Hot Sundays | Lead Sheet into Tug Life. Pt. 3

Jamaican yardie-style crime fiction. Told from a Carib-Jamericanadian perspective. In richly blended language mix of; poetry, nonsense talk, double entendre, sensational spelling, and Jamaican Patois. Yeah — man, a Jamaica Yaad mi come fram, sorry, I meant to say; I’m Jamaican born and bred, okay? So, continuing.

Savia is in the hot seat again, it’s Sunday evening, and she’s out joyriding with her friends. No, oh no, not her so-called “best friend” Shannon. She’s beginning to outgrow that sort of companion on the ship of friends from London, now. Well, so it would seem. She’s beginning to find much more pleasure in the company of men much older, I mean. Particularly, that Damion fellow. But now! Those same longtime friends of hers, Savia and Damion, as it occurs, are like a pod of peas lately, and a devil of a man is he. That’s a sure thing for one to see and go talk to Shannon about me. But Shannon…?

They’re doing the drive-by sing-a-long song again tonight. Just a promenading spin around the block, and along the scenic route off the posh neighborhood where the rich and famous folks around these parts lives. Yes, on the waterfront near the bridge, port, of course. Courting Waterloo where they go to do what they do when not doing the play-of-the-day and courting the fee off you. “We’re robbing this one tonight,” said Damion, to his friends’ fright, and they laughed.

But when at last they could finally recompose their body parts, and fully digest the weightiness of the impact. That was when they’d noticed the fact that, Damion wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t joking as she had supposed and thought spin. He was as serious as serious could have ever been. The mischievous glitter in his dark brown eye like splinter, gave little away as to just how serious he really was, that day. Well, it was just about when the darkness fully set in to go play. After the evening had sulked, tumbled, and fallen off the Edgewatery Bay. But.

“Those eyes,” she whispered and mused at her friend about the guys. Shannon’s whispering surprise as felt coming from warm breath beside, her, dripping the words down to fall on her inner thighs. Well, below the gaze of the man’s eyes, overseeing them via the rearview mirror, but not close enough to overhear her words. Aren’t they the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen?

Looking up at Savia, she heard it as it was said to her again, about him and his behavior I mean, and she’d laughed. Laughing giggles at how much truth was wrapped up within such talk, disheveled though it was, and still is, of course. “But then again, how many eyes have you looked into to save? Eyes that were to be found at the time, upping the shades, and up-staging a teenage girl’s lustful brainwaves anyway?”

“None other than… Or maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“Never mind that.”

Quietness now, in the car seat out back.

…

She’s looking in again tonight, or out. But squarely at him and his braided brain covered up, and tight. So? Yes, too tight as a matter of fact, for a “man” like that. “Well, perhaps, perhaps we could do something about that.” Said Savia, almost as a whispering thought. “That’s not too bright, though, what you mean by ‘we,’” Shannon remarked. As events and time would come to show, she was right.

Yet, they laughed, because it was funny, in fact. Except when and where it applies to the real truth about such things as that. Those that cannot face the daylight schemes of things. In such a case, it’s not that funny. Shannon knew it. Want to bet that on the money? “…yes but, oh, those eyes again,”

“Those eyes,” she said, “they sure are bright, fa real”

They’re off to get a move on hot wheat bread, to go along with the fried chicken of Ken’s fame. Before homing it back to the crib again, to go and get overly excited, with them. He’s got his sparring p with him in the pan, and that was when… Murder She Wrote? Or was it Redrum?

…

Savia was standing there at the corner of the street in the square when she called out the slang of the week, “red stripe beer,” she said, so to speak. That’s when they looked up and saw them, on the run, running away from the scene that night, and out of town. This was after she’d seen a police party approaching, coming on down. Savia’s stage show act was so designed as a disguise so that those men, her friends, could make an escape and get away from them, guys.

In time to go and hide their guns, bloody clothes too, those that were stained with the leftover spills from their games, from you. She was placed there to slow them down, yes, the police patrol, “if they should drop into town.” By walking out into the street in her leggings and skimpy pum-pum shorts under her mini skirt, clothes of sorts. Those she’d picked up from the new store that had recently opened up on the corner; Victors Reveals it, was what they’d named it. Just next door to the old; Vickie’s Secrets, but they couldn’t keep it.

This act was designed for that very purpose, to slow them down. By showing off her buffs, knowing full well that they will want to stop and chat off their mouths with her guts. Trying to get a taste of the pretty pp-pea soup with the pp meat of the week, you know. While giving the armed men time to get away, and go home. “Sweet eh.”

Meanwhile, the men would have gotten enough time to run down the back alley and across the gully and make the getaway, and to make it safely home. Most folks around these parts knew these men very well. They have always known the score, but will never tell. As everybody already knows, they don’t work. “They never do a hard day’s work in their lives,” some would confess, at the point of the hidden knives. Yet, they’re the ones who are always sporting coils of cash and such the likes. They drive the most expensive cars on the roads and bikes. They have all the pretty girls too, as you already know this truth.

“Like who?”

“Like Savia, for instance, and now this little one, still not yet fully grown to go the distance. What’s her name again?”

“Shannon.”

“Yes, yeah man! She same one, sweet Shannon.” So, the two girls were left there to their own devices. Sitting there in the back room of the house, as the choice was. Sigismund and Damion had just slid out of the house to go and grab a bite of some kind of grubs. Well, that’s what they’d said to the girls, left sitting there, by the bed of pearls. Down at the shop, though, Sigismund and Damion didn’t show. They’d gone to do other business somewhere across town, no? Yes, that was the reason why they were so long gone. As seen through the eyes of Savia and Shannon.

…

Welton was laying on the sofa, back down. Battling the sleepy eyes that were just about coming on. While entertaining the late show, on the television. Bang, bang, bang, came the battering sound. Pounding on the door to try and break it down. “open the door, open up. This is the police; this is the cops,” but it was not, though Welton didn’t know that.

He popped the door open to his own demise; it came at him with such a great surprise. Damion and his friend both pulled guns and aimed, started demanding “everything,” from the trembling Welton. He didn’t know who the other man was, since he was cover-faced under his plan-tam, hands in gloves. Welton couldn’t run, nor could he respond in kind. Like, to deliver in the same way as those intruders had demanded, at his hands. He was home, yes, but his luggage was not. They were to follow him today, or on some other thereafter, that was that.

That was the wrong answer, as seen through the eyes of the gangsters. “You’re a dead man — Welton, ‘’ he said, before shots rang out, bang, bang, and now, he’s dead. Dead yes, and gone to bed, now the crooks are running, armed, and scared. Under droplets of his migratory blood, bleeding red, out of there. Running towards their regular ways and means. To go river-wash them and get them clean. By the hands of none other than their own regular girlie means. All done now, and back at home. Drinking champagne, while sitting down, “Ice Cold,” is the new name as it’s known down home. But then again. To be continued.

An excerpt from my book called “Collect Call.” A collection of short stories and poems of the times, available on Amazon, and wherever books are sold. If you don’t see it, ask for it, they’ll get it for you.