Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

This is the exception for Pierre, and for many others who don’t partake in the madness. Young and old, visitors, country, town — all kinds come to see, and play in the bands. Despers — the strongest, from wajang Laventille, holds the legacy tuned and tight, pinging and pounding traditions high on their hill all night.

The oil-drum segments crawl like a massive centipede, electric black and shiny. Ripples of floating legs slide it forward, adrenaline anticipates the bite. Hair raising.

The small group of friends fall in with the chipping, buddoom boom bam, buddoom boom bam … melody, it’s only a melody … Renegades, Catelli All Stars, Exodus, Invaders, Solo Harmonites, Carib Tokyo, and Phase II Pan Groove — the big bands and little straggler Panberi tuning and rehearsing in the queue.

Ata, Fraser, and Alan push up between the canopied frames of Despers, inching closer to the iron section.

The others stay on the edge, moving along with the band.

In a break, when only the shuffling of feet and the muted jangling of empty drums fall on their steel-deafened ears, they get right up to the rhythm section.

Rum and heat stoke this engine of men and old steel. Car rims and angle iron, metal-rod drumsticks in gnarled hands, wait. Sweat drips from crow’s-feet, soaking headties, pouring salt drops into their drinks. And they tapping. The happiest, sweetest, start-up count …

* * *

Alan pretends he’s carried away by it all, but is here to see his friend in his home element, for the last time. There would be no other time like this, not at the rate he’s losing weight. He secretly watches Fraser gripping the pole close to the iron man, bobbing in time with everyone pressed close, stamping the heralding beat. Tenor pans join in, lightly, then the mass of chafing drums crash into action. The onslaught of rhythm always made Alan marvel at the perfect synchronicity and power of this music, played without a written score. The conviction of a self-furnaced orchestra, tire-tube rubber tips on steel.

He had tried to capture all this in photos and paintings — a young girl’s braids lashing like whips as she snaps between six drums; three boys bouncing in unison, heads back and hands flying identically; old rasta bending, crimping himself over his pan, squeezing it out; a Chinese woman, straightbacked and solemnly ruling a bass. This was the kind of richness Alan knew Fraser missed, when he had been in England. A mixed-up, crashing sound in his heart. It travels now, from his grip on the rail, through his weakening bones, jarring his very core.

* * *

They didn’t stay to see Despers onto the stage. Two hours was plenty and the crowds jammed up down there. From a distance, they had seen the blue and red of Catelli All Stars ramping up, clawing wildly, and raising the head of the centipede to the floodlit sky. Banners waving mad, flag-girls frenzy — Ata could feel the board bleachers of North Stand bouncing as she watched it shake and thunder.

* * *

Sammy was coming round the Queen’s Park Savannah when he hear North Stand roar. His boys in there, making theyself hoarse with they whistles and thing. The ole fellas always on one side and the football fellas, with one’r two of they girls, down below on the next side, closer to the stage. They go have they coolers and drinks and pot’a pilau. He used to bring goat roti to start them off, ’cause they there since early o’clock.

This is the part now when the soloist bring down the volume, reining everybody listening tight. People, closing they eyes, ketching the scale. And that master climbing higher, higher, heights — up! Up, everybody standing, jumping, pitching screams as the rest’a the band buss loose. Creshendo in yuh skin. Sam swing into the parking lot with a flourish, in time.

* * *

“It’s a wonder more people don’t get injured. That stand is just waiting for a stampede, or to collapse or something.”

“Don’t say that, nuh.”

Vernon had melted away in the crowd. Alan would take Fraser home. Helen was staying on and Ata was headed for the mas camp. They wait with her for Sammy, in the safety of cars and light on the edge of the old horse-racing track.

“Be careful, please.” Pierre holds Ata close as he kisses her.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep at home anyway.”

“And you think I will?” He closes Sammy’s car door after her.

“I go take care’a she, don’ worry,” Sam says.

Pierre glances out at the dark, at the raping and mugging center of the park.

“Ah go safeguard she,” Sam repeats, as they drive off and Ata looks back, to see Pierre get into their car.

* * *

Sam turns back up the radio volume. The Panorama commentator shouts the score above the racket, and then Renegades start up. The tinny version of the steel orchestra screeches along with them till Ata feels she’s riding inside an incessant cicada. There is no way of recording pan on this scale, and nothing does it justice. She can’t ask Sam to turn it down.

Sam listening carefully, a Renegades man himself for years. He already had speechify to her, long before now, about Despers being a “government band,”’cause anything they play they win, even one year when they come with electric pan. Even though now they are very good pan beatist. And about how he respect Exodus, from the day Jit Sameroo direct them to win and Rudder say is time for the East, with “Dust in Yuh Face.” Sam can’t talk now, for a change. Serious in his Renegades red-and-gold T-shirt, ears cock, almost trembling, he driving with the screeching.

* * *

Fraser sits in the jeep, and asks Alan not to start the engine for a moment. “I’m okay.” He exhales hard, realizing he was unconsciously holding his breath with the start-up of the next band in the background. He sits, still shaking inside, and Alan lights up a Silkcut Mild. “Give me one of those, please.”

His friend hesitates for a second, then hands him the pack. “You said ‘please.’”

Fraser drags gratefully on the long filter. He groans, releasing the smoke, and again before taking the next pull.

“Fucking Christ, don’t start that up again.”

“I groan whenever I like now. I’m allowed. And besides, it’s supposed to be therapeutic.”

“Jesus.”

A couple walked up to the car opposite them, deep in argument. Instead of getting in, the woman goes over and pushes the man’s chest hard, cussing his nasty backside. She keeps flicking her wrists back onto her thick waist, punctuating. The lights of the cars on the road behind flash between them like a music video set.

“These mild ones are too mild,” Fraser complains, sucking harder on the filter and dragging air through his teeth like it’s weed.

“My gesture to doctor’s orders, for my cough,” Alan drawls.

Two policewomen stroll past on the pavement, noticing but ignoring the lovers’ fight.

“Yuh bitch!” the woman screams and slams the man back against the car. “You fuck she, yuh lying, fucking bitch !” She hits the car and the man stiffens and grabs her face.

“We better get going, Alan, let’s go.”

Alan turns on the headlights but that only makes the man bellow at them. As they hustle out of the car park, Fraser tries to at least inform the officers.

“We know,” they say. “We see dem. Is a lovers’ t’ing, nuh.”

Fraser starts questioning them, but Alan drives off. “I thought, living here, you’d know by now when you’re wasting your time.”

* * *

At the mas camp, there are only a few people working on the Queen costume.

“What happen to everybody?” Ata demands of the dog-tired manager.

“As usual, they can’t miss the finals, and then they never come back.”

“So why say they’ll be here? I took a taxi to come here and…”