The Lunatic by Winkler Anthony C

Author:Winkler, Anthony C. [Winkler, Anthony C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2007-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Under the rule of pum-pum there were civic improvements made in the plot of pastureland in the bush: A house was built. It was a house such as poor men have made in Jamaica since the malarial beginnings of the Fallen Empire. Its walls were made of wattled sticks, sealed with river mud, and stank like the dried hide of an old animal. It had a sloping roof of plywood covered with galvanized zinc sheets and a dirt floor overlaid with sheets of cardboard.

On the day the house was finished Inga took numerous pictures of it and made endless drawings and notes. It was her idea to build the house. She had given Aloysius and Service the money to buy the few materials needed and told them where she wanted it raised under the sheltering overhang of the flame heart tree.

By the time the rainy season began the three of them were living in the house in these the days when rain roared on the roof and the nights when the pasture blew with the chill of an ocean breeze.

“Dey build chicken coop house,” Busha reported to his meeting of the cricket club. “Now dere’s three of dem in it.”

“Three of dem?” the parson asked incredulously.

“Three of dem,” Busha said. “Two man and dat woman.”

The parson looked at the doctor, who looked at the inspector, who looked at Busha, who shook his head with foreboding.

The four of them silently brooded on the algebra of two men with one woman.

“Dis is a case for hellfire if ever dere was one,” mumbled the parson.

“Damn foolishness,” the doctor snapped.

“Where Sarah?” the inspector asked wistfully. “Butchering more chicken?”

“She have a running stomach,” Busha chuckled. “Morning, noon, and night she sit on the toilet. Just like she find a new throne.”

During the month that followed it rained nearly every afternoon, with the sound of knuckles pounding on the zinc roof of the small house. Then the skies cleared and a crisp evening breeze rose up off the mountains and the land glimmered in the sunset and gave off the fresh smell of the infant earth.

At night the darkness blew gently into the valley on a cool breeze. In the mornings a thick fog steeped the green loveliness of the land in a hushed pool of whiteness.

“This is the way the vorld used to be,” Inga declared one morning as she stepped out of the small house and sniffed at the fog. “It reminds me of the days vhen I vas a cow.”

“A cow? What you talking about?” Aloysius was scratching himself all over as he did every morning.

“In another life I vas a cow.”

“How you know dat?”

“I vas a very good milker, too. The man who owned me always told me that.”

“How much milk you give?” Aloysius asked.

Yawning loudly, Service shambled out of the house.

“You build the fire,” Inga told him.

“Me build it yesterday.”

“Build it again,” she said. “Aloysius, you go draw the vater.”

“Why always me drawing de vater?”

“Because I say that is vhat you must do.

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