But Billy was not sure he was the man for that. Oh, he wanted to be. He wanted to be some sort of seer, a teller of tales, the one who gives meaning, and weaves the unravelling and trailing threads of the lives and histories here together so that people can be held up and together by the integrity and sense of the patterns. He who sings the world anew so that you know where you are.
It might not be true to do that, if it could be done.
And, in truth, he had barely started even transcribing the words of his sources. Oh, he had read one or two anecdotes to the students. They had looked at the words on the page and recognised the syntax of the voice that Billy read. They were surprised at it, and laughed. Sebastian, too, had come to the class to listen and elaborate if necessary. He had wondered at the rendition Billy gave, the rhythms of his speech altered a little, and the different timbre of his voice.
Billy thought it may be like magic. He thought his audience realised the power of literacy. This man can tell the same stories, use the same voice almost. Better maybe. Billy wanted to have power and magic like that. Like they said some people used to have, in the old times, when people believed.
When Gabriella said, ‘You’re the man for that,’ did she mean, ‘You’re no good for anything else’? That’s what the gardiya thought. It was a waste of time. Although Alex was interested. ‘You mean they listen when you read?’ But the others? Nope. And Liz, she had trust, this one from another old land. But maybe that was just her love for Billy.
Sebastian, Fatima, Samson, even the kids; they seemed happy that he wanted to do their stories. They wanted these things written down: that they worked hard to help build up the mission, that they were clever and proud, that they still knew some of the old ways, and the old ways were good. The old people wanted to make it happen that the young ones got power in the white man’s way also, and did not drink or fight so much, and could be proud.
Did they think there was still magic in story words?
And Billy saw the drunkenness. It was real. And the wife bashing. The rubbish. He saw people manipulating the young government workers who visited, and then afterwards bragging; Samson, Moses, sometimes younger-but-learning-fast Raphael, bragging about getting a flight out and coming back with beer and wine, or about the new Toyota they were getting ... He saw the things Gabriella was now seeing too well.
Samson, since Gabriella’s last visit, had been officially appointed the community ranger. A man had visited the community for a couple of days, and Samson had been the first to speak to him. Samson had so impressed and charmed the man, the more so when he knew there was a vehicle involved, that he got the job.
The missionaries tried to dissuade the government agent from his choice, but they failed.
So it was not long before Samson and his boys were sitting proud in the cab of their new Toyota, their women and kids in the back. Samson had also been given a khaki uniform. He pulled the wide brimmed hat down tight on his head, and carried a notebook in his shirt pocket which he pulled out and scribbled in regularly. Could he write? He lost the pen, and that was the end of that.
See? He was like a clown really, acting out, and some white people laughed at him. And that Toyota, his boys or someone rolled it and nearly killed some kids who was in there, and other childrens scratched their names in the paint so that before long the inside of the doors under the windows was bare metal.
The old people, would they like all these things written down too? You need history to understand all this, don’t you? But you can get and guess that elsewhere.
In Karnama Billy would like to have been a mechanic. Then it could have been he that people came to be nice to, and to flatter, so that he would fix their car. Or a builder. A good welder. A pilot, to cheaply fly the people out, and not permit them to bring crates of alcohol back in, and to be respected for that.
Like Father Pujol, he always go to the airport when people flew in. He welcome them, and help them with their things. Then he drop their bags, like accident, their bags fall on the ground and he listen for the sound of breaking glass. Then just look at the person. ‘Oh, sorry. Maybe it’s good that broke, eh?’
But Billy was the man to write the stories, stories in which he didn’t belong. The old people told them better. Even the young kids. No one here read books, except at school. And except the gardiya, who read stories of sophisticated and ruthless people, or histories peopled by heroes.
The people who belonged here liked to talk and listen around a campfire. Yes, they liked to listen. And now they watch videos all through the night, and recite lines of dialogue, role-playing with one another.
Here, then, was Billy. The man to write up stories.
It surprised him in class, how Deslie, especially, took to listening to him reading. Even before school. Billy sat in a beanbag, and Deslie beside him, and they read. It was as if it was parent and very young child.
It was funny, really, how they got on so well. He who couldn’t read or write, and he who wanted to read and write everything too much and maybe too hard.