Your Corner Dark

by Desmond Hall

  Tell me something I didn’t know, Uncle Joe.

  Thirty-Seven

  after racing every last plate, cup, and utensil back to its owner, Frankie performed one last chore, a walk through the house to check for anything he might need at the camp. He opened the door to his parents’ room, taking in the tiny single bed, wondering how his parents had ever fit in it. He picked up the ham radio his father had restored and clicked it on, and a radio announcer tagged RJR: Real Jamaican Radio.

  After turning off the radio, he packed it with his other stuff, then gently closed the door and scanned the living room. He’d locked all the trinkets, things his mother had collected, inside the small closet, not that they were worth much. Funny, when he’d found out he’d gotten the scholarship, he’d wondered if he’d miss home when he went to America. Now he knew what he’d have missed. And it wasn’t this house. It wasn’t a what, either. It was a who. A whole lot of who’s.

  Maybe he could loan the house to someone? But no one moved to Troy. Only away from it.

  His phone vibrated. Leah. Her text consisted of three words: Hellshire Beach today?

  It was like a message from another world. He was in another world. When?

  2pm?

  Another world. He could hardly answer fast enough.

  A car honk nearly made him drop his phone. He’d answer her in a minute. Ice Box was waiting for him, supposedly to help him get his stuff up to camp, but Frankie knew better. Ice Box was on guard duty. Guarding him. He wondered if he could ask Ice Box to drive his stuff up to camp while he went to the beach. All he had was the one crammed crocus bag, a coarse-hair sack frayed all over, and his old Frankenstein of a bike.

  But the honk wasn’t Ice Box. “Wha gwan, Nephew?” Joe came in, a cigar-size spliff burning between his lips. This couldn’t be good. Frankie snapped his phone shut. “Me deh ya, Uncle.”

  “Moving day.” Joe looked around the house like a potential buyer. “Yeh, mon, it will be good for you to leave here.”

  “Uncle, I have something to do downtown.”

  “No, mon. We have a meeting this afternoon.”

  “Can’t I skip it this time?”

  “Skip it? Frankie, we going to war! Time to grow up.”

  Frankie went cold at the insult. After all he’d already done for the posse, for his father… “Uncle, I am grown up,” he said tersely.

  “Okay, stop acting like a likkle youth and start acting like a big man, then. We have business fi take care of. Me wait fi you in di car. And don’t tek no long time,” he said in a thick and annoyed patois. He spun on his heel and out he went.

  Eff this was what Frankie wanted to say, but instead he picked up his bag. Then, at the last second unlocked the closet. A kerosene lamp with a faulty switch, two chipped bowls, posters with religious sayings on landscapes, mismatched candleholders, a glued-together ceramic map of Jamaica, and all the other worthless things that were now his inheritance. He had already taken everything he wanted to bring. He relocked the closet, pulled out his phone, and texted Leah that he wasn’t coming after all. Another day? Then he stood at the door and took a final look. The house looked so small. How had they all fit in it? And now he didn’t fit in it at all.

  Thirty-Eight

  at the encampment, Joe dispatched Frankie to the smallest shack. It was the one at the far end, next to the trail that led to the ganja field. His uncle was probably making a statement to everyone that he didn’t play, even with his nephew.

  The room smelled like oak and pimento. He’d just unpacked his bundle: Samson’s ham radio, a dented windup clock, two pairs of pants, four tees, the white button-down shirt, underwear, socks, sneakers, boots, and Samson’s shoes—pretty much everything he owned. A cardboard box, which he unloaded next, held a framed picture of his mother, Samson’s clippers, a couch cushion, several notebooks, and a Statics & Dynamics textbook. Why had he brought the book? Some foolish hope? He should check in with his teachers but… whatever.

  He sighed, propping the couch cushion up against the wall. He would use it for a bed tonight. Joe’s crew had given him a warm welcome, but he felt more alone surrounded by them all than he ever had at home. Maybe it was being there when Winston wasn’t. He wanted Leah. He opened his phone. Closed it. Opened it. Nada from Leah. She was pissed, he figured. She had no idea how he was feeling.

  He closed the phone once more and wandered outside. The other recruits would be arriving soon. Moving in. What had they told their families? What did their families think? If he’d told Samson he was moving up here, Samson would have lost his mind. Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about that. Yeah… they’d all be moving in… except for Winston. Winston. DAMN IT!!! Would Winston have gotten the house next to his? Would they have bunked up together? It would have been tight, but fun. He’d never know. Winston and the others had been such good friends to him at the Nine-Night. He could practically smell the wet hay scent of the whiskey they had brought. Then came the smell of wet concrete as he scraped the sides of his father’s tomb. He couldn’t recall what the choir had sung. He hadn’t been able to remember his father’s favorite hymn when they’d asked him. And now their faces were a blur. The only face he could see, wanted to see, was Leah’s. So he took his phone out once more and called her.

  “Change your mind, asshole?” She sounded cheerful and pissed off at the same time.

  He had the meeting, yeah, that damn meeting. But he needed her more. He had to tell her what he was doing, especially now that he was living at the camp. Fuck it. The posse could wait. It was just a meeting. Someone could fill him in. “You want to meet up now?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Meet me at the entrance,” she said.

  “Yeh, mon.” He found his bike leaning against a guava tree near his shack. Avoiding any eye contact, he walked it to the road. He’d ride to Troy, then catch the bus to the beach. Fully expecting to hear someone shout his name, he tried not to hurry, not to call extra attention to himself. Twenty feet down the road, his stomach fluttering, he hopped on and started pedaling fast, swerving around potholes, breaking into a smile as he fled on a runaway’s high.

  Thirty-Nine

  when he first saw her at the entrance to Hellshire Beach, the sun highlighted the side of her face. She was beaming. As they walked in, she took a fat square of tinfoil out from her backpack and unwrapped banana bread—her self-proclaimed specialty. He had no gifts but ate graciously: enjoyed it, enjoyed the closeness, enjoyed not feeling alone.

  The sands glittered as he trailed Leah’s footprints, her shoes and his in his hands. Once they were far beyond any lingering beachgoers, he knew it was time.

  “Leah, I have to tell you something.”

  She turned with a smile. It faded as her eyes searched his.

  He swallowed. “I didn’t lose my scholarship the way I told you.” He watched her lips part, her eyes go guarded. “When he got—when my father was shot, he got really sick, you know that. He needed a special treatment, a course of crazy-expensive antibiotics from America, and the cost was a lot more than we had.” He looked to the sea; a wave had just crashed and was now receding, just like everything in his life. How could he tell her this? He had to tell her this. “I had to get the money somehow—it was my dad—so I went to my uncle.” He waited a beat, gauging her reaction. Her eyes had narrowed. Shit. But he went on—there was no other way. “My uncle, well, he’s a don, back up on the mountain. He’d only give me the money if I joined his posse.”

  Her eyes were now slits. “You’re in a posse?” Her voice was ice.

  Even now, the words seemed impossible. His cheeks burned. “Yes.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “So, was there even a scholarship?”

  What? Okay, okay. He got it. He’d lied about so much, he could have been lying about that. She didn’t know what to believe, and why the hell should she? “Yes, there was a scholarship. I was supposed to respond a few weeks ago. You saw the letter! They’ve prob
ably moved on, given it to somebody else by now.” He dug one foot in the sand. “But like I said, the only way my uncle would give me the money was if I joined his posse. It was the only way to try and save my dad. That’s the truth.”

  Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. But she hadn’t left. Yet. “That why you didn’t ask me to come to your father’s funeral?”

  He thought about Taqwan and his crew. “Yes.”

  She let out a careful, meted breath. “What kind of things do you do? In the posse, I mean?”

  He knew she was asking, was he also a crazed dog? He dug deeper into the sand, deeper to where the sun’s warmth no longer reached, where it was colder, denser. “I had to use a gun one time.” He would stick his head underneath the sand as penance if it would make all he’d done go away. “I shot at a kid.” He dared to glance at her. Her arms were folded tight now. “I didn’t hit him! But I had to do it.”

  Now she was blinking hard as if holding off tears. He had to make her understand. “He was about to kill some people, my friends. But I didn’t kill him.” Ray-Ban Boy’s body collapsing, falling, T-shirt white to red. He hadn’t done that. But he’d tried to. Pretty much the same thing—

  “Shit. Shit!” she cried. “Damn it, Frankie! Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Leah, I want out of the posse. I want out so bad. It’s a lifetime thing, but I’m going to try to find some way out.” There was no way out. He could hear the pleading in his voice. For that way out. For them.

  Leah pivoted and resumed walking, but not in a way that seemed like she was running away from him like he was evil, corrupted, like it was over between them.

  Looking at the trail of footprints she’d left, he prayed he could continue to be honest with her. That she’d let him. Another wave rolled in, leaving behind white foam as it rolled back into the impossibly blue ocean.

  Waves rolled on no matter what else was taking place. That kind of strength—did they have it? But she was still walking away.

  Until she wasn’t. “The boy you shot at, you sure he was going to shoot you?” she called into the wind.

  “I didn’t kill him!” He felt desperate to make that clear. “I didn’t hit him! And yes, I think he would have killed me, all of us, if he’d had the chance.”

  She nodded, then set her gaze on a trio of children in the distance, diving, running, splashing in the shallow water. “I don’t know if I trust you.”

  He watched the little girl do a cartwheel. He used to be able to do handstands. He used to do a lot of things. Now it was all shit. He wanted to say that he didn’t have to tell her everything; he could have left out the shooting. But that could make things worse. “I was wrong for not telling you before,” he said at last. “I know that. I do. But I’m telling you now. It wasn’t easy to say this to you because… I can’t even believe it myself. I wake up every morning hoping it all was… a nightmare…”

  She threw her hand out, stopping him. “Hold on.” She sat on the sand and wrapped her arms around her knees. And then, to Frankie’s surprise, she gave a quick, hard laugh. “What I would give to see the look on my father’s face right now.”

  Did this mean Leah wouldn’t tell her father about any of this? And did it mean that… did he dare hope? He sat down next to her, dropped the shoes, smoothed the sand around them with the flat of his palms. “So, do I still have my girl, or are you going to turn me in?”

  “I gotta say, you’re a lot tougher than you look.” She rubbed her nose against her knuckles.

  There was an insult in there, one that made him want to laugh. How could this be his life?

  “Look,” she went on. “I don’t like it—I hate it, in fact. But I kinda get it. You had some sucky choices to make. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been in your place.”

  And he knew she wasn’t going to break up with him. He felt like he’d escaped, but he still wasn’t sure. “Leah, I’m going to quit the posse.” He looked at her. “My father’s gone.” He rolled his shoulders. “There’s no reason to be in it anymore.”

  “What is it like being with the posse?”

  “Hmm.” He watched the little kids running back and forth away from the surf. When he and Winston were ten, they’d gone to the beach once and Frankie had stepped on a sea urchin. “It look bad, mon,” Winston had said. “You need a quick cure or else you have fi go hospital. Me have to pee on it, mon.” Frankie protested, but the pain was intense, and he’d once heard some adults talk about this very cure. So he gave in. Winston’s pee was hot, and since he’d had a couple of grape sodas, there was a lot. When he finished, Frankie asked, “You sure this will work?” Winston said, “Me doubt it, mon. But me sure did have to pee.” Frankie hopped after him as he ran away. He’d never have a friend like that again.

  Leah was waiting for an answer. “It’s hard to say, you know?” he said at last. In the distance, fat-leaved trees grew out of the sand, twenty feet from the water. Under their shade sat several older Jamaican women, like guardians of all the prior generations. In a warped way, that was what Joe thought he was: a guardian of the way he wanted Jamaica to be, and making big money off that at the same time. Joe, Aunt Jenny, Big Pelton, Marshal, the Stony Mountain boys, and the others. He would miss them, but they weren’t worth dying over.

  “Was it, well, exciting to have a gun, to make big money? Did you—did you want revenge for your father?” An edge of angry fringed her voice.

  He squinted into the sunlight until he had to shut his eyes. Two dots drifted behind his eyelids like black tears. “Maybe.”

  “Did you get the revenge? Still want more?”

  “What are you doing?” He felt dizzied by her questions. “I’m saying that I’m done with posse business.”

  “Are you really, though? And—do you say you’re done, or do they?”

  He nodded hard and turned to the surf, which was crashing, foam rushing to the shore. “You keep on like this, I’m going to start thinking you want me to stay in it.”

  “It’s not about what I want.”

  Frustrated, out came, “Don’t you want me?”

  Unnerved by her quietness, he took her hand. She didn’t pull away. He looked at it. “You know, I thought it would have been softer.”

  “You try using paint thinner every day.” Then, out of nowhere, she punched him in the arm, punched him again, harder. Then she got up and stomped away.

  What? What had he done now?

  Then she stopped and glared over her shoulder. “You coming, asshole?”

  Something quietly sad dawned on him, something that oddly also made him feel a little better: Samson would have liked Leah. He would have liked her a lot. Frankie hopped up. If she kept going all the way to the end of the island, jumped in the Caribbean, and started for Cuba, he’d be right by her side.

  * * *

  After fifty feet of silence, Leah went toward a collection of dried-out crab shells wedged in the sand. She kicked one free and began dribbling it as if it were a soccer ball.

  Frankie ran after it. She turned, shielding him from the shell, sticking her back against his chest, defensive moves. He slid his leg between hers and tapped the shell away. He stepped around her and broke for the shell. She lunged forward, stuck her leg out, and tripped him. As he fell, she jumped on his back, pressing hard. “You’re such an asshole! Why didn’t you tell me you were in a posse? You can’t keep things like that from me.” She pressed harder, and harder.

  He swung to the side, knocking her off his back. He smiled at her, thinking that she was playing. But her expression was the same kind of stern he’d seen when she’d confronted the crits. She wasn’t playing. She might have been trying to forgive him, but she wasn’t there yet.

  “Leah, I’m really, really sorry.”

  She brushed the sand off her legs and stood up.

  He reached for her.

  She stepped back. “I have to go, Frankie. I’ll see you around.”

  The pit in his stomach bec
ame a sinkhole. “That’s it? Leah, I said I was sorry. I’m really sorry—”

  “See you.” She walked off. And this time she didn’t stop, didn’t turn around. And when he was sure she wasn’t going to return, he drew back his leg, ready to kick that shell till it crumbled. But something stopped him. The curl to it, the flash of peach in the center—his mother had loved these kinds of shells. He’d been what—seven, eight?—and Samson had brought them to the beach, a rare adventure, and his mother, late in the day, found a crab shell washing up with the surf, as if the ocean was presenting it to her as a gift. She’d been so happy—carrying the shell home, placing it on a shelf by the window. Whatever happened to that shell?

  Frankie lowered his foot, then squatted and picked up the shell. Then he tucked it gently into his pocket.

  Forty

  it was dusk by the time Frankie got back to his shack. He moved his father’s old ham radio to the left, to the right; then he lay the shell he’d found at the beach on top. He didn’t know much about how his mother and father had met. Had they ever broken up and gotten back together while they were dating? Could he and Leah? He banged the back of his head against the wall, hard.

  Almost like an echo, a sharp knock sounded at the door.

  “Frankie, open up di fucking door.”

  Frankie pressed his face against the wall, peering through a crack between a plank and the doorframe. Ice Box and Buck-Buck. Frankie let out a long breath. No one had looked him in the eye when he’d come back from the beach. They all knew this was going to happen. Joe must have told everyone that he would be punished for missing that damn meeting.

  “Frankie, no make me bust down this door, mon.”

  Frankie was enveloped by the same heavy sense of doom he felt when his father was going to beat him. He held the door latch, reminding himself he knew what to do, how to take it. But when he pulled the door open and stepped outside, he gasped. The entire camp was there. To bear witness. He’d never actually seen everyone standing together before: about thirty people, posse and family members, all looking like a soccer team posing for a photo. Joe stood in front, his face hard, whether out of anger or disappointment, Frankie couldn’t tell.