PASSION FRUIT

by

Adam Andrews

When Jasper planted passion fruit was when things started to go bad. All the time before, everything went just as he wanted it, like he was dreaming his life out. The first thing he tried to plant was hot peppers and in two months, not the usual three, he had more peppers than he could count. He met her then, she herself had some fire and he liked that. Her mouth too, the way her lips puckered and the way she was never afraid to say what was on her mind even if it stung, so he started calling her Pepper. It was good, just like he dreamed it, cause he always said he never wanted a woman after he made his money.
How he go trust somebody then?

He put plantain suckers in between the hot peppers and cut down the grass. In the area next to it, he planted sorrel and pigeon peas. By the time that Christmas came they had plenty work with picking things. Pepper, sorrel and peas are things that have to be picked one by one and he anticipated his plantain bearing, so that he could move out whole bunches. Jasper and Pepper, for two months, picked and sold a thousand pounds each of sorrel, peas and hot peppers. Those were long days, but good days. They would listen to music and shell peas back at home on the couch at night. Sometimes singing and dancing, sometimes making love They made little jokes with each other and he would feel a warmth growing between them that he wanted to water and feed like one of his plants.

Years before he knew he would be a farmer he made a joke with some friends about having two dogs and naming them Dasheen and Dashout. Now he had them, this woman and his land, like he dreamt them into his reality. Everything he planted was good and made money. Jasper was smart, too. He saw that planting hot peppers was a young boy thing, not that he was old, but he wasn't young. You had to make sure to plant enough to make a profit for it to make sense. Then too, peppers don't grow tall, so, when harvest time came, you needed that young boy energy to keep going up and down, back and forth. Those kinds of crops needed you around all the time and it was plenty that he was trying to manage by himself. Pepper needs your care and attention all the time. Things like sorrel and pigeon peas though, you could plant and forget for a month and come back and cut back some grass and forget about it for two months and come back and cut and forget and when you come back the third time, you see flowers and things ready for picking. Hot peppers wanted you there all the time, maybe not every day, but every other day, we could say. So Jasper planted sorrel, and cassava, and took his profit and paid a man with a tractor to come and clear more land. There he planted more sorrel and more cassava and varieties of avocado and citrus and mango. Everything was growing and the plan he had working out smooth, like he was in control. Until the year he planted passion fruit.

Since he started planting he learned, not to put anything in the ground in December. December is deceptive with rain. It could start off wet and end up bone dry, or do the opposite. Either way, it was a poor time for something fresh and new to go into the ground. When planting in December you had to be there for it every day. So that if the sun's too hot, you could wet it, and if too much rain falls you could cut a drain and ease it up. But if he was doing all that and behind his crops every day, that would mean Pepper having to run the stall they set up and sell the produce by herself. The Christmas rush was just that for them now, full rush. Some days as she opens the awning for the stall, the steady flow of customers goes until she is pushing people back, when pulling it down at night. Now, you see Jasper loves Pepper. He wants her to know that he is supporting her, as much as she is supporting him. So December, he never plants, until the year he got the passion fruit.

He would wonder, later, if the friend who gave it to him was trying to work obeah on him. He dismissed that, not that he wouldn't put anything past anybody but she just didn't seem the type. More to the point, she didn't just give seedlings to him and plus, he shared with others from what she gave him and as far as he knew, nobody life get turned around like his. No, if it was obeah, it didn't come from there. So he gave away six and was left with two and he planted those two in December. The next day as he was driving down to check on them, he heard talk on the radio about a thing called the coronavirus. March rolled it's hips slowly around in the post-Jouvert hot sun and he had to keep going to check on the passion fruit. The passion fruit by now, started to vine and coronavirus reached Trinidad and things locked down. He was still lucky as a farmer because he could work just as he always had been. Pepper there to run his vegetable stall, too. All of his crops were still growing and producing. The country was going through various stages of lockdown and re-opening and locking back down to control the spread, but for him nothing really changed. He loved driving to the farm now because the roads were clear and he could think about his work and plan for it, while he drove. All his neighbours had their children home and were sour and fighting but his house was quiet. Him and his woman and his dogs were still happy.

Passion fruit is not a quick thing. The vines ran and thickened as March turned into July bringing the rains, but no flowers. Not that he was worried. He had plenty cassava to dig up and new plantains to cut to sell. He was busy all the time now, with his mangoes putting out their first flowers and trees needing pruning and fertilizing. He didn't even realize that he was going down on the land every day until Pepper pointed it out to him. It shocked him and he rushed to hug her up and whisper sorry in her ear with his cheek close to hers so he could feel the rising heat of her blush.

He had to change his flow. He was working hard on the land, pouring out all his love but Pepper was not there to see it, to feel it. Since they were running the stall, somebody had to stay and that was always Pepper. She hadn't seen the farm since before the passion fruit was planted, even before coronavirus and lockdown. The day he is driving to the farm and thinking on the clear road and deciding that yes, he would spend a little less time on the farm, he sees the passion fruit flowering and throwing fruit and he forgot all about his decision. September now and some flowers have closed up and there is now fruit. He has his eye on the first two. They are small, smooth and green, with white speckles. Their hardness, too, surprises him and makes him think of calabash and maybe planting a few calabash trees come next year. His dreams have always come through so now he dreams of sharing these first two with her and of how that will make him feel prouder than when he made his first money with his peppers.

That December he was in real trouble. He had so much land to manage now and to manage alone that he still had to go down every day. Pepper was selling sorrel from sun up to sun down, by herself and you know what they say about Trinidad between Christmas and Carnival. With everybody masked the young boy didn't really look any different. He skipped the line and that was a little off, but people only reacted when he pulled his gun.
Money, Bitch!
His eyes were cold and black, the way watermelon seeds are black. He didn't say anything else. When he found she was taking too long, he sucked his teeth and hit her flush across the mouth with the barrel. She filled a bag as quickly as she could. She was still blinded by the pain of it when she realized he was already gone. The one or two customers too shocked to run off, now helping her up. Somebody had called the police. By the time Jasper got home, he had to thank the neighbour for taking care of his wife and swallow his shame.

Jasper parents died just before he met Pepper and they left him a big house in a fancy neighbourhood. Some people thought he was lucky but Jasper knew it mean he needed to make money to maintain a big house. He was driven by money and making money. He loved his woman, she felt it in his eyes but she felt, in his absence, his need to prove himself to the world. He was living or trying to live as a simple farmer in between lawyers, doctors and engineers.
Jasper, why yuh don't hire some workers, they say.
He paid them no mind.
Fuh true, baby, why yuh don't hire some help? Pepper would ask.
Help me? Yuh mean help thief me out? Yuh know how much farmer that happen to? As you ready to pick yuh crop it get thief out and when yuh do check, is because the man you hire come when you not there. And he bring he cousin and he pardnah and ah van.

They don't understand, he would say to her at nights, when they were alone.
All these men, paying somebody to wash their car or cut their grass or cook their food. Is like they don't take pride in doing these things themselves.
Pepper tries to reason with him because, how much people making ah honest living from that, Jasper? How much people staying off the street or able to feed a child?
What, like the young boy who rob you? How you eh know he must be was working in the car wash when it was running?
And as he said it he knew he had gone too far. He had never seen her eyes look like that, with so much sad. The next morning, she woke up and reached for him across the space their awkwardness had made in the night and he was not there.

Months passed and for Jasper the bandit incident was a thing that sometimes crossed his mind. For Pepper it was still fresh, still the first thing she saw every morning when she stretched across an empty bed to find Jasper not there. It still lived in the corner of her eyes when she was working at the stall. When she opens the awning she sees him. When she closes it on evenings, her heart is in her throat because she knows, waiting for her is a Gunman!

He had everything in control on the farm now. He cut grass and heaped it for mulch and composting. He collected coffee grounds from one friend who brewed and wood shavings from another friend who did woodwork, all to be added to his compost. When he first started he used fertilizers and chemicals and now he was understanding permaculture and letting the land work with itself. He started to fantasize about his soil and imagined seeing the microscopic organisms reaching out and branching everywhere, forming relationships. He would sometimes take off his boots and socks and stand barefoot in his fields, imagining they were talking with him, too, bonding. All this time he was watching the first two passion fruit. He saw how they gradually started to turn yellow and the skin went from smooth to not so smooth. As they started to ripe, the skin got softer and it showed the marks of every time a gust of wind roughed it up or Jasper himself maybe squeezed somewhere a little too much.

The last of Jasper's luck ran out the morning he picked the two passion fruit. Normally, when you stalked fruit the way he did, monitored it for as long as he did, you don't get lucky enough to pick it. Usually a bird will beat you to it or a man, just when you tell yourself,
Yes, tomorrow I picking you.
But Jasper told himself 'Yes' Tuesday and Wednesday morning, they were still there, un-pecked, un-stolen. He picked them. He picked them and turned right around to head back to the van and go home. It was almost six months now he was waiting on this. Six months since Pepper got robbed and even longer since she pointed out to him that he was coming down on the farm every day. He want to take these passion fruit for her, to show her that this is why. He wanted to show her that it was because he loved her that he could not stay home. That as man, this was why his back was broad and his arms and legs strong. This was why he could say his neighbours on shit, why he could feel better than them, because he was really working. He knew blood, sweat and tears because he out here sweating, bleeding and tearsing. He turned right around and started his van and drove home to share the passion fruit with Pepper and to show her how he loved her.

The last thing a man wants to see is someone fucking the woman he loves and the last, last thing is someone fucking the woman he loves in a way that he never has. This is what Jasper saw. When he came around the corner on his street, he could see his house and he could see the police jeep in front of it. His throat tightened and squeezed panic into his mind.
I so bad lucky?
Pepper get rob again right as I bring the passion fruit?
Right as I coming to tell her everything she want to hear to make we good again?

The police jeep was parked in front his gate so he parked on the road. He jumped out the van and ignored his dogs as they greeted him, quickly walking through his doorway, passion fruit in hand. On the couch was Pepper and on top of her, a police man with his shirt open so Jasper could see his wife beaters and his sweat and Pepper's feet flat on his chest and Jasper could see his cock too, and his hand around Pepper's neck choking her, fucking her on the couch that he watched football on, that he used to sing to her on, that they used to make love on. On this couch she is being fucked in a way that he never even knew she would like and her head is arched over the arm of the couch and her eyes are wide open looking at him, through him. Not caring, not a mask, not a condom. The two passion fruit fell from his hand and he just standing there looking right back at her.

The next morning it was Jasper's turn to wake up and reach across the space to find an empty bed. He went downstairs to the kitchen and fingered a knife. He saw the two passion fruit and picked them up from the floor. He tried to not see that his fingers squeeze their skin like how the police man squeezed Pepper's neck. He sat at the table and cut into them. The sun coming through the window was warm on his hands but he did not feel it. The tiles were cold under his bare feet but he didn't feel that either. It was when he cut the passion fruit that his eyes welled with tears not from sadness but hysterics, as he saw they were both full of worms.