St. Somewhere Journal, July 2013

  She left, and I stood watching her as she hurried down the hill. I could not concentrate on anything else for the rest of the day. I had two shilling and six pence tied up in a white sock and I kept wondering if the thief stole that too. I had saved up for a long time to buy ice cream and light cake and grater cake at the school harvest. I could hardly wait for lunch time to come.

  As the bell rang I dashed home and bored my way through the crowd that was milling around at my gate. The door of the house was still open and the house was ransacked from top to bottom. Clothes, furniture, even food was scattered on the floor. The trunks of clothes and bed spread were capsized and the ward robe was left ajar. All the drawers were pulled out. I got the impression that the thief was searching for something in particular.

  The police came and took statement, but it took a long time before the crowd dispersed.

  When they were all gone we cleared the things off the floor and tidied back our house. I was happy to find the sock with my money. The thief did not find it. However he took our radio, Papa’s watch and some pound notes that Mama kept in the machine drawer. He also took some of Papa’s clothes, and all the food we had in the house. I was so mad, I wanted to catch him and send him to jail.

  The search for the thief started. People started combing the hills for evidence of his hide out. That thief was smart. He wouldn’t even light a fire, so they could detect where he was.

  Doors were locked early at nights, and we were warned to stay away from the hills. Papa and the other men made sure to keep a well sharpened machete in the house, and the slightest noise alerted them at nights. To be frank, everybody was on edge.

  Then one evening as I reached the square, I knew something was afoot. There was a large crowd and a lot of noise. As I came nearer I realized that they had a prisoner in their midst. He was a chubby black man. He badly needed to be trimmed and shaved. His face was greasy and he was awfully dirty and haggard. They were beating and kicking him. His hands were tied with a rope and all he was doing was grunting. I felt sorry for him.

  Soon the police drove up in a jeep. They praised the people for catching the thief. I watched as they opened the back of the jeep to take him away. One held his feet that were tied and the other held him under his two arms.

  “One two three,” they counted and threw him into the van on the count of three.

  Long after they were gone the people still stood in the square, talking about the thief. It was the first I had seen a real convict up close. I was glad they caught him, but deep inside I felt sorry for him. They had beaten him badly and then they just threw him into the jeep. That picture stayed inside my head for days.

  After this incident things changed in the village. Everyone became more cautious, and Mama never left her door open again when she was going to the shop.

  Walk Too Fast, Walk Two Time A Poem by Patricia Whittle

  If you walk too fass you walk two time

  Dis proverb prove true eight time outa nine

  For nuff smaddy weh palawash dem job

  Soon realize dat a dem own time dem rob

  Now Miss Mavis inna one big rush

  An no hab time fi put on di final touch

  Shi was baking bullas fi sell

  Someting shi could do very well.

  But tedday shi wake up late

  An shi hurry up an bake

  So dat shi could reach by five

  Wen har customers would arrive

  Well of course shi reach in time

  But shi neva meck a dime

  For afta one smaddy taste di cake

  Im seh it give im bellyache

  So Miss Mavis lose har sale

  An har cake stay till dem stale

  Afta dat shi haffi teck great pain

  Fi bake good cake fi sell again

  Helper A Poem by Patricia Whittle

  Housewuck a sinting weh never done

  Yu wuck roun di clock an no hab no fun

  So if yu hab a job plus a husban

  Yu fi try an get a helper if yu can.

  Now Valerie live eena one hellova house

  So yu expect har fi hab a helper of course

  Shi hab three pickney an a full time job

  An add to dat shi hab a husban name Bob.

  Everytime mi si Valerie, shi too busy

  Shi even complain seh har head often dizzy

  Shi doan even hab time fi talk pon di phone

  Shi seh all di wuck lan pon she alone.

  One day mi jus get upset wid har

  So mi gi har a piece a mi mine sar

  Mi sey, “A full time yu tap gwan like idiot Valerie?

  Yu hab pickney an husban an yu still unhappy.

  Yu wuck out yu soul case bout yu a cut an carve

  If yu hire a helper unnu not gwine starve

  Wi hab plenty poor people who waan fi live

  Hire one meck God bless yu, fi wat yu give.

  Wen yu pay di little wages, it nah done yu money

  But wen yu overwuck an get sick, it won’t bi funny

  For it sad wen yu rich an yet yu nuh healthy

  But a joy if yu healthy, tho yu nuh suh wealthy.

  Julie Mango A Poem by Vanessa Simmons

  Miss Julie

  a perfect handful

  to contend with,

  always playing hard

  to get,

  How is the air up there

  Miss Julie?

  Don't worry

  because I will know

  when you are ready

  for me,

  that slow blush

  spreading like the dawn

  over young skin.

  I will come for you

  and steal you away

  behind their backs

  Miss Julie

  I will savor your wild

  tropical scent

  of heat and savage rain

  and be your first

  carnivorous love

  of sweet pulp and

  warm sticky punch.

  And then Miss Julie

  I will take you home

  to breed for me

  an infinite feast

  of little Julies.

  Mr. Brown A Poem by Vanessa Simmons

  Mr. Brown don't step foot

  on my porch no more,

  no more comments on the heat

  and how nice I lookin'

  and what I doin' standing all the way

  over there for

  and if he could please

  get a glass of water,

  how I making him hot and thirsty so

  (wink)

  but I know in truth

  it must be the heat.

  Mr. Brown used to visit my porch

  at night

  with the light turn' off,

  there use' to be a lap

  between the chair and

  my backside,

  and warm hands 'round my waist.

  Mr. Brown would kiss me

  on the dark porch

  when the moon was hiding

  so nobody could see.

  Mr. Brown don't step foot

  on my porch no more,

  I suspect is because of

  Mrs. Brown.

  The Grand Master of Time (v1) Art by Barbara Sandiford

  The Grand Master of Time (v2) Art by Barbara Sandiford

  Sweet Slavery Art by Barbara Sandiford

  Rainy Season A Poem by Sarah Venable

  In the rhythm of the seasons

  when the music of the planet

  is in tune with June’s fat moon,

  what’s the melody you hear

  if you take the time to listen?

  The recurring refrain of the rain.

  Though the sky may be duller,

  the wetness brings out colour

  here below,

  and makes things glisten

  if you take the time to look.

  And the moisture is a balm
/>
  that bestows a sort of calm

  and splendid generation

  to all creatures here below,

  a caressing penetration

  that provides for things to grow.

  The skin becomes more supple

  the frogs come out and couple

  while in darkness, shy fungus

  proliferates among us.

  Mildew plots insurgence

  under every sink and cranny.

  Laundry on the line stays clammy.

  Light holds in diffusion,

  Dampness in suffusion,

  And photos stored in boxes

  Undergo a fusion, needing

  peeling from their wads.

  We are forced to change our sunshine ways

  beneath this sky that sheds itself

  in a soft cloak of rain,

  while thick air beckons us

  to just go back to bed and sleep for days.

  Transport of the Word A Poem by Sarah Venable

  Kamau, Kamau, Kamau

  Speaks in his measured pace

  From word to word,

  The upright, steady pole

  at the centre of the whirl.

  His mind flings out leaping

  Stones in a stream.

  Stream becomes river

  Deep and wide

  Need to fly to the other side

  And we do,

  transported

  on wings

  of images freely

  associating

  Sipping dipping

  elisions flow

  collisions go

  Whup! Upside your head

  And knock you from streaming

  Into conscious wonder.

  I wonder how

  his raptor vision soars

  spotting landmarks

  in the panorama of events

  then chooses the words;

  How what he sees is heard,

  How he paints behind our eyes

  How some strokes feather,

  cut or blur.

  His choices are

  De liberate,

  though sometimes baffling.

  But this quibble

  is anchovy tango.

  (See what I mean?)

  The arc remains.

  He stands at the lectern

  humbly but erect

  his forearm sweeping,

  round and round

  like a coucou stick

  stirring the pot of poem

  dishing it steaming

  into our open beaks,

  making arcs over the page.

  He does not so much read,

  as transmit.

  And – What’s this? – I see an aura.

  It can’t be so;

  I am not one of those

  who does. I blink and

  the glow remains

  curving over the man

  tracing circles

  in the spotlight.

  Through the darkened hall of bodies

  I hear his voice in my pores.

  -- on the occasion of hearing Kamau Brathwaite reading“Arc” at Frank Collymore Hall

  Man Called Raven Art by Glenn Johnson

  Homes for the Inde A Story by Glenn Johnson

  Claude Heldt was engrossed in reading a report on the status of housing for his Dzil Ligia Si’an Ndee. He unconsciously stroked his groomed brown beard, same color as his collar length hair. His long sleeved shirt was rolled up at the sleeves with a silver bolo tie finishing it off. The report had been ordered a year ago in 1966 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for all federally recognized American Indian reservations. The results were not pretty; in fact, for all tribes it was appalling. Embarrassingly, his reservation was among the worst of the worst. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent of the White Mountain Apache reservation, he knew they would blame no one but him—the buck stopped on his desk. The fact that his reservation was grossly underfunded for housing projects was of no consideration to the government’s powers to be. They needed to blame someone, so Claude and his fellow reservation superintendents were tagged it.

  Looming large in Claude’s mind was the option of resigning and letting some other sucker take on the inescapable political heat. Vying with that option was Claude’s love for his job of working with the Dzil Ligia Si’an Ndee, and their beautiful reservation in the alpine region of Arizona. Over his 8 years as the reservation Superintendent, he had grown to greatly respect the tribal pride in their ferociously defended customs and traditions. Claude reminisced how it had taken three years to gain the Inde’s trust. They were a very proud people who preferred their own company. He had learned that mistrust was imbedded in their history as a warrior society which was still a source of great pride. It was not lost on the Inde that their not so distant war chiefs, Geronimo and Cochise, were the greatest warriors in the Southwest. For years, Geronimo and Cochise had run the U.S military forces around in circles through some of the most unforgiving terrain in the Southwestern United States. They had driven the Army crazy; not hard to do because the Inde believed they were crazy in the first place.  It was not until 1886 with the capture of Geronimo that the American Indian wars ended in the West.

  Part of Claude’s effort to win over his charges was to call them by their traditional name: Inde—meaning person of the band. The name Apache was not Inde. The historians he read concluded it came from the Yavapai word “pace” that translated to “enemy.” In his reading about American Indian tribes, Claude found it fascinating that the vast number of traditional tribal names, when translated, meant the same thing:“The People” and then words that described their land; thus Dzil Ligia Si’an Ndee—People of the White Mountains.

  Claude slumped, over resting his forehead on his desk. He was overwhelmed, as he often was, as to how to help these people. He felt immensely responsible—who else was going to do anything? Housing was rotten, no jobs, Show Low’s businesses hours away as if that made any difference anyway because few of them could afford cars, reservation wide electricity and phone services were decades away. He was at a dead end with job development already used funding from the 1956 Adult Indian Vocational Training Act. No more government jobs to train for that didn’t require a college degree. Even with the HUD funds available for building homes, it was slow going because construction crews were hard to find that would live out in the boonies for months on end. Claude’s brain started to percolate. Housing construction and job training kept bobbing around in his head. They started to drift closer and closer together. “I’ve got it!” he yelled as he jumped up out of his seat. The answer was now clear as day. He would use the Vocational Training Act funds to teach Inde men to learn all of the construction skills needed to build their own homes. And HUD funds would pay for their salaries and for all the building materials once they were ready to start working. He knew that combining the two programs had never been done before by the BIA; but he was sure he could get it approved as a demonstration project.

  Claude started immediately, and happily spent the next two days researching both programs and writing as tight a proposal as possible. He wanted to insure approval and funding. When it was finished, he personally drove the two hundred miles to Show Low’s post office, and posted it overnight express to BIA headquarters in Washington D.C. Now the excruciating part: waiting to hear back. One week went by. The second week passed, and finally Claude received a letter from D.C. He tore it open. His heart sunk, not all the way, but a ways. Headquarters wanted to know what accounting procedures would be in place to prevent comingling of funds. Claude thought that he could kick himself for not covering that in his proposal. Finances were not his best suit. “Shoot,” he said to himself, “Should have run it by Phil in the accounting department.” Claude raced over to Phil’s office and gave him the office copy of the proposal and the letter from headquarters. Phil looked at Claude. Looked at the proposal and said, “Hmmm. “Homes for the Apaches.” Not al
l that catchy but it does get to the point. I’ll read it over next couple of days so I know what I’m talking about.” Claude was very anxious to get the proposal back to D.C., but he greatly respected Phil’s expertise, and knew he was going about it the right way. “Phil, this is top priority. Drop everything else. My goal is to send it off to D.C. in three days. Do able?” Phil skimmed through the proposal, and then looked up at Claude. “You got it boss. Oh, yeah, for what it’s worth--great idea.” Claude smiled proudly and headed back to his office.

  Again, he personally delivered the revised proposal to the post office in Show Low. Popular stories had it that Show Low got its name from a poker game in the late 1800s. The future land of Show Low was put on the table as a last chance bet. The winner made a show low bet and won--the name stuck. On the drive back, Claude had the windows open taking in the sweet smell of the Douglas Firs. He thought about how the Apache reservation was not the permanent traditional home of the Western Apache. Like many tribes they followed the migration of game with quickly built temporary shelters. But the Inde were not just hunters, they were raiders, to the great consternation—putting it mildly—of Spanish and then American settlements all over the southern region. Just the word Apache struck fear into many a non-Indian and equally Indian’s of other tribes. Their swift and devastating hit and run guerilla tactics were the stuff of legend to this day.

  Waiting for the response from D.C., had Claude constantly on edge; it was hard to do even his routine duties. Finally, he got the call from Show Low that he had a certified letter with a BIA D.C. return address. Good thing there were rarely any state troopers in this isolated area of Arizona because he was 15 mile over the speed limit all the way to Show Low. He rushed into the post office, and nervously tapped on the counter—the clerk just could not move fast enough. As soon as he was handed the letter, he tore it open. “Hallelujah,” he yelled. His idea was approved. He was proud, but also thankfully optimistic that this was going to be a major game changer for his Inde. Jobs. Housing. What a coupe. He drove the speed limit back to his office relieved, but also excited and anxious to get started.