Pynter Bender Read Online Free PDF Page B

eyes had even taken him down to that stinking place of tangled roots and mangroves into which they said his grandfather had disappeared. He’d stood there staring at the boiling mud, wondering what could ever make a person want to do a thing like that.
    Now, he’d only just got back home from the sea. He’d sat on the pebbles that faced the ocean and looked out at the grey shape of the land that rested like a giant finger on the water, beyond which were darkness and the boom of water breaking over reef. He’d repeated in his head the last words Santay said to him the day she returned him to his yard: that to truly rid himself of Zed Bender’s curse, he would have to cross that ocean.
    Deeka was talking about John Seegal again when he arrived. He wondered if she’d ever been to see the swamp that her husband had left her for. He wondered if anyone in the yard had ever done so.
    His mother came and placed his dinner in his lap. He wasn’t hungry, but he fed himself all the same, keeping his eyes on Tan Cee and her husband. He glanced across at Deeka’s face. She was talking too much to notice him, and for that he felt relieved.

    Following Coxy in the dark was easier than Pynter expected. He had been behind him for so long his heels were aching and a film of sweat had broken out on his face. He was not afraid of the night. It was never the kind of deep black that Deeka spoke of in her stories, where you couldn’t see your hands even if you held them up before your face.
    The night was full of shapes, some laid back against the skyline, some leaning hard against each other. The track curled itself around the roots of trees that rose as high as houses. It dipped into small ravines, turned back on itself so suddenly he sometimes lost his sense of where he was.
    He thought there would be no end to Coxy Levid’s walking.
    Past Cross Gap Junction, Coxy turned left and suddenly they were in the middle of a cocoa plantation that spread out before them like a warren of dark tunnels. Pynter had a sense of how far ahead of him Coxy was because of the glow of his cigarette and because he sometimes whistled a tune. Sometimes he stopped and pulled his shirt close because it was cold beneath these trees.
    Tan Cee had told him of the snakes that lived beneath the carpet of leaves which every cocoa tree spread around its trunk. Crebeaux, she told him, were creatures so black they glistened. They moved like tar but were quick enough to knot themselves around the foot of a careless child, a rabbit or a bird and make a soup of their bones before swallowing them whole.
    He’d lost sight of Coxy, had emerged on the edge of a small hill and hung there, leaning against the bark of a mango tree, looking down at the houses scattered along the hillside facing him. Lamplight seeped through their wooden walls. Their galvanised roofs glowed dully in the dark.
    He was about to turn and make his way down when he caught the smell of cigarettes. He brought his hands up to his face. A hand reached around his shoulders and he felt himself thrown backwards. He’d lost his balance but he wasn’t falling. He felt his breath leave his body as the hand lifted him and slammed hisback against the tree. Pynter opened his mouth and drew his breath; and there was Coxy Levid’s face, level with his own.
    â€˜Why you falla me?’ Coxy shook him hard. ‘Yuh aunt send you after me?’
    Pynter shook his head, made to speak, but his tongue had seized up like a stone inside his mouth.
    â€˜You lie fo’ me, you never leave dis place.’ Coxy made a circle with his head that took in the bushes and the darkness around. ‘Y’unnerstan?’
    A match exploded in his face again. Coxy’s lips were peeled back, his teeth white and curved like seashells. The light-brown eyes glowed in the matchlight like a cat’s.
    â€˜Why you falla me, boy!’
    â€˜I don’ know, jus’ … You