the left of the road. Then, abruptly, a clearing: cowed grass lying low before sand, sea, sky, endless. The dramatic reveal. The thing that was there all along, less surprising than startling, the scope, how it changed things. The air.
It was seven in the morning, he could tell without checking, by the men seated tugging in nets from the night: at least ten of them, eleven, in a vertical line along the end of a rope that stretched far out to sea.
Heave-ho
. Forward, backward, a perfected synchronization, hauling, all, with one movement like rowers on sand in once-bright colored T-shirts (much like the T-shirts sold at Goodwill), all the palm trees leaning with them. Fronds fluttering in the breeze.
He must have made some sound as he stared out the window because Fola laid a hand very lightly on his. As she did. Never taking, never “holding”
his hand, just lightly laying hers on top. A choice. To hold or be held. He held her hand absently, not turning from the window. Unable to, glued there, transfixed by the view, with the first few tears forming now, loosely, like cumulus, clouding his eyes, too unripe yet to fall. The effect was to soften the edges, a filter, the beach sparkling gray in celestially blurred light, like a scene from those soaps all the nurses loved watching: irresistibly gripping if you only knew the plot. (And he did. Basic storyline. Dancing, sap, grandmas.) He stared like the nurses, through unfalling tears.
Why had he hated this view? Of this beach, of the backs of these fishermen, glistening brown, of the long wooden boats, evangelical names in bright tricolor paint on their splintering sides,
Black Star Jesus
,
Jah Reign
,
Christ the Fisher of Men
, in the red, yellow, green of the national flag and the national spirit of open-source ethos, this mixing of Anglican, Rastafarian, Ghanaian? What was there to hate in this? There was only openness. As far as he could see. A cheerful openness. An innocence. An innocent beach on the road to Kokrobité at seven A.M ., November 1975, little country lurching, cheerful, unaware, to revolution. Little taxi lurching, blasting revolution, to grief.
• • •
And then her.
Not a bridge, her fulfillment the brick.
No jubilation, no drumming, no goats, and no fish.
• • •
Fola stayed waiting with his half-sisters Shormeh and Naa, their eyes filed with old hate and new grief. A crowd had gathered excitedly as they’d alighted the taxi and lingered now watching as he entered the hut. No one needed details (irresistibly gripping). His cameraman, among, didn’t follow him in.
He ducked as he entered, forgetting his height. Or its size, this small shanty, his childhood home. He carried his son, half asleep, six months old then, the American-born boy-child, to her.
The one bed.
She was lying on her back with her arms at her side, with the mats on the floor, the same mats he remembered. Dark, and so cool with the dome overhead. It was a well-structured hut, however minimal. Rounded clay walls with the massive thatch roof sixteen feet at its peak, a triangular dome. His father had built it. An artist, they told him, a Fante, a wanderer, a “genius like him.” (He’d been jailed after punching a drunk English sergeant who’d hassled his wife, jailed, then publicly flogged. There by the tree in the middle of the “compound,” this cluster of huts. Stripped to shorts at midday. “He left,” said the villagers simply. Thereafter. Just packed up his things, walked away, as he’d come. Others, now dead, claim he walked into the ocean in a sparkling white
bubu
, to his waist, then his head, without stopping. Further, forward, under,
into
the ocean. Like Jesus. With weights. Under moon. Into black.)
His brother looked surprised as he entered but said nothing. “Leave me,” he said to his brother. His brother left.
• • •
She could have been sleeping from the way she was lying there. He’d heard families say this
It was seven in the morning, he could tell without checking, by the men seated tugging in nets from the night: at least ten of them, eleven, in a vertical line along the end of a rope that stretched far out to sea.
Heave-ho
. Forward, backward, a perfected synchronization, hauling, all, with one movement like rowers on sand in once-bright colored T-shirts (much like the T-shirts sold at Goodwill), all the palm trees leaning with them. Fronds fluttering in the breeze.
He must have made some sound as he stared out the window because Fola laid a hand very lightly on his. As she did. Never taking, never “holding”
his hand, just lightly laying hers on top. A choice. To hold or be held. He held her hand absently, not turning from the window. Unable to, glued there, transfixed by the view, with the first few tears forming now, loosely, like cumulus, clouding his eyes, too unripe yet to fall. The effect was to soften the edges, a filter, the beach sparkling gray in celestially blurred light, like a scene from those soaps all the nurses loved watching: irresistibly gripping if you only knew the plot. (And he did. Basic storyline. Dancing, sap, grandmas.) He stared like the nurses, through unfalling tears.
Why had he hated this view? Of this beach, of the backs of these fishermen, glistening brown, of the long wooden boats, evangelical names in bright tricolor paint on their splintering sides,
Black Star Jesus
,
Jah Reign
,
Christ the Fisher of Men
, in the red, yellow, green of the national flag and the national spirit of open-source ethos, this mixing of Anglican, Rastafarian, Ghanaian? What was there to hate in this? There was only openness. As far as he could see. A cheerful openness. An innocence. An innocent beach on the road to Kokrobité at seven A.M ., November 1975, little country lurching, cheerful, unaware, to revolution. Little taxi lurching, blasting revolution, to grief.
• • •
And then her.
Not a bridge, her fulfillment the brick.
No jubilation, no drumming, no goats, and no fish.
• • •
Fola stayed waiting with his half-sisters Shormeh and Naa, their eyes filed with old hate and new grief. A crowd had gathered excitedly as they’d alighted the taxi and lingered now watching as he entered the hut. No one needed details (irresistibly gripping). His cameraman, among, didn’t follow him in.
He ducked as he entered, forgetting his height. Or its size, this small shanty, his childhood home. He carried his son, half asleep, six months old then, the American-born boy-child, to her.
The one bed.
She was lying on her back with her arms at her side, with the mats on the floor, the same mats he remembered. Dark, and so cool with the dome overhead. It was a well-structured hut, however minimal. Rounded clay walls with the massive thatch roof sixteen feet at its peak, a triangular dome. His father had built it. An artist, they told him, a Fante, a wanderer, a “genius like him.” (He’d been jailed after punching a drunk English sergeant who’d hassled his wife, jailed, then publicly flogged. There by the tree in the middle of the “compound,” this cluster of huts. Stripped to shorts at midday. “He left,” said the villagers simply. Thereafter. Just packed up his things, walked away, as he’d come. Others, now dead, claim he walked into the ocean in a sparkling white
bubu
, to his waist, then his head, without stopping. Further, forward, under,
into
the ocean. Like Jesus. With weights. Under moon. Into black.)
His brother looked surprised as he entered but said nothing. “Leave me,” he said to his brother. His brother left.
• • •
She could have been sleeping from the way she was lying there. He’d heard families say this
Similar Books
