The small square of my window was still dark when America woke me the next morning. ‘Quit grumbling,’ she said. ‘I left you as long as I could,’ though I hadn’t said a word. I followed her to the kitchen where I was met by rows of cooling bread rolls and sponge cakes already sliced into rectangles in their trays. Aunt Mary was up too, dressed for the day in a blouse and skirt, her hair neatly pinned even at this hour. She smiled at me as I came in and though my entire body ached for sleep I smiled too, for the kitchen, rinsed by a blue-grey light from the yard and filled with the round, dark smell of baking, felt welcoming. Aunt Mary had prepared coffee and she poured out a cup for me, stirring in a spoonful of sugar without my having to ask. She tapped the spoon on the cup’s rim to shake off the drops, frowned as the sound rang out in the thin early-morning light. She looked pale and I wondered if she’d slept at all. She placed the cup carefully, almost noiselessly, on the table in front of me.
America sat down beside me and started to slice tomatoes and cucumber, humming softly to herself as she worked. Aunt Mary moved about in silence, an absorbed look on her face. She fetched a tray of rolls from the counter and placed it on the table. I put down my cup and picked up a roll, split and buttered it, sprinkling sugar inside before closing it up again. Aunt Mary sat down opposite me and started to layer sandwiches. ‘Not quite so much sugar perhaps,’ she said. ‘I doubt many of the Greenhills children bother to clean their teeth properly.’ She emphasised the last word. I hadn’t thought to ask who the food was for. I buttered the next roll more heavily and Aunt Mary, watching my hands, smiled at me again. ‘I thought,’ she continued, her tone almost apologetic, ‘that the symbolism might not escape Eddie Casama and his consortium.’ I liked the way she said symbolism: easily, without pause, as if certain I’d understand her.
Around us, the boarding house lay still and we worked without interruption; Benny had left for Cora’s before even America was up and Dub was still in bed. When, eventually, I heard Dub on the stairs, I pushed myself back from the table and started to assemble his breakfast. I examined my face in the polished surface of his breakfast tray as I placed his food on it. If anything, I looked worse. The swelling had subsided but the bruising had risen and spread and was livid to look at. My arms were no better but I had worn a long-sleeved shirt with my shorts, resisting the urge to roll up the cuffs when they got in the way.
I took the food through to the dining room and arranged it before Dub on the table without raising my eyes. I started to pour out a coffee. Dub smiled up at me but, on seeing my face, looked away again unhappily as he had done several times over the preceding days. He picked listlessly at his plate, and though he opened his mouth as if he might say something, he seemed each time to reconsider. I withdrew to the kitchen to let him eat in peace.
A little later he came through into the kitchen. He looked about at the trays of rolls still on the counters, the skyscrapers of newspaper-wrapped cake on the table. America leaned forward, ready to swat his hand, but Dub thrust his hands into his jeans pockets and bent down to speak to his mother. America nudged me. I got up from the table and walked through to the dining room to retrieve Dub’s breakfast tray. He’d hardly touched his food. I covered his plate before I returned to the kitchen, kept my back to America as I scraped the remains into the waste bin. Her eyes were on me as I turned back.
A strong yellow light washed the kitchen now, accentuating the lines around America’s mouth and cutting shadows under the carton flaps as she packed up the food. As she filled each box I carried it through to the hallway and, when the last of them was done, Dub and I loaded everything into a taxi under Aunt Mary’s direction. His eyes swept over the dark stains on my hands and face as we worked.
The back seat full, Aunt Mary climbed into the front of the cab. The driver waited, his brown arm languid out of the open window, fingers gently drumming the warming metal as Dub moved over to his bike and kicked it off its stand. Together, they pulled out of the drive for the short ride to the jetty where Dub was to help his mother unload, before doubling back to Prosperidad and Earl’s garage.
Back in the kitchen I skulked about, finding small tasks and avoiding America’s gaze. ‘You plan to sneak about here all day?’ she said eventually. I buffed the spoon I’d just washed, studied my upside-down reflection. ‘I might not know all the details,’ she said, ‘but I’ll bet you’re the last person who should be shamed by how you look.’
Esperanza Street teemed under a cloudless sky. People moved in drifts downhill towards the market hall, while overhead banners snapped like sails between lamp posts and balloons tugged against their tethers at door handles and railings. In the distance, the public-address system was being tested: Jonah’s voice. The air smelled different, lighter. It smelled of the ocean and of warm asphalt. Gone was the scent of fried pork and hot oil, for Johnny Five Course had wheeled his cart down to the jetty the evening before to be certain of a pitch, a roll of bedding strapped across his counter. On the other side of the street, Abnor’s tea-stall was still in its usual spot, but it was closed up and padlocked and, behind it, Primo’s windows were shuttered.
Halfway down the hill, the stretch of sidewalk outside the Coffee Shak was empty except for Ignacio Sanesteban, who was working away at something on the Shak’s frontage, his movements uncharacteristically quick and jerky. Behind him, still stacked indoors beside the pastry counter, the white plastic sidewalk chairs formed a bright column. Ignacio straightened up as we approached, placed down the wooden board he had just pulled away from the window frame. He stepped towards us, his hands out like a policeman stopping cars. He crunched as he moved and, in the same instant that I recognised the sound, I made out the mound of broken glass behind him on the doorstep, sunlight scattering from its innumerable edges. From it, a trail of dust and shards tracked back into the interior like the tail of a comet. I gaped at the empty frame of the Coffee Shak window, a few glass teeth still protruding in places from the wood, mouthing its belated protest. Ignacio shrugged. He looked me over, his hands on his hips. ‘You gave the other guy a good hiding too, I hope,’ he said.
‘Looks like a bomb,’ America eyed the broom that leaned up against the doorframe.
I remembered Rico’s voice in the darkness: got another job to get to. ‘You see who did it?’ I said.
‘I got my suspicions. Still, it’s just a window.’ He looked down at my hands. I pushed them into my pockets. ‘Your pop’s been working hard on the rally too, eh? Cowardly way to do it though – get at a man through his kid.’
‘No-names-mentioned wouldn’t be where he is if he did things straight like the rest of us,’ America muttered. Ignacio cast his eyes about the street and, seeing him do it, America added testily, ‘At my age what have I got to be afraid of?’ She threw me a dark look.
‘Want some help?’ I said to Ignacio, hopefully.
‘You don’t need to be near anything sharp right now.’ He turned a piece of glass over with the edge of his sneaker.
‘You better take it easy today, Joseph Santos,’ America glowered at me. She managed to make it sound like a threat. I was disappointed. I’d have liked to stay at the Shak, hear a little Dusty, keep out of sight.
Ignacio moved back to the window. He pulled a cloth out of his back pocket and bent down to study one of the remaining fragments that clung to the frame. It was peaked like the fin of a milkfish. He wrapped the cloth around its point and, gripping it gingerly between forefingers and thumbs, started tugging it back and forth, loosening it. ‘I’m ready to believe,’ he said softly, drawing out the word like an evangelist, as he got to his feet and held the freed shard up to the light, ‘that it doesn’t pay to be honest in this world.’
‘Amen,’ said America loudly.
At the seaward end of Esperanza Street, where it broadened to run alongside the market hall before merging with the coast road to become the jetty, a sizeable crowd had gathered. The air was rich with the smell of food. Stalls lined every alleyway, the vendors talkative behind mounds of fruit or meat, pyramids of cans and bottles.
The market hall had been cleared out and under its canopy, on the Greenhills side, a stage had been built with speakers on either side of it. Towards the back of the stage, a row of red plastic garden chairs waited. A microphone lay in the well of the centre chair, its lead coiled under the seat like a snake.
In front of the stage, Cora and Benny were busy with something on the ground. The Greenhills children, clustered about the nearby pillars, watched them at work. Every now and then Cora looked up overhead and around her, as if considering some invisible structure, and when she did, the kids looked up too, scanning the roof for clues.
I stopped when I saw Benny and made as if to go to him but America had spotted my father standing with Jonah near the sea wall. She started towards them and, after a moment’s hesitation, I trailed after her. When the men saw me, they came to meet us. ‘Looks bad,’ Jonah said as they drew close. ‘Dante says you won’t tell him who did it.’
‘Only one candidate,’ America said.
‘I remember him when he was starting out,’ Jonah said. ‘Not so obvious then what kind of a man he’d turn out to be.’
‘You sleeping any better?’ my father asked me. I was still aching too much to sleep through a whole night.
‘Like the dead,’ I lied, without thinking, and I saw how it startled him.
Subong came over and looked me up and down. He whistled through his teeth. ‘They spared your legs, huh?’ he said. He looked at my father. My father ignored him.
The men eyed me curiously for a minute or two. I looked away, back towards the stage. ‘What’s left to do?’ I said.
‘Sit for a minute. One of the boys can fetch you a drink,’ Jonah said.
‘There are enough hands about today.’ My father placed his hand on my shoulder, carefully.
Jonah looked over to where a group of jetty boys loitered near his office. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. One of the boys broke away from the group and jogged over to us. It was Dil, one of Rico’s Barracudas. For a moment, I couldn’t remember whether Dil had been there that night, but then I saw him again in the shadows under the tree, near the oil drum, the distant sounds without origin in the darkness, the smell of earth and sweat and blood. My stomach lurched and I felt a chill break over my skin and subside again. My father’s hand tightened momentarily on my shoulder. Dil raised an enquiring eyebrow at Jonah, then turned to regard me blankly. I glared back but he held my eyes. I looked away first. ‘You look rough, Joe,’ he said easily.
‘Get him a Pepsi,’ Jonah said. ‘Cold. On my tab.’
‘Sure, Boss.’ Dil smiled at me and walked to the sari-sari store near the corner. I watched him move away, his step casual, blameless. He returned just as leisurely, winked as he held the bottle out to me. I didn’t want it but I took it and as I did so my finger brushed his. Involuntarily, I flinched. It was scarcely perceptible, but I was sure he noticed. He smiled at me again. ‘See you around, Joe,’ he said, and walked back to Jonah’s office. I felt a surge of fury, as much at my own response as at him.
I held the Pepsi, forgotten for a moment until Jonah said, ‘Better cold, eh?’ Still feeling sick, I sipped slowly, barely tasting it. My father studied me as I drank. America’s eyes remained on Dil for several minutes and quickly enough the Barracuda busied himself, keeping his back to her.
There was plenty still to be done but no one would accept my help, their eyes first asking my father’s permission only to be refused. I felt fraudulent standing idle while around me everyone worked and at last I excused myself to go in search of something to do.
The chatter in the market hall formed a steady low note pierced every now and then by the bright, clear counterpoint of Cora’s voice. I followed the sound to its source, to where she stood with Benny, her hands moulding the air between them as she talked. Benny, bending to hear, hefted a hand drill from one palm to the other and back again. On the ground in front of them nine large panels lay face down on plastic sheets. Cora stopped talking and started to circle the panels, swooping now and again to chalk red marks onto each frame. She looked up as I approached, staring at me for several seconds before she uttered a cry of comprehension and then, throwing down her chalk, she marched over to me. She lifted my chin, her fingers red with chalk dust, moved my head this way and that, inspecting my face. ‘Benny told me,’ she said. ‘Your father said you won’t say who.’ I looked past her to Benny. He glanced guiltily down at the panels, his hands still, the empty palm open, waiting. Cora brushed red dust from my chin with the heel of her hand. I tilted my face like a child to let her finish. ‘Any part of you still a normal colour?’ She looked me over. I wriggled my toes. She smiled down at them.
‘I saw Ignacio,’ I said.
‘He was wearing gloves like I told him?’
‘Sure, I think.’ I dropped my eyes.
‘You think, eh?’
‘So where’s this famous mural?’
‘You’re looking right at it,’ Cora pointed to the nearest panel with her foot.
‘Magnificent,’ I said.
‘That’s the back of it.’
‘I know.’
She smiled crookedly, made as if to jab a finger into my chest, stopping just short of me even as I recoiled. ‘Only bad jokes till it stops hurting, huh?’
‘What still needs doing?’
‘Oh no,’ Cora pulled a face, her hands waving a vigorous protest. Benny started shaking his head. But I was insistent; to do something physical was a kind of defiance. Cora’s eyes gleamed at me.
Under her direction, I steadied each panel as Benny drilled holes in the frame. We bolted the panels together, screwed in a line of hooks along the top edge, threaded through a rope. The mural was to be hauled upright and suspended from the rafters just above the stage. I was keen to get a look at it. I ran a finger along the frame, over the line of staples that secured the rolled edge of the canvas, rubbed the tip of my thumb gently against a familiar mark on the fabric. ‘Gold Cup,’ said Benny. I peered closely at the mark. The panels were constructed from rice sacks stitched together and stretched over wooden pallets, the Gold Cup brand on the cloth just visible in places between the slats or emerging through the paint at the very edges.
When we were done I got to my feet slowly, like an old man, conscious of Cora and Benny’s eyes on me. Cora wagged a finger at me first, then at Benny. ‘Stay put,’ she said. She stalked away, glancing back over her shoulder more than once.
Benny relaxed back against the stage. He pulled out a peso and started playing with it, doing sleight-of-hand tricks. I smiled as I watched him; he wasn’t very good, fumbling the peso several times. The circle of kids watching him drew in closer, their eyes on the coin. After a minute or two of bending to retrieve it, Benny stopped and, studying the gathered children, handed the coin to the smallest before turning his back decisively. The kids didn’t pester him. They moved away to try their hand at palming it just as he had done and with little more success. Benny, here without his sketchbook, watched them for a while.
He turned back to me and, smiling, started to roll his shirt-sleeve down, shaking the cuff over his hand. There were paint stains on his sleeve, a crust of colour on the stiff edge of the cuff. He bunched the fabric in his fist and, reaching up, wiped my cheek carefully. I blinked at him, surprised. He didn’t say a word but carried on and when he was done, he rolled his sleeve up again, thumbing the red chalky smudge into the cloth before he folded it. I eyed his sleeve and wondered how easily I might get the paint and the chalk dust out of the fabric when it came to laundering it.
Benny took out a Marlboro and lit it. I stared at him. The whole of Esperanza might be about, any number of people who knew his mother, but he relaxed back against the stage, smoking. I pictured the man in the cigarette ad, the blond woman’s eyes on him. Aware of my gaze, Benny turned to me, puzzled, and opening the packet again, slid a cigarette towards me with his thumb. I looked at it, thought about Rico on the bench outside the Bukaykays’ store, a cigarette sloping in his fist, waiting for the day Suelita might board his train. I shook my head.
I glanced about the market hall. In every corner, someone was working away. From the direction of the jetty, I saw Missy Bukaykay coming towards us. I sank down to the floor of the market hall, the cement cool against my legs, as if the change in level might render me invisible.
‘Oh boy,’ said Missy. Even though I was expecting it, her voice made me jump. From behind her mother, Suelita looked down at me, both hands pressed to her mouth.
I got to my feet as lightly as I could. Missy snorted. I glanced at Suelita. ‘Joe,’ she murmured.
‘Come back to our place. Bee can find you something for those bruises,’ Missy said.
‘I’m ok.’
‘Ok? Stones are softer than your head. Just like your father. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who did it? And why?’ She studied Benny as she said this. I looked at Suelita. ‘Why are you looking at her when I’m talking to you? You know something about this?’ Missy narrowed her eyes at her daughter.
I knew from the set of her mouth that Missy would have persisted then had the sound of Cora’s voice not cut through the surrounding noise as she swept back towards us, a line of jetty boys trailing in her wake. Cora broke into our circle and rearranged us, making me stand aside as the boys tightened the bolts and looped the guide ropes over the rafters. The promise of the mural distracted Missy and she stood quietly beside me as the boys hoisted it up and secured it in place.
We stepped back to take a look. Cora’s hand could be seen readily enough in the composition, the smaller images of Greenhills and its people around a central image of a man, woman and child: the poor. The woman seemed familiar. I stepped forward to inspect her more closely. It was the girl under the yellow bell tree. I shot a look at Benny but he avoided my eye. I turned back to the mural. On another panel, a man in a suit stood beside a Mercedes. Next to him a child begged while he looked the other way. There was no mistaking the figure; Cora had painted Eddie, though she’d made him look fatter than he really was.
Suelita stepped forward now too, and I felt the warm skin of her arm brush mine as she turned to Benny. ‘I hear you painted half of it,’ she said. He moved to stand beside her and they fell easily into conversation, their voices soft as though for privacy while they discussed brushstrokes, chiaroscuro. His long fingers played in the air as he pointed out one figure or another. Suelita, watching his hands, smiled to herself. I cleared my throat heavily. They paused and she turned to me, frowning as she took in my injuries afresh, laying, though only briefly, a hand on my arm as she turned back to Benny. As they started talking again, her hand fell away. ‘Young love,’ Cora whispered, and she winked at me.
‘You’re really good,’ I heard Suelita murmur. Benny reddened and dug his hands into his pockets.
Missy beamed at Cora, spoke loudly. ‘Suelita writes poems,’ she said, and I was astonished because I hadn’t known this. ‘She’s a good cook too. Smart. Strong.’ I felt hot suddenly. Missy laughed like she was joking but her shrewd eyes appraised the back of Benny’s head.
I stepped away from the group. My eyes scoured the mural, hoping to find fault with his work, and of course found none. Desperately, I appraised the whole composition until at last I decided, with a cold satisfaction, how like Cora it was, how obvious. And, for several moments, I didn’t care if Esperanza was to be lost or not.