The women around Clover start to scream. Clover is woozy, faint, bleeding from his nose and lip. “S’maddy help him!” Miss Louise shouts, untying her head scarf to dab Clover’s forehead.
Someone yells for Macka to call an ambulance. But Macka doesn’t have a phone, so he runs to Mr. Levy next door. Mr. Levy, who has long ago resigned himself to the shenanigans of the drunks next door, simply flips his newspaper and shakes his head. But Macka bangs on the mesh door. “A man is bleeding in di street, Missah Chin! How yuh stay suh? Have a likkle mercy an’ call di ambulance!” Finally Mr. Levy picks up the phone and dials 119. It takes a long time for the ambulance and the police to come. Meanwhile, people are pointing at Charles. “Is dat big-head bwoy do it!” Thandi is able to catch Charles before he leaves the scene.
“What have you done?” She’s pulling him, hitting him with both hands, demanding an answer. He just looks at her, his mouth downturned. “Him get what him deserve,” is all he says before he flees.
Clover is mounted on a stretcher and two policemen question residents, to discover the identity of the man who started the fight. They say that they have to make an arrest. Holding the knife — which was Clover’s — as evidence, they say that only a dangerous criminal would attempt to kill a man cold-blooded in the street for no reason at all. Absolutely no good reason at all. But no one knows where Charles went. The news comes back later that night that Clover had a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital. But the people believe that it was Charles who killed him.
29
WHEN VERDENE SEES THE SHAKING BOY ON THE STEPS OF HER veranda, she lowers the flashlight and opens the grille for him. He’s bloodied and clutching himself as though trying to stop the shaking. Without asking any questions, Verdene wrestles one of his hands free from its grasp on his upper arm and leads him inside. JPS took the electricity again, so she lights a kerosene lamp to see. Charles sits still, resting his hands on the dining table where he once sat the first time she let him inside the house. Verdene regards the blood on his shirt. “Are you hurt?” she asks. Charles doesn’t raise his head.
“Ah didn’t know where else to go weh dey wouldn’t look fah me,” he finally says.
“What happened? Why are you running?” Verdene begins to wonder if she has made a mistake letting him inside before asking this question. She’s suddenly fearful, but because she doesn’t want the boy to think she is nervous around him, she busies herself with an internal script — the role her mother would have played.
“Let me at least get you cleaned up.”
She gets up with the flashlight and goes inside the bathroom for a basin and washcloth. She also grabs a University of Cambridge T-shirt, which she inherited from her husband, out of her drawer. When she returns to the dining room, Charles still hasn’t moved. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing. The quiet roars in Verdene’s ears as she holds the wet rag over his eyebrows. Slowly she wipes his forehead, the area above his mouth, and his hands. He winces when the damp cloth touches his upper arm where there’s a gash. Verdene gets her first-aid kit and dresses it. “Calm down and just breathe,” she hears her mother’s voice say to him in a whisper. It must have been all the boy needed to hear, because as soon as Verdene says this, he breaks down. His body jerks with loud sobs, his hands covering his face. “What happened, Charles?” she asks, trying hard to keep her voice steady.
“Ah kill someone,” he says. “Ah hear dat police aftah me now. Mama Gracie warn me.”
Verdene regards him closely. His frame appears small and wilted in the light of the kerosene lamp. He doesn’t look like a murderer, though his confession looms large inside the house, moving and shifting things. Something in the house braces. After a second or two, Verdene grabs a chair. “You what?” she asks.
“Ah kill someone,” he repeats. “Him rape my girlfriend.”
This time Verdene lets his statement fall inside the quiet like a single hair landing on the wooden floors. Not since she knelt by her father’s stiff body on the kitchen floor after she watched him suffer a heart attack has she felt so paralyzed by ambivalence. She peers at Charles through the cloud of this memory, thinking how she had hurt with guilt for days, and how there were no remedies to quell the agonizing pain that she never expected to feel for the person who she thought deserved it. Verdene gets up and kneels in front of Charles. Her instinct is to grab him and comfort him, but instead she says, “Do you know for sure that he’s dead?”
Charles nods. “Yes.”
“Maybe you didn’t kill him. Maybe he’s just hurt.”
“Ah know for ah fact dat him dead. Dat me kill him.” His jawbone clenches. “When me look pon him face an’ see him smiling like di devil himself, knowing dat him rape my girl, all ah wanted to do was to kill him. But ah didn’t know when or how dat force tek ovah me. Next t’ing me know, me see Mama Gracie an’ she tell me how dey pronounce him dead at di hospital.”
“Oh, Charles. .”
“Me neva mean fi kill him.”
“I know you didn’t mean to.”
Charles looks at her. His face is colorless. Verdene has a feeling that if this man is really dead, then so is Charles. Not because of how the police treat criminals, but because of the guilt she senses has already begun to wear him down. Verdene wants desperately to ease his anxiety, so she decides on logic. “If you can prove that he raped your girlfriend, then maybe you can argue that you did it in defense.”
Charles shakes his head and covers his face again. “There’s no proof. It ’appen years ago.” Verdene rubs his back, feels his muscles tense up again. “I can’t stay here,” he says suddenly. “I can’t stay in Rivah Bank. Ah must get going.” Verdene silently agrees, though she would never think of saying this out loud. She would have offered him a hiding place, but then she would have to explain to Margot when she drops by after her shift at the hotel and sees a boy — an alleged killer — inside the house. And besides, Margot can never be seen here by anyone. So Charles must go.
“At least change off first and eat something before you go,” Verdene tells him.
“Ah can’t eat anyt’ing.” He takes off his bloody shirt and puts on the one Verdene gives him. “Thank you for this,” he says, smoothing the fabric over his chest, his fingers trailing the University of Cambridge letters. He folds his soiled shirt, and Verdene offers to bury it outside, next to the dead dogs. She thinks of things to say to convince him that justice might still be on his side, but cannot come up with anything. “You must really love her. That girl?” she says as he heads toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the handle. The darkness is thick outside, since it’s overcast and there are no stars or a moon tonight. One would think it might finally rain; but Verdene won’t hold her breath. “Yes. I do,” Charles replies.
“I would’ve done the same thing,” she says.
Charles lets go of the knob. He leans against the doorpost and looks Verdene right in the eye. “Yuh know, ah used to be afraid ah witches.”
With that, he leaves her in the dark. She looks around the house. Not since she returned to it, wanting to be closer to her mother, has she felt so alone. How repelled she is tonight by the floors, the walls, the curtains, the burglar bars by the windows through which most days she can barely see the wide expanse of the sky.