Miguel Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

know. Every word that boy write going to England.’
    It didn’t sound true.
    ‘What you think it is at all?’ Errol said. ‘Elias have brains, you know.’
    Elias’s mother died in January, and the results came out in March.
    Elias hadn’t passed.
    Hat looked through the list in the Guardian over and over again, looking for Elias’s name, saying, ‘You never know. People always making mistake, especially when it have so much names.’
    Elias’s name wasn’t in the paper.
    Boyee said, ‘What else you expect? Who correct the papers? Englishman, not so? You expect them to give Elias a pass?’
    Elias was with us, looking sad and not saying a word.
    Hat said, ‘Is a damn shame. If they know what hell the boy have to put up with, they woulda pass him quick quick.’
    Titus Hoyt said, ‘Don’t worry. Rome wasn’t built in a day. This year! This year, things going be much much better. We go show those Englishmen and them.’
    Elias left us and he began living with Titus Hoyt. We saw next to nothing of him. He was working night and day.
    One day in the following March, Titus Hoyt rode up to us and said, ‘You hear what happen?’
    ‘What happen?’ Hat asked.
    ‘The boy is a genius,’ Titus Hoyt said.
    ‘Which boy?’ Errol asked.
    ‘Elias.’
    ‘What Elias do?’
    ‘The boy gone and pass the Cambridge Senior School Certificate.’
    Hat whistled. ‘The Cambridge Senior School Certificate?’
    Titus Hoyt smiled. ‘That self. He get a third grade. His name going to be in the papers tomorrow. I always say it, and I saying it again now, this boy Elias have too much brains.’
    Hat said later, ‘Is too bad that Elias father dead. He was a good-for-nothing, but he wanted to see his son a educated man.’
    Elias came that evening, and everybody, boys and men, gathered around him. They talked about everything but books, and Elias, too, was talking about things like pictures and girls and cricket. He was looking very solemn, too.
    There was a pause once, and Hat said, ‘What you going to do now, Elias? Look for work?’
    Elias spat. ‘Nah, I think I will write the exam again.’
    I said, ‘But why?’
    ‘I want a second grade.’
    We understood. He wanted to be a doctor.
    Elias sat down on the pavement and said, ‘Yes, boy. I think I going to take that exam again, and this year I going to be so good that this Mr Cambridge go bawl when he read what I write for him.’
    We were silent, in wonder.
    ‘Is the English and litritcher that does beat me.’
    In Elias’s mouth litritcher was the most beautiful word I heard. It sounded like something to eat, something rich like chocolate.
    Hat said, ‘You mean you have to read a lot of poultry and thing?’
    Elias nodded. We felt it wasn’t fair, making a boy like Elias do litritcher and poultry.
    Elias moved back into the pink house which had been empty since his father died. He was studying and working. He went back to Titus Hoyt’s school, not as pupil, but as a teacher, and Titus Hoyt said he was giving him forty dollars a month.
    Titus Hoyt added, ‘He worth it, too. He is one of the brightest boys in Port of Spain.’
    Now that Elias was back with us, we noticed him better. He was the cleanest boy in the street. He bathed twice a day and scrubbed his teeth twice a day. He did all this standing up at the tap in front of the house. He swept the house every morning before going to school. He was the opposite of his father. His father was short and fat and dirty. He was tall and thin and clean. His father drank and swore. He never drank and no one ever heard him use a bad word.
    My mother used to say to me, ‘Why you don’t take after Elias? I really don’t know what sort of son God give me, you hear.’
    And whenever Hat or Edward beat Boyee and Errol, they always said, ‘Why you beating we for? Not everybody could be like Elias, you know.’
    Hat used to say, ‘And it ain’t only that he got brains. The boy Elias have nice ways too.’
    So I think I was a