“Sometimes, Star, when you make your enemy think you is their friend, you can get more from them than when you fight, you see me?”
He released his fist, and a wad of money, as if falling in line with the man’s dramatics, flipped open magnificently. Some of the bills fell off the counter and floated to the sidewalk.
Ab stared at the notes for an instant before looking back at the shocked faces outside. Then he turned away as calm as ever and began to pour a bottle of fresh vinegar into the bucket of pickled peppers.
After a few seconds of silence, he spoke over his shoulder.
“Tek your money off me food counter, Rasta. I just finish wipe it.”
Barry’s face fell. He looked around at them, embarrassed like, but the look lasted only a few seconds before he was grinning again.
“Is yours, Brethren! Yours, man! To pay back for… everyting, you see me!”
Ab slammed the cover onto the bucket.
“I and I don’t need your money, Rasta. Everyting cool, Star.”
“Not my money, Bredda, Eric money! Listen to me, when him tell me to collect up everyting for Necka to bring to him at weekend time, me just hold back little-little each time. After all, who doin’ all the work? Nuh me! Who you think risk them life every night, risk gettin’ caught by the police every night to get this cash? Nuh me! And that fat dog, Mongrel and the one named Eric think them must get more than me? Nah man! This is mine! And me givin’ it to you!” Barry flicked his wrist at the money.
“WHOSE MONEY YOU SEY?”
Ab’s bellow made Nola jump. She watched as he leaned forward to shove the money off the counter, sending it floating like discarded leaves onto the sidewalk. Mattie stared at a hundred dollar bill that settled beside her, but she did not touch it. No one moved.
“Don’t bring nothin’ dat come from any iniquity round here again, you hear me, Rasta?!” Ab shouted, pointing a finger at Barry’s shocked face.
Barry stared at Ab in disbelief, and this time when he spoke, his pompous tone was gone.
“Ab,” he said, “‘Memba how you and me use to talk, man?—‘bout one day when you goin’ to open your big restaurant with live, fresh fish in a pond, and how me goin’ to open a store that sell all them fancy TV and video? ‘Memba that, Star? Well, see the start we need here, Bredda! Now we get the chance to do it! Now we can live the dream, you see me!”
“Nah, not dis way. Hard work, Star. Me tired to tell you dat. Hard work! Is only hard work bring tings dat stay for good. Anyting else will fade away before you blink!” The anger seemed to have left Ab’s voice as quickly as it had entered it, and he nodded gently at the sidewalk where the money lay scattered. “Dat is not good money, my Brethren. Dat money goin’ only bring more trouble, more problems, man. When time come for Jah to bring the dream, Him goin’ bring it the right way, Star—not like this.”
Barry gave a bitter laugh and whirled around to look at the other faces, “All of you is hypocrite! Big hypocrite! All of you a cry everyday say unnu hungry, say unnu pickney can’t go school, say the rich man a keep you poor. Well, now you get your chance, you see me, and you turnin’ it down! Where you think this money come from? It come from the rich man who drive round in him pretty car all day, gettin’ richer and richer while unnu down here starvin’! You think them rich people care ‘bout you? You think them big time insurance don’t just buy them back another car? This money can feed unnu pickney!”
He scooped a handful of bills from the sidewalk and walked over to Mattie, dropping the money over the woman’s head. It floated over her like giant confetti, but still Mattie did not move. Even when Barry frustratedly slapped a bill against her chest, she continued staring straight ahead.
“See it there! See it there!” Barry ranted. “Now you can buy food! What the hell you think Eric can do to you if him don’t know? You think I stupid, to make Eric know? You think anybody would notice if a few blade of grass missin’ from a big field? Oy, Mattie, nuh the same ting Eric do to everybody else—take what don’t belong to him? Thief from a thief and him can’t call you a thief, you see me?”
“Take up your money, boy. None of us want any part of it!” Nola spun around. Aunt May! She must have heard all the shouting. Now she stood in the centre of the road, arms on her hips and a glare on her face that Nola remembered so well.
“When you bring back my niece, then you can talk to us about a chance! Then you can talk to us about a start!”
“And when you can put mi lion’s mane back on him head, put him pride back on him shoulders, then you can talk to me ‘bout hypocrite!”
Mams had come back from the house. But when Nola saw what she gripped in her right hand she gave a panicked gasp. Mams was holding the cleaver she used to chop the heads off the fish.
Barry backed up at the sight, but his feet misjudged the closeness of the curb and he flew backwards into the road, his arms flailing wildly.
“Easy Mams,” Abs said quietly.
He’d moved so quickly. He was already beside Mams, removing the cleaver from her hand. “We nuh defend dat kind of ting, Mams, you know dat.”
“NAH!” Mattie finally jumped up from the curb. “Don’t tell Mams to take it EASY, Ab! Him deserve for someone to teach him a lesson once and for all! I tell you long time ‘bout this bwoy—this no-good, dutty bwoy! Him come here with him nastiness and bad ways, and look what him do? Bring nastiness and badness to people just tryin’ to live a honest life!”
Barry took another step backwards and opened his mouth, but he quickly snapped it shut as if he thought better of speaking. Suddenly he turned helpless eyes to where Nola sat in stunned silence.
She pleaded back with her own eyes. We have it all here, Barry! We don’t need no Eric and him thiefin’ ways! We have each other. Nobody to beat us and kick us down stairs, nobody to tell us we can’t eat cause we too fat, or ugly, or black.
But the shutters closed over Barry’s eyes. They shut, like Ellie’s had shut, and he turned to walk away.
“Hold it, Star!” Ab called.
Barry stopped and turned slowly. Ab pointed at the money scattered over the sidewalk.
“Don’t leave your litter on mi sidewalk, Rasta.”
Barry’s shoulders fell as if someone had leaned on him from behind. He looked at Nola briefly again, and she stared back steadily, willing him to break his resistance and apologize for his betrayal, but he just headed slowly back towards the sidewalk and picked up the scattered bills. The only sound on the street the click, click of his smart white shoes.
When he’d finished, and stood with the notes crushed in his fists, he turned to face them once again, the look on his face saying, “This is your last chance”, but Ab just nodded, and said, “Thanks, Star. We have to keep our streets clean, you know?”
Barry turned and walked away, just like the old Barry.
CHAPTER
41
It was one of his babymothers who raised the alarm. She’d gone to his rented room to pick up the thousand dollars that he’d told her to come and collect, found the door broken and the mattress smeared with blood. She’d raced to the garage to see if Barry had been somehow injured the day before, but no one knew of any injury.
Some days later, a cane worker in St Catherine found his body. At first the worker thought the suspicious mass of ants in the cane field where john crows had begun to circle was the carcass of another dog or goat. They often got hit by the speeding cars on the highway, and ran into the cane fields where they eventually died.
It took a while to distinguish which parts of the body had been devoured by the ants and wild dogs, and which parts had been removed before it had been dumped into the cane field. The wailing babymother identified the long scar across the back as the one that Barry had gotten when he’d tried to crawl under a barbed wire fence to escape her demands for money. It was agreed that the body belonged to one Barrington Dickson, and it was also agreed that the fingers, eyes and tongue had been hacked off before the victim
had died.
As soon as Nola had heard, despite her grief, she felt as if a piece of her soul that had become loosened, a piece that had been clanking noisily around within her, had clicked back into place. She’d known. She’d felt Barry’s death, and that night, her spirit had bade him farewell.
She told no one of this ‘feeling’, of ‘knowing’, for she was sure none would have believed her. None except for a cackling old woman, miles away.
Two police cars visited the garage the day after Barry’s body had been identified. They questioned the man’s co-workers and wrote report after report, including one from his devastated boss, the Mongrel, who tearfully slobbered that Barrington Dickson had been one of his most hard-working mechanics.
It was shocking for the residents to see the garage so radically transformed. One evening, the garage had been the grimy yard with parts stacked everywhere, and by the next morning, the day after Barry had been reported missing, the garage had become a spanking facility, with five cars and a motor bike parked neatly at the side, awaiting their turn to be cranked up on the brand new lift.
The police left Monty’s Garage with no leads as to Barry’s brutal demise. Then one of the man’s co-workers suggested that they visit Barry’s favourite watering hole. Maybe someone there would have an idea of any enemies the man might have had. By that afternoon, the police cars had migrated from the garage to the sidewalk of Abediah’s Ital Stop.
They were all sitting on the curb, sick and numb over the news of Barry’s torturous death when the police cars pulled up. And yet, even in the midst of their grief, the silent warning passed between their eyes, like a shared bottle of stout. Petra! Kendra! Don’t say nothin’ … bout Eric or Necka or the money Barry had brought to them! Nothin’ bout the car ring!
That was when Nola realized how smart Eric McKenzie really was. In Petra, he’d created his own little insurance policy. Wasn’t that something? He’d got Petra through the threat to Kendra, and had got them through the threat to Petra. They were his—his little men on his little board game of life. The barbed tongue was finally, truly out of its sheath.
So they all masked their knowing with their grief and obligingly answered the detectives’ questions. No, no one they could think of who would want to hurt Barry. No, no, no arguments. No, no money borrowed that they knew of. No, Barry had no questionable associations. No, he didn’t do drugs. The only women they only knew of in his life were his three babymothers—Judine, Rosie and Irene, the one who’d raised the alarm ‘about him missing’.
They questioned Nola last, maybe because she was the youngest. The detective offered her the chance to get a drink of water before he sat beside her on the curb. She declined the offer and stared down at his shoes. Shiny, like Eric’s. He smelled good too. She looked up at his face, and her breath stopped within her chest. His eyes! They were hard eyes, and even though he made his voice soft with coaxing as he asked her how well she’d known Barrington Dickson, his eyes remained as hard as a rock stone. They made Nola shiver. The detective misunderstood her action and told her not to be afraid, that he just wanted to know if Barry had ever mentioned having a problem with anyone.
But Nola could not answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The eyes stifled her voice. She looked away again, and another detective came up and asked if she was hiding something why she looked so ‘fraid’. The nice smelling detective waved him away, asking if he wouldn’t be ‘fraid too if his friend had been found minus his eyes. Then they both chuckled, and the nice-smelling detective handed Nola a piece of paper and stood up. There was a phone number on it, and the name ‘Winston’ written above.
“Call me if you think of anyting. Your friend never deserve that, did he?” he said.
Did he? Nola’s eyes flashed upwards to meet those eyes. Did he? It was the way he’d said it. Not like a rhetorical question, but like he was really asking her if Barry deserved it.
But he just winked at her and went to join his colleagues at Ab’s window.
The cars eventually screeched off, complimentary stouts balanced along with their guns through the windows. They left on the sidewalk, eyes wide with fear, and silenced voices wanting to scream for help.
The night after Barry’s funeral, they all sat beneath the ackee trees and allowed Kendra’s noisy chatter to soothe their frayed nerves—Nola, Aunt May, Nathan and Mrs. Lyndsay. When they spoke, it was in halting whispers because the air seemed too heavy for speech. The fear had forced itself between the cracks in the air, granting them immobile within the sludge. No one could shed the painful memory of Irene, stripping off her clothes in grief and flinging her naked body onto Barry’s pine casket. It had taken Nathan, Ab and Panhead to scrape her off the box so it could be lowered into the earth. Five children, all bearing features that had once characterized Barry’s face, had stood silently around the gaping hole. Even Mattie had wailed, tearing at the long weaves in her hair and screaming, “Barry neva deserve this! No Lawd, not even Barry deserve this!”
Eric had not come. Neither had Petra, Pedro or Necka. Nola was half grateful, half regretful. She’d hoped to see Petra for Aunt May’s sake, just to know that she was okay. As Nola had watched Barry’s casket disappearing beneath the dirt, she couldn’t help herself imagining Eric’s face down there—his cocky mouth with its toothpick being covered beneath the layers of soil.
Afterwards they could do nothing but sit beneath the trees. Nathan held his face with hands pale and ashy from drained blood. Ever since he’d heard about Barry’s death, his hands periodically flew to his face, as if the thought of the Barry’s demise made him grateful that he’d gotten away with just his purple mask.
Then the phone rang. It vibrated the thick air and scraped against their raw nerves. They all jumped, looking at each other with stunned expressions. Finally Aunt May bleated, “Tiny!” and waddled up the kitchen steps. She was back at the door in less than a minute.
“Nola, come child,” she called quietly.
What now? Nola thought. No more, Lord! Not Petra! But when she looked at Aunt May’s face, she noticed with relief that it was no more panicked than before. Not Petra, Aunt May’s eyes said.
The voice at the other end of the phone was so low that Nola wondered if the caller had hung up. She shrugged questioningly at Aunt May, and was about to put the receiver back in its cradle when she heard “Nola”.
Nola gulped. “Louisa?” she whispered into the mouthpiece and to Aunt May at the same time.
Aunt May waddled away as the voice whispered back, “Hello, Nola … I can’t stay long. I … I just wanted to see how you was doin’.”
“Louisa! Where are you? Where you callin’ from?”
There was a slight pause. “Razzle Dazzle … I workin’ here for a little till Mama start to make chutneys again. It’s my turn to lock up this evenin’, so I get to call you before Mrs. Spence come to pick up the keys.”
Despite the shock at hearing Louisa’s voice, the words snagged on Nola’s brain. Mama wasn’t making chutneys? Impossible! That’s all she did—chop, stir, bottle. Even when sick, she’d bound her head in bayrum-soaked rags and made her chutneys.
“What happen to Mama, Louisa? Why she not makin’ chutneys?”
Another pause. “She tired, Nola. Takin’ a little break, you know?”
Nola closed her eyes. “Louisa, is she alright? Mama alright?”
This time Louisa was quick to answer, her voice gaining a sudden spurt of brightness. “Fine! She fine! Mama good … and Papa too.”
The mention of Papa’s name gave Nola’s heart a sharp pulse.
“And you?” she quickly asked Louisa. “How you doin’, Louisa? Workin’ at Razzle Dazzle, eh? That’s nice.”
“You can believe it, Nola? Me! Have to dress up nice every day in skirt and blouse, and high heels! You should see me, Nola. Papa say I look just like a secretary in a fancy office!”
Her heart pulsed again, but Nola forced a laugh.
“What ‘bout Aggie, Louisa? You see her rou
nd town?”
A little expulsion of breath. “She gone, Nola. From ‘bout a week or so after you leave. Tanky was passin’ the stall one mornin’ and him notice that everyting was gone—the cloth, the bush. Everyting! Nobody don’t see her since, so them tear down the stall.”
Nola gasped. Aggie—gone? The shack—gone? It was like hearing that the Rio Diablo was no longer flowing through the village. The sadness that poured into her heart was overwhelming, and Nola had to bite her lip to stop from bursting into tears. Louisa would think she was crazy to be crying over the witch and her rancid stall, but that spot on the sidewalk meant as much to Nola as the room that had held Grampy’s whispers. That spot had saved her life.
“… sey that them saw a pig just like the witch’s own up by the river somewhere.” Louisa was still speaking, and the word ‘river’ halted Nola’s thoughts. She remembered that Aggie had often spoken of moving up on the riverbank. Could she have gone there?
“Louisa …” Nola stammered, “You see Delroy round the place?”
“Mmmm. Him come by the shop sometimes. You know, to buy things.” Nola could sense the shrug in Louisa’s voice. She didn’t know if it was because of her own reaction to the news of Aggie’s disappearance, but Louisa’s voice now sounded a little thin, a little strained.
“You did tell him for me, Louisa, that I neva die in the fire?”
“Mmm hmm.” Still strained.
Nola felt ashamed for asking. She shouldn’t have made Louisa uncomfortable, especially when she was taking such a risk to call her.
“What ‘bout you, Nola? Slugga treat you good?”
Nola sighed. “Very good. Everybody here treat me good.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “But someting bad just happen to one of our ….”
“Nola, I have to go! I hear Mrs. Spence calling. I have to go, okay Nola? Take care of yourself till we talk again, okay? And Nola … We couldn’t come to see you leave because … we couldn’t let Papa know, you understand?”
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