Every Thursday I made the trek across a dirt track to the community center so I could reach choir practice. The dirt track was shielded by large trees with shrubbery on either side, and the shade they provided was so intense I felt as if dusk were approaching, even at three in the afternoon. It took me only two minutes to go from one side of the track to the other, but those two minutes were some of the longest of my life. Usually, at the time I would walk through it the track would be empty, and I was free from the intense scrutiny of others. During those times, I would breathe a sigh of relief and skip through the track without a care in the world. I often pretended that I was in some strange fairytale where I was the lithe heroine decked out in the most delicate of gowns. My dark green pleated Tetrex school skirt was heavy and hot, and I often could not wait to abandon it as soon as I reached home, but for now, it was a wispy gossamer gown fit for a fairy queen. The images took my mind off the reality of my walk; the reality of the shortcut that I took.
These days, however, I often needed a distraction on my walk home because within the past month I had become aware of a strange-looking man who had made his bed between two of the trees—he had managed to get a hold of a weathered hammock, and he had an old shopping cart that was filled with food boxes, snack wrappers, and what looked like a worn-out Snoopy blanket. I could see part of the distinctive logo of the smiling red chicken of the chicken-and-chips food cart that stood outside of my school. The picture of the smiling red chicken scared me. Why was it smiling? Why was it so happy to be eaten? Did the number of chicken boxes in his cart mean the man was as frequent a customer at the rubbish bins, as my friends were at the food cart?
I imagined him to be a dark troll who was biding his time for when he would take me down into the depths of his kingdom to be his slave. The shredded T-shirt and pants he wore fell over his body like a dark cloak. His matted hair stuck up like horns, and his eyes . . . the whites of his eyes stood out dramatically against his dark face. His eyes bore under my skin and deposited the infection of fear into my bloodstream.
I first noticed him about a few weeks ago. I had a wonderful day at school, preparing for my final school-leaving exam. It was going remarkably well, and I was excited for the moment I finally left secondary school. All my friends wanted to go do sixth form, but I wanted to follow in my sister’s footsteps and start working as soon as possible. I was daydreaming about wearing a red work-suit when I entered the shortcut and smelled the telltale aroma of cigarette smoke mixed with the sickly sweet scent of decay.
Du Maurier. I knew the smell well. My father often made us leave the comfort of our beds at night to go down to the corner shop to buy him a new pack if he ran out during his twenty-four-hour binge-drinking sessions on the weekends. I turned toward the smell and saw the imposing figure, sitting with his legs crossed, leaning against the trunk of a tree. His matted hair cascaded over his shoulders and caressed his knees, making the two “hair horns” in the front more prominent. His eyes . . . those eyes . . . the whites were dramatically white, but his irises were as dark and deep as black holes. I looked away before this underworld creature could pull me into his realm; I kept walking but could not get his image out of my mind.
Then the next Thursday, he was in the same spot, this time picking at a sore on his left arm. He never said a word; he just silently watched me. The Thursday after that, he was sitting against that same tree, silently smoking, just staring into the space. I started to feel as if he was waiting for me every Thursday, simply to watch me walk past him, formulating his plan. I would peep quickly out of the corners of my eyes at him, making sure that he did not move from his position. He barely moved, but he never stopped watching me. He picked at the sore, which had begun oozing a white liquid the second week of him making under the trees his home. He would stare at me silently and lick his lips. I saw all of this during my quick glances. I had grown adept at “watching without watching,” a skill that came in handy with strangers on the street. I had always been afraid of people who lived on the streets ever since a man had walked up to me while I was with my mother in the city, kissed me on the cheek, and then slapped me hard across the face. I remember being frozen in place, not able to move because of the shock and fear.
After that experience, strangers on the street terrified me; he terrified me. Whenever I got to the safety of the main road, I always let out a loud breath, never realizing that I had been holding it the entire walk through the track. Why did I have to take that shortcut anyway? I knew why—I was stubborn and own way,just like my grandmother would always tell me every Sunday. “Too own way” was practically my nickname, but I prefer to think of myself as free-spirited.
“Cassie, I eh know why you like to do yuh own thing every time eh. You harden like stick break in yuh ears! But doh worry, who doh hear does feel eh!” my grandmother would say.
She would get the stories from my mother about my behavior during the week and would always admonish me each Sunday. Why I didn’t have a relationship with my grandmother like the kind I had with my grandfather was beyond me. I remembered how he and I would talk for hours about any random thing, how he would let me help him in the garden when he was out there, how he would call me “chicken” affectionately because he said my two legs looked as thin as a chicken’s. But Grandpa Norman was long gone from this world, and now I had to deal with his ornery old widow who swore I could do nothing right.
I felt as if I would behave better if Grandma Erline would just give me some candy like my friend’s grandmother’s and tell me how much she was proud of me, but that was not ever going to happen.
This Sunday, however, I let it slip to Granny that I kept seeing the homeless man on my trek through the track, and the gasp she let out was surprising.
“Cassie, chile, stop passin’ through that track for me, please! You doh know what kinda creatures you would encounter. So take my chupid advice and exercise dem young legs and walk on the main road.”
“But Ma, it will take me an extra fifteen minutes to walk down the main road, and I would always be late if I do that cuz Miss Claire does always want to be letting we out of class late. Plus, mammy tell meh if I reach to practice late, she would stop pay for it and I actually like choir.”
“Miss lady! Let me ask you a question. You say you see this man every time under the same tree. What kinda tree it is?”
“I doh know, Ma, ah big tree. It tall, tall and the branches spread out and it have big roots that look bumpy like dem witch fingers. Why the tree important, Ma?”
“Oh lord, chile! That sound like a silk cotton tree. Like allyuh mother didn’t teach allyuh nuttin’, boy! Way sah! Look here, take my chupid advice and take the long way around before that jumbie show you what is hidden in that tree eh.”
I looked away and rolled my eyes internally—I dared not let Ma see me do it. Those old people always have a story about spirits to try to scare people. I was too old for that foolishness, and if I wanted to walk there, I will walk there.
Next Thursday I took the track to choir practice again. Oddly enough, the man was not in his regular spot but standing to the far right of the tree. He watched me as I walked past, nothing but his eyes following my movement (I knew because I kept glancing toward him to make sure he was still where I left him). As soon as I had passed the tree, I heard the voice; it sounded as if the person was calling out from a deep hole but also as if they had molasses in their mouth. The slow steady words echoed in my head.
“The thing Erline looking for right there under the tree.”
I heard the male voice in my head instead of in my ears, and I felt compelled to turn around. When I did, he was an inch away; I smelled the sickly sweet odor of garbage emanating from his body. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move. I felt my body stiffening up like it did when the homeless man had kissed me on the streets, but this time I snapped out of it and stumbled backward, screaming. I tripped and fell and kept scrambling backward on the dirt track, feeling my hands aimlessly trying to grip the dirt. He never moved the entire time, and then he grinned and pointed, and his voice in my head repeated, “The thing Erline looking for under the tree.”
I stopped scrambling backward and looked at where he pointed, at the base of the silk cotton tree. What was my grandmother looking for that this man . . . this jumbie . . . this vagrant knew where it was? He looked at me and grinned again. His voice in my head, “It right dey, go and get it when you want.”
The next thing I knew I had gotten up and was walking hand in hand with him through a field. Wait, was it him? I looked at the man I was holding hands with and for some reason he looked and felt familiar, but I knew I did not know this man. He looked a bit like my father, but younger. Why was he so familiar to me? The man smiled and we kept walking. I looked around and realized where we were, the yard behind my grandmother’s house. I knew this couldn’t be real; I knew I was still in that dirt track—at least I believed I still was there—but this all seemed too real. This had to be what my grandmother had warned me about, what the jumbie would show me inside the tree. Was this some sort of spiritual portal I had accidentally found myself in, that had transported me to my grandparents’ house? Before I could figure it out, the man next to me spoke.
“I want to show you something,” he said, and he led me toward the mango tree that my grandfather had planted all those years ago. Kneeling at the base of the tree he moved a piece of brick that had a butterfly painted on it and began to dig up the dark earth below. I knew this brick; I remember playing around this tree as a child and getting punished for moving the brick because I pretended it was an actual butterfly and was waving it around in the air. I did not know why Granny had gotten so angry with me for touching it; she just spanked me and told me never to touch it again and I never did.
“I painted this butterfly for her when we first got married. It was a part of an entire set on the wall that was at the front of the house. I painted a line of them because Erline loved butterflies and I wanted her to see them first thing as she reached home. One day Boyie, the neighbor son, ram into it with his new car and the whole wall mash up; and this was the only piece that was left with a full butterfly on it. Your granny was so sad, and when I planted this tree, she had the idea to put it at the base.”
No, no, this couldn’t be Grandpa! He didn’t look like him . . . at least, not really, maybe a younger version, maybe? Oh! As I looked more at him, I realized that he was the grandpa that I saw in my dreams sometimes. This was the grandpa who I remember seeing in my grandparents’ wedding photos. It all felt so real, and yet I had this disembodied feeling as if I was also floating through this reality. But this was Grandpa. This had to be him.
“Wait, Grandpa Norman, that is you?”
He stopped his digging, looked up at me, and smiled. “Yes, chicken, like yuh eh recognize meh?”
I dropped to my knees and embraced him. He smelled just like my grandpa, like Brut aftershave and peppermint. The last time I saw him he was ailing in a hospice—a shell of the man I knew. I missed our conversations, I missed his smell, I missed him because he understood me so much more than anyone else.
“I miss you so much, Grandpa. But I want to ask, what are we doing here, Grandpa? Why we digging up the yard?”
“I have to show you something, just wait nah,” he said, and went back to digging.
“You know they say that mango trees are a symbol of love, happiness, and prosperity?” he said while digging. “Yeah, I read that in a book when I was a teen. The book also said it has the power to grant wishes, but I not too sure about that . . . unless your wish is for a delicious mango!” He chuckled to himself. He stopped digging and suddenly pulled out a small black box that he dusted off and opened delicately. Inside was a gold ring that had what looked like the compass tool in my geometry kit on it over an open book; there were other symbols on the side of the ring that I couldn’t make out. I was very confused, but he looked very pleased with himself.
“Show your granny this. Tell her where the ring is. She looking for it since I leave, and I have been trying to get a message to her for the longest time. She always was too harden and didn’t like to listen to me sometimes.”
I took the box from him and looked at the ring a bit more. “Okay, I will tell her the ring under the brick by the mango tree. If she doh believe me, I will dig it up myself.”
He smiled as he stood up. “That’s my girl! Now, I have to go because it is time for you to go to school.” He kissed me on the forehead and I closed my eyes; I reopened them to the morning light in my room. How did I even get here? The last thing I remembered was being in that dirt track. Did that even happen? Was it all a dream? Was that man by the silk cotton tree even real? Did I really travel through some sort of spiritual realm? I didn’t know what to think about what had happened, but all I knew for sure is that I had made my grandpa a promise and I had never broken a promise to him.
That Sunday, I went by Granny’s as usual. After going through our normal routine, I decided it was time to tell her about the ring.
“Granny, you been looking for one of Grandpa’s rings a while now, ent?”
The question made her stop the ascent of her cup to her mouth. “What you know about that?”
“Grandpa told me about it the other night in a dream . . . At least I think it was a dream because it really started when I passed through the track again and see that vagrant man—”
“Cassandra Rosemund Franklin! Didn’t I tell you not to pass through that track again? Eh? You see how allyuh children harden!”
“But Granny! I find out where the ring is because the vagrant make me see Grandpa in a dream and Grandpa show me where it is!”
Granny sucked her teeth and shook her head. “So you telling me my husband of thirty-five years would talk to you to give you a message for me? Why he didn’t visit me himself?”
“He said he was trying to show you for the longest time, but . . . but . . . you too harden!” At this, I closed my eyes, cringed, and waited for the slap, but it never came. Opening my eyes slowly, I saw her just looking at me blankly; I had never seen her like that before.
“Okay then, show meh where he said it is.”
We walked to the back of the house, and I led her outside to the mango tree. The brick was right where it always had been. I was hesitant because I remembered the spanking I had gotten the last time I touched the brick. But I had promised Grandpa. I kneeled, took it up, and handed it to her before she had a chance to say anything. I started digging frantically, hoping it was not going to be in vain, when I finally felt the box and pulled it out. I stood up and presented it to Granny. She looked surprised at seeing it, but she took it, handed me the brick absentmindedly, and opened the box. As soon as she began to open the box she looked sad, and I could see tears in her eyes. The last time I had seen my grandma cry was when Grandpa Norman had died.
“This was Norman’s ring, his lodge ring that he said he wanted me to have, but he knew his brother wanted it, so he was going to keep it safe somewhere. I didn’t get a chance to ask him where because when he got sick his memory was all over the place. He barely even knew me most days. He hide it smart because he knew Mason would have taken it from me otherwise. He hide it for me.” She closed the box, turned away from me with a slight smile, and headed inside. I filled in the hole and put the brick back in its spot. I was happy this had worked out how it was supposed to. I left Granny inside and went home. I guess Grandpa was right—the mango tree was able to grant wishes.
The next Thursday I decided that I should take the track as usual. My curiosity was killing me; I wanted to see if the man was still there. As I closed in on the silk cotton tree I saw him in his spot. He looked at me and smiled.
“Your Granny find what she was looking for?” he asked me. This time his mouth moved when he spoke, and I did not hear his voice in my head like before.
“Yes, she did,” I responded, watching him, waiting for something magical to happen.
“Good, good.” With that, he got up and walked behind the silk cotton tree, out of sight. I walked toward the tree and peeped behind it to see where he went—Granny was right, my curiosity always got the better of me—but no one was there. Maybe he was faster than he looked and had hidden somewhere. I turned and walked to choir practice with a sense of peace.
Every Thursday after that I took the same track to practice, but he was never there and there was no evidence he had ever been there.
Omega Francis is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago with a bachelor’s degree in communication studies and an MFA in creative writing from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Her writing has been published in STAN Magazine, Outlish Magazine, SPED, UWI Today, Harness Magazine, and Intersect Antigua Online.