“Four Tins” by Tabitha Bast

Content warning¹

“We can’t move to the hills because Lo’ Rax won’t let us and we can’t move down coast because Lo’ Tally so we have nothing to do but sit here and die.”

Ma explains this to the traveller. Again. Traveller stupid and it third time they ask. They have matted hair, long as a settled person, but dirty as mine. I nod to support Ma.

‘The Lords?’ Traveller asks.

I nod again. To support Ma. Lords sound like they are rich and fancy with castles and dragons. Ma sound like she my family and loves me. These are just words and not those kind of lords and not those kinds of Ma. The lo’s are warlords – them that control the paths we can move across, the land, the food, the shelters. Not so different perhaps to them lords with the butlers and the maidservants and the dancing in that respect. Ma is Ma as in Madam who once gave me life when I was at knifepoint so I owe her mine just like a son. Not so different perhaps to them mothers with the love and the kind and the cuddles in that respect.

Ma and me wait to die.

Die ain’t so bad, everyone do it.

 Well. It bad and not so bad. What isn’t bad? It’s all bad now, right? Even the Lo’s are skinny let alone butlers and maid servants and dancing. Lo’ Rax never had that, but he did have fifty miles and all the factories and their produce in it. Before, Lo’ Tally was known as the Farmer King, but land got too sodden for anything to grow or to graze. So it’s Rax the winner cos he still has tins. Tins are currency like money was once. One tin for a gun now, a gun with bullets. It used to be two hundred but now nobody has enough tins to take with a gun – or maybe they do but how do you find them? Or get to them from here? Two tins for a taxi out. Nobody knows where the taxi may get to before the fuel run out or flood or fire say stop. But p’raps it can go all the way, to a place where wheat still grow and water isn’t sour. You can take your chances with two tins. But maybe you get a big time prize. Or maybe you get shot.  Three tins is a whole wide negotiation, bit of this and a bit of that, and we see one get a house for three and another get their whole family axed to death for it. 

We have four tins left. We are not telling the traveller.

The traveller may or may not be use to us, Ma does not know yet. I watch her with my bat next to me, I read her face. Her face is all the stories I need to know. Ma’s mouth says if I survive, if she survive, when I move, when she move, when he die, when we die, when we eat, when we drink, when we sleep. Ma says people have always relied on each other and have always mistrusted each other and sometimes it is the same people. She says this while she watches me back.

Ma has black-grey hair, wiry like bark on a dying tree. Some teeth, not all, less than me. Her face is brown and dry like the earth, like she needs a lot of water, just like the earth needs a lot of water. She told me she is not old but so what? What is age now, if nobody die of age but die of something along the way, by the belly or the bat. Ma is not smaller than me by height even though her race and sex should make it so. She told me this, I was the first boy near an adult smaller than her. She is not big but I am tiny. A runt, a rat, a rent boy, a retard. I don’t know which of these she sing to me because she relies on me or which of these she sing to me because she mistrusts me. 

Ma – and four tins – is all I got.

Me – and four tins – is all she got.

The traveller, well, we don’t know what we got yet do we?

That’s why they are still here. They sit on step with me, Ma, bat on my knee and whatever they got to whack us with but they have not shown yet – they are still doing the pleading. 

“I come to bring you God,” the traveller says, and then they bring out what they want to whack us with and it a book. A big book could hurt if hit hard enough but they just put their hand to rest on top like it’s a favourite dog, or  a parent on a child in the olden days. And Ma, I never saw her laugh so much before, a laugh like dancing where you sitting, shaking all up from the boots to the brow, rocking and rattling like you’ve just been bit or batted or shot. She make the wheezing noise too like a death whisper. 

“Of all the lords I want to do trade with, he’s the last.” She says finally and I laugh with her, wheeze with her, show my bared teeth to the traveller like I friend and foe all at once. 

But the traveller says they ain’t trading, they giving. Just like their Lo’. They says it but they crying to say it now and Ma has no time for tears. She told me there was a time once, when there was music and art, when you could cry for joy or cry for sadness just from that, not even from ill or death or even your loved ones’ ill or death. Tears just for a sound, a song, a picture.. That time went before I was born.

The traveller lift the book up and breathe deep to smell it, not reading it and they says “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Oh and the traveller all smiles and broken teeth and crusts at the corner of their rotting mouth. They offer it out to Ma like she’s a dog to trick.

Ma takes the book but when the traveller asks to stay, saying they’ll sleep in the doorway no worries, but just scared to go on, she does not take kindly to it. She asks what else they got except a useless pile of paper to burn. Nothing they says, opening the bag to show stinking clothes, scrambling through to show us bad rags. Ma frowns and I stand up and tap the bat on the floor. Bop bop bop. All the music we need now. The traveller showed their final hand and they has nothing for us. We have no reason to say stay, we just have another book to burn. 

“But you said it’s not safe in either direction?” They plead. There is snot trailing from their nostril into their moustache, makes me want to wipe my own nose with the back of my hand even though mine is dry as Ma’s face and the earth. Too dry, it’s why the dust bothers me so much when it’s storming. 

“Not safe.” She confirms pointing to the end of our path.

“Then where shall I go?”

Ma opens the book. She squints at the little writing, she’s not used to reading any more but she can do it. She reads slowly but she reads good:

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

“In other words. Not my circus, not my monkeys.” Ma shrugs. She sits down with the book, her hand on it now. She closes her eyes to show how relaxed she is, meaning she’s passing the job of scrutiny to me. I tap my bat near their feet like I’m pushing rats away.

With her eyes closed she didn’t see that face when they left, but I did. The one was raging, charred rage, grimace like a forest fire. The figure slopes off with their back collapsing under that crammed backpack.They walks fast for a starving person, for a dying one. Their face reads like trouble.

I don’t know whether to say to Ma or no. Decisions do not come quick to me, especially when it can mean upsetting Ma. And Ma is triumphant, she is gushing laughter again now, hee hee hee she rocks back and forth.

“Oh child,” She screams and I love it when she calls me that, it’s like for a moment I’m not hungry, full up on a good but delicate feeling, sweet like I matter. “We got that Bible conman, thinking he could outwit me with his well chosen verse! Me! The pastor’s wife once, back then. When I led the big Sunday school….” and out she fades, eyes open but staring into the distance like she’s blinded by her happy memories that also make her sad. Ma takes a big sigh, as big as the laughs she’s been taking, deep in and deep out. I slide a bit closer to her so I can catch some of this feeling, even if it’s bitter.

I take a long time to tell Ma about the traveller and his raging face. And like I expected, she is not happy. She asks me what that face said it’d do next and I show her, bashing down with my bat on the patio. “And what was he saying he’d do if he didn’t have a bat?” She whisper, real angry with me.

I lift my bat high in the air with my bad hand. And slowly pass it to my good one, the one where the fingers work. Then bash it down again on the patio. “He get someone else to kill us, ey?” Ma checks. 

She is not so good at reading people as me.

Ma tells me stories when she’s happy and when she’s cross.

When she is happy she tells me about people when she loved, of a husband and four children, when she actually was a Ma. She tells me of cooking on a stove and plucking feathers from a chicken, of oils and salts and flavours that made each meal taste good in its own way, so you could tell one apart as easy as one person from another. Ma tells me of eating at a table with the husband and four children, and she was the one who told me of music and art and gardens that you just like all for its own sake.

When she is happy she tells me tales of her but when she’s cross she tells me tales of me.

Ma is now telling me a tale of me. So she was angry. She tells me this time Lo’ Rax is my Ma-ma, the original Ma, the one who birthed me and was meant to love me but she hates me because who wouldn’t and only Ma now would take me on. She told me this before but also she told me once Lo’Tally was my Pa, or was my pimp, or was my kidnapper, this changes depending on the mad she is. 

She goes on so much I want to bat her head, not the traveller and his crusty vicious smile, just her who is all I got. But I remember nothing of how I lived before her, so p’raps this is all true stories or p’raps she is saying it to sadden me further but either way I never knew how to survive without her. 

When Ma wears herself out with hating me she tells me she is sure the traveller will be going up to the hills to negotiate with one Lo’ or down to the coast to negotiate with another, cos them all the paths possible at this juncture. And that negotiation may or may not involve passage for them but will involve them giving us up.

“And child,” she softens again. “He will tell about our tins. He don’t know about our tins but you don’t need to see tins to believe in them. You just need hope and a promise. You just need nothing else to barter with but blind faith. And he’ll tell them we have three or he’ll tell them we have six, what’s the difference? They’ll be down here as soon as they can hear it yet before someone said it they’d believe we had nothing. Like we said. But then he’ll say. And that is the power of the word.

It ain’t your fault. It mine. I should never have been so kind to let him go. The power of the word. And the word should have been to batter him to death, child, make sure he can never speak. But I was weakened and gentle. Cursed by his hopeful bible verse. He did bring the word of the lamb to me and make me a martyr. Well child, into the valley of saints we go.”

I don’t understand any of what Ma is saying to me but she’s saying it with such kindness that I can scuttle real close and I sit at her feet with my arms upon her lap where that book that also matters to her lies. It smells old, like her, but different to her. I wonder if this is what an oven smells like, an oven cooking up oils and salts and flavours for a husband and four children.

Ma touches the top of my head, a blessing. I push my scalp into her hand, try to grow myself into it like an apple tree to nourish us both. I rub my belly, asking her if we can share one of those four tins. Four. Richest people for miles.

“No” Ma withdraws her hand, mouth downward. “No tins, no food. We die now, by the belly or the bat. So like I said, and I never lie,  we have nothing to do but sit here and die.” Ma rocks a little, back and forth, and I move with her like I’m in a cradle, and like dying hungry is a lullaby.

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1. Ableist language ↩︎