By Robert J. Fernandes

(From his published short story anthology ‘Short & Sweet’)

THE small aircraft came to a stop in a cloud of dust at the end of the interior airstrip. It looked like some strange insect from the surrounding forest and seemed awkward and out of place on the ground. I was standing under an open-sided shed along with a group of porknockers.

These men were partners, as their friendship had been forged in the crucible of danger and hard times, over many years. Laughing and joking with each other, they were in good spirits, eagerly anticipating their long-awaited trip to their gold claim near Potaro River head.

The plane door opened and a short, large woman dressed in an old Guyana Defence Force uniform, was having trouble breaking free of the doorway. The door of this small plane was only designed for loading and unloading bags of sugar, rice and forty-five-gallon drums of fuel, so it couldn’t really handle Mavis. She appeared to be an enormous G.D.F. duffle bag with a head on it. She eventually sat on the floor of the plane and by passing the steps made, what was for her, a giant leap to the ground.

As the dust cleared, one of the porknockers called Rasta, recognised her and said to the leader of the group,
“Macaw, dat is not you sweet-oman Mavis? What she doing here?”

Macaw was a tall, lean man with a small head and I guessed that he got his name from the way he walked. He was badly parrot-toed and leaned forward when he walked, as if he didn’t want his tail to touch the ground. He should have been as surprised to see Mavis as they were, but he wasn’t. This caused the other porknockers to realise that something was up and they all turned towards Macaw for an explanation.

Yankee-Tom was the first to speak. “I hope yuh know she en going in no backdam wid we?”
“Who gun liff she up dem bumps in de trail?” asked another one of the group, called Granpa.

Coolie Ally mumbled to himself, “I shudda bring me chile mudda.”

Rasta said nothing and was still in shock as he stared disbelievingly at Mavis who was getting larger as she came towards them.

She waddled into the middle of the group, and as she turned to kiss her man Macaw, some part of her touched each one of them. The hairs on Macaw’s neck seemed to raise slightly, either because he was glad to see Mavis or in his anticipation of the battle with his partners that was about to begin. In his most commanding tones he declared,
“Somebody got fuh do de cooking wuk. Las time Granpa do um, he cook pure stupitness. Anyway Mavis gun cook and she gun get de same share as all awe.”

All hell broke loose. As I drifted away from the group, I could hear the shrill voice of Mavis, like a baboon’s call, high above the tangled voices of the others.

Sunday morning I was sitting on the bank of the Ireng River where I lived, trying to catch some fish. However the fish were all probably attending whatever holy services fish attend on Sundays and the only things biting were the atheistic Kaboura flies. As I watched the floating leaves go by on their journey to nowhere, the river seemed upset that the wind had disturbed the reflections on its surface so early in the morning.

In the distance the unmistakable, rhythmic tap-dance of paddles on the side of a corial, became slowly louder as three corials rounded the bend in the river and came towards me. It was Macaw and his crew of porknockers from the airstrip yesterday. Two of the corials were loaded with men and supplies and the other one was overloaded with Mavis alone draped across its middle.

Sebastian, an Amerindian friend of mine was paddling Mavis’s corial and I could see that he was under pressure. Amerindians have an instinctive rhythm when paddling. To them it is usually an effortless exercise that can be kept up all day. Mavis however, had Sebastian completely out of tune. It was not so much her weight, though it would have helped to have cut her into quarters like the tapir he had shot last week, and distributed her more evenly in the boat. The real problem with Mavis was that she had absolutely no sense of balance whatsoever and Sebastian had to use all his skill just to keep the corial from overturning.

As one of the boats passed near the bank where I sat, I called out, “Yankee-Tom, you all running late. Sun high already and you ain’t even reach first falls yet. What happen?”

“Wa happun,” growled Yankee-Tom, cutting his eye on the boat with Mavis which was now lagging behind, “It still happunin.” He then gave the loudest “suck teeth” that I have ever heard. It not only echoed across the river, but he dislodged his “false teeth” in the process and he had to struggle to keep them from falling overboard. As the corials slowly disappeared from view, I knew that the “Mavis Affair” was far from over and I had an urge to accompany the porknockers to the backdam so as not to miss the ending of the saga that would surely play out there.

Late one afternoon about two weeks later, my wait was over. I was tending my kitchen garden and listening to the gentle clicking of the Ite Palm leaves as they reported on the state of the wind in the Cipo valley, when the dark speck of a man floated down the grass-covered mountainside, and came slowly towards me. It was Rasta, or more accurately, what was left of him. Although I was accustomed to seeing porknockers after they had been walking for weeks on the trail, even so Rasta was in bad shape and looked somehow strange.

His fancy Brazilian jersey resembled a spider web designed to catch insects, which seemed to have caught a large animal instead. His black serge pants, once worn to church on the coastland, was not cut short in the usual way, but just seemed to have melted away above the knee. Instead of a belt around his waist he had tied a strip of frayed hammock, to keep his pants up. But it was the wild expression on his face that intrigued me most.

“What happen to you Rasta?” I asked in eager anticipation.

Like a mountain stream after a heavy downpour, the drama burst from the angry, broken man. “Is not wa happun to me, is wa happun to all awe. Is dat balopshous Mavis, she like Manatee, she clumsy pun lan. Wa she en bruk she bun.”

I sneaked a closer look at his clothes and noticed for the first time definite evidence of singeing.

“We camp was bout fifteen minit from where we does wuk, and one day we leff Mavis fuh cook we food and we gone fuh wuk. Nex ting we see is Mavis come running and tumble down pun she face inside de pit where we diggin. Over five minit she cant talk and all awe stan up round she waitin. I tought she was gun dead,” Rasta stamped his feet to chase the flies, and it was only then that I noticed that he had no shoes and most of his toes were worn and bleeding.

“At lass she tell we dat de camp ketch-a-fiya an she cant out um. Accouri couldn’t a ketch we. I feel like me foot en touch de ground till me see de fiya. It tek over de hole camp, but I fly strait fuh me hammock and warishi. De warishi dun bun up and fiya pun de hammock, but I scramble um and run back outside.”

As he related the experience, he became so worked up that he was panting. “De fiya from me hammock ketch me clothes and nearly bun me up. Ah loss everything.”

I enquired about what had happened to the others.

“Dem scatta like wile hog in de bush, me en know where dey deh. Me en mine me tings bun up so much, but wa make me wan kill Mavis, is when me locks bun off.”

Suddenly I realised why it was that Rasta now looked so strange. His rasta dread-locks that had taken him years to grow and had been his pride and joy for so long, had been completely burnt off. On closer inspection his hair now resembled a clump of razor-grass after a savannah fire. It was just ashes clinging to roots. I looked into the eyes of the hairless Rasta and finally understood the wish to murder Mavis that I saw burning brightly there.

(Published by Hansib Publications)