Prologue (better later than never)

It is not my intent to make either the culture or its people the subject of stereotype. Neither do I intend to make creature characters have anthropomorphic personalities. Yellow Bird is a report of observations, personal analysis of situations and my possible explanations for what constitutes actions observed. Kent Kent fancys himself a player. He uses terms like hooking up. When are we going to hook up?Usually its a rhetorical question so I avoid an answer and we all save face. But it works often enough. The day met Kent. 6 years ago he was hustling an American tourist. He got along pretty well that winter but he looked scruffy and faded. But The Boy From Ipanema was clearly into serial monogamy this year. That first morning, this time around, I cant believe that I see Kent making a coffee downstairs. I met Kent on Seven Mile Beach in 2006. He was Canadian and had just purchased a bed sitting room in Jackies quest house. Jackie had bamboozled him and rented out his rooms and bath to tourists when he wasnt there. He was obliged to return to Canada to retain his free health care status. This evil little move of hers, left him in the back bedroom, still sharing a bathroom. Kent dropped the Jackie topic quickly as we shared his pancakes with my fruit. I bring up the topic of Carol. Carol led a retreat that I had been on, the first time I was here, six years ago. As I said, we met Kent for the first time on the Seven Mile beach hustling female tourists. Carol is coming down next month with another group of women for another retreat. Retreat On the Reef, its just east here a few kilometres. Carol was tired of Jackies sureness that she, Carol would continue to work for her for poverty wages while expecting too much. Jackie burns people not just bridges. She had even asked me to be manager at the end of my retreat with Carol as manager. I took the one week glance of Carols many dilemmas and said no. His date arrives from his room onto the front balcony, joining us. She is introduced to me as Devins daughter. I move to another table and they continue their sweet nothings. Serial monogamy is also the order of the day in Jamaica. Yellow Bird An old car, tossed by a hurricane into this ravine, does not shelter the body very much. The hoarders of flesh, gut, and tissue, the vultures and other raptors have taken the eyeballs first. Easy pickings. But vultures are no indication of where death is on this island. Death is everywhere. They are always circling the reef, the morass, the ponds, Geneva Mountain, were we now stand. Human remains, lying exposed, escape no indignity. They seem to soften, then melt into where they lay. Dead people left outside, in tropical heat, decompose at the same predictable rate as any at any body in our summertime. Skin exposed the longest turns blacker, usually the head becomes black-and-blue first. Like any fish, it decays from the head down. Bloating takes place within the first two weeks but goes away. Then all the fluid that produced that swelling suddenly dumps into pools around the corpse. Putrefaction attracts snakes, lizards and salamanders and they love the juices. Grubs and mites traverse the necrotic skin in a morose Quadrille, (a French square dance in a lively double time, danced by four or more insects.) Kent turns away and pukes involuntarily. I stare on; trying to the scan for the gender of the corpse, I remember the quote, he who is born to be hanged will never be drowned. I make him promise that he will not report this to Jamaicas Keystone Kops, yet, because I think we know who this is.

Gansta We will take the skull, say we tripped our it and Calm downof course the skull is ours, AND the rest of it. And youre not telling the cops. Kent has an aversion to authority. It might have been on account of the 2 grams of weed he smoked every day. As, he shook his head, I knew he wouldnt tell. We went back to the motorcycle, leaned in close like lovers do, and he tried to scream. What the hell are we gonna do now? I was pretending to inhale and shock my head back at him in rhythm with my voice. We shut our mouths, go about our ways, and did I mention, shut our mouths? He nodded in agreement and asked me to get my fist off his jean jack lapel. I couldnt really make Kent not go the police. But he wasnt getting any more of my attention if he did. Okay, Okay no 5.0s. Tip Toe Through The Spinal Cord (until you meet Uranus) I mentioned that all bodies spread out as they die. (Ill tell you how they do decompose underwater, later) Kent and I descended into that short valley of what looked like squirming vermicelli, hand in hand. Kent and I are not a thing in that sense, so the hands business was creepy enough. Naive Kent went one way and me the other but his idea of circumference of a crime scene was different than mine. When I looked up, he had stomp into black skin, crunched a femur, and tramped his boot brand in all mud under a corpse. KENT THE HELL OFF THAT BODY I was 20 ft away but I could see the blood vessels around his ears start to throb and fill with blood. He looked like he was gonna blow. Unholy Alliance We didnt dwell on the subject of Kents Canadian brand shoe tracks in the skeletal remains of that mutual friend we beleived he was trampling on.(It becomes the elephant in our rooms). It wouldnt rain for a while either so Kent and the victim were locked in unholy alliance until rains came. He seemed nonplussed enough to drive the two hours back. We stopped for his last smoke break in Bloody Bay, under a canopy filled with vacationers partying the afternoon away. I let Kent know that I was not the bosom buddy that Jackie had billed me as. I was neither her spy no confidant. We spent a few minutes trying to figure out why she wanted me to seem that way to others. The Wild Dogs Of Jamaica The next day was Sunday. The wild dogs started howling a couple hours after Sunset the night before and as the last Rasta men were finishing celebrating Bob Marleys birthday, I was trying to settle into sleep. The wild dogs were taking back the night and they joined a lone Rasta man in a special lament at his house next door. Short verses of unintelligible grief he wails, through the remainder of the night. Man, followed by his chorus of dogs. Primal as a 12,000 year old cave drawing, Rasta Mike laments the plight of his manhood and the wild dogs do not let him down. Since Mike is the representative of centuries of island slavery, the dogs also, show themselves as knowing a thing or two about destitution, loneliness and heart ache. The song goes on as long as the drunken man is able to stay conscious. The canines finish his mantra and he drifts off. They move on to the church on the other side of my balcony. Good-naturedly, they wait for the hand-outs after Sunday service. And if the preacher says, Da Lord is comin by heah, Him better pay Him respect for the dog chorus first. They howl with every chorus or bridge and coda. They know the drill. Something good is comin. They just have to play the game. In the hills behind Negril, the pups yelp with the joy of good snacks to come. Mom will have milk to spare when she gets home. She might even bring something; a popes nose, a rib cage or the neck will do nicely. The parishioners are generous once more and give up their plate scrapings. The bitch choir has outdone the human one as far as I can tell and gets its reward. I am

covered by his blood, nearly 2:00m a.m., and they are still at it. But the mother dogs have their prizes and are headed up to their pups in the mountains. VooDoo Kent tells me this morning that he is going to bead his favourite charms onto his Rosary as a tribute to Ja. I told him he had gone native and he was going to Hell. You don't want me to go into his crazy reasoning. Hippi-dippy. Do you? Remember this is 2007). POP crunch POP Ocean currents and weather patterns had made Kingfish The Catch of the Day for a fortnight. To make things worse, excess seaweed had plugged the small channels local fishermen use to go out to sea. On its top the chocking seaweed carried booty down Seven Mile Beach from the Five Star. Money, gold, and other valuables trickle down to human scavengers perched along channel barriers. Behind the quest house older children impale anchovies onto tiny nails, through the head. I could hear the crunch of brains as nails went though one eye and then the other, until the final one was hanged to sun-dry into a shrivel of its former fishy self. Fly In the Jam Everyone talked about Jackie but she knew that. She knew they also had tried to smear her, and ruin her business. But Jackie didnt care what they thought or believed. She had a, When I get paid, youll get paid, approach to commerce in Jaw. After she was paid, though, she did what all Jams do; she tacked on a few days before she passed it on and paid her bills. The problem with this was, she wasnt a Jam. She married one. She had his children but she wasnt one. And Jams hate that. They would never forgive her for assuming their rules applied to her. It became the elephant in all their rooms. Mountain Ride Kent told me he was looking forward to a day away and from Negril drama and me, I felt a strong impulse to ask a few questions along the mountain trail. He spoke in an even tone, no matter what happens, let me drive, do not try to help me. He hooked up the dual splinter ear bud device for his MP3 player and we hit the open road but not before I burned my leg on the exhaust pipe of the Shadow touring bike, while getting on. Rookie Mistake. I figured, later, the scar would be almost as good as the tattoo some people get on their holidays. Kent stopped at the first four corners out of Negril to buy cold water and I applied it to my wound but out of sight, behind the store. He smoked some, and told me he could not drive the nasty little bit of potholed road without it. I said a couple of Hail Marys and got back on the Honda. Oppressive heat off the harvested sugar cane fields reached down into my lungs and pulled out the oxygen. I became afraid. Kent handed me a hat, but no sun-screen for the impending doom of death by sunshine. I would be less of a hospital casualty by the end of the day with a hat. The tropical temperature began to tear at my bare shoulders. A bone-dry wind vacuumed us and wouldnt seem to pass. Vampire draughts seeped into my skin, to find moisture. For miles before we reached the shelter of the mountains, dehydrating breezes sucked perspiration out of our bodies. A mumbo-jumbo of predatory clouds came over us. My burn seemed cold all of a sudden. Cerulean cloud shades, crop harvest and humidity reminded of Canada and our summer harvests. The MP3 played Fleetwood Mac grabbed my brain and it was 1980. You Go Your Own Way Grain Stubble seemed to prickle my ankles. It was exhaust burn pain but my foot was asleep on the wonky passenger footrest of the touring bike:

Mom was crossing the field with a few sandwiches and coffee, trying to head us off before the end of the harvested row. The heat was like now only there was no breeze that day on the prairie. Dad clutched the Massey Ferguson into a lower gear and used the hand brake to slow down. I was on the orange fender, leaning, perched, the same way I sit on this motorcycle seat now. He did not even stop in order to grab the food. Pony espress o anyone? There was that overly sweet, strong green Kool-Aid for my father to drink. Later, that evening, I held the grey thermos to my tiny lips and drained it entirely. And then the ocean; the bottle green of it, salt smell parching lungs and throat, unripe Jamaican lime in my nose. I ripped the ear bud off and made some excuse for not wanting to listen to it anymore. I wanted out of this. We wound downwards from Dolphins Head. A silent ride. Kent cut the engine to coast. No word She. Knowledge She Is Power Today Devon and I drove up to the Skeme, a development of plywood homes where most people employed in the tourist trade live. Its Saturday and time for some foreign beers. The gossip has begun. Some local stabbed; here and, another tourist ran over; there. It isJewlls bar. Not Opals. Not Rubys. Opal and Ruby had their bars but I was a foreigner brought here by a Jam and at Jewll's, that's big news. Ruby and Opal had their phone with them in case their bar's called. (Even with no minutes left, they brandished their phones like fashion accessories.} The bar is four rugged, banged up stools and tables on a stoop. What is said here today will be the ripped up, chewed off, the bastardized reality of tonight's scuttle-butt. At Ruby's. At Opal's. But the owners would have heard it first this morning, And the would laugh to themselves about the ' child's game of telephone' results. They would never correct them or set the record straight. Their power lay in the, I told you so's" they would wind into a conversation much later. And her only competition is the other two owners. The never argued amongst themselves. The three of them knew, that in-fighting would comprimise the structure the troika. But Jewlls bar was the true fountain-head of gossip. I could swear she had a five oclock shadow by cocktail hour. No matter. She know all. What she dont know, she telephone up, or down, to find out. Her sources were impeccable, probably a manager who lives on-site or a cruising pool boy, or a shirtless. Sweaty gardener. Probably they worked at a Five Star, and the factoid was from her son or her daughter or both. No hemm not? She mouths words to Jasmine, not two dead. One only. Internal injuries. Of course everyone can read her lips. Even me. For this is the hub of everything important that is happening this day. A tourist from Detroit was killed crossing the road. The army was on the in one Parish or another. These things were of importance to everyone. Troop movement put their cash crops at risk. Growing pot is illegal in Jamaica. Most of what they say is lost on me because of dialect. Devon chimes in dialect. He has sources. He has news. Me, I just shut my mouth. On the way up we were stuck in a traffic jam on account of a tourist having a heart attack at a small hotel. Devon had made a comment to a taxi about moving along. The driver gestured at me and advised Devon what he could do with me, the white ho, beside him. I understand nothing up here unless they intend that I understand. They chide Devon for flirting with a girl who passes by and warn him about Jackie finding out. By di way, Devon, Jackie home call, dey want know her be at Mo Bay, by plane? If U know? Jewll said all this in The Queens English. She holds her cell phone under her chin with her shoulder and she squints at him, trying not to show that she was singling him out. Devons face fell. Uh-uh, no, he winched. No word she.

You Go Your Own Way

Grain Stubble seemed to prickle my ankles. It was exhaust burn pain but my foot was asleep on the wonky passenger footrest of the touring bike: Mom was crossing the field with a few sandwiches and coffee, trying to head us off before the end of the harvested row. The heat was like now only there was no breeze that day on the prairie. Dad clutched the Massey Ferguson into a lower gear and used the hand brake to slow down. I was on the orange fender, leaning, perched, the same way I sit on this motorcycle seat now. He did not even stop in order to grab the food. Pony espress o anyone? There was that overly sweet, strong green Kool-Aid for my father to drink. Later, that evening, I held the grey thermos to my tiny lips and drained it entirely. And then the ocean; the bottle green of it, salt smell parching lungs and throat, unripe Jamaican lime in my nose. I ripped the ear bud off and made some excuse for not wanting to listen to it anymore. I wanted out of this. We wo

Back In The Day - Jackie

Jackie Knowles believed that there was no escape from Meadow Ridge and its seamy motel life. No deal, no deal, she could hear her father scream at the television each Tuesday night. But she wouldnt settle for a life like this when she left home. She had developed a fairly good sense of who was feeding her bullshit in the small world of a sleazy motel lobby. Her father. She called him Dah, and he dwelled in the shallow end of Meadow Ridge gene wading pool. Dahs heart of darkness was more evident the closer you got to his deeply creased face. From the motel entrance he looks youthful, boyish even. By arrive time, at the front desk, the charm takes a suicidal plummet from a tenth floor ledge somewhere. To the overall affect add Coke-bottle glasses on already beady eyes, sallow skin and a cinched belt over burgeoning beer gut. Jackies Mama was a different matter. She was probably the reason for the childrens intelligence but she could no longer tolerate a life with their father and had deserted the family for a chance at a real life in Cleveland. Her children, justifiably angry, would forget in time, she figured. The boys had dropped the worst of their vengeance but Jackie Deal! Deal! She was jolted from her daydream. The bikers who checked in early this morning were not going anywhere. had not.

Ice! More ice! Jackies 15 year old brother Dwayne was put in charge of them. I thought bikers drank beer; why all the ice? Bathtubs full of beer, D, yells Dah. They tipped good last year, get em whatever they want. What had escaped Dah was that they just wanted to hassle Dwayne. They called him their mascot. They had tipped him a great deal already. The poor kid couldnt tell his dad this because Dah would take all his money. "We want plaid paint Dwayne.!" "Get us 12 Whistle Dogs from the A&W!" "And don't forget the Rootbeer!" Whoa-Whooooo, Dwayne, Dwayne, Dwayne. He dreaded the coming of evening. und downwards from Dolphins Head. A silent ride. Kent cut the engine to coast.

"'Koom By Yah' My Lord"

Fourteen year old Lil Dwayne, succumbed to sodomy by gritty, sweaty, smelly Deputy Dawg, by midnight, the second night of the gang's stay. He lay as a pile of human degradation behind the motels ice machine, until Jackie found him the next day. Jackie recognized the state of affairs. It had happened to her a couple of years ago. She scooped her brother up and nudged him into a shower in a clean room beside them, clothes and all. She told him to lie low for the rest of the bikers stay. As far as Da was concernedshe would cover and insist that he was extremely ill and especially contagious. As far as the world is concerned, Dwayne joined, as a statistic, the plight of all the child labourers of humankind. His life, as he had known it yesterday, was over.