Hear nuh man.

Everybody know that it have two type a mango that is the best mango to eat. The first one is any type that growing on a tree that rooted over a old woman grave in a village cemetery in South. It ain’t matter if is a Julie, Starch, Doux Doux, La Brea Gal or what: once the tree stand up there getting that old lady juice, it bound to taste like ambrosia, nectar that reserve for only the gods of Olympus. The next kind is any mango that you get away with. You see, mango that you buy in the grocery or what your mother get in the basket she win in the church Easter raffle could never compare with one that you mark, set for, and gone to get for yourself in somebody yard. Some might call that teefing, but I, a long-time professional extractor of mangifera indica from behind enemy lines, swear by Saint Peter and Saint Paul that this is not so – and that is the gospel truth. Most people figure that to do this work is only stealth you need, but that is only one step in successful procurement of a grop ah mango.

When I was about nine, Mammy send me to spend the August holidays by family in San Fernando, and I was vex too bad. I leave all my friends in Fyzabad, and my heart hurt me to think of all the fun they was having without me. No riding bike down in the oil fields and dipping sticks in the froth around the cap wells. No chance to add winnings to my marbles pan or to play skooch in the trace with Junior and them. No sucka bag from Miss Doris shop, and, worse than worse, all the mango that growing down Crest Camp behind the Intermediate School and on the both sides of the red dirt road going down New City sure to waste! An why? Because I, a whole mangoist, not there to relieve the trees of their burden. When I tell you I vex – I was real vex!

Auntie Claudia tell me a morning after Uncle Leon went to work that she tired see me swell up sitting down on the front step like a po me one so to go and explore the neighbourhood and make sure I put on shoes and cream my skin. Mammy send me by you, and you sending me to look for trouble? Since I reach, I en see not one boy my age, much less for girls. Plus to besides, what it have to do in this place with these houses jam up close close to each other? And the road always have one set a cars passing all the time? You want me to go an play cricket by myself? I alone to bowl and bat and catch and appeal to me self as the umpire?

I couldn’t quarrel with she as she big and I small, so I put on my school sneakers which was the only pair of shoe that I did go there with and walk outside in the yard into a wall of heat. The sun was hot, and breeze wasn’t blowing. Typical type of August morning in Trinidad that does burn away all the fine hairs on your face. The Jergens that I plaster over the fresh scabs I get from dragging on the barbagreen pitching marble with myself the other day raise off my skin and start to run down my shins mix up with sweat. Geezeanages! Heat! How it is the sky could be this kind of clear blue and still hold that level of heat. Blue supposed to be a cool colour, not so? I never understand that.

I make sure that Auntie wasn’t watching me from the gallery, and I let go one long steups under my breath. I stand up in the yard in the blistering heat, squinting against the light that the sun was sending down that was bringing every leaf, blade of grass and piece of dirt into sharp focus. While still studying what to go and find to do, I stoop down near one of the frangipani plant Auntie had growing in the yard, and I choose three average size stone with jagged edge and put them in the left side pocket of my khaki short pants. Listen, take some advice from ah five-star general in this ting: always make sure you have something like these before you leave the house because, at best, it will help you get something, and, at worse, you could use it as artillery because you never know when you might end up in a big stone situation. In the couple steps along the short walkway painted over with bright red oil paint, I pat my pocket and feel good with the assurance that having the stone and them give me. I open the little wire gate, grinding my teeth at the grating sound the rusty hinges make, and I step out onto the narrow, mossy pavement. I look left and I look right; then I start walking, hoping that by some miracle something worthwhile to do would show itself, and then, of course, something did.

At the end of Auntie street, just before you could turn off and end up on the Coffee, which was the main road, I see a house leaning on one side like it do a day work and couldn’t find the strength to walk home. The wooden front of the place was crease up like a half-wet paper bag. It look like all the other houses on the street grow up and around it, and it just couldn’t be bothered to keep up with them. Is the kind of place that by just watching it, you does start to itch because you feeling like things crawling on you. I look through the wire at the top of the hip-height wall fence and was watching how the house was drooping on low concrete stilts. It had murky looking mosquito water settle underneath it. Nothing wasn’t reflecting off the water other than the canopy cast by the large bagasse tree that spread it branches across the yard and over the house. Tangles of witch hazel was jockeying for spaces all over each dead-looking branch of the tree, and it look like birds avoiding nesting in them. The whole yard look like it was walking a fine line between life and death as hardly any light from the almost noonday sun was reaching the ground beyond the fence where I was standing up. One thing though, the place didn’t look like Mahabir house from down home. Old man Mahabir was a loupgaroup, and he place look like where you expect a jumbie to live.  But this house was different. To this day I don’t know why I stand up there so long looking this place over from on the pavement, but God does move in mysterious ways. Out of  the corner of my eye I see something like a flash of light. Quick quick and it gone. When I look over to the left of the house where I thought the glint of light come from, my eye fall on what had to be the San Fernando mother lode. Right there, even though it was next to the rottening wall of the house, a stumpy looking Calabash mango tree was growing. It didn’t look like nothing else in that half-dead yard. I telling you right now, as sure as I know God make morning, that the tree had a golden glow to it. The mango them was so heavy that most of them was near the loose earth underneath it. If from quite by the fence them mango was looking so big and fat, I was sure that you wouldn’t have to apply much pressure with your teeth before the skin would split and juice would start to run through your fingers and them. One time my mouth start to spring water, and before I could catch myself, I was looking for a way into the yard.

Now, the good thing about being a schoolboy is that nobody don’t take you on when you going about your business. It still didn’t have anybody out on the street, and I didn’t see anybody from the neighbouring houses liming about outside. So, I do like I was just walking along, and right before the corner, I climb up on the concrete lower part of the wall and put my foot one one over the rusting fancy wire at the top. As I rub the peeling paint from the wire off my palms and onto my thighs, I didn’t even take on the red marks the paint leave on my short pants. That was trouble for later; right now, had to see about itself. Once I touch down in the yard, I bend low and make my way through the mess of stinging nettles and fever grass that littered the yard thick, and in two twos I was by the tree. It had so much low hanging fruit that I didn’t even have to climb the knotted trunk and up into the branches to reach any. Swallowing the spit that kept gathering in my mouth, quick quick I tuck my jersey into my waistband and start pulling mango from left and right and put them down inside the pocket I made with my jersey front. The feeling of the cool, ripe fruit against my chest full me with so much joy that I couldn’t help but whoop and laugh like I just hit de lotto! If Reggie and the boys could see me now! Look at how much mango for me and me alone! Is the sound of the front door banging open that make my laughter stick in my throat, and I stop dead still.

The impact the wooden door make when it slam against the woodlice-eaten frame ripple through the structure. I hear like a dragging sound, and then a hairy, muscled hand push the rip up lace curtain that did hang across the now-open doorway one side. All I see is a man at the other end of that hairy arm peeling from the darkness of what had to be the front room, coming out into the gallery, and one time I drop down flat into the overgrowth before he see me. From where I was laying down on my belly, all I could see was this short, dirty-looking fella wearing jeans with no belt that had what look like fig leaf stains on it and a tear-up vest that was probably once a much lighter colour than it looked now while I hold my breath watching. He stagger out into the gallery and trip over a large rip in the faded blue vinyl that covered the wooden flooring. As he kilkitay forward, he hold on to the banister with his left hand, and the entire thing bend outward like it was a Joe Gum that you chew for hours till it was bleach out and stiff. I didn’t like the look of him at all. Although he come out of this place, I did just know that, like me, he wasn’t supposed to be here. I did also know for sure that if he did see me, the cutlass that he was holding in his right hand would do the talking for him. He steady himself best as he could and survey the yard. Then he bend down, pick up a crocus bag that was leaning on the top step by the bannister, heft it on his shoulder and start to walk down the steps to make his way down into the overgrowth of the yard.

A little bit again and he would see me. As careful as I could, I put my hand into my pocket and pull out one of the stones that I took from underneath Auntie Claudia frangipani. I did know that if I could distract this fella, I could hide better or get away clean. My hand was slimy from the mango juice that was all over my front, but I grip that stone with as much steadiness as I was able with. I wait until he was almost down to the last step from the gallery, and, as smooth as I could, I throw the stone against the iron top of the fence. The ringing sound it make when it connected with the fancy wire make the man stop and look in that direction. Well boy, I start to crawl backwards, hoping that the low branches of the mango tree would give me extra cover. Easy easy like Rambo in Vietnam forest, I start to push backwards through the grass. I feel more juice from the overripe fruit bursting through the soft skins, and I know that I would have to explain to Auntie Claudia what happen to my jersey. I feel to cry for the loss of all that fruit, but it wasn’t the time for all that yet. Easy easy one one if you see me moving toward the tree, until I hear a low growl and feel something like a cold eclipse shadowing the little light in the yard from over me.

Nothing could a make me look up. I lie down there in the bush with a jersey full a mango juice, legs and arms scratch up from the thorns of the nettles and the razor edges of the grass and was praying that the cold, slimy liquid dripping onto my neck and running down past my ears was rain or some kind of anti-gravity sweat. I didn’t know if the rumbling I heard next was another growl or my heart that was threatening to burst through my back from between my shoulder blades or out the front of my chest into the cold earth. I remember feeling a sick comfort in thinking that at least on its way out of my body, my heart would get a taste of the sweet mango juice that I would not.

What happen next pass so fast that I an all not sure what went on. The man raise he right hand with the three-line in it up, the shadow move from over me, and I see it jump and fall on the man. The fella start to bawl, drop the crocus bag and the cutlass and start to fight with this thing that sounding like a dog but looking like a small bear. I see my chance to get away. With a quick thanks to Peter Paul and Saint John Jesus Mary and the rest of the saints, I push myself up and start to run for the fence. All the mango that I had in my jersey front was pulp, and what didn’t hang down in the fold of my waistband slime down my legs and into my shoes. As I was running, I look back quick at the tousle that was happening between man and beast, only to realise that the crocus bag that the mister drop was spilling mango into the grass – and it look like the same calabash mango from on the golden tree. Right there I know I had a choice: escape while I had a chance, or risk my life for the spoils that was right there.

A couple seconds later, I was pelting up the street with the crocus bag over my shoulder. I was moving so fast I nearly pass Auntie Claudia gap straight like full bus. I grab the gate, yank it open, hoist my carcass through it, and once I was on the other side, I pull the sliding lock. I was never so glad to hear a rusty deadbolt click in all my short life. I bent over trying to catch my breath, smelling the salt of sweat mixing in the sweetness of the fruit stains on my jersey front and the fragrance of the tall frangipani plants growing high on either side of the walkway. As I let the crocus bag fall from my aching shoulder, I hear a bawling, and it was coming closer to where I stand up trying to catch my breath. I peep over the gate only to see the same fella running pell-mell, heading up the street with a black dog close on he heels. Auntie Claudia hear the commotion and come out in the gallery just in time to see the man and his separate shadow streaking up the road towards Rushworth Street. She watch them till they gone around the corner, and then she eyes fall on me. I could feel she gaze burning across my stained and torn clothes, my newly skinned knees and, finally, the crocus bag with calabash mangoes spillin out of the top that was leaning, like a mute witness, against my trembling legs.

She suck her teeth and say: ‘If teef from teef does make God laugh, then you good lucky it ent make a pitbull bite. Pass and go inside, Rocky, and make sure you bathe before your uncle reach home.’

2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist