Kaieteur News celebrates Indigenous Heritage Month with works of fiction that focus on the myths of our First People. This excerpt is from a supernatural novel, Kamarang, by Michael Jordan, to be published next yearBRENDA WAS SWEEPING the yard when Sealey returned from his morning walk with the old pork-knocker. She opened the gate for them, and retrieved the Sunday Chronicle that the newspaper boy had pushed between the slats of the paling fence. She smiled at the old man, pointedly ignoring Sealey.“You going upstairs now? I got the bath-water ready.”The old man’s twisted mouth moved silently. Then he said: “No chile. I gun…sit under the house…lil bit.”She turned away, swept a heap of leaves under a breadfruit tree near the fence, then headed upstairs. Sealey stared at her for a moment, then guided the old man to a bench under the house. Jocelyn Walker sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned back in the bench. The walk they’d taken couldn’t have been over 400 yards, yet a pulse fluttered rapidly at the base of his throat. Looking at the old man, Sealey tried to tell himself that his friend had come a long way since his stroke. But then he would remember that this was the same man who could once walk for hours through mountain-country with a 50 pound warashi on his back. Now having to be helped upstairs. Now having to bathe with warm water, after a lifetime of swimming in icy creeks.Sealey shifted his eyes away from his friend and stared towards D’urban Street. He watched a family, dressed for church, frantically flagging down a car. The pious voice of Jim Reeves came from a nearby radio. That would be from the home of the elderly Chester sisters, who were always sharing out tracts and inviting him to church. He smiled without humour, as he remembered that Sunday had almost caught him leaving the old brothel. He had entered the bedroom quietly so as not to disturb Brenda. But he had found her sitting up in bed, because, as she explained later, she had awoken with a strong feeling that something had happened to him. They had quarreled about his nights out, and he had almost told her about the girl; almost told her what had happened when he left the brothel that night.His thoughts were interrupted by a young man with short dreadlocks who had ridden up to the gate.“Morning, Mister Sealey.”“Hi man. You could come around for the hammock and the other stuff tomorrow.”The young man grinned. “Alright, Mister Sealey.” He clenched his fist in a Black power salute, then rode off.Jocelyn Walker, who had awoken, peered after the departing man. “That is not…the young chap…who say he going on…De’ Abreau dredge?”Sealey smiled. The old porknocker kept surprising him. Since his illness,Wholesale Jerseys From China, there were times when he seemed to wander in his own hazy world. At other times, like now, his memory and eyesight were as sharp as before.“Same one,” Sealey said. “He want to borrow some things.”Walker smiled. “He ain’t?frighten…De Abreau…sell he soul?”Arthur De Abreau was a dried-up, very wealthy Portuguese miner who’d had a series of deaths at his mining camps over the years. Not surprisingly, the rumour had grown that he sacrificed his men to spirits in exchange for gold.Sealey joined in Walker’s laughter; two seasoned bush-men who knew that there was nothing supernatural about dying from malaria, or snake-bite or drowning in an underwater cave.Laughing, but tense inside, as he remembered what had happened when he left the Ritz…*SEALEY STARED at the ceiling as he lay in the hammock in his spare room. The smell of fresh bread came to him…Brenda’s baking. Someone was listening to the two o’clock radio programme Sunday Showcase. He could hear a woman singing, in this stifling August heat, that it was such a rainy rainy night in Georg-uhhh. He heard Jocelyn Walker cough in his sleep. He thought about his laughter when they had spoken about old Arthur De Abreau. He had especially wanted to talk about what had happened to him in Lombard Street on Saturday night. It had been at the edge of his tongue, even as they walked this morning.The boy had not turned up at the Ritz on Saturday. Sealey guessed he was following the doctor’s instructions. He wondered how long that would last. He’d seen the girl, though.She had sat in the corner at the side of the bar, out of sight of him and away from the Saturday night patrons. He’d sensed a restlessness in her, though. She had thrice come to the bar for her Woodpecker Cider. Once, when he’d gone to the punch-box, he’d stolen a quick glance at the corner. She was sitting with eyes shut tight and her hands were out of sight under the table. Something about her posture triggered a sharp, bitter-sweet memory of the whore Josephine, who had broken his heart long ago.Who are you? He had found himself thinking. What the hell are you up to? But no answer was reflected in that pale face, and he did not go over to question her.*He calle