Pynter Bender by Jacob Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

ought to know him too?’
    He didn’t answer straight away, preferring to follow the flight of a pair of chicken hawks high on the wind above them. Their cries reminded him of bright sharp things – knives and nails and needles.
    â€˜He a old man,’ he said. ‘Ten times older’n you. Dat’s what Miss Lizzie say. I not goin nowhere.’
    â€˜What else Miss Lizzie say?’ She was looking at him sideways.
    â€˜Lots o’ things.’
    â€˜Like what?’ She was speaking but her lips were hardly moving.
    A small current of uneasiness ran through him. He turned his head away from her, remembering the evening he returned from the river after Tan Cee had taken him there. During dinner, Patty the Pretty had come to sit with him. She’d asked him what had happened down there by the river. He told her, finding that he’d lowered his voice like hers. When he finished she was shaking her head and she wasn’t smiling as she did most times.
    â€˜You must never tell your mother about these things, y’unnerstan? You talk to me or Tan Cee, but never your mother, y’hear me?’
    He’d asked her why. She seemed to be making up her mind about something, then she touched his arm, ‘Know Miss Maisie?’
    He nodded.
    â€˜See that long white mark that run across she face?’
    He nodded.
    â€˜Well, one time, when y’all was little baby, Maisie say something to your mother about y’all and Manuel Forsyth. Elena put you an’ Peter down by the roadside and went fo’ her. It take four people to pull her off. She only had time to do that to her face. Imagine if she had another coupla minutes.’
    He looked across at his mother, his voice a plea this time. ‘Let Peter go – I don’ like ’im, Na.’
    â€˜You don’ like somebody you don’ know? Is you he ask for.’
    â€˜Why?’
    She looked away.
    â€˜I wan’ to stay with Tan.’
    â€˜What you say?’
    He felt the change in her. It was as quiet as it was frightening. He jumped to his feet to run. Her hand shot out and closed around his shirt.
    â€˜Siddown!’ The voice came from her throat. ‘Lemme teach you something. I’ll never have to do this with Peter – but you, you different. I don’ know what kind o’ child you is. You want to know who’s your modder? Well, let me,’ she shook him, ‘show you,’ she shook him again, ‘who your modder is!’
    She was loosening the buttons of her bodice with the other hand. He watched as she lifted the ends of the garment. Still staring into his eyes, she took his hand and placed it on the small bulge on the left side of her stomach. He tried to pull away. She dragged him back.
    â€˜Peter was here fo’ eight months an’ thirteen days. You,’ she pulled his hand over to the other side, ‘you was here a extra two days. This,’ she forced his finger along the lines that ran like a faint network of vines around the bulges, ‘is y’all signature. Is de writing dat y’all leave on me. Dis is Peter; dis is you. Me, Elena Bender, I’z your modder. So!’ She shook him hard. ‘Don’ get renkwith me, y’hear me! I not askin you, I tellin you – next week you goin live with your father.’
    She pushed his hand away, got to her feet and went inside.
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    A couple of mornings every week, when it was still so dark even the chickens beneath the house had not begun to stir, there came the clip-clop-clipping of his father’s donkey, the thud of a bag of provisions hitting the ground, then the voice, ‘Elen-ooy!’
    Pynter would listen to his mother in the bedroom as she got up, quickly dressed and hurried down the hill to the road.
    Pynter would hear the rhythm of the donkey’s hooves fading into the distance, following them in his imagination through the sea of plantation canes in the lower