Bivouac - Kwame Dawes

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      like any nude he made

      limb or feeling heart.

      In this bright or yellow sky

      or blue (the symbol is arider than water)

      the familiar gesture of the rose

      is parched with dry-land laughter but cannot die:

      over and under this composed waterscape

      delicate crows only are sensuous.

      I have this all,

      a monotonous bamboo-flute or the immodest jasmine.

      “Without Dogma” by Neville Dawes

       Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan

       Already I am beginning to sound like an ungrateful complainer. They say I should be grateful for the scraps thrown before me. So I have a job. I have a job working as a ghost editorial writer for this paper. If the people who have been reading my editorials knew who was writing them, they would be startled, and in some cases quite outraged, I am sure. That Merchant Party lot is still so giddy with victory that the taste of blood is still fresh in their mouths. Peace simply leaves them hungry and thirsty. They would ravage me if they knew. The joke is that the People’s Democratic Party lot would do the same. Here I am, suffering because they did not protect me, and yet they would slaughter me for writing editorials for the enemy. Well, screw the lot. None of them have the gumption for revolution. These days, I don’t care what they have to say. I feel cheap sometimes. Some mornings I get in early enough to see the two prostitutes who must own this end of Duke Street eating their breakfast out of cheese pans in a shadowy alcove. You can see the fatigue in their eyes—that mute gaze, staring into the asphalt and not seeing. One of them has the most striking cheekbones. But she can’t hide her decay. Perhaps I would have judged them once, or simply ignored them, but now I think of myself as a kindred spirit, an old broken-down whore, hustling money from the very people who broke me down. God, I am so cynical. It wouldn’t be so bad, this cynicism, if it had the proper effect of making me feel superior, somehow above sentiment and pathos; but what I feel is a truly pathetic gratitude. This is what I have come to. I take my pay with sniveling, bitter gratitude. Who said irony helps?

      ONE

      The pains came in sharp spasms, cutting through his stomach. He opened his mouth, sucking in air. He tried to force a belch. More air in his stomach. He had eaten too fast, too late.

      They had not heard him come in. This was for the best. He did not want to answer questions, to assume the mask of mourning that was wearing thin. It had been a long day, driving from Mandeville with his father’s body melting in the backseat of the Volvo. Sorrow was tiring.

      He had eaten breakfast at four in the morning before they set out. Kingston was sleeping. They drove downtown, breaking red lights at the deserted intersections. The streets were empty except for the occasional madman or -woman shuffling aimlessly along the sidewalk, smudges against the deep blue of early morning. Ferron noticed a cream Toyota behind them somewhere above Cross Roads. Its lights were off.

      “Only dog, madman, an’ Christian, to rass,” Cuthbert muttered. As if on cue, a cluster of turbanned, white-clad “mothers” strolled in slow, dreamlike motion across Old Hope Road to their morning prayers. The soft sunlight turned their skins to a tender orange, their robes flecked with gold. The wind played with the flowing robes. They vanished behind a thick hibiscus hedge. Ferron could see the blue tattered flag on a long bamboo pole bobbing above the yard behind the hedge.

      They drove along Spanish Town Road where the traffic was a little heavier, and then headed into the country. In Bog Walk, a heavy mist hung in the air. The wiper was on.

      They stopped and Ferron stepped behind some bushes to urinate. Farther down the road, just where it curved and disappeared, he saw the Toyota tucked away to the side. He noted the coincidence casually. But from that point on, his body was tense even if he could think of no useful reason to feel that way.

      They bought some oranges, mangoes, and bananas from an early vendor. The boy’s eyes were full of sleep. He did not have enough change, so they left him with a healthy tip. He was too sleepy even to smile in gratitude.

      Cuthbert turned north toward the Mandeville hills.

      The early start was important. Cuthbert understood these government departments; after all, he worked in one. Collecting a body involved at least eight carbon-copied signatures and a file full of paperwork. At that time of the morning, with so little traffic on the road, the ride would take them less than three hours. With any luck, they would be back in Kingston before nightfall. The funeral home closed at five thirty, and the proprietor, Mrs. Abrams, wanted people to think she had a home to go to. She would not be there after five o’clock. More critically for Cuthbert, the parlor was somewhere downtown, near Jones Town. He did not want to be caught there after dark. His political connections were not on that side of town.

      After the fruit, Ferron ate nothing else for the day.

      He looked back a few times to see if the Toyota was still following. He did not see it.

      TWO

      A crow of a woman with gray patches of hair sticking out of a blue-and-gold silk scarf knotted in front had pushed her way through a crowd of visitors who were gathered around a bed at the other end of the ward, and moved toward Ferron and his mother. They had been standing there by the old man’s side for nearly an hour, not speaking. His mother used a cool rag to wipe the expressionless face. She kept whispering to the old man, asking him why he was doing this to her. The old man’s bed was the last one before the door to the nurses’ office.

      The crow was dressed like the others in the group at the far end of the ward: church whites and blacks, which hung on her body at a slant. She held her Bible tight under her thin chest and looked from the bed to the faces of Ferron and his mother. The old man was having difficulty breathing. He looked thin. The woman stared at him knowingly. Two women from the other bed looked over. Soon they were all but ignoring their sick friend and watching this crow-faced woman standing before the old man’s bed. Ferron recognized the look. They were expecting a lesson—a sermon.

      “’Im soon dead. ’Im soon dead. Yes. ’Im as good as dead, now,” she said, turning to them with a knowing gaze, as if expecting applause for her prophecy. “Them always put the worse one dem right side a de door. This one gone, Jesus.”

      The other women nodded. Ferron felt his mother shaking.

      “’Im soon dead. ’Im really look bad.” She walked closer to the old man, covering her face with a kerchief. “Soon gone.” She sniffed. The other people still nodded, but they kept their distance.

      Ferron could hear his mother’s breathing quicken. He would have acted, but the woman’s audacity surprised him. His mind worked quickly, trying to understand the woman’s tone, to decipher something that made sense in it. Sympathy, perhaps, or concern. His mother did not wait.

      “Move! Move your sour little body from here, do you understand? I said move! Now!” Ferron’s mother shouted into the face of the woman who seemed too startled to move. “If you don’t leave this minute I will wrap that scarf around your neck . . .”

      “Sweet savior!” The crow-woman clutched her Bible tightly, her face breaking into a twisted network of wrinkles, her mouth hanging open in shock. She sloped her way to the other end of the room, offended, martyred, misunderstood. The others comforted her in low tones, sending admonishing glances toward his mother who kept glaring at them.

      “Vultures. Stinking vultures,” his mother said, as if trying to help the old man understand. Ferron felt her shame and anger. This was death without dignity. They had no protection from the vultures. The nurse said she could do nothing and suggested that his mother had misunderstood the woman.

      “These people mean well. Sometimes them bring

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