One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist (10 page)

She snorted in her sleep, and her hand disappeared beneath the wool blankets. Blankets made of his sheep. He pinched a loose thread hanging from the hem, imagined Winona’s haunches. Soon, once he had peace on his new land, he would have dozens of Winona’s daughters, all with fine wool, and he’d save all the softest hair to make blankets just for Maggie. So many blankets she’d never know cold again. Only warmth. A womb of wool. So many blankets. But then she’d never need his body heat, unlike the winters they’d spent when all they had was the one threadbare quilt. Back then they would drag that quilt to the stove, pull it tight around their toes, their legs twined, arms quivering until their shared body heat meshed and the shivering stopped and then they made love, softly at first, slow hip thrusts so as not to break from the blanket. And then Maggie would become daring, roll on top of him, yank off
her sweater, and escape from the quilt, her bare breasts glowing in the frigid moonlight.

Cold became another kind of touch then. Sweat stilled over goosebumps. Movement of hips and arms and bodies pressed, until heat wasn’t a thing to be kept in a blanket or locked in the stove but a burning between their waists that could fill a cold and empty house.

But their heat never filled anything. Her belly never grew. And now they each had separate thick woolen blankets.

Soon, soon, they would have more wool and more money, and that would bring Maggie back inside his blanket. He’d pay off the mortgages and build a second-story add-on to their hovel. She’d be comfortable and safe, and they would make love with precision and purpose. That would work. That would have to work.

Maggie’s tired arms and scraped hands stretched across the mattress. Ren would need to push her aside to sleep on the same bed, would need to wake her from a dream he hoped was of those cold nights under the quilt. He took his blanket and curled up on the floor.

When he woke at dawn, Maggie was already gone to her brother’s factory, the bed left unmade, blankets twisted like withered husks.

The sky blazed pink when he got his sheep to pasture. Ren felt his fortune renewed, his to grasp like starlings fluttering overhead, and all he had to do was reach up and snatch one, wrap his fingers around spasming wings, squeeze a jittering heart. Today he’d implement active-shepherding techniques.

He started with Whitey, who had taken to munching a yellow patch of brittle grass. His lips puckered around a buried stone. Ren thwacked Whitey’s rear with his staff, led him toward a greener area. As soon as Ren turned his back, Whitey moseyed back to the yellow patch to suck at the rock again. Ren tore fistfuls of green, pulled Whitey’s mouth open, and jammed the bounty between his teeth. He kept cramming grass until his stained fingers cramped. His arms throbbed with the work, his back smarting. This was real
work, and it felt good. Blood pulsed through his arms, thrummed in his ears.

The other sheep lingered in the greens, and Ren jogged from one to the next, shouting encouragement, jabbing his staff into the air, chanting, “Chew, chew chew!”

By noon, sweat soaked his frock. This was the work his father and grandfather had never dared. They would have shaken their wrinkled heads at the idea of innovation. He wondered if Maggie’s brother was working this hard. He doubted it, doubted any workingman had ever worked so hard.

Ren began the next stage of active shepherding. He hooked the crook of his staff around the thick neck of his largest ram, Thor, and led him to Winona. It would be natural. His sheep just needed a little nudging. Today would be the day when the flock would flourish. The mood was perfect. Thor resisted, dragged his hooves, but Winona was nearing. Then came the clang of armor. Ren lost his grip on Thor.

The shoddy man-boy crested the rim of slate. He waved his sword at Ren until he lost track of his footing and tumbled down the hill. He rolled all the way to Whitey’s feet, and Whitey licked the man-boy’s arm.

“Hell of a sheep you have here,” the man-boy said. “Cleaning my wounds, I see. And I didn’t even have to call for a healer.”

Ren thwacked Whitey away. He turned back toward the man-boy.

“When I eyed you, down there with your mighty-fighty lungs and your tough old staff, I said to myself, ‘Thank Gurfay the Lucky Star Smasher above that my hero is here today,’” the man-boy said. “Just when you think it’s over, war breaks out again, and I’m outnumbered like a shepherd to his herd, though it would have to be about three times as big as your herd.”

A giant boulder crashed into the earth a dozen yards away from them. Ren looked up to the basin lip and saw the arm of a catapult. In moments, four more catapults appeared. A group of men bustled around each catapult, hoisted fresh boulders. Ren wondered if they sweated and strained as much as him doing active shepherding.

“You see, pops! Outnumbered. I tell you those big old stones make a man feel bitty. Might just be shit outta luck this battle.”

Ren fingered the metal flute in his pocket, smiled at his secret. Another giant boulder thudded farther away. It must have taken a dozen men to lift just one boulder and a mule team dragging a cart for miles. A dozen wives and three dozen children left at home while they worked. The overhead was astronomical. And the effect was Ren and the man-boy could look up into the sky, watch these giant rocks blotting out the sun, and then move two feet to the left.

The boulders hailed down. More halberd- and sword-wielding soldiers ran down to clang swords and sidestep thunking boulders. Ren rushed through the field, gathering his sheep into a huddle around him so that they wouldn’t be flattened. He thought he had all of them corralled into a tight circle, when he noticed, in the distance, Whitey lapping at a bloody, discarded breastplate. A shadow darkened Whitey’s fur. Ren grappled for the flute. He pushed it to his lips and blew. It made a pathetic squeak just as a boulder swallowed Whitey.

Whitey’s blood seeped through the grass, and that was all that was left of his oldest sheep. Ren blew on the flute again, and no one noticed. The men kept clanging, and the boulders kept dropping. He lifted Winona and clutched her to his chest. She was heavy in his arms. He didn’t know if he could hold her until the battle finished, if it ever would.

The sun eventually burned red, then hid behind the basin lip. The catapults ceased, the clanging blades silenced, and the soldiers retreated up separate hills. Ren didn’t see any bodies, any decisive victory. The only casualty was his lush grass, now acned with giant rocks.

“A battle to rattle the ancestors’ graves!” The man-boy planted his foot on a boulder near Ren, puffed out his chest. “Guess that settles this fight for good. Until tomorrow, Shepherd.”

Ren watched the man-boy sheathe his sword, crack his back, sigh with satisfaction. It all made Ren furious. “You certainly made
enough noise to make your ancestors piss themselves laughing. What a joke.”

“Now wait a goddamn minute. We’re honor earning here. Fighting for our lives.”

“How much honor, do you figure?” Ren waited for no answer. “What are you even doing here?”

“What aren’t we doing? This is for everything: Land, religion, freedom from tyranny and ogres—once they’re inevitably proven to exist. For the safety of my family, when I find the right buxom maiden, if you know what I mean.” The man-boy waggled his hips. “But peace mostly, I suppose.” He smiled, proud.

“So that’s how it’s done. That’s how you make peace?”

“Listen, Shepherd, peacemaking takes time. I don’t tell you how to do whatever you do with your sheep. My family’s been doing this for generations.”

“You must be so proud.”

“I’m walking away, Shepherd,” the man-boy flicked his sword at Ren, stepped backward, “so that I don’t make peaceful pieces out of you, my old ally.”

Ren snorted and watched the man-boy as he turned, as his shoulders drooped, as his sword dragged in the dirt, as the man-boy became a tiny speck on the basin lip and then disappeared again.

On his way home, Ren stopped by Tommy’s again. A sign that read
FOR
LEASE
THROUGH
GOD
blocked the cave mouth. Ren leaned over the sign and yelled, “I want a refund, Tommy. All thirds, Tommy. All of it back.” Nothing stirred. Tommy was probably hiding, giggling, his hand over Franklin’s muzzle. Or maybe Tommy and Franklin were dead, a pile of mixed human and sheep bones picked clean by bobcats. Ren flipped the coil of Maggie’s hair around his index finger and peered into the black silence. He turned toward home. He hoped Maggie was still awake.

But the hovel was empty. No Maggie. No note. Just a mass of tangled blankets. She was likely working overtime. Ren could do that, too. Ren could do overtime even better, could become more
of a ghost than Maggie. He could win a family, a future, alone, without Maggie, without anyone.

By moonlight, the half-buried boulders in his field looked like full bellies. Ren leaned into his staff, tired, dazed, but also focused, what his Grandpa Nork used to call the shepherd’s drunk. That was a joy he’d forgotten, something that Tommy Two Bags couldn’t teach. He watched his sheep disperse and maw at the night-blue grass.

When the man-boy appeared, Ren wasn’t surprised. Ren slid behind a boulder and watched him stagger, lift a cask to his lips, drink. The man-boy spotted Thor and charged him. He smashed into his flanks and knocked the sheep over. Ren waited.

The man-boy gathered himself and stood. He lifted his foot over the ram’s neck and then stopped. Ren heard him blubbering, one foot in the air, one on the ground, frozen like some kind of terrible dance. Ren was enjoying the show, the inanity of a soldier’s solo performance. Only a shepherd could do it alone. Ren fisted Maggie’s hair and then dropped it to the earth. He gripped the metal flute.

The man-boy unsheathed his stubby sword, raised it high over Thor’s head. This was the man-boy’s work. Ren understood. He required a partner for fighting. It didn’t matter what the fighting produced. Production would never stop him. The man-boy would swing eternally at wisps in the dark.

Ren pitied the man-boy for his pointless labor, for its endless inevitability. And he hated that the man-boy required pity. Ren’s grip on the flute tightened. He bolted forward, slammed into the man-boy. Ren stabbed his flute into the man-boy’s thigh. It pierced the skin, and the man-boy screamed. Ren pushed harder, twisted the flute, made him howl. The howl morphed into a high-pitched bleating. Winona lay on her side a few boulders away. Ren jumped up and ran toward his ewe. She looked unharmed but continued to bleat madly. He ran his fingers through her coat, up her legs, down her neck, checking for the hot wetness of the wound the man-boy must have given her. As his fingers scoured her body, he glared at the man-boy, who was slinking behind one of the boulders.

Finally, his hands reached her tailhead. Under that, an unexpected roundness. A cold shock darted through his chest. There was the water bag, full and glistening. He hadn’t noticed her heaviness when he’d clutched her against the catapults. He’d missed the signs for so long. But here it was—a lambing. This was what he’d been waiting for, and it had been here all along. Ren knelt beside her and massaged her coat, cooed into her ear.

A long time passed without the baaing he longed to hear. Just Winona’s heavy panting. He wished it would be faster. The man-boy kept peeking from behind the boulder. One eye, half a dirty, childish face, and then he’d duck back into his ambush. He lurked in the darkness like a bobcat, like Tommy in his cave, waiting to pounce and collect. Ren wiped his hands against the inside of his robe. If he were closer to home, closer to Maggie, she could bring hot water and coffee. She could rub the ewe’s hind legs. They would be a team working perfectly together.

But Ren was alone. Alone except for the man-boy, who leaned his head out from the boulder more boldly, his eyes wide and wild. Alone except for Papa Ander’s ghost hand that had guided Ren through his first lambing decades ago, patient fingers that never knew rush. Ren bunched his fingers into a cone and pushed inside Winona. She struggled against him. The flesh around his wrist tensed. If she continued to fight, she’d never have this lamb, never have another. He longed for Maggie or Papa Ander or even Grandpa Nork to steady her.

The man-boy swayed above him against the stars. Ren was unable to defend his herd, his hand trapped, his fingers searching for wet lamb legs. The man-boy’s thigh oozed blood. The blood trailed down his leg, dripped onto the grass. He dropped to his knees. The man-boy’s hands wound around Winona’s neck, roughly, in a way that made her jump. But then she calmed, and the man-boy eased his grip. The flesh around Ren’s wrist loosened. He concentrated, felt the knotty angles of lamb elbows. He pushed the lamb deeper, until the elbows unlocked and the hooves lurched forward and
out, and then the nose, the brow. He removed his hand, and the lamb followed.

It lay on his land, motionless, a wet pile of blood and moon. The man-boy gulped air. Winona licked at the still lamb. It baaed. It baaed impossibly, a little screech in the dead of the night. This lamb would become a ewe, which meant Ren could become a success. But Maggie would not be home when he returned carrying the new lamb. So he had this moment, these scratches of new breath, Winona and her lamb and the man-boy, who’d lost his sword somewhere. His silent armor gleamed in the moonlight alongside the wet lamb.

I grab up my microphone and stroll to the front of the tour bus. The clicking cameras turn from the shanties out the window and aim at me. I tear a giant smile into my face, and one camera blinks. Nothing much to see yet. I’m just the guide, another dark woman wearing a collar and name tag. They smatter sunblock on their husbands, on their wives. The bus smells like coconuts and sweat. A middle-aged couple in matching yellow Hawaiian shirts clutch their fanny packs and quiz each other with a laminated exchange-rate chart. When I get to the front, the youngest couple—twenty-year-old babies, honeymooning and pretty as a pair of polished stones—tug my shirt hem, whisper-ask where they can score the ganja. I spread that smile bigger, keep moving, snap on the mike.

It’s time to sing. I swallow a breath and belt out Belafonte’s “Day-O.” The pasty legs uncross and start tapping. Now it’s time to teach their version of our language. I chant: “No problem” and “Mon” and “Irie.” They shoot it all back in pinched American syllables. We put it all together: “No problem, mon. We feelin’ irie.” The bus rings with hard Rs and squeaky vowels. Now they know everything, and all the pink lips smile. The cameras flash freely. I’m
finally fit for a picture. I’m their Jamaica. They can print me on a four-by-six glossy and fold me into their wallets.

I’ve been running tour buses for three years now. Sunny Side Hotels promoted me from maid service when they heard me smooth talking the guests. They said they liked my voice, my people skills, but it’s mostly because I’m a woman, youngish and half-pretty, short and skinny, one of the few dark-skinned workers the Americans don’t fear. The guests ask me for everything: directions, drugs, towels, where to get the best jerk chicken, where to get one of those coconuts they can drink out of, where the jellyfish swim. I am the ambassador, and the money’s good.

After the bus tours, I’m done for the day. But a few months ago, Busha Paul ordered me into his office. If we called him Busha to his face, he’d stomp around, lecture how lucky we have it, how free we are. He wants us to call him just Paul—just everybody’s friend Paul.

Busha Paul assigned me the Trumans. Big-deal guests. Busha Paul already swept the maids into a tizzy for them, changing the royal-suite sheets three times over. I find the couple sweating through their khakis in line at the front desk. They look in their thirties, have hair so blond it looks like spiderwebs. I worry about their scalps sizzling. But I can’t stop the sun.

I snatch them from the line, palm their bony shoulders, try to ease them toward the beach sunset. I’ll handle check-in. Big-deal guests don’t wait, don’t sweat. Not with me. Everything’s easy. Trust me.

Busha Paul says they own this online dating service Soul-Matrix. First time to Jamaica, but if things work out, they’ll sell honeymoons at our hotel for their matched soul mates. Busha Paul says I’m to show them paradise, and if I do, if it all works out, the hotel will send their contractors to my house, fix it up perfect. A Sheetrocked room for my sons Desmond and Isaiah. Patch the leaky roof. Maybe an air conditioner for Grandmama Adina. No way I could ever fix it up on my own. A house that looks like a real house for my real family—that’s a dream you don’t want to wake from ever.

The government gave me this house of cracked mortar and frayed wires. It beats the shanties. No one is homeless in Jamaica. But no one’s home is right. I’ll never catch up to patch the leak dripping on Isaiah’s forehead when he snores at night. Grandmama Adina’s window is a gaping hole, and she wears a bug net that makes her look like a duppy bride. Not homeless, though. Oh no.

The Trumans hesitate to leave the check-in line, to leave their luggage with one of us dark strangers. So I slap leis over their necks, kiss their cheeks, send a pretty little waitress with big cups of piña coladas. They shuffle off to the beach, and I hurry to their room, double-check the bedding, direct the porter and shoo him out, fluff the hyacinths. A little blue-tailed skink hangs from their curtains, and I slap him down to the tiles. I kick at him, try to urge him to the door, but he scurries under the bed, disappears. And I say, “Okay, little man, you can stay. You watch over these big-deal sweeties from down there.” I pray he’ll stay hidden in the mattress springs.

When I get to the beach, the Trumans are wading, khakis rolled to their bony kneecaps. The sun boils purple into the ocean, and it feels good and strong against my cheeks, like Grandmama’s hand before it got all shaky. I can even hear the ocean-dipped sun simmer. But I know suns don’t simmer. That’s not real. Simmer like a hiss, like a water snake. Not really a snake but just as bad. Uncle Alton’s bald head rises from the ocean. His tobacco-stained, cotton-ball beard emerges dripping. He’s whisper-hissing to the Trumans, waving them out, coaxing them with his pearly too-big dentures. The black iron fences surrounding the hotel compound keep out men like Alton—shell hawkers, ganja pushers, renegade hair braiders—but we can only keep the higglers so far. Nobody owns the ocean, so Alton’s free to sell to anyone swimming his way.

Anyone but the Trumans. They aren’t needing to meet sneaky-snaky old Uncle Alton.

I run to the beach, kicking fans of sand that fill my sneakers. The purple sun melts fiery on my neck. I stomp into the water, mud squishing in my shoes. I tap Mrs. Truman on the shoulder.

“Your room all ready, honey. Why don’t you come inside to rest them tired traveling bones,” I say, sweeter than syrup.

Uncle Alton’s head dips back under the water, so just his yellow eyes watch me. The Trumans nod at each other and turn my way. I’ve saved them, won them. But Alton resurfaces, fist first, clutching a big conch shell.

“’Mericans! ’Im looka dis way see da magic shell I finding jus’ fe you.” Alton lifts the conch higher, as if he were a Sunny Side waiter serving filet mignon. “Pretty shell fe dis pretty white lady.”

Mr. Truman wades toward Alton. His fingers skim the calm water, as if it were a bubble he might pop. Mrs. Truman sways next to me. Her plastic cup makes a popping sound.

“They aren’t wanting your dirty old shells, Alton,” I say. “They got a nice room waiting.”

“Dis no dirty ol’ shell.” Alton flicks a tangle of seaweed off the conch. “Dis magic shell. Keep da secrets of Jamaica insi’. Whispa fe ’im de waves and san’ and good people ’ere.”

“Only thing that stinky shell keeping is a squirmy-germy mussel or something like that,” I say. “They don’t need your shell, unless they’re wanting soup. And we have five-star chefs that can do much better for you, Mrs. Truman dear.”

Mr. Truman wades to his waist, a couple of yards from Alton. He wrestles his T-shirt over his shoulders and tosses it to Mrs. Truman with a smile. The water sparkles off his bleach-white chest. “How much?”

“’Im wise one ’ere. Wise mon wan’ da secrets.” Alton dips the shell back under the ocean. “Ten dollas ’Merican and be yours.”

Just when I’m certain the Trumans are smart enough not to have money on them, Mrs. Truman produces a fold of dollars from between her breasts. She peels off a ten-dollar bill and waves it high above her head, shouts, “He said ten American dollars.”

By how proud and loud Mrs. Truman says the amount, I’m pretty sure these are the first words of Alton’s she’s understood. He’s a dirty patois speaker, like Desmond’s picking up, my oldest, though he’s still just a pickney. Alton speaks low and fast like machine gun
fire through a pillow. No guest understands that rumble or wants to hear it. But Mrs. Truman is all smiley and money waving now that she understood something. Price. Dollars. American cash. Everyone everywhere knows the words to that song.

Mr. Truman swishes to her and takes the bill from her fingertips, pecks her on the lips. “I bet I can get it for five. Want to see me haggle, baby?”

“Just give him ten,” she says. “Look how much he needs the money. What would you do if our clients started haggling?”

“It’s different commerce here. They expect it. The price he says isn’t what he means.”

She shakes her head until he clutches her chin and kisses her again. “Whatever you want, my love.”

I’m soaking in sea brine, and all I can imagine is the pink mussel in the conch wrestling out like a swollen tongue in their luggage, sliming all over Mrs. Truman’s lacy lingerie, Mr. Truman’s satin ties. Then him storming into Busha Paul’s office. My walls at home crumbling, a mouth erupting in the ceiling to dump water onto Isaiah’s head.

“The lady says full price, my friend.” Mr. Truman stretches the folded bill toward Alton, but Alton doesn’t move. His woolly white beard bobs on the water.

“’Otel say no. You come fe Alton, so Babylon no come fe me.”

Mr. Truman stands there smiling, gives the bill a little flap. We could wait all night, until the tide swoops over our noses. I want the Trumans sleeping in soft beds, and I want to read my boys a story before they fall asleep. I grab the ten bill from Mr. Truman and slosh out to Alton, up to my neck. I pass him the money, but before he gives me the shell, he holds my wrist, winks. I shake free and trudge back to the Trumans. Mrs. Truman puts the conch to her lips and blows. Nothing comes out but a squish. Mr. Truman pulls a wadded ten from his shorts and offers it to me. We don’t take tips, can’t take tips, and I tell him. He stares at the drenched uniform clinging to my body. I might as well be talking Alton’s garbled tongue. Who don’t want American money? I don’t, but
it’s easier the other way. I take it, and finally the Trumans go to their room.

The next morning, no bus for us. The hotel rents a private car, shiny and black and not a single dent. I ride up front next to the driver—the Trumans, our precious cargo. They wear skintight short shorts and tank tops. I don’t smell any coconut sunscreen, and I worry for their ghost-pale skin. We drive past the shanties, and I pour them drinks, sing them the tour-bus songs. They go zip-lining at Big Timba, and the trees and rivers blur under them like a pretty painting. I usually tell my tours about the ackee, grandpa tales about the Great River, but the Trumans push more sweaty dollar bills my way every time I start one of my speeches. I stop trying to talk.

The best part of the zip-line tour is the fences. Like the hotel, except these fences are taller, block out all the best parts of the forest. No ocean for the Altons to spill in from. Hundreds of acres of trees, and way up on the lines, the Trumans can’t spot a single shanty. The holes in my roof would look like pinpricks from here.

After the zip line, the Trumans push dollars into the workers’ palms. They swarm to unlatch the Trumans’ lanyards, offer hands to guide them over rocks and back to the car. I hold the door open, and the Trumans try to push money at me. I pretend I don’t see, don’t say anything, but Mr. Truman stands there smiling until I take his bills.

On the way back to the hotel, the Trumans’ eyelids dip heavy. Mr. Truman’s head lolls onto Mrs. Truman’s fire-kissed shoulder. He murmurs, “Paradise, baby.” And I wish he’d say it again. Again and again to Busha Paul, and then maybe to my boys and Grandmama Adina. I’ll fold his words, stash them in my pocket, and pull them out whenever the rain drip-drips through the roof. But there’s no room in my pocket. It bulges with American dollars.

Busha Paul snatches me away from the Trumans when we return to Sunny Side. Busha Paul is a ball of muscle. He wears shorts, shows off his calves, which look like fists trying to punch through
his skin. His mustache pulses when he asks about the Trumans, when he asks if everything is perfect.

“Mr. Truman says it’s paradise,” I tell him. I slip my fingers into my pockets and yank them away when the dollars crinkle.

“They met Uncle Alton.” He stretches his right foot to his hip, balances on the other. “That’s no good, girl. We want them with our people. Our best people.”

“Which ones are ours?” The zip-line crew, the car driver, the girls selling polished conches at the gift shop instead of live ones from the sea? They’re all wanting what Alton wants. Only difference is names scribbled on forms somewhere in Paul’s filing cabinets.

He drops his right foot and stomps on the tile. “You know what I mean. The ones who sound right.”

“I hear you, Paul.”

“Good. Because we need the Trumans, which means you need the Trumans.” His thumb and index finger press his mustache, and I wonder if the pink mussel that was in the conch has oozed out in the Trumans’ hotel room yet. “Who are they with now?”

“Not me. I’m talking to you.”

So Busha Paul pushes me out his door, into the lobby, and the Trumans are somewhere, pushing dollars into tired hands, forcing smiles on some bartender who’s worrying about getting fired, trying to push the money back and explain the gratuity policy the Trumans refuse to hear.

I wander the bars, and no Trumans among all the sunburned shoulders and Hawaiian shirts. Not at the jerk hut and not along the beach. I scour the resort until the sun’s almost gone, just a slit over the water, and Grandmama Adina will be fretting over some rice about now, my boys shoving through the front door from whatever trouble they’ve been into.

Out on the dock, I spot a mess of pink skin glowing against the dusk. Mr. Truman has stripped to a red Speedo and black water shoes, the Mrs. in a string bikini. Their near-white hair flaps in the night-promising breeze. Mr. Truman is bent over, smiling at
something below him in the darkening water. Mrs. Truman sits on the dock, stretching her hand to the sea. On both of their backs, I see the outline of tank tops, where pink arms meet pale, untouched skin. Every time I see them, more of their skin has been claimed by our sun, but they always seem to stow a little whiteness away. I can’t see what they watch in the water, though. I’m too far, and it’s getting too dark to know anything. The moon’s no help, just a straining sliver.

When I step onto the dock boards, I feel a punch in my belly. I sense him—Uncle Alton again, creep-creeping around too close to the beach. I should go back to Busha Paul, have him call the police, teach Alton a hard lesson. I tap across the dock, listen for the low spitting bullets of Alton’s nocturnal sales pitch.

“Not jus’ pretty beads, dese amagic. Made of dem dreams an’ wants of all Jamaicans.”