Augustown by Kei Miller

Author:Kei Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

This Is How It Starts

And so, I commenced the observance of fasting. Then, I began to continually see myself on the way to Augustown. Whether I slept at night or day I dreamed I was going to Augustown.

—TESTIMONY OF MRS. A. DACOSTA, TRANSCRIBED IN 1917 BY A. A. WOODS

12

To know a man properly, you must know the shape of his hurt—the specific wound around which his person has been formed like a scab. And the shape of Ian Moody’s hurt is a gentleman you have already met, and who has already died. His name was Clarky.

Now if you ask him, Ian will not say that he was in love with Clarky. That would have been impossible. Ian will call down fire and brimstone and judgement on you for making such a nasty suggestion. At the time, Clarky was a big man, and he, Ian, was only a boy. And they were, neither of them, the kind who believed in that kind of love. Not even between man and woman. Love was a thing for storybooks, or for those big “film” shows, for white people on a screen in black and white, singing their way through their simple lives. Love was for Judy Garland and Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

And yet…

From the beginning, something unspeakable had passed between them—an intensity of feeling—but the two believed in talk even less than they believed in love, which only made things worse. Unspoken, the thing between them could not dissipate. It only grew.

And what exactly drew Ian Moody to the Rastaman is also unknown. On that Thursday, the boy had spent the day outside with his sudsy pail of water. In his hand was a tattered T-shirt which he planned to wear at the end of the day but which was now being used as a washrag. His business was the washing of cars, a service he offered to customers who parked up outside Papine market. It being a Thursday meant that business was slow inside the market and even slower outside. The boy spent much of the day just sitting on the pavement, dipping his fingers in the pail of water then holding the hand above his head, letting the water drip down across his back. He enjoyed the feeling of coolness as it evaporated from his skin.

He watched fat black flies flit from one discarded fruit to another—the blighted naseberries, mangoes and pawpaws that had been left to rot in the gutter. He noticed, however, that the flies would never pitch on the discarded sections of melon, so sometimes when no one was looking he would take up one of these pieces, wash it off and eat it.

When the occasional driver turned into the parking lot and emerged from the car, Ian would spring up from the pavement and run over to make his bid.

“I clean yu car for yu, sir. Anyting yu can give.”

But always the drivers turned their faces away, pretending not to see or hear him. Ian was forced

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