LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

crash of trees, branches breaking, and suddenly Marlo was no longer there.

      Missa Geoffrey stepped away from him – with his light brown eyes and a tiny brown moustache. ‘Who de hell is you, and what bring you here?’

      ‘Pynter – I’z Pynter.’

      ‘You know who dat was?’ Missa Geoffrey lifted his chin at the bushes beyond them.

      Pynter nodded.

      ‘You know what could’ve happen if it didn cross my mind to come here now?’ His face was hard and unsmiling.

      Pynter nodded again. He realised his knees were shaking slightly. Missa Geoffrey was there beside him, yet he sounded as if he were speaking from a far way off.

      Missa Geoffrey dropped the stone. He looked about him. His face and shoulders were twitching. ‘Why dat murderer had to come here, eh? Dat sonuvabitch could ha’ gone everywhere else, but is here he had to come. I have to report this now, not so?’ He gestured at the bushes. ‘An’ what happm when I get out o’ here and call police? Next thing you know, this place full up of all kind o’ people.’ He looked about him again as if the gully were his house. Pynter thought the man was going to cry.

      ‘And you,’ he turned brown accusing eyes on Pynter, ‘what de hell bring you down here? This look like place for chilren?’

      ‘I come here when I hungry,’ Pynter told him.

      ‘Come here when you – you playin de arse wit’ me, not so?’ The man was staring at him closely. His eyes narrowing down to slits.

      ‘I don’ look, Missa Geoffrey. Not all de time.’

      ‘Don’ look – look at what? Look, you say?’ Geoffrey moved his lips to say something else but coughed and rubbed his chest instead. He swung his head around as if expecting all of Old Hope to be there. He brought his hand up to the side of his face and coughed again.

      Missa Geoffrey looked around him. ‘Look? What de hell it got down here to look at? Dem guava? Dem serpent over yuh head?’

      Pynter found himself replying in his father’s flat irritated tone. ‘A pusson not blind, yunno.’

      His words stopped Missa Geoffrey short. Left him open-mouthed and confused. He kept smoothing the hair back from his forehead and then he coughed a very distressed cough.

      ‘Lissen, lil fella,’ his voice rumbled out of him deep and low exactly as it did with Miss Petalina, ‘I just save your life. You know what dat mean?’

      ‘Nuh.’

      ‘It mean,’ he dropped his voice to a half-whisper, ‘it mean you owe me a life.’

      ‘I don’ have no life to give back.’

      ‘I don’ want no life back, man. You tell anybody ’bout …?’

      ‘You an’ Miss Tilina? Nuh.’

      ‘Me an’ Miss – Jeezas, man. Jeezas! Then you keep it so – okay? You keep it so, cuz … ’

      Pynter nodded. ‘A life fo’ a life.’

      ‘Eh?’

      ‘Pastor Greenway goin kill ’er if he get to know.’

      Missa Geoffrey sat back on the wet grass. ‘You prepare to swear on de Bible?’

      Pynter nodded.

      Missa Geoffrey slapped his pockets with both hands. He pulled out something bright and red and shiny and held it out to Pynter. ‘Look – look, I want to give you this.’ It was a small penknife. ‘Dis mean me an’ you’z friend. Dis mean you can’t tell nobody nothing. Dis mean me an’ you agree man to man, y’unnerstan?’

      Pynter took the knife.

      ‘Okay fella, we settle then.’ Missa Geoffrey looked up as if suddenly alerted to something. ‘Come, let’s get outta here. And don’t come back again, y’hear me. Is my land.’

      ‘Is not.’

      ‘You hear what I say?’

      ‘Yessir.’

      When Pynter reached the yard, it was raining again. Warm dry-season rain, the kind that fell with all the violence of a flash-storm and lasted just a short while. Pynter wondered if Gideon had left yet. He was trembling, but he wasn’t cold and he didn’t want to go inside if Gideon were still there.

      He stooped between the pillars of the house and watched the rain come down.

       10

      ‘GIDEON TAKE MY father,’ Pynter said.

      Elena shook her head. She didn’t understand him.

      ‘I come from Eden. I shelter under de house and when I went in he wasn’ there.’

      His mother shook her head again. She still didn’t understand him. ‘You look in dem other room?’

      ‘Gideon take my father,’ he repeated.

      ‘Where he gone to?’

      He heaved his shoulders and turned his face away.

      ‘Where…’ She stopped herself short. The cloth that she was drying her hands with dropped softly on the floor. She brought her face down close to his. She touched his cheek and looked into his eyes. ‘Gideon take your father where?’

      He heaved his shoulders again. ‘Gideon come and take ’im when I wasn’ there.’

      ‘You get wet,’ she said. ‘Your head soakin wet. You couldn shelter from the rain?’ She began unbuttoning his shirt.

      He was staring at the wall behind her head.

      ‘Pynter,’ she said.

      He did not answer. She peeled the shirt from his shoulders. ‘You must learn to cry. Y’unnerstan?’

      She touched his cheeks again. Her face was working. ‘When you feel like this, when you feel like you feeling now, you must try to cry. Y’hear me? You have to learn to cry.’

      She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and pulled him close to her.

      He did not tell her everything – how he’d gone to Miss Maddie’s house to ask her where his father was. How she had looked away from him as if she didn’t want to answer, her eyes red. And all she had said was that she wished Paso had been there when Gideon came. She had stood him in the kitchen and wiped the rain off him. She’d done it the way Tan Cee or his mother would have done, pausing every now and then to examine him. She’d stretched his arms out and slid her fingers along the bones all the way down to his wrists. Had turned his palms up towards her and examined them under the gaslight in the kitchen. She’d passed her fingers along the small drain at the back of his neck, followed the fissure all the way down to his spine. She had come closer to his ear as if she were about to whisper something, traced the shape of his lobes with her fingers, and spent a long time over his feet. She’d gone to the fridge and offered him some food. He didn’t want anything to eat. She’d left him for a while and come back with a towel. She had tried to smile. He had seen that she had three gold teeth. She had told him the towel was hers, spent a long time wiping his hair dry.

      ‘You got feet like Paso,’ she had said. ‘An’ them fine little hairs on your back same like all my father children.’

      ‘Miss Maddie,’ he had turned his head to look up at her, ‘you could tell me where Gideon live?’

      He could not make out the expression on her face because the evening had thickened into night. He had only her voice to go by.

      ‘You shouldn think of goin there.’

      ‘Tell me where he live.’

      ‘He’s not a good

Скачать книгу