The Liquid Plain (TCG Edition). Naomi Wallace
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CRANSTON: Got a spare piece of rope?
DEMBI: You just keep taking, don’t you?
(Dembi throws him a piece of rope. Cranston ties it around his waist.)
CRANSTON: I hear a tail flappin’. There’s a fish in my ear.
(Cranston tries to dislodge the fish he thinks is in his ear by hitting the side of his head, and as he does so, his eyes alight on Adjua.)
A pretty one you are, so pretty and—
DEMBI (Interrupts): Your name.
(He doesn’t know. Adjua makes up a name.)
ADJUA: Jeffrey.
CRANSTON: Jeffrey?
DEMBI: Sinker. Sure. Jeffrey Sinker. Why not?
CRANSTON: I don’t feel like a Jeffrey Sink—
DEMBI (Cuts him off, to Adjua): Or maybe Stinker?
ADJUA (To Cranston): Adjua. My name. It means born on a Monday.
DEMBI: Adjua’s my girl. Every day of the week.
(He plants a kiss on Adjua.)
ADJUA: You hush up, stupid Igbo. (To Cranston) This here is my man Dembi.
(Cranston sizes up the situation as he itches his leg, moaning with pleasure as he itches.)
You got worms.
CRANSTON: Worms?
ADJUA: Big ones, ja. Under the skin.
CRANSTON: You a doctor?
ADJUA (Laughs): I mend the sails when the ships come in. Dembi, he mend the rigging. We scrape the casks and make sugar cookies for the market. (Beat) Jeffrey, I think you a shred. A tailor. Like me.
DEMBI: He’s not like you.
ADJUA: And you work with the cloth for your bread.
CRANSTON: A tailor. Hmm.
ADJUA: Ja, a winter cricket.
CRANSTON: Feed me, please. I’m nithered.
DEMBI (To Adjua): Don’t.
(After a moment of consideration, Adjua takes a small piece of biscuit from her pocket and holds it out to Cranston, who snatches it and eats it like he’s starving. Then Cranston throws it up again. Adjua and Dembi watch.)
When we pull him out of the water he’s wearing fine cloth, well cut. But he’s no rich man with worms in his legs.
ADJUA: So . . . maybe he makes one good suit to show off his skill and he wear it every day? Yes. A tailor. A Yankee tailor.
DEMBI: He’s sick.
ADJUA: We could fix him up.
DEMBI: He’s no use.
ADJUA: Mijn Got, he’s a white man. Always got a use. And he owe us his life.
(Dembi thinks this over. Cranston has stopped retching. He fishes out bits of the biscuit from his vomit and eats again. This time it stays down.)
DEMBI: I don’t like it. Just me and you, that’s what I like.
ADJUA: We fat him up, he can work for us.
DEMBI: Can’t trust a man who don’t remember.
ADJUA: We can give him all the remembering he needs.
(Cranston collapses, curls up and sleeps.)
DEMBI: And then?
ADJUA: And then he help us.
DEMBI: How? He’s got no skills to recall.
ADJUA: We skill him. Then we can sew double the sails. Get double the quid. Oh, Dembi. This thing we pull from the water is a handful of clay and me and you, we’re gonna shape it.
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