Wait, let me get on them trousers. Wait, wait.
(They scramble into hiding. Enter YETTE, CALICO, POMPEY.)
YETTE
Mano! Is Yette, I bring you more recruits. We got a Chinese cook, an East Indian tactician; now we have a preacher and a ruined planter. Attention, recruits. In about five minutes, if the Maroon commander like you, you might promote to the rank of generals, for that’s the way things devise here, equal powers. (MANO and the others emerge.) Your commander, Emmanuel Mano, sometimes known as Cudjoe, sometimes John Orr, sometimes Fédon, and various multicoloured aliases. They call he Calico; all he have left in his name is an antique Spanish coin that ain’t worth much. And you there, put down the breadfruit and salute.
MANO
Your first military action, pardner, is to dedicate this fruit to today’s supplies. Hand it over to General Yu.
YU
Just in time, General, nice fruit just good for pot.
MANO
What’s your Christian name, and what make you fight for the cause of emancipation and constitutional progress?
POMPEY
You never heard of me?
RAM
You is a soldier?
POMPEY
I is a calypsoldier. I bugles, I incites violence, I tread the burning zones of Arabia. I was a meek and mild nigger, a pacific man, but now …
MANO
All right, all right, and you, Mr. Calico, hand over the coin to the auditor, General Ram. Yette, you see anything, gal?
CALICO
General, this is an ancestral heirloom, my great-grandfather found it and died with it as Jeremy Ford when he searched for Guiana with Sir Walter Raleigh.
MANO (Shouting impatiently.)
Well, ain’t it an Indian you giving it to, and ain’t it an Indian them did want it from? Boy, pass the subscription before I chop off your brains.
YU
Food cook will please sit and serve. I will stand watch.
POMPEY
Inform me of my duties and watch me charge the foe.
MANO
You ent too mind if we eat a little food first. Now you, what you want?
(They sit to eat. YU passes plates of food around.)
CALICO
General, the bottom fell out of the sugar market, but more than that economic fact, I was pursuing your career with interest. I hear how you have developed an army of free men. You could shoot me if you need to, but since the hand of ruin withered my crops, poverty has taught me compassion.
MANO
Friend Calico, nobody hate nobody here. I know what concern you have for the land, and you may have a proprietary right, for all I know, as you was here first …
CALICO
Yes, but I didn’t care sufficient about those who worked it.
MANO
I say it don’t matter, sometimes the times so bad a man don’t have time to think properly. Now, ladle out a soup for yourself.
CALICO
I don’t like Chinese food.
MANO
Well, that’s all we have here, so you best swallow your pride.
YU (Rushing at CALICO.)
You don’t like Chinese food? A smashed head brings wisdom.
MANO
Don’t attack the man, General Yu, he don’t mean no wrong. Pompey, how about you?
POMPEY (Waving his musket.)
War! To war! They holding us in the chains of bondage, and I doesn’t eat dead flesh with mortal man. Oh God, they beat poor Pompey with the rod of correction, and they cast me and my people in a dungeon with the lizard and the involved serpent.
YETTE
Hear he. Good robber talk, Pomps.
MANO
What’s the news in the country now, girl?
YETTE (Eating.)
They hanged George William Gordon from the yardarm is what I gather, and the riots in Morant Bay bursting out like sandbox pods from the tree of Liberty …
POMPEY
Liberty, that’s a stupid phrase, that’s an abused phrase. I drowned my grandmother in a spoonful of water, I is the tawny lion of Assyria, and the rod of God is the rod of violence. I defies police and parliament, I shoe the foot of the devil so he can tread the burning marl of hell. Oh, God is a white man that crack me crown, destroy the enemy.
(Rushes at CALICO. RAM and YETTE hold him back.)
RAM
Pompey, pal, eat your eat and don’t worry.
POMPEY
Ain’t this is the man who profit from my flesh and get fat on my ignorance, ain’t this is the man who fatten the land and exhaust it? O God in heaven, let me bury my cracked head in the grave, for I can’t stand the din of the history of unrighteousness no more.
CALICO
All I had was a coin and I gave it to Ram.
RAM
Pompey, history not a judge, not a prophet, not a priest, and not a executioner. This man never hurt, and he ain’t no more responsible for the past to his father than for the future to his son. Don’t grudge, don’t remember, eat.
CALICO (Aside to YETTE)
What is your relationship with this general, if I may ask?
YETTE
I’m a woman friend. I don’t have no prejudice.
POMPEY
Prejudice! The cry of the damned fiend in the whirlwind of reason …
(Again he charges CALICO and is again intercepted.)
MANO
Oh God, but is hard sometimes to love one another; if he get on like a beast, bind him hand and foot. I can’t have no ruction in this place. He getting on like some mad Haitian rebel. Wait, I hear the bugles of the first battalion.
(They tie POMPEY’s hands and gag him.)
RAM (Searching.)
The hour of battle is at hand. Where the map? Where the map I draw out with the battle tatix?
YU
Do not touch the calaloo pot.
RAM
You damn stupid Chinaman, look how you tear up me map. What you know about war?
YU
Is better always to make soup than war.
RAM
This the map I spent all last night designing.
YU
Short of paper. Map was entirely without tactical value. Hence used to start fire.
MANO
Yette, bring the military list. Loose Pompey, and make him stop whining there as a mongrel dog. Boy, whether you like it or not, we uniting against this oncoming British platoon. Take away the tureen, General Yu.
YETTE
General Yu, where the military list? It was in your coat there last night.
MANO
Oh God, when West Indians going learn discipline, much less the art of war?
POMPEY (Singing.)
The drums and colours come, and the canes marching to war.
YETTE
Here the list, General Mano.
MANO
Ram, run up to the rock and signal for me.
RAM
Right.
(He runs off.)
POMPEY (Singing.)
The drums and colours come to defeat us as before …
MANO
All right, we going into council. General Yu, you keep watch ahead;
Ram signal the rebels across the ravine that we ready.
(Reads.)
One pair washikongs, two pairs shirts, one underwear, two parts scallion, one part fried rice … Give me patience; Christ, this is the laundry list …
POMPEY (Singing and marching.)
The conqueror that leads us into war,
Oh, the conqueror that leads us into war.
MANO
It have the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and the Black Watch … Hey, Ram, what is this Black Watch, coloured boys?
CALICO
It’s a regimental description …
MANO
Now General Yu report! Hurry up, hurry up! Don’t bother bow.
YU (Bowing profusely.)
As special cook for British re
giments from Newcastle to the northern plain, have fixed company meals thus. Placing many haphazard ingredients into Chinese special Friday-night menu, into vast cauldron of polluted soup, last night whole company complain of interior disorder, but during supper several green British soldiers demand more, kicking this person in the shin …
POMPEY
Oh God, they coming for Pompey, hide me, hide me …
YETTE
Take it easy, boy!
RAM (From above.)
I can see the sunlight winking on their muskets and the sergeant have a broad and blond mustache …
POMPEY
Oh God, the sergeant, the sergeant.
YU
This same platoon should be considerably weakened by dysentery, yet compelled to march. I remember the advice of General Ram, that an army travel on its stomach.
MANO
Yette, you going be in the vanguard and conduct this interesting flank movement. When the regiment passing between this gully of the dried riverbed, sick and helpless and ready to die … then you suddenly appearing like a mirage of woman and water onto the parched plain, without musket, singing a local song, and then display a vulnerable flank. Show me the artillery.
YETTE (Showing a leg.)
So?
YU
Naturally, men sick and tired will stop and whistle. Sex being a great republic …
YETTE
Mano is British not French soldiers, you think they going look?
Them fellers well trained in discipline.
MANO
They bound to look.
YU
We lashing into them.
MANO
Then Ram, at some point, you getting up slowly and making off-break remarks about the regimental British cricket team, then I giving the other band a signal, and we lashing into them with stone, ladle, iron. This one musket I giving to Pompey so he can shoot the sergeant.
POMPEY (Grabbing a musket.)
The sergeant, the sergeant!
RAM (Waving frantically above.)
Boys, boys, clear the road, clear the road, they coming…!
POMPEY
Oh God, revengement is mine. Come, Brother Calico!
(POMPEY and CALICO exit.)
MANO (To YETTE)
But let me tell you, woman. You best not act this part too good or is blows in your skin, and your regimental colours going be black and blue …
YETTE
Don’t mind that, scatter, scatter!
(She sits singing as the regiment comes on.)
Fan me, soldier man, fan me.
Fan me, soldier man, fan me.
Fan me, soldier man, fan me, oh
Gal, your character gone.
SOLDIER (Shouts.)
I’ll see you later, sausage!
(The CAPTAIN blows a whistle; all halt.)
CAPTAIN
Halt! stop that drumming.
Sergeant, find out who shouted to that woman,
I’m sick of this indiscipline.
SERGEANT (Moving among SOLDIERS.)
The young captain is very thirsty, mates, and he would like me to know which of you poor suffering buggers, sweating on the march all day and fighting in a rebellion which you really have no faith in, cried out, I’ll see you later, sausage, or various innocent words to that effect, thereby slandering this lady’s physique. Purdy? Williams? Fairweather? Matheison? No answer, Captain, they never even seen her before.
CAPTAIN
You there! strumpet! Ease there on your muskets.
YETTE
Is it me, my blue-eyed captain?
CAPTAIN
Is there a river near here?
YETTE (Singing.)
Oh, down by the river, he gave me his word,
I’ll be back tomorrow is all I heard.
Oh, now he’s gone, and he rots in the sun …
There’s river through the canes to your right, Captain Blue-eyes.
POMPEY
You see how she flirting? (He rises.) Surrender in the name of General Mano, defender of freedom, or is stones in your skin.
CAPTAIN
Shoot that fellow, Sergeant, he’s a runaway slave.
POMPEY
You can’t shoot me.
CAPTAIN
Present your musket.
POMPEY
I ain’t have no damn rifle.
CAPTAIN
Prime locks.
POMPEY
All you best surrender.
CAPTAIN
Fire!
(They wound POMPEY.)
Come on, men, after them.
(MANO’s army battles with the SOLDIERS.)
YETTE (Singing above the chaos.)
Oh, the soldier he leads a terrible life,
The soldier he leads such a terrible life,
He fights for man’s folly, confused by each cause,
And the captain prohibits his preference for …
(The SOLDIERS are beaten off.)
RAM
They killed the boys this time. General, we can’t keep fighting them like this, it ain’t make sense. Look how they kill Pompey.
YETTE (Moving in the field.)
He fights for man’s freedom, confused by a cause.
And the captain prohibits …
Oh, they killed my blue-eyed captain.
MANO
How you feeling, Pomps?
POMPEY
I feel cold in the heart, General.
I think the chief calling Pompey. He shoot me in a bad place, that feller.
MANO
Yette, get the man some water. I think Pompey grievous hurt.
POMPEY
Nigh unto death, as it say in the Book. Nigh unto death. How is so dark and so cold? Ain’t it noontime?
MANO
Cheer up, Pomps, we has great things to do yet in the name of freedom.
POMPEY
I dead tired, Mano. I can’t fight no more. We lose, is no use fighting.
Freedom will never come.
MANO
Look your friend Calico, Corporal.
POMPEY
I ain’t no corporal, Mano, a feller give me this uniform. You think we going win, Mano?
MANO
We was born free in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord won’t close his eye because the sun sink. One day, praise God, the freedom we was born with bound to come. See, your friend Calico here …
POMPEY
Calico, it have white fellers what dead down there. But they was soldiers. I spoil everything. I ruined the attack because I am a fool since I born.
CALICO
Everybody makes mistakes.
POMPEY
We all the same in the dark. We all in the same descending darkness. I ain’t know what to tell you, Calico.
YETTE
Pompey. Drink some water.
(A trumpet blows retreat.)
POMPEY
That’s a nice-sounding bugle. But is dark, eh? Where Ram?
MANO
Ram.
RAM
I here with you, Pomps.
POMPEY
Hello dere, you old coolie. You crying or what?
RAM
Bear up, Pomps; don’t give up yet.
POMPEY
It ain’t water I want, Yette. I want all you boys stick together, you hear? All you stick together and don’t hate nobody for what they is or what they do. This is all we land, all we country, and let we live in peace. I want all you hold hands there near me, and live like brothers. Calico, don’t ’buse coolie, and coolie don’t ’buse Mano, and, Mano, give the boys a break sometimes, because this is confusion time.
(He dies. Trumpet.)
RAM
They sending back a burial detail. We best get out.
YETTE
Where will they bury my blue-eyed captain, I wonder.
(More shots.)
MANO
If you don’t haul you tail out of here, they’l
l bury you alongside your blue-eyed captain. Come on, Ram, we’ll come back for Pompey.
(All exit running, except YETTE.)
YETTE
I could open a store with the pickings of dead soldiers’ pockets. (She picks up a badge.) It’s only a bloody badge for valour, no use to a woman.
(Enter SERGEANT with PATROL.)
SERGEANT
Burial detail, halt! You still here?
YETTE
Woman’s work is never done, Sergeant. We clean up.
SERGEANT
You know we should have shot you right away, when you begun it,
Hiking up your flank and perturbing the regiment.
What yer waiting for, get on and bury them all
Or heap them in the cart!
(The SOLDIERS gather the dead.)
YETTE
His eye is on the sparrow, Sergeant, it wasn’t me.
It was your imagination that started the battle.
SERGEANT
Robbing the dead, what a ghoulish occupation.
YETTE
And there goes the lovely drummer boy.
SERGEANT
You women cause all the trouble.
(YETTE laughs.)
What are you doing in such a rum game, girl?
You’re not with them, are you? I mean those fellows.
Seems a girl like you could live in a great mansion.
YETTE
I had that once, Sergeant, but it didn’t come to much.
You know, you find what’s honest and you live by that.
Are you happy in your trade yourself, then?
SERGEANT
I never thought much about it till you asked me.
Seen many dead in many parts of all the empire, but
As you were singing, the soldier’s life is hard.
Are you with that fellow, what’s his name?
YETTE
Emmanuel Mano.
I’m with nobody, Sergeant. Man is a beast. Move your foot.