The night sky gathered around us as we sat in the yard of this household. Trees blushed with their array of red flowers. Subtlety blew away from the tall tree that rested outside the house’s borders. I only wanted to not be involved with foolishness. Tallman was ready to war over nothing at all.

Made little sense to me, if my old friends Blake and Rigga heard my thoughts they would have said I was growing soft. It was not that. For me, it was just meaningless to live like that now.

Tallman’s lips moved like a fluttering motor. Joshua and another man were listening with avid intent. The noise was infectious, but I was immune, so my ears heard nothing. He got himself so worked up over Malt.

Renee sat beside me. She shook the juice inside the plastic KFC cup.

Renee made a momentary glance at the boys before she turned to me. I hoped no words left those lips of hers and came in my general direction.

“Pass the ketchup,” she said. Her voice was like a soft wet dream to some men. To me, it was a raging flood with gold hidden below the rabid currents.

I looked at the tiny parcel. The red design over the white packaging was neat. We sat separated, but the wind blew blissfully the lovely tinge of her fragrance. It made me want to sleep and dream of a better life. I took the ketchup and gave it to her.

Her face had high cheekbones. Renee was captivating with those slim eyelids that her mother blessed her with. It was matched by her grizzly hairstyle that bounced with every shake of her head. Renee was too flirty for her own good. I would be hard-pressed to avoid her least I jumped into problems with Joshua.

The only reason Joshua was with her was, because she looked good on his arm. When she was not here, he flirted with everybody else within five miles. It was not like any woman was stupid enough to open their legs for him though.

How those two still managed to continue this façade of a relationship was beyond me.

Better things needed to be on my mind. I needed to contact my brother tomorrow. Negril was the destination. Money was the objective.

After she took a bite of her spicy chicken burger, specks of lettuce peeked out the sides, the noise got closer.

I was not getting away, wasn’t I?

“Yo Arden roll in, a Lacovia we a reach,” Lance said.

I raised my head. “Why, I have no bus fare to go there.” A thought crossed my mind. “Wait, hold on why are you going there, anyway?”

“Kimani a hold a roast, we ago bump one, two liquor with him.”

I kissed my teeth at him and said, “Man youth me nuh want to drink nothing round that waste-man footballer. Him could never defend a goalpost yet, Rian could have dribbled the ball around him rass!”

Renee snickered.

Lance retorted, “Arden no insult the man, yuh can play no sports fi know man hard work.”

I was not lying. Kimani Williamson was a terrible soccer player at least at the level his team played. They played in the division below the Premier League and he barely played more than five games a season. That meant the coach had better players to choose from.

His only claim to fame in Berryhill is that he got with the one girl every dude wanted to get a chance with, Nodelyn. He screwed that up and she had been on lockdown, it was odd to see her brother Irwin playing American Football. Here, I thought he was a lazy idiot.

“Hey Arden, about Rian, is it true he homo?” Renee asked moving closer to me. I looked away.

“Boy, I don’t know eno, I never seen him with a man still.”

Joshua heard the argument and jumped in, “Of course him a battyboy!”

I sighed. Renee rolled her eyes as Joshua drew up a chair and dropped it next to our table. I groaned inwardly, because I now had a front-row seat to the madness.

He parked himself in it and leaned back with a smile. Tallman and the other man came over as Lance left to go to the roast.

“You damn well know that boy is a battyboy!” Joshua said.

I exhaled and replied, “Based off what, whe' him say to the pastor? Rian is an asshole I really think he was just being an asshole to the pastor to show him up.”

Joshua kissed his teeth then he looked at his girl. Tallman was looking to the side, but I felt the dread travel through me when I saw Tallman’s eyes. I have seen those eyes too often.

“Tallman, no, Dwight you good?” I asked in concern. Tallman looked up at me though and I was sure then.

Tallman spoke low, "I swear when I see that bloodcloth Lasco flavor pon the road a lone kick ina him face him a get."

Renee snickered as I groaned at the thought. Tallman noticed my scoff at his comment. He rolled his head, then he leaned off the side.

"Yo, you a gwan so sticky? Like Malt and you a friend from last week," Tallman said with narrowed eyes.

I maintained my composure under their tense glares. "Brah the only thing me do for the man was business. Me and him is not friend."

"So how him a call up your name suh?" Tallman asked.

"My youth, it obvious I am the sane one, you are the hurthead. That's why," I replied.

Renee almost choked on the drink as she drifted back laughing. We all looked at her with serious glares and she pertly held her head upward proudly. We had not yielded though and she took a hint.

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“Fine, good night gentleman,” she said.

“Where're you going?” Joshua asked.

“I will walk home, I don’t need a ride,” she said with an emphasis on the last word.

Joshua watched her leave. Kissing his teeth Joshua turned and mumbled something. Tallman groaned and made a point of his finger at me.

“Yo, what are you doing tomorrow?” Tallman asked.

“Nothing.” That was my answer with a shrug attached.

“We need fi deal with Malt’s and Rian’s service.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Dog, the hell we don’t.”

“Tallman, you see me right now? I don’t want no bloodshed over simple foolishness.” I point at Joshua without looking at him. “This is simple foolishness.”

“How me reach ina this?” Joshua asked like a wounded puppy.

“How.” I immediately got pissed and looked at him with a frown. “Is not you start calling out Leon name and a call him name from the other side of the field? Brah no feign ignorance right now. Yoooou started this! You and Leon used to be friends I don’t know what both of you have riff over.” Actually, I had known, but I was not going to throw it into his face.

“True, but Malt bitch-slapped me and Rian almost did,” Tallman asserted. I got up and walked off pass them to the yard exit.

“Terry!” Joshua called.

“Me nuh wa' hear it! Fight yuh own war without me!” I shouted back. There were a million reasons not to have gotten involved with their schemes.

Taking the route of the main thoroughfare, yet the houses along this stretch held a nice distance between each other. The shrubs danced. No flowers dabbled in these environs. Just lone fruit, there were enough random fruit trees with no owners. It would have been hard for anybody to have grown hungry, for all you had to do was climb.

Mangoes were never a favorite of mine, but there were plentiful. A few apple trees were on the northern side. Lime trees littered the center of Berry Hill, but pushed towards the east where the tallest ones shaded the competitive churches who were driven to salting the other’s holy ground.

Breadfruit, I wanted one. It was going to be quite a climb. The lazy took the majority of the lower ones. I breathed out preferring the challenge. The branch on the left side became my foothold and I quickly hopped and wrangled my way up from one branch to another. I looked around and saw two I was near.

The bigger branch was picked for my jump. My hand bit into the bark and I almost winced for it ended up being the harder one.

I twisted my palm into the bottom of the branch. The desire to not feel immense pain guided my efforts. After all, dropping thirty feet to my demise was not a life goal of mine. A weak grasp that burned with the pain of my disorientation kept me focused.

I jumped from that branch to a lower one. The leaves shook loose and I shuddered with the blistering agony that spiked into my wrist. I pulled the breadfruit and used the elbow of the grasping hand to pull myself along the branch.

The breadfruit fell, half snapping the branch below me. It never registered the danger I put myself through. I only thought of it as an afterthought especially when I jumped off ten feet to a running stop. The night turned my sweat into a cold reminder of the past excursions of the foolish me. A noise, breadfruit had dropped behind me. It rolled up next to the one I had just taken.

Ah, the lord was good. Two breadfruits were in my hands as I made my way homeward again.

I got a look at the farms. Most were desolate of activity and human life. There were only two workers I saw. Floodlights assisted them as they marched with machetes at hand. Not sure if it was thieves or predators they were stalking for.

One waved at me, “Arden!”

I waved back and continued on my way through the wooden houses. You would have sworn that no technology had touched them, but if I had a thousand dollars for each sixty-inch flat-screen TV per house I would have lived happily for years. I reached the concrete semblance to a scheme where the houses were closer.

I passed through a narrow alleyway behind an old shop and drudged down Abbyline Road to my house.

“Daddy!”

My eyes widened as I slowed to a stop. Ashley, my little baby girl ran up and waved her arms upward waiting for her starship. I let down the breadfruit and grabbed her up in a swooping motion. She laughed. My brother ran out in a sleeveless shirt. A tall blanket held onto his shoulder.

“Yo, you reach David,” my brother said.

“Yeah,” I said, I held her up on my left arm and lifted her higher. My right hand pointed at her back with a quizzical look aimed at Benedict, for I wondered why she was here.

“Oh, yeah her sister dropped her off, oh, she said Caroline want to talk to you later too,” Benedict answered as he leaned on the van. It was a Toyota Hiace and we had plans to make a steady large income from its usage. Benedict had secured a contract to transport tourists for an entrepreneur who had her own local hotel.

It was better than the odd jobs I got here and there. The only stable job I ever had was working for Campbell when I worked for his hardware business. Unfortunately, me and him were not on good terms.

I wiggled Ashley in my arms.

“What did you buy me daddy?” she asked.

“Boy nothing still you know,” I said. Her face pinched up when she frowned. “But I can surely get something for you tomorrow, how about that?”

“I want ice cream!”

Great, I was stuck here. I dropped her in the underside of my arms and advanced up to Benedict.

He pushed out the letter. My eyes scanned the once-unopened top torn in a zig-zag pattern. A bill, it was my usual worse nightmare. I took it.

“Until when?” I asked. My brother blew out his mouth and made a facial shrug.

Marie did say she was going to give her to me for a few days. I almost forgot. It was not that I was mad or anything I wanted to see my daughter, but I also really wanted to help Benedict with this business we were setting up.

I said, “You are going up to Negril, better you go without me.”

“Nah dog, can’t do that yet. Besides Betty ask me to deliver some goods for her. Remember it is a request thing, the only thing I would have to go up there for is the shirts, vinyl, and decals. I can do that early one of the days they request a tour and you can come with me and Vanessa.”

“Who?” Who the hell was Vanessa?

“Oh she is directing the tour and talking to the tourists, you will secure the thing. I am driving.”

Why had my brother hired an employee? That costed money which we were lacking right now. “My youth, me nah want too much people a run in pon our business,” I replied.

“She is better at talking to people than you and me.”

“Me can talk to people, good good, man.”

“No one is going to understand what you just said.”

The letter was opened and my eyes were blessed with the over seven thousand dollars needed to pay this electrical bill. Jamaica Public Service, they always had their crusty old foot on the back of my neck. I groaned. “And then what? Brother, a waste a money that. How are we going to make a profit?”

“Is a woman brother, you know how people stay nowadays. Two man, one van, a country you know nothing about… Look, spooky brother.”

I looked away and sighed. “That is thanks to idiots gone and buried. We shouldn’t have to be under that scrutiny.”

“Not all of them buried unfortunately otherwise I would not ask you for help. The amount of money we going to make, one girl smiling all the while won’t burn our pocket.”

It may not have burned yours, but it was burning mine.

Mini-Glossary

Battyboy - a derogatory term aimed at homosexuals.

Sticky - Suspicious

Bloodcloth - used alone or as a noun or verb in various phrases to express annoyance, contempt, or disdain. (historically means strips of cloth once used before toilet paper)

Hurthead - A idiot.

Dog - means 'friend', 'brother' (mostly used by males in reference to each other)