"Finally, let me in addition to invoking blessings on Russell ... let's also thank Mr Warner ("Bring back, Latas, and give him what he wants" Adigun was saying long before now) and Latapy's handlers for even at this late blood and sand hour, trying to lift our spirits by bringing back at least one man's magic in our increasingly embattled and, as a consequence, self-curfewed lives..."
-Smith, August 25
Well, I just had to ask my friend Adigun (I keep telling you about these friends of mine) why he had to run on the people field, the game being over, but security still hovering to protect the players and Adigun being in ordinary life a security man himself:
"Well, I just had to shake the great man hand" he explained and maybe the crowd who laughed as he escaped over the fence just ahead of the baton of the chasing policeman empathised because they cheered his escape.
In any case it was about the same thing that other great man, Brian Lara, said to me when, in genuine bewilderment, I asked him when I happened to see him in passing:
"Buh, how we win that match, boy".
"Because the man is back," he said with his still boyish smile as he pointed to the front of the red jersey I was wearing.
And, actually, I should have taken the jersey and the fact that it fitted me as the first encouraging sign. I hadn't worn it in years and over the years I had, well, widened a bit and yet it came on and managed to stay on after a fashion, the picture on front that of a younger close- cropped-head Latapy, which his manager here, Wayne Mandeville, had kindly sent to me years back and for which now, more than ever, I'll be forever grateful.
Man, I could have named almost any price for that jersey Saturday afternoon gone in the Stadium, Kevin "Mau" Leith querulously asking even as we entered the place why I hadn't got similar jerseys for the whole band as if Mandeville had given me the whole damn concession in which case, I could probably have retired promptly after the match hundreds, I swear to you, looking enviously at the one I had on and that was even before "Latas" scored the goal that brought us the equaliser.
That was one of the few things I actually saw in the match. The pick up, the shake and the strike and I swear to you that I may have been the only man in the whole Stadium who was certain before the strike that it was going to be "goal" in the same way that I would have told you that it would have been certain goal if instead of Latapy the ball had been at the feet of Tony Fisher (the best player never to play for T&T), players like these incapable (incapable, I tell you) of missing from such a distance-call it a Laventille thing, if you like, and let "Laventy" people like you.
You may be wondering, if you have been really following, what in God's name I was doing while the game was going on if Latapy's left-footer was one of the few things I actually saw. Not too put too fine a point on it I was dealing in prayers and obeah, in that order. Prayers first. Imagine my consternation when on my way to the washroom I saw three Guatemalans kneeling (yes, kneeling!) on the ground praying their hearts out as if their side hadn't already broken my and 20,000 other hearts by going ahead from early.
Well, they wasn't going to "outpray" me. Not. God forbid, on my own ground and, besides, I had well-connected friends which led me to cell-phone Professor Bartholomew to ask him to chip in with a word, the good doctor replying that his prayers were measured for life and death matters which was understandable enough but the Good Lady (I am sure those kneeling Guatemalans were Catholics) must have considered the intention good enough because look, how we came back to play to our potential in the second half which is all that you can ask for in this world, and I suppose the next, God helping those willing to help themselves, one of the Good Books having reportedly said.
And the obeah? Well no less a football fanatic than Jack Warner himself (In a past life, Jack must have been a gambler, the man winning now with a last throw of the "Latapy" dice) was my witness when I loudly proclaimed to all who would listen that I was going back upstairs to sit in my same seat in exactly the same position as I was when the original equaliser came, the better to enhance the chances of us getting a second one. And my esteemed friend, Kevin Baldeosingh, could sneer all he wants and call for rational thinking but, see! not only did the equaliser come but a winner to boot, Stern moving up from "s...hound" to "super" in the space of a few minutes, although, come to think of it, by the time the winner came I was back downstairs, those final minutes (obeah be damned!) being too much to bear.
Listen I hope all of those people who kept bouncing up with me and asking in the usual farse, feisty Trinidadian way-"Keith Smith, we want to see wha' yuh go write in the papers"-don't expect from me any clinical examination of the match as if I am Earl Best or Keith Look Loy or Alvin Corneal or Kern de Freitas or Leonson Lewis or Fazeer Mohammed or as if I ever pretended to have the technical command of the sport required to do this. There is going to be enough of that kind of well, "total football" as it is. Me? I am the glad man in the pack, shuffling from one part of the Stadium to the next, giving but more often than not seeking solace and support and, on the day in question, revelling in the vocally unprecedented support Trinibagonians gave their team as if at last we had become tired of being dumbly watching mou-mous twice ten thousand loud mouths urging Trinbago:
GO!
Which more than anything else was what I had in mind when I met Mr Manning in passing (tha' is the only way it seems I ever meet either the powerful or the rich or the famous) and received a, well, manly smile from him as I said:
"Boy, maybe, we really blessed in truth".
Just for that day, anyway, just for that day which was enough for me, yuh boy having learned in this longish, slightly misspent, life that sufficient for the day is the glory thereof.