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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504961615 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 02/12/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 232 |
| File size: | 311 KB |
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The Provident Family of Baxter's Yard
A Novel
By Cornell Charles
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2016 Cornell CharlesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5049-6163-9
CHAPTER 1
Victor Provident was considered an exceptional student in primary school. His behavior was exemplary, a factor his teachers thought noteworthy considering he resided in an environment not known for producing boys with such outstanding qualities. Although fourteen years old and a few years above the average age of other applicants, he was in the first group of boys to be interviewed for admission to St. Teresa's College. The college was established by priests of a French religious order, Fils de Marie Immaculée, on Au Tabor Island at the commencement of the twentieth century. The island is part of an archipelago and is anchored in the Caribbean Sea.
A foreigner in a white seamless gown reaching to his ankles made Victor unsure about the stranger's gender. His father had instructed him only about attending an interview for admission to college, but was not given further details. The stranger's deep bass voice filled the hall with authority startling Victor.
"Calling Victor Provident!"
It was Herman Provident, Victor's father, who rushed ahead in obvious anxiety. Victor had never seen his father so nervous and compliant, almost shouting and nodding his head jerkily in affirmation.
"Yes, Father. I will, Father. Not yet, Father. Soon, Father. I thank you, Father Giraud."
During the interview Victor remained silent while his father responded to the questions Father Giraud had read off a paper and which his father had answered diligently.
Victor turned to his father as they stepped out the door after registration. "Where are his children?" Victor assumed someone addressed as Father would have children.
"Victor, he does not have children. He is not allowed to have any."
"Why you calling him father and he's not your daddy?" "Because he is the father of our souls and the other kind of Fathers look after bodies."
As they walked home, Herman waved and tipped his hat to persons walking by with the notion they knew he had successfully registered Victor as a student at the college. Meanwhile, Victor squinted in the glare of the midday sun while his pre-pubescent mind quietly thought about the unusual item of clothing which he thought only women wore and the unexpected and resonating bass voice of Father Giraud in which he addressed Victor directly before departing, "It is the kindness and generosity of good souls who saw your need and promise. I hope you live up to their expectations."
Victor recalled snippets of Christian teaching told to him by the wife of retired Col. Simpson for whom he did odd jobs. He believed people of her kin knew more about how to be good and behave properly compared to the folks in Baxter's Yard. He had heard that one of their great, great grandparents knew someone who had come down from the heavens, and the good things he taught them were passed on to others.
CHAPTER 2Soon after the Christian missionaries arrived on the island of Au Tabor and built churches and schools to facilitate the imparting of religious education, they assumed administrative roles and taught the island natives new life styles, other histories and stimulating world events.
The predominant segment of the population was of African heritage. They were vague on details of when their predecessors first set foot on the island. Occasionally, an uncomfortable whisper or a rebellious drunk would acknowledge a heritage of slavery, however the riddle of who brought them to the island, when and how they arrived was unknown. Many of African heritage did not want to know, as they believed it conferred on them an inferior status.
The children of Au Tabor first learned that entry into the world was by means of a large white bird called a 'stork' flying with an infant in a hammock attached to its long beak and delivering him or her to their parents. Parents accepted this representation of childbirth, perhaps fearing biological explanations might encourage sexually explicit thoughts and unseemly questions, or to shirk the humiliation of a blank and untraceable heritage.
And so an adaptation of their primal history was eagerly fitted into midstream of other civilizations. Captive minds relented in servility to a call for a new modesty with clothing of superfluous morality. Dogmatic laws imposed through spiritual education erased primal narratives and were replaced with stern canons from another hemisphere, magical and unfamiliar as a wintry season.
CHAPTER 3Between many fashionable buildings fronting the streets of Tabor City, were earthen alleyways leading to backyard spaces teeming with a haphazard collection of shanties that seemed to be jostling each other for space.
Elegant homes all had street frontage and low-income tenants rented house lots in the yard behind them.
Herman and Victor on the way home from the interview paused before Miss Mable and Nurse Grace chatting out of opposite windows at the entrance to Baxter's Yard. The glow of a proud father was evident in his profuse salutations.
"A very good morning to you Miss Mable, and the same to you Nurse Grace. My son makes me feel proud today," Herman said, beaming to the occupants of street-front homes at the alley entrance. "He is now a student of St. Teresa's College."
"Congrats, Victor. Well done," offered Nurse Grace. "You should be proud of him every day, Herman. I always know him as a good boy."
"Now don't let down your father and mother," Miss Mable, the landlady and eldest of the spinster sisters, chimed in. "You muststudy hard, don't follow bad company and always set a good example. Forget those vagabonds who are always making trouble and cursing. I know you will make a man of yourself."
Herman nudged his son in the back. "Say thanks." "Thank you. I will try," Victor said quietly.
Miss Mable Baxter was the largest renter of house spots in the yard behind her residence known throughout Tabor city as Baxter's Yard. She monitored the tenants' sundry activities and social life, often acting as arbiter of frequent disputes. Herman Provident was an able and willing handyman, and he was being rewarded for exemplary conduct with a Mable and Diana Baxter scholarship to his son Victor. The community in the Yard was supposed to note this gesture, both as an incentive for good behavior and to quell the impressions of Miss Mable as an indiscriminate miserly spinster.
Herman quickened his steps into the Yard when Bajan Tilley in the house just behind Miss Mable's fence alerted him about a dispute concerning his wife, Lorna.
"That no-good Iris causing trouble again with your lady."
Victor's mother, Lorna, had proudly hinted to residents of the Yard that Victor may soon be going to the secondary school
Herman was given prompt access as he barged through the crowd that had gathered and excitedly encircled the adversaries, Miss Iris and Lorna. A surprised Miss Iris promptly adopted a protective standpoint on seeing Herman.
"I am somebody dat always try and avoid trouble. I don't mind people business. I have no time for dat, so don't interfere with me," cried Iris looking around anxiously for an opening to make an exit.
With the arrival of Herman, the crowd had enlarged around the three participants, shutting off all exits as they yelled provocative statements into the arena hoping to enliven the conflict.
"You lie! Is your habit to make trouble and interfere in people business and say bad things about them!" a woman yelled from among the crowd.
"So why you saying the man have something with Miss
Mable?" a male voice shouted.
"Who me, you hear me Iris say dat?" declared Iris as she slapped her flat chest while looking in the direction of the accusing voice.
Herman walked menacingly towards Iris. Her shoulders and chest tensed and heaved visibly as the crowd yelled out to Herman, "Burse her tail!" "Give her some licks!" "Don't spare her!"
Herman was a mild-mannered individual not likely to prolong the altercation or to be spoiling for a fight. Instead he waved his forefinger inches from her face and warned, "Next time you open your dirty mouth, make sure it is not about me or else I will get the same Miss Mable, who you bad mouthing to throw your backside out of the Yard."
This threat had maximum impact on Iris, a resident of Baxter's Yard for twenty plus years. Aware of the tolerance granted Iris in the refuge of the Yard despite frequent disputes, Herman was sure this action would be effective.
As the disappointed onlookers dispersed along shoulder width tracks separating the hovelled dwellings, young males tossed out unflattering remarks. "Why is he not doing nothing? What she say must be true."
"But look like he really controlling Miss Mable."
"Yeah yeah, imagine he goin make the bitch throw Iris out."
Herman, with his arm around his wife Lorna, confidently steered her into their modest hut. He ignored snide remarks from a few women who had returned to squat before enamel basins of clothes soaking in sudsy water.
"Why she think she better than us, eh? Lord, tell me," asked Agnes the youngest of the women as Mr. and Mrs. Provident entered their home.
"And she only there with 'My husband dis and my husband dat.' I could of had many husbands too if I wanted," boasted granny Katie.
"But nobody would want a coo-yon like Herman for a husband," doubted Agnes.
"Is a competition going on with Miss Iris for who Ma Baxter like best," added Granny Katie.
"And for who get scholarship and who don't want pay rent," Ma Reggie declared with a signature laugh of ridicule.
"Ha ha hye, woooeee."
CHAPTER 4"Ay, ay, what he looking for, something happen to bring police in the Yard?" A squatting Ma Reggie stood up abruptly to sound an alarm as soapsuds dripped off her hands into the basin of laundry at her feet.
"Anybody do anything why police looking for somebody?" she continued.
The policeman looked an incongruous figure, his wide brimmed cork helmet and white jacket just about filled the space between two dingy huts on either side of the track as he with uncomplimentary caution picked out dry ground with each footstep to avoid soiling his polished black boots. As he got to an open area and looked around, his eyes met with hostile stares and vulgar gestures from residents.
"Messier, so people car even quarrel with themselves, they have to send for police?" complained Agnes turning and thrusting her bottom out in the direction of the policeman.
"I here long enough to know she does send Bajan Tilley out on the street to look for policeman and is Tilley self who tell Ma Baxter," Granny Katie concluded.
"You know I did see when she did pass dere. I never trust her. She's a real suceur that Tilley," Ma Reggie spoke angrily. "I ready to beat her if she ever cross me."
Confrontation between constabulary personnel and Baxter's Yard residents occurred frequently and there were a number in the prison population. As a group ensnared within a lower economic and social status, they did not submit easily to local state laws citing they were targeted by law enforcement and services and facilities available in other communities were in short supply within the Yard. However official personnel were aware that residents of the Yard often illicitly helped themselves to services provided by utility and other service providers. Some residents who migrated from the countryside regularly returned to amass food supplies from the farms of relatives.
Many disturbances within the Yard stemmed from a lack of privacy. All amenities were exposed and detached from the main hut, in full view of neighbors. Two steps away was a shed assigned as a kitchen. The shower stall and water faucets were to one side with the latrine hut farthest away. The main huts were built square in shape with uncut lengths of cedar planks from nearby forests and supported at the corners by random boulders stacked on top each other. The earthen ground beneath the hut was shared by fowls seated on hatching eggs and crabs with periscopic eyes emerging stealthily from underground. The roofs and exterior boards were covered with overlapping moldy shingles in a pattern similar to fish scales. Family unit allotments in the Yard were marked out by the foot worn tracks meandering between the huts.
This part of Tabor City in former years had many trees that filtered the sunlight, stood firm against buffeting storm winds and turned torrential rain showers into tame flowing streams. Now a trampled soil, with a dead tree stump as the only trace of a verdant past, serves as a favored stool of an amputee, his crutch resting at his feet among lifeless root tentacles.
As early evening approached, a cloud of aromas assailed nasal passages with an indivisible bouquet of cooking blends replaced later at twilight by the distinctive savor of roasting coffee beans.
Coal pot fires were extinguished in a rite of sundown marking a day's end to food preparation as bedraggled youngsters drifted home around the twilight hour. The sounds of chatter in the Yard increased, and as night fell, the huts huddled together in a silhouette against the night sky. The pale yellow light of candles and kerosene lamps glowing unsteadily inside the huts were soon obscured as shutters closed and silenced the chatter inside the huts except for an occasional drunken shout of profanity. Slivers of light from outside appearing in the partitions of the darkened room were blocked with wads of paper and cloth.
Peculiar calm seeped into the nighttime around the midnight hour when a silent space was given to frail elderly ladies for an appalling task at a minimal wage. At the furtive hour they carried a putrid matter in tall pails, euphemistically referred to as 'night soil' for disposal at a dumping site.
CHAPTER 5Baxter's Yard's southern entrance adjoined Anse Zordi, a beaching base for boats belonging to area fishermen. The land behind it was steep and pockmarked with shanty structures that appeared to be tumbling on top each other. Bay Street ended at the waterfront on reaching the shore of Anse Zordi. The sea current swept into the bay, and transported all the floating trash tossed into the water at points a long distance from here. The litter collected among fishing implements and canoes resting on the shore of Anse Zordi.
Across the street a row of two storey residences once owned by middle class workers, was now converted into bars, drinking holes, pleasure houses, and small grocery shops with minimal inventories of canned corned beef and sardines, flour, sugar and rice, cooking oil, laundry soap, candles, matches and cigarettes.
Many adults flocked here just before sundown to purchase supplies of fish as the canoes streamed in with the day's catch. There was a self-imposed after dark prohibition for all youth and many adults since to be seen then in the area suggested a lifestyle of suspect depravity.
Victor and his preteen friends never joined the crowd at the frequent squabbles in Baxter's Yard. After registration at his new school, Victor hastened home to change his clothes and then ran to the bay of Anse Zordi. Most of the canoes had sailed out at daybreak for a day's fishing, and the vacant spaces provided Victor's friends, Colom, Planche and Blackie, an opportunity to search among the litter for anything of interest. Colom, the eldest, alerted the rest.
"Look, Vicious reach," attempts to belittle Victor with name-calling stemmed from misgivings of him as a social climber.
"You went up by where dem priest living?" announced Planche
"Yes, I am going to the new school them starting," assured Victor.
"So that mean you going become a priest I suppose," guessed Planche.
"Me? Never! Me put on all that cloth those priest wearing?" "Is the same amount ladies using for a dress?" Blackie sought a link.
"Boy, a lot more, the cloth reaching from neck until it even cover the shoes and it have so much cloth covering their arms that it flapping like seagull wings."
"So you think if they stretch their arms and legs wide so, they can fly like seagull." Planche extended his limbs to illustrate.
"You see that fella, Planche? If you just tell him one thing, he goin to think ten extra thing on top of it," warned Colom.
"Planche, boy, they came here by boat, they did not fly," teased Victor.
"Anyway, but it have enough cloth to make sail for canoe?" Blackie said with certainty, still curious about the clothing.
"C'mon Blackie, you forget it taking six flour bag sew together to make canoe sail." Colom usually chided the others by stating known facts, a strategy that often resulted in no further comment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Provident Family of Baxter's Yard by Cornell Charles. Copyright © 2016 Cornell Charles. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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