Independence by Cecil Foster

Author:Cecil Foster [Foster, Cecil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443415071
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Everybody stops to look as the strange new motorcycle roars past. Pastor Wiltshire stops preaching and also lets off ringing the bell. The deacon stops beating the drum. The women in white dresses and head ties stop singing, clapping hands, swooning. The men in long black robes halt their bass or baritone rumblings. I cannot remember, in all the many years, anything or anyone silencing Pastor Wiltshire. When in full flow, his words came out in torrents, magically rhyming in time with the movement of the worshippers.

The motorcycle is a scrambler and it is very loud. On the back are two riders, and we immediately know they are foreigners by their bodies, their long, straw-like hair bleached by the sun and sea, the multicoloured dyed clothes they wear, their faded and torn jeans, and the sandals on their feet.

“Hey, you two there,” Tyrone shouts from the rum shop. “You ain’t see proper people carrying on a church service? Why you have to go and interrupt people so? Like you ain’t got no manners?”

“It’s the Peace Corps people,” says a boy helping his mother with a basket. “It is Mr. Smedley who does teach me at school.”

“And who’s that with him on the back?” asks his mother.

“That one is who we does call Miss Tamara,” the boy says. “She does teach in we school too, the class four boys. She’s newer to the school than Mr. Smedley, since she only come to the school two weeks ago. We like them because they bring to school a lot of what they does call candy but what we call sweeties, you know, chewing gum and them things from over-’n’-away for us. And particular she is always saying how much she like to hear the boys singing, and she does make we sing a lot.”

“I don’t give one blast who they is,” Tyrone says. “And if they’s teachers, they should know better, especially if they’re teaching the children ‘round here. They shoulda know better than to ride some loud-arse motorbike like that right through the man’s church service, even if it is only a’ open-air meeting. Them things ain’t right, man. Ain’t right at all. No damn culture, they ain’t got no blasted training?”

“So why Pastor Wiltshire don’t say something to them?” one of the other men in the bar asks. “If it did be any o’ we from ‘round here so, he would be already calling down the curses from heaven on all o’ we. We would be hearing all like now that all o’ we’s a hard-hearted people with no broughtupcy whatsoever.”

“What you’re saying is that something different going down?” Tyrone asks.

“Of course, something is different. Look who disrupting his service. Two white people from over-’n’-away. And we saying we is an independent country. Still, we having people coming among us and carrying on as they like. I bet you that if it did be any of the young people from ‘round here keeping all that noise that the police woulda

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