Ghost Story

by Barbara Jenkins

Cascade

(Originally published in 2012)

It used to have a petty thief where we living. His name is Ghost. Of course his mother didn’t christen him that—no way can you look at a defenceless little baby and drop the name Ghost on him just so, not same time you putting on the maljo jet-bead bracelet to ward off the evil eye. It must be the people who used to live here long-time who give him that name. Maybe in the early days he used to come like a spirit and nobody seeing him and he earn his name under those circumstances, but since we know Ghost, he coming in broad daylight and we seeing him, but is like the name stick.

Any day of the week, Sunday to Sunday, you seeing Ghost walking up and down the narrow road that winding through our little valley. People in car swishing by having to be careful not to bounce him because he walking in the middle of the road and cars have to weave round him. Ghost wearing boots, like discarded army boots, black heavy lace-up boots and where you expect to see socks, you see very dark brown stringy hairy calves leading up to ropy thighs with the wide legs of khaki shorts flapping around. Holding up the shorts is a wide black leather belt, also looking like army throw-out stock. And that’s it for clothes. Ghost always bareback, back running with sweat, and he have a full, lumpy crocus bag fling over one shoulder or across the whole two shoulder. In one hand he holding some kind a tool: a three-canal cutlass or a hoe or a grass-swiper, sometimes is only a long stick with a hook at the end. We used to wonder how come police don’t ever stop Ghost to ask why he breaking the law walking around the place with bare sharp tools when honest gardeners wrap up they cutlass and thing in gazette paper to keep within the law. But is when you look at Ghost face you know why nobody don’t stop him to ask no question, because Ghost face always set up vex-vex like he about to cuss you, he eye cokey and have a wild look, the raggedy beard and the thick-thick locks hanging in two-three dense clotted mat like a old coconut-fibre doormat. You feel anybody could put God out they thoughts to even say morning or evening when they pass him? Furthermore, if you do say something and he shake his head, is you self getting spray with the old sweat he harbouring in the beard and locks. Too besides, he striding up and down purposefully like he have somewhere to go and he can’t be late and you fraid to get in his way, but most of all is because he looking don’t-care, and don’t-care is like untouchable to us ordinary people. But that don’t mean people didn’t talk to Ghost at all. We used to have plenty conversation with Ghost—after all, is only good manners to exchange a few words with a person who spending more time in your yard than you.

Everyone in our suburban area of houses scrambling along the face of the steep hill slope have a favourite Ghost story. When we meet up at one another house for breakfast after church on a Sunday morning, was always a chorus of complaints about Ghost. Marjorie say one time she hearing the dogs barking and she gone outside to check. The dogs and them running around and around a orange tree and she look up and see Ghost. She say, What you doing there? He say, I picking some orange. She say, Get down, get down at once, and he get down. She tell him, When you want something, you must ask for it. And she tell him to get out her yard. Next morning, she hear someone calling, Morning, ma’am, morning, ma’am, at the gate. Marjorie in the middle of preparing breakfast buljol, but she go outside. Is Ghost. I come for some orange, he say. She say, Okay, and she lead him to one of the tree. Pick from this one, she instruct. Ghost shake his locks. Not that one, he say. Them orange too sour. I taking from that one over there. Them sweeter. He pick and pick and when he done he tell Marjorie, Look, I pick some for you too, and he leave about a dozen or so in the mop bucket by the back step.

Hazel say she ketch Ghost in the zaboca tree and tell him to come down immediately. He say, I can’t come down yet, I have a order to fill. Hazel tell us she understand, because that same afternoon she see the same zaboca self, now label avocadoes, at the nation’s favourite grocery, for ten dollars each. When Nicky tell Sue that Ghost pick out all the nice yellow-flesh breadfruit and he tell her when she see him leaving the yard with the crocus bag bulging that he leave three more for her and they will be full enough to pick next week, Sue say, But he is a nice man, last week he sell me some really nice julie mangoes, five for ten dollars. Mavis say, He thief those mangoes from off my tree. Sue say, Your Julie is the best I eat this season. So it look like he harvest from the one and sell to the other, keeping the fruit circulating and making up deficiencies where he seeing them, like keeping a balance in nature or like supply-side economics, with him as middleman.

Louisa say, Is people like Ghost who keeping the neighbourhood safe because he always on the lookout, he know everybody times of day and comings and goings and if a strange bandit come in to do real harm, he will see them. She say, We don’t recognise that Ghost is our protection. Marlene laugh and say, We should call him Holy Ghost then. But Louisa quickly remind her blasphemy is a sin. Okay, sorry, Marlene agree, is like having a kind of informal security and we paying with surplus fruit. Is not surplus, Denise say, is years I watching my young zaboca tree. First year it bear, is only one zaboca, but it big and nice, smooth texture, dryish. Next year three fruit and I waiting for them to be really full before picking and one morning I look for them and they gone. That wasn’t no surplus. He coulda pick one to sample for future reference and leave two for my family until the tree start to bear more. Is hard to have a tree in your own yard and have to buy zaboca in the grocery. People sympathise, yes, we agree, Ghost does be real indiscriminate sometimes.

But Ghost know everybody business and Maureen say he and her husband does talk good and make joke and only last week her husband pass Ghost sitting on the bridge, and her husband ask him when he think the zabocas will be ready and Ghost tell him, Boss, them zaboca have another three weeks still, and how Ghost really have a good heart because when her husband was sick Ghost look in the bedroom window and say, Boss, I hear you ent too well, look after yourself, eh? I go be real quiet. I ent go disturb you. Look, I going to shut your dogs in they kennel so they go stop the barking while I here. And then he proceed to pick off all the full limes. When Ghost leaving he see Debra coming in the gate. She hustling-hustling, because she had to drop the child by the child father mother as her own mother had to go out. Debra already late for work and she have to hurry up to start preparing lunch but he stopping her and telling her to bring out a bowl for him. She steupsing but she still bring it out for him. You know what he do? He put down the crocus bag and he drop a couple dozen or so limes in the bowl and he say, Make some juice for the boss, I don’t find he looking too good, nuh.

Ghost and we woulda continue like that if the mealy bug hadn’t arrive in a schooner-load of plantain and dasheen from Grenada. In a few months many of the fruit trees off which Ghost was making a living was infested and bearing less and less fruit; in a year, pickings was meagre. Ghost begin to use his intelligence of the area to supplement his income in a different way. Children bicycle left in the yard begin to disappear, Maureen wake up one morning to find the toolshed ransack and lawn mower missing, Denise hear what she thought was rain in the night then next day see pieces of PVC piping lying around spouting water and her six-hundred-gallon Rotoplastic water tank gone. Is now a different relationship start to develop between us people and Ghost. What we used to tolerate before as a kind of sharing was now theifing. If tree bear plenty, you can spare some, it cost nothing, next year it will bear again; but if you pay good money for something and it gone, you have to pay more good money to buy it back.

People start to lock gate, put up chain-link fence where they was depending on steep drop to be deterrent, some even put in automatic gate and a barrier came between Ghost and his host. He start to walk the street doing house-to-house visit, calling at the front gate, asking for work. He offering to do garden and clean yard, wash car and so on. Some people feel sorry and take him on but when you make arrangement for him to come Wednesday and you wait and wait for him and he ent come, you bound to get vex, and when he turn up Friday and say he had something else to do, you tell him don’t bother, you will cut the grass yourself, or wash the car or whatever. It looking like Ghost life always too free for him to get tie down with day and time.

One Saturday morning, Denise pick up the papers from where the delivery man throw it in the yard and she see that a man in the next valley shoot a bandit who he see walking out his yard with his bush-whacker over his shoulder. The papers say the bandit was wounded in the back and was warded under observation in hospital. They print the bandit name: Alfred Thomas. Nobody didn’t take it on, nobody think they know any Alfred Thomas, but when Debra come to work that morning she well excited. She calling from by the gate self, Miss Maureen, Miss Maureen, guess what? I hear Ghost get shoot. People was talking about it in the maxi coming up. Before you know it, is all of we people calling round to one another and saying how the Alfred Thomas in the papers is Ghost, and Sunday morning all of us by Maureen for breakfast and the subject is Ghost and the shooting and Maureen ask what we going to do about it.

Marlene say, What you mean what we going to do about it? What that thiefing rascal getting shoot have to do with us? Denise, still vex about the water tank and the zaboca, say, It damn good for him, now he will have to keep his blasted tail quiet. Hazel say, That is not a nice sentiment to express on a Sunday morning after coming from church. Denise say, If you did have something thief you woulda be damn vex too. Nicky say, Oh no, what I going to do now? And she say that she was expecting Ghost to come Monday to clean the yard, the drains slimy with moss, and now she would have to do it by herself and her back not feeling so good these days. Marjorie say that it is a good thing she wasn’t depending on him for any yard work, and anyway, yes, she have to agree with Denise that Ghost get what he looking for long-long time. Mavis say, Poor feller, he don’t deserve to get shoot for a bush-whacker when, right in the heart of government self, every manjack hand digging deep in the national cash register, and you don’t see any citizen rushing out to do a citizen arrest or shoot any of them big thief. Sue say, Is people like you self that walk quite to the polling station and stain your finger for them. Is the people like you self put them in power; like all you people don’t remember the track record they had build up when they was in government last time. For the people in this carnival-mentality country everything is a nine-days wonder. Mavis answer that the last lot wasn’t no good either and like we head hard and can’t learn no lesson from experience. Sue say, Mavis, you confusing the issue, who is big thief and feathering they own nest, giving big contract to friend and family is besides the point. Louisa say, Ladies, ladies, stop that please; don’t bring no politics talk here today. The subject we discussing is Ghost, who lying wounded in a bed in the public hospital, and at least we could feel good that is not us who responsible for putting him where he is. She say, I asking all of you, who looking after Ghost interest now he get shoot? Ghost is somebody we know and he is a human being too and I personally don’t see how we can let him just lie down there in the hospital, shoot-up, and nobody caring if he living or dead. Well, with that little sermon, we focus and we talk and talk and we agree somebody had to go on a mission of mercy and visit the hospital to check up on Ghost.

Debra serving out some guava juice at this point in the talk, and she volunteer to help out and go and see Ghost in hospital. She say she know about the public hospital, where the different wards is—male medical, male surgical, and so on. She say she know the rules and regulations about visiting time and number of visitors allowed and she say how we kinda people wouldn’t know how to deal up with them security who like to rough up people who wearing church hat and talking and behaving hoity-toity. Denise want to take on the hoity-toity challenge Debra throw down just so, but Louisa jump in quick and say, Well, thank you, Debra, that’s very kind, we appreciate your offer. Everybody agree that Debra is the most suitable person of all of us to tackle the petty bureaucracy of government-run space.

That same afternoon self, Debra set out with a bag of mango, orange, and sapodilla we gather up hurry-hurry, to visit Ghost and take him our get-well-soon message. When she come back Monday morning she say, Ghost not doing too good, nah: the bullet still inside and he have to have operation. Well, things start to get technical now and is like we have to intervene beyond mango and sapodilla. We send back Debra next day; she don’t mind, she getting off work early and her role now enhance beyond cooking and cleaning: she is the designated mediator. Her mission is to find out who is the doctor on the ward, when the operation is, whether police pressing charges, and so on.

Debra come back and say the operation is for next week Thursday if the theatre have current and if they get through the backlog from last Thursday when current gone whole day. She say she know the fellow who does make up the list for the surgeon and he say he could put Ghost name high up on the list if he get some encouragement for him and for the surgeon too. All-a-we vex like hell about this grease-palm business, what the hell the oil and gas royalties is for, what taxes is for, what else health surcharge is for if not to make everything in public hospital and public clinic available for everybody in the public, irregardless, and ent these people getting pay already, from we same tax, etc., but, after all said and done, all-a-we know is vent we only venting; we know this is not a whistle to blow so easy, when people out there in the know have it to say that even the head of the district hospital authority been seen to be redirecting brand-new hospital equipment and supplies the Health Ministry pay good money for, to his own private clinic. We not powerful but we not stupid; we know the cards stack in their favour not our own and if we play mad and say we going public about corrupt practice, before you could say bribery and corruption, Ghost would be discharge immediately with the bullet still inside him and then what we will do? Paying the same surgeon to do the operation in his private clinic was out of the question. So we agree to shut up, sub up, and help out; it will be cheaper in the long run. Eventually talk done and everybody boil down and agree and pull out wallet and purse, cash only, no cheque.

Debra continue to visit in the hospital, Ghost get the operation, Ghost discharge, Ghost home recuperating. And Debra bringing us the latest news about how Ghost progressing. That he living up a steep hill over by so, with a dirt track to the house Ghost and his father scramble to build together. And that now that his father dead, is his mother and sister living there with the sister three children. That the sister does do a little hairdressing—braiding, weaving, straightening—and how she expand to nails too with her biggest girlchild helping out, learning the same beautician business because it does pay good, because everybody want to look nice, and that the school the same girlchild pass for is only a waste-a-time place, the teachers don’t come to class and the children only having sex in the classroom and taking videos with they cell phone and sending it all around the place and some even selling it on the Internet, and how she don’t want her daughter mixing up in that kind a thing, is best she help out with the business and learn something she could make a living with. Debra say to us, All you don’t have to study Ghost at all, nah, he mother and sister helping he out. We self wondering among ourself, but of course not out loud in front of Debra, how come poor people does have enough money for hairdos but only buying Crix biscuits and Chubby sweetdrink for they children when the day come, and how come little-little schoolchildren can have cell phone with camera in it and not have books for school, but, in the end, we exhaling, we well glad that it looking like Ghost pulling through all right. So we listen to Debra and we lay Ghost to rest for the time being as we have plenty other thing to deal-up with.

Outside in the yard, we seeing that the mealy bug finally ecologically controlled by a fast-multiplying ladybird colony they bring in from India and fruit trees flowering good again. Mangoes ripening and falling in the yard and rottening, zabocas too high in the tree for we older folks to pick; is only iguana and manicou enjoying the fruit. Nowadays gardener and them don’t want to climb no tree for you. They only coming in a team, cutting lawn zrrr, zrrr, zrrr with the whacker, blowing grass cuttings vroom, vroom and then gone, quick-quick to the next yard, and you standing there like a fool with your purse empty, and nothing you really want do getting done.

One Sunday morning Maureen hear people calling, Morning! Morning! at the gate and she look out the kitchen window. She see two neat and tidy people, a man and a woman. The woman wearing a floral-print shirt-waist dress, white sandals, a white hat, carrying a straw basket in one hand and holding a pink parasol in the other. The man in a long-sleeve white shirt, blue tie, black soft pants, and black lace-up shoes, black parasol. Maureen wondering what they could be selling and she go to the gate and she see the man holding a big maco Bible and the woman basket have magazine in it. They say, Good morning, madam, and we are messengers of the Lord coming to bring you blessings from Jesus.

Maureen tell us afterwards she feel something was familiar but she couldn’t say exactly what until the man say, Miss Edwards, you don’t remember me? Alfred Thomas. She say the name sounding familiar but where she know him from? The man say, I used to get lime and zaboca from your yard. She say she look at him good-good. And in the eyes and the eyes alone, she recognise Ghost. His hair cut flat down to his scalp, his face clean-clean; she say is the first time she see he have forehead, ears, cheeks, chin like everybody else. She say she didn’t say the name Ghost out loud because maybe the woman didn’t know about his past and it wasn’t her business to reveal nothing, so she just say, Oh yes, is you, Alfred, I didn’t recognise you. He say, I seen The Light, Miss Edwards. Jesus reach out to me and save me. I was in hospital and a pastor come and show me I was on the wrong path. He point me in the right direction and now I am save. Miss Edwards, I want you to be save too and everybody I uses to know. You have a few minutes to spare for the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Maureen say she didn’t know what to say. She had time for the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, yes, of course, but she didn’t have no time for Ghost, now known as Alfred Thomas. So she say she have food on the stove and maybe another time when she wasn’t so busy. He give her a magazine and the two of them gone up the hill by where Denise and Mavis living.

Every Sunday Alfred and a lady at the gate, sometimes the same lady as first time, sometimes a different one, but always is Alfred. And every Sunday people hiding and making excuse not to go out by they gate and fight-up with Alfred attempt at religious conversion: they just about to go and bathe, they have plantain frying and can’t leave the stove, they on a phone call to they daughter in foreign. We don’t really care for the evasiveness but the man become a absolute botheration. And whole week-a-day, we people raking up and sweeping up and piling up whole heap a rotten mango and carcass of hollowed-out zaboca skin and seed that drop when the iguana and parrot done with them and we wondering how after one-time-is-two-time and how you never appreciate what you have until it done. And in the middle of all the grumbling and all the what to do, you know, is Debra self who again pull us out of this stalemate situation.

One Sunday, Maureen gone out to man the cake stall at the church bazaar, and when the two proselytizer come by the gate, Alfred lady ask if she could use the bathroom, please, so Debra let the two-a-them come in. Alfred and Debra waiting in the gallery for Alfred lady to finish her business in the bathroom when Alfred spot the julie mango tree laden with fruit. He ask Debra who does pick it. Debra say, Well, where the picker pole could reach they get pick, but plenty too high to reach. Alfred say, Tell Miss Edwards I coming Tuesday to help out.

So said, so done; Tuesday morning bright and early Alfred at the gate. Debra had already tell Maureen what Alfred say but Maureen say she will wait to see with her own two eye before she believing anything Ghost say. Alfred tell Maureen he come to help pick the mango and she let him in. Well, he pick and pick and full up a whole crocus bag. He tell Maureen the day work come to two hundred dollars. Maureen pay him, then she and Debra had to go and share mango through the whole neighbourhood, because how much mango one person could eat, eh? Is a setta work to pulp and juice and freeze, and who have freezer big enough to pack-up with a setta mango pulp? You tell me. Hazel pay him two hundred dollars the following week to pick out her zabocas and he buy back most of what he pick for a hundred dollars and take the bag with him. He say he have an order to supply the little street-side vegetable stalls. And so it went with the pootegal, the orange, the sapodilla, the pommecythere, and the grapefruit. People find theyself paying Alfred to do what Ghost use to do for free.

One day, Alfred come to Maureen yard and he find a big truck park-up in the yard. It mark Green Fingers Tree Removal Service. He hearing brrz, brzzz, brrrzzzz. When he look, he see two big man with a chain saw cutting down the pomerac tree, branch by branch from the bottom branch. He rush for the man holding the saw and start to pelt cuff. The man drop the saw and it start to race around by itself in circles till the next man catch it and turn it off. What you think you doing? Alfred challenge the man. The man say, The lady here call us to cut down the trees. Maureen, hearing the saw stop and hearing the commotion, come out to investigate. She explain to Alfred that she cutting down all the fruit trees because it now a nuisance to have them: too expensive to upkeep, too much waste, too much mess in the yard with leaves and fallen fruit. She add that furthermore, from now on she buying what she want from the grocery. Alfred sit down right there on the ground between all the leaf and branch and the red star-spatter of buss-up pomerac and start to bawl like a little child who get plenty licks. How you could do a thing like that? he say. You don’t know how much a people all over the place depending on them pomerac and sapodilla and mango. You have any idea what them fruits and them does mean to people like we? Is how long I know all you? Why we can’t talk about this man-to-man like two big people? Maureen tell the tree-cutting men to stop a minute while she has a quiet word with Alfred. The two of them go to the gallery and sit down and talk. Debra bring out some lime juice for the both of them and they talk some more. When Maureen come back outside, she tell the cutting crew to go back to the company; she don’t need them and she will call the office and settle up.

Since then, Louisa finding two big hand a green fig by the back steps and when she check, the big bunch that was hanging down on the fig tree down the slope gone. Denise mop bucket always have a few lime or pootegal and orange when they in season and the tree and them still have some left back. Most morning, Nicky finding a nearly ripe zaboca on the kitchen window sill and no rotten ones on the ground. And Mavis enjoying not only julie but starch and graham mango with no flies and rotten fruit under her julie tree. If Maureen husband forgetting to close the gate at night, Maureen not making no fuss with him, and when two chain-link post with ten feet of link wire at the back by Denise lose they footing and slip down in a little landslide in the rainy season, nobody bothering to put it back up.

When we ladies meeting for Sunday after-church breakfast, some wit may remark to the hostess that she enjoying the nice homemade pommecythere jam but where you hiding the pommecythere tree, girl? And a next time, a person may wink when she complimenting on a sweet mango nectar at the home of someone who can’t boast of a mango tree, and all the rest of us smiling-smiling, because we figuring that is really like a Ghost does be passing through in the night.