Grant

Grant by Rory Elliott

As a little boy, I often sat at my grandmother’s bedroom window on the second floor of her house which was situated at the upper most point of Jones Street. That view massaged my young and vivid imagination while affording my young eyes a majestic view of the neighbourhood and its characters. At the time, I didn’t know my father because he had left the country when I was a younger boy. I was the only child in a household of two uncles, an absent mother and loving grandmother. I spent a lot of time entertaining myself with only the company of my vivid imagination. I spent hours gazing from the window with a semi-panoramic view of the landscape. I surveyed the odd shape of San Fernando hill that seemed to rise sheerly out of the ground in the center of the town. The hill had undergone extensive quarrying and its appearance reminded me of a giant wedge of cake with its jagged yellowish sides and groves of trees that blanketed its steep terrain towards the top. We lived in a two-storied home with a galvanized roof and massive limestone walls, with tall doorways and jalousie windows. High from my window perch I oversaw the neat rows of houses and winding streets that sat in the cozy valley. Many of them were simple, chattel-style homes built on pillar trees. Others had pitched roofs with dormers - small windows usually built out from a sloping roof, porticoes and lacy wood-work. Some were small, some were sprawling. These French style homes known as “Gingerbread houses” were indicative of the vernacular architecture very common amongst the houses in Trinidad. These were one of the many remnants of colonialism that remained fossilized into fabric of my observable environment. One of the familiar points of interest from my look-out point was my primary school called Mon Repos Roman Catholic. It was located just off the street that ran parallel to Jones Street. It was a dull two story concrete structure that was erected just behind St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church a popular place of worship to members of the local community. It also sat up on a hill on the other side of the lower land. It was surrounded by massive bamboo tree patches that hid the unsightly government housing scheme that extended behind.

Grant was the neighbourhood vagrant. He was known to spend most of his time at the corner of Jones Street and Skinner Street, two major intersecting streets near my grandmother’s house in Mon Repos, Trinidad. It was rumoured that Grant used to be an accomplished professor at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. However we knew him as an elderly man who probably suffered from some form of dementia. In passing around the community in Mon Repos, I had heard that Grant was once a man of great prestige who went mad or as Trinidadians would say in their local dialect, “He gorn off”. Apparently the story had something to do with his estranged wife, who, at the time of their bitter divorce, took his house and furniture. He lost everything else after that - including his mind. Ashmeed Khan, my friend and neighbour from down the street said that his wife had no choice but to leave him because he had become so deranged. Wendell Huggins, a classmate who lived behind our house said Grant had eaten his own children and that’s why Grant's wife left. Grant was famous for his angry rants, shouting and cursing at all hours of the night. I didn’t know Grant but I assumed that ‘Grant’ was his last name. Either way, the very mention of his name inspired looks of pity from the adults who knew him and frenzied fear from the children who lived in the area. Many of them were afraid to encounter Grant during their travails down Jones Street to and from school - I was one of those children. The story of Grant became one of those urban legends or folklore that was so integral to West Indian oral tradition. Only this one had come to life.

Every night, well after the streetlights had come on and the neighbourhood had settled down, the show began. I could see the glow from Grant’s makeshift stove which he made out of wood, paper and a pyramid of cans. His incomprehensible grumblings would begin, low at first, as mild tremors that were barely audible. Grant would continue with this quarrelling, slowly mounting louder and louder as he staged his opening act shouting at no one but himself. As time passed the incessant chatter grew and finally erupted into a surprisingly angry “YES!” Like coals added to a roaring furnace, Grant’s intense indignation seemed to heighten more and more every time he shouted “Yes!” This pattern continued until he seemed to wind down as if from exhaustion. Then out of nowhere, just when you thought he had lost his steam he would belt out another “YES!” and from there it would start all over again. This would continue throughout the night stirring up the neighbourhood dogs. Every time he shouted “Yes!” the dogs would bark their applause. It was as if Grant was re-enacting some past petulant exchange. It was as though he was reliving an argument enacted with himself every night he was on that corner, pleading the facts to his case. Later in my life, I had come to think that maybe that routine was some re-enactment of a conflict he had had when he was younger and successful. It might have been his last hour of sanity; that singular episode that had driven him insane. Most of his shows he started and ended in this fashion. I feared him even though I found the performance quite entertaining, safe half a block away, from the theatre balcony that was my grandmother’s bedroom window.

Ashmeed, Wendel and I led a group of school children on our daily walks to school. As we approached the corner where we knew Grant spent his nights some of us would slow down to appraise the items he left behind. Usually, there would be pieces of weathered cardboard, old dirty clothes, cans stained with soot and ashes from burnt rubbish. We would playfully push each other towards the campsite hoping one of us would accidently stumble and touch anything on the dreaded site. Grant however was nowhere to be seen. We assumed he slept during the day. But where? We didn’t know, but our imaginations drew the most dark and horrid of places. Some even said that Grant was a ghost and took human form at night. Sometimes our group of school friends would work up the courage to kick over the charred cans and run frantically as if we expected him to jump out from the bushes in irate protest. Ping! Pang! Our witch-hunt clan would bolt down the road, book-bags bouncing on our backs with Grants burnt dusky cans tumbling up the road. The sudden noise of the toppled empty cans heightened our fright but was always fuel for a giddy laugh from a safe distance down at the of the bottom hill. I would always trail the group before we began to head towards the school and over my shoulder would glance back up the hill where we left Grant’s paraphernalia scattered in the streets. I often imagined a dark silhouette of a man at the scene of our crime standing motionless staring down towards me. I would say nothing and shuffle nervously back in formation wondering if he was somewhere watching.

Grant was a skinny old man probably in his early seventies as I remember him. His hair was picky and often riddled with dirt. His eyes were sad, sunken and always blood shot. The few teeth that he had remaining were rotting and discoloured. He was dark skinned with a clumpy and matted beard. His stained clothes had holes and pants sagged off his skinny waist. His pants were cuffed around the ankles and the soles were yellow like brass. Needless to say, on a Caribbean island where standards of poverty were severe to the elderly in Grant's predicament rarely received the care he needed. More often than not without the support of friends and family the indigent were left to fend for themselves on the street. Grant was the shame of Jones Street. On some days if Grant was spotted during the day I was told not to stare at him. People who lived on Jones Street stepped past with stiff determined eyes that would never focus on him. My grandmother would tell me I should pray for him so the devil would not possess him every night. The closest he came to my prayers was the sight of his face when I asked God to ‘deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever amen’. The God in my prayers was the picture of a skinny, pale Jesus illustrated with a bleeding heart that hung next to the outdated calendar that hung in our kitchen. The kingdom was our entire block, and the evil was Grant.

Alfred Codolla was a well known local artist who illustrated various portraits featuring legends of mythical West Indian folklore characters like La Diablesse - the female devil, Soucouyants – a shape shifting woman, Douens - lost souls of children who had not been christened or baptized, Mama Glo - half woman, half snake, and the Jacakalantan, a mysterious ball of light to name a few. Hanging unobtrusively on the wall of my grandmother’s dining room, was one of his most famous paintings called ‘Folklore’. This painting depicted those aforementioned characters and more. In it, these ghoulish characters stood hauntingly poised on the edge of a dark forest on the foot of a placid river bed, illuminated by a soft moon on the horizon. I was mesmerized by its eerie intensity and how it captured the mystery of the night. I was particularly drawn to one character known as the Papa Bois, a French patois word for “father of the forest”. The artist portrayed him as an old dark African man with hoofed feet who, in spite of his elderly appearance, was extremely muscular. Papa Bois was covered with the hair of a donkey, had a long grey matted beard and small horns that sprouted from his forehead. Grant’s resemblance to the father of the forest was unmistakable. Notwithstanding the fact that Grant had none of the animal features, in my mind he might as well have. And although according to folklore the Papa Bois, was considered the guardian of the creatures of the forest, a somewhat noble characteristic, out of all the characters, I feared him the most. I was convinced that the Papa Bois lived at the bottom of my street.

One day on my way to school I noticed Grant making a rare daytime appearance. Although at this time, far more subdued than his night-time self. He was probably exhausted after last night’s curtain-call performance on his favourite stage on the corner of Jones Street. He sat on the corner, trying to light a match under his can-kettled tea stand. He was quiet and for the first time ever seemed harmless. In this moment of his assumed weakness I saw my opportunity. From a safe distance across the street near a hill of red sand that was wet from last night’s rainfall I eyed my enemy. The red sand was perfect for packing sand balls. Attempting to be inconspicuous, I knelt down and pretended to play in the sand. When I thought Grant was not looking I packed in my palm the perfect sand ball; I had bad intentions. Now, as if adhering to some rules of engagement I made my weapon of choice visible to my enemy. I would liberate my block from this black picky-headed demon named Grant who terrorized the night. We wouldn’t be scared to walk on this corner again. I would be a hero, I thought.

I made my intentions known as I reinforced the packing of my sand ball and readied my stance for launch, brandishing my weapon. This would be my right of passage. Grant was very calm and sat motionless, eyeing me out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t the shouting mad man that I knew from the night. Grant was like a drunk who was now sober. He almost looked guilty and regretful. There were no grumblings, no cursing and no grunting “YES!” Just as I cocked my arm back to deploy my sand bomb of liberation, the sparsely-toothed slight gray bearded man stopped me dead in my tracks with nothing but a gaze. Grant turned and gave me a look and without even speaking conveyed an unspoken message to me which I translated as meaning "What do you think you are going to do with that?” I froze. It wasn’t much but it was not what I expected. Despite his assertiveness he remained nonchalant, fanning out a match as he lit his fire. At that moment I was overwhelmed with my own level of shock. A few seconds passed with me standing motionless, mid throw, while he averted his eyes back to his tea. I dropped the sand ball, I think. Grant’s eyes smirked. He paused then continued with his morning tea as if releasing me from my petrified state. I sauntered down the street totally deflated and still a little boy without the hero's parade. As I turned my back and continued my walk to school I felt as though Grant was laughing, but I was too ashamed to look.

Strangely, from that day Grant didn’t seem so scary. The snarling dark dog of the night had spoken to me. He was no longer a monster but a poor old man and I felt eerily guilty. I’m not sure if Grant knew my name but he knew my face. Although he didn’t verbalize it, he communicated to me a lesson about humanity. That day he snatched back the last strand of respect that I was about to take away, but he did it without the horns and his pitchfork. I knew there was still a man with feelings inside of that fearsome shell. He knew that I misunderstood him. I hated myself for seeing him as some monster and I was ashamed. I can’t remember when Grant died nor when he was no longer at the corner or when I didn’t hear his cursing plaguing the night anymore. And I never found out if Grant was a first or last name.