Mister Henry's Trousers

MISTER HENRY'S TROUSERS/ William McCauley HEARING THE HONDA in the vaUey, he pushed himself to his feet, paused to let his belly receive the pain, then moved stiffly across the dirt yard to the wrought-iron gate. From there he watched the young white man drive the Honda through the stand of tamarind trees on the brow of the hiU and bounce along the dusty trau toward him. The white man stopped the motorcycle in front of the garage. Giving Sheku a smile, he removed his goggles and stripped off his gloves. "How de day, sah?" Sheku asked. "I de manage," Mister Henry said over the bubbling putt-putt and pop of the engine. He tossed a ring of keys to Sheku. Sheku caught the keys and unlocked the gate and puUed it open. Mister Henry gunned the Honda up the incline into the garage, where he stopped it between a drum of petrol and stacks of shovels and head pans. Sheku waited at the gate while the young man dismounted and removed his helmet. When he came out of the garage, Sheku entered and loosened the rubber that held the shovels on the back of the Honda. Mister Henry went across the bare earth and up the stairs to the long covered porch and unlocked the double doors. "Sheku, come upsai," he caUed over his shoulder as he entered the house. Sheku finished stacking the implements against the wall, secured the gate and climbed the stairs. He approached the threshold of the open doorway and stopped and waited. He heard Mister Henry opening windows in his bedroom. "Sheku!" Sheku stepped out of his halfbacks and went barefoot across the cool tile floor toward the haU. The shadowy room contained bamboo chairs, a dining table, a writing table. On both ofthe tables were coal-oü lamps. Mister Henry came out of the haU carrying his laundry bag. He handed the bag to Sheku. Bobbing his head, Sheku took the bag and returned to the porch. Under the gauzy, tented shelter of his mosquito net Sheku sat crosslegged on his sleeping mat. From his vantage point on the porch at the The Missouri Review · 7 top of the stairs he could observe much of the hillside, which was bathed in sUvery moonUght. The moon's position in the western sky told him that the night was almost finished. He leaned back against the waU and put his hand inside his baggy trousers, taking in his hand the substantial weight of his scrotum. The pain subsided a bit. For a while the underwear that Mister Henry had given him had supported his scrotum and thereby provided some reUef from the pain. But no longer. Now his scrotum was too big for the underwear, and the pain was with him more often, and more intensely. Sheku tried not to think about the pain. He preferred—as on this night—to pass the time by reflecting not on his affliction but on how good life had been for his family in the year they had been in the care of Mister Henry. The young man had provided many good things: the underwear, the trousers that were roomy enough in front to contain his scrotum, the school fees for his children, halfbacks for his entire family, the mosquito nets, the coal oü and the lamp, the rice. Above aU, the rice: even now, in the hungry season, Sheku's family ate rice. Only three days ago, the young white man had returned from Pujehun with a fifty-kilogram sack of upland rice tied on his Honda. Of course Sheku knew this good luck would end someday. Mister Henry would leave, and the project masters in Freetown would send another white man to replace him, as Mister Henry had replaced the white man who was before him. The new white man would no doubt choose another, more able, viUager to be his watchman. But that was in the future, and he did not worry about the future, which would come no matter what he thought about it. He reflected once again on his recent ride on the back of Mister Henry's Honda, when the...