Fortune by Amanda Smyth

Author:Amanda Smyth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press

EIGHTEEN

No one predicted the worst rains in the history of Trinidad. Roads out of Siparia grew thick and muddy, tyres glued themselves into it. When a truck was stuck, wheels spun and sprayed red mud. Men from the village brought wood, and slid the planks beneath the tyres, allowing the trucks to crawl a few more yards. Chatterjee said he had never seen a rainy season like it. Sita complained. If they were in Rio Claro where her mother lived in a house on stilts, the rain wouldn’t reach.

Kushi estate soon flooded with soupy brown water, the men wading up to their ankles. Rain never seemed to stop for long; it thrashed the land and trees and filled the river. They covered the rotary table with a tarpaulin of sorts and tried to keep going. The river grew swollen and full, the same colour of shit, Callaghan said, that trailed out of him in Jamaica.

Monkeys called out their sad songs; beetles with horns appeared from nowhere; clouds of mosquitoes, centipedes as long as Eddie’s foot showed up inside the barracks. Mercy screamed when a centipede slid out of a cup towards her lips. Callaghan, nearby, saw the creature – its body long and thick with brown rings and strong red feet. He flung it into the bush. Then he carried Mercy, too terrified to walk, up the hill to the house.

Later, Eddie said, ‘There’s easier ways to have a girl put her arms around you. If you like her, you should ask her out.’

‘Maybe I will,’ Callaghan said. ‘When we’re done here.’

For twenty-four hours, they were stuck while the rain held them captive. Some of the camp had to relocate to the top of the hill. Chatterjee and his family moved into one room, Callaghan and Eddie shared the vacated room together. Mercy and Grace were downstairs next to the kitchen. Grace sent Malaki home to her father. Callaghan taught Mercy to play cards; they stayed up late playing poker for matchsticks by the light of candles.

Mercy had a way of looking at Callaghan that made Eddie take notice. Her eyes were the colour of dried grass – a dirty burnt green, and her hair was piled on top of her head. She was skinny, her limbs long and rangy. She didn’t know who her father was, but her mother worked for a wealthy family in San Fernando.

‘Mister Callaghan,’ she’d say, tucking her hair behind her delicate ears. ‘Show me how to win.’ Then, in between games, ‘Tell me about America. What you all did Christmas time. Tell me how snow does feel.’

Grace saw something growing between them, and warned Mercy to be careful.

‘But Mister Callaghan nice.’

‘Men like Mister Callaghan doh marry girl like you.’

Grace told Mercy about Mr Wilkinson; how she worked for the family in Forest Reserve from thirteen years of age, and how, in that house, the English woman, Mrs Wilkinson, clapped her hands when she wanted something.

‘She talk to me like I crawl out the lagoon.

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