“Yeah man. A man can’t do that kinda fuckery and live with himself.”
“So you can’t get my money then. I catch you. You bugger you.”
“You see how you stay?”
“Just cool, man. Your dinner safe with your money.”
“Me no bet for lose, you know, Brownie.” One Drop is a man like to boast sometimes. “Me no bet for lose.”
“So how you find him?”
“One of my sources. You know how that go. Find him down by the shrimp place on Black River, few miles up from the coast. The body lay out on the ground like it was in a coffin, tidy, with a pillow under the head.”
I went over the night in my mind: I came back by land. Drove along the coast road then up into some hills then across some little dirt roads then walked down a track to the back of the jetty.
“So what about the next of kin and all that?” I asked, squeezing the button of the hand brake. “You wrap up in that too?”
“As a matter of fact, that is why I called you. Since you know her and she hire you, I thought you might want to tell her for me. Ease things a little. I can arrange for someone to call her later, but you going to see her, yes?”
“Yeah, I can tell her. But make sure the station call. Just to make it official.”
I rang Cynthia with the news right after me and One Drop hung up. She sounded afraid—nervous. I asked her what happen, baby, and she said some policeman came by there and asked her about her husband. I asked her what she told him. She said she was afraid. I asked her where she was.
I could hear she was in her car so I tell her don’t go home. Meet me. She said her daughter was at home so she had to go there. I asked if the child was there too when the police come, and she said yes, that the little girl was traumatized by all the guns.
How much of them was there? Did she remember any of the names? Was there a Wilson? She asked me where I was. I said out by the airport. I asked her if the police told her anything or if they just asked questions. She said just questions. When I asked for more information, she said we had to talk off the air, so I should come and meet her at home and drive fast-fast.
I called the airline rep and lied.
As I headed to Portmore, I kept thinking of how I felt when I went back to the jetty, the way the man sighed when he got the shot, and how it felt so indecent to leave him there like a cement bag, and how his body was still warm through the gloves when I moved his legs and arms and put the pillow under his shattered head in an attempt to fix him up.
My body was trembling as I was driving. By the time I got to the power station out by Rockfort I had to stop the car on the roadside.
I still remember the smell and taste of that vomit. A lump of it got stuck to the wall of my throat. I had to keep swallowing and swallowing to get it down.
Killing people is not a easy thing. I know I might be repeating myself. Is not a easy thing, sir. Who to tell? Maybe some people do it and sleep good at night. But not me. Killing has marked me for life.
Did I know I’d feel this when I went back to the jetty? I did. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, and when you finish doing it you fully consider the price. Otherwise you won’t get it done.
I reached Portmore at around four o’clock, just when the traffic from Kingston start to get thick. It is strange how you can know when something wrong just by looking at a place. Or maybe this is something you tell yourself to feel wise when you looking back at a moment when you were clearly a fool.
There wasn’t anybody in the place. I knew this right away. But it took maybe half a second to accept say Cynthia and her daughter never just gone down the road to the shop. The place vacate. The curtain them was gone. I knock on the grill with a stone.
Then I saw a envelope pushed between the bars. It had my name on it, and I couldn’t miss her handwriting—just like a little child.
I opened it quick-quick. One sheet of paper. The note was short and simple:
Thank you, My Lord. I knew you would do this for us. I knew it when I asked you to help me, I knew it when you hold my body that you would do anything for me. So I don’t
have to ask. I just have to say thank you. I am only telling you that we left Jamaica and we’re not coming back, so you know we are fine. Thank you for everything. Take care.Sincerely,
Cynthia
p.s. Your finder’s fee is at Western Union.
Strange, to me at least, I didn’t think of being abandoned or that I’d messed up my life. What came to me was the first time I’d seen Cynthia in my office. When she was standing just inside the door and she noticed me looking at her, she gave me a soft tired smile, and I could see the full white perfection of her teeth, and a deep dimple in her right cheek.
That strong body. Those legs—long and firm and black and shine with lotion. The dress hem up above her knee. Her shoe heel was scrape down to almost nothing on one side though, and the perm in her hair was soon going gone.
A lot of feelings come with this memory—some of it bitterbitter, some of it regretful, but the feeling that always wash over me, despite everything else, is a sweetness. It is the kinda sweetness you keep in your pocket, and when things start to get bad, you pull it out like a kerchief, and take a deep breath from it, and it send you back to a place where, just for a little moment, the world could never be sweeter. Nobody can’t take that from me, that is the truth.
My Lord …
THE WHITE GYAL WITH THE CAMERA
I
t was when the papers come out with the gyal’s picture print big and broad on the front page that August Town people did find out her rightful name. Marilyn Fairweather. It sounded right. It sounded like a white woman’s name. But for the six days she had been in August Town we had just called her “the white gyal with the camera.” Or “the white gyal” for short.
She get the name because whatever Soft-Paw say we take it as gospel, and is Soft-Paw did send out word that if anybody see “the white gyal with the camera” we was not to trouble her; we was to leave her alone. But is like the white gyal with the camera never know or understand this—that she was living on grace—that if Soft-Paw never send out such a word she woulda dead from day one.
You had to give it to the white gyal though—is like she never have a coward bone in her body. She take a plane to Jamaica and in my books that alone count as bravery. Pretty blond girl on her own in the heart of Jamdown? Who ever hear of such a thing? But this white gyal take it further. Instead of staying at one of them hotels in New Kingston where she could order rum and Coke all day and listen to jazz in the gardens, or in a nice little apartment in Barbican or Liguanea, she did decide to rent a room right here in August Town.
It was one of them little rooms with its own kitchen and everything. Miss Tina usually rent it out to university students, for UWI was just a ten-minute walk up the road. But it was July so the room was empty.
The white gyal did knock on Miss Tina gate after midnight, which of course did upset Miss Tina who was fast asleep, but she confess that she was glad for the chance to rent out the room, even for just a week, and seeing that the gyal was white, Miss Tina make sure to charge what she would usually charge for the whole month. You know how these things go. Still, Miss Tina tell the white gyal that August Town wasn’t the safest place, but it come in like the white gyal with the camera wasn’t interested in safety.
When Miss Tina fall back asleep, the white gyal take up her camera and walk straight into the baddest part of town. Imagine that—the time of night when we all have the doors close tight; the time of night when who don’t come in yet not coming in at all; the time of night when we make sure to fall asleep on a low-low mattress because nobody want to sleep so high that a stray bullet could come inside and find us; the time of night when the only people walking on the street was gunman or duppy—is that same time when the white gyal with the camera choose to go back out. They say a fool will walk where angels fear to trod, and the white gyal with the camera was such a fool as that.
Soft-Paw and the bwoy-dem was out there in the night, and to see them would make even a big man tremble, the way their trousers’ pockets was big with guns. As to how I hear it, Soft-Paw and the bwoy-dem begin to notice when all of a sudden a light start to flash bout them. They think maybe it was lightning and they look up into the sky to see if rain was going to fall. But the sky was clear as glass and full of stars. The light start to flash bout them again and now they hear a clicking noise and they cannot believe they eyes when they turn round to see this brazen white gyal lie down on her belly in the middle of the road pointing her camera up at them like a solider with a gun.
Soft-Paw, being the leader, step away from the others and start to walk to her slow and dangerous-like. The white gyal just smile and get to her feet and brush down her skirt and start to fiddle with the camera. Easy-easy, like she don’t know she was somewhere she not supposed to be. When Soft-Paw reach up to her she turn the Nikon to him and show him the little screen and she tell him, “Look!”
Now, Soft-Paw is not a kind of man you supposed to ever give instructions to. Everybody know that. But he so surprised by this situation, he so surprised by the whole night, that he look. The white gyal start to flick through, going from picture to picture, showing Soft-Paw the photos she had been taking.
Soft-Paw see photograph of himself lean up against the zinc fence and talking to the bwoys, the angle making it seem that the zinc was rising and rising forever. He see photograph of an owl, pale and bright on the roof of Miss Inez house. He see photograph of the old car that was rusting for years just at the end of the road. Soft-Paw face don’t give away anything but I gather now that he was thinking he never before see August Town in the way that he was seeing it then—almost beautiful. And the white gyal with the camera looking at him with a look that say he was almost beautiful too. He smile at her, his teeth brown as rust except for the one gold tooth glittering at the back. He ask her, “What you doing here?”
And his question was soft. Usually when him ask this question, him ask it hard, like the night last year when they did see a young fellow from the university on the road. Is like this fellow did loss him way. Soft-Paw walk up and ask the same question, “What you doing here?” and the boy did stammer and a circle of piss did spread cross the front of his trousers. The bwoy-dem did laugh. Soft-Paw face never change. Soft-Paw just flick out a knife and push the blade into the young man’s back, not so deep that it could kill him, but deep enough. The fellow bawl out loud. I remember the scream. But they say Soft-Paw never flinch and he run the knife down the back like he was opening a woman’s dress. The fellow bawling like he give up all hope on life, but Soft-Paw tell him calmly, “Leave this bloodclaat place and never come back.” You see what I trying to tell you? It is a dangerous thing to be where you not supposed to be.
So maybe the white gyal with the camera don’t know that Soft-Paw’s question could have been put to her in a hard and dangerous way. She never piss herself or nothing. She just say to him, “I am here for one week to take … photographs.” She touch the camera when she say “photographs” as if she did need to touch it to remember the word. She had a funny way of talking, an accent none of us could place. She say to Soft-Paw, “I think you have a really, how do you say, lovely place here.” And she lift up her head and look all around and smile a smile that would make you think she was standing in the middle of fucking paradise—and mind you, Jamaica can be paradise when it want, like those times when you standing on a white beach looking at the moon sinking below the coconut trees. But this white gyal wasn’t on no beach. She was in August Town. She was in the heart of the ghetto, but she was smiling.
“You don’t work for no police or nothing like that?” Soft-Paw ask.
She look at him with the most serious look she have all night. She touch herself on her chest. “I work for me. For myself alone. What I do is—it is art. I am not, how do you say, informer. No. That is not me.”
Soft-Paw nod. “All right then,” he say. “Do what you doing, but protection going to cost you. Hundred dollars a day. Hundred U.S. dollars. And a next thing: before you leave, you will have to show me all the pictures that you take. Is me who run this place. You understand? Me is the community leader, and I don’t want you take no picture that we wouldn’t like. You get me?”
She agree to this and so Soft-Paw send out word that if anybody see “the white gyal with the camera,” they was not to trouble her. They was to leave her alone. The next morning when we get this word we all start to wonder: who the hell is this white gyal with this damn camera?
All day next day we was wondering so till we start to make joke that this so-called white gyal with her so-called camera must be some sort of vampire. What other kind of person would sleep during the entire day like she fraid of sun? Not a squeak nor a squawk from her during morning, midday, or afternoon.
In the evening when we all gather in the square as we always do, it was that time when Miss Tina tell us she actually set eyes on the white gyal with the camera, and that she was staying in the student room in her own yard. Miss Tina tell us how the white gyal did wake her up late the night before, and she herself couldn’t believe that the white gyal did go out after that and meet up with Soft-Paw and the bwoy-dem.
One of the fellows start run joke and ask Miss Tina, “So you rent out you room to a vampire?”
Miss Tina, who at times could be a real jokified woman, smile and tell us that actually, just now as she was leaving the yard, she did in fact see a soft and unearthly light coming from under the door of the white gyal room.
Sister Doris, who go to the Bedward church, whisper, “Sweet Jesus!” when she hear that, though we who have more sense did know that it was probably just light from a computer. I would have said as much but when Miss Tina done her story, Bongo Collie arrive with another.