“Why you do something like that, My Lord?”
“You know why.”
“You shouldn’t do that, My Lord.”
“I had to …”
“You shouldn’t do that,” she say again. “No, you really shouldn’t do that.”
After that she never say a whole lot, so I promise her that she will understand and we will be all right. It wasn’t the time to tell her how Deloris leave and how I already work out when she and the girl were going to move in. That would look too callous—like Deloris was disposable or something. I am not that kinda man at all. Now, if Deloris had started some foolishness, I would have to tell the woman, but Deloris, God bless her, deal with this thing with dignity, and the few times when I see her, is not vexation I see in her, but pity, a terrible kinda pity for me that was a new kinda punishment.
Be that as it may, at the time, I was in a zone. Love, man. Love. I hang up and start make plans.
Well, how did I find the man? Come on, that man wasn’t difficult to find. Cynthia had done told me that he had family in St. Elizabeth. So all I had to do was to get to Santa Cruz, where she said his people was from, and the rest was easy.
I had some old police friends in the area. And when you’re doing certain kinds of things you have to figure in the police. So I called my good squaddy One Drop one night and ask him to meet me at five the next morning in Santa. One Drop’s name is really Wilson, but he’s the kinda police that each time he has to draw his Glock, a man is going to fall.
So Drop met me outside a patty shop, in plainclothes as usual. Everything was closed. The place was still dark. But is country, so one or two goat and cow was loitering. We talked in the parking lot. Turns out he was looking for the husband too. It was one of the first things he said when the subject came up.
Some complaints had been coming in from prostitutes in Black River saying there was this man who was offering triple money for them to work without condom. Then when he was finished with them now, the man would just throw the thousand dollar on them belly and tell them to go get test for AIDS.
According to Drop, at least three of them come to him direct and tell him this personally. And when I say personally, just read between the lines and come to your own conclusion about what kinda relationship Drop as a police might be having with the prostitute them.
When Drop telling me about what the girls tell him, is like him start to laugh. When I ask him what was going on, him say that the idiot didn’t know that most of the woman doing their business in Black River learn how to use female condom, so even though he thought him was getting a bareback ride, the woman them was well saddled.
Then Drop face change. Him look off toward the square, then down at him loafers, then look at me again.
Two of the younger girls, well, they was careless Ethiopians, and they never had the protection, and him blood really boil when they came to him.
Officially, if one of the girls test positive, the man was going get a murder charge. But between the two of us, Drop knew why the supe had put him on the case. Before that man dead him was going know what it was like to live without a cock or balls while rotting in prison for life.
So I laugh and told him how the man’s wife hire me to find him because she was concerned about his health. I tell Drop that the way things look, maybe somebody was going to done the man before I could help him.
“Why you want to help a piece a shit like that?” Drop say.
“I work for pay. Woman hire me to save the man. So can’t be helped.”
And this is how you get police involve.
“Well, I going to find him before you, Brown,” Drop said.
I laughed.
So who was going find him first? My skills is something that Drop respect. Five thousand Jamaican and a Chinese dinner. Wasn’t no big bet.
The thing is, I knew I’d won already, because I knew where the fucker was, even how he was lying down, but Drop didn’t need to know that.
You see, the day I went down to meet with One Drop was not the first time I’d gone down. I’d gone down there the day before, not to Santa Cruz up in the hills there, but way down south, even more south than Black River, down in a place name Treasure Beach. Down there is what you call real country. It don’t even have a town. Is just red niggers, blue sea, and brown grass. The perfect place to get lost.
From what I had gathered through my intelligence, there was a routine to his days. Him would go out with the fishermen most mornings then spend the afternoons smoking weed on the beach till night. Then when night come now, him would catch a taxi down to Black River or even go as far as Montego Bay to do his work.
I ask a big-belly man with the smoothest skin you could ever see and some wild stick-up sea-salt rusty locks—fellow they call Boops, who used to be a serious fisherman but decide to use his boat for sightseeing for tourist and excursion up Black River from the sea—if he knew where the man was. He said the man was at the rocks this morning, but catch a ride with one of the tourist excursion up river and soon come back.
Well, I waited and when the boat come back the man was not in it, but the captain of the boat told me that he left the man by the shrimp dock a few miles up river. He said that the man sometimes just stay up there for the night because he had a woman there.
So I ask Boops to give me a run up the river, and I promise to pay for gas and a little something.
We move out as the sun dropping down behind the sea. We head out south like we going to Venezuela, then turn west and follow the coast until we come to the sweet-and-salt coolness of the river mouth. Boops push the boat toward the river mouth past where one of those flat-bottom tourist boat and a few fishing boat was dock.
A light mist take over the river when we motor past the white hanging roots of the mangrove that look like some gray dreadlocks. Long shadow and orange light everywhere you look. The ibises already crowd out the riverbank for the night.
In a bend in the river, I could make out a jetty, a rough-up cement-floor gazebo, and a narrow brick bungalow with about three little storefronts where they cook and serve the shrimps. Most days about five or six people cook and sell shrimp and bake crab from there. Only a fat woman cleaning up the place for the night was left.
And there he was—the man. Sitting under a almond tree smoking a cigarette and eating shrimp from some foil. Boops guide the boat against the jetty, and both of us climb up onto the concrete landing, and while I sat down on one of the wooden bench, Boops tie up the boat and walk behind the shop to piss.
I was watching the man who barely look around when we slide in. He was short. Red-skinned. The most ordinary, pimpleface man you would ever see. His hair was low-low on his head, and you could see the balding start already. He wasn’t a fit man or anything. He was not the kinda man I did expect to see.
Boops walk around from the side and come sit beside me. The man watch Boops moving past like he really in a different world. It is then that he look at me like he want to ask what I was doing in his kingdom, and right away I know why my spirit never take to this man. Disdain. Like the man have disdain for everything around him. This one is not pride, self-assurance—them is good things. This one is disdain, like him is better than everybody else. I don’t like those kinda people. And worse, when you red and disdainful, you have no basis but that you might a be a lucky sperm that make a move in a certain time in history. Nothing that you have done.
“Mr. Alvaranga?”
“Who asking?” He spit out a shrimp shell in his hand and throw it on the ground. “I say, who asking?”
“No problem, sir. You have answered my question.”
As I start to walk back to the boat, hear him, “Who the rass is you, anyway?”
I turn my head sideways to talk behind me. “Nobody, bossman. Not a damn soul. You know what? Call me Duppy.”
Boops laugh out.
“Hey, Boops, who the rass is this man? Why you bring him out here for?”
“Take it easy, Alva. Him s
ay him have a message from your wife.” Boops look at me as if to say I must do what I said I was doing.
“She just want to know you living and healthy,” I explained.
“Fuck the bitch!” he shouted. “Boops, don’t do that again or I will fuck you up myself.”
Boops laugh and start up the boat.
While we were going back down river toward the sea, Boops tell me that sometimes Alvaranga sleep in one of the shacks on the landing.
So, when I’d called One Drop to meet me in Santa Cruz, I was calling from Treasure Beach. Not Kingston. As I said, I already knew where the man was before I made the bet, even how he was lying down.
I called Cynthia with the news two days later. I needed time to clear my head. I was in Kingston, driving out to the airport to meet a rep for an airline that wanted to know when a rival was going to change its fares. The harbor was gray and choppy on my right and the hills dusty on the far side of it and the city, spreading and rising up and up killing itself one person at a time every two or so hours.
I didn’t tell her anything about anything when she picked up. Just small talk. I wanted to give her the news in person, more like in her person. I wanted to be saying, I did it for you, baby. I did it for you. Is you me done the fucker for, as she made me come.
One Drop call me as I was waiting for my contact in a far end of the parking lot. Hear him: “You owe me five thousand and a lo mein.”
“For what?”
Him say, “How you mean?”
I turn down the radio. “So you arrest him?”
“Arrest him?”
“Yeah. You say you find him.”
“The man dead, My Lord. Dead. One shot in the head.”
“You too rass lie. So what you think, the AIDS fly up in him head or him conscience bite him and him commit suicide?”
“It don’t look so—”
“So is you supposed to find that out or them bringing in a sense man from town?”
“Fuck you. Me know more than most of them little guys who call themself investigator. All them do is go on a little three-month course to England and come back like them is anything. Me learn more than them from CSI to bloodclaat.”
And we laugh for bout two minute.
“So you feel is kill himself?”
“Yeah man. A man can’t do that kinda fuckery and live with himself.”
“So you can’t get my money then. I catch you. You bugger you.”
“You see how you stay?”
“Just cool, man. Your dinner safe with your money.”
“Me no bet for lose, you know, Brownie.” One Drop is a man like to boast sometimes. “Me no bet for lose.”
“So how you find him?”
“One of my sources. You know how that go. Find him down by the shrimp place on Black River, few miles up from the coast. The body lay out on the ground like it was in a coffin, tidy, with a pillow under the head.”
I went over the night in my mind: I came back by land. Drove along the coast road then up into some hills then across some little dirt roads then walked down a track to the back of the jetty.
“So what about the next of kin and all that?” I asked, squeezing the button of the hand brake. “You wrap up in that too?”
“As a matter of fact, that is why I called you. Since you know her and she hire you, I thought you might want to tell her for me. Ease things a little. I can arrange for someone to call her later, but you going to see her, yes?”
“Yeah, I can tell her. But make sure the station call. Just to make it official.”
I rang Cynthia with the news right after me and One Drop hung up. She sounded afraid—nervous. I asked her what happen, baby, and she said some policeman came by there and asked her about her husband. I asked her what she told him. She said she was afraid. I asked her where she was.
I could hear she was in her car so I tell her don’t go home. Meet me. She said her daughter was at home so she had to go there. I asked if the child was there too when the police come, and she said yes, that the little girl was traumatized by all the guns.
How much of them was there? Did she remember any of the names? Was there a Wilson? She asked me where I was. I said out by the airport. I asked her if the police told her anything or if they just asked questions. She said just questions. When I asked for more information, she said we had to talk off the air, so I should come and meet her at home and drive fast-fast.
I called the airline rep and lied.
As I headed to Portmore, I kept thinking of how I felt when I went back to the jetty, the way the man sighed when he got the shot, and how it felt so indecent to leave him there like a cement bag, and how his body was still warm through the gloves when I moved his legs and arms and put the pillow under his shattered head in an attempt to fix him up.
My body was trembling as I was driving. By the time I got to the power station out by Rockfort I had to stop the car on the roadside.
I still remember the smell and taste of that vomit. A lump of it got stuck to the wall of my throat. I had to keep swallowing and swallowing to get it down.
Killing people is not a easy thing. I know I might be repeating myself. Is not a easy thing, sir. Who to tell? Maybe some people do it and sleep good at night. But not me. Killing has marked me for life.
Did I know I’d feel this when I went back to the jetty? I did. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, and when you finish doing it you fully consider the price. Otherwise you won’t get it done.
I reached Portmore at around four o’clock, just when the traffic from Kingston start to get thick. It is strange how you can know when something wrong just by looking at a place. Or maybe this is something you tell yourself to feel wise when you looking back at a moment when you were clearly a fool.
There wasn’t anybody in the place. I knew this right away. But it took maybe half a second to accept say Cynthia and her daughter never just gone down the road to the shop. The place vacate. The curtain them was gone. I knock on the grill with a stone.
Then I saw a envelope pushed between the bars. It had my name on it, and I couldn’t miss her handwriting—just like a little child.
I opened it quick-quick. One sheet of paper. The note was short and simple:
Thank you, My Lord. I knew you would do this for us. I knew it when I asked you to help me, I knew it when you hold my body that you would do anything for me. So I don’t have to ask. I just have to say thank you. I am only telling you that we left Jamaica and we’re not coming back, so you know we are fine. Thank you for everything. Take care.
Sincerely,
Cynthia
p.s. Your finder’s fee is at Western Union.
Strange, to me at least, I didn’t think of being abandoned or that I’d messed up my life. What came to me was the first time I’d seen Cynthia in my office. When she was standing just inside the door and she noticed me looking at her, she gave me a soft tired smile, and I could see the full white perfection of her teeth, and a deep dimple in her right cheek.
That strong body. Those legs—long and firm and black and shine with lotion. The dress hem up above her knee. Her shoe heel was scrape down to almost nothing on one side though, and the perm in her hair was soon going gone.
A lot of feelings come with this memory—some of it bitterbitter, some of it regretful, but the feeling that always wash over me, despite everything else, is a sweetness. It is the kinda sweetness you keep in your pocket, and when things start to get bad, you pull it out like a kerchief, and take a deep breath from it, and it send you back to a place where, just for a little moment, the world could never be sweeter. Nobody can’t take that from me, that is the truth.
My Lord …
THE WHITE GYAL WITH THE CAMERA
BY KEI MILLER
August Town
It was when the papers come out with the gyal’s picture print big and broad on the front page that August Town people did find out her rightful name. Marilyn Fairweather. It sounded right.
It sounded like a white woman’s name. But for the six days she had been in August Town we had just called her “the white gyal with the camera.” Or “the white gyal” for short.
She get the name because whatever Soft-Paw say we take it as gospel, and is Soft-Paw did send out word that if anybody see “the white gyal with the camera” we was not to trouble her; we was to leave her alone. But is like the white gyal with the camera never know or understand this—that she was living on grace—that if Soft-Paw never send out such a word she woulda dead from day one.
You had to give it to the white gyal though—is like she never have a coward bone in her body. She take a plane to Jamaica and in my books that alone count as bravery. Pretty blond girl on her own in the heart of Jamdown? Who ever hear of such a thing? But this white gyal take it further. Instead of staying at one of them hotels in New Kingston where she could order rum and Coke all day and listen to jazz in the gardens, or in a nice little apartment in Barbican or Liguanea, she did decide to rent a room right here in August Town.
It was one of them little rooms with its own kitchen and everything. Miss Tina usually rent it out to university students, for UWI was just a ten-minute walk up the road. But it was July so the room was empty.
The white gyal did knock on Miss Tina gate after midnight, which of course did upset Miss Tina who was fast asleep, but she confess that she was glad for the chance to rent out the room, even for just a week, and seeing that the gyal was white, Miss Tina make sure to charge what she would usually charge for the whole month. You know how these things go. Still, Miss Tina tell the white gyal that August Town wasn’t the safest place, but it come in like the white gyal with the camera wasn’t interested in safety.
When Miss Tina fall back asleep, the white gyal take up her camera and walk straight into the baddest part of town. Imagine that—the time of night when we all have the doors close tight; the time of night when who don’t come in yet not coming in at all; the time of night when we make sure to fall asleep on a low-low mattress because nobody want to sleep so high that a stray bullet could come inside and find us; the time of night when the only people walking on the street was gunman or duppy—is that same time when the white gyal with the camera choose to go back out. They say a fool will walk where angels fear to trod, and the white gyal with the camera was such a fool as that.
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