No matter. She slapped the door with the flat of her hand and shouted, “Inside! Allyou in there? Gladys? Michael?”
The coughing noise stopped one time. After a few seconds, the handle of the door turned in Tan-Tan’s hands. Michael opened the door one little crack to peer out at her. A cloud of black, greasy smoke with the stench of burning oil floated out the iron shop and escaped on the breeze. Tan-Tan coughed and waved her hands to dispel the smoke, but she had to smile at the sight of Michael’s soot-covered face, his reddened eyes glistening like guinèpe fruit. “Mister Michael,” she said teasingly, “like one of your creations blow up in your face, or what?”
Michael tried to wipe away some of the soot, but all like how his hands were black with it too, he only smeared his face worse. “What you want, Tan-Tan? We busy.”
Tan-Tan frowned at his tone. “Ain’t you remember, Michael? You tell me was to come and get my birthday present today,” she said in her sweetest voice. “It not ready yet?” She gave him a disappointed look, biting her bottom lip to make it fuller and riper. What were they doing in there that they wouldn’t make her see?
“Nah, nah, is all right, Tan-Tan, I have your present right here.”
Tan-Tan smiled and stepped forward, thinking Michael would open the door for her; instead he said, “Soon come,” and shut it in her face. She heard the bolts slide over. What the rass…?! Tan-Tan kissed her teeth. Nothing she could do about it, she just had to stand there and wait for Michael to come back out. She put her ear to the door. She thought she could hear Gladys’s voice, then Michael’s, but she couldn’t make out the words. It fell quiet inside the iron shop.
In a little minute a clean-face Michael cracked the door again. He stepped outside fast-fast and shut it behind him. A quick blast of heat had followed him out. It dissipated on the breeze. Tan-Tan had only managed a glimpse inside before the bolts locked. There was something big like a donkey cart in there, covered right down to the ground in an oilcloth that had mako rockstones weighting it down. Tan-Tan was mad for curious. “Is a big something that,” she said enquiringly.
Michael only smiled, caramel skin crinkling to cocoa along his forge-weathered face. “Craven puppy does choke, Tan-Tan. When time come for you to know, you will know.”
Oh, yes? She knew how to get what she wanted from him. She grimaced a little, made a small noise of pain, lifted one foot delicately off the ground and perched it on top of the other.
“What happen to you?” he asked.
“Is a long walk over here, you know. I think I must be blister my foot.” She bent over, slowly slipped her alpagat sandal off her slim, brown foot. She spread her toes and inspected them. Michael gave a small intake of breath. She had him now. “You see any blister there, Michael? Between the big toe and the long toe? It paining me right there so.”
Michael pursed his lips. He looked almost frightened. He wiped his hand on the leather apron tied round his waist. His smith’s biceps jumped with the movement. He came closer and bent to look at her foot. The tips of his ears went ruddy with embarrassment. “You don’t think maybe I should go inside and sit down?” Tan-Tan asked him. She nearly felt wicked, teasing him like this. For a big, hard-back man, Michael was shy and gentle so till he wouldn’t even mash ants beneath his foot. For all her mischievousness, Tan-Tan liked him. He was a man who saved his strength for his work, not for brutalising people who didn’t do as he wanted.
“I ain’t see no cut,” he said softly.
Enough. She wasn’t going to torment the poor man any more. “Well, maybe is just a little soreness. You bring the knife?” She slipped her alpagats back on.
He straightened up, held his apron away from his thighs, kept wiping his hands in it as though they were wet. He took a long, chamois-wrapped package out of his apron pocket and held it towards her.
It had been Janisette’s idea; a cooking knife.
“The way people always sweet after you,” she’d told Tan-Tan, “you go have your own partner soon, and you go have to do your share of the cooking. A good cook need a sharp knife.” She’d sent Tan-Tan to the iron shop to order it, so Gladys could measure her grip. But as Tan-Tan had opened up her mouth to tell Gladys to make a cooking knife, the image of the Robber Queen dolly had popped into her head, and for some reason she’d said “hunting knife” instead. She hadn’t made Janisette know. Too besides, it was time she owned her own hunting knife. She and Melonhead were going to have to go through bush to get to Sweet Pone.
Tan-Tan unwrapped the chamois. An oiled leather sheath lay inside it. A shaped wooden handle protruded from it, rivets still new and shiny. Tan-Tan slid the knife out of its sheath. Light winked along the blade edge.
“When you not using it,” Michael said, “you must clean it with the chamois then oil it. And you must always store it in the sheath, you understand me?”
Tan-Tan just watched at the knife. It was gun-metal grey. A dark blue sheen chased itself round the blade. The tip of the blade came to a sharp point. She touched her finger to it, hissed as the point entered her skin.
“Careful!” Michael took the knife from her. “The point is so you could use it for throwing. Gladys make the handle from some Jamaica mahogany Chichibud bring we from Sweet Pone.”
The hardest wood, the most precious. It only had a few Jamaica mahogany trees growing on New Half-Way Tree, from a cutting an exile had brought years back. The way the handle of the knife curved, the way it was just the length of her palm and looked smooth like a baby’s cheek, Tan-Tan’s hand was itching to hold it again. She reached to take it from Michael.
“Mind now, girl. You must treat a knife with respect. You is left handed, yes? Here. Take it.”
The knife fit her hand like she’d been born carrying it. She laughed and swung it through the air. It sang.
“Wait, wait! Not like that. You go hurt somebody, or drop it and cut off your own pretty foot. Let me show you how.”
Michael stood behind her and reached over her shoulder to take her hand. He formed her fingers around the hilt of the knife. Shyly he said, “Like so. Feel the indentations for your fingers, and the one on top for your thumb? When your thumb slide into that space, you know you have the right angle for throwing.”
Tan-Tan turned and made to throw the knife at the trunk of the big halwa tree in the yard.
“No, not like that! You have to cock your arm back like this.” He bent her arm into the right position.
“Thanks, Michael.” She gave him a seductive smile. He looked down at the ground. What a way this man was sweet! Tan-Tan too liked gentle Michael. He was no true exile, had followed Gladys for love. People like him and Melonhead would never try to catch her in a quiet corner and feel her up. Not like…
Suddenly angry, she grunted and threw the knife. It went wide of its mark and sliced through a branchlet of the tree before it tumbled to the ground.
Michael laughed. “You get power in that throwing arm, Tan-Tan!” He retrieved the knife and gave it back to her. “The way you stand is the most important thing. You must plant your right foot in front.” He pointed at her foot, looked quickly away.
“Like you giving the girl-pickney a lesson, Michael?”
Michael started at the sound of Gladys’s voice. He took a step away from Tan-Tan.
“Ah-hah. Showing she how to use she new present.”