The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [94]
The Jamaican reached the hole. “Who dat?” he said. The dog jiggled and jumped to get free.
“He’s not dead,” I said, feeling caught and stupid, my one hand moving toward the knife, just in case.
He smiled and put his hands up. “You nuh need kill me too, mon.”
“I don’t?”
“Nah, mon.” The taxi honked again.
The dog came down to lick my face. He sniffed Fred’s crotch, and then nudged me until I scratched under his ears.
“You ’gawan. I take care of Fred, yanno.”
I picked up the bag and shimmied myself sideways, with one eye on Fred’s limp body the whole time.
“’Gawan,” he said, walking past me, lowering himself into the hole.
“But …”
The taxi man yelled something in patois. The Jamaican rummaged around in Fred’s pocket for his overstuffed wallet. He handed me a wad of cash and patted my wrist warmly.
“’Gawan, now. Go.”
The dog walked me to the road. I leaned down and gave him a rough cuddle and stole one more glimpse of Billy’s Bay behind me. The beach was empty, the water was calm, and the Jamaican was pacing the hole, holding my dad’s army shovel and looking down at Fred, singing something to himself under his breath.
As I plonked myself into the taxi’s back seat, I felt a weight like two ton of shot lift off my back. Emer was gone. Three hundred years’ worth of emotion floated into the atmosphere. Three hundred years’ worth of loneliness and hate and fear and anticipation evaporated, and I was left staring at a complete stranger in the rearview mirror. Me.
The Montego Bay airport was crowded. The line for the ticket counter was about twenty-five minutes long, and I waited with my eyes closed, the shock and fatigue finally catching up with me. I must have looked like an idiot, slouching there with my eyes clamped shut. But I just couldn’t face the string of facts laid out before me. I was leaving Jamaica without my treasure. I was about to arrive in the Hollow Ford trailer park with nothing more than a few moldy capes and a handful of whatever was sewn into them. I was as pitiful as the rest of my family. A failure.
I paid a hundred dollars (of Fred’s extra cash) to change my ticket, and then, after passing through security, I walked slowly to the gate area and sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair. I stared out the window at the airport workers moving luggage on the tarmac until I realized that I’d have to bum a ride from the Philadelphia airport with whoever in my house was sober enough to drive. I walked back through the concourse to the airport shop and bought a bottle of water and a phone card, and dialed the pay phone that was next to the flickering departures board.
The trailer park phone rang and rang. After eighteen rings, someone I didn’t know answered sleepily. I asked for Sadie Adams and the guy said something like, “I don’t know any Sadies.” I asked him to go and knock on the trailer for me, and he told me that #34, our trailer, had been burnt out two nights before.
“Was anyone killed?”
“All I know is that it was trippy, man. Flames everywhere.”
As I stood there, trying to retrieve my sister Patricia’s phone number from my memory, I saw a young man watching me from the outdoor smoking area, beyond the security check. He was smiling so warmly, like he knew me, that I looked behind me to see who he was looking at. But I was the only one there. And when I looked back, he was gone.
When I got ahold of Patricia two panicked minutes later, she told me that Mom and Dad were fine and staying with some friends in a nearby trailer. Then she told me that Junior started the fire. I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “That figures.”
When I hung up, I felt like the universe was trying to tell me something. In the same day that I’d broken free from Emer’s three-hundred-year-old grip, I’d been set free from my wretched family,