“I know the difference.”
“You know the difference. You so angry you can’t see the good in anything. You suspect everything first and when the truth embarrasses you sometimes, you just shut up or move to another suspicion.”
“It is my right to be angry.”
“I see men get heart attack at a younger age than you.”
“Tell me about my mother.”
“It is not you damn business. Ask me, Everton, what you want to ask me. Tell me what you really want to say.”
“I am asking you: why did you not love my mother?”
“This is a waste of time.” He makes to leave.
“I am still talking to you.”
“Stop using your mother as a damn excuse, boy.” He shakes the empty bottle and almost slams it onto the table, but seems to make an effort to control himself. Then he casts it into the yard. It shatters on the concrete at the side of the pool. He is a stubborn old man who has no intention of answering me. And I am half-drunk, tired, and feeling as if I have just spent ten minutes spitting into the wind. So when he walks away into the cottage, I make no effort to stop him. Instead, I move over to sit on the wall and lay my legs along its length.
He only went to get a shirt and to find another bottle of his wine. He emerges now filling a clean glass as he comes. He stands against the column near my outstretched feet with both drink and bottle in his hand.
“As a child you was always like that, you know. Nobody never know what you was thinking. Not that you was a quiet child or anything. You could play marble no dickance though, boy.”
“So I hear.”
“And it is true, you could play marbles better than anybody. Holly couldn’t match you and all you tried to teach him he wouldn’t learn. He could beat the boys near the yard but when you came by you were the boss. I remember one weekend you came and won a whole Milo pan of marbles from him. He cried so much, you had to give them back before you left.
“But there was something about you though. Sometimes you would be just silent so and then you’d ask a question that floored everybody. Just out of the blue so. My mother used to call you Little Jesus. But Una, she knew you. Maybe that is why you two get along so well. She would say you are a sponge. You take in everything, everything, she used to say.
“And that was the thing. Since you were small I always talked to you like a big person. I took it for granted that you knew and understood everything because you were always like that. But Una told me that one day I would have to answer a lot of questions.”
“Why didn’t you come to my high school graduation?”
He pauses at that. Maybe I have thrown him again.
“I was with the minister,” he finally says. “The minister needed my advice.”
“Your son needed your presence.”
“I do not remember why I did not make it to the one at the university though.”
“You had to go to Meagan’s high school graduation.”
“That is what I told you? You never complained about anything. I do not even remember that.”
“I remember because she had invited me to hers. And I had mine to do. And no one came to mine. Except Mother, that is. But that was okay, I had a girlfriend by then, and I had discovered ways to deal with disappointments that were more pleasurable.”
He moves aside to put the bottle on the table. Then he spins and points across the yard with his filled glass. “I’m not good at catching things. I’m not good at seeing things. You see, when I use to come down here, a little old man name Bennett owned the whole of this beach side going straight across. He offered it to me one day for little and nothing; thirteen acres right along the seaside. I could have written him a check right there, that is how little he wanted for it . . . nothing. His family was moving to England and he couldn’t find the fare. He never wanted the land anyway because you couldn’t plant anything on it. So he practically gave it to me.
“You know what I told him? I don’t want it, can’t even mulch on it. Now this land is going for what, four million dollars an acre now—the whole thing is about what now, one, one point one million US dollars? Now I would be a millionaire. You still can’t even mulch on it.” He shakes his head.
“Mulch!”
“Yes. Because the land is so dry down here the farmers cut the grass and cover the roots of the plants. You remember, I show you the other day, the grass traps the moisture and when it rots it becomes fertilizer. This dry grass mulching is unique to St. Elizabeth.”
“So you prefer to do things the hard way. That is what you are saying. You make wrong choices. The piece you kept is still not developed?”
“I know my failures, son.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Who knows these things? Who knows what makes anybody grow, what makes anything a success? Sometimes you can just make a judgment. You don’t have to be right all the time. Who knows what makes anything grow? Maybe if the damn land wasn’t so dry, we would have enough water to grow everything.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” I shoot back. “I am rotting from the very thing that made me grow. That is what you are saying. What is it? Envy? I envied my brothers. Hate? I hated my life. I am a rotten, bitter person. That is what you are trying to say?”
“I am saying that anybody can make mistakes. But you never wanted for anything. You never ask for anything you never get.”
“You were never around.”
“That is what I’m telling you. You never look like you weren’t all right.”
“It is a parent’s duty to know the difference. Mother knew. Una knew.”
“I don’t see everything the way everybody sees it. And you never use to say anything. You smiled, you laughed, you said, What happen, old man? You show more affection for me than anybody else. And you absorb and you absorb and you grow. And you never use to say anything.”
“And now it is my fault.”
“I never said that, but you never use to say anything.”
“Trust me, Daddy, believe me, it would not have made difference. You would have had a smile and an answer for everything I tell you. You were always like that, fast and charming.”
“But who’s to tell?”
“Who’s to tell indeed. Even now, I am talking and you are not listening. You want me to ask the questions you think I should ask.”
“No, I want you to stop hiding your feelings and using your mother for an excuse. If you have something to tell me, just tell me.” He swallows the wine in one gulp and sits on the seat to face me. Now we are both filled with liquor and bravery—staring at each other, square, honest, and fearful. And I do not know what to tell him.
“So now after all these years you finally have time for me, that is it? Now we are on a trip and you are trying to make up for lost time, luring me down here ’bout you going to look for woman, tricking me. You have time to listen now.”
“You never use to say anything.”
“What you wanted me to say? What you want me to tell you now?”
“Everton, if you hate your father, tell me.” He does not give me space to avoid his stare, and I feel tears welling up inside me.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know, I don’t know, I just don’t know if I love you. I don’t know how to feel about you, Daddy, I don’t know if I love you.”
“Who knows about these things?” His voice is soft and hoarse as he reaches to fill our glasses with the biting pimento wine.
TWENTY-THREE
We sit in silence for a while. I have moved a bit to take the filled glass from him. It is not a bad or uncomfortable silence. It seems we have come some ways, as if we have climbed a slope and are resting till it’s time to climb the next slope ahead. Tired men then, maybe, but also men who have come through a battle and have been drawn closer by the fury of it. After a while he reaches for his half-finished spliff, rolls its end tight, and lights it. I do not make any effort to stop him. Nothing in me wants to at this time.
&nbs
p; I read somewhere that aging is like another country. As if on growing old we enter a brand-new territory, unexplored, a place where there are no words from those who have already gone ahead, for none has come back from that place. It is another place, another world that we step into across the great divide, and we are explorers there. We are new there, children again, discovering a place for which there is no map, a place that ends in our end. Once a man, twice a child . . . that is what Angela said.
“May I ask you a question?” I finally say.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Are you dying? Are you dying, Daddy, and is this some last trip you want to do?”
“Why you ask a thing like that?”
“Just answer me. Is this a last trip, are you terminally ill?”
“Not that I know of, God not so merciful.”
“You are sure?”
“I am sure.”
“What do you want then, for there must be something that you need? Why come on this trip?”
“Old people need many things, young boy. Many things for which there isn’t time enough.”
“Yes, but why this place? Why the southeast? Why this trip? What do you want to do?”
“When Una said you would have questions, I don’t think she imagined how many.” He is looking like Caesar again. “This is the kind of land that grows on you. I use to come here or sit on the hill and just look out.”
“So if you have a wish now, where would you like to go, what would you like to see?”
“I have seen everything already that there is to see.”
“What would be the three top places you would like to see again?”
“You can’t put numbers on things like that, Everton. You can’t just pick things out of a hat like that. There are so many places. But you know what I would like to see. I have never been on the Appleton tour. I have never seen how they make rum. I always promised myself that before I died, I would go on the Appleton tour. You see, they never use to have it during my time.”
“I bet you could show them a thing or two about brewing,” I laugh.
“Ahh, see what I mean?” He drags the weed and the smoke surrounds me.
“Daddy . . .” I drop from my perch and turn to look at him. “Daddy, tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“If I take you on this trip, if I take you to see your favorite places, would you come home? Would you leave and come home to your wife?”
“You want all kinda promises about all kinda things. Son, life is not a business deal. Suppose I never live to see another day. I couldn’t come. Why you don’t just take things a day at a time? I don’t have any promises to give you ’bout two days down the road. Day by day is better, son.”
“So let’s do it then, Daddy. Let us see your country a bit. Would you come then?”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Aren’t you goin’ see anything? You can’t just go through life this fast—always planning ahead while the present just pass you. For instance, we are down here and all you thinking about is getting back to work and seeing some American woman play tennis.”
“So what will it be?”
He seems disappointed at the answer, but I am getting tired. “Well, as you say, we will see. After three days, we will see.”
Finally, some kind of commitment from him—if that is what I may call this response. But I am tired and my eyelids are heavy. “Ah, Daddy, you tire me out tonight. I am going to bed, I think you should too.”
“No, you go in. You look like you drunk. I want to sit out here a little. I want to look out.”
“You mean you want to smoke your weed.”
“I want to look out. See the stars. See the place when the moon shines on it.”
As I rise to leave him, I pat his shoulder and I can’t help but ask the final question that lingers in my mind, has been lingering there all evening. “Tell me the truth, old man: it is a story, isn’t it? This woman—this thirty-five-year love affair—it’s a story, isn’t it? I mean, I know she exists and so, but the story is a story . . . isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he shakes his head without looking at me, “a real story.”
“Just a story, no true? Just something you make up so we could travel the coast together, right?”
“Does it matter?” He drains the last of the wine from the crusted bottle. “Does it matter what kinda story?”
And no, I guess it does not. I steady myself by tightening my grip on his shoulders. He is not as strong and firm and sinewy beneath the shirt as I remember. And as I leave and reach for the door with a tipsy hand, I can swear I hear him start to sing softly, the chorus of the old Kris Kristofferson song: “I don’t care who’s right or wrong, I don’t try to understand. Let the devil take tomorrow. Lord, tonight I need a friend . . .”
So I close the door behind me with a quiet hand, but even as I do, the words I have heard him sing so many times seem to follow me to my room: “Yesterday is dead and gone and tomorrow’s out of sight. And it’s sad to be alone. Help me make it through the night . . .”
It is a hard thing when those you feel are as solid as rocks soften beneath your very touch. All of a sudden I must rescue the person I thought was Superman. Sixty-seven years old—three years from the three score and ten the Bible talks about. Once a man, twice a child, Angela had said. My father is entering his second childhood. He now has needs he himself does not even know how to fulfill. He now has fears, dreams, and contemplations I cannot fathom. He sees forms and visions and people in shadows that do not exist. But I, at least, I need to understand. Help me make it through the night. And now the fear in me is whether or not I can surmount these feelings that have been awakened tonight, and still be there for my father. But I will try, if that is what he wants. I will try as best as I can to be here for him.
TWENTY-FOUR
Rain has finally come to southern St. Elizabeth and for a while it seems the earth is too hard to absorb it. So it kicks the rain back up with the rust-colored dust and the walls and everything is splattered red, from the feet of the skittering stray dogs to the walls of buildings, the roots of trees, and the wheels and skirting of my Pathfinder.
Father says it will not last because the sky is not half as black as it should be if the showers are to be taken seriously. Therefore he has no intention of aborting his tour of the Appleton Estates. So after breakfast we pull out from the cottage to join the rain as it sweeps down the hill in the light breeze like the long straw skirt of a limbo dancer.
Now, I do not know everything, though there are those who will say I act as if I do. But I am a practical man and I believe that things must be logical and explainable. So forgive me if I do not know how to take this day as it unfolds.
For instance, I do not know why I turn toward Ballards Valley this morning as we head out, despite my father’s mischievous smiles. And I cannot explain the feelings that come over me as she pushes her head through the window to ask what it is that makes us stop. Nor have I fully gotten a hang of how I feel when she finally skips from her house in tight jeans and a T-shirt that seems to have lost most of the bottom half. This strange sensation in my chest as she pauses, just to give me half a smile, before bounding into the outstretched arms of my father, is still a mystery to me.
I enjoy the ride through Malvern and its sweeping views of the hills. The air so fresh and cool it burns the throat at ten o’clock. Father insists I keep the windows open so I may feel the difference when we get to our next stop. I do and am impressed as we swoop from the crisp clear air of the hills of St. Elizabeth to the teaming sauna of the hottest town in Jamaica, Santa Cruz.
She makes a difference, though, in the van the moment she enters. Much like the change in a bachelor’s apartment after a woman has moved in for a week, like the space had been missing something all along.
We buy snow cones in Santa Cruz, a treat I had not seen in years. I am fascinated by the little man standing over a
block of ice grating his shear across it like a carpenter shaving wood. He snaps his shear open, stuffs the ice into a paper cup, bringing back thirty-year-old memories of ice cream mixed with syrup and sheared ice. Everything everywhere is sold in plastic bags and sanitized boxes these days; yet here in this hot musky town, a man still sells snow cones from shaved ice.
Father’s stories seem more hilarious than they did before. There is a new ring to them, though I know he was never chased by a crocodile through the Black River in ’75 because the scar he shows on his foot is one from that old accident he had when his car crashed in the cane field ages ago. But still I laugh as he tells his story. Angela and I listen attentively as he relates the history of the Appleton Estates, that it covers more than eleven thousand acres; and that it was the Caribbean planters who invented rum, which back then was called Kill Devil—the pure stuff is called John Crow Batty. That the same Ward who built the Ward Theatre in Kingston is the nephew who makes the rum: J. Wray & Nephew. I had never heard that before, but I do not question it. I find I am more patient with my father today.
We stop two miles or so in from Lacovia, and I watch in consternation as he haggles vociferously with a child no more than ten years old over a bucket of mangoes. At the price being suggested, we could take the bucket to Kingston and quadruple our investment. Yet on hearing the boy’s offer my father jumps from the van, points to a neighboring pasture, and yells, “So much? Look at the tree, you never even had to climb it!”
And though I am on the child’s side, I keep silent as he stands his ground and leans against the bucket like an old pro, while his friends gather to watch the barter. They have obviously done this before, and he hopes to be a hero by the time he has finished with my father. So he points to his friends and insists that they all need a cut of the money.
“Cut nothing!” my father yells and gestures to another bucket. “Whose bucket that? I will buy that one instead.”
But they will not be divided and another calls out, “All of us bucket, sir.”
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