Black Cake(14)

Covey followed her pa outside as he hurried down the driveway, brushing past the bougainvillea and out into the street. At the end of the road lay the small cluster of businesses that included one of his stores. In the daytime, Covey would have been able to see the intersection in the distance, but now there was only an orange glow against the night sky.

“Go home, Covey!” her father said when he saw her. “Go on, and lock the doors behind you.” The thought of locking the doors to their home came as a shock. It was something that Covey, at seventeen, had never done. Not even with the political business farther up the coast, the killings the previous year. There had never been any need.

“But, Pa,” Covey said, coughing. A hint of smoke scraped at her throat. Her father put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around.

“Don’t talk back to me,” he said, “just go on. And look at you. In your night clothes, no less. Go cover yourself up.”

Covey ran back to the house, keeping her arms folded over her pajama top to cover the bounce of her breasts. Before leaving, she’d seen enough to understand that her father’s stores were probably burning along with other businesses on that stretch of road. Just as Covey turned into her front yard, two women passed her on the street. One of them was saying that a chiney shopkeeper had roughed up one of his workers, that’s why somebody had set fire to the shops.

“The woman asked for her wages and ’im mash up her face,” she said.

The other woman kissed her teeth.

Chiney? They didn’t mean Covey’s father, did they? Most of the stores in the parish were owned by Chinese islanders, so Covey supposed it could have been any one of them. But not her pa. Everyone knew her father was prone to the gambling and drinking. But beating up an employee? That didn’t sound like Johnny “Lin” Lyncook. Her pa? Her father had pulled a belt strap on her once but he hadn’t actually hit her. He’d seemed so certain that the menace of it would be enough. His bark had always been greater than his bite.

As Covey reached the house, she saw Gibbs and his father running toward the fire. Gibbs hurried across the street to her.

“Gibbs!” his father yelled, pointing at the fire. Gibbs’s father had opened a shop with his wife’s cousin and he looked worried.

“I’m sorry, my father…,” Gibbs said.

“I know, I know.”

“Can you meet me tomorrow?” Gibbs said. “Try to meet me. The usual place.”

Covey nodded, tears building up in her eyes as she opened the gate to her house. But she didn’t have to wait until the next day. An hour later, Gibbs was back, rapping a stone against the gate until Covey looked out the window and ran out to let him in. Holding hands, they ran through the side garden to the back of the house.

“You mustn’t let my father see you.”

“I don’t think your father is coming back anytime soon, Covey.”

Covey felt her body go heavy. She rested her head on Gibbs’s shoulder. “And your dad?”

“He’s all right, the store’s all right, he’s just helping out.”

They fell silent, kissing and touching until she pushed him away.

“You’d better go before someone sees us.”

“You’re right,” Gibbs said, leaning into her one more time, then pulling away.

After that, Covey was alone in the house until after dawn, waiting and worrying. Lately, Covey had spent most of her time steering clear of her father, dreaming of the day when she and Gibbs could get away from the island together, but on this night, she only wanted to see her pa walk through the front door. Her mother had left, but her father had stayed. Her grandparents had passed on, her uncle and aunts and cousins had moved away, but her pa was still there. That selfish, bad-tempered, narrow-minded man was all that remained of her family.

In the light of day, some of the men from the neighborhood helped Covey’s father and the other merchants pick through the mess. Four shops had caught fire, in all, including one of her pa’s two stores. No one knew who had set the blaze. Or, at least, no one was saying. They all came back to her father’s backyard, shirts and Bermudas covered in soot, her father walking with one foot bare and a broken sandal in his hand. Covey ran to the washroom to wipe away her tears.

The men rinsed their hands and faces with water from the garden hose and settled into chairs, or perched themselves on the veranda steps. Pearl and Covey brought them glasses of ice water and plates of chicken and rice and peas, the scents of coconut milk and garlic mingling with the distant smell of burnt wood and metal. Covey’s father was muttering to another shopkeeper about the man who had reportedly beaten up his employee.

“Is not the first time him rough up somebody,” her pa said. “Dat man only causing trouble for the lot of us.” Covey’s mummy would have glared at her pa for slipping into patois that way, but Covey’s mummy hadn’t been home in five years.

Hadn’t telephoned.

Hadn’t written a letter.

Hadn’t come back for Covey.

“And this won’t be the end of it, either, Lin,” the other shopkeeper said.

Covey wanted to hear more, but Pearl called her into the house. If you wanted to know what was going on around town, you either hung around the men in the backyard or, once your body had sprouted points and curves and you were no longer permitted to linger, you sought out the women in the kitchen, especially on laundry days. There was usually a lull in the afternoon after school, when the white clothes had been laid out on the patio to bleach in the sun and Pearl had time for a piece of fruit and a chat with other helpers from up the way.