Just Joshua (7 page)

Millie went around with her skirt held out in front and the tourists put coins in it. They finished up with a fishing chant. By this time Solomon was falling asleep and the tourists were fading away, heading for boats to take them back to the ship. Millie shared out the coins and they all went home.

Joshua’s father was sitting on their step, one arm thrown around Pig’s neck. He stopped stroking it when he saw Joshua. ‘Been waiting for you,’ he said, his voice slurred from too much toddy.

Joshua put the small pile of coins down on the step.

‘G’ boy,’ his father said. ‘You’re a g’ boy to me.’ He began to cry. He stopped and wiped his eyes. ‘’s time for bed.’

‘I know,’ Joshua said. He put a hand out to help his father. ‘Come on.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Sit. Move along, Pig.’ He pushed the carving along, making room, and patted the step. ‘First sit. ‘ve been making decisions. Want to tell you. Sit.’

Joshua sat.

‘No more pig,’ his father said, ‘but plenty of fish, plenty. Most days,’ he added. ‘I’ll smoke whaz over. Smoke it and sell it. I’ll talk to whaz-his-name tomorrow – you know, to …’

‘To Leon?’ Joshua asked, guessing.

His father nodded. ‘Leon. Thaz right. Thaz the man. Going to talk to him ‘bout it tomorrow.’

He did too. In the morning, through one half-opened eye Joshua watched his father get up and dress. He even walked part of the way to school with Joshua. When they reached the beach he peeled off, calling to Leon.

Out in the bay, the cruise ship hooted and began to sail away majestically.

When Joshua came home in the afternoon, he gave the shop a wide berth, not wanting to find his father slumped over the counter again.

‘Hey! I’m in here!’

He halted and retraced his steps. The counter was empty.

‘I’ve had a busy day,’ his father told him, reaching up and vigorously cleaning a meat hook.

Joshua stared. The shop gleamed as it hadn’t for weeks. There was only the faintest trace of a meat smell in the air.

‘Leon’s agreed to sell me the surplus fish. I’ll smoke it. I’ve got a big metal drum to do the smoking in. And I’ve been to see Oliver at the Gola. He says he’ll buy dried fish. Fetch me some fresh water, will you?’

You’ll be a kind of fisherman. And you aren’t drunk, Joshua thought happily, taking the bucket his father held out to him.

A page torn from an exercise book lifted in the wind and was blown back and forth till it finally settled in a patch of cracked, curling whitewash on a flat stone roof. The ink on the page was smudged and faded. Sounds of chairs scraping on hard floor, of chalk
tapping
on the blackboard drifted up from the row of classrooms beneath, each one open to the verandah that ran alongside. In the third classroom along, Joshua brushed his hair out of his eyes and fidgeted. He put the point of his pencil into the wood of his desk, his mind only half on the lesson.

‘New tribes came up from the south in about 1800 …’

He dug the pencil in and drew it along the grain of the old wood. He pressed it harder and pulled the pencil down towards him, then up again until it formed a leg.

At his side, Robert nudged him and pointed at the blackboard where a nun was chalking lines and arrows on a map. Joshua copied them quickly into his exercise book, then returned his attention to the wood. He drew a line to the left, bumping over the grooves of an earlier
carving of someone’s name.

Robert leaned across and continued the picture.

Joshua took over again, beginning to draw a robe. He sniggered quietly.

‘Joshua? Well?’ The nun was looking straight at Joshua, her eyebrows raised.

Joshua looked up uncertainly at his teacher. He put the pencil down very carefully. ‘Er, you asked … I mean …’ He was floundering.

‘How many … migrations … were,’ hissed the boy on the other side of the aisle.

Joshua looked helplessly at him. He’d only heard a few of the whispered words. He tried to answer the nun anyway. ‘Er, two, Sister.’

The boy shook his head and mouthed something.

‘Three,’ he said, changing his answer.

Sister Mary looked at him steadily. ‘If you’d been
listening
instead of defacing school property, you would have known the answer. Can anyone tell him?’ she appealed to the rest of the class.

‘Five, Sister,’ called out a few voices.

‘That’s right. Five, Joshua,’ she repeated to him. ‘There’s an empty desk up here at the front. Perhaps you would care to fill it? On your own, without Robert, so that you can attend to the lesson?’

Joshua sighed heavily and got up, gathering his books together.

‘And no more decorating desks, young man.’

Joshua drew up the chair at the desk she had
indicated
and nodded, chastened. He hadn’t thought she’d seen.

‘Now,’ Sister Mary announced, coming down from the teacher’s platform, ‘I’m going to give out the papers for today’s test.’ They always had a test on their first Friday back at school after the holidays

A sheet of questions fluttered on to his desk. He put out a hand to stop it and began to read.

‘You have half an hour to answer the questions. Do your best.’

Joshua knew the answers to the first two questions – they were easy. Quickly he wrote ‘green’ and ‘head, thorax and abdomen’. But he wasn’t sure about the next one: what is the definition of an isthmus? He chewed a bit off the end of his pencil and spat it out quickly, remembering. But in his hurry to get down the answer, he pressed too hard on the paper and broke what was left of the point.

He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Please may I sharpen my pencil?’

Sister Mary nodded.

Joshua crossed to the other side of the classroom. The folding doors that ran along the length of the
classroom
were opened back so that there was plenty of air. By the front pillar was an oil drum where they put their
pencil sharpenings and other rubbish. He took one of the two razor blades from the shelf above, pressed it carefully into the wood of his pencil and began
sharpening
the tip with steady, outward strokes.

‘Psst!’ Robert appeared on the other side of the bin. He reached up for the other blade. They grinned at each other.

‘Do you know the answer to number eight?’ Robert whispered.

‘Number eight? Haven’t got there yet. What is it?’

A voice came from the teacher’s platform: ‘Joshua! Robert! No talking, please. I don’t want to have to tell you again.’

Joshua wrinkled his nose at Robert and they went back to their sharpening. But they weren’t
concentrating
. Robert jabbed his blade hard at the pencil. It came away at an angle and sliced into Joshua’s elbow.

It happened so fast that Joshua didn’t notice the blade going in. He felt no pain. Not until he saw Robert staring at him and saw the blood drip into the waste paper and shavings below.

‘Sister Mary!’

The nun looked up at Robert’s cry, realised what had happened, and pushed back her chair.

‘Oh, Joshua! How could you be so careless, that’s what comes of talking at the bin. You know you shouldn’t …’ She was bustling down from the dais,
talking all the while. ‘We’ll have to take you to have it cleaned and stitched. Maybe they’ll give you an
injection
; you might get lockjaw or blood poisoning or something. Come along, we have to bring you to the hospital.’

At the word hospital, Joshua dropped the pencil and blade in the bin and was out of the classroom before anyone could stop him, running for dear life, down the steps and across the yard. Sister Mary in her long habit had no chance of catching him. He was terrified. He didn’t want to die. He ran out on to the path and headed for home.

‘Whoa!’ his father said as he rushed by him. ‘What’s up with you? Why aren’t you at school?’ Then he caught sight of the blood crusting Joshua’s elbow. ‘Oh, Josh, what have you done?’ He turned away from the old oil drum where he’d been smoking fish and took Joshua’s arm to examine it.

‘Ow.’ Joshua began to cry. Now that he was standing still, the wound had begun to throb.

‘That’s a nasty cut. How did you get it?’

‘Robert cut me. By accident. We were sharpening our pencils.’

‘Couldn’t they bandage it up for you at school?’

Joshua shook his head. He didn’t want to tell his father about the threat of hospital.

‘Well, we’d better clean it up, hadn’t we?’ He put a
sacking cover over the drum and went to wash his hands at the standpipe. ‘Come on.’ When Joshua
hesitated
, he added, ‘We need to go to the sea.’

‘Not to Mama Siska?’ Old Mama Siska often took care of the villagers. ‘Or to –’ he avoided the word.

‘I don’t think so. Good, clean salt water will be enough. Almost.’ He went inside and brought out the small box of salve that he made himself and they went to the beach, Joshua still sniffing.

Joshua flinched as the salt stung the wound. ‘Hold still, it won’t take much longer.’ His father dipped his hand in the water again and the shoal of tiny fish that darted in the shallows divided and then regrouped as if the giant interruption hadn’t happened. ‘Now, bend your arm so I can see into the cut.’

Joshua did so.

‘It’s very deep.’ His father smeared salve around the wound, then took a handkerchief from his pocket, worn but clean, and tied it tightly around the elbow. ‘There. That’ll do.’ He cupped water in his hands and pressed it to Joshua’s face. ‘Better now?’ he asked,
stepping
back.

Joshua managed a smile.

‘Come on, then.’ His father put an arm round him and led him home. ‘Here.’ He gave Joshua half a mango and brought Pig outside. ‘Sit quietly with Pig for a while and eat this.’

Joshua rested his arm on Pig’s back as he slowly chewed the juicy mango.

His father went over to the oil drum to see how the fish were coming along. He lifted the poles that lay across the top. Fish hung down from the poles by string threaded through their gills. The first two rows looked ready. Satisfied, he slid the fish on to a metal tray. ‘Put these inside, would you,’ he asked Joshua.

Joshua got up and took the tray inside, laid the fish out under the counter and brought back the tray.

‘Now, would you –’ His father broke off, laughing. ‘I forgot, you should be back in school. Go on now.’

Sister Mary was waiting for him on the verandah
outside
the classroom, looking worried. ‘There you are at last. We have to get that cut seen to properly,’ she said, eyeing the bloodstained handkerchief around his elbow. ‘You didn’t think I’d forget, did you? Robert was using the rustier blade, so I’m going to take you to the hospital, just to be safe.’

Robert appeared at her side in time to catch her last words.

‘No.’ This time Joshua didn’t run. ‘Dad’s cleaned it for me. He says it’s okay.’

‘His Dad won’t like it if you take him to hospital,’ Robert chimed in.

Sister Mary wavered.

‘He treats things himself,’ Robert added. ‘He uses his
own medicine.’ He turned to Joshua. ‘Come on, Josh, or we’ll miss Sister Martha’s arithmetic lesson.’

Sister Mary’s eyebrows shot up comically at this unusual sign of enthusiasm.

‘He’ll be all right, Sister. Really.’

Robert pulled him back into the classroom. ‘Come on, Josh.’

Joshua went back to sit at his usual place, next to Robert.

A cardinal bird darted into the mango tree in search of its mate. Not finding her there, it zoomed out of the tree in a flash of brilliant red and landed on the palm-leaf thatch to look for food. It shoved its beak into the leaves, pecking this way and that, gathering up ants and spiders and swallowing them. It worked its way down the roof, stopping here and there for another tasty morsel, until it came to the edge, where it perched, swaying. Then it dropped down to the window below and balanced there, head to one side.

‘Where did you get these?’

Joshua looked round. His father had pulled his box out from under the bed and was holding the
four-legged
creature in his hand, staring at it, turning it round and round in his strong fingers.

Joshua hadn’t noticed him take the broom down from the hook to sweep under the beds. He was cross at not noticing, and even crosser that his father had looked under his bed. ‘That’s secret, Dad.’

‘Ah.’ His father looked at him. ‘I’m sorry. But since I have seen them, where did you get them, Josh?’ His
father had stopped turning the little animal. He had found the broken leg and was frowning.

‘Outside the hospital. We collected them,’ Joshua explained.

‘We?’

‘Me and Robert. And Millie and Tom and Miriam. You know. Anyway,’ he felt less cross now, even quite pleased to be telling his father. ‘There was a mountain man in there and he threw them out.’

‘Is he still there?’ his father asked.

Joshua shook his head. ‘He died.’

His father got heavily to his feet, the box in his hands. ‘These are rejects, Joshua. The mountain man didn’t mean them to be collected. They’re broken. That’s why he threw them away.’

Joshua crossed the room and took the box from his father and clasped it protectively to him.

‘Get rid of them, Josh.’ His father’s face was set. ‘They’re bad luck.’

Joshua opened his mouth to argue. He nodded instead.

‘Now. Okay?’

Joshua left the house with the box. Once outside, he looked at the two stone carvings. He didn’t want to get rid of them. It didn’t seem right. But he couldn’t keep them under the bed, not any more. Perhaps he could just kind of get rid of them by putting them somewhere
else, somewhere outside of the house where he couldn’t get to them so easily.

He listened for the steady swish of the broom indoors. His father would be busy for a few minutes yet. He saw a cardinal flit past him towards the shop. That gave him an idea.

He went to the shop, into the back corner where there was a large carton containing paper, string and some old knives his father had discarded but was
keeping
, just in case. Joshua had never seen him actually look in the carton. Once he put things there he seemed to forget them, and anyway it was Joshua who sorted out the paper. He thought it was rather clever to hide something under his father’s nose.
Get rid of them
, he thought, and snorted. He shoved the box down in the bottom of the carton and covered it with the papers and string. The carvings would be safe there. He knocked his elbow on the side as he straightened, and winced. The cut was healing nicely but sometimes it still hurt a bit.

He sneaked back into the house, grabbed a comic from his bed and was out again before his father had a chance to check on him. Pig was outside and he sprawled on the ground, one arm draped over him. Millie had slipped him the comic that afternoon after school. She said her father had been given it by a
tourist
. Joshua was fascinated by the bright, small pictures.
The words in the bubbles were foreign and he couldn’t understand them, but he tried to follow the story through the illustrations. There was a red-headed boy in the first picture with a wicked grin glued to his face; in the second picture he was shaking a tin of something down a friend’s shirt. At least, Joshua thought it was a friend, although he didn’t look too happy about what was happening.

His father had finished sweeping and was chopping vegetables for the dinner, humming to himself.

Joshua lowered his comic and watched as his father threw the vegetables into the hot oil and added garlic, turmeric and chillies. His head was bare; he must have taken his hat off to sweep under the beds and forgotten to put it on again. Joshua noticed the way the light fell on his hair – straight hair, like his own. He was different to the other men in the village, there was no doubt about that. Joshua had succeeded in shutting out
Robert’s
words, now they came flooding back.

But mountain men who came to this village got sick and died, he reasoned. So his father couldn’t be a mountain man, even if his hair was straight. If he was, he wouldn’t be here now, alive and well, cooking their meal. There, that proved it.

His father looked up and smiled. ‘You’re very thoughtful tonight,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you hear me ask for the plates?’

‘Oh, sorry. Coming.’ He scrambled to his feet and brought them over. ‘Dad,’ he hesitated. Now that he knew his father wasn’t a mountain man, it felt safe to check. Even so, he took a deep breath first. ‘Dad, you’re not a mountain man, are you?’

His father was startled. ‘Who said I was?’

‘Well, Robert did.’

‘Him again.’ He frowned. ‘Why?’ he went on. ‘Would you like me to be a mountain man?’

Joshua shook his head vigorously.

‘Well I’m not,’ his father said firmly. ‘Not so as to count,’ Joshua thought he heard him add under his breath.

‘Dad?’

His father stood up, frying pan in hand, and looked down at Joshua. ‘Where were you born?’

‘Here,’ Joshua said confidently.

His father nodded. ‘And does that make you a boy from the village, or doesn’t it?’

Joshua nodded. ‘It does.’

‘Well then. Now get me my hat, will you?’

Joshua lifted one of Pig’s trotters and put the comic under it so it wouldn’t blow away, then went inside for his father’s hat and swapped it for a plate of food.

That night, lying in bed, he tossed and turned restlessly. He wasn’t wholly satisfied by his father’s answer. His father had straight hair, he wore a hat, he’d
been a butcher, he carved – and there was Pig.

In the morning he went round for Robert. Only
Robert’s
mother was indoors. She always baked on
Saturdays
, and the room was stiflingly hot from the small iron stove. He hovered hopefully, watching. Perhaps he could double-check with her, he thought. He’d start with the most important question.

‘Is my father going to die?’ he asked her back, as she bent to open the oven door.

She looked round at him in surprise, then turned back to what she was doing. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she answered at last, taking out a baking sheet and
releasing
a gush of warm biscuit smell into the air. ‘Of course he isn’t.’ She put a knife under the biscuits to loosen them, then tipped them out one by one on to a piece of raised wire netting to cool.

‘Never?’ Joshua asked, testing her.

‘No, not never. We all have to die one day, my love. But there’s no reason he should go just yet, is there?’ She looked up in alarm. ‘He’s not ill, is he?’

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘Well then. Here,’ she handed him one of the hot
biscuits
and he crammed it into his mouth. Still he lingered by her side.

‘Is there something else bothering you?’ she asked.

He shook his head, eyes on the ground.

‘Robert’s going to the market for me,’ she said. ‘Why
don’t you go along with him?’

Just then Robert appeared. ‘Mum, Miriam says she won’t … hey, Josh.’

‘Go and tell Miriam I want her to help me in here, will you. And ask Tony to look after the others. And make sure Solomon is clean, and –’

Robert escaped, with Joshua on his tail. Sometimes Joshua understood why Robert liked the comparative peace of his home. ‘Robert!’ they heard his mother shout after them, but Robert didn’t stop.

At the market they went straight to Mama Calla.

‘You two come to buy or to sell?’ she asked.

‘Both,’ they answered in unison.

‘Tell you what, Joshua, you sing for me. Robert, you go and get me a glass of coffee.’ She extracted some millis from her pouch and stretched across the piles of fruit to hand them to him.

‘Don’t you sell berries?’ Joshua asked her after he’d settled down beside her.

‘Berries?’ she asked in surprise. ‘No. Plenty of good fruit and vegetables to sell without those. Anyway,
what
berries? None round here. Look, are you going to sing, or aren’t you? I don’t want you just sitting here chattering. I have a lot of beans that need to be shifted, and tomatoes. Will you sing them first?’

‘Fat beans, juicy as ripe tomatoes!’ sang Joshua. ‘Come buy Mama Calla’s beans, sweet as her red tomatoes!’

It didn’t go as well as the previous time, perhaps because Mama Calla cramped their style. Robert felt silly copying her phrases while she was there, watching them with narrowed eyes as she drank her coffee. After half an hour she paid them off with a small melon each and a quarter of the price knocked off the vegetables Robert had been sent to buy.

They headed for their usual stretch of wall. Joshua spotted a sharp flat stone near his feet and picked it up. He wiped it on his shorts and dug into his melon, using it as a knife.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You’ll see.’ He cut away some melon. ‘Here, want this?’

Robert put it in his mouth.

Joshua began whittling at the melon with the stone, but it didn’t seem to be working. Pummel came up to them, sniffed at their ankles and barked.

‘Here, Pummel, fetch!’ Joshua threw the stone for the dog. It looked reproachfully at him and stayed put. Robert found a piece of wood and threw that instead.

Pummel ran, and reached his target just as Swabber came lumbering round the corner towards them.

‘Oh-oh.’ Joshua put down the melon.

Pummel growled. His legs and back stiffened and he strutted up to Swabber, the piece of wood forgotten. The dogs were sworn enemies. Pummel slowly worked
his way around Swabber, sniffing aggressively.
Swabber
, the older and larger of the dogs, froze, ears
flattened
against his head. Only his eyeballs moved, rolling back in his head. Pummel nipped him
experimentally
on his hind leg.

That was enough. Swabber leaped round on all fours to face Pummel, snarling, lips drawn high over his gums.

A couple of men had gathered. Now more sauntered over as the dogs began to circle each other. Pummel pounced and drew blood. Swabber’s hackles rose. Still he snarled.

‘Two korias on Swabber!’ a man yelled. There was mocking laughter from the onlookers.

‘Make it five for Pummel!’ called out another.

Joshua and Robert went over and joined the men who were forming a rough circle around the dogs.

The stakes climbed to eight korias. Swabber and Pummel, sensing the atmosphere, flew at each other in earnest. Pummel was smaller and sharper. When
Swabber
pinned him down and lowered his head to bite, he wriggled free, and raced around the older dog.

There was ragged cheering from the crowd.

Swabber turned, trying to keep pace with Pummel, trying to make sure he was always facing him. Pummel launched himself at the side Swabber least expected, bit, drew blood and darted away again before Swabber
was able to retaliate. He came in again. This time
Swabber
managed to graze him with his teeth, but not before Pummel had sunk his deep into Swabber’s leg.
Swabber
let out a howl.

The men surrounding them grew silent, intent on the fighting. Not even the man who had placed a bet on Swabber was egging him on now.

Joshua’s heart thudded. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. Dogfights were common in the village, but he didn’t really want to watch this. He was sure that Swabber was going to be slaughtered.

Pummel threw himself at Swabber’s head. He seized an ear in his sharp teeth and tugged hard. Swabber howled again.

Suddenly a hand grabbed the back of Joshua’s shirt and jerked him to his feet. His father broke through the circle of men and threw the sack he’d been carrying over Pummel’s head.

At once the snarling turned to a whine. Mutters rose from the spectators. Joshua’s father ignored them.

‘Go!’ he ordered Swabber.

Swabber didn’t move. He seemed stunned.

‘Go!’ He pushed the dog with his foot. Swabber shook himself and slunk off, limping.

‘Who asked you to interfere? Get out of here!
Meatseller
!’ a man hurled the curse at Joshua’s father.

‘He’s not!’ Joshua shouted.

But his father didn’t answer. He took the sack off Pummel’s head. ‘Joshua! Robert!’ he called.

The boys went over, trying not to look at the men. Pummel barked and wagged his tail, transformed in a second from a vicious fighting dog to the playful
mongrel
they knew. Joshua bent down to pat him. He couldn’t help himself.

When he straightened up, Simon was standing in front of his father.

‘Come on, you two,’ his father said in a quiet voice, stepping to the left to avoid Simon. Simon stepped to the left too. He moved to the right, but again Simon blocked his way.

‘Hello, Simon,’ Joshua said, edging closer to his father.

Simon took no notice. He was staring hard at Joshua’s father. For a moment no sound came through the damaged teeth. Then, ‘Meatseller!’ spurted out on a wave of rotting breath.

Joshua’s father flinched. He put out his hand for Joshua, and Joshua took it. He gave his other hand to Robert, but Robert pretended he hadn’t seen. Then he turned away, brushing past Simon.

‘Meatseller!’ Simon swore again. He threw back his head, arched and then spat at their feet.

Deliberately, Joshua stepped on the glistening glob, covering it from his father’s eyes. He ground it into the
earth, staring straight ahead, trying not to retch at the slipperiness under his skin. The three of them walked through the circle of men, restless now and breaking up as the men drifted away.