Bivouac - Kwame Dawes

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“When it come to death and damnation, sister, God is no respecter of person.” She shrugged her shoulders and walked back to her office. The crow-woman stared across the room with a triumphant smile on her face.

      His mother wanted to move the body to Kingston, but there was no money to do so and the doctor said it would be too dangerous. So he would have to stay in this small country hospital, reduced to a simple old man—a peasant, a member of the lumpen proletariat. Ferron felt that the old man would have found it all quite funny; sweetly ironic and fitting. This would have been his end in a classless world, anyway. This was his dream.

      He died that night. They got the call from the hospital while they were reading the ninety-first psalm together. His mother breathed what seemed to be a sigh, and then walked into the bedroom and changed into black. She would wear black for three years after the death.

       Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan

       This is Femi’s third trip to Jamaica this year and July has not come yet. I think he is coming to cheer me up, but all we end up doing is drinking. Well, he drinks, but I must be a downer for him since I can’t find the strength to laugh. Ambassador work suits him just fine. He gets to see his women, and he really loves Jamaica. It is funny, sometimes being with him can really play tricks with you. The jokes, the Shakespearean quotes, the gossip about conspiracies and the memory of that summer we spent traveling across the Soviet Union—he is amazingly good at transporting you until you start to feel younger. But this is Jamaica. We have just come out of a bloody season and everything has changed, utterly changed, and the shadows are thick with desperate people who will kill you for reasons that you will never anticipate. He left yesterday for Rio. I might see him in December, he said. Funny, because when he called to say he was coming, he had me convinced that he was traveling with a contract for me to take up a post at a university in Liberia. He kept asking me if I was ready to go. I said I was. I am. I am ready to go anywhere. He has said nothing of Liberia since he has been here. I am too embarrassed for him to mention it.

       Last night we ran into Gregory. He looks quite greasy these days—he sweats a lot, now, which is such a cliché for someone growing fat on power. But I do not begrudge him the extra flesh. At school his lean and hungry look was quite sad; made him hard to trust—and he did suffer a great deal in the seventies. We met at the Sheraton, in the bar. I have not been there in a while, and I really did not want to go for fear that I would run into people like him. But Femi insisted, said I needed distraction.

       “My God, George, I thought you was dead, man. You were not on the list?” Gregory shouted this across the room, waving. This is how they talk in Parliament, I suppose. He was red-faced with rum, and, like I said, quite fat. And then there was that big laugh. So I laughed. What I should have said was, “They did kill Appleton on Stony Hill Road. He was on the list too, wasn’t he? And we suppressed that well in the paper.” But I didn’t. I just laughed.

       How many people read the paper for news, anyway? “Listening Post” is probably the most popular section of the paper among supporters of the party that forms the government (it was equally popular among them when that party was in opposition). Why? The paper is anti-PDP and the majority of people working here or writing for the paper are, however concealed (at the columnist level) or confused (at the worker level), rabid anti-communists. How anybody of intelligence can take such a stand is beyond me. I similarly cannot follow an anti-Christian attitude. Being against communism or Christianity in terms of debate is quite rational. But to be caught in this inflexible system of animosity is an incredible waste of energy.

      THREE

      The gas was eating away at his stomach. Acidic. They called it a nervous stomach. That and low blood pressure were his ailments. He was counting the dizzy spells. Today, there had been six. This death was becoming a burden, and yet he took it on, accepted it as his lot, and proceeded to do all that had to be done. Nobody complained. His older brother Lucas was still numb, spending the afternoons reading novels that had belonged to the old man. Nobody knew what would happen when he finished reading. He was sitting with his legs thrown over the side of the armchair reading novel after novel and smoking profusely. He had stopped smoking three years ago when he got saved. The old man smoked. It had been difficult to tell whether Lucas’s evangelism was more to win his father to a smoke-free life or to Christ. Whatever, Lucas had poured his zeal into antismoking efforts and, for months, the old man smoked more. Lucas must have given up after a while. Things returned to normal. The old man died a smoker. But smoking did not kill him.

      Now, Lucas coughed through cigarette after cigarette, barely burning each stick. Most of the family seemed to understand that everybody had their private ritual of mourning. Only Clarice, their sister, ventured to remind him that cigarettes were expensive these days. She was protecting her money; Lucas had taken to borrowing a lot of late.

      A small delegation from the church had visited the house the Sunday before to offer their condolences. They were hot in their heavy clothes and carried their Bibles and hymn books. They seemed, though, more intent on trying to speak some sense into Lucas, who had missed three important services since the death, than on condoling with the family. Lucas barely acknowledged their presence when Ferron opened the door for them. They stood in a huddle, silhouetted by the large window that filled the den with the orange glow of dusk, whispering to Lucas, who sat back, almost parodying the old man, listening to their admonitions. Finally, Lucas stood up and turned to the window. The delegation was silent.

      “He is my father. I rejected him. I turned my soul from him, and now he is gone.” Lucas’s voice was calm and evenly modulated. “We look alike, me and him. You can see that. Look at that. Look at that.” He lifted the bust of the old man and put it beside his face. “We could be brothers, right? And it was badly done, everybody says so, but you can see the resemblance. They made him look older, ten, maybe twenty years older. This is what he was going to look like. Maybe it was intentional, a prophecy, something to keep him growing with us, you know?” He paused, placing the bust back on the side table. “So why can’t I smoke too? Don’t I deserve to feel what he felt, sitting here? This is his seat. Don’t I deserve it, to feel . . . him?”

      “Brother,” one of the sisters tried to sound patient, “this is not of the Lord . . .”

      “Aahhh! Not of the Lord,” Lucas said, turning to her. Ferron was startled at how much his tone was like the old man’s. “Not of J. Christ Esquire, eh?” He laughed.

      Somebody breathed, “Lord!”

      “That is what the old man would say,” Lucas continued. “I have never read his books. Do you understand what that means? Do you? I never read any. None. Zero. I read everything else but . . . No . . . I am doing what I have to do. These are his shoes. These are his . . .” He paused. Ferron was expecting him to break down, and stood, preparing to clear the house of the delegation. But Lucas did not start to cry. He was trying to find the right words. “This is . . . this is him,” he finished, leaning back in the chair.

      The delegation could not get him to say any more. He was busy reading. They gathered around him and prayed. Ferron looked over to the telephone room and noticed Clarice sitting there in the half light, chewing at her nails and watching everything. Her face was expressionless. The delegation finished their prayer and promised to come by again soon. Lucas did not look up. They left as quietly as they had come.

      Ferron watched Lucas lean forward and peer through the window to watch them leaving. He turned away quickly as Lucas looked over to him. He heard Lucas chuckle slightly. There was silence for a few minutes. Lucas lit a cigarette and continued reading. He turned a page. By now it was too dark to make out his facial expressions. He was a shadow.

      “They think I have gone mad now,” he said slowly. Ferron could hear his smile. “So how the hell I must explain to them what I am doing when I don’t even know myself, eh?” He laughed softly. “You just do what you have to do.” That was one of the old man’s stock lines. Ferron caught it, so did Clarice, sitting in the telephone room. They started to laugh. Lucas laughed with them.

      Then

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