Iron Balloons (26 page)

For him, to have acted then would have been utter hypocrisy. His life has been shaped by this incapacity to act.

He sees.

He sees the brutish way of this country of his. He knows personally many of the high-ranking politicians and business folk whose cynicism has led them to engage in the crude violence of the society. He knows that the stories of violent death, corruption, terror, and fear are rooted in something quite simple—people taking advantage of centuries of abuse. He says nothing about any of this. He does not complain, he does not accuse; he sees. He cannot imagine a way out of this morass. He has tried to write songs about it, thinking that perhaps were he to turn away from those friends, turn from the system that birthed him, turn to the myths of reggae, he would find a way to fight, to resist. But it does not happen. He is still himself, still consumed by the rituals of his privilege and unable to speak the language of radical action. It is a failure of the imagination, he knows.

How to reconcile the two worlds he thinks are his? Melanie helped him to feel, at least for a moment, that there was a true path for him—a man who could look at his country with new eyes, her eyes—and find a music to speak to that country. Now she has gone. She has gone because he was not there to protect her when she was attacked. She has gone because he could not step away from his anger at her goading him to act, to shake off the inertia of entitlement that he wore, her way of making friends with everyone she saw regardless of their class, their color, their age. She has gone because he told her that she was a true Jezebel—a bloodsucking woman who had tricked him into bringing her to Jamaica. He told her this and never took it back. So she has gone because she was an alien in an alien world and it was hard for her to sleep at night not knowing what he would do. She left because she no longer believed his promise to be her guide, to lead her along the paths to the place where the berries are, the soft place of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that he had described so well to her as he seduced her outside a club in a forgettable southern American town.

She left because he would not take the medication. She did not know who she would meet hovering over her late at night, and he could not tell her anything to reassure her.

Somewhere at the back of his mind he is waiting to hear her slipping the key into the lock, and then to see her peering into the room with that smile on her face. “Hey, baby,” the way she would say it that would make his skin prick, his groin tickle instinctively.

He is listening over the sound of the music. All he hears are the crickets.

6.

The God, tall, light-skinned, and strangely anemic in a baggy navy-blue sweat suit, strolled through the lobby toward them, his locks bobbing behind, his eyes flaming. He had the presence, the kind of confidence that forced people to pay attention to him. The muted sunlight from the wide windows looking out into the cluttered tarmac caught his chains, an array of crudely crafted chunky gold pendants that dangled around his neck.

Behind him hurried Bobo, a short, round man who insisted on wearing clothes that were decidedly too tight, who insisted, despite his copious stomach, on tucking his shirt into his tight black leather trousers. Bobo was out of breath. He wore a pair of dark glasses that wrapped around his face. He would have looked sinister if the rest of his body had not seemed so comical. He could barely keep up with the steady, assured stride of The God.

Joseph looked down when he saw them approaching. He had hoped that they would announce the flight before this confrontation.

Rhea and the three women stood up and moved toward The God and Bobo. Bobo was pointing. The God stared hard, not at Rhea or the women, but at Joseph. Joseph caught his eye and looked down quickly. He did not want to look up. He stared at the ground, then he looked into the sky. He was trying to disappear, to throw himself as far away from this moment as possible.

He was tired. The drive to the airport had worn him out completely and he was not looking forward to the flight. It was going to be painful. The sores on his back and his bottom were weeping that morning, and when one of the women had rubbed them gently with some anti-bacterial ointment, he could hear her muttering at the tragic ugliness of it all. “Why, why, why them let this happen, eh?” She was not expecting an answer. In fact, for the three days they had been in the same room, these women had not spoken to Joseph except to give him simple commands like “Lean back” or “Sip” or “Lift up.” They were working for Rhea, no one else. They simply worked, gave comfort as no one else could.

But that morning, one of them, Barbara, could not help herself. She wondered why anyone would allow this man to go through this, this man with sense, with money, with a name around the world, why they would let him go through this kind of foolishness. She wondered aloud, as if Joseph was not there.

Now, at the airport, Barbara was standing slightly ahead of Rhea, looking at this tall, lanky dread striding toward them. Joseph knew then that it was possible that he would not be on the flight out of Germany. He knew that his broken body might be taken back to another room in the city, another smoke-filled place, for someone else to rescue him, but he did not care anymore. He wanted to have his guitar with him, his Bible, and the Miles Davis tape he had been playing over and over again for weeks. He would go wherever he was taken. It was already over.

The God could bring no magic with him, just the assured look of someone who was born to be in charge. The God would come and argue that they went back too far for him to let this woman come and take over his life. The God would say that he would be better off with friends, real friends, with the bredren. The God would say that he could not die. That Rasta could not die. Rhea would never say that. Rhea knew, like Joseph, that he could die. The God would say that Joseph was a bonafide dread, and a bonafide dread could never die, it was impossible. The God would tell him that all he needed to do was humble himself and look to Jah and he would get a chance to travel to Ethiopia. There he would find the nice plot of land that they had both picked out those many years ago, that spot where Joseph planned to retire, put up his foot and plant, plant, plant, and watch Jah give the increase. The God would remind him of the dream. The God would tell him what to do and how to do it. The God would remind him that he has been with Joseph forever and that Joseph could not turn away from a true bredrin. The God would point out that Rhea was a
succubus
, a bloodsucking bitch who was looking for revenge on Joseph; that she was a woman, and woman is never to be trusted over a bredrin. The God would say all this and convince Joseph that he should stay.

Joseph would be too feeble to say anything. Joseph would look at Russell and Russell would look back with the dazed eyes of a man in a perpetually “red” state—the look of a dog assuring its master that it will go anywhere the master desires. Russell would have no answers. Russell would feed Joseph no matter what. He would feed Joseph until Joseph could feed no more. Joseph would get no answers from Russell. Joseph would look at The God and say, “God, yuh right.” But Joseph would not be able to move. It would have to be between The God and Rhea and the women.

He watched the confrontation. The God carried himself with the same sly danger that he had brought to the football field. There was nothing physically overbearing about him. He was slight. Fit but slight. His self-assurance lay elsewhere. What he had was a quality of danger, a capacity to believe in his invincibility, in his ability to dramatically change the direction of a game. He always wanted the ball, and when he got the ball things happened. His gift was simple: He was a dreamer with the capacity to dream impossible things and, more importantly, to execute them through his body’s remarkable flexibility. He had found a way to respond physically to the unique rhythms that moved in his head. What onlookers saw was a man with the ability to caress a football, to toy with the intelligence of his opponents, to outthink them to the point of bafflement. This, combined with his total fearlessness, made him a dangerous man.

When he stood beside Pelé in the National Stadium, The God still felt that his title was deserved. Pelé was good, but Pelé was a man like any other. Pelé was from Brazil and he, The God, was from a tiny island with no history of football to talk of, but he was The God, and he could take on any man, any man. And he did. He took on Pelé as if Pelé was a local player, and Pelé smiled at the sheer audacity of the seventeen-year-old. From the earliest days it was his way.

Now here, standing in front of Rhea, he had come to get Joseph. On the surface of things, this was a done thing.

“Bobo, tek Joseph bag and come. Russell, help me wid Joseph.” He brushed past Rhea and pushed his face into Joseph’s face and stared intently into his eyes.

“God,” Joseph said, smiling crookedly and weakly.

“Come, bredrin.” He reached round to gather Joseph up. Rhea dragged him away and he let himself be pulled from Joseph. He was not going to fight. He had come for the dread and that was the bottom line. The ritual was fine. He would play it.

Joseph closed his eyes and tried to listen to the argument. He could not follow anything. His mind was slipping away again. He was drifting beyond this airport, to Ethiopia, the brown and burnt-sienna of the landscape and the rich dark green of the vegetation, to the small plot of land in St. Ann where he found himself hoeing, getting it ready to plant tomatoes and carrots—Rhea was singing hymns in the shack—to a blazing afternoon in New York, the park overflowing with people dressed in red, gold, and green, prancing to the sound.

He stood there feeling the strange weight of his Gibson. His feet felt like clay, locked to the ground, while his head spun as if the weed had twisted itself on him. Everything was floating and his body felt lighter. The trees turned upside down as his voice tried to reach for a sound, a faraway sound. He wanted to shout something to that Yankee guitarist and his frantic stage antics, kneeling, lifting the head of his guitar in the air, prancing about the stage with a most un-reggae rhythm. Joseph felt both irritation and a deep fear that something was out of his control. Then he felt his body giving way. He was on the ground. The bass was rumbling. He was unconscious, but he could still hear the music in his head, could still see the light blue of the sky, could still feel the way his body was lifted and the music sounding like a reverb, going on and on.

7.

The man wakes and it is still dark. He knows that something has woken him, but he is not sure what. The pain in his stomach comes on him gradually but relentlessly. It is as if he is forcing his way up from deep water, his breath held and all his thoughts focused on the strain in his lungs. He feels the strain to come up for breath—the rush of bubbles, the cool of the water, and the blinding glow of the approaching light. Then he bursts through the surface, his lungs opening to take in air, his body opening to be fed by the food it desperately needs.

In the aftermath, in the calm after knowing he has survived, after finding breath again, his body begins to remind him of the brute beating it has undergone. Then comes the pain, the pain in his head, the pain in his limbs, the pain deep inside his stomach. It is the pain that has awoken him.

He lies there breathing hard, trying to work out the source of the pain and its meaning. His head is still stuck in the dream of Melanie standing there arguing with The God. The name won’t leave him. The God. He knows these people. He expects to look up and see them standing in front of him, arguing in the shadows of the room.

As he lies there, the pain creeping across his ribs, filling his head with an intense pulsing, he begins to think hard about flying away from everything, about going somewhere else. He is willing his mind to focus on the story he wants to take shape in his head. Two people arguing over him, over his body, over his future. Two people. One of them he knows well. It is Melanie. Yet in this incarnation she loves him, she is there for him. He wants to believe in this incarnation.

8.

Joseph could see a pattern. There he was, thirty-five, and he could see a pattern. He was young, but he had been around long enough to know a pattern. He had been married for almost twenty years—they had married at seventeen. Now, nearly twenty years later, he was dying. He understood a pattern when he saw one. The pattern was always the same. Rhea was there when things were going wrong. Rhea was the constant in his life. He did not like Rhea. He needed Rhea. He did not love Rhea. Love had fallen away too long ago. But Rhea was constant. The more things began to explode around him, the more Rhea was the constant that he depended upon. There was going to be no death without Rhea. There was going to be no crisis without Rhea. She was like his
chi
, a force inside him, sometimes dammed or diverted, but immovably there until he died. He would travel all over, screw all around, fall in love, let his body fall into the softness of other women, but they all understood that Rhea was the one he would go to when he was hungry, when he began to suspect that one of his women was trapping him with
obeah
. Joseph trusted Rhea because he knew that she would never harm him—she needed him. And so he needed her. He spent his life waiting for the inevitable pattern to repeat itself. Rhea was there to make sure that it happened.

Now they were airborne, the plane heading toward Miami. He thought about how quickly The God had given up. There was that look The God gave him, a look of deep regret. He put up a good front. He argued, he cursed Rhea, he even threatened to have her beaten up. But Joseph could tell that he was going through the motions. He was tired of Joseph now. He, too, had given up. It was clear that Joseph was sick. It was clear that the doctor’s shark cartilage remedy was not going to work. Money wasted, time wasted, deprivations wasted, hope wasted. Joseph was dying. The God had looked defeated. He stared at Joseph, had assured him, “I gwine come a Miami fe you, Joseph. Don’ fret. This bitch naah go control tings,” but Joseph knew that he was saying goodbye when he leaned toward him and touched his head. Joseph stared back. He wanted to say something, but he felt a terrible weight on his mind, on his brain. He had nothing to say. He resorted to a stock phrase, a phrase of deep hopelessness. It made The God’s face crumble. Joseph could tell that The God could not cope with him in this state. All through their time in Germany, Joseph had managed to maintain his brash, stoic front. The front of an orphan child.