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There was still another place like
New Mexico where the transplanted,
the outcasts,and indigenous
people of the land, hung on near
the edges of civilization with
laughter and music
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(pt.3)
There had been no spiders. That morning we held out our
thumbs to passing trucks and vehicles that passed us by. One Mercedes with two
Jamaican men, in starched white shirts and close-cropped hair, gave us a lift
for a few miles to the next bread stand. I was concerned that they wanted to
know too much about where three white boys were going and what they were up to
in the hills.
One spoke directly to Dennis, “Hey,
Mon, when you come to Jamaica did you bring guns?”
“Naw,” Dennis drawled, “We brought no
guns, Mon.”
“Next time you come you bring guns?”
“What you want guns for, Mon?” Stan
picked up on the tone of the patois.
“It’s some ting we need to have in
dis here place… we need guns. Americans have guns… more dan we can have here.”
I had enough of this talk and was
suspicious of these two men. They could easily be police and I was annoyed that
Dennis and Stan seemed oblivious to this. I laid on the patois deliberately
mocking Stan and Dennis, “What business you be havin’ drivin’ a big-assed
Mercedes, Mon?”
The question apparently turned the
subject from guns to whatever else we might be up to. Dennis cut-in to ask,
“You know where Hoss Bozz lives?”
The driver, who had been silent up to
then, volunteered despite the glare of his partner’s stern expression, “Yes, he
up deer ‘yond Maroon Town… he has a place in the hills.”
He dropped the patois and spoke with
a perfectly clear English accent and asked, “What do you boys want from Hoss
Bozz?”
The other asked. “So, that’s what you
are doing here? He’s more trouble than you need to deal with. You boys would be
better off back in Montego Bay than to get caught up with the likes of Hoss
Bozz.”
After that exchange, we were let off
on the road to hike a few miles more. As we rounded a turn, one of many turns
on the way, a boy on a bicycle approached and passed us. He turned back,
peddling as fast as he could. We neared the town (if one would want to call it
that) and arrived at a bread stand in what one might think of as a village. I
could see that a village meant nothing more than a slightly denser collection
of farm houses along the road.
Everything was green, and a stream
ran through the valley below the road with round women and lithe girls in
colorful scarves and dresses that were bent over stones in the creek-bed,
washing clothes. The road and the green valley led to a bread stand. A bread
stand was the community center equipped with a juke box and Red Stripe Ale on
sale along with bread. Every available young man of the village was there out
of curiosity… curiosity for and about the three white boys in the mountains
where few tourists ever ventured in cars.
We ate bread and fruit and drank a
few ales. Dennis told us to save the bread wrappers. The music that wafted from
the juke-box was the same as at the club in Montego Bay. I was to find out
later that it was, pre-Reggae Ska, club music, but I had no idea what either
genre was in 1970. I just knew I enjoyed it. Ganga high… the next disc played…
it was a slower beat… one I could sink into it… just moving to the subtle joy
of it.
I apparently enjoyed it so much that
one of the men hanging out at the bread stand stuck his face right in front of
mine, grinning as he spoke in a cadence that moved with his feet and whole body
from feet to torso, “You like to dance… You dance … go ahead and dance, Mon. Go
ahead ‘n dance to de music, Mon, dance.” All in the tiny bread-stand room were
dancing… all except Dennis.
I was sure I had found it. I could
feel it in the music. There was still another paradise on earth like New Mexico
where the outcasts, the transplanted, and indigenous people of the land, hung
on to an earth centered culture near the edges of civilization. Dennis had one
of the locals show us to a grower’s plantation up the road a few miles. He’d
been there before, and knew the grower, but it’s always best to have a local
along just in case. A tin roof over a veranda and house was nestled in the
hillside beyond a clearing.
It was humbler than any image I held
in my mind of what a plantation might be as we approached the place. We were
greeted warmly and invited inside before the afternoon rains. The Grower had
several sons and daughters who were happy to wait on their guests like princes
from far away. Several other men from the surrounding village came around as we
ate a curried chicken and plantain concoction.
After eating, the rains stopped, and
the men sat on the steps of the front porch talking. Dennis brought out our
bread wrappers and gave them to The Grower along with a pouch of tobacco. The
old man’s calloused hands deftly fashioned a cone in which he mixed the ganja
and tobacco. After crafting one spliff, he passed it to Dennis and began on a
second. After passing a spliff out to each person, conversation took on a more
serious tenor.
“So, Mon, wot you are doin’ here?”
The old man spoke while the others directed their attention first to Dennis.
“I have dese tools,” He answered as
he pulled a canvass wrapped set of wood carving tools from his pack. “I plan to
carve wit dem.”
The old man’s eyes lit up at this,
“Wot do you carve wit dese?” He tested the edge of a chisel with his gnarled
forefinger drawing a slit of crimson on it.
He sucked on the finger a moment and
turned to me, “Lemme see yer hand?” I held out my hand and the man took it in
his, then turned it palm-up, asking, “Wot you do wit dis here hand?”
I was loaded. This was the most
powerful pot I’d ever smoked. The best I could do was say, “What?”
“Are you a teef?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your hand has not seen work, Mon …
are you a teef?”
I saw that it would do no good to be
evasive or angry with him, but I had no good answer, “I’m no thief.”
“If you are not a teef, den wot do
you do wit dese hands?” He held onto my hand more tightly as though he wouldn't let go until I provided a satisfactory answer.
After sticking the spliff behind my
ear like the way the others did I pointed to my head with my free hand, “I
haven’t found what it is I do with my hands. Maybe I am a philosopher who uses
his head instead of his hands.”
All of the men laughed as the mood
shifted to a lighter mode, “Max? A philosopher? Eh? A better kind of teef!” and
there was more laughter. “You come here for dee troot? You get dee troot in you
hands.”
“How did you know my name?”
“Your hands… dey tell me, mon.”
I didn’t tell him my name and I’d
never been under this kind of scrutiny before… at least from people whose
respect I dearly wished to have.
My belly filled with curried chicken,
rice, and black beans, and my head full of ganga, I sat amid wise and good council
on that sultry evening filling my starving soul. Something was revealed of my
character there. These people were no longer cartoon characters of quaint
locals. They’d become spiritual watchmen, gleaning what they could of what I
was about before they sent us off the next morning with a bread-sack full of
ganga. My Hands and mind had to find meaning of their own… to become calloused
from hard work before anything of value would come of either.
The men went off to their homes and
we laid out our bed rolls on the floor of the veranda where we’d laughed and
talked earlier. Dennis asked the old grower, “So, what can you tell me about
Hoss Bozz?”
“Oh, mon, you don’ want to know dat,
do you?”
“I been hearing about him, I need to
know for myself.”
I drifted off to sleep vaguely
hearing words like; “gangster”, “evil-mon”, “scourge”, “Babylon”, as Dennis and
the old man talked. The next day we lit out on the road with a gift of at least
a half-pound of ganja, “Here, you will need this as you pass through these
hills.”
Stan mentioned it first, “You ain’t
goin’ to go find this Hoss Bozz are you?”
“You guys don’t have to go with me.”
Stan looked disappointed, “How about
you, Max?”
I no longer cared, I was so high,
“Sure, why not.”
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