Bivouac Read online

  “You sure yuh nuh wan’ nutting sweet in dere, dawta? Lickle coloring?” The Rastaman had not made a sale and he did not seem about to charge Mitzie for the ice.

  “No,” Mitzie said, still looking at Ferron.

  “Too sweet already, eh?” The Rastaman laughed. “You too perfect already, eh, dawta?”

  “Exactly.” Mitzie moved away from the cart and used her eyes to indicate that she wanted Ferron to follow.

  “You got through?” he asked.

  “Yes, man.” She was chewing on the ice and staring into the street. Ferron followed her eyes. Between the cars you could make out splinters of white, red, and yellow glass. “You woulda believe seh somebody dead, eh? The way the people dem was a gwaan. Old neaga too bad.”

  So nobody had died. Ferron was about to ask her what had happened, but hesitated. This was not what he wanted to talk about.

  “When are you due? If . . .” He was not sure what her reaction would be. “I mean the baby . . .”

  “Next week,” she said, grinning at him.

  “Next week! You shouldn’ be in hospital or something?” He tried to make it sound funny.

  “Yuh never hear say black woman strong. Cho, we jus’ drop de pickney dem one place, wipe off, and is gone we gone ’bout we business.” She did not take her eyes off his as she spoke. “A soh we hard.”

  “I see.” Ferron knew she was laughing at him. He did not mind.

  “Man!” It was an insult, an expletive. She looked back at the street, crushing the ice and sucking in the cold water at the bottom of the cup. “Me notice how you never even look up. You just siddown dereso, like you never even care.”

  “You mean the accident? I was tired.” Ferron saw that she was not convinced. “I just don’ like see dem tings, you know. Is like people just waiting to see a dead man. What do they say first: ‘’Im dead! ’Im dead!’?”

  “Tha’s not the only reason . . .” She stopped eating the ice.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “So why you run out there, then?” He knew he was pushing it.

  “It coulda be my bredda out there,” she answered. She was looking away from him now. “Or my baby father. A girl must know them things early-early so she can plan the party.” She was laughing again.

  “You know you bad.”

  “Well, is the truth.” She threw the cup on the side of the street.

  “Littering,” he said instinctively.

  “I don’ like when people try tell me wha’ fe do, you hear.” There was an edge in her voice. “So which part you walking?”

  “Half Way Tree,” he answered. He did not want it to be over already. “Wha’ ’bout you?”

  “Jus’ around soh.” She nodded up Maxfield Avenue. “So what ’appen to the car? Garage?”

  “No car,” he said.

  “No car, big-big uptown man like you?” She laughed. “Barbican, right?”

  “What?”

  “Is Barbican yuh live, right. Or is Norbrook?”

  They lived in Barbican. He did not think it was so obvious. “You feel you can just read people like that, eh?”

  “Most times. Most times I can tell what a man thinking. Like you now, you married, right, or engage, but you look on me and you start ask yourself what you doing. But you cyaan control yuh feelings, brother.” She smiled. “Then suppose I wasn’ pregnant, eh? Suppose you see me slim up and ready, man, you woulda jus’ lef’ the girl long time; is lie? You woulda jus’ rush me, eh? Right thereso in front a John Public.”

  “Sounds tempting.” Ferron liked her boldness. He did not have to do anything, just be.

  She laughed. “Come, walk with me. Is jus’ down so. It safe.”

  He followed her.

  “So what she name?” she asked as they walked.

  “Who?”

  “Your wife?”

  “No wife. My ex-fiancée is Delores.” This was the first time he had described her in those terms.

  “So it wasn’ me?” She pretended disappointment.

  “No,” he said.

  “Somebody else?” She did not seem bothered about prying like this.

  “Me,” he said.

  “Oh.” She looked at him quickly, and then continued to walk slightly ahead of him. She asked no more questions.

  Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan

  I prefer to call it a low-grade depression, but even the word depression seems trite when I think of what happened to my brother. He wanted to die. So he drank. If you asked him, he would say he did not want to die. But he knew he wanted to die. I don’t want to die. I just don’t mind dying now. I feel dead. Man feeds on usefulness. I have never felt as useless to the world as I do now. I used to think that I would relish that kind of useless—that I would take the time and write books, travel, reconnect with friends. But that is the kind of thing that people happy with the world and with their minds do—people with friends who are not treacherous, people with money. I have no money, I have no prospects. I add nothing. So dying would not be terrible—it does not frighten me. And this is not bravado.

  Felix, the taxi driver who picks me up in the morning, said he was sure he saw one of those white Toyotas loitering around the house when he came in at five in the morning. I asked Felix why he had come at five. He said he comes early so he can sleep a little. He can’t sleep at home. Too many people—his nieces and nephews, his grandchildren, and so many people he and his woman have taken in. So he sleeps in the car outside the gate, waiting for me. He said he saw one of those white Toyotas with four men. He thought a politician was in the house meeting me and that they were waiting for him. I told him there was no politician in my house. He stopped talking. He seemed very sad. He shook his head. Then he told me that five nights before he had dreamed of a baby. He did not explain. He just went on to another story. He said he was in Trelawny two days ago digging yams from his ground in his home district. It was around dusk. He heard the hoot of a patoo. He said his skin got all prickly. He stopped and said nothing else. Then when we were near the parking lot, he asked me if I had heard about the former member of Parliament who was gunned down in Jack’s Hill last night. I told him I had heard. He said, and I can’t forget it, “All now, you would t’ink all this murdering woulda done, but now is the time to clean up shop.”

  When I came out of the car, he said I should mind my step. I decided to be tragic and give him something to quote if I was gunned down that day. “No man knows his time or hour. Fear is a waste of time, Felix. You know that.”

  He did not say a word, he just smiled in the way that people do when they are talking to a complete buffoon.

  nine

  “What the hell you mean you never took the report?” Lucas was shouting down at Ferron, who tried to ignore him, watching the television. Mother was tense. She had tried to calm Lucas, but he wouldn’t listen. Clarice wrote in her notebook. They had just finished their Sunday dinner. They missed the old man. Nobody sat at his place. Clarice had unintentionally prepared a setting for him. When she was clearing it, Mother told her to leave it, so they ate with his empty plate staring at them. Little was said. Ferron went through a few of the details for the funeral. Clarice and Mother asked questions. Lucas stayed silent, concentrating on his food. Clarice asked what Lucas would be doing. Ferron said he had not thought of that. Clarice and Mother both turned to Lucas, who stared in his plate. Ferron became uncomfortable. He could tell that they had been talking in his absence, and it had something to do with Lucas being the oldest and the funeral plans. He stopped talking about the plans he had made. But after dinner it exploded.

  Lucas walked back and forth around Ferron, interrogating.

  “I never said I didn’t take one; the man never gave me one.” Ferron tried to stay calm. He didn’t want to fight. “He said it was routine. Hemorrhaging from the fall. That was it. I saw the coroner’s comment.”

  “Didn’t give you one?” Lucas moved to the window. “You mean you hear them g
iving him autopsy, you see police and everything, and you don’ ask nothing? That’s what you telling me?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Don’t fucking bingo me! Don’t take that tone with me, man!”

  “Lucas!” Clarice shouted, trying to drown Lucas. “You don’t have to talk like that . . .”

  “Jesus,” Mother said. She was patting her chest.

  “What the hell wrong with this man, eh? You can tell me? Just tell me that and I will be quiet.” Lucas directed his words at Clarice. Then he turned to Ferron. “Is like you feel you have special right to know everything, eh? You think you know every damn thing, right?”

  “That is your field, man.” Ferron stared at the television. It was an old movie. He had no idea what he was watching.

  “Your father! Your father fall down a set a stairs, fall down in a stranger yard, and dead. Your father. You don’ ask who de people was, you don’ ask no question. You don’ care what the police say, you just carryin’ on like nothing happen. Your father.” Lucas hovered above Ferron. “Well, let me tell you something. I asked a few questions, you know. I did. Who you think those people was, eh?”

  “Oh Christ, you gwine start this again.” Ferron stood up.

  “No, listen to him,” Clarice said.

  Ferron sat. “So you into this foolishness too?” He looked at his mother. She looked down. She too believed.

  “Foolishness, nuh. Who the hell find the place for him, Mister Ferron, eh? Who?”

  “You tell me,” Ferron said. He was sure what was coming.

  “Just tell him what you know, man,” Clarice said. Her lips trembled slightly, her fingers toyed with the loose threads at the end of the sofa.

  “Vera Chen. Senator Vera Chen, alright? That man there . . . that Walters guy, not the old man . . .” Lucas looked to their mother for support.

  “The son,” she started, looking at Ferron. “The man with the bike. It’s the old man’s son. He doesn’t live there.” The man with the bike had come to the house when they were talking with the old man. The man said he was his son. The young guy went to the back and came back around with a few planks of wood on his head. He gave his condolences, climbed onto his S90 bike, and balanced his way out of the yard.

  “Yes. That one. One of her boys them,” he continued. “What happen, you shut up now, eh? You never know that, right? What about that, now? And you know what time the old man fall down the stairs? You know what time? Eight o’clock, right? Tha’s what the man said, right?” He waited for Ferron.

  Ferron stared at the television. He did not want to hear any of this. The man was dead; that was the end. He found these theories all too tempting. He had toyed with them and found them attractive for they gave him anger, provided him with an enemy, somebody to blame. It was a useful outlet, not unlike what he felt about the men who had raped Delores. But this was a fiction, a strained construction, and he knew it. He stopped thinking about it.

  “Answer me, man!” Lucas shouted.

  “Yes.”

  “The man said he didn’t know . . .” Their mother was trying to calm Lucas.

  “No he didn’t,” Lucas said. “He didn’t.”

  “Well, he didn’t know.” Clarice was becoming impatient again. She kept looking out to the front gate.

  “Too high up with all his responsibility to know, too high up.” Lucas said “all” with an elaborate outstretching of the arms.

  “He’s been through a lot,” Mother said.

  “Stop talking about me as if I not here . . .”

  “Like him is the only one who been through things!” Lucas shouted. “Hey, hey, this busy-busy business not going to bring your woman back, you know? Go talk to her, beg her, do something, but don’t bring you problems into this place, man. I sick of it. It’s your father’s death now, alright? All of us have suffered loss, now. Not just you.”

  “Do me a favor, eh. Just do me a small favor and keep your blasted mout’ outa my business. You understand?” Ferron was now standing and pointing at Lucas.

  “Don’t point at me!” Lucas’s eyes flamed. He flung Ferron’s outstretched arm from his face, and then stood to his full length, throwing out his chest. “Don’t do that!”

  “What is wrong with both of you, man?” Clarice shouted. “Ferron, sit down, sit down, alright?”

  “So why the hell you never went for the body yourself, eh? If you so damned jealous, if you think maybe it was your responsibility, why you never get off your fat ass and go for the body? I never beg to go, alright?” Ferron was shouting.

  “Ferron.” Clarice’s eyes said, I understand. She dared not let Lucas notice.

  Ferron waited. Nobody spoke. Ferron sat down.

  “One o’clock in the morning. One o’clock! That is what the hospital people say. One o’clock when them bring him in. And them tell the nurse that him was drunk. Drunk.” Lucas sat down at the other end of the room. “That piece of crap, lickle work. All for that. The old man was getting senile. Chen of all people. You couldn’t warn him?” He said this to Mother.

  “He needed a job,” Mother said softly.

  “That piece a crap?” Lucas waved her off.

  “It was something. He needed something,” Mother said. “We needed the money.”

  “Well, him really get something,” Lucas muttered. “What you watching?” He had turned to the television, as if nothing had just transpired.

  “So what are we going to do?” Clarice asked. Nobody spoke. “The police could investigate. Maybe somebody did push him.”

  “The boy wasn’t there that night. The father said so,” Mother said to Clarice. There was resignation in her voice. Ferron understood. “I saw the stairs. There were two identical doors. He picked the wrong one. There was no bannister, no railing. He fell.”

  “You believe him, nuh?” Lucas said.

  “He is my husband, Lucas.” Her voice was breaking.

  “You believe that man, right?” Lucas said again.

  “Man!” Ferron glared at his brother.

  “What is there to not believe?” Mother asked. “Why would anybody want to kill him, then? He was where he was supposed to be . . . Where they wanted him . . .”

  “You pushed him too hard; he never wanted the work.” It was barely audible, but everybody heard. Lucas stared into the ground. Nobody said anything.

  Mother sat still for a few seconds and then spoke. It was as if her voice was coming from far away, another space: “We got condolences from Senator Chen this morning. A nice card. We also got one from the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Aunt Louise won’t be coming. She has no money. We got a notice from the owners of the house. I am going to stay with Gene, until I can get some money together for a new place. You will need a job, Lucas, and somewhere to live. You should get over this and get some help from your church friends. Clarice, you will have to move into the house in Ensom. Ferron, Cuthbert says you should stay with them in Stony Hill, till you get organized. My new place won’t have too much, so we can divide the furniture. Your father owed some money on the car. I will take care of it. We have about a month and a half to two months to leave this place, so you children need to start planning. The owners would want us out sooner, but they decided to show some mercy.

  “Tomorrow, your father’s friend from Nigeria will come. He faxed the details this morning. He will stay in your room, Ferron. And Lucas, if you want to trace the path to your father’s death, maybe by finding somebody else to kill him, please go ahead, but do it quickly because the cremation is on Friday. I am going up to Newcastle to pray. I need somebody to drive.”

  Ferron knew she was completing business for her last family meeting. There was something final about this ritual of splitting up the family. She was making it formal, official. Mother carried out her final task as parent. She stood up with effort. Her eyes were soft, heavy with this small request. She wanted somebody to have heard her.

  They called her “Mother Miraculous” for her impossible
ability to transform tragedy, catastrophe, sickness into a triumph. They called her “Mother Miraculous” when she would make them squeal in terror as she removed both hands from the steering wheel for a second, as the car sped down a hill. They called her “Mother Miraculous” for always managing to keep them together, always, the family first. Together. Always. “Mother Miraculous” cooking impossible meals from nothing, feeding the cultured taste of the old man who at fifty hobbled like an invalid, broken after the elections. “Mother Miraculous” spun no more magic spells. She spoke hard pragmatic words.

  And now, standing there like that, this woman looked incredibly small and very lost. When they had embraced in the room after hearing the news of the death, Ferron had been struck by how much shorter and smaller she seemed than he expected. She had accumulated the weight of childbearing and kept it. Yet at that moment, she seemed tiny.

  Ferron thought Clarice would have gone, but Clarice stood still, looking to the front gate. She was expecting somebody. Lucas continued to look at the television. Ferron stood.

  When they left the house it was already dark.

  * * *

  Kingston shone like a jewel from the hill. The city lay there, a natural part of the landscape, a lake of lights tucked away in the armpit of the black mountains on one side, and the open blackness of the sea on the other. Kingston glittered, lights chaotically blinking orange in the night. A cool breeze tumbled off the mountain.

  Mother had not spoken all the way up the hill. She asked him to stop just above the parade ground in Newcastle. She climbed out of the car and walked a few yards away. He could hear her singing an old song his grandmother, her mother, had sung for them the day she was leaving for England. Mother’s voice trembled in the cold. Then there was silence. She prayed. It began with her Hail Mary, uttered slowly. This was the journey back to faith, back to the days in the convent school she attended as a child, where the Irish nuns taught faith in Latin. Then her prayers assumed the cadence and tone of her mother’s Pentecostal utterances. Christ was sitting before her listening to this intimate prayer. Ferron could not hear her words, but she spoke casually. Then she ended with another song, this time something Lucas must have taught her. It was one of those new charismatic renditions of a psalm—composed to sound Jewish in rhythm and melody.