Earl Mckenzie

Outsiders who saw Ernest in the village square in the years following his dream would never suspect that he was once rich and famous. Now he spent most of his time on the piazza of the shop begging rum and cigarettes from the men who frequented the bar. A small man with a long face and bushy hair, he wore mostly khaki shirts and pants with many patches, and he was usually barefooted.

Sometimes he would sit for hours with his hand on his jaw and a faraway look in his eyes. He often told people that he believed that something good would happen in his life again, and that another stroke of good fortune was just around the corner. Perhaps he would have another dream.

One day, some years before, he had suddenly woken up to the realisation that he was getting on in years, and that he was poor. He wasn't dirt poor. He had a bit of land his grandfather left for him on which he planted a variety of crops, including yams, bananas and sweet potatoes. On weekends he earned a little extra as an 'ackee-tree barber', cutting the hair of men in the village with the barbering set his Uncle Ray had brought for him from the States.

He earned enough from farming and barbering to contribute something to the running of the family home in which he lived with Aunty Lynne and Uncle Ray, and Aunty Lynne saved some of the money for him.

But his aunt and uncle, who had inherited the house from their parents, were both getting old, and they would pass on the house and land to their own children. He was the illegitimate child of their deceased brother. His mother, who had been an employee of his grandparents, had died in childbirth, and his grandparents had adopted him. Now that people were noticing his grey hairs and his increasing baldness, he began to worry about the future. He had no children and felt it was unlikely that he would start a family so late. He began yearning after financial security, and he began to think of ways by which he could become rich.

He began doing the kinds of things by which, it seemed to him, he could become wealthy: he bought raffle tickets and went into the town to bet on race horses; he began making plans to buy and sell animals; he thought of renting a wayside spot and setting up a small shop. But he lost money on the gambling, and the first goat he bought to resell died overnight; and since people laughed at him when he talked about a little bamboo shop to compete with the big one in the square, he gave up on that idea. At night he turned and tossed in his bed as he tried to figure out a way of making a fortune.

Then one night he had an amazing dream - or, as he preferred to call it later, a vision. In the dream, he saw a fat, very black woman sitting on the ground beside a taya plant; there was a bond, it seemed, between the woman and the earth on which she sat. The woman wore a head tie and a long dress of slavery times. He just knew, in the dream, that she was one of his ancestors.

She began describing a spot on his piece of land, speaking in a voice that was at once spectral and affectionate, sometimes talking and sometimes chanting: 'Three steps from the root of the cotton tree, towards the rising sun. Spanish man buried something there, O! Running from the English people dem. Gone to Cuba, O! Gone like kite.' She brushed one palm against the other quickly. 'Hoping to come back one day. But never to return, O! Never to return.'

Ernest woke up and saw the light of dawn coming through the creases of the door and window of his bedroom. He dressed quickly, took up his digging bill and a crocus bag and hurried to his field. As the sun rose he measured his three steps from the cotton tree and began digging. About two feet down he came upon the lid of a large earthenware jar. When he opened it he saw that it was full of gold coins. He gave a cry of joy as he filled his palms with the gold pieces. 'Thank you, M'am! Thank you, M'am!' he said to the woman in his dream. 'You set me up for life!'

But he did not want anybody to know about his good fortune. Not yet, anyway. He put the coins in the crocus bag and covered the jar with earth so no one would notice it. Then he began walking home, secretly enjoying the thought that no one who saw him would even come close to imagining the nature of the luggage he was carrying. When he got home he put the bag in a basket and hid it under his bed.

Then he began dreaming about what he would do with the money. First of all he would buy the attractive property which the Rev. John Simmonds was selling; the Irish clergyman had retired and was returning home. The property consisted of seven acres of well fruited land, an old two-storey house made of cut-stone, mahogany and zinc, and a thriving bee farm which he could continue; and it had a wide view of the sea. Then he would get married; he felt sure that now that he was rich, women would swarm all over him. He would put any money which was left over in the bank and then relax and enjoy the interest.

But before doing any of these things, there was the problem of converting the gold coins to usable cash. He wondered about the wisdom of putting the bag of coins on a truck, taking it to Kingston, and walking into the first goldsmith's shop he saw. Since he knew nothing about the price of gold, there was the possibility that he could be robbed. After thinking it over for a few days, he decided to confide in Mass Winty, the most informed man in the district.

Mass Winty had travelled to many countries before settling down to his tailoring business in the village. He read books, magazines and newspapers and never missed a radio newscast. The villagers hailed him as a genius, since some of his patriotic poems had appeared in the paper, and he recited them to appreciative audiences at church and school concerts. A natural leader, he was president of both the PTA and the local branch of the Jamaica Agricultural Society. People called him a 'village lawyer' and went to him with virtually every kind of problem.

Ernest found him sitting in front of his sewing machine with an unfinished pair of trousers across his lap.

'Hoy, Mass Ernie, come in!' he called peering at Ernest over the top of his glasses.

Ernest sat on a stool by the window.

'You been looking very thoughtful these days of late, Mass Ernie. What can I do for you?'

With a few firm and clever questions Mass Winty soon got most of the story out of Ernest. He was like that. He knew how to get the information he wanted out of people, and they always ended up telling him more than they planned. When Ernest was finished, Mass Winty raised his glasses over his eyes, put the pair of trousers aside and stared at Ernest.

'I want to see them,' he said.

'I will show you one.'

'Go get it.'