I am almost there. I bend my legs to place them in the center of the clump of grass. First one, then the other, then I straighten them gently. I stretch my arms to their full length but I don’t feel the tree behind me. I must spin around to lie on my belly. I close my eyes, test the root of the grass, cross my legs, and spin around. The root feels firm and good. Just one leg is grounded there, but I am flat on my belly and my body’s friction is holding me down. I place the other leg carefully down, glancing back to make sure my feet are on either side of the clump’s center.
Now I turn my attention to the mountainside and the tree above me. It is half an arm’s length from my reaching fingers. I measure and lunge gently, missing and sliding slowly down onto the grass root again. That was a trial attempt. To get there I must lunge higher and harder. I measure my feet against the grass root, bend my legs, and check again. If I miss, I must return to the exact spot on the grass root; hitting it wide on the return could be disastrous. I practice one last time, measuring the distance to the tree, coil my full weight and force into the tension of my bending legs, and then lunge forward toward the tree.
I am halfway forward when I feel the grass root split beneath my right foot.
Suddenly, I am slipping and sliding through the middle of the clump of grass, and before my desperate fingers can grab something, I have been shot from the cliff into the middle of empty space, dropping like a stone, screaming like a man on fire, my hands flaying frantically, grabbing onto air to finally discover in the most painful way where the river is.
The water is like concrete. I feel every bone in my body shatter as I hit. My teeth snap against my tongue, almost halving it. Pain shoots like sharp needles through every inch of my body and all my senses explode. Everything is blank for a minute, then I begin to fight and struggle against the waters, thrusting and kicking as if against a thousand devils; screaming in terror with visions of alligators slipping through the murky depths to eat me. I’m fighting with desperation, but I am unable to control my functions or prevent myself from sinking.
But the river is not too deep. I touch a muddy bottom almost immediately. I easily make surface and look round me. I am in green water, in a riverbed twice as wide as the water in it. I swim toward the dry section and drag myself onto the gravel there. As soon as I touch land, I stretch out, so exhausted I can hardly move my legs. My palms burn, half my shirt is missing, my pants have no backside left, and one of my legs doesn’t seem to be moving. Exhausted, I close my eyes and pray to God that Alligator Pond really is just the name of the town and nothing more.
“Everton!”
“Yes, I will take a drink.”
“Everton!”
The sun bears down viciously. The sand I lie on is as hot as coals. The air is dry around me and to open my eyes is to feel the heat drag across my eyeballs, taking every bit of lubrication with it.
“Everton!”
I finally open my eyes against the glare of the afternoon. I glance around and do not see my father, then turn onto my aching side to peer across the river from where I have come. Then I see him making his way down the hillside like a country goat.
Somehow he has found a decent path a few yards to the left of where I fell. And he is moving very quickly and expertly down.
The foot of the hill is a few feet from the edge of the river. As he gets there, he tiptoes to the edge and calls, “Everton!”
I wave at him.
“Come!” he beckons. “Come.”
There is no way I will move. You come. I wave at him. You cross the water, you feel the hot sun too. Everything is me. You feel some of the pain too. All of this is carried in the wave.
“Come!” he shouts as loudly as a whisper may rise. Then he points his hand above his head. I realize what he is saying at the same time that I see the bush move and hear a gunshot reverberate. He does not have to call again. I dive into the water and do not surface until I feel the embankment on the other side.
“You all right?” There is an excited worry in his voice. “Come.” He pulls me from the water. “We have to move. They can’t see us here and so they can’t follow us.”
Without a word, I jog and limp beside him, half-dead, half-crawling, sheltered by the mountain, following the river for about fifteen minutes. Here the river leaves the mountain and tracks through the sloping, flattening land while the mountain and the hills curve westward and back on themselves.
“If we keep following the river, we will find the beach just down there so,” he says to me. “But let us rest little.”
“Rest a little?” I pant.
“I don’t think they are coming after us anymore. It look like they just wanted to frighten us.”
I limp to the clearing at the root of a large mango tree in the middle of the tall grass. I sit so its trunk shades me from the sun, stretch my body on the ground, groan, and close my eyes.
NINE
Call your father now, no.
My breath is hot in my nostrils, tears of anger burn my eyes as I run, and blood drips down my face where a stone has hit my head.
Call your father now, no.
There are three boys after me.
One, I could beat easily. Two, I could take a chance and stand and fight. But three is too much for me. They have my knapsack. I had to discard it when the ugly one grabbed it some minutes ago, twisting my neck as he pulled at it to try and stop me. But I swiveled hard and left it in his hand. Dirt splatters from a wall in front of me as another rock is thrown at my head. I run and zigzag through the narrow lane where the cracked, broken sidewalk is just as wide as the dirt track it shadows for a road.
Call your father now, no.
“Touch me,” I had said, “lay one finger on me or any of my friends, and I will call my father to lock you up and make them run you family off the dirty old hut you live in. My father is in charge of all cane fields from here to Clarendon. Touch me—no, open your mouth—and I will call my father and you and all your ugly family will turn beggars.”
A shove had gone with that too. A little boy in torn khaki was at the end of that shove too, standing there with his friend, trying to hustle money from us, John and me. Saying how he liked my shoes. Young snarling dirty boys who hardly passed through the school gate except to get their names noted on the register once or twice a week as their minds tell them. Sullen boys, dirty boys with downturned eyes, hating school as much as school hated them. Maybe because they smelled so much . . . too poor to change their clothes or bathe anywhere except the irrigation canal that fed the cane fields till their skins were as chalky and scaly as fish left to die in the sun. Always there, standing at the gate, intimidating anyone they could, fondling the girls, threatening those they thought were soft.
But I would not be soft. I stood up to them
“You never had to insult them so, we could just walk them out,” John said.
“I never insult them—I just tell them the truth.”
“But we could o’ just walk them out. Leave them alone. Them will kill you, those people have gun.”
“Cho, they don’t want me to call my father.”
Now they chase me down a lane that leads to a place I don’t know. And where is John now? Disappeared the moment he saw them. Wasn’t he the one who got me into this? Wasn’t he the one I defended when I took them on? Wasn’t he the one who I offered to follow home though it was miles out of my way because he was scared to pass alone through the area where the dirty ugly boys live? Now he is gone and I am alone far away from my home and even farther away from the safety of the school crowd where I took them on.
There is no shelter here in Portmore, just the sun beating down on this concrete place with its intermittent tracks of dirt. I am dashing from one strange lane to another. I don’t know where I am going and I am running out of breath.
Call your father now, no.
I wish I could call him; I wish he would come. Drive his big car, park it at the end of the ally down which my tired legs now
make me falter, open his arms to my charge while lifting his larger-than-life self to its full height, raising his hand like Moses pushing back a storm . . . like the great defender I boast him to be. Touch him, no; touch my big son; just touch one hair on his head, if you think you’re bad.
But I am alone. I have no father to come.
Call your father now, no.
I run hard. I am tired. The open fences, dirty houses, are all part of one hot, hazy blur around me.
I cannot go much farther.
A large light post looms. It is a crossroad with an alleyway to my left and right. I brace myself and swing right. The feet behind me are closer and seem multiplied in my ears. I swerve around the corner, and before me are houses on every side. Then there is a cul-de-sac with a narrow lane feeding off to its left-most corner. I swing toward the lane; it is the only escape from this box that traps me. But standing there is a snarling boy with a knife in his hands. I have been herded into a dead end.
I pull up quickly, but lose my footing and fall, skating in the dust on the seat of my pants till my backside burns from the grating gravel.
Call your father now, no.
Anytime you need me, he had said, just call. Just call, man, and I will come. I now realize just how deceptive a promise that had been, for how could I call him? How do I know where he is at any time of day, and even if I did, by what means would I call him? How stupid I was to believe that I could call . . . and even more stupid I have been to think that he would come.
Call your father.
Call me when you ready! Though he knows I have no way to do so. I will come when you want. Though he knows he will never come, will never be there when I want. Nor will he be there when I return home after I have been beaten to death.
Big son, my big son.
Maybe after this, when I am dead, he will come. Maybe then he will find me whom he has neglected. Big son! Yes, big son in the dust now, faced down by a knife and two cowards. Maybe when I am dead, maybe then. Someone else will call and then he will have no choice but to come. Someone will call and tell him, Your big son dead, man . . . Then he will come. Then he will know . . . that I wanted him, that I called and he did not come.
“Call your father now, no.” Big, ugly, bulky kid, whose name I do not know, on the right edge of the circle of three that converges on me.
“Your father not coming now? So I live in a shack, I live in a cane field . . . so your father goin’ chase me out like a dog? Your father is a bad man? You call him? I don’ see him. Call him now, no.”
He has spoken my thoughts into the hot day. He should not have done that. My hatred for my father is my own. So I choose him. I choose him now, that boy of sixteen years or so, two years older than me, a head and a half taller, big and broad like a mature footballer, with a knife in his hand as long as my arm and a mocking snarl on his face—I choose him this day to die with.
I am at his throat, from crouching in the dust, through the air so fast it is as if the earth has tilted to meet his slamming back. There is no strategy to the attack, no form to the madness. I am an animal broken loose, teeth bared, biting, sinking into dirty flesh till blood runs down my face. Head butting, stiff arms tightening around an ugly thick neck, knees pumping, kicking, legs flaying. Angry animal gurgling and savage grunts coming from me. It is an expulsion of something deep and deadly inside for I shall give everything here in this dirty place, in this hot dusty road. I shall vomit everything here and now, for I shall not return from this place this day. I shall not return to be anything he wants; not to ambition and good grades; not to school and empty stands when I compete. I shall not return to a lonely home and a mother who tells me to turn the cheek all the time, nor to the empty spaces of my room and the echoes of empty promises and a voice so strong, a smile so sweet, and face so godly and strong. I shall not return from this place. I shall kill him now. I shall die right here with him, with this ugly, thick, smelly person. I shall kill him now and die right here in the hot dust of a strange and ugly street. I shall die for him; I shall die with him . . . I with this empty space that I see is my father.
Call your father now. Leave me alone, police people. I do not want to know I almost killed him.
Call your father now. Leave me alone, hospital people. Leave the knife right there buried in my shoulder.
Call your father now. Leave me alone, mother people. I do not know, I cannot tell what is wrong with me.
Call your father now. Leave me alone, father people. Let the scowl drop from your face, for I called and you did not come. I wanted you and you were not there. You are never there when I need you! Leave me alone, Father . . . for when I call, when I need you . . . you do not come.
Call your father now, no. No, I will not call him. I have no voice to call. I am alone and I am empty . . . I have no one to call . . . I have no father to call . . . I have no one . . . I am alone . . . Let me die alone . . . I have no one . . . I have no father.
Call your father, call your father, call your father . . . father . . . father . . . father!
TEN
I must have fallen asleep. For I open my eyes to a cooler place, and my father is seated beside me by the trunk of the tree. He seems quiet, contemplative. His little brown book of poetry is in his left hand resting on his leg. It is late afternoon; I can tell by the position of the sun and by the color of the grass on the hillside.
I wonder what time it is exactly and lift my wrist to check. It is empty. I jump to my feet. A pain shoots through my left leg. I fall over. Where is my watch? Where is my expensive Movado, my thousand-dollar-US birthday present? And my shoes, my two-hundred-dollar Bally loafers, where are they? What are these crusted dirty torn things on my feet? Where is half my shirt? Why does my palm hurt so? Why does my ass feel so cold, why are my underpants exposed? Where is the seat of my pants? Where is my wallet?
“You all right?”
I do not answer because I am not sure how to react to him, to this man I call my father. And I must wonder at that now, this father thing. Is this man the father I have loved all my life? Waited some evenings on the streets just to see his car whiz by and tell my friends, “See my father there, is a Toyota Crown that him driving.” Or for those days when I would come home from school to see him stealing out of my mother’s bedroom, so he could pat my head and ask how I was doing.
But now I have him with me and he is not what I want for a father. This weird mischievous old man trying to drag me through his old-man fantasies. He will have me lose everything, including, possibly, my life, because I am not sure those gunmen will allow us out of this godforsaken parish, now that we can identify their ganja field. I do not know this man.
“You lost your watch, no? It was a nice watch. I tell you, when I saw you drop over that hillside, I thought you were dead.”
I do not know how to take these words. I do not know how to read that look on his face. So I do not respond to him.
“Never frightened so in all my life. Never run so fast yet. You all right though?” He rises and brushes the red dirt from his pants. His hair is a mess of bush and dirt and weed, his face and hands are scratched, his clothes torn, but that seems not to affect the elegance in him as he joins me.
“Which way?” I still do not have a notion of how to approach more than a few syllables of conversation with him. I am much too close to a boil.
He nods his head southward. “If we follow the river, we can catch the beach about a mile or so down there so. Then we should find somebody on the beach or a cottage or a small hotel or something.”
I turn to join the river’s path. He is beside me.
“As soon as we reach down, we’ll get some people and the police so we can come right back and look on the land.”
“Daddy, forget the land.”
“You can’t forget it. Is my land, is your land.”
“Daddy,” I pause to look at him, “you don’t own any land, and even if you did, you don’t own it now. Bad men with guns own it. Ganja
man land now, Daddy.”
“Well, they’ll have to kill me first. It is your birthright. It is your birthright!”
“Daddy!” I stop. “Daddy, if I hear land one more time, I am going to explode! Jesus, old man. When you goin’ come to reality, eeh?”
“You would almost die for nothing?”
I stop again and hold his shoulders. “Daddy, I don’t want the land, okay? I don’t want it. Give it to Holly, okay? You know what I want, Father? I want to go home. I want to take you home to your wife. I want you to be all right. I want to go home, lay in my Jacuzzi, in some warm water. Soak, Daddy, soak for a while, then jump on a plane and go watch Venus Williams play tennis. You understand? I say it now: I want to watch Venus Williams in the US Open. I have been saving my vacation for it and agreed to give you one of those weeks so I could work with you, spend some time with you. But now I want to go home. Now I want to take you home. So come.” I move off again. “Come, Daddy, let us go home.”
“You need to know the story of the land. If you knew the story of the land, you wouldn’t talk like that.” He is a dripping pipe on a night when all I want is to fall asleep. I am tired of him. I am tired of this talk of land. I am tired of this day. I wish the week would start over.
“Why, Daddy, why?”
“Why what?”
“Why me? Tell me, why me? You have three children, why me? You are at home and you want company, they call me. You sick, they call me. You need help with lawyer, they call me. Why me? How is it that all of a sudden I am so important? Tell me something, Daddy: where were you? Answer just one question: why didn’t you come to my graduation? Can you answer that?”
He hesitates.
“Right, you can’t answer because you were never there. I was never important. I am the bastard, the one outside. And who get everything, who live in big house and have car-drive to school every day? Me? No, Daddy—Holly, Meagan, they get everything. Sometimes I feel that the only way my name is Dorril is that someone threw it on me, not because it is your name. How come I name Dorril when I am always outside? Now everything you want, you call me. Where are they? Why they not going through bush with you, losing everything they save money to buy, have gunman shoot after them, getting land on the wrong side of some damn river? Why me, today, this day, why? When you were in you prime, I never saw you. I suffered every day and you never even knew. Now you losing you mind, you call me. Now I am the one who must die on some hill like some damn Indiana Jones movie. Why me? Why me? I don’t want any land. I want my watch, I buy that myself. I want my van, I buy that myself. I want my life, I make that myself. So if you coming, come. But I don’t want to hear anything about any land. I don’t want any land.”
The Angels' Share Page 9
