Hat said, ‘Is the only thing she really could feel, I think.’
The strangest thing about this was that Mrs Bhakcu herself kept the bat clean and well-oiled. Boyee tried many times to borrow the bat, but Mrs Bhakcu never lent it.
So on the evening of the day when the car fell on Bhakcu I went to see him at work.
‘What you did saying about the tappet knocking?’ he said.
‘I didn’t say nothing,’ I said. ‘I was asking you.’
‘Oh.’
Bhakcu worked late into the night, taking down the engine. He worked all the next day, Sunday, and all Sunday night. On Monday morning the mechanic came.
Mrs Bhakcu told my mother, ‘The company send the mechanic man. The trouble with these Trinidad mechanics is that they is just piss-in-tail little boys who don’t know the first thing about cars and things.’
I went round to Bhakcu’s house and saw the mechanic with his head inside the bonnet. Bhakcu was sitting on the running-board, rubbing grease over everything the mechanic handed him. He looked so happy dipping his fingers in the grease that I asked, ‘Let me rub some grease, Uncle Bhakcu.’
‘Go away, boy. You too small.’
I sat and watched him.
He said, ‘The tappet was knocking, but I fix it.’
I said, ‘Good.’
The mechanic was cursing.
I asked Bhakcu, ‘How the points?’
He said, ‘I have to check them up.’
I got up and walked around the car and sat on the running-board next to Bhakcu.
I looked at him and I said, ‘You know something?’
‘What?’
‘When I did hear the engine on Saturday, I didn’t think it was beating nice.’
Bhakcu said, ‘You getting to be a real smart man, you know. You learning fast.’
I said, ‘Is what you teach me.’
It was, as a matter of fact, pretty nearly the limit of my knowledge. The knocking tappet, the points, the beat of the engine and — yes, I had forgotten one thing.
‘You know, Uncle Bhakcu,’ I said.
‘What, boy?’
‘Uncle Bhakcu, I think is the carburettor.’
‘You really think so, boy?’
‘I sure, Uncle Bhakcu.’
‘Well, I go tell you, boy. Is the first thing I ask the mechanic. He don’t think so.’
The mechanic lifted a dirty and angry face from the engine and said, ‘When you have all sort of ignorant people messing about with a engine the white people build with their own own hands, what the hell else you expect?’
Bhakcu winked at me.
He said, ‘I think is the carburettor.’
Of all the drills, I liked the carburettor drill the best. Sometimes Bhakcu raced the engine while I put my palm over the carburettor and off again. Bhakcu never told me why we did this and I never asked. Sometimes we had to siphon petrol from the tank, and I would pour this petrol into the carburettor while Bhakcu raced the engine. I often asked him to let me race the engine, but he wouldn’t agree.
One day the engine caught fire, but I jumped away in time. The fire didn’t last.
Bhakcu came out of the car and looked at the engine in a puzzled way. I thought he was annoyed with it, and I was prepared to see him dismantle it there and then.
That was the last time we did that drill with the carburettor.
At last the mechanic tested the engine and the brakes, and said, ‘Look, the car good good now, you hear. It cost me more work than if I was to build over a new car. Leave the damn thing alone.’
After the mechanic left, Bhakcu and I walked very thoughtfully two or three times around the car. Bhakcu was stroking his chin, not talking to me.
Suddenly he jumped into the driver’s seat and pressed the horn-button a few times.
He said, ‘What you think about the horn, boy?’
I said, ‘Blow it again, let me hear.’
He pressed the button again.
Hat pushed his head through a window and shouted, ‘Bhakcu, keep the damn car quiet, you hear, man. You making the place sound as though it have a wedding going on.’
We ignored Hat.
I said, ‘Uncle Bhakcu, I don’t think the horn blowing nice.’
He said, ‘You really don’t think so?’
I made a face and spat.
So we began to work on the horn.
When we were finished there was a bit of flex wound round the steering-column.
Bhakcu looked at me and said, ‘You see, you could just take this wire now and touch it on any part of the metalwork, and the horn blow.’
It looked unlikely, but it did work.
I said, ‘Uncle Bhak, how you know about all these things?’
He said, ‘You just keep on learning all the time.’
The men in the street didn’t like Bhakcu because they considered him a nuisance. But I liked him for the same reason that I liked Popo, the carpenter. For, thinking about it now, Bhakcu was also an artist. He interfered with motor-cars for the joy of the thing, and he never seemed worried about money.
But his wife was worried. She, like my mother, thought that she was born to be a clever handler of money, born to make money sprout from nothing at all.
She talked over the matter with my mother one day.
My mother said, ‘Taxi making a lot of money these days, taking Americans and their girl friends all over the place.’
So Mrs Bhakcu made her husband buy a lorry.
This lorry was really the pride of Miguel Street. It was a big new Bedford and we all turned out to welcome it when Bhakcu brought it home for the first time.
Even Hat was impressed. ‘If is one thing the English people could build,’ he said, ‘is a lorry. This is not like your Ford and your Dodge, you know.’
Bhakcu began working on it that very afternoon, and Mrs Bhakcu went around telling people, ‘Why not come and see how he working on the Bedford?’
From time to time Bhakcu would crawl out from under the lorry and polish the wings and the bonnet. Then he would crawl under the lorry again. But he didn’t look happy.
The next day the people who had lent the money to buy the Bedford formed a deputation and came to Bhakcu’s house, begging him to desist.
Bhakcu remained under the lorry all the time, refusing to reply. The money-lenders grew angry, and some of the women among them began to cry. Even that failed to move Bhakcu, and in the end the deputation just had to go away.
When the deputation left, Bhakcu began to take it out of his wife. He beat her and he said, ‘Is you who want me to buy lorry. Is you. Is you. All you thinking about is money, money. Just like your mother.’
But the real reason for his temper was that he couldn’t put back the engine as he had found it. Two or three pieces remained outside and they puzzled him.
The agents sent a mechanic.
He looked at the lorry and asked Bhakcu, very calmly, ‘Why you buy a Bedford?’
Bhakcu said, ‘I like the Bedford.’
The mechanic shouted, ‘Why the arse you didn’t buy a Rolls-Royce? They does sell those with the engine sealed down.’
Then he went to work, saying sadly, ‘Is enough to make you want to cry. A nice, new new lorry like this.’
The starter never worked again. And Bhakcu always had to use the crank.
Hat said, ‘Is a blasted shame. Lorry looking new, smelling new, everything still shining, all sort of chalk-mark still on the chassis, and this man cranking it up like some old Ford pram.’
But Mrs Bhakcu boasted, ‘Fust crank, the engine does start.’
One morning — it was a Saturday, market day — Mrs Bhakcu came crying to my mother. She said, ‘He in hospital.’