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  Samson eyed his brother. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  His father had not just said that!

  “Well, Frankie? Wha’ you say?”

  Think fast. “What kind of pension plan you have, Uncle?”

  Ice Box and Buck-Buck laughed. Joe flashed them a grin and turned back to Frankie. “We don’t have no 401K or no IRA, mon.”

  “Sorry, then, Uncle. I have to think about my retirement.”

  “Yeh, mon. And like the Bible say, honor thy father.” Joe grinned. “But remember, Nephew, come back here to spread your roots.” To Samson he added, “Good luck with the mousetrap, Samos.”

  “You’re the one who needs the luck, not me.”

  Joe’s eyes narrowed. Damn it. He’d been about to leave! “Uncle—”

  “Hold on, Nephew.” He jutted his chin, a chin not as prominent as Samson’s. “So, you think me need luck?”

  “That’s right, you need luck on top of those bodyguards.” Samson pointed his hammer.

  “Them? Them not bodyguards.”

  “What are they, then? They’re not choirboys.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe them can sing.” Joe smirked and sauntered out of the backyard, Ice Box and Buck-Buck trailing. They were always like this—Samson would do anything to piss off Joe and vice versa. It had all started—their fight, the one that would have come to blows if his mother hadn’t begged them to be civil—over how to treat her cancer. Joe had said he had the means to send her to Cuba for a new treatment he’d heard about. Samson had dismissed the idea as simple Rasta foolishness. Joe had shot back that the God Samson believed in clearly wasn’t going to save her. And now that Frankie’s mother was gone, there was no way to fix it.

  His father was back to hammering at the windowsill, making a slight adjustment. No way could Frankie tell him he wanted to go to his uncle’s party. Samson would shut that down faster than the machete hit the sill. But Frankie was aching to go; Joe only had parties a couple times a year. He could celebrate the scholarship with his father tomorrow. So he took a gamble. “It’s late to start the beans—how about we celebrate tomorrow instead?”

  “Good point, college boy. Okay, no problem.”

  “I can start the beans first thing in the morning,” he added, walking away before his father could ask any questions. No such luck.

  “What you doing tonight, then?”

  Dang. “Oh, there’s a party in town. I promised I’d go.”

  His father paused. “Whose party?”

  “It’s—an election party.”

  “Whose election party?”

  Damn. “Joe’s…”

  Samson fumbled his hammer. “When you talk to him about it?” He’d go as hot as the day’s temperature, but Frankie wasn’t going to lie.

  “The other day.”

  “Why?” His father gripped the hammer again.

  “I had to ask him about something,” Frankie said evasively—not quite a lie.

  “What?” his father pushed.

  Frankie’s teeth felt too big for his gums. “The kid I had a fight with the other day. Garnett.”

  “Lawd God. What good you think could come of that?” He waved the hammer, orchestrating the sermon that was coming. “Your uncle is a criminal, you know?”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “Me don’t want you going to any party him throwing.”

  “It’s for all of Troy, though. And it’s just going to be at the end of the street. At the clearing,” Frankie implored. “Even people from Stony Hill are coming.”

  His father’s face grew dead serious. “Frankie, it’s a rally for the PNP. Me tell you already the PNP and JLP, they are the ones who brought guns to Jamaica. You forget, mon? There’s no gun factory in Jamaica. It’s the politicians that imported them. You don’t see it? You think this is a party—it’s what they want you to think, but it’s really serious business.”

  “It’s a party,” Frankie insisted, knowing his tone was harsh.

  “No, mon, it’s politics. Joe’s only throwing a party to get everybody to follow him, vote for who he says. The JLP and PNP build tenements, give out jobs, Lord, they even give out cheese to anyone who help them get elected.”

  “What’s wrong with that? People need places to live. Food.” Frankie balled his hands. He could already hear Winston telling him about how great the party was, how he missed this and that.

  Samson took a step toward Frankie. “You think you’re smarter than me?”

  “Yes.” It shot out of Frankie’s mouth, no taking it back. He took a step backward. But Samson, having gone ramrod straight, simply said, “Hmm. You still live under my roof. When you gone foreign, you can do as you please. Only then.”

  There it was again, the because-I-said-so. “I promised I’d go.”

  His father’s face stayed rigid as a mask. “Okayyyy.” He drew out the word, then turned back to his work, striking the hammer against the sill, again, and again.

  Okay? What did okay mean? It probably meant his father was hurt, furious, but holding it in. And that stung. At the same time, Frankie deserved some fun. He sighed, watched Samson toil at his stupid mousetrap, a man from the country. He was backward. Frankie knew that when he moved forward with his life, got educated in America, there would be no making peace with his father, no way of really relating, again. Maybe that package would never get opened after all.

  That was when he decided that okay meant he was going to the party.

  Eight

  having changed into his good shirt—the blue one with the collar—Frankie passed his father sitting at the table without a word and went out the door. He walked past Mr. Brown’s store, toward the party. A small hill, eroding for decades, had formed a natural amphitheater with a dirt-and-pebble floor. Homebuilt six-foot speakers on either side stood like two giant bookends, the reggae music so loud that it got distorted, ricocheting in Frankie’s ears. Both electric and kerosene lamps bobbed on ropes suspended from trees and telephone wires. Villagers from all over the mountain milled about, heading in the same direction.

  As Frankie approached, he thought about what his dad had said, how the party was only to influence people. But the fact was—and it was a fact his father refused to admit—Joe already took care of many things that the government didn’t. A year back, gullies were littered with trash. Garbage trucks had stopped coming up the mountain because of the financial crisis. But now Joe paid someone downtown, and the trucks rolled up and down the narrow roads twice a week. Even the standpipe was being upgraded. Public works probably hadn’t even known where Troy was on the map until Joe got involved. Maybe one day Troy would even have running water.

  “Frankie!” It was Blow Up. His hair—short dreads that stuck straight up in the air—suited his temper. Frankie had always thought enforcers should be cooler, calm like Aunt Jenny or Ice Box and Buck-Buck. But Blow Up’s name was his name for a reason. The handle of a Glock stuck out of his waistband—a clear Don’t Mess with Me. “Hear you get di scholarship! Up, up!” he hooted now.

  Frankie gave a chin nod, cool, no big deal. Blow Up nodded in turn. “Got to get some ice, mon. Likkle later.”

  As Blow Up left, Frankie eyed his gun. Several rubber bands encircled the handle, probably to keep it from falling down his pants leg. Probably all of his uncle’s men had brought weapons—they never took chances. Probably never relaxed, not really.

  A mass of people were gathered just ahead, the party already spilling beyond the main area, people already dancing. He waved to an ex who was looking really good in her track shorts and tube top. She waved back, then dug into a line dance with her friends, winding low in a corkscrewing motion, nearly to the ground. She’d cut her hair, he noted, curls falling to her shoulders. So much like, well, another girl he’d dated last year. Leah. He hadn’t seen her around lately—just as well, as it ended really weird: she kind of ghosted him. Didn’t matter, he was leaving Jamaica anyway.

  He made his way past several older w
omen in fitted dresses working their more conservative gyrations. Behind them, three teenage boys from the bottom of the mountain, still in khaki school pants, were twisting their knees like windshield wipers; then they jumped up and slammed their feet on the ground, kicking up dust, shooting forward, pumping like pistons. Frankie chuckled: the Excuse Me Please was always gonna be a thing. Everyone was getting their own dance on, it seemed. Maybe he’d get out there—after he ate, because, man, the aromas were making him salivate. Someone was making bammy—deep-fried cassava cakes—the line was insane. An old bald guy, Gummer, was turning jerk chicken and jerk pork on a barbecue, the meat slathered in what looked like spicy pimento like the one Aunt Jenny used. Just the sound of the sizzle made Frankie’s stomach growl.

  He had just gotten in line when a murmur spread through the crowd. Frankie turned. Joe, the provider, had arrived, making his grand entrance, striding through the crowd as several people stepped forward to offer their respects. Joe bowed his head to each, like a seasoned politician, then pressed on. Several children ran up to him. He chose one to pick up and toss high in the air, catching him on the way down. Joe knew the game, for sure.

  Frankie scanned the rest of the grounds. Aunt Jenny, sitting at a table in an impossibly tight sequined denim shirt and pants, waved. She was playing her game again, the Aunt Jenny version of how businesspeople wore a suit and tie. Mr. Brown approached her carrying two plates overflowing with curry goat, plump dumplings, rice and peas, and fried okra. Jenny turned her head away, picked up a half-folded newspaper, and began to fan herself. Pretending, Frankie could tell, to be all casual, pretending not to see him. When Mr. Brown arrived, she turned to him and delivered an impressive display of surprise, stretching her eyes wide, throwing her hands up: for me?!?

  Over by the DJ station, Winston and the rest of his friends huddled, heads nodding, beats dropping. Frankie went to join them, then stopped short. No freakin’ way. His father? Frankie gave his head a shake, but dang sure enough. It was Samson jogging, weaving through the crowd, heading his way. Frankie’s cheeks went hot. Samson was going to press him to come home, or just as bad, stay there to look out for him. Samson so didn’t get it. Then—

  POP! POP! POP! POP! Shots rang out. There was a screech of tires. TEK, TEK, TEK, TEK! Frankie lunged to the ground. Where was it coming from? People all around were flinging themselves down. Where was his father? Frankie lifted his head an inch.

  A white BMW, its headlights off, was closing in quickly. Two men leaned out of the windows, machine guns in hand, and they just started blasting. Bullets tore into tree trunks, into the dirt. Half the crowd was now running, the other half seemed frozen in disbelief. Frankie saw one, then two, then three people fall to the ground. Where was his father? He saw Joe dive to the ground as a second round pelted several people who were just standing there in terror. Flesh ripped. Screams shrilled from so many directions, Frankie couldn’t even think.

  He couldn’t move.

  He couldn’t stop looking.

  Holy shit, holy shit—two bullets hit Mr. Brown in the belly, blood spurting, his curry goat spilling to the ground. Aunt Jenny came into view, eyes wide, reaching into her waistband for her gun. More shouts. Where was his father?

  To the left, Ice Box and Buck-Buck were on the ground, crawling commando-style, guns in hand. A mother with three children stood like a deer in headlights. Two of her children broke away from her, running, crying. A guy in his twenties scooped one of them up and sprinted away, his arms and legs pumping. Bullets caught up to him; the child tumbled from his arms as the guy fell, and scrambled away. More bullets ripped apart the speakers, a high-pitched screech ringing out.

  Frankie kept looking for his father. He caught a flash of Joe rolling over, drawing a gun, and starting to shoot. Ice Box and Buck-Buck were standing now, shooting at the BMW with assassin-like calm. Jenny was doing the same thing from the other direction. Tires screeched again as the BMW made a sharp U-turn and fishtailed back up the road—then there was a loud crash. Joe and his men ran toward it. Frankie got up on one knee: five hundred yards away, the front end of the car was crumpled around the trunk of a lignum vitae tree.

  Frankie could hardly breathe. Palming his face, squeezing hard, he tried to calm himself, to gain hold of his fury, his fear. The speakers screeched on, but their sound wasn’t enough to muffle the cries of those hit, and the wails from villagers, turning back, gunfire now over, finding their loved ones wounded or worse. People ran through the landscape of twisted bodies, the sea of agony. Frankie’d seen this before, the same kind of nightmare, but never in Troy! Both those times he’d been in Kingston riding back from school, feeling for strangers—and it had felt so unreal.

  This was real.

  His father! Now Frankie was running forward, his legs leaden, as if they were pushing through a viscous liquid instead of air. He wove past a splayed body, then another, and another, until he saw ahead, a man, his father. Not moving. As if floating, Frankie was suddenly there—he had no idea how. He dropped to his knees. “Daddy—”

  Nine

  dust particles twisted in the midday light in his house; Frankie stared past them at the machete in the windowsill. Pff. Samson thought he was protecting them—nothing had protected him last night. Frankie’d been lying on the couch so long the small of his back was aching, but the energy to move wasn’t there. The screeching sound from the shot-up speakers still rang in his ears; the sight of his father lying there on the ground at the party refused to go away.

  The front door creaked open. “Frankie?”

  He sat up, a hand on the floor, ready to charge. It was Winston. Frankie grunted, lowered his head back down.

  “Wha gwan, mon?”

  “Me all right.”

  “Respect.” Winston came farther into the house. “How you feeling?”

  “Okay.” That was what his father had said, okay, when Frankie’d said he was going to Joe’s party. Frankie went mute, feeling the echo of that word “okay.” Winston walked to the back window and stood silently.

  “It was my fucking fault,” Frankie said at last.

  “Wha’ you say?” Winston was inspecting Samson’s “burglar alarm.”

  “Right before the party, he told me—my father did—about the JLP and PNP, how they were.”

  Winston looked up in surprise. “Your father knew they were coming?”

  “No. But he told me not to go.”

  “Come on, mon. That’s not your fault. It’s election time; posses make hits all the time.”

  Winston didn’t get it—didn’t get that Frankie should have stayed home, celebrated his scholarship with his father.

  “Listen, me come to give you some good news.”

  Frankie lifted his head. About his father? Joe had gotten ambulances up the mountain in seconds, it had seemed. Samson was put in the very first one. Ice Box had raced Frankie and Jenny down the mountain to the hospital, but they hadn’t been allowed to see Samson. “Ice Box, Buck-Buck, and Blow Up hit the posse that was responsible.” Winston waited, practically beaming. Was he expecting a freakin’ happy dance? “They got three of them, plus the ones in the BMW—that makes six. Supposed to be just a couple more. It was only some small posse trying to come up.”

  “They were with the JLP?”

  “Yes.” A half smile lifted the side of Winston’s mouth. “But not no more.”

  That wouldn’t help his father, but “Good,” Frankie said weakly. At least it wasn’t Taqwan. At least that.

  Winston poked at the machete. “Hear anything about Samson?”

  “Still can’t see him. They made me come home cuz they had to operate.”

  “Don’t worry, mon, Samson’s tough. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Winston nodded at the booby-trapped window. “Smart,” he murmured, then said, “You can’t just stay here all day.”

  Frankie pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not.” He reached for his backpack.

  “Where you
going?”

  “School.”

  “What? Why?”

  “To tell them I’m not coming.” Frankie held the backpack by a strap.

  “That no make no sense… school started hours ago.” Winston pulled a phone out of his back pocket. “Use my phone and just call them.”

  “No, I’m not going back to school for a while. I need to talk to my counselor.”

  “Your dad—he’s going to be all right, mon—”

  Frankie slammed the backpack on the floor—splat. “Give it up, okay? Just give it up! Stop trying to cheer me up and shit. He’s lying in the hospital and he might not get out of there, mon.”

  “Okay, okay.” Winston paused at the door before leaving. “Me not your enemy, mon.”

  Frankie wanted to say something, let his friend know he wasn’t hating on him. But the words weren’t there. He looked back at the makeshift security device. If only it could have guarded Samson.

  * * *

  Gripping the arms of the chair like he was on a roller coaster with no safety belt, Frankie waited for Mrs. Gordon to get off the phone. He had explained what had happened to his father. He’d asked for time away from school. Now his counselor was talking to the principal on his behalf. Fury was building, building. He should not have come to school; he should have just used Winston’s phone. He needed to be at the hospital, the surgery had to be over by now. It was his duty to be there, especially since it was his bumboclot fault that his father was there in the first place.

  The counselor placed the phone back in the cradle. “Okay.”

  There was that word again. It plagued him—you should have listened, you should have listened.

  “The principal will make a concession this one time, given your excellent record and that you’ve turned in your final engineering assignment.”

  Frankie loosened his grip on the chair. His fingers felt as cramped as if he were still holding on. “Thank you.”

  “But you need to keep up with your regular classwork,” she went on. “And check in once or twice a week with your teachers until—” She patted the table.