Here Comes the Sun (31 page)

“What will you do to him?”

“Don't worry 'bout dat.”

“Don't do anything that will cost you. Yuh know he's a drunk. He can do anything.”

Charles pulls away from her. A scowl transforms his face and twists it so that he talks from the side of his mouth. He walks a few steps ahead, his shoulders mounting like hills. Thandi runs to catch up with him. She tugs at his shirt. “What yuh going to do?” But he doesn't answer. He turns to her, just short of her gate. Mr. Melon is untying his goat. He's walking in their direction. When he approaches the both of them, he tips his hat. “Howdy.” Charles and Thandi mumble a greeting to the older man. After he passes, Charles says, “Don't worry about what ah g'wan do. I'll take care of everything.” He kisses Thandi and leaves her standing at her gate, panicked.

···

T
he next afternoon a crowd is gathered outside of Dino's Bar to watch Charles and Clover roll on the dusty ground like two lizards. Macka, the bartender, is trying to pry them off each other, but he stumbles backward when Charles pushes him off, the man falling over a group of small schoolchildren squatting nearby. The children scatter like mice, then return when Macka gets up and brushes himself off. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” the little boys yell. This brings more people to the scene—mothers who are just walking from the river with buckets on their heads. The women stop and lower their buckets to scoop their children close. This is not surprising to them, since the normal meanness that the heat and the sun brings is compounded by the drought, which provokes fits of rage. They set their eyes too on the young girl madly screaming, clamping both hands to her face, a woman in despair. “Stop it! Stop it!” This sets off mild whispers among the women, for they have only heard her speak just a decibel above a whisper. Always proper.

“What a sing t'ing!” they cluck, shaking their heads.

But Thandi ignores them. Her cries are uncontrollable. She stands away from the fight like the other spectators outside of Dino's. She had hoped Charles had forgotten his vengeance. He doesn't seem to care what might happen to him if he kills Clover. He's acting like a wild beast, a man with nothing to lose. Saliva fills her mouth as the urge to vomit rises.

Clover is weak and bloodied, but insists on fighting Charles, who is younger, more virile. Charles holds him down with his weight, wildly punching him. Clover pulls a knife. Charles struggles to pry it out of Clover's hand. “Somebody, please help!” Thandi screams, her blood running cold. But Charles wrestles the knife out Clover's hand, and in one swift motion Clover's shirt is ripped, a horizontal red gash printed on his shirt. Charles springs to his feet and Clover struggles to stand up. For a moment both men dance around each other, Charles with his shirt open and the knife in his hand, and Clover with his fists clenched and renewed strength and a dangerous look in his eyes. “C'mon, yuh pussyclaat, good-fah-nottin' bwoy . . .” he spits. “Yuh eat from people plate all yuh life, an' now dat yuh discover pussy yuh t'ink you is a man now.” Charles drops the knife and lurches forward. Both of them are on the ground again.

“Oh, lawd 'ave mercy!” Miss Gracie shouts. She's stumbling out of the bar and into the street, a little tipsy, with the blind faith of a toddler walking into traffic. Miss Gracie is using all her strength to pull Charles off Clover, grabbing him by the end of his shirt as he punches Clover like a sack of rice. A few men—the types Thandi has seen hovering over pecking roosters with wild eyes filled with money and dust and sometimes tears of defeat—jump in to help Miss Gracie pull Charles away. Charles fights them off, but they outnumber him, pulling his hands behind him. Clover sits there in the middle of the road looking dizzy. He clutches his chest as if he's trying to locate a lizard slithering its way under his armpit. A few women stoop next to Clover to give him something to drink. They ignore Charles, who is busy snatching his arms from the men and then stooping to catch his breath.

The women around Clover start to scream. Clover is woozy, faint, bleeding from his nose and lip. “S'maddy help him!” Miss Louise shouts, untying her head scarf to dab Clover's forehead.

Someone yells for Macka to call an ambulance. But Macka doesn't have a phone, so he runs to Mr. Levy next door. Mr. Levy, who has long ago resigned himself to the shenanigans of the drunks next door, simply flips his newspaper and shakes his head. But Macka bangs on the mesh door. “A man is bleeding in di street, Missah Chin! How yuh stay suh? Have a likkle mercy an' call di ambulance!” Finally Mr. Levy picks up the phone and dials 119. It takes a long time for the ambulance and the police to come. Meanwhile, people are pointing at Charles. “
Is dat big-head bwoy do it!
” Thandi is able to catch Charles before he leaves the scene.

“What have you done?” She's pulling him, hitting him with both hands, demanding an answer. He just looks at her, his mouth downturned. “Him get what him deserve,” is all he says before he flees.

Clover is mounted on a stretcher and two policemen question residents, to discover the identity of the man who started the fight. They say that they have to make an arrest. Holding the knife—which was Clover's—as evidence, they say that only a dangerous criminal would attempt to kill a man cold-blooded in the street for no reason at all. Absolutely no good reason at all. But no one knows where Charles went. The news comes back later that night that Clover had a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital. But the people believe that it was Charles who killed him.

29

W
HEN VERDENE SEES THE SHAKING BOY ON THE STEPS OF HER
veranda, she lowers the flashlight and opens the grille for him. He's bloodied and clutching himself as though trying to stop the shaking. Without asking any questions, Verdene wrestles one of his hands free from its grasp on his upper arm and leads him inside. JPS took the electricity again, so she lights a kerosene lamp to see. Charles sits still, resting his hands on the dining table where he once sat the first time she let him inside the house. Verdene regards the blood on his shirt. “Are you hurt?” she asks. Charles doesn't raise his head.

“Ah didn't know where else to go weh dey wouldn't look fah me,” he finally says.

“What happened? Why are you running?” Verdene begins to wonder if she has made a mistake letting him inside before asking this question. She's suddenly fearful, but because she doesn't want the boy to think she is nervous around him, she busies herself with an internal script—the role her mother would have played.

“Let me at least get you cleaned up.”

She gets up with the flashlight and goes inside the bathroom for a basin and washcloth. She also grabs a University of Cambridge T-shirt, which she inherited from her husband, out of her drawer. When she returns to the dining room, Charles still hasn't moved. He doesn't even seem to be breathing. The quiet roars in Verdene's ears as she holds the wet rag over his eyebrows. Slowly she wipes his forehead, the area above his mouth, and his hands. He winces when the damp cloth touches his upper arm where there's a gash. Verdene gets her first-aid kit and dresses it. “Calm down and just breathe,” she hears her mother's voice say to him in a whisper. It must have been all the boy needed to hear, because as soon as Verdene says this, he breaks down. His body jerks with loud sobs, his hands covering his face. “What happened, Charles?” she asks, trying hard to keep her voice steady.

“Ah kill someone,” he says. “Ah hear dat police aftah me now. Mama Gracie warn me.”

Verdene regards him closely. His frame appears small and wilted in the light of the kerosene lamp. He doesn't look like a murderer, though his confession looms large inside the house, moving and shifting things. Something in the house braces. After a second or two, Verdene grabs a chair. “You what?” she asks.

“Ah kill someone,” he repeats. “Him rape my girlfriend.”

This time Verdene lets his statement fall inside the quiet like a single hair landing on the wooden floors. Not since she knelt by her father's stiff body on the kitchen floor after she watched him suffer a heart attack has she felt so paralyzed by ambivalence. She peers at Charles through the cloud of this memory, thinking how she had hurt with guilt for days, and how there were no remedies to quell the agonizing pain that she never expected to feel for the person who she thought deserved it. Verdene gets up and kneels in front of Charles. Her instinct is to grab him and comfort him, but instead she says, “Do you know for sure that he's dead?”

Charles nods. “Yes.”

“Maybe you didn't kill him. Maybe he's just hurt.”

“Ah know for ah fact dat him dead. Dat me kill him.” His jawbone clenches. “When me look pon him face an' see him smiling like di devil himself, knowing dat him rape my girl, all ah wanted to do was to kill him. But ah didn't know when or how dat force tek ovah me. Next t'ing me know, me see Mama Gracie an' she tell me how dey pronounce him dead at di hospital.”

“Oh, Charles . . .”

“Me neva mean fi kill him.”

“I know you didn't mean to.”

Charles looks at her. His face is colorless. Verdene has a feeling that if this man is really dead, then so is Charles. Not because of how the police treat criminals, but because of the guilt she senses has already begun to wear him down. Verdene wants desperately to ease his anxiety, so she decides on logic. “If you can prove that he raped your girlfriend, then maybe you can argue that you did it in defense.”

Charles shakes his head and covers his face again. “There's no proof. It 'appen years ago.” Verdene rubs his back, feels his muscles tense up again. “I can't stay here,” he says suddenly. “I can't stay in Rivah Bank. Ah must get going.” Verdene silently agrees, though she would never think of saying this out loud. She would have offered him a hiding place, but then she would have to explain to Margot when she drops by after her shift at the hotel and sees a boy—an alleged killer—inside the house. And besides, Margot can never be seen here by anyone. So Charles must go.

“At least change off first and eat something before you go,” Verdene tells him.

“Ah can't eat anyt'ing.” He takes off his bloody shirt and puts on the one Verdene gives him. “Thank you for this,” he says, smoothing the fabric over his chest, his fingers trailing the University of Cambridge letters. He folds his soiled shirt, and Verdene offers to bury it outside, next to the dead dogs. She thinks of things to say to convince him that justice might still be on his side, but cannot come up with anything. “You must really love her. That girl?” she says as he heads toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the handle. The darkness is thick outside, since it's overcast and there are no stars or a moon tonight. One would think it might finally rain; but Verdene won't hold her breath. “Yes. I do,” Charles replies.

“I would've done the same thing,” she says.

Charles lets go of the knob. He leans against the doorpost and looks Verdene right in the eye. “Yuh know, ah used to be afraid ah witches.”

With that, he leaves her in the dark. She looks around the house. Not since she returned to it, wanting to be closer to her mother, has she felt so alone. How repelled she is tonight by the floors, the walls, the curtains, the burglar bars by the windows through which most days she can barely see the wide expanse of the sky.

30

A
LPHONSO CALLS MARGOT TO THE VILLA, WHICH HAS BECOME
their meeting place. Sweetness is with her, because she happens to be on the schedule for tonight's soiree. But when they get there, the developers are frenzied. Alphonso is pacing, blowing cigarette smoke through his nostrils.

“What's going on?” Margot asks Alphonso as soon as she enters.

“The fucking police.”

“Why are they involved?”

“A murder happened in the development area. They decided to shut down the whole fucking project until they find the killer. They think the activity from the construction could give the guy cover.”

“What?”

“We're losing money, Margot. The longer the police make us wait as they investigate this crime, the more we suffer. Tourists aren't going to want to come to a high-crime area. The investors are shitting themselves as we speak! I got a call from Virgil. He's threatening to pull out.”

“Calm down, I can fix this.”

“How?” he almost shouts.

“Let me think.”

An idea, which was really a thought uttered too loudly, too prematurely, surfaces from Margot's mouth; materializes into sound waves that halt the developers in the room, bringing them closer to the table where Margot sits. Alphonso too listens, his arms folded across his chest, visibly amused. “Where would we get the money to pay the reward?”

“We're flush with cash, Alphonso, and you know it,” Margot says. “Sweetness alone is bringing in seven thousand a week. The other girls are just as profitable. We can do this.”

“So ten grand and we solve everything?” one of the developers asks.

“Yes, ten grand,” Margot replies. “I suggest we tell the constable about it so that he can relax his force. This money will have the residents of River Bank scouring every nook an' cranny for the criminal. In the meantime, we send Sweetness to the police station.”

“Sweetness?” Alphonso asks. “Why Sweetness?”

“Because if you're going to take over a quarter of the island, then you should at least be smart about it. Be nice to the police. They can be your biggest allies or worst enemies. Like women, they love it when you bring them gifts.”

The men in the room laugh. Alphonso laughs too.

“Margot, you're brilliant,” he says.

···

A
gain people gather at Dino's. There's a search warrant for Charles and a prize of $10,000 in U.S. currency offered by the police department for the person who turns him over.