The Polished Hoe (16 page)

“And still, with all that polishing and sharpening, I still couldn’t pinpoint what use I was going to put it to. Or, what act destiny and fate had in mind for me to perform, using it.

“But I knew, from the very beginning, yes, that there was an act ordained for me to perform. Yes.

“One Saturday night, late-late, as I was tuned-in to Latin-Amurca, and was listening to Latin-Amurcan mambos and tangos, and parangs, on my ‘private-set,’ I heard a discussion in English, about the hardness of woods. It surprised me to hear English spoken.

“As you know, they have lots of forests in that part of the world. Take British Guiana, or Demerara, for an instant. In those jungles, there’re woods from trees that are famous for their hardness and prettiness; lasting wood that never rots, that we use in furnitures. Look round this room. You will see what I mean. That couch, with the white pillows. And the two matching Berbice chairs. The tea trolley. They are made from Demerara red wood.

“But coming back to the hoe . . .”

“So, Miss Mary-Mathilda,” Sargeant says, “you telling me that you don’t have intent nor intention. Are you stating what we in legal terminology calls ‘no malice aforethought’? In quotation marks. Eh, Mary? I mean, Miss Mary. Miss Mary-Mathilda.”

“Nothing in the way of malice aforethought,” she says.

“That is a big difference.”

“How much of a difference?”

“Well, it is a difference. A big difference. I don’t know how to simplify these legalistical matters in plain English for you to understand, Miss Mary-Mathilda, but, um, is a big difference.”

“Because if there is such a difference, and a big one at that, after all those nights polishing and sharpening, I did not consciously know, how the hoe would feature. I hope you consider that in your calculation of the differences.”

“I consider that, already, Miss Mary. I already consider that.”

“Because, I don’t really understand what you’re saying. And I don’t mean this with malice aforethought. The Law is a strange thing.”

“The Law is a strange beast, Miss Mary.”

“
Malice aforethought
! But isn’t it a pretty way to say things! English, boy!”

“English.”

“The English language! No language, under the sun, even those from Latin-Amurca, comes close to English, in beauty. ‘No malice aforethought.’ In quotation marks, as you say. It is a nice way of saying things, as if it comes from the Bible.”

“Is the Law, Miss Mary-Mathilda. The Law. And the Law have a way of talking with words of seriousness.”

“You sure it isn’t from the Old Testament? One of the biblical prophets?”

“Malice aforethought? Is pure Law! Pure jurisprudence, Miss Mary-Mathilda! No connection at-all, at-all, to the Old Testament! None, whatsoever. Far’s I remember, my Torts and my CommaLaw from Police Training School,
malice aforethought
is nothing but a legal terminology!”

“With this in mind, I going-begin from the beginning, then.”

“As aforementioned.”

“It is always better to begin from the very beginning.

“And my beginning starts, and ends with the hoe that I used to use round this very House where I now living. I was assign, as a lil girl, to weed only the flower beds, beginning from the age o’ eight or nine; and when I reached my teens, I was sent to work in the North Field using the same hoe.

“Round the yard here, I use it to weed the beds of the kitchen garden, the small tomatoes, for making gravy; and large beefsteak tomatoes; string beans, christophenes, squash, cucumbers, lima beans, pigeon-peas and punkin-vines, all from the kitchen-garden.

“And in the afternoons, when there is a lil relief from the sun and the humidity, I turned from the kitchen-garden to the flower beds, cleaning and weeding the rose of Sharon, daisies, pansies, bourganvillea, flowers . . . to help-them-along more faster.

“You could see the lovely flowers round the property, as you ride-up the path of white marl and loose gravel, if it wasn’t so difficult in the darkness to see the flowers?”

“I see flowers all the time, Miss Mary-Mathilda, even on a dark night. Flowers don’t mean that-much, to me, though,” Sargeant says. “They grow and I passes them; and sometimes I don’t see them at all. But I know they are there.”

“I-too. I’m not much for flowers, neither. No.

“But to give Satan his due, Mr. Bellfeels was. Is. A master at growing flowers. Specially roses. He even grafted a new rose and named it after my daughter, Rachelle Sarah Prudence, who did not live long, my only girl, who didn’t survive two months after birth. God rest her poor soul! Sweet child . . .”

She makes the sign of the Cross.

Sargeant makes the sign of the Cross, imitating her.

“The Rachelle Rose. Named after my late daughter. You can see it better when the sun come up . . . in the morning . . .”

“I see it once, one day long ago when I had to pass here,” he says.

“And Wilberforce take after Mr. Bellfeels, in regards to having a green-thumb. And Gertrude. Now-and-then. Gertrude’s two hands are green thumbs. But she is sometime-ish, even although anything she touch, turns to gold. Anything I plant, drops-down-dead by the second day. My
fortay
lies in the use of my hoe, with regards to tending and cultivating the ground, the hard, thick, musty, smelly ground, that black soil. The soil that is so cruel, when you come to know it. When you clear a field of trees and tree-roots, or even turn a fallow field, once full o’ canes, into a field for planting potatoes, or even yams and eddoes, my-Christ, Sargeant, the number of forty-legs,
centipees
that appear at your two feet, up to your ankles, thick as if you are walking through mud! The droves of centipees crawling outta that ground the same colour as the soil, that fresh ground, that they call virgin soil! My God-in-heaven, Sargeant, centipees in such countless, numberless numbers! . . . So, all you could do was just stand there, dumbstruck. And you would think that what it is, was the earth, the ground itself, moving and wringling, .Welling and contracting like the bellows of a concertina.

“Sargeant, pray to God that one of those bastards don’t crawl-up your trousers leg, oh Christ, man! The sting they could put in your you-know-what! Or, in your behind. Takes days and days to bring-down the .Welling, and ease the sting and release the pus and the venom!

“Jesus Christ, Percy. You must remember Golbourne? And the pain? And the sorrow Golbourne went through, when that centipee crawled slow-slow from under his bed, one night, and walk all over Golbourne face, as if it was vestigating his entire anatomy, and then how it slip-into his mouth . . . Golbourne still sleeps with his mouth wide-open . . . and the bastard crawl-back-through Golbourne nose-hole, his nostril? Jesus-Christ-inheaven! Yes!

“I shake, I shake with, with disgust. . . my stomach quiver, and get into knots, even to this day, whenever I think of it. Golbourne was how old when that happen? Five?”

“Six!”

“Six? You sure? Yes. But he wasn’t quite-six, yet, Sargeant. He wasn’t yet in Primer Standard at Sin-Davids Elementary, although he start late. Nor in Kinter-garden, neither.”

“Not quite six. Five, then?”

“Yes. Five! Golbourne was five when that centipee crawledthrough his two nostrils, from the inside out.”

“My God!” Sargeant says.

And he pulls a large white handkerchief from the sleeve of his black serge tunic. He pulls it out like a conjurer performing tricks. And when the handkerchief eventually comes out, like a long white snake, he wipes his face with it. The buttons at the front of his black tunic are buttoned. Up to his neck. The buttons are silver and shining. His face is large, and strong. And black. Like ebony. A happy face. A face you normally would confuse with honesty, if not with unsophistication and j.Welled naivety. No, not quite that kind of a face. It is, in its smooth roundness, a face with no trace of complicatedness and complexity, shaven with such regular care that it looks as if hair has not yet sprouted from it. The face of a boy. Yes, that is Sargeant’s face. It is an honest, boy-like face.

“My God!” he says.

And this time, he shivers. He shivers and hopes it tells her that his skin crawls, too, to hear about Golbourne; that he, too, can feel pain, and can recoil at the disgustedness, same as hers, at the sight of a centipede coming back out through a child’s nostril.

The sudden and uncontrolled movements his body goes through, are larger and more dramatic than normal.

“And you call yourself a detective, Percy! Haven’t you seen worse things? A lil thing, like a centipee crawling-through a child’s two nostrils makes you shake and shudder and squirm like that? You look as if nothing tragic ever stared you in your face! You remember the plight of Clotelle? You remember Pounce’s lot?”

“Just the thought, Miss Mary, just the thought.”

“It wasn’t pleasant.”

“Being a Crown-Sargeant in the Force, I see certain things which a normal person isn’t privilege to see; and don’t see. And when my two eyes sees such things, it don’t mean that my constitution is so toughened-up by my job that I loss all sense o’ compassion and feelings . . .”

“You have any compassion and feelings for me, in my present circumstances?”

“I know, Miss Mary, that . . .”

“You have a job to do. I have a job to make your job more easier. Not making statements to com-promise you.”

“You already do,” he says. “Making my job more easier.”

“What you mean?”

“Making my life easier? I mean, sitting here with you in your front-house, on a Sunday evening, talking to me as if you are really not Miss Mary-Mathilda, Miss Bellfeels of the Great House, as we call you, and what that mean, but sitting here, you is still,somehow, the girl who I went-school with. And who uses to play London Bridge and Ship-Sail with me. And as if I is not a police come to take your Statement.

“This is the very first time that I have the honour to grace a seat in your front-house. Except years ago, the time Mr. Bellfeels bring me here, on his horse, before you was living in this house, and make me stand-up in the kitchen, as he question you and axe you to swear that I steal the Plantation mangoes . . .”

“Yes! Bellfeels scared you like hell. Threatened to give you five years in Dodd’s Reformatory!”

“Yes. And he hold me by my two ears, and turn-me-round, and lifted me up in the air, offa the red tiles on the kitchen floor . . . I’ll never forget the colour of the tiles in the kitchen . . . and twist my ears, whilst forcing you to swear um was me who climb the mango tree. No, you were not living in this Great House yet. You was your mother’s helper in the kitchen, here in this Great House.”

“What a brute! Bellfeels. Is. And was. Treating you like a harden criminal.

“And when you count the number of mango trees we have on this Plantation, mangoes like peas! Pah-wees, common-mango, the Trinidadian version; mangoes from Sin-Lucia; and see the number o’ mangoes, ripe ones, green ones, and young mangoes, that fall outta the tree, and leff on the ground to rot . . .

“Or, to feed to the stocks!

“Bellfeels was itching to tar your backside, that afternoon. And if I didn’t lie . . . with Ma touching my back to do it . . . and intervene in your behalf, Jesus-Christ, Percy-boy, you wouldda gone up. Straight to Dodd’s. Over
one
mango!”

“One mango. From that day forth . . . I pee my pants that day Mr. Bellfeels hold-me-on on the hard leather saddle of his horse, tight . . . from that day, and years afterwards, every time I see Mr. Bellfeels, I wet my pants, again. And for years afterwards, like a thing that Mr.Wilberforce call a cause-and-effect, the mere thought of that day in the kitchen, on the red tiles, makes my bladder burn and I want to pee . . . excuse me for talking so plain. But that day, I also make a vow to be a police. So that nobody-else could ever take advantage o’ me. This burning bladder and wanting to pee bad went on till a year or two before I joined the Force. The peeing of my pants, in times of emergency, I mean.”

“The man is a savage,” she says.

“Was like a savage he treated me,” Sargeant says. “But that is over.”

“Thank God for that!”

“Thank God.”

“That part of him is still alive. That in-born nastiness don’t ever die. It is round-here, somewhere. Perhaps, in the fields. Or in habitation in the Plantation Main House itself. For sure, I know it is still inhabiting this Great House with me. And I regret that it still resides inside this place, with Wilberforce living here. But my days here, are numbered, and . . .”

“What you mean by ‘numbered’? Nobody isn’t counting your remaining days, Miss Mary-Mathilda.”

“I mean death. When I dead-and-gone, this Great House may go to Wilberforce. I hope that if he inherit it, first thing he will do, is give it a thorough going-through. Purge it.”

“Oh!” he says, “you had me scared, there!”

“Mr. Bellfeels start talking to the owners of the Plantation up in Englund, to let me live in this Great House, the day after he was promoted from overseer of the field gang. As gang leader, he looked after the horses, and the mules, and the donkeys. And the pens. Head of the stables and stable boys. He got a quick promotion from being head of the stables, to be assistant overseer. Then, overseer. Then, bookkeeper assistant. Then, full bookkeeper. It was as bookkeeper that this Great House was put at his disposal.