Pao (6 page)
Authors: Kerry Young
5
After they arrest Bustamante for the mayhem up in North Parade they keep him in jail for four days and then them let him go. A month after that him set up a trade union, the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union. And three months after that, in September 1938, his cousin Norman Manley, a barrister educated at Oxford University in England, who represented the strikers, set up the first national political party in Jamaica, the People’s National Party.
Manley was interested in people getting the vote and Jamaican self-government. Bustamante wanted higher wages for workers. But to me, neither of them mean much. Sure enough Manley was a true gentleman and I believe he was right that we should all see Jamaica as our country; and see the life and destiny of Jamaica as being bound to our own lives and our own destiny. But it seem to me like him think freedom was something to debate over rather than something to fight for. So maybe he was too much of a gentleman.
Busta had spirit, I give him that. And he could command a crowd. But there was always something ’bout that man I never did like. He had a kind of smugness about him. A kind of arrogance that come from him believing that he alone control the masses. Maybe it was that same thing Zhang warn me against when him say to me, ‘Don’t think more of yourself than a decent man ought to.’
When war break out in Europe, being a British colony Jamaica get placed under the Defence of the Realm Act, so there was all sorts of regulations and controls over the price of goods and foreign exchange, and censorship of the press, mail and telegraph.
Then in 1940 Britain tell the Americans they can come set up military and naval bases in Jamaica. Next thing we know there was US sailors all over the place, parading up and down Harbour Street and King Street as bold as you like all clean and sharp in them navy whites. It turn out the women like bees to a honey pot, because the honey they could smell was some crisp US dollar bills and that was surely worth the time of day. And they didn’t feel no shame ’bout it neither.
There was girls from Spanish Town and May Pen, Kingston and Linstead, and Bull Bay, all in them favourite colour. Red dress. Red shoes. Red fingernails. Red lips. Red hibiscus in them hair. And there was boys from New York and Baltimore, Washington and Detroit and Milwaukee. All of them laughing and dancing, and smooching and drinking right there in the street. Right there in the doorways of bars that got their ground-floor windows painted white on the inside.
I think to myself what I wouldn’t do to see inside one of them places, but it wasn’t no good me even thinking ’bout it. Zhang would have box my ear if him find out I been in there. But then business is business.
So one evening when I think him open to suggestion I try soften up Zhang with a nice ripe Bombay mango. With any other man you would get him a drink but Zhang never touch no liquor, never seen a drop pass his lips. So when him busy peeling the mango I say, ‘These Yanks sure spend a lot of money on women.’ But him just look at me and carry on with the mango.
Then him say, ‘What we do here?’
‘Look after Chinatown.’
‘That is right. Look after Chinatown. Not look after American sailor want use Chinatown. You see Chinese girls do this? You see Chinese fathers want daughter do this?’
‘In the old days . . .’
‘In old days emperor have concubine, and rich man have wife number one and number two and number three. And what was that?’
I know the answer he expecting from me so I just say it. ‘That was imperialism, and the exploitation of the peasant and the subjugation of the Chinese woman.’
‘That is right. So now, what you ask me?’
So that then was the end of the conversation and I had to think to myself what else these American sailors could be good for, because Sun Tzu’s first lesson is to use the terrain.
I send Judge Finley on a mission to loiter ’round the bars and places these boys frequent to find out what they into. It was a kind of fishing trip. And within the week Finley come back to me saying him think he catch something but it might be just a sprat. So I say, ‘Never mind. What you got?’
It turn out some sergeant down the naval base approach him to say he have American cigarettes and liquor and suchlike. The suchlike turn out to be navy surplus, which is just about everything Uncle Sam give this man to run his business, this sergeant is willing to sell to us, from cook pots to boots and T-shirts.
Me and Finley go meet him way over Windward Road in a lounge called the Blue Lagoon, a favourite of mine because everybody in there is up to something so you don’t have to worry ’bout anyone reporting them see you in there. The sergeant is called Bill, a stocky, shifty-looking white boy with a little bit of blond fluff on his head. Bill come in civvies, but you would have to be a blind man not to know from a hundred yards away that him just step fresh off of the
uss
Farmboy
. Well even a blind man would have smell him when all that washedness and scrubbedness step through the door.
Finley stand up so Bill can see him, and then Bill come over to the table and sit down opposite me. I order up some Red Stripe and we get started. We talking maybe five minutes before Bill get himself all agitated.
‘Gasoline!’
‘Bill, calm yourself nuh. And keep your voice down, man, this is a public place.’ Bill ease back in the chair half inch but him looking red in the face and worried.
‘Bill, you want me to take your cigarettes and liquor and all them other things and I do that for you. No problem. I not complaining ’bout that. In fact, I happy for the liquor because even though we got so much beautiful rum on the island rich people still pay hefty for that Scotch whisky. But I need things as well, Bill. There is a war on. We got shortages. And what I need you to do for me is rice and gas. After all, I need gas to drive your stuff all over town. And then I will need a little extra. And Chinatown is . . . well, Chinatown. We need rice. And that is all I am asking you for.’
So then him settle down, but now Bill want a fifty-fifty split and I am saying no way, we taking all the risk here. And he say, ‘You think I’m not taking any risk?’ And all the time he looking ’round like anybody care what him doing there. He don’t seem to realise how many times men been knifed in that bar in broad daylight and nobody ever see anything. Not that there is much daylight in there anyway.
But I see he have a point and I say to him, ‘I have expenses, you know, Bill, you only dealing with me, I am dealing with the whole of Chinatown. I have to negotiate. I have to transport. I have to distribute. I have to provide protection.’
So then we talk some more and I send for more beer till in the end we settle for seventy-thirty and him seem happy enough with that. And that is good with me especially since I have no intention of giving Bill any account books so he will just have to take my word for it ’bout how much this stuff is fetching.
So next thing we busy fixing up the door and boarding the rafters in Miss Tilly’s outhouse just like I say to Hampton the very first time him take me there almost three years ago. And we getting a truck to move all this surplus.
Everybody at Matthews Lane very happy ’bout the rice, because up to then it was noodles, noodles and more noodles. We even hear tales ’bout people breaking up spaghetti into little pieces and cooking it like it was rice. Though I don’t even know where they get the spaghetti from. And then there was some man uptown that was selling rice off a cart at three o’clock in the morning. Knocking on people’s door to wake them up, which was his idea of a joke, but the rice got all sorta brown bits in it so I dunno where that was coming from.
Bill’s rice was good though, and it go well with Ma’s recipes. Like instead of duck and orange it was chicken and orange juice with tin garden peas. Or curry chicken with scallion and Irish potato. Or pork with butter beans. Or mince pork balls in cabbage leaves. She even take to curing her own ham choi, and it turn out that Ma’s ham choi taste better than anything you could buy in the shop.
Plus I was selling the extra rice, like I was selling the extra gas to one or two special customers who didn’t feel like they wanted to go take the engine outta their car and turn it into a horsedrawn vehicle like all them others you see ’round the place. And what a sorry sight that was, horsedrawn cars riding down the street next to them buggies that decorate up so fancy with all sorta tassel and lace and net all over it, and all over the horse as well. So that is when you realise how little there was for rich people to spend their money on.
This little arrangement with Bill turn out good for me, but how he was getting away with this every month I didn’t know. I reckon sooner or later somebody going catch up with him, at which point I hope he know how to keep him mouth shut. So just as a sort of insurance I say to him one day, ‘Bill, you know who I am?’ And him nod his head, and I say, ‘We making good money together. We good partners. But if you cross me I kill you, you know that?’ I just say it, even though I never kill nobody in my life, and him just nod his head. Him look so frighten I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a puddle under the chair him sitting on.
The funny thing was Bill never seem to realise that I was only a boy. But then him never really look at me. He only look at the idea of me, and see Fu Manchu.
6
So one day Bill say to me that the American navy going send a truckload of liquor and fancy food for some big shindig the British army having at Up Park Camp. Bill say it a goodwill gesture. I don’t even know what half of this stuff is but Bill say it really nice and it going fetch a price, so that is OK with me.
The truck going leave the naval base and then turn up South Camp Road and head up to the camp. Bill going make sure that the escort that the truck got to have going leave late and travel slow. So we have to stop the truck and wave it ’round the corner at Hope Street and unload the things fast before the escort jeep catch up with us. And because everything got to happen so quick I decide to ask Xiuquan to come help us. But he don’t want to do it.
‘It no mean nothing to yu, man. A few minutes of yu time, that is all.’
‘Yu asking me to go get involved in daylight robbery.’
‘This not no robbery. This all fix-up. The truck driver expecting us. The escort expecting us. The whole thing organised, man. All we have to do is lift out the boxes and put them in the van and take off. That is all there is to it.’
But Xiuquan don’t seem like him convinced and I don’t want to just go get some stranger to come do this. People talk too much. Next thing yu know yu go turn the corner at Hope Street and find every Tom, Dick and Harry waiting there to come snatch their slice and make a run for it. No, man, I not going stand by and watch that happen. So the day before when me and Xiuquan walking up Barry Street to the post office I say to him, ‘I never ask yu for nothing before. Everything me and the boys do we do it on our own. You all righteous ’bout not doing no robbery but I don’t notice yu complaining every time Ma put food on the table that she pay for with the money that Zhang get from the pai-ke-p’iao or I get from the navy surplus.’
Him no say nothing to me. Him just keep on walking with his hand in his pocket like he not even intending to give me no answer. Maybe like he can’t even hear me a talking to him.
‘Everything that yu don’t like is what is keeping a roof over your head and clothes on your back and food in your belly.’
And then he suddenly stop and turn and say to me, ‘Yu think I don’t know that?’ And just then some rude man push past between us and almost shove me off the sidewalk so I crash into the juicy and nearly knock him and his shave ice into the street. When I look ’round Xiuquan walk off so I have to run to catch up with him.
‘I dunno why we have to keep going up the post office to check some box that not got no letters in it anyway. Who the hell Zhang think writing to us?’
I don’t even bother answer him because Xiuquan don’t want no answer. He just want to complain and walk fast and vex with himself.
‘What is it yu want, Xiuquan?’
‘I want to get up every morning and know that I’m going to go do something honest. I want to stop choking on my food because I know where the money come from. I want to stop worrying every time somebody knock at the gate that maybe it the police that come to take you or Zhang or the whole lot of us to lock us up in some stinking Jamaican jail and never again see the light of day. I want to stop thinking that maybe one day the blacks going raise up and just come murder every one of us as we sleeping in our bed at night. The Indians, the Chinese, the Jews, the whites. Every single person that come here thinking they going make themselves a home. I want to see my mother happy because she got some meaning in her life, because there is something she believe in like when she and my father was working the land doing something worthwhile and producing something wholesome. Something that made a better life, not just for them, but for every single person in that village that get to eat the vegetables they grow. The vegetables they planted and tended with their own hands, on their knees in the dry earth and in the mud when it rained.’ And then he stop talk, and draw breath and say, ‘I call that honest. What do you call this?’
The two of us look ’round as we standing there outside the post office where Barry Street cross King Street. The whole world is out here, with their hooting and honking and hollering. Every inch of the street is jam up with pushcarts and buggies and the country bus that pack up so much it actually leaning over and god help anything or anybody that standing next to it when the thing fall down on top of them; and cars that somebody should have put a hammer to rather than taking it out so all the pieces can drop off on the public road. And the fumes that is coming outta them is something else, which is why the pushcart boys is bobbing and weaving so them don’t have to sit behind there breathing it all in. Never mind trying to miss the trail that the buggies and them cars powered by real live horsepower is leaving. And when them ease past, the pushcart boys got some words to give the driver ’bout the condition of his car or how he driving it and what he think the driver ought to be doing instead of just sitting there in the road with him hand on the horn. And because it so hot and nothing is moving one inch the driver is leaning outta the window shouting at the higgler on the corner to come bring him a cold beer or a soda or maybe he want a sweet mango from the woman that squat down on the kerb with the big basket she just take down from her head with the banana and mango and pineapple and sweetsop and June plum and a few guinep. Or maybe he want some shave ice with a bit of strawberry syrup pour over it. But the higgler not paying him no mind so maybe he got to shout some more or maybe stop a boy riding a bicycle past the car or just walking in the street and tell him to go get the drink or fruit or whatever it is he want. So he is reaching for the change with his left hand in his pocket and pointing with the finger on his right hand, and hoping that he can trust this boy to come back to him with his goods so as to collect the tip he is offering. And he got to do all of this because he can’t get outta the car in case as soon as he leave it to walk to the corner it become occupied by any of the dozen of men just standing there in the street or leaning up against a post flicking through some dirty magazine.