1986 03 15
Filename: lf01.html
© 1998 Lennox Farrell
Length: 2400 words
Genre: Historical Fiction
Description:
A man, now older, reminisces about some of individuals, activities which seemed inchaote and mysterious to him as a youth - aspects of which have possibly aided him in maturing.
1986 03 15
Name was Sewell.
Could've been first name or last or Saywell. In Trinidad & Tobago -two score and ten years back- the "blacks" take to any given name and it don't cause disturbances as long as it wasn't, African.
Africa, we were dead, dead certain was savagery. Apeman, cannibal, jungle beast all ... all avails for Cecil and Georges and Missions procured for manTarzan. As were his Janes.
This was it in the times from I was a boy.
Times, too of wonder. And of blossoming memories, fruiting sometimes into understanding! But with understanding has only come more mystery about Sewell.
Never meet him myself, though others I know send sharp cuteye at one another as sometime adversaries in the courthouse or make sly sweeteye as family and oftime compatriots in schoolrooms, and in churches.
But he abides in me still, resurrect whenever I feel being small and recall other familiars like calypso, condensed milk, oh boy! sweet sweet, stolen sweets, suck-tongue deep in stealthy draughts. Cyphers, too, and syntax scratchings on midnight slate while a teacher mom after-hours, ironing clothes standing up in white 'oman kitchen. And listening. Just listening for so. Telling yuh to be quiet even when yuh know yuh ain’t makin’ no noise! But yuh can’t say that, eh! Don’t contradict.
Times, too, helping my gran'mother, harder and harder to please, with "dat infernal sick toe" she stubbornly refusing to let the physician cut off because her Bible
-excuse me, her King James if yuh please- tell her somewhere, that if, peradventure, she lobbed off a limb, Jesus will have it real hard gathering her remains come Resurrection Morning!
Sewell, like her dying from that bad-minded big-toe and her body being prepared in our living-room for burial, was party to those resurrections
He had become another night-horse on the haunt another Douen stalking the Shadows. T 'n T bolting their doors because of him, against him! Mount El Tucuche
-loftiest peak in a trinity from whence came the spanish name, Trinidad- peering nervously under tall, brass-top iron beds draped with white mosquito netting anxiously awaiting daybreaks again without hope.
Hang-Man Village, Never-Dirty, Morvant-Laventille and Suskounuskou Lago Palmiste, dreaded Moruga, Grande Lagoon and other mysterious abodes of obeahman like Papa Bois, Leader Hunte, Papa Neiza all these lairs and their fearsome occupants, themselves hiding fretfully away from starshine nights, lurking in darknesses already rampant with hell's own legions of La Diablesse, chain-pullin' Lagahou and blood-suckin' Soucouyant.
This time then, was his name Sewell Gordon or Gordon Saywell?
"Sweet Hour of Prayer Sweet Hour..."
I remember our parents, Medford and Philippa,, he a "beke ‘n neige" red-skin, black-man and she, "black as five-past-midnight". After they married, family cut him off. He lower his colour, they say.
"Man that colour should have more sense. OK! Man have to have outside children. Two, three with sweet-woman like them. But don’t marry and put them in house! Unless, boy?! maybe, what they give you to rub with, you eat! Because them woman hand, dirty, dirty…"
I remember our parents, sympathetic. Talking in patois. Furtive. We weren’t allowed to follow their conversations, ‘cause as yuh know, bush have ears. But of all times, talking all this politics, politics during worship. And at nightfall? About how, during an earlier trial, Sewell stand up to another of these "locho" judges from Great Britain "...Mother of the Free..." My arse!
"During worship?
"Caraho!!"
The Trinidad Gazette had negroes reporting. Been up to London. Didn’t see the Queen, but passed Buckingham Palace by. Made it, too, to the Colonial Office for tea. I say, very, very British readership and colonials shareholding, liked!
Loved!!
Adored foreign things: Latin sayings!!!
Argumentations range from Manchester United football scores to Eisenhouver:
"…with respect… excuse me… excuse me! The man’s name don’t end in ‘…hower’. Is … ‘hoover. Hoover!’ Yuh don’t inhale to pronounce the man’s name. Yuh exhale!
"Yuh is a idiot or what?!
"Excuse me… The man is a president! American. Yuh can’t mangle the man’s
name like that!
"Yuh stupid or what?! Yuh is jail-bait, or what? Look, go an’ tell dem yuh cyar find meh, eh?!
"Is you lookin’ for jail?! Yeh, I know jail ain’t make to ripe fig in!
"All the cheap rum yuh guzzlin’ for free! The man wouldn’t pay a penny to watch the world spin in a pitch-oil tin! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
"Yuh mout’ go lock you up!
…Arguments I still recall, concluding with: Quod, kiss-meh-arse. Erat, yuh-mumma-tuntun. Demonstradum: Q.E.D.!!!
Saywell was, in local parlance, "Infra Dig.,!" So to speak. Out-a-order!
And "did not this vile, uncouth criminal this Barrabbas, he and Butler one unholy alliance of egregious individuals a band of obscurantist political neophytes. Did he not illegally over-power a guard, murdering him escaping thereafter from Carrerra (Island Prison)?
"Wasn't anti-British Uriah "Buzz" Butler, that damn, double-ankle, Grenadian rabble-rouser, not kept there during the Great War?! Having to be put away in lock-up the blasted, ungrateful "small-island" –he ain’t even born here- bringing disgrace on the good name of Trinidadians. And Tobagonians? While Britain, Great Britain, the Old Lion, trying to defend the Free world? Defending democracy from Hitler? With our boys up there doin’ their best, and still catchin’ hell in France?
Ol' people say Sewell swim thru the dreaded Bocas, down the Dragon & Serpent's Mouth turbulent Caribbean waters rivalling Atlantic tempests. Jostled by sharks that didn't attack because he tarred the soles of his foot and the palm of his hands.
"Haily Mary, full of Grace…"
He gave the Gazette another headline, predictable as its perennial comic strips: Mandrake the Magician, the Lone Ranger, his loyal Indian "Kemo Sabey" Tonto, and Dick Tracy.
He was a teacher, our parents say. Not Dick. Sewell!
The ‘Condemned’ questions British justice!
He, too, the rancid English governor proclaimed dangerous: Dead. Or alive...
I know he live, eh!
In some ‘coolie’ dirt-trace deep, deep down in South Trinidad real deep, way way pass the oil-belt, down, down in the sugar where to ‘l'il nigga-boys’ was foreign and far away as Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Karachi, he get captured. Weakened. Bleeding from bullet. The authorities hinting, threatening, that the outlaw -in contravention of the Governor’s Statues as representative of His Majesty the King: Defender of the Faith, Fidei. Defei- had received assistance!
One, of several accomplices, had also been wounded! This the proclamation published in the Gazette, and nailed to boards reading: Post No Bills had announced. It wouldn’t be long before the other criminal, too, was captured by the long arm of John Bull. Better to give up and throw yourself on the Mercy of Tiberius!
Half-dead, without friend, family or hope, Sewell was taken under the
unfortunate flooring of this old woman’s pitch-pine house.
Some of us thought: she could never climb them steps again, Boy! 'specially after dark!? Bejesuschris'!! Pardners, I couldn't!
Apprehended he was, on the orders of the English governor. Roped. Hooded and hauled up by hands of the governor.
One, an available hangman and part-time "wharfie", down on the dockside it was said, had boasted that Sewell’s gallows, "…was a good drop. All the way to the boundary. For six. Perfect man, perfect. The foot ain’t touch nuttin’. The head ain’t bounce off. Perfect drop! Perfect!"
"The Vincentian woman he sleepin’ with, she ain’t ha no place to go. An’ he givin’ she, weekly a little something, an allowance. She still leave him," rumor, hard to prove, claimed.
Was at the day-break, just before sunrise, that for us Trinidadians he was
mercifully hung, until by the neck: Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Ma, our gran'mother, herself visiting from South, intoned herself gran'daughter of the slave-woman, "Dear Dear". Ma, our gran'mother, Augusta Wilhelmina DuBique, herself, when a girl of seven, demonstrate in her native Dominica against the "The Shame of the Congo".
Belgian royalty, building industry and other family values, had officially decreed: Africans Who Do Not Meet A Quota Of Desirable Jungle Rubber - Compensate. We will need an ear, a hand, a foot, a breast...
Ma, long dead and gone yet every-day ever-present at any little good and occasional decent thing I do, admonish us -bloodied strips of torn cotton scrubbed in milky disinfectant and brown soap, bandaging the swollen sick toe.
She admonish us, day and night to mind the ways of the Lord of Hosts! "Jehovah abandon Saywell in the same way He reject Saul, King of Israel!! Saul, chosen and rejected as King!" She repeated. "Father, have mercy on his soul!"
We breathe again.
The tightening hangman's noose lifting the Shadow of Saywell from us?
It was a while back, eh. Quite a while back.
Times of flickering pitch-oil lamps, always needing trimming. And smoking shadows messing up the fragile lamp-chimney. Sooting up all over yuh copy-book and white crepsole. Spoiling Daddy’s "butter-tips an’ white" shoes that he cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. The only religious thing he doing, every Sunday God send.
Times, too, of stone beds to bleach clothes on. And scrubbing boards taking sun, trying to dry out before next washing day. Times of Mom’s embroidered pillow-cases knitt by Ma’s fingers from beige flour-bags, the last of her wedding gifts she could still locate. For sure, it was a while back.
Yet, times still, so poignant, so troubling, and so, so familiar.
But it was a while back, eh.
I think sometimes he must probably have some family left behind, hoping, as it were, to forget things. Maybe. Unable to forget how they, too couldn't assist more, still protecting hush hush, family secrets.
Like me. Like what I been carrying for the last years on my chest.
Carrying and watching Mom become feeble. Unable to feed herself now. A woman like that!
She who could whip-up a Sunday-school Easter play and coach people to act, in no time flat!
She, who out-run and out-play us in cricket and sports. And if yuh have a licking coming, don’t make a mistake and run when she called. She would scramble at the same speed with you, and give you licks from whereever she catch you till yuh reach where yuh was in the first place.
She would walk for miles, all the way from Petit Bourg to Barataria and back, cheerfully saving bus-fare next day for me and my sister going to high-school in town.
I carry some loads. Not reluctantly. Regrettably, but never reluctantly! I could say that without fear of contradiction. The old people say I was obedient, never giving back-chat and for that, my mother’s favourite.
I remember, under the Alston clock I met her my first pay-day. She peeled open my first pay-cheque. Gave me bus-fare. Open my first bank account joint, pay my first insurance. And bought my plane ticket when I left to study overseas.
I feel good about all that now. My kids don’t. From hearing it repeated too much, I guess!
I, the eldest boy –primogeniture, Mom judiciously remind me- charged with making responsibilities, when the time come to bury our parents I wouldn’t reveal what he and I talked about for a whole night on one of my infrequent trips home from overseas. He had not been a talkative one. Not with us. Our father had never strapped us either –remarkable, we thought, recognizing it as another bit of weakness in him, too.
That night, warm with hibiscus flowers in the air and candle-flies flashing, he tell me a whole lot. First and last time. Secrets from inside the Butlerite Movement. His voice didn’t drop to a whisper, about telling me even who get killed! He did that, but after my work, supporting causes. The Grenada revolution.
When we bury him a little while back, he had ricochet metal fragments still lodged in scarred legs. I knew that. I know why he would sleep, only in a room, with the curtains drawn and lights out. I know why he mostly wore long pants -with flannel drawers- even in Trinidad searing hot sun. Neighbours like Miss. "Big-breast" Enid say he playin’ white. He playin’ he is British.
After all those years. And after all these years.
After Independence, boy, when we haul down the Union Jack. Put up the Red, White and the Black! Britain generously give us, in parting, a sword and a tea-set. Silver. Not gold! Silver! I wonder who these belonged to?!
Some people, black people, too, make joke –Medford never laugh- that after the English leave the flag could never fly upright because the Black in it go weigh it down. Big laugh! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
After those years, first generation after Independence, people my age fleeing overseas for education. For jobs. Getting disrespect, too. Like if nothing happened! Except growing graceless, aging in foreign places burying in alien customs. All gadgetry. No history. None our offspring find trustworthy.
But Sewell spread massive, mangrove roots buttressing the swamps in my growing tendrils entwining boyhood things: steaming race horses pounding in the Grand Savannah cricket, well-heeled, tea-at-three in the Royal Oval well-bowled in cow-shit Aranguez cow-patch!
"An' big, big hardback "nigga" man, no wuk at-all, at-all, at-all. Playin' card all day long under de chinaman rumshop fuh tuppence ha'pny. An' short-pants police wid fierce, fierce baton, bussin' pan-man arse an' culture lyin' like hell in de four-shillin' court.
Meantime, his master’s voice, "This is Greenwich Mean Time. The BBC calling" and local Rediffusion stations civilizing, playing Mantovani: solemn, solemn, solemn. Striking Big Ben to heart.
And bouganvillea, flambouyant all over the city. And little you, without even stooping, but upright, dangerous on the dirty, wooden latrine seat, with worms flanking just beneath yuh bamcey eagerly baptising themselves, could still smell and see poui trees yellowing up, up the whole mountain-side, flowering under rainshine and blazing, hot sun evermore.
An' red red, red dirt blue school shirt, khaki pants crotch tightenin', "yuh playin' yuh is big man, frothin' up de groun' whay yuh piss!"
And always with a hunger, and short of the six-cents change fuh bus-fare. Always! Always...
And beginning to wonder and yearn -sultry and sweet. "Oh God Boy- how nice woman look, eh Boy?! 'susChris'!!
And life, too, its cosmic extent encompassing inwards the Stars of Bethlehem: the Big Dipper, Betelguese, the Plaiedes, the Sword and Belt of Orion.
And Lands of Hope and full of Glory.
But Lands, nonetheless of Hope?