Let it also be noted – if only for the record – that as judgment descends on this wicked place, some of its more wretched sinners are today crying out to the rocks to hide them from God’s righteous wrath.
Some who cry loudest are the some of the ones who say that they are ‘called’. Indeed, as I listened in to the echo of a matter that seemed to be coming from a Court-house, I thought that I heard a man’s conscience in whisper mode.
As I seemed to hear his conscience say – Brother, Brother, Brother – You have sinned against God, man and that young boy, Repent!
And yet again, I heard the echoing shout in the wind when a man answered a judge with a defiant in-your-face response to allegation of crime most foul: Not Guilty…!
So there you have it, a whisper of truth and a raucous response.
And so, you can now – after the fact – speculate concerning how it might come to be that a woman could suggest that her fine criminal-husband of a lout could be accused of doing it again; even when the public at large was not aware that he had done it before.
Truth is this woman remembered the time; and conscience demanded that she speak.
She spoke.
Here what I am trying to suggest by way of this linguistic circumlocution is that the town we live in is one twisted kind of place; a messed up kind of place where dishonesty is rewarded.
It is also a place where the dishonest ones routinely tell themselves and their ilk that the honest ones are simply crazy.
As they would explain, you have to be crazy if you decide that you will not buy numbers; you will not steal; you will not covet your neighbor’s ass or wife; you will not lie; you will not steal; you will obey the Sabbath call; you will love strangers – and so on and so forth.
And for sure, these fine types would laugh you to scorn were you to ever mention that you are prepared to work for every penny you need/ and that you look forward to sweating from the brow down.
As one brother described me [in private conversation] to one of his crooked confidants, "Bettul is one crazy ass; das why he so poor…"
When the gossip monger put it this way to me, I was happy to know that this is what that dude thought about me and about my need to be honest in these last and evil days.
The truth of the matter is that being honest can sometimes turn out to be quite perplexing. Let me explain, you go shopping and as you go shopping – say in the Mall at Marathon – you come across other people who are shopping.
As you shop, you watch them shopping. And as they shop, you note [out of the corner of your good eye] that they have trolleys full of stuff. And poor, honest you, all you have in hand are the things you could afford.
You try to figure things out and all that comes back as answer is the word in the wind, Farther along, we’ll understand why…
And as you wonder about the trolleys and the stuff, you wonder how it comes to be that so many hard-working honest people like me just can’t figure out how the "you and your money" thing really works
And then, the words of the song-writer echo, "Tempted and tried, we're oft made to wonder, Why it should be thus, all the day long; While there are others, living about us Never molested, though in the wrong.
And thereafter the mocking chorus: Farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why, Cheer up my brothers, walk in the sunshine. We'll understand it all, by and by.
Then there is this other stuff, When death has come and taken our loved ones, leaving our homes so lone and so drear, Then do we wonder why others prosper, living as sinners year after year.
And with the dicey-doh, we hear: Often I wonder why I must journey over a road so rugged and steep, while there are others living in comfort while with the lost I labour and weep.
Indeed, I wonder.
And if there is one thing of which I am also sure is that the day will come when – as the hymn writer writes: Soon with the Lord, our wonderful Savior, we'll be at home beyond the blue sky; there we will meet the dear ones a-waiting, we'll understand it all by and by.
Well, by damn, while I do believe that stuff about beyond the sky, I am still distressed about some of the here and now facts as regards the trolleys and the goods and as to how I am obliged to sweat and toil for the few pennies I earn.
And I am royally pissed that even as I toil there are people about who would rob me of my Joseph-coat of many colors, kill me and put my remains in a pit – and thereafter deprive my orphaned children and their mothers of salt and bread.
As God is in heaven – I swear – some of these wicked ones shall eat iron before they die.
But even as I dread the day when they purge before they perish, my view remains that honesty is the best policy.
I am not alone.
Indeed, my parents, some of my neighbors and a number of my best friends [the three of them] are convinced that honesty is the best policy.
I believe them.
Some of them like my dearly beloved Terecita Armbrister also tell me that honesty and manners can take you far in life.
I believe her.
And today, since I believe her and my three best friends, I commend honesty to you as policy.
But here, I have to be terribly honest with you.
Had it not been for some early encounters with some powerful men and their take on the matter of honesty, I might today be quite dishonest and also [again to be quite honest] quite rich.
Honestly, I am not quite rich today – or any other day.
Here take note and this, thanks to the late Lynden O. Pindling, Paul Adderley and a host of other PLP luminaries [currently inclusive of the luminary likes of Alfred Sears, Fred Mitchell and Obie Wilchcombe, among other luminary ones] I am obliged to be one of the most honest men in the history of the Bahamas.
And so, believe you me when I tell you that I thank them for seeing to it that I could become one of the most honest men in the Bahamas.
And thereafter, I was obliged to spend every honest penny earned on children I helped dredge up from the depths in which they slept.
And as I imagine – this from the depths from which I was plucked – these children that are mine – these precious ones did not ask to be here.
As one of my plucky-cheeky ones remonstrated and crowed just the other day, "But, papa, I did not ask to be born. But I did ask for fifty dollars."
But such is the power inherent in carnal knowledge that I decided then and there to fork over the fifty dollars, think some more about parental responsibility, honesty, sweat and hard work.
Even now, I revel in the God-ordained connection between sweat honesty.
