Stunned, she didn’t answer.

“Answer me,” he asked quietly. “Please. I’m having a rough time.”

She didn’t respond.

“Margaret, please talk to me. I want to love you, Margaret,” he said, exhaling the words like they were his last breath.

She still didn’t answer and he became very afraid.

“Please … Margaret … talk to me. I need you. I’m so down … don’t hurt me when I’m down. I don’t want to lose you, Margaret … I want you in my life …”

He paused for a moment, thinking he had heard her begin to speak. As he listened keenly, desperation gripped his body. “I going kill myself.”

When he heard the dial tone, he began to consider it seriously. He was adrift with no one to look after him. Fire was gone and Margaret too. And he didn’t feel the strength to go it alone. He wanted to lose the ability to feel because his senses seemed tuned only to pain. He lay in a wreck on the floor with the phone to his ear and whimpered like a mangy dog.

chapter fifteen

“Four!”

The crowd under the bamboo pavilion applauded Fire’s cover drive. The next ball, though, was a bouncer, and he scuttled to the pitch.

“Don’t hurt me, nephew, y’know,” I-nelik yelled jokingly as the bowler returned to his mark. “Cricket is supposed to be a gentleman’s game—I don’t know what a cruff like you doing here.”

The crowd tittered, then settled down. Fire brushed off his white flannels and tapped his bat slowly, watching and waiting. The bowler dropped the next one short as well and he shuffled down the pitch to meet the ball and lost his offstump in the process.

He took a seat in the pavilion after his beautiful eight and watched the innings collapse. Buju, the only batsman to reach double figures, was soon caught in the slips. After that the Battery Eleven flowed in a steady stream to and from the crease, and they lost the match by six wickets.

Everyone went to Mr. Bartley’s bar after the match to drink and eat a just-killed-and-curried goat and sip hot mannish water.

Fire and I-nelik sat on the hood of the Land Rover and ate and talked. Buju kept his distance. He and Fire still were not completely cool since the fight with Ian. They’d talked things over, though, and agreed to let things slide.

Fire was taking lots of ribbing for his elegant eight. He was a good batsman, but impatient, and had been slipping steadily in the batting order. He used to be an opener, but was now batting five.

“Dat eight is a prophecy, y’know,” Zacky said, interrupting the conversation. “Last match you did make five. And you bat five today. Make twelve next time nuh, so me can get a game. I was a boss opener in me time y’know. Ask you father. I wasn’t pretty like you though … but I used to score more runs.”