He goes to lock his holster and gun in the car. He prepares himself to climb. But what will he do when he gets to the top? This boy is almost too big to sit on his back. Abel pictures himself holding one of the child’s ankles from below, tugging just hard enough until he’s forced to move.
Too hard and he falls.
Fall.
Fall.
He can’t stop himself from thinking it. You mus’ push the man outta fi yuh head. He tries to concentrate on the boy and push his partner aside for the moment. Abel sees a stray cat run past him to find shelter from the downpour. He wants to do this too, to find shelter curled up inside a hollowed-out tree, safe and dry, like the saner animals, not out here doing a job no one else wants. But it is better than getting shot at, he reasons. It occurs to him that they no longer trust him to do anything more. He looks at the boy and then at the people sitting on the wall, and he knows that he cannot be the fool who let his partner get killed on his watch and the one who let a child fall and break his neck.
Abel starts to climb just as the rain beats down harder. He is barely five feet up the tree when he slips off, landing on his feet. The onlookers behind him erupt with laughter. He circles the area around the tree, hoping they can’t see his face turning from its light brown to the color of his hair. He notices a pole in the ground with a piece of rope still tied to the bottom, probably once used to tether a goat. He asks the boy’s mother if he can use the rope to make a foot strap. He takes off his shoes and socks, wraps the rope around his feet, and tries again.
The first time Abel climbed a coconut tree, he was alone. He remembers the feeling of disappointment when he got to the top, realizing there was no one there to see his triumph. But then he took in the view: he could see the zinc roofs of his neighbors’ houses, the women washing their clothes down by the river, his grandfather bringing home stalks of sugarcane on the back of his mule. He felt powerful, capable, like the entire world was his and he needed no one. He tries to remember the last time he felt that way, definitely not since he joined the police force, or moved to the city, maybe not since he became an adult.
As Abel moves up the tree, he feels suddenly energized by his muscle memory kicking in. He scales about fifteen feet with ease, just as he had when he was younger. He pauses to catch his breath, sees that the boy is more attainable, though still too high. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning cracks through the sky and catches him off guard, and for a second before Abel loses his grip and falls, he sees his partner standing at the base of the tree, watching him, his skin gray, his eyes covered by a white film. Abel lands on his back, hard. The boy wails as he too slides several feet down, scraping some skin off the inside of his forearms, until the pain forces him to let go, and he lands with a thud just beside Abel.
Abel is out for a brief time; it doesn’t feel like long, but when he wakes, coughing out the water that has filled his open mouth, he can hear Bully laughing. The laughter seems to surround him. He rubs the back of his head to see if he is bleeding. The boy is beside him, and Abel turns to see the child, on his back too, whimpering. The mother is kneeling over him, cradling him in her arms as if she’s certain he’s dying.
It invokes a slight resentment in Abel to see how this boy is babied. He thinks of how Vera doted on him when they first got together—how she showered him with a depth of affection he’d never known, how she’d stand on the veranda and wave as he drove off each morning, how she’d make sure she was there waiting as he got home. But that lasted only for a few months. Since Vera started working at the factory, she’s constantly withdrawn and irritable. This life is her doing, yet she seems to hate it as much as Abel.
“Gary. Look how you get cut up so! Nuh move,” the mother says to her son. “You mustn’t try fi move. Make me go get some rubbing alcohol and bandage.” She gets up and runs into the house.
Abel’s vision is blurred, but he can see the outline of his partner, coming into focus. Bully is turned away from Abel, facing the tree that he and the boy fell from. He is standing with his face close to the bark, as if he is studying it, but Abel knows that he is letting him see his back, the deep gashes that the cutlass blade made when the men attacked him. The wounds are still open, red and raw, a reminder to Abel that all his choices so far have been the wrong ones. He closes his eyes and then opens them; the vision is gone.
Abel stands up and it feels as if a bushfire has ignited in between his temples. He sees that the onlookers have lost interest and left. The mother is dressing the boy’s wounds with rubbing alcohol, and he squeals every time the cotton touches his skin.
“You alright,” his mother keeps saying to her son.
Abel tries to clear his head and focus enough to walk back to his car. He wonders why he had believed this task would be simple, when nothing about his new life is. His thoughts are interrupted by the boy squealing, a sound that worms its way into his ear and makes his head pound, makes him ball his fists in frustration.
Abel bends down over the boy. “Listen to me. You too big for this foolishness,” he says. He reaches for the boy’s face, tries to make him look at him, but the child howls like a dog and shakes his head back and forth. Abel finds his hand pulling back and then making contact with the child’s face before he realizes what’s happening. The sound of the slap is as loud as the bolt of lightning.
“Wha’ wrong with you?” the mother yells, pushing Abel away from them with her free hand. “You gone crazy, man? Leave fi me son alone before me report you.”
Abel stands up but looks the boy in the eye. He is about to apologize when he sees that the boy has finally stopped crying. His face is absent of emotion, as if the slap has thrown him right out of his body. A part of Abel feels like he is standing at a distance, watching his own body’s actions, aghast. But another part feels exhilarated. He has done this child a favor. He thinks if Bully is watching, he would be nodding his head in approval.
VERA
The last thing Vera remembers is rising from her sewing machine to get some air. Now she wakes to find two of her coworkers propping her up in a plastic chair in front of the manager’s desk, as if they are staging a mannequin in a shop window. Someone puts a cup of water to her lips and raises her own hand to hold it, but she can’t feel her body, let alone control it, so it falls.
Mr. Zacca nods at the floor, and she feels the girl to her left, Madge, remove her weight from Vera’s left side to tackle the water. Vera’s body begins to slump in the direction that Madge went until Vivian, the girl on her right, straightens her up. Mr. Zacca begins talking, but it is hard for Vera to listen, so distracted is she by the sensation of her limbs being numb.
“You know seh me cyaan have one pregnant woman in hereso. How you fi keep up? Come back when you not pregnant,” he says, waving her away like dust.
Madge was the only one she told. Vera uses the little strength that has returned to her to look the woman in the eye, telling her without words that she is lucky that Vera is too weak to punish her for her betrayal. Meanwhile, Vivian offers to accompany her home, but Mr. Zacca refuses to pay her for the time, so she walks Vera to the bus stop, gives her a hug goodbye, as if she knows she will never see her again. Vivian’s prediction is spot-on because Vera knows that she cannot go back, for they will ask her about the baby. She can say she lost it, true in a sense, but every time she tells the lie, she will remember how she betrayed Abel. She’s pregnant by another man, and she has no intention of letting Abel or anyone else know.