They were off to brief the ambassador for the Windward Islands, who had just arrived from Barbados. The ambassador would be talking with Edison Banks that afternoon. He was going to lecture Banks about cozying up to Cuba. He would also be announcing a new aid package for the island: a five-thousand-dollar shipment of school supplies.
By the end of the week, Mitchell had a higher understanding, a supreme understanding, of his naïveté. He had underestimated them, the friends of golf. He had of course underestimated everybody. Kingsley got on the radio to electrify the island with his dema-goguery, laying out a sequence of astounding accusations. Yes, it was true, he harangued, as the new People’s Revolutionary Party alleged, that a paramilitary force existed in the northern mountains. Yes., it was true, as the PRP alleged, that a young man named Isaac Knowles was the leader of this international conspiracy. Yes, it was true, as the PRP alleged, that there were foreign agents involved—one of them sitting right now in a cell in Fort Gregory. But, it is not true, Kingsley countercharged, that these were his bad children. This allegation was a Machiavellian lie, another of the PEP/PRP’s falsehoods, because, in fact, these people he was talking about were the enemies of the PIP and the enemies of democracy. He could prove it, he railed, he had gathered the evidence, and it was damning. Let us go to the courts, he challenged. Let us have two trials, three trials, many. Let us go to the ballot box and divine the truth.
When Mitchell heard the news, his mind leapt to Johnnie, and he felt as though Kingsley had just married them, bonded them forever together. Some things you can’t get behind you no matter what, he thought: an amendment to the extraordinary power of Johnnie’s imagination, which had convinced her to reappear in his life, to come back aboard, as if it were a beautiful white ship under beautiful blue skies, and away they’d sail.
You’re so mine, she had said, and it was proving true.
The St. Catherine Crier
June 9, 1977
Low & Behold
by Epictetus
Eppy: Well, gents, the politicians have us stumped again, I can see by the hard put look on your faces. Let me make my little speech and then have at it: Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Now I am willing to gamble I speak for many Catherinians when I ask, What in God’s name is going on??? Anything reasonable will be supported.
Sir Cease-All: Murder and Mayhem, sir, Wickedness and Undo-itness, and not a lick of it in God’s name. The signatures I read at the bottom of the page are Joe Stalin, Mr. Castro, and the Prince of Darkness. Now add to that rogue’s gallery a most unexpected lackey, this poor misguided fellow from the great USA who has grabbed the spotlight in our High Court follies.
Beau of the Bawl: Grabbed? Why not pushed, kicked, shoved, and booted into it?
Joe Pittance: Murder it is, and mayhem too, fellers, but Sir C has stood the perpetration on its head, to accommodate his favorite view, arse-backwards topsy-turvy. Why, it wasn’t so very long ago Sir C was screaming bloody hell in this scamp Wilson’s defense, no surprise a’tall from an enthusiastic admirer of James Bond fantasy, the Vietnam War, the ruling class, the gilded class, the House of Lords, the Shah of Iran, men on the moon, Princess Margaret, the flim Lawrence of Arabia and, last and most, His Majesty Joshua Kingsley.
Beau: I see gallows humor is the coming rage. He left out Jesus Christ, Will Shakespeare, and the kitchen sink.
Joe: And after such spirited support for Mr. Kingsley’s Yankee agent—er, I mean economist, that is what they are calling saboteurs these days at the Ministry of Agriculture—Sir C and his disloyalists gall us with their cry, About-Face, Abracadabra! and poof, come look, their Innocent Boy Scout is the Second Coming of Che Guevara. Even our obeahmen wouldn’t dare try that brand of black magic.
Sir C: Funny you should mention the name of this feller’s mentor, Joe, who is also the matinee idol of your man Edison Banks and his bloodthirsty band of schoolboys. There is no depth low enough, including Flames of Hell, that these so-called Revolutionaries won’t scrape and bow to, to disgrace us. The only magic to be had is the stuff supplied by the two magicians Fidel sent PRP to entertain at rallies and witch-hunts, not to mention the Cuban teachers who are pushing our own out of the classroom. Next we’ll see the Russian bear dancing at carnival. As if Communist basketball coaches and Soviet-trained dentists weren’t bad enough, now we have Cuban ships pulling into the harbor, and when the lights go out at night, I don’t have to tell you what comes ashore and is hidden in depots around the island. This is not scandal, Joe, we must call it what it is—Treason. We demand new elections, as I for one have no desire to conduct my business in the language of Spain. Failing that, let me once more issue a plea to those guardians of liberty in Washington: Come save us.
Beau: I’m flummoxed, fellers. You have me playing eenie meenie minie mo. My plea goes out to our spook-in-residence, this boy we hear so much about, Isaac Knowles, to come down out of the mountains, if he is truly there, and answer Eppy’s question. Is it as Banks says—like father like son—or Kingsley says—monkey see monkey do? Who was it firing the shot killing that poor woman up in the wilds of Soufrière, isn’t that the question? Bandits, we hear from PRP. Cassius Iman Colly-ibra-more-him or whatever this unfortunate is calling himself, we hear from PIP. Well, which is it, eh? This fellow Wilson seems uncertain, and now he is discredited by these new allegations.
Sir C: Not allegations, fellers. Evidence. The books in this man’s library were printed in the Kremlin. He purchased firearms illegally, for what purpose I shudder to imagine. And his mistress is the moll of a notorious renegade and drug peddler, of Cuban extraction, who takes his orders from cigar-smokers in Havana. Seriously, Joe, this Wilson is not the type you’ll likely find conspiring with a man of Kingsley’s principles.
Joe: The principles of a gangster, no less.
Beau: Well, that fixes it, boys. No longer am I flummoxed—now I’m bewildered as well.
Eppy: Gents, am I mistaken or is it not Mr. Wilson on trial in our courts, though prosecution and defense seem to think otherwise, but this pitiful tongue-tied orphan from Cotton Island, the youth Cassius Collymore. Mr. Wilson should be allowed to testify without disruption or further accusation and sent home. Difficulties are things that show what men are, and he has conducted himself with dignity. By the way, life goes on despite our crab antics and current turmoil. Family Planning will hold a fair this Saturday on the esplanade, with balloons, games, and free food for the kids.
Until next week then, Clarior E Tenebris.
Chapter 34
After the trip to Scarborough, he went home then to Howard Bay for the sole purpose of knocking himself out flat and senseless, washing down codeine from the hospital with numerous rum and tonics and after a while, still awake but floundering, hurrying unconsciousness along with one of the Mandrax Johnnie had so considerately left behind. He passed out in the hammock on the veranda and woke up at dawn with a brain seriously fogged and every joint aching, wondering how close he had come to killing himself, which was not as far as he knew what he had in mind.
He showered cold and began to dress, only to stop himself in the middle of slipping on his pants to sit on the edge of the bed, lost in a void, fighting back the desire to vomit which made him break out in a sweat. He was not well, he was not going to be well anytime soon, but he had things to do, only he couldn’t put his finger on what they were, all he could remember was that he had forgotten something, and was forced to sit there sweating and wanting to puke while his thoughts, sluggish and blind, grabbed at whatever it was, until he had regained enough presence of mind to notice, there on the floor, kicked into a corner of the room, the pair of pants he had worn up Soufrière, streaked and splotched with stains that were Sally’s blood, and he thought, Get rid of those. He sat there for a few more minutes, unsatisfied, and then of course remembered the letter he had retrieved from the body of Captain Eddins.
He buttoned his pants and stood up.
It was exactly what he now knew it would be—evidence, a crudely drawn map of a camp in the mountains behind the volcano—not the sort of thing you should be carrying in your pocket up Soufrière, in this day and time.
Addressed to nobody, signed by nobody, all-incriminating. He ripped it up and poked the pieces down into the fly-blown slop bucket on the side stoop—more garbage for Mrs. Fetchalub’s pig. Mr. Quiddley was in the yard, cracking open the second pit. Removing his hat, he stood up straight and offered condolence.
“I am sorry to hear of dis sahd news of you lady friend.”
“You should never have done this,” Mitchell shouted irrationally. “Never. Never,” and he went back inside to finish dressing, packed his knapsack with bread and cheese, a water bottle, gym shorts and a change of underwear, his rain poncho and envelope of codeine and the handgun he had bought in Scuffletown wrapped in a tee shirt, walked down to Augustine and took a jitney loaded with merry schoolchildren into Queenstown, saw as they passed toward Brandon Vale that the red letters PRP had been splash-painted on the roof of Miss Defy, soon to be invisible in a sea of cane. He went to the ministry which was still locked up though he was taken aback to see the vet’s assistant Morrison standing in the door of his dispensary, a clean bandage around his head and both eyes puffy, reading a government broadside. They does get you too, eh bwoy? Morrison smiled, curling his upper lip into a sneer. Morrison told him Kingsley was still up leeward side, playing the fool, but the time was coming to kick his ass, Wilson, we will have some fun with these fuckers, we will revenge the girl, nuh?
Walking down to the esplanade, the morning light was blinding and seemed to shine right down on his witlessness, and he queued up with a workforce of laborers at a line of lorries ferrying the men leeward, wondering what he was doing, an explanation of sorts bursting through like madness, telling himself, But Isaac was up north in the mountains with Jack Nasty and the old white patriarch he had dreamed of at Josephine’s and the bandits and the mercenaries and the forest gods that had migrated with the slaves from Guinea, the lost spirits of the Arawaks and now Sally and all the other phantoms that were gathering to consummate the destiny of the island in this day and in this time. So there was that, the mountains like a parallel universe, a land outside of the world where he might begin to look for the truth.
Asking himself, But does this make sense? and when the lorry came and the men started climbing onto the bed he stepped out of line, confused and homeless—both the ministry and the cottage in Howard Bay had been rendered uninhabitable—swallowed a codeine pill dry to soften the rising pulse in his wrist, and started walking, thinking, whoever his enemies were, all they had to do was let him be himself and eventually, as if it were a law of nature, he’d find a way to fit their bill, he’d end up being whatever it was they needed him to be. It was easy work if you could get it.
In Scuffletown he stood in Mrs. Knowles’ front-room apothecary, breathing the tannic aromas of her bush medicines, confronted by the armor of her hard and unpitying dignity, until finally she acquiesced to tell him what it would do him no good to know, that old friends still high-up had whispered to her of Isaac’s incarceration on an unspecified charge, which these high-ups were not even aware of until someone had whispered to them about his release, or perhaps his escape, it wasn’t clear to them and it wasn’t clear to her. They say my Isaac gone to hide, she said without emotion, they say him start a movement. Tell me, Mistah Wilson, what kind of movement that bwoy goin start except the mind-you-own-business kind, the Keep-to-Youself Party. Eh? Eh? She sucked her teeth, chupsing, and said, Now I suppose you goin join up, nuh? She rebuked him, sucking her teeth angrily: You and my first son who is not a’tall like his poor dead father, you and he and the king of duppies, and you with all the woe you need since crazy men take to shootin good white people here on we St. Catherine of sorrow, and when she had spoken her mind she told him, Wait, left the room and came back to slip a juju around his neck, a tiny hand-stitched leather pouch attached to a strip of rawhide, to keep him safe from evil, from all the many evils.
As long as he was in Scuffletown he thought he would try again to find some bullets and stepped into several of the rougher bars—the Black Cat, Our Place, Hughes Alley—only to learn the police were arresting people on ammunition charges—he was unconcerned, there was nothing left to explain to himself about firearms and such—but until one of the men throwing back his rum in the daytime darkness of Our Place asked, he had forgotten that he still had no idea of the caliber of bullet he required. He fired a rum himself, washing down a codeine, while the fellow examined the gun in his pack and concluded he couldn’t help him.
From Scuffletown, he dreamwalked to National Police Headquarters where he suddenly woke up into a disruption that was himself demanding to see the front desk logbook of two weeks past, learning just how big of a fuss was enough to convert the duty officer to the cult of possibility, and there on the log’s blue-lined copybook pages, like a schoolboy’s homework, was Miss Defy’s accident report, a statement given in person by Renata Archibol, but no entry attesting to Isaac’s presence at the station, and no record of arrest. From there he flagged a cab which took him through the lower slums and up the hills to Hubbard Heights, the ruling-class neighborhood preferred by elite businessmen and those of ministerial rank, regardless of party affiliation, they lived in peace together in the Heights but not in parliament, the driver cruised the walled yards, the modern airy homes with their gardens and guard dogs, the grillwork on the windows and doors, families of domestic staff housed on the property, until finally he asked where exactly was it he wished to go, and Mitchell didn’t know the address so they pulled over to where two yardmen were “mowing” a perfect zoysia lawn with machetes, stooped over like the old men the job would soon make of them, snicking the errant blades of grass, and the miracle of the day was that the two of them agreed immediately about the location of Archibol’s house and were of the same mind as to the best and quickest way to get there. The minister was not home but the Missus was; she was not disinclined to speak with him but on the contrary gave Mitchell a warm reception, made him sit with her for a cup of tea, and answered his questions with cautious but unfailing courtesy, saying all she remembered was going to the station with her husband and a drunk boy who had banged up her import. She then paid effusive and heartfelt tribute to Sally, saying What I would like to know is this, did anyone ever say thanks to this young woman who gave these frequently despised youngsters friendship and understanding? That was all she could say except would you like another cup of tea, something stronger? we are a warm people, despite we troubles. He asked if she had any painkillers and he left with a handful of Darvon, walking aimlessly down the slope and then across it until the houses no longer boasted their affluence and he knew where he was without a conscious understanding of what he was doing there.
It was lunchtime, Josephine’s Shoovie wasn’t in the drive, so he didn’t even bother knocking but sat down on the stoop to wait. He wondered, for the first time, and not with confidence, if this was a revolution, if that’s why things were even more fucked up than ever.
He thought, the liberation of zero commitment would be at least one way to describe Johnnie.
He took a Darvon. There were steamy wraiths of self-condemnation in his head. Josephine came home, took him inside, and made him lie down.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he mumbled apologetically. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know. Where else really.”
She sat on the edge of her bed, where she had put him, stroking his unshaven cheek. She understood, she said, she understood everything, she was sad, for the dead girl but for him too. Her hair was trussed in a kerchief, the braids extruding under a triangle of calico at the back of her neck. She looked fresh and youthful but still urbane, sleek in her designer jeans and remarkably white tee shirt, almost gaunt with seductiveness though both of them knew his coming here, and her accepting
him, wasn’t about sex, and couldn’t be, naturally, until ... but neither of them could say. She acknowledged his depression, made a halfhearted attempt to be plucky and cheering—But you does know why you come here, mahn, she said with affectionate sarcasm, ain dis what black women do, eh? tek in hand white bwoys? eh? eh?—then brushed her lips across his and let him be, shuttering the room and then retreating to her work desk where she sat on a stool in the shadows, sketching, while he stared, unseeing, listening to the gliding scratch of her pencil. Mourning, he had heard, can be a very selfish act, but what was he to do? Sometime later he was aware of her leaving the room, he heard Josephine talking to her aunt, heard her scolding and then playing with her child, smelled cooking, she came back after a while to ask him if he wanted to eat but he wasn’t hungry, then she came back to tell him she had to go out for a while to meet some people, he watched her change into a dress, shyly turning her back to him, then she was leaving, telling him not to bother himself with anything, he could stay by her as long as he wished, he was to think of her house as his, and then she had returned, smelling of cigarette smoke and sweat and perfume, candles guttered in the stale air of the room, and she was beside him in bed, holding him sleepily and telling him she had heard that tomorrow there would be a memorial service for Sally at her school on the waterfront, in the morning, wiping the tears on his face, whispering, but it hurts me to see you grieve so, Wilson, whispering, okay, okay, mahn, okay, but in the morning he only got out of bed to use the bathroom, he watched her prepare to leave the house and then woke up when she came back in at noon, he asked for a glass of water to help swallow his pills, and she told him the island was losing its mind, everybody making speeches and calling for strikes, there was a way in which he was at the center of it but in truth it had nothing to do with him at all, it was nothing more than PEP versus PIP, there were many speeches by both sides, new security measures, Kingsley’s men were in parliament demanding a vote of no-confidence in the prime minister, it was all a mess, he had no understanding of his political position, there seemed to be a growing mood of belligerence among the people, someone she knew wanted to pass by to see him this afternoon and wanted to know if he would be received.
Swimming in the Volcano Page 63