But Thandi ignores them. Her cries are uncontrollable. She stands away from the fight like the other spectators outside of Dino’s. She had hoped Charles had forgotten his vengeance. He doesn’t seem to care what might happen to him if he kills Clover. He’s acting like a wild beast, a man with nothing to lose. Saliva fills her mouth as the urge to vomit rises.
Clover is weak and bloodied, but insists on fighting Charles, who is younger, more virile. Charles holds him down with his weight, wildly punching him. Clover pulls a knife. Charles struggles to pry it out of Clover’s hand. “Somebody, please help!” Thandi screams, her blood running cold. But Charles wrestles the knife out Clover’s hand, and in one swift motion Clover’s shirt is ripped, a horizontal red gash printed on his shirt. Charles springs to his feet and Clover struggles to stand up. For a moment both men dance around each other, Charles with his shirt open and the knife in his hand, and Clover with his fists clenched and renewed strength and a dangerous look in his eyes. “C’mon, yuh pussyclaat, good-fah-nottin’ bwoy . . .” he spits. “Yuh eat from people plate all yuh life, an’ now dat yuh discover pussy yuh t’ink you is a man now.” Charles drops the knife and lurches forward. Both of them are on the ground again.
“Oh, lawd ’ave mercy!” Miss Gracie shouts. She’s stumbling out of the bar and into the street, a little tipsy, with the blind faith of a toddler walking into traffic. Miss Gracie is using all her strength to pull Charles off Clover, grabbing him by the end of his shirt as he punches Clover like a sack of rice. A few men—the types Thandi has seen hovering over pecking roosters with wild eyes filled with money and dust and sometimes tears of defeat—jump in to help Miss Gracie pull Charles away. Charles fights them off, but they outnumber him, pulling his hands behind him. Clover sits there in the middle of the road looking dizzy. He clutches his chest as if he’s trying to locate a lizard slithering its way under his armpit. A few women stoop next to Clover to give him something to drink. They ignore Charles, who is busy snatching his arms from the men and then stooping to catch his breath.
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.