10 Tropic Death

I

THE little boy was overwhelmed at being suddenly projected into a world of such fluid activity. He was standing on the old bale and cask strewn quay at Bridgetown watching a police launch carry a load of Negro country folk out to a British packet smoking blackly in the bay.

He was a dainty little boy, about eight years of age. He wore a white stiff jumper jacket, the starch on it so hard and shiny it was ready to squeak; shiny blue velvet pants, very tight and very short–a little above his carefully oiled knees; a brownish green bow tie, bright as a cluster of dewy crotons; an Eton collar, an English sailor hat, with an elastic band so tight it threatened to dig a gutter in the lad’s bright brown cheeks.

He was alone and strangely aware of the life bubbling around Nelson’s Square. Under the statue masses of country blacks had come, drinking in the slow draughts of wind struggling up from the sea. City urchins, who thrived on pilfering sewers or ridding the streets of cow dung which they marketed as manure; beggars, black street corner fixtures, their bodies limp and juicy with the scourge of elephantiasis; cork-legged wayfarers, straw hats on their bowed crinkly heads; one-legged old black women vending cane juice and hot sauce.

It was noon and they had come, like camels to an oasis, to guzzle Maube or rummage the bags of coppers, untie their headkerchiefs, arrange their toilet and sprawl, snore, till the sun spent its crystal wrath and dropped behind the dark hulk of the sugar refineries to the western tip of the sky. Then it was their custom to pack up and sally forth, on the singing jaunt to the country.

Scores of ragged black boys, Gerald’s size and over, filled the Square, half-covered by the dust, snoring. Old boys, young boys, big boys, little boys; boys who’d stolen on the wharves at sundown and bored big holes in the wet sacks of brown sugar; boys who’d defied the cops, and the sun, and the foaming mules, or the ungodly long whip of the driver, and skimmed on to tin cups the thick brackish froth the heat had sent fomenting up through the cracks in the molasses casks; boys who’d been sent to the Island jail for firing touch bams at birds lost in the bewildering city or for flipping pea-loaded popguns at the black, cork-hatted police.

Melting target for the roaring sun, the boy turned and gazed at the sea. It was angry, tumultuous. To the left of him there rose the cobwebbed arch of a bridge. Under it the water lay dark and gleaming. Against its opaque sides there were scows, barges, oil tankers. Zutting motor boats, water policemen, brought commotion to the sea. Far out, where the sun kissed it, the sea shone like a sheet of blazing zinc.

Creeping to the edge of the quay, he peeped over and saw a school of black boys splashing in the water. They were diving for coppers flung by black tourists on the side lines. They slept on the Congo-slippery rafts holding up the city, and would, for a ha’penny, dart after parasols or kites–that is, if the kites happened to be made of hard glazy “B’bados kite papah”–lost on the rolling bronze sea.

“Come, Gerald, eat this.”

He turned and there was his mother. His big bright eyes widened for her. And a lump rose in his throat. He wanted to hug, kiss her. With the heat of his mouth he wanted to brush away her tears, abolish her sorrow. He wanted, too, to breathe the lovely, holy beauty of her.

“Come, son, tek yo’ fingah outa yo’ mout’, quick, de launch will be yah any minute now.”

He took the lozenge, the sun making it soft and sticky.

“Don’t yo’ want some ginger beer, son?”

“Oh, mama, look!”

The launch had come up, and one of the sailor-cops, a husky, black fellow, was making it fast.

“Orright lady, yo’ is de nex’–come ahlong.”

With much agitation she got in the boat. She had to hang on to her bag, to Gerald, and she was not prepared to get the ends of her slip wet. The men seized him, and she stepped down, barely escaping a carelessly dangling oar.

Bewildered, they clung to each other. “All right, son?” she said. But he was too unspeakingly concerned over the concurrent miracles of sea and sky.

Leaping through the sea, the boat would drown them in a shower of spray every time it came up, and Gerald was repeatedly tempted to put his hand in the water. “Keep yo’ hands inside, sah,” she cried, “shark will get you, too.”

He remained aware of only foam and water, and the boat’s spit and sputter, and the warmth of Sarah’s bosom. Away back, on the brown and gold of the horizon, he saw speeding into nothingness the scows and warehouses and the low lofts of Bridgetown. Now, the sea rose–higher, higher; zooming, zooming; bluer, darker–the sky, dizzier, dizzier; and in the heavens war was brewing–until the shroud of mist ahead parted and there rose on the crest of the sky the shining blue packet!

II

Sunday came. The sun baptized the sea. O tireless, sleepless sun! It burned and kissed things. It baked the ship into a loose, disjointed state. Only the brave hoarse breezes at dusk prevented it from leaving her so. It refused to keep things glued. It fried sores and baked bunions, browned and blackened faces, reddened and blistered eyes. It lured to the breast of the sea sleepy sharks ready to pounce upon prey.

Falling night buried the sun’s wreckage. To the deckers below it brought the Bishop of the West Indies, a wordy, free-jointed man. He was a fat, bull-necked Scot with a tuft of red grizzly hair sticking up on his head and the low heavy jowl of a bulldog. He wore a black shiny robe which fell to the tips of his broad shiny black shoes. An obedient man, he had deserted the salon on the upper deck–deserted red-faced Britons in cork hats and crash on a jaunt to the iron mines of Peru–to take the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ to the black deckers below.

He very piously resisted grime and filth. On one occasion to avoid stepping on a woman’s sleeping arm, he was obliged to duck under a hammock. It swayed gently and the man in it was one of those rare specimens–a close-mouthed, introspective Savanilla trader. As he shot up from beneath it, the Bishop was just in time to have splashed on the breast of his shining robe a mouthful of the trader’s ill-timed spit. For half a second he blinked, and heated words died on his lips. But seeing the Colombian unaware of the impiety, he gruffly scrambled onward, brushing his coat.

Edging between a carpenter’s awl and a bag of peas and yams, something ripped a hole in the Bishop’s coat. He was sweating and crimson. His collar was too high and too tight. Stepping over a basin of vomit, he barely escaped mashing a baby. He was uncertain that he had not done so, and he swiftly returned and without saying a word gave the sea-sick mother half a florin.

He clapped a fatherly hand on Gerald’s head, and the boy looked up at him with wondering bright eyes. Sarah Bright was sitting on the trunk skinning a tangerine.

“Your little boy?” smiled the Bishop, “smart-looking little chap, isn’t he?” It was a relief to come upon them.

“Tu’n roun’ yo’ face, sah,” she said, “an’ lemme brush de sugah awf yo’ mout’–” Assiduously she tidied him.

It was dark, and the ship was rolling unsettlingly. A kerosene torch spun a star-glow on the Bishop’s pale tense face. He was about to address them. He was buried amongst a cargo of potatoes and the litter of the deckers. His was a sober impulse. On all sides the Dutch of Curaçao, the Latins of the Pass, the Africans of Jamaica, and the Irish of Barbadoes–spat, rocked, dozed, crooned.

In a fetid mist odors rose. Sordid; tainted; poised like a sinister vapor over the narrow expanse of deck. And with a passionate calm, the Bishop, clasping the Book of Books, faced them.

“O Lord, our God,” he trembled, “O everlasting Father, again it is our privilege to come to Thee, asking Thy blessing and Thy mercy. Great God and Father! Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest the hearts of all men, and especially the hearts of these, Thy children! O Sacred Jehovah! purify their wretched souls–give unto them the strength of Thy wisdom and the glory of Thy power! Lead them, O Blessed Father, unto the pathway of righteousness that they may shine in the glory of Thy goodness! Help them, O! Divine Father! to see the light that shineth in the hearts of all men–we ask Thee Thy blessings in Thy son, Christ Jesus’ name, Amen!”

III

Fish, lured onto the glimmering ends of loaded lines, raged in fruitless fury; tore, snarled gutturally, for release; bloodied patches of the hard blue sea; left crescents of gills on green and silvery hooks. Some, big and fat as young oxen, raved for miles on the shining blue sea, snapping and snarling acrobatically. For a stretch of days, the Wellington left behind a scarlet trail.

. . . . . . . .

He was back in Black Rock; a dinky backward village; the gap rocky and grassy, the roads dusty and green-splashed; the marl, in the dry season, whirling blindly at you; the sickly fowls dying of the pip and the yaws; the dogs, a row-rowing, impotent lot; the crops of dry peas and cassava and tannias and eddoes, robbed, before they could feel the pulse of the sun, of their gum or juice; the goats, bred on some jealous tenant’s cane shoots, or guided some silken black night down a planter’s gully–and then only able to give a little bit of milk; the rain, a whimsical rarity. And then the joys, for a boy of eight–a dew-sprayed, toe-searching tramp at sunrise for “touched” fruit dropped in the night by the epicurean bats, almonds, mangoes, golden apples; dreaming of the day when the cocoanut tree planted at a particularly fecund part of the ground would grow big enough to bear fruit; waiting, in the flush of sowing time, for a cart loaded to the brim to roll rhythmically over the jarring stones and spill a potato or a yam. After silence had again settled over the gap, he’d furtively dash out on the road and seize it and roast it feverishly on a waiting fire; he’d pluck an ear of corn out of the heap his mother’d bring up from the patch to send to town, and roast it, and stuff it hot as it was in his tiny pants pocket and then suffer excruciating rheumatic pains in his leg days afterwards.

Usually on a hike to Bridgetown Sarah would stop at the Oxleys’ on Westbury Road. Charlie Oxley was a half-brother of hers. Once he had the smallpox and the corrugations never left him. He was broad and full-bellied and no matter how hot it was he wore severe black serge. He was a potato broker, and a man of religious intelligence.

He had, by as many wives, two girls–and they were as lovely as fine spun silk. But Suttle Street, a pagan’s retreat, was hardly a place for them so they were sent to Codrington to absorb the somber sanctity of the Moravian Mission. Now there came to crown the quiet manor on Westbury Road, another mistress, a pretty one, herself a mother of two crimson blown girls, the quintessence of a spring mating. They were a divine puzzle to Oxley. It was queer that their fathers, both firemen on a Bristol tramp, now blissfully ensconced in the heart of the Indian Ocean, had forgotten to return to tickle and fondle their pure white faces. …

It had happened in a peculiar way. And all through a silly love of song. Why did she ever encourage such a feeling? The legend of it was fast taking its place beside the parish’s scandals of incest. Sea songs; songs sailor-men sang; ballads of the engine room and the stokehole; ditties fashioned out of the crusted sweat of firemen. Ah, it went beyond the lure of the moment. Bowing to it, she’d go, the lovely whelp, to wharf and deck when sunset was spreading a russet mist over the dusky delta of Barbadoes and give herself up to the beauty of song. Greedily songs go to the heart; go to the heart of women. It was bad enough being maid at a grog shop on a bawdy street and the upsquirt of a thundering Scot and an African maiden, but it was worse when the love of songs of the deep, led one at dusk, at dark, to descending stairs to stokeholes or to radiant night-walks on the spotless fringe of Hastings.

Mosquito one
Mosquito two
Mosquito jump in de ole man shoe.

At last, song-scorning, no more a slinger of ale, she had crawled, losing none of the primal passion she had formerly dazzled him with, over to Oxley’s–to fatten on a succession of gorgeous nights of deep-sea singing and unquestionable sailoring.

Meditating on the joys attendant to the experience of seeing the Oxleys there came to little Gerald’s mind the vision of soup. Rock-hard crabs, tight-fisted dumplings, little red peppers, Cayenne peppers, used all to be in it. Sometimes there would be seasoning it hossah or corass and parsley and white eddoes. And when they left, Mr. Oxley always gave Sarah a bag of potatoes to take home; but she was a lady and proud and it pained her to take it home on her head; but one of the neighbors, who had a donkey cart which came to town each day, would stop by and get it for her.

One forenoon when the sun was firing the hills of Black Rock, she had hurriedly decided to visit the Oxleys. To every one, down to the idiot Lynchee King, he of the maw worm, it was clear that something was tugging at Sarah Bright’s throat.

To Gerald it was a quickening ordeal. All along the gap they went; up St. Stephen’s Road–the birds brilliant-plumaged in the ripening cornfields–past the Gothic exterior of the Chapel to a steep decline where the hilly road was crowned by the falling leaves of a giant evergreen tree whose roots spread to every point of the compass. Up the road, the sun bright as a scimitar, the inexorable dust-marl heavy on them; past cow pens and meadows; past shops and cottages where folk inquisitively spied at them through half-shut jalousies. Then past the Mad House and Wolmer Lodge, a branch of the Plymouth Brethren, where Sarah “broke bread” and Gerald slept; up to Eagle Hall Corner and onward down to the roaring city. On the way he’d lift his piteous eyes to her sobbing face and implore, “Don’t cry, mama, don’t cry, God will provide for us.”

At the Oxleys’ the tension slackened. It was easing to be there. They had a big, pretty house, plenty to eat, and the girls were lovely as the flowers whose fragrance was a dewy delight to the boy.

Again it was some sort of soup, fish soup, and the sensation of a hearty meal helped considerably to dissipate Gerald’s concern over the things agitating his mother.

After dinner he and the girls, Vi and Rupertia, slid to the floor to play. A Bible was their toy. On their lips the letters of the word contents made a lascivious jingle. Charlie open ‘nen’s t’ing ent ‘nen’s ting sweet. Caught in their own impishness, they clapped their hands over their mouths, shutting off the laughter, and rocked against each other in riotous glee.

“Hey, Sarah, duh ought to lock he up, yes. Hey, you would ‘a’ t’ink a man wid fi’ chirrun would ha’ a bit o’ conscience. W’en yo’ say yo’ hear from ‘e las’?”

“June–le’ mah see,” snuffled Mrs. Bright, diving in her hand bag, “yes–it is June. June will be eight months sense Oi las’ hear from ‘e.”

“An’ yo’ mean fo’ tell muh,” cried Mr. Oxley, his incredible eyes big and white, “dat dah neygah man ent ha’ de graciousness in ‘e ‘art fuh sen’ yo’ a ha’penny fuh de chirrun awl dis time?”

“No, Charlie.”

“Gord! Dah man muss be got de heart uv a brute!”

“He must be fuhget we, Charlie.”

“Wuh, moy Gord, yo’ don’ even fuhget ah doig yo’ fling a bone to, much mo’ a big fambaly like yo’ got dey. Fuhget yo’?”

“He must be,” wept Mrs. Bright, swallowing hard, but Gerald was too impassioned himself to rise or let the girls share his sorrow.

“But wha’ yo’ gwine do, ni, Sarah? Wha’ yuh gwine do? Yo’ an’ all dese chirrun yo’ get dey, ni?”

“Oi ent stop fuh t’ink, Charlie, to tell yo’ de troot. But de Lord will provide Charlie, Oi is get my truss in Him.”

“But wha’ kin de Lord do fo’ yo’ now yo’ doan heah fum dat woofless vargybin?”

“Ev’yt’ing wuks togeddah fuh dem dat truss in de Lorrd. Oi’ll manage somehow. Oi’ll scratch meself togeddah. De lil’ bit o’ money Oi get fum de house an’ de piece o’ lan’ will jus’ buy me an’ Gerald ticket. Now all Oi is axin’ yo’ fo’ do is put up de show money. Oi ent wan’ no mo’. Dah is anuff. An’ as de Lord is in heaven Oi’ll pos’ it back tuh yo’ when the boat land at Colon.”

“An’ wuh yo’ gwine do wit’ de chirrun, ni, Sarah? Wuh yuh gwine do wit’ dum?”

“Oi got Rosa fuh look aftah dem fo’ me, bo. Yo’ know Peony is wid she evah sense de holliduhs, an’ she don’t even wan’ fuh come way, de ownway t’ing. But, yo’ know, Charlie, Oi can’t blame de chirrun, ni. Um ent nutton home fuh duh. Rosa is berry well satified fi’ hav’ she, aldo me can’t say she ah happy riddance. No, not at all. Well, an de uddah gyrls, it gwine be ha’d ‘pon dem, but Rosa house on Coloden Road is big enough fee tek cyah ah all uh dem, an’ Mistah Foyrd only come home once a mont’. Rosa so lonesome, an’ she so like de picknee dem. She will tek cyah uh dem fuh muh till Oi sen’ back fuh dem. An’ Oi only takin’ Gerald wit’ muh, po’ fellah.”

“Oi gotto go,” she went on, in a hollow, dejected voice, “an’ see wha’ de mattah wit’ Lucian. Oi can’ go ‘long tyin’ mi guts no mo’. Oi too tired.”

“Hey, but dah is a beast uv a man fuh yo’, ni!” muttered Oxley in incredible outrage.

“Yo’ know, sometimes Oi t’ink he muss be sick–”

“Sick?” he flew up, like a hen striking at a mongoose. “Dah man sick? Gyrl, hush up yuh mout’! Dah man sick? He ent sick no ‘way! If he was sick doan yuh tink de nurse in de horspitral can write a letter even fuh a shillin’ fuh he? Gyrl, go talk sense, ni! Dah man ent sick. He is jess a wufless stinkin’ good fuh nutton vargybin’ who ent learn fuh tek cyah uh he fambaly, dah is wuh he is! Oi tell yuh ’bout dese fancy mud-head men! Ent a blind one o’ dem any blasted good! A pack o’ rum-drinkin’, skirt-chasin’ scoundrels–dah’s wuh duh is! Dey ort tuh lock he up, dey ort tuh get he ‘n roast he behind fuh he–”

“Charlie!”

“Wha’ Oi doin’? Ent um is de troot, ent um?”

“Oi ent gwine giv’ up hope, Charlie, Oi still got my truss in de Lord.”

“Yuh is ah bettah uman dan Oi is ah man, Oi know.”

“If um is de will uh de Lord fuh me tuh suffer like dis, Oi is willin’. Didn’t Christ die on Calvary’s Cross tuh save yuh an’ me an’ Lucian–”

“Who, dat vargybun’, don’t put ‘e ‘long side o’ me, Oi ent wan’ none o’ ‘e nasty self fi’ tetch me.”

Some one intruded upon them. Sarah wiped away a tear. It was difficult to be there, denuding herself before that woman and her saucy girl children.

She came in, one of the girls at her side. “Hexcuse me, Charlie, but wuh yo’ say, le’ dem go?”

“Go weh?” he roared suddenly looking up.

“To de fungshan, no?” she replied, scornful of his brilliant memory.

“Chu,” he said, turning back to Sarah, and staring at her searchingly, “All de time sochalizin’, sochalizin’.” He swiveled back round. “Ah say no! Yo’ heah? No! Dem a stay in de house!”

“But it no a gineral saht o’ shindig,” she pleaded, “it a Miss Coaltrass dawtah what a hav’ it.”

“Ah don’t giv’ a dam pity hell who dawtah a hav’ it–dem n’ah go!”

“But Charlie–don’t!”

“Me don’ mean fi’ insult yo’, Sarah, wit’ me nasty tongue, but yo’ mus’ excuse me. But dese pahties dem ‘nuf fi’ mek Christ hesell bre’k loose.”

“But me don’t tink it are much–”

“Dem n’ah go–dat a sure t’ing! Could as well put it in yo’ pipe an’ smoke it! Saht’n fact! Dem tek up wit’ too much gwine out orready. Wha’ ah mo’, dat Miss Persha, dem low-neck dress she ah wear, dem gwine giv’ ar cold, too, yo’ mahk ah fi’-mee wud.”

“Wha’ time it hav’ let out, Persha?”

“Early, mam.”

“Oh, le’ de picknee dem go, Charlie, yo’ too a’d on de gal chile dem.”

“Dat’s juss why me don’t wan’ dem fo’ go. Awl yo’ go out o’ dis house at all howahs o’ de night time, like unna is any umans, disregardin’ whatevah awdahs dere is. Look at dat Miss Persha, she bin gwine out eve’y night dis week. Wha’ she a go so? Wha’ she a fine place fi’ go so? But no mind; wait till me catch she, yo’ wait.”

“Dat a fac’, Charlie, me hagree wit’ yo’ dey, me gwine put my foot down once an’ far-all ‘pon dem trampoosin's.”

“Well, let de rascals dem go dis time.”

IV

One day Gerald stole out on the deck. The sun was broiling hot. His mother was with him.

“Mama,” he said, “let’s go roun’ de uddah side.”

“Wha’ fuh, sonny?”

“Ah wan’ fuh go out dere at the Portugee shop an’ buy a ball o’ cookoo an’ a piece o’ salt fish. My mout’ ain’t got a bit o’ taste.”

“Yo’ can’t do that, son, there ain’t any shops in the sea,” she said, smiling weakly at him. “Come, let’s go back–I don’t feel so good.”

Then it suddenly happened. They were below, it was dark, quiet, noiseless. Even the engines had stopped. Boom! it came. It sounded like the roar of a cannon. It shook the ship. Glass jingled. Things fell. Gerald’s energetic mind flew hurriedly back to Black Rock. Often there would be sun and rain–all at once. The gap folk had become so used to it that they said it was the “devil and his wife fighting.”

Until now lazy and half-asleep, the deckers rose, scrambling up on the above deck. Their baggage was going with them.

Gerald turned to his mother, busy combing her hair. She said, “Come, Gerald, put on yo’ Sunday hat, son, yo’ at Colon.”

But he was skeptical. He stole upstairs and was an eager witness to the ship’s surrender. The Wellington, a princess of the sea, had given in to the greater force of the earth. Soberly and serenely she had done so.

V

“Well, Sarah, who’s this?”

“The last one, Gerald.”

“He grow big, yes.”

“Skipper don’t even know he own son.”

“Suck fingah buay.”

“Shut up, Saboogles!”

“Fairf!”

“Come heah, son, don’t cry–come ‘n say howdee to yo’ pappy.”

“Tek yo’ fingah outa yo’ mout’, sah.”

“Say, something, no, Gerald–”

“Howdee!”

“Say howdee pappy.”

“Howdee pappy.”

“Oi don’t know wha’ mattah wit’ dis’ boy, ni. Comin’ on de boat he was–”

“Come an’ kiss me, sah.”

He flinched at the suggestion. But there was no escape and he had to put up his face to receive the wet, disgusting kiss.

“Like yo’ ent glad to see yo’ pappy,” he heard his mother say, and was ferocious at her, “an’ bin talkin’ an’ exquirin’ ’bout what yo’ look like, Lucian, evah sense we lef’ B’bados.”

He slunk back, shuddering at the touch of the man, and took a good look at him. He was crouched before a machine. He was fairer than Sarah–she was black, he a yellowish brown. He was soft, yet not fat, but he gave one the appearance of being weak and flabby. He was biting thread. Gold-rimmed brown glasses barely shaded eyes circulating in two seamy bloodshot pools. His hairy arms rested soft and heavy on the machine. He was bald, and his mouth was large and sensuous. It was a roaming mouth. His hands were of putty. Every time he swallowed, or raised his head, a rum goggle as modest as a turkey gobbler’s would slide up and down.

The place was noisy and vulgar. It smelt of brandy and Jamaica rum, but tuxedos and crash tunics were sewed there for the dandy bomberos of the Republic. Far into the night it kept twenty men on the job, but it was an idler’s and a lazy man’s joint. Customers like the judge, a proud, blue-eyed Spaniard, would stop by on their way home at night–but it was a hang-out and an assignation spot for cabrons and barefooted black mares.

“Go an’ pick up dah cotton reel fuh mah,” Bright said to him, “an’ put dis empty bottle behind the counter–”

It was here that Gerald was to take on the color of life.

VI

“Mama, a las siete!”

It was seven o’clock. Anger, noise, confusion–a cock’s lofty crowing. Opening his eyes, he stood quietly, deciding. In a tall bare room, he had been warmed in the night first by one adult body, then, an eternity later, by another. Now he was free of the sense of both.

A sun, immortal, barbaric as any reigning over Black Rock, shot hazes of purple light on the evening’s litter scattered about.

“Mama, a las siete!”

Ah, he was not now on the ship. Nor was he at the tailor shop. This must be–home.

He sat up in bed, gazing at the enormity of things in the room. “Oh, Mama–” he cried, but no answer came. He jumped off the bed and dragged on his boots. He dressed and made for the door. He was struck once more by the glow of the bright Panama sun. The room opened out on a porch, not very wide, and there was no awning to cool it.

“Mama, a las siete!”

Down by the stairs a half-sick, half-clothed little child was crying. Standing above him was a lank, black, cruel-faced woman, brewing a cup of hot milk. As soon as the milk was shifted from one cup to the other, she would turn and stamp at the little boy on the floor.

“Where am I to get it from?” she screamed at him, “shut up, I say–shut up–before I cuff you–what do I care if you haven’t eaten for two days–your stomach burning you–well go to sleep–you been already–well go again–sleep, sleep–it will do you good–it will make you forget you ever had a belly.

“Think I pick up smoked sausage? I’ve got to buy it. And what have I got to buy it with? Filth! May the heavens consume you! Shut up, I say! Who cares whether it is seven o’clock–or eight o’clock–or nine o’clock? Let me be! The baby’s got to eat, and you’d better begone, you’re too noisy. Seven o’clock! Sing it to the birds, sing it to the canary, sing it to the winds. Winds can wake up the dead. Go try–bawl it to the winds! But I’ve got my own song, I’ve got my own tune. I don’t want to hear you, shut up, I say.”

All this in a tongue musical to Gerald, but the cries of the little boy and the pox on his face and the sores making a batter of his toes unforgettably moved him.

At the cesspool he espied a girl. Her back was to him. She was of mixed blood, of assafetida brown, and had once had the smallpox. She was shouting at the top of her voice to the Chinaman downstairs to “giv’ me wattah, yo’ dam China-mang, you giv’ me de wattah.”

It took a long time for it to treacle upstairs. The water struggling up at last, she proceeded to bathe Madame’s canary. To supervise the rite, Madame came herself–adding to the Cholo girl’s swift parrot-like chatter words just as swift and as parrot-like.

Madame was a beauty. Wife of a Colombia rum merchant, she was fat and rosy and white. “Me white,” she’d say to the West Indian lodgers in her tenement, “you no see fo’ my skin?” The plate of her jeweled bosom soared high. Encountering it, one’s first impulse would be not to lay one’s head on it, but to cling, climb, sit safely and plumply on it. Her flat, wrinkled face had been smothered in some starch-like powder. She was white, as whites on the Isthmus went, but the flour or powder which she dabbed so thick on her face sometimes failed to accomplish its task. At intervals the wind or the latitudinous heat dissipated splotches of the starchy pallor, and Madame’s neck, or the rim of Madame’s mouth, or the balloons under Madame’s eyes–would expose a skin as yellow as the breasts of the Cholo girl.

Mistress of the tenement, and using a row of six of its one-rooms, Madame’s love of jewels rose to a fetish. Her suite was full of jewelry. Her opulent person was ablaze with them. Her bright, thick black hair was prickly with hairpins of silver, hairpins of gold. She wallowed in colors, too. Some of the pins were blue, some red, others green. Her fat, squat arms were loaded with bangles. Her gaping stomach shimmered in a sea of rich white silk. Walking, it rolled, and dazzled, and shimmered.

Waltzing by Madame and the Cholo girl, there sallied out of the kitchen a woman. She was a mulatto. She was carrying a smoking dish of stewed peas and her head was held high in the clouds. Squat as Madame, she, too, was mad about jewelry. Her arms were creased with bracelets. And no jewel-ankled Hindu maiden had finer nuggets of gold flung about her neck. Her clogged feet sent buxom out at you a belly bursting with a fat, mellow tumor.

She came clogging straight at Gerald, and smiled. One of the one-room flats on that side of the porch belonged to her, but on spying him she swept past it.

“Run down to the John Chinaman’s like a good little boy and bring me a loaf of French bread and a tin of sardine–”

“Come, wash yo’ face and drink yo’ tea, Gerald, befo’ it get cold,” cried a voice.

“Orright, mama, ah comin’,” and he ran away, uncertain of the escape, leaving the St. Thomas virgin with the peso in her hand, stumped.

. . . . . . .

Fired by the beauty of the marbles and the speed of the tops–gigs–he’d go on secret escapades to the alley below and spin gigs and pitch taws with the boys who’d gather there. He had to be careful of the pacos. He had to be careful of the boys he played with. Some of them used bad words; some had fly-dotted sores on their legs. A city of sores. Some of them had boils around their mouths. Some were pirates–they made bloody raids on the marbles.

One day he was alone spinning his gig. It was a particularly rhythmical one. It was pretty, too–for he had dabbed a bit of wash-blue on top of it so that it looked beautiful when it was spinning.

Suddenly a gang of boys came up, Spanish boys. One of them, seeing his top, circling and spinning, measured it; then winding his up, drew back and hauled away. The velocity released made a singing sound. Gerald stood back, awed. The top descended on the head of his with astounding accuracy and smashed it into a thousand pieces. The boys laughed, and wandered on.

At marbles some of the boys would cheat, and say, “if you don’t like it, then lump it! Chumbo! Perro!” Some of them’d seize his taw or the marbles he had put up and walk away, daring him to follow. In the presence of all this, he’d draw back, far back, brooding. …

. . . . . . .

Sea on top of sea, the Empire mourned the loss of a sovereign; and to the ends of the earth, there sped the glory of the coronation.

Below Gerald’s porch there spread a row of lecherous huts. Down in them seethed hosts of French and English blacks. Low and wide, up around them rose the faces and flanks of tenements high as the one Gerald lived in. Circling these one-room cabins there was a strip of pavement, half of which was shared by the drains and gutters. But from the porch, Gerald was unable to see the strip of pavement, for the tops of these huts were of wide galvanize, which sent the rain a foot or two beyond the slanting rim.

But it wasn’t raining, the sun was shining, and it was the day of the Queen’s coronation. On that galvanized roof the sun bristled. Flaky, white–the roof burned, sizzled. The sun burned it green, then yellow, then red; then blue, bluish white, then brownish green, and yellowish red. It was a fluid, lustrous sun. It created a Garden of the roof. It recaptured the essence of that first jungle scene. Upward, on one of the roof’s hills spread the leaves of banyan tree. Fruit–mellow, hanging, tempting–peeped from between the foliage of coffee and mango and pear. Sunsets blazed forth from beyond the river or the yellowing rice hills on some fertile roof.

All day, the day of the coronation, Gerald stood on the porch, peering down on the burning roof. It dazzled him, for up from it came sounds; sounds of music and dancing. Sounds of half-drunk creoles screaming, “Sotie, sotie!” Flutes and “steel” and hand-patting drums; fast, panting music, breathless, exotic rhythm; girls, with only a slip on, wild as larks, speeding out of this room, into that one. All day, the day of the coronation, the music lasted, the dancing lasted, the feeling mounted.

A slippery alley connected Bottle Alley and Bolivar Street. Through it Gerald tiptoed, surreptitiously, to see the bomberos on parade. He stood at the edge of the curb, gazing up the street at the clang and clash of red flannel shirts, white pants, brass helmets and polished black leggings. Behind him was a canteen and it was filled to its swinging half-sized doors with black upholders of the Crown. Gazing under a half-door he could see hosts of trousered legs vaguely familiar to him.

The coronation rags of the bar were a dark, somber kind. Dark green leaves, black-green leaves–wreaths and wreaths of them.

“Come on, Dina, an’ behav’ yo’self. Yo’ ain’t gwine wine no mo’ fi’ suit any big teet’ Bajan.”

“Who is a big teet’ Bajan?”

“Who’ yo tink ‘s talkin’ to? I didn’t know yo’ wuz hard a hearing.”

“Bet yo’ ah lick yo’ down, if yo’ go long talkin’ like dat?”

“Say dah again, ni, betcha yo’ don’t say dah again.”

“Look at dese two, ni. Wuh, Bright, yo’ ort to be shame o’ yo’self, man, fightin’ ovah a chiggah foot gal.”

“Who yo’ callin’ chiggah-foot? Me?”

“Oi ent talkin’ to you, soul.”

“Ah buss yo’ head open fuh yo’, yes, yo’ go on playin’ wit’ my Trinidad uman! See dah stick in de corner–”

“Butt ‘e! Butt ‘e down! Don’ lick ‘e wit’ de stick! Butt ‘e down!”

“Wuh ’bout it?”

“Wuh ’bout it? Wait an’ see!”

“Look out, Lucian, befo’ he chop open yo’ head.”

“Oh mi Gahd!”

“H’m! Yo’ beast! Yo’ whelp! Leave my uman alone.”

A figure, washed in blood, fell backwards through the half-door on to the refuse-littered pavement.

. . . . . . .

All night Sarah sat up, imploring the Lord to have mercy upon them, and beseeching Bright to mend his reckless ways. His head bandaged up, he lay on the bed, a ghastly figure, the pain crushing the fire out of his eyes.

“Yo’ ort to tek dis as a warnin’,” she said, “an’ steady yo’self.” And he only moaned in pain.

All night Gerald was restless, bruised by his mother’s sorrow, and unable to rid himself of the hideous nightmares surrounding it.

In the morning the lodgers grew restive.

“Yo’ heah all dah ruction las’ night, Maria, like dey wuz bringing up a dead man up de stairs?”

“Oi taught dey was gwine break down de house–”

“No,” flounced Maria, “no ask-ee fuh me, me no no.”

“But ent yo’ hear um, Miss Collymore? Ni?”

“No harm meant, soul–”

“Didn’t you, Mrs. Bright?”

“Yes, I heard it.”

“Wha’m wuz, ni? Yo’ know?” All eyes were turned upon her. But she calmly responded, “It was my husband. He went to a ball given by the tailors and he must have had too much ice cream–”

“Yes?” some one tittered.

“Fuh true?”

“Yo’ see, evah since he wuz home he liked to eat ice cream, but it don’t agree wit’ him–”

“Yo’ don’t say.”

“No, it don’t agree wit’ he, an’ he nose run blood like a stan’pipe run water. An’ dey put ‘e out ‘pon the verandah fuh hol’ ‘e head back, and he fell asleep an’ de moon shine ‘pon ‘e all night–”

“Oi had a boy who got de moon in he face, dah way, heself.”

“Well, you know den. As I wuz–he sit dey all night wit’ de moon shinin’ in ‘e face, wit’ he head cocked back, an’ when dey fomembah an’ come out an’ look at ‘e dey fine ‘e had one eye shut up, an’ instead o’ stoppin’ de blood de moon only start it running wussah.”

“Hey, we can’t ‘elp yo’ wid ‘e, ni, Miss Bright?”

“No, soul, Oi jess takin’ dis fish tea fuh ‘e. Dey say it is good fo’ wash ‘e eye wid. Dey say it will ca’y way de redness an’ de soreness.”

“G’long, soul, an’ do yo’ bes’ fuh get ‘e bettah.”

Taking broth to him, she murmured, “Ain’t yo’ shame o’ yo’self to hav’ me bring yo’ something to eat–”

“Oh, God, uman, don’t torture me,” he cried, tossing in misery and pain.

“Don’t torture yo’, ni, Oi mus’ love yo’–is dah wha’ yo’ wan’ me fuh do?”

“Oh, God, lemme ‘lone,” he cried, raving like a bull, “lemme bones rest in peace, ni?”

“Yo’ scamp yo’! Yo’ heart ort to prick yo’ till yo’ las’ dyin’ day fuh all yo’ do to me an’ my po’ chirrun–”

“Oh, how many times I gwine heah de same old story?”

“Old? It will never be old! As long as I’ve got breath in my body–as long as I is got my boy child to shield from de worle–from de filth and disease of this rotten, depraved place–as long as I got my fo’ gal chirrun in B’bados in somebody else han’–um can’t be a old story!”

“Giv’ me de t’ing, no,” he cried, tired and exhausted, “if yo’ gwine giv’ me, an’ le’ me head res’ in peace. Yo’ don’t know how bad it is hurtin’ me now.”

The day he was ready to go back to the shop, she said to him, “Tek heed, Lucian, yo’ heah, yo’ bes’ tek heed, an’ men’ yo’ ways–”

“O Jesus! jess because yo’ been tendin’ to me when I wuz sick, yo’ tink yo’ gwine tell me wha’ to do, ni, but yo’ lie, uman, yo’ lie!” and he sped downstairs, swanking, one eye red and flashing.

. . . . . . .

To the pirates and urchin gods of Bottle Alley, Gerald was the bait that lured a swarm of felt-hatted pacos who kept the alley under sleepless surveillance. It was risky to loiter, play marbles, spin gigs–and there wasn’t enough to keep Gerald occupied upstairs. So he hit upon the notion of going at dusk to his father’s shop. There he’d gather rum bottles and cotton reels, open up the backyard and inveigle the Judge’s son to come down and play shells–and shut his ears to the men’s vile banter. …

One day, after the men had gone, he saw his father take a glass bowl from a shelf far back in the shop and put it on his machine. He was drawn to it, for, squirming about in the weed and moss, was a congeries of little black reptiles.

“Papa, wha’ is dese, ni?”

“Leave them, sir!” his father shouted, “an’ get away from there!”

He drew back, afraid. The place was silent. He watched his father furtively. His face was clouded, agitated, aflame. He tore off his coat, peeled back his shirt sleeve, and revealed a red, sore arm. He squeezed it, the while gritting his teeth. He moved over to the bowl, wincing in pain. Gerald was stricken dumb. Up to the bowl his father crept, taking one of the shiny, slimy reptiles and planting it on the red sore, to feast there. Uncomprehending Gerald patiently waited.

Later he was in bed, half-asleep, listening to the storm. A hurricane of words passed by–hot, carnal words. The fury subsided, and there ensued a sober sympathetic calm.

“Lucian, darling,” he heard his mother say, “wha’ yo’ doin’ fuh de arm, ni?”

“Oh, Oi is orright.”

“Yo’ bin to de doctor, man?”

“No.”

“An’ you mean to tell me yo’ gwine sit down an’ not do nutton fuh dah han’ yo’ got dey. Hey, man, yo’ know wuh is good fo’ yo’self?”

“Oh, Oi put a leech on it teeday. Dah ort to draw out all de bad blood.”

As the nights advanced, the heat became more and more severe. It was useless to try to sleep. Body smells, body vapors, the room’s need of oxygen–grew tense, exacting.

“Yo’ know, Sarah, dis t’ing is really hurtin’ me; why um is worse dan Oi taught um wuz. Um is stickin’ me jess like a needle.”

“H’m, tell yo’ so–tell yo’ yo’ won’t men’ yo’ ways.”

“O Christ,” he roared, “why yo’ don’t say yo’ glad an’ done?”

At Sixth and Hudson Alley there was a branch of the Plymouth Brethren, and Sarah suddenly went about the business of securing “acceptance” there. Now, so far as running it went, the shop was out of Bright’s hands. He was ill, and had to stay at home. One of the men, Baldy, a mulatto Antiguan, took hold of things.

By way of the Sixth Street Mission, his mother rooted religion into his soul. Every night he was marched off to meeting. There, he’d meet the dredge-digging, Zone-building, Lord-loving peasants of the West Indies on sore knees of atonement asking the Lord to bring salvation to their perfidious souls. In the isles of their origin they were the tillers of the soil–the ones to nurture cane, and water sorrel, stew cocoanuts and mix Maube–now theirs was a less elemental, more ephemeral set of chores. Hill and vale, valley and stream gave way to wharf and drydock, dredge and machine shop. Among the women the transfiguration was less brilliant. Dull. The “drops” and cakes and foods and pops vended to the serfs and squatters on insular estates found a husky-throated market at the ends of the pay car lines.

Thursday night was prayer meeting. Religiously Sarah and Gerald went. All the brothers and the sisters took a deep and vital interest in him. They’d bring him sweets, and coppers, and stare long at him, their eyes wet, and soft. They came, a drove of them, to the house, all dressed in black, which set the neighbors talking.

He was not a child of the Lord, he did not believe in the Scriptures, but it did not serve to rob them of their sense of charity. So they came to see, and give words of courage to the family of the sick man. They’d read passages of the Bible to him, and marvel at the priceless wonders of Christ Jesus. And then one day he said to her, “Sarah, I think I ort to go to the horspitral–I can’t see–my eyes is painin’ me so bad. Oi wondah wha’ is de mattah wit’ dem.”

“Didn’t de medicine de doctah giv’ yo’ do yo’ any good, Lucian?”

“Oh, that bitter t’ing? Good wha’! Oi feel like Oi could cut off this bleddy old han’–”

“It still hurtin’ yo, Lucian?”

“Cuttin’ me like a knife.”

After they came and got him, Gerald began to feel things ever so much more keenly. His vision, too, grew less dim. But a pallor fell on things. In the morning he went to the cesspool to whistle to the canary while the Cholo girl washed it. But as he approached she fled in terror screaming “No, no, don’t touch–go ‘way–yo’ no good–no clean–me no like yo’ no mo’.” The little boy, the seven o’clock one, refused to let him come near him. “No, no,” he also cried, “me mama no like–” None of the old gang, who’d been willing to elude or defy the pacos and foregather down in the alley came any more. And he didn’t go to the shop, either. It was so dark and silent over there. Only Baldy looked on–all the other men, one by one, had gone to other places to work. Dust grew high, thick. Spiders spun webs on the very frame of the door.

But he went oftener to the Sixth Street Mission, he and Sarah. The folks there weren’t fickle,–firm, solid, lasting. His mother had become one of them. He was one of them now. He’d go on Thursday evenings to prayer meetings. The evenings were long and hot. He would go to sleep in the midst of some drowsy exhaustless prayer. All would be silent. Hours of silence to God. Then they’d rise, slowly, back-crackingly, and he’d be left kneeling, snoring. He would be immune to pinches, nudges, murmurs. They’d be useless, he would be fast asleep. His mother’d pinch him, quietly, but he’d be as stiff as a log till the service was over.

. . . . . . .

All in black–veil, hat, gloves, shoes, dress.

At Sixth and Bolivar they took one of those modest subdued coaches, not adorned by any wig-powdered Jamaican Pretty Socks, and bade the driver take them to the city hospital.

The sun dealt the city some stern body blows. The piazzas were strewn with folk. Bees and flies and fleas sang and buzzed and added to the city’s noise and squalor. Swinging onto rafts hoisted high on porches parokeets and parrots screeched and chattered incessantly. In cages set in the shades of windows bright-feathered and trill-voiced birds languished half-sleepily. Down on the piazza among the old women and the children the Duque ticket sellers and the sore-footed heathens, there were monkeys. Tied to poles greasy and black with banana grime they were lathering their faces with spit. Slowly they ascended the head of the street, the chapel of the Christ Church, felt a bit of the onrushing sea wind, and made the drive. The sea wind beat against them. It was cool and refreshing. At last they were at the hospital.

. . . . . . .

A high box, square, gauze-encased and white with a dim black object in it was set at the end of a back porch–wide, long, screened, isolated. Facing it was a planted plot, gardened by Asiatics, seen through the dusty screen. Near the sloping end of the porch the rosebush was withering; mocking the bitter fury of the sun the sunflowers were slightly bowing. Accustoming one’s eye to the dead reach of things beyond the screen one saw a terra cotta sky and lank, parched trees with reddish brown foliage. One saw, sizzling, at the mouths of dying flowers, blue-winged humming birds–

An eternity had passed since the doctor had brought them there, and all the sorrow and anguish inside her rushed to Sarah Bright’s eyes.

“Yo’ mus’ pray fuh me, Sarah,” were the first words that came to her from the box square.

“Yes, Lucian,” she said, concurring in their finality.

He emitted a groan, and she patted Gerald’s face, forcing the child to look away.

“An’ wuh duh say, Lucian,” she asked, with piety and anxiety, “wuh duh say, ni?”

Their eyes were fastened on the fixed intensity of the sun, but their ears were attuned to the tiniest rustle of the glazed sheets, and the restless figure under them. Then he said, “Ah’m in a bad way, gyrl.”

She took out a little white handkerchief and dried first Gerald’s mouth and nose, then her own glistening eyes.

He groaned, and was restive again. “De doctah say no use–de oil ent no good.”

“No?” there was a quiet suspense in her voice.

“No bloomin’ good!” he flung, unearthing some of the old asperity.

“Don’t, Lucian,” she entreated, “fomembah Jesus.”

“Oh, God, dis han’!” he groaned, tossing fiercely.

He ruffled the sheets, and a lizard, a big lanky bark-hued one, slid down the trunk of the cocoanut tree, after some gawkier prey.

“An’ dey ent try nutton else,” she said, again exhuming the handkerchief.

“Oh, dese Yankees don’t cyah wuh de do to yo’–dey don’t cyah. Duh wouldn’t even giv’ yo’ a drop o’ hot wattah, if yo’ ask me. No, dey ent try nutton else.”

“Hush, don’t cry, Gerald,” she said, hunting for a piece of Chinese candy, “yo’ mustn’t cry, son.”

“An’ wuh dey gwine do, Lucian,” she said, reluctantly risking the query.

“Put me ‘way–Palo Seco–dah’s de colony.”

“Don’t cry, son, never min’, mama will tek care o’ Gerald–oh, my son, you’ll break my heart.”

“‘E love ‘e pappy, ent ‘e?” he smiled, then turned his moistening eyes to the black wall behind him.

“Well,” she said, her eyes clear and dry, “the Lord wuks His wonders in a mysterious way. What’s to be, will be.”

He, too, was weeping; but she held on, driving the mirage to the winds.

“Yo’ kin come to see muh, Sarah,” he said, “dey allow yo’ one visit a year–yo’ mus’ come, yo’ hear?”

“Yes, Lucian, I’ll come.”

“An’ yo’ mustn’t call me bad, yo’ heah?” he pleaded, the water in his eyes, like a young culprit.

“God forbid, dear–be quiet now. Come, Gerald, time fi’ go, son.” She adjusted his hat, and a bell started ringing.

“An’ yo’ mus’ tek good cyah o’ yo’self, heah Sarah, an’ don’t le’ nobody tek exvantage o’ yo’, yo’ heah, dis is a bad country–”

“Yes, Lucian.”

THE END