Pynter Bender Read Online Free PDF

the heels and got looser all the way up to the waist. And of course a coat. Nothing was more confirming of his intentions than that coat. It would be the last thing that his friend – the only person he’d trusted with his plans – would hand over to him as they stand on the Carenage in San Andrews with their backs towards the island. And he would promise that friend, over a quick and secretive handshake, that he would make a way for him as soon as he got ‘there’.
    â€˜There’ was anywhere, anywhere but home. ‘There’ was wherever in the world someone wanted a pair of hands to do something they didn’t want to do themselves. ‘There’ was anywhere a man could turn his back on cane. And it all started with that walk which, one quiet night, took him past the small dry-goods store with the single Red Spot sign, past the crumbling mansions that sat back from the road, their facades half-hidden by ancient hibiscus fences.
    At Cross Gap, the last and only junction that marked Old Hope from the rest of the world, the man would begin to walk faster, thebeige felt hat pulled down over his eyes, his last journey up Old Hope Road, his arms swinging loose, the walk of no return.
    There were other Old Hope walks too, shorter walks, the night-time disappearances that lasted until morning. After dinner he would get up, wash his hands, hitch his trousers higher up his hips, and with barely a turn of the head he would say, ‘I takin a walk.’
    â€˜Where you off to?’ a woman’s quiet query would come.
    And just as softly his answer would reach her: ‘Don’ know, jus’ followin my foot.’ And the soft pad of his shoes would melt into the night.
    Tan Cee’s husband would never explain himself. Wednesday nights, Pynter would watch his auntie watching her husband sitting cross-legged on the stool a couple of feet away from her. He imagined her counting the cigarettes he pulled out of the packet, the gestures his left hand made to light the match, how close to the butt he smoked each one and the slowness with which he crushed it into the dirt between his feet. That long, still face of his was always lifted slightly, like a man whose head was buried in a dream. And as the night drew in, he took longer drags and made the match burn closer to his fingers.
    Tan Cee’s head was angled just like his, but slightly away from him, her eyes switched sideways so that only the whites showed in the firelight. He could hear the whisper of Coxy’s clothing as he came to his feet, smell the Alcolado Glacial he’d rubbed along his neck and shoulders. It was only when his sandals hit the asphalt on the road below that his aunt got up and headed home.
    Pynter had his eye on Coxy too. There was something about the soft-voiced smoking man that made his aunt a different person. However quietly Coxy called her name, she always seemed to hear him. She would lift her head, drop whatever she was doing and go straight away to him. It was as if she had an extra ear that was always listening out for him.
    Sometimes Pynter would catch Coxy’s eyes on him. It was a different look from Deeka’s. It didn’t seem to wish he wasn’t there. It didn’t switch from him and then to Peter and back to him again. It was quiet and direct; and if he looked back at him, Coxy would nod his head and smile.
    He was going to get an answer to the question that Coxy always left behind every Wednesday night. It felt a natural thing to do because lately he had been following his eyes. He left the yard on mornings and made his way to places he’d spotted in the distance. The week before it had been the high green rise of a silk-cotton tree on the slopes of Déli Morne. The day after that a patch of purple down the furthest reaches of the river, or a bit of rock that stood bare and brown like a scar against the green face of that precipice they called Man Arthur’s Fall. His