KAMARANG

Aug 23, 2009 Features / Columnists, The Creative Corner

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Day Two

The boy came in around midnight, bringing the smell of the girl with him. In the fluttering flambeau light, his eyes lifted to Sealey, who was smoking in his hammock.
“Night Mr. Sealey.”
Sealey pressed his cigarette out against a post. He lit another at the flambeau, the turned back to Leon.
“So how the young rooster?”
Leon responded with a tired, dreamy smile. “Okay Mr. Sealey.” He stepped further into the porknocker’s logie, stumbling slightly in the gloom. From his hammock, Jerry Mentore laughed. “Ha..like you worn out chap.”
The boy smiled again. He shifted to his hammock next to Sealey’s. He removed his boots, then his jersey. A strong, unmistakable feminine odour wafted over them. Jerry Mentore sniffed the air loudly. “Hay…go bathe, chap.” He leaned to the floor, then flung a boot at Bap Reggie, who was snoring in his hammock.
The snores ceased abruptly. Bap Reggie stirred, grumbling a curse.
“Wake up old man”, Mentore said loudly. Leon come back.”
Bap Reggie scrambled up, immediately awake. His grin was wide in the darkness. He began to cheer, Jerry Mentore joining in.
“Ahh raaight…the man with all the luck..”
“The young rooster…”
Now they were all grinning like schoolboys.
“What she name?”
“The boy held up his hands, laughing.
“What she name?” pressed Mentore
“Carmelita.” He said the name slowly.
“Car-mel-ita. Sound Brazilian. She’s Brazilian?”
“How much fuh a night-sleep?” Leon?” asked Bap Reggie.
The boy gave Bap Reggie a sideways, mischievous glance. “But what this old man want with night sleep?”
Laughter…Bap Reggie, unabashed, joining in.
“But serious, Leon,” Mentore said. “How much?”
“I dunno,” Leon said, smiling and
Mentore shifted impatiently, almost tumbling from his hammock. “How you mean you don’t know? You ain been with the woman?”
“Yeah.” Again that tired, dreamy smile.
“So what you telling me, youth?”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
The boy was smiling, eyes half-closed. Now he yawned, and stretched himself out in his hammock.
And then, like a flash of light, understanding came to Sealey.
“Leon, you still got the two pennyweight I gave you?”
And then, like a flash of light, understanding came to Sealey.
“Leon, you still got the two pennyweight that I gave you, right?”
Leon’s eyes fluttered open. He stared at Sealey, surprised.
“Yes Mr. Sealey.”
Mentore was glancing from Sealey to Leon.
“Wait a minute. You mean you didn’t pay?
Leon said nothing, but the dreamy smile had returned. He pushed a hand into his trouser pocket. It came out with a wad of paper. Sealey watched him unfold it, saw the dull-glittering metal inside. He stared at the gold, feeling a pang of jealousy, mingling with a sense of foreboding. Leon let them stare at the gold for a moment, then stretched out again in his hammock.
Mentore emitted a sigh. “Lucky son of a…
Hay, wha ’bout introducing me tomorrow…eh Leon?”
But Leon was already asleep….
Sealey first saw the hunter with the crippled leg while they were gong to bath at the river next day.
The boy was last up, still yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he shivered in the light mist that hung around them. There was still a hint of the girl’s scent on him; but what they most was the mass of crisscross scratches on his back.
Jerry Mentore gave a low whistle. “Christ…what you did making love to…a tiger?”
For a moment, Sealey thought he saw a shadow of some indecipherable emotion on Leon’s face. Then the boy smiled, rubbed his eyes, and walked on.
They were heading down a slope leading to the river when, a few yards from them, a shadow broke the mist. It was a slouching shadow; a squat, hulking, lurching shadow that broke the mist at the bottom of the slope. There was an unnatural width to the stranger’s shoulders, until Sealey realized that the man was fetching something. The stranger paused for a moment, as if scanning his surroundings, then continued towards them. As the stranger neared, Sealey saw that he was shirtless, wide-shouldered, deep-chested. In the clear air, the rank smell of musk and blood came to them.
The man was hoisting a wild boar across his shoulders. A few boys gawked at the hunter from a respectable distance. Sealey estimated the animal’s weight at over a hundred pounds. As the man came closer, Sealey saw something else. The instep of his left leg was turned completely backwards. There were no scars to suggest that it had been mangled in an accident. Looking at his strange limb, Sealey felt a stirring of revulsion and unease. He wondered if the others felt it too. They had fallen silent since the man had come into view.
Now only a few yards separated them from the hunter and his burden. As he came closer, the stranger seemed to check his stride before continuing his stumbling walk. Sealey forced himself to transfer his gaze from the hunter’s leg to his burden.
The boar’s tusks were at least five inches long. He knew they would be razor-sharp. The hunter had gutted the boar, but he carried no knife that Sealey could see.
His hands were encrusted with blood. Splotches of blood were on his chest. His hair was long, dusty-brown, matted. His full, blank face showed no strain from his burden. As they passed, almost within touching distance, the hunter glanced at Sealey. His eyes, black and tiny, held a mixture of aloofness and hostility that quelled any though Sealey had of speaking.
Sealey half-raised his hand in greeting, but the man just started through him, heading in the direction from which the men had come.
They walked on in silence for awhile, then Leon said: “I know him.”
There was something in the boy’s tone that made them turn to him.
“I see him by the girl last night, he was standing outside when I was leaving. Standing by a tree.
“Ha, boy, like you got a rival,” Mentore said
That broke the tension. Jerry Mentore and Bap Reggie erupted into braying laughter. The image of the girl and the hunter in bed made Sealey smile, but yet he felt a trace of crawling dread that the laughter didn’t quite dispel…
If the prostitute named Shirleen hadn’t gotten a sudden bout of diarrhea, she would never have gone to the outhouse. But what drew her to the window afterwards, she couldn’t quite say.
She’d awoken to the chill of the Kamarang night with a griping in her stomach. She pushed her feet into a pair of slippers, grabbed a roll of tissue and shuffled down the back steps.
The yard was bathed in moonlight. Jumbie moon, her grandmother Rhoda would have said. Grandma Rhoda was full of jumbie stories. On a night like this they would come pouring out… Shaking the thoughts away, Shirleen shuffled down the stairs and stepped down the path that led to the outhouse.
Soon, she was hurrying back up the stairs. She entered the bedroom and was hading for bed
But then, for some reason, she found herself heading for the bedroom window.
One moment she was looking outside seeing nothing, and the next she was staring at a figure which seemed to have stepped out of the hold-me-back bushes behind the outhouse. There was something familiar about the dumpy, square-shouldered figure, and then she recognized it as the man with the crippled leg. He was shirtless. He seemed to be wearing nothing but some sort of dark underwear. He crouched, peering around. He clutched some long, coiled thing in his right hand. There was something wet and rubbery-looking about it that disturbed her. She watched him put the thing to his lips. Even from the window, she could see him bite down on it and suck a portion into his mouth.
The man was raising the rest of the coil to his mouth when he suddenly swung around, facing the bushes. He began to sidle backwards.
The girl that she had first seen the night before stepped out of the bushes.
The two stood, staring at each other for a moment. Then the man backed away, crouching almost to his knees. The rubbery-thing dangled in his hand. The girl shifted forward, so quickly that Shirleen wasn’t sure that she had seen her move. She stood over the man, her right hand upraised. Shirleen tensed in anticipation of the blow. Instead, the girl touched the man’s head lightly. She said something and the man rose, and began to follow her to the hold-me-back bushes.
They had reached the hedge when the girl suddenly stopped. She stared towards the latrine for a moment. Then she turned and looked up at the window. The bedroom light was off and Shirleen was peering from behind the window blind, so she knew that there was no way that the girl could have seen her. But she felt as if the girl was staring into her eyes. She felt naked, exposed.
Then the girl turned dismissively away, and veered towards the bushes, the hunter following behind like a scolded child…
(To be continued)

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