Stray dogs bark at night far away. Cars and buses huff-puff round the city streets but the noise and smoke do not reach me. Hot and sticky in the dusty concrete down there, cool breezes and tall trees up here in the hills.
From the balcony of the house that cricket built, Kingston becomes a twinkling panorama, a map of the past as well as the present. Out to my right, out to the west, the headland curving round to Hellshire Beach. Moving my gaze across the city, the lights of Tinson Pen aerodrome, the cranes at the wharf, where the container ships come in off the Caribbean, where I once worked that job for the Port Authority. Big jumbos coming into Norman Manley airport on the peninsula beyond, then downtown, dark sea in the distance, and the Coronation Market, where I used to go as a kid and sell bag juice to hustle some funds. Keep coming around, to Cross Roads, where Half Way Tree Road meets Old Hope Road and traffic crawls, and then to the high rises of New Kingston and the Pegasus Hotel, where touring teams stay; leading away from it Knutsford Boulevard, with Triple Century at one end and Emancipation Park at the other. On and on, moving east, floodlights beam at the National Stadium, Rollington Town hidden a mile or two on and Sabina Park just over there. The big houses on the slopes of Beverley Hills, Usain’s neighbourhood of Norbrook further east, Smoky Vale closing it out. Lucas is flat and dark, invisible from this distance, yet I know exactly where it is. I can see Lucas from the other side of the world.
The instinct was always there: when I get the right money, I’m going to buy a house. That was always the dream. Because I know where I’m coming from. Because they can’t take away from me a house I’ve bought and paid for. Because then you’ve made the jump. You’re not going back.
The view holds me still and silent. Sometimes it makes me pinch myself – ‘Wow, this is you up here?’ Sometime it makes me shake my head. You can never forget the down there, and all that comes with it. Down there, looking up; down there, walking streets, chasing runs, toiling for more.
It fills my mind, and clears it. If you’re in the darkness and you feel a sluggish day, you come out here and the breeze start to blow and your vision clears and your belief comes back. Listen to the water running into the pool, listen to the wind through the branches. No factory next door, no battling for a single bed. A kitchen inside with cupboards full and sinks that fill.
You look down, and you look back. How you came through. What you had to survive. The things you did to break out.
Sometimes I sit here, and it’s too much to take in. I dreamed of a house, but never a house like this. I dreamed of escaping, but I never dreamed I could take so many with me.
For they are all here. My mum has the best bedroom in the house, and a house of her own nearby, where she lives with my sister Michelle when she wishes for that. My dad Dudley has the first bedroom you come to, his flatscreen and newspapers so he can follow the world; 85 years old, and nothing now to worry about. My brother Vanclive’s son in another room, space for all my friends when they come back from trying to earn around the distant world. I bought Popeye his first car, a Nissan Maxima. Now he has a roof when he needs one too.
Sometimes I sit here and I think of Noah building an ark. I escaped, and I brought them all with me.
You alone cannot enjoy it. An escape on your own is into a prison of a different making. You bring your family, you bring your friends, you look after all. Trust me, I do. If they have kids, I school their kids. All the books, all the fees. I pay for everything. Mi alone cyaan enjoy it.
You might see that as a burden. Sometimes they take it for granted. There are nieces and nephews, and you have to care for them like a parent. You do those things, but you want them to be responsible as well. ‘You can bring in food for the table too.’ That’s important, so they don’t just rely on Uncle Chris. But I still give them what they want, and I still give them what I never had.
Roots hold you back as well as sustaining you. My dad leaves the house some mornings and goes back to Rollington Town. He still walk around the neighbourhood.
Sometimes you want to stay where you are. My brother Michael Crew, in a smart house in a smart area that I bought for him, and every day he’s still there where he grew up. The same streets, the same rum shack on Giltress, the same story played out over and over again.
I go back too, and I go back with time on my hands so I can sit and talk and take a drink. I go back and walk down St James Road and look at the old zinc fences, and I walk round the corner onto Preston Road, past the gates to Kensington Cricket Club and on to Lucas, and I walk out to the middle once again and take guard on the unmarked wicket, and I walk back to rattle the bars around the old pavilion and Briggy comes out and we talk old times and new nets and Chris, could you fund a little academy here so the nets can actually have nets now?
When the cricket comes to an end, I’ll be here. My family will be here. Helping out whenever I can. When you’re gone, someone else will be spending your money, and I want to spend my money, how I want. I came from nothing, I will leave with nothing.
My heart is strong now, and my vow is unbroken with it.
Life is about now. If you’re going to do it, do it big. Do not wait for the never-comes future. Do not do it apologizing to a man you never met. Do not die worrying about the edge behind. Play your shots, and play them your way.
When you go to party, do it big. I don’t want to go to a party and just stand up. Fuck, I look good already.
I want to dance. Whether I’m going to dance by myself or dance with someone else. Whether it’s my friends I’m with or on my own. You dance, you drink, you come back home, you sleep. Then you wake up in your clothes and find a piece of jerk chicken in your pocket, and you know then you have had a good night.
Lissen mi. Listen to Chris. Nothing can protect you from the ball you never saw coming. Death stalk you. Garrick, gone to the swerve of a bus, Runako, lost to the darkness.
Those are the things you have to live with. When you have good health and life, make the best of it. Make it count. If you can’t make it count for you, make it count for someone else. Make fun for someone. Live it while you can.
You have to go big. Why take a single when the boundary is open? Why take a four when you can aim higher and beat away a six?
I’m not a man for regrets. I regret not punching a particular person in the face, but that time has passed, and anyway, I’m not a violent man. Let the stress and anger go.
Be happy now, not on a promise or another day. The happiest time in your life is not when you’re making a million bucks. Happiness comes with freedom, with having enough to buy the food you want when you want it, with being able to move when you want to move. That is the golden time.
You can feel sometimes like you’re climbing a mountain. One more push, and you’re at the summit.
Trus’ mi. There is no summit, only a plateau and then another climb. You will never play the perfect innings, never hit the perfect six.
But you can come close, and you can come close only by trying. And when that six sails away, when you see the crowd scatter or jump, when the umpire’s arms go up, behind that gladiator’s mask you are alive. You are the centre of it all. You are the Six Machine.
I sit on this balcony, and in the room behind me are Raddy Haynes and Mr Mac, and Kevin Murray and Popeye, and my dad and my brothers, and we are all together. Triple Century calls, for there is a special send-off party for Jamaica’s entry to Miss World, and it would be rude not to wish a compatriot well before such a long and trying journey.
But the world never stops, not even for World Boss. Soon there will be others in the house, not just my girlfriend but the child she carries for us inside. A landmark like no other, a delivery I have never faced before. What did you expect? I always did like three figures.
So here I am, on Noah’s Ark.
You might think this is the end, but I’m only just starting. Moving up, always moving up.
I escaped, and I took everyone with me. Yuh cyaan stop me. I am all you have seen and much more you have not. I am complicated. I am weird.
I am the Six Machine. And I am moving up, always moving up.