Kite Man

 The test kite now more damaged from the journey, we had no time to waste.  The next morning we started rummaging through our aunt’s yard looking for old box boards to cut and make parts for our broken kite. We found a few pieces and with a cutlass started chopping down on the wood. 

Suddenly we heard someone shouting at us. “Hey there! Hey you there!” 

We looked round and there was this tall skinny man pointing at us. “Stop that racket, what do you all think you are doing?” 

We replied, “We’re trying to repair our kite”. 

“Oh! I see” he said, “Come here, let me help you I have a knife the sharpest gal I ever had, when she cut, she does cut real clean and smooth”. Me use am to chop up nuff of them”. “Bring them boards, leh me help you all build a big man kite”.

 I am the Kite Man. Wait here, Ah gon bring out my favorite knife Baby Gal! 

His fingers were long, and his hands were steady as he chopped and planed the boards to be used for our kite. 

“Go get me some pace.  Pacie is a gummy sticky fruit that grew on a large tree in Aunt Sybil’s yard.  So we climbed the pacie tree and picked as many bunches of pacie as we could, as fast as possible, because red ants were biting us on all parts.  Red ants always bite you in parts unmentionable.   Red ants live in pacie trees, they love the fruit because it is so sweet. 

Next we had to cut some bamboo to make the ‘bull’ of the kite.  We then asked our mother for a few dollars and ran down to Main Street to buy some kite paper to pace on the kite frame.  Because the kite was so big we could not use our crochet # 0 twine, we had to buy a thicker twine more like a fine rope. Then for the tail we cut some old clothes and joined the pieces together. But the Kite Man said we had to get some rope so we found a big old rope in the yard and split it in two to make the tail. The Kite man said “I am a fight man and we are going to battle any bad man kite that challenges us on the Back Dam tomorrow”. 

Then we made some cut out of and wrote out the name of the kite “Baby Gal”. It was the biggest kite my brother and I had ever seen and the most beautiful. Only one thing disturbed us, was the name “Baby Gal”. Next the Kite Man said “find some razor blades and broken old glass and bottles with sharp edges' '. With all these items procured and the kite completed; he declared “I am done now. How you all gon pay me?”  Big problem for us was we had no money.  While “Kite Man '' was building our kite he kept on rambling about the different people he used “Baby Gal” to slash. By then we had figured that Aunt Sybil’s boarder was the infamous murder who sliced up his victims.  However the police could never pin any definite murder on him. Hence he would spend a short time in prison and then be released. He was also known as the New Amsterdam Butcher Man.   While scratching our head he blurted out “I want Rum”!  

Well Aunt Sybil had a bottle of Rum which she used for black cake and to preserve fruits. So we raided her cupboard, poured out all her rum and replaced it with some lime swank – (lemonade made with brown sugar).

 

 We now had the best looking kites in New Amsterdam, but feared Aunt Sybil’s border was the notorious “Kite Man '' known criminal for cutting up his victims. This knowledge lingered in our minds. That night we hardly slept a wink. Both my brother and I had constant nightmares of Kite Man creeping up and cutting us into pieces while we slept. 

Once upon an Easter.

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