There was always something going on in the street directly in front of Mr. Persad’s house. The Americans maintained a base on the island. On their days off, soldiers in uniform swept into Marion. The townspeople were often awakened by their aggressive singing, shouting, and laughter as jeep loads of them sped by, uninhibited by the lateness of night.
Myriad odors wafted into the house in Marion: petrol from the station next door, effluvia from the gutters on either side of the street. The latter had to be cleaned daily by the city public works crew; otherwise the surface, made slick and shiny overnight, trembled with mosquito larva. Cars and trucks burned dirty oil, and their exhaust hung heavily in the air. Dolly had to dust and sweep twice daily. She could be heard uttering under her breath that even Raleigh’s sand had never invaded her house in such a manner. The boy enjoyed reminding her that the bedsheets there got so sandy, even as they slept, that she used to have to shake them out regularly, sometimes awakening even in the middle of the night to give them a proper brushing.
It didn’t take long for the boy to forget, however. He quickly became accustomed to the cacophony of a city. Soon enough, he would tell time by the city’s rumblings. Mondays, the Syrian cloth seller called at each and every house without fail. Tuesdays, eight P.M., the bells of the Good Shepherd Evangelical Society clanged out an hour’s worth of hymns. Wednesdays, the manure man rolled his loaded odorous truck slowly through the residential quarters of the town. At precisely the same time every Thursday afternoon, the knife sharpener passed in front of Mr. Persad’s house. Fridays, the fisherman’s jitney rumbled noisily down the street. It was five A.M. when the imam’s call to prayer rose from the turret of the mosque, four P.M. when the nutman’s rubber-ball horn wheezed by, and it was six-thirty P.M. sharp when melismatic outpourings rang from the Indian cinema down the road.