by Jacob Ross
She smacked her lips, then narrowed her eyes. ‘Missa Digger, y’ever wonder why Missa Malan stay clear of me?’
‘Tell me, Miss Stanislaus.’
‘You not goin to get upset?’
‘Depends on what you say. Go ahead.’
She rested a hand on the white tablecloth. ‘Well. Missa Malan know that before you shoot him down, you goin be countin aaall your fingers and aaall your toes first. By that time – pook! You dead! With me!’ She raised her eyes at the room, suffused with soft candlelight and packed with the bobbing heads of rich locals and tourists. She brought the white napkin to her lips and with the most delicate of movements, began patting them. ‘He ain’t got no doubt that I going to pull the trigger.’
Miss Stanislaus dropped the napkin on her lap. Her expression was strange when she looked at me again. ‘Your face, Missa Digger, when you lef to kill that Shadowman fella.’
‘What about it?’
‘You wearin the same face now. Is Loofer Came you finkin bout?’ Her smile was mocking.
‘Luther Caine went down with the boat because of me, Miss Stanislaus. They wouldn’t let me touch him here in Camaho, so I frightened him with the evidence I showed him. I frightened him onto the boat.’
‘How?’
‘I convinced him I knew all his dealings, and the US people were after him.’
‘But you didn know the boat was going to drown.’
‘Nuh, I alerted the French Islands, just in case. They would’ve been waiting.’
‘An’ Miss Dressy?’
‘Dessie alright. She told me she done with me. I told her, fine, and she broke my expensive glass cabinet.’
‘When she tell you she finish?’
‘Well, uhm, right after our farewell get-together. Miss Stanislaus, I could tell you something?’
‘Tell me.’
‘You not going to get upset?’
‘It depend, Missa Digger.’
‘I prefer to destroy myself than to destroy the thing I love, or allow anybody to destroy it. And I not just thinking about Dessie. Don’t get me wrong, Miss Stanislaus.’
She nodded, dropped her eyes on her hands and nodded again.
‘Missa Digger, Miss Dressy will come back to you. That what you want?’
‘Like you say to Pet – mebbe I dunno what I want. Or mebbe I know and I dunno that I know.’
She frowned, shook her head and soured her mouth. That made me laugh.
Miss Stanislaus offered me a sudden, bright smile. ‘I talk to Daphne like you ’commend. I tell ’er everyfing. Before I halfway finish, she want to borrow Betsy and go shoot Juba Hurs’ herself. I tell her he done gone already. She say she still want to find im and shoot im.’ Miss Stanislaus shook with chuckles. ‘Missa Digger, how chil’ren so silly?’
‘Food in front of us, Miss Stanislaus. Shall we persevere?’
‘Persevere we shall, Missa Digger.’
Jacob Ross was born in Grenada and now lives in Britain. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is the author of two acclaimed collections of short stories – A Way to Catch the Dust and Song for Simone – and Tell No-One About This, which was nominated by the 2018 Bocas Literary Festival as one of the three best works of Caribbean fiction published in 2017. His first novel, Pynter Bender, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Regional Prize, and his debut crime novel, The Bone Readers, won the inaugural Jhalak Prize.