Bad Man's Woman-Excerpt

Bad Man’s Woman A short story by Austin Mitchell My friend, Elroy Reid, was relating to me what had happened between him and his longtime girlfriend, Carline Weston. They had been friends from high school. They lived just a kilometer apart in Keswick. It all started when Carline decided to go to a commercial school in Kingston. “I told her to take the morning bus and come back with it in the evenings.” “So what did she say?” I asked. “Said, that she wouldn’t get any time to study.” “Maybe she’s right. She would have to get up too early in the mornings and come home too late at nights.” We were sheltering under a shopping plaza as it was raining cats and dogs. I was getting the impression that maybe Elroy didn’t want Carline to go and live in Kingston. Maybe he feared that she would find some other guy down there. Anyway, above strong objections from Elroy, Carline went to live with her aunt in Kingston. Elroy swore that he wouldn’t have anything to do with her, but changed his mind when she started coming up on weekends. Elroy couldn’t be happier and they went to dances and parties together. Carline stayed with him whenever she came up. Elroy’s father had helped him to build a one bedromm house with a small kitchenette and bathroom. But it all ended about three months later. Carline would still visit her parents but it would be every month. “By the time I hear that she come country she’s gone aready,” he told me one day. That was because Carline would come up on a Saturday or Sunday morning and return the same evening. He told me that she was working and going to school part time. Elroy was now operating a shop in an adjoining district. One of his uncles had recently come from England and bought a fifty acre farm nearby. I understand that it was this same uncle who had given him the money to open the shop. Elroy was operating both businesses for him. He bought a pickup and would go to various towns to sell produce from the farm. Whe he was returning he would buy things to sell in the shop. He was especially generous to Carline’s parent. He would give them loads of produce from his farm. All in vain I thought as Carline wasn’t coming back to him. I remembered seeing him one day. He was driving his van with produce to sell in Linstead. As he wasn’t passing, Carline’s parents, Sammy and Miss Fay’s house, he asked me to take some goods to give them on my bike. Among the produce was a huge bunch of ripe bananas which I took for myself. A month later he gave me the largest breadfruit I ever saw plus two dozen ackees to give his suppposed in-laws. We did make a feast of that breadfruit and ackees. Me and my brothers all agreed that anything Elroy gave us to give Carline’s parents, we would keep most of it for ourselves. This continued for another six months or so.