Collected Short Fiction (19 page)

Hat said, ‘Where you going, Bolo?’

Bolo said, ‘You go hear.’

And so he left us that evening.

Eddoes said, ‘You think Bolo going mad?’

Hat said, ‘No. He going Venezuela. That is why he keeping so secret. The Venezuelan police don’t like Trinidad people going over.’

Eddoes said, ‘Bolo is a nice man and I sorry he leaving. You know, it have some people I know who go be glad to have that box-cart Bolo leave behind.’

We went to Bolo’s little room that very evening and we cleaned it of all the useful stuff he had left behind. There wasn’t much. A bit of oil-cloth, two or three old combs, a cutlass, and a bench. We were all sad.

Hat said, ‘People really treat poor Bolo bad in this country. I don’t blame him for leaving.’

Eddoes was looking over the room in a practical way. He said, ‘But Bolo take away everything, man.’

Next afternoon Eddoes announced, ‘You know how much I pick up for that box-cart? Two dollars!’

Hat said, ‘You does work damn fast, you know, Eddoes.’

Then we saw Bolo himself walking down Miguel Street.

Hat said, ‘Eddoes, you in trouble.’

Eddoes said, ‘But he give it to me. I didn’t thief it.’

Bolo looked tired and sadder than ever.

Hat said, ‘What happen, Bolo? You make a record, man. Don’t tell me you go to Venezuela and you come back already.’

Bolo said, ‘Trinidad people! Trinidad people! I don’t know why Hitler don’t come here and bomb all the sons of bitches it have in this island. He bombing the wrong people, you know.’

Hat said, ‘Sit down, Bolo, and tell we what happen.’

Bolo said, ‘Not yet. It have something I have to settle first. Eddoes, where my box-cart?’

Hat laughed.

Bolo said, ‘You laughing, but I don’t see the joke. Where my box-cart, Eddoes? You think you could make box-cart like that?’

Eddoes said, ‘Your box-cart, Bolo? But you give it to me.’

Bolo said, ‘I asking you to give it back to me.’

Eddoes said, ‘I sell it, Bolo. Look the two dollars I get for it.’

Bolo said, ‘But you quick, man.’

Eddoes was getting up.

Bolo said, ‘Eddoes, it have one thing I begging you not to do. I begging you, Eddoes, not to come for trim by me again, you hear. I can’t trust myself. And go and buy back my box-cart.’

Eddoes went away, muttering, ‘Is a funny sort of world where people think their little box-cart so good. It like my big blue cart?’

Bolo said, ‘When I get my hand on the good-for-nothing thief
who take my money and say he taking me Venezuela, I go let him know something. You know what the man do? He drive around all night in the motor-launch and then put we down in a swamp, saying we reach Venezuela. I see some people. I begin talking to them in Spanish, they shake their head and laugh. You know is what? He put me down in Trinidad self, three four miles from La Brea.’

Hat said, ‘Bolo, you don’t know how lucky you is. Some of these people woulda kill you and throw you overboard, man. They say they don’t like getting into trouble with the Venezuelan police. Is illegal going over to Venezuela, you know.’

We saw very little of Bolo after this. Eddoes managed to get the box-cart back, and he asked me to take it to Bolo.

Eddoes said, ‘You see why black people can’t get on in this world. You was there when he give it to me with his own two hands, and now he want it back. Take it back to him and tell him Eddoes say he could go to hell.’

I told Bolo, ‘Eddoes say he sorry and he send back the box-cart.’

Bolo said, ‘You see how black people is. They only quick to take, take. They don’t want to give. That is why black people never get on.’

I said, ‘Mr Bolo, it have something I take too, but I bring it back. Is the oil-cloth. I did take it and give it to my mother, but she ask me to bring it back.’

Bolo said, ‘Is all right. But, boy, who trimming you these days? You head look as though fowl sitting on it.’

I said, ‘Is Samuel trim me, Mr Bolo. But I tell you he can’t trim. You see how he zog up my head.’

Bolo said, ‘Come Sunday, I go trim you.’

I hesitated.

Bolo said, ‘You fraid? Don’t be stupid. I like you.’

So I went on Sunday.

Bolo said, ‘How you getting on with your lessons?’

I didn’t want to boast.

Bolo said, ‘It have something I want you to do for me. But I not sure whether I should ask you.’

I said, ‘But ask me, Mr Bolo. I go do anything for you.’

He said, ‘No, don’t worry. I go tell you next time you come.’

A month later I went again and Bolo said, ‘You could read?’

I reassured him.

He said, ‘Well, is a secret thing I doing. I don’t want nobody to know. You could keep a secret?’

I said, ‘Yes, I could keep secret.’

‘A old man like me ain’t have much to live for,’ Bolo said. ‘A old man like me living by hisself have to have something to live for. Is why I doing this thing I tell you about.’

‘What is this thing, Mr Bolo?’

He stopped clipping my hair and pulled out a printed sheet from his trouser pocket.

He said, ‘You know what this is?’

I said, ‘Is a sweepstake ticket.’

‘Right. You smart, man. Is really a sweepstake ticket.’

I said, ‘But what you want me do, Mr Bolo?’

He said, ‘First you must promise not to tell anybody.’

I gave my word.

He said, ‘I want you to find out if the number draw.’

The draw was made about six weeks later and I looked for Bolo’s number. I told him, ‘You number ain’t draw, Mr Bolo.’

He said, ‘Not even a proxime accessit?’

I shook my head.

But Bolo didn’t look disappointed. ‘Is just what I expect,’ he said.

For nearly three years this was our secret. And all during those years Bolo bought sweepstake tickets, and never won. Nobody knew and even when Hat or somebody else said to him, ‘Bolo, I know a thing you could try. Why you don’t try sweepstake?’ Bolo would say, ‘I done with that sort of thing, man.’

At the Christmas meeting of 1948 Bolo’s number was drawn. It wasn’t much, just about three hundred dollars.

I ran to Bolo’s room and said, ‘Mr Bolo, the number draw.’

Bolo’s reaction wasn’t what I expected. He said, ‘Look, boy, you in long pants now. But don’t get me mad, or I go have to beat you bad.’

I said, ‘But it really draw, Mr Bolo.’

He said, ‘How the hell you know it draw?’

I said, ‘I see it in the papers.’

At this Bolo got really angry and he seized me by the collar. He screamed, ‘How often I have to tell you, you little good-for-nothing son of a bitch, that you mustn’t believe all that you read in the papers?’

So I checked up with the Trinidad Turf Club.

I said to Bolo, ‘Is really true.’ Bolo refused to believe.

He said, ‘These Trinidad people does only lie, lie. Lie is all they know. They could fool you, boy, but they can’t fool me.’

I told the men of the street, ‘Bolo mad like hell. The man win three hundred dollars and he don’t want to believe.’

One day Boyee said to Bolo, ‘Ay, Bolo, you win a sweepstake then.’

Bolo chased Boyee, shouting, ‘You playing the ass, eh. You making joke with a man old enough to be your grandfather.’

And when Bolo saw me, he said, ‘Is so you does keep secret? Is so you does keep secret? But why all you Trinidad people so, eh?’

And he pushed his box-cart down to Eddoes’s house, saying, ‘Eddoes, you want box-cart, eh? Here, take the box-cart.’

And he began hacking the cart to bits with his cutlass.

To me he shouted, ‘People think they could fool me.’

And he took out the sweepstake ticket and tore it. He rushed up to me and forced the pieces into my shirt pocket.

Afterwards he lived to himself in his little room, seldom came out to the street, never spoke to anybody. Once a month he went to draw his old-age pension.

EDWARD, HAT’S BROTHER
, was a man of many parts, and I always thought it a sad thing that he drifted away from us. He used to help Hat with the cows when I first knew him and, like Hat, he looked settled and happy enough. He said he had given up women for good, and he concentrated on cricket, football, boxing, horse-racing, and cockfighting. In this way he was never bored, and he had no big ambition to make him unhappy.

Like Hat, Edward had a high regard for beauty. But Edward didn’t collect birds of beautiful plumage, as Hat did. Edward painted.

His favourite subject was a brown hand clasping a black one. And when Edward painted a brown hand, it was a brown hand. No nonsense about light and shades. And the sea was a blue sea, and mountains were green.

Edward mounted his pictures himself and framed them in red passe-partout. The big department stores, Salvatori’s, Fogarty’s, and Johnson’s, distributed Edward’s work on commission.

To the street, however, Edward was something of a menace.

He would see Mrs Morgan wearing a new dress and say, ‘Ah, Mrs Morgan, is a nice nice dress you wearing there, but I think it could do with some sort of decoration.’

Or he would see Eddoes wearing a new shirt and say, ‘Eh, eh, Eddoes, you wearing a new shirt, man. You write your name in it, you know, otherwise somebody pick it up brisk brisk one of these days. Tell you what, I go write it for you.’

He ruined many garments in this way.

He also had the habit of giving away ties he had decorated himself. He would say, ‘I have something for you. Take it and wear it. I giving it to you because I like you.’

And if the tie wasn’t worn, Edward would get angry and begin shouting, ‘But you see how ungrateful black people is. Listen to this. I see this man not wearing tie. I take a bus and I go to town. I walk to Johnson’s and I look for the gents’ department. I meet a girl and I buy a tie. I take a bus back home. I go inside my room
and take up my brush and unscrew my paint. I dip my brush in paint and I put the brush on the tie. I spend two three hours doing that, and after all this, the man ain’t wearing my tie.’

But Edward did a lot more than just paint.

One day, not many months after I had come to the street, Edward said, ‘Coming back on the bus from Cocorite last night I only hearing the bus wheel cracking over crab back. You know the place by the coconut trees and the swamp? There it just crawling with crab. People say they even climbing up the coconut trees.’

Hat said, ‘They does come out a lot at full moon. Let we go tonight and catch some of the crabs that Edward see.’

Edward said, ‘Is just what I was going to say. We will have to take the boys because it have so much crab even they could pick up a lot.’

So we boys were invited.

Edward said, ‘Hat, I was thinking. It go be a lot easier to catch the crab if we take a shovel. It have so much you could just shovel them up.’

Hat said, ‘All right. We go take the cow-pen shovel.’

Edward said, ‘That settle. But look, all you have strong shoes? You better get strong shoes, you know, because these crab and them ain’t playing big and if you don’t look out they start walking away with your big toe before you know what is what.’

Hat said, ‘I go use the leggings I does wear when I cleaning out the cow-pen.’

Edward said, ‘And we better wear gloves. I know a man was catching crab one day and suddenly he see his right hand walking away from him. He look again and see four five crab carrying it away. This man jump up and begin one bawling. So we have to be careful. If you boys ain’t have gloves just wrap some cloth over your hands. That go be all right.’

So late that night we all climbed into the Cocorite bus, Hat in his leggings, Edward in his, and the rest of us carrying cutlasses and big brown sacks.

The shovel Hat carried still stank from the cow-pen and people began squinging up their noses.

Hat said, ‘Let them smell it. They does all want milk when the cow give it.’

People looked at the leggings and the cutlasses and the shovel and the sacks and looked away quickly. They stopped talking.
The conductor didn’t ask for our fares. The bus was silent until Edward began to talk.

Edward said, ‘We must try and not use the cutlass. It ain’t nice to kill. Try and get them live and put them in the bag.’

Many people got off at the next stop. By the time the bus got to Mucurapo Road it was carrying only us. The conductor stood right at the front talking to the driver.

Just before we got to the Cocorite terminus Edward said, ‘Oh God, I know I was forgetting something. We can’t bring back all the crab in a bus. I go have to go and telephone for a van.’

He got off one stop before the terminus.

We walked a little way in the bright moonlight, left the road and climbed down into the swamp. A tired wind blew from the sea, and the smell of stale sea-water was everywhere. Under the coconut trees it was dark. We walked a bit further in. A cloud covered the moon and the wind fell.

Hat called out, ‘You boys all right? Be careful with your foot. I don’t want any of you going home with only three toes.’

Boyee said, ‘But I ain’t seeing any crab.’

Ten minutes later Edward joined us.

He said, ‘How many bags you full?’

Hat said, ‘It look like a lot of people had the same idea and come and take away all the crab.’

Edward said, ‘Rubbish. You don’t see the moon ain’t showing. We got to wait until the moon come out before the crab come out. Sit down, boys, let we wait.’

The moon remained clouded for half an hour.

Boyee said, ‘It making cold and I want to go home. I don’t think it have any crab.’

Errol said, ‘Don’t mind Boyee. I know him. He just frighten of the dark and he fraid the crab bite him.’

At this point we heard a rumbling in the distance.

Hat said, ‘It look like the van come.’

Edward said, ‘It ain’t a van really. I order a big truck from Sam.’

We sat in silence waiting for the moon to clear. Then about a dozen torch-lights flashed all around us. Someone shouted, ‘We ain’t want any trouble. But if any one of you play the fool you going to get beat up bad.’

We saw what looked like a squad of policemen surrounding us.