The shadows were long and deep as I walked up Esperanza Street. I was brooding over what had passed between me and Suelita, replaying everything I’d said, imagining any number of ways I might have said things differently and, preoccupied in this way, I paid little attention to what was going on around me. I was almost past the mouth of the Espiritista alley when the sound of my name being called interrupted my thoughts. I stopped, perplexed for just an instant before I heard it again. I looked back into the alley.
Rico sat on the bench outside the Bukaykay’s store. Behind him the hatch was closed, the windows dark. ‘Psst,’ he beckoned me over, his palm downwards, fingers scurrying in the air like he was scratching an invisible dog. I hadn’t seen him for a few days. It didn’t surprise me to see him on the store bench now, even though the house was empty. I so rarely saw him anywhere else that it almost seemed the bench was where he belonged. I wondered anxiously for a moment whether he’d seen me alone with Suelita and even as I did so I chastised myself; Rico could hardly claim her as his property. He’s a jerk, I thought.
I walked over to him. ‘You take your head out of your books only to put it straight in the clouds? I was calling and calling,’ he reproached me, but his tone was genial, over-familiar. I heard noises behind me and saw that the rest of the Barracudas were there too, in the shadows, one on the corner of Esperanza as if he’d been behind me the whole time.
Rico rose, slipped his arm around my shoulders and said softly, ‘Let’s walk, Joe,’ as if he didn’t want to wake anyone, though there were still people about and noise and light leaching out into the evening from behind shutters and doors.
I became conscious now of how late it was. ‘I should be back already,’ I said, ‘but I can come tomorrow.’
He laughed. ‘You act so serious all the time, Joe, but actually you’re quite funny.’ I hesitated, but he pulled me forward with him, his arm heavy across my shoulders. ‘It won’t take long,’ he said.
We walked together through the back alleys into the depths of Greenhills, until the shacks dwindled into coarse grass and litter-strewn streams and long shadowy stretches in which little could be made out. Here, there were few people about. It seemed just the sort of place for the kind of shady business I imagined Rico to be involved in. We stopped under a tree and he turned to me, his eyes meeting mine then looking away again. He laughed again, softly. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear a pig straining at its tether and underneath that, the sound of a radio or perhaps a TV. ‘Your pop,’ Rico said, ‘he’s been hard at work on this rally, eh?’
‘It affects everyone,’ I said. ‘You too.’
‘I know my place.’ If I hadn’t known him better I might have thought he sounded sad. ‘And your boy. He thinks he’s a real rock star, huh?’
Who? I thought. I heard the barkada boys move in closer.
‘Can you carry a message for us, Joe?’
‘Sure.’ I wondered at the theatricality of bringing me through the back of the shanties to this place, if all he wanted of me was that I carried a message.
Rico lowered himself slowly onto an empty oil drum that lay on its side under a tree. Someone had beaten a hollow into the top of the drum to make it into a seat. It would be a good, cool spot even at the height of day. He leaned back against the trunk. ‘Sorry, Joe,’ he said. He started to hum, a tune I didn’t recognise at first, and then, softly, to sing. I heard the words kung-fu fighting. I was surprised. His voice was good: melodic and smooth. He might have been a choirboy. The barkada boys closed in. They started to beat me, carefully, neatly, with a restraint that I didn’t understand at the time. I found myself wondering if Rico only knew the same two lines of the song, for now they seemed to repeat over and over. After what might have been seconds or minutes, the blows stopped and the boys stepped back. Rico’s face frowned down at me. ‘You’ll make sure the message gets through, won’t you, Joe?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do this again.’ In the darkness, his eyes looked wounded. His face retreated again and the boys moved back in. I focused on a point somewhere deep inside my body, away from the surface, away from my skin, from every sensation and, after a while, through the gauze, behind the dull tumult, I became aware of thoughts arising and breaking up, distantly, like surf. Down at the jetty, under the market-hall roof, everyone was still working to prepare Esperanza for the rally. None of them even knew I was here. I’d have liked to be with them. I thought about Aunt Mary and almost immediately I pictured Dub. The rock star. I pictured a guitar, the exact modeclass="underline" a second-hand Stratocaster, a real beauty. A motorbike bought with his dead father’s money. Either object worth far more than a few stolen herbs. I felt a thin, sharp line of rage that brightened and dissipated. And then another thought, clear and unperturbed, about how practised Rico and his boys were, how professional. I smiled.
Girls with Jasmine Braids
The barkada boys ebbed away again, leaving me on the ground. Rico knelt down, put his hand on my shoulder, watched me. I was still smiling. ‘Joseph?’ He sounded puzzled. I looked up at him, wondering what might come next. ‘You’ll be all right getting home?’
I laughed, wincing as I did so for my chest hurt with even the smallest movement. He laughed quietly too then. And, his hand resting on my shoulder, he patted me once or twice, before leaning into me to push himself up to standing. I closed my mouth hard to stop myself making a sound. ‘Got another job to get to,’ he said, but he stayed where he was, looking down at me. I kept quiet and still, my eyes open, staring straight ahead at the dark tussocks of grass, the forest of legs. After a moment Rico turned away. ‘See you, Joe,’ he said as he moved off, his boys falling in behind him.
I listened as their footsteps receded. I let a few more minutes pass, absorbing distant noises: the hum of a truck, a cockerel whose call, raised in pitch at the end, sounded like a question. I took a slow, ragged breath. The smell of earth and leaves filled me, became suddenly nauseating. I rose stiffly, carefully, to my feet.
I sat down on the oil drum from which Rico had directed his boys and stared at the spot where I’d lain, but in the darkness it divulged nothing. I ran a hand slowly over my face and body. My other hand ached. My left eye was starting to swell and from above it a sticky crust of blood or dirt came away under my fingers.
I cleared my throat and said out loud, ‘Where to?’ The sound of my voice surprised me; it sounded as it always did. I thought about the Bougainvillea. The boarding house was full for the weekend and the guests would still be awake at this hour. The Bukaykays would likely still be down at the jetty with my father, Jonah and the boys, and even if they were not, I didn’t want Suelita to see me like this. There was only one other place to go and so I set off for my father’s apartment, knowing that Lorna at least would be in, and if not, then perhaps Elisa and Aunt Bina next door. It seemed to take a long time to get there; Rico and his boys had spared my legs but, even so, every step jarred.
The courtyard of my father’s building seemed to gather around me as I entered it. It was quiet for that time of evening. A few of the windows were dark and the light from the others settled in mid air in a milky haze, leaving the ground in shadow. I lowered myself onto the bottom step of the stairwell and leaned back gratefully for a moment against the cool concrete wall. Overhead, my father’s windows were open and through them the sound of Elvis Presley curled out into the evening. Elvis sounded far too cheerful.