Pynter Bender by Jacob Ross

shirt.
    â€˜Still there, Uncle?’
    Pynter nodded. He’d spent most of the afternoon waiting to catch a glimpse of Paso again.
    Paso placed the plate on the step beside his foot. ‘I tell the Madre to put a little extra in for you – not just this time, but every time. You been inside that lil room yet?’
    The question caught him unawares. Paso dropped questions the way a person threw a punch when the other was least expecting it.
    â€˜Which room?’ Pynter asked.
    â€˜The dark one.’ He winked.
    â€˜Uh-huh.’
    â€˜Find what I find in there?’
    Pynter turned his head and shrugged. Paso laughed.
    â€˜Take me a coupla days and a bottle of the Madre cooking oil to grease them hinges. The Old Fella used to keep it locked. He shouldn ha’ tell me not to go in there. S’like an open invitation, s’far as I concern. I leave it open so he could know I was in there. He never close it back.’
    â€˜Where you go to every night-time?’
    The smile left his nephew’s face, but only briefly. In less than a heartbeat it returned. ‘Wherever night-time want me. Ever hear this one?

    The road is long, the night is deep, I got promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep .
    â€˜Uncle Michael?’
    â€˜Nuh, Merican fella name Robbie Frost – with all the warmth from me, of course.’
    He was fingering the little blue book in his shirt pocket. ‘Know any poetry?’
    â€˜Wozzat?’
    â€˜You serious?’
    Pynter nodded.
    â€˜You been reading Mikey’s stuff – and …’ He laughed, looked at Pynter closely and laughed again.
    â€˜Jeezas, man! Moon over your shoulder.’
    â€˜Shadow in me eye,’ Pynter cut in. The words had come almost despite himself.
    â€˜You been reading Mikey stuff and you don’ know what it call? Listen to this …’ His fingers slid the little notebook from his shirt. He held it up before him. The way Missa Geoffrey sometimes held Miss Tilina’s face.
    In the morning dark
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  my people walk to the time of clocks
             whose hands
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  have spanned
                        
so many nights
    His voice was as soft as Missa Geoffrey’s too, and it was as if he were talking to himself from a bellyful of sadness.
    Paso stopped, looked up. He didn’t smile. Pynter shifted under his stare and before he lost the courage, before it became impossible to say what had been sitting on his heart from the moment his fingers retrieved that strange little book from his uncle’s grip, he turned up his face at Paso.
    â€˜I wan’ to make wuds like dat too, I want … I …’ Something desperate and quiet fluttered in his heart. He turned his head away.
    Paso steered him towards the steps and sat him down. ‘That book was the most interesting thing you find in there, not so?’
    Pynter nodded.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Don’ know.’
    â€˜I tell you something. Once, it cross my mind to take it. Yunno – copy all of it over to this lil book and make meself believe is mine. I start doing it. But then, that same night, I had a dream. I was walking down some kinda road. Long road. I couldn see the end of it. The more I walk, the more I see road in front of me. When I was close to givin up, I realise I had somebody walking beside me. It wasn’ Michael. It was hi friend, the boy.’ Paso threw a sideways glance at him. ‘Yunno what that young fella was to ’im?’
    Pynter shook his head.
    â€˜One day it will come to you. Right now nothing in life ain’t prepare you for that kind of … of awareness. Mebbe you’ll never work it out. Don’ know … Anyway, that fella say something to me that I wake up with