Skin Folk Read Free Page A

Shards of golden sunlight struck her eyes.
     She looked down. A light breeze was rippling the grass in waves. She was sailing on a green sea.
    When they were children, she and Morgan would climb the julie mango tree in the back of the house and pretend that they were
     old-time pirates, scaling the mast to spy out ships to plunder. Other little boys in Mona Heights had had cap guns. Morgan
     had a plastic sword. He used to jab Silky with it, until that time when she punched him and broke his nose. Grandpy had been
     so mad at her!
    As she reminisced, Silky picked a fat, golden pear, but with a liquid sound it collapsed in her hand, rotted from within.
     “Ugh! Nasty!” She flicked the soggy mush off her fingers and wiped her hand on her jeans.
    After Mummy and Daddy died, the children’s grandfather came from Spanish Town to take care of them. He was the one who had
     told them the story about Jackson, a man who had lived just outside Spanish Town in the 1600s. People hadn’t known it at the
     time, but Jackson had been a carpenter turned pirate. He was a greedy man. He had drugged the crew with doped rum and scuttled
     their ship at sea while they were still in it. He had drowned his mates so that he could retire rich with their booty.
    “Guilt drove Jackson crazy,” Grandpy told them. “The ghosts of the drowned pirates called from their grave in the sea and
     asked the river spirit for her help. They said she could have their gold if she gave them revenge.
    “River Mumma loves shiny things. She agreed. She would come to Jackson at night. As he tossed and turned in his bed, he could
     hear the river whispering in his ear that he was a murderer and a thief. River Mumma told him she would have revenge, and
     she would have his gold. Jackson was afraid, but he was more greedy than scared. He wasn’t going to let her have the doubloons.
     He used his carpenter’s skills to make a huge table of heavy Jamaican mahogany, then he nailed every last gold coin onto it.
     Hid it in his cellar. He stopped bathing, stopped talking to his neighbours, stayed in his house all the time.”
    “Then what happened?” Silky had whispered, holding tight to Morgan’s sleeve for reassurance. He looked just as scared as she.
    “Jackson didn’t even notice the heavy rains that year. It rained so hard that the Rio Cobre river that ran beside his property
     swelled up big. He was in his cellar admiring his gold when the Rio Cobre broke its banks and gouged a new course for itself,
     right through his home. The house was demolished.
    “River Mumma sent the water for him,” Grandpy said. “The last thing the neighbours saw was a big golden table rising to the
     surface of the rushing water. It floated for twelve seconds with Jackson clinging to it. Then it sank. If he had let go, they
     might have been able to save him, but he refused to leave his treasure.”
    “What happened to the table?” Morgan had asked. He was eleven and already he had a taste for money. Grandpy was looking after
     his two orphans as best as he could, but things were tight.
    “No one ever fetched the golden table out of the Rio Cobre. They say that at the stroke of noon every day, it rises to the
     top of the water, and it floats for exactly twelve seconds, then sinks again, dragging anything else in the water down with
     it.”
    Silky’s basket was full. She tied the scarf around the handle and lowered it to the ground, climbing down after it. She lugged
     it inside the house. Morgan loved pears. She would make preserves from them, stew them in her precious Demerara sugar to keep
     them until he returned.
    The Jamaican police had sent her Morgan’s effects. Some clothes, a letter he hadn’t mailed. She had put the letter with the
     month’s stack of bills on the bookshelf. At least the insurance was covering Morgan’s half of the mortgage payments.
    Morgan used to say to her, “Back home, they tell you that when you come up to Canada, it’s going to be