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’om 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 spreading dounz she 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 the dounz.

“… let she alone, sha’, g’way.”

“Eatin’ de po’ dog bittle.”

“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, they bess 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, bolonjays a 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 ahl
An’ crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl
An’ crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl
An’ 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 wiggling queriman resist being dragged up on the smooth, spotless deck. Kingfish, sprat, flying fish–sprang, fought, grew enraged at the proximity of sealess earth. On a half-dry mattress the children slept … 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 and dounz sunset 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 the conkee, 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 watahmout’ 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’ ent gwine 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 went in 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 Joe
Donkey wahn wahtah, hole ‘im Joe
Hole ‘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 outdone 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, singing Hole ‘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 and 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. Obeah juice. “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, the leaves 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.