Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross

  I took up Caran’s invitation to come to one of his ‘blockos’. It was the first I would attend.

  Once every two months, he organised a cook-up for his area. His ‘area’ was the scattered clusters of houses that sat at the foot of Saint Catherine Mountain whose western side sloped gradually down to the sea. A narrow road, cut precariously into the hillface, ran through it. That place of cool mountain air and thick-headed vegetation grew the nutmeg and mace, saffron and cloves, bay leaf, ginger, turmeric and cocoa that Camahoans claimed were the very best in the world. Me, I wanted to believe every word!

  Problem was, that same soil grew the best marijuana on the island and explained the ruthlessness of Caran’s Bush Rangers in driving the growers out. He’d told us in no uncertain terms, ‘This land feed everybody. It send chil’ren to school. I not going to watch people here starve because some fellas in San Andrews want to get high.’

  From early morning, he said, adults from the outer settlements brought mountain yams, salted meat along with a carnival of vegetables – dasheen, tania, sweet potatoes, eddoes – and heaped them in the middle of the playground a few yards behind his house. Children scoured the foothills and returned with piles of firewood. Then they filled oil drums with spring water while teenagers laid out battalions of cooking pots on stones. When they were done, the adults took over and did the cooking.

  I’d taken up Spiderface’s offer to get me there by boat. We left San Andrews in the afternoon at two and followed the coastline northward: mountains rising up from the very shore, covered in blue-green vegetation, their valleys sunken in deep shadow.

  The cooking was almost done, the air about me dripping with the smell of steamed provisions and salted meat, when I arrived. I’d turned up in time to witness two small miracles: an ancient East Indian man teaching a gathering of youths how to pulp a broken unshelled coconut with nothing but the saw-toothed edge of a bent machete. A very old woman sat on a downturned pan beside him, converting the poisonous flesh of manioc into healthy food, while urging the young men to introduce the milky fluid into their bloodstream and kill themselves.

  Mary, Caran’s wife, stood behind him, her arms draped around his shoulders. I hugged them both and waved at the others in his Rangers team. They’d formed a little cluster at the entrance to the playground. The fellas waved back. The woman, Toya, barely nodded.

  Mary drifted off to join a group of women. From time to time she tilted her head at Caran or flashed him a look. He would nod as if in agreement or chuckle and raise his brows. A couple of times a big grin spread across his cheeks. Their way of loving always lifted me. Some invisible thing flowed between those two. It came off them like an aura.

  ‘Digger, how’s De Queen?’

  ‘Miss Stanislaus not bad, Caran.’

  ‘I hear about the trouble that happenin to her. You think y’all kin manage this one?’

  He was probably thinking about the last ‘trouble’ we had with Deacon Bello.

  ‘We’ll have to,’ I said.

  ‘How Dregs dealing with it?’

  ‘Malan wants Miss Stanislaus not just out, but down.’

  ‘We can’t let that happen,’ Caran said. ‘Let’s go get some food.’

  I followed him to a row of makeshift tables. People were spread out on the grass feeding themselves. Others began trickling in, some emerging from the spice plantations surrounding us. Most came off the main road and raised a shout or an arm in greeting: East Indians – sometimes four generations deep, mixed-blooded Afro-Indians and the red-skinned offspring of ancient Scotsmen. All the bloodlines of Camaho converging here on this one little patch of ground called Mont Sur Mer. All heading straight for the food.

  ‘Real people,’ Caran said. ‘My kinda people. I ask you to come becuz you need to chill out before things get really hot for you and De Queen.’

  He was distracted by a few teenagers who’d brought out what looked like a giant ghetto blaster and placed it in the middle of the field. They ran a few wires to it and attached an additional pair of speakers.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  ‘You’ll see later,’ he chuckled.

  I dropped onto the grass and must have dozed off. Caran was tapping me on the leg. I sat up, realising I must have slept a couple of hours because the sun was already yellowing the ocean in the near distance. A young woman ambled over to the ghetto blaster and slotted a USB stick somewhere at the front of the machine. The air about us pulsed and shivered with rich almost subsonic bass.

  ‘Watch that,’ Caran said, grinning. A flock of youths crowded the machine and began contorting around each other, every inch of their bodies riding on the bassline. And it was a thrilling thing to see the children copying their movements for a while, then getting the hang of it and bringing their own vibes to the dance.

  ‘That’s just the warm-up,’ Caran said. ‘Now watch.’

  The elders had risen to their feet. Great-grandmothers in their usual headwraps, gnarled old men – not one of them with an upright spine – converged on the music with the slow intent of tortoises. They kicked off their footwear and began stepping on the bassline until something inside them lit up. They shifted gear, became different people altogether, dipping and turning with rapid complex footwork, raising waves of applause from the gathering. I felt the hairs stir on my arms.

  ‘Jeezus!’ I said.

  A burst of laughter came from Caran. ‘You come to live here, Digger, and you dance like that when you eighty.’

  Spiderface was suddenly struck by whatever it was in the music that animated these old folks. He flitted among them like a delighted cricket and didn’t seem to give a damn about the laughter that he generated.

  Caran nudged me in the rib. ‘Digger, you see why I love dis place?’

  ‘I see,’ I said and meant it.

  Even here, in the middle of all this fun, he and his team had not lost their alertness. From time to time they would lift their heads, breaking their conversation to scour the perimeter of the playground.

  I felt Caran’s eyes.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Digger, I know is rough times for you and De Queen right now. I want y’all to know that me,’ he dropped a finger on his chest then extended the same hand in the direction of his unit, ‘Carlo, Roy and Toya – we at your and De Queen’ disposal. It don’t have to be official. We kin come as friends. Just make the call.’

  I nodded and looked away.

  The dancing was over, the music from the ghetto blaster shutdown, the fading evening light replaced by blazing kerosene torches planted around the field. Down below, the ocean had become an inky darkness. Some young boys were on the outer edges of the field tossing a ball around. The air throbbed with the voices of older folks, talking about the times they’d lived.

  Mary walked up and high-fived her husband, a mischievous gap-toothed grin aimed at me. ‘How yuh doing, husband number two?’

  I made the sign of the cross, raised my arms in mock defence and backed away.

  Caran cracked up. ‘Smart fella! You know what’s not good for you.’

  I pointed at the sea below. ‘Got to go, we ain got no headlamps. I turned back to Caran and Mary, told them thanks with my eyes. They both nodded at the same time.

  12

  I stepped out of my house and stood for a moment looking down Old Hope valley towards the sea. The world around me was still dripping with last night’s rain. I’d barely slept. My mind kept drifting back to my childhood and the old woman who’d brought me up. My grandmother – a thin-boned, cinnamon-eyed Afro-Indian, fierce like a hive of hornets when she got stirred up. I’d seen her stand up to men ten times her size with nothing but a rusty machete in one hand and the heavy leather belt she’d taught me to use as a weapon in the other. My grandmother, resolute, inflexible – upholding the single commandment she taught me to live by: don’t go askin for no trouble, but when trouble come askin for you, don’t just stand your ground, go out there and meet it halfway.


  I was carrying those words in my head when I took to the road and headed for the Commissioner’s house in Morne Bijoux.

  I anticipated that Malan’s first move would be to file his report to the Justice Minister, demanding the immediate dismissal of Miss Stanislaus on the grounds of gross misconduct. His temper made him predictable. He’d be acting on the resentment he carried for DS Chilman, who’d resigned but never really left the job to him, and for Miss Stanislaus because the woman stirred him up in ways I could not always fathom.

  Miss Stanislaus would be out of a job, and it would be impossible to have the Commissioner reverse the Justice Minister’s decision once it was done.

  I’d decided to meet the trouble halfway.

  I was on the road before the sun broke over the hills and was parked by the Commissioner’s gate at five. I didn’t know what time his house woke up, and I didn’t want to intrude. Besides, it wasn’t family business.

  My two sisters were the first to come out. They were dressed for the private school they went to on the outskirts of San Andrews.

  They spotted me and raced down the steps. I was out of the vehicle by the time Nevis and Lucia swung open the gates and raced across the road: Lucia – a gangling, clean-skinned seventeen-year-old, brows arched like the Commissioner’s, a mouth like mine; and Nevis, fourteen – soft-voiced and reserved, with black, probing Amerindian eyes. Lucia and Nevis didn’t hug, they squeezed with all their strength, their eyes on my face to see whether I would wince, or probably die from asphyxiation.

  ‘What brings thee hither ere this foreday morning?’ Lucia said.

  ‘Shakespeare gone to your head?’ I grinned. ‘I here to see y’all father.’

  ‘Michael, you got to stop this! He’s inside.’ Her eyes lit up with curiosity. ‘Things happening?’

  ‘Things always happening.’ I walked them back to the house. Their mother was in the doorway. For most of my life, I’d convinced myself that this red-boned Dominican woman hated me. In all my years of knowing her, she’d never said a word to me. She’d ignored my greetings as a child when my grandmother, in times of desperation, sent me to the man she told me was my father, for money. The silence between us had become a habit that was hard to break and, perhaps to spare herself the awkwardness, The Wife retreated inside.

  My sisters followed her in. I heard the Commissioner’s rumble, then the scrape of sandals on the floor. He came to the door dressed in shorts and one of those short-sleeve shirts that always seemed a size too large for him. He rested puzzled eyes on my face. ‘You all right, Michael?’

  ‘I awright. Need to have a conversation, Sir, that’s all.’

  ‘Important?’

  I nodded.

  I submitted to his gaze – being taken in, in a way I experienced with nobody else. An old fella appraising the product of his loins.

  Lucia and Nevis came out; each hugged him from behind and pressed a cheek against the side of his neck. I watched him closely. He avoided my gaze.

  ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow, Michael.’ Lucia showed me a row of perfect teeth, held up a hand and flopped her wrist at me.

  ‘You just told me a lot about your teacher, young lady: she got to be in her sixties, white, probably English, and she been living in Camaho a long time.’

  Her hand shot to her mouth. ‘You know Mrs Martineau?’

  ‘Through you, yes. I bet she never heard about a fella name’ Walcott.’

  Lucia’s mother hurried her into the car.

  The Commissioner brought out a bottle of Malta, opened it and filled a glass. He gestured at it, then at me. He pulled a chair and sat. ‘Tell me, Michael.’

  I told him about the shooting.

  ‘Chilly already told me about it. What’s her name – Kathleen – she doesn’t look like a violent woman.’

  ‘She’s not a violent woman.’

  ‘How d’you call what she did, then?’

  ‘Self-defence, Sir.’

  He shifted in his seat. ‘I can’t ignore it, if that’s—’

  ‘I not asking you to ignore it. I asking you to jump ahead of the Justice Minister and take on the disciplinary procedure yourself. Else the MJ will go on the radio and announce that he’s fired her so you’ll be forced to rubberstamp it.’

  ‘And you think I won’t?’ He sounded irritated.

  I often wondered how he took this daily undermining of his job by the Justice Minister who described himself not just as ‘the voice of law and order’ on the island, but the one who hired and fired.

  It seemed to me too that the Justice Minister had always been hostile to San Andrews CID. He’d objected to the way we were brought into the Police Force by Chilman and in our very first year on the job we’d embarrassed him in public. Like Chilman kept reminding us, the MJ was probably biding his time – waiting for us to do something indefensible so he could make his move. Malan knew that too.

  The Commissioner cleared his throat and shook me out of my thoughts. ‘So what you asking for, precisely?’

  ‘I’d like you to put Miss Stanislaus on Restricted Duties and call the hearing in six weeks’ time – that’s the legal maximum. She’ll still get her salary, and it will give me time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Is clear to me my testimony won’t count, however true it is. I asking for time to find something to pin on Juba Hurst, to show people the sonuvabitch he was and why h’was better off dead. We never followed up the allegations against him for murder, rape, extortion – whatever. I want time to get the ammunition to fight y’all.’ I realised I’d broken out in a sweat and my voice had risen. The idea I had earlier of a quiet, reasoned discussion with the Commissioner was completely gone now.

  ‘Y’all?’ he queried.

  ‘Who else?’ I said.

  ‘Michael, I take offence—’ He stopped short; was staring at me quietly. ‘She means a lot to you – Chilly’ daughter. What about Dessima? I heard—’

  ‘I here to discuss a policing matter, Sir. If I had my piece, I would’ve killed Juba Hurst myself. I got no evidence to show that Miss Stanislaus acted in self-defence and in my defence. I want a chance to correct that. Is why I asking for time.’

  ‘How far you prepared to go with this?’

  ‘As far as I can go, Sir.’

  ‘Even if it means losing your job?’ He was searching my face.

  ‘Yessir.’

  He stared into the distance for a while. ‘You two getting a reputation in the Force. You aware of that? I happen to know that most of the superintendents on the island have a lot of respect for what Chilly’s unit is doing and they’ll stand with him. Some of the rank and file – they’ve begun to resent you two, especially since that incident with Officer Buso. What I’m saying, Michael, is – so far I’ve respected your wish to keep your connection with me quiet. But if I have to make it known that you’re my son to protect you, I will do it without asking you.’

  ‘Won’t be necessary.’

  He stood up. ‘Let me think about it. You off to work now?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  I didn’t ask him what he meant by that.

  13

  On the way to work, I switched on the radio and tuned into the government broadcasting station. The news broke at twenty past eight.

  Unconfirmed reports are reaching us of a fatal shooting on Kara Island involving two police officers and a local man. Stay tuned, we’ll keep you updated as more details come in.

  Twenty minutes later, a voice from Kara Island was on air. The caller said his name was Richard. The shooting was not no accident, he said, it was a murder. He happened to know that one of the officers involved – the woman in San Andrews CID – had a lotta bad blood between sheself and the man she killed. The morning before, she tried to shoot the man in question and one of her friends who was also from San Andrews CID just managed to stop her. Mebbe that was for show, becuz it was daytime and everybody on the island would’ve witnessed
the killing. And if it wasn’t for show, how come the same officer was there when she shoot down Juba Hurst and he didn’t do nothing to prevent it?

  Despite his attempt to sound different, I recognised the voice as Officer Mibo’s. It was with a growing sense of dread that I walked into the office.

  Malan greeted me with lifted brows and a steady stare. ‘I got a feeling you been working overtime, Digger. Dat don’t change the price of cocoa. She still going.’

  The air was taut with the electricity of the Chief Officer’s anger. Pet was making her keyboard rattle. She was the fastest typist I knew, depending on her mood. Lisa was pecking away at something on her computer, her eyes on a handwritten sheet of paper at her elbow, in Malan’s handwriting.

  He tossed me a printout of an email from the office of the Commissioner, notifying the Department of his decision to put Miss Stanislaus on Restricted Duties pending a hearing in six weeks.

  ‘I know how to get a better verdict.’ Malan nodded at Lisa. The laser printer in his office woke and spat out a couple of sheets. Malan crossed the room and retrieved them, slotted them in a folder and stepped back out his door. ‘Today I show you something, Digger.’

  ‘Wozzat?’

  ‘I way ahead of you.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said.

  Malan didn’t return to the office. Instead, he had the letter from the Justice Minister’s office biked over to us.

  When Pet opened it, her face went dead. ‘He’s shutting us down,’ she said. ‘He’s shutting down San Andrews CID. Digger, that legal?’ She handed me the letter.

  I scanned it then passed it back. I kept my voice as level as I could. ‘He’s disbanding the Department: you and Lisa going to Port Authority Customs, Malan and me to San Andrews Central. And like you see, he didn’t mention Miss Stanislaus.’

  ‘Why, Digger? What we done?’

  I got up, went to the sink and washed my face. I realised my hands were shaking. The mirror presented me with a hollow-cheeked fella with the night-black, sleep-deprived East Indian eyes and the eyelashes of my grandmother.

  When I returned to my desk, Pet’s voice had shifted gear. She was talking to Lisa.