The son, father, husband, master carpenter inhaled the sawdust-scented air of his woodwork shop. It was like the smell of the mist near the seaside after a long rain. Fresh, welcoming, perhaps the only place Arthur felt completely at home.
Surveying the piles of wood shavings of various heights, colours and configurations, Arthur thought of his children, of the very different experiences that went into making each one. Devonni, their first, which made him regard his wife’s rising belly with the same reverence he’d felt as a boy watching his father craft a fine bureau; Francey, who came shortly after Devonni, and who, against all her mother’s predictions, had run into her very first school yard without so much as looking back; and their last, quiet one Johnna, a genuine surprise and sickly from the very beginning, and then, of course . . .
Arthur inhaled deeply, though it did nothing for the tightness developing in his chest. Retrieving a broom from behind the side door, he coughed and spat on the dry earth outside. There was a soft rapping at the main door. “Arthur?”
Arthur turned around cautiously. He looked for longer than he wanted to at the serene and earthily-elegant woman standing before him, as his mind took him involuntarily back to the very different presence she was when she’d first entered his woodwork shop some four years before.
Make me a coffin.” The woman had said it so evenly and with such definitiveness that Arthur was tempted to ask, what kind of wood, cherry, pine, or mahogany? But he didn’t make coffins. It was Straffe and Sons, the only funeral service in Antigua, that did that kind of work. Arthur was a carpenter. Chest-of-drawers, dressing tables, bureaus . . . he wanted to remind her, until he really looked at her.
She was wearing some kind of housecoat, torn at the neck. There were scratches about her neck, too. Red, fresh, and from the way she was scratching now, obviously self-inflicted. Her hair was combed through and flat on one side, on the other wild, with bed lint and something that looked like bits of wood-shaving, maybe some paint, too. Her eyes were red, swollen.
There were salt stains on her cheeks, dried snot in her nostrils.
“Make me a goddamn coffin! You deaf! Ah have money.” She glared at him, but quickly changed her focus. And now, she was talking to the ceiling, the floor, her body, anything but Arthur. “He lef’ me. You gone an’ lef’ me. Lef’ me with what? Money? All de goddamn money. Not a damn t’ing but de money.” And then Arthur saw the blood stains on the woman’s housecoat. And, Lord Have Mercy, the blood and mess trickling down her leg! “You and you daddy. Wicked! Oh, lord have mercy ‘pon me. Oh, Lord, kill me, too! Dis kinda cross me can’t bear!” She shook her head violently. Squeezed her eyes tight. Then opened them in a wide, accusing gaze onto Arthur’s astonished face. “Me say fuh make me a damn coffin! Take de wood we buy fuh the crib and make me a coffin.” It was then that he realised who the woman was.
It was Adynah Williams. Dead Victor Williams’s wife. They were poor at one time, until Victor made a deal with three of the hotels to supply them with a constant and choice selection of the best in island sea catch for their seafood specialties. It was a deal that only Victor would make, because no fisherman with a relatively sound income would venture as far out as frequently and under the latest hurricane conditions. It was a deal that cost Victor his life. Three months before, Adynah was Victor’s pregnant widow. And now . . . Arthur began to understand Adynah’s frenzied state.
Arthur dropped the piece of wood he was marking and rushed to her side. He reached for Adynah’s arms, still scratching about her neck, and forced them to her side. Holding them there, he half dragged her to the open door of his Woodworks Shop and yelled out to two neighborhood children playing checkers on their front porch, “Run, quick! Go call Mamma, Miss Henry. Tell she, ‘Dynah loss she chil’!”
He’d completed the coffin. Mahogany with brass handles. Free-of-charge and at the expense of other work he’d already contracted. But it was the least he could do since he’d participated in that dirty business, the business of building things for a child before the child was born.
His mother had warned him. “Arthur, you flyin’ in de face of God. Long time now, ol’ people does say . . .” Arthur had raised his hand in protest and started the power saw to drown out the rest of what his mother was saying. He was tired of the “Ol’ People Say” ignorance his people were prone to. His long-time school friend Victor Williams had finally made a go of it financially, and Arthur knew how a man felt when he could provide the best for his children. He saw the pride in Victor’s eyes when he made the advance payment, asked for the special order, lacquer for the legs of the crib, wouldn’t accept the merchant’s discount price. “How me can steal from one man chil’ren fuh feed mine. No man, charge me de full price.” Victor had feigned the kind of disgust that both men understood as pride. And the steadiness in the smiles they exchanged was filled with a man’s gratitude . . . one that implied a respect for God’s role, but would not default entirely to His divine input.
In the months that followed the child’s funeral, Arthur said silent prayers of thanks to God and Victor’s spirit that, Dynah, at least, was left to expert hands. Mamma, Miss Henry, as he called her when he spoke to others, was adept at both counsel and cure. And, in time, Dynah’s mental state had improved enough for her to return to her own home.
And now here she stood, back in Antigua for good, having returned from the sister island of Barbuda with his last child, the one they’d conceived somewhere between four nights, three days, and two wrecked souls.
