The Angels' Share Read online

He took me there once—I now remember, yes, took me there once, a long time ago now . . . and it all comes to me right now in this place. Strange . . . but I remember.

  I was at his house for the weekend, and a farmer, Hansel, came to tell him of a disease he had found in his oranges. Father decided immediately over breakfast that he had to go over the entire territory in order to provide a report for the minister on Monday.

  It was Saturday morning on a long holiday weekend, perhaps Labor Day, I don’t remember. But it was one of the very few times I spent a weekend at his house. Holly had other things he wanted do, and so did Meagan. But I wanted to go with him and see the span of land he commanded on behalf of the government, and most of all I wanted to have him to myself all day.

  So I jumped into the passenger seat of the fishtail car as he followed the farmer’s old Land Rover, throwing dust in its wake as if it was digging a new road as it went. I couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and I remember the first bar we stopped at. He introduced me to the barmaid, asked me what I was drinking, laughed, and slapped me on the back when I ordered a soft drink.

  “Give him a Dragon, give him a Dragon Stout, boy turning man now. Drink a Dragon today, young boy. Next thing people come in here and see you drinking water, and I telling them you are my big son. Drink a stout.”

  “Aren’t we going to work?”

  “We are working,” he said to me. “We are working, but work doesn’t have to be work . . . well, not all the time.”

  So I had my first real drink on a dusty Saturday morning in a dirty little bar in Wakefield with my father sitting with a rum in his hand looking proudly at me and making bets as to whether or not I would throw up on myself.

  We plunged through that large area west of where the Rio Cobre curls toward the St. Catherine hills, to a vast land of orange groves and tall cane fields with coconut trees standing way back in the distance. And the roads through the fields were almost always long and straight and the dust almost always thick, dry, and rising, blocking the taillights of the Land Rover ahead of us. And Father sped along the road and through the thick dust as if he did not need to see.

  Every now and then, a break would appear somewhere on one side and he would swerve and swing down a long lane of trees. Then suddenly on some little hill or at some little corner would be a small farm with children running around the car and little mongrel dogs yapping at my heels.

  Every little village or collection of houses or farm was no more than fifteen minutes from a dusty little corner with a bar. Some still unopened, some barely, some with no customers but a few old-timers lying on the pavement, recovering from the goings-on of the night before. Others with a couple of men sitting in a corner nursing white rum—maybe some shuffling domino pieces across tables short of players.

  We stopped at every bar, every shop, and almost every house along the way, where my father would engage the farmers in small talk, flirt with the bartenders, ask about their families. He may have kissed some babies, but my memory is hazy on that. Then he waded into their fields with a businesslike look on his face, slicing through the oranges to examine the cores and shaking his head; examining the sugar cane—cutting it, tearing the sharp leaves apart, till the flaking inner dust would fly in the air like powder; peering like a surgeon to where the leaves meet the skin and where the skin turns to joints; then breaking them to see the joints themselves; then nodding again or shaking his head; then moving on from farm to farm, from estate to estate, examining bananas, sugar canes, oranges, even the apples and avocados that were not being farmed for production.

  Dusk caught us halfway through a little town east of Ewarton called Redwood. A little place no more than a village with a small road leading to a small square with a shop and a bar at its crest. Two roads led off to its right and left. In front, across the dusty road, a wide track led down to where I could see the tops of houses and two women walking up toward us with large water buckets on their heads.

  Father parked his car beside Hansel’s old Land Rover and headed straight for the little bar called George’s Place. He stomped up the dirty concrete steps like he owned the building, looked across at the group of men sitting around a domino table, and shouted, “George, how things, man! You don’t have anything to quench thirst in this godforsaken place?”

  To my worshipping eyes he was like a god. The way he strode into the bar in the same manner he had been striding around the countryside all day—tall, broad, with his booming voice, commanding people and having them respond quickly to his smile and to the flash of his black eyes and his mouth’s arc and the flesh wrinkling at the corners of his eyes. Never mind that he had taken me from my Pentecostal mother, knowing how she was raising me as a good church child; never mind that in one day he had given me more liquor to drink than I had ever even seen in all my life; never mind that in addition to that first stout, I had drunk white rum, rum punch, beer, coconut water, goat head soup, rum and Coke, and a tot of John Crow Batty—the raw overproof unfiltered rum; plus food of every kind and taste, from curried goat to jerk pork, fried chicken and ackee and salt fish—never mind that. Never mind that by the time I sat at the bar and faced my next stout, my stomach was churning with the turbulence of a boiling pot.

  Never mind all of that. He was the father I dreamed of: the man who dragged life around with him wherever he went; dragged it into an empty bar with old men sitting around, desolate, with nothing to do; but as he strode in, he brought life and suddenly the barman was serving drinks, suddenly the domino game in the corner was revived, suddenly people were stopping by, peeping in and sitting down. He was a man in command of himself and all around him. And even when halfway through the Dragon Stout, I began to vomit; I tried hard to hold it in, and when my stomach rebelled, I put my hand to my mouth to stem the flood so I would be brave and manly for him. But the vomit came hard and filled my hand and spurted through my fingers onto the counter, onto my clothing, onto the floor, and onto Hansel who was trying desperately to tend to me.

  “Time you son go home now!” he shouted to my father. But I wouldn’t leave him that day for all the money in the world.

  So I was happy and thankful when Father yelled over his shoulder from the domino table for George to give me somewhere to lie down. “Boy must turn man,” he laughed. “My big son that you know, boy turning man now. George, find somewhere to put him to lie down and give him a little rum to hold his stomach.”

  Then George called a woman from somewhere inside who stripped my clothing and gave me old trousers and a T-shirt and put me on an old bed in the back. Then she gave me a mixture of rum and something very sweet that put me to sleep almost immediately.

  When I opened my eyes, it was past midnight and I was in a different bed in a different place. This was a nicer room, with a bed with sheets stiff as starch and a clean hard smell. My stomach was burning as if someone had lit a fire inside me. Somewhere outside I heard singing. I opened the curtain, looked out, and saw a large yard with trees and flowers with a walkway on one side that led to an open gate. Through the gate I could see another yard across the road where part of a large tent showed.

  Father had found a wake and he was over there singing his heart out, paying tribute to someone he may or may not have known. In the short time since he’d hit the town, he had even found someone to put me in a clean bed, medicate me, wash and dry my clothes, and hang them neatly on a chair next to me.

  A woman came and told me my father had left instructions for me to dress and join him as soon as I woke up. “How you feel?” she asked.

  “Not so bad.”

  “You feel terrible, don’t it?”

  “Little bit.”

  She laughed, shook her head, and gave me some hot soup to drink. But though soothing to some extent, it did little to calm the storm inside my stomach, and I began to retch again as I tried to fight my first hangover.

  “What a little boy like you doing drinking so much rum?” she asked me, wrinkling her nose at the stench of
liquor coming from inside me. “Drink this.”

  Whatever it was, it was so bitter she had to hold my nostrils for me to swallow it.

  “Now lie down and don’t move,” she said.

  I did. And did not.

  The next sound I heard was my father as he shook me and teased me. Why had I come to country and slept through the whole night? “Come, rise and shine,” he said. “We have to bathe and finish the inspection.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Soon five o’clock.”

  “We not going home?”

  “We’ll go home later, after.”

  “Where is Hansel?”

  “He went home last night.”

  “But Aunt Una!”

  “We are working.”

  “But what is Aunt Una going to say?”

  “What must she say? We are working! If what we doing important, a little waiting won’t hurt her. It is the choices we make. You will learn that life is like that sometimes.”

  And so he led me, with George and his woman, through the town and down the little hill where I had seen the women bringing water on their heads. It was still dark, but my stomach was normal again and I was as hungry as if I had not eaten in weeks.

  We got to a crystal spring that my father said was the main tributary of the Rio Magno. It was barely more than a trickle from the hills but we were led to a deep pool where the water was sweeter than the filtered water they sell in Kingston, so clear the sides reflected deep into it and through the predawn mist curling there.

  Father stripped naked in the early morning, walking carelessly into the water as if into some sort of baptism. I stood staring, amazed that he could be so casually naked, then looking around to see that George too was naked and all his wife had on were thin panties. Her breasts hung down her chest like small palms turned inside out. I was standing there, mouth agape, feeling shy, wondering if I would measure up to my father.

  “You afraid of the water?” Father asked

  “No, not really.”

  “Well, come in.”

  And finally, still clad in the shorts George’s wife had washed for me, I slipped from the unassuming graveled beach into the harmless, transparent water which suddenly gave way to a deep pool that reached my shoulders; it was icy cold and everything around and above was intimate and cozy—a thin fog misting, flitting, and tangling with the dark foliage that covered the steep slopes of the hills around us, just as this Rio Cobre valley now surrounded me.

  None of my friends had a story like that, ever. Not through high school or college; none had a story to rival that weekend I had trampoozed through the hills, valleys, and plains of St. Catherine with my father.

  We did not get home until close to four o’clock Sunday afternoon, the time it took to do the rest of the territory. And though the routine was the same, though we stopped at almost every farm along the way, and though there was more food on offer, we ate a little less. Yet the drinking was the same. There were fewer bars open on a Sunday, though, so by the time we got home I was less filled and less drunk and a little less sick.

  We still had space for Una’s Sunday dinner. And he still found time and energy to drive me back home to my mother’s that evening. And when we got there, we sat in the parked car outside the house for about fifteen minutes or so while he talked a bit about my career and asked what I planned to do with my life.

  “You enjoy yourself this weekend though.”

  “Yes sir, but me vomit up.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout that. Boy your age shouldn’t learn to hold liquor too well. You don’t want turn rum head or nothing like that.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You see how you old man have to work hard for a living though.”

  “That no hard, is just drive and drink and eat and get drunk.”

  “Well, the lesson for you here is not how hard you work, son. Is how much you enjoy you work. That is the thing. You don’t see I finish that entire farm on them? And right away I understand what causing the problem, for the people them find it easy to talk to me. So now I know what to do and what they have been doing wrong. You never pick up that?”

  “Ohh.”

  “So what you want to do when you grow up?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Well, at your age you should have a very good idea. You must start thinking about that now. What are you good at? What do you like to do in school?”

  “Everything—well, I try to get good grades in everything.”

  Then he laughed, reached into his pocket for some money. “You not easy. This is yours, don’t show you mother . . . Whatever you choose, make sure is something you like, something you enjoy . . . that mean something to you . . . so when you make sacrifice, stay out and make you wife vex, it still not matter. You understanding?”

  “Or my mother?”

  “Well, if you want tell her about everything, is your business. As far as I know, you come spend the weekend and I bring you back home. Come!”

  * * *

  The Pum Pum Rock shifts by slowly across the river to my left. With the traffic’s pace, I can’t help but glance at it. Even now, as early as this, in this traffic jam, people are still stopping to take pictures of this perfectly formed vagina in the rock. Some stop just to point it out to their friends and children.

  One man is fighting his way down the slope of the river, carrying his son. He gets there and is met by a hustler of a guide in a sleeveless undershirt and shorts, who pilots them both, him and his son, across a shallow section. Then they are scrambling and crawling up the bank to the rocky edge where he finally places his son in the middle of the cleft of the rock, resting his child’s head on the smooth, hard clitoris. Then both are leaning deep into the crevices of the flaring dark inner portion, as the guide backs away, down into the shallow water to take a picture. There is laughter and cheering all around. Everyone finds it funny. I can’t help but smile myself. And wonder what hand of nature could have sculpted a vagina so perfect and brilliantly detailed in the hard face of a rock.

  Thank God the traffic finally begins to move. I shake the image from my head; a perfect vagina is not an image I want in my mind right now.

  I try to get Una on the phone, but there is no answer.

  I try to get ahold of Holly to hear what he knows and whether or not he has called the police, but my brother’s phone is busy. Or perhaps he just switched it off. He has been known to do that. Maybe I should have called him earlier, or maybe I should have gone to his house in St. Jago Heights before I made the drive down here all on my own. I don’t know, I am a bit confused this morning; Una called me and I made a promise. It is now my responsibility to fulfill that promise and find out what has happened to my father no matter what the cost. I have to go. So what if my career is on hold. So what if my future is on hold.

  I made the decision that was right.

  Now the traffic is moving and if I hurry I might make it to Hampshire by eight thirty. But my workday is dead—I will not make it back in time. I try to push my job from my mind. So what is a job anyway? Corporations can wait. Opportunities will come again. There is always a better deal has been one of my mantras in sales meetings and negotiations. “But not in sales, not in sales,” I tell my staff. There is always a better deal for us, but never for the client. We are the only deal they have.

  Not in sales, not in sales.

  “Dorill,” my manager recently said, “you were born for this.”

  “No,” I replied, “I am born for everything; this is just a part, sales is just a part.”

  Now they have given me my own brand, my own line. They went out and bought a snacks and bottled water company and gave it to me to run. This is not sales anymore, this is marketing management. And now this, my first board meeting, the first board meeting when I must present my plans and projections for making this company the number one on the island. After years of dreaming, months of planning, nights of sweating, days and days of planning
and phone calls and studying, now after all of this, I must let it go and take care of my father.

  Now, suddenly, at this moment, at this crossroad, just as the Pathfinder enters the first roundabout at the end of the gorge, I am assailed by uncertainty and confusion, and I am being blinded by tears. Suddenly, I am fighting tears of despair and anger as if all the events of the morning are catching up with me. Halfway to my destination and I cannot hold them in anymore. Hard tears too, not sobbing ones, just hard blinding tears, clear and unaccompanied by any sort of emotion, like rain while the sun still shines. Hard tears burning my face and filling my lashes, tears I do not need to wipe away. And even as I blink them away, I find that the car has gone around the roundabout twice without exiting.

  I must be a mad man, thinking like this when my father is missing and may be lying dead in a ditch somewhere. I must be a madman thinking this way, in a time like this, in a country like this, where old people are murdered in their sleep and nothing seems to come from it. I must be a hard, selfish person to think of my career at a time like this.

  But I am not thinking of my career by my own will; the thoughts are flooding me even as I try to push everything from my mind and focus on my love for my father—on my duty as his eldest child. I am trying, but it is upon me, this feeling, this desire to save myself and my career. I am confused by the emotions and I am blinded by my tears.

  Brakes screech behind me, horns blow from all sides. I am still in the roundabout and I am now endangering other motorists around me. I swing to the soft shoulder near Juici Patties, and I hear even more screeching of tires and cursing motorists. The vehicle lunges over the curb wall and stops on the soft shoulder. I press my hands to my face, lean into the seat to calm myself.

  My hands are trembling. There must be a way out of this, there must be a way to save us both.

  But there is no way, at least not at this time. I can’t call and stop a board meeting. People have come from Trinidad and Barbados for this meeting. And I can’t leave him there lost wherever he is. He is my father and I love him.