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Read Ebook: Tropic death by Walrond Eric
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Ebook has 1381 lines and 45702 words, and 28 pages
At the quarry it became whiter and the color of dark things generally grew darker. Similarly, with white ones--it gave them a whiter hue. Coggins and the quarry. Coggins and the marl. Coggins and the marl road.
Beryl in the marl road. Six years old; possessing a one-piece frock, no hat, no shoes.
Brown Beryl ... the only one of the Rum children who wasn't black as sin. Strange.... Yellow Beryl. It happens that way sometimes. Both Coggins and Sissie were unrelievably black. Still Beryl came a shade lighter. "Dat am nuttin'," Sissie had replied to Coggins' intimately na?ve query, "is yo' drunk dat yo' can't fomembah me sistah-in-law what had a white picknee fo' 'ar naygeh man? Yo' don't fomembah, no?" Light-skinned Beryl....
It happens that way sometimes.
Victim of the sun--a bright spot under its singeing mask--Beryl hesitated at Coggins' approach. Her little brown hands flew behind her back.
"Eatin' marl again," Coggins admonished, "eatin' marl again, you little vagabon'!"
Only the day before he had had to chastise her for sifting the stone dust and eating it.
"You're too hard ears," Coggins shouted, slapping her hands, "you're too hard ears."
Coggins turned into the gap for home, dragging her by the hand. He was too angry to speak ... too agitated.
Avoiding the jagged rocks in the gap, Beryl, her little body lost in the crocus bag frock jutting her skinny shoulders, began to cry. A gulping sensation came to Coggins when he saw Beryl crying. When Beryl cried, he felt like crying, too....
But he sternly heaped invective upon her. "Marl'll make yo' sick ... tie up yo' guts, too. Tie up yo' guts like green guavas. Don't eat it, yo' hear, don't eat no mo' marl...."
No sooner had they reached home than Sissie began. "Eatin' marl again, like yo' is starved out," she landed a clout on Beryl's uncombed head. "Go under de bed an' lay down befo' I crack yo' cocoanut...."
Running a house on a dry-rot herring bone, a pint of stale, yellowless corn meal, a few spuds, yet proud, thumping the children around for eating scraps, for eating food cooked by hands other than hers ... Sissie....
"Don't talk to de child like dat, Sissie."
"Oh, go 'long you, always tryin' to prevent me from beatin' them. When she get sick who gwine tend she? Me or you? Man, go 'bout yo' business."
Beryl crawled meekly under the bed. Ada, a bigger girl--fourteen and "ownwayish"--shot a look of composed neutrality at Rufus--a sulky, cry-cry, suck-finger boy nearing twenty--Big Head Rufus.
"Serve she right," Rufus murmured.
"Nobody ain't gwine beat me with a hair-brush. I know dat." One leg on top of the other, Ada, down on the floor, grew impatient at Sissie's languor in preparing the food....
Coggins came in at eleven to dinner. Ada and Rufus did likewise. The rest of the day they spent killing birds with stones fired from slingshots; climbing neighbors' trees in search of birds' nests; going to the old French ruins to dig out, with the puny aid of Rattah Grinah, a stray mongoose or to rob of its prize some canary-catching cat; digging holes in the rocky gap or on the brink of drains and stuffing them with paper and gunpowder stolen from the Rum canister and lighting it with a match. Dynamiting! Picking up hollow pieces of iron pipe, scratching a hole on top of them, towards one end, and ramming them with more gunpowder and stones and brown paper, and with a pyramid of gunpowder moistened with spit for a squib, leveling them at snipes or sparrows. Touch bams.
"Well, Sissie, what yo' got fo' eat to-day?"
"Cookoo, what yo' think Ah are have?"
"Lawd, mo' o' dat corn mash. Mo' o' dat prison gruel. People would t'ink a man is a horse!" ... a restless crossing of scaly, marl-white legs in the corner.
"Any salt fish?"
"Wha' Ah is to get it from?"
"Herrin'?"
"You t'ink I muss be pick up money. Wha' you expect mah to get it from, wit' butter an' lard so dear, an' sugar four cents a pound. Yo' must be expect me to steal."
"Well, I ain't mean no harm...."
"Hey, this man muss be crazy. You forget I ain't workin' ni, yo' forget dat I can't even get water to drink, much mo' grow onions or green peas. Look outside. Look in the yard. Look at the parsley vines."
Formerly things grew under the window or near the tamarind trees, fed by the used water or the swill, yams, potatoes, lettuce....
Going to the door, Coggins paused. A "forty-leg" was working its way into the craw of the last of the Rum hens. "Lahd 'a' massie...." Leaping to the rescue, Coggins slit the hen's craw--undigested corn spilled out--and ground the surfeited centipede underfoot.
"Now we got to eat this," and he strung the bleeding hen up on a nail by the side of the door, out of poor Rattah Grinah's blinking reach....
Unrestrained rejoicing on the floor.
Coggins ate. It was hot--hot food. It fused life into his body. It rammed the dust which had gathered in his throat at the quarry so far down into his stomach that he was unaware of its presence. And to eat food that had butter on it was a luxury. Coggins sucked up every grain of it.
"Hey, Ada."
"Rufus, tek this."
"Where is dat Miss Beryl?"
"Under de bed, m'm."
"Beryl...."
"Yassum...."
Unweeping, Beryl, barely saving her skull, shot up from underneath the bed. Over Ada's obstreperous toes, over Rufus' by the side of Coggins, she had to pass to get the proffered dish.
"Take it quick!"
Saying not a word, Beryl took it and, sliding down beside it, deposited it upon the floor beside Coggins.
"You mustn't eat any more marl, yo' hear?" he turned to her. "It will make yo' belly hard."
"Yes ... pappy."
Throwing eyes up at him--white, shiny, appealing--Beryl guided the food into her mouth. The hand that did the act was still white with the dust of the marl. All up along the elbow. Even around her little mouth the white, telltale marks remained.
Drying the bowl of the last bit of grease, Coggins was completely absorbed in his task. He could hear Sissie scraping the iron pot and trying to fling from the spoon the stiff, overcooked corn meal which had stuck to it. Scraping the pan of its very bottom, Ada and Rufus fought like two mad dogs.
"You, Miss Ada, yo' better don't bore a hole in dat pan, gimme heah!"
"But, Mahmie, I ain't finish."
Picking at her food, Beryl, the dainty one, ate sparingly....
Once a day the Rums ate. At dusk, curve of crimson gold in the sensuous tropic sky, they had tea. English to a degree, it was a rite absurdly regal. Pauperized native blacks clung to the utmost vestiges of the Crown. Too, it was more than a notion for a black cane hole digger to face the turmoil of a hoe or fork or "bill"--zigaboo word for cutlass--on a bare cup of molasses coffee.
"Lahd 'a' massie...."
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