Leaving him standing there, Trey ran to the back of the house from where the noise had come. Tasha’s still body was sprawled on the ground by the kitchen door. Danny was standing in the doorway, dazed, a .38 in his hand. Trey rushed to his side and grabbed the gun.
“She was picking the lock, Trey. She was coming to tief the weed . . .”
“Boy, you mad or what? What we going to do now? Eh?” He turned to his dead ex-girlfriend. Knowing she had probably been trying to steal the ganja was no consolation. He stooped and stroked her silky, dark cheek. It was still warm, unblemished, and as soft as it had been in life.
Danny sprang to action. “Boy, we don’t have no time for that. We have to move she.”
Trey nodded. At least he had some garbage bags at hand.
When Garvin got home he was trembling and pale. Antonio found him there, still jittery and sickly yellow, four days later. Tasha was gone, and so were two kilograms of product. Antonio wanted an explanation and he wanted one quickly.
“Is-is-is Trey!” Garvin stammered, breath cut short by the fingers tightening around his throat. “He trust the weed and then tell me he don’t have the money.” Antonio relaxed his grip. Trust the weed? Why would Trey want two kilos of weed on credit? Antonio glared at his brother, but Garvin just gave an anxious smile.
They pulled up at Trey’s gate in Antonio’s Lexus SUV, a shiny black monster that Antonio probably loved more than he did his whiny, dishonest little brother. It was nearly 1 in the morning.
“Trey!” Garvin bawled at the top of his lungs. “Trey!” There was no answer. Antonio leaped from the van and strode up to the house. Kicking in the front door, he entered. There were no signs of life or weed, except for endless ashtrays overflowing with cigarette and spliff butts.
Garvin murmured weakly, “Like they gone.”
Antonio, a stronger, larger version of Garvin, was not amused. He pulled his Magnum Desert Eagle from his waistband and put it to his brother’s temple. “You go find them, right? And find my weed. If I only find out you had anything to do with this—”
“But how you go say that, Antonio?” Garvin whined.
“You like to tief too damn much. You feel I don’t know you?” Antonio flicked off the gun’s safety and rubbed the chrome muzzle against Garvin’s cheek. “If I only find out,” he repeated. Then he uncocked the gun and stuck it back into his waistband. He turned to look at the contents of the house again. It was on the dresser in Trey’s bedroom that he found what he was looking for—a block of board wax wrapped in a plastic bag labeled, Zora’s Sweetbread and Cakes, Toco Road, Sans Souci. He grinned. There was no humor in the smile.
Once again, Trey was surrounded by black garbage bags. This time they were empty. Danny, sprawled in a beanbag next to the bed, was nearly unconscious. Trey was feeling no pain himself. It was the last of the weed, a nearly impossible amount to smoke out in three days, but with dedication and a lot of help from their friends, mothers, and Jimmy, they had done it. The evidence was up in smoke. Mostly, anyway. Aunty Zora had seen her way to baking a most excellent batch of sweetbread with an unusually strong herbal kick.
Trey stumbled to his feet and zigzagged to the bathroom. As he let a stream of urine hiss urgently into the toilet bowl, he vaguely heard a car pull up outside in the silence of the Sans Souci night. Moving to the window, he saw the moonlight bouncing off the glossy surface of a familiar black Lexus. “Shit,” he muttered. Danny was bleary-eyed when Trey tried to shake him awake. “Danny, boy, get up. Garvin and he brother come looking for we.”
This was instantly sobering. Danny shook his head to clear it. “What the hell we go do?” he asked in a whisper.
Trey was down on his hands and knees, avoiding the windows. “Well, first thing is to get to ras out of here.”
They slipped silently out the back door as Garvin and Antonio walked through the front gate. The three dogs, rushing at the strangers, kept them occupied, and at first they didn’t see the two figures running down the road. It was Garvin, shaking Sarah off his left ankle, who spotted them.
“Look them running!” Antonio and Garvin gave chase into the bush. But the dark night, even lit by a full moon, confounded them. They were soon lost. There was a rustling to their right. Garvin, who had never been in a forest before, whimpered, “Antonio, what was that?”
Antonio sucked his teeth and kicked at the undergrowth. “What you get me in here, Garvin? You’s a real clown, boy. I don’t know why I does trust you with anything.” They kept walking for about an hour, drifting further and further into the bush. Then they spotted it—a sloped clearing planted with lush marijuana trees higher than their heads. Garvin was the first to rush in.
“So, is here he get it!” he exclaimed. In the quiet forest, his voice was a cannon.
“What you talking about?” Antonio asked, fingering a leaf with admiration. Even in the dark he recognized it was good weed.
“Trey. This is where he get the—”
Too late, he realized his mistake. But Antonio already had the gun to his head.
“I thought you say he tief the weed from we.”
Garvin gave a sickly smile. “Well . . .”
“I tell you already, I go kill you for tiefing from me.”
“But Antonio, listen, this is the weed, man! I smoke it myself!”
Neither of them heard the footsteps behind them. A pair of gunshots shattered the quiet of the night. Antonio never had time to turn and fire a single bullet.
The tall, bald-headed man with the smoking gun spat on the two bodies before turning on his heel, saying, “Come back to tief my weed again, you bitches. Not one fart of that.”
In the fisherman’s hut on the beach, Trey and Danny shivered for a few hours until dawn before creeping back to the house. Garvin and Antonio never came back for the Lexus, so eventually it replaced the battered Land Rover as Zora’s delivery van. And in Zora’s backyard, a new bed of ixora bloomed unusually well that year.
THE RAPE
BY KEVIN BALDEOSINGH
Couva
When she first saw the jogger, Hemrajie was sitting on the porch as she did most evenings. She did not notice him until he had run past the house. He wore a white strap jersey, maroon shorts, and his back looked very straight and very strong.
“Who is that?” she asked Feroza, who was sitting with her on the porch as she did most evenings. Feroza looked up from her newspaper. The man was already past the last house of the village, running steadily down the road which snaked through the cane fields. The sun’s rays reflected off Feroza’s spectacles, dazzling Hemrajie, who blinked and turned her head.
“Dunno,” said Feroza. “I never see him before.”
“Me neither.”
They watched the man run around the corner and disappear behind the rippling cane stalks. The sun was glaring but low, and the evening darkness would come suddenly. Hemrajie took a sip from her glass of iced tea. Feroza resumed reading the newspaper. She had already finished the second of the three cigarettes she allowed herself. A half-filled cup of coffee sat on the iron-fretted center table next to a clay pot with African violets. Feroza drank so slowly that her coffee always got cold before she finished, and she would never let Hemrajie reheat it in the microwave. The two women looked very different. Hemrajie was fat and dark-skinned, Feroza fair and very thin. Hemrajie had round features—round eyes, round nose, a pursed mouth. Feroza had small sharp eyes, a hooked nose, and prominent front teeth. She had married at twenty-one and divorced at twenty-five. Her husband had been an alcoholic. Hemrajie had never married, had never even had a boyfriend. And when Feroza told her stories about her married life, Hemrajie was glad to have avoided the beatings and the bad sex.
Feroza said, “A next woman get kidnap. From Couva.”
“They getting closer,” Hemrajie said. Couva was a town seven miles from the village.
Feroza continued reading the article. “She thirty-four. Has a restaurant. Husband is a pilot.”
&nbs
p; “Indian?”
“You have to ask?”
“I hear the last one leave the country already.”
“I don’t blame she. Look at what she went through.”
“Was four men, ent?”
“Yes. And two was Rastas.”
“Poor woman.”
“I hope they find this one quick.”
Hemrajie shook her head. “They will find she after the ransom pay. It always have police behind these things. Most of them in the police force black too.”
“True,” said Feroza. She took up her third and last cigarette, flicked her lighter, and turned to the letters page.
Hemrajie looked down from the porch at the village. She could see as far as the corner, where the village’s main rum shop stood. On most evenings, the men would gather there to drink and play pool. The concrete area in front of the bar had wooden stools and three round wooden tables, each with a thick center leg and thatched umbrella over it. Hemrajie could see the usual set of men at the rum shop. There were some who only went to drink on a Friday, and on weekends there would be unfamiliar faces, especially if Feroza’s family was having a special promotion. And there were those men who were at the bar most days. Hemrajie knew all of them, although she spoke to none of them save to say hello and knew some of the younger ones only by face. Jit was a truck driver who came to the bar mainly to escape his nagging wife. They had three children, and it was said that the third wasn’t Jit’s. Ricky, who was twenty-seven years old, had an irregular income cutting people’s lawns and spent most of it in the bar. He lived with his parents in a household of grandmother, two uncles and their wives, and eleven other children in a structure which had been extended so often that it looked like a Lego-block building. Sonny was fifty-three, a primary school teacher, and had been accused some months ago of molesting a seven-year-old girl. Saleem, who was thirty and single and a clerk in a hardware store, was there for two weeks out of every month. For the other two weeks, he would be at Patricia’s house in Teemal Trace, since her husband worked offshore on an oil rig every fortnight. And Sam, Tally, Vishnu, and George just liked drinking beer and talking.
Hemrajie knew all this even though she had lived in the house by herself for the past three years, ever since her mother had died. Some information she got from Feroza, some from the village women who would pass every so often to check on her. Even though she did not socialize in the village and had no husband, Hemrajie was respected because she was respectable. She was educated, went to temple twice a week, and had enough money so she didn’t need to work for a living. But she had only one true friend.
“That man coming back,” Hemrajie said to Feroza.
Feroza closed the newspaper and looked up. The sun was an orange ball on the horizon now, and the air had become cool. The man was running on the other side of the road, so he faced the few cars speeding along the smooth black tarmac. His pace had slowed, and as he came closer Feroza could see the sweat on his forehead and upper arms. His legs, Hemrajie noticed, were well-muscled. He did not look up at the two women as he passed the house.
“Like he training for the marathon,” Hemrajie giggled.
“Nah,” replied Feroza. “He breathing too hard.” They watched as he reached the bar. He did not look at the men there or nod to anyone. He rounded the curve of the road and they could no longer see him.
“He must be from Bombay Number Two,” Hemrajie said, settling back in her iron chair. She had replaced the bamboo furniture after her mother died. The metal was painted white and had removable lilac-and-blue striped cushions.
“Maybe,” Feroza said. “I don’t feel he coming from far.” Bombay Number Two was the next village two miles up the road.
“Because he breathing hard?”
“He didn’t look like a marathon runner.”
“Maybe he in training.”
Feroza shrugged, looking down at her newspaper. Hemrajie took up her glass of tea. The ice had melted, and she opened the ice bucket and put some more cubes into her tall glass.
When Feroza finished her cigarette, she got up and folded her newspaper under her arm. “I gone.”
“See you,” Hemrajie said.
Feroza usually left around 6, before it got dark. She lived in the house above the bar. The bar was owned and run by her family. She had come back there to live after she left her husband. But Feroza had nothing to do with the business. She was a nurse in the public hospital, and she always had a story about how demanding patients were and how most of their ailments were their own fault. Whenever Feroza had the 8-to-4 day shift, she would walk up to Hemrajie’s house in the evening. Hemrajie would make iced tea for herself, and Feroza would read the newspaper and smoke her cigarettes. On Fridays, Feroza would also have a glass of white wine. She always kept a bottle in Hemrajie’s refrigerator. Hemrajie didn’t mind, although she herself drank no alcohol. It was only at Christmas time that she would have one glass.
After Feroza left, Hemrajie went inside and turned on the TV to wait for The Bold and the Beautiful which started at 6:30. This gave her time to clear the center table and wash the dishes. Apart from the soap operas, Hemrajie passed the time reading best sellers and mystery novels. Even though her mother had died three years ago, Hemrajie was still not accustomed to having so much time on her hands. After the stroke, her mother had been unable to exert herself, and Hemrajie had taken care of her for fifteen years. This was the primary reason she was not married, with children, like her three sisters. Since their mother died, her sisters had stopped visiting and called only occasionally. They were vexed that Hemrajie got all the Lotto money that their father had won two decades ago which had allowed him to quit his job as a taxi driver and drink himself to death within five years. And Hemrajie had never limed with boys. Even when she went to university, she had done her work and come home. She could have gotten a boyfriend—other girls on campus who were even fatter and darker than she had done so. But Hemrajie had always been a good girl, and if her father had not died, he could have arranged for her to meet someone. But he had, so she spent fifteen years caring for her mother and her retarded younger brother who was now in a government hospital because none of the sisters wanted him and because a private nursing home cost too much money. Hemrajie always thought the beatings her father had given her mother were why her younger brother had come out so.
Now Hemrajie lived quietly, taking care of the house, cooking every day, drawing money from the bank every month, worshipping God twice a week, and sitting on her porch each evening.
Feroza did not come the next evening. She was working the night shift for the next three days. So Hemrajie sat alone on the porch with her iced tea, enjoying the breeze, gazing out at the rippling green blades of the sugar cane. She did not notice the jogger coming up, and saw him only when he passed the house. His back still looked very straight and very strong. He was wearing dark-blue shorts this time and a purple jersey. She didn’t know what he looked like—when he had passed back the day before, her gaze had been caught by his legs. Unlike many other Indian men, he did not have thin calves. The outside crease of his thigh muscles was deep and the inner balls just above the knees were very developed. He disappeared around the corner in the distance, and a taska truck, its iron trailer looking like a cell for some huge beast, appeared from the opposite direction, turning onto the dirt track just before the village. Harvest time was starting, and the trucks would be running for the next six weeks. When the fields were cleared, Hemrajie could see all the way to the factory where the canes were processed into sugar and molasses. Even with the cane arrows tall and uncut, smoke rose fitfully from the factory’s blackened chimney.
The jogger reappeared within ten minutes, which meant he had not run very far. Hemrajie thought that he had probably run up to the first side track of the road where the cane cutters walked toward the massive scales to weigh their bundles, then turned back. He was moving at a slower pace now, but Hemrajie thought he still looked fit enough to be a marat
hon runner. As he came closer, she looked at his face. He was not handsome, but he had a square chin. He passed the house and glanced up, and before she turned her head, Hemrajie thought she saw him raise an eyebrow in acknowledgment. He seemed to be in his late thirties but could have been older, and he was very brown but not as dark-skinned as she. He ran down the road, again ignoring the men who were drinking outside the bar.
At twenty-five past six, Hemrajie went inside to watch The Bold and the Beautiful. Afterwards, she made some sada roti and tomato choka for dinner while she listened to the seven o’clock news. The kidnapped woman was still missing, but the family had gotten a ransom demand. With the TV on, Hemrajie ate while she read three chapters of a Patricia Cornwell novel. She had a large collection of murder mysteries but found the Cornwell pathologist the most believable detective of all. After she washed the dishes, Hemrajie watched a drama on Lifetime about a woman who discovers that her perfect husband is a psychotic killer.
At ten o’clock, she brushed her teeth, showered, and creamed her skin. When she went to bed, she took out a dildo from the bedside table drawer. Feroza had given it to her ten years ago, for her thirtieth birthday. “Is a cobweb cleaner,” Feroza had said, tipsy from the wine she had drunk that evening. The two of them had gone to a restaurant for the occasion. Hemrajie had been shocked, but treated the gift as a joke, as had Feroza. But she had kept it and used it every other week or so. She would have used it more often but felt guilty. Her orgasms were much stronger with the object than with just her fingers, and she usually had two or three before she stopped. Then she would put it away, say her prayers, and lay in the darkness waiting for sleep to come. It was very quiet this night, as always, though Hemrajie thought she could hear the grinding of the factory over the way. It was only at that hour that she felt the emptiness of the house. She had thought of getting a pet, but she did not like dogs or cats. There were a few chickens in the coops downstairs which were for eating. She had plants in the front yard, though, and she reminded herself that she had to pay more attention to them now that the dry season was here.
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