Free Valmiki's Daughter by Shani Mootoo

forest, every man had to look out for himself as well as his friends. When you reached a hand out against your friend’s chest to hold him back, that touch was like a lightning rod of information, intent, opinion transferred. Such camaraderie made Valmiki bristle with life in a way that not even the practice of surgery had ever done for him. In the forest with the men he might have been duty bound, but he was not weighed down by it. He was no one’s father, husband, employer, or healer. He was one with them. They were one with each other.
    Valmiki was not a gifted hunter, though. That is why Saul taught him how to set the bird cages with pieces of banana or a coating of laglee on the parallel rods, so that at the end of the day there was still the possibility they would return to where the cages hung in the bushes and he would find a peekoplat, a semp, or a banana quit in the cage. He would have something to take home, to show for his day away. Still, at the end of a hunt, over drinks by the open trunk of his car, the other men clapped his back and said, “Next time, Doc, next time,” desiring nothing more from him than he go with them soon again. How they admired him, if only because the town doctor left the comfort of his tamer world, of his social network, and went deep into the dark dank forest with them. They would spot the agouti, or the deer, or the lap, and point it out to him. They invariably let him take the first shot. He would watch it through his binoculars, then nestle the rifle’s butt into his shoulder and lift its long barrel, catching the animal in the target sight. Aim. Shoot. Nothing. Yet the clean, clear animal rawness he felt with these men friends, his sporting friends, enlivened him. It wasn’t for his correct or effective aim, for those were sorely lacking, that they called him “a real man,” but rather for his trust in them, for his courage to go with them time and again and then to sit with them, either right there in a clearing or on the roadside by the car, or in the dusty clay yard of one of the men over a hand-built fire as they cooked an animal someone had shot.
    If they were at Saul’s house in Fellowship Lands in Marabella, there would suddenly be a platter heaped with lengths of limp sugary plantain that glistened in a slick of the oil in which they had been deep fried until they looked, but were not, burnt. The others knew Valmiki liked the candy-like fruit, and someone would excitedly race like a person with a holy mission, not the day before, but the instant they arrived, and hack off a hand offresh ripened-on-the-tree plantains, which Saul’s wife would then fry especially for Valmiki. She would leave after cooking and go to a relative’s house for the night. The other men ate with their hands, but they always gave Valmiki a thin, light spoon that bent with the slightest pressure, or a fork, each of its tines making off in a different direction, and a knife. But he would use his hands, and then he would lick his fingers, one at a time, each one deep in his mouth, down to the knuckle almost, pulled out slow, his teeth gripping and scraping off the very last tastes, with an indiscreet pop. Saul would bring out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label that he had bought and kept under lock and key especially for Valmiki. Or if they were at the home of one of the others, Valmiki might be served home-brewed puncheon rum or pineapple babash. His eyes had filled with water, tears of shock, when he had first tasted the babash. But then he got used to it and looked forward to the bite of the fermented fruit singeing the length of his esophagus.
    He sometimes drank babash or scotch enough that by the time he got home, after driving very slowly to remain steady on the dangerous pot-holed road back into the city, Devika would be either asleep or disgusted by his drunkenness, the searing odour of wood fire in his hair, the smell of wild meat, and the