Pynter Bender (35 page)

Frigo smiled. ‘People change, Pynto. You lookin at me an' you thinkin I not up to it? You thinkin … '

‘Tell 'im I want to see 'im.'

‘I not so sure 'bout dat, fella.'

Pynter advanced towards him. ‘I want to tell you somefing, Frigo. Paso will not live past this “gatherin” y'all planning. I know this. Nobody need no magic to unnerstan that. And if y'all just stop and think 'bout it, y'all will see exactly what I sayin.'

Frigo laughed. ‘Everybody want Paso life, like … '

‘Tell 'im what I tell you, Frigo.'

Frigo turned. ‘I see what I kin do, Pynter.'

‘Don' jus' see what you kin do, Frigo. Do!'

‘You missing Tan Cee?' Peter's voice was a whisper in the dark.

‘Ole Hope is a different place without Tan Cee, Peter.'

‘Who's behind it, Pynter?'

‘Behind what?'

‘De trial o' Victor.'

‘Paso.'

Peter seemed to sense the worry in him. ‘What gonna happen?'

Pynter lowered his head. He touched his brother. ‘You remember that night before them soldiers come for Birdie?'

Peter nodded.

‘You left the yard. You was out there for a lil while in the dark. Then you come back. You went straight inside the house to tell Birdie he couldn go back to jail else he'll never leave it. What happm out there in the dark? What make you know?'

Peter stirred beside him. ‘Don' know. Didn fink it. I jus' know.'

‘I tell you how you know. You do two things that night: you didn fool yourself and you went all the way. You saw dem soldiers come fo' Birdie. You know Birdie mash up eight of 'em already before he break loose from jail. You know if they take 'im back to jail and hit Birdie, Birdie goin go crazy. Ain't got no fella in de world goin strike Birdie an' Birdie won' strike 'im back. You add all o' dat up in yuh head. So quick, Peter, you didn even know it happen. All you had befo' you was de answer. Patty an' Deeka see
it too, but they didn want to believe it. They stop demself halfway. They fool demself wiv hoping dat it not goin happm. People do that. People do it all the time. Dey fall back on hope, specially when the obvious is jus', well … unthinkable. You, you didn let hope stop you. Dat's how I know Paso wouldn come out of dis gatherin alive … and I can't get nobody to lissen. Before I come here, I write it down for Tinelle. I left her a letter. I explain to her that in all them years that Paso been mobilisin, that gathering is the only place where Sylus sure to find him. They been lookin for him for years. He frighten the hell out of dem, y'unnerstand? They been tryin to put a face to Paso from time. Now they got a face for this one lil bright-eye fella who kin bring the whole island out in one place, point hi finger at Victor and convince everybody with a coupla words that he's a criminal. Now they got this one chance to get 'im. You don' think they goin do whatever the hell it take to do it? Put yourself in Victor place an' tell me who you'll go for first, the thousands dat make de trouble or the one pusson dat make de thousands make de trouble? An' besides, who got the guns, eh? Who got the guns, Peter?'

‘Paso could leave dis place, not so?' Peter said.

‘Paso will never leave this island.'

‘Why?'

‘Cuz he don' feel he belong.'

‘Don' unnerstan.'

‘Wouldn make sense if I tell you.'

‘You tellin me I stupid?'

‘Nuh. Paso wasn' born nowhere. He born in the middle of the sea, somewhere between Puerto Rico and this island. Pa told me that. Paso carry dat knowledge wiv 'im all de time. He talk 'bout it even when he don' know he talkin 'bout it. How a pusson make demself belong to a place, Peter?'

Peter shook his head.

‘They give themself to it. They commit.'

‘An' I not s'pose to unnerstan dat?'

‘Didn mean it the way you take it.'

The fires on the foothills had been reduced to the fitful glow of embers that brightened with every passing wind, like the eyes of demons in the dark.

Peter stirred. ‘You know what people saying about you?'

‘No.'

‘You brave.' Peter chuckled. ‘You know why?'

‘No.'

‘Cuz you bring back Arilon.' Peter laughed louder.

‘Something wrong wid dat?

‘Dey say you could ha' never get away if you didn shorten dem arms o' yours and make them turn to bat wings.' Peter's laughter must have reached the foothills.

‘You are my twin. If I am like that then you are the same.'

‘You are my two-win. Ef I um loike thort! You turn speaky-spokey too? Seven months and you talkin as if you got a lump o' mud in you mouth. Spit it out!'

‘It might fall on you.'

‘Never. I don' wear nothing dat don' suit me. What she look like?'

‘Who?'

‘De girl.'

‘Tinelle?'

‘Dat's she name?'

‘Yep!'

‘Tell me 'bout her.'

‘Tell you what?'

‘What she look like, how she talk, de way she treat you.'

Peter went quiet.

‘She nice,' Pynter said. Whatever changes they saw in him they'd put down to Tinelle.

‘Like I say, she nice. Brown like one of Uncle Birdie bread. Warm like bread too. That is how I think of her especially. Just warm. She teach me somefing, Peter.'

‘Wozzat?'

He did not know how to say it. The words felt awkward in his head. ‘Tenderness. Y'unnerstand dat? Love an' violence – dey don't have to go together.'

When Peter spoke again his tone was gentle. ‘She pretty?'

‘I never hear nobody say she pretty,' ceptin me. But I know one fella want her desperate like Sylus want Paso life.'

‘S'posin 'twas me who meet her first?'

Pynter laughed.

‘What de hell you laughin at?'

‘I don' know how to answer dat cuz I don' know how you'll mix with her.'

‘You tellin me she too nice to mix wiv me?'

‘Jeezas Christ, man!'

‘Lemme tell you something, fella. If I did meet dat girl before you or even same time as you, she would ha' been mine. In fact, if I meet her tomorrow and I want her, she'll be mine. You know why?'

‘Nuh, tell me.'

‘I more of a man than you. That's why. I no saga boy, no sugar- mouth sweet man. But I'z a man, a big man, y'unnerstan? Is a long time now dat I gone flyin past you. So don't think dat becuz you got a stupid lil piece o' red-skin girl in town dat anybody kin own, dat make you special. It don't, cuz I could take she from you any time.'

‘You jealous, Peter. And you ain't got no frickin reason to be jealous. Jealousy eatin y'arse and you don' know what to do with it. You got no reason to be hatin me. Cuz you never had nobody tell you that you not natural, you not born to live, you not good for much 'ceptin for yourself. My life been like a line you draw in de dust with your toe that any wind or any absent-minded hand or foot could rub right off like dat, as if I never been there. They talk about me only in the present, or the past. What I am; what I was. I don't invite no future tense because what's the use
if I not going to be there for long? So they build everything around you. It always there in their words, in their expectations, in their idea of the future for this family. Dat's why you ain't got no flippin reason to be jealous.'

The next day over dinner he told them he was leaving. Elena stopped chewing for a while. Patty smiled at her as if to say that, despite her silence, she could hear her perfectly. And Peter, who from the day Pynter arrived had decided to eat standing with his back against the night, sat down. Windy, who was still avoiding him, placed her bowl on the ground between her feet, got up, stepped out of the rim of light and disappeared.

Elena chuckled. ‘She won' sleep tonight,' she said. ‘She'll walk up and down in that house like her mother used to.'

His mother ate with her fingers, something he had not noticed before.

Patty leaned against him, jostling until he adjusted himself to accommodate her. The beautiful fingers went back to stripping the thigh of the chicken. ‘Fix yuh face, Sugarboy. Cat eat you tongue?'

‘S'pose I did come to stay?' he said.

‘You didn,' she said. ‘You fink a few lil ole words could change de truth? And you know what's good?' She dropped her voice. ‘I see Elena happy fo' the first time in years. She believe the trouble finish.'

‘S'not over yet.'

‘Dat's what your modder feel an' we should leave her feeling good for as long as it last.' Patty looked up at him with troubled eyes. ‘Eat in peace. Arilon bring your books up for you from where you left them by de river.'

‘I don't need them no more.'

‘They yours.'

‘I done the exams. I'm sick of them.'

‘They still yours. Don't leave them here when you going. Peter! Bring your brother bag o' book!'

Patty rested a hand on his knee. ‘Another time, Pynto. Another time. I hope everything make sense later. But you got to go. Cross water. And San Andrews nearer overseas than here.'

T
HE NEW YEAR
crept in so quietly Pynter hardly noticed when it arrived. San Andrews looked like a picture postcard. Mornings, the grass was wet with dew. The big trees lining Canteen Road were already discarding their leaves in preparation for the dry season.

This, he told Tinelle, would be his nineteenth dry season in the world. Pynter scrawled the year in yellow on a square of paper, underlined the number – 1974 – with a red marker and hung it beside the portraits on her wall.

The island was tossing with a new disquiet, one that had started at the tail end of the previous year. They'd called a great gathering in the hills by the sea, listed twenty-seven crimes against Victor and tried him ‘in absentia'.

They had been generous, they said. They left out the hundred or so ‘atrocities' for which they judged him indirectly responsible. They'd had witnesses who gave long testimonies. At the end of it, Paso spoke as planned, and told the thousands about another gathering to come, when there would be even more people, this time in San Andrews on the half-mile spread of asphalt that looked out on the harbour called the Carenage. Together they would cripple the island.

Tinelle and Hugo returned from their nightly planning meetings to the breakfast Pynter prepared for them. He'd stood at Hugo's shoulders a couple of times and learned the way he cooked. Now
Pynter watched them eat, hardly taking in the driblets of conversation that animated them.

By the time they finished, he knew what Tinelle's mood was. He got up then, strolled over to the row of bottles, selected a few and mixed a drink that matched her mood.

He showered her. He washed her hair. He lay beside her and read while she slept. Once he pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and wrote some lines he suddenly remembered from the pages of his Uncle Michael's book.

The rustling of the paper must have woken her. He felt the tips of her fingers on his thigh. She was staring at him with a wide-eyed, wondering gaze. ‘What you doing to me, Pynter?'

He'd smiled at her and closed his eyes.

Paso had become an incubus on his mind. He lost his appetite and would toss awake at night with worry. He made himself recall whole passages from books. He composed poems in his head and kept them there. His agitation was an illness that was spoiling the way he was with Tinelle.

Not long after that first gathering, he heard Tinelle talking on the phone and he was sure it was Paso she was speaking to. He walked over to her and placed his head against Tinelle's. She convulsed her shoulders, told the voice she would call back, went into her room and locked the door.

When she came back to him she looked into his eyes. ‘What's happening, Pynter? What's wrong? You making yourself sick. Look at you – you lost so much weight, I hardly recognise you. What's going on with you?'

He held up his hands at Tinelle. ‘I awright, Tinelle. I awright now.'

His words did not convince her. ‘There is something deeply selfish about this too,' she said. ‘That's what's really getting to me. We'll have more people out there than you can count, and what you do? You killing yourself over Paso. Not Hugo, not me, just Paso.'

She'd gone to the record player and lifted a disc from the floor. She held it round the edges and blew on it. He watched her hands as she dropped it onto the spindle of the machine.

‘We can't stop this, Pynter. This island already stirred up. Victor stirring one way, so we have to stir the other way or else everybody drowns, including you. We've been counting from the time this started. We were counting again last night: the disappearances, the accidental shootings; the people like us who leave their homes to visit a friend or family and never arrive. Not to mention the ones Victor sends back to us so frigged up you could hardly recognise them. Two hundred and seventeen, Pynter. Two
hundred and seventeen. I want you to keep that number in your head. Why? Because we insist that this island is not Victor's back garden? That we want a future different from the one he decides for us? That we don't want no independence from no England if it means we still kissing England's arse? I'll tell you something else.'

Tinelle lifted the record off the player, flipped it over and dropped it back onto the spindle.

‘I'm clear about one thing. You my man, you not my mind.'

He pushed himself up off the chair. ‘Make sense,' he said. ‘Everyting you say.'

‘Then how come we can't agree on anything?'

‘Cuz, like you say for yourself, my mind is mine and I will check out whatever try to enter it before I give it a place in there.'

The words came out more fiercely than he'd meant them to. Tinelle and he – they'd suddenly become strangers in this room and the detachment he felt surprised him.

‘Come,' he said. ‘I want to show you somefing.' He took her hand and urged her towards the door.

Tinelle's house stood like the prow of a ship above the Carenage. A few alleyways radiated off the space like spokes in a wheel. From the veranda he pointed at the spread of asphalt down below. The evening sun had bleached it almost white. People drifted about down there like shoals of fish, the reds and greens and yellows of their clothing burning bright like daytime torches.

‘What you see down there?' he said. He sensed her irritation and ignored it. ‘I see two end of a road that bring you in and out of there. I see five little alley-road that run off it. I see the sea in front of all of dat. I see a trap y'all makin for y'all self.'

Tinelle shook herself and glared at him. He rested a pleading hand on her shoulder.

‘I ask meself: what happm if five thousand people have to get out o' dat lil place in one go. Eh? My problem is,' he dropped his voice, ‘I not jus' thinkin 'bout what Victor an' Sylus done to people
already. Dat's history. I keep thinkin o' what dey capable o' doing. I wish I could stop an' give meself a easy time.'

Tinelle leaned into him. She slipped a hand around his waist. ‘You worry too much, that's all. Another week to go and then …' She elbowed him, winked at him and chuckled. ‘This is all the standing I'm doing for the rest of the day, Pen-Ben. Y'hear me?'

‘Undertow.' He shrugged and followed her inside.