When he appeared for this recording on a stage in 1985 at Harbourfront, Austin Clarke was already a well-known writer in Toronto, having published seven novels, three story collections, and a best-selling memoir, in addition to his work as a freelance journalist for the CBC and the dated, clichéd, “angriest Black man in Canada” label that critics used to characterize his activism. This story, “Doing Right” (from his 1986 collection, Nine Men Who Laughed) shows Clarke’s humour and light-heartedness, bringing the signature cadence and rhythms of his West Indian-inflected English to the voice and characters that inhabit this Toronto. Clarke shows how some members of a community respond as a “Wessindian” migrant tries his best to do what he feels is the right thing. Through the lens of time and place, we’re offered a glimpse of how stories of newcomers were pivotal in transforming “Toronto the Good,” from the staid and quiet collection of villages whose sidewalks rolled up at 6pm, to the colourful, vibrant and cosmopolitan city of today.
Note: given the current temporary closure of TPL due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made our best efforts to offer suggestions below for materials which are part our online collections (indicated) and available at home to anyone with a current Toronto Library card.
Read: Why are wait times on ebooks or audiobooks sometimes so long?
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Works by Austin Clarke
‘Membering (ebook)
The Origin of Waves: a Novel (ebook)
Choosing His Coffin: the Best Stories of Austin Clarke (ebook)
Where the Sun Shines Best (ebook)
The Polished Hoe (audiobook)
Love and Sweet Food: a Culinary Memoir
Other Related Books or Materials
Austin Clarke: Essays on his Work by Camille Isaacs
The Passions of Austin Clarke by Donna Bailey Nurse (link opens an article from The Walrus from Jun 2016)
Remembering Author Austin Clarke by Andrea Baillie (ink opens McLean’s article from Jun 2016)
Austin Clarke: a Frank and Thoughtful Critic (link opens CBC Archives interview from 1963)
Austin Clarke (link opens a 1969 photo by Boris Sprimo from TPL’s Special Collections of the Toronto Star Archives; all of Clarke’s images from the Toronto Star Archives can be found here)
About the Host
Novelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and principal of St. Michael’s College, where he holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. He is the author of three novels: Original Prin, Beggar's Feast, and Governor of the Northern Province. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (2006) and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (2012), and named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection (2012 and 2019) and Globe and Mail Best Book (2018). He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, Financial Times (UK), Guardian, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and National Post, in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017.
Music is by Yuka
From the Archives
Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first series associated with the Toronto Public Library’s multi-year digital initiative, From the Archives, which presents curated and digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s biggest cultural institutions and organizations.
Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.
Writers Off the Page: S1E15
Austin Clarke: Doing Right
OPENING MUSIC SEGMENT (2-3 seconds)
RANDY: Welcome to Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA, produced by the Toronto Public Library. I'm Randy Boyagoda. In today’s episode, Austin Clarke reads a story that makes you laugh, and makes you wonder if you should be laughing …
TEASER: But we was feeling good, though, 'cause the big boys in Toronto don't particularly notice we unless him his car burn a weekend or when election time coming and they're looking for votes. Or when they start doing a feature on racism and West Indians, and they want a quotation. So we feel this Green Hornet is our ambassador, even if he is only an ambassador of parking tickets.
RANDY: I’m speaking to you from somewhere inside the time of the Covid crisis. You know as well as I do that I can’t be more specific. Is this the start? It certainly doesn’t feel like the end. Well, with empty store shelves and growing numbers of infections and bad news and worried faces everywhere you look, I guess it kind of feels like the end, in a different way, right? Did that make you laugh or smile, even a little? It’s an on-the-fly example of gallows humour, the kind of dark laughter that tends to come up in response to difficult situations. Writers have long been master proprietors of this kind of thing — there’s a famous old story of Kafka reading from his fiction to a group of people who looked shocked and horrified that he couldn’t stop laughing as he detailed the kind of awful and bleak situation he tended to write about, a lot. If you’re not certain yet, of what I’m talking about, or if you know exactly what I’m talking about, the Austin Clarke story you’re about to heard is perfect for you. What matters here isn’t just the story itself, which is entertaining and unsettling, back and forth, back and forth. What matters is listening to the way the live audience responds to Clarke’s telling of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a five foot three parking ticket officer from Guyana, nicknamed Green Hornet because of his uniform, as he tries to move up and ahead in Toronto by taking very, very seriously his right and responsibility to issue slips for parking offences. You can tell the audience wants to laugh, they can’t help but laugh, they are absolutely right to laugh … until they’re not so sure, as Clarke describes moment after moment of comic humanity and comic inhumanity at work in the Green Hornet’s relationship to the people and world around him. That’s enough to say about the story itself. It’s worth hearing, in its complex fullness, for yourself.
But one more thing, this time about the storyteller. Austin Clarke has a beautiful voice – it’s at once sonorous and lyrical, sweet and light, and capable of suddenly turning sharp and barbed before turning back again, much like his very writing. He could have, at so many times in this story, played up to the audience. Sensing they were laughing and were wanting to laugh more, he could have read some of Green Hornet’s words or some of the words others have about him, to exaggerated, and assured, and assuring comic effect. He doesn’t do that. He lets certain lines and images linger, challenging us to work it out for ourselves what happens when triumph and failure, comedy and tragedy, so tightly weave together in the telling of an ordinary person’s effort to lead an extraordinary life.
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Austin Clarke (AC): “I see him and I watch him. I see him and I watch him and I start to pray for him, 'cause I see him heading for trouble, making money. In five or six years, I want to have a lot of money. Only when I have a lot of dollars will people respect me. I have to laugh every time he says so, I just have to laugh, 'cause I couldn't do nothing more better than laugh. Look at the Rockefellers. Look at the Rothchilds, look at the Kennedys. I was going to ask him if he know how they make their money, but before I could ask, he would be off dreaming and looking up at the ceiling where there was only cobwebs and dust, and only God knows what was circulating through his head every time he put himself in these deep reveries concerning making lots of money and talking about the Rockefellers, the Rothchilds and the Kennedys.
AC: I was still laughing, because the present job he had was a Green Hornet job. He was a man who went to work in a green suit from head to foot except the shoes, which was black and which he never polished. His profession was to go round the St. Clair Oakwood area, putting parking tickets on people's cars. Before he started all this foolishness with West Indian cars, he uses to be on the Queen's Park beat for Green Hornets. A big man like him over 200 pounds, healthy and strong and Black, and all he could do after 8 years is to walk about with a little book in this hand, put a little yellow piece of paper on people's windshields.
AC: He liked the job so much, and thought he was doing the right thing that in the middle of the night during the poker game or just ditsy-doodling and talking about women, he would put back on the green uniform jacket, grab up the peak cap, jump in the little green car that the police give him and gone straight up by St. Clair Oakwood, up and down Northcliffe Boulevard, swing right on Eglinton, go on down Eglinton and swing left on Park Hill Road, left again on Whitmore, and all he doing is putting these yellow pieces of paper on decent hard-working people cars. When he returned, he does be laughing. I tell him he gonna soon stop that when a West Indian lick he down with a big rock. I have fixed him. I have ticketed 110 more cars today alone. And the night I left the poker game, I ticket 50 more, 50 more bastards, mainly West Indians.
[laughter]
AC: I start to get real frightened, because I know a lot of these West Indians living in them very streets where he does be ticketing and laughing, and all them West Indians know who the Green Hornet is. And being as how there's West Indians, I know they don't like Green Hornets nor nobody who does be ticketing their cars. So I feel that any morning when one of these West Indians come home from a party or off a night shift and see him doing foolishness and putting yellow tickets on their motorcars, I know him is at least one hand break. West Indians are accustomed to parking in a middle of the road or on the wrong side back home and nobody don't trouble them or touch their cars and since they come here, many of these West Indians haven't taken on a change in attitude in regards to who own the public road and who own the motorcars.
AC: So why is the boy ticketing and laughing and putting his hands on people cars which they just wash in the car wash in Bathurst. I continue worrying and watching him. One night, just as we sit down to cut the cards and before the cards deal, he come in grinning and saying, "I ticket 200 motor cars today alone." "One of these days, boy," I tell him. When I pass in the green car and I see him, I knew I had him. "Who?" I see the car parked by the fire hydrant, the chauffeur was leaning back in the seat, one hand outside the car window, with a cigarette in that hand, the next hand over the back of the seat. I look in the car and when I look in, I nearly had a fit. I recognized the pipe, I recognized the dark blue pinstripe suit. I recognized the hair with the streak of grey in them, and I make a U-turn in the middle of the road.
AC: "But a U-turn illegal. I here is a Green Hornet man." "I see." I size up the car and I see the license plate, ONT 001. I start getting nervous now 'cause I know it is the big man. Or the second most biggest man in Toronto. I drop, the chauffeur nod to me and tell me, "Fine day, eh?" And I tell him, "A very fine day, sir." And I get out. I bend over the bonnet of this big shiny black car. "Limousine, man. A big car is call a limo." Well, him could have been a limo, a hearse, a Chrysler automobile. I still bend over the bonnet and stick on one of the prettiest parking tickets in my whole career. "The Premier's car?" "He make the law, not me." "And you think you doing the right thing?"
AC: "My legal bounden duty. Afterwards, I did feel so good like a real police officer and not a mere Green Hornet. And I walk through Queen's Park on my two feet looking for more official cars to ticket. And when I was finished, I had stick on five parking tickets in their arse. One belongs to the Attorney General too. The same man who does defend West Indians. I put one upon Larry Grossman car too." Well, that whole night, all the boy talking ’bout and laughing ‘bout his hobby stick on tickets on these big shot cars, all limousines. And to make matters worse for the rest of the week, he win all the blasted money in the poker game. I feel now that the boy really going to become important, maybe even become a real police and make pure money or else going lose a hand or a foot.
AC: But we was feeling good, though, 'cause the big boys in Toronto don't particularly notice we unless him his car burn a weekend or when election time coming and they're looking for votes. Or when they start doing a feature on racism and West Indians, and they want a quotation. So we feel this Green Hornet is our ambassador, even if he is only an ambassador of parking tickets. So we laugh like hell at the boy's prowess and progress. And we just wait till a certain time on a Friday night, nervous as hell while I was cutting the cards and dealing them to see if the boy going turn up still dress off in the green uniform, meaning that he hasn't get fired for ticketing the big shot cars.
AC: And when he does turn up, dress from head to trousers in green, we know he still have the job and we just laugh some more. But all the time, I just be so nervous as I seeing him, I'm watching him. Then he start lossing weight, he start biting his fingers, he start wearing the green uniform not press and half dirty. He start calling me, "You people." I getting frighted now 'cause he tell me that they taking him off the Queens Park beat. So I'm as know that he up in St. Clair Oakwood and I fear he went put a ticket on the wrong motor car, meaning a West Indian car. And at least one hand break or one foot.
AC: And if the particular motor car belong to a Jamaican, not even the ones that have locks and does wear the wool tams make outta black, green, and red, I know there gonna be buffets on both hands. I see him and I watch him. "I have live in Trinidad as a police, but I born in Barbados. I left Trinidad because they won't let me ticket 100 more motor cars and break the all-time record. I went to Guyana after Trinidad. I was a police in Guyana before Guyana was even Guyana and was still Demerara or BG. They make me left Guyana when I get close to the record. Ten more tickets is all I had to ticket. From Guyana I end up in Dominica, same thing. From Dominica I went to Antigua and it was in Antigua that a fellow come close to licking me down for doing my legal duty, namely ticketing cars. In all them countries, I ticket cars that belongs to Prime Ministers, ministers of governments, priests, civil servants, and school teachers."
AC: I see him and I watch him. I see him getting more older than the 45 years he say he was born and I see him drinking straight rums first thing every morning lately because he said, "Dinners bad. Not that I become an alcoholic. I only taking the bad taste of waking up so early out of my mouth. I am not an alcoholic, it's the pressure and the lack of sleep." But he was drunk. Cleveland was drunk, drunk, drunk, early every morning. He had to be really drunk after he outlined the plan to make money to me. "Remember the Rockefellers, man," he tell me. "This is my plan. I've been a Green Hornet for nine years now. They promised me that if I ticket the most cars out of the whole group of Hornets, they would send me to training school to be a police. First they tell me, I too short. I is 5'4", but most criminals is only 5'3.". Then they tell me my arches fallen. Jesus Christ! What you expect? After all the beats I have walked in Trinidad, Guyana, Antigua, Dominica and Grenada, my arches bound to fall. And eight, nine years in this damn country pounding the beat ticketing cars, but they can't beat me, not me, boy. This is the plan I got for their arse.
AC: Tickets begin at $5, right? There is $5, $10 and $15, right? $20 for parking beside a fire hydrant or on the wrong side, right? Now, I write-up a $10 ticket, and I change the 10 to 40. The stub in my book still saying $10, but the ticket on the car that's saying 10 also, I going change from 10 to 40. Then I going rush down to the vehicle registration place on Wellesley Street where they have all them computers, and I tell the fellow I know from Guyana something, anything to get him to look up the registration for me. And then I get in touch with the owner of the said vehicle and subtract 10 from 40 and..." "You mean subtract 10 years from 40?" "You don't like my plan?" "I think your plan worth 10 years."
AC: "Okay. What about this other one? People don't lock their cars when they park, right? West Indians is the biggest criminals in regards to this, right? Now, a fellow don't lock his car, and it is night. And I got on my Green Hornet uniform, right? Meaning I am still operating in an official capacity." I see the boy start to smile, and his face spread and light up like a new moon. The face was shining too 'cause the heat and the sureness that the plan going to work this time make him sweat real bad. But I watching him. I know that West Indians don't have much money because they does get the worst and the lowest jobs in Toronto.
AC: Only a certain kind of West Indian does have money in their pocket. The kind that does work night shift, especially after midnight, when everybody else sleeping, the brand of West Indian who I not going mention by name in case they accuse me of categorizing the race, and being a reverse racist. But certain West Indians, like hairdressers, real estate salesmen and fellows who know race horses backwards and forwards, good, good, plus the unemployable brand, namely the illegal immigrants, the illegal parkers and them who hiding from the police, them sort would have money to burn inside their cars that not locked. The boy eyes smiling, I see dollar bills instead of pupils. I even hear the money clinking like when a car pass over the piece of black rubber thing in a gas station, cling-cling. "Give me just three months," he say, "Give me three bare months, and I going show you something."
AC: Just as I left him and walking across Northcliffe Boulevard going to Eglinton, I see a Green Hornet fellow standing up in front a fellow car. The fellow already inside the car. The fellow want to drive off, but the Green Hornet is standing up in front the man car. The fellow inside the car honk the horn and the Green Hornet fellow take out his black book. Slow, slow. And he flip back a page, and hold down a little, and start to write down the car license. The fellow honk the car again. The Hornet walk more closer. He tear off the little yellow piece of paper, and getting ready to put it on the man brand new grey Thunderbird. Just as the Hornet was about to ticket the man for parking next to a yellow fire hydrant, the fellow jump out. A Japanese Samurai wrestler with a look like a twig beside of him. Pure muscle, pure avoirdupois, pure latissimus dorsi.
AC: Shoes shining bright, white shirt, stripe tie, a three-piece grey suit, hair slicked back and long, gold upon two fingers on each hand, gold on left wrist, more gold on right wrist. The Hornet paralysed now. A rigor mortis of fear turned the whole uniform and the man inside the uniform to pure starch or like how a pair of pyjamas does look when you left them out on the line in the dead of winter. "Goddamn," the man say. "You park wrong," the Hornet say. "Who say I park wrong?" "You park illegal." "Who goddamn say I park illegal?" "Look at the sign." "Which goddamn sign?" "The sign that say no parking between 4 and 6 and no stopping any time. You not only park, but you stop. You stationary therefore."
AC: The Indian Green Hornet man's voice get high and shaky. "You have, therefore, park." "I'mma gonna give you two seconds, nigger to take the goddamn ticket off my car, mother fucker." "What you call me? I am no damn nigger. I am Indian, legal immigrant. I just doing my job for the city of Toronto in metropolitan Toronto. You are a blasted American negro." Well, multiculturalism going out the window now. All the pamphlets and the television commercials that show people of all colors laughing together and saying, "We is Canadians." All them advertisements and stuff, the night in McLean's, all them speeches that ministers up the Ottawa make concerning the different cultures that make up this great unified country of ours. All that lick up now and gone through the others. One time, bam.
AC: The Goliath of a man grabbed ahold of the Hornet by the scruff of the green uniform. The peak cap fall off like now so the little black book slide under the car. The Hornet himself lifted up off of the ground by at least three inches and shaking about in the gulliver's hand, pelting ‘bout his two legs, like if he is a Muppet or a puppet. And when I anticipate that the fellow going pelt him in the broad road, the fellow just hefted him up a little more, higher off the ground and lay him across the bonnet of the shining Thunderbird. Holding he down like how you just hold down a cat, particularly on the chin.
AC: And the fellow said, "Now, motherfucker, is you gonna take the goddamn ticket off my Bird?" I passed along quick, boy, because I know the police does be up in this St. Clair Oakwood District like flies around crocus bag o’ sugar at the drop of a cloth hat. And that they're just taking anybody who near the scene of crime, no matter how small the scene, or how small the crime. And if a West Indian is involved, pure handcuffs and passing about inside the back of the cruisers, till they get inside the station. And then the real sport does begin.
AC: So I looking, and I looking off, knowing that the Green Hornet, even if he look like a Pakistani or an Indian, but is really a Trinidadian or a Guyanese and only look a little bit Indian, he going to get help from the police. Not one police but five carloads of police. All like saw the road fill up with West Indians and other people. And these West Indians looking on and laughing. Because none of them don't like Green Hornets, not even Green Hornets that come from the West Indies. I pass along quick, boy. I got the first immigration people in a week. I don't want nothing concerning my past or present to have a stain through witnessing violence to prevent them from stamping "landed immigrant" or "immigrant reçu" in my Barbados passport.
AC: I may be a accessory before the fact, but I was still thinking of my friend, the other Green Hornet. So I looked back to see what kind of judgment the Thunderbird man was going to make with the Indian gentleman from Guyana, who now have no have no peak cap, no black notebook, one shoe fall off and the green tunic tear up. And as my two eyes rested on the scene after the fact, I hear the Charles Atlas of a man say, "I don't call the motherfucking cops. I got you covered, nigger. I knows where you goddamn live." I hope that this Goliath of a man, don't also know where my Bajan Green Hornet friend live. I hope the Thunderbird don't park all the time up here. And I start to think about getting a little message to my friend, to tell him to don't put no tickets on no grey Thunderbirds. Or no West Indian cars like Tornados, which in is West Indians' favourite cars.
AC: And I start to wonder if he know that a West Indian does treat a Tornado more better than he does treat a woman or a wife. And with a West Indian, you can't ask his woman for a dance at a dance unless you're expecting some blows. Even if he give you permission to dance with his woman, don't dance to Isaac Hayes or Barry White slow piece, too slow, and too close, yeah. I waiting anxious now because I don't see the boy for days these days. I feel the boy already start making money from the scheme. I walk all over St Clair, walk all along Northcliffe, swing a right on Eglinton, make a left on Park Hill Road, a further left up by Whitmore. And find myself back up on Northcliffe going now in the opposite direction. And still, I cannot rest my two eyes on the Green Hornet.
AC: Fellows start telling me that the boy that's be going to the races every day on his lunch break from ticketing people cars. I'm betting $100 on the nose, and $500 to show on one horse. And leaving the races with bundles of money and laughing like shite. I walking about day and night, all over St. Clair Oakwood and still no sight at the boy. Then, bam, I start hearing horror stories. "I come out my apartment last Wednesday night to get in my car, my blasted car not there. It gone, tow-away," one fellow say. And next fellow say, "Be Christ, if I catch a police towing away my car." "I don't like this place, it too fascist, too much regulation and law. A man can't breathe. I take up myself and lodge a complaint with the police 'cause I here... I can't take up myself and lodge a complaint with the police 'cause I here illegal. No work permit, you know? No job. Now, no car. You park your car, and when you come out in the cold morning to go work, at a little illegal job, no fucking car."
AC: "I was up by a little skin's one night. I tell the wife I going by Spree. I tack-up by Northcliffe at the skin's apartment. I really and truly did intend to spend only a hour. Well, with a few white rums in my arse, one thing lead to the next. And when I do so, and open my two eyes, morning be Christ break, and it's daylight. My arse in trouble now two times, wife and work. I bound down the fire escape, not to be seen, and when I reach the ground, no blasted car."
AC: Stories of motor cars that get tow-away start spreading through the St. Clair Oakwood neighbourhood, just like how the yellow leaves does fall upon the grass a certain time of year. Stories of fellows getting lay-off, no work permit, getting beat-up, can't go to the police in case, and getting locked up. All this gloom start spreading like influenza. The fellows scared. The fellows vex. The fellows angry. And they can't go and complain to the police to find out where their cars is 'cause, you know, the papers not in order. As man, and the little matter of landed and reçu and so on and so forth. They can't even start calling the police pigs and racists and criminals and all this time, nobody can't find the Green Hornet boy at all.
AC: Well, a plague of tow-away cars rest so heavy on my mind, even though I don't own no wheels, seeing as how I is a real TTC-man, that I get real concern 'cause drunk or sober, blood more thicker than water. "As man." I hear their voice and I bound round, and look, I see cars. I see West Indians. I don't see no police, but I frighten. I see a tow-away truck, and I still don't see nobody I know, but I think I recognize the voice. "As man." I bound round again, and I see the same things. "Over here, man." God bless my eyesight. Is the green hornet man. My friend, sitting down behind the wheel of Do Right Towing 24 Hours. I do so look, I blink my two eyes. I seeing, but I not seeing right. I watching, but I having eyes that see and that watch, but they're not seeing right.
AC: "Um is me, man!" The tow-away truck real pretty. It having short-wave radio, two-way radio, CBC, FM stereos and CB. It paint-up in black, yellow and white. The Green Hornet boy dress off now in overalls and construction hat, cock off at a angle on his head, cigar in mouth and shades on his face, like if he is a dictator from Latin America. "Remember the plan? The plan I tell you about for making money? Well, I went to my bank and talked to my bank manager and squeezed a loan outta the bitch, man." He tap the door of the tow-truck like if he tapping a woman. "And I had a word with a fellow who was a Green Hornet like me. I is still a Green Hornet myself, but I works the afternoon shift.
AC: "This fellow I know, the ex-Green Hornet, couldn't take the abuse and the threats to his person for being a Hornet, so he opened up a little place up in Scarborough where he impounds the cars I does tow-away. And me and he splits the money. I brings in a car, and quick so, him lock-up and enpound it. If a fellow want back his car, $50 in his arse. You want a piece of this action?" I get real frighten. "You want to get cut-in upon this action?" "But, but, but, but... " "You see that pretty silver-grey Thunderbird parked beside the hydrant? I watching that car now, 15 minutes. I see the fellow park it, and go in the apartment building there. I figure if he coming back out soon, he going come out within 20 minutes. I got five more minutes." I start getting real frighten now 'cause I see the car and the car is the same car that belongs to the Goliath, the Black American fellow.
AC: I so frightened I can't talk and warn my Green Hornet friend. But even if I could've find words, my tow-truck friend too busy talking and telling me about a piece of the action and how easy it is to tow-away cars that belongs to illegal immigrants and get money split 50-50, and to remember the Rockefellers. "And I had to laugh one day when I bring in a Cadillac," he tell me, still laughing, as if he was still bringing in the Cadillac. "Appears that my pound friend had a little altercation or difference of opinion with a American man over a car once. So when I appear with the silver-grey Caddy, he get real frightened and start telling me that nobody not going maim him nor brutalize him nor cuss his mother, that before anything like that happen, he would go back to Guyana first and pick whelks off the reefs or put out oyster pots in the sea wall. Look, I gotta go, time's up."
AC: I see him, and I watch him pull off from side of me like if he didn't know me, like if I was a fire hydrant. I watch him drive up to the shiny grey Thunderbird car, not making a noise, like if he is a real police raiding a West Indian joint after midnight. I see him get out the tow truck, like if he walking on ashes. I see him let down the big iron thing at the back of the tow truck. First time in my 11 years living here as a semi-illegal immigrant that I have see a tow truck that didn't make no noise. I see him bend down and look under the front of the Thunderbird. I see him wipe his two hands. I see him wipe his two hands like a labourer who do a good job does wipe his hands.
AC: I see him go round to the back of the Bird and bend down. He wipe his two hands again. I see him size up the car. I watch him put on the two big canvas gloves on his two hands. I watch him cock the cigar at a more cockier angle, adjust the construction hat, take off the shades and put them inside his pocket, and I see him take the rope that make out of iron and look like chain and hook 'em on upon the gentleman nice, clean and polish grey 1985 Thunderbird. I see him and I watching him. The boy real professional. I wondering all the time where the boy learned his work. He dance round to the tow truck and press a thing, and the Bird rising up off the road like if him ready to take off and fly. I see him press a next thing in the tow truck and the Bird stationary, but him up in the air at a angle like a Concorde taking off.
AC: I see him bend down again to make sure that the chain of iron hook on good. I see him wipe his two hands in the big canvas gloves a next time, and I see him slap his two hands, telling me from the distance where I is, watching, that it is a professional job, well done. I think I see dollar bills registering in his two eyes too, and I see him tug the chain tight, so the Bird would move off nice and slow, and not jerk nor make no noise, when he ready to take she to the pound to impound she. And then I see the mountain of the man, tipping-toe down the metal fire escape of the apartment building where he was, black shoes shining in the afternoon light, hair slicked back and shining more brighter than a process, dressed in the same three-piece suit with the pinstripe visible now that the sun was touching the rich material at the right angle of sheen and shine.
AC: And I see, or think I see, the gentleman take off a diamond and gold ring two times off his right hand, and put them in his pocket. I think I see that. And I see how the hand become big, big, big, like a boxing glove, and I watching, but I can't open my mouth nor find words nor voice to tell my former Green Hornet friend to look over his left shoulder. I seeing, but I can't talk of what I seeing. I find I can't talk. I can only move. A tenseness seized the moment. I do so, and point my index finger like a spy telling another spy ‘don't talk, but look behind.’ And at that moment, the Black American gentleman's hand was already falling on my friend's shoulder.” Thank you.
[applause]
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RANDY: Austin Clarke was born in Saint James, Barbados in 1934, and raised by a single mother who worked as a laundress. A track star and superb student, he attended the island’s top schools and gained admission to elite universities in the United Kingdom. Circumstances led him instead to Canada, where he studied at Trinity College, University of Toronto, in the 1950s. Thereafter, he pursued a career as a writer while also working for the CBC as a journalist, teaching at a series of universities including Yale, Brandeis, and Duke, and participating in politics and civic life and civil rights activism, in the United States, Canada, and Barbados. Clarke’s 2002 novel, The Polished Hoe, one of ten that he published in addition to a series of memoirs and short story collections, won both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Austin Clarke was named to the Order of Canada in 2008 and died, aged 81, in 2016.
Thanks to the Estate of Austin Clarke for allowing us permission to use the audio for this episode. And thanks, as always, to the Toronto International Festival of Authors for allowing us access to their archives. Find out more at FestivalOfAuthors.ca
RANDY: Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is a year-long podcast series that celebrates 40 years of the Toronto International Festival of Authors. It's produced by the Toronto Public Library. The Executive Producer is Gregory McCormick. This episode was produced by Gregory McCormick and me, Randy Boyagoda, with technical support from George Panayotou and Michelle De Marco, marketing support from Tanya Oleksuik, and research support from Marcella van Run.
For more about Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA, visit tpl.ca/podcasts where you will find links to the books mentioned in each episode and links to other relevant materials in TPL’s collections.
Music is by YUKA.
I'm Randy Boyagoda and we'll be back soon with another episode ofWriters Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA.