The Angels' Share

by Garfield Ellis

  “I would need to rest first,” I tell him.

  “I am not tired,” my father asserts.

  “Boy, Daddy Dorril, you frisky, ehh, man?”

  Frisky indeed!

  I wonder how long my father intends to stay down here. I had planned on returning to Kingston tonight. Now I’ll be here at least until tomorrow. A yawn forces itself from me, a sign of both hunger and fatigue. As soon as I eat, I intend to sleep wherever I can find a place to put my head.

  FOURTEEN

  Someone is calling my name and banging on the door. I pull the large pillow over my head to shut it out. But the shouting continues and with the banging it feels like a strange ugly symphony echoing down a dark valley to my ear. Then the sounds pause as if the caller is catching his breath and I feel that I must rise quickly to prevent them from starting again and increasing the throbbing in my head. I stumble through the unfamiliar room, drag my hand across the wall till I find a switch. It only lights the bathroom but it is enough to make my way to the living room where a dim light is on. As I get to the door the banging starts again.

  “What is it?” I shout. “Who is it?”

  “Mass Everton, you father call you. Say you must make haste and come.”

  “My father?” What time is it? Does he ever sleep? “Tell him I soon come,” I call back. I have no intention of leaving this cabin tonight. “What time is it?”

  “’Bout eight o’clock. Him say the beauty contest soon start and that you must come.”

  “Beauty contest? What beauty contest that?”

  “The beauty contest up at the carnival. You have to come before it start. Him say the judges must be in place before it start.”

  “Judge? What judge? What does that have to do with me?”

  “You are one of the judges.”

  I do not believe what I am hearing. But it does not matter. There is no way I am leaving this cabin. I refuse to be manipulated.

  “Yes, all right, tell him I soon come!” I yell, and head straight back into the large soft bed.

  This seems to be one of those places that you do not know how hot it is until you wake up and try to go back to sleep again. I toss around for ten minutes and cannot sleep.

  I am forced from the bed. By the light of the bathroom, I am able to find other switches that bring soft lights on from two small lamps, one at the bedside and another on a small table over by a large love seat.

  I am actually noticing the room for the first time. It is cozy, with large drapes covering one wall and green patterns of birds and trees and all kinds and shapes. The bed is on a large straw mat that protrudes on all sides. I sit on the edge of it wondering what time it really is. My watch is on a large dresser that covers the wall in front of me; it lies carelessly near an ashtray made of seashells and a neatly folded towel.

  It is eight thirty. I clean the watch against my pants and reach for the cell phone that is also lying there. I am halfway from the room before I realize that my wallet is missing. It is not in the shorts I’m wearing—they have no pockets. When was the last time I saw my wallet? Was it there this morning when I woke sick and tired from the evening before? I must have had it before we went onto the hill, but I do not recall it after the fall, after the river.

  I suddenly feel anxious.

  My bag is at the side of the love seat. I begin to dig for the old pants I was wearing—the ones that lost their seat on the slide down the hillside. I find them. The backside is missing, but the pockets seem intact. I empty the contents on the floor and it is the last thing that falls out. The leather is stiff in my hand. All the cards are there, the money is there, some bills still soft and moist. I pull them gingerly from the wallet, but that is not what I am looking for. Somehow I am trembling as I slowly unzip the inner pocket. My movements are as delicate as a surgeon’s. I open the pocket wide even before I attempt to reach inside for the old folded paper there.

  My list is soft and moist. I lay it gently on the dresser and look at it for a while. Then I try to unfold it, but the old creases seem to have collapsed, and there is little to hinge the folds as I peel them away. The old ink has been so smudged that the words I scratched so many years ago have soaked into the facing page. Nothing is clear as I peel the layers back, only parts of words, edges of phrases, smudges of the numbers that listed my feelings. I am peeling, I am trembling, and my heart is sinking. Everything is unraveling softly in my hands and nothing is whole, nothing is legible, except the very center of it. I try to read, but . . . try to make sense of it, try to recall; I see a Why do you. I see the makings of I, or is it S? But there is no straight line. The old paper, having journeyed for nearly twenty-five years, from a lonely room, through college, through university, through a million hesitations and stops and starts—it is now mush in my hands . . . and the only thing really legible is a strange ragged line at the edge of the central fold. You . . . You . . . I peel it back gently. There is a love you beside the line. And on the other side the beginning of the sentence: How do you . . . My list has died.

  I clutch the last of it, the half-complete scrap with the question interrupted by the smudges and diluted ink. I stumble from the room and find a beer in the overstocked fridge and make my way through sliding doors to the veranda.

  I do not know how I feel. I really am not sure. On one hand, there is a panic in me, a sense that time has disappeared; a feeling that everything has gone and that I have wasted my opportunities, that I am running out of time and if I do not find the guts to corner my father then these questions will disappear from me, unanswered forever. Relief, too, is what I may be feeling, like a load has been lifted from my heart. I find a chair and sit and look out into the night with the scrap of paper in my hand and the beer untouched on the ground beside me.

  Twenty-five years. Now this.

  How do you . . . love you.

  This could be either of two questions, perhaps a part of a third. How do you . . . love you. There is so much that could be placed in the middle to make sense of the two ends. And that is the thing: Why does it feel so when I know all the questions by heart. Why this sense of loss, this numbness, this sadness, this quietness, when I know all those questions as if I had written them yesterday, though I had modified and changed them over the years. Why do I feel so, why does this question feel so fractured when even as I look at it I know exactly where it fell on the list and exactly what it said and exactly what I had felt when I wrote it twenty-five years ago?

  And why is this the part that is left? Why is this the one that remains on the scrap of paper? How do you . . . love you.

  Why this one, this night?

  My mother used to tell me I needed to learn to let things go.

  “If you don’t, you won’t have many friends,” she had said after I’d beaten my friend to a pulp under the ficus tree at primary school. “Sometimes you have to let things go.”

  Maybe it is time to let these memories go, these unanswered questions. This dead list.

  How do you . . . love you.

  Let it go.

  Audrey accuses me of that too, in many ways—of holding on to things too long. She does not tell me all the time, but I see it in her eyes when we quarrel, when she tries to reach me, stares at me too intensely straight out of a passionate moment and sometimes even in the heart of those most intimate times. I know she feels that if I would let go of our past we would be further along in our relationship by now.

  I wonder what she is doing now. Where she is, what is on her mind? She must have called me a dozen times by now. There were three missed calls from her on the phone by the time we were eating breakfast on the hillside in Mandeville. But I did not feel I could call her back. And now down here there is no signal on the phone, so I cannot call her if I wanted, and she will not get through no matter how she tries.

  She is the only woman I have ever thought of marrying.

  She would enjoy a night like this. Quite on the edge of nowhere with the light of the moon skipping across t
he waters and the old town blinking lights along the bay as if the stars have dropped to ground level. She has a body for the beach and the love for it too. Father thinks she is a bit too slim, but he likes her mind. And she liked his stories too. The few times we went out together, he would have her in stitches by the time we got back home.

  The only woman I have ever thought of marrying.

  I met her modeling bikinis at a client-appreciation Christmas party—a model with dreams of managing a large hotel and eventually owning one. She already had her first degree then and was looking for a place to study hospitality management. It took her two years to secure a scholarship in England and during that time our relationship blossomed.

  When her scholarship was finalized, we sat across from each other at that little restaurant at Devon House, and she told me that if I asked her to, she would not go and we could start our family. I told her no, that she should go, study, see some of the world. When she returned there would be time enough.

  I didn’t see her again for two years though we wrote each other and spoke regularly on the phone. And then last summer she returned home.

  I can still sense her now, that night on the beach at Sandals, Ocho Rios, as her moans of passion turned in an instant to quiet sobs and hot tears burning against my skin—because I paused, in the middle of lovemaking, to ask where she had learned to move like that.

  No man wants to hear that his woman has given herself to someone else. No matter how long she has been away, no matter how cold and lonely the English winters she had been forced to experience by herself—no man wants to know that.

  I knew it might have been partly my fault—it was the winter I should have visited, but had postponed the trip because of work. She had been lonely, she said, loneliness made worse by the disappointment of me not coming . . . so she had succumbed to advances she had resisted for over a year. But still it was hard for me to accept that someone had had such access to that which I held dearest and closest to my heart.

  Now she is back. Now she tells me I only love myself.

  And I am not sure what to do or how to see her or how to be with her all the time; though I feel we have come to some understanding, I also sense that deep inside she has been made to feel that somehow she is now unworthy of me.

  You don’t love me. You only love yourself.

  How do you . . . love you.

  Let it go. Deal with it or let it go.

  That is the thing. Not just to let it go.

  That is what I am being told tonight. That is what my list is telling me. It is time to deal with it, whatever it is, and move on.

  How do you . . . love you.

  But not today. Not tonight. When we get to Kingston tomorrow, I will sit him down and I will let him know. Then I will sit with my woman and I will do what must be done.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight I will get up. I will shake these feelings that have me here. I will walk across that beach and see what the noise and the carnival is all about.

  How do you . . . love you

  Jesus.

  FIFTEEN

  Twenty minutes later I am showered, dressed, and making my way up the beach toward the noise of the carnival. It is like one big dance. The music is blaring from all around, there is a bonfire near one side close to the water. The smell of weed is mixed with that of food, perfumes, and party. Stalls dot the large beach. Food of every kind and gambling tables—a big party in full swing. People mill around, play games, lie on the beach, and dance, wrapped around each other.

  In one corner there is a makeshift stage. I walk over there to find my father and Willy sitting at a long table. Daddy has his reading glasses at the tip of his nose and is looking quite official with a sheaf of paper in front of him. Willy is leaning across the desk and gesturing to some other people as they work feverishly to organize about a dozen scantily clad young women into a corner where a curtain creates a backstage area. I shake my head in wonder. I just cannot keep up with him. A day in St. Elizabeth and he has copped the job of the party.

  His pace will grind me into the dust. He is like a hound dog.

  I swear he has a way of smelling me because he turns the instant I arrive, his face lights up, and he beckons me over, pointing at a seat beside him.

  I pat him on his back. “You don’t sleep, old man?”

  He smiles broadly, winks at me, and jabs Willy. “Willy, see the man just come. Take your seat, judge.” He slaps at me.

  “What, man on spot?” Willy turns to me. “You ready to do some judging?” He waves his magnanimous hands toward the girls getting ready to parade their skin.

  “I don’t know, I’m not sure. This is old man work.” I nod at the drug cultivator. “You and Daddy can manage, man.” I am definitely not feeling the vibes for judging this one.

  “No, we need three judges,” Father insists.

  “I soon come,” I tell them as I gaze across the yard. “I’m going to get a drink; hold the fort for me till I come.”

  A woman has caught my eye. She is just beyond those gathering for the beauty contest and leaning easily against a stall of some sort. I catch her stare across the space, double-check to be sure I have not read her wrong, and now make my way over. I am not in the mood, but one look at the makeshift stage and the scrawny contenders with Father and Willy, licking their lips, is enough to make me want to return to the cottage. I may as well talk to someone who stands so beautifully against the stall in the night.

  I am a foot from her before I realize she is Angela from Ballards Valley. Too close to change course or turn away, I halt in front of her and say, “Hi.”

  Her hello is soft against the night, and there is a kind of relief in her voice as if she too is bored and hoping to see a familiar face.

  Something has changed about her. The troubled nervous look is not there now. There is a womanliness and an experience and a calm. There is a mystery too and an intimidating sensuality.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  She smiles. “Is carnival. I should be asking what you are doing here.”

  “I see.”

  “So?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  That is what I mean. She was not so bold yesterday. No smile played on her lips, no mischievous inquiry was in her eyes.

  “It’s carnival,” I tell her.

  “I thought you and your father were back in Kingston by now.”

  “Well, we’ve had a setback. And as you see, Father has to judge a beauty contest.”

  “So I hear.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Is true that you dive off Dorril Hill into the river? You know is only one person ever do that and him never live?”

  I am not sure if she is laughing at me or if she is amused by my open mouth and startled eyes. “Where you hear that?”

  She whips the tail of her braids from her shoulder so they run neatly down the small of her back. “Everybody talking ’bout it.”

  “Everybody? What they saying?”

  “They too out of order, though,” she says seriously. “That is what they do. They go round the place and plant ganja on people land. They just move from land to land all over the place and plant weed. Somebody tell me that last week police locked up about three o’ them from my district. They too out of order.”

  Now I feel stupid for having thought Willy might have known all the policemen in the area. Maybe I could have locked up the vagabond, permission or not. The memories are coming back, and I feel cheated that I had not insisted on calling the police. Instead I am on the beach at carnival, living in his cabin, and here now to judge a beauty contest with him and my father. All of a sudden I feel small and stupid.

  “How you get so serious?”

  “Nothing,” I tell her. “Would you like to get something to drink?”

  She looks over my shoulder toward the makeshift stage. I follow her eyes to see that the beauty contest is about to
start. “Oh, I see, you want to watch the beauty contest.”

  “No sir!” she exclaims. “You not one of the judges? It looks like they ready for you now.”

  And it is true; they are motioning in my direction. I see my father whisper to a man and send him toward me. But the anger at feeling like a fool has swollen in me, and there is no way I will be made a further one by sitting on the stage with Willy, as if nothing has happened.

  So I tell her I do not feel like judging a beauty contest tonight.

  She gives me a searching look. “You sure? I don’t want to get into any problem with your father.”

  “No, they will find someone else. Come, come before that man gets over here.”

  She straightens from the counter, and we walk away from the messenger hustling through the crowd.

  The night is nice and warm. Here and there the speakers tremble with the music. With every step we take across the beach, men glance at her. She notices but does not seem to care. I am trying to work her out even as I order a beer from the man inside the bamboo stall. “Ting,” she greets my inquiry. The man digs for a moment into the drum of ice and water and bottles of every kind. He produces our drinks.

  She takes the Ting from me and murmurs how bad it is that this is a big, big carnival and one can’t even get a mixed drink. I figure she is trying to impress me, so I let it slide and motion across the compound to the stage where some other man is taking a seat as the third judge beside my father.

  I wonder what she is all about. I wonder what troubles her now, what troubled her then. But I am finding it hard to bridge the gap because she does not give me much to hold. Sometimes I see women like her, in bars and in clubs and other places, and I do not know what to say to them, for they speak another language, as if they come from another world. She is not my type, the kind for good conversation. Not my kind of body either, too aggressive in the hips, too much swirl, too much force to her walk, too saucy, too sexy.

  “What you looking on?” She raises her eyebrows as if she has caught me at something. “Come, we walk little, the place boring.” She scowls into the night. “Tired o’ them old boys, them looking on me like they never see woman yet.”