Austin Mitchell, Contributor

NANKO DIPPED his spoon into the bowl of cornmeal porridge and took up another spoonful. He ate it and then put some more ackee and saltfish on to the hard-dough bread. He made a sandwich with it and bit off a huge piece. Their cornmeal porridge was made of grated corn with coconut milk. They had used wet sugar to sweeten it and grated a nutmeg in it to give it some more flavour. Butty, Dedco and Bully were also eating their porridge.

"You think we'll find him today?" Butty asked.

The men were casual workers on several properties around the McKenzie Land area and they were looking for Berbice Morgan, reputed to be a great eater. Stout eaters themselves, they were no match for Berbice. A feast was coming up and they wanted somebody to bet on. Wimple, the best eater in the village, had withdrawn from the contest because his elder brother, Bam, a man with a fierce temper, had threatened to give him a terrible beating should he dare enter the contest.

"Berbice is the only man capable of beating Bagda," Nanko said. They were filling up themselves with this large load of food for the long haul into the woods to find Berbice.

"He must be at his shack up in Lobban's Ridge. That's where he stays when he is burning coal," Bully said.

They saw Hustay Willie coming towards them. He was riding on a grey mule. Hustay was also a coal burner. He was a big, strapping man and a great eater himself. He had entered several eating contests but had never finished in the top three. He was not well liked in the village. Hustay had always boasted that his grandfather had been the driver on the nearby Goodall Estate. In fact, Hustay now carried his whip.

Hustay saw them eating and remembered that he had not eaten his breakfast as yet. He stopped his mule and got off and tied it to a nearby tree stump.

"You guys loading up, it seems as if you have some hard work ahead of you," he greeted them as Sonia, Dedco's woman, came out of the house with a pail of lemonade.

"Join us Hustay," Dedco invited him. Sonia greeted him, too, before putting down the pail and returning inside. Hustay took up a platter and poured out the rest of the ackee and saltfish into it. He took 10 slices of bread, each almost an inch thick, and put them in his plate. He put down the plate and took two pears out of his bag. He passed one to the men while pealing the other and putting it into his plate. He poured a cheesepan full of lemonade and sat back to shovel the food into his mouth.

"We are going to look for Berbice," Bully said belatedly in reply to Hustay. They were all watching the pile of food on Hustay's plate. They could have done with another helping but Hustay had shovelled all the food that was left on to his platter.

"Think you guys can find him? I might enter the contest because I hear that Wimple will not be in it," Hustay said.

"We are looking for somebody to beat Bagda. You've come up against him several times and lost," Dedco said.

"I've beaten Bagda already, and Berbice too," Hustay said, before stuffing his mouth full of food.

Hilda, Nankoo's woman, came out of the house.

"Any of you want any more food? she asked. "Wait, Mr Hustay, I didn't know you were here."

"Hilda, I could do with some roasted plantains, if you have any, and some cocoa tea too," Hustay told her.

The others told her that they had had their fill and she returned inside for the food for Hustay.

"It's so you guys eat light. You can't be cutting cane or doing the kind of hard work we do and eat so light," Hustay said as Hilda returned with the roasted plantains and a pot of cocoa tea.

"We are going up into the woods to look for Berbice. Chances are he'll have more food up there for us," Dedco said.

Berbice was at his hut in the woods of Lobban's Ridge. He was putting the finishing touches to his breakfast. He was having fried dumplings, ackee and saltfish and cocoa tea. It was a big meal with a dozen dumplings, a pot full of ackee and saltfish and a pot full of tea. Berbice sat down at his self-made table to eat. He was a huge man with big, rippling muscles. His work was hard as he had to fell huge trees and cut them up for making coal to sell in the May Pen market.

As Berbice ate his meal he thought about the upcoming contest. A feast was to be held in their village and it included a eating contest. The winner would receive a domestic animal, and Berbice had heard that a goat was the prize this time around. Of the four contests in which he had participated, he had won two and Bagda two. So both were now even. Wimple and another man, Polack, had come close to dethroning them. Hustay Willie had participated but had never finished any of those contests.

There would be horse racing and running, too, and many other games. These were always held on the first day of August each year. This was how they celebrated Emancipation Day. Berbice finished his meal and waited for his food to be digested. Already, he was thinking about his lunch, and he had green peas and pig's tail soaking. He would roast two breadfruits and cook yam, banana and dumpling.

Berbice was packing his kiln and his lunch was cooking when the men burst in on him. He had been expecting them so his pots were full of food and he had picked and thrown half a dozen more breadfruit into the fire. As the men ate their meal they talked about the upcoming feast.

The fair was in full swing when the eating contest started at mid-day. The men had to eat a bowl of soup as an appetiser. In this were various meat kinds, corn, chocho, pumpkin, carrot and Irish potato. In the morning they had cornmeal porridge hard-dough bread and callaloo. Bagda had won these two contests.

Bam had relented and allowed Wimple to partake in the contest but he was performing poorly. Bam was standing in a corner of the room eating a plate of curry goat and drinking a beer while watching the eaters. Each man was now given a platter consisting of one roasted breadfruit, yam, dumpling, and pear. There was a bowl consisting of saltfish, pork, gully-beans and run-down, plus a gallon of lemonade.

At the bell, the men started eating with loud cheers going up from Bagda's supporters, but he was three-quarters through his meal when he started choking and, despite some generous drinks of lemonade, he couldn't continue, while Berbice's supporters started shouting as they looked at his empty plates and him finishing the last of his lemonade. Wimple had also dropped out, so had Hustay and Polack.

Warsop and Brim had their foreheads on the table as the crowd lifted Berbice in the air. Later on that evening he was presented with his prize.

- Austin Mitchell