NEAR DWELLERS

By

Basil Warner

 

Part I

STAYING HOME
Chapter 1


                    Wide and Sloping Yard
                                   
            …should be a relaxed morning

    Mr. Archer was up before dawn and was the only one awake in the house. He swung open the top half of the backdoor and the darkness inside became one with the outside darkness. Feeling like the only person alive and trapped in an unlit world, he could see neither left nor right nor out in the backyard where the chickens nested in the lemon grass roots.
    Unlike other early mornings, the surrounding stillness was uneasy. His eyes strained to adjust to the darkness, to something stirring out near the chickens.
He could dimly make out a few banana leaves bobbing and shuddering with a lifelike restlessness. Early morning breezes mingled the fragrance of lemon grass with the stench of chicken droppings, and the rising mix of smells was as if chicken dung and lemon grass were being trampled and stirred.
    “Somebody there?” Mr. Archer called out, squeezing his voice to keep from disturbing his still sleeping wife and their two little boys.
    The darkness stopped stirring. A few fireflies that had been up all night went on darting about in random pinpoints of light. A few hens fussed, shuffled in their nests, resettled themselves.
Mr. Archer had started raising chickens with the two little brown ones he bought at the open market in Kingstown one Friday, the day his first son was born. To mark this sort of special day, some people plant a tree as a symbol of fruitfulness. Mr. Archer instead bought two chickens. All he wanted at the time was for his growing family to have fresh eggs 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, and the count was steadily increasing. The hens were still asleep in the lemon grass roots under the shelter of the banana trees. The roosters, soon to begin crowing at dawn, were perched on the sugarapple and mango and avocado branches.
Other than leaves and branches and passing breezes, only fireflies and the river below the cliff at the end of the sloping yard should be moving or making sounds this early.
    Never bringing destruction or leaving damage, the river blended with the predawn calm, as it bubbled along the foot of the cliff and meandered through the village on its way to Roucher Bay.
    A new breeze blew towards Mr. Archer like wings flapping in the darkness. The banana leaves, pale on one side as if whitewashed, bobbed and shuddered and continued even after the breeze was gone.
    “I said, somebody out there?” Mr. Archer’s voice was sharp now, like a quick thunderclap cracking the predawn calm.
    A mosquito whined near his ear, landed, and Mr. Archer slapped it away just as it stung his unshaven jaw. The only sound now was hair stubble scratching like sandpaper against his palm and fingers as he rubbed his face.
    Except for a few banana leaves holding his attention, this should be a relaxed morning. The next day began his week off from work. For one week there would be no rushing to leave the house on time, and for many mornings to come there would be no reason to shave.
He had two weeks of annual holiday. One week came in the second quarter of the year, during the cricket tournaments. The other week was just before Christmas.
Those two weeks 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.
    He often spent these holidays doing odd jobs around the property and collecting eggs from the chicken nests. The pride with which he handled the eggs was as if he himself had laid them. He polished each one on his shirtfront and pants leg then gently arranged them in a blue enamel basin 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 spent his free time going back and forth, checking for blight and pulling weeds. During the cricket season, he’d do this back-and-forth checking while listening to the tournaments on a small radio held up to his face.
    Corn and sweet potatoes and peas often did well when not attacked by blight of one sort or another. Corn and sweet potatoes and peas also brought petty thieves and prowlers and troublemakers sneaking into the yard and helping themselves to whatever was ready for picking.
When there were no crops, Mr. Archer walked around and up and down the large yard, stroking his chin, scratching his head and planning other uses for all that length and width of hilltop land.
    Bananas got his interest next and eventually and replaced corn and peas and potatoes. Banana suckers were planted from behind the house all the way down to the edge of the cliff above the river. For anyone with enough land and know-how and patience, bananas were a sure bet. The crop did well throughout the island and earned the affectionate nickname green gold.
    With his three acres turned into a forest of banana trees, Mr. Archer couldn’t see himself going wrong. Every Tuesday morning a big white cargo ship sailed empty into Kingstown harbour and remained docked until Wednesday noon. For that day and a half every week, trucks from all over the island hauled bananas to the big banana boat. By Wednesday afternoon, the big white boat, sitting low in the water now, steamed off for England with its cargo of green gold.
    Even before Mr. Archer’s first bananas sprouted, rats began nesting in the roots, waiting to nibble on the pulpy crop. The banana rats didn’t remain just an outdoor problem. Kitchen food attracted them into the house and they became just as much an indoor nuisance. 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 his steep and windy hill would be a challenge for the shallow-rooted trees.
    They were proven right. The steep hill’s topsoil loosened easily in heavy rains, and banana trees always ended up sliding downhill and over the cliff. Winds blowing a little too strong down from the mountains were just as destructive. The continually discouraging damages levelled much of the three acres of green gold. In short time, most of the remaining trees were thinned out, with a few left huddling near the house.
    Mr. Archer had reached a point of disinterest in the constant trial and error of crops. Greater yet was his disgust in his overall environment. Instead of concern over what next to plant, he had a nagging desire to do something else, to move somewhere else, instead of planting something else.
    And that desire was more persistent now, as his eyes searched the darkness, and as the banana leaves twitched and bobbed in a way they should not.