The Angels' Share

by Garfield Ellis

  “Some people feel that is what a man is for: breadwinner at all cost. I’m not made that way. Your mother was a bit like that. When she wanted money, she never cared what I did to get it or where I got it from. If I gave her the last cent, empty my wallet and show her, in ten minutes she would ask me for money again. It is just how she was. Her mother grew her and taught her how to take care of a man, not how to help him. That is how she made me feel at the time and it scared me to death.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell her?”

  “It is not easy to tell somebody something like that.”

  “So you take her to a beauty contest, leave with the first woman you find? You run away and leave her sitting there like a fool so she could get the message? That, Daddy, is an excuse? You know what you are sounding like, Daddy? A man who is looking for good things everywhere else but where he is for fear of something he himself does not even know or understand. That is how you sound.”

  “All right, Everton. Since you don’t want to come off of that, since you think it so symbolic, let me explain this beauty contest thing. I did not leave her because I wanted to show her anything. I left because a woman blew my mind.”

  I remain silent.

  “Right, a woman blew my mind and I am not ashamed of that. A man can live ten lifetimes and never experience that,” he says into the sun. “And even now, when I think about it—every time I think about it I realize, I would do the same thing again. Not because it right, but because I know I would still not be able to control myself.”

  That brings the memory of my hardness pressed into the small of a back on an old train at Appleton. I try to blink the guilt from my eyes.

  “Yes, I left her there, yes.” He nods violently. “Yes, I leave her but I never went there expecting to do it. Is just how life went. I see the woman and the moment we start talk, is as if the world just change. It is as if everything different—as if the night started over, man. And people would think that we left and went to do something. We just talked, you know. We left Sombrero and just talked; we walked around the racecourse and we sat and we just talked. Talked and laughed till morning came. It was in her lap I dropped asleep and when she woke me and said she had to go home, it was morning like now. And it was then I realized I couldn’t risk telling her that I had left a woman and come with her. I never wanted her to feel that I would probably do the same to her one day. So I walked her home, and she invited me for breakfast and I stayed. And I never left her house till eleven that morning, and if she had asked me to stay till night I wouldn’t have left at all. And by that time, it never made sense going to look for your mother again. I wouldn’t know what to tell her.”

  “But you leave that one too.”

  “I know, but it was for a different reason.”

  “Oh, I forgot, she was not your level. She would have held you back.”

  “You asked about your mother.”

  “You know what, Father?” I say to him. “You are right, I really don’t care about your secrets anymore.” I had wanted to hear so much, to pin him against a wall and demand that he give me some kind of restitution. But now it is bitter as cerasee in my mouth. I am not sure I want to hear more. What I really want to do is punch him flat on the ground. This vain, cruel person is not the father I adored. This is not the truth or honesty I wanted. But I asked for it and he has given it to me.

  “You said you wanted to hear about your mother,” he insists.

  “All right, Father,” I wrap his shoulder with my arm, “I get the picture now, all right. But you have hurt a few women in your life.”

  “I know.”

  “And you are hurting one now.”

  “I know, but I can’t do better. This is something I must do. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “I understand that you can’t run from one woman to another when one does not suit what you want at a particular time.”

  “I am not leaving Una.”

  “Tell her that.”

  “She will be all right. You don’t worry about Una.”

  Then, after a while, after a short silence, as we watch the sun finally emerging, he reaches to press against my hand with his open palm. He may have sensed that I had started to drift.

  “Your mother and I, we worked it out before she died. We were good friends.”

  “I can imagine.” I am not sure I care how that sounds.

  “But we did.”

  “But did you tell her why?”

  “We worked it out.”

  “Well, I lived with her and I am not sure if she knew, till the day she died. And I don’t think that matters now. Do you? All that is gone now, Daddy. All that is gone.”

  It is a hard thing to say, but I do not feel the need to pull any punches right now. He too has said some hard things, and even though I had asked for them to be said, the impact of his words is no less.

  “. . . So it is tomorrow then.”

  “What is happening tomorrow?” I am drawn back to him. His hands are in his pockets and he is looking out onto the sea. We are casually at ease. He has made some point I did not hear.

  “In Montego Bay, we will meet tomorrow.”

  “Meet who in Montego Bay tomorrow?”

  “Hope, she is coming. It looks like we had the flights mixed up.”

  Just when I think it is over, just when I think he is slowing to some level of sobriety, he jabs me like a relentless toothache. I am a cup that is filled to its brim, I am the bucket that is taken to the well once too often, I am the camel just before the feather breaks its back. If he were a child, I would lift him and shake sense into him, but he is a stubborn old man and all I can do is tremble with rage and face him with as much composure as I can muster.

  “Why are you doing this to yourself, Daddy? She is gone. It is over, old man. She is not coming. You are sixty-seven years old but you acting like a schoolboy on a date. You are like me when I stood up at the Carib Theatre, waiting for the girl who told me to meet her there. You remember me standing there half an hour after the movie finished and she still nowhere in sight? What you tell me the evening when you passed by chance and saw me standing there? What did you tell me when you were giving me the ride home, you remember? You told me: Everton, if she is half an hour late, she not coming again. Daddy, if she is thirty-five years late, she not coming again.”

  He is not impressed. He stuffs his book into his pocket and turns toward the cottage. “You don’t know a damn thing what you talking about. She will be there tomorrow. Are you coming or not?”

  “Coming where?”

  “For the breakfast—you weren’t listening? We have to go back to the cottage now. I invited a few people over before we leave. Have a kind of breakfast and so. Say thanks for everything.”

  He constantly amazes me. These mood swings must be part of getting old. He speaks and moves so I have no chance to shape my feelings into a response.

  “You go on ahead without me, old man, I need to be by myself awhile. You are right, maybe I should walk more . . . walk a bit and clear my head.”

  * * *

  She is waiting for me right there on the edge of the morning where the sun slants from the beach to slice the veranda into two. Right there on the edge of it; sitting half in the light with her legs stretched out and hanging in the sun.

  I do not feel surprised. I do not really know how I feel, and nothing about her is out of place.

  Last night when I took her home to Ballards Valley she was so tired she slept the whole way. But how early must she have awakened to be here by this time?

  “Hey.”

  “Wha’ happen. You go walk.”

  “Yes.”

  I touch her hand. Her fingers are soft . . . warm against mine. And she rises as if I had pulled her to her feet, though the contact is as light as the sun against her skin. She follows me into the cabin.

  There is a natural flow to things. I pause without knowing and she is as tight and soft against me as yesterday. She is a mix
of delicious oils, fresh spring water, and a hint of cinnamon.

  I sense the softness in her face, the tenderness in her look, but I do not see her eyes clearly, I do not know what they are telling me. But I know the moment before me as if I am already living there. The space beyond this instant is so clear and tenderly scripted, I can feel every sensation even before I enter it, I can see where we are going, and I can feel every emotion and every reaction to everything she does to me . . . there in that moment before me . . . every touch of her fingers, every boring of her naked breast into me, every grate, scrape, and drag of pubic hair; I feel the deepest, softest part of her wrap the hardest part of me. In that moment I am there already and every inch of my body is alive and even though we are now not touching, we are tied with energy as raw as a magnetic field.

  The spaces close completely. She has merged into me, and I am pressed against a wall. Everything in me rises to meet the moment as it comes. I close my eyes as time converges. But the moment pushes back—trapping me against the thinnest edge of in-between. And something deep inside me hesitates, pauses, holds. And everything in me grows still and quiet, though I have not willed it to, as if a hurricane has just been envisioned, simulated, and has subsided. I pull her head softly against my neck as the moment slips away.

  “We must go,” I whisper, “we cannot be late for Father’s party.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Leave it to my father to be in St. Elizabeth for less than a week and have enough people for a send-off breakfast. It is just after eight and already his friends have arrived. Angela has joined Tara in the kitchen. They are frying fish that came out of nowhere. Dumplings and other St. Elizabeth breakfast delights are being prepared simultaneously. The liquor is out early. Beer and Guinness are already cold. Rum and whiskey have already joined my father’s pimento wine on the pool deck. Father is seated in his shorts with a leg in the pool while his friends laze around with him. There is a faint smell of weed about. A domino table is off to the right of the pool under a large mango tree, where Tom from Memories sits with another man lazily pushing the pieces around. A table with fruits sits in the middle of everything—cut melon, peeled oranges, ripe mangoes of every kind, sliced pineapples—just there for the taking, the munching, dog stoning, whatever one wants to do with fruits.

  What is it about this man that people love so much?

  Willy slaps my shoulder and motions to the domino table. “Come mek we mash up them boys.” He smiles his magnanimous smile. He could be my father’s son.

  “I am not a domino player.”

  “You can match. Just match and I will do the rest, man.”

  I agree and fill a plate with pineapple and oranges on my way.

  In five minutes we are two love down and Willy is in a rage, shouting at me across the table, “I not taking any six love, man! What kinda play is that, Everton, man?”

  “I told you I can only match.”

  “But I never take you serious.”

  “Town man can’t play domino. Which town man you ever see play domino good?” Tony is ecstatic.

  “He can jump hill, but can he play?” the other laughs, and slams a domino onto the table.

  “Jesus!” Willy wails. “A Jamaican man who can’t play domino is like a Jamaican woman who can’t dance. It just doesn’t exist.”

  Three love down.

  Willy shuffles the pieces, draws his hand, and winks at me. I wink back. As I gather my dominoes, I realize I am short. But there are no extra pieces on the table.

  “I only have six,” I announce. “Who have eight?”

  “Your hand all right,” Willy responds. “Stop the noise and play.”

  “But I only have six.”

  “Your hand all right, man.”

  Tom looks suspiciously at Willy and halts the game. “Let me see your hand,” he demands. Sure enough, Willy has eight and I have six. We have to shuffle again and my partner’s eyes blaze with feigned anger. “You can’t play and you can’t even thieve. I would ask you if you come from country, but people would laugh at me.”

  This is all in good fun and halfway through I find that I am winning.

  And of course Willy is in heaven and is yelling at me, “Slam down your domino harder than that, man!” Then to Tony, “You think my partner stupid, he was just testing—playing fool to catch wise.”

  And so we go on; some God is smiling at me, I have won two games in a row. It seems the harder I slam the dominoes down, the more I win and the more I enjoy the game.

  The food call comes and we converge on the pool area.

  And what is there to say about it? Well, it is a feast of fish and dumplings and roast yam and bananas. There is freshly steamed cabbage and broccoli. It is an occasion of warm friendship. We are all gathered around the pool and the food is on the tables. We take what we want, and we talk and we laugh.

  Much is made of the fact that I am the only man who jumped from the hillside and survived. And I have ceased trying to tell them I had not intentionally jumped. I take the applause and the comments and the compliments. Much too is made of how I was an amazing marble player, something I strangely still cannot remember. But I take the compliments for that too.

  “When you coming again?” they ask my father every chance they get.

  Mostly he looks at me or over at Tara with a knowing smile. “When I come, I come. But I promise, it won’t be as long as it was the last time.”

  “Over ten years!” Mass Eustace or one of the others shouts.

  “It’s too bad,” another says, “that sometimes the next time we see each other is at a funeral.”

  I do not know what they see in that to raise their glasses to. But they do. This is a macabre crowd.

  “I hear you like tennis,” Tom’s friend calls from across the table. “I hope you play it better than you play dominoes.” The laughter for that one is long.

  Wherever my father goes, my secrets disappear. “Like I play marbles,” I tell him.

  “Play or played?” He does not miss a tick. He has piled his plate with fish and moves to sit between Tom and his father.

  “I played tennis while I was at Munro College. It’s good game. Now I just watch it on TV. After high school there is nowhere to play. And Munro does not allow old boys to come and play. They should have tennis courts somewhere around here. I use to love playing that game.”

  “You ever watch the Williams sisters?” This is Willy. “Boy, I love to watch Serena play.”

  And then, surprisingly, an argument ensues as to who is the better of the two. The discussion is not just between the young men, Mass Eustace too has a say. He has time, I understand, to watch much tennis on TV, with the business they get. Moreover, I realize that most of them have satellite dishes or cable TV in their homes.

  But tennis!

  Suddenly it dawns on me that this year I will not be seeing Venus Williams play. I had begun to forget about it in these adventures with my father. Not only have I killed all my leave, I will no longer be able to afford the tickets. For I had booked a package deal that I should have paid for on the very day we were being chased around the hillside of south St. Elizabeth by drug cultivators. Now the price will be twice that.

  But there is something about this day, this party, that makes me feel like it does not matter that I won’t make it this year. Maybe next year I will. I look across the pool and watch him as he smiles and laughs with his friends and I can’t help but feel good that I have been able to hang with him these few days.

  “You all right?” Angela is at my side.

  It is the first time we have spoken since earlier.

  “I guess so.”

  “You eat?” She sits beside me on the low wall that separates the pool deck from the garden and crosses her legs.

  “Of course I’ve eaten. And you?”

  “When I cook, I don’t eat. I would take a drink though.”

  “What?”

  “You could bring my lime squash from the fridge?”
/>
  I rise quickly from the edge of the conversation and the laughing crowd and head to the kitchen and the large fridge. As I pass through the living room, I see my father’s little poetry book lying on the center table. He must have been in a real hurry to leave it there. I pick it up. It has the weight of a small Bible and the leaves are almost as thin. For the first time I realize that it is custom-bound. The table of contents is divided by nationalities: British, American, and Caribbean. There is no title on the spine, just two words on the front—Life Words. Could it be that this is a book he has compiled and had bound just for himself? I must ask him about it.

  I flip to the page in the Caribbean section where the silk marker is placed. The poet is a name strange to me:Martin Carter: “Poem of Shapes and Motion.” It is a long poem but one section seems more read than the rest.

  I was never good at poetry, but this is not one of those complex sonnets they forced on us in high school. This is straightforward enough. These are simple and beautiful words of concern and doubt—of a poet examining his limitations and possibilities as a man.

  I was wondering if the strange combustion of my days

  the tension of the world inside me

  the strength of my heart

  were enough

  The words ring with a strange familiarity, and I cannot pull myself away as verse by verse the poet examines each element that makes him—from the strength of his heart, to the strife of his days, the nature of vague and distant decisions, and the haunting of unfulfilled dreams.