Collected Short Fiction Read Online Free PDF Page A

Caroni and he give she a baby. In Caroni they don’t make joke about that sort of thing and Bogart had to get married to the girl.’
    ‘But why he leave she?’ Eddoes asked.
    ‘To be a man, among we men.’

2 THE THING WITHOUT A NAME
    THE ONLY THING that Popo, who called himself a carpenter, ever built was the little galvanized-iron workshop under the mango tree at the back of his yard. And even that he didn’t quite finish. He couldn’t be bothered to nail on the sheets of galvanized iron for the roof, and kept them weighted down with huge stones. Whenever there was a high wind the roof made a frightening banging noise and seemed ready to fly away.
    And yet Popo was never idle. He was always busy hammering and sawing and planing. I liked watching him work. I liked the smell of the woods – cyp and cedar and crapaud. I liked the colour of the shavings, and I liked the way the sawdust powdered Popo’s kinky hair.
    ‘What you making, Mr Popo?’ I asked.
    Popo would always say, ‘Ha, boy! That’s the question. I making the thing without a name.’
    I liked Popo for that. I thought he was a poetic man.
    One day I said to Popo, ‘Give me something to make.’
    ‘What you want to make?’ he said.
    It was hard to think of something I really wanted.
    ‘You see,’ Popo said. ‘You thinking about the thing without a name.’
    Eventually I decided on an egg-stand.
    ‘Who you making it for?’ Popo asked.
    ‘Ma.’
    He laughed. ‘Think she going use it?’
    My mother was pleased with the egg-stand, and used it for about a week. Then she seemed to forget all about it, and began putting the eggs in bowls or plates, just as she did before.
    And Popo laughed when I told him. He said, ‘Boy, the only thing to make is the thing without a name.’
    After I painted the tailoring sign for Bogart, Popo made me do one for him as well.
    He took the little red stump of a pencil he had stuck over his ear and puzzled over the words. At first he wanted to announcehimself as an architect; but I managed to dissuade him. He wasn’t sure about the spelling. The finished sign said:
    BUILDER AND CONTRACTOR
Carpenter
And Cabinet-Maker
    And I signed my name, as sign-writer, in the bottom right-hand corner.
    Popo liked standing up in front of the sign. But he had a little panic when people who didn’t know about him came to inquire.
    ‘The carpenter fellow?’ Popo would say. ‘He don’t live here again.’
    I thought Popo was a much nicer man than Bogart. Bogart said little to me, but Popo was always ready to talk. He talked about serious things, like life and death and work, and I felt he really liked talking to me.
    Yet Popo was not a popular man in the street. They didn’t think he was mad or stupid. Hat used to say, ‘Popo too conceited, you hear.’
    It was an unreasonable thing to say. Popo had the habit of taking a glass of rum to the pavement every morning. He never sipped the rum. But whenever he saw someone he knew he dipped his middle finger in the rum, licked it, and then waved to the man.
    ‘We could buy rum too,’ Hat used to say. ‘But we don’t show off like Popo.’
    I myself never thought about it in that way, and one day I asked Popo about it.
    Popo said, ‘Boy, in the morning, when the sun shining and it still cool, and you just get up, it make you feel good to know that you could go out and stand up in the sun and have some rum.’
    Popo never made any money. His wife used to go out and work, and this was easy, because they had no children. Popo said, ‘Women and them like work. Man not make for work.’
    Hat said, ‘Popo is a man-woman. Not a proper man.’
    Popo’s wife had a job as a cook in a big house near my school. She used to wait for me in the afternoons and take me into the big kitchen and give me a lot of nice things to eat. The only thing I didn’t like was the way she sat and watched me while I ate. It was as though I was eating for her. She asked me to call her Auntie.
    She introduced me