NEAR DWELLERS

By

Basil Warner

 

Part I

STAYING HOME


Three Acres of Wide and Sloping Yard

    Mr. Archer was up as usual before dawn. He swung open the top half of the backdoor and the outside darkness became one with the darkness inside the bedroom.
    Other than being the only person awake in the house, he felt like the only person alive in an unlit world, seeing nothing in the darkness, as he looked out towards where the chickens nested in the lemon grass roots.
    He had started raising chickens with two little brown ones he bought at the open market in Kingstown one Friday after work. All he wanted at the time was for his family to have fresh eggs every now and then for breakfast.
    The chickens had done better than just provide eggs. There were now a dozen or more hens and roosters nesting in the backyard. The hens were still asleep in the warm lemon grass roots under the shelter of banana trees. The roosters, soon to begin crowing at dawn, were perched on the sugarapple branches.
    A few fireflies, up all night, darted about in random pinpoints of light. Breezes blew down from the far mountain and the near hills, mingled the fragrance of the lemon grass with the stench of chicken droppings and flapped towards Mr. Archer like wings in the darkness.
    Mr. Archer passed a hand over his unshaven face. His eyes tried reading the darkness. The air felt disturbed. The mix of rising smells was as if chicken dung and lemon grass were being stirred and trampled.
    Other than tree branches twitching with the mild breezes, only fireflies and the river under the cliff at the end of the sloping yard should be moving or making sounds this early.
Louder in the sleeping hours yet unobtrusive as a heartbeat, the river blended now with the predawn calmness. Mr. Archer heard it in the near distance, tumbling over stones and bubbling along its banks, never bringing destruction nor leaving any damage as it curved away below the cliff and meandered past the village on its way to Roucher Bay.
    “Somebody there?” Mr. Archer called out, squeezing his voice to keep from disturbing his wife and their two little boys who were all still asleep.
    A few hens fussed in response, shuffled about in their nests, resettled themselves. The broad banana leaves, pale on one side as if whitewashed, barely visible in the dark, bobbed and shuddered with a lifelike restlessness.
    A breeze came and passed. Mango and coconut and sugarapple and avocado branches rattled slightly. Another one or two broad banana leaves bobbed and shuddered.
    “I said, somebody out there?” Mr. Archer called again, his voice sharp now, like a quick thunderclap cracking the predawn calm.
    Mr. Archer’s hand slapped and brushed a mosquito from his unshaven face. All was still again. No breeze. No shuddering banana leaves. The only sound now was hair stubble scratching like sandpaper against Mr. Archer’s palm and fingers.
    Other than the brief attention drawn to banana leaves bobbing in the darkness, this was a relaxed morning. This was the first day of his week off from work.
    On this morning there was would be no rushing off to work. On this morning and for many more mornings to come there would be no reason to shave.
    He had two weeks of annual holiday. One week came in the early part of the year, during the cricket tournaments. The other week was at year’s end.
    Those two weeks of holiday were a break from heading off each morning in his small black Volkswagen; taking the winding road uphill then down into town to the every-day sameness of the job in the government printing office; returning in the evening to the every-night sameness of the children and the wife and the house in Carib Park.
    His two weeks of holiday were spent doing caretaking around the house and yard, taking a close look at his crops, picking up the eggs from the chicken nests. The care and pride with which he tended the eggs was as if he himself had laid them. He handled them one by one, wiped each on his shirtfront or pants leg and eased them into a speckled white-and-blue enamel bowl cushioned with a towel.
    At times when the three acres of wide and sloping yard were planted with corn or peas or sweet potatoes, he’d walk back and forth from end to end checking the crops. During the cricket season, he’d do this crop checking while tuned in to the games on a small radio held up to his face.
    When there were no crops, he’d still stroll the length and breath of the large yard. He’d wander back and forth, stroking his chin, scratching his head, pondering other uses for all that length and width of hilltop land.
    Corn and sweet potatoes and peas brought in a little cash on the side. They also brought nuisance thieves sneaking into the yard and helping themselves to hands-full and armloads of whatever was ripe and ready.
    The last crop to replace corn and peas was bananas. Banana suckers were planted from just behind the house all the way down to where the yard ended at the edge of the cliff above the river. In a couple years the three acres grew into a thick field of banana trees.
    Bananas were a good bet. The crop did well all over the island. People with enough land and enough know-how and patience to raise bananas couldn’t go wrong. As a means to prosperity, bananas earned the affectionate nickname 'green gold'.
    Early every Tuesday morning a cargo ship sailed into Kingstown harbour and remained docked there through just afternoon on Wednesday. For those two days every week, trucks hurried back and forth, through hills and valleys, returning to Kingstown harbour overloaded with bananas for the big white ship. By Wednesday afternoon, the big white ship, weighed down now, steamed off for England with its cargo of “green gold”.
    Even before Mr. Archer’s first bunches of bananas were ready for cutting, rats began nesting in the roots, waiting for first taste of the first crops. Rats in the banana roots did not remain an outdoor problem. They made their way into the house and went after whatever was edible. Corn and peas and sweet potatoes never brought this kind of rat infestation.
    Another problem with bananas was the location. People who knew these things advised Mr. Archer that bananas would do poorly on a hill so steep and windy.
    They were proven right. Many of the shallow-rooted trees constantly toppled whenever the winds blew down from the mountains with a little too much force. Also, heavy rains often loosened the soil and sent uprooted banana trees sliding downhill over the cliff and into the river.
    It was only a matter of time before high winds and heavy rains took their toll on Mr. Archer’s “green gold” field. The remaining banana trees were left to wither away and Mr. Archer reached the point of not having any thoughts on what next to grow on all that length and width of hilltop land.
Maybe he should give up on crops altogether. Do nothing. Let the yard return to grass and shrubbery. Or may he should just go ahead with the totally different idea that had lately been nagging at him.
    It was more than just a different idea. It was more a strong desire to move somewhere else instead of planting something else.
    Brief thoughts about leaving Carib Park had been throbbing in his head. Then the thoughts became less brief, lingered longer, throbbed harder, took more of his attention.
    The same thoughts were throbbing in his head now, as his eyes searched the darkness, as the leaves on the few remaining banana suckers twitched all by themselves, in a way they should not.