“Father Tree shade you, little one.” Chichibud skinned his snout back in a smile. “You sleep good?”
“Yes.” Yesterday his snarly, snouty grin would have frightened her, but she was coming to like how his face looked.
Chichibud had used branches to rig a net of vine over the fire. He was smoking strips of mako jumbie meat in it. It smelt nice. But he had the mako jumbie head in the net smoking too, with its beak cut off, ugly as the devil he own self. The beak halves stood nearby, like a canoe that had been sliced in half.
“Why you cooking the head?”
Shu-shu-shu. “Not cooking; drying. I go jam it on a stake and stand the stake up right here-so in this bush, so anybody who pass by going to know that a fine hunter win a battle here. Beak coming home with me to decorate my entranceway.” His long tongue flicked out, licked his snout, the corner of one eye; slid back into his mouth. He held out a piece of gristle for her. “Here; piece of the mako jumbie tongue. The sweetest part to eat.”
It had bumps on it like on her own tongue, but big. And it was dark blue. Her gorge rose. “No.” Then she remembered her manners. “No, thank you, Chichibud.” Oh, but she’d come to talk to him for a reason: “Daddy arm paining he. Come and fix it, nuh?”
“Yes. I have some hard words for he too. We nearly all dead because of he.”
Chichibud stood. From beside him he picked up Daddy’s empty rum flask. He’d found the lid, transferred the water from his calabash into the bottle. He saw Tan-Tan looking at him. “Precious thing this your daddy cast away. I take it as payment for my trouble.”
The arm he had scraped the night before was all over scabs now. Tan-Tan wondered if he had spit on it the way he had spit on Daddy’s broken bone. He began to limp towards where Daddy was lying.
“Chichibud, your leg hurt?”
He didn’t answer. When he reached Antonio he stood by his head, making Antonio scrunch his eyes to look up at him in the sunlight.
“Tallpeople, you know what we does do to people who break trail debt?” Antonio said nothing.
“We does break they two… arms and leave them out in the bush.”
Tan-Tan’s skin prickled. Chichibud would do that? Hurt Daddy and leave him like that? It was her fault. She shouldn’t have made a noise when the grit fly bit; she should have just gone outside and lit the fire back her own self. Then Daddy wouldn’t be in trouble.
Chichibud ask Antonio, “What I must do with you? Eh?”
“You ain’t go do nothing with me. You go keep me alive so I could look after my little girl.”
Chichibud skinned up one side of his snout. That looked to Tan-Tan like a growl, not a laugh. Is so mad dog does do before they jump you. Tan-Tan went and stood close to Daddy.
“Mister,” Chichibud said, “best I leave you for Bush Poopa to take in truth. She go survive better without you.”
“No!” Tan-Tan leapt into Daddy’s arms. He cried out in pain. Horrified at what she’d done, Tan-Tan jumped up again. Antonio glared at the douen.
Chichibud jerked his snout up into the air two-three times, like a he-lizard throwing a challenge. His ruff started to swell out. Then he stopped.
“No. I liard. I not going to hurt you. Is just vex I vex.”
Antonio’s face was serious. “Look, you right. I do a stupid thing last night. I sorry. I make a long, long journey to this strange place, and it sitting heavy on my heart that I never going to see home again.”
His tone of voice was familiar. It was the same one he used to use on the narrowcasts back home come election time. Mummy called it “speechifying.” Antonio hung his head, looking shame. Tan-Tan felt bad. She was so much trouble.
“We could reach Junjuh today,” Chichibud said, “if you mind everything I tell you.”
“Yes. I go do that.”
Antonio made as if to get up, but he sucked air and sat back down. “Tan-Tan say maybe you have something for pain. Is true?”
“Same bitter bark from last night. I could only give you little piece. You chew too much, you go fall asleep. You go be thirsty too, after chewing it last night. First thing, we go find some water vine.”
By the time the shadows were getting long again, Tan-Tan was weary so till she thought she would drop. They had had to move slowly because walking jogged Antonio’s arm badly. He came close to fainting away a few times. Chichibud was limping heavily on his injured leg, but even so, he had a net vine sling at his back with the smoked mako jumbie meat, and was carrying the dead bird’s beak halves stacked inside each other and overturned on his head. He’d made a second sling in which Tan-Tan was carrying more smoked bird.
“For the way you was brave,” he’d said. “Food to share with your daddy until he could hunt for the both of you.” It was heavy. He’d had to remind her a few times not to drag it on the ground.
Junjuh village snuck up on Tan-Tan like a mongoose; one minute, the three of them were beating their way through bush, then the bush got less dense, fewer trees, more shrubs. Next minute they turned a corner to see cleared earth.
Two men were standing round a low round wall made of stone. It had a roller handle above it. A rope wound round the handle and extended down inside the wall. The wall had a thatch roof. One of the men, the big, brawny one, was winding the handle. So he turned so the handle creaked. Both men were chanting:
As Tan-Tan and Daddy and Chichibud approached, the men wrestled a dripping bucket up at the end of the rope. The bucket was strange, made of pieces of wood with iron bands round them. “Daddy, what they doing?” Tan-Tan whispered. By now she knew it was no point asking eshu. He’d gone and left her.
“I think is a well that, doux-doux,” Antonio replied tiredly. “For getting water out of the ground.”
Out of the ground? Why not from the tap in their house? One man picked up a large calabash, one of two round-bottomed gourd containers that had been sitting in twisted rings of cloth on the ground. He put the cloth on his head then sat the calabash in the ring. The other man carefully poured water from the bucket into the calabash. He gave his friend the bucket to hold. His friend wove his head a little from side to side to counter the sloshing of the water. The second man arranged his own calabash on his head then went down on one knee so his friend could fill it. He began to stand with the full calabash of water. He would spill it!
But no, he made it safely to both feet. The men rested the bucket on the lip of the well then, steadying their calabashes with one hand, they turned and started walking down the path. Their hips and heads swayed like those of Bharata Natyam dancers as they balanced the shifting water. Tan-Tan laughed with glee to see it.
They stopped at the sound and turned, slowly, their heads sliding from side to side. One of them grinned. “Eh Chichibud, ain’t see you for a while. I bet you been up to mischief, ain’t, boy? And is who that with you? Like you mash them up bad, oui!” Tan-Tan frowned, confused. The man spoke to Chichibud the way adults spoke to her.
Chichibud said, “Evening, Master One-Eye, Master Claude. These two drop out the half-way tree.”
Master? Only machines were supposed to give anybody rank like that. The two men beckoned them over. Daddy drew himself up tall as he limped up to them. “Good evening, Compères,” he said in his official voice. “I name Antonio, and this is my daughter, Tan-Tan.”
One of the men had an eye cloudy in its socket like guinèpe seed. He nodded at Antonio. “One-Eye, me. This is my partner, Claude.” Claude said nothing, just spread his two feet-them wide for balance and stood there looking at them. He had a truncheon tucked into his waistband. One-Eye clapped Chichibud hard on his back. The douen man stumbled, favouring his injured leg. “Chichibud, you thieving little bastard, you!” One-Eye said. “I bet you you make these two give you something before you bring them here.”