Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

Now Ericka has to rush back to work and she gets up, chasing away the ghosts of men hovering around them. She promises that Fraser will come around, he really does care. And Helen goes in to check on him.

Ata’s picture mind is still cruising the black smooth roads of Tobago, with Fraser, late at night.

* * *

Cruising is an art, Fraser had told Ata and Pierre. “You have no idea until you go out there at night and meet the jackals, run with them.”

Ata had put the jackal talk down to his tendency to over-romanticize everything with foreign references. She was still getting to know him.

It was not long after she had met him and Pierre when Fraser turned up one night, blocking traffic in the narrow street outside her fretwork home. “Come, quick, we going right now.” Hustling them into his old jeep. “Hurry — you don’t need to change!” Excitement revving with him and the slipping clutch. Ata and Pierre had joined in the stupid grinning adventure with him and they headed to downtown Port of Spain at 11:00 p.m.

The image of cruising that Fraser had described, and what went on then, was the joke. No smooth drive, with a long arm draped out the window, sweet night breeze caressing and cool music lacing — only jerky bradam-bradam, in all potholes with the jeep coughing, Fraser sweating and craning through the dirty windscreen to see properly. He straightened the rearview mirror, glanced at Ata, then at Pierre. “What youall was doing, eh? Youall have it bad bad, sorry for the interruption but we going to see the life.”

“Downtown at night is ‘the life’? It’s dead,” Ata said.

“But the dead will bury the dead. Or raise them, you’ll see. Is one life I have.” His lines. The old shocks and jeep joints squeaked loud as they bounced their way onto empty Tragarete Road and Fraser started singing, “ Captain, this ship is sinking. Captain, these seas are rough … we have no electricity … the oil pressure reading low. Shall we abandon ship? Or shall we sit on it? And perish slow — we don’t know, we don’t know. Captain, you tell me what to do. Oye-yo…”

The cow-heel soup center was shut up tight. Pierre crouched in his seat to see better, peering out at the empty pavements and big dark trees of Victoria Square. They swung onto Frederick Street and Fraser slipped the clutch again, ready for action.

“Okay, okay, Ata, put on that hat and slouch down in the seat.” He scrambled around and threw some old socks at her. “Stuff them in your pants, look like a boy in the back there and make your chest look flat.”

“Socks, Fraser? They clean? I not pushing your stinky—”

“They clean, hurry, look somebody! Make it bulge like you have something down there and keep your face in the dark.”

Pierre’s shoulders shaking, laughing.

“Shhh!”

They approached Woodford Square, the People’s University, the homeless inside, sleeping. Shops opposite locked down with steel shutters and a vagrant going through the garbage.

“Don’t laugh.”

Tall iron spikes flickered past, guarding black bushes by streetlight. A man walked the pavement, slow, along the fence. He stopped as Fraser crawled the jeep along the curb. A flame sparked and the man lit a cigarette, cupping it close to his face. Fraser stopped, slung one arm low outside his window. “Breds, yuh have a light?” Fraser’s other hand, with an unlit cigarette between his fingers, jabbed at Pierre’s leg. Pierre slumped lower to look while Ata tried to keep her head in the dark. The man bent to the window and all of Fraser’s shoulders leaned over to meet him. Fraser’s long fingers lifted his fresh cigarette slowly to his lips, cupped the man’s fist, as the lighter scratched. The flame was long and the moment hung between them, a hand gently wrapping a strong fist, their eyes meeting, faces close in the flickering light. The cigarette flared on a deep pull and the flame went out.

Fraser let out the smoke, hissing softly. “Thank you, breds.”

The man straightened up. He didn’t step away.

“So, what going on? Where you heading?” Fraser’s voice was self-conscious then; he pushed his head outside.

The man mumbled something and Ata and Pierre only heard Fraser saying that he has friends with him right now. He started rolling the jeep forward gradually, his arm still hung outside, cigarette smoldering on the steering wheel. “All right. We’ll catch up. Take care.” He took a deep pull and jerked them forward fast as he could, away from the pavement and the man. “I don’t know him, I don’t know the man at all! ‘ Captain, these seas are rough ’ … Oh Lawd…” Whooping like he couldn’t believe it himself. The fact that the man would have gone with him, the mad scare of it, zinging him even without the act. “Breds,” he told them, is short for brethren, “it’s like ‘bro.’ And the lighter signal is the thing. Phew, boy.”

“But, Fraser…” Ata whispered, “wasn’t it a friend of yours, found chopped up in his bed a few years ago? You have to be careful.” Immediately she regretted saying it.

Fraser hunched forward and threw them round the corner, past the dark Red House.

* * *

Outside the Red House of Parliament, “the People’s University” of Woodford Square is Sammy next favorite place in town. He was right there earlier this evening, killing time and learning all the while. You might as well, ’cause you never know when that knowledge might come in handy. In this crazy place anything could happen, anytime. And that is what two men on the lil’ wall round the dry-up fountain was arguing about. In Trinidad, a man could do anything and get away with it.

“It only looking so, brother, don’ worry with dat,” the next man saying. “It have no hiding place from God eyes and His punishment. Every dog got he day.”

It wasn’t so late, and Sammy had decide to dawdle a little before looking for a late job to head home. The real active daytime limers and talkers gone home already and the square settling down to a regular dead, downtown night. Them tall trees tinkling up clear orange streetlight, disappear the urine, dry dust, and homeless smells. A few people had already bed down with they cardboard, some pedestrians still walking through the square on the pathways.

“I tell you a’ready,” the one man said, “God don’ interfere with Trini business. When you go realize dat? Where in history you ever see this kind’a thing, eh? Watch, for example, right in dat Red House, only here a madman could hold up a coup, stick up everybody, and ransom de government — dat is national kidnap, yuh know! Only in a place like this, he, a man like Abu Bakr, could do dat and then be walking round the place free! What de ass…”

“He will not escape God punishment, though,” the Seventh Day insisted.

“Well, the man say is Allah tell him do it in de first place, so that is to tell you. That is what is de problem as well — too much’a damn different kind’a people thinging up all about. Too much’a chance to conduct they wicked ways. No unity. And don’ talk about justice — dat is why…”

Sammy could see that the Seventh Day man was biding he time patiently, to come back with his rounds. Man like him-so does say the same thing over and over, whole night. Sam get up and cross over the dry orange grass, to more lively talk over so.

About five men was on the old bandstand steps with a lil’ radio, talking politics of course. This one saying Manning is a ass making nigger people shame and that one admiring Panday, the gray-hair Silver Fox with he cunning, Indian, opposition ways. As they greet Sammy, the talk turn to who deserve to win the Calypso Monarch Crown this year, ’cause David Rudder song came on the air. And that make the men and them laugh and find it funny — funny that they was just talking politics and hear the song, about Hulsie X and “Manday.” Sammy himself love the song about the feisty young Indian woman in the opposition party. He love it the minute it release, just like the rest of Trinidad. The high-pitched, nasal chorus “ Ah not moving! ” is the best part, making big man crack up and sing along, tapping they foot with the bass—“ Go down. Go down. Go down with the Hulsie X .” Sammy, small and petite as he is, did a lil’ jiggle, chutney head-wag and snake-hand move, just to make them laugh more. All’a them know already — that is the dance and the song of the season. They appreciate it properly ’cause they know the newspaper’s story, about Hulsie striking for water in Penal, with a set’a women and buckets in the middle’a the road, shouting, “ Ah not moving! ”