The Old Man and the Bottle(republished)

The Old Man and the Bottle The old man was grizzled. I remembered him now. He was Jake Burnett. He used to teach at Mc Cauley High School over in Keswick in North East, St. Catherine. That was nearly thirty years ago. Jake would be in his late sixties, I thought. “Juicy promised to rent me a room. When we went there the woman was still in the room. But as soon as she comes out he says I can have it.” “How much are you paying for it?” Boyd asked. “Twenty thousand dollars.” Boyd whistled. “That’s a lot of money,” he opined. I don’t think Jake would recognize me since he had only taught me for three months. I looked at him again. He was sitting under a tamarind tree in front of the playfield. His clothes looked worn and his shoes just about to give way. He took a quart bottle out of his bag. It was only half full. Boyd and another man, Justin, were soon helping themselves to some of the rum and boom. I introduced myself to Jake. “Can’t say I remember you now. I’m retired and all that.” I was living in the nearby village of Darnley, but I worked in Kingston. It was a Saturday evening and I had come for a walk on the playfield. We soon finished Jake’s rum. Me, Boyd and Justin put together some money to buy some more rum and boom at a nearby bar. I went to buy it. When I returned there was no sign of Jake. “Where is Jake?” I asked. “He went somewhere, said he was feeling sleepy,” Justin replied. He was probably drunk, I thought as I threw out the rum and boom. We started drinking again. “He sleeps up at Kenny’s bar, on one of the bar stools,” Boyd informed me. “What the hell are you telling me Boyd!” “It’s the truth, he’s telling you, Buster,” Justin said. ”Didn’t he live over in Nelson?” Nelson was a nearby community, a kilometer away. “Because of drunkedness, his wife left him for the States. He and his daughter and son who live at the house can’t get along,” Boyd informed me. “He should be the one getting of them,” I opined. “They both have children living there,” Justin put in. “When he gets his pension, he gets drunk and spends it off on some young girls. He then turns on his children and wants money from them,” he continued. We drank off the rest of the rum and boom. They also told me that Jake’s wife although ten years younger than him was afraid of returning to Jamaica. A month later Jake got the room from Juicy. Within two months he was evicted for failure to pay his rent. I saw him under the tree the next day with a bottle of rum. Several men including Boyd and Justin were helping themselves to generous amounts of Jake’s rum. They called me over but I ignored them and drove away. A few weeks later I heard that he was back home. It appeared that when he was drunk he slept on Kenny’s bar stool. When he was sober, which was probably once a week, he was at his house. Up to the date of his death, I always passed Jake and men like Boyd and Justin soaking up themselves down at the playfield. The End.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mother River by Austin Mitchell (Excerpt)

The Mother River by Austin Mitchell              Once, hundreds of years ago, there was a great river. It was called the Mother river. Some said that it was in the north of the island, others said that it was in the middle of the island, but others disagreed, saying that it was in the west. Although it was known as the Mother river, people called it the magic river, the golden river and many other names. One of the main villages the river passed through was reportedly called called   Dunklet. The people of Dunklet worshipped the river.   They depended for their very lives on this river. They bathed, swam and caught fishes in its waters. They often wondered at the size of the fishes they caught. They were so big and juicy. They used its waters to irrigate their fields. From their fields they got the finest crops. Nobody in Dunklet went hungry as there was always lots of food to go around.    ...
Read more

Going to Fetch Water

We first had piped water in our village when a pipe was put at Ashley Gate. Before that we had to go to the springs or rivers to fetch water. Women had to go to a place called Flat Rock to wash clothes. No sooner had the pipe been put in than fights over water began. Some families consisted of eight or nine persons at the time. They would put a huge washtub under the pipe and each member of the family would full their jug from it. They would not move that washtub until every vessel in their yard that could hold water was full. Other persons would object to just one set of people preventing others from getting access to water for more than two hours sometimes. As a result it was the families who had the strength in numbers and brute force who prevailed. After a while my grandmother got fed up of this and so we got water piped into our yard. Eventually everybody started taking in piped water into their homes. But people living in remote areas still went to the springs or rivers for their...
Read more

The Big Steal -excerpt from a short story by Austin Mitchell

Image
The Big Steal a short story by Austin Mitchell           Mr. Burton couldn’t believe his eyes. Two hours ago he had left the two goats tied to the guava tree to go and attend to his cows, now all that was tied to the tree was the rope. He wondered if by chance the rope had gotten loose and the goats had wandered off. He began to worry as they were quite a few small farmers like himself around. They planted a variety of crops and he knew the damage the goats could cause. He called over to his nearest neighbor, Garnet Green, but only Velma, his wife, was there. Mr. Burton went to the line and called to her.             “What’s happening, Mr. Burton? Garnet had to go up to Browns Town this morning,” Velma said. “He told me that you were going down to Falmouth this morning.”             “I had planned to do that, but righ...
Read more