So next thing we busy fixing up the door and boarding the rafters in Miss Tilly’s outhouse just like I say to Hampton the very first time him take me there almost three years ago. And we getting a truck to move all this surplus.
Everybody at Matthews Lane very happy ’bout the rice, because up to then it was noodles, noodles and more noodles. We even hear tales ’bout people breaking up spaghetti into little pieces and cooking it like it was rice. Though I don’t even know where they get the spaghetti from. And then there was some man uptown that was selling rice off a cart at three o’clock in the morning. Knocking on people’s door to wake them up, which was his idea of a joke, but the rice got all sorta brown bits in it so I dunno where that was coming from.
Bill’s rice was good though, and it go well with Ma’s recipes. Like instead of duck and orange it was chicken and orange juice with tin garden peas. Or curry chicken with scallion and Irish potato. Or pork with butter beans. Or mince pork balls in cabbage leaves. She even take to curing her own ham choi, and it turn out that Ma’s ham choi taste better than anything you could buy in the shop.
Plus I was selling the extra rice, like I was selling the extra gas to one or two special customers who didn’t feel like they wanted to go take the engine outta their car and turn it into a horsedrawn vehicle like all them others you see ’round the place. And what a sorry sight that was, horsedrawn cars riding down the street next to them buggies that decorate up so fancy with all sorta tassel and lace and net all over it, and all over the horse as well. So that is when you realise how little there was for rich people to spend their money on.
This little arrangement with Bill turn out good for me, but how he was getting away with this every month I didn’t know. I reckon sooner or later somebody going catch up with him, at which point I hope he know how to keep him mouth shut. So just as a sort of insurance I say to him one day, ‘Bill, you know who I am?’ And him nod his head, and I say, ‘We making good money together. We good partners. But if you cross me I kill you, you know that?’ I just say it, even though I never kill nobody in my life, and him just nod his head. Him look so frighten I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a puddle under the chair him sitting on.
The funny thing was Bill never seem to realise that I was only a boy. But then him never really look at me. He only look at the idea of me, and see Fu Manchu.
6
So one day Bill say to me that the American navy going send a truckload of liquor and fancy food for some big shindig the British army having at Up Park Camp. Bill say it a goodwill gesture. I don’t even know what half of this stuff is but Bill say it really nice and it going fetch a price, so that is OK with me.
The truck going leave the naval base and then turn up South Camp Road and head up to the camp. Bill going make sure that the escort that the truck got to have going leave late and travel slow. So we have to stop the truck and wave it ’round the corner at Hope Street and unload the things fast before the escort jeep catch up with us. And because everything got to happen so quick I decide to ask Xiuquan to come help us. But he don’t want to do it.
‘It no mean nothing to yu, man. A few minutes of yu time, that is all.’
‘Yu asking me to go get involved in daylight robbery.’
‘This not no robbery. This all fix-up. The truck driver expecting us. The escort expecting us. The whole thing organised, man. All we have to do is lift out the boxes and put them in the van and take off. That is all there is to it.’
But Xiuquan don’t seem like him convinced and I don’t want to just go get some stranger to come do this. People talk too much. Next thing yu know yu go turn the corner at Hope Street and find every Tom, Dick and Harry waiting there to come snatch their slice and make a run for it. No, man, I not going stand by and watch that happen. So the day before when me and Xiuquan walking up Barry Street to the post office I say to him, ‘I never ask yu for nothing before. Everything me and the boys do we do it on our own. You all righteous ’bout not doing no robbery but I don’t notice yu complaining every time Ma put food on the table that she pay for with the money that Zhang get from the pai-ke-p’iao or I get from the navy surplus.’
Him no say nothing to me. Him just keep on walking with his hand in his pocket like he not even intending to give me no answer. Maybe like he can’t even hear me a talking to him.
‘Everything that yu don’t like is what is keeping a roof over your head and clothes on your back and food in your belly.’
And then he suddenly stop and turn and say to me, ‘Yu think I don’t know that?’ And just then some rude man push past between us and almost shove me off the sidewalk so I crash into the juicy and nearly knock him and his shave ice into the street. When I look ’round Xiuquan walk off so I have to run to catch up with him.
‘I dunno why we have to keep going up the post office to check some box that not got no letters in it anyway. Who the hell Zhang think writing to us?’
I don’t even bother answer him because Xiuquan don’t want no answer. He just want to complain and walk fast and vex with himself.
‘What is it yu want, Xiuquan?’
‘I want to get up every morning and know that I’m going to go do something honest. I want to stop choking on my food because I know where the money come from. I want to stop worrying every time somebody knock at the gate that maybe it the police that come to take you or Zhang or the whole lot of us to lock us up in some stinking Jamaican jail and never again see the light of day. I want to stop thinking that maybe one day the blacks going raise up and just come murder every one of us as we sleeping in our bed at night. The Indians, the Chinese, the Jews, the whites. Every single person that come here thinking they going make themselves a home. I want to see my mother happy because she got some meaning in her life, because there is something she believe in like when she and my father was working the land doing something worthwhile and producing something wholesome. Something that made a better life, not just for them, but for every single person in that village that get to eat the vegetables they grow. The vegetables they planted and tended with their own hands, on their knees in the dry earth and in the mud when it rained.’ And then he stop talk, and draw breath and say, ‘I call that honest. What do you call this?’
The two of us look ’round as we standing there outside the post office where Barry Street cross King Street. The whole world is out here, with their hooting and honking and hollering. Every inch of the street is jam up with pushcarts and buggies and the country bus that pack up so much it actually leaning over and god help anything or anybody that standing next to it when the thing fall down on top of them; and cars that somebody should have put a hammer to rather than taking it out so all the pieces can drop off on the public road. And the fumes that is coming outta them is something else, which is why the pushcart boys is bobbing and weaving so them don’t have to sit behind there breathing it all in. Never mind trying to miss the trail that the buggies and them cars powered by real live horsepower is leaving. And when them ease past, the pushcart boys got some words to give the driver ’bout the condition of his car or how he driving it and what he think the driver ought to be doing instead of just sitting there in the road with him hand on the horn. And because it so hot and nothing is moving one inch the driver is leaning outta the window shouting at the higgler on the corner to come bring him a cold beer or a soda or maybe he want a sweet mango from the woman that squat down on the kerb with the big basket she just take down from her head with the banana and mango and pineapple and sweetsop and June plum and a few guinep. Or maybe he want some shave ice with a bit of strawberry syrup pour over it. But the higgler not paying him no mind so maybe he got to shout some more or maybe stop a boy riding a bicycle past the car or just walking in the street and tell him to go get the drink or fruit or whatever it is he want. So he is reaching for the change with his left hand in his pocket and pointing with the finger on his right hand, and hoping that he can trust this boy to come back to him with his goods so as to collect the tip he is offering. And he got to do all of this because he can’t get outta the car in case as soon as he leave it to walk to the corner it become occupied by any of the dozen of men just standing there in the street or leaning up against a post flicking through some dirty magazine.