Convinced he was alone, Phil went to the kitchen for another match. He came back and lit the candle, but he wasn’t completely settled. He saw his trumpet and he quickly put it away, but he was curious about the bundle in the bed. He went there and pulled back the sheets and stood there … and stood there … and stood there …
The gun was still in Ian’s mouth, and his hand still held it in place, as though it wanted to be ready in case his brain, which was splattered against the bed frame and the wall, decided to reconstitute itself. Taped to his chest was a piece of paper. Phil peeled it off carefully, recoiling when his hand brushed the warm skin. He began to wonder now: How long had Ian been dead? The gun had a silencer, he noticed. Fuck, it could’ve happened while he was outside with Doug. The note said:
Bury me in Jamaica. Play lots of music. Tell lots of lies about me. Say I was a good man.
book four
chapter sixteen
On the day of Ian’s funeral Fire woke up from a hard-earned sleep with death trapped in his pores. Yawning and stretching, he wiped the sleep from his eyes, and tied a noose with a lock of hair and dangled it over his thumb. He lay there on his back awhile, in a lime green poplin shirt, breathing nonchalantly as if survival were not instinctive but a curious afterthought. Digging in with his elbows, he raised himself to the edge of the bed and gazed through the open door. A bright, red dawn was bleeding through the mist. The mist was gray … not white this morning. Gray, he thought, like the sea must have been on the trip that brought the Africans here. Red, he thought, like it must have been when the bravest chose the mouths of sharks. Death before dishonor.
He leaned toward the nightstand and spilled a cup of water as he tried to tune the radio. White noise surged and popped and snapped. Down toward the hundreds he tripped over a rising sound and held the knob with trembling fingers. He couldn’t afford to lose it now. A horn was sailing through the blues, surging on an ancient tide. The Bird was playing “Now’s the Time.”
He drew the purple sheets against himself, sat up hugging his knees, then lay down again. It had rained last night and the air was damp, adding a bite to the mountain breeze. He hadn’t eaten since Claire had called to share the news—nine days now—and he’d lost a bit of weight. How much, he didn’t know. But these khakis in which he’d slept last night—he gathered the waistband now—would slip over his hips if he didn’t wear a belt.
At first he’d told himself that he was fasting. After that he said that he was busy. Which he was. He’d been taking care of everything: writing the obit, shipping the corpse, arranging for cremation, planning the funeral, and covering the costs—because Ian had died penniless, and Miss Gita couldn’t afford to bury him. Even in death he felt a need to care for him.
But there was another reason, one which he only discussed with himself, and even so, always in a whisper, and never directly: deep in his heart he believed that he had failed Ian, that he had allowed his infatuation with Sylvia to distract him. Why, he would ask, had they spent their last hours together discussing only his hurt? And wasn’t he the one who had told Ian that no one would care if he killed himself?
The least he could do was to give him the kind of funeral he would’ve wanted … or at least the kind he deserved.
Convinced there was a need to reunite him with his family, Fire had tried to persuade Ian’s sisters to go to the funeral in Battery. The first two, sensing that his urgency was greater than theirs, said they couldn’t go because they didn’t have clothes that were suitable for church. Stripping some bills from the wad he’d withdrawn to bribe the detectives, he told them to go and get some. And wha bout de pickney-dem? they asked. It wouldn’t right fe bring dem inna tear-up-batty pants …
Conversations with the rest of them were simpler: Fuck Birdie … when him was alive him nevah know we.
Downstairs in the kitchen Miss Gita was sniffling. Poor woman, Fire thought. She’d returned from seeing where Christ was born to hear her son was dead. No, woman … nuh cry …
Dead, he thought. Dead. The fan was an axe suspended above him. Ian is fucking dead? He lifted his shirt and pinched his skin … placed his palm above his heart.
He breathed in deeply and his belly caved in, touching his spine, it seemed. And he promised to eat at the nine-night, when family and guests would nyam up fish and clap dominoes and dance ole choons and lick white rum and sup black coffee, making noise till way past midnight, speeding the spirit home.
How would he die? he wondered. He really didn’t want to know—tried to fight it—but the thought swelled up like dough.
When he was ten he wanted to die in war … as a pilot … in a dogfight … trailing a scarf and a plume of smoke behind his twirling plane. At twenty he wanted to die in bed, wallowing under a stranger.
Now he wanted to die in his sleep, to go to bed and live within his dreams.
He felt his eyelids drooping, and sat up quickly. Not now, he thought. Not now. He must not fall asleep right now.
He hitched up his pants and went to splash his face with water, then went to the terrace and slouched in a blue Adirondack chair.
The mist was melted away by now and all was green before him—green and wet with dew and life. The low sunlight was dripping off the coffee plants. And the orchard blazed with pulsing color—yellow papayas, orange mangoes, fat magenta plums.
And Charlie Parker was riffing still.
He asked himself what time it was. Around five by the sun, he thought. A crowing rooster confirmed this as an army chopper shot across the sky … thukkering … thukkering … whipping a breeze, bending plants and shaking trees and stirring dust and grit.
He closed his eyes. Fuckers, he thought, dissing the dead like that. His face was wet when he looked again. It must be the wind, he thought. These could not be tears because my heart’s too dry to make them.
I have no blood left. No sweat. I haven’t pissed or shit in days. Maybe I too have died. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe this is how it feels when the plane goes down or when you come in a flutter of flailing limbs into arms that do not know you.
He reached for his pocketknife and looped a finger through the ring. If I cut myself I would not hurt, he thought. I know this. As he laid the blade against his wrist a flock of birds curled into view, circling the house then flying away, chirping toward the horizon and the comfort of the sea. Can I come with you? he thought. Can you take me where you’re going? He bit his lip and clicked his teeth.
And Charlie Parker was riffing still.
Placing his feet on the banister, he took his time to count the wedge of birds … started from the left-hand side … worked his way across the crook. There were thirty-three of them. Thirty-three garlings.
Birds, he screamed inside his head, go around the world and sing my lament. Sing that I did not want this boy to die … that I wanted us to age and join the elders of our tribe. Birds, go around the world and sing my lament. Sing that I do not want him to take that trip alone. For who will instruct him in the ways of the life that he has chosen not to know? Who will beg and plead for him with the guards outside the village? Someone has to tell them that he is not a stranger, that he is still our brother even though his hair and nose are different. I do not want them to press their spears against his spleen and order him to go. For where would he find his resting place? In India he’s untouchable.
Miss Gita began to wail downstairs.
Ian, he thought, as he threw the knife on a stack of books, look what you do to your mother … you dutty, wutless coolie …
He began to moan. And Charlie Parker was riffing still.
chapter seventeen
The funeral procession began at a quarter to five on the Bailey bridge on the narrow road that wriggled down to Battery. The river, which was brown with silt, fizzed like a stream of spurted Coke, splashing over bright green ferns and leaping off protruding rocks to lick the fruit that dangled forth from overhanging trees, nobbly sweetsops and wedgy carambolas and round passion fruit. I
t had rained that morning, and the air was cool. The clouds in the washed-out sky were hard and gray like steel wool.
“I shoulda had something before I came,” Fire said to I-nelik. “Or brought a sandwich. I had no idea we’d run so late. Everybody’s in town already.”
They were seated in the cab of the Land Rover.
“Well … we couldn’t leave before Miss Gita calmed down,” said I-nelik. “And maybe it’s better that they went ahead. So many people on this little road could cause a lotta problems.”
“How many you think down there?” Fire asked, feeling within himself a preemptive disappointment. There was no figure, he knew, that would make him happy.
“Bout a half grand,” I-nelik said, hearing in Fire’s melancholy a keynote that confirmed his suspicion that he was staging the funeral for selfish reasons. “I didn’t know so many people liked him. But then they always love you when you’re dead.”
Dead. Fire reclined in the vinyl seat, creasing his purple robe.
“If you hungry then drive, then,” I-nelik said, glancing in the rearview mirror at the milling crowd behind them.
“Couldn’t do that,” Fire replied. “Miss Gita asked me to lead the band.”
“But suppose you faint?”
“Is a mind-over-matter thing,” Fire said through a stomach cramp. He laid the keys on the dashboard. “Your mind must be strong in times like these.”
He climbed into the back of the Land Rover and raised his hands, and the clashing sounds were slowly drawn into the surrounding forest, sucked away by silence, the silence of ants digging soil, and roots drawing water, and leaves making life out of sunshine. And Fire forgot his hunger and smiled. Arranged in rows before him was a Pentecostal mass choir, three hundred and twenty-six women from neighboring towns dressed in black robes and purple sashes, fussing with tambourines and hymnals. Behind the women were two hundred and twenty-four rastamen with long beards and white robes to match their headwraps, warming up their instruments—kete and funde drums, cowbells, chimes, and calabash gourds. And behind them, sitting crossways on a mule led by Sarge, who was wearing a too-tight suit, was Miss Gita in a bright red sari trimmed in gold, clutching the urn with her son’s remains.
“I am not a Christian,” Fire said, cupping his hands to project his voice. “And I’m not a rastaman. But that shouldn’t matter, because we are here today in the name of love. And love is bigger than religion. For religion was made by man … and love was made by God. So let us walk together and make a joyful noise and sing that song that binds every one of us who came across the Atlantic in the belly of the whale—‘Amazing Grace.’ ”
He blinked the mist from his eyes and I-nelik gunned the motor and the funde drummers began to beat a call on the drums strapped across their chests.
Boom-boom. Boom-boom.
Then the calabash gourds replied.
Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom-sheke-sheke-boom-boom.
Then the kete drums.
Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom-sheke-sheke-boom-boom-tock. Tock-boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom-sheke-sheke-boom-boom-tock.
As I-nelik eased the vehicle forward the cowbells and chimes began to titter and the women’s voices railed up high and the choir began to dance across the bridge with their hands above their heads, tambourines shimmering, shaking out a sound like rice being poured into a skillet. Sweating, jostling, dipping sometimes then falling back, the procession made its way along the narrow, rutted road, curling around the jungled mountainside, rising and falling as it descended along the edge of the valley, which followed the natural lay of the land designed by the whim of the swerving river. Nine times in the five-mile journey women were picked up and thrown down by the power to froth and wriggle on the coarse asphalt, to rise, lurching and sweating, speaking tongues of remembrance without a scratch on their skin or a speck of dirt on their shining robes.
The church was too small to hold the service, so Buju and Teego had built a three-foot stage out of bamboo and palm fronds outside the door. I-nelik steered the Land Rover to where the cars were parked on the common and the rest of the procession nudged and squeezed its way to the stage, then split in two to form an aisle, up which Sarge led the mule with Miss Gita. She handed the urn to Reverend Bartley, who’d dressed himself this evening in a black-and-gray-checked three-piece suit and a Panama hat with a purple band. Sarge lifted Miss Gita down from the mule onto the stage; there she sat in an aluminum chair beside a plastic table decorated with pink and purple doilies and a portrait of her son.
Clutching a tattered bible, Mr. Bartley approached the microphone and asked to be joined in prayer. The crowd sar-dined between the gated park and the gingerbread houses bowed its head, and the ochre light from the setting sun washed over heaving shoulders.
“Dear Lord and Heavenly Father, we are gathered here before you now as sinners begging forgiveness. We are not worthy of Thy sight, O Lord. We do not deserve Thy love. But still You sent Your only son to die for our sins, so great is Thy forgiveness. The poet Dylan Thomas said that death shall have no dominion. But we don’t need no book to tell us that. For in You we have eternal life. You alone have loosed the bonds of death. So we ask that You grant each and every one of us the wisdom to look into our hearts and admit that we are sinners, to confess our imperfections so that we may be humble in our actions before You and each other, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”
“I still can’t believe so many came,” Fire said to I-nelik as they walked to the square from the common. “We have about five to six hundred people and about two hundred vehicles with a lotta minivans.” He’d taken off his robe and was dressed now in a black-and-navy windowpane suit with flaps on the three patch pockets. As he surveyed the crowd, he pulled his hair into a ponytail and loosened the neck of his lavender shirt. People were clinging to branches and perched on shingled rooftops.
I-nelik stopped and looked at him, smothering his anger by stroking his beard. He began to whistle as he felt an urge to shake his nephew. Instead, he tapped him on the shoulder and addressed him frankly in the voice of the dentist he used to be. “You’re sounding like a concert promoter. Okay, Fire, you’ve managed to attract a horde of people through a focused marketing plan. But so what? What does that mean? It means a lot to you, obviously. But fundamentally, Fire, what does it mean? None of this will bring him back. Accept that.”
Fire stuck his hands in his pockets; he did not want to hear this now.
“You are using your brother, Fire. His funeral has become your personal sacrifice for what you believe are your sins. Look into your heart, Fire, and ask yourself if this is about Ian or about you—realizing, though, that if this is about you it will be refused like Cain’s offering to God. Who knows, most of these people probably came for the food.”
None of the people who were close to Ian came, Fire reflected. Claire had said she wasn’t over the treachery. Margaret was still recovering from a breakdown, and Phil had decided to stay with her.
“And there is something else you should consider in all this,” I-nelik said. “From what you have told me and from what I know about Ian, he did not deserve that woman. And deep down I know you know that. Fire, you can’t go around blaming yourself for Ian’s behavior. You’ve been doing that for twenty-odd years. Everybody has free will. Everybody has to make choices—choices they must live with, sometimes die with. Ian made his and you’ve made yours. He’s died with his. Now what are you going to do?”
I-nelik stood there stroking his beard, watching his nephew clenching his jaw, grinding the words that came to mind like a calf chewing its cud. “Lately I’ve been getting this sense from you, Fire,” he continued, “and it’s very disturbing: you believe that all Ian’s problems are related to class and that you’d be just like him if you’d been born in his situation. That’s the kind of thinking that gives us of the left a really bad name—that kind of simplistic economic determinism. There are many struggles in life, Fire, and class struggle is only one of them. Ever
ything in life is a struggle, and the greatest one of all is holding that commitment to keep struggling no matter what. Cause when you lose that one, you can easily lose it all.”
“You are right,” Fire said to end the discussion. “You are right. But everything has begun. There is nothing I can do about it now.”
The sun was halfway into the wrinkled sea.
“As I said,” I-nelik replied, “we have to live with our choices. And,” he began, moving to another point, “are you still insisting on taking his ashes out to sea today? We’re running late. It might be dark coming in. Why we don’t do it tomorrow? It will be safer then.”
Afraid of what he might say and how he might say it, Fire looked past his uncle into the sun’s red eye and began to debate going out alone. On the stage, a mento band was leading the crowd in “Rock of Ages.” The service would be over soon. Short and sweet, he’d told the Reverend. Ian had wanted a party.
As they began to walk again he felt the need to be alone. I-nelik was right, he thought. How many of these people had really loved the boy? How much of the turnout was due to his effort? He began to do the math in his head. Fifty percent? No, closer to seventy. Then as the figure pushed past eighty-five he felt another cramp in his belly. A man was pacing behind the crowd, chattering into a mobile phone. What the fuck, Fire thought, could be so important?
Waiting in Vain Page 36