“You are using your brother, Fire. His funeral has become your personal sacrifice for what you believe are your sins. Look into your heart, Fire, and ask yourself if this is about Ian or about you—realizing, though, that if this is about you it will be refused like Cain’s offering to God. Who knows, most of these people probably came for the food.”

None of the people who were close to Ian came, Fire reflected. Claire had said she wasn’t over the treachery. Margaret was still recovering from a breakdown, and Phil had decided to stay with her.

“And there is something else you should consider in all this,” I-nelik said. “From what you have told me and from what I know about Ian, he did not deserve that woman. And deep down I know you know that. Fire, you can’t go around blaming yourself for Ian’s behavior. You’ve been doing that for twenty-odd years. Everybody has free will. Everybody has to make choices—choices they must live with, sometimes die with. Ian made his and you’ve made yours. He’s died with his. Now what are you going to do?”

I-nelik stood there stroking his beard, watching his nephew clenching his jaw, grinding the words that came to mind like a calf chewing its cud. “Lately I’ve been getting this sense from you, Fire,” he continued, “and it’s very disturbing: you believe that all Ian’s problems are related to class and that you’d be just like him if you’d been born in his situation. That’s the kind of thinking that gives us of the left a really bad name—that kind of simplistic economic determinism. There are many struggles in life, Fire, and class struggle is only one of them. Everything in life is a struggle, and the greatest one of all is holding that commitment to keep struggling no matter what. Cause when you lose that one, you can easily lose it all.”

“You are right,” Fire said to end the discussion. “You are right. But everything has begun. There is nothing I can do about it now.”

The sun was halfway into the wrinkled sea.

“As I said,” I-nelik replied, “we have to live with our choices. And,” he began, moving to another point, “are you still insisting on taking his ashes out to sea today? We’re running late. It might be dark coming in. Why we don’t do it tomorrow? It will be safer then.”

Afraid of what he might say and how he might say it, Fire looked past his uncle into the sun’s red eye and began to debate going out alone. On the stage, a mento band was leading the crowd in “Rock of Ages.” The service would be over soon. Short and sweet, he’d told the Reverend. Ian had wanted a party.

As they began to walk again he felt the need to be alone. I-nelik was right, he thought. How many of these people had really loved the boy? How much of the turnout was due to his effort? He began to do the math in his head. Fifty percent? No, closer to seventy. Then as the figure pushed past eighty-five he felt another cramp in his belly. A man was pacing behind the crowd, chattering into a mobile phone. What the fuck, Fire thought, could be so important?