Pynter Bender. Jacob Ross
…?’
‘’Bout dis fella you s’pose to be.’
He was surprised she did not know the story. Everybody knew it, even Miss Lizzie. The story was always there, even when no one was telling it, there in his grandmother’s eyes whenever she turned her gaze on him. Perhaps she knew but she wanted to hear it from him.
He chewed the bread and stared at her uncertainly. He swallowed and closed his eyes.
‘My auntie, Tan Cee, say the cane was always there – the cane and us. She say we come with the cane. A pusson got to count a lot of generation back till dem reach Sufferation Time, when we didn belong to weself, because de man who own de cane own de people too.’
He lifted his head in incomprehension. Santay nodded slightly.
‘Had a fella name Zed Bender. He didn feel he belong to nobody, but in truth he belong to a man name Bull Bender. Bull Bender had a lotta dog. He teach dem to hunt people down. He teach dem to rip off de back of deir leg when he catch dem. If is a woman, he bring ’er back. But he never bring back a man.
‘It happm one day Zed Bender decide to run ’way with a girl name Essa. She was pretty an’ he like ’er bad, real bad. He like ’er so bad he wasn’ ’fraid o’ nothing o’ nobody. He run ’way with her. Bull Bender catch ’im – catch ’im …’ He lifted his eyes past Santay, frowned, shook his head and pointed where he thought the purple mass of the Mardi Gras might be. ‘Up dere.’ Cross dere it have a tree. S’big. It got root like wall. Part of it like a lil house. It got a lotta little bird in dere. Dey ain’ got no feather on dem. It don’ smell nice in dere eider. Missa Bull Bender catch dem dere after de dog tear off de back of Zed Bender leg.’
He placed the bit of bread he was holding on the table and looked at her. He was tired. Wasn’t hungry any more. He wanted to sleep.
‘Finish,’ she told him quietly.
‘He put hi back against one of dem wall root. He want to stand up. He make ’imself stand up cuz he want to watch Bull Bender in hi eye – like a man in front of a man. Bull Bender tell ’im to kneel down. He won’ do it. He tell Bull Bender if he have to kill ’im, den he have to do it with ’im standin up. He tell ’im dat he put a curse on him an’ all hi famly, an’ de seed of all hi famly to come. He dead. Dead real vex. He tell Bull Bender that is come he goin come back. Don’ know when, but he goin come back, and when he come back … ’
Pynter looked away. ‘I don’ know, don’ know what goin to happm when he come back. Nobody never tell me dat part.’
Santay brought the heel of her hand up against his eyes, so softly he barely felt it. ‘You cryin,’ she said.
He watched her move across the floor towards the back door in that quick, whispery way of hers. She stood there and sniffed the air. The rain outside had stopped and he could hear the rising-up of the night-time bush sounds. He heard her call his name.
‘Come, look down dere.’ She was pointing at the black hole that was Old Hope Valley. He saw showers of lights stippling the darkness below them. ‘Firefly,’ she said. ‘Never seen so much in one night.’
While he watched and marvelled, she turned her gaze on him. ‘Dat tree up dere, de one where dat young-fella get kill, your auntie tell you dat part too?’
He stared back at her, said nothing.
‘Well,’ she said, turning back to face the night, ‘sound to me like dis Zed Bender fella had a real mind of hi own. You don’ fink so? The way I figure it, if he decide to make someting happm, den is happm it goin to happm. It cross my mind dat if he really come again an’ he decide he don’ want to go back, nobody kin make ’im go until he damn-well ready. A pusson have to ask demself a coupla question though. Like why he come back now, an’ whether he come back alone. Cuz dat lil Essa Bender lady he run ’way with the first time was sure to meet ’im up again – in the end, I mean. Love like dat can’t dead. An’ if she loss ’im once, she not goin to loss ’im twice. She goin want to follow ’im. An’ if what them say ’bout you is true, your brodder should ha’ been a girl.’
She switched her head back round to face him. ‘So! Let’s say dat girl come back with him – mebbe different passageway – and she somewhere on dis island, what you think goin happm if dey meet up?’
He looked at her, but she did not seem to expect an answer. She got up and tightened the knot of the cloth on her head.
‘Well, I figure she come to take ’im back. I figure dat she not good for ’im. Come, catch some sleep. Tomorrow I take you home.’
HOME WAS THE yard his grandfather had blasted out of rocks. It was a hill above the road that no one had found a use for until John Seegal claimed it for himself. Ten years it took her husband, Deeka Bender said, ten solid years to break through the chalk and granite with dynamite, crowbars and sledgehammers.
The work was as simple as it was breathtaking. With every girl-child he gave Deeka, he carved out a place where one day they would build their house. He went further up the hill each time a girl-child came. As if he knew that they would never leave his place. Or perhaps it was his way of tying them to this rock above Old Hope Road. Or maybe it was just his way of making sure his words came true.
And what were those words? Deeka splayed her fingers wide and laughed: that no man alive would ever rule his women. He said it when Tan Cee, their first girl-child, was born; said it again when Elena arrived a couple of dry seasons after her; said those very same words a final time when Patty the Pretty was born.
For Birdie – the only boy – he made no place at all. He told Deeka something different. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘have to make a way for himself.’
He wasn’t thinking about Birdie when he laid a nest of stones in the middle of the yard to make a fireplace. Or when he perched the great metal cauldron he’d brought from the sugar factory on three boulders, under the ant-blighted grapefruit tree which he’d planted with his hands. He put it there for the times they would need to feed a wedding or celebrate a birth, or when, just for the hell of it, one of the women decided to clear out the leaves, fill it with water and toss the children in.
It was the only thing he ever built, because all his life he had been paid to pull things down. Used to be the person the government called to blow up hills and buildings. Old bridges too; or when, during the rainy season, the face of one of those mountains on the western coast broke off and, on its way down to the sea, flattened every living thing in its wake, including people foolish enough to put their houses there. He was the one they sent for to clear the mess. Once he blew up the house of a man Deeka had worked for as a servant girl for the liberty he’d taken with her.
No wonder then, that in the eyes of lil children and a lot of foolish wimmen, her husband, John Seegal Bender, was the nearest thing to God, since with a little red box and a coupla pieces of wire, he could make thunder.
He’d built his house with storms in mind. A kind of ark on thirty legs, it half stood, half leaned against the high mud bank, which was, in turn, reinforced by the roots of a tres-beau mango tree. The posts were cut from campeche wood, chopped down at the end of the dry season, just before the new moon, since the blood-red core was hardest then.
He’d rebuilt the house in ’51, the year before he ‘walked’. Four years before Hurricane Janet pulled the island apart, lifted most of what people were living in and flung them at the Mardi Gras a thousand feet above them.
The house had grown since then, in various directions and according to its own fancy, to accommodate the swelling family. Elena added a couple of rooms to the west side with the money that, in Deeka’s words, Manuel Forsyth’s conscience had given her when Peter and Pynter were born. And because the house could not decide in which direction it wanted to lean, different parts leaned different ways.
They called