Bivouac. Kwame Dawes
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Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan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 giving 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.
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