by Desmond Hall
Frankie had vouched for Winston. He’d given his word, promised Winston would be a good soldier. And he did this? He didn’t even have to aim at anyone! Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Joe turning toward them. Holy shit. He was going to get kicked out of the posse for sure. Winston couldn’t get himself up and do a little bit of nothing? What was his huge problem? Thinking fast, Frankie made as if he were pushing down Winston’s gun, raving, “Shit, Winston! Save some bullets, mon! Stop firing, mon!”
Joe seemed to buy it—he turned his attention to the road ahead as they drove toward their next target. He was fist-bumping Ice Box, so they had to be pleased with the chaos they’d all caused. Word of the drive-by would spread, and potential JLP voters would be too scared to even walk past polls on Election Day for fear of getting caught in a cross fire.
Frankie clapped Winston’s back. “Up, mon. Up, up.” But Winston just stared sullenly at his feet. “Winston, what the hell, mon?”
Winston shrugged. “Me no know.”
“You better figure it out. Quick too.”
It was as if Winston had the yips, like how athletes sometimes lost confidence and couldn’t do even the simplest things. There was a cricket bowler once—he was the best on the national team, but after a bad game he completely lost his way. He couldn’t even throw the ball to a teammate in warm-ups. Pretty soon he was let go, off the team. Frankie couldn’t let that happen to Winston.
Twenty-Nine
joe did, in fact, deem the terror mission a success—they’d hit a half-dozen other JLP neighborhoods in the next half hour. It was a freaking relief that Winston had gotten over his yips, at least a little, in the next towns, and managed to get off a few shots, at least enough so that Joe didn’t notice. But Frankie was still concerned. Suppose Winston had to defend himself? Would he get the yips again?
With only ten days left before the election, the posse’s main work was done for the time being. They all turned their attention to their “day jobs”: tending to the ganja fields, making drops, and collecting. Frankie only had to go up to Joe’s camp for a few days at a time and help prep and bag the ganja for delivery—much like the work he’d done for Mr. Brown. And now he had time for Leah.
He sat in the art studio, feet up on a chair, a Popular Mechanics in his hands. He’d gone to visit his father earlier, but he couldn’t see him, since they were running some tests. The nurse assured him that they still had a lot of hope. He hoped they were right. He’d also just checked in quickly with his teachers—all was good with school. At least there was that.
A few minutes later, Frankie laid the magazine on his lap. He’d read the same paragraph about megapixel capacity three times. But the only information sinking in was that he had to tell Leah about the posse.
She snuck him a sweet smile, then tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear as she leaned over her latest project—she wouldn’t let him see it yet. She seemed so focused, so happy to see him. And he was back playing yo-yo in his brain. Why screw that up? But why lead her on? He liked her so much. He liked her too much to keep that shit from her. A lie of omission is still a lie, his mother would say when he had trouble fessing up to something when he was little. He had to stop lying to Leah.
“Please don’t tell me this is what you read for fun.” Leah had somehow snuck up on him, peeking at the page open in front of him. “ ‘Hardworking Software’? ‘A Brave New World of Surveillance’? Riveting.” But he could tell she was teasing.
“Don’t you read art blogs? ‘How to Clean Your Paintbrush Weekly’ or something like that?” he teased back.
She stuck her tongue out at him, then reached into his backpack and lifted out the letter he’d never sent to the University of Arizona admissions department.
“It’s my letter turning down the scholarship.” Frankie lowered his head, tapped the cover of the magazine, and looked up at Leah. “Just never got around to mailing it. I’m sure they get the message, though.”
Leah bit her lip, then put the envelope back into the bag.
“It’s cool,” he said quickly, trying to brush it off.
“Serves me right for looking at other people’s stuff.”
The light, bright energy of a moment ago vanished as the loss of the scholarship rained down.
She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Okay?”
He nodded a lie.
She leaned closer and kissed him, her soft lips hard against his, then pushed away with a smack.
At the table behind them, a student cleared her throat, breaking the spell. Frankie took Leah’s hand and pointed to her new work. “Can I see now?” And to his surprise, she nodded.
Leah had painted black angels hovering over a blood-splattered child who lay splayed on the ground, seemingly lifeless, next to a wall covered with lots of JLP and PNP signage. Shaking, Frankie stepped away. “I think… I think you cross a line with this one, Leah.”
“Good. That means it’s working.” She grinned, proud. “Or at least getting there.”
Scared as he was, he couldn’t hide his admiration. She wasn’t going to back down. She was painting what she wanted. It was a canvas of hopelessness, and yeah, a thorough indictment of the government, the shitstem. His phone buzzed. It was a text from Aunt Jenny:
Come to hospital. Your father.
* * *
He and Leah hopped off the bus while it was still slowing to a stop and ran-walked the block to the hospital. Frankie checked his phone for the hundredth time. He’d texted his aunt over and over, but still no response.
Frankie scanned the scores of visitors around the outdoor waiting area. No Jenny.
“Come on!” He grabbed Leah’s hand, his stride fast and choppy. His chest grew tighter with each step as they rushed inside to the front desk.
“My aunt texted me,” he blurted out, breathless, at the attendant’s confused face.
“Is your aunt a patient here?”
Leah pushed past Frankie and leaned on the desk. “His father is Samson Green. He’s the patient.”
The woman sifted through several documents on her clipboard, taking her time, thumbing through page after page. Hurry the hell up, Frankie screamed in his head. If he’d said it out loud, it would only make her slow the hell down.
At last she glanced up. “What did you say his name was again?”
“Samson Green,” Frankie said in frustration.
The woman glared at him, then adjusted her glasses and looked back at the lists.
Leah edged close, ran her hand up and down Frankie’s back.
He felt a sudden chill. “Stop, Leah.” He pushed her hand away. “Miss, where’s the bathroom?”
She pointed toward the elevators. Frankie jogged across the lobby and straight-armed the bathroom door. When he was done, he caught sight of himself in the mirror at the sink for the first time in who knew how long. His jaw seemed wider, or longer, he wasn’t sure which, his eyes more intense. He looked like… Samson. Odd. He’d always thought he took after his mother. He splashed water on his face and dried it with his sleeve.
Back at the front desk, the woman was gone. Leah was pale, her eyes glassy. He grasped her arm. “What’s wrong? Where’s that lady?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Leah, where is she? What’s the—”
She put her fingers to his lips to stop him. “Frankie, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but your father died.”
He couldn’t be hearing her correctly. He closed his eyes, trying to conjure his father’s face. But he couldn’t. He opened them to the shock of fluorescent lights. He didn’t understand. There had to be a mistake.
“What are you saying? Where’s the woman?” Frankie spun around, looking for the attendant, then spotted her clipboard. He snatched it up, unclipped the papers, rifled through them with shaking hands. There, handwritten at the bottom of a list of typewritten names… No. No, no, no. His father’s name: Samson Josiah Oswald Green, deceased. The pages spilled out of his hands onto the
floor.
“What’s going on here?” a security guard demanded, barreling over. “That’s hospital property right there!”
Frankie ducked past the guard as if he didn’t exist, as if no one, not even Leah, existed. Leah caught up to him just outside the sliding doors and put an arm around him. The people in the outdoor waiting area, faces going grim, turned away quickly.
“He’s gone? My dad—he’s gone?” The words felt so completely foreign he had to squeeze them out of his mouth.
A single tear slid, almost in slow motion, down her cheek. He pulled her close, pressed his cheek into hers. What happened? How could this happen? Samson was just getting tests this morning. Frankie’d seen him just the other day. Then a wave of guilt crested. He should have stayed—waited until his father was back from the tests! Why hadn’t he been there? Why hadn’t he stayed? They should have talked. He should have done so much more. And now? And now?
Frankie released Leah and stormed back into the hospital lobby.
“Where is he?” he barked at the attendant, who was back behind the desk.
“Don’t raise your voice in here, young man,” she said.
The elevator doors opened, and there was Aunt Jenny, his father’s nurse beside her.
Jenny rushed toward Frankie, her lips pressed tight, and pulled him to her. Her cheek felt wet, her skin hot. Frankie moved away and broke for the elevator doors.
“You, wait there!” the security guard commanded.
Frankie slipped inside anyway and jabbed the button. Leah slid in just as the doors were shutting. The elevator jerked and creaked as it went up. Leah was full-on crying now, but Frankie could only manage to focus on the closed doors, willing them to open.
A myriad of thoughts pummeled at him. Drug-resistant or not, why hadn’t the fucking treatment worked? Why hadn’t it come sooner? He hadn’t been the son he needed to be! And the worst—he hadn’t been there! Frankie stormed through the ward, gagging at the foul urine and peroxide smell, eyes darting, searching for his father’s bed.
“May I help you?” a nurse asked, rushing toward him, another nurse by her side.
Frankie turned down a row of patients and broke into a jog. He could see his father’s bed ahead, empty, a few ghosted stains on the sheet near where it tucked under. He grabbed the rails. They were cold.
“Oh, I see it. It must be di son,” the second nurse said to the first.
The first nurse shook her head. “Yes, me see di resemblance.”
Frankie strained to sense something of Samson, but there was nothing. His father was gone. Frankie yanked the sheet up off the bed, holding the cool fabric to his face. Then, tightening his grip, he tried to rip the cloth to shreds. Leah reached for his arm. He shrugged it away. He strained, and tugged, and finally threw the sheet on the floor. He couldn’t breathe. The next thing he knew, the room was spinning and he was on the floor. Why couldn’t he breathe? Maybe he was going to choke to death, right there. Die on the dirty floor. He should have been there. He should have been there. It was too much, the guilt too heavy, pressing, pressing. Then, he became aware of someone standing over him. Leah or a nurse? No, he was in the shadow of a wrinkled old woman.
“My dear,” she said. It was as if her words performed some kind of obeah on him, for a calm fell on him. She extended her wretched-looking arms. Frankie pulled himself up and hugged the woman and started crying into her bony shoulders.
“It’s so good of you to come and see me, Johnny.”
The woman didn’t know who he was. Frankie didn’t care. He just held on, tight, his eyes burning with tears.
Thirty
two days later, still in a fog, Frankie slogged into his backyard with a spade and a bucket. The bucket held a small coconut tree he’d dug up by the bushes near the clearing, a few kilometers up the mountain. Carrying the little tree was a lot easier than carrying water from the standpipe, but still, his shoulders felt tight. The burden of his thoughts? In the corner of the backyard, he stopped near another dwarf coconut, the one his father had planted for his mother after she had died.
“You’re not going to plant that now, are you?” Aunt Jenny. He hadn’t even heard her come into the backyard. “It’s for Samson, right?”
Frankie nodded. “Thought this was probably the best spot.” Lots of sun.
Aunt Jenny squinted into the sky. “Is a crescent moon tonight, you know?”
Frankie shrugged. “What’s wrong with that?”
She studied the heavens as if there were instructions there. “A full moon is the best time.”
“I don’t think so, Aunt Jenny.” Frankie pointed to a twenty-foot coconut tree at the other side of the backyard. “My father and Uncle Joe planted that during a crescent moon. I think it was seven years ago.”
“No, Frankie, it was a full moon. And it was ten years ago.” She smiled sadly and looked at the house. “It was for your grandmother. She’s been gone for ten years.”
The memory rushed back. His father and uncle had let him carry the then-tiny tree, in a bucket, just like now. “You’re right.” He’d been so sure about the moon and the number of years. He shook his head, trying to clear it. “It’s just that it’s… not fair.”
Aunt Jenny rocked back and forth. “It isn’t. He fought so hard. Maybe if the treatment had gotten here sooner, but how can anyone predict all dem complications, him going into shock? His body just couldn’t keep fighting.” She looked intently at Frankie. “I hope you’re not blaming yourself. You did everything you could to help him. You gave it your all.”
Was she for real? Of fucking course he was blaming himself. If he hadn’t gone to that party, his father wouldn’t have come after him. He’d sacrificed his scholarship, and his father died anyway. Could a head explode? If so, his was about to, into a million tiny pieces. If Frankie had done nothing at all, the result would have been the same.
Jenny rubbed her cheeks with her palms. “I have a delivery,” she said, pulling her gun from her waistband, checking the slide. “There’s some food for you on the stove.” Aunt Jenny’s way of saying goodbye.
And leaving him alone. Because that was what he was now, alone. In his father’s house. Now his house. He wanted to hit something. He looked at the tree, still in the bucket, its fronds so green, so alive. It would die if he didn’t replant it. He picked up the spade, grabbed the bucket, and left for the clearing where he’d dug it up in the first place.
Thirty-One
time had become erratic. Seconds were unreliable, minutes slurred together, and hours were moody, too fast or too slow. All he knew was that the funeral was tomorrow, whenever that was, and the only task he could manage was pressing his good shirt and black pants.
The heat rising from the steel iron on the stovetop warmed his chin. If he lingered, it would singe him, and if he waited long enough, it might burn, but then maybe he could feel something.
He heard Aunt Jenny. He looked out the window over the sink, and there she was, in the front yard, talking into her cell phone, one hand gesturing incessantly.
Frankie figured it was posse business because that’s what always seemed to be at the forefront of her mind. He envied her intense focus, especially now that he felt so scattered.
He closed the knob to the propane tank and wrapped the old rag, the one his father had used so many times, around the handle of the iron. Age and use had thinned it. The heat seeped through to his hand almost immediately and started to burn. There were worse kinds of pain. He carried the iron to the table beside the couch, where his sole white button-down shirt lay atop an old towel. Pressing the iron down on the collar, he worked his way from one side to the other, wearing away the wrinkles; his father had done the very same thing with his own shirt for his mother’s funeral. Three years. Three years ago, he had parents.
Frankie was on the last sleeve with the iron when Aunt Jenny walked in, Joe so close behind they could have been playing tag. Wow. Frankie hadn’t even heard a car drive up. Man, he was out
of it.
“Nephew, me want to talk to you and your aunt,” Joe said, pulling a chair from the table and taking a seat.
Aunt Jenny leaned against the kitchen counter. A long stalk of sugarcane had been sitting there since before Samson had been shot. Jenny snatched it up and, with the long kitchen knife, chopped the stalk in half.
Frankie brought the iron back to the burner, which he hoped was still hot. His pants still needed ironing. He hoped his aunt and uncle wouldn’t stay long.
Joe slammed his hand on the table. “Hear me now. Me don’t want to give Samson no funeral.”
Frankie nearly singed his skin testing the burner. He jerked his head away.
Joe went on. “This is not a money thing, so don’t jump to no conclusions. Me even pay the workers for the tomb already.” He began to shake his head, slow, slow. “Rasta don’t believe in death. Samson is reincarnating right now, if he hasn’t already.”
Aunt Jenny wedged the knife into the center of the stalk. “Samson wasn’t a Rasta.”
“The concrete tomb will hold no connection to my brother.” Joe turned to Frankie. “Or your father. It’s only a place to keep his bones.”
Jenny pushed so hard that the knife sliced right through the cane bark and thwacked into the wooden countertop. “It’s what he would have wanted.”
Frankie didn’t know how to begin to respond. This was too unbelievable! Joe and Samson had battled over everything, including Frankie. But this went beyond that. His uncle wasn’t content with defeating his brother—he wanted control of him even dead!
Joe kept on preaching. “Both of you must see that there is no such thing as beginnings and endings. Jah intends for all the things on earth to continue. Energy just transfers, it does not disappear.”
Aunt Jenny cut away the last piece of bark. “Joe, I respect your beliefs, but you have to respect Samson’s, too.”
Joe’s smile was not a happy one. “I am respecting the man’s soul. His spirit doesn’t need no ceremony, no send-off. His spirit is still here.”