Rule of the Bone

TWENTY-ONE. BONE’S REVENGE

In the morning when I woke up to the sound and diesel smell of trucks and buses blatting past on Gloucester Avenue next to my head practically I didn’t know this would be my next-to-last day in Jamaica, but I wouldn’t’ve done anything different if I had. I would’ve gone up to the Mothership anyhow same as I did and I would’ve pretty much done up there what I did irregardless. I told myself I was going because like the American guy said at the ant farm, it was the only place on the island where I was safe now but actually I had some unfinished business with my father, with Doc, with Pa, and that’s why I went. I didn’t know what the unfinished business was exactly but I was pretty sure it had to do with me betraying I-Man to him the night that I-Man hooked up with Evening Star, the night of my birthday party. That was like a sin which is different from a crime and it still weighed heavily on my mind so to speak and I guess I wanted to somehow undo it if I could, especially now that I-Man was dead and I needed my father, Doc, Pa, for that.

I spare-changed for a while and by mid-morning had a few bucks in my pocket plus a meat patty breakfast under my belt so I cut over to the marketplace where I caught a bus like I-Man and I’d done the first time and rode up out of Mobay on the long winding road to the village of Montpelier and got off by the little grassy lane that led up to the Mothership. It was a real pretty day with a fresh breeze blowing and the sun out but not too hot and the local people as I passed them were friendlier toward me than I remembered from before, I guess on account of my Jah-stick and backpack and the box which maybe made me look like I’d come from a far place like Australia and was returning home. Or probably they just remembered me from my birthday party last summer and were glad to see me back again. I liked the local people, the farmers and suchlike and the women and kids who lived in the little houses and cabins in the bush all around the greathouse on the hill and who it’s possible were the descendants of people who’d been the slaves there, and it made me happy that they seemed to remember and like me too, so when they smiled and waved I smiled and waved back like mad and shook my Jah-stick in the air like it was a spear and I was on a sacred mission to deal with the dragon in his cave who’d terrorized the villagers for centuries. That’s a fantasy, I know but that’s how I think sometimes.

Finally I was over the top of the hill looking down at Mobay and came to the sign STARPORT and turned in at the stone gate and walked up the long driveway past the terraced flower gardens and all the strange white animals with the red eyes and mouths and marched up the wide front steps to the greathouse. It was real quiet and I couldn’t see anybody not even the guy who worked in the gardens or the woman, his wife who did the laundry and all but I remembered it was the heat of the day and they never worked then anyhow, but there weren’t any cars in the parking area I noticed and no one out at the pool either which was unusual. I’d never seen the place empty. before and kind of liked it.

I hollered, Yo, Pa! and Yo, Evening Star! a couple times and finally decided the place was mine for the time being, I took a cold Red Stripe from the fridge and wandered into the livingroom where I’d dropped my stuff and scrounged around till I found some cigarettes, loosies in a silver box. I took a handful and started smoking and because I hadn’t had any for a few days got instantly high although not like with skunk of course and it wore off right away. Then I noticed Pa’s CD player by his chair and I thought I’m pretty nervous and this’d be a good chance to finally hear those classical CDs I took from the Ridgeways’ summerhouse in Keene so I went into my pack and pulled them out.

I was thinking about that place in Keene now anyhow due to the similarities of me being alone there and alone here and with both houses being old and up on a hill with great views and I was noticing how different I was now from how I was then only a little less than a year ago. Naturally in lots of ways I was still the same person but the differences were real and pretty amazing and I hoped permanent because in spite of how things’d turned out I never wanted to go back to being the sad fucked-up kid I was a year ago.

The guys who’d made all the CDs had these mostly unpronounceable names which was definitely not like typical rock or reggae bands except for this one that attracted my attention not only because I could pronounce it, Charles Ives but because IVES was in big letters and seemed like an excellent Rasta name and plus some of the songs had names like The Unanswered Question and The See’r and All the Way Around and Back which sounded like they might be Rasta songs or at least spiritual, so I snapped that one in and kicked back in Pa’s chair and listened to it. I guess I was like still wishing for a message from I-Man in Africa to tell me what to do next so I listened to this Ives guy more careful than I would’ve otherwise and accidentally got really into his songs, most of which didn’t have any words but that didn’t matter because when they did have words they were sung like in opera and I could barely understand them. But it was the band music I was into, all these trumpets and violins coming at me from different directions at different speeds and loudness but linked together anyhow. No one instrument stood out so I figured Ras Ives must be the songwriter and probably led the band too although he might’ve been the piano player. I don’t think he did any of the singing.

I sat there for a couple of hours and played the CD over and over and the more I listened the stronger and steadier inside I felt until I was sure that I-Man was using his ol’ compadre Ras Ives to drum me into shape and clarity the same way the Cockpit Rastas late at night used their African drumming out on their groundations sitting around the chillum together to see into the depths and the heights of I. I figured Ras Ives must be a white guy due to a lot of the songs having white names like Three Places in New England and General William Booth Enters into Heaven but it was obvious listening to him that he was a true heavy Rasta anyhow and I was starting to think that maybe that was the message I-Man was sending me, that even though I was a white kid I could still become a true heavy Rasta myself someday but only as long as I didn’t ever forget I was a white kid, just like black people could never forget they were black people. He was telling me in a world like ours which is divided into white and black that was how you finally came to know I.

Along about five I heard a car coming up the driveway and it turned out to be the black Buick, Pa’s government car. The driver stopped by the steps and let Pa out and then turned and went back the way he’d come. Pa I could instantly see was seriously toasted, swinging and swaying as he came slowly up the steps and grinding his teeth like from speedballs so I decided this might not be the best time to tell him his son had returned to the fold. I grabbed my stuff and ran up the stairs and down the hall way to what used to be my room at the end and didn’t remember till I got there that I’d left the Ras Ives CD playing. It was too late to go back so I just chilled and let him deal with it. I could hear Pa hollering downstairs for Evening Star and yelling, Where the hell is everybody, for Christ’s sake! and mumbling to himself as he walked from room to room.

Then a little while later I heard another car drive up, Evening Star’s Range Rover from the sound of it and here comes a whole bunch of white American female voices including Evening Star’s plus one Jamaican guy laughing that when he said, Me gwan fe kill de goat now, I recognized as Jason. A couple of the females said like, Oh-h-h no-o-oo! but they were only kidding and laughed and pretty soon there was the sound of splashing and diving from the pool where I guessed everyone’d gone for a swim, except Jason I figured and Pa who I’d never seen swim even once the whole time.

Downstairs then I heard Evening Star in the livingroom saying, What the hell are you listening to? and Pa who was somewhere else, probably in the kitchen says, Beats the shit out of me. I dunno, I think it was on when I came in, he says sounding fairly mellow so I decide this’s as good a time as any to make my appearance.

I don’t know why but I put my pack on and brought my Jah-stick. I guess I wanted to like make a grand entrance descending the staircase which I did and they both watched me in silence as I came walking slowly down to the livingroom. Then when I got to the bottom step Evening Star came rushing over to me and wrapped me up in her arms smelling like bread and I could see on her shoulder and neck a light sweat and almost licked it but didn’t. She said, Oh Bone, thanks and praise! Thanks and praise to Jah, Bone! We’ve been so worried about you, darlin’. Look! she says to Pa releasing me then and turning me around so he can see me better. He’s back! she says. Your pick’ny’s back! and Pa gets this squinty shit-eating grin on his face like he can almost see me through the haze.

Mi pick’ny, he said and he floated his hand out in the air toward me so I shook it but it was like shaking a cold banana and I let go of it real quick.

Doc’s not feeling too good, Evening Star says to me and I go, Yeah, I see. He looked really bad actually, even thinner than before and gray-faced with dark circles under his eyes and he didn’t look like he’d had a bath in a long time either.

Hard week, dear? she said slightly sarcastic but Southern so you can’t really tell.

Yeah, you could say that, he says and drops down in his chair and notices the Ras Ives which is still playing and says, What the fuck is that? and twitches like it hurts him to hear it. Ol’ Ras Ives is deep into Central Park in the Dark then so that’s what I say, Central Park in the Dark. and Pa cringes and turns away.

I hate that shit, he says. Turn it the fuck off!

Evening Star reached down to the player and switched it off and said to me, C’mon in the kitchen, dear. Your daddy’s in a foul temper but I want to hear all about your adventures. I want to find out where you-all’ve been all these months. We were afraid you’d gone back to the States, she said. That is, until Jason told us he’d run into you out there at Mount Zion.

He said that?

Yes he surely did, only a few days ago. He said he saw you with I-Man, poor thing, and we were so worried about y’all after they found I-Man shot to death. It was drugs, wasn’t it? I hope you weren’t involved. Bone honey, tell me you weren’t involved. You’ve got to tell me everything, darlin’. Everything. There’s so many rumors floating around. What happened? she asked but immediately turned and headed for the kitchen. I dropped my backpack and Jah-stick and followed her with a few questions of my own but she’d already started rattling in her high excitement mode about tonight’s menu, roast goat that Jason’s going to barbecue for us and some exquisite basmati rice dear sweet Rita’s brought us, whatever that was and whoever Rita was although I could guess as I heard squeals and squeaks from the direction of the pool.

Y’all want to take a swim, honey? You look plumb tuckered out. I’ve got to get supper going but you go ahead and meet Rita and Dickie, they’re these wonderful lesbians from Boston, she said like I gave a shit they were lesbians. They’re both artists and you’ll love them.

Evening Star was wearing this loose red and white striped smock over a skin-colored bikini bathing suit and I could catch flashes of leg and belly now and then. Her tan was wicked good and probably all over because of the nude sunbathing she was into. She and the others’d spent the day at Doctors Cave, she said and later shopping for souvenirs for Rita and Dickie to take home. She was covered with dried ocean salt and itchy and was going to take a swim in the pool herself as soon as she had the supper under control. So you go ahead, darlin’, she said. I’ll join y’all in a few minutes.

I said no, I wanted to hear about I-Man and all that so while she cooked and I helped by chopping the veggies and grinding the coconut and suchlike she went on about how she’d heard that I-Man’d tried to rip off some big-time American ganja dealer, she didn’t know who and he and one of his posse’d gotten shot for it. I asked her what about Doc, did he know anything about it and she said no, although Doc did know some of the Kingston dealers and various and sundry unsavory types, she called them but this one was a mystery to him too. I asked if Doc was into dealing and she hesitated a second and said, Well, sometimes a little, I reckon, but don’t say anything. Just a little ganja, you know. For the tourist trade. Basically, she said, Doc’s become a consumer. As you can see.

Yeah, I said. Speedballs.

She sighed and looked at her hands. I’m afraid so, honey, she said. I’m afraid so. It ain’t a very nice welcome home, is it, my love? she said and put her hands on my shoulders and looked sadly into my eyes. We were about the same height I noticed which meant I’d grown about four inches since I split with I-Man for Accompong last summer. Then suddenly she let go of me and pushed her dreadlocks back and went to work again. For a few minutes neither of us said anything and I just watched her from behind while she stirred the dreadnuts in a pan at the stove. There was some more squealing from the pool and I smelled woodsmoke from the barbecue pit out on the patio where Jason was getting ready to cook the goat. Doc had put one of his own CDs on, some old Ike and Tina Turner song and when I glanced back into the livingroom I saw he was flopped in his usual place and was smoking a decent-sized J and looking blissed.

There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, I said to Evening Star.

She turned and looked at me and smiled. What’s that, darlin’?

Well, I was like wondering… I was thinking maybe you’d like to fuck me. You know, since I’ve never actually done it.

It sounds coldhearted and all probably, but it wasn’t. At least not completely. I mean, Evening Star was definitely a hot babe irregardless of her age and from when she’d hugged me after I first came down the stairs to greet her and Doc I’d been pretty turned on and everything, plus somehow just being in that house always got my sex juices flowing. Right from the start with all the loose screwing that went on at Starport for me the place’d been a sex box. It was hard especially for a teenaged kid to ignore female poets from New Orleans slapping on suntan lotion by the pool and black natties with great builds and no shirts and their units showing in their shorts sneaking off to hook up with Evening Star’s many white friends and relations, and I hate to admit it but it’s true, I really was turned on by lesbians from Boston trotting around in bikinis and from the beginning I’d been way turned on by the sexual vibes that Evening Star herself gave off constantly, how she sort of suggested that her whole purpose in life was to give pleasure whether in the form of food or drugs or sex didn’t matter, it was like the giving that mattered because that was the only thing that gave her pleasure back which is some weird kind of generosity that when you think about it and I did is more like constant desire than generosity and is very sexy to a guy. With all that going on for months and years and for all I knew for centuries practically, since slavery days, the place hung suspended out there in the darkness of normal life like Pleasure Island vibrating and twinkling and giving me a perpetual hard-on so to speak that up to now I’d tried to deal with on my own you might say.

But it’s also true that it was coldhearted too, my asking Evening Star if I could fuck her or to be exact if she would fuck me. A, because I was wicked curious in a scientific sort of way about what it’d be like and had been wondering about the mechanical details of screwing for at least a couple of years, ever since I first found out about Russ and other guys my age or slightly older getting laid by girls they picked up at the mall and so on. And B, because of Doc and I-Man. More than my general ongoing hominess and Evening Star’s buff appearance and more than the Pleasure Island lifestyle of Starport and definitely more than the requirements of scientific curiosity, the force that drove me to hit on Evening Star in the kitchen that evening was my need to try and undo the sin I’d committed against I-Man.

When I told Doc the night of my birthday that I-Man’d screwed Evening Star I’d separated myself from I-Man and joined up with Doc. It only lasted a minute and I did it because Doc was my father but still I’d betrayed my best friend and teacher and he’d died for it maybe. Now though, by committing the same crime against Doc as I-Man’d done, which was to steal something that Doc thought was his but actually wasn’t since it was a person, I’d be separating myself from Doc and joining up with I-Man again. Stealing is only a crime but betrayal of a friend is a sin. It’s like a crime is an act that when you’ve committed one the act is over and you haven’t changed inside. But when you commit a sin it’s like you create a condition that you have to live in. People don’t live in crime, they live in sin. I didn’t know if it’d work, I was still new at this sin-versus-crime business but I had to try. I already had enough experience as a criminal to know that you can’t undo a crime. Even a so-called minor crime. When it’s done it’s done. I’d known that since the day I got kicked out of my mom’s and stepdad’s house for stealing my grandmother’s coin collection. But a sin which can go on forever irregardless of whether you’re punished for it I was hoping could be undone. Even if I had to commit a crime to do it. Well, sort of a crime. Like I said, Doc didn’t really own Evening Star, he only thought he did.

She stood there by the stove with this little smile on her lips for a long time not saying anything, like she was running a mental video on fast forward to see how screwing me might turn out. Finally she let go of the spoon she’d been stirring with and carefully lowered the stove flame. She turned back to me and smiled. Yall want to do it now? she says.

Sure. Why not?

She glanced at the clock on the wall like this won’t take long and said she had to get something from her bedroom first that I figured was some kind of birth control device which was cool as I was definitely not into fatherhood. Wait for me in the laundryroom, she said. I reckon nobody’ll bother us there. Except you maybe. And I’ll have y’all with me this time, won’t I, darlin’?

Yes you will! I said and went through the door into the darkened laundryroom where there was a washer and dryer and various yard tools plus the little cot against the wall in back. I could tell I already had a wicked huge boner but I didn’t take off my clothes or anything yet. I remembered from porn films and such that the female always takes off her clothes first so I just sat there on the cot like in a doctor’s office until the kitchen door swung open and I could see from the daylight behind her that she’d taken off her bathing suit and was only wearing the striped gauzy shift now and nothing underneath. My breathing had definitely speeded up and I could hear my heart pounding and my hands were all sweaty. I was seriously scared, more of doing something bad than scared of Evening Star herself but no way I’d turn back now.

She came over and sat down beside me and started kissing me and putting her tongue in my mouth and all that and guided my hands around to her nipples but the didn’t need much guidance so she let go of my hands and started unbuttoning and unzipping my cutoffs. I kicked off my old sandals then and wriggled out of my tee shirt and she let her shift fall off and lay back and pulled me straight to her and I went right up inside like despite everything of a sexual nature that’d happened to me in the distant past this was exactly what I was made for. I’ll spare you most of the details but she pretty much controlled everything which was cool because otherwise on my own I probably would’ve hopped around there for a few seconds and that would’ve been it and I would’ve had to wait for five or ten minutes of downtime before I could do it again which would’ve been embarrassing. But she clamped onto my ass with her hands and drew me slowly in and out and taught me to make certain hinky little hitching moves and drifty swirls with my hips that seemed to really do a job on her and I was feeling kind of proud but then when she started moaning and pulling me in faster and faster I found myself getting incredibly excited and then just as I started to have some really good thoughts about this, like how sex with another person really does block everything out of your mind except that person herself who fills your mind and becomes like the whole universe, and it really helps your concentration and lets you finally forget all your troubles, and it’s got so strong a pull on your attention that you actually can’t think about yourself anymore, you can’t even try, it even blocks out your thoughts, my thoughts got blocked out and I came.

She kept me moving for a little afterwards but then gave up I guess due to my thoughts having returned and let go of my ass and flopped back on the cot all wet with sweat and smelling like cake. She was smiling though, I could see in the dim light coming through the shuttered window and she looked wonderful to me, an amazing new creature on the face of the earth like from a different species than me and ten times more beautiful. She was a naked adult woman and I’d never seen one up close and leisurely before so I just kind of took my time and gazed at her.

I said I was sorry I came so fast but she said not to worry, I was really great and someday I’d be a worldclass lover. I had all the right moves, she said and she was proud and happy that she’d had the privilege of glimpsing my future which was a kind thing to do for a kid on his first try at regular sex, irregardless of his motives.

Well, she said, time for me to get back to makin’ dinner for my guests. And then I’m gonna jump in the pool an’ cool off. What about you, sugar? We won’t eat till after dark, when Jason finally gets that goat barbecued. I wouldn’t have done it but I promised Rita and Dickie some irie Jamaican roast goat an’ they’re holding me to it, bad girls.

I had my clothes back on and was standing next to the cot still kind of gazing at her beauty but my mind was clicking through the gears and moving rapidly on to the rest of my life. You know, I said to her, when I was out there like in Accompong I heard a few things. About Doc.

Oh? she said all suspicious.

Yeah, but nothing bad, you understand. One thing though I wanted to ask you before I talk to him about it myself.

What’s that, honey?

I heard he had another kid. Maybe more than one. Over in Kingston, you know? And I heard the mother was like Jamaican. I mean, some people knew he had a kid but not a white kid. That true?

There’s a lot about Doc that nobody knows, sugar. He’s a mystery man.

Yeah, but c’mon, you’d know if he had another kid than me. I don’t think it’s wrong or anything, you understand. It’s not like a sin, or a crime even. I just want to know and I can’t exactly ask him. Not right now anyhow.

No, not now for sure. But… well, yes, he wouldn’t mind me telling you, I’m sure, he’s just a little embarrassed to do it himself. But yes, he does have another son. Actually two, I think. But who knows with Doc? There could be other families in other lands. He’s that kind of man, you know. Anyhow y’all shouldn’t be jealous or anything. Doc loves you the most, I know that personally. He’s told me that a hundred times.

What about the mother, is she Jamaican?

Yes. Yes, she is. A good woman too, as I’ve been led to believe, and Doc stays with her and Paul and his little brother when he’s in Kingston, and he stays with you and me when he’s over here! she said brightly.

His son’s name is Paul? I said. The same as Doc’s?

The older one is. I’m afraid I can’t recall the name of the other one or even if there’s but one. Paul’s the only name I’ve heard Doc say. Listen, sugar, I’ve got to get back to my stove now.

How old’s the son named Paul?

I don’t know, about ten, I guess. I’ve never met the boy. Not a teenager though. Now c’mon, we can chat about all this later. Right now I’ve got work to do, sweets. What’re you gonna do? Whyn’t y’all cool off in the pool?

No, I’m gonna book, I said.

Whatever do you mean, Bone?

I’m leaving now.

Oh Bone. Didn’t you like it with me? She made a pout. Don’t you want to do it again?

Sure, but I’m leaving. Don’t take it wrong, it’s not about you.

Oh now, Bone, you mustn’t be upset about Doc’s other family. I never should’ve told you.

Naw, that doesn’t do anything to me one way or the other. In fact I feel a lot sorrier for them than for me. Especially the one named after him. I was only curious, that’s all. No, it’s on account of Doc himself that I’m leaving. If he wasn’t here, yeah, I might stay. But he is here.

Listen, Doc won’t ever know about us, sugar. Trust me, she said. Who’s gonna tell him anyhow? You? she said and laughed.

Yeah, well, I would if I could.

Now don’t you get any bright ideas, sugar, she said and cinched her shift tightly at the waist. She was really in great shape for her age. She said, Y’all just wait till later this evening, sweetie. I’ll come tippy-toein’ down the hall to your little room an’ I’ll show you some tricks that’ll make your hair stand on end. Wait till everyone else’s gone off to bed. The evening star, don’t you know, is Venus. The goddess of love, sugar. An’ don’t you forget it.

She gave me a kiss on the lips and ran her forefinger down my tee shirt from my collar bone to my belly button. Then she turned and smiled over her shoulder and pushed open the door and went back into the kitchen leaving me alone in the darkness with my thoughts which were setting up in my mind like slabs of concrete. They weren’t many but they were tough and hard and as I’ve found out since pretty near permanent.

Dealing with my father was eased a lot due to him having passed out on the couch. The CD was silent now and when I came out through the kitchen once I knew Evening Star’d gone swimming I stopped at the doorway and for quite a few minutes stood watching Doc lying there on his back and he didn’t blink or move even afterwards when I came into the livingroom and picked up my backpack and Jah-stick. The sounds of naked women playing in the water drifted in from the pool and the bump of the diving board and so forth, and then somebody put a heavy reggae album on the big outdoor sound system and started blasting the jungle with it. Peter Tosh it was, Steppin’ Razor. Party time. Doc stirred but then lapsed back.

For a few minutes more I stood over my father’s unconscious body and looked down and wondered how I could’ve thought once that he looked like JFK. He didn’t look any more like JFK than ol’ Buster Brown had or my stepfather Ken. I’d sure run into a lot of evil men in my short life so far, at least that’s how it seemed to me and I hoped it wasn’t going to be like this the rest of the way even though I was much better prepared now to deal with them than before. I was thinking probably John F. Kennedy himself if I’d’ve known him personally wouldn’t’ve looked anything like the man I’d imagined him as. Not necessarily worse or evil, just different. But Doc, my father, he looked evil. Even passed out like this. I almost felt sorry for him, like he was possessed.

Anyhow I had my plan and started to put it in action then. No time for feeling sorry. Over on the end table next to the phone was a notepad and pencil and I ripped off a sheet and in large letters wrote out, THE BONE RULES, NEVER FORGET-TEE! At first I was going to just pin it to Doc’s silk shirt but I couldn’t find a pin anywhere. Then I had a better idea. I reached down into my pack and came out with the stuffed woodcock that I’d hauled around with me ever since the Ridgeways’. Inside the hollowed-out place where I’d once stashed Buster’s porn money I put the note with just enough of it showing so it wouldn’t get overlooked and then I stood the woodcock carefully on Doc’s chest facing him with its long beak almost touching Doc’s nose. The bird looked stupid standing there but sad and stern too, like the woodcock was me and I was giving my father the evil eye that when he came to it’d be the first thing he’d see, and if it didn’t make Doc change his ways of living right then and there maybe it’d give him a heart attack instead. Either way, it didn’t make no never-mind to me. Not anymore.

I was in a mood to study for a while the one Haitian painting that I-Man’d loved so much but it was getting late in the day and the sun was fading fast so I had to get a move on. I was headed for the marina at Mobay and wanted to get to it before they closed and locked the gate. A couple of times last fall I’d gone there with I-Man to deliver herb and knew the routine and after around nine you can’t get out onto the docks where the boats are. I took the machete out of my pack then and hitched my backpack straps over my shoulders, picked up the machete in my left hand and my Jah-stick in the other and went straight out to the patio to deal with Jason.

He was standing on the other side of the waist-high barbecue pit which was about six feet long and made from cinderblocks with this long grill and a spit where he was slowly turning the charred body of the goat over the fire. I have to admit it smelled delicious. The pool was on the further side of the patio and beyond a high wall so up here by the barbecue you couldn’t see it or be seen from there either except by someone standing on the diving board. The females must’ve been paddling around calmly now though or chilling with a J because I couldn’t hear them anymore even between songs on the sound system. Jason didn’t notice me until I was almost up to him with the barbecue still between us and when he saw it was me he grinned like we were pals and said, Hey, Baby Doc! Respect, mon. Welcome home.

No, mi not called Baby Doc no more, I said. I actually didn’t know what I was going to do or say to Jason, my plan wasn’t all that detailed. All I knew was that I was going to deal with him, whatever that meant. He saw the machete in my hand though and got suddenly serious and reached down beside him and grabbed up a machete of his own which was all bloody from butchering the goat and at that instant I felt like I was possessed, not by an evil spirit like Doc but possessed by the good spirit of I-Man. It was like my voice and words weren’t mine anymore but his, and my movements weren’t guided by me but by him.

In a low dark voice I heard myself say, Me nyan come fe slay a mon when Jah can do de job more properly. Lissen mi, Jason. Mi come fe place a curse ‘pon you, mon. Lissen mi, dis be de curse of Nonny, dat him who live by de sword shall die by de sword. Then I took a step forward and he raised his machete like to chop at me if I attacked him but I didn’t, all I did was gently place my machete on the grill below the body of the goat and step quickly away from it.

The coals were red hot and the smoke made like a shifting gray curtain between me and Jason. He seemed confused and upset, maybe even scared a little. Y’know, you fren’ him, I-Man dat ol’ Rasta-man, it be de Nighthawk who shoot him, de white man. Me couldn’ stop him, Bone. Him go crazy when him see de Rasta, jus’ pow-pow-pow like dat! Wid de Uzi, mon.

I knew he was lying and if it hadn’t been for being possessed by I-Man I probably would’ve told him so but instead I said, Dat sword dere in de fire gwan kill you, Jason, gwan sattar in de fire till it red hot and den it rise up an’ fly ‘cross de air an’ chop off you head from you neck, mon. De sword of virtue it be an’ it gwan slay de liar an’ de hypocrite wit’ a single stroke!

I think he figured at that point I was looney-tunes and basically harmless because he laughed and grabbed the machete off the grill and now he had two machetes, one in each hand and he jumped up on top of the barbecue, not on the grill but on the cinderblocks around it which still must’ve been hot on his bare feet but he didn’t seem to mind. He was standing up there towering over me shirtless and in shorts with a machete in each hand and a wild crazy stoned look on his face. It was like a white man’s worst nightmare and if it hadn’t’ve been for I-Man still holding me under his control I’d’ve been outa there that second, no way I’m hanging around to discuss things, but instead the Jah-stick like takes on a life of its own and pulls itself forward in my hands and even though I’m yanking back on it trying to keep it from jabbing at Jason I can’t and the lion’s head at the top of the stick heads right for Jason’s face and jacks him in the eyes. He howls in pain and the machetes go clanking and he slips and falls onto the grill knocking the goat off the spit and burning the shit out of himself and now he’s really screaming in pain and I don’t know how to help him except by running around the barbecue to the other side and steering him as fast as I can down the steps toward the pool where the females are out in the middle with their hands over their mouths and looking on in horror as I push Jason into the pool.

And book. As fast as I can and without once looking back I race up the steps again and grab the Jah-stick and run full speed down the long driveway past all the sad little red-eyed rabbits and foxes and so on and through the gate to the lane and down the long hill past the cabins and houses of the local people who watch me and a few wave but I don’t wave back. I just keep on running.