The counterfeit sock.

Sitting on a creaking, weathered stool, Marcus used a rusted machete to slice ten inches from the sleeve of a faded, black jersey. He peered into the predawn gloom of the other room to see if his uncle Sean stirred from the noise, but the old man--smelling of rum, sweat and urine--was sprawled on his bed in yesterday's clothes, still drunk from the night before.

Only the orange glow of a candle relieved the blackness of the unpainted shack. The single layer of grimy, unpainted boards that formed both the outer and inner walls of the two small rooms reflected almost no light, and the underside of the rusted tin roof, blackened with forty years" accumulation of soot from kerosene lamps and candles, reflected even less.

It was Monday; Marcus took his only secondary school uniform from a plastic grocery bag that hung from a nail in the wall. He put on the rumpled but dean, white shirt, and the gray, hand-me-down slacks that should have been handed-down to someone else months before. The pants were tight; he had trouble with the button. But he'd outgrown his belt over the summer so it was good that he didn't need one.

He put on his left sock and shoe then arranged the amputated sleeve on his right foot so the elastic ringed his ankle. Holding the jagged end between his toes, he slipped on the right shoe. The sleeve tried to disappear; he pulled it up and tugged until it looked like a sock.

He stood and looked down. Even by candlelight, the outgrown pants revealed the deceitful sock. The elastic wasn't tight around his ankle; it had fallen into a pile against the top of a scuffed grey shoe that would have been black if polished.

He knew his mother would never have let him go to school looking like this. She would have found some way to get him a uniform that fit. He couldn't remember her well only a hazy memory of her smiling as she smoothed his clothes before they walked out the door together. She died ten years ago when Marcus was five. He had been forced to live with his uncle since he had no other family.

Marcus looked in the hand mirror that hung on a nail in the wall between the two rooms and combed his hair. He hated his face; it was too black and two of his front teeth were missing. He ran his fingers over the little keloid scars on his face and stared into his own eyes until the skin disappeared and only the eyes remained.

Marcus sighed as he blew out the candle. He poked a chunk of bread into one cheek and put a little saltfish in his mouth. There was nothing to drink in the old man's shack. He stepped through the decaying door onto the rock that served as a front step, and closed the latch without a sound. He exhaled deeply to rid himself of the stink of his uncle and took a long breath to fill his lungs with the fragrant trade winds that blew from the central mountains. Tiptoeing to the back of the shack where he was hidden from the street, he reached under the shack to retrieve a soup can that kept his money safe from the old man. He took a dollar for his lunch and replaced the tin.

Marcus looked west toward the sea as the sun broke over the mountain behind him. The turquoise of the Caribbean glittered as the sun danced on the white sand below the clear, shallow water. About 100 feet down the dirt road that led to the sea, he stopped to rinse his mouth at a standpipe. A rotund woman in a tight, translucent slip was washing a naked baby and filling a plastic pitcher for her family's breakfast. After she moved away, he rinsed his mouth quickly and spit into the trash lining the ditch, then drank several handfuls of water to last him until he reached the school.

The road was coming alive; the women were washing, cooking or heading out to the fields with baskets on their heads and machetes in hand. School girls were braiding each other's hair and laughing. The men were sitting around smoking and waiting for the women to clear out so they could head for the rumshop.

Marcus continued down the cratered road into the village of Victoria, and walked five blocks among the concrete houses of the village elite--the taxi drivers and shop owners. The street was barely wide enough for two cars to pass without scraping their rearview mirrors or slipping into the concrete ditch on either side. The small, two-bedroom bungalows with freshly painted concrete walls rested on four-foot columns to keep them above the wetness. They were crammed together with just a narrow walkway between them. Dogs, chickens, and goats lay in the dirt under the houses or rummaged in the mud in the yards.

As he reached the main road, he turned north toward his school. It was cool in the shade of the cliffs to his right as he left the village behind him. Small waves played among the rocks to his left. He stood for a moment and listened to the drone of several small out board motors. He looked south and saw three skiffs heading out to sea. For a few minutes, with Victoria out of sight, he felt a part of the wind and the sea; he felt at home. He dawdled along, scuffing his feet in the dirt of the road which had been destroyed by a storm the previous year; the broken sections of asphalt washed out to sea or scattered among the rocks on the shore.

After a mile or so, an old flatbed truck passed, swirling a cloud of dust around him. It carried the children from the village who could afford 50 cents for the ride. There were no seats, just six two-by-twelve boards forming crude benches shaded by a canvas canopy. Marcus watched the bottoms of the children bouncing on the planks as the springless truck hit pothole after pothole.

When Marcus reached the school, the children were lined up in their separate classes on the grassy slope between two long concrete shelters that served as classrooms. Each classroom had walls of heavy rusted chicken-wire on the east and west sides to let the wind pass through. The north and south walls were concrete with chalkboards made of warped pressboard painted black.

The principal, Mrs. Phillips, was making announcements while the teachers took attendance. As Marcus slunk along the building, trying to be inconspicuous behind the group, children turned and snickered.

He found his place in line. All the children in his class smiled in his direction waiting for the teacher to mention his tardiness. Before that could happen, Thomas, the class clown standing right behind him, noticed his right foot.

"What man! You tink data propa sock!"

He pointed and a brief wave of snickering drifted through the class.

Another boy bent down to get a better look, "Naa man! Data sleeve, you know! Look man! Marcus make a new sock!"

The snickering grew louder, then faded into whispers. Marcus hung his head, but not in shame. He was a junk yard dog of a boy; his anger brought his shoulders up and his head down. He glared at his persecutors through his eyebrows as he imagined the punches that he would land if he could. The scars on his face, his unblinking eyes, and the thin line of white where his snarl exposed his teeth would have silenced them if the principal hadn't moved in their direction and ended the whispers. She stood in front of Marcus and stared at the class with her "not another word from any of you" expression.

Mrs. Philips was a kind and sympathetic woman who knew that Marcus had only an uncle at home. She watched Marcus's black face change from rage to embarassment. The children were pointing at his feet. Mrs. Philips stepped back a few steps to study Marcus's feet, her head tilted to the left. The walk to the school had stretched the elastic so the sock now looked very much like a sleeve. She wagged her finger at the class with a look on her face that would silence the rowdiest of them.

"I think Marcus is a very resourceful fellow, you know! You children could all take a lesson from him. What would you do if you found yourself with only one sock?" she sucked her teeth as if to say that she didn't have much hope for them. "I think Marcus is very creative."

She had shamed them for the moment, but the students began laughing again once they were dismissed to go to their first class. Marcus wanted to go back home and change into his shorts and T-shirt so he could go fishing with Rawlyns, but he knew that by now the old man was already at the deep water. He went to his first class and pretended to listen.

It was a long, angry day for Marcus. He overheard Thomas and the others making jokes about him a few times. He hated the school. He appreciated the principal's kindness but it wasn't enough to soothe the pain of ridicule from boys with mothers. Throughout the day he looked at Thomas's nicely pressed pants that went all the way down to his polished black shoes. Marcus was jealous of all the boys. Some of them looked better than others but they all looked better than him.

The bell rang. The Victoria students walked out to stand by the main road and wait for the truck. The students from the northern villages formed another little group. Marcus walked along the edge of the crowd and out onto the road heading south toward Victoria. As he neared the first rumshop, the voices and laughter of the students were replaced by the rush of the waves against the rocks to his right.

Farther down the road he walked past several houses, two wooden shacks and several small concrete ones. It was the custom on the island to paint some part of each house at Christmas with whatever color happened to be available at the importers in St. Georges. After a few years the houses were a riot of pastels, some with each wall painted a different color. Marcus watched the small children running and laughing around the houses, and the mothers caring for them.

He thought again of his classmates and their mothers fussing over their meals and appearance as they left for school. Then his mind drifted to thoughts of his mother holding him at night as they went to sleep and the great wall of her back as she slept next to him. He wanted someone to care that he ate and washed. He wanted to be touched, the way his mother's hand would touch his hair or shoulder when she sent him to play. The other boys may not have fathers, but they all had mothers. He felt cheated and alone.

He passed the group of houses and continued to walk along the sea in the stretch where there was nothing manmade except the road. The angry and lonesome thoughts drifted into a sense of freedom--of being by the sea, listening to its voice. The truck passed him heading south. For a few seconds through the dense dust that almost erased the truck from view, he could hear the others laughing. He assumed they weren't laughing at him, but for a moment he hated them anyway. Then the voice of the sea drowned them out, the bus disappeared around a curve, and he felt free again.

For the next three days Marcus worked on a fishing boat with Rawlyns, a quiet, ancient man with a ready smile who seemed to know what Marcus suffered. They'd had an understanding since Marcus was 10--whenever he needed money, he could work with Rawlyns for a day or two. Marcus knew he was a big help. The occasional work pulling the nets had given him the arms, chest, and legs of a wrestler.

"I going on holiday today!" Rawlyns would joke as he and Marcus pushed the skiff off the beach into the gentle ripples of the bay.

Marcus loved being on the water, away from the village. The skiff was another world for him; a vibrant red, yellow and green island on a crystal sea. There was no dress code, no children--just the sun, sea, and Rawlyns's laugh as he told stories of visits to other islands in the Antilles.

Rawlyns was 60, or maybe a few years more, but his face appeared much older--deeply wrinkled from decades of sea and sun. He was bald, so he kept a white straw hat in the boat for when the sun was high. His deep black skin contrasted with the clean white tank top and khaki shorts he wore to sea. Rawlyns's hands were huge and strong with palms as weathered as the gunnels of his skiff.

Marcus loved the old man. He knew how lucky he was to have such a friend. Rawlyns was Marcus's only source of income. He worked about two days a week and got five dollars a day. He got nothing from his Uncle Sean.

This Tuesday, as they gathered the nets into the skiff to head out to sea, Rawlyns was his usual joyous sell "Yeh boy! It a good day today. De sea be easy and smooth."

Marcus looked at him and nodded but didn't speak. He looked sad. Rawlyns tried a few more comments about the weather but got the same response. After that they worked mostly in silence except for a quick instruction now and then.

When they stopped to eat, Rawlyns said, "You got time for joke, man?"

"I goin' nowhere."

"Last week, dis fellow in St. Georges--ugly old Englishman--he lives in a little-little sailboat in de harbor, smaller dan dis boat here. De Englishman walking on de dock and dese three Rastas makin fun. De Englishman mad-mad, boy! He go to two policemen and tell dem, 'Shoot those Rastas.' De two policeman try not to laugh, boy. De man serious, you know! De policeman, he say, 'Sorry sir, we're not allowed to shoot people.' Crowd gathering around--laughing. De Englishman getting mad-mad. De Englishman say, "In the old days we'd have shot 'em by God!' He go back to his dingy and paddle away. It too funny. I laugh on de bus all de way to Victoria."

Marcus smiled. Rawlyns's wrinkles had wrinkles of their own when he laughed; he enjoyed watching him more than listening to the story.

The skiff returned to shore loaded with fish. A fellow at the jetty met them to weigh and load the fish onto the shiny Toyota truck that would take the load to the fisherman's cooperative in St. Georges. Then Rawlyns and Marcus walked the hundred yards to the two Adirondack chairs behind Rawlyns's house on the beach. Rawlyns's wife fed them a chicken dinner and left them to talk until almost sundown.

"Did I tell you 'bout harvesting cane in Cuba?"

"Naa man. You don' tell me 'bout dat."

"It after de war, you know. Dis fellah come through and asked if de boys wanted to go Cuba for three months to cut cane. I say sure. So lots of us take a boat to Cuba. De boat bad, man. It old wooden ting dat roll too easy. I tink we sink when we reach de channel between St. Vincent and St. Lucia. De waves comin' big from the Atlantic side. And again between St. Lucia and Guadeloupe--more big waves again. But we make it OK. Cuttin' cane--it hard work, boy. It harder dan fishing. But we have good time. De Cuban rum nice and de Cuban girls nice too, eh?"

Later, walking home, he thought about how lucky he was to have women give him clothes and old school uniforms when their children outgrew them, lucky to have farmers give him mangoes and bananas, and to have friends of his mother in the market offer him breadfruit and yams from time to time.

Just last Saturday he was walking up the hill at the end of the day to his uncle's shack; one of the mothers on the road was cleaning up from dinner and washing her children. She called out, "Marcus, de pot not empty, man! Come finish dis for me."

Marcus knew he would never go hungry. If he wasn't able to finish up some woman's chicken stew on his way up the hill, he'd get a bit of bread and cheese from the little shop higher up the road.

The fishing was good on Wednesday and Thursday; Marcus was tired at the end of the day from pulling the nets and loading fish. There was much more work to do on days when they brought the skiff back full.

On Thursday evening Rawlyns's wife fixed oildown, a special treat for fishermen--chunks of beef and breadfruit boiled in coconut water and spices. Rawlyns and Marcus sat in their chairs on the beach, slowly filling their bellies and sipping on a beer and a sorrel soda. Marcus tried to imagine anything better but failed. Later, with 15 dollars in his pocket, he stopped in the clothing store on the main road and bought his new socks for Friday.

Marcus arrived at the shack. He put the new socks inside the plastic bag that held all his clothes and hung the bag back on its nail. Since it was early, he went outside to sit in his usual spot on the retaining wall to watch the sun slip into the sea. He looked down on the row of fishermen's houses where Rawlyns lived and where he had once lived with his mother and father.

Marcus could see most of the village as he sat on the wall at the top of the hill. He saw the small house, two houses south of Rawlyns, where he lived for his first three years. Another young fisherman and his wife lived in it now. He could see them walking in and out of their house and imagined them to be his own parents. He saw himself as a toddler playing in the sand as the couple's daughter often did.

As he sat there, he tried to remember them but he couldn't; there were no photographs of his parents. He thought of the large woman he had seen on the street earlier in the day--coming from a bath in the sea with a towel wrapped around her. For a moment he remembered his mother's back after she'd bathe herself each night--a broad, rounded back with deep creases on either side where the bulk of her breasts continued around.

He remembered yesterday when he told Rawlyns that he missed his mother and that he hated the boys who had mothers.

Rawlyns had studied him for a few moments and said, "Boy, it hard for you, dat true. It good to tink of your mother and try to remember. But don't make bad thoughts, boy. Everybody got some bad tings in de past. De bad thoughts slow you down, like draggin' de boat anchor wit' you down de street. Don't look at dese boys dat vex you; look at de sun dat warm you, and de sea dat bathe you and feed you. In St. Georges, people worry 'bout gettin' food; you don" worry 'bout dat. You always got a place wit' me in de boat."

Marcus stood up, stretched, and looked down the hill at the last rays of sunlight fading on the roof of Rawlyns's house, then he went inside the shack for the night.

Ron Frazer lives on Florida's Emerald Coast and writes stories of his experiences teaching secondary school in Grenada following the US intervention in 1983. This is his first published story.