Collected Short Fiction Part 20

Hat said, 'All right, all right. I have to go and get some of the boys.'

We heard Hat shouting in the street. 'Boyee and Errol!'

No answer.

'Bo-yee and Ehhroll!'

'Co-ming, Hat.'

'Where the h.e.l.l you boys been, eh? You think you is man now and you could just stick your hands in your pocket and walk out like man? You was smoking, eh?'

'Smoking, Hat?'

'But what happen now? You turn deaf all of a sudden?'

'Was Boyee was smoking, Hat.'

'Is a lie, Hat. Was Errol really. I just stand up watching him.'

'Somebody make you policeman now, eh? Is cut-a.r.s.e for both of you. Errol, go cut a whip for Boyee. Boyee, go cut a whip for Errol.'

We heard the boys whimpering.

From under the car Bhakcu called, 'Hat, why you don't leave the boys alone? You go bless them bad one of these days, you know, and then they go lose you in jail. Why you don't leave the boys alone? They big now.'

Hat shouted back, 'You mind your own business, you hear. Otherwise I leave you under that car until you rotten, you hear.'

Mrs Bhakcu said to her husband, 'Take it easy, man.'

But it was nothing serious after all. The jack had slipped but the axle rested on a pile of wooden blocks, pinning Bhakcu to ground without injuring him.

When Bhakcu came out he looked at his clothes. These were a pair of khaki trousers and a sleeveless vest, both black and stiff with engine grease.

Bhakcu said to his wife, 'They really dirty now, eh?'

She regarded her husband with pride. 'Yes, man,' she said. 'They really dirty.'

Bhakcu smiled.

Hat said, 'Look, I just sick of lifting up motor-car from off you, you hear. If you want my advice, you better send for a proper mechanic.'

Bhakcu wasn't listening.

He said to his wife, 'The crank-shaft was all right. Is something else.'

Mrs Bhakcu said, 'Well, you must eat first.'

She looked at Hat and said, 'He don't eat when he working on the car unless I remind he.'

Hat said, 'What you want me do with that? Write it down with a pencil on a piece of paper and send it to the papers?'

I wanted to watch Bhakcu working on the car that evening, so I said to him, 'Uncle Bhakcu, your clothes looking really dirty and greasy. I wonder how you could bear to wear them.'

He turned and smiled at me. 'What you expect, boy?' he said. 'Mechanic people like me ain't have time for clean clothes.'

'What happen to the car, Uncle Bhakcu?' I asked.

He didn't reply.

'The tappet knocking?' I suggested.

One thing Bhakcu had taught me about cars was that tappets were always knocking. Give Bhakcu any car in the world, and the first thing he would tell you about it was, 'The tappet knocking, you know. Hear. Hear it?'

'The tappet knocking?' I asked.

He came right up to me and asked eagerly, 'What, you hear it knocking?'

And before I had time to say, 'Well, something did knocking,' Mrs Bhakcu pulled him away, saying, 'Come and eat now, man. G.o.d, you get your clothes really dirty today.'

The car that fell on Bhakcu wasn't really a new car, although Bhakcu boasted that it very nearly was.

'It only do two hundred miles,' he used to say.

Hat said, 'Well, I know Trinidad small, but I didn't know it was so small.'

I remember the day it was bought. It was a Sat.u.r.day. And that morning Mrs Bhakcu came to my mother and they talked about the cost of rice and flour and the black market. As she was leaving, Mrs Bhakcu said, 'He gone to town today. He say he got to buy a new car.'

So we waited for the new car.

Midday came, but Bhakcu didn't.

Hat said, 'Two to one, that man taking down the engine right this minute.'

About four o'clock we heard a banging and a clattering, and looking down Miguel Street towards Docksite we saw the car. It was a blue Chevrolet, one of the 1939 models. It looked rich and new. We began to wave and cheer, and I saw Bhakcu waving his left hand.

We danced into the road in front of Bhakcu's house, waving and cheering.

The car came nearer and Hat said, 'Jump, boys! Run for your life. Like he get mad.'

It was a near thing. The car just raced past the house and we stopped cheering.

Hat said, 'The car out of control. It go have a accident if something don't happen quick.'

Mrs Bhakcu laughed. 'What you think it is at all?' she said.

But we raced after the car, crying after Bhakcu.

He wasn't waving with his left hand. He was trying to warn people off.

By a miracle, it stopped just before Ariapita Avenue.

Bhakcu said, 'I did mas.h.i.+ng down the brakes since I turn Miguel Street, but the brakes ain't working. Is a funny thing. I overhaul the brakes just this morning.'

Hat said, 'It have two things for you to do. Overhaul your head or haul your a.r.s.e away before you get people in trouble.'

Bhakcu said, 'You boys go have to give me a hand to push the car back home.'

As we were pus.h.i.+ng it past the house of Morgan, the pyrotechnicist, Mrs Morgan shouted, 'Ah, Mrs Bhakcu, I see you buy a new car today, man.'

Mrs Bhakcu didn't reply.

Mrs Morgan said, 'Ah, Mrs Bhakcu, you think your husband go give me a ride in his new car?'

Mrs Bhakcu said, 'Yes, he go give you a ride, but first your husband must give me a ride on his donkey-cart when he buy it.'

Bhakcu said to Mrs Bhakcu, 'Why you don't shut your mouth up?'

Mrs Bhakcu said, 'But how you want me to shut my mouth up? You is my husband, and I have to stand up for you.'

Bhakcu said very sternly, 'You only stand up for me when I tell you, you hear.'

We left the car in front of Bhakcu's house, and we left Mr and Mrs Bhakcu to their quarrel. It wasn't a very interesting one. Mrs Bhakcu kept on claiming her right to stand up for her husband, and Mr Bhakcu kept on rejecting the claim. In the end Bhakcu had to beat his wife.

This wasn't as easy as it sounds. If you want to get a proper picture of Mrs Bhakcu you must consider a pear as a scale-model. Mrs Bhakcu had so much flesh, in fact, that when she held her arms at her sides they looked like marks of parenthesis.

And as for her quarrelling voice ...

Hat used to say, 'It sound as though it coming from a gramophone record turning fast fast backwards.'

For a long time I think Bhakcu experimented with rods for beating his wife, and I wouldn't swear that it wasn't Hat who suggested a cricket bat. But whoever suggested it, a second-hand cricket bat was bought from one of the groundsmen at the Queen's Park Oval, and oiled, and used on Mrs Bhakcu.

Hat said, 'Is the only thing she really could feel, I think.'

The strangest thing about this was that Mrs Bhakcu herself kept the bat clean and well-oiled. Boyee tried many times to borrow the bat, but Mrs Bhakcu never lent it.

So on the evening of the day when the car fell on Bhakcu I went to see him at work.

'What you did saying about the tappet knocking?' he said.

'I didn't say nothing,' I said. 'I was asking you.'

'Oh.'

Bhakcu worked late into the night, taking down the engine. He worked all the next day, Sunday, and all Sunday night. On Monday morning the mechanic came.

Mrs Bhakcu told my mother, 'The company send the mechanic man. The trouble with these Trinidad mechanics is that they is just p.i.s.s-in-tail little boys who don't know the first thing about cars and things.'

I went round to Bhakcu's house and saw the mechanic with his head inside the bonnet. Bhakcu was sitting on the running-board, rubbing grease over everything the mechanic handed him. He looked so happy dipping his fingers in the grease that I asked, 'Let me rub some grease, Uncle Bhakcu.'

'Go away, boy. You too small.'

I sat and watched him.

He said, 'The tappet was knocking, but I fix it.'

I said, 'Good.'

The mechanic was cursing.

I asked Bhakcu, 'How the points?'

He said, 'I have to check them up.'

I got up and walked around the car and sat on the running-board next to Bhakcu.

I looked at him and I said, 'You know something?'

'What?'

'When I did hear the engine on Sat.u.r.day, I didn't think it was beating nice.'

Bhakcu said, 'You getting to be a real smart man, you know. You learning fast.'

I said, 'Is what you teach me.'

It was, as a matter of fact, pretty nearly the limit of my knowledge. The knocking tappet, the points, the beat of the engine and yes, I had forgotten one thing.

'You know, Uncle Bhakcu,' I said.

'What, boy?'

'Uncle Bhakcu, I think is the carburettor.'

'You really think so, boy?'

'I sure, Uncle Bhakcu.'

'Well, I go tell you, boy. Is the first thing I ask the mechanic. He don't think so.'

The mechanic lifted a dirty and angry face from the engine and said, 'When you have all sort of ignorant people messing about with a engine the white people build with their own own hands, what the h.e.l.l else you expect?'

Bhakcu winked at me.

He said, 'I think is the carburettor.'

Of all the drills, I liked the carburettor drill the best. Sometimes Bhakcu raced the engine while I put my palm over the carburettor and off again. Bhakcu never told me why we did this and I never asked. Sometimes we had to siphon petrol from the tank, and I would pour this petrol into the carburettor while Bhakcu raced the engine. I often asked him to let me race the engine, but he wouldn't agree.

One day the engine caught fire, but I jumped away in time. The fire didn't last.