Collected Short Fiction (10 page)

Hat said, ‘You go hear. You know the upshot? Big Foot come the best runner out of all of we. In the school sports he run the hundred yards in ten point four seconds. That is what they say, but you know how Trinidad people can’t count time. Anyway, then we all want to come friendly with him. But he don’t want we at all at all.’

And I wondered then why Big Foot held himself back from beating Hat and the rest of the people who had bullied him when he was a boy.

But still I didn’t like him.

Big Foot became a carpenter for a while, and actually built two or three enormous wardrobes, rough, ugly things. But he sold them. And then he became a mason. There is no stupid pride among Trinidad craftsmen. No one is a specialist.

He came to our yard one day to do a job.

I stood by and watched him. I didn’t speak to him, and he didn’t speak to me. I noticed that he used his feet as a trowel. He mumbled, ‘Is hard work, bending down all the time.’

He did the job well enough. His feet were not big for nothing.

About four o’clock he knocked off, and spoke to me.

He said, ‘Boy, let we go for a walk. I hot and I want to cool off.’

I didn’t want to go, but I felt I had to.

We went to the sea-wall at Docksite and watched the sea. Soon it began to grow dark. The lights came on in the harbour. The world seemed very big, dark, and silent. We stood up without speaking a word.

Then a sudden sharp yap very near us tore the silence. The suddenness and strangeness of the noise paralysed me for a moment.

It was only a dog; a small white and black dog with large flapping ears. It was dripping wet, and was wagging its tail out of pure friendliness.

I said, ‘Come, boy,’ and the dog shook off the water from its coat on me and then jumped all over me, yapping and squirming.

I had forgotten Big Foot, and when I looked for him I saw him about twenty yards away running for all he was worth.

I shouted, ‘Is all right, Big Foot.’

But he stopped before he heard my shout.

He cried out loudly, ‘Oh God, I dead, I dead. A big big bottle cut up my foot.’

I and the dog ran to him.

But when the dog came to him he seemed to forget his foot which was bleeding badly. He began hugging and stroking the wet dog, and laughing in a crazy way.

He had cut his foot very badly, and next day I saw it wrapped up. He couldn’t come to finish the work he had begun in our yard.

I felt I knew more about Big Foot than any man in Miguel Street, and I was afraid that I knew so much. I felt like one of those small men in gangster films who know too much and get killed.

And thereafter I was always conscious that Big Foot knew what I was thinking. I felt his fear that I would tell.

But although I was bursting with Big Foot’s secret I told no one. I would have liked to reassure him but there was no means.

His presence in the street became something that haunted me. And it was all I could do to stop myself telling Hat, ‘I not fraid of Big Foot. I don’t know why you fraid him so.’

Errol, Boyee, and myself sat on the pavement discussing the war.

Errol said, ‘If they just make Lord Anthony Eden Prime Minister, we go beat up the Germans and them bad bad.’

Boyee said, ‘What Lord Eden go do so?’

Errol just haaed, in a very knowing way.

I said, ‘Yes, I always think that if they make Lord Anthony Eden Prime Minister, the war go end quick quick.’

Boyee said, ‘You people just don’t know the Germans. The Germans strong like hell, you know. A boy was telling me that these Germans and them could eat a nail with their teeth alone.’

Errol said, ‘But we have Americans on we side now.’

Boyee said, ‘But they not big like the Germans. All the Germans and them big big and strong like Big Foot, you know, and they braver than Big Foot.’

Errol said, ‘Shh! Look, he coming.’

Big Foot was very near, and I felt he could hear the conversation. He was looking at me, and there was a curious look in his eyes.

Boyee said, ‘Why you shhhing me so for? I ain’t saying anything bad. I just saying that the Germans brave as Big Foot.’

Just for a moment, I saw the begging look in Big Foot’s eyes. I looked away.

When Big Foot had passed, Errol said to me, ‘Like Big Foot have something with you, boy.’

One afternoon Hat was reading the morning paper. He shouted to us, ‘But look at what I reading here, man.’

We asked, ‘What happening now?’

Hat said, ‘Is about Big Foot.’

Boyee said, ‘What, they throw him in jail again?’

Hat said, ‘Big Foot taking up boxing.’

I understood more than I could say.

Hat said, ‘He go get his tail mash up. If he think that boxing is just throwing yourself around, he go find out his mistake.’

The newspapers made a big thing out of it. The most popular headline was
PRANKSTER TURNS PUGILIST
.

And when I next saw Big Foot, I felt I could look him in the eyes.

And now I wasn’t afraid of him, I was afraid for him.

But I had no need. Big Foot had what the sports-writers all called a ‘phenomenal success’. He knocked out fighter after fighter, and Miguel Street grew more afraid of him and more proud of him.

Hat said, ‘Is only because he only fighting stupid little people. He ain’t meet anybody yet that have real class.’

Big Foot seemed to have forgotten me. His eyes no longer sought mine whenever we met, and he no longer stopped to talk to me.

He was the terror of the street. I, like everybody else, was frightened of him. As before, I preferred it that way.

He even began showing off more.

We used to see him running up and down Miguel Street in stupid-looking maroon shorts and he resolutely refused to notice anybody.

Hat was terrified.

He said, ‘They shouldn’t let a man who go to jail box.’

An Englishman came to Trinidad one day and the papers to interview him. The man said he was a boxer and a champion of the Royal Air Force. Next morning his picture appeared.

Two days later another picture of him appeared. This time he was dressed only in black shorts, and he had squared up towards the cameraman with his boxing gloves on.

The headline said,
‘Who will fight this man?’

And Trinidad answered, ‘Big Foot will fight this man.’

The excitement was intense when Big Foot agreed. Miguel Street was in the news, and even Hat was pleased.

Hat said, ‘I know is stupid to say, but I hope Big Foot beat him.’ And he went around the district placing bets with everyone who had money to throw away.

We turned up in strength at the stadium on the night.

Hat rushed madly here and there, waving a twenty-dollar bill, shouting, ‘Twenty to five, Big Foot beat him.’

I bet Boyee six cents that Big Foot would lose.

And, in truth, when Big Foot came out to the ring, dancing disdainfully in the ring, without looking at anybody in the crowd, we felt pleased.

Hat shouted, ‘That is man!’

I couldn’t bear to look at the fight. I looked all the time at the only woman in the crowd. She was an American or a Canadian woman and she was nibbling at peanuts. She was so blonde, her hair looked like straw. Whenever a blow was landed, the crowd roared, and the woman pulled in her lips as though she had given the blow, and then she nibbled furiously at her peanuts. She never shouted or got up or waved her hands. I hated that woman.

The roars grew louder and more frequent.

I could hear Hat shouting, ‘Come on, Big Foot. Beat him up. Beat him up, man.’ Then, with panic in his voice, ‘Remember your father.’

But Hat’s shouts died away.

Big Foot had lost the fight, on points.

Hat paid out about a hundred dollars in five minutes.

He said, ‘I go have to sell the brown and white cow, the one I buy from George.’

Edward said, ‘Is God work.’

Boyee said to me, ‘I go give you your six cents tomorrow.’

I said, ‘Six cents
tomorrow
? But what you think I is? A millionaire? Look, man, give me money now now, you hear.’

He paid up.

But the crowd was laughing, laughing.

I looked at the ring.

Big Foot was in tears. He was like a boy, and the more he cried, the louder he cried, and the more painful it sounded.

The secret I had held for Big Foot was now shown to everybody.

Hat said, ‘What, he crying?’ And Hat laughed.

He seemed to forget all about the cow. He said, ‘Well, well, look at man, eh!’

And all of us from Miguel Street laughed at Big Foot.

All except me. For I knew how he felt, although he was a big man and I was a boy. I wished I had never betted that six cents with Boyee.

The papers next morning said, ‘
PUGILIST SOBS IN RING.
’

Trinidad thought it was Big Foot, the comedian, doing something funny again.

But we knew otherwise.

Big Foot left Miguel Street, and the last I heard of him was that he was a labourer in a quarry in Laventille.

About six months later a little scandal was rippling through Trinidad, making everybody feel silly.

The
R
.
A
.
F
. champion, it turned out, had never been in the
R
.
A
.
F
., and as a boxer he was completely unknown.

Hat said, ‘Well, what you expect in a place like this?’

A STRANGER COULD DRIVE
through Miguel Street and just say ‘Slum!’ because he could see no more. But we who lived there saw our street as a world, where everybody was quite different from everybody else. Man-man was mad; George was stupid; Big Foot was a bully; Hat was an adventurer; Popo was a philosopher; and Morgan was our comedian.

Or that was how we looked upon him. But, looking back now after so many years, I think he deserved a lot more respect than we gave him. It was his own fault, of course. He was one of those men who deliberately set out to clown and wasn’t happy unless people were laughing at him, and he was always thinking of new crazinesses which he hoped would amuse us. He was the sort of man who, having once created a laugh by sticking the match in his mouth and trying to light it with his cigarette, having once done that, does it over and over again.

Hat used to say, ‘Is a damn nuisance, having that man trying to be funny all the time, when all of we well know that he not so happy at all.’

I felt that sometimes Morgan knew his jokes were not coming off, and that made him so miserable that we all felt unkind and nasty.

Morgan was the first artist I ever met in my life. He spent nearly all his time, even when he was playing the fool, thinking about beauty. Morgan made fireworks. He loved fireworks, and he was full of theories about fireworks. Something about the Cosmic Dance or the Dance of Life. But this was the sort of talk that went clean over our heads in Miguel Street. And when Morgan saw this, he would begin using even bigger words. Just for the joke. One of the big words I learnt from Morgan is the title of this sketch.

But very few people in Trinidad used Morgan’s fireworks. All the big fêtes in the island passed – Races, Carnival, Discovery Day, the Indian Centenary – and while the rest of the island was going crazy with rum and music and pretty women by the sea, Morgan was just going crazy with rage.

Morgan used to go to the Savannah and watch the fireworks of his rivals, and hear the cheers of the crowd as the fireworks spattered and spangled the sky. He would come in a great temper and beat all his children. He had ten of them. His wife was too big for him to beat.

Hat would say, ‘We better send for the fire brigade.’

And for the next two or three hours Morgan would prowl in a stupid sort of way around his back yard, letting off fireworks so crazily that we used to hear his wife shouting, ‘Morgan, stop playing the ass. You make ten children and you have a wife, and you can’t afford to go and dead now.’

Morgan would roar like a bull and beat on the galvanized-iron fence.

He would shout, ‘Everybody want to beat me. Everybody.’

Hat said, ‘You know we hearing the real Morgan now.’

These fits of craziness made Morgan a real terror. When the fits were on him, he had the idea that Bhakcu, the mechanical genius who was my uncle, was always ready to beat him, and at about eleven o’clock in the evenings the idea just seemed to explode in his head.

He would beat on the fence and shout, ‘Bhakcu, you fat-belly good-for-nothing son-of-a-bitch, come out and fight like a man.’

Bhakcu would keep on reading the
Ramayana
in his doleful singing voice, lying flat on his belly on his bed.

Bhakcu was a big man, and Morgan was a very small man, with the smallest hands and the thinnest wrists in Miguel Street.

Mrs Bhakcu would say, ‘Morgan, why you don’t shut up and go to sleep?’

Mrs Morgan would reply, ‘Hey, you thin-foot woman! You better leave my husband alone, you hear. Why you don’t look after your own?’

Mrs Bhakcu would say, ‘You better mind your mouth. Otherwise I come up and turn your face with one slap, you hear.’

Mrs Bhakcu was four feet high, three feet wide, and three feet deep. Mrs Morgan was a little over six foot tall and built like a weight-lifter.

Mrs Morgan said, ‘Why you don’t get your big-belly husband to go and fix some more motor-car, and stop reading that damn stupid sing-song he always sing-songing?’

By this time Morgan would be on the pavement with us,
laughing in a funny sort of way, saying, ‘Hear them women and them!’ He would drink some rum from a hip-flask and say, ‘Just watch and see. You know the calypso?

time so next year, I go have the King of England and the King of America paying me millions to make fireworks for them. The most beautiful fireworks anybody ever see.’

And Hat or somebody else would ask, ‘You go make the fireworks for them?’

Morgan would say, ‘Make
what
? Make nothing. By this time so next year, I go have the King of England the King of America paying me millions to make fireworks for them. The most beautiful fireworks anybody ever see.’