A Bridge Over Thirty Years
Author: Patrick George
Chapter 1
He stepped out of the minibus onto the wet pavement outside the Queen’s College compound. It had rained overnight, especially during the pre-dawn hours, and the cool wind skimming the nearby Atlantic waters before touching his skin, stirred sensual vibes in him, setting his mood and body to a pleasing temperature. Patches of dark clouds hovered overhead, but the sun was daring to peep out. He could tell it was going to be his kind of day, no rain of any consequence, if any at all, but no sun of any consequence either, just a nice, cool, cloudy day. He hated hot, sunny days; they depressed him and wore him down. But cloudy days, or even rainy days tended to energize him, make him vibrant and alert. He often wondered, amusingly, if this was due to him having been born during the traditional May/June rainy season.
Because of the early morning traffic, crossing the road was proving difficult, and he found himself standing on the pavement a full three minutes before successfully negotiating the feat. He was feeling all right as he crossed over into Barrack Street and made his way through Eve Leary, the name of the area housing the police compound, or as he jokingly thought of it, the police market. In Eve Leary one could go shopping for anything concerning the Guyana Police Force, for it was home to the Police.
Headquarters, Commissioner’s office, CID branch, mounted division, canine division, homicide, traffic, barracks, sports club and ground, immigration, lock-ups, training school, police bands, DPP office, clearance office, accounts, and officers’ living quarters. He’d once told a friend of his that with so many policemen on the take, they should make an addition to Eve Leary; a special building with staff and all where you could enter and discuss some illegal requirement and hire a cop to look after it. One building in Eve Leary that he never passed by without looking up at it was the Police Band practice quarters. His father whom he’d seen less than fifty times in his life, even though they lived in the same city, about three miles apart, was a member of as well as a music tutor to the band. He always looked towards the band quarters hoping to get a glimpse of the old bastard.
The only thing marring for him on an otherwise lovely morning was the familiar stench of crushed toads on a wet tarred road. The little monsters had a habit of crawling out of canals and gutters and onto the road whenever it rained, and as a result getting run over by passing vehicles. The stench was disturbing to say the least. He was thankful for the occasional interruptions of sweet perfumed scents blowing off passing young women on their way to work. He greeted familiar morning faces, ignoring those he knew from habit usually passed him with a straight face. A dog barked at him and he made as if to attack, causing the animal to bolt away from the fence shrieking. A thought jolted him and he suddenly touched his right side trouser pocket, feeling unsure as to whether he had collected his change from the minibus conductor. A beautiful morning like a beautiful woman could make one careless and forgetful. He fished inside
the pocket and pulled out a wad of bills and some coins. He counted the money and was satisfied.
Ahead in the distance, several hundred yards away to the end of the street, he could see the huge dominant edifice of his workplace crossing the end of the street like the top of a T. A hundred yards away, coming towards him was a vaguely familiar figure, teasing his memory like an elusive word. He knew it was a hundred yards because two lamp post distances separated him from the approaching figure, and it had been instilled in his head since he was a child by an older person that the distance between lamp posts was fifty yards. And he had taken that to be a fact, even passing it on to others over the years. He had always intended to measure it for himself, but had never gotten down to it.
As the distance shortened he noted the leaning shoulders and swaying hips and careless fling of legs that indicated the walk of a country man. No man born and bred in town would walk like that unless it was really deeply entrenched in his genes. That was the walk of someone used to trudging through mud, wading across trenches and traversing bushes, and perhaps, running behind farm animals through wide fields of uneven ground. At fifty yards away the face looked familiar, and a picture began to take shape in his head like a disjointed Picasso painting in cubist style. His brain began fitting pieces of the puzzle together. Twenty five yards before collision the pieces fell into place like a perfect portrait, no more cubism, but sharp realism, and his heart lurched inside his chest, as vertigo threatened. He knew this country man, he knew him well, even though he’d only seen him once, briefly, in thirty years, and that was about twenty years ago, as he was boarding a taxi outside the Berbice bus and taxi rank, dressed in police uniform. He remembered being amused at the sight of the young man in police uniform. There was a raw awkwardness about him and the way he spoke in his deep country twang, and his natural jovialness that just didn’t fit into Ben’s notion of a policeman. The man coming towards him was none other than Barley! Good old Barley, they used to be friends. Until that night!