The Polished Hoe (44 page)

There is a “shed-roof” built onto Flagstaff Macon Castle now, two years after Sargeant got the stripes that made him Corporal. This “shed-roof” is his bedroom and his “den.” He plays dominoes with his friends every Friday night, in his “den,” between “tinklelling” his piano. He can sit in his “den,” so named by Ruby, on his “lazy-boy chair” which she sent for him, and watch his puh-paw tree bloom, and pick his puh-paws green, to boil them with no salt, for his high blood pressure. From his “den” he is able to see the pig growing in its pen; and watch his chickens and check under his cellar for the eggs they lay, before his neighbour and his neighbour’s dog claim ownership . . .

And occasionally he would glance up the hill, through the valley, to the Great House; and wonder . . .

“Many’s the night, sometimes,” Mary-Mathilda tells him now, “but more regular in bright daylight, I would come up and sit down here, to study my head, and catch a lil fresh breeze blowing off the sea, and would have a strong urge to see what you are up to. Very-often I would find myself looking down at you, through the trees, wondering where you get the name Macon from? I know the origin of Flagstaff.

“I even asked Wilberforce the derivation of Macon.

“Macon is not a name from round-here. Wilberforce, with his knowledge of dialects, languages and the origin of languages, could not figure-out Macon. Is it French? Or a word from a African language? Nobody in my household, in the Village, even Mr. Bellfeels, could come up with a explanation.

“And now that I have you, where Macon come from?”

“The South.”

“South of here?” she says. “South of Flagstaff?”

“More south than that,” he says. “The real South. The Amurcan South.”

“You named a house in Bimshire after a place in the Amurcan South? After what I told you about my visit to that country?”

“I was listening to the radio. A service from a church somewhere in a Southern town I didn’t know the name of, then. It was like a vision, and I was transpose’ there in the flesh. A Friday night, just before the boys come over to play dominoes, and I was listening meanwhile to the service. Manny had-tell me things about the South, though he never tell me exactly what he was doing in the Deep South; but Manny had-tell me sufficient, and by only listening to a fellar preach . . . from a Southern Baptist Church . . . I could visualize everything.

“Five or six years afterwards—Manny had return-back by then —Manny inform me that it was a man from Georgia, preaching in that Southern accent; and that he was from a place call’ Macon-Georgia. A white man . . .”

“And you sing in a Anglican Church Choir?”

“Was the man’s voice, and the music, Mary-G, not his ’nomination!”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Manny had at-first say that the name of the Southern town sounded African to him, because with the first bunch o’ slaves to land in Bimshire, Manny say, Macon was the name of a African slave; and he was speaking a language called Maconese, which the slave masters couldn’t speak, and never learn’ to speak, hence the broken-English version of the proper African name handed down to we, as Macon, Manny say so. Macon. So, therefore in consequence, Macon isn’t merely a word from the Amurcan South, but could-very.Well be a African nomenclature. I don’t rightly know exactly what Manny was telling me, nor the correct pronunciation of the name of my house. But wha’ I going do?

“I christen it Flagstaff Macon Castle, nevertheless. But Macon of Flagstaff is the name I first-had-in-mind to christen it with, having come across that name in a English story I was reading. But what is done is done. I name it Flagstaff Macon Castle, after listening to a man preach about sin and loving thy n’ighbour as thyself, and putting a end to fornication; and stop serrigating people, because everybody born free. Amurca, the preacher say, is in grave danger of becoming two Amurcas. One, a white Amurca. The other, a black Amurca. I still say, be-Christ, pardon my French, that that white man preach a sermon that make sense to me, regardless to whether he is a Anglican, a Southern Baptist, or a white man!

“I was impress’ by his voice. When he finish preaching, I remember that I take out my police black notebook, and waited until he axe for donations, and where to send the money and to get the address, when at long last, he said Macon. In Georgia. The Deep South.

“I join-on Macon to Flagstaff, and add-on Castle, to make it more appropriate,” he says.

“Thanks for explaining, Percy.”

“Nobody never asked me this before.”

“Pass me the spying glass,” she tells him. “Let me show you.”

“If you can see a little dent in a Royal Insurance shield from this distance,” he says, passing the spying glass, “you sees
everything
that I do all these years,
inside-out . . .
”

“And outside-in,” she says.

But she says it with a smile in her voice.

“But it’s such a bad word,” she says.

“Knowing a person outside-in?”

“The spying glass. To say that I been looking at you with my spying glass is different from saying, I been seeing you through binoculars . . . all these years, your every move, with it at my left eye, with my right closed, trained upon you . . .”

“Trained on me? But, Mary-G, I don’t have nothing to hide.”

“One Saturday afternoon, Gertrude went to Manny to get a piece o’ pork, and with my spying glass on Manny, I could see the flies buzzing-round the table with the pig on its back, and its head cut off; and Manny now have the pig in the hot-boiling-water, scrubbing-off the hairs. I could see the colour of the bristles, a white spot near the snout of that boar-pig, that had such a big-long . . .
thing
, Percy!

“And the flies. But I was tracking Gertrude. I had just take-heron as cook, promoted from being kitchen help, and I deliberately ask her to make something for me; as a test. I had to know if she was suitable. Pudding-and-souse, or meal-corn cou-cou; and if she pass either, she suitable. And watch to see if she clean.”

“I would have-make her cook split-pea soup with flour dumplings, mixed with cassava flour!”

He knows now that she has been spying on other people: Manny cutting up pigs; Gertrude going to Manny’s shop and to Miss Greaves’ Shop; and she has picked out Pounce, Golbourne, the Constable and Naiman. She has spied on all of us, from this window in her bedroom. Just like Mr. Taylor who climbs the fourteen grey cement steps from his green-painted Government house, assigned by the Bimshire Department of Housing, spies on the entire coastline, and deep into the Harbour looking for enemy hostilities; and so long as Mr. Taylor continues to reach the fourteenth step of the Lookout, punctually, four times every day at a fixed hour, in all emergencies and weather, he’ll keep his job. He has to climb fourteen steps—plus one step—to enter the octagonal-shaped Lookout; and spy carefully down into the green sea, Bimshire’s portion of the Carbean Sea, part of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, this vast body of water that is sometimes clouded by the sprays of waves and clouds that hang low. Mr. Taylor will live comfortably in his Government house, so long as he lifts the telephone and rings the bell, and calls out to his superiors down in Town, Crown-Sargeants in charge of Security, and Crown-Sargeants in the Harbour Police in charge of depth-charges, stationed in the Central Police Station, the Special Branch, and at the Harbour Station . . .

“A submarine! A enemy submarine! A Nazzie submarine!”

Yes!

Yes, she has picked out the lives of more people than he had imagined.

“Gertrude left here after twelve that Saturday taking the lane with the dunks trees; and she picked a few, ate some and spit-out some; the dunks are strange, bitter fruits, sometimes; yes; and wipes her mouth with the back of her left hand; holding the basket in her right, the hand she wears two silver bangles on; yes; and I followed her in my spying glass, through the grass-piece to the Pasture, pass cows and a few sheep grazing, where the boys were playing cricket, where she pick a blade o’ Guinea grass, and put the blade in her mouth; and chew it. Growing up, you and me couldn’t walk ten yards without stopping to lick-down some dunks outta somebody dunks tree; break-off a piece o’ grass, and put it between our teeth. Saturday, Gertrude behave no different: break-off a blade o’ Guinea grass and use it as a toothpick; near now to Flagstaff Macon Castle; yes; and it came to me before Gertrude even think about it, that she was heading to your Castle; yes; is something that a woman would know about the behaviour of another woman; my mind racing now, back over the years to see if any hint Gertrude had-drop: in the bus going to Town, at Church on first Sundays; being confirmed together, me, Gertrude and you.

“The two o’ you always had more freedom than me. But whenever I thought I had a chance to be free, Ma would throw cold-water over it . . .

“I first-began to regret the life that was mark out for me, when I realize they were keeping me far from people like you and Clotelle, Sis, Gertrude, Pounce and them-so, deliberately. Ma, and even Gran, wanted to bring me up different from you, and closer to the Plantation way, different from the Village. So, I was left half-fashioned as a person; in-between.

“Not fish and not fowl. Not white and not black. A half woman. Half a person. Or, as the Villagers say behind my back, ‘not knowing my arse from my . . . you know what’!

“So, there Gertrude was that Saturday afternoon at your front door, and I could hear the knock she gave your door, from this distance, so powerful was I imagining what was in Gertrude head; her knock was too confident; too sure, too brazen for me to stomach and bear; because the way she knocked was the way a woman knocks on a door she is accustomed to entering; who has shared
some
thing with the man who lives there; she is a woman with a past with that man. I wasn’t angry: just, just . . . just . . .

“After that afternoon, I stopped counting the times I saw her flounce-up to Flagstaff Macon Castle, and open your door and walk in.

“The confidence of that woman, though! Soon after this, she stop knocking altogether, and just walk in. Flagstaff Macon Castle was now her briar-patch. As if she living there.”

“Living in
my
house?” Sargeant says.

“. . . as if she and you had something,” she tells him.

Sargeant is confounded. His speechlessness is more from shame than from shock.

She stops talking. He remains silent. She continues looking down into the valley; and then she looks up into the heavens; and then she says something barely audible, about no stars out tonight.

“I am sometimes at a loss,” she goes on to say. “Sometimes I see things but they are not the things that my two eyes are pointing out to me. They are my imagination. But when I saw Gertrude walk-in without knocking, that was not my imagination. Although I did see her walk in, before she actually walked in.

“And, this evening, when she brought the drinks, you didn’t notice how she used her body to block-me-out . . .

“But Gertrude don’t know I already caught her at your front door. Months, now. Yes.

“And still trying to hide. When she brought in the drinks you didn’t notice her nervousness? Because you-yourself were nervous.”

“What you saying, Miss Mary-G?”

“Merely that life can play tricks on a person like me in my present position; under the circumstances.

“But hey, listen to me talking about things that have nothing to do with what brought you into this house, in the first place!

“You know, and I know, what we should be talking about . . .”

“And instead we are talking about yesterday.”

“Yesterday is the best way to face today. Or tonight. You come across this in your detective work, don’t you?

“It doesn’t seem like I can come to the point, at all. You shift-away from assisting me to come. When I think it is time to come, take blame, admit, confess, and have you warn me that what I say will be taken down and use against me, you veer-away, and postpone my coming.

“Why I am doing this to myself? Why are you doing this to me? You are here to take a Statement. But a bare Statement can’t convict me. Only God can convict Mary Gertrude Mathilda. Not another soul. Living or dead.

“They could
punish
me. And I have faced punishments untold. From the moment the midwife cut my navel string, and I emerge from inside my mother’s womb . . . God bless her soul.”

“God bless her soul,” Sargeant says; and imitates her as she makes the sign of the Cross, pleased that he does it correctly this time.

“. . . mercy on the dead,” she says.

“. . . have mercy on the dead,” Sargeant says.

From standing at the window, Mary-Mathilda and Sargeant retrace their steps back through the dressing room, and into the ornate bedroom. She stops beside the canopied bed, and passes her hand over the bedspread, as if she is spreading it evenly; erasing the creases. The bedspread has been made smooth by Gertrude, who prepared the bed before she left, a few hours ago.

Gertrude has gone to wait for Sargeant, at their rendezvous. Tonight is Sunday night. And Sunday night is a night when there is no revival meeting, when Church ends early, at nine o’ clock,early enough to spend in the cane field, in complete freedom and abandon, in complete recklessness and happiness: away from her work, and from Sargeant’s neighbours; and from her two small children. Her house is too small to have carnal knowledge in it, and contain Sargeant’s voice at orgasm. He woke the children one night.