Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

The torment of choice lies bare between the two of them now, but it only makes Ata feel judged, by the friend of Fraser she respects the most. Extra aware of her own mixed-up values, way of doing things, and lack of religion — flaws that make her rootless. Gray.

“Father McBarnette is here!” Thomas announces cheerily at the door. “Fraser still sleeping?”

* * *

“ Ka-nee-val again, bacchanal in Port’a Spain, whoa donkey. Whoa whoa donkey! ” The Matrimony financial figures and the time left before Carnival didn’t add up, and God of Design refused to accept it. The manager shut down the camp while they battled it out. But secretly, in the dim hangar, the core group of performers, key craftsmen, and the King and Queen of the band gather around the bolts of stretchy fluorescent fabric. A few have on the yellow and orange body suits, their limbs glowing, looking like skinny aliens sitting, standing on crates, around the strapping King. “Look how much of the spandex left-back. And how much body suits done already — we could make this work.”

“ Whoa donkey. Whoa whoa donkey! ” rattles again on the insistent radio. One of the luminous bodies springs up and starts jockeying around.

“Exactly! What I thinking ’bout is … the ‘Donkey Rally’—hear me out! Serious, watch — we making heads and de tails…”

The Amazonian Queen of the Band looks at her subjects, handsome face aglow and amused, waiting for the outbreak.

“I is a ass! I is a damn jackass? To jump down de road on Carnival Monday, dress up like a ass!”

“For Slinger? You mad?”

Three out of the sitting four jump up, gesticulating, while the infectious song by the United Sisters rallies on.

“Dat is pure madness. Slinger would never agree to dat. Is a joke!”

“No, look, I run it by he right arm a’ready. Is to save the band. You know how many people done sign up? Thousands. And yes, is a joke but Kaneeval is about joke and at least everybody go have fun. I make a headpiece prototype…” The King, who has always been admired for his physique and skill at carrying the massive costumes, stalks into the office to retrieve his prototype.

The Queen smiles knowingly and the performers and craftsmen mumble, milling about. “Whoa donkey” fades into the monotone of the radio DJ and the King appears again quickly, wearing a brown stuffed donkey head with fluorescent net ears sticking up. The effect is even more comical on his spandexed oversized body, with a cloth tail swinging behind. The whole pack falls about rolling on the ground, kicking up and slapping each other like real asses. They laugh, they laugh, they laugh till they cry, and even the Queen joins in. The King is mad but he holds his ground. Till they cool down, spluttering and begging for the song to come back on the radio again. The Queen sniffs through her laughy-tears, “Allyou listen, man, is not a joke. He have a good idea here, oooh … a good idea. And allyou could help, try nuh.”

The old wire-bender man, sitting in the darkest corner all this time, steups his teeth.

“Ah sure if Slinger mad enough to ketch de joke, he could design some real boss-ass head! If he want to.”

“Yeah, right, I is Slinger ass a’ready. Whoa whoa … yuh think he go even listen? Jesus!”

* * *

Sam’s Queen know the best way to get her son back on track is cooking. Even though he have no appetite and he not interested in nothing, she will get him back in the kitchen. The household quiet quiet. The grass and all in the neighborhood silent these days. The little drain, running from the backyard all the way ’long the edge of the empty field to the back of Douli murder house, choke up with water plants. But they not even sending out two purple flowers. Is a blight. Sam can feel it and she know it all along but what you go do?

* * *

“What you can do wit’ these kind’a t’ings happening, eh? This is not no ordinary crime, yuh know. Crime’a passion? Is not dat neither.”

“Is frustration.”

The ole boys done seen the headlines and the rumshop talk come back around to that one — the most outstanding in weeks.

“What frustration? He frustrated with he daughter so he kill her, then why he kill heself and he wife?”

“You don’ hear what I say? Frustration wit’ life — dat is the only thing that would make a man get in a rage so.”

“I hear the daughter had like a black man, and he didn’ agree to that.”

Big steups all round the rumshop. “Don’ come with dat ole race talk.”

“But what you saying, life more hard in Trinidad than other places, that’s why we have so much’a these crimes so?”

“What stupidness you aksing, boy?”

* * *

The dingy rum belly of Port of Spain growls and grumbles, echoing the dark guts of the hills. Digesting the murders. Crude oil deep in the bones of the land.

* * *

The priest, the same tall, dark, handsome priest that Fraser had had fantasies about, and cursed, is at his bedside. Father McBarnette, the obstacle to his church project, the blocker. Fraser looks up through sleep-soft eyes now and sees a blesser. He makes up his mind to listen to the priest and not argue. Maybe he has come to use his priestly healing powers.

“Let me tell you a story, Fraser,” he begins, and Fraser thinks he’s right, it must be a miracle story coming. “I know you are a well-educated man and most probably know much of what I’m about to tell you, but bear with me …

“This land of the Holy Trinity has a particular history that runs through our veins. It is inescapable and … tainted, built on lies and deceit. The Amerindians first told tall tales of a city of gold to the Spanish, and Trinidad was set up to look for the third El Dorado, after Mexico and Peru.* But it never materialized. Piracy, murder, and mayhem founded the first capital here in Saint Joseph — you know that’s where I’m from, right? That’s why I have a special interest in this story. Requests were made for ships and men from Spain, for expeditions that never happened. Antonio de Berrio did try before that but then after the initial glimmer of gold Trinidad remained a backwater post, ‘breeding disease, mixed-blood, and sin’ for a few hundred years.”

Fraser thinks this is a good setup for a miracle tale, but he is trying to figure out how much this black-power “man of the cloth” and slave descendant really accepts his colonial religion. He watches Father’s sensuous mouth, set perfectly in thick black stubble, continue.

“It became ‘the Ghost Province’† of El Dorado. Saint Joseph, or San José de Oruña, remained a ‘ten-hut place.’ French and English buccaneers, ‘gangsters of the sea,’ continued trading and raiding, taking Negroes, torturing Spaniards … The friendliness of the Arawacas Indians here, though, attracted missionaries. These missionaries worked hard despite the heat, for they were serving a greater King. They ruled that no Indian was to be called a ‘piece,’ they built settlements for some of the freed Indians, baptizing and instilling the practice of work for wages.”

“Unh hunh, proper businessmen,” Fraser muttered, but the priest droned on.

“The Indians became restless, and we’re talking late seventeenth century here — Trinidad got its ‘first Christian martyrs and its first miracle.’”

At last. Fraser wishes he could see the point, though. His toxic blood is putting him to sleep again. “Thanks for that, Father,” he mumbles.

“But wait, I ain’ tell you the story yet.” Father McBarnette pulls up his chair closer to Fraser’s bed. “They were building a new church one morning, and a monk told off two Indian laborers — the Indians killed all four monks and buried them in the foundations of the new church, burned down the mission. But you from Arima so you should know all about this. When the governor and his men came to investigate later, the Indians ambushed and killed them too. All of them died slow slow with the poisoned arrows.” Father McBarnette pauses, excited like a boy in the middle of his comic book. It looks like Fraser has dozed off.