12 Drought (1925 New Age Version)

The whistle blew for eleven o’clock. As if under the hypnosis of a magic wand, all life at the quarry came to a standstill. Throats parched, grim, sun-crazed, blacks cutting stone on the white, burning hill-side dropt with a clang the hot, dust-powdered drills and flew up over the rugged edges of the horizon to descent into a dry, waterless gut. Hunger–pricks at stomachs inured to brackish coffee and cassava pone–pressed on folk, joyful as rabbits in a grassy ravine, wrenching themselves free of the lure of the white earth. Helter-skelter dark, brilliant, black faces of West Indian peasants moved along, in pain–the stiff tails of blue coats, the hobble of chigger-cracked heels, the rhythm of a stride–dissipating into the sun-stuffed void the radiant forces on the incline.

The broad road–a boon to constables moping through the dusk, or on hot, bright mornings, ploughing up the thick, adhesive marl on some seasonal chore, was distinguished by a black, animate dot upon it.

It was Coggins Rum. On the way down he had stopt for a tot–zigaboo word for skillet–of water by the rock engine. The driver, a buckra johnny–English white–sat on the waste box digging the meat out of a young water cocoanut. An old straw hat, black, and its rim saggy by virtue of the moisture of sweating sun-fingers, served as a calabash for a “ball” of cuckoo–corn meal, okras, and butter boiled and mixed and stirred and served in “balls”–roundly poised in its crown. By the buckra’s side, a black girl stood, lips pursed in an indifferent frown, inert in the heat.

Passing by them, Coggins’s bare feet kicked up a gust of the white marl dust, and the girl shouted to him, “Mistah Rum, you gwine play de guitah tee nite, no?”

Promptly, Coggins answered, “Come down and dance de fango–dance de fango fo’ Coggins Rum, and he are play for you.”

Bajan gal don’t wash ‘ar skin
Til’ de gut come down—

Grumblings. Pitch-black, she, to the “washed-out” buckra, was more than a bringer of victuals. The buckra’s girl. It wasn’t Sepia, Georgia, but a backwoods village in Barbados. “Didn’t you bring me no molasses to pour in the rain-water?” the buckra asked; and the girl, sucking in her mouth, brought an ungovernable eye back to him.

Upon which, Coggins, swallowing a hint, kept on his journey–noon-day pilgrimage–through the hot, creeping marl.

Scorching–yet Coggins gayly sang

O! you come with yo’ cakes
Wit’ yo’ cakes an’ yo’ drinks
Eve’y collection boy ovah deah!–
An’ we go to war–
We shall carry de name,
Bajan boys for–evah!

“It are funny,” Coggins murmured, clearing his throat, “Massa Braffit and dat chiggah-foot gal.”

He stooped and picked up a fern and pressed the back of it to his shiny ebon cheeks. It left a white–ferny imprint. Grown up, according to the ethics of the gap, yet Coggins, who, to it, was a “queer saht o’ man,” given to the picking of a guitar and to cogitations on the step after dark, indulged in an avowed juvenility.

Sun-drunk, Coggins carelessly swinging along cast an eye behind him–more of the boys from the quarry–overalled, shoeless, caps whose peaks wiggled on red, sun-red eyes–the eyes of black sun-burnt folk.

He always cast an eye behind him before he ventured off the broad road into the gap.

Flaring up in the sun were the new shingles on the Dutch-style cottage of some Antigua folk. Bordering theirs were the cherry trees in front of a mansion owned for Coggins scarcely knew how long by two English dowager maidens. In the gap, rocks, stones–shot up–obstacles for donkey carts to jarringly wrangle over at night. Flies and ringworms gathered in pools of muddy water forming about them.

“Yo’ dam vagybond, yo’!”

Coggins cursed his big toe. His big toe was blind. Helpless thing–a blind big toe in broad daylight on a West Indian road gap.

He stopt, and jacked it up. “Isn’t this a hell of a case fo’ yo’, sah?” A curve of flesh began to peel from it. Pree–pree–pree. As if it were frying. Frying flesh. The nail was jostled, shaken out of place. Hot, bright blood began to stream from it. Paradox. Around the injury white marl dust clung in grainy cakes. Now, red, new blood squirted–spread over the whole toe–and the marl dust took on colour.

Gently easing the toe back to earth, Coggins avoided the grass sticking up along the road and slowly picked his way to the cabin.

“I got a lame toe,” he announced, “I got a lame toe–woy–woy–”

“Go bring yo’ pappy a tot o’ water–Ada–quick—”

A nut-brown Sissie took the gored member in her lap and began to wipe tenderly the blood from it.

“Pappy stump he toe—”

“Dem rocks in de gap–”

“Mine ain’t got better yet, needer.”

“Hurry up, boy, and bring de lotion.”

“Bring me de scissors, an’ tek yo’ fingers out o’ yo’ mou’ like yo’ is starved out, sah!”

“–big boy like yo’ sucking yo’ fingers.”

Clip! Onion-coloured slip of flesh flew to the floor. Rattah Grinah, the half-dead dog, cold dribbling from his dazed, hungry eyes on to his freckled nose, moved inanimately towards it. Fox terrier–shaggy–bony–scarcely able to walk.

“Where is dat Beryl?” Coggins asked, one leg over the other, sitting on the floor–and pouring the salt water over the crimsoning wadding.

“Outside.”

“Beryl!”

“Wha’ yo’?”

“What yo’ doin’ outside?”

“Come in, miss!”

“Hard-ears girl, she been eatin’ any mo’ marl, Sissie?”

“She, Ada?”

“Sh, gal eatin’ marl all de haftahnoon—”

Pet, sugar–no more terms of endearment for Beryl. Impatient, Coggins, big toe stuck up cautiously in the air–inciting Rattah to a sleepy curiosity–moved past Sissie, past Ada, past Rufus, to the rear of the cabin.

* * * *

Yesterday, at noon–a roasting sun smote Coggins. Liquid–fluid–drought. Solder. Heat and juice–exotic union.

It smote Coggins. The dry season was at its height. Praying to the Lord to send rain, black peons gathered on the rumps of breadfruit or cherry tree in desolate supplication.

Passing along the road to the gap Coggins gazed at the essence of the sun’s fury. There, where canes spread over into the road with their dark, rich foliage, the village dogs–hunting for eggs to suck, fowls to kill–paused amidst the yellow stalks of cork-dry canes to pant, and drop, sun-smitten.

Of its moisture the sun had milked the land. Sucked it dry. Star apples, golden apples–husks–transparent on the empty trees. Savagely prowling through the orchards black birds stopt at nothing–gooseberries, sugar apples, mammie apples. And growing neurotic, turtle doves, leisurely hosts of the tropic earth, rifled the pods of green peas and purple beans. Yellow as the leaves of autumn, potato vines, severed from their roots by the parching of the sun, stood on the ground, the wind’s eager prey. Undug, stemless–peanuts, carrots–seeking balm, relief, the caress of a passing wind, shot dead, unlustered eyes up through cracks made by the sun in the shrunken earth. The sugar corn went to the birds. Ripening prematurely, breadfruits fell swiftly on the hard, dry soil, good only for fritters.

Fell in spatters–and being yellow–a yellow-mellow fruit–the hungry dogs, anticipating the children, lapped it up.

His sight curtailed by the very vividness of the sun, Coggins turned hungry eyes to the soil. Empty corn stalks–black birds at work—

Along the watercourse, umbrageous palms shading it, frogs cried for air, their white breasts like fowls, soft and white, giving the only moisture to their lives. The water in the drains dried up, they sprang at flies, mosquitoes–wrangled for a mite.

It was a dizzy spectacle. Coggins drew back–

Asking God to send rain–why? Where was the rain? Barrelled up there–in the clouds? Odd! Rivers, ponds, drains, upon drying up, asked of the sky–water. Odd–water in the sky.

The sun! It had its effect on Coggins. It wrung its toll out of the cosmos. It made the stone cutter’s face blacker. At the quarry–it was whiter. The quarry became whiter. The colour of dark things grew intensely darker. Similarly, with white ones–it gave them a whiter, glistening hue. Coggins and the quarry. Coggins and the marl. Coggins and the marl road.

Upon the road his eyes experienced a change. The road was white–blazing white. It was difficult for him to see anything upon it. His eyes at best a vivid red due to the intense warmth of the sun, he was unable to keep them on any one spot upon it.

About to switch off and go in to the gap, Coggins saw Beryl–in the marl road.

Beryl in the marl road. Six years old; possessing a one-piece frock, no hat, no shoes.

Brown Beryl–the only one of the Rum children who wasn’t black as sin. Yellow Beryl. It happens that way sometimes. Both Coggins and Sissie–a comely black woman–were unrelievably black. Still Beryl–came a shade lighter. Light-skinner, Beryl.

It happens that way sometimes.

Victim of the sun–a bright spot under its singeing dome. Beryl drew back at Coggins’s approach. Her little hands flew behind her back.

“Eatin’ marl again,” Coggins admonished, “eatin’ marl again, you little vagybond!”

Incredible imp! Only the day previous he had had to chastise her for it–sifting the stone dust and eating it.

“You’re too hard ears,” Coggins shouted, slapping her hands, “you are too hard ears.”

Dragging her by the hand, Coggins started in the gap. He was too angry to speak–too concerned.

Avoiding the jagged rocks in the gap–Beryl, her little body impressionless in the crocus bag frock dropping from her shoulders, began to weep. It was pitiful to Coggins to see Beryl cry. When Beryl cried he felt like crying, too.

But he sternly rejected the temptation and heaped invective upon her. “Marl’ll make yo’ sick—tie up yo’ guts, too. Tie up yo’ guts like green guavas. Don’t eat, it, yo’ hear, don’t eat no mo’ marl.”

“Eatin’ marl again, like yo’ is starved out,” Sissie landed a clout on Beryl’s uncombed head, “Go under de bed an’ lay down befo’ I crack yo’ cocoanut.”

Proud Bajan, Sissie; existing on a dry-rot herring bone–a pint of stale, yellowless corn-meal–a few spuds–yet thumping the children around for eating scraps, for eating food cooked by hands other than hers—

“Don’t talk to de child like dat, Sissie—”

“Oh, go ‘long you, always tryin’ to prevent me from beatin’ them. When she get sick who gwine tend she? Me or you? Man, go ’bout yo’ business—”

Beryl crawled meekly under the bed. Ada, a bigger girl–fourteen and “own-wayish”–shot a look of composed neutrality at Rufus, a sulky, cry-cry, suck-finger boy approaching twenty–Big Head Rufus.

“Serve her right,” Rufus murmured.

“Nobody ain’t gwine beat me with a hair brush—I know dat—” One leg on top of the other, Ada, down in the floor, grew impatient at Sissie’s languor in preparing the food.

* * *

Coggins came in at eleven to dinner. Ada, Rufus, did likewise. The rest of the day they spent killing birds with stones fired from the sling-shots; climbing neighbour’s trees in search of birds’ nests; going to the old French ruins to dig out, with the near-nebulous aid of Rattah Grinah, a stray mongoose or to rob of its prey a canary-conquering cat. Digging holes in the rocky gap–or on the brink of drains–and stuffing them with paper and gunpowder stolen from the Rum canister and lighting it with a match. Dynamiting! Picking up hollow pieces of iron pipe, scratching a hole on the top of it, towards one end, and ramming it with more gunpowder and stones and brown paper–and, with a pyramid of gunpowder moistened with spit, for a squib—-leyel it at a flock of snipes or sparrows. Touch-bams.

“Well, Sissie, what yo’ got to eat to-day?”

“Cuckoo–what yo’ tink yo’ are have?”

“Lord, more cuckoo–“–a restless crossing of scaly, mud-white legs in the corner.

“Any salt fish?”

“Wha’ ah is to get it from?”

“Herrin’?”

“You tink I muss be pick up money. Wha’ you expect mah to get it from? With butter and lard so dear, and sugar four cents a pound, you must be expect me to steal—“

“Well, I ain’t mean no harm–“

“Hey, this man set me crazy. You forget I ain’t workin’ ni? Yo’ forget dat I can’t even get water to drink, much mo’ grow onions or green peas–look outside–look in the yard–look at the parsley even.”

Formerly, in places–under the window or near the tamarind trees–fed by the used water or the swill—things grew. Yams, potatoes, lettuce—

Going to the door Coggins paused. A “forty-leg”–centipede–was working its way into the craw of the last of the Rum hens. “Gawd—” Leaping to the rescue, Coggins slit the hen’s craw–undigested corn spilled out–and ground the surfeited vermin underfoot.

“Now we got to eat this,” and he strung the hen up on a nail by the side of the door, out of poor Rattah Grinah’s reach—

Consummate rejoicing on the floor.

Coggins ate. It was hot— Hot food. It fused life into his body. It rammed the dust which had gathered in his throat at the quarry so far down in his stomach that he was unaware of its presence. And to eat food that had butter on it was a luxury. Coggins sucked up every grain of it.

“Hey, Ada.”

“Rufus, tek this.”

“Where is dat Miss Beryl?”

“Under de bed, M’m.”

“Beryl—”

“Mam—”

Unweeping, Beryl, barely saving her skull, shot up from under the bed. Over Ada’s obstreperous toes, over Rufus’s, by the side of Coggins, she had to pass to get the proffered dish.

“Take it, quick!”

Saying not a word, Beryl took it, and, sliding down beside it, deposited it upon the floor near Coggins.

“Yo’ mustn’t eat any more marl, yo’ hear?” he turned to her; “it will make yo’ belly hard.”

“Yes—pappy.”

Throwing up at him eyes–white, shiny, appealing–Beryl guided the food into her mouth. The hand that did the act was still white with the dust of the marl. All up along the elbow. Even around her little mouth, the white, tell-tale marks remained.

Drying the bowl of the most inconsiderate bit of grease, Coggins was completely absorbed in his task. He could hear Sissie scraping the iron pot and trying to fling from the spoon the stiff, over-cooked corn meal which had stuck to it. Scraping the pan of its very bottom, Ada and Rufus fought like two mad dogs.

“You, Miss Ada, yo’ better don’t bore a hole in dat pan, gimme heah!”

“But, mammie, I ain’t finish.”

Picking at her food, Beryl, the dainty one, ate sparingly—

* * *

Once a day the Rums ate. At dusk–curve of crimson gold in the sensuous, tropic sky–they had tea. English to a degree, it was a rite absurdly ancestral. Pauperised native blacks clung to the utmost vestiges of the Crown. Against which, too, it was more than a notion for a black cane hole digger to face the turmoil of a hoe or fork or “bill”–zigaboo word for cutlass–on a bare cup of molasses coffee.

* * *

“Lawd ah massay—”

“What a mattah, Coggins?”

“Say something, no?”

“Lawd, com yah, an’ see de gall picknee—”

“–speak no, what a mattah?”

Coggins flew to the rain-water keg. Knocked the swizzle-stick—-echo of Sissie’s pop manufactures–behind it, tilting the empty keg.

“Get up, Beryl—get up; what a mattah; sick?”

“Lif’ she up, pappy.”

“You move out o’ de way, Mistah Rufus, before—”

“Don’t, Sissie–don’t lick she—”

“Gal only playin’, dat what de mattah wit’ she–gal only playin’ sick— Get up, yo’ miss!”

“God–don’t, Sissie, leave ‘er alone.”

“Go back, every damn one o’ yo’, all yo’ gwine get in de way.”

Used to be moist near the rain-water keg. Times past “seasoning”–onion, thyme–sprang up profusely along there. Swill–dog dung, crisp dog dung, bird dung–cow dung picked up by Ada and Rufus on the broad road–and potato peelings flung there used to grow and create a world of green–soft to the eyes–there.

Hard, bare, virgin of growth–Beryl, little naked brown legs apart, was flat upon it. The dog, perhaps, or the skeleton of some fugitive wind, had blown up her little piqué dress. It formed a “cattah corner” shape on her stomach.

“Bring ‘er inside, Coggins— Wait, I gwine fix de bed.”

Mahogany bed. West Indian peasants–pirates of the black earth–sporting mahogany bed. Canopied mahogany bed. Dusty, grimy slice of cheese-cloth over it—

Bleak, palsied, Coggins stood up by the lamp on the wall, looking on at Sissie prying up Beryl’s eyelids.

“Open yo’ eyes–open yo’ eyes–betcha the little vagybond is playin’ sick.”

Indolently Coggins stirred. “Move, Sissie, befo’ ah hit you.” Unexpectedly a woman’s shadow dropped away. Swept aside to the larder over the lamp. Soot black painted the bottom of it.

Out of it came a lump of assafetida, bits of red cloth—

“Put dis to ‘er nose, Coggins, and see what’ll happen.”

Last year Rufus, the sickliest of the lot, had had the whooping-cough, and the parish doctor had ordered her to tie a red piece of flannel around his neck.

Into Coggins’s hand she stuffed the red flannel. “Try dat,” she avowed, and stept back.

Brows rinkled in cogitation, Coggins–space cleared for action–denuded the child.

“How it a rise! How ‘er belly a-go up in de air!”

Bright wood; bright, mahogany wood, expertly polished, and laid out in the sun to dry, approached it. Beryl’s stomach at best a light brown tint, grew bit by bit shiny— It rose; rose round and bright. It rose–higher and higher. Used to kites–pleasure star of the British tropics–none of them thought of wind-filling balloons. Beryl’s stomach resembled a wind-filling balloon.

Then—

“She too hard ears,” Sissie declared; “she won’t lissen to her pappy; she too hard ears.”

* * *

Dusk came. Country folk, tired, drowsy, sleepy, staggering in from the city–depressed at the market quotations on bantam cocks–hollowed howdy-do to Coggins, on the stone step, waiting.

Night: and Rufus, Ada, strangely, forgot to go down to the hydrant to wash their feet. It was a rule of Coggins. “Nasty feet breed disease,” he had said. “You, Mistah Rufus, wash yo’ feet befo’ you go to sleep. And you, too, Miss Ada. I’m speaking to you, gal, you hear me? Take yo’ mouth off o’ yo’ head, and hear what ah tell yo’!”

Inwardly glad of the escape, Ada and Rufus sat, not by Coggins out on the stone step, but down below the cabin, on the edge of a stone overlooking an empty pond, pitching rocks at the frogs and crickets screaming in the early dusk.

The freckled-faced old buckra physician paused before the light and held up something to it.

“Marl–marl—”

It came to Coggins in swirls. Noise comes in swirls. Pounding, pounding–dry Indian corn pounding. Ginger. Ginger being pounded in a mortar with a bright, new pestle. Pa-pound, pa-pound. And. Sawing. Butcher shop. Cow foot is sawed that way. Stew–or tough, hard steak. Then the drilling–drilling–drilling to a stone-cutter’s ears! Ox grizzle.

Drilling into ox grizzle—

“Too bad, Coggins,” the doctor said, “too bad, to lose yo’ dawtah—”

Hazily it came to Coggins. Inertia swept over him. He saw the old duffer climb into his buggy, tug at the reins of his sickly, old nag and slowly turn round the rocky gap and disappear into the night.

Inside, Sissie, curious, held things up to the light. “Come,” she said to Coggins, “and see what ‘im take out ta ‘ar. Come an’ see de marl—”

And Coggins, slowly, answered, “Sissie, if you know what is good fo’ yo’self, you bes’ leave dem stones alone—“