Jazzie 2

Bad Sick

John Carter watches the game from the corner of the school. Nathan and three other boys are at a tire they are using for a wicket. John knows them all. Younger boys field endlessly, hoping the older ones will leave, or for the years to pass raising them to upperclassmen.

Nathan was best friends once, so it took a term for him to turn his back on John, but he did. Now Nathan is first of those who make John the untouchable. Without friends at Gray's Farm School, John became an easy mark for pranks and cruel words.

John has watched a discussion, but now the four boys have sorted themselves out and the one named Marcel struts down the pitch bobbling a ball. It is Nathan’s bat. Nathan stands alert before the tire. Marcel exaggerates his preparations for the bowl. After a moment, Nathan abandons his readiness and starts to jeer. Their mates chime in, arms about each other's shoulders, and John can imagine the outfielders memorizing insults. Marcel shrugs it off good naturedly and bowls a hard one towards the center of the upright tire.

The ball connects with Nathan’s bat and everybody watches it soar up and over the school yard fence. The ball barely misses the open water, takes a pothole bounce, then skips up the road away from John.

The fielders started with a burst for a step or two, until the futility registers. It is left to the closest boy to follow the ball to the fence. Back in the zone, Nathan stands gloating at his strike. The other boys begin yelling. The ball needs to be retrieved. “What are you waiting for? Go after it!” The outfielder at the fence looks back, then turns to the chain link fence. He hesitates when John moves up.

“Hey, John.”

“Hey, Henry,” John nods. He starts down the road. Henry is two years behind John. He might be Chloe’s classmate, if his sister was still in school. “what you ah say?”

“Me yah,” Henry responds. He starts to climb the school fence.

“I’ll get the ball.”

“Thanks”

“Henry, you get the ball,” someone orders.

“Yes, don’t be lazy,” another complains. “Don’t let that bad sick boy touch our ball.” HIV/AIDS is a private thing; not polite to talk about, or so they say. “We don’t want his bad sickness. Run away, John.” The whole street can hear this taunt.

John is walking slowly toward the wall. He stops at these familiar taunts. Fists bunched, he wants to turn and fight, but the boys will not fight him now. They just talk. John’s teachers just shook their heads and blamed his parents.

“He isn’t bad sick,” Henry tries.

“Who knows what his daddy does? His little sister caught it, what do you know? All mout nu set fi tell di same lie.”

John can’t fight them. He wants to argue back, but that was tried long ago. He can get back at them in other ways. John carefully walks over to the ball, listening to their chatter. “Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it! It will be useless now. HIV ball.”

John takes a measured look at his tormentors. Someone says something privately to Nathan and he laughs. I should spit on the ball, John tells himself, bitterly. He won’t. It seems pointless. He stoops and lifts the ball. He could keep it, something for his sisters. He could turn and throw the ball far away. Make his former classmates search for it.

John takes the ball to Henry, waiting at the fence. “Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!” The chorus screams, but they are giggling, because this all is just their game. There is no real fear of John, and they need the ball.

“Thanks. John,” Henry has a serious face. “You still going to that school downtown?” Henry points at John’s blue school shirt.

“Different place now.” John will not say where, because his troubles seem to follow him. The ball gets tossed to Henry.

“Thanks”

There is a pause with things unsaid. The other boys are urging Henry to throw the ball in. When Henry turns back to the field, Nathan starts to run between the wickets, and John is forgotten.

Cool Runnings

Chloe is on the front step with two empty plastic pails. John has been away since the day he met the young American across the street from Cobbe’s Corner School. The men in the family seem to feel free to do that, leaving the women to work. Chloe simply holds one pail out towards her brother. There is no water again. John expects the power has been paid for now. Phones might be charged elsewhere, and they could cook out back, but the T.V. is essential.

“Why don’t you go to school?” John scolds Chloe. He is thinking of Henry as they walk together to the tap.

“Mum struggles.” Chloe answers. “You see how little money she is making at the end of the week, and she nuh even get to complete what she has to do. So I go with it and help her. I got no time for school.” She explains this matter-of-fact.” You're off with your thing, like dad.” Certificates matter, but Thomas Carter has his education and it does not seem to make things better. Chloe expects no better from her brother. School is John’s way to stay away.

Two-year-old Steven trails Chloe down the street. “Go home now.” He is a mongrel tied to her much of the day. “Go watch with Eve.” Steven just smiles.

John sets his pail down and hefts his little brother onto his shoulders. Chubby fingers clutch at John’s face and hair, while dusty Crocs beat contentment on his chest. The neighbors say Steven looks like John, but John always thought he resembled his father, Thomas. John does not know Steven’s father.

As they pass a street stall, Steven wriggles on John’s shoulders, “Juice!”

“No juice,” Chloe replies, preempting John.

“Sure,” John contradicts. He veers off with Steven to the woman’s stall.

“Buy tin food, better,” Chloe calls cross.

John returns to her with a large can of Mackerel in Tomato sauce, onion and peppers. There is an apple juice to placate her. “Bye, bye,” Steven waves to the street seller, "Fu-me, all!"

Chloe takes the time to sluice city water over Steven’s naked body. She scrubs his grime with the palm of her hand. John watches, arms folded, as his little brother fusses. He glances around. “Neighborhood talking up our business.”

“Nevermind their sayings.”

Chloe will pull the track suit back on the dripping boy, but John pulls his blue school shirt off and pats Steven down. Afterward, he wrings his shirt out under the tap. A close inspection gets it clean enough.

“Dad will get work and then the water’s on,” Chloe starts.

“Chicken and WIFI,” John agrees.

“Pocket cheddar,” Chloe eyes John suspiciously. She is not so young that she can’t guess where her older brother goes these days. “Ah good, Wah mek yuh ah act so with those Russian men?”

“Ah fu me own. That money just came my way,” John answers evasively. Their mother wants better for John. The young American, Jeremy Gates, said the card in his pocket, so easy with his money. “Down south shore, Falmouth, lots of work.”

“He’ll do construction, then -- “

“ -- cool runnings,” John finishes. He hefts the damp boy back on his shoulders and they start back to the Carter house. The hopeful lie lingers between them. Thomas Carter is not looking for work. Susan Carter asks him every day. “I do what I can, God will do the rest,” the inevitable reply. John Carter does not think so. Still, if his father would try in Falmouth or English Harbour Town? Better than lying at home all day and sexing with strange women at night, John thinks glumly.

“Cool runnings,” Chloe echoes doubtfully.

Steven shifts his chubby legs on John’s bare shoulders, part of the burden both the eldest Carter children picked up since their father came home with the bad sickness. Blames outsiders, like Jeremy Gates, John thinks. It is the HIV, or maybe it is Thomas Carter. Their mother works long days while their father drifts.

“I’ll buy a powerboat and fish. I’ll take tourists all about. I’ll buy you sausage and jalapeno, eat fried chicken sandwiches till I’m fat like Pudgee Funk. John puffs his belly out, pats its softness. Maybe better to be big and ugly, like Pudgee Funk. John’s father’s looks never helped him to amount to much.

“Moon run faas but day ketch im,” Chloe warns.

“Leh me lone,” John replies. “Yu’ never mind,” he reassures her, more confidently than he feels.

We’ve Got Things to Settle Here

Incessant knocking on the window of Papa Jack’s old coup brings John back from his twilight dreams. They were something subtly shaped by the stirrings of his chrysalis body. He is in his stretch years now. The car’s rear bench is less comfortable than a year ago. John scrunches up his face and finally opens his just-closed eyes. Trini knocks again, impatiently. It is barely dark.

“Ahawah de joke yah tall? What do you want, Trini?”

“Get yourself up.”

John knows why Trini has come around tonight. He is the neighborhood watch, and word goes around that John Carter is back from school. Pudgee Funk wants to see him. John scratches his bed-mess hair back into the easy halo as he sits up. The Civic’s front buckets were yanked out years ago. His foot kicks at the mess about the floor. John pauses to look at Trini, then pulls his Adidas on. The Trefoil hoodie is man-sized. John flips the hood over his hair as steps free.

“When are you going to put the wheels on this ride?”

“Papa Jack sold off the parts; doesn’t work.” The gutted coup is John’s refuge. Sometimes he sits with Chloe. The rest are too small. John stole the keys when he was eight. He locks the door. Good times are wrestling and giggling with his father. When Susan Carter is not on him with her sharp tongue, Thomas is a happy man. They wrestle, both giggling as John’s strength grows. Thomas’ fingers pat John down. He is looking for money so he can step out at night and visit his women. John hides his money and hides the Civic’s keys.

Pudgee Funk lives with his mother. Their bungalow crowds the street, hemmed in by a kick-down wall of rusty corrugation. It melts into the black mold rainbow of Gray's Farm poorer streets. There is no front porch, just steps up from the cracking road. Pudgee Funk’s mother rests, fanning herself beside a neighbor.

Some nicknames are ironic. A quiet boy like Trini might be Angry Bird. Pudgee figures he’s the man, nothing but sardonic. Nelson Bird has always been swaaty, like John’s ex-friend Nathan (at the bat). Pudgee tells it like it is, a true, the man will say. John Carter is too small, too smart to answer that. More D.J. Vlad than Pudgee Funk, John always thinks. Nelson Bird was a dangerous boy to tease. He is not a safe harbor now, but John has problems that need allies.

It is Pudgee Funk’s neighborhood, so the man claims. Pudgee Funk’s gang, but mostly you see boys like Trini. Pudgee gathers them in. Like the little boys in the outfield, maybe John Carter earns his way into bat someday.

“Is there anything else you want?” Trini asks. Trini’s eyes avoid the young banger sitting across the room.

“Get yourself a cold one, stay around.” Trini slips away, eyes flicking once to Pudgee Funk’s companion. “Tell those bitches to bring me a drink.”

John has picked a chair where he can slouch. Pudgee Funk ignores his brass. “What up, bluh?” he asks his companion. The banger’s eyes follow Trini out of the living room. They gloss over John and settle back on Pudgee Funk.

“Why are you letting that batty boy hang with you? Makes my skin crawl, not healthy for our reputation.”

“Dutty water cool hot iron,” Pudgee Funk reminds his friend. “Trini will have his uses, some day.”

“Makes me sick to have him looking at me, thinking his dutty thoughts.” The young man’s nose wrinkles and his slouch deepens.

John sinks deeper into his big hoodie. A hand gravitates to his crotch, mimicking the young man’s spread-knee posture. John is listening, statue still. Growing up is way better than being a kid. Thomas Carter calls John No-see-um. “Stop your pesky buzzing and settle,” he used to say. John practices that now. There is a way to be and John needs to figure it out. He trades the two men’s manners like shirts at the Hospice Thrift Shop.

John does not know Trini beyond the fact his name is Jayden. Batty boy is just an insult friends toss at each other. There is a peel of laughter from Pudgee’s girls on the back step, followed by Trini’s deepening voice. The girls around Pudgee Funk like Trini. John tries to understand the problem with him. He tries not to study the men too much.

The girls sway in all brash and fresh. They have the confidence of knowing Pudgee Funk likes them. They sit on either side of the big man, and their schoolgirl shows in the awkwardness of their pose. Pudgee Funk looks from one to the other. "The man says, bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks. Lick on these nuts and suck the dick." Pudgee Funk clutches his crotch.

“Snoop Dog,” the young man slaps his thigh, “Yeah, that’s good. Should have been with me like I told you.”

“I don’t need to dance bad at some chirren fete.” Pudgee Funk scoffs. He takes a gulp of beer and a foot comes up to push some trash off the coffee table. Pudgee has an automatic that lays like a gavel ready to bring the house to order. John has watched Pudgee masturbate it as he talks of doing justice to some offending punk. “Tap lies, Tayo. We’ve got things to settle here,” he adds with a first nod toward John Carter.

“A true!” the young man protests. “That bitch was wet for me on that beach. Coppertone tanned like she was yellow. I knew she liked chocolate men the way she danced for me.”

“Here he goes,” Pudgee Funk rolling his eyes at the girls.

“Baby girl, I say. Baby girl pull your pants up, I only want your face.” Tayo smiles and looks up at the ceiling. “My dick hard as a motherfucker. She pulled the life right out of me.” Tayo’s hips recall the daggering. John’s eyes widen in the shadows of his sweatshirt hood. Tayo is talking real life, not the schoolyard bullshit.

“So where is this fine booty?” Pudgee asks skeptically.

The young man waves the question off. Tayo brings the beer to his lips and pauses, searching for an acceptable answer. “We could never be a couple. Fuck love. All I got for hoes is hard dick and bubblegum.”

“That’s Big L,” Pudgee Funk tells the girls. “Now, run away,” he adds. “You sticking around, Tayo?” The two girls pause in the doorway to hear the young man’s answer.

“No, I got places to be,” Tayo waves the offer off. Talking about the American boy on the beach agitates him. The pale flash of firm flesh as the youth pulled his pants back up. Tayo puts the beer can to his lips. His fingertips press softly against his cock. Tayo could take Trini into the back yard and fuck his teenage ass. Can’t do that, can’t risk word getting around. Tayo looks at young John Carter, that boy has his eyes on you too.

Pudgee Funk turns to John as if he has not been sitting there soaking everything in. “Jazzie, Jazzie, Jazzie, me a listening to your words.”

John stays slouched, but he moves his hand to make himself feel tough. His pants are bunched up around his crotch and he is proud his bulge has grown. “I’ve seen some things,” John allows in a careful voice. “The marinas --”

“-- not interested in marinas,” Tayo cuts in. He looks at Pudgee Funk for confirmation. “We’re not pirates and everyone’s about.”

“There are lights at night; pop on when you move about,” John agrees. “The houses have them too. Not all, but the nice ones.”

Pudgee Funk smiles his satisfaction. He points at John. “Told you, Tayo. Jazzie is a clever boy. He uses his head. What we could find on those posh boats, but nevermind. The toffs spend their money somewhere.” He gestures for John to continue.

“There’s shops and stalls.” John mentions Seagull Inflatables and Ultra Yacht Refit. Then there are houses he has cased. Some seem empty. John does his best to describe locations and layouts. “There is a bungalow in English Harbour Town, just up the hill from Falmouth Harbour.” John mentions the street name and both men shrug. They have never been there. The two men fire questions at him and he tangles up the explanation.

It is hard to keep his voice from piping, hard to keep his body still. “Just go and look for yourself,” he challenges. He tries to say it cool like Pudgee Funk, keep his tense body bad like Tayo, but his frustration is obvious.

“Use your mind; we can’t be poking around for no reason.” Pudgee Funk laughs. “Tayo here is too pretty to be strutting his stuff around the women. He’s bound to be remembered.”

John wipes his nose and slouches back some more. Tayo has the looks John hopes he will have. Be fit like Tayo and the young American in Cobbe’s Corner, John hopes. Then the snotty girl on Dockyard Drive will take him seriously. Then again, John’s father gets the ladies, but that never brought him money or respect. John wonders if it is better to be big like Nathan and Pudgee Funk. Pudgee fills a room better than the automatic on the table.

“Can’t draw you a picture,” the exasperation again, when what he wants is chill.

“No stumbling about, blind,” Tayo warns Pudgee Funk. He turns back to John, “Just poke about a little. Snatch a little. Don’t be chupit and step on the bus with a big screen TV.”

John frowns. “I’m no bandit. Pudgee says go look. I go look. Zeen?”

“Star,” Pudgee Funk’s voice is silk. “Memba mi tell you, we all bandits here. A little property tax is all. That’s how we take care of each other; bredas, get it? Otherwise, Jazzie, you just a waste man.” He does not wait for John’s response. With a grunt, the big man is off the couch. “Mum, where did you put that phone?”

While Pudgee Funk is out, Tayo looks John up and down. “Pudgee run’s the road, Jazzie. There any tuff bitches down south?”

“Plenty; maybe I’ve seen that woman of yours sunning herself on one of those big boats.”

“Nah, that bitch suns herself somewhere else.”

“A girl like that won’t see me, anyway,” John shrugs.

“You’re not scabby. I know you can talk like a dryland tourist when you want to. You’ll stick that little pup in something fine, a true.”

“Maybe,” John tries to match Tayo’s tone.

“Be careful, Jazzie; you cute one more time. You’re like your Dad that way. Gonna get bad sickness from some bitch.”

“I won’t,” John is talking theoretically about it all. Boys brag, make promises; like promising Chloe he will have a powerboat someday. Truth is, he is just happy for a bulge and grateful for the inch or two that puts him closer to looking his father in the eye.

Budgie Funk flings an Iphone 4 with its charger coiled tight around its cracked face. “There you go, Jazzie.” He has proved that he is the cleverest man in the room.

“What am I supposed to do with this conk? Talk about scabby,” John looks at Tayo, “You wipe your ass with this?” Tayo’s lips flick a smile, John’s way.

“Wah mek you ah go on so? Don’t disrespect me, no-see-um.” Yes, Pudgee Funk knows the family nickname. “It works; take pictures. You be Spike Lee for us.”

“You’re giving me a phone?” John hides his delight. “I’ll give you a shout when I find something.”

“I’m giving you a phone,” Budgie Funk responds scornfully. “I’m your sugar daddy? I didn’t give it to you so you can phone fu-yu Mum when you’ve pissed your pants.”

“It doesn’t work?”

“Data is money, child. It will take a picture. Just find WIFI.”

“Screen’s cracked,” John complains, not caring. Everybody’s screen cracks. With this, he can perch on a table, look like he is connected.

“I like you, Jazzie. You do your part and you be one of us, eh Tayo?”

“You keep poking around, take pictures, bring them back,” Tayo encourages. “You stay out there?”

“Sometimes,” John wants to start playing with the phone. He forces himself to shove the bundle into his hoodie pocket. Leans back further, trying to hide his triumph. The government has sent John all the way across the island. He rides the bus past closer schools. Fact is, they want to push him out. Nothing easy for John these days. The road between St. John’s and Cobbs Cross is long. Better to sleep under the stars or in some corner. John does not share that with the men. “Old phone, late nights, need money fu-me.”

“Jazzie, you’re doing man’s work for us. Trust us.”

“Thank you no buy half bit bead,” John replies. He is not one of them, not yet, maybe never if his Mum has her way. Pudgee Funk wants him to scout the harbors, John thinks the man has to make it worth his while. John hangs tough with his challenge. They all know the big man could slap him hard and send him on his way.

“Tayo, Jazzie is a hard man.” Pudgee Funk reaches in his pocket for a roll and peels off several bills.

Winches once a year

“Eh you scabby truant, what are you doing nosing fu-you about the place?” John Carter turns toward the woman’s voice. “Yes, you with the big eyes looking about the place. School bell’s rung for you long ago.”

She is a heavy woman standing in the doorway. The sign above her head reads Winston Jet Ski. The line of black scooters drew John to the boathouse. Antigua Slipway sprawls between English Harbour and a lush promontory jutting out towards Nelson’s Dockyard. John came down the road from Fourteen Gates Apartments to search for his young American.

“Me’s eye on you, boy, snooping about the boats.”

“Me just looking.”

“This is a serious place of business, not a playground.”

“Me looking for someone,” John explains. He spins slowly in a circle. The shipyard is quite a distraction. Boats of all sizes line the road right back to the gate. Some polished fresh, and others crusted, sweating grime from procrastination. Beyond the dry docked craft, just off the concrete quay, more boats shift in the still waters. An old two-master is slowly inching up the broad slipway. It is a thing to watch. John points the way he came. “Someone up there said me could find he here. Fu-he boat is here.”

“Who you looking for, then? Most of dem boats are empty now.”

John steps closer to the woman. He pulls the crumpled card from his pocket. “Is one of these boats called Gravity?”

“You going on a charter with that boy? Taking ah-you all about the island now?”

“A charter? What? No.”

“Jeremy is not here.” The woman waves about the crowded boatyard. She turns back to the rental shop to pass a word, and then starts toward John.

“Me saw the bike fu-he up there in the parking lot. His place, him not there. The woman washing sheets said he be down here fu-he boat.”

This is a curiosity and Cynthia wants to ask the boy about his business with the youth who owns Fourteen Gates. “His boat is in the water, over there.” She is pointing past the scrum of boats.

“It looks like this?” John shows her the business card.

“Hmm,” Cynthia claps a hand on John’s shoulder and guides him to the edge of the quay near the ketch inching up onto the land. “Look there.”

From Antigua Slipway’s gate, the small cove continues around to a restaurant perched on the steep slope. Beyond that and to the left is Clarence House, which John mistook for the apartments the first time he saw it. From here to there, John sees a wall of green. Several boats are moored against the roots drinking the tide. Cynthia points again, “That old sloop there? That’s Gravity.”

Jeremy never shakes the apprehension, the sense of being dangerously exposed when he is left on his own. His grandfather, a person of profound faith, tells Jeremy that fear is looking back along your path. The future is a vast ocean passage, but there is no other way for those who live. Fear dissipates as you become one with your future, his grandfather says.

The apprehension is always worse when he is on his own. It is the twists and turns of dry land, being beached too young, too inexperienced. Jeremy needs boundaries. The makeshift studio unit across the road at Fourteen Gates, the one he christened Da Nang, is comfortable. Still, Jeremy abandons the weekend nest as soon as Theo Clarke returns to school and his aunt Ronica’s home in Swetts. On Gravity, Jeremy is safe from looking back too obsessively.

The morning is too hot for coffee, yet here it is in the scuffed Tim Horton’s mug. The morning French Press is a necessary ritual. So is working through the maintenance list for his pert French sloop. Jeremy takes the mug and his tool bag to the cockpit. The world is at arm’s length, but swirling all around him. The red and black ketch that arrived on Friday is sliding up the marina’s slipway. It is an older boat, and by the looks of things, it is being pulled for a good scrape and painting. They come and go like this in Jeremy’s aquatic R.V. Park.

Jeremy eyes his port mainsail winch. Another sip of black coffee and then he is laying out his tools with surgical precision. Four winches to look over before his restaurant shift. Perhaps some time to study later. He spins the chrome cap off and sets the first piece of the puzzle on the ready plastic sheet. Next comes the trailer. Jeremy wiggles it to coax it off the spindle.

“Hello”

John Carter has retraced his steps along the access road. It has been easy finding paths through the mangrove trees. He took a few wrong turns until he found his goal. Unlike other encounters, the young American’s boat is moored to a small floating dock.

Jeremy glances at the alto voice. A boy is standing on the pallet-dock Gustavus and Jeremy illicitly floated off the public shore. Harbour authorities wink at it because Jeremy is not a nomad liveaboard. He is a man of substance, so it seems. English Harbour suites Jeremy’s pocketbook for the moment, and the Swede keeps an eye on vacant Gravity. Presently, Gustavus’ Catalina 30 is out of the water. Jeremy gets a taste of John’s shy smile, then he recalls the boy from the picnic bench.

“You gave me your card. The picture looks just like your boat.” John's gesture to the sloop is economical. “The scooter woman said you were here.”

Jeremy places the trailer carefully on the plastic before turning back to John. He remembers the boy’s inquisitiveness. Even now, John is a boy in motion; turning his body-attention from harbor noise to every incidental motion. Gravity holds the boy’s interest more than Jeremy. John’s round face scrunches up along worry lines and a hand darts over to scratch a scab. “I’m John, remember?”

“Sure,” Jeremy replies. The Antiguan boy is an echo of a past friendship. Schoolboy blues and butternut, a school day; Jeremy does not challenge the boy. With another welcoming smile, Jeremy resumes dismantling the mainsail winch.

John steps closer, “Is it broken?”

“No, it needs to be cleaned and oiled.” Focussed on the drum, Jeremy’s voice is soft and thoughtful. His hands pause, remembering his first winch lesson in the Sea of Cortez. “You have to be careful, because sometimes,” there is a pause as he adjusts his grip, “sometimes the washer and bearings come … up … with it.” There is no rush in this. Jeremy holds the winch drum like some Venetian vase, then sets it aside.

John comes closer still, and then he is boarding Gravity uninvited. “Watch your feet.” The boy quickly lifts his feet away from the plastic on the cockpit locker. He sits on the comb near the tiller.

“These are the bearings,” Jeremy continues. A pair of rings are lifted off. Jeremy palms the steel cylinders as if they were Tibetan prayer wheels. “Spindle,” this is laid carefully in its proper place.

John has never watched someone work with this assurance. He has seen lazy, and he has watched impatience. “How are you going to put it all together again?” The parts are not laid out in sequence. The young American has some other system.

“Well, it is a puzzle. Each part is different and it has its proper place. You learn to do it.” Jeremy pauses to smile at his visitor. “Gravity is a machine. You learn the parts and how they fit together.”

“It would take me forever to learn all this,” John confesses. He is leaning forward, not slouching unimpressed-be-wary, as he would with Pudgee Funk. Some brag they can do anything, and what they can’t is stupid. John tries to think that way — think like Pudgee Funk — but he forgets sometimes.

“I had good teachers,” Jeremy replies. He stepped on his first deck a mere fourteen months ago, and he still thinks like a liveaboard after eight months in Antigua.

John scrambles up, leaving his school bag on Gravity’s coachroof. The iPhone Pudgee Funk gave him is in one hand. He treads the canted deck, fingering the mast stays, nylon halyards, and sheets threaded along the coachroof. Gravity’s white paint and bright works gleam in their complexity. Ladder steps rise up the mast to the spreader. John climbs to the business at the top of the mast in his imagination.

At the bow pulpit, John leans over the railing to examine the heavy anchor suspended below the bow. The north end of English Harbour is packed with boats, most larger than the young American’s. It is hard for the traffic to give a wide berth, but to the city boy’s eyes, accustomed to St. John’s tight streets, it feels expansive. Nobody pays attention to each other. It seems so different from Gray's Farm. Pudgee is wrong, John decides, it would be easy to slip on a boat. 

The iPhone comes up so he can take a picture of one lonely boat near the restaurant. The battery is dead. John frowns, remembering he charged it just that morning before he took the bus. He turns away and walks the length of the boat along the other side. “Finished casing out the joint?” Jeremy quips with a friendly smile.

John does not understand the phrase. The young American is back to working on his winch. Coming up behind him, John leans over Jeremy’s shoulder. “It’s very mechanical,” he observes.

“The cogs,” Jeremy resumes his lesson with the boy’s weight pressing down. He eases the first cog out. “Be careful with the bearings and the washers inside it.” Jeremy’s mentor’s words are still fresh in his mind. He is laying everything out the way he has been taught. One set of cogs to the right of the winch drum, the other on the left in necessary regimentation.

“Look, see here,” Jeremy commands in his quiet way. “The pawl here?” He fingers the little piece away from the teeth and lets it snap back. “They can get stiff, so we need to lubricate them.” Jeremy lets John feel the action of the pawl. “Listen, can you hear the start of a rattle? This fits into here. Do you hear that? It’s really quite tingy. That’s because there is no grease, so in here, there is a little spring that holds it, and pushes out. This one is working okay, but sometimes they stick.”

The young American’s voice is so tranquil. He seems at peace working with these bits and pieces. John does not think he is mechanical, but he admires Jeremy’s understated cleverness. Learning a trade seems pointless, because it never helped Thomas Carter. His mother pushes him to get his certificates, even if that means her boy bussing across the island. Maybe his father is like this when he uses his construction knowledge.

Jeremy continues his monologue with traces of his natural humor in the slow flow of words. His cadence matches his fingers’ careful movements. “So, what you have to do is be ultra careful … because sometimes … they ping out and go down some hole! I have replacement springs. Anton said you have to replace them every two years. I don’t know when Mary got to that. Must be in her log book, but,” he pauses to think about what he is doing. “But she took that with her. Pinch the spring and slide it back in, and it’s there.” Jeremy smiles his accomplishment at John, who has come around to watch closer.. John smiles back as if they have set the spring together. “There, it’s nice and free, clicking back nicely. Do you want to help me?”

Jeremy sets John to work cleaning winch parts in a bucket of spirits. “Get all the dirt and grime.” John scrubs with a toothbrush. John takes his school shirt off before starting on the messy business. Jeremy sips his coffee, glad for the boy’s company. They sit in silence for a while, John being careful to avoid a mess on Gravity’s clean deck, Jeremy opening himself to the ocean future as the variable Caribbean clouds move by.

“My phone bruck up,” John remarks.

“What?”

John forgot he is talking Antiguan Creol to an outsider. “My phone won’t keep its charge.” He wipes his smelly hands on a rag, then reaches in his pocket for Pudgee Funk’s old iPhone. He hands it to Jeremy.

“You have the charger?”

“It’s in my bag.”

Jeremy checks the phone jack configuration. “I have an one for this.” Satisfied that John is being careful, Jeremy drops down to Gravity’s salon with the old phone. It is time to reward John for his help, anyways.

“Who are Anton and Mary? Dem your Mum and Dad?” John wipes a smear of peanut butter from the corner of his mouth. He is watching Jeremy spread a thin layer of grease over each part as he reassembles the winch.

Jeremy spins the piece he is working on. “Can you hear that? That’s a nicer sound. No, they are not my parents. Anton taught me how to sail. This boat? Mary is my partner. She went home to Canada for now.”

The young American does not seem to mind when John takes another slice of bread and dollops a heavy blade of peanut butter on it. “So Mary is your woman.”

“Not hardly,” Jeremy smiles at the thought.

“You said she was your partner.”

Jeremy laughs and leans forward to give John’s shoulder a push. “Not that kind of partner. Gravity was her boat. I’m buying it from her. So, next the drum goes back on.” Jeremy gives the drum a twist. “That spins around fine. Line the feeder arm up with the stripper ring and the teeth. Screw on the top cap. That’s the service done.” Jeremy sits back and smiles.

John chews a bit and frowns. There are the tourists gawking in old St. John’s, and of course he watches ABS TV. Rich outsiders keep to their condos on the coast. John peeked in the window of the young American’s home. The room was better, no better than his grandfather’s house in Gray's Farm. No better, just clean and organized. There was a colorful dress hanging on the bed frame. There was a big TV. John recalls Tayo’s warning about that. Pudgee Funk would not be interested in anything else he saw. The young man fascinates John.

“Go turn that other winch,” Jeremy prompts. John needs both hands to spin it. Jeremy spins the serviced one. “Hear the difference? That one you tried does the job. I could live with it for now. It will do the work, but it won’t last as long. They look the same, but if you feel it, listen to it, you know it could be better.” He looks about the boat as if it is speaking to him as he rides its movement against the dock. “Do you want to help me service that one next?”

Jeremy was lonely without Theo, and the Antiguan boy recalls another from not so long ago. “Start by twisting off the cap. Yeah, like that. Now where are you going to put it?” His voice is soft and patient.

Property Taxes

John pulls the iPhone from his pocket and checks the charge. The little battery is close to empty and playing with it is pointless here on the lane slithering up Monk’s Hill. The cello tape he used to cover the shattered Gorilla Glass has air bubbles. John tries to smooth it with his fingernail to no effect.

The bugs are out. John wishes himself safely back in Papa Jack’s Civic. Instead, he is keeping Tayo company. He turns the iPhone off to save the battery, then he starts to walk. Across the lane there is a break in the trees. Falmouth Harbour twinkles, and illuminated villas dust the surrounding mountains. John appreciates the spectrum band of lights along the crowded shore. He turns back to check the slope rising to the villa where Trini and Dray are forcing their way in.

John starts back to Tayo’s car, eyes studying his ungainly feet. Left heel to scuffed right toe, pressure on a sole so thin he can feel the gravel. A focussed planting of his foot as his right heel lifts. He is conscious of his balance as the back foot comes around and moves him forward another pace. This way, John walks the tight road back to the car. Without a word, testing his coordination, John spins on a heel and proceeds back to the spot where sailboats glimmer on the water.

John has retreated into his thoughts. One moment at school, the next his family gathered for the night in Gray's Farm. Thoughts jump to the young American, mineral spirits, grease, and peanut butter spiced with chilli peppers. The two boys up the slope are simply an annoyance.

“Just stop that foolishness now.” At Tayo’s cutting comment, John stops. “You look like a ghost in that white hoodie. Why did you wear such a thing?”

In fact, the Adidas sweatshirt is dingy grey, and John has nothing else. Besides, the hood keeps bugs at bay. To emphasize the point, John slowly pulls the drawstrings. The iris circle of fabric shutters in his face. John considers resuming his tightrope walk across the lane, but the man has embarrassed him.

Tayo’s voice often takes on an impatient adult edge. It is Tayo’s voice for Trini. It is the quarrelsome, tingy tone of someone not quite in control. John comes to stand beside Tayo.

“I didn’t plan to be standing here in the night with you three criminals.”

“Then you should not have lost the phone Pudgee gave you. Your likkle mind be about the size of your beanbag, Jazzie. Pudgee Funk hands over a sell off iPhone, you drop it somewhere.

“Tap lie, that. That broken-faced phone’s batteries die faster than your chances with a fine woman.” Tayo backhands at the boy. John ducks under the half hearted threat and moonwalks back a few paces. “A true brudder. Anyway, I know exactly where that tired old thing is.”

“Dey’s taking too long. In and out, that’s what Pudgee said.” Tayo looks up the hill. He lifts his shirt to show the pistol in his waistband.

“There’s nobody going to bother them.”

“So say you.”

“I watched the garbage fu-dem; empty cans,” John shrugs at the obviousness of the conclusion.

“You should have gone with dem, do your business.”

“My business is being eyes and ears,” John replies. “I’m no Ninja bandit.” John follows this with a suggestive wave of his hands and a kick towards Tayo.

“Stop embarrassing yourself,” Tayo sneers, but he catches the raised foot and lets Jazzie land a few Ninja punches on his shoulder. “Now, what you going to do, fool?” Tayo tugs at Jazzie’s pant leg playfully, and Jazzie has to break away and pull his sweat pants up. “No-see-um is gonna bite your baby batty, if’n me don’t box it first.”

“Not my business,” John repeats. John picked the deserted bungalow. The lawn had not been tended and it sits along a cul-de-sac. John’s mind deflects from this. “Why didn’t you go with them?” He counters.

Jazzie is all cute there, hands in the stretchy pockets groping his balls. Just a chillen, sure; but the pants stretch tight over a firm butt. It is just a thought that the sassy boy might take Tayo in his wide mouth. Jazzie is just on the cusp of interesting to the nineteen year old. Not that the preteen has the Trini-vibe. Jazzie wants respect, not sexual release.

Tayo has no plans to burgle the house himself. Pudgee Funk has this figured out. Just boys inside. If they are caught, no permanent harm to scabby teens. Pair of bafan boys who can’t find their puppies to take a piss. Got to start somewhere, Tayo reminds himself. “So certificate boy, what do you think is keeping them?”

“Don’t know, do I?” John shrugs. “Lost themselves in the dark.”

“In a crosses,” Tayo mutters to himself. His phone comes out as if he plans to message Trini; maybe phone Pudgee Funk.

John wants to look at his phone too. If he was down on Matthew’s Road or Dockyard Drive he could tap guest WIFI somewhere. At the bottom of his other pocket is a fidget spinner. A boy in John’s classroom left it where John could find it. The boy was such a bully. Angry boy blames Marcus, just because they bicker. John laid low from his seat while sides were taken. “Shut him up if Marcus just let him search him,” John whispered to the boy beside him. That boy picked it up, said the challenge louder; bad idea. Class bully takes Marcus’ calculator hostage. Things got noisy after that. Finally, their teacher ended it by banning toys entirely.

John draws the fidget spinner out. The smooth motion is mesmerizing. He is caught up in the spin. The spinner protests when he twists his wrist. It has its gyroscopic path and hates to shift. Runs on bearings like the winch John serviced all by himself. The sound is tingy, and needs grease.

Tayo watches Jazzie with the toy. The blurring arms draw Tayo’s eyes. Jazzie twists and turns it like he is flying a helicopter. Boy’s mind just goes away like a gnat. The frustration with the absent teenagers grows. Things need to stay in motion, but everything slows down. Funny how when the toy starts to slow Tayo wants the boy to snap a flailing arm, make it go fast again. “Useless thing to occupy your mind,” Tayo scorns, waiting for the next effort to keep the bright work spinning.

Jazzie’s face is hidden by the folds of his hood. He gives the gyroscope a fresh flick of a finger, then passes it between his pinched thumb and finger. The glittering motion passes back and forth. Finally, Jazzie tosses it up and tries to snag it as it spins down again. His fingers miscalculate and the spinner drops to the dust. Tayo reaches down, but Jazzie snaps it up. Jazzie slips the fidget spinner back into his pocket. With a hard look at Tayo, he resumes his tightrope back to the harbor lights.

Tayo considers the boy. Trini, because there is something batty boy about him that wants to be used; Jazzie, because his father has the HIV and the boy cannot shrug that stain off. Pudgee Funk uses the weaknesses in all these boys. Tayo watches the boy walk cat-careful, testing his stretching body constantly. Boy’s mind flits off like a gnat! Tayo repeats the thought. The young man does not question why he himself chills with Nelson Bird.

The patter of piss breaks the silence on the lane. Little boys push their pants down past their bums. Jazzie’s sweats ride down but hang on the pert swell of his buttocks. “Not much of a pecker you have there.”

“I’m eleven,” Jazzie protests.

The noise of Trini clumping about with his companion interrupts the teasing. Tayo casts about the dark slope. Security floods light up the neighbors, but there is no motion. He feels relief that this first break-in has concluded. Tayo sets his doubts aside. “There you two are, back from what you be doing to each other back there in the trees.”

“We tried the back door, but we couldn’t pry it open,” Trini starts.

“There was a deadbolt,” his companion giggles, “So we used the grinder like you said.” The boy brandishes the angle grinder as if he is packing heat.

“Long as you don’t tell me you grinding Trini’s ass. You two remember to knock up the front door first?” Tayo asks. The teens glance at each other, then start giggling.

“There’s nobody there,” Trini assures Tayo.

“There’s nothing there,” adds the other. “We looked all over, nothing. No money, no jewels, no drugs.”

“Well, we took some drugs from the bathroom. I don’t know what they are.” Trini holds a bag out to Tayo. It should be full of posh products they can fence.

Tayo rips the bag from Trini’s hand and steps into the younger teen’s space. “We didn’t come all this way for toothpaste,” Tayo snarls. This frustrates him and he will own the failure with Pudgee Funk. Tayo pushes the fragility of Trini back a step. He likes the mongrel-willingness-to-please reflected in the boy’s face. Another step and a stiff finger poke at Trini’s crotch. “Don’t have the stones for this,” Tayo concludes.

“So, Jazzie picked the wrong house; not Trini’s fault,” the other boy excuses. Tayo curbs his hunger and turns his eyes on Dray.

“It is a posh place. Fancy kitchen, the electronics,” John defends his choice.

“Yeah, what Jazzie says,” Trini nods. “So we came back to get you. If you bring the car up, we can take those things.”

“Oh my god,” Tayo grinds out.

“We checked everywhere,” Trini assures him.

Tayo looks down the lane, following its dark path down to Matthew’s Road. All four of them cock their heads, listening for the sound of sirens. The two teens watch Tayo. John walks back to where the harbor lights shine up at him. He knows where the police station sits on the road. Nothing is coming from that direction.

Tayo’s hand flashes out to grip Trini’s neck, liking the feel of the boy’s heat, masking the pleasure behind some necessary truth test. He ends the moment with a pressure that bends Trini’s head down in a cock-sucking submission. Tayo ruffles Trini’s hair, offering contrition. “Ah Trini, let’s go make lemonade.” He pushes Trini’s chest, just to savor the feel of him once again. “Jazzie, time to go, quick, quick.”

“You going up there?” John calls over.

“Yes”

“I’m not going with you.” John laughs at the ridiculousness of the idea. “I won’t be driving back to St. John’s with you in that stolen car, full of criminals and old T.V.s”

“You a soldier or a little boy fingering your puppy by the road?”

“I’m not your soldier. Pudgee Funk says I’m too young.”

“You don’t get cheddar if your baby ass is not with us,” Tayo warns.

“Doesn’t matter,” John replies. “You know, Pudgee is just going to set that stuff up in his room, and there’s gonna be no money anyway.”

John Carter waits until the car has left. Tayo is driving with the lights off, as if this will hide them from prying eyes. John can see the daylights fanning the surrounding bush. He takes the fidget spinner out, setting it in motion as he follows Trini’s trail up to the bungalow.

It is not a long wait until Tayo and his boys finish with the tidy bungalow. At the open back door, John checks the security camera Trini sprayed with paint. The menacing camera’s red light still glows. Inside, the rooms are in disarray. Tayo was not satisfied with the teenage boys report.

It was an obvious mistake, now that John has time to think. If nobody lives here, then nothing good will be left behind. He should focus on rentals; places tourists stay. Cruise ships drop them off in St. John’s harbor, pack them onto buses and send them off about the island. John sees them Instagramming Nelson’s Dockyard, eating in the fine restaurants, leaving their rooms for the day. Tayo’s boys can in-and-out.

Tayo tossed the master bedroom; even checked beneath the mattress. Closets and drawers are mostly empty, everything is on the floor now. Fine sheets are left behind. John cannot see hiding places. He has pictured living in a room like this. Fan spinning above his head, making the posh mosquito net stir as he rests on the clean mattress.

The coffee machine and such have been snatched. John finds a box knife in the drawer with tools Tayo might have sold. It goes into his pocket. There is no hassle food that people will leave when they go away. Cans and dry goods that can wait out a long summer absence. John finds a canvas shopping bag these folk would naturally have about. He takes what he can carry.

Tin of coffee for his mum; inside he finds a roll of bills. Caribbean currency an outsider could not use when they got to wherever they really lived. Just sitting here like a can of black eyed peas. John fingers the roll, wondering how much there is. Time to go. The money is in his pocket, the slot machine paid out. It is a winning streak, keep going. What else have Tayo and Trini missed?

And they left so much behind! John looks at the cutlery and cookware. The Carters could use that. Surely it is easier to sell a copper bottomed pot than sell a big screen TV. They cannot be taken. John’s mother would guess immediately what he had done. Then there are practicalities. John burdened with goods on the bus back to Gray's Farm.

Just one last look, he promises himself. Bathroom toiletries are swept into the top of his bulging bag. Last thing, he climbs a bed and cuts the posh mosquito net free. It cannot come home with him, but somehow he can use it here to ease the nights.

John is Jazzie, No-See-Um, a boy in the night. It is just a shopping bag from Ginny Supermarket for mum. A bus will run almost empty at this time of night; another night away from home.