Over by the DJ station, Winston and the rest of his friends huddled, heads nodding, beats dropping. Frankie went to join them, then stopped short. No freakin’ way. His father? Frankie gave his head a shake, but dang sure enough. It was Samson jogging, weaving through the crowd, heading his way. Frankie’s cheeks went hot. Samson was going to press him to come home, or just as bad, stay there to look out for him. Samson so didn’t get it. Then—
POP! POP! POP! POP! Shots rang out. There was a screech of tires. TEK, TEK, TEK, TEK! Frankie lunged to the ground. Where was it coming from? People all around were flinging themselves down. Where was his father? Frankie lifted his head an inch.
A white BMW, its headlights off, was closing in quickly. Two men leaned out of the windows, machine guns in hand, and they just started blasting. Bullets tore into tree trunks, into the dirt. Half the crowd was now running, the other half seemed frozen in disbelief. Frankie saw one, then two, then three people fall to the ground. Where was his father? He saw Joe dive to the ground as a second round pelted several people who were just standing there in terror. Flesh ripped. Screams shrilled from so many directions, Frankie couldn’t even think.
He couldn’t move.
He couldn’t stop looking.
Holy shit, holy shit—two bullets hit Mr. Brown in the belly, blood spurting, his curry goat spilling to the ground. Aunt Jenny came into view, eyes wide, reaching into her waistband for her gun. More shouts. Where was his father?
To the left, Ice Box and Buck-Buck were on the ground, crawling commando-style, guns in hand. A mother with three children stood like a deer in headlights. Two of her children broke away from her, running, crying. A guy in his twenties scooped one of them up and sprinted away, his arms and legs pumping. Bullets caught up to him; the child tumbled from his arms as the guy fell, and scrambled away. More bullets ripped apart the speakers, a high-pitched screech ringing out.
Frankie kept looking for his father. He caught a flash of Joe rolling over, drawing a gun, and starting to shoot. Ice Box and Buck-Buck were standing now, shooting at the BMW with assassin-like calm. Jenny was doing the same thing from the other direction. Tires screeched again as the BMW made a sharp U-turn and fishtailed back up the road—then there was a loud crash. Joe and his men ran toward it. Frankie got up on one knee: five hundred yards away, the front end of the car was crumpled around the trunk of a lignum vitae tree.
Frankie could hardly breathe. Palming his face, squeezing hard, he tried to calm himself, to gain hold of his fury, his fear. The speakers screeched on, but their sound wasn’t enough to muffle the cries of those hit, and the wails from villagers, turning back, gunfire now over, finding their loved ones wounded or worse. People ran through the landscape of twisted bodies, the sea of agony. Frankie’d seen this before, the same kind of nightmare, but never in Troy! Both those times he’d been in Kingston riding back from school, feeling for strangers—and it had felt so unreal.
This was real.
His father! Now Frankie was running forward, his legs leaden, as if they were pushing through a viscous liquid instead of air. He wove past a splayed body, then another, and another, until he saw ahead, a man, his father. Not moving. As if floating, Frankie was suddenly there—he had no idea how. He dropped to his knees. “Daddy—”
Nine
dust particles twisted in the midday light in his house; Frankie stared past them at the machete in the windowsill. Pff. Samson thought he was protecting them—nothing had protected him last night. Frankie’d been lying on the couch so long the small of his back was aching, but the energy to move wasn’t there. The screeching sound from the shot-up speakers still rang in his ears; the sight of his father lying there on the ground at the party refused to go away.
The front door creaked open. “Frankie?”
He sat up, a hand on the floor, ready to charge. It was Winston. Frankie grunted, lowered his head back down.
“Wha gwan, mon?”
“Me all right.”
“Respect.” Winston came farther into the house. “How you feeling?”
“Okay.” That was what his father had said, okay, when Frankie’d said he was going to Joe’s party. Frankie went mute, feeling the echo of that word “okay.” Winston walked to the back window and stood silently.
“It was my fucking fault,” Frankie said at last.
“Wha’ you say?” Winston was inspecting Samson’s “burglar alarm.”
“Right before the party, he told me—my father did—about the JLP and PNP, how they were.”
Winston looked up in surprise. “Your father knew they were coming?”
“No. But he told me not to go.”
“Come on, mon. That’s not your fault. It’s election time; posses make hits all the time.”
Winston didn’t get it—didn’t get that Frankie should have stayed home, celebrated his scholarship with his father.
“Listen, me come to give you some good news.”
Frankie lifted his head. About his father? Joe had gotten ambulances up the mountain in seconds, it had seemed. Samson was put in the very first one. Ice Box had raced Frankie and Jenny down the mountain to the hospital, but they hadn’t been allowed to see Samson. “Ice Box, Buck-Buck, and Blow Up hit the posse that was responsible.” Winston waited, practically beaming. Was he expecting a freakin’ happy dance? “They got three of them, plus the ones in the BMW—that makes six. Supposed to be just a couple more. It was only some small posse trying to come up.”
“They were with the JLP?”
“Yes.” A half smile lifted the side of Winston’s mouth. “But not no more.”
That wouldn’t help his father, but “Good,” Frankie said weakly. At least it wasn’t Taqwan. At least that.
Winston poked at the machete. “Hear anything about Samson?”
“Still can’t see him. They made me come home cuz they had to operate.”
“Don’t worry, mon, Samson’s tough. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
Winston nodded at the booby-trapped window. “Smart,” he murmured, then said, “You can’t just stay here all day.”
Frankie pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not.” He reached for his backpack.
“Where you going?”
“School.”
“What? Why?”
“To tell them I’m not coming.” Frankie held the backpack by a strap.
“That no make no sense… school started hours ago.” Winston pulled a phone out of his back pocket. “Use my phone and just call them.”
“No, I’m not going back to school for a while. I need to talk to my counselor.”
“Your dad—he’s going to be all right, mon—”
Frankie slammed the backpack on the floor—splat. “Give it up, okay? Just give it up! Stop trying to cheer me up and shit. He’s lying in the hospital and he might not get out of there, mon.”
“Okay, okay.” Winston paused at the door before leaving. “Me not your enemy, mon.”
Frankie wanted to say something, let his friend know he wasn’t hating on him. But the words weren’t there. He looked back at the makeshift security device. If only it could have guarded Samson.