When the cricketers took a break for liquids and food, the fans gathered at the picnic tables clustered across a small path east of the field. The men dribbled peppa sauce on platefuls of pelau, drank the rum straight with lime, and rehashed the innings just played.
When fielders returned to the field, and batsmen and bowlers returned to the pitch, the fans retook their positions on the bleachers by the river side to cheer all of the players on without real team allegiance; after all, they were now all citizens of this island in this city. So, they shouted out appropriately to whichever team: Good running, or, Cool down, bhai, cool down. It’s a bowler’s game.
Well, maybe luck’s allowed, maybe, maybe. I’ll be able to go to Belle Isle one of dese days to see another game. Yeah, buddy. Yeah. Yuh run with de bat when one guy hit de ball, he’s going to run to try and score as many runs as he can. It depends on how hard yuh hit de ball; if yuh hit it real hard, it go over de boundary, dat’s a six. If yuh don’t reach to de end, dey run yuh out; dey call it runout. Some of dem bhais can’t make it. Dey try to make one run and sometimes dey don’t; dey don’t make it. Den dey want to make two runs and so on. And when one guy hit de ball and he don’t hit it hard enough and he hit it in front of one of de fielders and he have to run with de bat in he hand and he run, run, and what de hell, yes, buddy, run, run.
And he began groaning. — Whan go, whan go, whan go.
— What, sweetie?
Louder and louder. — Whan go, whan go, whan go.
Was he speaking some foreign language, fragments of a tribal vocabulary that had been suppressed over the years? And then the stroke problem? She turned to find the head nurse. She wanted to know where this man was from. Maybe she could figure out a way to understand him if she knew the language he was speaking.
She found her by the central station. — Ms. Nurse, Ms. Nurse, she called out. Ms. Nurse was preparing meds for distribution.
— That man doesn’t talk. I ain’t got time now to fool with his grunting; gotta pass out meds. Let me see, does he get anything now? Nope.
And Ms. Nurse shuffled to the room at the other end of the hallway to begin distributing medications.
— Whan go, whan go, whan go.
— I can’t understand you, sweetie. What do you want?
Back and forth they went, the old man and the young woman. A janitor on the way to take the exit stairs passed by the two. He listened to their exchange for a couple of minutes then interjected, — You’ll never understand what he’s saying. Then he opened the exit door and disappeared.
The young woman and the old man continued their frantic exchange. Realizing something was really bothering him and that he was trying to say something important, the young woman leaned over and addressed him face to face, almost exchanging breaths with him.
— I’m trying to understand. What do you want, sweetie? She put her hand on his shoulder.
He turned his face away from her and stared at the opposite wall. He was trying to call up a vision of him sick and then him doing much better. Him playing cricket in Oronuevo and him eating pelau at Belle Isle. For a moment he was perplexed. What was happening to him? He slipped into a deep stillness to ponder yet again the smell of freshly turned funeral soil, so far from where his navel string was buried.
Finally, she remembered that he was wheeled to the window every day after lunch. Who knows how that ritual began, but he sat in that same spot almost daily, beginning with the first winter he arrived and then spring and summer and fall and winter and again and again, once more, until he had marked a little over three years by the window. Through frost and snow and spring rains he watched out of it while he finished digesting his food. He followed the pedestrians heading to the liquor stores and other notable neighborhood destinations and absently glanced at cars crossing the Kercheval intersection on the way to perhaps Belle Isle? He contemplated navel strings and final resting places.
Maybe that’s what he wanted now? she thought.
— Do you want to go to the window, sweetie?
Gratefully, the old man looked up at her and nodded. Finally, she understood and smiled back at him.
Now how to get him there, since she couldn’t lift him by herself to put him in the wheelchair and everyone else was so busy. Conveniently, the one-ton white crane used to lift residents was already in a corner of the old man’s room, likely in readiness for his afternoon window appointment. Luckily, she had been trained to use it yesterday. So confidently she marched over to get it. With its boom pointed toward the floor she maneuvered the lift near the old man’s bed and removed the halter left dangling on the hook. He was almost smiling as she leaned over him to place his arms through the halter, pull a strap between his legs, fasten it in the back, and check the placement of the loops for the hook.
Then she stood back to look at him.
— You’re a mess, sweetie. At least let me wash your face. He nodded, a crooked little smile developing.
After she washed his face and combed his few strands of hair, she wheeled the chair by the bed and locked it into what she thought would be the perfect spot to receive the old man when she was ready to lower him.
She was almost ready with everything and then …
— Oh my God, sweetie. I bet your diaper needs changing. She rolled the wheelchair aside and unfastened the halter. His crooked little smile turned into a look of alarm.
— Don’t worry, sweetie, I know what I’m doing, and she began to change and wash him with the adroitness of an old pro.
He closed his eyes at the feel of the young hand covered by a warm washcloth wiping Mummy’s territory. There’s nothing there anymore, Mummy. It’s all gone.
With the halter and wheelchair back in place, she moved the crane into position parallel to the bed. All of this activity occurred over and around the sunray, now angled slightly off the bed. The young woman darted in and out of its range as she prepared the crane without paying any attention to the motes traveling up and down the ray and the intermittent sunshine that caused her to squint. At last she felt the sun’s warmth.
— Hey, sweetie, you’re going to have a warm day at the window. You may not even be able to stand it.
She placed a pillow on the wheelchair seat for comfort and rolled him on his side. Now she was ready. She turned the directional knob on the lever to move the boom up and pumped the lever until it reached a good level for hooking the halter. Then she slid the base of the crane under the bed and pumped again, gently lifting his once-hefty body, guiding it all the way. He was now almost facedown and moving his heavily wrinkled arms and thin legs as if he was winding up in the yard to bowl to Toli.
— Hold on, sweetie. Don’t move so much. I’m going to roll you over to the chair. We don’t have far to go; hang in. Oh, you know what I mean.
He nodded, his smile having returned.
As she positioned the old man over the wheelchair, she pulled his legs down and around to make sure his bottom hit first. She reached to change the directional knob so that she could now lower the boom when she pumped the lever. It was jammed. It wouldn’t move at all, not to pump up, not to pump down.
— Oh my God, what am I going to do? She looked up at the man, who was moving his arms left over right and right over left, his legs in running formation and said firmly, — Be still until I figure this thing out.