He took me down with his arms around my neck, throwing his weight on top of me. There was a sound as my head hit the floor, followed by my brain screaming: Dive dive dive. I went with my brain, diving and felt it close down, turn out banks of lights, all lights but that little one up the back. There was nothing then, a kind of dead, then almost something, but not quite anything, then intense pain, physical, and emotional.
His breath on my face, his spittle drip drip dripping on my cheek, his arms around my neck cutting off my air supply and his legs wrapped hard and fast around my legs, as though to make sure no oxygen snuck in through my toes to make its way up my legs into my cardiovascular system and find its way to my lungs to give me the life that I had hardly started let alone nearly finished.
I am alone on the floor now. He’s gone from me. Something runs down my cheek, spit, but not his, mine. I am dribbling the dribble of a pathetic little man who has lost his heroes, his friends. A man no one cares for as he lies dying on a floor up high in the highlands of some godforsaken land where white men rule over black women and both black and white men kill you if they don’t like you or at the very least drop you like a sack of potatoes and stomp on your testicles as though they have fallen from the sack and are of no further use. Snot joins the spittle but before it reaches the floor a small stream diverts into my mouth where I taste its saltiness. I need salt, salt cures everything, suck that salt, more salt, nose, send more salt. Hang on, blood, fresh, and more blood than would seep from a cut made near an eye from a tossed table tennis bat. The nose on my face is bleeding. Is it broken, smashed into a messy potato salad of a nose as it hit the floor, throwing itself forward to cushion the rest of the face that followed?
My mother will not want to hear of my death. She will scream and yell and attack herself, blame herself, the mercury poisoning, my old school, my father, my older brother, anyone and everyone who ever lived. She wanted much for me, but never my death.
I get up, stand still, find my feet, walk into the bathroom, splash water over my face and dry it with toilet paper. I look in the mirror. I don’t recognise the face. There is heaviness and darkness and its lines are deeper. There’s blood in the hair, seeping from a cut near one eye and oozing from the nose. Shit, there’s someone there, no, no one, just the shadow of a boy I once knew. Yes there is. Someone behind me. I turn. William Foley.
You all right? he asks.
Yeah, I say. Nuh. I’m fucked, Foles.
Sorry I wasn’t here. I was up the road. I would have stood by you.
You’re always up the road. No wonder we didn’t get you with the fire-extinguisher.
Foley laughs.
Seriously, you don’t look good. You want me to take you to the hospital?
Nuh. Thanks. I’ll be all right.
Your nose?
I don’t think it’s broken, just smashed.
You want me to kick the shit out the racist pig?
There’s too many of them. Foles?
Yeah.
Then I tell him the thing I haven’t told him because I resented him moving so quick on Dorothy and I wanted to see if her racist father would send his men to beat up a black man.
Foles, I should have told you before. I’m a prick.
What are you talking about?
Dorothy’s father is a policeman. Watch out for him. Some of his boys beat me up.
Shit. You serious?
Yeah, be careful.
Foley puts his hand on my shoulder. I want him to hold me. I want to smell his manliness. He takes his hand away. I leave him in the bathroom and step carefully down the stairs. The bank johnnies are still at the dining room tables, talking, some drinking coffee or beer. Their heads lift but they say nothing to me. I say nothing to them. Someone stands. I think it’s Franky.
Jack, he says.
I don’t look at him or them but I can feel their eyes scanning me.
Jack, says Franky.
I run out the door. I don’t go far. Three houses down the road is a place owned by an expat who is hardly ever there. I lie down in his yard and cry myself to sleep.
I wake up when the rain starts. I cry a big sobbing jerking cry, get up, walk back to the bank mess, stand under Haines’ room and throw a stone at his door. He comes out to the balcony and I say: Can I see you, please, Haines. Just for a minute. He walks inside. A minute later he is with me in the yard.
I’m sorry, Haines, I say, for attacking you. I still think you’re a racist, but I had no right to attack you. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening to me, Haines. I don’t have a job. I have no idea what I’m doing here. My life is shit. I thought you were going to kill me on the floor. A part of me wishes you had. I know I wanted to kill you.
Haines says nothing. I have been looking down. I look up. There are tears on his cheeks. Does he pity me? Is he crying because he nearly killed a man? Is he crying because he always cries when someone he knows is crying? Is he crying because he too can see the sad demented life we live here on these islands of free love and madness?
Sorry about the bat, says Haines. I’ve got a temper.
Then I see it: Haines is not the thing, the thing is not out there, in the jungle, it’s in here, me, him, Merkel, in all of us and Haines is just another sad pitiful man like me. And a racist.
I put out my hand. He puts out his. We shake. He doesn’t squeeze the life out of my hand, just holds it then lets it go. I turn and walk away, down the road, along the street. Hordes of highland people walk in both directions. Many of them carry fruit and vegetables I recognise but still don’t know the names of. Some of them look at me. Most don’t seem to notice me. A couple of maries laugh as I walk by. Do they know me? Have I been inside them? I think of my mother. It seems to me that I am more like her than I know. She is often up, then down. Are we schizophrenic? I have no idea what it is to be schizophrenic, but it seems we have something wrong with us, something more than a pink-skinned disease that means you can’t concentrate and get hot and upset before your brain can step in and tell you to calm down, relax, that life doesn’t have to be this way and that you don’t have to get so angry about things you have no control over. I want to rest my head on her bosom and cry, tell her I love her, that I have messed up my life, that I am a filthy pig, that I am sorry, and ask her to help me and forgive me. I shake my head and flutter my hands. I can’t believe what I’m thinking. What kind of bullshit is this? I’m a man. My father is a man. Men don’t run home to their mothers and cry into their bosoms. They laugh as soon as a crying woman leaves a room. All that emotional nonsense, that’s women’s business. Not for men. Men are strong, straight, tall, firm and solid. One thing is sure, I want to go home. But first I go around to May’s house and lie in her arms.
Jack.
Yes.
You fighting again?
What do you mean, again?
I know, Dorothy and her father’s men. And the fight for George Kanluna.
How do you know all this?
In the highlands, words are quick. And I know you and Margaret Baker.
I have nothing to say. She knows everything.
May, I want you to promise me one thing. If Howard Merkel comes to your house, you won’t let him in.
Why you have to say this?
Just promise me.
I get up to leave. May is sleeping. I don’t wake her. In her sleep she reminds me of a painting. I have no idea where I saw it or who painted it, but the painting is of a sleeping black woman, a woman who was clearly at peace with her world and all you can see on her face is her beauty, no stress, anger or sadness, pure beauty. One finely shaped but strong arm lies across her chest.
I want to wake her and enter her one last time, but I don’t. I lean down and kiss her forehead.
When I get back to the bank mess, Franky is sitting in the dining room.
Jesus, Jack, he says. You look like a truck ran into you.
I smile.
I’m sorry I didn’t step in, he says. I thought it was best to let the bulls charge each other. And you were spitting on everyone anyway.
That’s all right, mate, I say.
What are you going to do?
I’m fucked if I know, Frank.
I’ll come see you off.
To make sure I leave, you mean.