We emerged from beneath the hood and crawled across the dashboard, leaving tiny footprints and the trails of dragging antennae in a thin layer of ash. Professor Cleave opened one eye to regard us, anxious students nearly indistinguishable from the dark spots clouding his vision.
“Desmond was the last one who should have suffered,” he finally said. “He’ll never bother you with his cigarettes again.”
We drew our wings inward and buried our antennae in ash. The only feeling more powerful than our shame was our fear that Professor Cleave had become unmoored by grief.
“As it turns out, the meek might not inherit the Earth. If they do, they’ll inherit its shell. You, my friends, might inherit this car, but it’s in very sorry condition.”
At a sharp rap on the window, we scattered into the alleys between seats and doors.
“She’s not interested in fumigation today. There’s been too much death already.”
As he lifted a finger, Cora yanked open the door and dragged him from the cab, cursing for the first time in her life. He staggered into the house with her arm around his waist and took tiny sips of water under her watchful eye. When he regained his bearings, he removed a roll of bills from the biscuit tin on the mantle.
“We have so little,” he said.
“We have enough to get through, here and in the bank.”
“If there’s a bank left.” He measured the roll between his fingers and placed the bills back in the tin. “She’ll want to send us money.”
“We have always said no, and we will say no again,” Cora said.
He turned to a faded photograph of his parents hanging on the wall. It had assumed the appearance of an antique, but his father had barely changed, he thought, since posing for the picture, even if he’d grown stooped and a touch cynical. He had the disturbing sense that he’d surpassed his father in years over the course of a single night. Exhausted, he went into Cora’s room and slipped into unconsciousness.
He didn’t snore. He didn’t move at all, and we feared he’d surrendered to despair. We hadn’t been prepared for talk of inheriting the cab, and we struggled to sleep beneath the bed, only to suffer visions of picking stuffing from the car’s decaying vinyl seats until only a rusted frame and dead radio remained. We were hardly prepared, ourselves, for the Americans’ arrival.
They reached Stokes Hill as the sun began to set. Dave surveyed his surroundings with the gaze of an amnesiac, as if trying to remember something he’d left somewhere. Helen stopped at each rise in the road to catch her breath and lowered her eyes each time they passed a shuttered house. She might have thought Stokes Hill uninhabited, if not for the woman crouched beside a car engine in the middle of a patchy yard. As they neared, the woman rose to her full height and narrowed her eyes at Dave’s shirt.
“‘Surrender the Booty.’” She tossed a wrench to the ground and considered the bags straining Helen’s fingers.
“We’re looking for someone named Wynston,” Helen said. “He told us he’s lived in Stokes Hill his whole life.”
“He’s dead?”
Helen stiffened. “No, he isn’t.”
“Then he hasn’t lived here his whole life. Still has some life to live.”
Helen cleared her throat. “He works at the Ambassador Hotel.”
“No one works at the Ambassador. That hotel burned.”
“Is there a man named Wynston here, who worked at the hotel that burned down?”
“Just up the road. Someone usually out front. The elder Cleave, if you’re lucky.” The woman turned back to the engine. “Don’t know what business he has with dumb white folks now.”
Morris’s daughter often raised the tips of our antennae with her hard speech. To be fair, the Americans were a miserable sight, trudging up the hill with soot clinging to their legs and exhaustion clouding their vision. If not for Topsy, sitting on the stoop and massaging his knees, they might have missed the house. Helen saw the taxi’s cracked windows and thought to turn away, but Topsy had already risen to his feet.
“You must be lost.” He squinted at Dave’s shirt. “But then, everyone’s lost these days.”
“We’re looking for Wynston. We rode in his cab a few days ago.” Helen glanced at the taxi. “Is he all right?”
Topsy ran his fingers through his sparse hair. “Despite everyone’s efforts.”
She drew her beach cover close. “He doesn’t know we’re coming.”
“That’s one thing he doesn’t know.”
“We came off the ship,” she said. “But we’re not sick.”
Topsy studied Dave’s face and opened the gate. “But you’re not well.” Near the house, he hesitated. “He’s not at his best.”
As he spoke, the front door opened, and we scattered from the stoop.
“What is this noise? He’s sleeping.” Cora considered St. Anne’s stained flag and a wan face that recalled the worst of all years. “Why are these people here?” she said, clutching the small cross hanging around her neck.
Professor Cleave appeared beside her, rubbing his eyes. When he saw Helen and Dave, he staggered slightly and gripped the edge of the door.
“He was attacked outside the hotel,” Helen began. “He had a concussion. We didn’t know where else to go.”
Professor Cleave shook his head. “They said everyone left the hotel.”
“We missed the shuttle. We were in our room.”
“That kid. The bellboy started the fire,” Dave said. “He came after me on the street.”
Professor Cleave let his hand slide from the door. He rubbed his fingertips together and felt something sticky, the insidious thread of an inextricable web. He stood quietly for a long moment, staring at the two strangers intruding upon his grief with their suffering and need.
Topsy placed a hand on his shoulder. “Your mother wouldn’t have let them stand there.”
Professor Cleave stepped aside. Cora pressed her cross to her lips.
“How did you find me?” Professor Cleave glanced at the open gate and closed the door.
“You showed us the turnoff. When we were in your cab,” Helen said. “Your neighbor pointed out your house.”
Cora backed toward a corner. “People will be spreading stories. Shunning us.”
“People would talk anyway,” Topsy said. “We don’t get many visitors.”
“We don’t get white visitors. Dressed this way. Looking this way.”
“The roads are blocked. And there’s a curfew,” Helen began.
“The curfew is not for white people.”
“But it’s no time be out,” Topsy said. “There’s no shortage of bad elements at the best of times.”
“We don’t talk of these things in front of strangers. This is no business of theirs.”
“It was their business last night. The lady said he’s had a concussion.” Topsy pulled batteries from the radio and slid them into a flashlight. He tested a dull beam against his palm and pointed it at Dave’s eyes. “Down at the factory, fellows would get caught by bags of sand coming off the belt. It was worse than boxing. In the ring, you had gloves to protect yourself.”
“I have a headache, but the pain’s mostly in my face,” Dave said.
“You won’t be posing in magazines, but your eyes are reacting,” Topsy said. “You should clean that scratch before we eat.”
Professor Cleave closed his eyes and dragged the flat of his hand down the side of his face.
Cora steadied herself against the table. “What do you think they’ll eat?”
“Yesterday’s rice and chicken.” Topsy carried five plates from the buffet to the table. “The icebox is dead, and you can’t take rotten chicken to Heaven. Isn’t that what your minister says? That you can’t take it with you? Morris died with cigarettes still in his pocket. That’s all the proof needed.”
Dinner was a dismal affair. Professor Cleave hunched over and ate in silence, with his head resting in his hand. Obsessed with signs of ill health in her unwel
come guests, Cora sat at a remove from the table, spilling rice onto the floor and resenting each squandered grain. His sense of smell deadened, Dave searched out tastes and textures in a manner off-putting to his most reluctant host. Helen held the hem of her sleeve to her palm with three fingers and picked at a chicken neck with the tines of her fork. Topsy alone ate with zeal, sucking marrow from tiny bones and eyeing Helen’s plate.
“Are you already finished?”
Helen looked down at her lap. “I’m not a big eater.”
“Everyone is always dieting in the States. A strange problem. A curse of too much.” Cora collected her plate and started toward the kitchen. “Or maybe our food doesn’t suit them. They’ll have a better dinner at the Plantations later.”
“That would be tomorrow’s dinner.” Topsy turned to Helen. “You and your man can sleep in the side room.”
Cora spun around in the kitchen doorway. “That isn’t your room to offer.”
Professor Cleave tossed his spoon on the table and pushed aside his plate. He leaned into the light of a kerosene lamp and gazed at his hands, following the oscillation of light and shadow between his fingers.
“We should leave,” Helen said. “But I don’t think he can walk to the Plantations.”
The plate slipped from Cora’s hands. She considered the floor with a bewildered expression and then looked at Helen. “Did you think he would drive you? Everyone thinks you’re contagious.”
“We don’t know anyone else.”
“You don’t know him.” Cora bent down to collect bits of ceramic. “You don’t know anything about him. About any of us.”
Professor Cleave watched Cora sweep the floor with the edge of her hand. “A curfew means martial law. The police won’t make exceptions.”
“We can pay you—”
Cora tossed a shard into a trash can. “You think his life is worth a handful of dollars?”
Professor Cleave closed his eyes and saw a pale woman slumped in his backseat and a square of sky framed by stone walls. He saw hellish light filling the cracks in his cab’s windows and Desmond lying on stained concrete.
“I can’t drive you. Anywhere.” He pushed away from the table. “In the morning, go on your way.”
Outside, he uncapped a bottle drawn from the grass beside the stoop, and a sweet smell filled his nostrils. If there was ever a person who needed a drink, it was Professor Cleave, still reeking of chemical burn-off and ash, but he wasn’t a man who could handle liquor. With a great deal of anxiety, we watched him ingest a shocking quantity of the most gastric-sac-burning rot imaginable. When moonlight began to twist his eyes, he pounded his forehead with his palm and cursed himself. We withdrew into the house, braving Cora to spare his dignity and hear one of Topsy’s stories. We desperately wanted to dream, if only for a few moments.
Mercifully, Cora had dimmed the lamp on the table. Sitting at the edge of its miserly light, she bristled at the sound of Dave snoring in her daughter’s room and traced the shadows of empty glasses with her fingernail. For an hour, she maintained a principled silence and refused to retreat to her bedroom, if only to stand witness to depravity until exhaustion claimed her. Topsy sat in his chair, counting minutes and cigarettes. Helen counted seconds and despaired at the night ahead. We clung to the curtains and tried to control the twitching of our antennae. Topsy saved us all by drawing Cora’s ire.
“To hell with austerity.” He drew a bottle from beneath his chair and two dirty glasses from the table. He filled both glasses and handed one to Helen. “I can’t say who had that last, but what’s in this bottle will sterilize anything. We should have poured some on your man’s head.”
“The man with you,” Cora said, turning to Helen. “That shirt he’s wearing. I wouldn’t think it’s something to wear in decent company. At times like these.”
“I’d say it suits the times all too well. But it’s an ugly thing. Ugly sentiment,” Topsy said.
Helen’s face warmed. “We picked it off the street. He needed something to wear.”
“I suppose a man can’t be too choosy when he’s stealing,” Cora said. “Pulling things from broken windows—”
“Or choosy with the news.” Topsy lifted the radio from the floor and placed it on his lap. “Our stations are out. They say the police station and that resort have power. Not a spark anywhere else. There’s a rhyme to it, but no good reason.” He skimmed static until he heard a newscaster describing a rash of potholes on Kingston’s roads. “Jamaicans don’t give a pot of piss about this place.”
He turned off the radio and set it back on the floor. For a moment, we’d entertained outrageous hopes of catching DJ Xspec. Demoralized, we watched Cora rise from the table and draw a bar of chocolate from the buffet. She peeled a leaf of foil from its whittled edge and used her fingernail to shave tiny ribbons of chocolate onto her palm. Topsy, all of us, watched her transfer ragged curls, one by one, to her barely parted lips.
“You can allow yourself a bit of chocolate,” Topsy said. “You might even allow us a bit.”
“Parsimony has its place.”
“Chocolate won’t make up the margins.”
“We’re rationing now.”
“There’s a sort of parsimony with no place.”
“There’s a sort of drinking unsuited to respectable people.” Cora returned the chocolate to the buffet. “And a sort of behavior and dress with no place here.”
She considered the bottle in Topsy’s hands and the spliff on Helen’s shirt, slammed the buffet drawer, and went into her bedroom. Helen, all of us, remained perfectly still until she closed her door. When we heard the creak of bedsprings, we dropped from the curtains.
“She has her reasons. Driving a taxi can be a dangerous business.” Topsy lifted the bottle. “Have another sniff, now that the censorship board has gone to bed.”
Helen tried to read his expression and hesitantly extended her glass. “Wynston told us about you. He showed us where you worked.”
“I was the president of the United Gravel Grinders. The most powerful union in its day.” Topsy straightened in his chair. “We led this country’s independence struggle.”
“When was that?”
“Usually from sunset until midnight, but some of the neighbors would tell you it went on much longer.” Topsy drew a cigarette from a nearly empty pack on his armrest. “We were a force to be reckoned with.”
Helen took a sip of rum. “Does the union still exist?”
“Times have changed.” Topsy lit his cigarette. “But we made this island what it is. We laid the Ambassador’s foundations. It was the tallest building anyone had seen. When every one of us is in the ground, no one will be left to remember the day we poured the concrete.”
Helen recalled the rattle of a dying air conditioner, rusted railings and smudged walls, and flames devouring everything. “It was a great place,” she said quietly.
“At one time, maybe. I wouldn’t be able to say. I never went inside.” Topsy considered the tip of his cigarette for a long moment. “What’s in that feed bag of yours?”
She reached into the bag beside her chair, picked through bits of cellophane, and then emptied its contents. “Most of it’s crushed or melted.”
“Broken or not, get any biscuits. And you’re a good girl to bring cigarettes. I traded too many for batteries. But then, batteries are the stuff of life now.” He leaned forward to take a small packet from Helen’s hand. “Things must have been desperate on that ship.”
She followed his eyes to her slipping sleeve and drew her arm to her side. “I left before most people got sick.”
“Then things couldn’t have been so bad, but you’re the only one who can say.” Topsy settled back in his chair. “There’s always some monkey’s ass saying things could be worse. Things could be better, too.”
“I suppose,” she whispered.
“I always wondered what things were like on those ships.” Topsy examined a biscuit in the candlelight. “So many
of the people coming off them just want their pictures with monkeys. Strange business. They’re good for stew and not much else, if you ask the old people.”
“Most people at home would think they’re too close to humans to eat.” Helen looked into her glass. “They’d worry about diseases.”
“Maybe they’re eating monkeys on that ship of yours.”
“It’s not my ship.”
“You sound like my son. He’s always looking for the finer meanings.” Topsy took a sip of rum. “He spent his whole life writing about revolution and he got a riot. And lost a good friend.”
“I didn’t know.” She looked at the floor. “We shouldn’t have come here.”
“You can’t be out there now.”
“I’m sorry. This all started with the ship.”
“It wasn’t your ship. Ugly things.” Topsy drained his glass and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Still, it would be great to go up in one of those kites. Those parasails. I always imagined looking down at the sea with birds passing beneath my feet.”
Over the next hour, Topsy told stories about St. Anne’s first labor union and its amateur boxing league, and Helen imagined him floating through the sky, far above a gutted hotel. We settled beneath the table and feasted on chocolate dust until Professor Cleave came into the house, grabbed a glass from the table, and filled it with rum. Topsy sniffed the air as he passed.
“When did this start? That stuff will eat you up inside.”
“You’re doing fine. Haven’t you always said that?”
“It’s my constitution.” Topsy gestured at Professor Cleave with a biscuit between his fingers. “Morris’s end is what most can expect.”
Professor Cleave rifled through a buffet drawer until he found an accordion fold of yellowed paper. “I’ll mark a route to the Plantations.” He glanced at Helen, spread the paper across the table, and smoothed its creases. “You won’t need to go through Portsmouth.”
The Wonder That Was Ours Page 19
