style="font-size:15px;"> “I’ve got to be going. Mary, I’ve got to pass here again tomorrow. I’ll bring some bush for you to make tea. Going to knock that fever and cough out of you in no time.”
*****
Mr. Cornelius did bring a paper bag full of bush for Mary as promised. Lemongrass it was. Mary made a fresh brew every night and drank a large cup before bedtime.
*****
John Allicock continued his daily tasks at Sadeo and bread selling with unceasing fervor. He was no stranger to hard work. At about age twelve, his father, Harry Allicock, took him to the family farm located on the other side of the landing, a stone’s throw up the Tenaboo Creek.
His father had remarked. “You big enough to know what hard work is. Some sweat under your brow would make you hearty and strong. Tomorrow you will start with your old man.”
John did not need any encouragement for the task. He was thrilled by the thought that his father had finally come around to the idea that he had become a grown lad.
“I’ll work toe to toe with daddy,” he muttered under his breath.
They crossed the half mile of water into Tenaboo Creek and onto the farm. The sun was hot, unrelentingly hot. Sweat bore down the back, neck, and hands of the young man within an hour of cutting the underbrush and small trees to provide a clearing for planting. His father, noticing his flagging effort, was quick to intervene.
“Take it easy, son. Have a break. It takes time to get accustomed to this hard work. In quick time, you will be working your daddy to the ground.”
Harry Allicock and his son toiled until the sun and made the final dip beyond the top of the forest trees.
“It is going to be dark soon. Let’s get going,” he exclaimed.
A bit later, father and son, carrying large jute bags laden with cassava, plantains, and eddoes, trekked the narrow trail down to their beached ballahoo astride Tenaboo Creek. They had rowed for about twenty yards without incident, then suddenly, without warning, the boat stopped moving. John became frightened and looked at his father in horror.
“What’s happening? It’s like massacuraman holding the boat.”
A smiling father responded quickly. “Don’t frighten. We stuck on a tacaba. I need to watch out for them at low tide.” Father continued to reassure son with his calming demeanor. “At the count of three, we rock the boat together. Let’s go. One! Two! Three!” The boat, as if by request, slid off the submerged log into the wider stream of the Demerara River.
John spent endless hours with his father on the farm, learning all the vagaries of weather and land. He became a good farmer, however reluctant, without the outcrop of love that farmers feel when seeds are planted and crops blossom into harvest. His father had farmed all his life. That was all he knew. On Saturdays, he would take his produce down the river to the busy Cockatara market and sell to the swarms of people for whom Saturday market had become the celebration of a weekend. He earned enough to feed his family and put clothes on their backs, perhaps barely. He was contented.
As time wore on, John’s restlessness became more evident to his father.
“Daddy, I feel tired today. Don’t think I’m going cross the river.”
“Don’t get lazy on me, boy.”
“No, Daddy, I wanted to tell you for a while that I don’t care much for farming.”
John did not want to disappoint his father. That was the last thing on his mind. He was not too bothered by the physical demands that farming made on him. He was built for it. He could heave a bag of provisions, weighing over a hundred pounds, with one fling of one arm over a shoulder, and walk effortlessly down the pathway toward the creek’s edge. But John found no joy in the effort. He wondered oftentimes whether it was a symptom of something deep-seated, rooted in his consciousness, an affliction of a disaffection with ancestral habits. Whatever it was, it was there. No denying it.
John bowed his head, as if in acknowledgement of failure.
“I’m coming.”
With hands outstretched, Harry Allicock gestured to his distraught son his understanding.
“All right, but after today, feel free to skip the journey across the river with me.”
There was a moment of silence, broken only by a gurgling sound of a macaw craving attention.
“You’ve got to decide what is best for you. You can take a donkey down by the riverside, but you can’t make it drink water…… last time I been downstream, I hear Sadeo Sawmill at Dalgin taking on people. I understand they got a big contract to supply greenheart and purpleheart for the new housing scheme at Moblissa. If you don’t want to till the soil, you might as well cut logs and saw timber. I don’t mind, providing you work and help to provide support in this house. It’s far, but if that’s what you want, I’m all for it.”
John was deep in thought. The bleedings of the macaw sounded less urgent, a sign of affection returned. He was careful not to appear too overjoyed at his father’s suggestion.
“Got to consider it, along with other options.” Was this his ticket away from the monotony of the daily grind across the river?
“Boy, what other options?”
John knew from his daddy’s tone that he had become impatient with him, and he was hesitant to push him too far.
“I know you not in favor of me working at Cockatara in the bauxite mills. You said it too far. Another ten miles from Dalgin. And I’m too young to live in Cockatara on my own. That’s what I’m thinking about. The day after tomorrow is Wednesday. I’m going check with Sadeo, see if he still got vacancies.”
Many times, John recalled this conversation with his father. Often with sawdust in his eyes and a sore nose from breathing in too much dusting, he wondered whether he was in his right mind to leave his father’s side and ply his trade so far from home at a job he hated so much. But he was stuck. Time had passed quickly. His father had died. He met his wife, got married, and was now an aging fifty-year-old, still sawing and hewing wood six days a week at Dalgin, at Sadeo for half pay, and moreover, still having to sell bread to keep himself and Mary fed, with enough left over for Jason to live at his auntie’s in Albouystown.
*****
Mary’s fever and coughing did not get any better. As a matter of fact, at about the end of the second year of Jason’s absence from Tenaboo, she awoke sweating profusely, wetting her under garments, nightgown, and the mattress that lay bare under her. She was so concerned by this new development that she shook John, who awoke with a startle.
“What’s the problem, Mary?”
He turned and looked at her, with beads of perspiration on her forehead and clothes stuck on her as if she had been out in the rain.
“Mary! Good god! You sweating like a horse…you getting worse. Is time you make up your mind to check with the doctor in Georgetown.”
Mary had been resisting for a long time the entreaties of her husband in this regard.
“But, but—”
