Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (14 page)

They were painted different colors and the owners had done what they could to lend personal touches. Small gardens. Flower pots along the porch. Most of the backyards sported fifty-five-gallon drums turned into homemade jerk pits.

“This is some of our work,” said Alan, pointing to the houses as Otee parked the car alongside the playground. “We’ll soon have another dozen more.”

Almost immediately, a group of kids began running toward the car.

“Mr. Alan, Mr. Alan,” they squealed.

Alan leaned forward to Otee and said: “I don’t want the children seeing your guns.”

Otee said, “Get out, den, and me follow in da car.”

I got out of the car with Alan and stood by him as the kids all got in their hugs. Alan spoke to a couple of them by name, asking about their parents.

Then he turned to me.

“We’ll walk to the co-op hall from here,” he said. “It’s only a short way.”

He set off down the street, children in tow. I followed a couple of steps behind, with Otee bringing up the rear in the Honda.

Every now and then, Alan would stop and exchange a few words with someone—an old woman doing her laundry in a washtub, a shopkeeper sweeping the steps of her store, a young man minding a vegetable stand. More children joined the others who had encircled Alan, reaching out for a chance to touch him.

Everyone recognized him, and everyone seemed glad to see him. Alan, for his part, seemed quite in his element. I couldn’t imagine that the few hundred votes Benton Town might deliver would be so crucial that Alan Whitehall would devote much time here, but it was his campaign to run, not mine. I was just along to make sure nothing happened to him.

And as far as I could tell, the only threat came from being hugged to death by small children.

The crowd at the Benton Town Co-op Hall spilled onto the street. Inside, it was hot and stuffy and standing-room-only. A podium sat in the middle of a low stage flanked by two tables set with pitchers of water and paper cups. Several men and women sat at the tables, wearing their Sunday best.

Alan made his way toward the stage greeting people as he went. I stuck as close to him as I could. He hopped up on stage. I hopped up with him. After he introduced me to the men and women at the tables—trustees of the Benton Town Co-op—I took up a position in the wings where I could watch the whole room. Otee had chosen to stay in the Honda and keep an eye on things outside. I could see him through a window by the backstage door.

It was obvious from the outset that we were in for a whole lot of speechifying. Each of the trustees took a turn at the podium, and nearly an hour passed before it came time for Alan’s introduction. There was loud applause and cheers as he stepped to center stage, but it was interrupted by a commotion at the back of the hall.

All eyes turned to a tall, thickly built woman who was pushing her way through the crowd. She wore one of those African dashiki things, in a design of burnished yellow and fiery red.
Her skin was almost blue-black, and she towered over most of the men in the crowd, the red turban atop her head making her seem even taller.

A cadre of men and women wearing red-and-yellow T-shirts and red-and-yellow bandannas surrounded the tall woman in the turban, helping her wedge her way toward the stage. I recognized the bandannas. They were identical to the bandannas worn by the three boys who had been spray-painting NPU slogans on the wall at Libido the night I arrived.

“Dat Nanny Two,” I heard a woman standing near me say.

Two of the co-op trustees, both of them big, burly men, jumped down from the stage to stop the advance of the newcomers. There was pushing and shoving and shouting as they faced off with the woman in the turban.

Others in the crowd joined in the fray. It was getting ugly. One of the bandanna-wearing women pointed a finger at Alan and shouted: “He PNP! He not for we!”

Others in her group took up the chant.

“He PNP! He not for we!”

I glanced outside and saw Otee trotting toward the backstage door, holding the rifle at his side. As I moved in to the podium, alongside Alan, the woman in the turban boomed: “We have a right to be here! We will not be denied!”

It put a hush on the room, and in the lull, Alan Whitehall seized the chance to speak.

“Please, please. Leave them be,” he said. “She’s right. They deserve to be here.”

It eased some of the rancor in the crowd. Then Alan Whitehall looked directly at the woman in the turban.

“Kenya Oompong,” he said. “We welcome you.”

He offered her a slight bow. Kenya Oompong held his gaze for a moment, then closed her eyes and sharply turned her head away—that Caribbean sign of contempt known as giving someone the “cut-eye.” No one in the crowd missed it.

“Now,” said Alan, “if we might continue . . .”

He waited as the two trustees returned to their seats onstage. The atmosphere in the room was still prickly, but for the time being the situation was defused.

I moved back to my position in the wings. Otee had opened the backstage door and was standing just inside it.

“People of Benton Town,” Alan began. “And honored guests.”

Another bow to Kenya Oompong, only this time I detected a slight smile on his face, as if he knew his equanimity had won the moment. Kenya Oompong drew herself up. She folded her arms across her ample chest, defiant, as she prepared to listen to what Alan Whitehall had to say.

His speech lasted twenty minutes. He spoke with humor and with substance. The platitudes were few and well chosen. He spoke about the lessons of the past, the hard realities of the present, and the glorious promise of the future. All in all, it was as good a speech as I had ever heard a politician give. And that’s not intended to damn by faint praise.

When it was over, applause once again rocked the hall. After it died, Alan looked at Kenya Oompong and said: “And now, should my worthy opponent wish to take the podium . . .”

The tall woman let out a snort.

“Cho!” she said. “Dat podium need airing out after you stink it up so. Me stand right here to say what me have to say. And me mek it short.”

Her supporters nodded their heads, urging her on.

“Give a monkey plenty money and even monkey can build a house. But dat don’t mean a man should sleep in it.” She shot a look at Alan, then turned back to the crowd. “You ’member dis: When monkey wipe his arse him don’t care where da leaf fall.”

She spun on a heel and headed for the door. Her supporters followed her. And the crowd fell back to let them go.

“Gee, that went well,” I said as we rolled out of Benton Town on the bumpy dirt road. “But then, I’ve always had a soft spot for monkeys.”

Alan Whitehall laughed.

“Could have been worse,” he said. “I mean, by Jamaican standards that was pretty mild. People expect their politicians to call each other names. Part of the give-and-take.”

“Like wit ol’ Auntie-Man,” said Otee.

“Yeah, like that,” said Alan. He glanced my way, then back at the road. “Few years back, this barrister name of Ernest Pantemann stood for parliament in St. Ann’s. He was JDP. And his opponent, from the PNP, twisted his name around, started calling him Auntie-Man.”

“Auntie-Man?”

“Yes, same as calling him a sissy. That’s an Auntie-Man,” said Alan. “So Mr. Pantemann, he had to respond some way, you know? But what’s he going to do? Make speeches denying he was an Auntie-Man? That just make the people laugh at him more.

“So what he did, he put up signs all over St. Ann’s that said: ‘PNP Can Go to Hell.’ Just that, nothing else, just ‘PNP Can Go to Hell.’ It became his campaign slogan. Pretty soon everyone was saying it.”

“He win?”

Alan shook his head.

“No, he lost. But people, they liked him for it. Showed he wouldn’t step away from a fight.”

We bounced along, putting Benton Town behind us. There was just another hour or two of daylight left. Thunderheads were forming above the mountains, threatening a storm.

We were nearing the cutoff where the dirt road met the blacktop when we spotted the white van. It shot out from behind an embankment, straddling the road and blocking our way. Otee hit the brakes and we skidded to a stop maybe thirty yards from the van as two men piled out of it, pointing pistols at our car.

Otee jammed the gear shift into reverse, but stopped as a gray Toyota pickup pulled in behind us. A man got out of it. He held a pistol, too. All three of the men wore red-and-yellow bandannas, tied off so only their eyes were showing.

They kept their distance, pistols leveled at the car.

“You, in da backseat, Whitehall! Get out!” yelled one of the men by the white van. “Get out now and we let da other two go.”

“Dey ain’t letting no one go,” Otee said in a low voice. “Dey shoot us soon as they got him.”

“I’m thinking you’re right,” I said.

I turned around to Alan. He looked remarkably calm, considering.

“Get down on the floorboard behind the seat,” I said. “Keep your head low.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t quite know yet. Think we’re making it up as we go along.”

Alan squeezed down on the floorboard, and I turned back to Otee. He was slowly unzipping the rifle case that sat on the console between us, one hand still on the wheel, his gaze fixed on the two men by the van.

“You can reach da gas pedal with your foot?” Otee asked me.

“Uh-huh.”

“You gonna have to steer, too.”

“I can do that.”

The two men in front of us moved closer to our car.

“Get out, Whitehall! Now!” one of them yelled. He was waving his pistol, and then he fired it, a puff of dirt exploding in the road just in front of us.

After that everything happened in a blur: Otee let go of the steering wheel and pulled the rifle from its case. I reached for the wheel, slammed down on the gas pedal, and the Honda shot forward, fishtailing in the dirt. The two men leapt aside as we sped toward them. They fired, their shots wild and wide.

Otee leaned out the window with his rifle—a wicked-looking thing, brushed black steel with a banana clip. He squeezed off a volley. One of the men went down.

The Honda slid out of control toward the edge of the road and a hairy drop-off that led God knows where. I whipped the wheel and it straightened, plowing into the rear end of the van, knocking it aside and giving us just enough room to rumble past.

Otee fumbled to open the front door, and as I let my foot off the gas and found the brake, he rolled out of the car, onto the dirt road, unleashing another round of shots, more shots than I could count, as the Honda came to a stop. Then everything was quiet.

I looked behind us and saw two bodies in the road. The gray pickup truck was already speeding away, in the direction from which we’d come. Otee stood up and brushed himself off.

“You OK?” I asked Alan.

“Yeah,” he said, unfolding himself from behind the seat.

Otee walked down the road toward the two bodies. We got out of the car and joined him.

Otee nudged the bodies with a foot. They didn’t move. Otee’s rifle had chewed them up pretty badly.

Two pistols lay by the bodies. Otee picked up one of them and looked at it.

“G39,” he said. “Just like the ones got stolen from the guardhouse.”

Three hours later we were in Mo Bay, sitting in Eustace Dunwood’s office at the Jamaica Constabulary Force headquarters. I’d driven Alan in his car while Otee followed in the white van, the two bodies in the back. I’d tried not to look at the faces of the dead men when we’d loaded them. They were just kids, really, barely out of their teens. No IDs on either one of them.

Otee had argued against going to the police, saying it was just a waste of time. He was all for dragging the bodies off the road, rolling them down the side of the mountain, and us being on our merry way. But Alan and I had prevailed, and now we all sat on one side of Dunwood’s desk as the inspector leaned back in his swivel chair.

“There’ll be an investigation, of course, but based on what you’ve told me, I’m not recommending charges,” he said. “You figure they were planning to take you hostage, Mr. Whitehall, and demand a ransom?”

“I don’t know what their intentions were,” Alan said. “But they knew I was in the car, and they were demanding that I get out and go with them.”

Our statements about the shoot-out were sitting on Dunwood’s desk. He rocked forward in his chair and looked at them.

“The two got shot, they were wearing NPU colors?”

“So was the third one, the one who got away,” said Alan. “Red-and-yellow bandannas.”

“Just like the other night,” I said.

Dunwood cocked his head.

“The other night?”

I reminded him how we’d caught the group spray-painting slogans on the Libido wall.

“These two dead boys, could they have been with them?” said Dunwood.

Otee shook his head.

“Nah, ones the other night they just children; they run off scared. Ones today, they different. Nothing scared about them.”

“Let me ask a dumb question,” I said.

They all looked at me.

“Why would they advertise who they were?” I said. “Why would they be wearing those bandannas, something that would point a finger at the NPU? Doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. Except in Jamaica,” said Dunwood. “The way it works here, everything is politics. Even when it’s not. You can’t separate it. It’s like wet on rain.”

“But wouldn’t they at least try to avoid throwing suspicion their way?”

“It’s like this, Zack,” Alan said. “Say some Kingston boys go into a grocery store, shoot the owner, and take all the money out of the drawer. Turns out the store owner supported the People’s National Party, the PNP.”

“The party you belong to,” Zack said.

“Uh-huh. The majority party,” Alan said. “So if the store owner was PNP, then who’s automatically going to get the blame? The opposition party, the JLP, the Jamaica Labour Party.”

“Even if it was just some guys walking into a store and robbing it only because they were low-life scum who wanted the money?”

“Even if,” said Alan. “So next thing that happens, some JLP store it gets robbed and that gets blamed on the PNP. It just goes on and on, robbing and killing and calling it politics.”