By Johnny Coomansingh
My tender little imaginations were pregnant with hope. The idea of snaring a warbler in my neatly constructed cage was beginning to show signs of fulfilment. I saw many other little boys carrying about their birds in their cages with such pride; totally elated were they. I envied them. I wanted my very own bird. Many of the feathered twits flitted and fluttered by but none seemed to care about the oxidized halved banana, almost dripping in the noonday sun. Maybe they wanted something more interesting and pleasant to eat.
Sitting patiently, I watched and waited in the tropical paradise for a prize. Surrounded by huge yellow globes hanging from the grapefruit trees, I couldn’t be more comfortable. Nonetheless, I was somewhat anxious, possibly tormented for the mere fact that not a bird appeared. Leaning up on one of the fruit trees a good way off from where the cage was set, I sat there dreaming about my prize; a semp.
I had hopes of catching and caging a semp (Euphonia violacea), a small songbird of the finch family. Then something wonderful and exciting happened. A bird perched on the cage! As I watched the semp make its gingerly move to the half-rotted banana, my heart palpitated to a crescendo. My blood was flowing faster as I saw my dream becoming a reality. My celebratory juices suddenly dissipated, a banana quit (Coereba flaveola) like a ‘line-jumper,’ callously darted forward pushing my prize aside to feast on the blackened banana. I watched and hoped for another semp but none appeared. My attempt that day at caging a specimen was futile. Dejected and fed up with the several disappointing scenarios with the birds I decided to call it quits for that day.
Little did I realize that while I was watching, someone else was also watching. It was Mister Frankie. “So you want to ketch ah bird eh?” Sheepishly, as one defeated in his quest to conquer an organism in what he imagined to be one of a lesser status, I said a muffled and humble “Yes sir.” It was as though I had to make an apology for my failure.
Maybe it was my covert fear of mister Frankie, the old man who lived alone in the old clapboard estate house as a companion to my godmother. I heard it said that Mister Frankie belonged to some weird secret order. In those days, people who belonged to secret orders always carried a tag for further discussion. Nevertheless, I was all ears when mister Frankie spoke to me.
The fear in the small cocoa-producing neighbourhood cautioned that people should be wary, maybe afraid, regarding mister Frankie. Because he lived alone and kept more to himself, they believed that he was a shape-shifter. “Dat man does tun beast” was the talk on everybody’s lips. I never saw him shifting his shape, only that he was quite a mysterious-looking individual.
He seldom spoke and the times he spoke, he conversed with my godmother in patois (broken French). What the people believed or imagined did not matter to me. At this point in time, and for the want of a passerine warbler, Mister Frankie was my saviour. I saw him as one who was willing to give me a chance at catching a warbler.
Trusting in his offer, apprehensively I moved closer to Mister Frankie. I mused to myself, what can an 80-year-old, grey-headed, frail man teach me about catching a bird? With all my lagley, the boiled resin from breadfruit trees that becomes sticky, half-rotted bananas and traps I was unsuccessful. It was worth a try. I was desperate, and I was not about to let such a good opportunity pass me by.
He signalled that I should don my rubber boots. I was wearing a pair of short pants and the boots were just a little over ankle height. Before putting on the boots I knocked the daylights out of them. One of those same boots became the home of a huge black scorpion. My godmother constantly warned me about scorpions invading people’s boots.
We began our trek into the cocoa field towards the river that served as a natural boundary for the 20-acre cocoa estate allotment. The field was foreboding, made dark from the canopy of the giant immortelle trees used for shading the cocoa trees. I did not mind the horrid nature of the long shadows cast upon the field from the dying sun. I was about to realize my toy, my joy; “a bird in the hand…”
As we quickly traversed the narrow muddy path, the long laminae of the gamelot grass reminded me that they were very present as they boldly cut shallow gulleys into my legs. I would thereafter suffer from the treatment of these wounds with raw iodine that my godmother stored for such occasions.
If allowed to digress, the cocoa field offered no real joy for an eleven-year-old boy. Wide ravines covered with thick brush served as booby traps for little unwary feet. One could not be too careful in the cocoa field. The cocoa field had its personal “jumbies” or ghosts. For example, the swarms of mosquitoes seeking for a meal sang their melodies in such close proximity to my ears while simultaneously inviting their friends to join in the feast of blood.
Colorful cocoa pods of red, yellow, tangerine and orange stick out from the tree trunks as the breasts of an 18-year old girl…firm! Cocoa pods would be freed from their cushions with a quick jerk of the extremely sharp gullet knife attached to a slim but firm bamboo rod. Gathering the pods was the job of little children. I was such a child, saddled with the task of the ‘samblay;’ to collect and empty ungainly crocus bags of pods in a heap somewhere in the middle of the field. The trials and tribulations concomitant with the future miserable task of ‘cracking cocoa’ raced through my mind as we found our way to Mister Frankie’s destination, the place where I imagined I would eventually get my prize.
My thoughts, my reminisces, about the cocoa-cracking activity slowly dissipated, drifting to a more pleasant aspiration; my precious bird. We were approaching the last bed of cocoa trees before the boundary; the Sangre Chiquito River. At that point, he told me to stop in the clearing between two cocoa trees separated by a box drain. I was told to keep very quiet.
What happened next was amazing but quite troubling. Let me remind all who are reading this narrative that this was no dream; this was no movie. It was real! Mister Frankie stood to my left and rested his right hand on my left shoulder. With a stolid look, that old man then emitted a sound, a kind of deep visceral haunting sound, a sound I never heard before in my life; indescribable! And then it happened.
The scene turned suddenly! Mysteriously, a swarm of birds flew in with a frenzied kind of behaviour that I never witnessed before. It seemed as though they had no choice but to beckon to Mr. Frankie’s ‘call.’ There were small birds, medium-sized birds and large birds with a variety of colours. All kinds of weird thoughts entered my mind. Was it true that Mr. Frankie was a shape-shifter as the villagers thought? Was he a wizard? Was he an Obeah man? Was that the reason why he did not ask me for my birdcage?
Mister Frankie looked mysteriously tense and staid as though in a trance. It seemed like he was communicating with something. I stood there frightened. Then he turned to me, and in a low somber tone asked, “Which one do you want?” I couldn’t utter a word. I just shook my head from side to side motioning that I did not want any bird at all.
His hand was still on my left shoulder. Still in a trancelike state, mister Frankie uttered a similar sound from way down in his stomach. The birds quickly disappeared. The scene became calm, but I said not a word. I was too scared to speak. My heart was racing inside of me. My imagination about mister Frankie began to torment me. I wanted to get out of there. It seemed that he had total control over these creatures.
A few seconds later he was back to normal but appeared a bit disgusted. I thought that he was annoyed with me for not accepting his effort in providing me with the bird I wanted so badly. Then he broke his silence with the question, “Why did you not want any bird?” I had no answer for a good reply. I remained quiet for a few days not wanting to come into contact with mister Frankie. I did not disrespect him but avoided him as far as I could have.
Years passed. The next time I saw mister Frankie was at the Seventh Day Adventist Community Hospital in Port of Spain. He smiled and I smiled back but I knew that he was in much pain. His fingers on both hands were very swollen. They appeared red and somewhat purple. He told me that he was not feeling too well and that he came to see a physician. Somehow I knew that he was coming to the last leg of his journey. Not long after, mister Frankie died. He died with all his secrets…more mysterious secrets I’m sure than just how to catch a bird.
(Excerpt from the unpublished book titled: Leh Mih Tell Yuh by Johnny Coomansingh)
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