The Angels' Share

by Garfield Ellis

  “Exactly! You come. And Daddy, I am not asking you this time. We don’t know what happened. We do not know where he came from. There may be danger up there. Come. We will report this to the police.”

  We are the same height, but he is slightly uphill so I am looking up to him. Still, he sees the sternness in my eyes. He relents and we make our way back through the bush.

  The man has found enough strength to drag himself to lean against the wheel of my vehicle. I step across his feet, play the light around the van to check what damage has been done. The front bumper is resting lightly against a large tree but there are only a few scratches made by the thick bush.

  I return to find my father in deep conversation with the man on the ground—if it could be called conversation. For my father is the only one speaking, and the man is panting so desperately he is hardly finding enough strength to breathe, let alone talk. I am standing above them, and all I can do is shake my head at the stubborn old man cradling the smelly muddy one as he tries to comfort and extract information. I know what is coming next. He came out of nowhere. We don’t know what he did, don’t know where he came from or what trouble he may get us into. But I know Father will insist that we take the smelly, dirty man with us. Man falls out of the night, out of the pool of acid and into our path, half-dead and mysterious, and my father has adopted him and all his circumstances.

  I am afraid that my father is in a mood of adventure I do not recognize and that nothing good will come of it. I am worried that another body will roll down that hill at any moment. I am terrified that whatever caused this old man to roll down might come chasing after him.

  “What now?” I ask my father. “What now, old man?”

  “We can’t leave him here,” he says stubbornly, “we can’t leave him here.”

  So I drag this man, dirty and stinky, rancid with the acrid smell of bauxite acid and urine; body slippery from layers of dirt and muck, hair plastered with all kinds of grease; stench so high I have to pause twice, put him down, and step aside for fear of vomiting. I take him and I put him in the back of the van. My father climbs in beside him.

  Even after winding all five windows down, and taking the van to seventy-five on the dark and winding country road, the stench lingers here with me like burnt flesh in an enclosed kitchen. It is on my skin, it is on my clothing, it permeates my very existence. My nostrils are flaring and my old asthmatic sneeze is coming on.

  God, I can’t wait to get to Mandeville and deposit the load. I cannot wait.

  “You know where the hospital is?” I ask.

  Father raises his head from talking to the old man on the seat. God, how can he stand the stench? How can he cradle his head in his lap like that, as if he knows the man—as if he is a baby or an injured pet?

  “I asked if you know where the hospital is.”

  “Just drive into the town center, man. I hear they have a new one now. I haven’t been here in a while.”

  It is a long time for me too. But why bother telling him that.

  My father never gave me a pet. I asked for a dog; he told me a dog would bite people and get me into trouble. I asked for a cat; he said it would aggravate my asthma. I asked for a goat; he told me he would raise one for me on his farm when he bought one since goats don’t do well in urban areas. And what would I do when they have to kill it to make curry goat? He never gave me a pet. My mother said it was because he was not convinced I could take care of one. After a while I figured he just didn’t want to make commitments to me that would make him have to come on particular days. He didn’t want to schedule me so I would expect him at promised or set times. Promises bring disappointments, disappointments bring explanations, explanations show weakness.

  He preferred to just pop in at his leisure.

  After a while I must have grown to accept or even prefer that he came without schedule. For the surprises were good, and as Mother would say: “Long-to-see better than tired-to-see.”

  But I always wished I had a dog.

  The road valleys then slopes gently up to crest and merges into the Winston Jones Highway. Mandeville is across the road.

  At this time of night, Mandeville looks like a sleepy, expensive housing development. It is a town, more suburban than country. The houses are large and tastefully designed, the lawns are manicured, and the yards are big and open. There are few fences and there is an expansive beauty about the place, yet tight and cozy. A sign points to Town Centre. I turn left as it is directing. Mandeville is also a town of hills and valleys; half the time one is going up or coming down, rising onto a small plateau or cruising down a gentle hill.

  I am now facing a town center with a sign that welcomes me to Mandeville, a sign made of iron in a park that rivals the hundred-year-old one in Kingston proper.

  Straight ahead are old buildings that match the park but on either side of the square are brand-new banking and insurance buildings.

  “This is the town square,” my father tells me from the back. I do not bother to tell him that I know. “It hasn’t changed much at all. If I am not wrong, the police station should be right down there so.” He points directly across the park. “If they haven’t moved. Let us stop over there and ask where the new hospital is.”

  The police station is tucked away off to the side of the road a bit under the park. I bring the Pathfinder to a halt. As soon as I switch the engine off and the air-conditioning dies from my face, the stench hits me again with a mighty force.

  This is a bigger station than in Spalding. There are more policemen milling around and more cars are parked in the yard. As I alight, a swarthy, well-dressed policewoman approaches.

  “You can’t park here,” she says. “Parking is on that side.”

  “I just want to ask directions,” I tell her.

  Her nose wrinkles. She must have smelled the stench of the man on me. “Yes, but you can’t park here. Please move the vehicle.”

  “I am not stopping. I just want to know where the hospital is. I found a man on the road. He must have been beaten. He is in a bad way.”

  “You found a man?” Her eyes become alert, suspicious.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of man?”

  “An old man . . . he looks injured, as if someone beat him. As if he was in the red lake or something. We need to take him to the hospital.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the back.”

  She steps away from me slightly. I almost feel I should raise my hands above my head. She then walks half a pace toward the vehicle where my father cradles the man in his lap. Her interest is piqued. “Turn on the light. Let me see.”

  I reach inside and turn the roof light on.

  “Hmm . . .” She looks inside and takes in the scene there. I know the stench has hit her, but she seems unaffected. She turns her head from the car and lifts her voice toward the station: “Sarge, they found another one.”

  Suddenly there are five cops around the van with a thousand questions.

  “Then why you never carry him to the hospital directly?” one of them asks, “Why you have him here?”

  “Who are you, sir?” the one called Sarge asks. “Don’t you see this is a police matter?” He turns to me. “We will take him from here. You need to fill out a few forms inside.”

  I thank God for sergeants and motion to my father to give him over.

  “This man is sick.” Father seems reluctant. “This man must go to the hospital now.”

  “Don’t mind that, Daddy,” the sergeant says. “We have a special vehicle for that. Plus, you gentlemen must be tired. Just fill out a few forms and then you can leave.” He turns in a businesslike manner to two of his colleagues. “All right, take him out. Where’s the truck? Take him out and send for the truck.”

  We spend half an hour inside. By the time we are finished, the excitement has died down in the station and the general routines seem to have settled back in. We learn that the man has been the third one discovered that night. The
y are street people out of Montego Bay who have mysteriously found their way to the mud lake in Manchester.

  The sergeant, named Clark, who takes our information is a nice, talkative, respectful man who divulges that this is not the first time it has happened.

  “What do you mean?” my father asks.

  “Not the first time we find them up there.”

  “But how they walk so far from Montego Bay to Manchester? And how did they get to the red lake?”

  “They are madmen,” I tell my father. “Madmen do mad things. Stop pestering the sergeant.”

  He hisses his teeth and gives me a long reproachful look. “I don’t see how people can walk that far.”

  “Who say they walk?” the policeman replies. “Who say they walk? Is dump they dump them. Don’t say I say, just sign right here.”

  “Dump them?” Father is bewildered.

  “Well, don’t say I say.” The policeman retrieves the book after we sign. “Don’t say I say. But I hear they have a big tourist conference down there. Every time they have a big conference in Montego Bay, they clean up the street people and bring them and dump them in the red mud lake. Can’t embarrass the tourist. But I never said so.”

  “You will never learn anything,” my father says to me as we turn to go. “Not if you in too much haste and don’t have time for nobody and nothing.”

  “What is there to learn?”

  “Nobody cares about old people, that is the problem. This country getting too hard—nobody cares about people anymore.”

  “Daddy! He is madman.”

  He hisses his teeth and turns away.

  So we are standing outside, and the wind is cold and fresh against my face. I feel hungry and my mind is returning to the KFC I saw down the road.

  “I tell you, we should have taken him ourselves,” my father says disgustedly.

  “What?” I follow his eye and I gasp. For that is all I can do, as the old man is still lying crumpled on the steps that lead to the police station.

  “You’re not taking him to the hospital?” I call to the first officer I see. The swarthy policewoman is standing over to the side of the door. “Excuse me, I thought you were taking that man to the hospital.”

  “Sir . . .” she looks at me with a stern, patient glare, “we are taking him.”

  “But he is lying on the steps outside like garbage,” I tell her.

  “We are waiting on the truck.”

  “But there are a dozen cars.” I point around me.

  “We will take him,” my father tells her. I don’t want to go that far, but I dare not contradict him.

  “We are taking care of it.” She takes a menacing step toward us.

  I pull my father away. “Come,” I tell him. “It is a police matter now, come.”

  But he is a stubborn old man, and he is raising his voice angrily: “This is a tax-money car, they are all tax-money cars. You are afraid he will dirty up the tax-money car? It’s not your car!”

  “Come.” I wrap my arm around my seething old man. “Come, Daddy, come!” I force him into my van and we drive around to the First Caribbean Bank, where I stop at the ATM.

  Cash in hand, I return to find my father gone. But I know where he is. I leave the Pathfinder and walk across the square to the police station where he is shouting angrily at everybody in uniform. The swarthy woman is before him with the sergeant at her side. Other policemen are milling around, and a stranger is restraining my father. I replace the stranger’s hand with mine and whisper into Father’s ear, “What happen to you, old man? These are policemen. They can lock you up.”

  “All o’ you wicked. I am going to write to the minister,” he is saying. “Wicked people. Taxpayer car and onoo make the poor man dead before onoo take him and dirty up the taxpayer car. Make him wait on some dump truck onoo know not coming. Nobody in this damn country care ’bout old people. Nobody care ’bout old people!”

  “See the truck there, Daddy,” I whisper as a battered police vehicle rumbles toward us. “The truck is coming. You don’t see the truck coming? They are going to carry him now.”

  He turns to me and drops his arms. His mouth works, but no words come. There is a sudden silence.

  “See the truck come, it late, but it has finally come. See, it is here,” I continue to point.

  “Come, you damn fool!” my father yells at me, and storms toward our van. “Come.”

  Suddenly I know the fool I have been. For as I turn to leave I see that the old man who was once folding himself, hugging and suffering upon the steps, is now awkwardly sprawled, his hands by his side, and he has rolled halfway down from where they had put him. His body is all askew and his lifeless eyes stare blankly into the skies.

  SIX

  The place where my father wrecked his car resembles a scene from The Fugitive. A ravine, as deep as a football field is long, runs along the edge of the road for several miles. It has a steep rugged face with large trees, thick shrubs, and bare jagged rocks. All that lies between the badly paved country road and the edge of the precipice is six feet of dirt. All that saved my father from death was a large cluster of bamboo trees halfway down the treacherous slope.

  His car is on the hill, anchored precariously in the bamboo roots. It rolled over twice to get there and now rests on its top. From the end of the front door to the rear bumper, it hangs unsupported, while the front is buried in the roots of the bamboo cluster. A fat bird could land on the bumper and send the vehicle tumbling the rest of the way down into the valley.

  As we stand here, the valley is still shrouded with mist and it is cold though my watch tells me it is after nine. Father says it rained last night. I slept through the rain, and the morning must have slept late too, for the sun is certainly taking its own sweet time.

  “That wrecker can’t pull it up! The crane too small.” Sergeant Clark is all business this morning. The two men from the small wrecker flank him.

  “So I see,” I answer. I could have told him that the moment I got here. I am afraid to ask if this is Small Man or the man from Silent Hill, or maybe Smaller Man by the looks of the truck.

  The sergeant scratches his head. “What you need is one of those big bauxite cranes to pull it out. It is going to cost you some money. But that will be the only way.”

  The wrecker man says that he could arrange the whole thing. “Sarge did not tell me, I would bring a bigger crane-truck with me.”

  “Couldn’t you just hook it to that truck and pull it up?” I ask.

  “That would mash up the car,” the policeman says.

  And now the dilemma: if they get a bigger crane, it will probably cost the price of the car to pull it up that ravine and the same amount to tow it to Kingston and then to fix it. My head begins to throb.

  I do not have time nor am I in the frame of mind for negotiating this morning. These country people treat everything like market day. They are hemming me in, scratching their heads, eyeing my SUV. The old man have rich son. Charge him, man, Kingston people have money.

  “How much to take the whole thing to town and leave it?” my father asks, his eyes glinting, cutting to the chase. He is finally emerging from the silent brooding mood that has held him all morning.

  “Well . . .” Small Man scratches his head, “what you think, Sarge?”

  “Well, you are the wrecker man,” the policeman drawls.

  Jesus, at least they could be more original.

  “I’ll give you ten thousand,” my father offers without a blink. “Ten thousand and you drop it off at a garage in Linstead till I pick it up in about two weeks.”

  “Ten thousand! Gas money that,” Small Man exclaims.

  “So!” I join in.

  Twenty minutes later and we have reached a consensus. They will pull it out and haul it to a garage in Linstead for twenty thousand dollars.

  As soon as the man asks for a down payment, my father adds a condition that he wants his suitcase retrieved from the car.

  Small Man’s a
ssistant says he could do it for a thousand dollars.

  So we stand quietly off to the side as the man from the wrecker climbs carefully down the slope at the end of a rope played slowly out by the wrecker’s gantry. I cannot imagine what is so important in that suitcase to risk a man’s life for. I do a mental tally of my current account; I should be able to get the down payment with my ATM card.

  “Let him work for his pay,” Father whispers to me.

  “Is money in there?” I ask. “You have money in there?”

  “There is a little,” he says through the corner of his mouth, “a little small change.”

  The man is at the car and his partner shouts down that he should just break the window. But he ignores this advice and tries to open the back door.

  “Don’t touch it,” the sergeant shouts down, “just bust the glass!”

  My father seems not to care what they do. “Ask him if he sees the suitcase,” he says to the policeman. Then he directs his voice down the hill: “Can you see the suitcase?”

  But the man is ignoring everyone. Maybe because he has discovered that the car is much more securely lodged than we expected. He has managed to open the rear door. Half of him disappears inside and then he reappears slowly, burdened by a large suitcase.

  Then it hits me. “Daddy, what do you mean ’bout two weeks?”

  “How you mean?”

  “What do you mean when you say that you will pick up the car in two weeks’ time. What are you doing with such a large suitcase in your car?”

  He tells me not to worry myself. Then he is silent beside me. In fact, except for the brief exchanges of a moment ago, all morning he has been strangely quiet and into himself, reflective even.

  Not much has passed between us since we left the dead man sprawled on the streets last night. I tried to buy him dinner, but he said he was not hungry. As soon as we checked in, he went to his room and closed the door. I know he was shaken by the death of the old man, so I went to check on him first thing this morning. When I got to his room, he wasn’t there. Before I had a chance to panic, however, I spotted him on the street walking slowly and pensively from the direction of Mandeville.