slid off the submerged log into the wider stream of the Demerara River.
John spent endless hours with his father on the farm, learning all the vagaries of weather and land. He became a good farmer, however reluctant, without the outcrop of love that farmers feel when seeds are planted and crops blossom into harvest. His father had farmed all his life. That was all he knew. On Saturdays, he would take his produce down the river to the busy Cockatara market and sell to the swarms of people for whom Saturday market had become the celebration of a weekend. He earned enough to feed his family and put clothes on their backs, perhaps barely. He was contented.
As time wore on, John’s restlessness became more evident to his father.
“Daddy, I feel tired today. Don’t think I’m going cross the river.”
“Don’t get lazy on me, boy.”
“No, Daddy, I wanted to tell you for a while that I don’t care much for farming.”
John did not want to disappoint his father. That was the last thing on his mind. He was not too bothered by the physical demands that farming made on him. He was built for it. He could heave a bag of provisions, weighing over a hundred pounds, with one fling of one arm over a shoulder, and walk effortlessly down the pathway toward the creek’s edge. But John found no joy in the effort. He wondered oftentimes whether it was a symptom of something deep-seated, rooted in his consciousness, an affliction of a disaffection with ancestral habits. Whatever it was, it was there. No denying it.
John bowed his head, as if in acknowledgement of failure.
“I’m coming.”
With hands outstretched, Harry Allicock gestured to his distraught son his understanding.
“All right, but after today, feel free to skip the journey across the river with me.”
There was a moment of silence, broken only by a gurgling sound of a macaw craving attention.
“You’ve got to decide what is best for you. You can take a donkey down by the riverside, but you can’t make it drink water…… last time I been downstream, I hear Sadeo Sawmill at Dalgin taking on people. I understand they got a big contract to supply greenheart and purpleheart for the new housing scheme at Moblissa. If you don’t want to till the soil, you might as well cut logs and saw timber. I don’t mind, providing you work and help to provide support in this house. It’s far, but if that’s what you want, I’m all for it.”
John was deep in thought. The bleedings of the macaw sounded less urgent, a sign of affection returned. He was careful not to appear too overjoyed at his father’s suggestion.
“Got to consider it, along with other options.” Was this his ticket away from the monotony of the daily grind across the river?
“Boy, what other options?”
John knew from his daddy’s tone that he had become impatient with him, and he was hesitant to push him too far.
“I know you not in favor of me working at Cockatara in the bauxite mills. You said it too far. Another ten miles from Dalgin. And I’m too young to live in Cockatara on my own. That’s what I’m thinking about. The day after tomorrow is Wednesday. I’m going check with Sadeo, see if he still got vacancies.”
Many times, John recalled this conversation with his father. Often with sawdust in his eyes and a sore nose from breathing in too much dusting, he wondered whether he was in his right mind to leave his father’s side and ply his trade so far from home at a job he hated so much. But he was stuck. Time had passed quickly. His father had died. He met his wife, got married, and was now an aging fifty-year-old, still sawing and hewing wood six days a week at Dalgin, at Sadeo for half pay, and moreover, still having to sell bread to keep himself and Mary fed, with enough left over for Jason to live at his auntie’s in Albouystown.
*****
Mary’s fever and coughing did not get any better. As a matter of fact, at about the end of the second year of Jason’s absence from Tenaboo, she awoke sweating profusely, wetting her under garments, nightgown, and the mattress that lay bare under her. She was so concerned by this new development that she shook John, who awoke with a startle.
“What’s the problem, Mary?”
He turned and looked at her, with beads of perspiration on her forehead and clothes stuck on her as if she had been out in the rain.
“Mary! Good god! You sweating like a horse…you getting worse. Is time you make up your mind to check with the doctor in Georgetown.”
Mary had been resisting for a long time the entreaties of her husband in this regard.
“But, but—”
John stopped her short.
“No buts, dear. It is final. Next week you traveling on that damn white boat to the city to see your sister’s doctor. Write a quick letter telling her you’re coming to spend a few days, and don’t raise no issue of the damn bread. The bread business going to be here when you come back. You not going to die and leave me all alone here like a hermit.”
Mary had known that the writing on the wall was there for quite a while. She had resisted her husband for as long as she could, fully knowing that the bread excuse was not the reason for her obstinacy. She had harbored doubts about hospitals and doctors for a long time. She even boasted, “I never cross the doorstep of any doctor’s office and hope I don’t ever have to.”
Previously, in the final stage of her pregnancy, her feet had become extremely swollen, and her pallor was pale, and a worried husband had beseeched her to travel to the Cockatara hospital to give birth.
“I’m staying right here. Midwife Pollard from Yaroni will do just fine.”
It was. She birthed a healthy eight-pound baby, Jason, without any complications. Whenever she felt under the weather enough to raise John’s concern, the question of her seeing a doctor was always brushed aside. It was not really an obsession about the places and persons providing medical care but the lingering fear of the probing and testing done to find something for which there might be no cure. She reasoned, “What you don’t know can’t worry you.” Mary did eventually travel by steamer to Georgetown and stayed a full week with her sister, Cleo, and son, Jason, in the small house on James Street.
It was a memorable week, aside from the dreaded visit with the doctor and x-rays and blood tests. Mary enjoyed immensely the time spent bonding with her sister after many years and was reinvigorated and pleasured by Jason, who sat close to her on the Berbice chair in the evenings, reading verses of poetry he had written, a habit he had recently cultivated. She was impressed by Jason’s ability to enunciate, his clear, strong voice in full flow. How enthralling for her to observe this new side of Jason. He read aloud.
Barely audible
A tiny voice squeaks a silent word over the river
And into a life injected.
Down a lonely highway a man limps towards the shade shaking anger.
All fruits of reaping dispersed
Leaving for another crop.
As shifting sands disturb the reef
Pastures loaned
Cow dung raising a stench to heaven (or hell)
Failure to find driftwood on the turbulent way or
Stubs on feet in vacant spaces
And fear at the margin lending onto want
Stinging
Hurting
Must flame the forest
Run the river red
And leave bones on carcass drying in the sun.
Her eyes shone brightly, and with a clap of the hands, she remarked, “Beautiful! Jason, you are our pride and joy. Stay close to your auntie. Learn your lessons. The world is