Kerry Young - Pao

Sun Tzu say, ‘ When without a previous understanding the enemy asks for a truce, he is plotting .’

West Kingston was like a powder keg just waiting for something to come put a match to it. So that day when Edward Seaga stand up at the hundredth anniversary of the Paul Bogle Uprising, and when the crowd start heckle him, an’ him say to them, ‘If they think they are bad I can bring the crowds of West Kingston. We can deal with them, in any way, at any time. It will be fire for fire. Blood for blood.’ Well that is when the mayhem really start up in earnest, and I wonder if it was a wise move for him to stop being a music promoter and become a politician. Not that all the shooting was Mr Seaga’s fault because it was going on long before that. I think the blood-for-blood thing just ease it up a notch.

Anyway, it was just like Gloria say to me. It was open warfare in the street. And this was 1965, just three years after Independence when we was out on them same streets parading and dancing and singing ’bout unity. Now everybody was just out there gunning down one another. It get so bad that one day they report that in a two-hour period on one West Kingston street they fire two thousand rounds of ammunition. How they work out a thing like that I dunno. I don’t even know how people can afford to buy so much gun and bullet. And how come they so happy to spend so much time and money just trying to gun down their neighbour.

I say to Judge Finley that it was exactly the sort of thing I worried we was headed for when Samuels take up with Louis DeFreitas, and how good it was that we stamp it out straight away. How good it was that we keep them guns outta Chinatown because I didn’t want nothing to do with what was going on.

And him say to me, ‘What about unity and being brothers in arms?’

‘This is not unity. Unity is when you gather together to face a common enemy. Who is the enemy in West Kingston?’

‘They think it is the man next door with the gun that is trying to kill them.’

‘Killing your neighbour not going solve unemployment and all the misery that go with that. Their enemy not their neighbour. Their enemy is the masa that is making himself rich while all them boys bleeding to death in the street. If you want talk ’bout brothers in arms then maybe we need to get together and go get back the land that still owned by British landlords. And maybe we need to go see ’bout how we going stop these foreign investors from just taking out all the profit as fast as we can make it for them, so Jamaica can get to keep something for herself. And then maybe we wouldn’t need so much foreign aid. But the ordinary man can’t do nothing ’bout these people. He don’t even know where to find them. All he can do is take up a gun and fire it at the people he see every day. And the worst thing about it is he doing it with a gun he get from the CIA. The masa don’t even have to beat the slave himself no more. We doing it for him.’

But there is not a soul listening to me, except Mui.

So then the next thing we realise is, we got to go do something ’bout Kenneth Wong, because it seem like somehow Kenneth get himself all mix up in the middle of everything. Like he use the excuse of running a few errands for me to go turn himself into his idea of public enemy number one. So I think I go solve that by hiring Desmond Drummond and telling Kenneth he don’t work for me no more. Not now I got Desmond. I think this going fix it because Desmond a long-time friend of Milton who turn out to be one seriously big, bad bwoy so I think that will send Kenneth running back to his mama. But it not so. Kenneth still going ’round the place acting like him working for me. So people start get confuse over whether it Desmond they dealing with or Kenneth, and I have to talk to the boy over and over and explain to him that he should go back to school and try get some qualification. But him not interested. Him say he don’t need it. His papa nuh got no qualification, I nuh got no qualification, but we still rich, so what he need qualification for? And I tell him things changing. He can’t spend his life just run ’round town like me. Maybe he should go ask his papa to work in the supermarket business. But him just shrug and walk off and I know him not going do it.

When I go talk to him ’bout what him doing he say he not interested in politics.

‘But you running with one of the biggest political gang of rude boys in West Kingston!’

‘Louis is my friend.’

‘Louis DeFreitas is not your friend. Him not nobody friend. DeFreitas only DeFreitas’s friend. You get thick with a man like that and yu heading for trouble. DeFreitas busy talking politics now but him only a punk. Him don’t care ’bout unemployment and education, him only interested in what advantage or money he can get outta a situation. And right now everybody say is the CIA backing him to be causing all this violence so they can destabilise the country.’

‘I tell you I not interested in politics. Louis been good to me. He let me work and him pay me.’

‘Yu can’t trust him. Louis DeFreitas will just as soon put you out front to take a bullet in your chest as shoot you in the back himself if that work out better for him.’

But Kenneth not listening to me. I start thinking it all my fault anyway, because there is no way a boy like Kenneth Wong was going meet a man like DeFreitas unless he was on the street running errands for me.

Finley say to me, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t take it so hard. After all, Kenneth was bugging you anyway. That was the way he was heading. He would have got himself involved somehow whether or not it had anything to do with you.’

A part of me know Finley right, but another part of me still feel responsible. I got no idea what to do with Kenneth. Sun Tzu say, ‘ Too frequent rewards indicate that the general is at the end of his resources; too frequent punishments that he is in acute distress .’

So I decide to go talk to Henry Wong ’bout it. But it turn out Henry don’t know nothing ’bout what Kenneth doing. Him say the boy just come in and outta the house and eat his meals and leave his dirty laundry behind. Kenneth don’t talk to nobody, and when he in the house he lock himself in his bedroom, which he put a big padlock on the door so nobody can go in there when him out.

All Henry know is Kenneth got a lot a money. He buy a lot of fancy clothes and a record player and a whole heap of records him busy playing in there. And he buy a car and driving it ’round even though he got no driving licence.

Henry say the boy been off the rails a long time. Even before he legal to leave school him stop going while Henry still paying the school fees. And Henry say him think the boy smoking ganja in the house because the maids say they can smell it. Henry dunno what to do with him and all Miss Cicely say is she praying for him, but Henry not counting on that doing much good.

‘I not know what to say to you, Pao. If you got a idea I happy to listen. But is Cicely that really deal with children.’

Three days after that, on a hot Thursday afternoon, Henry Wong collapse in the street. They take him to the public hospital because they dunno who he is and that he rich. And down there they decide it was a stroke that cut him down. When I hear ’bout it I ring George Morrison and tell him to take a ambulance downtown and bring Henry back up to Old Hope Road. Later when I go see him he paralysed down one side and he in a bad way.

After a few days Morrison say Henry not going get any better and he may be more comfortable at the Chinese Sanatorium, so that where we move him to. This is a nice place. It clean and calm and the nurses really seem like they care for him. Like they mean it, they not just doing their job. But when I go see him all him say to me is how he want me to bring him some rice and peas and chicken and saltfish fritters and bammy.