Boof! Splat! The sound of the overripe breadfruit splattering its nauseatingly sweet guts on the terrazzo tiles of the patio jolted Bomber out of his afternoon siesta. The flies swiftly vacated their perch in Bomber’s Jheri-curled mess of hair, in search of the next target.
“A wha’ dat?” Tiny shouted in question, rushing from the kitchen, wiping her dripping hands in the polka dot apron whose strings threaten to choke the life out of her ample waist.
“Blastid breadfruit, man,” Bomber exhaled with hiss of his teeth. “Who pon God green earth di tink sey it woulda cute fi plant a breadfruit tree yaso,” he huffed.
Bomber eased himself off the crocus bags stuffed with sponge and adorned with madras, untangled his length of legs and arms, and stood akimbo facing the tee. He vowed mentally to cut the cursed thing down to the root, because when it wasn’t playing alarm clock, falling breadfruit had already broken two verandah windows and threatened to cave in the zinc roof.
Bad enough too that the old witch next door, Marlene, complained endlessly that the overhang of the limbs disturbed her anytime the breeze drew breath. After the passage of the last Tropical Storm, when almost every leaf carpeted her ugly vomit-coloured Nissan Cube, she swore on her mother’s grave that next time she would sweep up every leaf and find a way to spread Bomber bed with it. Bomber wondered at that because Marlene and Tiny were best friends, and he couldn’t imagine her being so frustrated that she gave no second thought to the inconvenience she would be causing her “bench”. Rightly so that she was the “batty” cause Marlene did miserable like sin.
“I think is time you go,” he cooed to the tree, patting the firm trunk. “You drop one too many careless pickney yah now.”
Bomber dragged himself into the kitchen where Tiny was diligently stirring the Saturday soup. His favourite—pig’s tail with red kidney beans, chock full of spinners, sweet yam and breadfruit. He sighed in lamentation that breadfruit would no longer be a staple on the table but enough was enough.
The cutlass was still stuck in the dirt from two weeks ago, when he had begun preparing the garden, at Tiny’s request, for some pepper and tomatoes. Time’s getting hard, we have to reap what we sow, she had said. He slowly sharpened the ‘lass with the rusty file and dragged himself back to face the tree.
Back in the day, Bomber was a champion climber. You want the tallest coconut in the tree—call Bomber, the puss stuck on a limb in the ackee tree—call Bomber, Vybz Kartel on the stereo and you want to whine in a tree—Bomber was your guy. All that changed with Tiny because well, Tiny was not so tiny, if you catch the drift.
Two twos, Bomber is straddling the second tallest limb that could manage his weight and with a “wap” the leaf, branch, breadfruit ripe and green, lizard, everything in the tree was quickly piling up on the ground.
“Oi! Oi! Yuh nuh know sey yuh nuffi cut tree when it a bear? Eh?” Marlene stumbled down her kitchen steps, barefooted, with her breasts flopping side to side unhinged behind her multi-coloured oversized T-shirt. “Bad blessing a go tek yuh Bomber,” she warned.
“It haffi reach yuh fuss before it reach me, so me content,” Bomber hollered from above.
Marlene stood helplessly shielding her eyes from the sun, her neon-coloured talons threatening an eye or two.
“Yuh nuh have nutten better fi do dan tan up inna di sun a watch me work?”
“Den a how me muss focus when you out yah a batter bruise the tree inna it prime?”
“Nuh yuh same one threaten me bout dis tree yah? A how yuh a change yuh mout so quick—can never please ooman”
“Tiny!! Tiny ooooh,” Marlene shouted for her best friend since they were in nappies.
“Gyal! How me nuh see yuh from mawnin’. Me fi call yuh cause what a way Days of Our Lives sweet yessidey?” Tiny sauntered over to the fence, grinning and flinging her hips.
“What a prekkeh een but a no dat mek me shout yuh. Look how Bomber a massacre di tree”
“Sas crise B, you couldn’ wait til season dun” Tiny whined
“Me fed up and mi nuh wan hear not another word bout it,” Bomber snapped.
The hollers and wails made no use as Bomber made clean work of the breadfruit tree, almost to the level of the roof. Pleased with his work, Bomber decided to take it a step further and chop the trunk. Therein, rest the remains of that tree. Might as well, he thought, dusting insects, pieces of wood and leaf from his cut-off jeans pants.
Bomber could barely sleep that night, twisting and turning, sheet on and off. On one twist and tug of the sheet, he swore he saw his Granny Mabel standing at the foot of his bed. He tried to scream, shuffle to wake Tiny, all to no avail because he could not speak nor move.
“Yuh never know better than to cut down your navel string tree, Marcel?”
No one called him Marcel except for his mother and granny—both on the other side of the veil.
“I sorry for you because I can’t stop what is coming,” Mabel duppy said matter of factly.
Bomber tried screaming again. Again, no sound. What could be coming, he wondered.
Reading his mind, Mabel croaked “You won’t know peace again, until you play another tree in her place.. That tree already done chat pon yuh. Every thing that you hold dear will be taken away, just like how you take away her spirit”.
Bomber rolled his eyes…at least some part of him could move…and prayed to wake up from this nightmare.
Finally, he felt the release of his limbs and snuggled his shape around Tiny’s plump behind, as he always did to fall asleep. Tiny felt rock hard, no warmth, no flow. His fingers scrambling across the bedside table, flicked on the lamp, and stared into Tiny’s mouth agape in her lifeless face.
He heard Granny Mabel in the distance…one down, more to go. Never you cut a tree down, son.