The stupid man is weedy-whacking the whole flicking yard again as she walks in. He likes to annihilate every blade of grass, and slice up bare dust where there’s none. He doesn’t even stop when someone’s passing ’cause he can’t hear a thing with the racket. He and the robowhacker are one. And, like any other man with a machine, he loves feeling the power in his hands, vibrating, as he slowly creeps up to a fresh, unsuspecting bush. Covered in grass crumbs, he moves forward with relish, grinning when he catches sight of Ata scuttling into the hangar. Worse than bachac ants or locust.
“Slinger couldn’t make it,” the manager greets her, loud over the grass eater’s din. “Let’s go in the office.”
It was true about the Donkey Rally business, but in Ata’s mood the story isn’t even funny. Pure nonsense. The manager asks how Fraser’s doing and Ata says she has to get back home soon. Amen is right. Ata isn’t fazed. She receives the concept description and sketches for T-shirt prints, makes her notes, and says nothing. Little bits of gravel spray the windowpane as the madman nears the building, and she stares at the manager’s dull face. She can imagine the state of Design God’s brain, he doesn’t have to say any more.
* * *
“Scampishness! Scamps! All’a, or plenty’a we heroes is scamps — dat is what I telling you. Governor Chacon surrender Trinidad to the English without a shot! And furthermore, he play kiss-ass to the next scamp, Picton, yes, dat nastiness Kernel Picton, Governor Picton — ent yuh know Picton Street?”
Sammy’s quick brain had start putting two and two together long before now, driving all about, as many hours and radio listening as possible. Programs sponsored by the library or university, or We T’ing hour. Anything to keep his brain occupy and busy. Now, in the rumshop on Independence Square, first time back after certain things had occur in his life, the ole boys hardly notice him ’cause they well into a piece’a ole talk.
“When you really check it, dat is it — we inherit scampishness. Picton, he receive half-pay as captain for twelve years, even when Abercromby leave him in Port’a Spain. And…”
Abercromby Street — downtown, vital, but dirty — has a few bars of course, but also goods shops, hardware, old strong buildings. Abercromby couldn’t be so bad, Sammy thinks, is the Belmont taxi one-way route out of Independence Square. But, they say, maybe he bribe the coward Chacon. Sam amaze himself, that he could find similarities between the historical characters and places, streets, named after them. He would look into this further, check it out with Father McBarnette.
“Cipriani is the next one. He, they teach you in school, he set up de first Workingman’s Association, say he was for de people — but he was on de white man side too.”
Cipriani College and then the boulevard, broad and clean, came to Sam. He like how this thing playing out in his mind like a detective movie, enthrilling and guessy, giving him things to think about.
“Scamp. Dat wasn’t Cipriani statue right here in de square?” another taxi driver ask.
“Yeah, boy. That’s why Sparrow had to sing about it—’cause was more bacchanal before they take it down—’bout if they should keep it or not. People was only destroying it and breaking off hand and foot and t’ing.”
Little, scrawny Oh Yes pipe up from the next table. He always tired and look like he can’t raise heself, only to get in his car and move the gear stick, but hear him, “Oh yes, I is one’a them who break off de man hand, self!”
“You boy, Oh Yes?”
“Why not? Oh yes. Me self. One night, I lash it with a piece’a two-by-four, oh yes. Captain Arthur Cipriani — I give him licks, oh yes!”
Sammy have to laugh at how the man looking so proud and satisfy with heself. “But you not easy, Oh Yes!”
A next man clap him on his back and he grinning, settling back against the cool wall.
One of them start singing Sparrow song. “I am made of steel and concrete, my address is downtown Frederick Street … Stand quiet and discreet, de sweetness of the oil drum round the street — that’s where I am to be. Cipriani Statue in de heart of town…”
“Where they take it and throw it?”
“Who knows? But de joke of it is dat now, they put up a statue’a Sparrow.”
“Where?”
“Where?” One taxi man tap the next driver on his head — they realize he mean Lord Kitchener statue, recently erected in Saint James roundabout. “Don’ get tie up, boy. Yuh too young.”
Sammy young too but he know things, his brain making connections same as a professor — speed speed.
“That’s de same thing Sparrow say, ‘Schooling to make me a blughead mule … educate to make comedians, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall … and Dan … is de man … in de van.’”
“Ah wanna fall…” the others chorus, changing the lyrics one time:
“Mama look a boo-boo…”
“Sparrow is boss, yuh know.”
“Dat ain’ Sparrow.”
“But Chalkie is de King’a political kaiso.”
“I know but don’ let we start on dat. I ain’ finish with this scamps and scampishness story.”
“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, sailed off in a wooden shoe…”
They hush up the singer so the man can continue.
“‘De Deaf, de Dumb and de Blind’—Eric Williams…”
“Who sing dat? Chalkdust?”
“Gypsy?”
Two set off quarreling while the man continue. Sammy listening good, though, to build up his theary. This is a sign today — that talk, on top of driving, will bring him back normal.
“Well, is ‘Eric de Ass,’ ‘Father of the Nation,’ so they call him, ‘Godfather of the Caribbean.’ Chookolingo used to call him donkey, and draw him in de papers with big ears so, and them rest’a Caribbean prime ministers riding him, so…” He break down with all’a them doing the antics in the rumshop.
“I know de name Chookolingo…,” Young Fool say.
Everybody know about the owner of the Bomb newspaper, the same paper popular for sexy-porny photos of bullipscious local girls.
Sam don’t approve of the papers himself, he like to leave that kind of staring deprivedness to them prisoners and unruly men.
“Was Seaga, Burnham, Gairy, and dem, in dem days, riding Eric de Ass, and he only giving out oil money, wild wild. Well, Eric Williams hold Chookolingo and throw him in jail for bad mouth. When Chooko release — two weeks later Williams name in de papers again. He say he exercising he freedom of rights and speech and t’ing.”
“Tha’s when them rest’a press say, that Eric say, ‘Let the jackass bray.’ Whoy!”
Table slamming, drinks downing, and the air in the rumshop roiling up good. Sammy like to see it so — in a racket. Who hooting, who braying, skinning up they lips like donkey smelling urine, and of course beating the donkey song percussion. Sammy not looking forward to this year Carnival at all. On top’a the usual madness, it go be one set’a foolishness. In the middle of the racket, he try to think of the Eric Williams Medical Complex, name after Trinidad’s first prime minister.
How come more wasn’t named after him? Sam can’t ask ’cause they busy arguing about if Williams was a good man or a scamp or what. Then he remembers the papers, after the hospital was named — his daughter vex at the time ’cause her father had said he didn’t want nothing name after him. Well, Sam reflect on the huge compound between the highway and Eastern Main Road — is a big hell of a thing, with the fanciest medical apparatus and “wings” of hospital spreading so and so. Was a big contract went down for it to get built. Something with some Canadian company and Moonan in the mix. A white elephant they call it now and is true, when you go in there, is big and foreign. Sam went once, and walk in the TV-style, cold waiting area. They even have a canteen nice like a restaurant, and coffee shop like in the malls, and plenty landscaping grounds. But when he peep at some of the wards with good-good signs pointing them out — no doctors or nurses or sick people about — chain and padlock on the doors. The image of Williams stamped in Sammy brain — the serious man in the dark glasses with a hearing-aid wire like a telephone cord dropping from one ear — is equally mysterious to him.