In the Falling Snow (31 page)

‘A year before I reach London I find myself sitting in the bar down by the harbour looking upon Ralph, who is slumped over the counter like a long fish. Through the open window I see bright moonlight on the surface of the sea, and I watch the small launch still taking passengers out to the boat. Soon it will be time for my best friend Ralph to pull himself together and make a start on his big journey to England, and so I nudge the man’s cardboard suitcase to one side with the outside of my shoe, and then I kick at Ralph’s stool and the man jump to attention and quickly rub his face with an open palm as though the man’s hand is some kind of small towel. “What happen? I miss the boat?” I don’t study him, and I ask the barman to open up two more bottles of beer so we can fire one for the road that Ralph will be crossing for the next two weeks until England show herself. According to Ralph, once he make it to England he say he will travel to the north of the country because some friend of his godfather promise to find him a job in a factory casting iron and the man claim a West Indian can make big money doing this kind of work. However, Ralph say that after five years he coming back home to open up a garage and establish himself in business as a mechanic. He already have the slogan for the advertisement that he say he going to put in the newspaper: “Bring your auto to the Car Doctor Ralph for he going fix it up nice, nice.” I remember it don’t rhyme or nothing, but it still impress me, and back then I suppose I feel a little jealous toward Ralph because the man talk about his plans with such confidence and I sure he can make anything happen. Me, I don’t have no plans to speak of. Since my mother die, and my pregnant sister Leona leave the house to marry the son of Mr Williams, the taxi driver, it’s just me alone working five days a week in town in the heat and noise of the sugar factory, and then come night I riding the bus back to the village and taking care of my father whose health
don’t
seem to be getting no better. Even though I don’t have no plans, I still have my dreams, and my dreams all locked up in the law book and the dictionary that I used to carry everywhere. I hold on tight to these two books and when the fellars at the sugar factory take a lunch break I sit on an upturned pail underneath a big tamarind tree and read, and when they start to play dominoes and get boisterous I just continue to read my law book and my dictionary and I don’t study them even when they pitch stones at me and hail me up as “Lawyer Earl”. Back then it is always tall Ralph who stand up and tell them to leave me alone, and it’s Ralph who walk with me to the bus stop at the end of the day and if he don’t have business in town with his woman, Sonia, it’s Ralph who will ride back to the village with me and sit and take a drink at the Bus Stop Bar before we both wander off to our parents’ houses. Sometimes we talk about getting a room together in town so we don’t have to trouble with the bus journey in the morning, and then again at night, but this talk just stop at talk, and then my mother die and my sister get pregnant and so I’m the only one left to watch over my father and after this neither Ralph nor me ever say another thing about rooming together because we both know that come night I don’t have no choice but to go back to the village, and then one day out of the blue Ralph decide that he is going all follow-fashion and taking himself off to England to work, and he reach this decision without so much as a “What do you think?” He’s going and it seem like Ralph don’t want any discussion. So I sitting in the bar down by the harbour and I look at Ralph and ask him if he trouble himself to tell Sonia that he going to England, but he just take a swig of beer and then thump the bottle back down on the bar top and start to laugh. He tell me that I don’t really understand women, because if I did then I would know that once Sonia realise that he gone then it only going take a day or so
before
she find a next man because women can take a blow and push up their lips and move on like nothing happen. “Maybe Sonia come looking for you with your damn books and your head stuck up in the air like you always thinking about something.” I tell Ralph that I not interested in a fast woman like Sonia, and besides I already have my village thing with Myrna, but he tell me again that I must stop hitting it with Myrna because every man dipping his bread there and maybe I going catch something. I tell him that Myrna don’t mean nothing to me, and so she don’t cause my head no anxiety, but he laugh out loud and insist that no matter what I say he know that something always causing me to worry. Ralph drape his long arm round my shoulders and the man behind the bar reach up and turn on the electric bulb which hang over the counter. The sounds of the night begin to come louder now, particularly the noise of the waves lapping up against the wooden pier and the rush of the wind passing through the leaves of the palm trees which line the harbour road. I remember, Ralph take his arm from my shoulders and pull out a coin which he tap against the bar and tell the man that we need two more beers. Then he turn to look at me and tell me, “I know, I know, then I have to gone.” The barman disappear to the backyard then soon return with a fresh crate of beers. The man uncap two bottles and push them across the bar, and I find myself thinking about my father, who I know will be lying in the dark waiting for me to come back and feed him up, and then help him to get ready for sleep by rolling him a quarter turn over and on to his side. But tonight he will have to wait. I look across at Ralph and I wonder if I ever going see my friend again, because inside of me I know that Ralph don’t be coming back to this small island in five years, or ten years, or one hundred and ten years, because we both know that Ralph and the cardboard suitcase leaving the island for ever. Ralph swivel round on his stool
and
look me full in the face. “So you never hear from Desmond then?” I tell Ralph that once upon a time my father get a card from somewhere in America, but my brother don’t send an address so it ain’t possible to write back or anything like that, but I tell him that my father still have the card tucked away someplace. Ralph slowly nod but like the rest of the village Ralph already know that my father place all his faith in his eldest son who, ten years ago, take off to Florida promising that he would come back, but Desmond never come back. Everybody know that after ten years Desmond, the chosen one, is never coming back, but my father continue to torment himself with hope, and when the man look at me and my books his face always turning sour, but part of me want to remind him that at least I stay back so the man have somebody to care for him. Ten years earlier, I remember standing in short pants at the end of the pier, sheltering from the wind behind my sixteen-year-old sister, Leona, and annoying the hell out of her because she want to be left alone so she can play the fool and giggle and so forth with the son of Mr Williams, the taxi driver, a boy who is squatting uncomfortably like a pelican on top of the fence that line the harbour wall. Again Leona pushes me: “Boy, move nuh man so I can get some peace.” I’m enjoying tormenting the girl since the alternative is to stand up next to my long-faced parents and watch the boat slowly pulling out the harbour. My mother is a thin woman, like a piece of cane, and her figure is silhouetted against the night sky. Her eldest son is going to pick oranges in Florida, but it’s the husband who is troubling her head because the man staring at the boat as though he losing some big part of himself. Once the launch reach back, and the crew start to move off in the direction of the bar, my mother turn and look sharply at her budding daughter, who continue to make eyes at the pelican-boy. Mr Williams lean up against his taxi and wait in the shadow of the large treasury
building
ready for his family of passengers to let him know when it is time to return to the village. Mind you, as long as it’s possible for my father to still see the boat on this side of the black horizon I know we don’t be going nowhere. Later that evening, I stare out the window of Mr Williams’s taxi as it trace its slow way along the island’s one road, a narrow piece of tarmac that hug the coastline tight. On this main road no light coming from neither moon nor streetlamp, and at this time of night the island seem dead, so much so that it difficult to think of the place as being inhabited with people. I turn from the blackness outside the window to my mother, who is resting up gently against my father, and then I look upon my sister Leona who is trying hard not to fall asleep and the girl’s eyes fixed on the back of Mr Williams’s son’s head. The boy is sitting up front in the passenger seat next to his father, while the four of us squeeze into the back, but eventually is me, not Leona, who start to nod. That night, I lie in bed and listen to the frogs outside in the darkness, and the breathing of my sister in the narrow bed next to my own. Between us a pile of schoolbooks is organised in a way that make sense to me, and behind the door my mother already hang up my school shirt for the next day, all wash and iron. I look away from the shirt and close my eyes. The island have only one scholarship for studying overseas at university and at least six boys in my class have parents who can pay for extra lessons, and all of these town boys have new textbooks. Even if I study day and night and don’t bother with sleep I still can’t catch these boys, but my mother don’t believe this. I’m sure that part of the reason Desmond gone off to America is to escape the attention that I getting, and maybe this is why he start to behave bad. In the village, people always running their mouths about Desmond saying he’s a bad john, and talking about how he put a woman in the next village with child, and how the
woman’s
husband threaten to cut Desmond with a machete, and so leaving to pick oranges in Florida is maybe just an excuse. In the morning I hear my mother shouting at Leona, who like to linger by the gate in the shade of the star-apple tree and talk foolishness with the village boys instead of bringing back the pail of water inside the house. My father long ago gone off to work in the fields, but my mother waiting for the water so she can make some tea for me before I go to school. Leona finally bring the water, then she come into the bedroom and tell me to turn my back while she make herself ready to go off to typing school. Once my sister gone I drink the tea and prepare for school, and soon after Ralph appear at the gate without any books and the two of us walk up the alley and wait for the school bus and I’m watching Ralph idly kicking at stones and messing up his good shoes. That morning he ask me if Desmond truly gone, and when I tell him yes, my brother truly gone to America, he just start to laugh and tell me that Desmond won’t be coming back, but I don’t say anything to Ralph because I already know this and so I just move my books from under one sweaty arm and place them under the next one and shrug my shoulders because I don’t see what it is that Ralph trying to prove. And ten years later, in the semi-dark of the Harbour Lights bar I find myself sitting with the same Ralph and staring at the naked light bulb that brighten up the gloom of the place, and suddenly my best friend looking unsure as to whether he really want to leave for England. I feel sure he want to order another bottle of beer, but Ralph know I watching him good and so he stand up from the stool and reach for the cardboard suitcase. “Well, you want me to write you and let you know how things going over there, or you want me to do you like Desmond and just disappear?” Ralph laugh like he convinced he say something funny. “Man, no need to look at me so. I already tell you, five years then I back. Five years at the
most,
you hear me?” He pauses. “Well, what happen, somebody glue your backside to the stool?” Ralph throw out an arm like he’s vex with me. “You just going sit?” I remember looking at him, then smiling and I tell him, “Better you just walk out of here like you gone from the bar for the night and I going see you tomorrow. That way it can all seem fine and natural?” Ralph look at me in surprise, then he start to shake his head and tell me how this book learning must have seriously mess up my mind, but I notice that maybe Ralph drink one beer too many because my friend look a little unsteady on his feet. “Look man,” I say, “you better go before Sonia come down here searching you out. Go ahead, England waiting.” Ralph hesitate like he want to shake my hand or something, then he stop himself and the man seem puzzled. “You really want me to go to England just so?” Now it’s my turn to laugh, “Yes man, just like so, because this way I know I going see you again. No big goodbye or nothing, you just go along.” I turn away from him and signal to the barman to open a next beer and out of the corner of my eye I see Ralph walking slowly out the bar like a jumbie, but I don’t look up. I just keep my eyes focus on the scratched-up bar top and then a beer appear in front of me and I reach down and feel the coldness of the bottle and wonder if I should stop by Myrna’s place for I don’t see the woman for nearly a week. I sit in the bar by myself and listen to the sound of the sea, and I realise that without Ralph the island going seem empty. And then, two months after Ralph leave for good, my father die, but he do so all casual and easy. One night I bring him some tea and a piece of bread, and I help him to make himself upright in the bed. Recently the man’s eyes seem to have grown big, and his stare is intense like he’s accusing me of something, but on this night the eyes seem normal again and he looking at me like he want me to give off some conversation, but I don’t know what to say so I keep one
hand
steady behind the man’s back, and I feed him the bread with the other hand, and outside it start to rain and the water beating down hard like a hammer on the tin roof and making any kind of talking difficult. In the morning I take my father a glass of water but I can see that he no longer breathing, and his eyes are closed, and to begin with I convince myself that maybe he just fall into a powerful sleep and I must simply shake my father to wake him up. I push the man’s shoulder once, then twice, but nothing happen so I place a hand to his nose and mouth and finally I’m accepting the situation. I sit on the side of the bed for I feel it personally like my father leave me but he can’t trouble himself to say anything, and I thinking if my mother is alive then she would know how to cope with this confusion. Long ago she forgive me for not winning the island scholarship, and she forgive me for ending up working at the sugar factory, but she tell me no matter what anybody say about me being a failure I must never give up my reading. My mother always know what is the best thing to say and do, and when my father shout at me and tell me that he don’t know what a grown man doing living under his roof when I working a job, and he don’t understand why all I do in the evening is just read book to no purpose, it’s my mother who tell him to hush up and mind his business, but now I see my father lying on the bed like a piece of board and I confused about what to feel and what to do and I think maybe I should talk with Leona because my married sister now living in the next village but one. Two years earlier, when my mother die, I know what to feel. Although I hurting bad, it’s a relief that she finally escape the disease that has been eating out her body and already reduce the woman to a skeleton, but this thing with my father is strange and come too quick. The next thing I know I standing next to my sister and I watching as four men lower my father’s body into the ground and I trying like