Benji and the Harvest Festival

The Cliffside Harvest Festival was not a small thing.

It happened every October — the first Saturday — and it had been happening for twenty-two years. The square was transformed: stalls from every household that wanted one, a cooking competition, live music from three in the afternoon, the children’s dance showcase that every parent with a child in Standard Three through Five attended whether or not their child was performing. It was the neighbourhood at its loudest and most generous and most itself.

The preparations began two weeks before. The logistics were managed by a committee that had been meeting monthly since July. Everything had its place, its time, its responsible person.

Benji was at the committee chairwoman’s gate at six on the Monday of preparation week.

The chairwoman was a woman named Mrs. Fearon, and she was sixty, and she was extremely organised, and when she came out of her gate at six-fifteen to collect her newspaper and found a dog sitting there, she looked at it the way she looked at everything that arrived unexpectedly: with assessment.

“What,” she said.

Benji looked at her gate.

She looked at her gate.

On the gatepost, where she pinned the committee notices each Monday for collection, her clipboard was there. Her clipboard with the master schedule for the Harvest Festival, the vendor allocations, the equipment list, the contact numbers for every responsible person.

Except the clipboard was open to the inside pages.

She had not left it open to the inside pages.

Someone had photographed the master schedule.

This was the conclusion once Mrs. Fearon called the children — she had their numbers, she had everyone’s numbers — and once Nadine looked at the clipboard angle and the gate gap and the sight line from the road.

Someone had reached through the gate gap, opened the clipboard, photographed the pages, closed it again. Probably in the dark, in the early morning. Neat. Quick.

“Why would someone photograph your festival schedule?” Clevie said.

“Because the festival has forty vendor slots,” Mrs. Fearon said. “And thirty-eight of them are allocated. Two are still being decided — applicants pending review. If someone knows which two are open and who has applied—”

“They could apply with better terms,” Omar said. “Or arrange to have a competing stall nearby.”

“Or know in advance which equipment would be where,” Nadine said, “and arrange for something inconvenient to happen to it.”

Mrs. Fearon looked at her. “That is a specific thought.”

“You have a generator on the equipment list,” Nadine said. “For the stage. Stored at Mr. Jackson’s shed. If someone knew it was there—”

“They’d know exactly where to cause a problem,” Mrs. Fearon said.

She called Mr. Jackson.

The generator had been fine until Sunday night, when Mr. Jackson had heard something in the lane. He had gone out and found nothing — or thought he had found nothing. When he checked the shed on Monday morning the generator was there. He had not checked whether it was functional.

It was not functional.

The repair took two days and cost money the festival committee had not budgeted. The committee covered it between themselves without public announcement, because twenty-two years of Harvest Festival did not end because of a tampered generator.

Sergeant Peart spoke to the vendor who had submitted a late application for one of the two open slots and whose stall happened to be the type that could run without generator power. This conversation was private and its outcome was that the application was withdrawn.

The festival ran on Saturday.

The generator ran.

The cooking competition produced a winner — a woman named Miss Vera who had been entering for eleven years and whose jerk chicken was finally, officially, recognised as the best in the neighbourhood.

The children’s dance showcase included one Standard Three child who forgot the choreography entirely at the critical moment and improvised something that the audience liked better than the original. This child’s name was Rashida, and her brother, in the audience, buried his face in his hands and then applauded very loudly.

Benji walked the festival from end to end.

He did this every year, it turned out. Every Harvest Festival. The neighbourhood noticed him, and greeted him, and gave him small things, and he accepted some of them and declined others with great dignity.

“He’s been doing this every year?” Omar said.

“Every year,” Miss Icie confirmed. “Since before you were old enough to notice.”

Omar thought about that. Benji at the Harvest Festival every year. In the same lane. Under the same poui tree. At the same square.

Older than all of them knew.