Four Eyes | Page 3

back down again into dry and dusty town.
Days that built and mounted onto Manny's shoulders. He began to
wonder if the obeah man would ever respond.

He even spent one night in a motel, tired of waking up on the couch
with crusty eyes and a cramped back. Too scared to walk into his room.
Too scared to see the motionless statue sitting by his bed.
When Manny came back and parked his Acura, G.D threatened him
with the cane the moment he passed through the kitchen.
"Where you been?"
"Out," Manny said. "Leave me alone."
G.D pointed out the window.
"You should sell that ugly car. You can't self afford it."
"I never had anything nice like that, ever," Manny said. He was tired.
He looked around for the keys to his taxi-van. Another day of
following the roads for money lay ahead.
"You just a taxi driver, you can't afford no fancy car. You ain't rich."
Manny found the keys and clenched them.
"You think I don't know that!" He snapped. "I feed you, I pay you bills.
I been keeping you alive all them year, and all you do is trouble me so.
I pay the doctor-man. What you ever done? You useless, that's what
you do."
G.D rolled his chair away. Manny continued.
"Yeah, I just the taxi-driver. And I all you got, old man. I ain't selling
the car unless we poor, you hear?"
Manny stopped and faced G.D. His grandad's tears ran down his cheeks,
magnified by the glasses. G.D rolled away, and Manny angrily made
sandwiches for the two of them.
Afterwards he checked the porch looking for G.D, then cautiously
peered into his room and shuddered. The ghost still sat there patiently,

hands in her lap.
But no G.D.
Manny walked to the guestroom. He took the key from over the door,
and with a trembling hand unlocked it. The room swarmed with dust
that made slow, lazy spirals and patterns in the air.
In the corner of the room sat the still figure of an old lady with a veil
over her face. Her hands were crossed politely in her lap, just like the
dead girl in Manny's room.
"I should have gone with she," G.D said from next to the doorframe.
Manny jumped, heart pounding. "CarolineÉ" G.D cried. "I miss you so,
dear."
Still angry, still feeling he'd been caught between everything and
everyone, Manny wanted to both yell and hug G.D's frail body.
G.D wheeled out past him. Manny closed the door and locked it.
"You right," G.D said to Manny. "What I ever done?"
Manny leaned his head against the wall.
"I have to go work, G.D," he said.
#
He drove more. From Red Hook, on the East end of the island where
the ferries left for St. John, to Brewer's Bay on the West End. He drove
over Crown Mountain and down onto North side to let tourists take
their pictures with the donkey by Drake's Seat.
At the end, when he counted the day's take, he had a bit. But not
enough.
He sat with a bottle of soda and a pate. He wondered if it was faulty
memories that made it seem like he was making less and less, and that

fewer and fewer tourists were coming to the islands as the years passed.
He'd once had other things in mind for himself. University. Stateside.
Computers. But driving taxi brought in money for G.D and living.
Manny had left those plans far behind.
The radio interrupted to tell him he had a last pickup for the day.
"At Magen's Bay?" Manny complained. "I'm in town."
"They had ask for you special."
Manny sighed and shut the door. He drove up the mountain from the
back end of town and down into the cooler air of the North Side.
Magen's Bay stretched out, a white crescent in the dimming light. The
last clumps of people were leaving, knocking the sand off their feet and
getting into cars and taxis to leave.
The sun's last streamers of orange pastels dripped behind the islands off
the North Side. The last few vehicles coughed on, then drove off.
Manny was alone, slightly nervous that he was about to be mugged.
Instead, Jimiti stepped out from behind a coconut tree, barefoot, his red
floral shirt unbuttoned.
"Sorry I took so long," the obeah man said. "I had a lot of thing to
reflect on."
"Okay," Manny said.
The obeah man's hands hung loose by his side.
"Walk with me."
Manny took off his shoes and socks and followed Jimiti. They walked
down the long beach, until the water sucked and splashed at their toes.
The darker it got, the whiter the beach seemed. Manny slapped at bites
to his exposed arms.