“Nah, I ain’t mean nothing by it.” He was searching through his room. “Let me just find my good boots.”
“We taking the side routes, so you know. Can’t make anybody see where I go.”
He straightened up from tying his laces. She’d forgotten his short, sweet, bandy legs. “All this secrecy really necessary, girl?”
Panic fluttered in her throat. “Yes! And if you can’t honour that, tell me now and let me go my ways.”
“I never break word with you yet, Tan-Tan.”
But she’d broken hers to him. “Make we go.” She tipped her sombrero low on her head.
He followed her uncomplainingly, dipping into side streets, taking the least observed routes. He followed her through the cover of the eveningtime cornfields, through the middle bush to where she’d stashed her lantern. He just raised an eyebrow at how quickly she found it. It would be dark before she got back, Abitefa would be worried. She shouldn’t have stayed this long. How would she let Tefa know she was bringing company? How would Melonhead react to the hinte? To the rolling calf pup? She didn’t know what she was doing, or why. “We have to go quick.”
“Seen.”
He hiked along quietly with her for almost an hour, a soothing presence by her side. He held the lantern for her while she lit it, handed it back to her, said, “You making baby, ain’t it?”
“You could tell!” she stuttered, too shocked to dissemble.
“Not at first, no. That cape does hide plenty. But it start to show in your walk once you get out of Sweet Pone.”
“Huh.” She strode off, leaving him to keep up.
Another half hour of silence, not calming this time. Tan-Tan’s brain was seething over, too fast for sense. She was aware of every step Melonhead took, every inclination of his head. She nearly jumped out of her skin when he took a preparatory breath in. He was going to speak. He said, “Tan-Tan, don’t vex at the question: is Antonio baby?”
“Why you would ask me something like that!” She stomped on ahead of him, horrified herself with the fleeting thought that she could abandon him here in bush, like in the douen stories. She had let him get too close.
He caught up to her, gazed at her, waiting. Fucking man, always waiting, waiting for her to say what was on her mind. She said, “I can’t talk about it, don’t ask me.”
He nodded. “Seen.” They kept walking. In a few more minutes, he reached slowly for her hand. She took it and held on, tight-tight like creeper vine.
“Is really your home your taking me to, Tan-Tan?”
“My camp, yes.”
“It dark out here like backra soul, oui. You not frighten in this bush come nightfall?”
She felt pleased with herself. “Not any more.”
In another hour they were approaching the place where she and Tefa had made camp. Tefa had left pork-knacker signs, bush prospector signs, to tell her that she’d made that night’s nest in another nearby tree. They did that every night; it gave the rolling calf pup somewhere new to graze. Tefa was probably already hearing two sets of feet tramping through the bush, was wondering is what a-go on. “Tefa!” she skreeked. Her hinte talk was getting better. “A tallpeople with me! No danger!” Tefa carolled back that she was prepared.
Melonhead had jumped when she began calling. He halted dead where he stood. “What you make that noise for?” he asked.
“I have a packbird with me,” she said. The story she and Tefa had prepared if they were to need it. She hoped they could pull it off. “Just letting she… it know I coming.” Now she could see through the trees the flicker of the campfire. “Melonhead I have, ah, a pet.”
“You mean the bird?”
It took her a second to understand that he was calling Abitefa a pet. “No, a next beast. Don’t ’fraid when you see she.”
By the lamplight she could see him smiling. “You got what, a hunting dog or something?”
“No, more like a ankylosaur.”
“How you mean?”
“She getting big, all right? And she scary looking, but she won’t mean you no harm. Just don’t get where she could step on your foot.”
They stepped into the campsite. Snuffling with joy, the rolling calf pup rushed Tan-Tan, narrowly missing her with one of its horns. Melonhead shouted and froze. “What the bloodcloth…!” Inquisitive, the pup went to sniff at him. Melonhead put out warding hands, his face grey with alarm. The pup sampled a bit of his sleeve.
“Stop that!” Tan-Tan scolded her, pulling on her horns. “Sorry Melonhead, she growing; she is nothing but appetite.”
“She going to get bigger?” The pup chewed meditatively, spat out a button.
“Little bit, yes. Watch out for she tail there. She mother reached to my shoulder. I killed she, the mother I mean, but is my fault. I frighten she and she attack. I couldn’t abandon the pup after that.”
Some of the fear had gone from Melonhead’s face. Carefully he reached out a hand and stroked one of the pup’s horns. “In all my born days, I never.”
Abitefa fluttered down from the nest. Melonhead straightened, smiled. “Now, here something I more familiar with. Coo-coo, bird-oi.” He made dove noises at Abitefa, holding out his hand. She looked to Tan-Tan for guidance.
“Ahm, she not used to strangers. She won’t come to you.”
He dropped the hand, pulled it out of reach of the pup’s nibbling mouth. In her beak Abitefa picked up a log of the wood she had gathered to stoke the fire. She must have thought better of it, for she dropped it again and stood looking at Melonhead. She didn’t get to see plenty tallpeople.
Melonhead glanced round the campsite. “Nanny bless, Tan-Tan; is here you staying? And all because of Janisette?”
“I like it here,” she lied. “You hungry?”
That was a long night; long in good and bad ways. There was the moment when Tan-Tan realised she couldn’t really expect Melonhead to make his way back home through the bush in the dark. He was going to have to stay there with them. How come she hadn’t thought of that before? It pleased her and frightened her to have him stay. She showed him how to climb up into the nest and he praised her ingenuity at training her bird to build it for her. Abitefa’s neck feathers had bristled. Tan-Tan had told him how she slept snuggled next to Abitefa for warmth and he’d said sweetly, “You don’t have to do that tonight, sweetheart. I here.” Tan-Tan had gaped at him, looked helplessly at Tefa, who just gazed back, puzzled. Finally Tan-Tan had had to ask her in awkward hinte to please sleep somewhere else for the night. Abitefa had made a peculiar noise and climbed up higher in the tree. Leaves and twigs had rained down on she and Melonhead for a while as Tefa had woven herself a new nest.
Yes, a long, long night alone in a confined space with Melonhead, which she had managed by pretending to fall asleep almost instantly. Melonhead had called her name softly a few times, then sighed and curled himself round her. She’d lain like that for hours, feeling the slow beat of his heart against her spine, his arm curled round her belly.
Come morning time Abitefa didn’t show up. Trying not to worry, Tan-Tan had shared with Melonhead her breakfast of smoked tree frog and dried halwa fruit. Things were awkward between them, shaped by the silences she insisted on. He said he had to get back to his shop. She walked him to the edge of the bush, made clumsy small talk the whole way. Before stepping back out into Sweet Pone he took her hand and said, “You going to be moving on soon?”
“Yes. Nuh must?”
“I not convinced, but if is so you want it. Come and see me before you go?”
“I promise.”
“Don’t promise, just do it.”
True, her promises were no good. Sadly she watched him thread his way through the corn. She had disappointed him again.
When she got back to the camp, Abitefa was waiting. *You partnering with that tallpeople now?*
No, she wasn’t. But she found herself back in Sweet Pone two days later, looking for excuses to keep passing and repassing the front of Melonhead’s shop, too jittery to just walk in. She stared wistfully at the people who did: the old man in the anachronistic suit; the bongo toughy little girl who was clutching a rubber ball in one hand and holding the torn seat of her dungarees closed with the other; the preoccupied-looking young woman who had a bag full of either cloth or mending. She was pretty, that one—fat and firm with a high, round behind. She stayed in Melonhead’s shop too long for Tan-Tan’s taste, left with too big a smile on her face.
And who was she Tan-Tan to care? Standing there in patched-up, leaf-stained clothes; no pot to piss in, no roof over her head. Who was she to be scrutinizing who Melonhead was entertaining?
She was preoccupied, that’s why he caught her. Another day and she would have zwipsed into the shadows as soon as he set foot out of his shop. Damned baby was slowing her down, yes.
“Tan-Tan!” he called, waving. She gasped. He was coming over, face alight with joy. “You come to see me!”
“Ahm, yes, I suppose so.” She couldn’t meet his eyes for long. She felt dirty, plain.
He looked glum. “Is ’cause you moving on?”
“Soon, yes. Not right now. I come, I come… because I want you make me some clothes,” she continued, happy to have thought of something that would make her feel less homely. “I need a new outfit that would hide this belly.”
This time his smile had some mischief in it. She knew that smile well. That smile had got her behind warmed for her one time when she had gone along with his suggestion that they knot all Compère Ramdass’s yellowed singlets together as they flapped on the clothes line behind his cottage. “If I going to sew for you, I have to measure you,” Melonhead said.
Her ears were burning. She just nodded. “Let we start then, nuh?”
She followed him into the shop. Pity that having clothes made would slow her down, waiting for him to finish them. She’d have to delay moving camp.
Melonhead closed the door. “You could take off the cape, people know not to come in while I measuring.”
Thankfully she shucked the heavy unbleached fabric she wore all the time now if she was among tallpeople. She should wash it soon; it was smeared with leaf and road stains. She rolled her shoulders luxuriously, stretched her neck.
Melonhead sat at his workspace and started pulling things out of a press beside his sewing machine: a tape measure, a pencil, some scraps of paper. “Why you want to hide that you making baby, Tan-Tan? Begging your pardon, but who go care?”
“I can’t make nobody…” she started, then stopped. No words to speak about Tan-Tan the Robber Queen. That was another self, another dimension. “I alone on the road. If people know say I pregnant them might try to take advantage.”
He looked disturbed at that. “True thing. Maybe you could stop here little bit till the baby born. I don’t think Janisette will find you. Come, stand over here.” He draped the tape measure over his neck and stood to face her. His hair smelt of sweet oil. Cheeks flaming, she let him take her measurements and write them down. She looked round the room to distract herself.
To stop in one place. Sweet Pone was nice. With a start of surprise, Tan-Tan realised that she hadn’t played Robber Queen on the Sweet Pone people yet.
There was more fabric in Melonhead’s shop than there had been the last time. Plenty more, and bright bright colours too besides. Her sister Quamina would have loved it in here, all the shiny needles and gorgeous cloths. “Like somebody give you a big job, eh?”
He laughed. “Sweetness, you been in the bush so long you ain’t even know what time of year this is?”
She did. Time for the mako jumbies to migrate to the poles. Time for the foot snakes to moult. She was trying to work out a way to tan the shed hides they left behind. Maybe she could make wallets with them to sell. She frowned. What did tallpeople do this time of year?
He took her by the shoulders, turned her to face him. “Tan-Tan, Carnival is three weeks from now. What you going to wear?”