Dagger Key and Other Stories

“Sometimes I feel that way, but just because a thing a tradition, that don’t mean it true. Other times I think Annie never let go. She going to hold onto that dagger ’til the last days.”

“Don’t you be telling me that!”

“I can’t help it. That’s how I feel.”

“No, don’t be telling me that!” She confronts him, hands on hips. “You just vexed about Annie, and you pitying yourself. And you trying to get me to pity you. But you don’t want that. The day I come to pity you, that’s the day I stop loving you.”

Shocked, he looks up at her.

“I’m serious,” she says.

“I can’t believe you say something like that, after all these years.”

She drops to her knees in the sand, puts her hands on his knees. “Fredo, I just trying to get your attention. You know I love you, but there’s days when it seem you got too much Jesus in your head.”

“You going to start blaspheming now?”

“If that what it take to get you straight,” she says. “Jesus don’t have to live in this world. We do. Like it or not, when time tough, we gots to be hard, even if it sinful.”

Fredo hangs his head and digs in the sand with the toe of his shoe, his thoughts circulating between the good sense of what she’s said and his views on personal salvation.

“We counting on you to be hard, Fredo. The boys and Leona, we all counting on you.” Emily sighs and pushes up to her feet. “I gots to go back in before Philby steal us blind.”

“I’d pass through hell for this family,” he says. “But I no want to get stuck there.”

Emily’s fingers brush his shoulder, startling him, and he glances up.

“Want me to wake you when I come in?” she asks. “Or I can sleep down with Leona.” In her face, beneath the worry and agitation, he finds what he has always found when she looks at him. “Yeah, wake me,” he says. “I leave the lamp burning for you.”

Palace is dribbling a soccer ball in front of the shanty, a skinnier, eleven-year-old Fredo, but with his mother’s dark eyes, and Jenry, a well-built fifteen-year-old with Emily’s African features and coloration, and his father’s blue eyes, is lying in his parents’ hammock, listening to dancehall on a battery-operated CD player. He’s a strikingly handsome kid and he knows it. Seeing him, Fredo is tempted, as usual, to take him down a peg. He considers bringing up the gas-sniffing incident, but limits himself to saying, “Turn that mess off.” Lately it has been difficult for Fredo to warm up to Jenry, and he’s had the thought that his son may be growing into someone he does not much like; but Jenry is still a child, still salvageable, and Fredo understands that this is the reason he has to go with Annie, to fund that salvation. That both makes him feel more kindly disposed to Jenry and amplifies his resentment of the situation.

Jenry lets the CD play, then—just as his father is about to repeat his instruction; he’s learned how to time these things—he switches it off and climbs from the hammock. He’s wearing his school uniform, as is Palace. Short-sleeved white shirt, dark blue trousers and matching tie. He shoves his hands into his pockets and leans against the wall, the generic pose of the layabouts who hang around Tully’s shop.

“Mama say you had a visit from Annie,” he says in a challenging tone, as if daring Fredo to deny it.

“Change out of them clothes,” says Fredo. “You got to keep them fresh for school.”

Jenry loosens his tie. “I want to go with you.”

Fredo grunts in amusement. “There a long walk between what you want and what going to happen.”

Palace, the soccer ball under his arm, comes into the room, and Fredo tells him to change his clothes, saying he’ll start supper going.

“Why can’t I go with you?” Jenry asks, and Palace says happily, “Roxy Tidcombe already fix us sandwiches over the resort.” He giggles. “Her cat purring for Jenry.”

Jenry gives him a scornful look.

“Go on,” says Fredo. “Change them clothes. Your mama’s got enough to do without washing ’em every day.”

He stretches out in the hammock and closes his eyes, listening to the boys bickering in the back room. Palace: “You the one tell me about Roxy!” Jenry: “Did I tell you to spread the news around, too?” Fredo’s thoughts slow, but he does not sleep, hovering just above sleep’s surface. A breeze pushes open the door, the rusting hinges squeak. Through the doorway, a narrow band of the sea appears to billow like a blue-green scarf drawn between earth and sky. Footsteps behind him, and Jenry steps into view. He asks again about Annie and Fredo, less irritable now, says, “Your mama needs you to help out while I gone. The time come soon enough you going to learn about Annie.”

“How soon?”

Fredo swings his legs over the side of the hammock. “You remember that toy you wanted a few years back? That robot with its eyes light up and it shooting sparks?”

“That were six, seven years ago,” Jenry says defensively. He’s clad in a pair of shorts and has a cheap gold chain about his neck, the links showing like golden stitches against his black skin.