Over the following weeks, Orbits was brought back to those years while he was arranging his belongings in cardboard boxes, while he was expressing his gratitude to Mona, while he was marvelling at the way the years had flown. The mood followed him to his bungalow, and he recalled his fantasy of floating over the clouds, away from his parents, his brother, everyone at his schools. That dream had lasted longer than he had anticipated, and now Orbits wondered how many other awkward children like him had devised fantasies that gave them the power not to punish and destroy, as in the comic books, but to escape. He wished his younger self could meet others like him far away from the gaze of the bullies, maybe in an abandoned village like this, and he tried to imagine what they would talk about apart from the wish for invisibility. He recalled instead a scene from another era, when he was in high school and the teacher was talking about a book in which a man had bemoaned his invisibility. Orbits had misunderstood the writer’s point and couldn’t understand why anyone would see this as an affliction.
This foray into his childhood was something Orbits had always avoided, and in the nights, he walked out to his gallery hidden from the road by ferns and ornamentals. When he switched on the outside light, insects, as if they had been patiently waiting, began scotching around the bulb, bumping against the ceiling, their arcs briefly illuminated so that the scene resembled a distant fragmentation. His mother would have liked it here, he felt, even though she might have complained about the obscured view of the road. On some mornings as he stepped into his car, he speculated on what exactly her gaze had been fixed on during her last months. Maybe she had been seeing her dead husband on the road and beyond, Starboy returning from the guava patch. Or perhaps she had chosen a single insignificant object rooted to a single spot to constantly remind her she was still alive.
Occasionally he stopped at the shop on his way from work. The owner perked up to ask if the electrical wiring had come loose, or if he had discovered termites on any of the walls, or if the water tanks at the side of his house were empty. Orbits said the wiring was fine, there were no termites, and the tanks were filled although he was not certain of this. Then the shopkeeper would ask if he had checked the voltage of the plugs and the water for kiwi, mosquito larvae and tadpoles. He seemed affronted with each of Orbits’ assurances that everything was satisfactory. He would open a soft drink in a sulking and exaggerated way and take a tiny sip, wiping his lips with the side of the bottle before he pounded the cap into place with the flat of his palm. Once he said, “I surprise that the mister decide to sell it, if you ask me. But who know what in people mind. Maybe it was haunted. It look to me like the sort of house that no spirit will pass straight. Sometimes when I passing in that direction I does hear children laughing from the school opposite even though that place shut down forty years now. The thing about spirits is they have no rhyme and reason. They willing to tangle with anybody.” He paused and looked over Orbits’ shoulder. “Ay-ay. Long time I didn’t see that preacherman. I wonder what he want?”
The man who entered the shop seemed to be in his late sixties. He was bald and had a white beard on his chin, but his upper lip was clean. It was his voice, slightly trilling as if there was a bit of nervous gaiety at the centre of all his words, that seemed familiar. He stood at the end of the counter while the shopkeeper rummaged through his fridge for the requested drink.
“Skullcap?” The man turned and Orbits remembered this was just a private nickname he had given the man. “Baby Rabbit? Remember?” He looked at Orbits without recognition. “I too worked at the place.”
For a minute, Orbits felt he had made a mistake, but the man drew closer, looked him up and down and said, “Not the matter-rologist? Eh?”
“Yes, yes, man.” Orbits was so excited to see someone from his younger days that he was uncharacteristically effusive. “Is me self. You remember we use to go for drives all across the country.”
“Come, brother.” He hugged Orbits. “Listen, I know hardback men don’t like to hug like this but is nice to see you. In darkers and thing. You was a youth in them days. How long that was? Twenty years?”
“Thirty maybe.”
“Thirty and twenty is the same amount,” the shopkeeper murmured. “Is just a difference of ten. Take out the one from ten and it leave zero.” He tittered.
“Time does fly in your old age. So what you doing in these parts?”
“I living in this village now. In the green house opposite the old school. What about you?”
“Here and there, brother. Here and there.”
“Guess who maxi I was in when I first see the house?”
“You joking! With all these tourists bundle in the back and bumping they gums about how nice the place is.” He laughed sadly. “Was a different time, brother. A different time. Baby Rabbit gone and get diabetes and now he park up in some nursing home. Rich people disease, brother. You remember Lilboy? Get bounce down and remain on the road for hours from what I hear. That is what happening to we people now. Nobody watching out for the little man. Money melt away but sweet teeth remain. Foreign this and foreign that. Foreign crime, too. Kidnapping and ransom. That is why it have so much thiefing. The end times, brother.”
Orbits wanted to change the topic. “So what about the outsides?” Skullcap seemed startled with the question, so Orbits added, “We visited a family. A little girl at the time.”
“Ah, yes. She not so little again. In fact, she in America now. I does visit from time to time to help out with the grand but that place not for me. Shaitaan, brother.”
The shopkeeper, who had been listening, said, “For years I trying to get a visa but every time they ask about bank account I does come to a complete full stop. My bank account is my and mine damn business. I applying for a visa, not getting married, I tell the officer the last time.” He tittered.
Skullcap shifted away from the counter and spoke in a lower voice. “So what about you, brother? What you up to these days?”
“I worked in a field station for a few years, but I is a councillor now. In a village about twelve miles away. I almost finish there.”
“Good, brother. I always thought you would reach far. You remember all these questions you used to ask me? About every little thing.”
Orbits could not recall and he wished the other man would continue, but it was the shopkeeper who said, “So you is a councillor? You never mention it to me. Don’t ask me why but now that I know I wondering if you could do anything about the drain in the back of the shop. Everybody rubbish does come to a full stop right behind me. Never know rubbish could be so bad-minded.”
“Is not in my jurisdiction,” Orbits told him.
“Jurisdiction. That is a very big word you using on me.” He returned to his corked drink and gazed sourly at Orbits while he sipped daintily. “Joo-risk-deek-shan.”
“Look, brother, I have to push on,” Skullcap said. “Was nice meeting you.” He seemed set to leave before he asked, “I making a trip to the town next week. If you want to come is fine with me. Will be like old times.”
Orbits suspected the invitation had been issued through politeness, but he was curious about Skullcap’s mention of questions during their trips together. So he said, “Sure. We could meet right here. What time?”
Skullcap took almost a minute before he said, “Wednesday. Ten in the morning.”
“Okay. I will take the day off.”
When Skullcap departed, the shopkeeper said, “I wish I could take a day off. But I not so lucky. Ask me why?”
“Because you are self-employed and I never see any children around the place.”
The shopkeeper took a long drink, his eyes on Orbits. “No madam, no children, no close family. Sometimes I does ask myself why I standing behind this counter day in and day out.” He raised a leg to kick away a fly and almost lost his balance. “Because is the only thing I know. The parents die out before they time
and all of a sudden everything fall on my lap. No time for romancing and liming. You could say that I marking time. Yes, you could say that. So when you bringing the people to see about the drain?”
“This area have its own councillor. You should talk to him. He might—”
“But don’t feel sorry for me. I had a craft once, you know. Real pretty and sexy.” He put down the bottle and traced a wavy shape with both hands, stopping to adjust his hands further apart. “You have anybody?”
“Parents passed away.”
“Anybody else?”
“My wife and I separated.”
He bent to blow on his knuckles but kept his gaze on Orbits. “The first time I set eye on you I tell myself that you and the madam run into some problems. Ask me how I know that?” When Orbits did not respond, he said, “You have the look of a man who toting feelings. A man with a bag of cement on two of his shoulders and a solid concrete block on the other two. What I was talking about before? Oh, yes. Father never approve. He say the girl was from the wrong family. Maybe he was right. Maybe he was wrong. Who is to say? Sometimes I does blame him for that and sometimes I does feel that my script get write long ago. Which remind me. That old friend of yours was mixup in some bad business.”
“What sort of business?”
“Is not for me to say. I just repeating what I hear. Something with the law.” He slapped away a fly and glanced suspiciously at Orbits. “What you all going to the town to do?”
“I have some business there,” Orbits told him. “Government business.”
The statement was just to terminate the shopkeeper’s curiosity, and on the appointed Wednesday, when he saw Orbits with a folder in his hand, he asked, “People drain business?”
“An old teacher came with a problem.”
“So you does help out old teachers? Drain?”
“I just dropping the form for him. He too old and sick to travel.”
“Sick? What disease?”
“He never mentioned it to me and it was not my place to ask.”
“But you is a funny sort of councillor. Not your place you say and yet you doing big-big favour for him. Ask me what disease I battling with?” When Orbits remained silent, glancing at the road, he continued, “Heart. But the thing with the heart is that it real bad-minded. When it start getting ownway it does pull down everything with it toute baghai. Lungs, liver, kidneys.” He counted on his fingers. “I leave out anything? Is four it had the last time I check. You know the preacher fella who was here the other day say that time does fly in you old age, but in my case, it dragging on. I wonder why he say that? You think is because old people have plenty years in the bag to compare with? I not that old you know. Guess.”
“Your age?”
“Make a pick. Any number from ten to fifty-five.” Thankfully, at that moment Skullcap drove into the gap. “Fifty-four!” the shopkeeper shouted as Orbits got into the car.
During the trip to the capital, Skullcap was talkative the way Orbits remembered, remarking on the direction the country was heading, the growing gap between the rich and poor, the flaunting of wealth, the corruption at every corner, the arrogance of those in power and their reluctance to annoy the wealthy. “The money bring new vice but people didn’t forget the old ones. It had a time when I use to wish for a hurricane or earthquake to run through the place just to remind people that it have a big man upstairs watching and he don’t like what he seeing.”
During a break in his sermon, Orbits told him, “It look like you should have been in politics rather than me.”
Skullcap laughed and said, “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to throw all this on you. I hope you don’t mind.” But as he continued on about the absence of god and the wickedness all around, as he made the world bigger and more consequential, Orbits saw his own four years as a councillor stripped and reduced. And when Skullcap asked him about his “own good works,” it was not false modesty that was attached to the simple statement “I try to help out some of the poor people in the area, but I didn’t make much progress.”
“But you try, brother. That is the thing. You try.”
“Sometimes I feel I didn’t try hard enough.”
Orbits had spoken in a deliberately lugubrious manner, offering the statement in a joking way, but Skullcap said, “That is honest, brother. Not much people like that again. That is what I always liked about you. You used to lay you cards on the table even as a youngboy working with Baby Rabbit. In the coming battle fellas like you will always be on the right side.”
As Skullcap spoke admiringly of men like Orbits, his subject was at turns flattered and reminded of his frustration with the long bureaucratic chain that sputtered and stopped before it reached the capital, forcing him to restart the entire process over and over until he gave up. Skullcap continued to preach about god and morality, and when they approached the capital, Orbits told him that he had some business and would take a bus back to his place.
When Orbits got out of the vehicle, Skullcap told him, “I was telling you before that for years I was hoping that god would send a earthquake or hurricane to remind people, but what he was really sending was messages. Not from goat or cyat and thing, but real message. Smallman getting murder and bigman walking free. All these moneymen walking around like they own the damn country.” He recited his messages in a singsong way, like an old-time calypsonian, and Orbits felt he had used this speech before. “Big shot with no cover for they mouth. Children borning with chicken foot and pig snout. So it does go. It take a time before I was able to decode the message and them. You know what the message tell me? It tell me that all a madman need is people to encourage him. That when a madman back against the wall is then that he is the most dangerous. Alright, later, brother. Keep fighting the good fight.”
Orbits walked around the capital marvelling how much the place had changed. There were new buildings everywhere, ugly structures that borrowed from arbitrary styles that made them seem bullying next to the small older wooden buildings squashed between all the concrete. The new structures had pushed the vendors closer to the streets, so that some intersections were almost impassable. There was constant honking of horns and everyone looked either miserable or violently impatient. Cars were speeding by, cutting dangerously close to the vendors selling every imaginable thing, it seemed. Thirty years earlier, there had been a few vagrants, but now he saw them everywhere, young, muscular and aggressive. The boom years had given the capital a vanity that extended even to the lowest.
“You could spare some small change?” a young man asked him. “Twenty dollars and some coins. I want to get a little something for the belly. Kentuckys.” Orbits, always uneasy with brashness, slipped his hands into his pockets and walked away quickly.
As he came to the Savannah, he realized he was less than twenty minutes from his old workplace, and he headed in that direction. He recalled his forays in the capital after he had lost his job with Baby Rabbit, a secret he kept from his former wife. He had been overjoyed when Wally had offered him the position, but his former wife had asked about contract and salary. He wondered how his life may have turned out if they had not divorced, if he had had the benefits of her practical side as the decades rolled by and they both grew older. As he approached the street, his mind drifted to Wally, whose company had blunted so much of the distress of the time. He had kept up his pretense about his life, but before Wally’s departure, he had revealed everything to the other man.
The building was exactly as he recalled, and from his time at the station, he knew that the money from the boom years had passed that ministry straight. But the workers were new, and they seemed more harassed than the men waiting on a long bench and glancing at their watches. From their clothes, Orbits knew these were country folks, most likely farmers. When he walked to the front desk, a young man with a tie said in a rough voice, “Mister, join the line please. Why allyou people so?”
/> “Allyou people? How long you working here, boy?”
“Who you think you calling boy?”
“The person who just mention allyou people. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Now the young man put down the magazine he was reading. He was not accustomed to this reaction that could stem either from ignorance or from a position of authority. He studied the man before him; his clothes, neither country nor town, offered no clue, but his hands were not a farmer’s. Just to be safe, he asked, “What is it you want?”
“I want your attention.”
“You have it now. What is it you want? As you could see, we very busy.”
“Yes, I know very well how things operate here. I used to work in this same building at one time.”
“Yeah? I never see you before. Must be a long time ago.” His voice was now more cautious. “What is your name?” When Orbits told him, he said, “Hold on.” He walked over to a young woman who was polishing her nails and then to the filing cabinet that Orbits remembered so well. “I think these is for you.” He returned with a bundle of envelopes tied with a string. “You know how much time we nearly throw them away. Is lucky for you that the old supervisor who retire mention that it was from his old boss. Say that was to one of his good friends who move to a field station. The letters keep coming year after year, mostly at Christmas. You have any identification.” Orbits saw the letters were all from Wally, and he was so moved that he sat on the bench next to the farmers. He glanced at the stamped dates and he saw they spanned a period of twelve years and had stopped sixteen years earlier. Wally had not forgotten him; year after year, he had written. Orbits glanced at the date of the last letter and wondered if his old friend had died or, not receiving a reply for twelve years, had finally given up. Perhaps somewhere in Toronto, he, too, was sitting in some old building and wondering if his old friend had died.
“You okay?”
The question was from one of the farmers, and Orbits saw a splatter on the top envelope’s stamp. He wiped his eyes hurriedly. “From an old friend. I thought he had forgotten.”
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