LITMIR.BIZ

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down our throats.) In some of the particularly thick places where Lionel told me to stay back while he swung wide for a good slice, I found angles to stick my arms through the brush to feel the stones of those walls.

      Felt some need to run as far as I could and be like Mother, never talking about any of it. Felt some other need just as strong to clear all this brush away to expose it all, clear the brush to explore the nooks and crannies the way Dad had done as the island dentist. He’d once described to me, when I asked why anyone would want to go digging around in other people’s nasty mouths, how it made him feel to find where the pain was coming from, to know exactly what to do, and to dig out the source of it. How it made him feel, when people brought their X-rays from the dentist in the capital, to match them up to the mouth in front of him, as different as they seemed just to his eyes. And then using his fingers to carefully feel out, trusting.

      I felt dust on my tongue and held it as I watched Lionel’s back, T-shirt stuck with what we called island glue, turn this way and that to avoid the haulback. All around me, even with the island glue sticking my shirt up under my breasts and around my belly button, I felt the chill of the past like a ghost pushing its way right through me. Here I was, days after Dad’s funeral, feeling out the secret source of pain.

      After we’d been at it for a long while, Lionel said, “No way we’re finding those cows. Let’s get out of here. And don’t be coming up here. And don’t tell your ma where we were looking.”

      “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” I said, now rolling my eyes at him.

      “Look, no one wants to hear about this shit anymore. Leave it gone,” he said, interpreting my body language.

      I didn’t need him telling me that, older cousin or not. Never once heard the word slavery spoken above an accidental whisper, not even in school. In history class used to run my finger along the edges of the textbook’s sliced-out pages, half hoping for a paper cut that’d remind me later something was missing, something almost invisible that bled easily. Hebbie, my best friend when we were kids and Andre’s sister, used to call me Hyphen Hands for all the straight bitty slits on my fingers.

      Say the word estate at work and look down at your palm for your firing papers.

      “Aren’t you the Landfill Manager? Dealing with everything that’s thrown away?” I didn’t know what I meant exactly, but he seemed angry, and I felt like pushing back.

      “Yeah, exactly, Miss Smarty. I know how to get rid of everything no one wants and keep it from ruining the whole island. Besides,” he said, his tone changing, “the resort owns all this land now anyways. You get caught up here, you trespass. Lose your job. Then how you gonna feed your ma?”

      “We’re here now,” I said, but I mumbled it to myself.

      The thing about my cousin Lionel was he was smart, and he did lots of stuff for Mother, especially in the weeks since my dad died. Stuff like that made me swallow what he told me, even if I told him to his face that he should mind his own business.

      I kept following behind him, letting him do the machete work while my hands felt through the brush for more traces of walls, places where I could feel the absence of where a wall had been. By the time we emerged from the brush, my arms and hands were maps of where I’d been cut up.

      We stood on the road looking at each other. No cows. Lionel pointed up around the bend.

      “Thiflae Bar?” he asked.

      We kicked dust in front of us as we walked along the road. Lionel pulled his shirt up to wipe sweat off his forehead. The wind had died, leaving the ocean flat with stillness and bugs hanging in the air. The only sound that reached us was of distant cars, but no one drove by as we were walking. Walls of brush on either side of the road looked so thick, almost like it was impossible we could’ve ever been where we’d been. A skinny blondish dog we both recognized from the landfill, Freddy, zigzagged the road about a quarter mile ahead, probably waiting for someone to come out the bar and drop something. The sky was going pink just as slowly as we were shuffling along. I was thirsty, and I kept my eye on Freddy to see how close we were getting.

      When we got to the entrance, the door hung crooked like always so you could see a slice of the room before you went in. I didn’t bother looking, knew there wasn’t anyone I particularly wanted to see. We could hear voices of all the men hanging out on what had been the bar’s back porch. All the slats gone, now just a piece of floor jutting toward the brush like a pier without water. I didn’t know how long it’d been since I’d seen my dad on that porch, talking it up with his friends. My memory of coming to find him there—so long ago—was only of legs at my eye level.

      “Wanna go on the porch or inside?” Lionel asked.

      Usually older folks on the porch, away from the music. How would we explain our machetes this time of night? The coating of the inland all over us?

      “Inside,” I said, where I knew everyone would be tipsy. I pushed ahead of him through the door.

      “Lionel!” Christine’s voice squawked above the din of voices in the room and on the TV as soon as we entered. Her hair glowed orangish in the fluorescent light where she had streaked it blond. It hadn’t been like that at work earlier in the week. We worked side by side at the resort, and she worked some nights at Miss Patrice’s store.

      She was calling us over, though I saw only one extra chair by her. She’d always been sweet on Lionel, but I couldn’t tell whether he couldn’t stand her or was willing. Lately he’d been talking an awful lot about that vet who came from the capital to tend to the island dogs. But she came out to us only once a year, a few weeks at a time, and Lionel wouldn’t go to the capital.

      Lionel and I sat at the bar instead, on stools he’d once rescued from the landfill when the resort threw them away. Christine walked over where we were anyway and slid closer than I wanted her. I reminded myself of all the times she helped me out, like when she spread early word to a few of us that a new shipment of the good tampons had come in at the store.

      “Lem’s here,” Lionel whispered into my ear. I didn’t bother looking around. “Ah. Done with that already?”

      I figured he’d known how long it’d been since I’d been done, everyone around here knowing everyone else’s business. I didn’t think Lem would come over to me at this point, since we hadn’t even talked much lately—though we both worked at the resort, him on garbage duty. But then there he was, by my shoulder. The heaviness I used to feel around my hips when he came near, and the furiousness following—gone.

      “Hey, Myr.”

      “Hey,” I said.

      “Another beer, Mr. Ken,” he said. I heard the exhaling sound of the cap being released, and Lem put the bottle in front of me. I put my hand on it for the cold feeling, then rubbed the glass against some scratches on my arm. I didn’t feel like having a drink.

      Lem’s head was shaved perfectly as always along a sharp line above his ear. Breath of beer that used to smell crisp and fun to me, now just stale.

      “I could use a water, Mr. Ken,” I said, feeling the kind of parched even my hair was soaking up the smell of fritters sizzling in their baskets behind the kitchen door. Lionel and I’d been up inland since before it was even thinking about getting dark.

      “Saw Troy before he left again,” Lem said. “Told me take care of his sister right.”

      “What’d you tell him?” I was looking at him now.

      “What? Can’t tell my old buddy I been hanging out with his sister?”

      Christine started doo-doo-ing a little tune she thought sounded like something sexy. Lionel laughed, and I glared at him.

      “We’re not—I— Seriously, what did you tell him that’s gonna get all back around to me now?”

      “I see how it is,” Lem said, stepping back and looking less smiley. “Always too good for everyone else around here, right?

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