Scott kept silent, stared at her for a moment, then went into their bathroom. Alice heard the swish of the sliding door, then the shower. She sat down on her bed, then stretched out on a cushion and stared at the wooden rafters above. It had begun. The party was beginning to unravel; all that planning and now Emma would be disappointed. It was no secret that Kathy and Alice didn’t like each other. Alice found that Kathy was superficial, snotty, and stupid. And it didn’t help that Kathy’s family had always been friendly with Scott’s family, or that Alice felt that Scott’s mother would have preferred Kathy for Scott, or that Kathy was undeniably pretty in that obvious sort of way. And the fact that Scott had spent those two nights at Jeffrey and Kathy’s house when things were at their worst made Alice hate Kathy even more, because now Kathy probably knew about the affair although Scott swore he never told her. Once, early in their marriage, Scott told Alice that maybe she was just a little jealous of Kathy; after that, Alice didn’t talk to Scott for a week, so now Scott avoided talking about Kathy unless, like today, it was unavoidable.
Scott got out of the shower, put on his jeans, white polo shirt, and a pair of sneakers. He left Alice still lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. He knew better than to say anything more about Kathy. Things seemed to be getting worse, not better; he didn’t know how to talk to her anymore, so he usually agreed with her or said very little. He could see them moving away from each other in slow motion, like two people in a corny Bollywood film; he had been looking at this film for a while and now he had no idea how to get the two people back to that point close to the beginning where they seemed happy.
Alice watched Scott leave the room without saying a word. She could hear the dogs barking at Eric and William. She could even hear Emma’s sweet giggle. But Alice, still smelling of curry, was tired, very tired. So she closed her eyes for what seemed like seconds; when she heard the buzzer for the gate it startled her; she had dropped off to sleep. She got up and walked to her bedroom window. It was Mr. Xavier with the horse for the party. The gate opened. She watched old Mr. Xavier get back into his rickety pickup, pulling the horse in another tray, and slowly drive up to the house. Scott and Ricky were already there to help him.
Suddenly she had the terrible thought of no children turning up for the party. But they would come; many had already RSVP’d; it was just Charlotte’s absence and Kathy’s desire to ruin everything, just to spite her, that troubled her now. Alice didn’t want to think about the Clarke boy. Two young children had been kidnapped in the last month; the first had been tortured and beaten to death with a cricket bat, but he was the grandson of a well-known drug runner; the second child, a casino owner’s son, again with a potential drug link, was simply shot in the head and had his hands cut off, a sign, the newspapers said, that the family had owed or stolen money. Both children, as horrible as their deaths were, came from what everyone called the “drug coast.” But the Clarkes, they all knew the Clarkes; they were a wealthy family, quietly so; they owned some of the most beautiful property on the island, bought for a song by Grandpa Clarke long before anyone imagined that those areas would ever be worth anything or be populated. The Clarkes were rich but not from drugs. No one was immune anymore, not from this plague that seemed to be spreading so fast.
Faster than even Alice had expected. Last week on Alice’s way home after picking up Emma from her school, she thought she was being followed by a black sedan with at least four heads in it; the car followed her from the moment she turned onto the main road all the way onto the main valley road. Alice wanted to call Scott on her cell phone but Emma was in the car and she didn’t want to scare her. So she drove, pretending to listen to a new song Emma had been taught at school, and tried her best to keep an eye on the black car following her. As she passed the Pastora Valley police station she slowed down. Emma asked why, but Alice told her that she just wanted to give Sergeant Socks an invitation to her birthday party. As soon as she turned into the police station, the black sedan zoomed ahead. The policemen on duty told her that Sergeant Socks was out on a “recon.” She left the invitation for Socks and drove away. Everyone in the vale invited Socks to their parties since they all depended on his goodwill to keep, as Socks said, “evil at bay.”
In fact, with each month Socks was becoming more and more famous, not just for catching kidnappers or finding ganja fields all over the island, but recently for his cocaine discoveries. Only last week Socks and his men had found packs of cocaine brought in with the tide onto a beach in a remote fishing village on the north coast, the drug coast. The minister of national security and Socks were featured together on the front page of the Daily News after that incredible find; the minister was quoted as saying that the country needed more policemen like Socks: “We Need More Socks!” the headline read. Some months ago another newspaper hinted at a different side to Socks, suggesting police brutality, strong ties to the drug world, and questioned how he was able to find all those marijuana fields. But questions on the island were never pursued; it didn’t matter which government party was in power. The last time Alice had seen Socks he was talking to a neighbour at the front gate; the Hernandezes had had a break-in while vacationing in London. Socks was his usual animated self, arms flailing and gesturing as he usually did with his thumb cocked and index finger pointed like a gun.
It was 3:20 p.m. Alice didn’t want to get up. Her tiredness never seemed to leave her now; it was always there like the heat and the ashes in this never-ending dry season. But she knew it was more than tiredness; a feeling of deadness had taken over in the last couple of months, which made it harder to do the things she had managed to do before: taking care of Emma, going for a walk, pulling up weeds in the garden, calling a friend. She didn’t feel like going downstairs to greet the guests, she didn’t feel like going to her own daughter’s birthday party. On the outside she pretended to worry about the details, the little things, but inside her head was filled with bigger worries: the shootings in the hills, the abused children on the front pages of the newspapers, the kidnapped bodies found lying in gutters, the disease-ridden prisons, the police beatings, the street children, the skeletal beggars, and everything Scott had taken away from her. Alice could not imagine a change, not in herself and especially not in this place she called home. She wanted to leave her life, the beautiful house, the valley; she wanted to sleep, but instead she got up, dressed, washed her face, brushed her hair, put on lipstick, mascara, perfume, and went downstairs before the first guest for the party arrived.
Ghost Story
by Barbara Jenkins
Cascade
(Originally published in 2012)
It used to have a petty thief where we living. His name is Ghost. Of course his mother didn’t christen him that—no way can you look at a defenceless little baby and drop the name Ghost on him just so, not same time you putting on the maljo jet-bead bracelet to ward off the evil eye. It must be the people who used to live here long-time who give him that name. Maybe in the early days he used to come like a spirit and nobody seeing him and he earn his name under those circumstances, but since we know Ghost, he coming in broad daylight and we seeing him, but is like the name stick.
Any day of the week, Sunday to Sunday, you seeing Ghost walking up and down the narrow road that winding through our little valley. People in car swishing by having to be careful not to bounce him because he walking in the middle of the road and cars have to weave round him. Ghost wearing boots, like discarded army boots, black heavy lace-up boots and where you expect to see socks, you see very dark brown stringy hairy calves leading up to ropy thighs with the wide legs of khaki shorts flapping around. Holding up the shorts is a wide black leather belt, also looking like army throw-out stock. And that’s it for clothes. Ghost always bareback, back running with sweat, and he have a full, lumpy crocus bag fling over one shoulder or across the whole two shoulder. In one hand he holding some kind a tool: a three-canal cutlass or a hoe or a grass-swiper, sometimes is only a long stick with a hook at
the end. We used to wonder how come police don’t ever stop Ghost to ask why he breaking the law walking around the place with bare sharp tools when honest gardeners wrap up they cutlass and thing in gazette paper to keep within the law. But is when you look at Ghost face you know why nobody don’t stop him to ask no question, because Ghost face always set up vex-vex like he about to cuss you, he eye cokey and have a wild look, the raggedy beard and the thick-thick locks hanging in two-three dense clotted mat like a old coconut-fibre doormat. You feel anybody could put God out they thoughts to even say morning or evening when they pass him? Furthermore, if you do say something and he shake his head, is you self getting spray with the old sweat he harbouring in the beard and locks. Too besides, he striding up and down purposefully like he have somewhere to go and he can’t be late and you fraid to get in his way, but most of all is because he looking don’t-care, and don’t-care is like untouchable to us ordinary people. But that don’t mean people didn’t talk to Ghost at all. We used to have plenty conversation with Ghost—after all, is only good manners to exchange a few words with a person who spending more time in your yard than you.
Everyone in our suburban area of houses scrambling along the face of the steep hill slope have a favourite Ghost story. When we meet up at one another house for breakfast after church on a Sunday morning, was always a chorus of complaints about Ghost. Marjorie say one time she hearing the dogs barking and she gone outside to check. The dogs and them running around and around a orange tree and she look up and see Ghost. She say, What you doing there? He say, I picking some orange. She say, Get down, get down at once, and he get down. She tell him, When you want something, you must ask for it. And she tell him to get out her yard. Next morning, she hear someone calling, Morning, ma’am, morning, ma’am, at the gate. Marjorie in the middle of preparing breakfast buljol, but she go outside. Is Ghost. I come for some orange, he say. She say, Okay, and she lead him to one of the tree. Pick from this one, she instruct. Ghost shake his locks. Not that one, he say. Them orange too sour. I taking from that one over there. Them sweeter. He pick and pick and when he done he tell Marjorie, Look, I pick some for you too, and he leave about a dozen or so in the mop bucket by the back step.
Hazel say she ketch Ghost in the zaboca tree and tell him to come down immediately. He say, I can’t come down yet, I have a order to fill. Hazel tell us she understand, because that same afternoon she see the same zaboca self, now label avocadoes, at the nation’s favourite grocery, for ten dollars each. When Nicky tell Sue that Ghost pick out all the nice yellow-flesh breadfruit and he tell her when she see him leaving the yard with the crocus bag bulging that he leave three more for her and they will be full enough to pick next week, Sue say, But he is a nice man, last week he sell me some really nice julie mangoes, five for ten dollars. Mavis say, He thief those mangoes from off my tree. Sue say, Your Julie is the best I eat this season. So it look like he harvest from the one and sell to the other, keeping the fruit circulating and making up deficiencies where he seeing them, like keeping a balance in nature or like supply-side economics, with him as middleman.
Louisa say, Is people like Ghost who keeping the neighbourhood safe because he always on the lookout, he know everybody times of day and comings and goings and if a strange bandit come in to do real harm, he will see them. She say, We don’t recognise that Ghost is our protection. Marlene laugh and say, We should call him Holy Ghost then. But Louisa quickly remind her blasphemy is a sin. Okay, sorry, Marlene agree, is like having a kind of informal security and we paying with surplus fruit. Is not surplus, Denise say, is years I watching my young zaboca tree. First year it bear, is only one zaboca, but it big and nice, smooth texture, dryish. Next year three fruit and I waiting for them to be really full before picking and one morning I look for them and they gone. That wasn’t no surplus. He coulda pick one to sample for future reference and leave two for my family until the tree start to bear more. Is hard to have a tree in your own yard and have to buy zaboca in the grocery. People sympathise, yes, we agree, Ghost does be real indiscriminate sometimes.
But Ghost know everybody business and Maureen say he and her husband does talk good and make joke and only last week her husband pass Ghost sitting on the bridge, and her husband ask him when he think the zabocas will be ready and Ghost tell him, Boss, them zaboca have another three weeks still, and how Ghost really have a good heart because when her husband was sick Ghost look in the bedroom window and say, Boss, I hear you ent too well, look after yourself, eh? I go be real quiet. I ent go disturb you. Look, I going to shut your dogs in they kennel so they go stop the barking while I here. And then he proceed to pick off all the full limes. When Ghost leaving he see Debra coming in the gate. She hustling-hustling, because she had to drop the child by the child father mother as her own mother had to go out. Debra already late for work and she have to hurry up to start preparing lunch but he stopping her and telling her to bring out a bowl for him. She steupsing but she still bring it out for him. You know what he do? He put down the crocus bag and he drop a couple dozen or so limes in the bowl and he say, Make some juice for the boss, I don’t find he looking too good, nuh.
Ghost and we woulda continue like that if the mealy bug hadn’t arrive in a schooner-load of plantain and dasheen from Grenada. In a few months many of the fruit trees off which Ghost was making a living was infested and bearing less and less fruit; in a year, pickings was meagre. Ghost begin to use his intelligence of the area to supplement his income in a different way. Children bicycle left in the yard begin to disappear, Maureen wake up one morning to find the toolshed ransack and lawn mower missing, Denise hear what she thought was rain in the night then next day see pieces of PVC piping lying around spouting water and her six-hundred-gallon Rotoplastic water tank gone. Is now a different relationship start to develop between us people and Ghost. What we used to tolerate before as a kind of sharing was now theifing. If tree bear plenty, you can spare some, it cost nothing, next year it will bear again; but if you pay good money for something and it gone, you have to pay more good money to buy it back.
People start to lock gate, put up chain-link fence where they was depending on steep drop to be deterrent, some even put in automatic gate and a barrier came between Ghost and his host. He start to walk the street doing house-to-house visit, calling at the front gate, asking for work. He offering to do garden and clean yard, wash car and so on. Some people feel sorry and take him on but when you make arrangement for him to come Wednesday and you wait and wait for him and he ent come, you bound to get vex, and when he turn up Friday and say he had something else to do, you tell him don’t bother, you will cut the grass yourself, or wash the car or whatever. It looking like Ghost life always too free for him to get tie down with day and time.
One Saturday morning, Denise pick up the papers from where the delivery man throw it in the yard and she see that a man in the next valley shoot a bandit who he see walking out his yard with his bush-whacker over his shoulder. The papers say the bandit was wounded in the back and was warded under observation in hospital. They print the bandit name: Alfred Thomas. Nobody didn’t take it on, nobody think they know any Alfred Thomas, but when Debra come to work that morning she well excited. She calling from by the gate self, Miss Maureen, Miss Maureen, guess what? I hear Ghost get shoot. People was talking about it in the maxi coming up. Before you know it, is all of we people calling round to one another and saying how the Alfred Thomas in the papers is Ghost, and Sunday morning all of us by Maureen for breakfast and the subject is Ghost and the shooting and Maureen ask what we going to do about it.
Marlene say, What you mean what we going to do about it? What that thiefing rascal getting shoot have to do with us? Denise, still vex about the water tank and the zaboca, say, It damn good for him, now he will have to keep his blasted tail quiet. Hazel say, That is not a nice sentiment to express on a Sunday morning after coming from church. Denise say, If you did have something thief you woulda be damn vex too. Nicky say, Oh no, what I goi
ng to do now? And she say that she was expecting Ghost to come Monday to clean the yard, the drains slimy with moss, and now she would have to do it by herself and her back not feeling so good these days. Marjorie say that it is a good thing she wasn’t depending on him for any yard work, and anyway, yes, she have to agree with Denise that Ghost get what he looking for long-long time. Mavis say, Poor feller, he don’t deserve to get shoot for a bush-whacker when, right in the heart of government self, every manjack hand digging deep in the national cash register, and you don’t see any citizen rushing out to do a citizen arrest or shoot any of them big thief. Sue say, Is people like you self that walk quite to the polling station and stain your finger for them. Is the people like you self put them in power; like all you people don’t remember the track record they had build up when they was in government last time. For the people in this carnival-mentality country everything is a nine-days wonder. Mavis answer that the last lot wasn’t no good either and like we head hard and can’t learn no lesson from experience. Sue say, Mavis, you confusing the issue, who is big thief and feathering they own nest, giving big contract to friend and family is besides the point. Louisa say, Ladies, ladies, stop that please; don’t bring no politics talk here today. The subject we discussing is Ghost, who lying wounded in a bed in the public hospital, and at least we could feel good that is not us who responsible for putting him where he is. She say, I asking all of you, who looking after Ghost interest now he get shoot? Ghost is somebody we know and he is a human being too and I personally don’t see how we can let him just lie down there in the hospital, shoot-up, and nobody caring if he living or dead. Well, with that little sermon, we focus and we talk and talk and we agree somebody had to go on a mission of mercy and visit the hospital to check up on Ghost.
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