They Were People Too # 3

Melody, whose real name was Albun Thomas, was a Mc. Knight man. He was a large man with what people said was an ugly face, but I never saw him as ugly. I knew him as a rather friendly, very hard working man who lived in a house  through one of the Alleys linking Thibou Avenue with other avenues.
 I have both pleasant and rather unpleasant memories of Melody, one of such unpleasant recollections will never leave my memory, because it was a brutal act perpetrated on a dog that bit him while he was in his back yard. I will never forget that deed as long as I am alive. I was a child but it has left its mark upon my remembrance. I also remember Melody having the largest radio I had ever seen in my young life. It was a radio with a cassette player, and he cherished it like a good man cherished a good woman he loved.
Melody was a church man and a latrine digger as well as a latrine cleaner. He did other jobs too, such as the digging of graves at cemetery, washing the bodies of  the dead in preparation for burial and burying the dead, but digging new latrines and emptying full ones was his main occupation.
 It was rumoured that one day Melody fell into a latrine he was bailing, and as he sank in the mire, he contemplated how in the world he was going to extricate himself. Melody began shout "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" No one saw any smoke , but no one took chances with fire in those days, so they summoned the fire truck. When the firemen dragged Melody from his dilemma, they asked him where the fire was. Melody's replied was "If ah de say SHA-A-A-A-ATt! SSSHHHA-A-A-A-A-TT!  you all would not have come, so I figured out that the best thing to shout is  FIRE! FIRE !FIRE! and see how fast aall-you come?"