Death Register

by Dwight Thompson

Overview

In this searingly honest debut novel, Jamaican author Dwight Thompson fearlessly and candidly explores themes of homophobia, emerging sexuality, identity, and the devastating effects of abuse.Brought up by his grandparents, Chauncey Knuckle has done well for a country boy. He has won a place at a prestigious college for boys, and his juvenile writing has won him prizes and some praise. But he can only wonder what kind of a person he has become. He witnessed his closest friend, Tristan, shot dead by the police and wonders about his role in Tristan’s downfall. Why did he fail to expose respected elder, Deacon Mac, for abusing Tristan when they were boys?

The college Chauncey enters is an institution still infected with the hangovers of colonialism, that offers a training in elitism, misogyny, and homophobia. Chauncy discovers, too, that the boundaries between elite schooling and the criminal gang life of Montego Bay are crossed far more often than the students’ parents could ever imagine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845234072
Publisher:	Peepal Tree Press Ltd.
Publication date:	03/01/2019
Edition description:	None
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Dwight Thompson works in Japan as an English teacher. His work has appeared in the Montego Bay Western Mirror and Caribbean Writer, where he won the Charlotte and Isidor Paiewonsky Prize.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

MONTEGO BAY PASTORAL

In Jamaica there are three things you don't do on a Sunday: you don't cook rice and peas without coconut milk, you don't beat your children, and you don't – not as a self-respecting, God-fearing woman – go to church without wearing a hat, or at least a decent wig. The first and third rules taken care of, my grandmother was an expert at flouting the second. Took to breaking it with more resourcefulness than congregants breaking bread at Holy Communion. With her right hand she would slap and pinch and pull till your skin was sore and puffy, and with the left hand upraised, as if swearing an oath, she warned you to keep quiet, else your punishment would double. But this was a ruse. Whether you protested or not she kept on hitting you until she felt satisfied.

This morning's punishment was special. I had defied her, had opened my mouth to speak in a strange tongue, had said no when I should have said yes. I felt that righteousness was on my side; it was how I imagined Deacon Sharpe must have felt on that great Christmas morning of the 1831 slave rebellion. But my courage hadn't lasted long, and my palms felt slippery as I imagined the hangman's noose around the Deacon's neck as he stood on the gallows in his Sunday best. Unlike him, I wouldn't have the solace of even a great parting sound bite to seal my place in history.

"Phyllis, why you don't let the bwoy do it half and half. Go to summer school for a month, then go to work with Mackie for a month." This was Papa, sitting across from me at the kitchen table.

"Clarence, don't draw me tongue!" Mama snapped. "This don't concern you."

Papa shrugged and sipped his tea. He didn't have the strength to argue. He was going through another of his spells when he'd wake up in the morning with his insides scrubbed raw, and hard food was off limits. Such moments came after his dream when the gift of prophecy was sealed inside him, barred from ever coming out, his belly a mouth sewn shut with cords of fire.

"An' is not even summer school," I mumbled, spooning my porridge listlessly, my elbow propped defiantly on the table and my palm pressed against my ear, "is a writing workshop ... an' it's free."

Mama glared at me. "A writing wha'?" She rolled her eyes in her mocking way. "What a piece o' fanciness. Look here, mister man. The only workshop you goin' is Mackie woodwork shop, bright and early tomorrow morning. Get that in your head! You coulda pout some more ..."

1. The Jesus Carpenter and the Jacket Man Crisis

The matter of contention was that I'd already signed up for a three-week writing workshop at the parish library. The library people had come to school in April promoting the event, handing out flimsy, puke-green pencil cases and Reading Maketh a Full Man lapel pins.

Now here I was, two months later, gainfully employed and woefully depressed, conditioning my mind to face the rigours of hard labour. My grandmother had got me a job with none other than Herbert Macintyre, aka Brother Mac, aka the Jesus Carpenter, an eloquent preacher and deacon at the Burchell Baptist Church (the church of the great Sam Sharpe) and a carpenter of not inconsiderable repute, though more famous for delivering promises than actual furniture. He had even been charged once with defrauding his renters by tampering with an electricity meter. I had also witnessed his depravity four years before, the incident that had changed my life.

To start with, Brother Mac's Woodwork Shop, as the legend outside the shop declared, wasn't really his. It was one of many rented units at the Bogue Industrial Estate in Montego Bay, just across the street from the sewage plant whose aluminium covers shimmered like a sea of glass in the sun. The estate was owned by Fitz-George Henry, aka the Jacket Man, a former drug lord and gangster of the 1970s political scene who'd been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, and who, like a good many people with a wall to their backs and time on their hands, had searched for God, found him and got early release.

Henry's history with the Baptist church was short-lived but lively. He became a member soon after leaving prison in 1990, but his forays into public life soon brought him into conflict with the church. The last straw was when he bought a license from the Gaming Commission to build several casinos. The Baptist Council of Churches came down like a scourge on his head. He was disfellowshipped, cast out from the flock, banished to roam the wilderness of the spiritually slothful. Three years later, with the acquisition of the Fletcher's Land property, he had rubbed salt into the church's wound. They had planned to acquire the site for their new western conference centre. Henry was intending to build a permanent home for the world's largest reggae festival: Reggae Jammin' Jamfest Jamboree.

The Church, not wanting to appear bitter, had extended an olive branch. At a parochial prayer breakfast, to which Henry was invited, the Archbishop had tried to broker a peace with their wayward son, wishing him success with his new venture. Henry, in return, had offered to allow the church to play a role in the development of his new property.

This was where Brother Mac came in. The Church commissioned him to build seven hundred foldout chairs for the VIP section of the venue, over a period of three months.

When I started working with him, Brother Mac was already into his second month, having started in May, the chairs due for the end of July. The festival would start in August and run for a week.

Brother Mac had worked for Henry before, so you had to think that Henry, with his knowledge of Brother Mac's highly individual work ethic, must have trusted his reputation to keep Mac in order – particularly the stories of the licensed firearm he allegedly toted below his coat, and the legend that he'd killed his wife and buried her beneath the tiles of his pool at his Plantation Heights mansion, then reported her missing. This had earned him the nickname, Stonewall Henry. You'd hear idling estate workers singing under their breaths:

One two three four Jacketman a come One two three four, Jacketman a come Wid de moneybag a knock him belly bam bam bam Wid de gunstrap a knock him belly bam bam bam ...

This was when they saw the blue Mercedes pull up by the gate the last Friday of every fortnight, when Henry personally doled out brown envelopes of cash and checked on the general status of things. Then they'd take flight like zinc sheets in a hurricane across the grounds.

But despite all this notoriety, we were fixing the Jacket Man's business, swindling him. From Day One. What we were doing was this: since completing the first three hundred chairs, we started renting them out to various church groups for weeks at a time. They needed the chairs for their summer tent crusades. We'd rent a hundred or so chairs to a particular church for one or two weeks. And since we had completed Jacket Man's quota a month early, by working sometimes up to nine p.m., we had the full complement of chairs at our disposal. We could rent to three or more clients at a time, depending on demand.

When the chairs came back, all we had to do was a little refurbishing, scraping off globs of candle-fat or gum, then applying a light coat of varnish, depending on the state of disrepair, before sending them out again. For the rest of the day, with no more chairs to be made, we had time to ourselves.

I passed most of the time reading. I'd gone back to the library, following the row with Mama, to borrow a few books on the workshop's reading list. My confidence had sunk when I saw it was the portly, overly dramatic librarian on duty. I'd never had a good relationship with this man, even as a child borrowing books from the Young Readers section. I had selected Naipaul's A Flag on the Island and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and brought them to the counter. He scowled at Naipaul's author portrait and leaned towards me confidentially, "This one, I have it on good word that his greatest desire is to be buried at Westminster Abbey, hmph!" Then he looked at the Fitzgerald book affectionately and pressed it to his breast, and looked at it again, his face sad, his lips quivering. "What a wasted life," he crooned (and the fraud was actually dabbing tears!). "A genius should never marry. A talented man maybe, but a genius no." Then he stamped my card and held the books out to me, though I had to wrench them from his fat fingers.

Gatsby I'd read before so I skimmed through it and loaned it to Renee (Brother Mac's secretary and mistress) telling her that it wasn't one of those stuffy classics that would leave you comatose before lunch, but the story of a great romance – not unlike the Mills and Boon paperbacks she devoured daily. I took my time enjoying the Naipaul stories.

All was bliss. (And I was making so much money!) My summer couldn't have been going any better.

But with time we got complacent. It was our greed that did for us, because we weren't just renting to tent crusades anymore, but had started taking commercial orders. The money was better, the engagements shorter, and we liked to think there was less risk involved, since most of the orders were one-day gigs, for business conferences, wedding receptions and so on.

So that Tuesday, when the little green van from the Freeport Business Expo returned, just after three in the afternoon, calamity was the last thing on our minds. Brother Mac, Demoy and I had been enjoying a round of dominoes, and we went out to help unload the chairs in good spirits. But there was Jacket Man, wearing blue overalls and work boots like the other workmen, but given away by his dark glasses (which he was never without). With his small frame, he looked like a boy playing dress-up. But there was no child's play in his body language. I recalled the story of his wife rotting away below the tiles. In our haste to fill the order, we had forgotten to vet the clients properly, to check if there were any risks. We were about to pay dearly for that oversight. We had rented the chairs to one of his many subsidiary companies.

He was walking coolly towards us, his jaw muscles twitching. I saw now that the grim-faced workmen weren't really workmen, but his bodyguards. I felt like running, but my legs wouldn't carry me. Demoy, on the other hand, had bolted right past them, before two bulky bodyguards cut off his escape. Brother Mac had spun on his heels and made a dash for the shop. "Renee!" he was shouting. "Renee!" I found my legs and followed him.

Renee came dashing from the backroom, with a startled and expectant look on her face. With her right hand she was preening her hair, with her left she was clutching The Great Gatsby to her bosom.

"Renee!" Brother Mac was on his knees, blowing raggedly through his open mouth, his hand over his heaving chest. In retrospect, I can see how this gesture could have given her the impression of a man in the grip of an epiphany of passion, a man about to confess his undying affection.

Renee started crying.

"Renee."

"Yes, Mackie."

"The book."

"The book?"

"The book. Quick! Burn the book!"

"Huh?"

"Burn the book!"

She was off. In an instant she was back from the storeroom, armed with a lighter that she now held to Gatsby's spine, the blue plasticised cover already curling back on itself. I couldn't move. My head was swimming. Everything was happening so fast.

Renee's eyes were bright with excitement. "Mackie, me doudou. See me burn it there. For our love, darling. To consummate our love."

For a split second Brother Mac's infirmity vanished and he became sober with rage. "Not that book, you stupid cunt! The receipt book! Jacketman a come!"

But before Renee could shake off her paralysis, Jacket Man was standing in the doorway, instructing his cronies to seize the books from the backroom. They pushed past us as Gatsby turned to sacrificial ash in Renee's hand. When the flame reached her fingertips she drew a sharp breath and flung it across the room. The Buttonmen (they looked like the characters in the first Godfather movie) came back. They had the receipt book, with all the yellow duplicate copies of our illegal transactions still intact. (Why Brother Mac had kept such damning records lying around the shop, I really can't say. Ego? Recklessness? Or just plain insanity?)

The Jacket Man put a hand on Brother Mac's shoulder and sighed wearily, like a father disappointed in his son. Brother Mac, still kneeling, fumbled with the insulin pen he'd taken from his breast pocket to inject himself. The sudden stress was spiking his blood sugar. One of the Buttonmen slapped the pen from his shaking hands.

"Mackie." The Jacket Man's voice was like liquid death. "I think you should come with us."

Brother Mac didn't resist. Rising slowly to his feet, his face as lifeless as a carving, he turned to follow the three men outside, sandwiched between the Buttonmen.

Picking up the insulin pen, Renee ran to them and forced it into Jacket Man's hands, saying, "Please, you have to stick him in the stomach."

When Brother Mac heard this he yelped like a cold puppy.

The blue Benz had arrived outside, as if by magic. By now word had got around and there was a crowd outside, with a kind of subdued sadistic expectancy playing in their eyes, now falling back theatrically to let the men pass. They got in the car, Jacket Man in front with the driver, and Brother Mac in the back, still squashed between two Buttonmen.

Back in the shop Renee was sobbing, her breath catching in her throat when she tried to speak. "What they going to do to him?" "I don't know."

She was packing up her things feebly, kneeling to retrieve the remains of the book. I reached out and grabbed it from her. She looked at me pitifully. "You must forgive me, I didn't mean to burn your book ... Is just that ... well ... you see what happen. I don't need to explain. I'll pay you back for it. I promise."

I was moved to sympathy. "I know you didn't mean it."

But then her expression changed to curiosity and she said, "But tell me, will Jay and Daisy ever get together? What will happen to Jay, eh?"

I looked at the ruined book, burnt all the way through to Chapter 9, page 198, where Klipspringer was sheepishly asking Nick to send along his tennis shoes. "You killed him ..."

She didn't say anything. I took up my things and left. I didn't even change out of my work clothes. Demoy had vanished.

My head was still swimming when I ran out into the street. I thought about stopping at the police station a few blocks up the street, but then couldn't think what I would actually say. Was there even anything to report? I hurried home to tell Papa.

When I got home I saw our bull, Winston Churchill, standing staidly in the yard, managing to look noble, impatient and righteously indignant all at the same time.

2: Anchovy: the Early Years

My grandfather reared animals on property he owned in a place called Goshen, just about three miles from where we lived in Anchovy, next to an abandoned textile factory. On Sunday we had to accompany him there, Tristan and I, to help him to clean them, give them food and drink, and various other things livestock farmers busy themselves with. It was torture. I'd go to bed on Saturday nights with a heavy heart knowing that it was cow bush the next day. It was enough to spoil my whole weekend, just thinking about it. My grandfather knew this and tried to wring as much distress out of me as he could by giving me really hard tasks, like casting and tying up Winston Churchill, or picking ticks off his black skin while he grazed, which the bull hated. Tristan was Papa's hero on Sundays. He could cast the cows like a cowboy and could talk to them in a language they apparently understood; they would nod and moo at him when he spoke softly, or bellow and shift their weight clumsily when he wagged his finger at them and cursed, tying them to a post or getting them to move from A to B. He always played up his skills for Papa's observation, in the same way, I began to realise, that he did while we were in school. In his efforts to win the teachers' good graces, there always seemed a need to play up to their authority, or their suspected homosexuality. I would watch him. Sometimes he would make a show of grabbing a male teacher's cigarette in the dining hall, like a girl flirting with a boy she liked, or offer his services as a food taster to his "lieges" at the head table, and mime sipping their soup, then grab his chest and fall to the floor as if dying of poison, while the masters laughed and clapped. The gay masters on campus knew exactly what he was doing. They would exchange knowing smiles while they smoked their expensive cigarettes and watched him performing for them. Once I overheard Master Livermore inquiring who the "livewire" was from his familiar, the skirt-chasing Master Beaumont, who was Tristan's academic adviser. Beaumont had replied, "Look at him, Alfred. Can't you tell the mother is beautiful? The boy is her 'dead stamp'! I visited her house last Monday." Livermore, smiling like a judge at a beauty pageant, had tapped off his cigarette ash and studied Tristan holding forth and had said, "Yes ... he is beautiful." But in playing up his skills for Papa's praise, Tristan would sometimes get it and sometimes wish he hadn't striven for it. Once when Papa had instructed me to pick the ticks off Winston Churchill, I was doing so and cursing him under my breath. Tristan had come over and started exploring Churchill's genitals and scrotum. He looked so earnest I couldn't laugh. I even started taking my exploration more seriously. Papa had walked over to us and frightened us with his outburst. "But bwoy, is what you doing? Who tell you to do dat?"

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Death Register"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Dwight Thompson.
Excerpted by permission of Peepal Tree Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

PART I: DEPARTURE,
PART II: THE CITY STIRS – PAPA'S REQUIEM,
CHAPTER 1 – MONTEGO BAY PASTORAL,
CHAPTER 2 – LADOO'S LEGACY, PLUS THE DELPHONIC SPLIFF,
CHAPTER 3 – BURNING OF THE SHELLS,
CHAPTER 4 – THE SUGAR NAVEL PILGRIMAGE,
CHAPTER 5 – MARZIPAN,
CHAPTER 6 – MARZIPAN II,
CHAPTER 7 – WARRIOR DANCE,
CHAPTER 8 – THE FULLERITES! THE FULLERITES ARE COMING.,
CHAPTER 9 – THE CITY AWAKES!,
CHAPTER 10 – A PEEP THROUGH THE CURTAIN. FRESH AIR AT LAST!,
CHAPTER 11 – BOGUE BOY,
CHAPTER 12 – MAN OVERBOARD.,
CHAPTER 13 – THE BAILEY HOUSE TRIAL,
CHAPTER 14 – THE CONFRONTATION,
CHAPTER 15 – THE RIOTS,
CHAPTER 16 – END GAME,
CHAPTER 17 – FINAL MOVEMENT,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR,