“It only looking so, brother, don’ worry with dat,” the next man saying. “It have no hiding place from God eyes and His punishment. Every dog got he day.”
It wasn’t so late, and Sammy had decide to dawdle a little before looking for a late job to head home. The real active daytime limers and talkers gone home already and the square settling down to a regular dead, downtown night. Them tall trees tinkling up clear orange streetlight, disappear the urine, dry dust, and homeless smells. A few people had already bed down with they cardboard, some pedestrians still walking through the square on the pathways.
“I tell you a’ready,” the one man said, “God don’ interfere with Trini business. When you go realize dat? Where in history you ever see this kind’a thing, eh? Watch, for example, right in dat Red House, only here a madman could hold up a coup, stick up everybody, and ransom de government — dat is national kidnap, yuh know! Only in a place like this, he, a man like Abu Bakr, could do dat and then be walking round the place free! What de ass…”
“He will not escape God punishment, though,” the Seventh Day insisted.
“Well, the man say is Allah tell him do it in de first place, so that is to tell you. That is what is de problem as well — too much’a damn different kind’a people thinging up all about. Too much’a chance to conduct they wicked ways. No unity. And don’ talk about justice — dat is why…”
Sammy could see that the Seventh Day man was biding he time patiently, to come back with his rounds. Man like him-so does say the same thing over and over, whole night. Sam get up and cross over the dry orange grass, to more lively talk over so.
About five men was on the old bandstand steps with a lil’ radio, talking politics of course. This one saying Manning is a ass making nigger people shame and that one admiring Panday, the gray-hair Silver Fox with he cunning, Indian, opposition ways. As they greet Sammy, the talk turn to who deserve to win the Calypso Monarch Crown this year, ’cause David Rudder song came on the air. And that make the men and them laugh and find it funny — funny that they was just talking politics and hear the song, about Hulsie X and “Manday.” Sammy himself love the song about the feisty young Indian woman in the opposition party. He love it the minute it release, just like the rest of Trinidad. The high-pitched, nasal chorus “Ah not moving!” is the best part, making big man crack up and sing along, tapping they foot with the bass—“Go down. Go down. Go down with the Hulsie X.” Sammy, small and petite as he is, did a lil’ jiggle, chutney head-wag and snake-hand move, just to make them laugh more. All’a them know already — that is the dance and the song of the season. They appreciate it properly ’cause they know the newspaper’s story, about Hulsie striking for water in Penal, with a set’a women and buckets in the middle’a the road, shouting, “Ah not moving!”
“Well, gentlemen, I heading down de road.” Sammy’s time to kill is up. He leave them trying to figure out the words of the next song, and go to his car.
* * *
Them Syrian stores lock down with padlocks and chains, fluorescent lights in fabric shop windows. One’r two vendor stalls light up selling music, incense, and sweets. The shape of a rasta lean up in a doorway on Frederick Street, the main street. Is dead. Independence Square at night, silent, compared to day. Two coconut sellers guarding they vans, smoking cigarettes to pass the time. Sammy feel like he crawling past today’s leftover garbage, looking for leftover people. A few’a them there, liming, on their way home or going somewhere. A man buying salted peanuts, the nuts cart pressure valve screaming steam and the sicky-sweet smell of hot nuts and brown paper hanging in the night air. Fast-food glary signs calling leftover late-nighters in, to eat on them bright blue Formica tables. They have security at the door. The corner bar now full of dingy laughter, and the scratchy speakers playing drunken music for drunken men on the pavement. Sam didn’t stop. Straight home he heading.
* * *
The sticky night greet Sammy as he get out’a his car at home. In Central, on the flats, the heat and staleness of Caroni Swamp trailing inland, in the dark. Much as he want to pass by Douli, he didn’t. He restrain himself from calling her ’cause is lateish. And that always made matters worse unless they had arrange something first. His Queen was up but she wasn’t watching TV, which was strange ’cause she didn’t have no lights on neither. She was waiting for him, Sammy realize as he entered the house.
“Me son.”
From the time she say “Me son” he know something, but he still had to ask what happen.
“Oh Lawd … she…”
“DOULI!” Sam scream and pelt out as she grab at him.
“Don’t go, don’ go there! Sammy!”
But he gone already, speeding his car the lil’ distance to her house on the edge of the fields. “Douli, Douli, DOULI! I coming, I go take you away, out of that house, that…”
A crowd had gather up on the street outside Douli’s house, a police car, a ambulance. And fear. Big, cold, and sweaty fear, box Sammy. Whuddup. Beat him again and again, on he head, chest, legs. Whuddup, whuddup. Two-by-four wooden blows, force him to crawl forward, push through people. “Where Mamee? Where Douli? DOULI!”
Bags. Bags with zips. What they doing? The ambulance empty.
People tried to stop Sammy but he rip through.
Blood. Blood. Plenty blood. Oh God, no. Where she? No. He … he … NO!
The whole room red. Stinking red. Dripping red. Slimey and thick as the hot air choking. Sucky fluid, air bubbles rattling in Sammy throat. Red marks clawing mashed-up furniture, the walls. And he, the devil’ body, not covered yet. Not bleeding but covered in blood. Cutlass, Gramoxone poison, killer, bleed. BLEED. Blood.
Moms pull her son out’a the red room, away from the neighbors and wailing family. But he couldn’t hear them anyway. She couldn’t pull him away from the madness, a mad rush in him, raging red.
“Shhhhh.” Moms hold him tight on her chest. “Shhhhh. Sit down here, come. Hush. Don’t say nothing. Hold me. Here…”
The big stone was warm through Sam jeans. Skin hot. He touch it. Bury his face in his mother’s soft stomach. Bread. Ghee. Roti-skin softness.
“He chopped them up … her and his wife … then he kill heself. You couldn’a know, Sammy, no.”
No. No.
* * *
Fluorescent net and satin cover the table in the mas camp. Bright pink, green, orange. “Ka-nee-val again, bacchanal in Port’a Spain. Whoa donkey. Whoa whoa donkey”—riggadigging on the little radio—“Whoa donkey. Whoa whoa donkey…” The gofer boy steps in the sewing room, cocks out his bottom, and does the jockey dance with his imaginary reins.
“Dat blasted song so stupid!” the high-pitched, hot-mouthed Firerago exclaims. “Why de hell they can’t sing sense no more? What is dat, eh? ‘Whoa donkey’ my ass.”
The boy slaps his behind with his whip and gallops forward to the table, in rhythm. He has everybody laughing, except the supervisor and the shy Chinese guy at the sewing machine, who just smiles to himself and keeps sewing.
Ata had left off drawing cardboard patterns to help Firerago and three other women make fabric flowers for the bridesmaid hat prototype. She takes a strip of satin and pulls the loose stitching along one edge. Watching Firerago’s hands, she follows, curling up the frill and punching it with plastic staples. One of the women winces and sucks her finger, burnt by hot glue. Firerago sucks her teeth and snatches the glue gun, admonishing her about how to glue the bases without burning herself.