Luke gazed at the sky from this unfamiliar vantage. His mind was quiet for the first time in years and he casually observed the swooping of the buzzards high above and the buzzing of the flies around him.
He wasn’t used to quiet time: it wasn’t encouraged by his mother. Idle time meant an idle mind and the gift that was his intellect was not to be wasted on frivolities such as boredom. Boredom was a luxury for the rich and spoiled. “I’m bored” may as well have been blasphemous speech in the mind of his Pentecostal matriarch, for which the antidote was always: “Go read a book!”. She knew very well the consequences of wasted time and potential, and wasn’t going to allow this child’s unexpected blessings to go the way of his predecessors.
His mother, Claudette, was as plump as the hills, and as dark as they were lush. Her heavy tongue spoke with a lilt that rose and fell like the land of her birth. She was the domestic helper for a wealthy family that lived on the plateau with the panoramic city view. This gaudy cluster of opulence was just far enough away from the wood and zinc shacks below that her daily walk there often felt like a trip into antiquity: The smiling, subservient house-slave up from dawn to relieve the Madame of her wifely and motherly duties. Very often she was reminded of the indignity of her profession by the unappreciative children of the household that she raised but never truly mothered. This was the impetus for her to push Luke not to settle for mediocrity in his school work for she had seen how the light-eyed children of privilege were given positions of influence in society by virtue of their pedigree and not their intelligence, and how in spite of everything, educational achievement was an equalizer for those of dark skin and meager means.
Luke’s formative years were a blur of advanced placement and overachievement in his humble primary school. The prodigious son of a working class nuclear family was the glue that held the barely functional relationship of his parents together in this agrarian community high in the misty hills of St. Andrew, Jamaica. His father was a coffee and cow farmer; always stink of the bush and beasts with ticks crawling from beneath his hat. His name was Clinton Dean. He never shared more than a passing glance or did more than gruff an obligatory acknowledgement of his son. His distance from Luke was partly for hygienic purposes but mostly because he simply did not see himself in this child. His only son at eleven years old was literate and spoke of foreign concepts such as industrialization, and all he wanted was an extra hand to prepare the fields for planting.
The boy was never meant to do well in school. He naively excelled from infancy in a fractured system apparently designed to maintain the status quo of social exclusion for the ebony children of the field and the self-actualization, earned or awarded, of the fair-skinned elite.
Academics signified his escape from a life of squalor, but he was too young to understand the society he was born into. He just allowed his potential the freedom to express itself, and smiled inside when people expressed surprise at his brightness. He never once considered the logistical and financial headache his decision to apply for a scholarship to attend the prestigious secondary school of the intelligentsia would cause his parents. All he knew was his favourite bible verse as quoted to him incessantly by his favourite teacher in Primary School: Matthew 5:15 : "Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house."
He had a particular connection to this verse and he repeated it in his head every night as the dull amber light of the kerosene lamp he used to study flickered in the breeze and hurt his eyes.
Claudette’s employers, the Abaid’s, weren’t exactly thrilled that Luke would be attending the same school as their children. They were not very fond of him and thought he was effete and slightly strange. Once as they were driving past him on their way to school, their daughter Isabelle remarked that she noticed the same stain at the back of his khaki uniform pants 3 days in a row; the following week they gave Claudette 5 washed out Dockers pants that he would have to grow into a little. At least he’d fit in a little more at school in the name brand trousers.
Luke was socially awkward and unsure. He wasn’t encouraged to hang out with the boys from his community because as his mother saw it, they weren’t heading anywhere worth going; and at school he was invisible because he didn’t have an acceptable last name. They knew he was different from the children of the growing black professional class that lived in the dormitory community on the other side of the Kingston Harbour; they knew he couldn’t have afforded to buy those name brand pants; and they also knew from his accent that he didn’t attend a wealthy prep school like they did. His life consisted of trips to church every Sunday with his mother, and the daily hike to the square to catch a bus to school with scandal bags over his shoes to keep them clean on the muddy road, punctuated with episodes of humiliation at the hands of his peers usually over something petty like his “aitch problem”: the way Jamaicans add or drop the letter from words when they speak. This “problem” tends to reveal where on the totem pole you fall.
His only friend at school was Wadsworth Desulme, the son of the island’s wealthiest industrialist. Wadsworth was a heavily built boy of cocoa brown complexion, the kind of hue when a black man marries a mulatta, and he had an odd gait he said he got from a horse-riding accident, but he really got from a fall after swinging on the railing of his bathtub pretending to be Captain America. They were forced to interact simply because their last names were one behind the other when the class was arranged in alphabetical order for seating purposes. They were two peculiar and kindred spirits from two different worlds who became fast friends because of the similarity in awkwardness they both shared. Wadsworth’s father would drop Luke off at the square most evenings after school on their way up the hill, it saved him another long walk plus the bus fare that he did not have, so he was grateful.
Wadsworth was always slightly eccentric, preferring everything slightly left of centre. He had his own bedroom and a personal computer with a dedicated internet connection and he always had stories to tell of how close he came to being caught looking at something he ought not to have been viewing, usually pornography. Sexuality was something Luke never really had the chance to process. His church treated it like an iniquitous human disadvantage; his parents never had it, at least not to his knowledge; and he never thought of it much. Even his first experiments with masturbation were more instinctive than fantasy-based. He couldn’t really relate to Wadsworth’s perverse tales of the sex they both knew he wasn’t having, but pretended to be interested to maintain his only friendship. In many regards Luke was largely infantile, not enduring the typical rites of passage the other pubescent boys in his community had, and not able to relate to the weird versions of sex Wadsworth was so eager to show him, but for the sake of having a friend he pretended to be interested.
Wadsworth liked to invite Luke over to his house on the weekends to study. Both relied mostly on natural ability to excel in school so their study sessions quickly digressed into surfing the internet for more and more porn. Wadsworth’s immature penis became engorged at the mere mention of sex and he always became visibly uncomfortable when this happened. Luke’s stoic reaction to material that would drive other teenage boys into frenzy puzzled Wadsworth, yet secretly Luke was more intrigued by the closeness he was forging with his only friend. Wadsworth jokingly called him a battyman once because of his lack of interest in the naked Caucasian girls on the screen and that was the cause of their first real rift. Luke simply stopped talking to him for a few days and left school as soon as the last session ended rather than wait for Mr. Desulme to pick them both up. One mutually lonely week later Wadsworth walked over to Luke just before their last class ended and said: “Daddy is asking if we gwen drop yu home this evening” then sheepishly turned and walked away. And their friendship resumed.
As time went on the two grew closer and developed a sort of brotherhood. Both felt isolated from their peers and ironically, their visible closeness didn’t make things any better. They were constantly accused of being a couple, a concept that at 12 years old was perhaps as bad as a 21 year old finding out he was HIV positive. Luke didn’t have the social capital Wadsworth had to be able to brush off such accusations. He was from the rural community nicknamed “Backa-God-Back” that didn’t take kindly to those things. Once he remembered a gentleman that had leased 4 acres to start horticulture, orchid farming in particular. He was single, in his 40s, and he grew flowers. These facts were puzzling enough to prompt vicious rumours and plots of public beatings. It culminated in a riot after one drunk farmer accused him of peeping at him while he urinated against a tree as he stumbled home from the bar late one moonless night. 30 machete-wielding illiterates descended on the man’s farm, chopping everything to bits, except the horticulturist who beat a hasty retreat, never to be seen again.
Luke biggest fear was word reaching his mother that he and Wadsworth had some sort of love affair. Of course, it wasn’t true. Wadsworth was developing into a bit of a sex freak, but a heterosexual freak. Luke on the other hand was beginning to realize more and more that the warmth and comfort he felt around his friend and brother was not platonic. He was beginning to long for him in a way that he didn’t know how to articulate. Luke’s preoccupation with Wadsworth wasn’t even overtly sexual. It was a deep love before he even understood the concept. He never really understood what a battyman was as there was simply no frame of reference for such things in his community except for the invisible boogey man that would do unspoken and horrible deeds to little boys without provocation. This was of course designed to keep little boys inside at night, instead of roaming the dense forests, but ironically it was just enough to pique Luke’s curiosity about this man and his interest in little boys.
He met the horticulturist once, on the rare occasion that he and the boys from the community played. They were on his land picking mangoes when they heard a commotion through the bush. It was the man, with a large stick in hand; ready to beat the mango thieves that were on his property. The other boys leaped from the trees and ran from the man as if their lives depended on it, laughing as they ran away, leaving Luke in the tree. The man approached and their eyes met. Luke froze, partly out of fear, and partly out of shock that he had finally come face to face with the phantom of Backa-God-Back. The man did not say a word. He simply looked at this strange boy staring back at him from the limb of his Julie Mango tree, lingered for a moment, then turned and walked away. For years after Luke pondered why he didn’t say anything and what was going through his mind when he looked at him. As he became more aware of his sexuality he had the weird notion that the man could somehow see his darkest secrets and desires and that his inaction was because they had a spiritual bond that at the time he was too young to understand. This paranoia only made Luke’s self-realization more uncomfortable as he wondered who else from the community could see it.
His mother, somehow sensing her son was going through some grief, became more smothering than usual and this annoyed Luke greatly. Privacy wasn’t something he was used to in their small wooden shack with curtains for walls and no indoor plumbing. But in the absence of physical privacy he cherished the solitude of his mind, and his mother’s insistence to find out what was the problem caused him to resent her slightly.
It didn’t help much that his father had recently become more critical of his mannerisms and lack of interest in the farm. “Yu tink yu is one of di brown people dem? Tan deh tun yu back pon farm work and lock up inna yaad like gyal! Don figet seh yu ‘kin black lacka wil’ hog…a yaso yu come from, nuh up deso!”
Stinging words, searing accusations and social exclusion was his miserable reality at 14 years old. He wasn’t performing badly at school but he wasn’t exactly soaring. His history teacher, himself a product of similar circumstances, pulled him aside one day after class to find out why exactly he seemed so depressed and why he had stopped trying. “Don’t let these spoilt brats get to you”, he said. “They’re jealous of your natural ability and it would be a real shame if you let them win”. These kind words of encouragement didn’t mean much to him. His eyes dashed about nervously, all he could think about was what the children would say if they saw him talking privately to “Bashment Granny”, the name they gave to Mr. Hunter because someone said he reminded them of the man in drag and multi-coloured wigs from the popular farcical play of the time. Mr. Hunter’s only crime was being well-spoken and a stickler for excellence.
Wadsworth also began acting strangely around him. As his voice deepened his gait changed from a limp to a swagger and his personality changed from fun and mischievous to serious and self-analyzing. He had begun to do what was necessary to avoid social suicide, including keeping Luke at arm’s length. So the ‘brothers’ became like 2nd cousins and the closeness they once shared became an embarrassment. Luke started to take the bus home and Wadsworth soon forgot about him.
Increasingly isolated, Luke began retreating more and more into himself. This did not go unnoticed by his parents. His mother was a prayer warrior and he would hear her chanting his name every morning just before sunrise, her voice swollen and slightly nasal as if she was fighting back tears, as she prayed for him to find peace. His father on the other hand became increasingly critical of his lack of interest in girls, often threatening to kill him if he ever heard he was a homosexual. “Yu tink me coulda bring any battyman come pon dis earth’? Ah coulda me bredda, me chop up dat bumboclaat!” was his drunken mantra. “Drunken words are sober thoughts” his personal development teacher taught him, and he wasn’t going to take his father’s rants lightly.
Another person in his community that had taken an interest in him was Monty. Monty was a deportee that spoke with a heavy Bronx accent who Luke found to be a little too friendly. He always greeted him as if they were long lost friends, with exaggerated high fives and chest bumps, physical closeness that Luke simply was not used to, and this made him very uncomfortable. Luke figured he had been a crack dealer on the streets in New York and that he was working some angle to try and get something out of him. He couldn’t imagine what that could be and so he avoided him where possible. He was always in the same grey heavy cotton shorts that reached just above his ankles, a pair of dirty tennis shoes, an over-sized white t-shirt and a grey sweat band he wore lop-sided on his forehead. Luke always thought he was ridiculously over-dressed for this humid forest but attributed his eccentricity to his sampling the product he used to sell.
Luke was 15 years old now and the uniforms he got that were expected to last him 3 years were beginning to look a little snug. He had grown in spurts in the past year and apart from the discomfort of being teased by his classmates, who got new uniforms every year, puberty had caused his penis to develop a mind of its own and erections were impossible to hide in these under-sized pants. Even in a flaccid state he was always conscious that rather than look him in the face when he was acknowledged, people’s eyes tended to drift south. He despised that feeling.
His new tormentor Monty noticed as well and accordingly dubbed him “Long seed bwoy”, in one of his rare slips into the vernacular, and made it a point to call him so at every opportunity while palming the crotch of those shorts he always wore and wearing a goofy grin. This is when it dawned on Luke that there was possibly a sexual aspect to this incessant teasing and friendliness.
Early one morning as Luke made his daily trip toward the square to catch a bus to school Monty met him along an overgrown section of the track. This particular part of the walk was his least favourite as there was a Guango tree and a huge old Cotton tree that grew into each other. That area was always damp, dark, and said to be haunted by the spirit of a girl that was found there raped, and her head bashed in with a rock. Such viciousness was foreign to the sleepy hillside community and was said to be brought there by one of her jealous boyfriends from Kingston.
Monty was friendlier than usual this morning, blocking the path so Luke couldn’t pass and insisting on having a conversation with him.
“Wassup big boy?” he asked in a sing-songy voice. There was a sense of urgency in his tone as if he wanted to hurriedly get to the point while using the odd greeting as a distraction. “I been noticing how that thing swings when you walk…”, he said in his awkward mixture of hard and soft consonants, his Jamaican and American accents ebbing and flowing. Luke was hoping this was some sort of game, a pun he hadn’t yet picked up. “I know you know what I’m talking ‘bout, don’t play dumb! Lemme see what’chu working wit!” he said with his eyes fixed on Luke’s crotch, shocking Luke into reality while stepping towards him and reaching for his belt.
Luke froze as Monty enveloped him. His hands touched places no one had touched since his mother bathed him as a baby. He thought of screaming but noticed the knife in Monty’s waist and swallowed the shout, as well as his pride.
Monty’s coarse hands scraped his virgin skin as he stood there with tears rolling down his cheeks. He transported himself to another plane where he was a CEO. He shooed his secretary, Isabelle, while ushering a Japanese investor into his office and asking him about his wife and children in Tokyo. After work he went home to his mansion above the Abaid’s where he was greeted by his mother. She embraced him and he was lost in her bosom as he had been in all of her embraces throughout his life. That primal comfort that words cannot describe soothed him. She kissed him on the cheek with a smack: KRAK! And he fell in slow-motion with his eyes facing upward.
Luke gazed at the sky from this unfamiliar vantage. His mind was quiet for the first time in years and he casually observed the swooping of the buzzards high above and the buzzing of the flies around him.
On the back of his neck he felt a warm liquid trickling slowly down his back and onto his shoulders. He looked upward, his dried tears were glistening rivulets on his cheeks that cooled with the passing breeze, the moisture was now all around him and he could feel the familiar insistence of an insect crawling up his foot. The white of the clouds and the blue of the sky merged and grew in intensity as he felt himself drifting like the times he spent too long at the beach and felt the tide for days after. The forest was more beautiful than ever, the birds sang sweetly, and the blossoms of the apple tree were more fragrant than usual. The insect continued to crawl up his foot, onto his leg and his eyes grew heavier.
He breathed in the scent of the bush, the smell of the hogs, and the cows, and the farmers that had used this path before. In the distance he thought he heard children playing, their screams of glee and banter sounded like a foreign language. His mind went to his parents. He remembered the one time his father ever hugged him, when he passed the entrance exam to his prestigious high school. It was an uncomfortable moment for both of them and would not have happened if not for the insistence of his mother who felt he deserved the world for his achievement. She bubbled over with pride while his father tried his best to hide his.
Leaves falling from the canopy rested in his mind, before scattering all around him.
Each a precious memory of times before, each a symbol of life transformed.
The tick continued to crawl up his side, each step of its legs leaving a bigger indent than the one before.
It rested on his heart as the rhythm of its beating faded, and he drifted away forever.
© 2010 Brian-Paul Welsh
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