Swimming in the Volcano (46 page)

He was made to wait four days for Selwyn Walker to come tell him why he had brought him there from Cotton Island and what it was he was supposed to be doing—sell marijuana? collect money? keep an
eye out? All those things he did for Sergeant Marcus on Cotton Island, until he couldn't do them anymore. By Friday of that first week he was still at his desk, immobile, until Walker came again, and explained it all again, and calmed him down, explaining that his would be one of the easiest jobs on the Force, since all it required was to act natural and be ordinary.

“You cyahn do daht, eh?” Walker had said with a big, phony smile. He hadn't answered, but Walker took it the right way. The other cops thought he had come to spy on them. He used to but he didn't do that anymore, that wasn't his job; that was someone else's job.

He sat at the same desk now, notified by one of Walker's men to come in for special assignment, so here he was, looking natural and ordinary as he had been instructed almost one year ago: pullover shirt, pants and belt, good shoes, aviator sunglasses, haircut, aftershave water, the holes in his teeth fixed. He sat erect in his chair, arms folded on the desk top, making an examination of the office stapler. He wanted the quartermaster to issue his section—Special Action—its own stapler, but the quartermaster said no—
they was like that
. Every time Ibrahim punched down on the stapler's arm, the staple fell out on the paper already closed, dead. He chopped it again and again, making a school of pinched staples, trying to see the problem. But it's broken, man, the secretary had told him. Yeah, Ibrahim had responded, but
why?
You ever think of that? She was a bitch he would get rid of, if he could,
but dey ain as yet give him real power around de place
.

Ibrahim was hungry. He looked at the clock on the wall, then checked the time against his Jamaican wristwatch. He had liberated the watch from a guy who didn't know how to behave—Jamaican ras-clot. The look on his face, bwoy! The Force had shipped him to Jamaica last year for what was called surveillance training, this playgame action. He went to an office building in Kingstown for school, then a camp in the mountains, then some make-believe business in Negril. There were five instructors—three Jamaicans; two Americans, one white, one black: it didn't seem to matter because they both acted smart. One day they dressed him up like a busy girl, even though he told them not to do it, and then they made him walk down the street. He went blank and there was some trouble he couldn't remember. Later on they showed him a telephone with a bug in it. They had binoculars, cameras, very strange weapons. They took his urine and made a study of it. He heard there was a potion they drank to make themselves invisible, but he had never tasted it. They wanted to teach him what waiting was, and being quiet, and hiding, but he
already had that information. Their secrets were not always to be believed. For instance, mind reading—they said they had a machine that could do it, but they didn't prove it to him. They hooked him up to it but they couldn't read his mind. They had some drugs but he heard a voice saying he shouldn't take them. They said his rating was
Good
and awarded him a certificate, very important. Next thing he knew, Selwyn Walker promoted him, Corporal Cassius “Iman Ibrahim” Collymore. He was sent to Panama for another certificate. He went to the States, to Georgia, where they called it that, they could call it whatever they wanted, but that didn't work out, they said he wasn't right. The certificates were in Selwyn's desk where they belonged. He was going to Cuba next, for more training. Classified. Cuba was a very important place, according to Selwyn. Very organized. Selwyn always talked about Cuba.

The important thing about Jamaica, there were holymen there. He met with them, because he had a religious feeling, and they gave him his true name. There were other holymen, but they were like wild dogs, and he didn't trust them. The instructors in the school said, “Well, Collymore, you are one step ahead of us, eh?” and thought he was on to something when they found out about his name. The holy-men had cleared Ibrahim's mind about enemies, which he had information on, but not enough. They gave him Muslim words to use, if he needed them. The Muslim said, Protect yourself from men with
ideas
. Right-thinking men were your brothers, your sisters. He was beginning to understand.
Ideas
were such things as imperialism, capitalism, fascism, oppressionism, Zionism. Alcohol and drugs. Maybe sex, but he was confused about that. He had heard Selwyn Walker reject these ideas first, though Walker wasn't a convert to Islam. Or maybe he was, but had to keep it to himself.
White
was an idea Ibrahim had no experience with, but he was learning every day.
Black
wasn't an idea, it was a way. A way through hell.

His stomach growled. He liked to eat, as much as he could fit, and maybe get a little bigger. His arms and legs were strong. In seventeen minutes, his lunch would be set out for him at the house where he rented a room in Scuffletown. Mrs. Pierce gave him a plate, Monday through Friday, for a Biwi a day—goat stew, bean and rice, sardine, jam sandwich, pilau, hash and boiled cassava, callaloo, pumpkin fritter, biscuit, stick of candy, glass of water with ice, sorrel tea, bottle of Ju-C. He refused fish. He told her not to cook pig anymore, not even for herself since it would foul the pots. Saturday he must find his own food—Mrs. Pierce gone country to visit she old people. Sunday he must find his own food—Mrs. Pierce gone church. So, his plan for
that was, to buy rotis from a street vendor and eat them in his room. Or pray—St. Catherine had no right-thinking church, so he had to pray by himself. Mama Smallhorne had been the superior cook and cheaper, but she was sour in personality, like she was doing him a favor, and Mrs. Pierce was lively! She with her housecoats and big ass and five pickaninnies and a faraway husband who sent her a big new refrigerator to stand in the kitchen like America or France or such place. On an ordinary day, Ibrahim would eat, then wash his hands and go to the front room that was his, open the closet and inspect the uniform that hung there—he had Mrs. Pierce wash and iron it every week, regardless of whether he wore it or not—and then sit on his bed and read a Trinidadian comic book. He was a good reader; he had read the Koran too, and Eric Williams, and Louis L'Amour. There was a darkroom at the back of the house—he had built it himself to make pictures. They had trained him how to do it, so in the afternoons he would go there, or walk back to the motorpool at headquarters for a car and take a ride, keeping a lookout for the ones who might be getting ideas, snapping pictures with his Japanese camera. Two months ago, Walker had told him to make a collection of pictures of foreign people who worked on St. Catherine, but he didn't know who they were so he just took photographs of whites. It was easy.

The stapler seemed to have ideas too. He gave it one more chance and then threw it out the open window behind his desk, sailing it into a clump of oleander. He saw a black and white cat run away and thought,
Fuck me, I miss a shot
. He hated animals—there was more to them than met the eye. When he swiveled back around, Selwyn Walker was there in the bullpen, aiming his concentration at Ibrahim, but Walker knew he was not a fellow with a flimsy heart. The corporal shrugged and smirked, acting impertinent about the whole thing—
Selwyn doan care fah staple, nuhf Selwyn care fah report. Report, report. Pictures and who-see-who
. That was all that was required of Ibrahim most mornings like this Friday morning when he was summoned in: wait for the lieutenant commander to appear, then follow him into his office and make an oral report, show him some pictures, name some names.
This mahn fix motor, this mahn wuk in hospital, this one wuk fah Kingsley, this one wuk fah Banks
.

Selwyn had recruited Ibrahim himself because he was impressed by the zodiac of scar tissue on the boy, that's what he had said—where you get dem nastiness, bwoy—the two crescent moons on the youth's right arm, the stars on his right leg, the diamond above one eye where Sergeant Marcus had kissed him with a piece of coral stone. Selwyn had saved Ibrahim from limbo and brought him to
Queenstown to serve in the Special Action section with another guy who hadn't been around lately. He was sick, Ibrahim speculated. Or he was on secret duty; maybe he went to the country to visit his mother. Maybe he was dead—Ibrahim wasn't going to stick his nose in it.

Walker came over to where the corporal sat at the desk. Ibrahim gauged the intensity in the lieutenant commander's eyes and made himself ready for it head-on. Selwyn had that look that meant an operation was coming. His uniform smelled like flags. Ibrahim always felt in the presence of strong forces when they were together. There was heat simmering out of Selwyn Walker, deep inside. That was a thing they had in common. Another thing was, they were both clean, which was important. Ibrahim held a powerful aversion to uncleanliness—he had been made to spend the greater portion of his existence bathed in filth, and it made his skin crawl, and fireflies blink in and out of his vision, to remember those times.

He sprang to his feet. A silver rain of staples fell to the floor. The salute, the end of nonsense. Walker let him remain at attention, but that was correct, he had been born and raised with a curriculum of discipline. He could
contain
himself, if you showed him a good system, like Walker's. He wanted Ibrahim to be
an immaterial being
. Tell lies about wrong-thinkers, stay in the shadows, create the fear.

You can do that?

But shit, Selwyn Walker knew he could do that, or else why else recruit him when Walker found him there like a pet monkey, invisibly chained to the stoop of the police station on Cotton Island, during those first days when the coalition took control from Pepper. He understood perfectly how to lime and lie low and don't talk. Walker had gazed down at him, curled in the shade but alert, and he saw that the youth fit his operation.

“What wildness you been up to, bwoy?” That was what Selwyn Walker had said, the first words. “Where you get dem nasty scar?”

He didn't tell Selwyn Walker anything, but the lieutenant commander got the picture, he comprehended everything about him, straight off. He had to say nothing—
it just happen
. Selwyn Walker had made him stand up and turn a circle. Then he went into the station and spoke with Sergeant Marcus; when he came back out, he looked at Collymore as if he had done something wrong, and he said that he should come with him, back to St. Catherine.

He had looked down at his bare feet, self-mortified, and had begun to tremble.
You carryin me to prison, sahf

Selwyn Walker looked inquisitive and wanted to know why he
would ask such a thing, if Cassius felt that prison was where he rightfully belonged. Cassius had no idea what Sergeant Marcus might have told Selwyn Walker—the man knew some things, after six years of jooking his backside, and playing cover-up, stashing money—but he saw that the lieutenant commander was not a fellow he could hope to deceive, not for long, and there'd be hell to pay for trying. He bowed his head, not in shame but to prevent himself from telling all.

“Yes ... sah.”

“
Yes?
” Selwyn Walker repeated, amazed. “You say,
yes
!” He relaxed himself with laughter, shaking his head in disbelief. “You sometin, bwoy.”

Yes. Because there was a restlessness inside of him that no one could see, and was without cure. Yes, because he had mean thoughts. After his father had disappeared at sea, between the time Sergeant Marcus had come to claim him and the situation with the Albritton girl, he would walk all day the way across the island to the villages on the windward side, exploring Cotton as he hadn't since he was a child in another home, with another identity. He would walk all the way across just to drink a grape Ju-C in a shop and then turn around for the walk back, reaching Collymore's shanty at dusk, tired and wanting sleep, so that he would not care so much when Sergeant stopped by. There were months he had spent on the periphery of the construction site for the new airport, staring dully at the machinery and the clouds of dust, and endless hours that would find him on the town wharf, getting in the way of the stevedores, staring cat-faced at the sailing yachts, thinking,
This is my boat. That white woman is my woman. Them men does work for me
. Then he would drag the heavy mindless restlessness of his adolescence back to Collymore's shanty, and Sergeant Marcus would come with his lesson books, and his sport magazines, maybe a piece of sweet cake or can of soup, and a jar of Vaseline to rub on his bum. He became a thief, because Sergeant never gave him enough money. Sergeant had a business with ganja, and Cassius became part of that too—a delivery boy, although he didn't smoke it himself because it brought on hallucinations and panic. There were other things, deals and messages and threats that took him from one end of the island to the other, always walking, walking out the sick energy and the rage, the terrible desires, feelings so ugly and burning that he found them intolerable, until one day, crossing through the bush, the sun so hot it cooked the silence into a boil, and the ravens overhead hissed at the infertile land where even the insects were drunk with heat, he met the Albritton girl, a stupid ugly girl in a torn and dirty dress that was too large for her and
wouldn't stay on her shoulders but kept dropping below the swollen pointy nipples that were her new bubbies. She sat on a rock, her feet in the dirt and her legs wide apart, scratching her name in the hard white dirt with a stick. He heard bells in the bush and noticed the scrawny goats she was there to tend. Behind her was a higher rock, and he climbed up on it to look around at all the thorny, rock-strewn, waterless and inhuman solitude of the interior of the atoll.

What you see, bwoy?
the girl had asked.

You
.