.
"Come an' tek she," said the other, pointing the reins at her. "Come an' tek she, ni, if yo' t'ink yo' is de uman Oi is dam well sure yo' ent."
"Always jookin' yo' han' in yo' matty saucepan," cried April.
"Wha' dah yo' say?" she cried, bewildered.
"Gypsy t'ing!"
"Wha' dah yo' say!" she cried, enraged. "Why yo' don't talk plain so dat a body can understan' yo'? Why yo' ha' fi' fall back 'pon dah gibberish unna tahlk dey whe' unna come from."
"Giv' me my goat," said April, "dat is ahl ah ax yo'."
"Dey she is," repeated Zink Diggs, pointing to Zenona. "Go tek she, ni!" But the goat was safely on Zink Diggs' ground.
April made a step to cross it.
"If yo' put a foot 'pon my sorrel I'll brek um fo' yo'," she murmured, vengefully.
"How much yo' wan' fo' de goat?" asked April at last.
"A shillin', an' yo' bettah be bleddy well quick 'bout it befo' ah carry de starved-out t'ing 'ome an' mek currie outa she."
"Teefin' vagybon' yo'," said April, water seeping into her eyes.
"Call me all de bad name yo' lik', but yo' entgwine get dis goat back to-night till yo' fork up dat shillin'. Dey'll have to jump ovah my grave befo' dey'll get yo' hungry goat fuss."
She turned to one of the children. "Go in de lardah, Mirrie, an' reach up 'pon de ledge an' bring de dah shillin' Bay Rum giv' me yestiddy fo' de eggs." She sighed, for it was her last one.
The child sped through the bush—spindling legs leaving the brown earth—and in a jiffy was back with the piece of silver bright in her dirt-black palm.
"Hey," said April, taking it and leaning over the ripening sorrel, "hey, tek yo' old shillin' an' giv' me my goat."
Zink Diggs grew hysterical at her approach. "Don't come near mah," she said, her eyes rolling wildly. "Stan' whey yo' dey an' put de shillin' 'pon de groun'! Don' come near muh! An' tek yo' ole hungry goat along."
April took the goat and dropped the shilling on the ground.
"Yo' t'ink Oi gwine tek any'ting out o' yo' nasty hand'?" she said. "Yo' put um 'pon de ground." But before she picked it up she wentin her bosom and drew out a little salt sack. She sprinkled two or three pinches of it on the coin before she picked it up.
The sun came out again. The crops bristled, the birds were singing. Triangles of birds, blackbirds and peewits, swarmed to the fragrant fruit, gave music to the wind. Hummingbirds—doctor birds—buzzed at the mouths of alluring red flowers.
April, a calico bag swung around her waist, picking the pigeon peas planted on the hedge facing Zink Diggs' land, sang hosannahs to the Lord....
An' Crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl
As she went along husking them, shelling the peas, she was soon aware of some one burrowing in the nearby hedge, and whistling
Donkey wahn wahtah, hole 'im JoeDonkey wahn wahtah, hole 'im JoeHole 'im Joe, hole 'im Joe,Hole 'im Joe, don't let 'im go—Donkey wahn de wahtah, hole 'im Joe.
She readily recognized Zink Diggs, but hardly, the words that followed.
"Good mawnin', Miss Emptage."
Being a child of the Lord, April answered, "Good mawnin'." She continued singing a Sankey hymn, and shelling the peas.
"You're not a quarrelsome uman," she heard Zink Diggs say, "but you're dam side mo' determined than I am!"
But she went on, not turning her head, singing the Sankey hymn.
V
It was spring; spring in Barbadoes. For the dogs—evil omen. Grippe. Sickness. Across the flowing acreage the brindle pup took a post near the goat. Nearby Alfie, Mirrie, Ona and Din were twittering, "Come, doggie; come, doggie—" and giving the poor wretch parsley.
"Go back an' put de pot on de fiah," April shouted to Mirrie as she strode through the cornpatch. "Go back an' boil de pigeon peas."
"Oi wan' fi' come, too."
"Go down de stan' pipe an' get a bucket o' water an' mek yo' oven, den."
They left her, and she went madly down to the end of her ground. On the rim of her land she met Zink Diggs. "Wha' yo' doin' 'pon my groun'?" she said. "Yo' muss be mek a mistake, uman, yo' ent survey yo' ground right."
"Yo' t'ink so?" the other cried, "Now look yah, Miss Emptage, yo' bin' lookin' fo' trouble evah sence yo' move in dis gap, yo'—yes, yo'—an' yo' dam well know dat when yo' wuz plantin' dem peas an' corn yo' wuz trespassin' 'pon my groun'. Uman, yo' mus' be outa yo' senses."
With a rope of banana trash to tie up her skirt—up so high that her naked legs gleamed above the tops of her English patent leather boots which the Doctor had ordered her to wear as a cure for "big foot"—Zink strode swiftly through the patch, dragging up by their roots, cane, corn, peas, okra—April's plantings.
"Move outa my way, uman, befo' Oi tek his gravallah an' ram it down yo' belly! Don' mek me lose me head dis mawnin' yeh, Oi don' wan' fo' spend de res' o' my days in de lock-up fo' killing nobody."
No rock engine, smoothing a mountain road, no scythe, let loose on a field of ripened wheat, no herd of black cane cutters exposed to a crop, no saw, buzzing and zimming, could have out-done Zink Diggs slaying and thrashing and beheading every bit of growing green. Flat, bare, she left it. April was afraid to open her mouth. She stood by, dumbfounded, one hand at her throat.
Gleaming in triumph, Zink gathered her bill and graveller and paused before she went. "Look at she dough," she said, "she look like Jonah when de whale puke he up!" And she flounced through the orchard, singingHole 'Im Joe.
"Ona, come yah, quick!"
"Yo' always boddering me, why yo' don't—"
"Come, yah, gal—gal, Oi call yo'!"
"Wha' do yo', ni?"
"Me wan' fi' show yo' somet'ing, gal."
"Wah'm is, ni?"
"De black pin is ketchin' de house afiah."
"Gahd! Go tell mahmie—"
"Wha' she is?"
"Roun' by de shed-roof."
"Mirrie, come yah, an' see wha' Din do! Ketch de house afiah!"
"It ent me! It is de black pin burnin'—"
Down by the back of the breadfruit tree Alfie and Mirrie were sitting close to each other—very close. They hated to be diverted by such silly inquisitiveness. Calm, unexcited, Mirrie was prodding the boy to do something to her. She had put it down on a matchbox, in edgy, scrawly letters—one word—but it refused to stir Alfie's sluggish desire. The scent of something ripe and rich and edible—something to be tasted with the lore of the tropics deep in one's blood—something bare and big and immortal as the moon—compelling something—began to fill the air about the little boy. He secretly felt it surging in Mirrie, and something beat a tattoo in his temples. Upon him a certain mirage fell—sure, unerring.
"Wha' yo' two doin' heah?" shouted Din, coming up. "Hey, Oi gwine tell mah mahmie 'pon yo' two."
"Wha' yo' gwine tell she? Yo' mouthah!"
"Dat—"
"Mout' run jess lik' sick neygah behine."
"Dat what? Wha' yo' ketch me doin', yo' liad t'ing yo'? I ent doin' nutton. I was just showin' Alfie—"
"Mirrie!"
"Comin', mum!"
His tongue thick, heavy, Alfie rose. "Yo' girl chirrun, if unna don't behave unna self, Oi gwine tell unna mahmie 'pon unna, too. Wha' all yo' makin' all dis noise fo'?"
"De pin ketch de house afiah."
"Wha' pin?"
"Fomembah de black pin Zink Diggs giv' Alfie fo' he mahmie?"
"Hey, yes."
"Gal, shut up yo' mout', yo' too stupid, how kin a pin ketch de house afiah?"
"Wha' is dah smoke, den?"
"Run an' tell mahmie, quick."
Ona, Din, Alfie, Mirrie—the last one, dusting, aggrieved, thwarted—galloped past the shed roof round to the kitchen.
"Mahmie."
"Quick, de black pin is ketchin' de house afiah."
"Gyrl, yo're crazy."
Swiftly drying her hands, she sped around to the shed roof. A gust of smoke darted, on the crest of a wind, from the place where the deadly missile had been imprisoned.
Surely, it was burning—the black pin had fired the shed roof! Out April tugged it. Once more she held it trembling in the sun. A smoking black pin. Some demon chemical, some liquid, some fire-juice, had been soaked into it originally.Obeahjuice. "But Oi gwine sick de Lord 'pon yo'," vowed April, tossing it upon a mound of fowl dung and wormy provisions scraped together in the yard, and set a bonfire to it all. The fire swallowed it up and the wind sent a balloon of gray-white smoke-puffs streaming over Zink Diggs' hedge.
It had speed, and energy, and a holy vitality—the smoke; for it kept on till it got to Zink Diggs' house and then it burst puffing into it. It had hot, red, bitter chemicals, the smoke of the pin, and Zink Diggs' reaction to them was instantaneous. The smoke blew by, taking life—animal, plant. The dog dropped, theleaves of tea bush she had picked and had on the kitchen table, withered suddenly. It left her petrified by the stove, the white clay pipe ghastly in her mouth. Even her eyes were left sprawling open, staring at the cat, likewise dead, by the smoking coal pot.
THE WHITE SNAKE
8
THE WHITE SNAKE
I
Onthe banks of a bilgy lamahau, the eeliest street-stream in Bordeaux, a row of Negro peasant lodgings warmly slept. It was a vile, backward crescent reeking in brats and fiendish lusts.Cocabeamong its inkish rice-growers extended to gorillas sentenced to the dungeons of Surinam, Portuguese settlers who'd gone black, Chinks pauperized in the Georgetown fire of '05, and Calcutta coolies mixingrotieat dusk to the chorus of crickets andcrapeauxmoaning in the black watery gut.
The dawn rose a dewy crimson, and a blood-curdling sound polluted the vapory silences of a Negro lodging.
"Murdah! Police! Warlah! Hole 'im! Miss Ewin', tek 'e arf me."
Fetid black snorers rolled restively, clawed,dug at bugs or itching veins rising bluely on bare languid bodies, as if to say:don't worry. It's nothing. Nothing but some Hindu coolie, after the evening's rotie debauch, to the roll of goat drums, outside, on the low lamahau earth, severing the head of some jewel-laden, thirteen-year-old mate, the third on a string of murdered conquests.
But die the scream would not.
"Lahd—"
"Wha' de mattah wit' yo', gal? Why yo' don' let a po' body res'?"
"Tek it arf me, no—?"
"Tek wha' arf yo', gyrl, yo' mus' be crazy. Foolish t'ing! Tek arf yo' top lip!"
"Wahy—look he crawlin' up me legs! Quick, tek 'e arf me!"
"Sahv yo' right. Tell yo' yo' eat too much hole pea soup 'n cawn meal dumplin'! Go 'long an' le' de mule ride up 'n down yo' belly."
"See 'im, dey! Dey he is! A white one—see 'im, Miss Ewin'? A white snake crawlin' up me foots—tek 'e 'way. Quick—o! Miss Ewin', Ah beg yo'! Help mah!"
"Gyrl, get up! Yo' only dreamin'! It entno snake fo' true—get up. It's mawnin'. An' go down to de stan' pipe 'n bring up de bucket o' hossah yo' lef' out dey las' night—"
"O! Lahd, Oi wuz frighten so—"
"Yo' heah ne, ni, Seenie? An' don' fuhget to blow de kerosene lamp out befo' yo' go."
The whole thing seemed to follow as a natural sequence. For Jack Captain, a Berbice mulatto, was an energetic wooer.
And then one rosy dawn, a dozen Hindu fires kindling the lamahau, the gold-diggingmacaumelured from Seenie the seed of her all.
II
Outlawed by the sorrowing blacks of Bordeaux, Seenie, "to exculpate she wickedness," fled to Waakenam, a sparsely populated isle on the Essequibo Coast. There she took refuge in a hut deep in the Guiana woods. Until a lackey on the constable's staff had dubiously led her to it, the cabin was deserted, cane trash crowned it like a wreath ofcallaloomist. Box square, inside it was dark and cloudy. The peon originally occupying it had evidently had a vivid contempt for the tropical sun or wind.And it was here that Seenie, hardly able to survive the social consequences of lust, felt happy in raising Water Spout.
Inside the hut, by way of a bit of color, Miss Esteena, the niece of the Negro head of the Waakenam constabulary, had given her an old canopied mahogany bed.
Into the boy's flower-like mouth she pried a spoon with the crusted refuse of the previous day's stewed cassava.
"Eat um, sah," she cried, "an' don't put on no 'ears, lik' yo' is any man. Eat um, Oi say."
Upon Water Spout's glazed tawny body there was not a stitch of clothes. But it was fiendish hot in the cane trash hut, and he needed none. His puny body, which theobeahmidwife had despaired of so, had flecks of porridge, and hardened bread swobbed in tea, on it. He had a scrawny neck. It had its base in a hollow-sounding delta. A stack of bluey veins, loosely tied in a clot of skin, connecting a hairless cocoanut to a brown, belegged pumpkin. The navel string, prematurely plucked, hung like a ripe yellow cashew. Bandy, spindlinglegs jutted out, to either side, from beneath a rigidly upright little body.
As a sort of aftermath to a night of studied rest, Seenie was dizzy, drowsy but she made sure of one eternal thing—Water Spout had to be fed. Feeding him was her one active passion. It was the least, she felt, she could do by him. Her ways may have been bad, her soul in doubtful retrospect, but Water Spout had to eat—hossah, cane licker, green peas, anything. And, by Jove, she had plans for him: later on, it was her idea, no matter how austere Miss Esteena was, to let him go down to the river by himself. If she had anything to do with it, Water Spout would some day walk!
"Come, Water Spout, come play wit' mama!" Somewhere, in the frowsy dark, she had seized a toy, a symbol of Miss Esteena's charity at Yuletide, and shaking it gave it to him.
Glazed-eyed, he reluctantly took it; he made no effort to wring joy and sound out of it.
As he grew older, she saw to it that he wasn't left by himself on the bed; not that she minded his wetting it, so that when she came home at night she had to take refuge on the floor, if shewished a dry spot to lie on. But time was slowly proving that there was life awake and raging in his glazed little body, which all along had seemed to her to lack virility. And he would, by the wreckage he'd leave behind, play, dance, and roll—make noise!—in a fury of possession, with some jaunty toy wagon or cart horse she had given him to play with. No, it didn't pay to leave him up there on the bed. He might fall to the unkempt floor. Then, again, although he refused to cry, no matter how often or how hard he would fall, in some quiet, unobtrusive way, the idea began to enter Seenie's head that he might not do so well, after all, from all these constant falls and things. His refusal, his failure to cry, started in her queer trains of thought.
At first they excited a more unobservant severity.
"Yo' too stubborn, sah, yo' too mannish—look at he dough—he look lik' something dog no like."
"Yo' so little an' yo' so ownwayish," she'd say to him, "yo' won't cry, ni, yo' won't cry—well,Oi gwine show yo' somet'ing," and she'd beat him for fair.
All this, when, turning away his little head, he'd try to shove the spoon with the fluff of corn mash away from him; or after a bowl of cane juice, when, with only the warning of a writhing face, he would unbosom himself, abdominally speaking.
And then Seenie, with the instinct of a heifer, began to argue that after all there must be something wrong with Water Spout, with any child, as lavishly fed as he was, who didn't stamp and yell and knock things out of one's hands and dribble at the mouth and lather with spit everything he came in contact with—the little heathen!
"Behave like a good lil' boy yo' heah?" she said, a bit penitently, pausing at the door. She shook a chastising finger at him. "Behave yo'self, heah, an' yo' mahmie will bring yo' a sugar plum."
Clap han' fuh mahmieTil pahpie comeBring sugah cakeAn' giv' Seenie some!
And she went out, slamming the door behind her.
The world of Seenie's flight was a terrible green. "Me baby chile," she murmured, "me own baby chile." The edge and sweep—wide and far-flung—of leaf and vine, shrub and fruit, flower and sky; the tender flush of the river dawn—brought a barbaric peace to her soul.
Snaky cords tightened in her brain. "Yo' mek up yo' bed, now go lay down on it," Miss Ewing, the Bordeaux sorceress had said to her. And with Captain, with whom the whole thing was a dismal oversight, she had implored on bended knees, to no Christian purpose, for having lost sight of, in a heat of frenzied lust, the fruit of her innocent pride.
III
Coral earth paved the one flake of road in Waakenam. Gathering depth and moss, the water in the gutters beside it was a metallic black. It was a perfumed dawn—the strong odor of fruit and turpentine flavoring it. For it was high up on the Guiana coast, and thewind blew music on the river. Vivid flame it blew on the lips of grape and melon, and ripened, like the lust of a heated love, the udders of spiced mangoes and pears peeping through the luscious grove.
Now and then, by the grace of the rollicking wind, there appeared in the dense forest the sparkle of resin hardening on the bruised trunks of balata. Sometimes, where the water in the gutter streamed, the music on the Essequibo touched fruit and flower and resulted in a flurry of orchids floating on to Calvary.
And in the distance, beyond the violent patches of green, flowing to a reddish upland, smoke—the vapors of boiling syrup—tarnished the white marl-gemmed sky.
On awakening on mornings Seenie indulged in a rite native to the Negroes of the region. She'd slip on a one-piece frock, and go outside to the rain water cask which had a zinc drain pouring off the cabin roof into it. There her toilet was done.
And as sure as the sun rose, there'd be on the dewy ground, on the boughs of mango and pine, lovely, quiescent, a gallant cordon of snakes.Now as she sped forward, the road shone with them. Gorgeously bedecked ones—two inches of blue, two of mauve, two of yellow—two of black. Some, the coral ones, a yard or more in length, lovely crown jewels. Green snakes, black snakes, reaching up to the shady bush and swamp—drowsy on the sandy road.
When she reached the constable's, a high wooden dwelling in ample view of the stream, Seenie took charge of the pantry. She tied on the ruffled bib, stuck a scornful nose in the larder, sampled skeptically the plantain, stewed in cocoa fat, which she had put aside the previous evening, following a tradition of the tropics, for any starving ghost who might pass along in the night.
"T'row de t'ing 'way, gal, um ent no good, um sour," she said, and heaved it through the window.
There were even limits to Water Spout's gastric feats.
Suddenly a fragrant presence invaded the pantry.
"Good morning, Seenie," said Miss Esteena.
"Mawnin,' mum," replied the girl, sticking amatch under the chocolate kettle in the coal pot.
An illuminating contrast; the girl, grating the cassava for thebakethe Sergeant liked so well; with her despairing uncomely face, the high cheek bones, the sprawling mouth eternally white at the ends, the tapering chin. On the other hand there was reflected in Miss Esteena's sullen grace the fruit of a Negro culture as old as the civilization of the Incas. An Albertown belle, she was tall, brown, beautiful. Shimmering in white, the collar of her hand-wrought bodice closed high about her throat after the fashion of the time of Mary Queen of Scots.
"Be sure," said Miss Esteena, in her sharp, pointed tones, "to season the corass, properly, Seenie. Put plenty of salt and pepper and steam it long and well with the pot half full of water. Until it begins to crack. Then call me."
"Yes, mum, when Oi get roun' to it, mum."
But Miss Esteena was used to help of her own hue, and so had come to shut her ears to the thin veil of obedience in the Bordeaux girl's voice.
Gathering up the hem of her skirt, she moved austerely from the rice, green in a dish on thevined sill, to the fresh shelled peas, the tray of soakingcashews, the sugary sour sop, under a wire cage away from the flies.
"You know, Seenie," she said, "when you get time I wish you'd plant some mustard seed over there in the garden. Look!"
"Yessum, Oi see—"
Grating cocoanut was a hazardous task. And it required a constant fluid motion. Grinding it till the skin became thin as a tip of flame, she had got her palm bruised, and blood spots spattered the white juicy nut.
She leaned over the window squeezing it.
"Under that tree," said Miss Esteena, "see where I mean?"
"Yo' mean—dey—yassum!"
"And perhaps you could stick in a few knots of cane and some pumpkins on the hedge."
"Passably some carrots, too, mum. But yo' won't want anyt'ing what gwine gaddah too much bush. Yo' fomembah wha' ole Hart say, he say too much grass will bring de snakes."
"There you go again, you and your snakes. Can't you think of anything else to be afraid of?"
"Fi' tell yo' de troot, mum—"
"Gracious me, are they digging again? Look—there—by the trench—Seenie, what are they digging?"
"Wha' mum?"
"Can't you see it, stupid? There! Are you blind?"
"Oh, yassum! Me taught yo' mean yondah, mum."
"You always think something contrary!"
"It are a grabe dem a dig, mum."
"A grave? Mercy! For whom? What sort of a grave is it?"
"Fo' de baboo wha' chop arf 'im wife head, mum," said Seenie.
"Oh, mercy!"
"Dem gwine hang 'im up dey an bury 'im under de scraffold dem a build dey. See it, mum? All dem board yo' see dem a pile up dey is fo' de scraffold dem gwine knock togad-dah fi' hang 'im."
"Well, well, the idea!" exploded the constable's niece, pacing the pantry madly. "If it isn't one thing it is another. Yesterday, it was finding a snake coiled up under my writingtable, foaming to strike. Last Tuesday, at thesoiréeon the Governor's visit to the colony, it was having a black camoodie secrete itself, the Lord only knows when and how in the chandelier and as soon as Lady Fordyce-Boyce and Captain Burt selected to hold their tête-à-tête underneath it, began to burrow into Lady Fordyce-Boyce's red hair.
"Now by Jove, it is to wake up and find them erecting under my very window a scaffold to wring the neck of some wife-killing Hindu. I have never heard the like of it in all my days."
"Dat a fac', mum," meekly murmured Seenie.
The missus strode out, raving. She was going herself to the Sergeant and ask to be shipped back to Georgetown at once.
"Cho," said Seenie, "she mek a fuss ovah nutton."
IV
The wind, alternately hissing and snarling, brought to Seenie's ears the roar of the Essequibo belching cargo on the wooded shores of Waakenam. O! placid, godless wind! Itbrought heroic tales of Georgetown muck on a briny dash to the gold fields.
Gold, Pataro goldO! de rich manAn' de po' man.
O! intimate, loquacious wind! It told epic tales of black men, the salt of adventure seasoning the marrow in their bones, inbateaux(the flat-bottomed curses) speeding, nugget laden, down thetacabah-paved river—suddenly becoming songless!
Ovah danger, danger, dangerDanger, danger, danger, dangerRocks an' Fall—!
You MistahTacabah! A sea lion, a sea cow, a shark? No! Great big slices of timber fastened, growing in the river! Deep-rooted, they were animals—groveling in the bowels of the unsettled stream. AndTacabah, the perpendicular beast, had eyes and ears, feet and heads. Andtacabahcould butt. On a starless night, he, the master of the river's fate, the hairyprowler of its incalculable depths, usually got on the war path. How easy it was for him! All a headlongbateau, oared by a lot of drunken gold diggers, need do was touch it—it was hardly necessary to jam it—andtacabah'dget the laugh onbateau! Over it'd go—attacabah'sjerky butt—heading for the eely monster's bowels, planted deep in the roots of eternity.
Ovah danger, danger, danger,Danger, danger, danger, danger,Rocks an' Fall—!
The moon, rambling about in the torrid sky, now and then gleamed on something Seenie carried on her head. It was a skillet filled with soup. Dozens of Cayenne peppers, hot as the water blazing in an equatorial sea, had gone into its making. Only throats of the purest steel were able to give passage to it. It was ghastly stuff. Eating it at night, Seenie'd bring heat to bear on heat. After a draught she'd light the kerosene lamp, discard the chimney, and open her mouth over the flames till her throat cooled.It was a rite rivaling the starkestbrujerialact. In the skillet of red terra cotta, was Water Spout's portion of the flaming broth.
All the thwarted sounds of creation rose to a mighty murmur in the obscuring night. Deep in the thicket four-legged beasts stalked. There was baying. Sheep, torn by a species of wolf hounds on the Coast, remained silent. But the dogs were less cultivated, and there was deadlier tearing done.
Along the road iguana, the sparkle in their eyes jeweling the tropic night, pursued shy, petty quests. And from the hedge came the silken slither of snakes about to lather with foam and strike some legless sheep or ox left by the mutinous pack.
The words of a song sung by the peasants of the East Coast rose on Seenie's melodious lips:
Minnie, Minnie, come yah!Salam-bo come yah!Salam-Matanja, come yah!Le' Quackah-Tanyah, 'tan' dey!