Fire rush, p.8
Fire Rush, page 8
I get to the high street, deserted except for a few people walking dream-time slow. An old woman in a woollen hat and tweed coat is standing outside the butcher’s where pink-skinned slabs of pork back hang on hooks; crates of blackened root vegetables stacked against shopfronts; red lights draped across the streets; two men, their voices muffled behind balaclavas.
The policeman follows me to Dub Steppaz. There are posters with red arrows pasted all over the window about Misty in Roots playing live at the Crypt later that night. I step inside the shop and the man walks past.
The place is empty, except for Eustace. It’s too early for the men who’ll later crowd the shop.
‘How’s my best customer?’ Eustace says. He’s polishing a record. An Upsetter track on the deck, a dread-slow mass scraping against cavernous sounds.
‘Bull are following me,’ I say. I look through the glass door. ‘Babylon doing what it’s always done – tracking, intimidating.’
Eustace raises the counter and goes outside and shouts, ‘Mister Undercover, we see yuh!’ Cold air rushes in as he closes the door. ‘Man didn’t turn around,’ he says.
I put my hat and sheepskin gloves on the counter and unbutton my coat.
Eustace pours coffee into a blue enamel mug and pushes it towards me. ‘You’re an easy target in this weather. No one else to mess with.’
‘Think they’ve been following me since Moose was killed,’ I say.
He turns the music down, drops his voice to a whisper. ‘Yuh sure?’
Don’t know how to describe the feeling of being watched: my heart beating in my ears, drum language, a coastal-lowland sound that only my gut understands.
Eustace listens as I tell him that the man who just went past was on the barge when I was with Herbert Peters talking about Moose’s case.
‘Pressure the women to pressure the men,’ Eustace says. ‘War tactics.’
‘I’ll take the pressure if it means Herbert can push on with the campaign.’
Eustace puts his drink down, says, ‘Mind yuself. The police can make your life hell, Yamaye.’ He puts on ‘I’m a Revolutionist,’ ramps up the volume.
We bust our necks back and forth, channelling the vibe.
Maybe it’s the vibes of revolution songs, a feeling that something powerful has been invoked, but it’s sinking in: Moose is gone and there’s nothing to lose.
The music stops and Eustace has a strange look on his face, like he’s drifted some place else. ‘Drink your coffee,’ he tells me. ‘Blue Mountain brew is the remedy when the soul is cold.’ He plays a one-drop rockers-riddim. I nod my head and wind my waist as he polishes the next track.
I check for Eustace. Something comforting about his fleshy face, his sturdy body and square jaw. He puts on a dubplate, gives me his Shure SM58 mic. ‘You’ve been talking about doing this for ages.’
I go behind the counter, set the treble on the mic, put the mid dial to two. My face is burning but there’s nothing I can do with desire for the dead except curl the tip of my tongue, chat headtop lyrics, singing:
‘Burn. Burn. Babylon burn.
Set it off:
We fe stay in the riddim and swing
Safe from de devil within
Fire-rush-rocking riddim
Babylon! Ah we carry the swing.
Fling it down, my selector!’
The track stops and I stop.
‘How yuh mean! Ah yuh dat, Yamaye?’ Eustace says. ‘You should be on the mic at the Crypt.’
‘What would the rude bwoys say? Let alone Asase.’ I twist up my face.
Eustace sucks in his lips at the mention of her name. Seems like he’s about to say something, but he looks up at the painted hummingbirds on the ceiling instead. As if he’s found out something unexpected about them. Or maybe he’s thinking about flying away.
‘Everything OK with you and Asase?’ I ask.
‘Life’s a time-limited offer, Yamaye. Tek it. Asase has her own fears to fight.’
I change the subject, telling Eustace about Rights On and the investigation instead.
Eustace promises to ask Misty in Roots to play a fundraising concert to support the campaign. ‘I’m not inna knives and guns,’ he says. ‘Sound is the best weapon we’ve got.’
He gives me the bag of records that he’s set aside for me and points to the window. Flakes of snow flutter in all directions, like ash from a firestorm.
‘Troubles me when the world’s white-up like that,’ he says. ‘Makes my blood run cold.’ He zips his leather jacket up to his throat. ‘We need truth for your man – for all of us,’ he says.
‘It’ll be New Year’s slush in a few days,’ I say.
‘Time is the master,’ he says.
The riddim slows to fifty-eight beats per minute, key drops to A minor.
I look outside and watch the snowfall thicken into darkness.
* * *
*
At home, I pack my garments. It will be the first time I’ve raved since Moose died. It’s time for a dose of supra-watt dub medicine.
Irving is in the front room, a lit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, the radio gramophone tuned into some faraway station playing an old Trojan tune. His eyes are almost closed, just a sliver of white showing. He’s in a trance, travelling between worlds.
I leave without saying goodbye.
Outside, I take small steps in baby-powder snow. Rock, pop, reggae, dub, all kinds of music beating against the glass windows of the towers. New Year parties in mid-swing. Disco lights flashing. I walk alongside the connected tunnels to Asase’s block, looking behind every now and again to see if I’m being followed, but the estate roads are empty, no one else around.
Oraca’s on the armchair; Asase’s sitting on the carpeted floor between Oraca’s open legs, her eyes half-shut. The gas fire’s on and two green paraffin lamps on either side of the bay window are churning smoke. A bottle of golden rum, champagne glasses, fried garra rufa fish on a large plate. I stretch out on the purple-cushioned sofa. One of Oraca’s old scratchy jazz records is on the stereo. The trumpeter’s notes are a whirring feedback of sadness. I should feel comfortable, but the familiar things seem entangled in the past and I’m drifting in a fever dream where nothing is real.
Oraca rubs the pink setting lotion between her hands, heating it before massaging it into Asase’s scalp and rhythmically combing stretches of hair.
I talk about Rights On, the marches I’m organising, and all the work that Herbert is doing. Asase says he may be good at his job, but he should have done better with her.
‘He was too fenkeh-fenkeh,’ she says. ‘All the man wanted to do was talk about human rights. What about my rights to my t’ings? Somebody best drop some mannish water in his coffee.’ She’s laughing. ‘We’re heading into the new year. Time to move on – from Herbert and from Moose, may he rest in peace.’
I stiffen. ‘Didn’t Moose mean anything to you?’ I ask her.
‘Can’t bring him back to life,’ she says.
‘Asase!’ Oraca says. ‘Respect for the dead.’ She conks the comb against Asase’s head.
Asase slaps Oraca’s arm away. ‘Muma, you can light a candle for him, send his spirit on its way. You check for that kinda thing.’
‘Music will do,’ Oraca says. She twists sections of hair and runs the hot irons through them, winding them into tight curls. The slow, aching notes of the trumpeter’s horn goes inna me. Vibrations pulsing my cells.
‘Bwoy can blow, yuh see,’ Oraca says of the music. ‘Tekking himself back to where we all came from.’
And we’re quiet, feeling the music.
Images of me and Moose together flicker, sending sparks of electricity along my spine.
I shiver.
Asase’s face relaxes and her eyes begin to close as Oraca parts her hair, like she’s selecting pathways, dragging on the kinks and knots.
‘Easy!’ Asase shouts.
‘Our music is language,’ Oraca says. ‘When Ashanti sent drum messages across the Atlantic to their people. See it deh!’
Asase twists around, looks at Oraca. ‘Ah so?’
‘Music connects the living with the dead.’
I slide into the sofa, wanting to connect to Moose, have him lead me on a vine through Cockpit Country trails. Deep into the rainforest of Water Withe, fireflies, mahogany and mosswood. A guitar likk disappearing mid bar, falling into an abyss.
* * *
*
Much later, after Oraca has gone to her room with her glass of rum and grated ginger, the smell of the sea trailing her, me and Asase go to her bedroom to get ready. Rumer called earlier to say she wasn’t raving because the cold weather and damp in her flat were making her wheeze. Time at the Crypt and she would end up in hospital, sucking oxygen from a tank instead of rum from a bottle.
I’m sitting on Asase’s bed and she’s at the dressing table, lining her lips in red. A pile of dresses at the end of the bed.
‘Wanna know the latest?’ she says.
‘New job?’ I say.
‘Guess again.’
‘Man?’
She nods, presses her lips together.
‘Someone from Norwood?’
She stands, picks up a white flared midi dress with tassels and holds it against her body. ‘Eustace,’ she says.
‘Dub Steppaz Eustace! What about Loreen?’ I say.
‘Early days yet,’ she says. She throws the dress on my lap and picks up a navy jumpsuit with cap sleeves and a gold waistband. ‘Loreen’s only interested in the kids. He’s a businessman. He likes my ideas. Maybe he’ll invest.’
Asase sometimes talks about creating her own range of beauty products for Black women, but it’s always just been talk. I toss the dress on the bed, stare at the red lamp on her drinks-trolley bedside table. Asase’s used to getting whatever – whoever – she wants, but I’ve seen the way Eustace talks to her. Like the kind of father we both wish we’d had. Thinking back to the look on his face when I mentioned Asase’s name at the shop last week. No shame, no desire. More like – no, couldn’t be. Pity?
‘Anyways, like I said, it’s a new year. Time to make moves,’ she winks.
My stomach churns. For a moment, I feel trapped in her red-lit room. Don’t wanna think of Asase like this, making a fool of herself.
She throws the jumpsuit on the bed and puts on a pair of leather trousers and a purple top with a draped neckline that shows her cleavage. Admiring herself in the mirror, she catches a glimpse of my expression. ‘Nuh fret ’bout me,’ she says. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘Do you?’
She sits on the chair in front of her dressing table and combs out her curls into waves that she sweeps behind her shoulders like she’s closing curtains.
She’s hard ears, not listening to anyone, hearing what she wants to hear. I’ve seen her like this before, an amplification of energy that makes me afraid of what she might do.
‘Maybe skip tonight,’ I say. It’s always the three of us on New Year’s Eve and I’m not feeling it without Rumer.
‘Party season and you wanna miss it!?’ Asase says. Her eyes go booom! And then she switches, just like that, softens her voice and says, ‘Girrrrl, come nuh, let’s make it a night to remember. We’ll walk. I’ll deck you out in style. Forget your clothes. I’ve styled some garments. Tek one.’
We leave a little before ten wearing rabbit furs, knee-high pigskin boots, and black suede fedoras with gold-stitched musical notes around the rims – all Asase’s. Her clothes don’t hang right on me. Feels like she’s stitched tight on to my body and I can’t move the way I want to.
Arms linked, we walk across the bombed-out whiteness of the estate.
Mish-mash sounds of rock-pop-country-reggae fight it out on the airwaves. Christmas lights flashing in people’s yards. Shadowy figures trudge through the snow shouting, ‘Happy New Year.’ Snow-static-hum.
A cackle of electric, like those first few seconds when the needle drops on vinyl.
The wastelands, like everything else, is snowed over. It’s a shortcut to the Crypt, but it’ll be impossible now to follow the track and avoid the things that are dumped there, like the old fridge that was found in the summer, a bin bag with a rotting arm stuffed inside, or the TV with smashed-in screen, a small revolver cotched on a glass valve like a trophy.
We head west. Holding on to the splintered wooden rail, we tek our time down the stone steps and puss-foot along the canal towpath. Not as quick, and the lighting is nuth’n more than a pitchy-patchy glow from street lights on the road above. At least the gravel path is salted, not as slippery as the pavements.
My eyes shut down in the blackness of supra-watt bass night. Listening takes over: the crick-cracking of the canal, the surface an ice-breathing shell. Clanking noises way below, like a vessel underwater.
We flick our lighters on, hold them close to our faces. We go through the tunnel below the bridge. The temperature drops, the icy air nips at my cheeks and nose. I push my hearing beyond the weight of silence.
‘If duppies exist, this is the night for them!’ Asase says.
‘Shhhh!’
‘Who yuh shushing!’
‘I heard something.’
We stop, look around.
‘Miss Fraidy-Fraidy,’ she says.
‘And you’re not?’
‘Of darkness?’
‘Snow. It’s a gag over the world,’ I say.
‘It’s fresh. Like grinding, makes me feel alive,’ she says.
We put our gloved hands in our pockets; our other hands hold on to our lighters.
‘My tongue’s gonna freeze at the root,’ I say.
‘Suck it up,’ Asase says. ‘Once we’re inside the Crypt, it’s pure fire-riddims heat.’
She bends backwards, busts a move, rippling her spine, arms pushing away from her body, parting invisible waves.
‘The Water Flex,’ she says. ‘Next big thing in the dance hall. Like me and Eustace. The big-time couple running things. Making serious money so we can get outta this town.’
I don’t say anything and she goes quiet.
I’m walking on the side closest to the thick bushes of ivy and bramble growing against the sloping wall. Asase is near the bank of the canal. The fast-flowing water beneath the ice must be cold as death.
‘Mind the edge,’ I say. I point my lighter in her direction.
Her shadow flickers on the ice, spreads, and I suddenly remember last night’s dream. Me in a dark-green ocean, watching as a naked Black woman crouches on the rails of a ship, her tied hands pointing as she dives, a spear firing into the depths. A sailor runs to the rail, shouts for help, jumps in after her. Lights from a lantern on the deck beam on to the sea. I follow their paths through the murky water. I’m underwater, diving alongside her. She can’t see me. Her breath bustin’ out of her eyes.
The sailor grabs her feet; she kicks him away, red algae swirling around her body like wings. He grabs again, and this time catches the ankle of her left foot. She undulates and twists, spinning them into a death roll, dragging him into the depths; the downwelling light from the ship becomes a distant tunnel. I feel her anger in the two-beat kick of her feet. It’s my rage in my ribcage, trying to break out, rage for the policeman who was following me and all the others, their eyes and power everywhere; for the men like them who hold on to our bodies in the dance hall; for Irving controlling what I know about Muma, his secrets. The secrets of men.
The sailor kicks away to the light. There’s fire in my clenched fists. I unfurl them and put my hand out to the woman. But she can’t see me.
There’s a sound behind us and I look back through the tunnel we’ve just come through. I raise my lighter and the shadow’s upon us. Crab Man, belted into a trench coat, a scarf snaking around his throat.
‘Miss Thing, yuh-one carrying the swing,’ he says to Asase.
He pushes between us and puts his arm across her shoulder. He’s laughing, a crusty hawking sound.
‘Tek yuh blood-claat hands offa me!’ Asase shouts.
He drags her towards his body. ‘Nuh chat to me so. Yuh hear!’ he says.
Asase pushes his hands off, tells him to kiss her batty-hole. Her voice spins across the acoustic emptiness of the frozen canal.
Silence.
Crab Man grabs her arms and shakes her. Her head snaps back and forth and she drops her clutch bag.
I point the lighter towards him. ‘Leave her alone,’ I shout.
I pull at his arm and he turns, bats me away with his free hand and looks at me as if he’s unsure about something. He won’t remember me. In the blackout dance hall I was just another body to drag and grind against.
What is it that stops me from pushing my fingers in his eye sockets and drawing his eyeballs out like two corks? I think of the policeman who threatened Nile at the mortuary, the fury I felt then. What stopped me from slamming my fist into his nose and shunting his nose bone up into his brain and waiting . . . one, two, three, lights out? Only the fact that I don’t have the strength to take on a man, and not knowing where the violence would end.
I clench my fists.
Crab Man shoves Asase and she staggers and slips on to the frozen canal.
‘Think you’re too nice, eh? Gwaan,’ he shouts as he walks on, disappearing into the darkness.
I shine my lighter on Asase. She’s on all fours, her feet sliding on the ice as she tries to get up.
‘Slowly,’ I say. ‘The ice—’
I don’t know where to look. Watching her and looking around, afraid Crab Man might come back.
