HURRICANE STORY, 1944

1. Each weekday morning
2. my father the dandy put on
3. his bicycle clips
4. his straw boater
5. and pens lined up in pocket
6. hair slicked down
7. vowels well oiled
8. he rode off to work at
9. Solomon's Drygoods and Haberdashery
10. where he was assistant (white-collar class)


11. Every Sunday
12. dressed the same way to flaunt his glory
13. he pedalled uphill for miles
14. to where his navel-string was buried
15. and when he left
16. freewheeling downhill
17. his barefoot country brothers
18. ran long distances behind
19. falling back from exhaustion
20. while their pride
21. their hope
22. kept riding
23. on that frail back


24. Then (his mother complained)
25. before he get establish and
26. help his own family to gain
27. their due reward
28. as is only right and proper
29. as it ordain (as it set out in the Good Book amen)
30. he take up with this girl
31. that don't come from nowhere
32. she dark she plain


33. nobody know what
34. he see in her when
35. a man in his calibre could get
36. any girl he want (little most)
37. Mark My Words
38. she going to cause him to turn down
39. again


40. But through her
41. they got the house
42. for though he was a gentleman in good employment
43. (first class) it plain to see
44. (she of few words said)
45. one body money can't stretch


46. She turned back to the soil


47. You see what I mean his mother said
48. also: you mek yu own bed you must lie on it
49. and: we all have we own row to hoe


50. My mother who hardly ever spoke
51. crooned hymns in the garden
52. to her skellion tomatis pumpkin melon
53. which thrived (as everybody knows)
54. from her constant labouring
55. (nothing like a pregnant woman to encourage
56. pumpkin and melon)
57. she sang mournful hymns as she reaped
58. sang as she took her crops to market


59. My father never wanted
60. a higgler for a wife
61. never wanted to turn back
62. to that life he'd escaped from
63. never wanted (in public)
64. to acknowledge this rooting
65. in the soil


66. But the house must be paid for
67. (though nothing for insurance)
68. the children fed
69. sent to school


70. In '44 when the hurricane struck
71. it all came unstuck
72. the roof the fields the job
73. (for Mr Solomon lost his shop
74. and laughingly retired on his insurance)


75. My mother clapped her hands and
76. ordered us children
77. to comb the nearby fields
78. for battered planks
79. and twisted corrugated zinc
80. ordered us to climb up
81. nail the roof back down
82. ordered us to thank the Lord each night
83. for what we were about to receive.
84. – black cerasee tea and water crackers –
85. ordered us early in the morning
86. to come into the garden early before school to pick caterpillars
87. off tomatis and melon
88. ordered us to grow straight
89. like skellion


90. My father stopped putting brilliantine
91. on his hair
92. his vowels went flat
93. as the tyres on the bicycle he finally sold
94. to buy us school books
95. he had never noticed we had stolen his pens (telltale ink
96. leaking from our pockets) never noticed
97. the battered straw boater disappear
98. (jauntily reappearing on top of our mother's
99. head-tie as she strode off to market one day)


100. No job he could find
101. worthy of a man of his abilities
102. (his mother agreed)
103. couldn't turn back to the muck
104. when his hands had been clean for so long
105. something bound to turn up


106. Meantime
107. he coasted downhill
108. and we settled into our new routine:
109. Monday Tuesday Wednesday our mother worked in the fields
110. Thursday Friday she went to market
111. Saturday she left him money on the dresser
112. He took it and went to Unity Bar and Grocery got drunk
113. came home and beat her
114. Sunday she went to church and sang