Brixton Bwoy. Rocky Carr
Pupatee and Carl didn’t like to miss out on the big tasty dinners the grown-ups ate, but they had to be at the table at the correct mealtimes. Pupatee was unlucky and often late, so he and his brother soon became very good at ‘wild bush cooking’. They would make their own fishing rods and lines, and cook up tasty fish dinners outdoors using whatever vegetables and spices they could help themselves to. The weather was always hot and while their stew simmered they would sit in the shade listening to the birds squabbling in the branches above them.
Every Saturday without fail, Mama used to boil up a big pot of soup. All Jamaicans love soup; they believe it keeps them strong and wards off common illnesses. Mama was a fine cook and Pupatee loved her pea soup best of all. He used to watch it keenly, waiting in the delicious coconut-scented steam for the moment when it would at last be ready. Once he ate so much of it that he had no room left to breathe.
The rooster on the roof woke the household every morning.
‘Time fe go milk de cows dem,’ Pops would shout, his big body blocking the doorway. ‘We coming, Pops,’ the boys would call back to him as they rushed to wash and dress.
When the milking was over, Pops would send Carl and Pupatee out with the donkeys to cut grass for the cows, and woe betide them if they tried to cut corners and just cut the grass from the shade, rather than out in the open, where the sun had prepared it for the cows’ bellies.
By the time all this was done, and the boys had eaten their breakfast of fried saltfish, fried and roast dumpling, fresh hot chocolate and hard dough bread, and had run across the fields and streams, and up the hills, and down through the trees, they were often late for school. The first time this had happened, when Pupatee was only six years old, he had got a terrible shock.
The teacher sent Pupatee straight to see Mr Sweeney the headmaster. He found Carl already there, standing with his hand stretched out in front of all the older boys and girls. Pupatee went over and stood beside him. Carl whispered, ‘Take dem all pon one hand, Pupatee.’
The next thing he saw was a thick leather belt coming down three times on his brother’s hand. Carl didn’t make a noise, but after the third hit he put his hand between his legs to cool it. Then the headmaster turned to Pupatee. It was his turn. The girls in the class were all whimpering and saying, ‘Oh no, not a little boy like dat.’
‘Hush up!’ The headmaster’s voice echoed around the classroom until everything was still and silent again. ‘Stretch out you hand,’ he demanded.
It took the terrified Pupatee a moment to understand what he had said. Fright stopped him lifting up either his left or his right hand. When he did finally manage to get some movement from his hands, both came up together. The class burst out laughing, and Mr Sweeney grew even more furious.
‘Put one hand down, bwoy!’ he shouted. Pupatee tried to obey, but he was so nervous that both hands went down at once. There was another burst of laughter, which the headmaster cut short with a fierce look at the boys and girls behind him.
Mr Sweeney’s eyes then returned to Pupatee. He quickly lifted his left hand and the headmaster looked at him as if to say he was going to make these ones especially sweet. Slowly, he raised the thick leather belt. At the top he paused for a moment – and then he brought it down with such force that it was no wonder that when the belt reached the spot where it was supposed to connect with Pupatee’s hand, the hand was no longer there. The hand had returned to Pupatee’s side, and the belt swung through empty air until it landed with a slap on the headmaster’s own leg.
Now Mr Sweeney was really mad. ‘Ah six you ah go get instead ah tree if you no hold out you hand,’ he yelled. Pupatee looked at him for signs of mercy, but he just shouted again, ‘Bwoy, hold out you hand.’
Pupatee held it out, and closed his eyes, and the next moment he felt the fire spread across his palm. When the pain hit the tender part on the inside, he started jumping as if he was doing a rain dance.
It was a while before Pupatee was ready to put up his hand again. It had become shy and he couldn’t keep it still. Then that ‘Bwoy, stretch out you hand’ echoed through his ears again, and he put up his right hand this time. Mr Sweeney looked at him as if to dare him to move it again, and Pupatee closed his eyes as he took the lash. This second one was worse than the first and when the pain hit him Pupatee was jumping up and down like a stallion being mounted for the first time. Then he found himself on his knees, with his hand under his arm, as if expecting a gushing waterfall from his armpit to put out the fire that was now running through his hand and up the nerves into his body.
‘Only one more to go,’ the headmaster said, bending down to look at Pupatee. Through his tears, Pupatee could swear that for a moment he saw a look of sympathy on the man’s face, but then that hard look and stare returned and his voice boomed out.
‘Get up and hold out your hand, bwoy!’
Pupatee sprang to his feet, because he sensed the headmaster was about to start with his ‘six instead of three’ voice again. But now he didn’t know which hand to offer as they were both stinging like pepper in the eye.
‘Come on, bwoy. Me got a class to teach!’
He stretched out his left hand and a mighty whack came down on it. It was the last, and Pupatee fled out of the school screaming, found a tap and ran his hands under the cold water.
The first person who came to his rescue was Carl. ‘Me tell you fe tek dem pon one hand instead ah can’t use two hands.’
‘Me right hand no too sore, man,’ Pupatee managed to say.
Carl laughed and said, ‘Come, before dem beat we again.’ Then he led his little brother back inside.
After that, every week it was the same, and before long if they were late, Pupatee would persuade Carl to stay away from school for the whole day, running free through the countryside instead. And when they did go to school, although Carl was a good student, Pupatee learned almost nothing. He could just about spell his name, but not any more than that. He didn’t even know his alphabet, and it was all he could do to count to ten. He would just sit in school, and wait for the afternoon to end.
After school, life began. A whole group of them would set off to pick sweet limes and number eleven mangoes. The best grew on land owned by a woman they thought was mad. She would lie in wait for them and when they were in the middle of picking the juiciest fruit, high up in the trees like the doctor birds, she would jump out and surprise them, shouting, ‘You tief inu me catch you all tiefing me mangoes. Police, police!’ and they would run off as fast as Pops’s animals ran down to the river in June.
One morning, after cutting the grass and eating breakfast, Pupatee was late for school as usual. There was no sense hurrying now – Pupatee would get a beating whatever – so he dawdled, and Pops saw him ‘You na go ah school today, Pupatee?’ he called. ‘What wrong with you?’
‘Me pencil no sharp, Pops.’
‘Come, me sharpen it fe you, come.’
Pupatee followed him into the house and he took out his big, long razor. He was proud of this razor, and he took great care of it, cleaning and polishing it after every use. He opened it out and the blade shone as silver as the moon. He calmly sharpened the pencil and replaced the blade in the handle, winking at Pupatee and smiling.
‘Den de teacher na go beat you, man, de way you so late.’
From outside, Carl shouted, ‘Pupatee, de later we are ah de hotter de licks, you know. So you better come on, we half late already, ah!’
‘Me gone, Pops,’ Pupatee said.
‘All right, massah, me see you.’
Pupatee joined up with Carl, but he was walking slowly. ‘You no have fe hurry now, ca wha me no go anywhere near dat school deh today, fe me get no tree licks ah no dis or dat from headmaster, prefecs or Mama or Pops. Me know a nice place we can go over de mad woman place, go pick number eleven mangoes and bully mangoes