KAMARANG…The pork-knocker speaks of the girl with changing names

Apr 22, 2019 News

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By Michael Jordan

Michael Jones passed the white colonial-style building that was the Ministry’s Brickdam headquarters. There was no sign of the Bedford truck. He’d be back at work tomorrow, and he knew they would tease him about falling ill. For now, though, the day sprawled ahead, empty of cares. First, he would eat a double chicken-in-the rough at Demico; a sort of celebration feast. But then he should maybe go home and study, though what he really felt like doing was seeing a movie and…
He was nearing the Brickdam and High Street intersection. His pace slowed. Just think, if he turned left into High Street, and kept walking, he could get a glimpse of the Ritz. But would she still be there? Would she still want him? Was she real or someone he had imagined?
He paused at the intersection, almost seeing her now; the dark, slanted eyes that seemed to look deep into him. He could hear the creak of old boards as she led him up the stairs…
“Hello…”
He turned, the spell broken. The tall man from The Ritz was coming towards him. For a moment, he almost felt that the approaching figure was unreal, an image spun by his thoughts of the girl. He had never seen any of the Ritz crowd by daylight. Meeting this man now was almost like encountering someone he had only known in dreams. He got a whiff of tobacco as the man stepped closer. Deep-set, dark-brown eyes sized him up from beneath grey brows.
He found himself tensing. Something was wrong.
“Yes?”
“You are the youngster from the Ritz place…right?”
“Yeah—what’s up?”
They had stopped near one of the trees that lined Brickdam. Now they both shifted into the shade, and Michael caught the sickly odour of cannonball fruit. The man removed his cap. He used a rag to wipe perspiration from his close-cropped head. He folded the rag, shoved it back into his pocket, then stared at Michael, like a man taking time to choose his words.
“Son,” he said at last. “You look like a decent young man to me. So, I gon talk to you straight. I notice that you friendly with that girl they call Lucille…”
So, this was what it was all about. Was this one of Lucille’s men? —admirers? … Maybe a friend of the old soldier he’d tangled with? That too didn’t make sense. Michael found himself gauging the man standing next to him. At least fifty, but with a quiet, dried-out, confident hardness. The close-shaven head, the high cheek-bones, a certain sadness in the eyes, made Michael think of the actor Woody Strode.
“Yes?” Michael said.
“I don’t know what the relationship is with you and she. But, as I say, you seem like a decent young chap, so I will tell you this: Be careful with that girl.”
He stood in stunned silence, the man’s warning echoing in his head. And now he knew that, ever since his strange friendship with the girl, part of him had expected something like this.
“I know she from the bush…Kamarang side,” the man said. “She used to call herself Carmelita then…”
He knew her…what did this chap mean by knew her?
“So, what you warning me about?” He had intended to throw it out casually, but his voice sounded high-pitched with dread and hostility.
Again, that hesitation, and he sensed a suppressed tension in the old man, despite his outward calm.
“I believe that she kill a young man in the bush. I don’t know how she do it. All I know is that he start to pine away, and in less than a week, he dead as a nit.”
There was something locking off his throat. He couldn’t breathe. There were questions he should ask, but his mind was numb and spinning. Pedestrians hurried past, a rushing parade of shadows.
“We find him dead in she barracks. But no sign of she…till I find she at the Ritz.” The man’s callused fingers tightened around his cap. He sighed, stared at the ground for a moment, then he was looking at Michael again.
“Youngster, I telling you this because I think that she after you now.”
He felt as if his head was swelling. He tried to shake the feeling away, not comprehending, not sure he had heard right.
“A-after me?”
“Why you visiting the doctor, chap?”
A memory stirred within his jumbled thoughts. The doctor’s clinic…the receptionist smiling and chatting with the man from the Ritz, then sending him in to the doctor ahead of everyone else.
Friends! This man and the doctor are friends! They had discussed him. Doctor Mootoo knew about Lucille. He knew!
He felt his face grow hot with anger and shame. “So, what my visiting the doctor got anything to do with—”
A hardness crept into the man’s voice: “It got everything to do with what happening!” He edged closer. “Let me tell you what that other young chap at Kamarang die from.” He bit the words off slowly: “Shock…due to…severe…anemia.”
Again, that numb, lightheaded feeling, as if he’d slipped into a dream.
“I-I don’t understand—”
“I think she harming you, chap.” The words were said almost gently, but they were like the caress of a cold hand on his skin.
“Why?” he whispered finally.
“You eating…drinking anything from she?”
The cassiri!—that sweet bowl of pepperpot!—No…it couldn’t be…
“You sure…is the same person you know?”
For a moment, the hard countenance reflected uncertainty. “I think so. Same eyes. Same lips—” He broke off suddenly. He glanced away for a moment, as if embarrassed, then stared at Michael again.
“Uh…youngster. Your girl. She got some sort of …tattoo…high up on she leg?”
He felt the coldness of betrayal. An image flashed before him of the man’s coarse fingers on Lucille’s thighs…
He realized that the man was staring at him and nodding in grim satisfaction. He shifted closer to Michael, and now there was no mistaking his urgency.
“Youngster…take my advice. Keep away from she! I think that this woman is very, very dangerous to you!”
“Listen!—I could take care of myself—okay?”
He caught a brief flash of anger in the man’s deep-set eyes. Abruptly, after, the man sighed. He fumbled in a back pocket and pulled out a battered notebook and pen. He wrote laboriously, then tore out a page and handed it to Michael. “If anything happen, if you need my help, you can find me at this address.” A trace of a smile softened his features. “Just ask anybody for pork-knocker Sealey.”
Michael pocketed the note without reading it. The two men continued down Brickdam in their separate silences. When they got downtown, Michael mumbled farewell as he turned towards Demico House. He sensed the man’s eyes on him as he moved away. He forced a swagger into his walk, though his legs felt numb and tangled, as the man’s words, echoed in his head, like a tolling bell.
Vibert Sealey watched the boy turn into Demico. Part of him felt a lightness of spirit, because he had finally let the boy know how things stood. He knew what he said had hit the youngster hard. He had been looking at the boy, as he tried to mask his feelings, and Sealey had thought of Leon. He had felt a stir of protectiveness that made him angry, because he wanted to be done with this business.
The boy said he didn’t understand. Sealey shook his head. He didn’t understand, either. All he knew was that three people who the girl from Kamarang had known were dead. And now she was spreading her thighs freely for another boy. But she was a woman of the night, and nothing that they gave was exactly free. In some dreadful, scary way, the boy was paying, as Leon had paid. And even if he had to shake it out of Carmelita, Lucille, or whoever the hell she really was, he, Vibert Sealey, would find out how, and find out why, and find out soon.
(Taken from the Guyanese supernatural novel, KAMARANG by Michael Jordan. Cover design by Harold Bascom.
KAMARANG IS ON SALE AT AUSTIN’S BOOK SERVICES. YOU CAN ALSO CONTACT MICHAEL JORDAN FOR AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY ON +592 645 2447 OR EMAIL ADDRESS [email protected]

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