Fire shook hands without looking and blindly returned hellos as he fought his way around the edge of the park, pressed against the stout stone fence, reaching for handholds and pulling himself along like a climber on a horizontal cliff. A woman fainted and he was crushed against the fence in the rush to pick her up, and an elbow gored his side. This is madness, he thought as the taste of bile rose to the back of his throat. He had to eat, he told himself as he watched the woman being passed overhead like a log. He had to eat … and reach the stage … and get the urn … take it down to the beach and out to sea.

According to his plan, as soon as the service was over, the choir and the rastamen should have set off up the hill to the gravel road with Miss Gita and the guests in tow for the nine-night and the spreading of the ashes. Because he’d been arguing with his father, he’d not been at his post when the ceremony was over, and, left to themselves, the choir members had drifted off to socialize with friends, and the rastamen had formed a groundation circle and begun to smoke weed and chant down Babylon.

Now he was trapped across the street from Buju’s house. To get to the stage he needed to work his way along the fence in the direction of the seawall, then slip around the short end of the rectangular park. Accepting the fact that the recession would never occur, he cotched against a ledge in the fence and waited for the crowd to pass. A breeze brought the smell of fried fish from Snapper Bay on the other side of the hill … the garlic … the pimento … the Scotch bonnet pepper … the heavy perfume of coconut oil. He trawled the conversations as the crowd swam by. No one was talking about Ian. They were talking about the fish, though—how good it smelled—and describing how they’d like to have theirs. Some wanted hard dough bread, some wanted festival, one or two were hoping for rice or steamed vegetables. Could I-nelik be right? Could they all have come for the food? He began to wonder now. It didn’t make sense, but he still gave it thought, to keep himself from thinking about the quarrel with his father … and the argument with his uncle … and the way the service had ended in disarray. Maybe the old man was right.

He plucked a program from the sidewalk; but he lost his idea by the time he’d reached for his pen; and he sat there for a while with the Uniball suspended over the paper, waiting for a thought.

“Fire, ah just want to tell you that you shouldn’t feel bad about what happen,” a voice interrupted.

“Is awright, Zachy,” Fire said without looking up. “But we can talk bout this later.”

The crusty voice became a whisper. A bony hand fell on his shoulder. He imagined the toothless mouth. “I am really de one to be blame fe dis what happen here, because I get de dream and never tell nobody. Cause de day Ian dead me did dream mushroom … and anytime me dream mushroom dat mean death. Ah doan know what to do with meself now, Fire. Ah doan know where to go.”