Grenada Ghost : Romance,
Suspense, Murder
(Click to order on-line)
Author: Lloyd Hollis Crooks
Publisher: Wayne Brathwaite Publishing
Date Published: June 1999
Format: Mass Market Paperbound
Chapter One Fyzabad
Forty flaming flamingoes fluttered from the mangrove, flew skyward, and alphabetized
themselves as they winged their way at sundown towards their swampy habitat. The game
birds had returned from fishing for frogs. Lyle Gordon took a cursory look at the birds'
flight for they signalled the close of day for Grandpa and many laboring field hands. Lyle
also knew the birds' course, and he kept running-running in their direction as a bearer of
good news. He ran under pumping jacks and derricks; he whisked by sunburned oilfield
workers on their way home from work; he ran abreast fast pedalling cyclists who felt the
raindrops; and he flew past steam rollers that levelled the axed timber on the macadamized
roads. Unbelievably, Lyle ignored his friends who pitched marbles with their dusty knees
and knuckles, and only made a hand sign to his brother Paul who danced his kite in the
breezy sky and eluded his foes in kite-fighting battles.
In a jiffy, Lyle was off the main road. Barefooted, he raced through the shortcut. He trampled up the mud tracks, cut through rice lagoons, sloshed into snail infested ravines, and toppled basket traps that were set for crayfish. Lyle balanced his body on narrow logs over the swollen river, and parried stray dogs and grazing bulls, but he never stopped running. His patchy shirttail flapped endlessly as the songs of early owls and toads echoed through the woods. Lyle's last hurdle, the feared stinging nettles, were brushed through like a grasshopper.
Finally, he reached his destination. He saw his grandfather packing the food carrier and hiding his hoe in a banana patch. From the sugar cane embankment Lyle shouted hysterically to his grandfather as if in hot pursuit by the Devil from hell. "Grappa! Grappa! Aunt Lily come...She come from America...She really come...True! True!" He panted, tripped, and fell. Fate loves children. Lyle wasn't hurt. His dog Flossy licked him. Grandpa picked him up, and quickly packed the reaped produce on the donkey cart.
Aunt Lily had at long last come to take Lyle out of Fyzabad. He had to share the news.
Fyzabad was the only place Lyle knew. It was a saucer-shaped village lodged south of the Godino River in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (Trinbago). Trinbago was also known as Pitch Lake Country to the Southern patois mouths. Fyzabad had history, and it exported oil and comedy. In Fyzabad, sabotaged oil wells periodically blazed; every citizen was nicknamed; and babies christened in the white churches' fonts were named after colonial governors, biblical heroes, or after Tubal Uriah "Buzz" Butler, a.k.a. the Chief Servant. The Chief Servant was Fyzabad's god, Fyzabad's mouthpiece, and, unequivocally, the 1940's one-man trade union whose word was the gospel.
It was picturesque to watch the peasantry houses of red tapia mud, sticks, and thatched leaves meander up the red hills of Fyzabad. In those comely abodes, neighbor John's personal life was better known by neighbor "Grapevine" Rosa. Trade unionism got instant recognition from the oil magnates when Charlie King, the feisty lawman sent by the colonial governor to quell the oilfield riots of Fyzabad, was set on fire and burned like dry chips. The Chief Servant negotiated on behalf of the underpaid oilfield workers. He asked the oil companies for one penny on every barrel of oil. The oil companies refused to pay that penny. Instead, the beefy-oilrich barons shipped Fyzabad's oil wealth to England to feed the King and Queen, and the barons used their English influence to have the Chief Servant imprisoned for his ceaseless agitation on behalf of Fyzabadians.
Incidentally, Grandpa was mulling over Fyzabad's history when he rushed to the embankment, picked up Lyle, and stretched Lyle's back. "Happiness kills m'boy," Grandpa said. "America have no use for boys with broken bones. Sickness come in aeroplane and leave on jackass cart." He massaged Lyle's body thoroughly with his muddy fingers, and Flossy, the dog, looked on. "How you got here so fast, Lyle boy?"
"I flew with the wind, Grappa."
"I can see that."
"Is my bone broken, Grappa?"
"Boy, if you continue running, it surely will." Grandpa lifted his grandson and put him on the donkey cart. Grandpa had known all along that Aunt Lily was expected, but he was too sad to broach the subject before. "You's leaving us, boy, before you know our history? If the people in America ask you about us, you don't even know what to say to them, Lyle boy."
"I know a lot about Fyzabad, Grappa. I know about the Chief Servant, the greatest man in this country...I know about those Chinese people, especially Chinee Chin who gives thirteen ounces to the pound, and whenever I go into Chinee Chin's shop, he chases me out, and he tells me, 'No hap, hackwai' in a disgusting way. I know that hackwai means black boy, and he never has whatever I ask for...I know about sickly Portuguese Alves who says, 'Bad pay kills trust.' I hope Portuguese Alves dies soon because Grandma says no matter how much money she pays Portuguese Alves, her account never goes down; and that is the reason why Grandma can't buy a new pair of gym boots for me to wear to Sunday school.
"Grappa, I even know about Mr. Sabga who sold Grandma 'bargain-bargain,' that cheap cloth he carries around on his back. Grappa, you remember when Mr. Sabga came to pick up his money for that bargain-bargain that he sold to Grandma?"
"Sure!"
"You remember that Grandma called me and told me in my ear to tell Mr. Sabga that she was not at home, and Mr. Sabga said to me, 'Little fella, tell your Grandma when she leaves the house she must carry her two feet too?'"
Grandpa laughed heartily. "Yes, that was my fault. I should've build the folding blind much longer so that whenever Grandma hide behind the folding blind her two feet wouldn't show. Your Grandma Leoni was right to hide from Mr. Sabga...Them Syrians sell their cheap cloth too damn dear...Bargain-bargain me foot!" Grandpa sucked his teeth, tugged at an overgrown shrub, and wiped his sweaty face with a clump of sweet bush. "What else you'll tell them people in America about us, boy?"
Lyle began to reply in textbook English, but resorted to a mixture of English and home patois. "Grappa, for sure, I'll tell the people in America about them high-color people in Apex Oilfields who think they are better than we...And I'll tell the people in America about them bigshot high-brown people who robbed Uncle Dodo of his cocoa estate because Uncle Dodo couldn't read and write...And I'll tell the people in America about you...You're a nice Grappa...And about Grandma...About Aunt Gina...And about Mr. Tellymack, my headmaster.
"Grappa, I hate Mr. Tellymack. He beats us...All Mr. Tellymack teaches us little children are how to speak correctly, and about a stupid poem called Abou Ben Adhem. He, Mr. Tellymack, wants us to recite that stupid poem just like him...'Boys and girls, diction, diction, please!'" Lyle mimicked his headmaster. He and Flossy jumped on and off the cart. "Boys and girls, diction, diction, please!" He mocked Mr. Tellymack repeatedly; and Flossy barked repeatedly.
Grandpa bridled the donkey, and Lyle and Flossy jumped on the donkey cart. Grandpa was in his glee, and he continued to test Lyle's knowledge of Fyzabad. "Boy, so you's not going to tell the people in America about the great Tintin?"
"Like what, Grappa?"
The cite-me-and-relate-me archives had their griot records. Tintin was a legend. She was a proxy of the Chief Servant and was aware of all of the Chief Servant's trade union activities. Tintin was just fatter than bones and had never slept on her bed. Her wooden bed, decorated with a cornstraw mattress, a lily-white embroidered sheet, and four pillows as hard as Goodyear tires, was a showpiece. Tintin plastered a no-trespassing sign on the dirt wall next to the bed.
During the Fyzabad disturbance, the anti-riot squad raided Tintin's shack in search of the Chief Servant. The government wanted the Chief Servant dead or alive and had a posse of 2,000 English soldiers in search of him. A police sergeant in full battle dress pulled Tintin's door, and the marline twine which secured her door popped in the sergeant's hand. Tintin, cuddled on the floor, shouted, "Where you going, Mister Corkhat Sergeant? You better don't go near me bed!"
"I don't want your bed, Tintin," the vigilant sergeant said. "I want that strike instigator...that self-styled Chief Servant...that illiterate son of a bitch. Tintin, where's your hipshorted man?"
"The Chief Servant don't live here...and the Chief Servant ain't no illterate because he know when hungry belly is groaning for food; and even if he illterate, he's our Chief Servant."
"What you said, Tintin?"
"I said the Chief Servant is fighting for all we poor people in this country. He is the only man with the courage to face up to England and to those prejudiced French creole who think they is white. The Chief Servant, Papa Butler, is a godsend!"
The newly-promoted sergeant touched Tintin with his cold bayonet, and she shivered on the floor. "You talk what you don't know, Tintin," the sergeant said angrily. "Your Chief Servant is not my godsend. For that matter, let me see if he's below you." He pushed Tintin with his polished boots.
Tintin rolled over. The space she reluctantly vacated would have fitted only a cricket bat. "Mister Shinebutton Police," Tintin addressed the sergeant, "you ain't see the Chief Servant ain't here in me house."
"Shut up!" the sergeant replied. "Do you want me to carry you down to the cell and lock you up for disturbing an officer in the performance of his duties? Say one more word!" The sergeant ransacked Tintin's one-room shack. He ripped down a portrait of the Chief Servant that was nailed to the dirt wall, and he checked for clues that would have led him to the Chief Servant's hiding place. The sergeant became irate. "I'm giving you one more chance, Tintin," he said, "to tell me where your nigger man is...that troublemaker...that no good son of a bitch who wants to change this country and run out all the white people...Don't you know that the white people did so many good things for Trinidad and Tobago? Where do you think the dress you are wearing came from?" He looked at her. "Tell me, Tintin, otherwise..." The sergeant shifted his gaze to Tintin's perfectly neat bed. A copper penny would have rebounded off of the treated flour bag sheet.
Tintin's voice pitched. "I ain't know where the Chief Servant is...Don't touch me bed nuh! Ah warning you, Mr. Shinebutton Police."
The lawman took no heed of Tintin's warning. He bayoneted her mattress, the bed sheet, the pillows, and the cedar bed frame. Each got a single incision. He looked at Tintin on the floor. She was crouched in a prayerful pose, but her hands were stretched below her bed. The sergeant marched up and down Tintin's cozy room. His boots shook the windows and doors, and loose cow-dung plaster fell from the dirt walls. He scoffed at Tintin as he dusted his tunic uniform.
His next mission was to wreak havoc to Tintin's bed. The dutiful sergeant did not know that the Chief Servant's scouts-some were lawmen who hated the white administration-had spread the news of the impending police invasion. Tintin, a confidante of the Chief Servant, she, more than anyone else, expected the anti-riot squad would search her house. Every Fyzabadian had a weapon lying in wait for the unfriendly incursion of Her Majesty's brutal policemen.
Tintin's weapon was unique. As the sergeant trampled her floor, her hands found her weapon. It was her nightpot. She uncapped it, and the instant smell of fermenting feces and urine combined pierced the sergeant's nostrils. The smell was pungent. The smell was rank. The smell was disgusting. It was ineffable-words couldn't describe that smell. But, indeed, the smell that came from Tintin's nightpot rocked the sergeant's head backwards; and he immediately forgot that he was on Her Majesty's mission. The decorated sergeant retreated. He held up his gun in a safe stance, and the attached bayonet shone from a glimmer of sunlight that permeated Tintin's thatched roof. The sergeant backpedalled and pirouetted in one movement towards Tintin's front door. He jumped off her top platform step that connected five broken steps, and he fell on the muddy ground. He stuck his bayonet into the ground, pressed his hands on the base of the gun, and raised himself off the mud. He scampered into a waiting police van, and commanded the uniformed chauffeur: "Touch the accelerator, private! Get off the fucking brakes! Speed! There is poison gas in Tintin's house."
Tintin came outside and pranced in the water-soaked yard with a heroine's smile. Her uncovered nightpot was in her hand. She waived it to the speeding police van and hailed, "Take that! You son of a bitch! You damn red-nigger-horn child playing you's a white man, and you don't even know who your father is." Her words echoed off the roofs of the zinc tenement in the valley below. Half an hour later, Tintin's bed was again a showpiece for the villagers to admire. That night, too, Tintin slept on the dirt floor on a crocus bag.
Grandpa ended his discussion of the escapades of Tintin when he met the spring. "Woh, donkey!" he said. The donkey stopped. He jumped off the cart with his empty food carrier. He cleared the moss in the spring and dipped water. "Drink, Lyle boy, for that nasty fall." Lyle gulped from the carrier and gave the rest of the water to Flossy. Grandpa got on the cart. "Hi, donkey!" he said, and the donkey moved off willingly. "You want to hear more of Fyzabad to tell the people in America, boy?"
"Tell me more, Grappa."
"I'll only tell you more, boy, if you'll behave yourself in America, and you'll tell the people in America about us."
"Yes, Grappa."
Grandpa was game. "Lyle boy, we have plenty of history in this little oilfield. I can belch you history for days without stopping. Before you was born, worthless Craig used to live in the back of me and Grandma. Craig said he fought in the 1914 war, and people say Craig is still shell-shocked, but I ain't believe any of that story. I know personally that whenever lazy Craig wanted a plate of free food, he used to lie down on the hot pitch and pretended that he was shooting Mussolini with his bony fingers. Your Grandma Leoni used to feed Craig, but left to me alone, Craig would've died from hunger."
"Who else, Grappa?"
He focused his eyes on the peaceful clouds outside his window. The blue and white clouds looked original, and imaginary figures floated through the clouds. He looked at the rat hook again. The hook vividly reminded him when his parents died and Aunt Gina took him in. He remembered when, one quiet morning, Aunt Gina flew the cheese-baited rat trap that was hidden below her boxwood table. The trap made a loud noise in the still of that morning. Automatically Lyle's eyes went back to the billowing clouds outside his window and his head shook as if the noise of the rat trap were heard in his ear again.
He wanted to admire the serene clouds but the magnet of his thoughts forced him to look at the steel hook in his hand. He looked at the hook and was forced to remember a painful morning in his life when he had agonized by the fireside in neighbor Meena's kitchen. Of all the mornings that he had gone to beg neighbor Meena for her roti, that rainy morning he was ashamed of his condition. On that painful and unforgettable morning, all he first had for breakfast before going to neighbor Meena's kitchen were the cheese bait that the rats rejected and a cup of rain water. Suddenly, his full thoughts occupied his bitter-sweet past. He was entranced. He relived a fact: that if neighbor Meena had denied him her roti, the cheese bait left by the rats and the cup of rain water would have been his only meal for that day. That period in Fyzabad's history that Lyle survived was a season of dearth, and of ration, in a productive oilfield town where only the French creole and the expatriates from England had plenty. Native Fyzabadians had less than the crumbs.
With tears in Lyle's eyes, and like a child who had gone through Gethsemane, from his window, his eyes searched for God in the moving clouds. He gave thanks and prayed. "Dear God, bless neighbor Meena for all those days that she gave me free roti when I was hungry...And, God, forgive me for calling neighbor Meena that bad word-a coolie-even when I was in her kitchen and waited on her hot roti. Miss Meena, you are not a coolie...You are a kind lady, a nice lady, a good lady, and Aunt Gina called you a godsend. If Aunt Gina knew I called you a coolie, even though I said it in my mind, Aunt Gina would call me an ungrateful child. I'm not ungrateful, neighbor Meena. I like you very much, Miss Meena...And God will bless you and make you sell plenty of roti by the market...And, Miss Meena, when you get plenty of money don't forget to build a new board house; and you'll break down that old, dirt house with the fireside outside in the rain." He paused. "...And, Miss Meena, when God gives you plenty of money you'll buy a new basin from Chinee Chin-not from sickly Portuguese Alves-and you'll use that new basin only to knead your roti flour, not to pee-pee in."
Lyle again paused, like a preacher, contemplative. He became somber in his prayer. "Dear God, please bless my Aunt Gina and prevent her from not telling the truth...Use your power, dear God, and cure Aunt Gina's cancer with the health office Shake-Well medicine...Aunt Gina, I thank you for everything. You really knew the things that were best for me-me, this stubborn, likkle Lyle. Aunt Gina, you didn't tell me but I knew when you went to work in the white lady's bungalow that the white lady offered you milk to drink but you spat it out even though you like milk. You spat out the milk from your mouth when you remembered that you left me home without anything to eat. Me, this stubborn, likkle Lyle, will never forget you, Aunt Gina; and I promise you that I will remember all the people in Fyzabad who fed me when I was hungry, and those who showed me the way when I was lost at the crossroads."
He took an intense look at the rat hook, then he put it in his hip pocket. He crouched his little frame on the inclined plane seat, and went fast asleep. His cathartic prayer raised goosebumps throughout Aunt Lily's body. She tugged her neck scarf and wiped her tears. The woman passenger who sat beside her hid her moist eyes with the palms of both hands. Aunt Lily took a blanket from the locker above, covered her nephew gently, and she, too, went fast asleep in the fuselage of the BWIA jet.
A voice awoke them. It was the captain's. "Ladies and gentlemen, you are now descending to Idlewild Airport."
At the International Arrivals Building a little girl broke the crowded line. "Lyle, Lyle," she said excitedly.
"Elizabeth, Liz...What are you doing here?" Lyle replied. "Where are you going?"
"My uncle is taking me to Brooklyn."
"I'm going to America," Lyle boasted.
"You're in America, Lyle!" She rushed over to her uncle. "Uncle Harry! Uncle Harry! You see that boy over there...He's my schoolmate...My friend Lyle...He and I went to Mr. Tellymack school...He's the boy I told you about who put the mirror...Never mind! He's the boy who climbed the greasypole and won the Mondesir gold belt...He recited Aboud Ben Adhem and won the two recitation prizes...He's a Spiritual Baptist in Leader Gerrol's church, and when he shouts and catches the power, he becomes a warrior in the spirit...Can he come and visit us, Uncle Harry?"
Uncle Harry measured and re-measured Lyle from his head to his brown Bata boots to fit in Elizabeth's total descriptions. He finally answered, "Sure...sure...sure...su...." His last word was a whispered dimuendo.
Elizabeth ran across to Lyle. "You heard what Uncle Harry said? Would you come and look for me?"
"If Brooklyn is near America!" "Brooklyn is in America!" she emphasized. She was proud about the fact that she had given a fellow immigrant his first lesson in American geography.
Lyle sought counsel from his aunt. "Is Brooklyn in America for true, Aunt Lily?"
Aunt Lily nodded.
"You see I ain't lie. You promise to come and look for me, Lyle, and to be my best friend?"
"Yes, I promise." He picked up his gripcase, looked back at Elizabeth, and followed on Aunt Lily's shoe heels.