Home > Your Corner Dark(3)

Your Corner Dark(3)
Author: Desmond Hall

 

 

Two


frankie snapped an aloe stalk from the spiky plant by the front door—his mother had planted one on either side years ago. He went into his house, and he eyed the twelve feet from the living room to the kitchen. Good, Samson wasn’t there. Crossing the floorboards—some maple, some walnut—to the kitchen, he found a knife and split the stalk. Then, lifting his shirt, he ever so gently spread the sticky, cool juice on his back, the puffy lash mark searing like hot grease. As he swallowed down a gasp, he made a vow to himself: this would be the end of it. If he got the scholarship, there was no way he was coming back home to visit if there was another beating. He had to make that clear to his father.

At least he’d put up resistance this time. Hadn’t made a sound. Hadn’t given Samson that satisfaction. Not to mention hadn’t let Winston hear a single howl, grunt, or groan slip from his mouth. That would have been even worse than the physical pain.

The door opened, and Samson glided in, anger gone, an almost meek look on his face. He set his finger on a tiny crack in the wall, blocking the light from outside. “Me don’t love to beat you, you know? Me get beating until I was a grown man, you know?”

But Frankie remembered his father’s face when he’d drawn his belt. A forehead didn’t crinkle up for duty. Eyes didn’t narrow for duty. Duty was calm. Samson’s face had been pure fury.

So Frankie stuck out his chin defiantly. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“Fault, Frankie? Fault isn’t important. Things happen fast out on the street. Damage comes quick and it doesn’t care about fault.”

“He was beating up Winston!”

Samson waved his hand as if shooing a fly. “Winston. That boy don’t know when his tongue becomes his enemy.”

“He isn’t stupid—”

“Plenty smart people don’t know how to conduct themselves. Keep your mind on the scholarship, you hear? Your mother—she dreamed—”

“It is on the scholarship!” Samson didn’t need to remind him about that, or about his mother. The scholarship wasn’t icing on some damn cake—it was the whole cake.

Samson pointed to the aloe branch. “You put the sinkle Bible on your back?”

Frankie nodded, and his father came toward him, raising his hand. Frankie flinched.

Samson paused, blinked, and then pointed at Frankie’s head. “You need haircut, you know?”

“I’m okay,” Frankie said, shrugging, shifting away.

Samson frowned. “You think since me unemployed, me don’t know how to cut hair anymore?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So come, mon, bring the chair. Me will give you a proper cut.”

Frankie brushed a hand over his tight curls. Haircuts—his father’s way of making peace. “It’s okay. I’ll get one when I go town.”

Samson folded one hand over the other. “Why you want to spend your money when you don’t have to?”

“It can wait. Besides, you cut the sides too short last time,” Frankie said, thinking this was the moment to draw the line on the beatings. A voice, maybe his mother’s, had always held him back before, counseling him to have patience with his father.

He’s having a rough time at work, Frankie. This too shall pass.

Thing was, things hadn’t worked out for Samson as a short-order cook, a handyman, a barber, or even his brief stint as a boxer. So he never stopped beating Frankie.

When he was little, Frankie had looked at his father’s formidable jaw and imagined that no professional boxer would ever take a shot at it for fear of breaking a hand. But of course one did and had shattered that jaw. Now it looked outsize, not befitting a man of Samson’s height. He was five inches too short for that jaw. And Frankie was too tall for the beatings.

“I think it’s time for the beatings to stop,” Frankie said, all the while wondering how the hell his father would respond.

“Oh?” Samson raised that chin. “You know why me beat you?” He unfolded his hands.

“It’s got to stop,” Frankie repeated, holding his father’s gaze.

“My father beat me till I was—”

“I know. I know. But I’m not you. And I’m not going to take it anymore.” The last sentence took all his courage, he felt almost faint.

“As long as you live under my roof, is me in charge of you.” Samson cracked his neck, left, right. “Frankie, me no love to do it. But until you learn to keep away from trouble—”

Frankie gaped at him. “You don’t think I know that?” Samson was clueless! “I work hard at school. I come in first in all my classes. First! I work hard at my job.”

“And one mistake could take all that away!” Samson roared.

Even though it was only the two of them—had been for three years now—his father didn’t notice anything. It was useless. Frankie turned to walk away and tripped over the molding that ran across the middle of the floor, one of Samson’s makeshift attempts to keep the house together.

In the backyard, humidity was thick, hard to breathe. Frankie pulled his bike away from the pimento tree where it leaned. He’d found the abandoned frame of the ten-speed near his school in Kingston, slowly added parts. After some tinkering, he’d gotten one gear to work. One was enough—he didn’t want to spend the money to fix the other nine. One was enough to get back and forth to where he needed to go.

He straddled the bike, thinking that it was about time to head to school—damn, it was going to hurt sitting in a chair. He stared back at his house, a green-and-yellow box with one back window, a colorful cage that shut out the world. His mother had painted it with so much attention, so careful not to get any of the paint on the window.

He glanced at the neighbor’s house, red and brown, set just past a sprinkling of arching lignum vitae trees and tall beech. Same planking as his. Most of Troy’s houses were made from the wooden storage-room walls of the now defunct sugar factory. At least they weren’t corrugated.

Frankie’s grandfather—a bushman who had harvested what he found in the forests for money—had left Samson the land, but it was Samson himself who had managed to build a house and get actual furniture.

Frankie remembered when, just after his nineth birthday, Samson had brought home an old ham radio that needed fixing. His mother, cancer free back then, had wiped her fingers on her apron, threads dangling from the embroidered roses, and sauntered over to his father. “Our junkyard is looking good. All we need now is a mattress and an old car out front,” she’d said, her voice teasing.

“When me done with this, we’ll be able pick up stations from all over the world,” Samson had replied, spinning a screwdriver into the back plate of the radio.

“I don’t doubt you, but does all the junk in Jamaica need to end up in my house?” She rubbed the tips of her fingers together as if working loose cake batter.

Samson had laughed and dropped the screwdriver, his eyes full of affection.

Frankie dashed over to pick up the screwdriver. He held it to the web of circuits and wires and blew air out of his mouth, emulating the whir of a drill.

“No, mon!” Samson snatched the screwdriver out of Frankie’s hand, pushing him away. “You not learning this line of work. You will do something better.”

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)
» The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash #4)