Community
House of blazes
by Dr. Curtis Barnett
More than once the men friends of the womenof the house occasioned a row in the neighbourhood. A woman hadher man - or men - friends and, typically, 'one or two other womenclaimed the same man or men.
Sometimes the claim broke out into a loud discussion , an argument,a real row, if a woman went to a store or some other place andsaw her rival, or even to the house of the other and attemptedto take her man - literally!
These rows sometimes broke out into fights, real battle royals,with the women battling each other like roosters in a fight toestablish sovereignty over their territory and to claim theirmate.
Such fights, of course, don't fail to attract onlookers and interestedparties. A few people look on with horror and disgust, while otherssic the fighters on or even try to help one woman against theother. The women cuss and abuser each other with their sharp tongues.They slap each other, grab and wring the noses, scratch the cheeks,pull the ears, pull and jerk the hair, lock the necks with painfulbear hugs, trip and stumble to the ground, roll over in the dusty,unpaved road, pull up their dresses and scrape the thighs on thesharp stones'.anything , everything. All in a day's fight. Untilone overcomes the other, or perhaps a relative or a friend ofthe apparent loser tries to separate the fighters.
That was the way life was around the house. Cholita's childrendidn't have to work much or worry about life. They didn't knowanything about philosophies, but 'eat, drink and be merry' wasthe attitude that characterised their style. Their mother workedenough to give them all a mouthful, and now and then the two oldestdaughters would strike a lick. The place might have been prettymuch of a mess and in a run-down condition condition, but whatmore did they want? They were accustomed to what they'd inheritedand aspired to nothing better. They had a house, after all, andsomething to eat every day, and they had their men.
Cholita's brother, Wally, on the other hand, was not content withthe way things were. He hadn't said much to anybody, but he wasunhappy about how his father had distributed the possessions.He considered it an injustice that the old man had not given himthe house. He was the son, after all , and the oldest child atthat. Cholita was only his half-sister, an outside child whomhis father had begotten to the chagrin of his poor old mother,God bless her memory.
Why should his half-sister fare any better than he, Wally askedhimself. It bothered him to no end that Cholita had inheritedthe best and most of his father's property. By rights, the housewas his, he considered. It seemed to him that his father had alwaystreated Cholita a special way. Was it b ecause his father hadloved that other woman more than his own wife, Wally's mother?Was it because Cholita was a shade fairer than the two other children?Or was it that his father had a tinge of guilt because of hisconjugal infidelity and tried to allay his guilt by giving hisillegitimate daughter special treatment?
Wally, however, had never felt much in his heart for her; theirrelationship had always been pretty much like a cat-and-dog life.For him, the old man's gift to Cholita was the straw that brokethe camel's back.
It wasn't that Wally would have starved to death or anything likethat as a result of this; he wasn't exactly on the rocks financially.He was employed often as a laborer in construction work, and hedid his little fishing two or three times a week. But the oldcatboat which he got from his father was leaky and well batteredby waves and weather and half eaten out by barnacles and worms.
Stacked up next to the house and land which Cholita had received,the catboat just wasn't worth very much. And all those men ñthis was like adding insult to injury. Wally couldn't take itany more that this foreigner, O mar, had moved in, adding to thelist of other no-goods that kept coming and going. Wally had enoughof all this.
Wally formed a plan.
Somebody else also became inflamed in anger against the house.The old neighbour up the road who we called 'Uncle Albert' hadcome to find out in recent days that his 14-year-old grand-daughterwas beginning to frequent the house. As she was growing up, shehad gone there now and then to visit her school friend, Cholita'syoungest daughter, but now the house had become a place to visitwith a boyfriend.
Uncle Albert wanted none of it ñ a girl of her young agegoing to that kind o'house that you couldn't call a home to seea mana you-couldn't-figure-what-kind-o'-man-he-was! He determinedto put a stop to it. He would attempt his utmost to stop his grand-daughterfrom going there, and to counteract that house's bad influenceand tendency to lead her down the wrong path. He didn't considerhow difficult it might be; the girl was beginning to take a leafout of her mother's book. Her mother, Uncle Albert's daughter,had gone down a similar path when she was a teenager and had becomea mother out of wedlock.
But Uncle Albert was a resolute man; he had made up his mind toaccomplish what he had decided to do. Maybe his youth was longgone and he had very little strength left, but he still had aquick mind and a sharp tongue. He wasn't a man to mince wordsand he was ready, when necessary, to give a piece of his mind.
Uncle Albert spoke to his grand-daughter, warning and commandingher to stay away from that house, and to have nothing more todo with it. It was a hotbed of evil, and if she wanted to stayout of trouble, she had better quit going there. So let that bethe last of it, he advised her bluntly, because he wasn't talkingjust to waste his breath! By now Uncle Albert's blood was boilinghot in his veins; it wouldn't take long for a situation like thisto make it boil over.
Wally had come up with a bright idea, he thought, and he hastenedto put his plan into action. If anyone had known about it andtried to dissuade him, it would have been to no avail. He wasn'tabout to bury the hatchet and smoke a peace pipe now. He thirstedfor revenge, and he told himself that the only way to assuagehis thirst was to reduce the house to ashes.