Chambers — The Brave

George Chambers blurted out, “That is real stupidness. I’ll do it and show all you.” We were all startled by his reaction. After all the big boy who told us the horror story of the power of the dead had to be right. About six or eight little fellows were standing at the corner of Jackson Place and Jackson Hill which led to Piccadilly Street. We were waiting for the funeral of a man who had lived at the top of the hill to pass in front of us. Bigger fellows were relating stories of the dead. One said that if you sleep on the same bed on which the person died, the deceased will pull your legs the whole night. Another declared that the dead walk the earth for forty days.

Someone exclaimed, “Nine nights after a person dead, he does come back to lie on he bed. If you put a clean white sheet on the bed, you will see the impression made by the sleeping body.” If you did anything wrong to the dead, he will come back to haunt you. One fellow even said that if you take the yampee from a dog’s eye and put it in your eye you will be able to see the ghost of the dead. The big guy said, “If you turn your back to the hearse when it comes towards you, and bend down and look through your legs at it, your neck would pop and you would die.” That was the statement that the new boy from Mango Rose, George Chambers who attended Nelson Street Boys RC School, had found ridiculous. He was determined to prove it was wrong.

The funeral left the house and made its way slowly down the hill and we all watched with bated breath as George Porgie as we called him then, turned his back and started to look through his legs as it came nearer and nearer. The coffin went its way and Chambers was declared a brave man and from that day he was respected by the boys from Jackson Place. We used to play cricket and football in the street before the steps but I remember him best as a champion in running “jockey” in the drain after the rain. The jockey was a small flat piece of wood in the shape of a boat. Some times you would write the name of your boat on the wood.

Everyone would place his boat in the water at the same time. When the race started, you followed your boat to the finish line. Often your boat would capsize on the way or be stuck in the bit of grass in the drain. Chambers won most of the races. That was one captain whose ship never seemed to be sinking. Several years after, I was talking to Shirley King at the Chag-uanas Senior Comprehensive School, discussing something about the play Beulah’s Dream which we were about to stage when someone called my name. When I looked round, I came face to face with the second Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago the Honourable George Michael Chambers.

We shook hands and he said, “Glad to see you Freddie, after more than forty years.” Right away, photographers started taking shots and the next day pictures were in the newspapers. That’s the last time we met but I followed his career with keen interest. Once a bus crammed with politicians on the way to a convention, plunged from a mountainous road and landed on farm lands below. The farmers buried all of them. When the reporters arrived on the scene, they were puzzled that every single politician had died in the accident. One farmer explained, “About three or four of them were groaning and said they were not yet dead. But we didn’t believe them because you know how politicians could lie!”