by Desmond Hall
So, “I have something to tell you,” Frankie said at last.
His father turned toward him and the hospital gown moved, revealing a rash on his chest, red like a cherry. “Tell me.”
Frankie scraped the toe of his shoe against the off-white tile but looked directly at his father. Lies worked better when you looked the person in the eye, but the trick was not to stare for too long. More Winston wisdom. “I talked to the people in America about my scholarship—I told them what happened to you. They were really nice, really understanding. They said they’ll give me the money for your treatment as a loan against the scholarship.”
Samson’s eyes went wide, panicked almost. “You give it up?”
“No! They said I can use the scholarship next year. But when I graduate, I have to work for them in order to pay back the money.” For some crazy reason, the Hoover Dam came to mind. He’d never get to see it.
“Work for them?”
“Yes.” Frankie didn’t want to give too many details; they’d be hard to remember.
Samson frowned, worry lines etching in his forehead. “How long you have to work for them?”
Frankie nearly glanced away, then remembered Winston’s words. He forced himself to look back. “Till I pay it back.” Lying to his father sat on his tongue like nausea.
“Yes, but how long is that?”
Frankie hadn’t expected this level of interest. “They didn’t say, but it can’t be more than a year.”
Samson took slow, deep breaths, his skin more ashen now than when Frankie had first walked in. “A year? How you going to live with no money? You stay on the campus?”
His father’s imagination was his gift, and Frankie’s curse. He responded so quickly, he slurred. “Yes, that’s what they said. I get room and board till I pay them back. Plus, salaries are much higher in America. Some graduates start jobs at forty thousand or fifty thousand US dollars! So even if they didn’t, I’d be okay.”
Samson muttered to himself, and Frankie willed himself to sit still, stay calm.
Finally Samson asked, “You sure about this? Your mother—she would be crushed, mon.”
“But Dad, I am going. Just a year later. Just a year.” Still, an image of his mother bubbled up—how the skin around her shoulder had become hard, dried out like tree bark. How long had the cancer been doing that to her? If he’d only known earlier. Samson should have told him. He should have!
Samson sighed. “Well, me will pay it all back to you.”
Frankie exhaled and looked over at a wall, a wall so oddly shaped. It split the large room in half, obstructing the view from the nurse’s station by the elevator. The nurse at that desk should probably be able to see the entire room at a glance. The wall couldn’t be load-bearing. Ripping it out would be easy, and realigning the beds into orderly rows wouldn’t be difficult either. Then nurses would have a clear sight line of all the patients. A simple fix, but one he suspected would never be made.
And the fix he could now make would never be simple. He couldn’t bear it—his father—in his eyes, was that pride? Pride in Frankie finding a solution? If he only fucking knew. “I have to go now. I have class,” he told his dad. The lies were coming easier and easier.
“Okay, take care of yourself.”
Frankie pulled Samson’s sheet to his chin and left. What would he have done if his father wasn’t on board, go downstairs and ask for the money back? What a fucking trip; so many hoops to jump through just to do what was necessary. He wished he were going to class; schoolwork was so much easier.
He jabbed the elevator button, heard a patient groan in pain. There was much more pain awaiting him. The initiation. It was… only days away.
Fifteen
the Saturday morning sun played hide-and-seek among the thick knots of branches, cloaking Frankie and Winston by turns in darkness and light. They’d traveled this path many times before, hunting for treasures of naseberries, pomegranates, pears, and mangoes. Soon they’d be hanging out more often, like when they were kids. That was at least something. But the thought of the major beatdown loomed heavy. Frankie tried to summon the grit he’d felt the last time Samson had laid into him. But the feeling wasn’t there. This was going to hurt like hell. And Winston had told him that he wasn’t allowed to fight back!
He skirted a fallen trunk, on the other side of which a stench rose up. It was a dead bird, maggots working away at its neck. His father’s neck… had been so skinny, his skin yellowed. Was the fever eating him from inside?
Winston sidestepped the bird. “What your father say ’bout this? Him no love posse business.”
For a moment Frankie wondered if the dead bird had made Winston think of his father too, but it was too weird to ask. “I didn’t tell him.”
Winston’s eyes went wide. “Him going to be well angry!”
Frankie shrugged. “No joke. But what choice do I have?” He thought of Winston’s question from the other day about why his father didn’t join the posse. “Crazy—the one thing my father most wanted was for me to stay away from Joe.”
“Well, that didn’t work.”
“True. I overheard my mother and him arguing once. She told him to stop going on and on about it—said telling me to stay away from Joe would make me want to hang out with him even more.”
“Your ma was a smart woman.”
Frankie agreed. “Respect.”
He held out his fist, which morphed into their special handshake: fist bumps, snaps, and crossed elbows.
“This won’t be easy, you know?” Winston said, voice now low, worried.
“Guess I won’t be entering any beauty contests for a while.”
“You ugly already, mon.” Winston frowned.
“Not like you.”
Winston grinned. “I’ll be right there, mon. It’s a good posse. Even two Stony Mountain boys are in it now.”
“Really? Why?”
“Joe wanted more people over there. The prison is so full up, him afraid that some of the prisoners might come back to Stony Mountain after they’re released, set up their own posse. Try to move in on his turf.”
Made sense. “How many men does Joe have over there?”
“Four there now, but he has six down in Kingston and five more in Spanish Town.” By the pride in his voice, you’d think Winston himself had recruited all those people. “Yeh, mon. The posse is growing.”
Frankie wondered who they were. He only knew Joe’s posse people on this mountain—good people at heart—well, compared to others, at any rate. At least he’d be a part of something that wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the others in Kingston: robbing and fighting over turf all day. That was what Joe had said.
“Ready?” Winston asked. The clearing was just ahead. Frankie squatted, spying something. A leaf of life? It was growing in the shade of a banana tree. He hadn’t thought that possible. He picked a small branch to bring to his father; Samson liked to make bush tea out of it. “Yeh, mon. Let’s go.”
Winston nudged Frankie back a few feet. “Follow me up there. You’re not a brother yet.”
Frankie swallowed down his irritation. Winston didn’t need to do that, he just needed to feel superior. Huh. Maybe the posse was Winston’s special place, his special opportunity to grow, like the school in Kingston had been for Frankie? So maybe that was why Winston hadn’t told Frankie about being in the posse.
As if reading his mind, Winston said, “You’ll be okay, you always are.” He smacked Frankie’s chest with the back of his hand. “It’ll be good to have you in the posse, mon. Come.”
* * *
Frankie had thought they were headed for the camp, but Winston led him higher—three kilometers above Troy, to a plateau covered with rocks that seemed to have exploded from hell.
At the far end was the posse, everyone wearing their game faces. Frankie spotted Aunt Jenny sitting cross-legged on the hood of the black Toyota, a sawed-off shotgun in her lap, and Joe in the passenger seat on his phone. Buck-Buck sat o
n a boulder, his Glock next to him for company. Blow Up was drying his forehead with a bandanna, careful not to mess up his spiked hair. As Frankie neared, he could make out the nine-millimeter handgun Ramgoat had dangling from his other hand as casually as a shopping bag. Ice Box didn’t carry anything—his body was his weapon: foreboding arms, huge round shoulders, and a chest that seemed inflated with air.
Sweat began to trickle down Frankie’s forehead, but despite the salty burn dripping into his eye, he didn’t move to wipe it. All he wanted was to make it through this without embarrassing himself.
But he couldn’t stop himself from glancing back at the path—the way back to Troy. Winston smacked Frankie’s upper arm. “Can’t go back now. Come, mon. Joe want you to stand by us.”
At first Frankie hadn’t wanted any special treatment just because he was Joe’s nephew… but any consideration was welcome now that this was real.
“Come, mon,” Winston said again. “First meet some of the guys.” He sauntered up to the new recruits.
Marshal, really tall and skinny, a dropout from the local high school, an acquaintance, stepped forward and gave Frankie dap.
The next boy—stout, probably a little younger than Frankie, with a low mini-Afro cut—nodded. “Wha gwan? I’m Baxter.”
“Frankie,” he said, giving him some dap: gripping hands, bumping shoulders.
Greg, he knew a bit better. Teeth jagged, quick-tempered, good fighter. Greg chin-nodded and said, “Respect,” with a fist bump and thumb taps. Greg’s knuckles were covered with scars.
The next kid Frankie knew well, his girth making Winston look like a model.
“Frankie, wha gwan!” Big Pelton’s voice was always at boom level.
Letting go of Big Pelton’s paw, Frankie turned to two short, skinny boys, matching white T-shirts hanging off them like sails: must be the Stony Mountain boys.
The first had deep sunken eyes, and the second had ears so pointy that they reminded Frankie of a bat’s. Their fist bumps were more like taps, something tentative about them, reminding Frankie of the first-year students at his high school, who didn’t know their way around yet. Now he was the freshman. But dang, if these little dudes could make it through initiation, so could he.
He was surprised by how glad they all seemed to see him. Still, this was no time to relax.
A car engine whirred nearby, and Buck-Buck and Ice Box hopped up just as Joe stepped out of the Toyota. All eyes were on the road.
“Must be Bradford coming,” Winston announced knowingly.
“Who?” Frankie side-whispered.
Winston squinted. “You don’t know anything, mon? Bradford. He’s our contact with the PNP. Police sergeant. Him is no joke, mon.”
Sure enough, a tricked-out police jeep with oversize tires zipped into the clearing and skidded to a stop in front of Joe, a trail of dust rising.
A burly officer with a big head, bushy eyebrows, and a reddish face burst out of the jeep. Frankie counted three stripes on his shirt. In one motion, the officer leaped up onto a jagged boulder and planted his hands on his hips.
“All you little youths ova’ deh!”
“Who him calling a youth?” Winston muttered.
Frankie hated that word too. Condescending as hell. He already disliked this Bradford dude.
“You listening, you damn stupid youths? Take out your cell phones and turn them off. No pictures, no videos, nothing! And don’t make me say it again!”
All the newer recruits wrangled flip phones out of their pockets—all identical; must have come from Joe. The older posse members didn’t move.
Satisfied, Bradford hopped back down and joined Joe, the two keeping several feet between each other, not even shaking hands. Bradford took up a wide stance. Joe seemed even more chill than usual—maybe for show?
As the two talked in low voices, Frankie suspected he wasn’t the only one trying to read their lips. Then Joe pointed toward the new recruits—was he marking him? Bradford nodded. Then, like a stalking beast, he made his way toward Frankie. If he was he trying to intimidate, he was doing it well. As he closed in, Frankie stepped left, Winston jumped to the right, and Bradford passed right between them.
What the heck? Frankie searched faces for a clue. Aunt Jenny could have been the hood ornament. Buck-Buck and Ice Box exchanged a few words and a snicker. Joe’s face—expressionless.
Bradford roamed among the recruits, closing in, moving on, closing in again, clearly enjoying the game—a bully, Frankie realized, like Garnett. Frankie felt his shoulders tensing. Guys like that pissed him off, but he knew better than to show it. “Your boss asked me to talk to you.” Bradford snorted. “I took one look at you all and told him times must be hard, because every one of you looks like you still wet your bed.” He started pumping his fist into the air. “Now, who loves Jamaica?”
What? But Frankie echoed the other new recruits with a timid, “Me.”
“I said, who loves Jamaica?” Bradford pumped his fist again.
This time Frankie stayed silent while the others shouted. Sure, he should at least move his lips and fake it, but something felt so wrong about it all—Jamaica—gangs—the police.
“You are about to play a big-time role in supporting the PNP!” Bradford looked over to Joe. Buck-Buck raised his Glock, held it there like his own raised fist, showing his solidarity with Bradford’s words.
Wow—a social studies teacher had once told Frankie’s class about how Jamaica’s political parties had always used gangs to force voters to vote for them. But now it was just on the low. How crazy was it that Frankie was about to be part of this? What the hell was he going to have to do?
Bradford was yammering on. “The JLP will not hesitate to use force. And they want to take control of Jamaica. Of you.” He brushed past Frankie. “I understand some of their gunmen paid a nasty little visit to this district last week. Well, it’s time to show them you won’t be intimidated. Elections will be here in three weeks. Until then, you must do what’s necessary.” Bradford struck a freaking superhero pose. “Sometimes… you have to kill to stop the killing.”
Frankie dug his teeth into his lips. His dad. Mr. Brown. Everyone else who had been hurt or killed at Joe’s party. Frankie didn’t like Bradford, but some of what he said made sense. He also knew too well that a policeman in bed with the JLP would be making the same kind of speech to another gang. His brain was in overdrive. It was clear to him now that the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party were the same, both responsible for a lot of deaths. Their battle was responsible for putting his father in the hospital, the tubes, needing a treatment—shit, that bag of brown piss. Two political parties, but what numbers in damage? In school, kids had talked about people they’d known who’d gotten shot, even killed, because of election-time politics. Frankie eyeballed Bradford, fury rising. Bradford embodied the pain, embodied the problem, might as well have pulled the trigger that sent the bullet flying into his father.
Now Bradford was telling them that they’d get their assignments from Joe. “Carry them out or you’ll hear from me.” He turned on his heel, then paused and looked directly at Frankie, somehow sensing Frankie’s glare.
With that one look, Frankie felt unmasked. The sergeant’s nostrils flared, as if he could smell Frankie’s hate for him. But then he kept walking, releasing Frankie like some hypnotist snapping his fingers. He got into the jeep, revved the engine. But instead of heading back down the mountain, the jeep spun around—directly toward Frankie! Holy shit! Greg and Baxter jumped back, out of the way, as did Frankie.
At the last second, Bradford hit the brakes. He narrowed his eyes at Frankie. What was the dude’s issue? Frankie’s eyes went wide. Mounted on the dash between the driver’s seat and the shotgun seat were a laptop and other equipment. Surveillance equipment. Did Joe know about this? Was Bradford using it on the posse? The jeep engine revved once more, and then Bradford drove away. Thank God.
But Frankie’s relief was short-lived,
because from across the clearing, Aunt Jenny was nodding at him, then started to clap her hands like she was trying to get this party started.
Joe spat out the ice-cream stick he’d been gnawing and beckoned Ice Box and Buck-Buck over as Winston sidled up to Frankie. “You ready?” Frankie was so spooked by Bradford that he’d almost forgotten why he was actually here. “Wake up, mon! Your time is coming.” Winston almost sounded… eager? “Listen. You can cover up, but remember, don’t throw no punch. If you do, you’ll get double.”
Marshal leaned in. “Buck-Buck is fierce. Speed and Cricket not so bad. You will be lucky if is them you get.” He shrugged. “But it might even be Joe.”
“No, mon. The big man don’t business with initiation,” Winston threw out, cocky now. “Is Ice Box you have to look out for. His punch is like a donkey kick. He’s well strong.”
Frankie could barely nod.
Winston’s eyes were all lit up. He was enjoying this, the bastard. “Listen, no matter what, you have to stand brave, hear me?”
What the hell did that mean? How brave can you be when you know you’re going to get a beatdown and not be able to do anything about it? It was like Frankie’s father saying no crying at his mother’s funeral.
“You’ll get maybe three minutes tops—punched, kicked, slapped, you know. Just hold on.”
Winston already savored this world, Frankie could tell. Frankie couldn’t remember his friend ever seeming so genuinely confident before. He looked anxiously across the clearing.
Joe gestured for Frankie to come forward, tilting his head as if seeing his nephew for the first time. “It take heart to do this for your father’s sake. Respect due. All the same, me can’t be nice about this. You overstand?”
Yeah, he understood all right. He understood that Joe totally didn’t get that this wasn’t what Frankie was about. His uncle knew that. Should care about that. But he didn’t get it, and now the deed was done. The money paid. Time to pay the piper. So, “Yes, Uncle,” was how he dutifully answered. “I’m ready.”
