Now on to our story!
As Mangohead lay awake, tossing and turning in the bright
moonlight that washed over him, the only image that came to his tired brain
repeatedly was the rag with the scrap missing. Could the Kurma man really be
the one who was haunting Ma Procop's zaboca tree? He wasn't even sure. Looking
at the old man hobble up the road that evening, it didn't seem likely. Still,
he liked to be thorough and decided that to ease his own conscience and to
clear the Kurma man he would have to investigate the situation. Slowly, he fell
into a restless, fitful sleep.
The dawn found Mangohead up before eight, a feature so rare
that his mother was stunned.
"You alright boy?" she asked in a concerned tone.
"Yeah Ma, I fine," Mangohead answered. "I go
be up the road if you need me." With that the youth slipped out of the
house and half-walked half-ran to Ma Procop's garden.
Briskly, he undid the wire holding the gate shut and made a
bee line for the zaboca tree. Standing in the shade of the tree cast by the
rising sun, he counted, his breath held...and realized that he was one zaboca
short! Sometime in the night someone had pilfered a pear. Now he was certain
that there was a zaboca thief in the village and he was determined to get to
the bottom of it. The main suspect he had (as loath as he was to believe in the
man's guilt) was the Kurma Man himself.
After checking around the tree and on the fence for any further clues
and finding absolutely nothing, he latched the gate to the garden and made for
the Kurma Man's shop.
Early mornings in villages such as these out in the rural
areas of Trinidad were usually interspersed with men returning from their even
earlier jaunts into the forest to tend to their gardens. The road would usually
have a gardener passing by regularly either on their way home or off to the
local rum shop in hopes of getting drunk so they could forget about their
problems, the major one being how hard it was to make a living in subsistence
farming.
Not all of these farmers were subsistence farmers though.
Some of them had inherited vast swathes of land from their fathers and
grandfathers, tilling the land just the way their parents and grandparents did
before them. Farming was a time-honored tradition out here in the bush, but
more and more children sought to escape the humdrum of rural life, and parents,
knowing how hard farming was and how difficult it was to make ends meet, pushed
their children to perform well academically so that they could escape what they
saw as a very hard life. Some children, however, eagerly worked the land,
seeing it the way the older, traditional Indians saw it, as a living.
Mangohead's friends Two and Four were on their way back from
their early-morning farming trek like so many others whose families owned lands
and had younger, stronger sons to work it. They hailed him out as they passed,
covered in the sticky, greyish-brown lagoon mud from head to foot.
"Aye Mangohead," Two called out, "you still
looking for them watchman hands?"
"Yeah boy," Mangohead said, perking up. "Now
especially, I have ah suspicion."
"Serious?" Two said, his eyes shining. "That
mean we getting pay then?"
"No eh," Mangohead stated. "But if allyuh
still willing to help for payment in zaboca then I could use it."
"I feel I could use it too," Four said slowly.
"Ma them buy like ten pound ah baigan. I hate baigan."
Mangohead nodded in agreement. Baigan, also known as
aubergine or eggplant, was one of the staples of the East Indian immigrant diet
when they arrived from India to work on the canefields so many years ago. They
enjoyed how easy it was to cook and even moreso how it tasted when 'stretched'
with potato, since the average East Indian family of the time had to stretch
every available resource, not being able to make ends meet otherwise. This love
for the baigan had extended to modern day, a fact that is mourned by many an
East Indian youth.
"Gyaaad," Two said, screwing up his face.
"Doh tell me is baigan again this evening inno."
Four nodded solemnly. "Is baigan today, baigan tomorrow,
baigan the next day..."
"Arrite, Arrite," Two said exasperatedly. "We
in, I cyah take so much baigan, I go kill somebody."
Mangohead nodded again, solemnly. "Cool, check me back
at Ma Procop house round ten and thing, we have some plans to make."
The boys exchanged goodbye and Two and Four continued their
weary trudge home to get out of their mud caked clothes. Mangohead realized with
the little help he had from those two, he could look into catching the thief red-handed.
However, he still wanted to confront the Kurma man about the rag; it was a
damning piece of evidence and Mangohead was curious as to how it entered the
old man's possession.
"Morning young one," the Kurma Man called to him
as he entered the front doors of the shop. "You and your sister
good?"
"Yeah we arrite," Mangohead said cautiously.
"I wanted to ask you bout something I see you with yesterday."
"What it is?" the Kurma Man queried. "Yuh
want to buy it?"
Mangohead shook his head. "Nothing like that, is that
rag you had yesterday what you was wiping yuh face with, where yuh get
it?"
"That old thing?" the Kurma Man laughed.
"Madame Lani give me it the other day, I does get all my sapee from
she."
"Sapee?" Mangohead enquired.
"Yeah, old cloth nah," the Kurma Man said.
"The kind yuh does use to wipe countertop and thing."
Mangohead's thoughts spun. Maybe he was after the wrong man
after all. He wouldn't rule the Kurma Man out totally yet, but now he had a new
suspect to go on. "Thanks eh!" Mangohead said as he sprinted from the
shop.
"Careful to walk on the side ehh," the Kurma Man
called after him. "Them drivers these days crazy!"
"Mangohead!" Julie's voice hit him square in the
face like one of those cartoon pies.
"What you want now?" he said turning to face her.
"It have somebody by Ma Procop house!" she said, wringing
her hands.
Mangohead felt as though someone had knocked the wind out of
him. "Who it is?"
"I dunno nah," Julie said, "they was up in
the zaboca tree.
The thief! "Quick, go tell Ma she go get Corporal
Parris and meet me up there, I go deal with them." Without a second
thought he charged up the road, back to Ma Procop's house.
Mangohead burst through the gate, just in time to see a
silhouetted figure slink behind the fence. Mangohead assumed he was running for
the safety of the forest. He wasn't about to let this thief get away. Casting
an eye up the zaboca tree, he realized that the thief was interrupted before he
could steal any more of the fruits. He vowed to himself that this miscreant
wouldn't get away with this. Nimbly, he hopped Ma Procop's fence easily,
pirouetting his weight at the top and landing safely on the other side. The
track into the forest was clear here so he followed it, since it would be
easier going. If the thief decided to cover his tracks he would have to move
outside of the cleared path and that meant that Mangohead might be able to
catch up with him before too long. He hoped.
He entered the edge of the forest, the jungle foliage
swallowing up the track suddenly and completely. The forest here was thick,
light barely filtering through the thick canopy above him. The ground was muddy
and moist; one misstep could leave him on his back. Taking note of this he
checked his speed just a little as he looked around for clues to where the thief
went. A loud cacophony arose to his left as a set of weaver birds (called
corn-birds here in the Caribbean) took to the skies, littering the quiet air
with their plaintive bellows. Mangohead quickly readjusted his position and ran
flat out from whence the disturbance came.
He sliced through webs and tripped over vines and lianas
that crowded the forest floor, seeking an inch of sunlight where none was to be
found. The only thing on his mind was catching the thief; finding out who it
was that would be so unscrupulous as to steal an old lady's zabocas. He turned
a corner, catching a glimpse of the thief as they disappeared into a stand of
trees. Swiftly he followed, pushing through the copse and immediately losing
his footing. The trees stood just at the edge of the riverbank. Mangohead threw
his weight backwards, but it was not enough as he slipped and both his feet
slid out from under him, the wet mud betraying him. With a cry, Mangohead
started sliding down towards the river. That wasn't so bad, he thought. A
little wet never killed anyone. A loud splash behind him made him strain his
neck to see what caused it. What looked like a large floating log was coming
towards him, but Mangohead knew by the ridges he could see that that was no log.
It was a caiman, a smaller, much more ferocious relative of the alligator. And
they were always hungry. Hurriedly he scanned the riverbank, looking for something
to grab onto in order to slow his descent. In an instant, he caught his
fingertips in a small crack in the steep slope, burying them deeper for
purchase. Levering his fingers into the crack, he felt the mud block give
slightly. Not good. It was only a matter of time before him and it went
tumbling down to the waiting jaws of the amphibious predator below. To his left
was the root of a roseau palm, the two-inch-long spikes rumored to cause
intense fever in anyone pricked by it. Mangohead swallowed. This was starting
to look grim.
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