Kingston Noir by Colin Channer Page A

that as Bongo Collie done with him story, another story would arrive just like that. But even better than that. The white gyal herself did arrive. We get to see her with our own eyes. My dears, she just walk into the square like it was home, and like all of we and she was friend, and Sister Doris shake her head and make the sign of the cross.
    But I have to tell you the truth. We all warm to the white gyal quick, for it turn out that she was a talkative and pleasant young lady. She even sit down with Miss Tina and Bongo Collie and Sister Doris, and she sit down with me as well, and it feel like we talk bout every godalmighty thing, though afterward I couldn’t tell you what me or she did say.
    Now and again she would lift up her camera to take a picture, but she would do it so quick and natural-like, without any announcement. And it was like the camera wasn’t really there, and nobody feel the need to pose or model or be anything but themselves.
    What make we know that this white gyal was really all right though was when she go over to the table where them old fellows was playing dominoes. The white gyal walk round in a slow circle from hand to hand, watching the game intense-like, like she trying to understand. The four fellows probably feel it was only polite to ask her if she wanted to play a round. They ask even though this white gyal had two things going against her—namely that she was white, and also that she was a gyal. A white gyal playing dominoes was even worse than a white gyal trying to shake her flat batty to Vybz Kartel or Beenie Man: them things wasn’t normal; them things couldn’t ever look right.
    Well, the white gyal start to play and I tell you, I nearly fenneh! What you think happen? In two twos this white gyal with the camera was slamming down tile like she really understand what she doing, and when Maas Delroy who was her pardy make a bad move, she cuss him blue from cross the table and ask him if he never read the game proper and see that is she have all the S them in her hand, and how he should have did play five-deuce and block the game from three moves back and how she woulda did win if him did only use him head and do that. And when she say all of that, everybody was quiet-quiet, and we all now thinking what Bongo Collie did think earlier—that this white gyal was more than she appear.
    Make me be the first to confess it was a stupid thing to think. For what else we could expect? We did call her “the white gyal with the camera” but she had to be more than that. She had to have her own story, but is like it was a story no one did think to ask bout. For all the talk we did talk to her, we never get to know her. We only get curious after the bad thing happen—after she get her picture in the front page of the newspaper and we suddenly start call her Marilyn as if to say we did really know her all along.
    Every night in August Town is a warm night, which is why we like to gather outside. But when it is coming on to midnight—the time when we know that Soft-Paw and the bwoy-dem will come out on the scene—we will begin to pack up from the square and go into our yards and close the doors tight and make sure to fall sleep on a low-low mattress, safe from stray bullets. For to see Soft-Paw during the day is one thing. In the daytime he is our neighbor. But to see him at night when him on the turf is another thing all together. The whole of August Town becomes his office, and you must never disturb a man from his work.
    That first night when we saw the white gyal, we begin to leave at midnight as usual. We ask her if she wasn’t turning in as well but she shake her head, a simple no, like she was quite happy to be out there by herself. More and more, she was lifting the damn camera to her eye, aiming at God-he-knows-what, snapping more and more pictures.
    Miss Tina even ask her, “You ever go to sleep at all?”
    The white gyal look on Miss Tina and tell her, “Not very much. I try to sleep