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adevotedappraisal · 5 years ago

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Short Story: Gershom, part two of two

The conclusion of Gershom, a memorable day in the life of the most famous anti-hero in Barbados, one Winston Hall. Enjoy.

Gershom part two (the night-duppies)

by Christopher White

Robert mekking good stew now. He should be cutting them carrots in the pot now. Sometimes I want to go by a rum shop and just talk. Don't know wha I would talk to dem about. Maybe cricket. Maybe pussy. Maybe I'll tell them that when it all comes down to it pussy doesn't matter. I'll wait until the sun goes down a little more till I set out for Robert. Wait until the sky turns that fuck up looking orange. Until it looks lazy. Until the birds get dark against it.

The invincibility or the infallible impression that people may or may not have had of the Prime Minister was of little thought to Winston. It was of little thought to Miriam as well. This was not a result of docility, but, perhaps cynicism. They both thought that businessmen ruled the country and the people in parliament were figure-heads. Such thoughts are ultimately too pat and are only useful in stopping you from going mad because the reality is that you have no idea how the country works, or, more horrifyingly, you have no idea how it should work. Miriam walked down the corridors of the hotel. The waves that dashed themselves against the outside mesmerised the tourists that were staying in the rooms far away from the things in their life, but to Miriam it was just noise on a radio: just something in the background, like when at the Holetown festival there is a man in the background playing conga drums, but you are too busy looking at the vendors and their twirlers and such, and not paying attention to the congas, but you know that it's still there. She thought about how her son would be when he grew up. He'd have strong legs from doing yardwork all the time. He would talk in a deep voice, no, a high pitched quick voice and talk about how fish prices went up and he can't stand it cuz he likes fish. Don't think about what you could have been Winston. Don't think about what you could have been. Don't think about what you could have been. Don't think about what you could have been. Stop thinking about what you could have been. Stop thinking about all of that. If you think about that one more time. Stop thinking about it, you went to rob a cunthole man with some johnnies that was older than you. Anyone would have looked up to them, or thought they knew what they were doing. Don't think about what could have been. It doesn't help. It never helps. You'll just keep pulling at it like when you took mummy's spool of thread and kept pulling it and pulling it until there was thin pink all over the bedroom and mummy beat you, like she should have. Do not think about what could have been. Just piss over there. Don't think about things while you are pissing. If you think about that mistake then you'll start thinking about the other mistakes. Then you'll start to cry again. You want to cry again like a buller? Then don't think about what could have been. Never do it. No one should do it.

The night was stark and everywhere, hiding the tufts of grass that came up everywhere in the village, and cooling the old roofs of the homes and dog houses. The night also turned things into other things by the theatre of its context. A cigarette lighter is paltry in the day-time, but during night, with all that black around, with all those things away from the eye, cigarette lighters become these magic, chain-less amulets, the clear plastic ones becoming savage, simple, flickering crystals of some sort. You hear more, and the hearing prompts your imagination. But ultimately, the night can only be arrogant, because it knows that regardless of all of our clawing advances in technology, of all of our theories for the explanation of things around us, no matter how much we know that eventually the sun will come around again, the night remains arrogant because it knows that you know that things will be hidden whether you like it or not, and who wouldn't be arrogant in that situation? Winston stomped his boots into the slope of the hill as he descended down to one of the paved roads in Suriname. He walked quickly and hid between houses when he saw someone on the road coming towards him. By the side of one house he looked into their window and saw the television, tall and looming. He forgot for a second that those things no longer had knobs to twist, or tabs to pull on. The show on was a garish display of Americana. The characters, a thin, lanky father and his precocious young daughter were talking. The father said "Well all I have to do is go to the video store and explain the whole mix-up to him. It should all straighten out." Then camera three showed the daughter taking a quick, meaningless sip from her brightly coloured cup while she said "Oh yeah, I'm real sure that'll work out smoothly," while the audience laughed. The couple in the house laughed as well, the woman saying "she too cute nuh." Winston didn't understand why that was a joke, and why the girl pronounced 'real' the way she did. Frankly, he thought the girl rude and in need of discipline. Winston darted his eyes around as he got on the road again. The houses were aglow as everyone sat to enjoy the night-time entertainment. One house had an action movie showing, the volume up to amazing levels, explosions rattling out of the surround sound speakers. Winston still had no idea where these people he grew up with were getting the money for this from. He walked up some cement steps to the side door of a house and tapped lightly. "Who it is?" went the voice inside. "De out-man." replied Winston. The door opened. Sergeant Douglass Sergeant stood up in the bathroom stall of the district police station squeezing the last bit of urine from his penis into the toilet with his finger-tips. He walked out the stall and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was round and a rich brown. His teeth had begun to yellow, from the coffee he had started drinking two years prior once he had signed on for this night-shift. He smiled just to see what he looked like when he smiled. He squinted his eyes at the mirror. He slapped his stomach that was becoming prominent now. "More sit-ups" he murmured. Then, he took out his night stick in the empty bathroom. He held it up to his face while still staring at the mirror. He walked left to right holding the stick to his mouth, and then danced, pivoting from one foot to the other, then sang-whispered some songs "Haiti I'm sorry, We misunderstood you, But one day we'll turn around, and look inside you." then "Jah ras-tafri parro-jammo creator of rhythm and tempo..." then he quickly stuffed his stick into his holster as Constable Henry Yarde pulled down the handle of the door to enter.

Robert's house was a small board house in a side path that you had to walk through light grass to get to. It smelled of a damp smoke, and the curtains were not changed regularly. Still, the floor was cleaned and the kitchen table was clear, except for a scale sitting by the corner. A radio was on in the bedroom, with an ad telling people about preventing a mosquito problem. The wind picked up a little bit causing the window curtains to rise and fall like when you put on bed sheets and you raise it up and it comes down on the flat bed slowly and cautiously. The wind made Winston look around in his chair. "Don't worry Winston." "I cahn help but worry. I ain't expect de wind to rise like dat usually it wouln't be suh dramatic at this time o' de year." "True." Robert said. Then, "you hungry?" "Yeah man." "I got de food in de oven. It was off for a while, you want me to heat it up?" "Nah jus' bring it here." Winston replied. Robert came back with a plate with more rice than anything else, vegetables, onions browning in the gravy. Robert looked at Winston as he ate. He moved his mouth quickly, but scooped up the rice slowly. He looked straight ahead at the wall as he ate. His hands were hardened, fingernails down to the skin and smooth. But his eyes. The eyes Robert saw up close were the same eyes that everyone saw staring up at them from the newspaper whenever Winston escaped from prison, or when he almost got caught again. Some may tell you that Winston became a folk hero because people didn't believe he did it, and they might be right, but only partially so. Because when you see those eyes that pleaded simply by staring ahead it sent out a secondary emotion of pity along with interest. It made one believe that this guy running for his life in God knows where, hopping on boats and stowing away in the hinterland of some island could be your son, or brother, or somebody. No one felt sympathy for hard featured Peter Bradshaw. Even the two youngsters Barry Jack and Sylvian Clarke got no care because they looked like the type of boys that stole your bicycle while you were in the rum shop. No matter how tattered Winston looked in those snapshots of him being carted off by police, his flopping over-bearing locks and all, it could never stop those eyes from peering through at you. Winston would probably kill you at this point if it came down to it, would definitely steal your computer to pay for passage out the island if he could, but for most people, he was just a boy that got turned into a criminal. A hare forced to scrap through the forest while the wolves descended a-growl. None of this has to be true, very little of it even has to make sense. The resultant was that Winston Hall became our folk-hero, our Billy the Kid, our Robin Hood (provided he just stole from the rich plantation fellow), our real life, living, breathing, crazy, exhausted Br'er Rabbit. "Ya got any plans cook up Winston?" Robert asked as he cleaned up his plate. Winston looked up and blinked at him, maybe thinking, maybe just looking. "I got a idea or two is all but most differently I...just gine try to keep moving." he said.

The two relaxed and talked about their day. Winston had little to talk about, while Robert talked lightly about world events that might mean something to Winston, or maybe, might be funny to him. He laughed a slight laugh at some moments, and at others remained silent and motionless. Sometimes he might make a random comment about wanting pussy, other moments he talked about his school days, stories Robert had heard already, but politely listened again.

"Sometimes I is envy you Winston."

"Why de hell you envy me?"

"Man people know bout you. Nobody ain't know 'bout me. You is de most famous man in Bim. More famous then de Prime Minister."

"Maybe," Winston began, "but wha dah mean for me? Is not like I could run fuh Prime Minister or, or open ah business down Swan Street wif my popularity. I was reading a book on criminals when I was in Trinidad. De term fuh criminals like me ain't 'famous', it is 'infamous' - I famous for being bad. People would smile with me, but call de police in a heartbeat as well. People ain't care 'bout me really."

"You really 'tink so Winston? People care 'bout you man. People still believe you ain't deserve nuh death sentence man. Most people woulda try to escape too. Dem wid you."

"I doan’ agree. People like rules too much. Dey want to believe that everyting would work out right if dey follow de rules. Until of course tings go bad and dey got to do tings to survive, then they realise. I mean it is just like, like...Robert you know how prison is man, they got people that deserve to be there, and they got people who jus' catch a bad break. A lot o' dem get sell out by they family and friends. A lot of Barbados like to rely on other people - de government, dey foolish husband, policemen, or somebody. I ain't nuh genius, but I feel that if a bunch o' people meet me, almost all o' dem would go and call de police cuz dey get tell so. Won't even tink as to why dey doing it."

"That is you fear talkin Winston. Barbadians care man. That is you fear," Robert said, while getting up and fishing in the fridge to refresh their beers. Winston stared ahead at the wall all that time, and when Robert returned to the table and opened the beers with his keychain he began again.

"Somebody is be talking in my head," Winston began, "I doan’ know who it is, it could be my fear telling me all these tings, or it could be my smarts. Whoever it is, it telling me hide from everyone. Last time I was comfortable was in Trinidad wid that woman."

"You did love that woman Winston?" Robert asked.

"Yeah, I did love she. De love turn me different. I guess love is do that. "

"If you hadn't get caught doin' foolishness..."

"It wasn't foolishness, it was my heart getting de best of me."

"Alright if you didn't get caught following you heart, you feel you woulda live there forever?" Robert asked. Winston thought and then looked down at the table.

"Maybe. I love this island, but I was comfortable there. Here my mind is mek me paranoid and nervous. I jus' cut off from this place. I might be de most famous man here, but I don't know much bout it Robert. Trinidad was where tings did at least seem normal. Cuz, for a lil' moment, there was love." Winston said.

Winston lightly clapped onto his shin the side of the collins that Robert gave him on his departure as a plastic bag with fruit lightly cheered by his thigh. Overhead the moon went through the trees with an unmistakable sharp glow, features on the face of it like birth-marks, and were one to walk under the leaves of the breadfruit and mango trees and look up, the way that Winston was at the time, the moon might seem to twinkle its pock-marked light to you. The houses were mostly silent at this point of the night, week-days it was this way. The insects called out into the darkness, creating an instinctual and perpetuating siren, as each insect, perched on their nocturnal pedestal, found a simple and eternal occupation.

Miriam found the insects creepy. When the night-noises reached her ear they were not received as a wafting tone poem of tones, but simply murky tension outside the car window on her ride home. Mr. Holford, who worked at the supermarket across the road from the hotel, and who would drop her home in the late night, and tell her smiling stories of the hopeless, irritable and easily confounded customers and employees of the supermarket, and who also would make fumbling compliments of her hair and necklace and would understand when Miriam declined his invites to concerts and exhibitions, and who would stare at Miriam’s rocking buttocks as she walked away from his car after smilingly thanking him, would then beep his car horn as he drove off softly.

What is that? A car horn. Get behind this house. Make sure that all the lights are off in this house you leaning against. Your knee is okay tonight don’t worry. Who is that there walking? It’s her. Her hair is frazzled a bit. Her hips are so gentle. How does she look so untouched up here in Suriname? Almost all these women look run-down, chipped at the edges, shaken about a bit. She’s different. She is like one of those dreams you have in de morning when ya almost wake up and ya coul’ swear it real but ya is wake up in de grass and ya look around and realise it is de same as yesterday, but ya is put ya hand together and thank God that you coul’ still dream, cuz if not you probably would’ve drowned youself a long time ago. Wait. Look at her eyes, all open wide in this night. Is she surprised? Is she looking for something? No. No, look. She’s scared. Shite you just slip. Hide! you just made a noise.

Winston hid behind the house steadying himself with his forearms while Miriam stopped walking and just stared at the direction of the stumble-sound. In the porous night where most things are hidden but some things escape stood the two, Winston peeping, Miriam listening.

“Who-w-who there?” she asked, amazingly evenly. Winston paused.

“Nobody. Just a man. I ain’t gine hurt you.” Winston finally said, secreted behind the side of the house.

“You was waiting for me right?” Miriam said into the night “I ain’t got no lotta money. I work hard t-this , um today. But tek it, tek d-de money, just don’t ra…”

“I ain’t wait for you . I was jus’ walking through.”

“Then why you was hiding?” she asked, not rudely, not accusatorily, but simply curiously. Silence. She then asked for his name but Winston stretched the silence, pressed rough against the side of the house. Miriam took a step forward on the road and then listened, and then looked around as Winston crouched low. He squinted his eyes at the woman taking tentative steps on the road and opened his mouth to say something, anything, to perhaps welcome her into his secret, or to tell her an outrageous and comforting lie while escorting her home, but instead he held firm and watched Miriam walk down the road quickly and determinedly into the shrouding night.

Through the grass Winston walked, mainly by memory, through the trees that cradled things to sleep and by the edge of a craggy pasture, pocking rocks and dirt with his boots and collins, and in this heavy chaos is where he crouched down and laid by his supplies and run-ragged possessions. Up into the air he looked, at the wavy and dreamy clouds, barely hiding the wide moon out tonight, and he thought of rushing things, and impoverished motionless things that loomed in his head as always, and then sometimes he would listen and listen as the night-time serenaded, or mocked him perhaps.

There he slept, back used to the flat earth, dreams sliding in and out of the thoughts. He dreamt of the children in Trinidad & Tobago, the woman’s children that he was around a lot. He dreamt about his stern lashes he gave them, and he dreamt of him teaching them how to make bow and arrows out of coconut leaves, sharpening the stem into an arrow-point using an old razor from a broken pencil sharpener. He then dreamt of a hot fire, and of him running, and running, and running, and then floating and flying through the trees away from the fire up and above Trinidad, looking down at the twinkling lights that families would leave on at times. He then thought of when he was captured there, and the children looked at him and asked “Tony, ya ‘un come back?” to which Winston looked at them softly with those doomed eyes of his, and shook his head no, his heavy locks floundering over and about his shoulders.

This is your life now. This is your life. Look at it. Look at the shadows of dem trees. Doan worry. We’ll get another plan together. Remember Robert had said there might be a guy that could get pay off to smuggle you on that boat? Something will always come up, you just have to hold on until then. The same thing day in and out until your ship comes in. You know you got what other people doan got. You got de discipline. What? Man you gine got to forget about that girl, about this whole fucking country in fact. Just stay down. Just stay out here, Robert gine set tings in motion. Man doan let you emotions get de better of you. Look I know she look good. I know she comforting. I know you could use some of that comfort. But let it go. This is your life now. This is your life now. Look at the dark grass over there. You could stash some things there. You got to go over to get those carrots from that plot of land. That is what you think of. You get as close as you could. This is your life. Winston sit down. Winston-

Winston got up and looked at the slow clouds, then back towards the little line of houses down the grassy slope. He took up his new cutlass, and walked, shaky, unsure and for the first time in a long time, scared.

Sergeant Douglass Sergeant walked around the district police station. He was testy and bored. He thought about being on the front page of the newspapers quoting something about some murder case he thought up in his mind. At least a good burglary case involving a well-known minister or a beloved person in the media. He would tell the reporters, in the most pleasant of voices, about the dangerous circumstances of the whole ordeal. He thought joyfully of the microphones, of the notebooks scratched with details, of the television cameras with their dull shine on the lens. In fact, he was drawing a complex, Eiffel Tower looking antennae on his note-book when Orville Lowell came up to him to challenge him to a healthy round upon round of x and os.

Eagerly Sergeant would scrawl his x in the corner to begin his winning play he had read of in a book dedicated to these puzzles called ‘Tic-Tac-Toe for Winners!’ that he had picked up in a store adjacent to a hotel on the south coast of the island. He grinned playfully at Lowell, and then at the page as the younger Lowell tried uselessly to circumvent the inevitable.

The grass slid against the boots of Winston as he walked down the hill. The rocks, loose on the dirt moved with a murmuring tumble as Winston kicked them or stepped on them on his way down. He would arch his head, to see through trees and branches, calculating his path towards a house he had never been to, had never scouted out in advance, had never thought of going to until the recent wanderings of his mind. Overhead the clouds were soft in their movements and the wind was cool against his old shirt and his face, run ragged by years, decades in fact, of worrying in a harsh, coarse manner, and decades of regret.

Stop this. Stop this. Stop this I say!

Miriam opened the door to her son’s room and watched the young boy curled into the edge of his bed, but a calm curl. He did not claw the bed-sheets like when she would look in on him after the arguments. This was a motionless slumber, a reprieve from the day at school where he was beaten for trying to cheat on his times-table test, and where Janice Peters, the girl he had pleasing thoughts about, laughed at him when he fell down darting between the trees. He looked up at her as she laughed and then she walked over to him, helping him up as he dusted off his short pants, saying to him “doan cry, you gine get better”, and then she walked away. Miriam closed the door slowly, the shadow of the door looming slowly over the bed until it darkened the entire room. She pulled off her shoes and clothes and just laid in the bed, churning her mind as to who that could have been hiding behind the house, desperate not to be seen, and from whence did he come from. She felt helpless, but also, for no reason, wondered if that man was helpless as well, adrift with no one to answer to, or to answer for.

She didn’t exactly want to help him, but rather, to understand him, where he came from, what had him out there at that hour, and what had him so scared, like her. She thought that perhaps he was hiding from the same dark permutations that she supposed existed in those bushy trees and grass up the hill. Perhaps the world had ravaged him to such a degree that even the plaintive claps of a woman’s shoe-heel on the dirty ground scared him. She surmised that his mind saw something horrible in people, and that sight drove him to cower noisily, with mouth agast, like in the movie she saw once where the man saw which people were holy, and which were demons of the devil. If only he stared long enough she thought, then maybe he would see that she was no clawed harlot, but that she was as scared as he was, distrustful of the very nature of people as he was, that she acknowledged the way that love spoiled into vengeful control after a long enough time, disappointing her as she was sure it did him, that poor man clawed and scared behind some wooden house, with the taunting night and the duppies all around him.

Winston stood behind the bare tamarind tree and solidified his approach: he would climb the low pailing surrounding the neighbouring mini-mart and then squeeze through the space he saw on that hill into her premises, and then softly, patiently, meekly tap the windows of the woman’s house until she awoke and then calm her with his eyes and tell her all that was in his foolish heart about her beauty, her unassuming grace, her glad-eyed son, and his own drifting life, polluted with his frenzied volition and shame.

He arrived at the galvanized pailing, creeping unsure like he had by the Plantation House where this whole legend began twenty or so years ago. He jumped up to grab the top, but at that moment, his knee shifted around itself, causing him to fall and hit the outside base with a small thump.

Miriam then heard a thump, small but real. She startled up and looked out the window at the night. She surveyed her little back-yard and saw nothing. She looked at the next door neighbour and saw the stillness she expected. She supposed it was a dog or cat bumping against the pailing, but she kneeled there on the bed, looking out at the trees that waved in the slight wind. And then she gasped, her body tensing up uniformly as if expecting a blow at primary school, as if she caught the Holy Spirit at church, as if she was giving birth at the hospital, as she saw a dark man crawling on top of the neighbour’s pailing.

The District Police Station’s phone rang twice. The officer listened, grumbled his questions to the caller while scribbling notes, and then he looked at the two men playing and arguing about the 1987 Calypso Finals results.

I understand you have a fancy towards her but this is no reason to do this. Think about your knee. Think about this pulsating, devious pain that moves from your knee towards the rest of your body. I can’t stop you can I? I want to. I want you to walk up that slope and disappear into those trees like you have since you came back to this part of the island. Stop thinking of her…you can’t can you? Your beautiful sin. A booming voice tells you not to eat of the tree, don’t eat that fruit, but you have to, because that woman tells you to right? Right there, is when love, the way we know it, was created. He looked towards the sky, looking the way that the sky looked now, a combination of tribulation and creation, the way four o’ clock has always looked, and Adam looked at the sky and chose love over unknowable punishment the way poor you from Suriname will choose it.

Winston jumped and swung his leg over the tall pailing and fell to the ground. He looked around the new surroundings and squinted his eyes to see where the path to Miriam’s house would be. He walked but then fell wordlessly in the soft darkness, soft because of the approaching morning that would shed light to the physicality of this all but never to the motivation, never to the chirping collaborators of the late night, and never to the love that occurred here.

Sergeant Douglass Sergeant turned the car onto the street where Miriam lived in a careful arc. Two others were with him – Lowell, the defeated tic-tac-toe player, and Constable Henry Yarde, a young man new to the police force who swore to his dying grandmother that he would do something useful with his life, and as she felt the dying in her along with the heat, the young man pressed his face into her scratchy, paper hands and thanked her for reforming him. Sergeant knocked softly on Miriam’s door and the door opened silently creating a tension. “I-I was just looking out my window when Jesus Christ I see a man jump over de pailing of’ de mini mart.”

“Okay yes this we know.” Sergeant whispered, “but in the time it tek for we to get here, you inform de owners o’ de mini mart?”

“Yeah, I call up Jackie and tell she. She is de daughter. I call she up cuz I know that she cell phone don’t got a loud ring. It does mostly buzz.”

“Good. Good thinking.” Sergeant said. The young policeman looked at her while her gaze was towards Sergeant. The woman was terrified. To Yarde, her eyes were a-blaze with fear, unblinking and beautiful. The wind would pick up for a couple seconds and he would look at her old T-shirt against her widening waist. He wanted to comfort her and to tell her lies to calm her and after he kissed her, look at her in the morning sun and tell her truth after truth. Meanwhile Sergeant looked at the woman he briefly consoled at Kevin’s funeral and took down the information, caring little for her fear, taking it only to mean that the criminal was a large man. Perhaps he committed more crimes throughout the countryside he theorised. Perhaps he could come up with a name of the man for the reporters to put on the front page - “countryside killer”, “de slasher”, and then “de jungle demon”.

The banana tree in the back flopped as Winston leaned against it, slowly putting and then taking weight off of his knee. He looked around again, and saw that the space leading to the woman’s house was wider than he thought. He swept his heavy locks back and wiped his brow with his old shirt, and then held his cutlass like you would an eccentric cane and said out to the abdicating night “Hello. My name is Winston. People say I do some tings – some o’ dem I do, but some o’ dem I didn’t. I tink I love you, but I ain’t sure, so, what is you name?”, then he shifted again in the craggy dirt and said “Good night, my name is Winston and I tink I love you. But wha so is you name?” Then he scraped the ground with his cutlass/ bejewelled cane and said “Even if you scared of me I want you to know that I love you. My name is Winston Hall. Yes, my name is Winston Hall and I am not ashamed.”

Yarde walked into Miriam’s house, squinted his eyes and looked back, asking “Ma’am, is there a way we could get from where you live to de mini-mart owner house?”

“Yes. They got a lil’ path that is connect we.”

“Do we just get out into your back-yard and just turn right?”

“Yes, yes, yes ya is just turn right.” She whispered. Yarde looked at Sergeant Sergeant, who then slid his right hand between his waist and the leather of his pistol. “Yeah, we gine go in she yard and surprise he, cuz he think he hard, but we gine light up he ass.” And with that he walked through the length of Miriam’s house, walking as if he owned it with no heeding to any decorum, because whatever decorum that was expected usually – whether you took your shoes off or letting the lady walk in front – would mean nothing once police were in your house, partly because of all the urgency in this and partly because of your status in the country. If it were a rich mover and shaker like a Goddard or a Williams, they would’ve at least asked if they could be shown the way through the house by the head of the house. Miriam noticed this, but pursed her lips because of this expected acquiescence that policemen’s widows exhibited always.

The sky was still dark, but still becoming lighter on the upper edges of the sky. Between Winston and the gate to Miriam’s house was a small, easily hop-able fence that separated the small garden that Winston stood upon, and the concrete that led to the back of the mini-mart. He leaned against the soft banana trees and looked up as the leaves crowded the round and glowing moon, its shining glow fading as the sun began to make its approach upon the island.

It combs the light of the moon. Look at the moon being obstructed by the light slice of the banana leaves, the distant craters and darkness of the moon that suggest another place for us humans to go to and make simple at first with our enviable industry, then only to advertise to the people about the advantages of such a place, and then imagine escaping to a place where the best went to the roughest, just like in the westerns you like so much. Feel that wind. Understand it. Believe that it holds a great new thing for you to encounter. Feel the wind, pregnant with the exhalations of generations of Barbadians and tourists. Tell yourself you love it. The people inside of you. Imagine that they tell stories to their children about you. Believe that someone is printing out protest banners for you. Hail the goodness that has gotten you this far, that has made you believe in the gospel of survival through the mere occurrence of actions. Worship the…

“Freeze, ya rassole cunt.”

“Doan come close.”

“I gine got ta come close. Cuz see I is de big bad woodsman coming to capture all o’ wunna wolves. Ya fucking wolves.”

“You sound like you been thinking a lot about what you gine say before you capture somebody.”

“Hush you fuckin’ mouth!” Sergeant Sergeant barked.

“You even know why I here?” Winston asked. “I ain’t here to steal. I here for love. I here to say something to a woman. Something that I should have said a long time ago. Let me through so I could tell her.”

“Put down de cutlass son. I doan know if you got a crush or you in love but come along and we could sort this out.” Sergeant Sergeant said, his hand out-stretched, on the concrete away from the man.

“I tink I love she.”

Okay run into the trees and then use the trunk of the trees to jump up to the pailing. You could leap over and be gone before these policemen come. We could get de dog and be gone from this parish by noon. Just run and jump! Your knee will be okay. You can’t wrestle the policemen to the ground. You have to retreat. Run off. Run off into de wild. Just do a lil’ jump an’ run. Jus’ do it calm.

Winston shifted back and looked at the imposing height of the pailing that he could jump over, he supposed. He saw the three policemen, and he saw them spread out to be of proper use. Winston gripped his cutlass stronger, his arms tensing and straight.

Then he saw her. She peeped through the passageway, furtively of course, but he saw her, her great, rounded eyes, her dense, brown skin, filled with a swirling system of emotions by now, brown with the approaching sun. She was pitied more than admired in her neighbourhood, and the tourists at the hotel were too caught up in the cocaine and flowers of the island to sit and study the beauty of this woman pushing past their rooms. This perky Barbadiana, full of egregious glee, of blind fear and hate, who went undetected by the visitors, but always constant to this visitor Winston. He knew no other recourse, could surmise nothing else but the accomplishment of these heated ideas that singed him in the dark.

He ran towards the policemen. The shot rang out with a sharp and ranging flight, like the flight of crows. Winston slumped back, and then lunged forward towards Miriam while the young policeman Yarde shot again. Winston fell back, squirming at first and then laying still, letting his shoulder-blades touch the ground, and listening to the arched sobbing of the mini-mart owner and Miriam go over the country-side, which was now becoming lighter with this new Age, supplanting the previous Age that began as the Union Jack went down and our flag went up, and ended as the man, arched and crackling on the ground, began to cough his last coughs about love, heard only by the mini-mart owners, the policemen, Miriam, and the curious primary school boy, who stood with his arms folded, staring through the open glass window of his room, with its colour coming alive again in the morning light.

THE END

#winston hall #barbados #black fiction #short story #Long Reads #black lit #fiction #island fiction

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adevotedappraisal · 5 years ago

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Short Story: Gershom, part one of two

A short story about a memorable day in the life of the most famous folk-hero of Barbados, one Winston Hall. I played loose with the actual facts of Winston’s life, the way all folk tales do, but also because the story is less about the particulars of his life and more of the imaginary mind-state and desires of a person in solitude who wishes to connect with a country that is as scared and confused about him as he is of the country itself. Enjoy.

Gershom part one (the mid-day son)

By Christopher White

Run always. Run until it doesn't make sense, until it gets too thick and it makes more sense to stop. Do the patrol. First go up to Old Ledge and do some sight seeing from there. Look. Look at the brown on the rooftops. Look at that section there with the path by the side. You made that path, trample all over the grass. It makes the runs quicker. Sky is clear. No rain smell, good. Mrs. Graves must be cooking by now. She makes good veggies. Are you hungry? You aren't hungry, good. Anything out the ordinary from the sight-seeing? No. Children going school. Look at that little one. Cheez on bredders I know he mother back when she was a child, now look she got a lil' boy. What's her name? She was cute girl, she used to look at me and smile sweet. I thought she did love me, but I was seven, I ain't know what love was then. She was cute. What was she rassole name now? It's an 'M' name. Anyway, check the trespass traps. No one has been up here. Good. Look up again. Look at that sky. Now look at the green. Go over by that mango tree and tie your lacens. What was her name? Winston stood by the mango tree overlooking St. Joseph and tied his shoe-laces carefully. The wind was soft but enough to push the trees to swaying. Down the hill was a pasture, a display of overgrown grass with an arcing path carved into it, made by Winston four months earlier. The countryside was silent save for the cheering that the leaves made in the wind, the occasional high shout of the school-children going to the nearby Primary School. A wooden crate laid half buried and overcome by the dirt, and one of the primary school boys stopped to kick at it. His mother quickly came and slapped his hand and the boy cried and breathed in, cried and breathed in, breathed in, then breathed in again, and then let his cry carry over the sloping section of the country, through the primplers of the dunks trees, over the ribs of the stray dogs, under the stereo of Stephen ' Step-Hen' Roberts, and into the tightly knit and thatched corridors of the Hill-trees (sparkling from the sun light coming through), past the perpetually deciduous Breadfruit tree until the last bit of the cry met the mango tree, and made Winston Hall look up, causing him to pity the boy and his own childhood, the recollections of which were as faded as the child's bellow.

The sun went on during the morning as Winston stayed mostly behind the large and thick line of trees, and carried his supplies as he made the trek to Chimborazo, where a sizable patch of farm land lay. On his walk along the ridges and down the dips along Joe's River and up through the slowly-swaying trees Winston remembered bits about his childhood. He thought about Primary School sports and how he was real good with the egg and spoon race. His little secret was to do the race on near tip-toes. A strange sort of balance, a strange sort of control occurred when he did this. The finals race was him up against Peter from down the gap, and Peter was the favourite because he had just won the 200m easily, but Winston had his technique. By this time of the day the sun was becoming soft around the Pasture of the school sports, and the sno-cone vendor had run out of evaporated milk, and Winston was ready. He got the lead early, trying to absorb all the shock of movement through his toes and knees. His eyes were on that egg, brown and wobbling, then he looked up at the yellow tape. He kept his nerve, trying to keep all his might and auspices on this one task. Mrs. Licorish was shouting "Go Winston! Lick down boy, lick down!" and he kept it all out while he warbled on. Winston stopped his thinking of his younger-Winston and looked up because he thought he saw someone. Down boy. keep low. Look for shadows that don't move like trees. Could be an animal. Could be nothing. It's not a person, you would have heard something by now. People is mek noise when they walking without minding their walking. Look the field over there. Good carrots and lettuce. The soil real dark. Gets turned over alot. He could grow some weed at the back there. Make himself some extra money. Remember Dizzy. Dizzy used to get a small boat and go over to Tobago every fortnight to get weed from he stash. Went with him sometimes. On the boat over he used to sing Sam Cooke tunes. Good voice. Barely used to hear him and was right across from him. It real hard to sing at a whisper and sing well. But you could do it if ya practice. I shoulda win that egg and spoon race. I lose concentration. I was thinking about the prize before I get it. Got complacent. Rest pun my laurels before I had de laurels. Peter just took advantage. He was safe tho. It was my fault. I wonder where that silver medal is? Mummy was proud or not? Mummy say once that she wish she had chinee eyes. I tell she I still proud of she eyes. She hug me. Okay stash de bags here. Come back later tonight. Get some carrots then. Sometime during the day you gine be hungry. Just hol off till you get to Robert. Robert got something for you. Remember. Later this evening. On his way back near Suriname, Winston heard a rap song. He wondered when was the time that rap got so popular in Barbados. He cared neither way for the music, it wasn't the music of his youth, and he really hadn't the time to learn new music. After getting free from prison during the late nineties he made it to the foot hills of his home-hamlet of Suriname, but on the way he remarked at all the antennae that were on top of roofs, all the fancy new cars on the road, and the even more churches that popped up during his imprisonment. By the time he reached Robert's house he was dirty, smelling of sweat, and tired, but the first thing he whispered to Robert was "wait Robert, Bajans sell dey ass to de Devil to get these new tings or wha?"

The sun had gone behind a sudden construction of clouds. Through the spaces in the clouds the sun came down in verdant lines. Winston was in a tree looking out at the country-side and nursing his right knee with a handkerchief in a way similar to this:

He had injured his knee on his latest escape from prison around four years ago. It was morning and the guards knocked on his door and said "Hall! Bath!" Winston got up off of his lumped bed and pushed against the wall. Silently he pushed against the inside of his cell, grimacing his futility only to himself, fingers clawing the faded paint, the thick stale air reminding him of his situation, of his choices. He did this same gesture to the walls everyday he remembered to do it. The young guard knocked on the door then the door opened. He stared at Winston. "Come 'long." he said.

Down the corridor he walked with the two guards flanking him, looking at the sorrowful structures of the century old prison. The feeding chain in the prison no longer surprised Winston. 'Big Criminal eat the little one' he mused. He noticed his feet chains were not the way he remembered them. He was walking with more freedom than the previous mornings. 'water goes to the path of least resistance' he thought. 'Geography teacher said that. But what was his name?' he thought. Then he pushed the guards fiercely aside and ran.

A large percentage of the Prison officials were in a meeting, and Winston ran like if he knew this beforehand - with reckless determination. Prison pants-legs rubbing swiftly against each other as Winston darted through some boxes then up near the play-court where Justin Maynard and Harold Peters stared in amazement at Winston's bursts. So concentrated, yet so risk-taking. Winston ran like freedom to the wall. The guards ran in pursuit and motioned others to tell the rest in the meeting. Gravel sparkled over his legs, then no gravel as he leaped up onto a shed and then onto the sharp-toothed wall. He looked back, at the galloping guards, at the stunned new-comer prisoners and the observant veterans who stopped the basketball game the moment they realised that this was an example that their fellow prisoners should view. They stood up, some cheering, most just beholding. Beholding Winston thirty feet up in the air on the precipice of a barbed wire wall that overlooked an over-run gully packed tight with all types of things discarded.

Winston jumped, not flailing, but not sure.

Don't squeeze it, just put you hands around you knee. Just let it know that you there for it. That jump was messy as blood. Uneven ground to land on. Thought it was broken. Thought it had snapped. Still bothers me to this day. Doesn't hurt when I bend down, only when I get up. This is good enough. Look at the sky. Sun coming back out. Look at the cloud shadow on the ground. That woman is coming back from dropping she son off from school. She doesn't work. Now I remember, she does, she just goes out 'round mid-day. She breasts look good. She do she hair pretty well up just to drop she son off. That's what I like. A woman that care what she look like. What is her name? I should run down there and ask her. Just ask her and kiss her and tell her I ain't got shite to give you but my heart and hope. I should tell she I want she to hope for me. Hope I work something out of this life. I is a good kisser I feel. Suck bubbies good. I would be a good father for de child. Child father aint around. I don't see any man ever with her. I would discipline the child good. I would love the child good. Tell he everything I know. Tell he everything to make sure he never end up like me.

Miriam Lowe walked down the cracked road to her home. She took her glasses off and started to clean them while walking by memory. She put them on again and stared at the trees and over-run grass behind the row of houses where she lived. Some of the children call that area the jungle and so she forbade her young one to go there without her. Her slippers flapped lazily as she walked up staring at this elaborate chaos back there. Fear truly resides in the unknown. Because fear implores you to assume, demands that you suppose the nature of the things that scare you. She day-dreamed a cabal of mad rastas in the hills, scorning the plaintive practicality of a remote control. Or she dreamt about drug dealers with huge weed trees reaping their harvest that would stick a knife through anyone who discovered their bounty, or any little boy. Maybe back there was a time warp, and pirates and runaway slaves and vampires and duppies and ravenous forest wolves all lived between the trees, all waiting to feast on the minds that fear them, the minds that are so scared of them, that they imagine them on morning walks while cleaning their glasses. Miriam walked up the unpainted steps and into her home. She put the boy's colouring books into a pile, and looked at the back of the newspaper. She then looked straight ahead at the picture of Kevin Lowe, staring straight ahead, policeman hat and visor sloping and shiny across his forehead, lips pursed, against a plain blue background. She stared at him and smiled at the dead man. On the nights that she would invite a man over for a night-time coupling, she would turn that framed picture down onto the glass cabinet that held assorted souvenir cups and decorativia. She put the kettle on the stove, sat down to gather herself before she left for work at a Christ Church hotel. She sat in her chair, bright from the sun coming through the ajar door, and thought about the duppies going to work in the bushes behind her house and up the hills. She thought about this until the kettle began to scree, unsure at first, then full throated as soon as enough of the water had boiled within it. Winston was down in a depression near Joe's River checking on stash B. He had a series of places where he stashed supplies, clothing and weapons. He walked further into the dense grass and further into the hills to Stash C. Stash C had dry foods and loose magazines he managed to get. He took out a green plastic bag filled with dry food and walked further down until the denseness stopped and the ground became softer. The ground gathered on his shoes but he walked on. The ground became sturdy again and a small pasture emerged; mostly dry grass and cracked earth. At the far end of the pasture was a tree with rope tied onto the base. Attached to the base was a dog, pacing silently back and forth, wagging all the while. There he is. He always lets me know he missed me. Give him a hug. Scratch his belly. Wrestle the bastard to the ground. There you go. He likes so much games. Is that lice there? No just dirt from the play-fall. Well, give the bag of dog food. Look at him nose through that. Sometimes you wait too long to feed him. Remember that. There was a boy in primary school who used to take children food from them. Used to call him Charles Bronson. Found out years later he was taking all that food home to feed his brothers. I would have given him the food if I had known that was the reason. He didn't have to hit me that one time. I cry but stop real quick. But I learn that sometimes you could reason with a man, but sometimes it doan matter. When a man hungry, all he know is letting go blows for food. Everybody like that. When dey back to the wall, they would beat they dog for food. Policemen is got to beat confessions out of people to get de case finish. Dem aint care, but when they job on the line dey beating up poor people. And if that poor person was a policeman he would do the same thing. Sometimes my back was to the wall. Sometimes I didn't have nuh big money for nothin. And sometimes I had to share out fuckin blows too.

And so Winston went through the day, hiding between one spot and the other, travelling with his dog, scouting out movement in the areas of St. Joseph, and thinking an assembly line of thoughts to stop himself from going mad. Winston's torment was not only his choices of his youth ( a naive 20 year old creeping up to a plantation house looking for quick money), but also the realisations that these choices were simultaneously making him more popular and more apart from this country he took for granted in his youth, as we all have. By the time of his second escape from prison (third from police custody), Winston Hall had managed to become the most well known male in Barbados while at the same time being the one person who had the least knowledge of what was occurring in his country for a man his age. He could tell you the best escape route from the gully near Richmond's house, and the best unguarded breadfruits in the parish, and how to separate normal flashlights from more expressive police flashlights, but at the same time Winston had no idea of the movie theatres that were cropping up, the dynasties of night-clubs that rose and fell over the decades, the spread of the internet, the drugs, the government, the rise of women in schools, the travel accounts for black managers at insurance companies, the carve of a rally-car tire into the asphalt, the smell of the west coast after it flooded and killed a few people, the look of a signature on an invoice slip of a DVD player bought at a department store, the progresses, the illusions, the pursed lipped rage of this country, all these things were apparitions - stories he might hear about but never care about because his country was not our country, his anthem was not the same we sing at events half-heartedly, his motto was of no high-minded Pride and Industry, but of only one word embedded into his thoughts, permeated into his action. His only motto was Survival. The sun was beginning it's slope downward now. Mid-day had come and Miriam was in a Transport Board bus rocking slightly, hopping up whenever the huge busses went down into a hole in the road. The grass and boundless grass that went by the window went into her eyes, left the memory that this road had grass on the sides of it, and then the rest of the images left her mind. The distinctions were only picked up by her under-mind, her subconscious, and her under-mind seldomly reminded her of how the world truly looked, of how the world truly operated. While the Bus stopped at a traffic light, and in the background, Grantley Adams Memorial School loomed sprawled by against the pastures. It was then that her under-mind began to remind her of the way her life truly was. The images of her late husband slapping her into the wall of their house came up. Miriam closed her eyes. She countered by reminding herself that he truly loved her, and she was not a door-mat for her man because she could get any man she wanted in Surinam or most places. She knew of the constitution of her breasts. But she stayed because she realised that things get complicated when you get older. "When you are a teenager or a girl like that of course you coul' leav ya boyfriend like that, because the only obligation is to the relationship. There is that thing telling you that you could get a better man. "But when you get married to a man, have a child with a man, get a house with a man, appliances, garden supplies, new bed sheets with a man, ya is become more entrenched. It's harder to leave. All of a sudden you start weighing everything. You is say to yaself 'yeah he hit me las night, but he change de child diaper real good and fix de back door'. The practicality of him over-weighs the emotional shite he might get on with. All of a sudden you get stresses when he get stressed, and vice-versa. We hurt each other differently when we in bad moods that is all. He shoved me into a wall when he was angry, and I tell he that he need to clean he ass better or I ain't gine suck he balls no more. People get hurt in different ways I guess." she thought to herself. The bus went along through the country. Past the mini-marts and the wooden churches and the rum-shops, and into the roads filled with hotels and night-clubs and well-designed restaurants. She rang the bell and got out, and went into her hotel. In the back room Janice Callender had her hand up her skirt pulling her shirt tail down so that it was all flat against her. The younger girl looked at Miriam as a bigger sister, an aunt, a guiding hand of some sort. "Miriam," Janice said while they got prepared for their work of work and smiling. "Yeah what happen Janice?" "Um, wha you would do is you man cheat on you? You woul' cut off he doggie?" "Nah, I wouldn't do that." Miriam said, "Men gine do tings like that sooner or later. I wouldn't even leave he." "Fuh trut? Why you wouldn't leave he?" Janice asked. "Because if you want to be in a relationship you is realise that ya aint in just a relationship, you in a life together. You have to learn patience, and hope, and most o' all, forgiveness. Love is mess up we head, and make us put up wid a lotta shite from de people we love. But to tell ya de truth, I wouldn't have it any other way." Miriam said. The two stood in the back room fixing up, and then Janice said, "but what if he was pun de down low with a man?" "Then I woul' throw he bullin ass out de house and cut off he doggie." Miriam said as they both laughed themselves into the hallway.

All was calm during the afternoon. The grass was knotted up amongst each other and the clouds moved softly. Years ago, there would be Reddifusion boxes wheezing out the hymns and solemn-spoken events of the day, but now those radios were gone and now a home stereo would vibrate bass-lines from a house where an unemployed man might live, or a woman at home with her child, or a middle-aged man going through a youth resurgence, listening to young-people stations while taking a day home from work. The community was at rest, as it usually is, as it usually expects itself to be. Winston sat behind a clutch of dunks trees mostly bare from being picked by Winston all the time. He was sharpening a piece of wood by planing down the edges to a point. Maybe he'd use it as a weapon, maybe he could stick it in the ground, tie rope to it and use it as an anchor for a make-shift tent if he suddenly had to run. Mostly he was doing it so see the soft, tender slices of wood peel off from over the knife and flick off playfully to the ground. Thin bends of wood, making not a sound as they were cleft from the wood that they were part of. No reason that they were now separated from their wood except from pure boredom now, or maybe pure usefullness. In any event, the wood shavings probably understood that these things were a course of life, and it didn't have to be fair, or expected, or planned, or even holy, in order for it to be a part of life. Winston took up the shavings from the ground lest anyone find them and suspect that he was living nearby. He was chewing some tamarind leaves slowly. "Tastes just like de tamarinds" he always told himself, and even as a little boy, it always calmed him down whenever he remembered that tamarind leaves calmed him down, because sometimes he didn't remember. He sat in the shade, his stomach not grumbling, and just stared at the countryside. Most would not believe this but he was not overly concerned with his legacy. He was so pre-occupied with survivng for no other reason than to survive that he seldom really thought about the impact of his survival on people who didn't have to. He once read an article when he was in Trinidad about the situation of the ghettoes around and the near Port-Of-Spain. The reporter asked a question, "How do you think your condition here in this squalour reflects on Trinidad and Tobago on a whole?" and then the reporter reported that the ghetto citizen had nothing to report on the question initially. He wrote that the man just stared at him as if he had never thought of anything related to this. The citizen then said " Ah cahn really say what other people should tink, ah only know what I tink. Maybe it reflect bad bad bad, but maybe nobody else really tek this ghetto into dey mind. In fact ah doan tink they do tink about the ghetto enough to feel ashamed or anyting about it." He heard shouting, but did not startle himself because he immediately recognised it as children's shouts. He slowly looked out and down the road from behind the trees and stared. He counted the money and objects in his pockets as he stared. Bajan women legs either small or big. They either skinny or meaty. no inbetween. They hips move like if only the hips dancing. Mrs. Fenty hand is getting better. Moving it better. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve I feel her husband broke it thirteen fourteen fifteen she looks like the type that would get beaten sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty and that's where ya is usually grab a woman when ya hold she rough twenty one twenty two twenty three twenty four - twenty four dunks in de right pocket. There's the little boy. The neighbour is carrying him home along with her son one two three four five his face is round just like his mothers six seven eight nine what is her name? ten Maureen? eleven Mary twelve wait Mary? thirteen Mary-Ann? fourteen fifteen Maybe Mary-Ann is she name. That is the closest I could get. I still feel I wrong, but less wrong than before sixteen seventeen. Seventeen bills I got, de same as yesterday so I know is de same amount. I is think about that girl too much one two three I getting feelings for she but I need to still concentrate on tings four five six seven eight she is treat people so good tho nine she so sweet to de other people ten when she laugh I is could hear it eleven and it is a laugh that so sweet twelve I want to mek she laugh like that bad bad bad thirteen rassole I love she? fourteen love who? I only love myself and mummy fifteen I have to talk to she, introduce myself to she, mek she laugh for me eleven, shite I think I lost count. Miriam tugged on the left side of the bed to make sure both sides of the sheet tails draped evenly off the bed. She looked outside the window at the sand, at the waves. She thought about drowning and then moved away from the window. She walked down the corridor, light thumps on the carpet when she walked. She sat down in the break room where the lockers were and unfolded the foil over her lunch. The smell of the beef chunks rose up and made her scramble for her fork. She speared one and shoved it in her mouth, biting down forcefully. She pushed the other chunks to the side to keep for later and scooped up the rice with her thumb on top of the place where the fork bent downwards. She enjoyed the meal but didn't smile about it. Smiling usually comes from enjoying the thing itself only for the entertainment in it. Food that you ate when you were hungry served the purpose of keeping you alive more, so there was little entertainment to enjoy about hunger-eating as opposed to say, eating ice cream. Miriam thought about when she was a child hiding from her father. Balled up inside a suitcase, she watched through the open zipper teeth as her father looked under the bed, sweetly growling her name, with his penis dripping. Yolanda came into the break room. Miriam looked up at her. Yolanda smiled back. "Doan be so sad Miriam. Jesus helps us all." "yeah...you right." she said, then took the beef into the fork and carefully bit the meat from the solid bone, using her tongue to rotate the piece, while she thought about dark rooms.

The sun was on it's stage to rest by the time Winston got underway to see the dog again. He thought about the future for the first time in a long time. He usually only thought about the future in terms of where things should be, where things are expected to be tomorrow: the sun comes up over there in the future, the school children sound this way in the future, the crickets will go like this in the future, the wind is expected to blow like this, and then like that, and then it would relent. But he never usually thought about that other future - the future that you can change. He wasn't one to think about five years into the future, because in his mind that was absurd. Other than the days, or maybe hours before a jail break he didn't think about his involvement in the future. Even in Trinidad during the calm nights, rain outside and the woman warm against him cooing herself to him saying, "Tony you is mek me feel safe, ya is a strong man ya hear me?", he never thought long about marriage, or where the little children would be in ten years or anything large like that. He just went on in his mind about what the rain was expected to sound when it slowed down to a drizzle, where the only big sounds would be the fat-as-cunt rain drops that fall from leaves, or dribble down the galvanize roof notching into the ground. He would think about that, then about the next day, and only after tomorrow came would he start to think seriously about the day after that, and what the accoutrements of then should look like. End of Part one.

#short story #winston hall #caribbean #barbados #long read #Black Fiction #island fiction

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