Collected Short Fiction Read online

  Edward said, ‘You could ride?’

  I said, ‘Yes.’

  Edward said, ‘You have a bicycle lamp?’

  I said, ‘No.’

  Edward said, ‘Take the bike and ride without lamp. You bound to get policeman.’

  I said, ‘And when I get this policeman, what I go tell him?’

  Edward said, ‘She try to kill sheself again.’

  Before I had cycled to Ariapita Avenue I had met not one but two policemen. One of them was a sergeant. He said, ‘You thinking of going far, eh?’

  I said, ‘Is you I was coming to find.’

  The other policeman laughed.

  The sergeant said to him, ‘He smart, eh? I feel the magistrate go like that excuse. Is a new one and even me like it.’

  I said, ‘Come quick, Edward wife try to kill sheself again.’

  The sergeant said, ‘Oh, Edward wife always killing sheself, eh?’ And he laughed. He added, ‘And where this Edward wife try to kill sheself again, eh?’

  I said, ‘Just a little bit down Miguel Street.’

  The constable said, ‘He really smart, you know.’

  The sergeant said, ‘Yes. We leave him here and go and find somebody who try to kill sheself. Cut out this nonsense, boy. Where your bicycle licence?’

  I said, ‘Is true what I telling you. I go come back with you and show you the house.’

  Edward was waiting for us. He said, ‘You take a damn long time getting just two policemen.’

  The policemen went inside the house with Edward and a little crowd gathered on the pavement.

  Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘Is just what I expect. I know from the first it was going to end up like this.’

  Mrs Morgan said, ‘Life is a funny thing. I wish I was like she and couldn’t make baby. And it have a woman now trying to kill sheself because she can’t make baby.’

  Eddoes said, ‘How you know is that she want to kill sheself for?’

  Mrs Morgan shook a fat shoulder. ‘What else?’

  From then on I began to feel sorry for Edward because the men in the street and the women didn’t give him a chance. And no matter how many big parties Edward gave at his house for Americans, I could see that he was affected when Eddoes shouted, ‘Why you don’t take your wife to America, boy? Those American doctors smart like hell, you know. They could do anything.’ Or when Mrs Bhakcu suggested that she should have a blood test at the Caribbean Medical Commission at the end of Ariapita Avenue.

  The parties at Edward’s house grew wilder and more extravagant. Hat said, ‘Every party does have a end and people have to go home. Edward only making hisself more miserable.’

  The parties certainly were not making Edward’s wife any happier. She still looked frail and cantankerous, and now we sometimes heard Edward’s voice raised in argument with her. It was not the usual sort of man-and-wife argument we had in the street. Edward sounded exasperated, but anxious to please.

  Eddoes said, ‘I wish any woman I married try behaving like that. Man, I give she one good beating and I make she straight straight like bamboo.’

  Hat said, ‘Edward ask for what he get. And the stupid thing is that I believe Edward really love the woman.’

  Edward would talk to Hat and Eddoes and the other big men when they spoke to him, but when we boys tried talking to him, he had no patience. He would threaten to beat us and so we left him alone.

  But whenever Edward passed, Boyee, brave and stupid as ever, would say in an American accent, ‘What’s up, Joe?’

  Edward would stop and look angrily at Boyee and then lunge at him, shouting and swearing. He used to say, ‘You see the sort of way Trinidad children does behave? What else this boy want but a good cut-arse?’

  One day Edward caught Boyee and began flogging him.

  At every stroke Boyee shouted, ‘No, Edward.’

  And Edward got madder and madder.

  Then Hat ran up and said, ‘Edward, put down that boy this minute or else it have big big trouble in this street. Put him down, I tell you. I ain’t fraid of your big arms, you know.’

  The men in the street had to break up the fight.

  And when Boyee was freed, he shouted to Edward, ‘Why you don’t make child yourself and then beat it?’

  Hat said, ‘Boyee, I going to cut your tail this minute. Errol, go break a good whip for me.’

  It was Edward himself who broke the news.

  He said, ‘She leave me.’ He spoke in a very casual way.

  Eddoes said, ‘I sorry too bad, Edward.’

  Hat said, ‘Edward, boy, the things that not to be don’t be.’

  Edward didn’t seem to be paying too much attention.

  So Eddoes went on, ‘I didn’t like she from the first and I don’t think a man should married a woman who can’t make baby—’

  Edward said, ‘Eddoes, shut your thin little mouth up. And you, too, Hat, giving me all this make-up sympathy. I know how sad all-you is, all-you so sad all-you laughing.’

  Hat said, ‘But who laughing? Look, Edward, go and give anybody else all this temper, you hear, but leave me out. After all, it ain’t nothing strange for a man wife to run away. Is like the calypso Invader sing:

  “I was living with my decent and contented wife

  Until the soldiers came and broke up my life.”

  It ain’t your fault, is the Americans’ fault.’

  Eddoes said, ‘You know who she run away with?’

  Edward said, ‘You hear me say she run away with anybody?’

  Eddoes said, ‘No, you didn’t say that, but is what I feel.’

  Edward said sadly, ‘Yes, she run away. With a American soldier. And I give the man so much of my rum to drink.’

  But after a few days Edward was running around telling people what had happened and saying, ‘Is a damn good thing. I don’t want a wife that can’t make baby.’

  And now nobody made fun of Edward’s Americanism, and I think we were all ready to welcome him back to us. But he wasn’t really interested. We hardly saw him in the street. When he wasn’t working he was out on some excursion.

  Hat said, ‘Is love he really love she. He looking for she.’

  In the calypso by Lord Invader the singer loses his wife to the Americans and when he begs her to come back to him, she says:

  ‘Invader, I change my mind,

  I living with my Yankee soldier.’

  This was exactly what happened to Edward.

  He came back in a great temper. He was miserable. He said, ‘I leaving Trinidad.’

  Eddoes said, ‘Where you going? America?’

  Edward almost cuffed Eddoes.

  Hat said, ‘But how you want to let one woman break up your life so? You behaving as if you is the first man this thing happen to.’

  But Edward didn’t listen.

  At the end of the month he sold his house and left Trinidad. I think he went to Aruba or Curaçao, working with the big Dutch oil company.

  And some months later Hat said, ‘You know what I hear? Edward wife have a baby for she American.’

  16 HAT

  HAT LOVED TO MAKE a mystery of the smallest things. His relationship to Boyee and Errol, for instance. He told strangers they were illegitimate children of his. Sometimes he said he wasn’t sure whether they were his at all, and he would spin a fantastic story about some woman both he and Edward lived with at the same time. Sometimes, again, he would make out that they were his sons by an early marriage, and you felt you could cry when you heard Hat tell how the boys’ mother had gathered them around her deathbed and made them promise to be good.

  It took me some time to find out that Boyee and Errol were really Hat’s nephews. Their mother, who lived up in the bush near Sangre Grande, died soon after her husband died, and the boys came to live with Hat.

  The boys showed Hat little respect. They never called him Uncle, only Hat; and for their part they didn’t mind when Hat said they were illegitimate. They were, in fact, willing to support any story Hat told
about their birth.

  I first got to know Hat when he offered to take me to the cricket at the Oval. I soon found out that he had picked up eleven other boys from four or five streets around, and was taking them as well.

  We lined up at the ticket office and Hat counted us loudly. He said, ‘One and twelve half.’

  Many people stopped minding their business and looked up.

  The man selling tickets said, ‘Twelve half?’

  Hat looked down at his shoes and said, ‘Twelve half.’

  We created a lot of excitement when all thirteen of us, Hat at the head, filed around the ground, looking for a place to sit.

  People shouted, ‘They is all yours, mister?’

  Hat smiled, weakly, and made people believe it was so. When we sat down he made a point of counting us loudly again. He said, ‘I don’t want your mother raising hell when I get home, saying one missing.’

  It was the last day of the last match between Trinidad and Jamaica. Gerry Gomez and Len Harbin were making a great stand for Trinidad, and when Gomez reached his 150 Hat went crazy and danced up and down, shouting, ‘White people is God, you hear!’

  A woman selling soft drinks passed in front of us.

  Hat said, ‘How you selling this thing you have in the glass and them?’

  The woman said, ‘Six cents a glass.’

  Hat said, ‘I want the wholesale price. I want thirteen.’

  The woman said, ‘These children is all yours?’

  Hat said, ‘What wrong with that?’

  The woman sold the drinks at five cents a glass.

  When Len Harbin was 89, he was out lbw, and Trinidad declared.

  Hat was angry. ‘Lbw? Lbw? How he lbw? Is only a lot of robbery. And is a Trinidad umpire, too. God, even umpires taking bribe now.’

  Hat taught me many things that afternoon. From the way he pronounced them, I learned about the beauty of cricketers’ names, and he gave me all his own excitement at watching a cricket match.

  I asked him to explain the scoreboard.

  He said, ‘On the left-hand side they have the names of the batsman who finish batting.’

  I remember that because I thought it such a nice way of saying that a batsman was out: to say that he had finished batting.

  All during the tea interval Hat was as excited as ever. He tried to get all sorts of people to take all sorts of crazy bets. He ran about waving a dollar-note and shouting, ‘A dollar to a shilling, Headley don’t reach double figures.’ Or, ‘A dollar, Stollmeyer field the first ball.’

  The umpires were walking out when one of the boys began crying.

  Hat said, ‘What you crying for?’

  The boy cried and mumbled.

  Hat said, ‘But what you crying for?’

  A man shouted, ‘He want a bottle.’

  Hat turned to the man and said, ‘Two dollars, five Jamaican wickets fall this afternoon.’

  The man said, ‘Is all right by me, if is hurry you is to lose your money.’

  A third man held the stakes.

  The boy was still crying.

  Hat said, ‘But you see how you shaming me in front of all these people? Tell me quick what you want.’

  The boy only cried. Another boy came up to Hat and whispered in his ear.

  Hat said, ‘Oh, God! How? Just when they coming out.’

  He made us all stand. He marched us away from the grounds and made us line up against the galvanized-iron paling of the Oval.

  He said, ‘All right now, pee. Pee quick, all of all-you.’

  The cricket that afternoon was fantastic. The Jamaican team, which included the great Headley, lost six wickets for thirty-one runs. In the fading light the Trinidad fast bowler, Tyrell Johnson, was unplayable, and his success seemed to increase his speed.

  A fat old woman on our left began screaming at Tyrell Johnson, and whenever she stopped screaming she turned to us and said very quietly, ‘I know Tyrell since he was a boy so high. We use to pitch marble together.’ Then she turned away and began screaming again.

  Hat collected his bet.

  This, I discovered presently, was one of Hat’s weaknesses – his passion for impossible bets. At the races particularly, he lost a lot of money, but sometimes he won, and then he made so much he could afford to treat all of us in Miguel Street.

  I never knew a man who enjoyed life as much as Hat did. He did nothing new or spectacular – in fact, he did practically the same things every day – but he always enjoyed what he did. And every now and then he managed to give a fantastic twist to some very ordinary thing.

  He was a bit like his dog. This was the tamest Alsatian I have ever known. One of the things I noticed in Miguel Street was the way dogs resembled their owners. George had a surly, mean mongrel. Toni’s dog was a terrible savage. Hat’s dog was the only Alsatian I knew with a sense of humour.

  In the first place it behaved oddly, for an Alsatian. You could make it the happiest dog on earth if you flung things for it to retrieve. One day, in the Savannah, I flung a guava into some thick bushes. He couldn’t get at the guava, and he whined and complained. He suddenly turned and ran back past me, barking loudly. While I turned to see what was wrong, he ran back to the bushes. I saw nothing strange, and when I looked back I was just in time to see him taking another guava behind the bushes.

  I called him and he rushed up whining and barking.

  I said, ‘Go on, boy. Go on and get the guava.’

  He ran back to the bushes and poked and sniffed a bit and then dashed behind the bushes to get the guava he had himself placed there.

  I only wish the beautiful birds Hat collected were as tame as the Alsatian. The macaws and the parrots looked like angry and quarrelsome old women and they attacked anybody. Sometimes Hat’s house became a dangerous place with all these birds around. You would be talking quietly when you would suddenly feel a prick and a tug on your calf. The macaw or the parrot. Hat tried to make us believe they didn’t bite him, but I know that they did.

  Strange that both Hat and Edward became dangerous when they tried meddling with beauty. There was Edward with his painting, and Hat with his sharp-beaked macaws.

  Hat was always getting into trouble with the police. Nothing serious, though. A little cockfighting here, some gambling there, a little drinking somewhere else, and so on.

  But it never soured him against the law. In fact, every Christmas Sergeant Charles, with the postman and the sanitary inspector, came to Hat’s place for a drink.

  Sergeant Charles would say, ‘Is only a living I have to make, you know, Hat. Nobody ain’t have to tell me. I know I ain’t going to get any more promotion, but still.’

  Hat would say, ‘Is all right, Sergeant. None of we don’t mind. How your children these days? How Elijah?’

  Elijah was a bright boy.

  ‘Elijah? Oh, I think he go get a exhibition this year. Is all we could do, eh, Hat? All we could do is try. We can’t do no more.’

  And they always separated as good friends.

  But once Hat got into serious trouble for watering his milk.

  He said, ‘The police and them come round asking me how the water get in the milk. As if I know. I ain’t know how the water get there. You know I does put the pan in water to keep the milk cool and prevent it from turning. I suppose the pan did have a hole, that’s all. A tiny little hole.’

  Edward said, ‘It better to be frank and tell the magistrate that.’

  Hat said, ‘Edward, you talking as if Trinidad is England. You ever hear that people tell the truth in Trinidad and get away? In Trinidad the more you innocent, the more they throw you in jail, and the more bribe you got to hand out. You got to bribe the magistrate. You got to give them fowl, big big Leghorn hen, and you got to give them money. You got to bribe the inspectors. By the time you finish bribing it would be better if you did take your jail quiet quiet.’

  Edward said, ‘It is the truth. But you can’t plead guilty. You have to make up some new story.’


  Hat was fined two hundred dollars and the magistrate preached a long sermon at him.

  He was in a real temper when he came back from court. He tore off his tie and coat and said, ‘Is a damn funny world. You bathe, you put on a clean shirt, you put on tie and you put on jacket, you shine up your shoe. And all for what? Is only to go in front of some stupid magistrate for him to abuse you.’

  It rankled for days.

  Hat said, ‘Hitler was right, man. Burn all the law books. Burn all of them up. Make a big pile and set fire to the whole damn thing. Burn them up and watch them burn. Hitler was right, man. I don’t know why we fighting him for.’

  Eddoes said, ‘You talking a lot of nonsense, you know, Hat.’

  Hat said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to talk about it. Hitler was right. Burn the law books. Burn all of them up. Don’t want to talk about it.’

  For three months Hat and Sergeant Charles were not on speaking terms. Sergeant Charles was hurt, and he was always sending messages of goodwill to Hat.

  One day he called me and said, ‘You go be seeing Hat this evening?’

  I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You did see him yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How he is?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, I mean, how he looking? He looking well? Happy?’

  I said, ‘He looking damn vex.’

  Sergeant Charles said, ‘Oh.’

  I said, ‘All right.’

  ‘Look, before you go away—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. No, no. Wait before you go. Tell Hat how for me, you hear.’

  I told Hat, ‘Sergeant Charles call me to his house today and begin one crying and begging. He keep on asking me to tell you that he not vex with you, that it wasn’t he who tell the police about the milk and the water.’

  Hat said, ‘Which water in which milk?’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Hat said, ‘You see the sort of place Trinidad coming now. Somebody say it had water in my milk. Nobody see me put water in the milk, but everybody talking now as if they see me. Everybody talking about the water in the milk.’

  Hat, I saw, was enjoying even this.