Her heart started to pound when she got out of the cornfield. To see people again! A dirt track led off to her right. She followed it to where it stopped a little farther on, making a T junction with a cobble street that ran off perpendicular to it. On the street to her right were two-three broken-down farmhouses in a row. To her left the cobble street meandered into the distance, probably leading into the town. Tan-Tan checked out the farmhouses again. The two goats tied up in the yard of the closest one scarcely raised their heads to look at her.
A woman came out from round the side of the house. Tan-Tan started, looked round for somewhere to hide; then checked herself. This is what she’d come for.
The woman swayed with the weight of a bucket balanced on her head. She spied Tan-Tan, stopped and watched at her. It was too far to discern her expression, but for a little bit Tan-Tan just stood and stared at the strangeness of her; her round face with neither beak nor snout, her two legs-them that bent to the front not the back. She would use them to walk, not hop. It came in strange to Tan-Tan. She felt her own body beginning to remember that it was human not douen, that her feet-them were made to walk on ground, not climb through trees. She smiled at the woman. “Morning, Compère,” she called out.
The woman just turned away and headed off for the compost heap with her slop bucket. What for do, eh? Some people just ain’t have manners. Tan-Tan shrugged and headed down the cobble street, looking for the town proper.
The street was lined with run-down wattle-and-daub houses, stink from the reek of the goat dung that formed their plaster. The front stairs to one bungalow had rotted away completely. Somebody had put a piece of warped board over the crumbling wood to make a ramp. A little farther on it had one mako midden heap, everything in it from a mashed-up baby cradle to rotting entrails, rank in the sun. Tan-Tan could hear the flies buzzing round it. A goat was standing on top of it, ripping and eating the leaves out of an antique paper book. The sight was shocking. Who had thrown away knowledge like that?
Eyes malice-bright, the goat watched her go by, twitching its ears to keep off the flies. It wrinkled up its nose like if is she who smelt bad.
In the front yard of the house after the midden heap it had a scruffy man digging in a half-dead kitchen garden. Tan-Tan patted the knot that hid her ring. She went to greet him. Like all the rest, his house was small and lopsided. Something had been split or maybe spewed against one of the mud-coloured walls; the dried residue was orange-yellow and looked gritty. Bits of it were flaking off into the pack earth. Half the steps up to the house had fallen away. It had a mangy, meager dog tied up in front with a piece of knotty rope. The dog start to bark when it saw her; a wheezy, resentful yipping.
“Morning!” Tan-Tan called out in a cheerful voice.
The man straightened up, stretched out his back, and looked at her. His eyes got wide. He cracked a big grin. Three of his front teeth were missing. His mouth looked just like his own front steps. His hair was snarled and matty-matty.
The dog was still barking. He went over to it and gave the rope round its neck a vicious yank. “Shut up!” The dog yelped and crouched down low on the ground. It stopped its noise.
The man flashed Tan-Tan a next gap-tooth grin and pulled up his pants that had been riding so low on his hips she’d seen the beginning of pubic hair peeking out above the waistband. “Ah,” he sighed. “What a way morning time bring me a piece of sweetness to grace my yard today.”
He was ugly like jackass behind, but she had to ask someone where to find the doctor. Tan-Tan remembered tallpeople ways. Bad Tan-Tan put on her coyest smile. “Morning, mister,” she cooed. “I lost, you know? Ain’t this is the way to the doctor?”
The man scratched his head, popped something between his fingers. “Like you new to Chigger Bite, doux-doux?”
Naturally the place would name after a parasite, Tan-Tan thought sarcastically. But she just giggled and played with her hair. “Yes, mister. I just visiting from over the way,” she said, pointing vaguely out beyond the opposite side of the village.
“Oh. From Wait-A-Bit?”
Wait-A-Bit. Must be the name of the next settlement. “Ee-hee,” she agreed. “And what you name, mister?”
The man stood to attention. He pulled down the shirt hem that had crept up over his paunch to expose a belly soft like a mound of mud; a bloated paunch on a meager man. He accidentally released the hoe handle; grabbed for it; it flew back and rapped him on the ear. Tan-Tan had to bite her lips to keep from laughing.
“Me?” the man said, rubbing the banged ear ruefully. “I name Alyosius. Alyosius Pereira. Al for short. And you, my girl, you must be name Beauty to match your nature, for I can’t tell when last I see anything so pretty as you.”
To Tan-Tan’s surprise, the look in Al’s eyes was warm and genuine. But what a way the man fool-fool! Her smile faded. She asked again:
“Is which part the doctor stay?”
“Make I take you, sweetness. I go give you the tour of Chigger Bite.” He leaned his hoe up against the side of the house, beckoned her to follow. Up close, he smelt of days-old sweat and rotten teeth. Tan-Tan fell in beside him, taking shallow breaths. They started off down the cobble road again.
“Chigger Bite Village,” Al said in a sunny voice, “is the nastiest, meanest of all the exile settlements on New Half-Way Tree, oui? In Chigger Bite, is every man and woman for themself.”
They passed a next flyblown midden heap. Al smelt sweet in comparison. He nodded in its direction: “Say you have a goat; a smelly, mangy goat, thin so till you swear you could see the sun shining through it flanks, but still, it does give milk when it have a mind to, when you could catch it before it bite you. Now, say a next feller put him eye ’pon your goat for some nice goat curry for him dinner; well then you best watch your back, oui? You could be walking your goat down the dirt trail to river bank good-good to get her some water, minding your own business, when next thing you know, one machète stroke chop the rope you leading your meager goat by, and if you make fast and try and stop the feller from running off with your property, well. Half hour later, them could find your carcass facedown in the river, fouling the water with the blood running from the slash in your throat.”
Tan-Tan stared at him. Al just pointed to a house they were passing, even dirtier than his own. A woman was hanging up raggedy laundry to dry on a line strung from the house to a dried-up lime tree nearby. Two snotty-nose pickney no older than two years were hanging on to her dress hem. One of them picked up a twig and threw it in the direction of Al and Tan-Tan, but the little arm didn’t have plenty power. The twig dropped to the ground right in front of the pickney’s foot. Without even self looking, the mother slapped it across its head. The pickney didn’t seem to notice.
Al continued with his story. “And it ain’t have nobody who would feel sorry for you, oui? Once you dead, your woman go praise God that it have one day in this land she ain’t have to slave for no man. Only one day, for you know that tomorrow some next man who couldn’t find a woman before this go be sniffing round she skirts. Your pickney-them go run wild, for now it ain’t have nobody to lash them and stripe their legs with no greenstick switch. And friend? Nobody in Chigger Bite have any friends. It only have two kind of people: them who would like to kill you on sight, and them who can’t be bothered with you.”
Tan-Tan decided she’d better get to her business and get the rass out of this place. “Al? Is which part the doctor living?”