I’m not sure when I heard his name for the first time, but I know it was shortly after I reached the island. He was already legendary and had been for as long as the island had memory. Gombe’ hunted before the dawn of time. His was prehistory. Gombe’ the Hunter kill wild boar with cutlass. Gombe’ the Hunter run fast like jumbie through forest. Gombe’ the Hunter go where no one go…which is exactly, existentially, where I was headed at that time. Where no one go.
I had to meet this man.
He was solitary, not part of a tribe, but in every true sense of the word a hunter-gatherer in that he followed the seasons hunting and gathering most everything he needed to live as it became available. Gombe’s terrain was not at all vast, a remote island, but he could spend weeks in the forest without surfacing because, every few miles, he’d plant a “garden” so he’d always have something to eat - callaloo, yams, papaya, wild onion, berries, stashed rice. A little West Indian nosh. If he weren’t hunting boar he’d trap agouti or iguana, or create a weir and trap fish, and concoct a simple stew. Simple and hot. Cook fires were started with a substance oozing from a certain tree. He didn’t need American Express. Unlimited credit out there for his taking. But here, to me, is the truly astonishing part: Gombe’ was also famous for the bread he baked - plump, brown, mound shaped loaves the girth of bowling balls; not pastry sweet but sweet enough when dipped in hot, sugared tea.
I had to meet this man.
Gombe’ lived in a wood hut on the edge of the forest. What did I expect? What would you expect? Stay tuned. Three dogs charged out of the hut to greet me. One was blind. PETA would have consented to off these three. They were…curs…unattractive mongrels with tattered coats and battered muzzles, but friendly, dancing friendly, so happy to see me, whoever I was. These were the famous boar hunting dogs? One of ‘em couldn’t even see! A man with rootbeer colored complexion followed them out, tossed each a piece of bread, and smiled at me.
Gombe’.
Gombe’?
An old man, shrunken, tiny, toothless, smiling. A Chesterfield cigarette - no filter - dangled from his lips. A dirty tan fedora perched on a tightly kinked, close to the skull thatch of gray hair. An ancient Cornell sweatshirt draped his frame. Patched khakis completed the look - too large in the waist, too short at the calf. Tied with rope. His feet were bare, toenails thick, reptilian. Was this the man you expected to meet? Could’ve fooled me, too, but there he was, smiling, smoking, saying, “oui, oui” to everything. Wow, does he smile a lot! This is the man who hunted wild boar with a cutlass? I’m game.
But then there were his eyes, black as BB’s, fixed on everything, missing nothing, flitting, landing, taking measure, flitting, not hostile, curious - a hunter’s eyes. He always seemed to hear what I did not. I thought, “If a tree fell in the forest, who would hear it? This guy would.”
We shared a cup of tea and a loaf of bread before heading into the forest early morning. Now, get this. True. Gombe’ carried a battered old suitcase wrapped and tied with an old belt. Into the jungle. With him. By its handle (which he had replaced with rope). His cutlass he carried in his right. Before setting foot he took a pair of black ballet slippers from the suitcase, put them on, and took off running. Running. The man could move. I was half his age - at least - and in decent shape, but could barely keep up. He moved easily through very rugged terrain clotted with vegetation. That night we made camp at one of his gardens where he had trapped an agouti he cooked with rice, fresh peppers, and too much salt. Ain’t half bad. We cooked, ate, and slept under a lean-to Gombe' constructed from broad leaves and saplings. It rained buckets, but we stayed dry. Next morning, before dawn, bread and tea, the dogs, sensing sunlight, took off on their own. We made certain the cook fire was out, then took off after the dogs.
The only thing that saved me was that I was in fairly decent shape at the time, or else I’d’ve lost Gombe’ within minutes. He probably wouldn’t have cared. I’d’ve been humiliated. As it was, we had embarked on a marathon of fording, climbing, tracking, sloshing, slashing, whacking and all ‘round general, non-stop grunt. Until the hounds began yowling. Gombe’ took off his fedora and waved me on. I lost him in seconds but saw where he went, whacked through some brush into a clearing where an enormous boar was backed into a tree by Gombe’s dogs and fighting back. Three hundred pounds, at least. Fighting back. I should have moved out of the boar’s path should it break free, but I was as fixed as a bug pierced by a collector’s pin. Gombe’ was there, too, eyeing things, cutlass poised, jockeying for position. I don’t know how long the boar’s tusks were, but they glistened from his jaws like stilettos. One of the dogs was already bleeding from a gash in its side. The blind one had the boar by its hind leg. The third kept dodging in and out keeping the furious animal off balance, slashing at air. Each animal had its own guttural death chant, a fearsome howling and screaming. I’d read Dante’s Inferno. Now I was observing it. Somehow Gombe’ was behind the boar. Somehow Gombe’ leapt high above his blind dog and came down hard, his cutlass tearing through the pig, nearly severing its head. It dropped to its side where Gombe’ the Hunter stood and finished it. Silence fell like an avalanche. It felt as if the jungle had been swallowed by a giant maw.
An idea occurred to me.
Maybe it's happened to you. You're out in the woods poking along, enjoying the day, driven by no particular goal when, suddenly, you realize the forest has become as quiet as death row. You stop. You listen carefully. You wish your ears were as powerful as those receivers deployed to pick up transmissions from deep space. Silence in the woods is heard only rarely during the cycle of a natural day. Dawn and dusk -- rather, the hour preceding light and that preceding darkness -- are two times you can depend upon. These are the hours when the beasts of the day and the beasts of the night take each other's place – some to prowl, some to sleep. One can sense the creatures passing each other through a kind of cease-fire zone as they exchange positions in the forest, so it is nearly, but not absolutely, a silence. There is still movement. Time goes by. The second silence is death. You may never be caught by this silence, yet, in the woods, its presence is undeniable. Many of us have watched predators stalk their prey. They carry the possibility of death -- death on the way, death to come -- and so they carry it with them in silence. Animals desert the area or stay still. This silence has a palpable presence of its own, one that takes a sense beyond the other six to detect. It is how a man can feel (though he might never see) an animal watching him. Downed prey is death-in-fact, and this final silence, this third silence, is deeper than any. Suddenly, there is an absence of a life in the forest. The void will be filled eventually, even quickly, but, while it is there, every being in its presence is commanded by it. Neither is this final silence one of peace. There is an edge to it, an air of uneasiness, a sense of mortality and danger. Peace obtains only when the woods is filled with the commotion of its creatures as they go about their lives. This "noise" is what most people love about the woods, and what they accept as silence.
The places I seek out and the characters I meet in those places help me to realize these things. I've eaten lobster and steak at the Palm. I actually even told the maitre’d at a 4 star in Paris to please order for us. I’ve eaten crabs from the Chesapeake Bay, biscuits and gravy in Montana. Extraordinary meals from gourmet friends. All wonderful. Not one better than another. As was roast boar that night in that jungle with Gombe’ and his blind dog. Now, I ask myself, what is it like to go through life never having to worry about a meal or the IRS, never having to fend off credit card merchants, never having to worry about snow tires or any tires, never having to find your damn phone? I don’t know what Gombe’s worries were because he didn’t speak English, just that patois of his made even more intelligible by lack of teeth. I do know mine, and they aren’t his.
A good friend, fine writer, and deadly critic, Dyanne Asimow, wrote to me recently:
“...when you say that your stories are the characters that are in them, it’s not as precise as it should be…”
K.
Re-def.
The characters I meet tell my stories. The worlds they take me through! Their thoughts at what they see. Skills that are foreign to me. Colorful language. Unusual aromas. Strange food. Where else would I get this stuff? Remember Willie Lee? I wrote about him once - an eleven year old, Black kid, retarded but capable. It was when I was a social worker, and Willie Lee was my client. We were talking about God one day. Willie Lee got real pensive, looked off, then told me, “God be the man who take me by the hand and lead me ‘round this world.” The same with my characters. They take me by the hand and lead me ‘round this world.
