The Polished Hoe (52 page)

“We are at the end of the passage, and what you see in front of you is the field in which I started my life.

“Ma started her life here, too. My grandmother, Gran, started her life here, and before Gran, my great-gran, who was taken from a different place. And Ma never really found out if Gran came straight from Elmina-Africa, or was transship from Waycross-Georgia, and then here. I used to hear Gran sing ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ and ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariots.’ And many a night, as I had occasion to tell the Constable, I sang ‘Ole Liza Jane.’ I told the Constable this.

“Ma always told me narratives about life in the barracks of the men and women who didn’t work in the fields, or in the sugarcane fields, the house servants, some of who were coopers and carpenters and blacksmiths; and Ma say that in the barracks of this very Plantation, Saturday night was the night that the master visited his slave woman down in the barracks, to get his weekly dose of his
thing.
Pum-pum time! Driver-time. Overseer-time. Bookkeeper time. Assistant Manager time. Manager time. White-man time . . .

“Ma’s time came. And she had to deliver. Either stanning-up behind the shack where she lived with Gran; or inside the house, with Gran inside the house, too, hearing every move, every push, every juck, every cry which was muffled, because the massa, the driver, the overseer, the bookkeeper, assistant manager, manager had-place his two hands to cover Ma’s mouth, as he did it from behind . . . and Gran pretending she wasn’t hearing nothing, nor her own history repeated; spend the hush, wet, soiled time pretending she wasn’t hearing nothing.

“Performing just like two animals.

“Every Saturday night, when things were sweet, and Wilberforce was at Harrison College, Mr. Bellfeels, as his habit was, as the custom was, would visit the Great House. And on these Saturday nights, there would be so much food. Good food. Rich food. Chicken fricassee. Long-grain rice that was clean, you hardly had to pick or wash it; not like what Demerara exported here. Ham. From that place I told you about, in the South. Smithfield. Bully-beef. If a ship hadn’t come in with beefsteak from the Argentyne, ’cause the Argentyne being Latin-Amurcan, was always a favourite of Germans. And fried pork chops. You wouldda thought we were having a feast. And that it was Easter or Christmas. Or Wilberforce birthday. Yes!

“Only the three o’ we. Little Wilberforce, Mr. Bellfeels and me. And Gertrude serving.

“I must confess that Mr. Bellfeels wasn’t a bad-looking man, being not pure-blood. He had the same body, that nice, strong, sexy —is that the word young people use nowadays?—mannish body that you and Golbourne and that I remember Pounce having.

“So it wasn’t all that bad, absolutely. It wasn’t a choice that I made. It was more like one of those Indian arrangements of marriage where the woman have no voice in the man she will get in bed with.

“Ma chose Mr. Bellfeels for me: and vice versa.

“On Saturday nights, you shouldda seen me and my son, with me holding my son’s two hands and we turning round and round, spinning; with our mouths wide open, laughing; at the top of our voice, doing these dances. Jigs, Wilberforce call them, after travelling in the South himself, to a conference in Tuskeegee. Tuskeegee was named after an Amurcan slave who told other coloured people to follow agriculture and learn how to grow crops, and that when slavery abolish, the very white people would come buying the crops that these same ex-slaves produce. But you know all this. Yes. Tuskeegee!

“I wasn’t even thinking of the man from Tuskeegee when I mention the habit of contriving, during the War years. It must be something in us, in we people, coloured people, Negroes,
whatever
you want to call us, that connects us together, no matter which Plantation we are to call home-prison, as Ma always referred to her life, on
this
Plantation, as.

“Dancing those Saturday night jigs caused Wilberforce to see the likeness of me and him in
Little Black Sambo
, a book he happen to buy in Tennessee.

“Wilberforce could not wait till he returned from Tennessee. He send
Little Black Sambo
by airmail, special delivery, with this note attach:
‘I have marked page 150 of this book to show you how we used to behave. Isn’t it ironical?’
”

They are standing now at the edge of a large field. There are no lights from the labourers’ shacks surrounding them. The houses are too far away, behind the phalanx of mahogany trees, down the slope, down the long drift of land that leads gently and gradually in the distance, into the sea. And on the other side, the side that could have afforded them a vision of the Main House, the distance is too far.

The noise now, of her feet and Sargeant’s, on the dried trash, even at this time of night, when dew is already forming, is still sharp and loud.

But when she thinks of the way her feet strike the trash, and the way the trash responds to her weight, it carries her back, farther back in her childhood, to the time when Ma would shake her mattress every evening before spreading it back onto the six pieces of board that were placed crosswise, in place of bedsprings, after the mattress had been hanging on the clothesline in the sun all day; to get rid of bugs, chinks and other little things that bite during the long, sweating, tossing-and-turning humid night. Walking on the trash in the field now, takes her back to those evenings when it was her duty to spread the mattress, stuffed with dried Guinea grass, evenly over the six boards.

The night has begun to get chilly. It is a skin-piercing chilliness that is noticeable because the day was so hot, and now the sudden change in temperature is like a change in disposition, from passionate confidence, to sly gossip and deceit.

It has changed from a night of passionate confidence, to a night of deceitful negotiating.

She pulls the neck of her dress and the shawl tighter round her neck, but there is no relief from the chilliness of the night.

Sargeant tramps on the trash in the same way he would track a suspect. With silent, deadly determination. But Sargeant never calls them suspects: they are all criminals to him, even before proven guilty. It is with this steadfast determination that he is walking now. He no longer feels the power she had over his body. His flesh is no longer weak. He is going along with her, out of courtesy. And because he is a policeman.

“We’re going to stop here,” she says.

“I think I know where we are,” he says.

He looks around into the thick, heavy darkness.

“I think I know where we are.”

“The North Field.”

“That field?” he says, still looking around.

“You should be.Well acquainted with this field, Percy.”

“Why?”

He does not see the sarcasm.

“Why?” he says again.

Perhaps, he does not want to see it.

“Are you a bat?”

“Bat?”

“A night-bat?”

“As against a day-bat, like in cricket?”

“Seeing in the dark, Percy. Seeing in the dark.”

“You had me there, for a moment.”

“This is the spot,” she says. “The best spot.”

They are standing now. The trash comes up to their ankles. Each time they move, change a posture, the trash grumbles.

“Wilberforce will be thirtyfive, tomorrow,” she says. “What a funny thing to come into my head, at a time like this.”

“thirtyfive?”

“Monday. That makes me fifty-something. And pushing sixty,” she says, looking up at the skies. “At fifty-something years of age, I feel like a woman for the first time. And it scares me.”

“Fifty-something,” he says, still trying to see through the blackness of the night that surrounds them. “You don’t look so old, Mary-G,” he adds, and immediately realizes how stupid is his comment.

“If that’s a compliment, thank you, Percy.”

“I didn’t mean it so,” he says, not knowing really what to say. This kind of delicacy, this kind of sophistication, the confidence to sweet-talk a woman, as Manny had tried to coach him, just stanning-up and throwing sweet-words at her, even to do this with Gertrude, is not his
fortay.

He is a man of action. A man of deeds. A man of force. And drive. A man of hardness. Even in his fooping. In.
And
two flings. With his eyes shut. And
bam
! Climax. Done with that! And out.

He is a man on everlasting missions, usually in the dead of night, when all Christian-minded people are sleeping, leaving him to roam the Village, in the company of bugs and worms and centipedes, with the “unrighteous,” as Manny calls them; in this kind of blackness, having to track down criminals; catch criminals; paint criminals’ arse with blows from his bull-pistle, to assist them in confessing “and don’t waste my blasted time”; lock up criminals; beat them some more; and “throw-’way the blasted key, if it was up to me. But it ain’t up to me. I is only a lil Crown-Sargeant. Not even a Inspector. But if-only. Only-if I were a acting Inspector, if um was up to me, all like you-so would be dead. Beaten to death. And then thrown in the sea, for the sharks to feast on, be-Jesus Christ, mark my word!”; and Boysie-Boys, to whom these words had been addressed, harkened; and Sargeant would forget them, until the next criminal is being tracked down, and beaten into pulp, and into confession.

But is he really such a man? A man who, as he says, likes to do a little “tinklelling” of the ivories on Friday nights, who likes to cook for Naiman and the Constable, and Gertrude, when she is off duty; a man who reads, not only crime magazines, and travel brochures about Amurca, but library books. Is this man the kind of policeman you would call by the nickname “Hitler” or “Goebbels” or “The Gestapo”?

He is a man “who love woman,” as he confesses to Manny. “’Nough woman. The more the merrier.” But, as he also confesses, “a man who don’t know very much ’bout woman . . .”

“Sit down, Percy. You’re so stiff!”

And he laughs, and she laughs, too.

“This is awkward for me. I haven’t done this, since . . .”

“You don’t have to tell me, Mary-G.”

“A lot I have to tell you, Percy. Both to you, as Percy my friend; and to you, as Percy the police Sargeant.”

“This passageway that you bring me in,” he says, looking back in the direction they have come, “this passageway. I was listening all the time you was talking, and I say to myself, whilst you are telling me the uses this tunnel was put to, nowadays and in days of yore, I been thinking, Mary-Mathilda . . .

“And this is hard for me, a lawman, to say. But this is life. And I know you. And you know me. And this is hard . . .”

“What, Percy? What?”

“. . . hard to say. But there isn’t
one
man,
not one
. . .”

“Who, Percy?”

“. . . not one man in this whole-entire Village and n’ighbourhood who won’t want to . . .”

“What, Percy?”

“There isn’t one blasted soul in this whole Village or n’ighbourhood, who won’t want to pelt a few stones, or one big rock-stone, at Mr. Bellfeels, a man you got yourself involve with, not that it was any fault of yours. It wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t your choice.

“And according to Manny, who, as you know, spend time in Amurca, working in the South, Manny always say that your life was ordered through the destinies of paternity. I don’t know exactly what Manny mean by that. Do you? But, as he try to explain it to me, and as my brain retain what little it could, Manny mean that your life, and not only your life, but the life of anybody who .Wells within the precincts of the Plantation, any Sam-cow-or-the-duppy, man, woman, child, girl or boy, would regard it as a honour to drive a deadly lash in Mr. Bellfeels arse.

“I know your connection to Mr. Bellfeels, and I hope you will pardon my language. And I can understand your loyalties to a man like Mr. Bellfeels. And I can’t say nothing against that. But, as Manny say, it is a matter of the destinies of paternity.

“I know you. And you know me. We grew up together. And played together, before your mother thought you were,..Well, you know what I mean. And that is when Mr. Bellfeels came on the scene.

“But I trying hard-hard, all this time, to see if I can’t forget what occurred, that cause me now to be here with you. To see if I can’t on purpose forget to take a Statement from you. If I can’t pretend that neither me, nor you, nor the blasted Statement exists . . .

“I feel like, like doing something to Mr. Bellfeels, and this whole case, to exterminate him from existence. You know what I mean? If it was possible, for me, or for you, or for any Tom-Dick-and-Harry, to do something to Mr. Bellfeels, to make him disappear. Just disappear off the fecking face of the earth—pardon my French, Mary-Mathilda. And nobody won’t miss him. Like invisible. Like a kind of extermination. You know what I mean?

“And I wonder if it is possible, and as soon as we visit the scene, which I should have visited hours ago . . . there is a scene to visit? . . . visit the scene with you long-side me, I been here wondering if when I visit the scene of the crime . . . if, as I said, there is one? . . . if I see him in the scene, whether dead, be-Christ, or alive, if I couldn’t snap my fingers and make him
disappear.
Like in music and in witchcraft. Or like the movie I saw once at the Olympic Theatre in Town, where a woman who didn’t want the man who was following her, begging her for a piece, to continue humbugging her, all she did was fling some drops from a special vial she had in her purse, right in his face, and all over his body, and
snap
! he disappeared; from sight. Disappeared from off the face o’ the earth!
Invisible
. The movie in question was
Gaslight.