smiled stupidly.
“I know some Morgans, you know? Your people from Mandeville here?” The orderly was organizing the papers on the pad. Ferron just wanted to take the body and leave. He looked down into the parking area for Cuthbert. The Volvo was parked on the banking. The Toyota was gone. Cuthbert was not around.
“From Mandeville?” the orderly repeated.
“No, St. Ann.”
“Oh . . . St. Ann. Nooo . . .” He pulled the sheet over the old man’s face. “I know the face though.”
“Television,” Ferron mumbled. A part of him hoped his father would be recognized. The squalor of this piece of business had cheapened the man’s death, deprived him of dignity. It embarrassed him.
“No . . . no.” The orderly passed the clipboard to Ferron, indicating where he should sign.
Ferron looked back down the hill. Cuthbert was standing beside the Volvo eating from a box of Kentucky chicken. Ferron waved him to come up.
The orderly took the clipboard from Ferron and walked back into the morgue. A few seconds later he was outside. “Nuh this man use’ to run the Hilo supermarket hereso in Mandeville?”
“No,” Ferron said. “Not him.”
“Jesus Christ, the man favor Missa Morgan! Mus’ be a jacket business,” he laughed.
Ferron watched Cuthbert amble up the pathway with a bundle of white sheets. In the parking area, the Morris Oxford was back. This time the woman walked with three other women. They were dressed in white and their heads were tightly turbanned. The driver of the car, a skinny dark man wearing a red tam, did not get out. The women were singing as they climbed the hill to the morgue.
“Shit, I know them woulda wan’ come with this foolishness,” the orderly said, hurrying inside.
Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan
A supposed poet gave me some poems to read. They are awful. He is not a poet. Again the pathos. I shall suggest that he send them to publishers. The pathos is that he thinks he is a poet. Again the arrogance, the lack of humility. The lack of a sense of scale. I do not have the spare energy to deal with this.
Financial success is unbeatable in a capitalist country and we have it, running into many millions. Just keep up the form, invent new gimmicks, and advertising will do the rest. It cannot ever be important that there are not enough readers to increase sales because readers read to nonreaders and that nonreader is our man and his ignorance must not be disturbed. Keep it that way for as long as possible. The Adult Literacy Program was and is a failure and now we are going to kill it, but delicately, not as crudely as the Jamaica Information Service. What else do we need to kill?
I must try to probe the backgrounds and working careers of the black people in here. Could it have been a straight political choosing? There was obviously no “cultural” choice; speech will tell you—and speech will suggest that Tivoli Gardens is very strong. Again, my ignorance of offices might be responsible for this. But it is appalling what an effort has to be made by them to speak English. Further resentment comes from the articles I did on the “Great West Indian Writers” in my clearly idiotic effort to let them know that we have had quite gifted writers—world-class writers and there is something of a tradition of good writing. But this fell on deaf ears. And here in the office, it annoyed the younger writers. Too much space given to these old writers, they murmured. Perhaps they are right. After all, these are new times, and that lot were all brainwashed by colonialism and it is roots time, reggae time, man time now. Ah, my Revolution has finally arrived! Revolutions are for the young. I am now, at best, an old campaigner. Well, what to do? My point has been made and as I am clearly not going to be paid separately for doing those articles, I don’t care if the others are not published. I hope the two I did will at least lead to some sales for those writers.
SIX
They drove back without stopping. Few words passed between them. Cuthbert drove slowly. He was not sure how he would explain the body to the police if they were stopped. Ferron had somehow not gotten a receipt or whatever was needed from the orderly. Ferron kept looking into the back of the car. A year ago, he had dreamed of his father’s death. They were riding in a taxi, a black cab. His father sat beside him staring out of the window. He was dead.
“He will alright,” Cuthbert said.
“I know. It’s just strange. It feel strange,” Ferron said. He looked back again. This is when he noticed the Toyota—the cream-colored one with the two men. The car was behind a truck, but Ferron recognized it from the headlights. They were on in the broad daylight. He kept looking back. The Toyota stayed with them.
After about an hour he asked Cuthbert to stop at a roadside kiosk. Cuthbert nodded and stopped in front of one of the vendors. Ferron did not move. He looked through the rearview mirror, watching for the Toyota. The Toyota slowed and parked at another kiosk a few yards behind. Ferron stepped out and walked to the vendor, still watching the Toyota. The men were not buying anything. Four boys were shoving plastic bags full of oranges into the windows of the car.
“Buy me a bag too, eh?” Cuthbert said.
Ferron bought two bags of oranges and came back to the car. Cuthbert started the engine.
“Wait,” Ferron said. He was staring in front.
Cuthbert looked over at his cousin. Ferron peered into the rearview mirror. Cuthbert turned around and then looked in front.
“You feel they following, eh?”
“What you think?” Ferron asked.
“Maybe. But is a free country, man.” Cuthbert started the car and swung onto the road. The Toyota followed.
In Kingston, Cuthbert lost them. He drove into Beverly Hills at breakneck speed, took a secluded side road, and then doubled back down onto Hope Road. By the time they were in Cross Roads, there was no sign of the Toyota. Cuthbert smiled. “Bitch!” he said. They continued downtown to the funeral home. It was still light when they reached.
seven
For the next two days Ferron had the old sensation of wanting to run. This time he was trying to resist the urge, but in the past he’d done that kind of thing a lot. When things became too pressured, he would pack a bag, take a van downtown, and get on the first bus to any destination that suited the length of time he had to escape. If he had a day, he would take a bus to Edgewater—that dry landfill of a suburban experiment which overlooked the Kingston Harbour. He would walk along the scarred, salt-white roads toward the large marl hill where only the most rugged of bramble survived. It was always hot, blazing, unrelenting. He would crawl down a narrow pathway to a small crevice in the face of the hill. This faced the sea and was completely hidden from the road. He would sit there and stare at the sea for hours, simply allowing his mind to empty. Nothing happened around there. The occasional plane would land at Palisadoes, a boat would trundle by, and a few sea gulls would dive at some prey on the water. Nobody would know where he was. He would disappear for the whole day relishing his return to the dorm to the chorus of “Where you was? People was looking for you . . .”
When he needed to disappear for longer periods, he
