The Marvellous Equations of the Dread by Marcia Douglas

Author:Marcia Douglas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peepal Tree

1996: The Future of Ras

With new higherstanding, Bob walks down the road, noticing how Babylon has changed yet remained the same. In the end, Babylon is Babylon. He walks until he comes across a man with a small stall at a bus stop. He sells bottled water and bag juice. When he sees Bob, he calls, “Ras!” Bob pauses and is about to move on when he recognizes the man as the youth he saw the first day, the boy with the play-play guitar. He is older now, his head tied with a red bandana and a little ram goat beard at his chin.

“Is you that, Ras?” the man says, “when me never see you, me think them kill you to raahtid!”

“Me come back.”

Then he looks at Bob hard. “So where you disappear go?”

“Inna the clock – down the street.”

“Ah, Ras! Still full of jokes! Still full of jokes!” He laughs and slaps Bob’s back, speaking with so much excitement little bits of spit accumulate at the corners of his mouth. “And not a year show on your face!”

“But tomorrow when me come again, you will show five more,” Bob says.

Delroy laughs and slaps Bob’s back again. Then he stops and says, “You still checking the girls?”

“This morning me see a dawtah with a phone in her back pocket.”

“That’s the Ras I know! That’s the Ras I know!” Delroy says, the spit bubbling at his corner-mouth.

Bob is pleased to discover that his responses satisfy Delroy. By now he realizes that it is useless to insist on his true identity. He reaches into his satchel and pulls out a little bundle. “Two patty and a box drink, for this ring.” he says.

Delroy looks at the ring with interest.

“Oh, is a Bob Marley ring!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah-man. Bob Marley used to sport a ring like that. Everybody want one now. Where you get it?”

“In my pocket.”

“But where you get it?”

“My faadah give me it.”

“Ah, Ras. Mad same way! Mad same way!” He cups the ring and blows on it, then rubs it to a shine with the hem of his shirt. “Them have a jeweller downtown make these kinda Rasta ring. I bet is him do this one.”

“Take it,” Bob says. “Where me going me no need material tings.”

“Nah?”

Delroy blows on the ring again. “Where you going?”

“Zion,” Bob says.

Delroy puts the ring back in Bob’s hand, then crosses the street. He comes back with a patty and a coco bread and a pineapple box drink, gives Bob a stool next to the stall.

“Keep the ring,” he says. “Is your faadah give you it.”

Bob eats the patty and crumples the brown bag. He is thinking of his children. A little girl with thick plaits. He misses her. Misses his nice girl. She would be grown up now; all his children grown up now. And his sons – one of them maybe about this man’s age. He pictures him. Yes, standing in a doorway, eating an orange. “Daddy?”

“Where yuh faadah deh?” Bob turns to Delroy.

“How you mean? Is you my faadah,” Delroy says.

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