Sisimito I--Ox Witz Ha Read online

  Actually, it was because of my deteriorating behavior … not even Father Stiobhan could help me … that I entered the army. After one very serious incident, I was made to agree that I needed some discipline and the army was the only way to go, so I signed up and, fortunately, the army became my life. It looked after me and I liked it for it allowed me to be in my jungle. At the time of that incident, the general sentiment was to throw me in jail, lock me in securely, and then destroy the key, not just throw it away where it may be found again. But the army and a compassionate magistrate saved me. I do know that it was only my signing up that kept the magistrate from sending me to prison and I thank him to this day for forcing me to sign up. I will never forget that magistrate. I always remember his face, his words, his name … Magistrate Longsworth … and I had faced him alone as I had insisted that Bas didn’t accompany me.

  He was a bit theatrical, but not in a way that would make you lose respect for him. Respect! He commanded respect. He stood up tall, he was dark, and he looked me straight in the eyes as he leaned over the impressive mahogany desk in the steamy courtroom in Punta Gorda. Even to this day, I still tremble under that respect.

  “Young man,” he declared. “You can read. You can write. I hear you are actually intelligent, although we are yet to see evidence of that.” There were murmurs of agreement in the courtroom. “You have been blessed among your peers, my boy. Yet, you are standing here before me in trouble with the law … Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Second’s Law … because of a drunken brawl.” He shook his head slowly then boomed at me, suddenly, “I do not take that lightly.” I jumped off my feet and am sure that the entire courtroom jumped in their seats as well. “Do you think you are big enough to throw away God’s gifts to you? Do you think you are big enough to waste the gifts that God, in His Power and Glory, in His Wisdom, and in His Compassion for lowly little you, has bestowed upon you? That’s blasphemy, Boy. They used to stone people to death, if they blasphemed.”

  “I know, Sir,” I had said. I thought I would impress him so I added, “They stoned Saint Stephen to death.”

  “What is this?” he shouted. “You dare address this court without me giving you leave to do so. And you dare to give me a lesson in religious history.” I could see spittle flying from the edges of his angry mouth. “When I am seated on this chair, Boy, I represent the Crown. Don’t you dare interrupt the Crown.” I nodded repeatedly and forcefully. I am sure my eyes were bulging out of my head. He settled back in the chair. “And stop bobbing your head like a drowning Chaali Prais42 … disgusting rat.” He glared at me. “Other times,” he continued, “they would tie those blasphemers to a stake and burn them … alive. And they didn’t make a big fire. Oh, no! They burned them slowly … giving them … in this case you, enough time to repent.” He shook his head again, his eyes looking straight at me. “Who are you? Tell me, Man … Boy. Who are you? All I see in front of me is the insignificant remnant of a copulation.”

  I was frightened. I had told myself that I would be tough, but under that magistrate’s stare, I was as soft as fresh wet shit. I didn’t know what to answer and even if I did, I probably couldn’t have opened my mouth to respond. The smell of my burning flesh was already in my nostrils and, at that time, I didn’t know what the hell copulation meant. When I didn’t answer, he stared at me so intently that I thought he was going to take his gavel and beat me right into the ground.

  “So, you don’t know who you are”, he continued. “Well, I don’t give a damn who you are anyway. But, whether you deserve it or not, I do give a damn about who you can be.” I remember seeing him shake his head then continuing. “I have sons. Many sons. Some are just your age. And, believe it or not, they can give a lot of trouble too. On occasions, I have had to throw them in jail. That’s what you have on your side. That’s the only thing you have on your side. I have sons. But, at the same time, I have to punish you or at least ensure that what brought you here never happens again. Are you willing to assure me that with respect to the crime you’re accused of, that anything like that, even remotely like that, will not happen again?”

  I was finally able to quietly spit out two words. “Yes, Sir.” My voice cracked. I was so ashamed. My voice cracked like that of a youth … one just starting to get a little hair around the balls … still jigging.43

  “Louder!”

  “Yes, Sir!” I shouted, deliberately focusing on his eyes and, as I looked into his eyes, I saw what he was demanding to see in me. He wanted to see an inner strength in me. If he did not, he would believe there was no hope for me and he’d dump me in jail. So, I went to my jungle. I quickly summoned the eyes of the mountain lion and they replaced my own. I commanded the tenseness and powerful rigors of the muscular jaguar about to pounce on an unsuspecting calf. I tempered my body with the wisdom of the icim. He seemed to relax and I knew that he now saw that there was hope for me even if the path was through thick and treacherous jungle.

  “Your drunkenness and disorder almost cost a man his life, and that man has a family to look after. Would you have been able to look after his family? No! You need discipline in your wayward life, my boy. Discipline! I can give you that discipline in prison. I can have you stripped naked and whipped. Have you heard of the cat-o’-nine-tails?”

  Cat-o’-nine-tails! Oh Fok!

  “Well, have you?”

  “I have, your Honor.” I stood firm, but no insolence marked my face.

  He smiled. “It is a rope-whip with nine knotted lashes for flogging criminals like you. And, we soak it. We give it to you wet. This court has been told that you like things wet. Well, I hope you’ll like this one.” He stopped and looked at me. I was fighting hard not to show that I was trembling down to my dirty sandals. I didn’t want to go to prison. I would be like a caged animal. I was too used to freedom. I had to be in my jungle or I would die. The cat-o’-nine-tails I feared but would take. But I had to have my jungle. I suddenly wanted to piss … to shit.

  “However, something tells me that’s not where I should put you,” he continued, leaning back in his high-backed mahogany chair. I was sure my shoulders had dropped in relief. “In other words, I still believe that there is some hope for you, young man. Do you know of an institution called the British Honduras Volunteer Guard?” I had heard of it, but didn’t know much about it, so I hesitated in answering. “Answer me, Boy,” he shouted. “You’re running out of time.”

  “Yes,” I answered, but very quietly as my mind was racing. I knew that it had something to do with the army. I knew damn well that I didn’t want to go into any army.

  “Speak up,” he roared. I answered, but only a little louder. He got up from around his large and elevated mahogany desk and stepped off the platform and approached me. I was so frightened that the mountain lion, the jaguar, and the icim deserted me without hesitation. I was ready to run, but the courthouse was so filled with people who were angry at me for what I had done that I knew they would have all welcomed the opportunity to catch me, stone me to death like Saint Stephen, and return me to the magistrate for burial. “I am going to teach you one of the first things you will learn in the army, Boy. When your commanding officer asks you a question, you answer immediately and with a loud voice. Now, I am going to ask you again, and you will answer very loudly, ‘Yes, Sir’, and we won’t stop until everyone in this Her Majesty’s Courtroom hears you loud and clear. Now, let’s begin. Stand to attention.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I stiffened up my whole body. I began to hear shuffling and quiet laughter in the courthouse. “Recruit! Do you know of an institution called the British Honduras Volunteer Guard?”

  “Yes”, I answered.

  “Yes, Sir!” he demanded, loudly.

  “Yes, Sir!”

  “Louder!” he commanded, and he had me repeat myself until I was so loud that I am sure people down the street were hearing me. My throat became so dry that my voice began to crack. I once again sounded like an unbroken juvenile, a masturbating piece o
f shit, much to the growing amusement of the courthouse. But he was giving me a chance and I had to take it. There was no other sensible choice. He told me I had to join the Volunteer Guard, immediately, or go to Her Majesty’s Prison and the cat-o’-nine-tails. He would also put me on five years’ probation, either way. I quickly agreed to the Volunteer Guard and probation.

  I thought that I had gotten off lightly and, as I slowly remembered what little I knew of the Volunteer Guard, I smiled inwardly. They practiced twice a week in the evenings, some weekends, and went to camp for two weeks once a year. And I would be paid. I almost smiled outwardly but didn’t want Magistrate Longsworth to know that I was feeling I had in effect won the case. I heard grumbles from the back of the court and it was very obvious that the observers wanted me jailed and beaten. Had I known then what I was about to learn, and very quickly, any trace of a blossoming smile would have been immediately removed from my face. I hadn’t won. No way. Her Majesty’s Magistrate had won. I didn’t know that there was an army sergeant in town recruiting for full-time positions until I was released from the court directly to him. I wasn’t even given a chance to go to my house to get anything. I was told I wouldn’t need them and, in fact, I didn’t. That seems so long ago. Now, I’m a sergeant.

  As I looked at Bas, I wondered, as I usually did, what on Earth was he doing in the army? He was a good soldier. He was fit and athletic, as I was. As a matter of fact, we always had our private competitions and although I did beat him at swimming, I just could never beat him at running races. I suppose it was that I always became distracted by the fast movement of his short legs. I couldn’t understand how those short legs could move faster than my longer legs. That distraction always made me lose concentration and I no longer focused on winning the race. I was always so marveled at how Bas’ short legs moved so quickly that I had to look down at them at some point in the race, to see those short legs kicking up dirt. As I did that, he’d pass me and I wouldn’t be able to catch him again. He’d win. At football, I could pop44 better than he did, but the running, at times, he’d just pass me by. I honestly thought that if he really made up his mind, he would beat me at anything. Even as boys, just finding out about the crazy feelings sex brought to us, in our innocence, we’d jerk off to see whose spence45 shot out the furthest. He always won even though I had the advantage, Tóolok being longer. Haha! And we loved to hunt and fish, often climbing the Krus Che’46 mountain near our village of Santa Cruz.

  Bas was also much smarter than me. He read a lot and can discuss many subjects I knew very little or nothing about. I was certain he could have gone to High School in Punta Gorda or even in Belize City … like Gus did. He didn’t, even though Father Stiobhan wanted him to go to St. John’s College in Belize City. In reflection, I felt sure that Father hoped that Bas would become a priest and serve the people in Toledo. But that was not to be. Bas didn’t go to any other school after San Antonio; he stayed around me. Perhaps, I was a bad influence on Bas and that’s why Father Stiobhan didn’t hang around me to much or it could have been that he had just given up on me. Yet, whenever Father Stiobhan was with me, he would be nice to me. At times, I would find him staring at me and that made me uncomfortable and I wondered if I were the evil beast from Revelation, had 666 tattooed across my forehead, were possibly growing ten horns and seven heads, were so evil that even Baptism and all the Sacraments of the Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church invoked by my Saint Stephen could not usher me into Heaven.

  Bas once said to me that he told Father Stiobhan that he, Bas, did not have to become a priest to serve the Blessed Virgin. Why the Blessed Virgin? I don’t know, but Bas’ deity was the Blessed Virgin, the Mother Of God. He said the rosary every day, even on holidays; he insisted that was what the Blessed Virgin wished. He rarely mentioned God or Jesus and almost never my Saint Stephen. I was glad, at that time, that he had told Father Stiobhan to stop pressuring him to become a priest. It was not that I disliked the priest totally … almost totally. He appeared to be a good man, dedicated to the work he was doing, and was always trying to help our village families and, for some unknown reason, my family more than others. Somehow, Taat didn’t convey the impression that he liked that.

  Father Stiobhan had made me go to school and that turned out to be good for me. Yet, I could never forgive him for having taken me away from my broadleaf jungle, Taat’s kool, and the hunt for wild game. Perhaps, I was selfish, but I certainly didn’t want him to take away my friend, Bas, also. Then, one day, Father Stiobhan was gone. Just like that. He was recalled was the rumor. I was surprised for I had always accepted him as part of the landscape. He was always there.

  Well, Father Stiobhan had not taken Bas away to the seminary and so we continued our wild lives, straying from hunting and fishing to drinking and whoring until I ended up in Her Majesty’s Courtroom. I must confess, make it clear, it was I who was the bad influence. So, I was put in the army, but life had its ways. I was astonished when Bas turned up at training camp a week after I had joined-up. But then, perhaps, I shouldn’t have been. He was my friend. He wanted to be with me. He knew that I needed someone to look after me.

  Bas looked up and saw me watching him. He smiled and asked, “How doing, Sarge?” He never addressed me by name when we were stationed or on a military exercise.

  I nodded. “Fine, Corp.” I didn’t have to ask what book he was reading. I was sure it was his book of prayers to the Blessed Virgin or The Bible. It was not that Bas surrounded himself with prayer at all times. There were occasions when he acted quite wild with drink and women. Of course, I was always the one pulling him with me into the bars and whore-houses. Yet, he seemed to go only to a certain point, the point which I would always want to go beyond and often did. Sometimes, I told myself that I should have encouraged Bas to become a priest, go on with his studies. He could have increased his learning, gone to a school where the Jesuits trained, somewhere outside of British Honduras. If he found out later that he had made a mistake, he could have left, no longer a priest, but a well-educated man. Yet, I didn’t encourage him. I held on to him, selfish in my friendship. And there he was with me, my Lance-corporal, on an expedition and training mission in my jungle. Yes, it was my jungle, our jungle, a land we both loved and needed. And there was Rosalia, Gus’ sister. He had a crush on her. Perhaps, one day they would marry and I couldn’t help but wonder, at times, what would happen to us … to our friendship … to our adventures. Me! I didn’t have a crush on anybody and nobody had a crush on me.

  Daytime, March 30, 1972.

  Illustration 4: Sergeant Chiac’s Walk – Expedition Bold.

  It had been very early that morning, at three-o-clock exactly, I had awakened the four men of my section who were going on the expedition. Two other men from my section, much to their disdain, had been replaced on the expedition by two civilians. All five of us, fully dressed in combats47 and with rifle and bergen,48 were at the pick-up-point by four a.m. Corporal Pascascio, Melvyn Hulse Sr. who was a pioneer logger and very knowledgeable of the Cockscomb Basin, and the two other civilians going on the expedition, picked us up in a small army truck at four thirty and at four forty-five we left Stann Creek Town. The two civilians were Vincent Clarke, a professional photographer from Barbados, and Harold Parham, a local journalist with a great personal interest in the Victoria Peak … the mysterious mountain we were going to climb.

  We travelled west for some six miles on the tarred Stann Creek Valley Road then turned off on the Southern Highway which, at its best, was little more than a wide dirt road. Dust immediately filled the vehicle, but there were no comments from the men or the civilians. Conversation between my men and the civilians had been very limited, at which I was not surprised. I supposed that the two civilians were not yet forgiven for having displaced the two soldiers from my section. I felt sure that as the expedition progressed, however, and as each of the civilians played his part, any bad feelings would be put aside.

  Except our driver Corporal Pascascio,
Melvyn Hulse Sr., and myself, the men were dozing and I let them. I had expected them to show more excitement than was apparent since we were not on a routine jungle training mission. Beside the fact that we were taking a civilian photographer and everyone would have their pictures taken, as part of the exercise we were going to try and climb the highest point in the country, Victoria Peak. But then, the men were trained soldiers, they followed orders, they kept their excitement within themselves … and, most likely, they were out later than they should have been, having a good fuck before their walked into the dark, dangerous, and mysterious Cockscomb Basin. The latest estimates put the aiguille49 of Victoria Peak at 3,680 feet high, in the middle of dense jungle, and it had only been climbed a few times before. Yes, I suppose they had not gotten to bed as early as I had wished, but it was I who had given them passes. However, it would be their headache. They knew that sleep or no sleep, they had to do what was expected of them. So, although the exercise technically began at the pick-up-point, I allowed them to doze. The group totaled seven, five of us from my section and the two civilians. The military members were, LCpl. Shal, Basilio, Pte. Taylor, Robert, Pte. Hulse Jr, Melvyn, Pte. Anderson, Henry and, myself, Sgt. Stephen Chiac.

  I spent most of the time talking to Melvyn Hulse Sr. who had much first-hand experience with the area we were going into. He was one of the few tough men who used to drag mahogany and other hardwood logs out of the area when logging was a treacherous enterprise in that sector of the country. He had many good stories to tell, informative and interesting, and the time passed quickly.