Collected Short Fiction Part 24

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.

Boyee began to cry.

Edward said, 'It have man beating their wife. It have people breaking into other people house. Why you policemen don't go and spend your time doing something with sense, eh? Just for a change.'

A policeman said, 'Why you don't shut up? You want me to spit in your mouth?'

Another policeman said, 'What you have in those bags?'

Edward said, 'Only crab. But take care. They is big crab and they go bite off your hand.'

n.o.body looked inside the bags and then a man with a lot of stripes said, 'Everybody playing bad-man these days. Everybody getting full of smart answers, like the Americans and them.'

A policeman said, 'They have bag, they have cutla.s.s, they have shovel, they have glove.'

Hat said, 'We was catching crab.'

The policeman said, 'With shovel? Eh, eh, what happen that you suddenly is G.o.d and make a new sort of crab you could catch with shovel?'

It took a lot of talk to make the policemen believe our story.

The officer in charge said, 'I go like to lay my hands on the son of a b.i.t.c.h who telephone and say you was going to kill somebody.'

Then the policemen left.

It was late and we had missed the last bus.

Hat said, 'We had better wait for the truck Edward order.'

Edward said, 'Something tell me that truck ain't coming now.'

Hat said very slowly, half laughing and half serious, 'Edward, you is my own brother, but you know you really is a son of a b.i.t.c.h.'

Edward sat down and just laughed and laughed.

Then the war came. Hitler invaded France and the Americans invaded Trinidad. Lord Invader made a hit with his calypso: I was living with my decent and contented wife

Until the soldiers came and broke up my life.

For the first time in Trinidad there was work for everybody, and the Americans paid well. Invader sang: Father, mother, and daughter

Working for the Yankee dollar!

Money in the land!

The Yankee dollar, oh!

Edward stopped working in the cow-pen and got a job with the Americans at Chaguaramas.

Hat said, 'Edward, I think you foolish to do that. The Americans ain't here forever and ever. It ain't have no sense in going off and working for big money and then not having nothing to eat after three four years.'

Edward said, 'This war look as though it go last a long long time. And the Americans not like the British, you know. They does make you work hard, but they does pay for it.'

Edward sold his share of the cows to Hat, and that marked the beginning of his drift away from us.

Edward surrendered completely to the Americans. He began wearing clothes in the American style, he began chewing gum, and he tried to talk with an American accent. We didn't see much of him except on Sundays, and then he made us feel small and inferior. He grew fussy about his dress, and he began wearing a gold chain around his neck. He began wearing straps around his wrists, after the fas.h.i.+on of tennis-players. These straps were just becoming fas.h.i.+onable among smart young men in Port of Spain.

Edward didn't give up painting, but he no longer offered to paint things for us, and I think most people were relieved. He entered some poster compet.i.tion, and when his design didn't win even a consolation prize, he grew really angry with Trinidad.

One Sunday he said, 'I was stupid to send in anything I paint with my own two hands for Trinidad people to judge. What they know about anything? Now, if I was in America, it woulda be different. The Americans is people. They know about things.'

To hear Edward talk, you felt that America was a gigantic country inhabited by giants. They lived in enormous houses and they drove in the biggest cars of the world.

Edward used to say, 'Look at Miguel Street. In America you think they have streets so narrow? In America this street could pa.s.s for a sidewalk.'

One night I walked down with Edward to Docksite, the American army camp. Through the barbed wire you could see the huge screen of an open-air cinema.

Edward said, 'You see the sort of theatre they come and build in a stupid little place like Trinidad. Imagine the sort of thing they have in the States.'

And we walked down a little further until we came to a sentry in his box.

Edward used his best American accent and said, 'What's cooking, Joe?'

To my surprise the sentry, looking fierce under his helmet, replied, and in no time at all Edward and the sentry were talking away, each trying to use more swear words than the other.

When Edward came back to Miguel Street he began swaggering along and he said to me, 'Tell them. Tell them how good I does get on with the Americans.'

And when he was with Hat he said, 'Was talking the other night with a American d.a.m.n good friend and he was telling me that as soon as the Americans enter the war the war go end.'

Errol said, 'It ain't that we want to win the war. As soon as they make Lord Anthony Eden Prime Minister the war go end quick quick.'

Edward said, 'Shut up, kid.'

But the biggest change of all was the way Edward began talking of women. Up till then he used to say that he was finished with them for good. He made out that his heart had been broken a long time ago and he had made a vow. It was a vague and tragic story.

But now on Sundays Edward said, 'You should see the sort of craft they have at the base. Nothing like these stupid Trinidad girls, you know. No, partner. Girls with style, girls with real cla.s.s.'

I think it was Eddoes who said, 'I shouldn't let it worry you. They wouldn't tangle with you, those girls. They want big big American men. You safe.'

Edward called Eddoes a shrimp and walked away in a huff.

He began lifting weights, and in this, too, Edward was running right at the head of fas.h.i.+on. I don't know what happened in Trinidad about that time, but every young man became suddenly obsessed with the Body Beautiful ideal, and there were physique compet.i.tions practically every month. Hat used to console himself by saying, 'Don't worry. Is just a lot of old flash, you hear. They say they building muscle muscle. Just let them cool off and see what happen. All that thing they call muscle turn fat, you know.'

Eddoes said, 'Is the funniest sight you could see. At the Dairies in Philip Street all you seeing these days is a long line of black black men sitting at the counter and drinking quart bottles of white milk. All of them wearing sleeveless jersey to show off their big arm.'

In about three months Edward made his appearance among us in a sleeveless jersey. He had become a really big man.

Presently he began talking about the women at the base who were chasing him.

He said, 'I don't know what they see in me.'

Somebody had the idea of organizing a Local Talent on Parade show and Edward said, 'Don't make me laugh. What sort of talent they think Trinidad have?'

The first show was broadcast and we all listened to it in Eddoes's house. Edward kept on laughing all the time.

Hat said, 'Why you don't try singing yourself, then?'

Edward said, 'Sing for who? Trinidad people?'

Hat said, 'Do them a favour.'

To everybody's surprise Edward began singing, and the time came when Hat had to say, 'I just can't live in the same house with Edward. I think he go have to move.'

Edward moved, but he didn't move very far. He remained on our side of Miguel Street.

He said, 'Is a good thing. I was getting tired of the cow smell.'

Edward went up for one of the Local Talent shows and in spite of everything we all hoped that he would win a prize of some sort. The show was sponsored by a biscuit company and I think the winner got some money.

'They does give the others a thirty-one-cent pack of biscuits,' Hat said.

Edward got a package of biscuits.

He didn't bring it home, though. He threw it away.

He said, 'Throw it away. Why I shouldn't throw it away? You see, is just what I does tell you. Trinidad people don't know good thing. They just born stupid. Down at the base it have Americans begging me to sing. They know what is what. The other day, working and singing at the base, the colonel come up and tell me I had a nice voice. He was begging me to go to the States.'

Hat said, 'Why you don't go then?'

Edward said fiercely, 'Gimme time. Wait and see if I don't go.'

Eddoes said, 'What about all those woman and them who was chasing you? They catch up with you yet or they pa.s.s you?'

Edward said, 'Listen, Joe, I don't want to start getting tough with you. Do me a favour and shut up.'

When Edward brought any American friends to his house he pretended that he didn't know us, and it was funny to see him walking with them, holding his arms in the American way, hanging loosely, like a gorilla's.

Hat said, 'All the money he making he spending it on rum and ginger, curryfavouring with them Americans.'

In a way, I suppose, we were all jealous of him.

Hat began saying, 'It ain't hard to get a work with the Americans. I just don't want to have boss, that's all. I like being my own boss.'

Edward didn't mix much with us now.

One day he came to us with a sad face and said, 'Hat, it look like if I have to get married.'

He spoke with his Trinidad accent.

Hat looked worried. He said, 'Why? Why? Why you have to get married?'

'She making baby.'

'Is a d.a.m.n funny thing to say. If everybody married because woman making baby for them it go be a h.e.l.l of a thing. What happen that you want to be different now from everybody else in Trinidad? You come so American?'

Edward hitched up his tight American-style trousers and made a face like an American film actor. He said, 'You know all the answers, don't you? This girl is different. Sure I fall in love maybe once maybe twice before, but this kid's different.'

Hat said, 'She's got what it takes?'

Edward said, 'Yes.'

Hat said, 'Edward, you is a big man. It clear that you make up your mind to married this girl. Why you come round trying to make me force you to married her? You is a big man. You ain't have to come to me to get permission to do this to do that.'

When Edward left, Hat said, 'Whenever Edward come to me with a lie, he like a little boy. He can't lie to me. But if he married this girl, although I ain't see she, I feel he go live to regret it.'

Edward's wife was a tall and thin white-skinned woman. She looked very pale and perpetually unwell. She moved as though every step cost her effort. Edward made a great fuss about her and never introduced us.

The women of the street lost no time in pa.s.sing judgment.