Pleasantview

In honor of Pleasantview winning the CLMP Award for Fiction, here is a bit of the opening story in the book:

Prologue: The Dragon’s Mouth (Bocas del Dragón1)
It have a benefit to being on this prison island, this tiny dot in the Gulf between Venezuela and Trinidad: freedom. The officers don’t take we on much; they don’t lock up too tight, because where it have to run? We can’t go nowhere. Or so they feel.

Straight from the cell, me and Richards, my cellmate, we stroll out.
Officer Babylon watching TV. We tell him exactly where we going: “Down by the water, Boss. To light up, li’l bit.”
“Allyuh going and smoke? Or allyuh going and bull?” he say, squawking like a seagull.
“Nah, we could do that anytime we want in the cell,” I say, not because me and Richards in any bullerman thing, but because that kinda fleck-up answer is the best way to block Babylon from saying something worse, something that might make me lose my head and buss he throat.

Tonight is not to fight. No, when your head in the dragon mouth, you ease it out real slow. Me and Richards trot down the incline, to the nibbling edge of the water. The place warm, warm—not a breeze blowing, but that good for us because the water go be flat. It have a full moon, though, grinning like it know what we planning and so it come out for spite, to make sure
everybody see we. We didn’t expect this damn moon—I shoulda check beforehand, my mistake—but is do or die tonight. All the dominoes done line up and people waiting on we.

So, me and Richards stand up, watching the silver water and sighing, like if we’s really lovers. Me ain’t know what he thinking, but I studying Consuela, she there on the other side, on the mainland. Not Venezuela (although that’s where she come from), I mean the big island, Trinidad. Consuela working in one of them so-called “guesthouse” in Pleasantview. She know I coming, at least I think so—I did send message with my pardnah, Stench: “Pack and get ready. I comin’ for you Thursday night.”

Consuela waiting; she can’t wait forever—she done wait too long already. Time to move.

“Light the thing, nah, bai,” I tell Richards, “before the man get suspish.”
Richards pull a li’l spliff and a lighter from he pants pocket. He take a pull, I take two, we blow out the smoke and the air start to smell like herb. I rest down the joint on a rock, and prop it up nice, nice.
“You ready?”
“Yeah, let we go.”
With that, me and Richards walk into the sea and just keep walking till we disappear. We lucky: not everybody could do what we doing. Only a few fellas on this prison island, even counting officers, could swim good. But Richards say he born and grow down St. Madeleine near a pond, he say nobody in the village was faster than he. But I tell him fresh water different
to salt, and pond have edge; the sea ain’t got none. But he say that don’t matter. Me, I born in this Gulf: Icacos, to be exact. If Trinidad is a boots, Icacos is the toe. On a clear, clear day, we used to see Venezuela plain as we hand. My father is a fisherman, he father was a fisherman, and so it go and so it go . . . all the way back through history. From small, I was always on the
pirogue with Daddy; I learn to swim before I could walk, I learn to dive before I could read and write.

That’s why I slapping this water, making it splatter outta my way, like is nothing more than melt-down ghee.
Left, right, left, right.
I did tell Stench to wait by the next small island, a li’l cove it have there. Wait and keep the boat quiet, no engine till I reach. Bring change of clothes, I did say. And have a car waiting in Carenage. We heading straight for Pleasantview, straight for Consuela. By that time, they go sound the alarm on the prison island, and while they huntin’ for we in the north-west, we go dash down south, to Icacos. I have to see Daddy and Mammy before I leave for Venezuela. I have to collect back the money Daddy holding for me. With that, me and Consuela go set up weself nice, nice, nice, back in Tucupita, she hometown.

Left, right, left, right. That cove is half a kilometer from here—so the map say. Left, right, left, right.

Half a kilometer is about 1600 feet. That’s all. Feet. Freedom is just feet away from me. And freedom have a next name: Consuela. Consuela, Consuela. A kind of madness take over: I turn barracuda in the water, one arm over the next, I going faster and faster. I ain’t feeling nothing, I ain’t ‘fraid nothing, I not looking back, I not going back.

I hear a siren and I know is for we.