The Polished Hoe (11 page)

Sargeant sat looking at the first shot of rum that Manny had placed before him in a short, stubby, thick-skinned glass. The glass looked like a bullet from a .38 revolver, magnified a few times. It reminded Sargeant of the day after Mr. Bellfeels became manager of the Plantation, and as a symbol of his new authority, how Mr. Bellfeels rode through the fields, wearing a revolver in a brown, large holster tied like a harness across his back. He had shown the revolver to Sargeant one Monday morning, demonstrating how fast he could, like Gary Cooper, pull the revolver from his back, in a flash, like a magician, “quick-quick as shite!” he said, laughing, “more-quicker than any fecking police ’bout-here”; and so it seemed: faster than Sargeant himself could flick-on his searchlight.

“Like one-two-t’ree!” Mr. Bellfeels had told Sargeant, laughing. “More quicker than blasted that! I is more faster than
any
cowboy in any Western playing at the Empire Theatre! More faster than that!”

And Mr. Bellfeels then snapped his fingers, for greater emphasis, to demonstrate the speed with which he could “kill any son-of-a-bitch who think he going-thief the Plantation things, and get off Scotch-free!”

He had laughed some more. And Sargeant became more uncomfortable.

He and Mr. Bellfeels and Manny were in the Selected Clienteles Room late one night.

“I is the law, round-here, boy,” he had said, putting his arm round Sargeant’s shoulder, “and I intend to tek the law inside my two hands! I is the law round here, Sarge-boy.”

“This-this,” Sargeant had stammered, “this thing, this thing could blow off a man’s head, Mr. Bellfeels!”

“Clean-be-Jesus-Christ,
clean!
” Bellfeels had agreed.

Sargeant did not, if he had been asked, know why all of a sudden, in this cozy, club-like Selected Clienteles Room, where he passed so many hours drinking and talking about his work, about discrimination in the Police Force, about the traps he laid for criminals, giving his drinking buddies confidential details about crime and criminals in the Island, and women’s secrets; he could not explain why all of a sudden he should be thinking of that one time, when he and Manny listened to Mr. Bellfeels talking about his .38 revolver, which he had bought from the Commissioner of Police.

The shot glass now sat untouched before Sargeant. He knew he had to face duty and responsibility because of his rank and his oath, his service in the Royal Bimshire Constabulary Police Force, acknowledge his allegiance to the Governor, and beyond His Excellency, in his loyalty, stretching to His Imperial Majesty, he had to assume that whatever surprise, danger, deadly confrontation, whatever the night might throw up, he had to face it. It was duty and loyalty and Scout’s honour. It was his duty.

He sat fully dressed in his night uniform, long after the telephone call from Mary-Mathilda had roused him from his lethargy; and here he is now, in black serge, thick as the Plantation’s horse blankets, and as rough to the skin. Sargeant kept the neck of his tunic clasped shut at the throat, tight and almost choking him. He was a stickler for neatness and appearance, as he was fastidious about discipline and uniforms and duty. But tonight, he wished this cup of duty would be taken from him. Taken from his lips, and placed at someone else’s.

He had sent the Constable to take the preliminary Statement, because he wanted the emergency to remain on the vine; and wait; and fall to the ground and be buried in the other heaps of untouched memories. He wanted to evade his duty. He knew he did not dispatch the Constable because he felt that his report, even preliminary, would be of much eventual help.

He had no taste for this case. It was tricky, and dangerous. And if it turned out to be what he thought he heard Miss Mary-Mathilda say on the telephone, a lot of people were going to have their feet stomped on; and their balls squeezed. And his own career could wither on the vine; and fall in ruin. “Best not to get involve in chicken fight, if you is a cockroach,” his mother always warned him. He might have to start thinking about writing a letter to his daughter and ask her to sponsor him as an immigrant to Amurca, in case.

He had no stomach for this taste of reality, as Manny called it. He was sitting stationary; not moving any part of his body; giving the impression there was no life in it; so still that even Manny was becoming concerned. It worried Manny to see him just sitting there, as if he was waiting for some spirit to tell him to move. It was as if he was a mechanical toy whose spring needed rewinding to provide the semblance of movement and “life.” Manny waited to see if this new life might bring his friend back to reason.

“Is a hell of a thing, nuh?” Manny says.

Manny moves from sitting at the unpainted deal-board table, and goes behind the counter. He is not looking at Sargeant. He is just staring ahead.

“All o’ we was after Tilda, one time or the other, when she was more younger; from when she was a girl growing up,” Sargeant says. “We uses to play together. Me and Mary-Tilda, you and Clotelle and the rest o’ girls. Pounce. And Golbourne. Even Naiman, before he turn to crime. We all grow up together. Manny, good-Jesus-Christ, you know, man! You was there!”

“I was there,” Manny says.

“Playing games! Hide-and-Hoop. London Bridge. HobbinaBobbina. And, Ship-Sail, Sail-Fast. One moonlight night, remember? We was sitting in a ling, in a ring, in Mary-Tilda paling, remember? And I was in the ling, and Mary-Tilda was in the ling, and she pointed at me, remember? And said the part in the Hideand-Hoop game, you know . . .
‘My mother and your mother was hanging out clothes; my mother give your mother, a cuff in her nose. What colour was the blood?’

“You remember Hide-and-Hoop, don’t you, Manny? And my God, Manny. Jesus Christ, I was only eight or nine at the time, and Mary-Tilda mustta been eleven or twelve. But when I tell you that at that moment when Mary-Tilda pointed the whip at me, and axe me,
‘What colour was the blood?’
expecting me to say,
‘Red!’
, and then spell-out the word,
red
. . . r-e-d, red . . . Good-Jesus-Christ, Manny, you remember don’t you? I can still see Mary-Tilda eyes, and Mary-Tilda lil bubbies, her two breasts, and smell the way her body smell. And I can still smell the smell of the cologne Mary-Tilda had-on, a smell that is a mixture of seawater and Limacol. It was her mother’s cologne that she was wearing that night.”

“You wasn’t the only boy smelling-round-behind Tilda, and getting-on like a ram-goat,” Manny says. He takes the forty-ounce bottle from the counter. The bottle leaves a ring on the unpainted deal board. And Manny pours some of the contents into a snap-glass. It is water. He holds his head back, and lets the water fall into his mouth. “Emmm!” he says, clearing his throat.

He then takes up the nip-bottle containing half pint of Mount Gay Rum. It leaves no mark on the table where it had stood in front of Sargeant more than thirty minutes. He pours a shot of rum from the nip-bottle, right up to the rim. And he holds back his head, and allows the dark, golden liquid to fall in an even flow into his mouth. He closes his eyes. He shakes his head, from left to right, in two quick jerks, as if he is in the sea, and seawater has entered his ears. He shakes his head in two more sharp, powerful quick jerks. “Emmmemmm!” he says, in appreciation of the sting, and the strength of the rum. And then, he says, “Ahhh!”

“We was all after Mary-Tilda, in them days . . .”

“But she wasn’t for we,” Manny says. “She was already ear-mark for Bellfeels, that red-skin son-of-a-bitch! I think her mother make that decision. People like me and you can’t offer Tilda nothing, whiching, when you think of it, is true as shite, Sarge.”

“
Ear-mark
is not the word, Manny. Not ear-mark. Reared for. Given to. A burn-offering. For Bellfeels. That is the way I sees it. Mary-Tilda was too good for either o’ we, for me, nor for you, neither. Her very mother as much as tell me so, down in Town one day. That’s before I join the Force.”

“I won’t go suh-far, Sarge. I won’t go so far in that direction. Is fate and destiny. Fate and destiny have a way of levelling-out things in our lives that we can’t understand. But Tilda was one o’ the most prettiest girls growing up in this Village. And Bellfeels get there first.”

“And none o’ we ain’t get the chance to foop she first!” Sargeant says.

“None o’ we didn’t get tha’ piece.”

“Neither you, nor me, Manny.”

“Neither you, nor me, Sarge.”

“Bellfeels get there first.”

“And look wha’ happen to him!”

“
Wha’ happen
? What happen to Bellfeels? What you mean?”

“What I mean is what I mean,” Manny says.

“You mean something that you not telling me, Manny.”

“What I mean is what I mean, man,” Manny says. And then he adds, “Let we change the kiss-me-arse subject.”

Sargeant fiddles with the stubby glass; crickets chirp in the darkness outside, and the singing of hymns from the
BBC
soothes the quiet night.

Then Sargeant begins talking, his voice rupturing the silence.

“It must o’ been my first assignment as a detective, when I was sent to guard the Plantation Main House, and the grounds, ’cause thieves was making the chicken coops shite. Every morning, Bellfeels calling in reports of thefts and petty larcenies; and going over my head straight to the Commissioner o’ Police. So, the Commissioner himself call-me-in and assign me to keep a’ eye on the Plantation, and catch the blasted fowl-cock thieves. And I remember the Commissioner winking to me when he give me the assignment. I got my first stripe, Lance Corporal, for carrying out that ’vestigation for the Commissioner—successfully. I just remember that, and I don’t know why.”

“Bellfeels have been a pain in the arse, all this time!”

Manny again raised the shot glass to his lips, and flung his head back in a sudden jerk. When the rum hit his chest, it was as if a man had landed a hard punch to that part of his body. He then flung his head from one side to the other, just as an unlucky boxer, stung by a jab, would do, to shake the sting out and to recover his equilibrium. And when he was finished, when he was done with this ritual for drinking rum, when his eyes cleared, and he could feel his blood surging through to his face, he was livelier and looked younger; and ready to do battle, whether with the remaining bottle of Mount Gay Rum, or with the conversation he was having with his old, dear friend Sargeant.

“I never liked Bellfeels,” Manny says.

“Me-neither!” Sargeant says.

“Bellfeels is such a avaricious, greedy man!” Manny says. “And whose secrets can’t hide. Can’t be hidden no more, in this Village. We can’t go on excusing Bellfeels, no more.”

Sargeant passes the index finger of his right hand round the rim of the short, stubby, ugly shot glass. It makes a deep sound, deep as the bass part Manny sings in Sin-Davids Anglican Church Choir.

“We sure not singing in the choir tonight!” Sargeant says.

“Not tonight,” Manny says.

He drinks another shot of rum. He makes his body shiver as if he is taking a dip in the sea, early morning, when the water is chilly.

“Emmmm!” he says, making his body shudder.

“‘. . . and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. . . ,’”
Sargeant is saying.

“‘. . . and with all thy strength,’”
Manny says, completing this section from the Eucharist.

“‘This is the first and great Commandment,’”
Sargeant says.

“‘This is the first and great Commandment,’”
Manny says.

“Was never a case o’ Bellfeels loving his neighbour as he love himself.”

“A woman walking by herself, at a certain time o’ night, in the shadows, is a occurrence that does-happen in this place, all the time,” Manny says. “And if you put two and two together, you know, for-sure, that that woman meeting a man, at a particular rendezvous. In a cane field. A woman walking by herself, at a certain time o’ night, and on a Sunday night to-boot, and hiding something behind her back . . . I couldn’t make-it-out in the darkness! Man, Jesus-Christ, Sarge, that is a horse of a different colour, altogether!”

“You saying something to me, Manny? You leaking evidence?”

“Jesus Christ, Sarge! Me and you know one another too long for you to bring this shite to me, man! Leaking evidence? You calling it that? Man, I only recounting something that, now we’re talking, happen to me earlier this evening. I am trying to piece together and reconstruct certain strains, certain strands, to see what I come up with, in regards to my understanding how mankind does-act.

“Is a matter of loving thy neighbour. A matter of the first and great Commandment. Tonight is Sunday night. I should be in church in the Choir, but man, I had hell learning the bass-part to the ‘
Kyrie Eleison.’
Man, I make my house miserable, singing the bass-part all Friday and Saturday night, over and over again, until I thought I got it. ’Cause, is Lent. And as I tell you last weekend, I not hitting the bottle so heavy these days. Is Lent. I drinking less.

“But I trying like hell to remember the details of my meetingup with Tilda tonight, as she was walking up the road, in a certain manner, like if she was on a mission. With something in her hand. I couldn’t make it out. Tilda was heading in the direction of the Main House.

“I couldn’t see it too-good, whatever it was she had in her hand. But I swear it wasn’ a piece o’ sugar cane. Nor even a stick, which a person sometimes would walk with, to chase dogs. Tilda didn’t carrying a walking stick! Still, though . . . I don’t really know.”