AS I drove on the highway my car was like an oven in the midday sun. It had no air-conditioning or radio, so while I baked I could hear only the labouring and futile hiss of the fan, and the hum of the engine. I surrendered to the heat. During my student days, on a winter’s day in Chicago, with the cold piercing my bones, I had resolved that as long as I lived I would never complain about the heat of the island again.

So I relaxed as I followed the highway, and stared at the black asphalt in front of me, and at the unbroken white line. I was going up a gradient with cane fields to the right and left of me. I had spent all morning visiting some of the schools I supervised. I glanced at my watch. It was time for lunch.

My wife Dawn was an excellent cook, and she liked to experiment with international dishes. This was only one of the many reasons I considered her a treasure. But from time to time I liked to eat the country food I was used to while growing up, so I often stopped to eat at wayside places. It was also a great way of meeting the local people and hearing their stories.

So I pulled up at the next shop I saw. The red sign on the yellow wall said RUBY’S COOL SHADE GROCERY AND BAR. I parked under the big mango tree that gave the place its name. I stepped out of the car into the hot sun, and tried to decide if I would enter the grocery or the bar. Both seemed empty, so, pulled by my thirst, I headed for the bar. I stepped out of the heat into the cool shade, and sat on one of the stools in front of the counter.

There were the usual bottles of liquor, sodas and energy drinks on the shelves. A white refrigerator hummed in the corner. My eyes fell at once on the very erotic calendar on the wall. It showed a nude white woman sitting on a bed while still wearing her wedding veil and tiara; her eyes showed that she was looking forward to her honeymoon night. After a few drinks, countless men must have fantasised about that picture.

“Service!” I said as I rattled my fingers on the counter.

I heard sounds in the grocery section, and then a buxom, dark-skinned woman entered and stood before me. She wore a blue head-tie and had a dour expression. She eyed me suspiciously, apparently recognising that I was a stranger.

“Are you Miss Ruby?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied with a voice that was surprisingly soft and feminine.

“I would like something to eat. What do you have?”

From the list of items she rolled off I selected a spice bun, a slice of cheese and a bottle of cold beer. The combination of bun and cheese is an Easter tradition on the island, but I enjoy it all year round. Miss Ruby served me.

“It is very quiet here,” I said.

“Yes. Not much happening this time of the week. But you hear the sound systems on weekends. And of course, during election time you hear the loud-speakers going up and down.”

“Bless the Idren!” said a man’s voice behind me.

I turned to greet the dreadlocked man who had just entered the bar. He wore a tam which was in the Rastafarian colours of green, red and yellow, a green dashiki, brown trousers and sandals. He sat down two stools down from me, and I noticed at once that his right hand was missing.

“What happen Ras Baga?” Miss Ruby greeted him.

“Give thanks, sister, to the ever living, ever faithful.”

“What would you like?” Miss Ruby continued.

“Gimme a Nutrament and a pack of crackers.”

Miss Ruby took a cold tin of the beverage from the refrigerator, opened it and poured the pink contents into a glass. Then she tore a packet of crackers open. She placed the two items before Ras Baga. “Thank you, sister,” he said as he raised the drink to his lips with his left hand and relished a long draught. He popped one of the crackers into his mouth.

I was progressing with my lunch and felt my hunger increasing. So I ordered a ripe banana and a pack of peanuts as well. I was becoming very curious about Ras Baga’s missing hand, so after a few minutes I turned to him and said, “Was it an accident? If you don’t mind my asking.” The flash of his eyes indicated a kaleidoscope of troubling memories and associations. He was silent for a few moments and then he said, “We come here to lose everything, Iyah. We will be lucky if we even manage to save our souls.”

He told me his story, speaking mainly in what the linguists call Dread Talk, the language of the Rastafarians, and which is a Jamaican dialect. But since I am not a professor of linguistics – I studied geography and then education – I am unable to reproduce it in an approximation of his actual speech. So I will tell it in English, the language of my education and my profession as an education officer.

He left his all-age school without any marketable skill, and just barely able to sign his name. He wasn’t very interested in being educated into the Babylon System, as he called it. But now that he ‘aged-up’ out of school, he had to find something to do. For a while he was apprenticed to a charcoal burner who worked in the hills. But with the increase in the use of electricity and cooking gas, charcoal was going out of style, except after hurricanes. Business became so bad he started looking for an alternative.

One day, after being turned down at a construction site, he was standing on a bank and looking down into the bushes. He noticed a fallen dry tree on the ground, and he could see the figure of a nude woman emerging from the trunk.

He felt an urge to release the figure from the tree. So he got a machete and went down into the bushes to rescue the woman from neglect and decay. He took the trunk home, and with the help of a chisel and hammer he carved away at it for a few weeks. The figure of a beautiful black woman half-emerged from the trunk. “Try and sell it,” advised his grandmother who had raised him. So one day he took it to the park in the nearby town.

A tourist couple admired it and took a photograph of him standing with it beside the fountain. “Take it over to the college,” a young woman advised him. “Show it to the art teacher there.” So he went over to the college and asked for the art teacher. Some students directed him to the art room. The art tutor was an Englishwoman with lively grey eyes. She gasped with pleasure when she saw the piece, and offered to buy it immediately. He felt sorry parting with it, but it was the most money he had ever earned at one time. His career as a sculptor had begun.

The he joined the Rastafarian religion. He found that their doctrines resonated with his distrust of all things Babylonian. Furthermore he admired their belief that they should be independent craftsmen and tradesmen, and not wage-slaves to anyone. Even St Paul in the Bible had a manual trade. The Rastas he saw were mainly broom-makers, potters and woodcarvers. Now that he was a sculptor he felt like one of them.

He dropped the name William Wordsworth Henry and called himself Ras Baga. Then he began a relationship with a young woman named Cynthia Wilson whom he had liked since childhood. He called her Abba and designated her his queen. They rented a small wooden house and began settling down. He carved wood under the almond tree in the yard. Abba cultivated vegetables and made hats and mats which she sold in the market in the nearby town. When the government built a new highway which passed right in front of their house, they saw it as a gift from Jah. He put up a wooden sign at the gate which said THE BAGABBA MUSEUM. Motorists began stopping to look at the carvings in his yard, and he began selling pieces. Some of his customers were tourists, and when they returned to their home countries they told their friends about him. He became used to having visitors who came on the recommendation of friends.

It was mid-morning, the time of his greatest creativity. The sun was shining on the hedge of crotons and flowers that Abba had planted in front of the house. He was carving wood and whistling along with a reggae hit on his transistor radio. He would work intensely until Abba called him for lunch.

“Oi, Ras B!” It was Clyde, his neighbour, calling to him from the other side of the hibiscus hedge.

“One love, my brother,” said Ras Baga, looking up.

Clyde looked sleepy. He was slim, of light brown complexion, and had short hair. The tail of his beige, long sleeved shirt was hanging out of his trousers. School children had nicknamed him Question Sign because the shape of the back of his head resembled the punctuation mark.

“Me think you reach work long time,” said Ras Baga.

“Work? Dem lay me off, me dear sah.”

“What you saying?”

“Dem lay off two-thirds of the hotel staff. Dem say tourist arrival down. We can re-apply when the winter season start.”

“So what you going to do?”

“Me don’t know yet. It hard fi cook fi get work. Life getting harder and harder for poor people in this country. And me have to pay rent and mind three pickney. Is a good thing Evadne still have her little helper job, even if dem pay her with the crumbs that fall from dem table.”

“Yuh haffi push hard fe sell yuh skill.”

“Easier said than done. You can talk, for you making piles of money. Make me go see if any food inna de house.”

“Little more, then. Little more.”

A few evenings later, Ras Baga was putting away his carvings and tools in the shed when Abba and their three-year old daughter Sheba, returned from shopping and stood at the gate. Abba’s broad face had curved, soft features, and she wore a long, dark-brown dress and a scarf over her dreadlocks.

A bankra with groceries hung from her right hand. Sheba, also growing locks, walked in front of her, clutching the parcel Abba had given to her to carry so she would feel useful. Ras Baga joined them and together they began walking towards the house.

“A big-shot man named Mr Henriques came to see me today,” reported Ras Baga. “He exports crafts to America and England, and is looking into China and Japan. He bought five pieces from me.”

“That is very good. I hope you got what I priced them for.”

“More or less. He said he really likes my work and will be coming back. Says he tours the island looking for good work.”

“So all we have to do is produce.”

Back at the house Abba began preparing Ital vegetarian peas-soup for dinner. Ras Baga lay on the bed and thought about the next day’s work. He got some of his best ideas while lying down. From listening to his teachers he had learnt that the blind John Milton composed Paradise Lost and dictated it to his daughters mostly while lying down.

Michaelangelo slept at night in his day-clothes so he could get up and start working right away before losing the inspiration. Bach said that when he woke up in the morning he had to be careful not to step on the melodies lying before him on the floor. He himself had come to believe that there was certainly some connection between lying down and inspiration. So he kept a sketchpad at his bedside so he could get up and make sketches when the ideas floated up into his mind.

“Oi, Ras B! You ever hear about socialism?” It was a dasheiki-clad Clyde at the hibiscus hedge the following morning.

“Yes,” said Ras Baga squinting at the log in his hand. “But I-man not interested in the country’s politricks. We want repatriation to Africa.”

“Well, is socialism me into now. Socialism is love. It says every man is his brother’s keeper. But capitalism says it is every man for himself. It is for dog nyam dog. It is bad for the human character. And it has been sucking our blood for hundreds of years. But socialism is for the small man. It is time for the small axe to cut down the big tree.”

“Why you don’t get a job?”

“I have a job. My member of parliament got a job for me.”

“Then why you not at work?”

“That is the beauty of this job. I don’t have to go to work. I am supposed to be sweeping the street and planting flowers. But since my name is on the payroll, all I have to do is collect my cheque every fortnight.”

“Sounds like cheating to me.”

“What cheating? This is my reparation money. After slavery they paid the planters but not the ex-slaves. Is so my MP tell me. I am now claiming what is mine.”

“Interesting reasoning,” said Ras Baga, “but tell me something. You don’t think that a man should profit from the labour of his own hands?”

“Every business transaction is theft,” declared Clyde. “The capitalist win and you lose.”

“Even if it is your free choice?”

“Most times choice don’t come into it. You need food, clothing and shelter. You have to live.”

“Well, I believe that if I create something of value, something new, and give it to the world, I deserve to be rewarded for it.”

“Rasta taking over the country!” yelled Clyde.

“Jah Rastafari!” Ras Baga chanted in reply. “Ever living, ever faithful, ever sure!”

A few mornings later Clyde and Evadne appeared at the hibiscus hedge. Clyde wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Evadne was still in her dressing gown, and her plaits were sticking out from under her head-tie. Both were dour-faced and scowling.

“Ras B, capitalism strikes again!” said Clyde.

“What happen now?” inquired Ras Baga.

“Evadne’s boss fled the country. Took one of the five flights to Miami. Say him running from communism.”

“He didn’t even pay me my severance money,” moaned Evadne. “Fled in the night, like Nicodemus in reverse.”

“That is bad,” said Ras Baga.

“Is only Clyde’s little work we have to depend on now,” said Evadne.

“Plant it like a seed,” said Ras Baga.

“You can gwaan talk like de Bible,” said Evadne. “You think we don’t see all dem big pretty car coming to buy from you? You turning a big-shot too!”

“Some can run but dem can’t hide,” said Clyde ominously. “You just watch we and dem. Equality coming! Power to the people!” He raised a clenched fist into the air, and he and Evadne retreated to their house.

One morning Ras Baga observed as a white Mercedes Benz pulled up in front of his house. A shapely, brown-skinned woman with shoulder-length hair came out. She began walking towards him, looking around at the carvings as she did so. She smiled, revealing beautiful, even teeth.

“Are you Ras Baga?”

“Yes I.”

“I am Nicole Taylor. Mr Henriques showed me some of your work. We want to commission someone to do a piece to be presented to a visiting African head of state. Would you be interested?”

“It would be a great honour to send back something to the Motherland.”

“They discussed business and Ras Baga agreed to the terms and conditions. Nicole Taylor returned to the car and brought him some sheets of printed paper.

“This is information about the leader and his country,” she said. “Read up on them, for this may help to inspire you.”

“Thanks,” said Ras Baga as he took the papers. She told him she would return from time to time to see how the work was progressing. Then she got into her car and drove away. That evening after dinner Ras Baga listened carefully as Abba read the literature aloud for him.

Ras Baga searched and selected the best block of wood he could find. He chose lignum vitae, the wood of the national flower. This was not an undertaking to be taken lightly, he thought. He needed time to meditate, or to Iditate, as he put it.

That night as he lay in bed, with ideas running through his mind, he decided that he needed to spend time alone in the hills before commencing this project.He needed to purify and prepare himself.

The following day he took a country bus up to his old village. He spoke to the old people whose outlook he would try to represent in wood. He visited the graves of his grandparents, and of some of the older people who had fled to freedom in the hills after the abolition of slavery.Then he wandered alone in the woodlands and listened to the ancient trees.

He bathed in the river. He stood on the hilltop and looked at the sea in the distance, the sea that brought the colonisers, the slave ships, and the pirates. What does this place want me to say? He kept asking himself. After his long day of reflection he boarded the evening bus and returned home.

The following morning he awoke refreshed. After his breakfast he took up his working position under the almond tree. He had some ideas about yabbas, baskets and wings, but he still wasn’t sure what form the sculpture would take. He would just let it come out of the wood.

“Every capitalist is the same!” he heard Clyde shout from the hibiscus hedge. “Big or small they are all the same.”

“What is it now?” he asked, looking up.

“The landlord give we notice. Me tell him say we don’t have any money to pay, and that him is to allow us some time. But him say him can’t wait. We have to leave.”

“And you don’t have any savings? Not even a tenth of yuh pay?”

“Tenth? What tenth? Before you can have a tenth you must have a whole. Dem didn’t teach you any arithmetic in school? We don’t have anything.”

“Your relatives can’t help you?”

“Relatives? Which relatives? Dem sucking salt through a wooden spoon just like we. Evadne used to join partner but she couldn’t keep it up. Lend me a money, Ras B.”

“Boy, me grandmother used to tell me: Never a lender or a borrower be.”

“We will pay you back, man.”

“How?”

“We going to bounce back one day, yuh know, Dread?”

“If you have anything to sell I will buy it. But since banks don’t carve wood, I don’t lend money.”

“So is so yuh a gwaan wid yuh neighbour! You not going to need help one day, too? Dem should kill every Rasta!”

Clyde turned and walked away.

It was evening. After working all day on the foundations of the new concrete house, Ras Baga and Abba were building on the land they had now bought. The carpenters had just left. Abba was at the market. Sheba was in the house doing her homework. Ras Baga was contemplating the form that was beginning to emerge from the block of wood.

“See de informer deh!” he heard Evadne shout from next door. He looked up and saw Clyde brandishing a machete as he ran down the gradient towards him, his red shirt flying out of his pants, with Evadne in pursuit. In a moment they were at the hibiscus hedge.

“Is you tell the police dat me have gun!” said Clyde.

“Gun? What gun?” replied Ras Baga. “How me fi know if you have gun or not?”

“I hear is a Rasta tell dem. And the description fit you exactly.”

“Rasta resemble Rasta. And I-man don’t have anything to do with Babylon.”

“You are a lying, dirty Rasta!” declared Evadne.

“And a capitalist!” added Clyde. “I see how you gwaan wid me. But we going to nip you in the bud!”

He saw when Clyde burst through the hedge, with Evadne in pursuit. He sprang to his feet, but by that time their hands were on him. They wrestled him to the ground. He felt Evadne holding his right arm to the ground. He saw the raised machete in Clyde’s hand. Her heard Sheba screaming in the house. Then there was the pain, the blood, the horror and the darkness.

He regained consciousness in the hospital. The nurses and Abba were around him. The Cuban doctor was gentle and very helpful. Nicole Taylor came to see him, and said she wept when she saw it on the news. But the visit by the African dignitary was imminent, so they decided to buy a completed piece from another sculptor. None of the finished pieces that Abba had showed her was suitable. She would keep in touch with him and give him all the support she could.

Clyde and Evadne were never apprehended by the police. It was rumoured that they escaped from the island with fake documents. He hoped he would never see them again.

“This is one of the most horrible stories I have ever heard!” I said to Ras Baga. He stared into his empty glass and said nothing. I felt like offering him another, but thought that he might regard it as pity and resent it. “So what are you doing now?” I continued.

“I paint with my left hand,” he said.

I recalled that one of the famous composers had written a piece for the left hand, specifically for a pianist who had lost his right hand in war.

“I would love to see some of your work,” I said.

“My house is about half-a-mile down the road,” he replied, pointing west. “It is on the left. Just look out for the paintings.”

Miss Ruby cleared the counter and we paid her. The wall of the sun’s heat hit Ras Baga and I as we stepped outside. “Blessings, my brother,” I said as I turned towards my car.

“Bless the I,” replied Ras Baga.

I headed for my first school for the afternoon. As soon as I entered the gate of a school I could sense the character and personality of the principal. This compound had trimmed hedges, trees with white-washed bottoms, and gardens alongside the buildings. There was a soft hum of purposeful activity. But even the pleasure of an aesthetically pleasing and well-run school was not enough to lift the cloud of Ras Baga’s story from my mind.

I walked to the principal’s office and was greeted by a smiling Mrs Yvonne Lee, a short, light-skinned Afro-Chinese woman who wore rimless spectacles and a white dress. She invited me inside, offered me a seat and asked if I would like some refreshments. I thanked her and she left to make the arrangements. When she returned we began going over the school’s recent records.

I updated her on what the Ministry was doing about some of her requests. I also told her about some of our plans for the school and the region. A uniformed female student from the Home Economics Department, in a white cap and apron, brought me a glass of cold guava juice and cookies on a tray. I thanked her and she said a cheery “You’re welcome, Sir!” and left. Mrs Lee and I began discussing the school’s sports programme, and a very talented female athlete I had noticed at Champs.

Our discussion over, I began walking along the corridor back to my car. I glanced through a window and saw an art class in progress. I stopped to look. There was nothing quite like watching a class of children absorbed in drawing and painting. Their concentrated, enthusiastic abandon to self-expression was not like anything else you see in a school.

Although my name was Paul, and most of my friends called me Pablo, I knew that I was no Pablo Picasso. But the creative process fascinated me. I wondered what it was like to be able to create things like that. My eyes fell on a small boy who sat before his easel, and was applying paint to the paper on the board as if his life depended on it. I hoped he would see better days than Ras Baga did.

After two more schools I set off, with the bonnet of my car pointed in the direction of Kingston. My wife would probably have Chinese food ready for dinner, for the night before I had heard her speculating about Sichuan cuisine. But I decided that when we sat down to dinner I would not tell my wife and five children the story of Ras Baga; that was not the time and place for such a tragic story. I would wait until the time came when I would feel like committing it to paper. I felt that now was as good a time as any, really.

The next time I was in that area I remembered Ras Baga the moment I passed Miss Ruby’s shop. I began looking out for the paintings. I found his house without difficulty, and pulled up at the gate. I came out of the car and began examining the pieces on display. Some were the usual “airport” art of famous beauty spots, but there were also a few genre scenes of the way of life of his community. Most of all there were the Rastafarian pieces, images of Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey, ships of the Black Star Line, heads of lions and so on. Some were on canvas, hardboard, and the lids of oil drums.

I went through the gate and saw Ras Baga sitting at his easel sideways, shirtless, and painting with his left hand.

“Oi, Ras Baga!” I said, and he turned to me, seemingly a bit startled. It was at that point that I remembered Clyde.

“Oh! Is you!”

“How are things?”

“Babylon still in charge.”

“And the family?”

“Doing well, thanks.”

I am dropping by to see how you are doing. And to buy one of your paintings.”

“Just look around, I.”

The paintings inside were very much like those outside. But a slightly larger one caught my attention immediately. It was a seascape with palm trees and a bit of coastline on the left which resembled the map of the eastern end of the island, but the right showed an ominous storm brewing over the water. Part of the storm cloud resembled the map of West Africa. It was a very dramatic picture with plenty of blue, white and black.

“What is this one called?” I asked.

“The African Reclamation,” he replied.

“I would like to buy it,” I said.

“Since is you, I will give you a discount.”

We settled on a price.

I wanted this painting for our living room, but I knew that my wife would not like it. Like most people she preferred landscapes, preferably with some sky, trees with low branches, and some water. Her birthday was coming up, so I decided to buy her a gift. I chose one of a waterfall – she loves waterfalls – and I felt she would also appreciate the flowers, including Easter lilies, which grew alongside it. She would also like the gallings flying above the water.

I paid Ras Baga and he took the pieces to my car. We put them in the trunk.

“There is a Jamaican proverb that I like,” I said to him. “Jah alone knows why he breaks a fowl’s wing.”

“Leave it to Jah, my brother. Leave it to Jah,” said Ras Baga.

I told him I would come again, got into my car and drove off. I knew I would always remember his story. I drove away remembering Bob Marley’s line about crucifying the dread. But in interpreting this story I would try hard not to let my imagination run away with me.

Published by permission of Earl Mckenzie. Excerpted from the short-story collection Ernest Palmer’s Dream by Earl McKenzie (c) 2015, LMH Publishing.

Earl McKenzie is a scholar, teacher, painter, poet and short-story writer. He has published two previous short-story collections, three volumes of poetry, one multi-genre volume and two academic texts. He is the recipient of a Silver Musgrave Medal for his contribution to literature.