Skin Folk Read Free Page B

easy, not like in Jamaica;
     that you’ll be able to reach out your hand and pull money from the trees. Money will just fall into your lap like fruit. I
     wonder where my money tree is,” he said.
    He had explained his plan to her in his unmailed letter: he had gone back to Jamaica to look for the Golden Table.
I think I can really find it, Silky! The Rio Cobre has altered its course twice since the pirate Jackson built his home beside
     it: once when he drowned with his treasure, and once more when they built the Irrigation Works in the 1800s. The works have
     drained off so much water onto the plain that you can actually walk on parts of the river bed in the dry season. That’s when
     I’m going to go looking for the Golden Table. I can dig late at night when nobody will see me. I even know the spot where
     the old people say it is—it’s a deep sinkhole that doesn’t dry up until the height of the dry season.
    No one looks for the Table, you know. They’re afraid. People out here still tell stories about a plantation owner way, way
     back who tried to have his slaves pull the Table out of the water when it rose at noon. Six men drowned that day, and twelve
     yokes of oxen, dragged under when the Table sank to the bottom again.
    Suppose it’s really there! All that gold! It’s almost dry season now. Just a few more weeks, and maybe I’ll be coming home
     rich. I’ll see you soon.
    If Silky had known what Morgan had been up to, she would have talked him out of it. When they were children, her mother had
     made it clear that she was to look out for her younger brother.
    “You’re the eldest one, Silky, and a girl to boot, so you have to have more sense. That boy’s so full of mischief, always
     getting himself in deep water. You have to be ready to pull him out. Your daddy and I won’t always be around, you know.”
    Silky had resented the burden placed on her. She loved Morgan, but at the time, she’d been a child too, just like him. Why
     did she have to take care of him? Isn’t that what her parents were for?
    After their parents were killed in the car crash, Silky sometimes wondered if her mother had known that they wouldn’t be around
     to see their children into adulthood. Like Silky, Mummy used to dream things. And if Mummy had known that, had she also known
     how to save Morgan? Did she die before she could tell her daughter what to do?

    Silky had another dream.
Morgan was standing beside her on the bank of the Rio Cobre. He put an arm around her shoulders to draw her close, and pointed
     into the murky water.
    It’s time, he said. Look into the water, Silky. No, bend your head like so. Quickly! Twelve seconds and it gone. See it? Rising
     towards us through the river water? That big round of pure gold, that tabletop, shimmering like the promise of heaven. Getting
     bigger, coming closer… four, three, two… gone again. Sunk back into the depths of the river. You can’t take it out, you know?
     The spirits drag you down. If I jump in, Silky, you will pull me out? I can’t swim.
    She didn’t answer him, just stared down into the roiling water that would melt her flesh and change her if she went into it.
    Morgan had been staying with a cousin in Spanish Town; Leonie and her husband, Brian. In a phone call, Leonie told Silky that
     Morgan had started going out late at night, returning while it was still dark. Leonie had surprised him coming in at four
     o’clock one morning. He was laughing softly to himself, and she could smell stale sweat on him, like he’d been doing hard
     labour. When he saw her, he hid a pouch of some kind behind his back, scowled at her, and went to his room. She had heard
     the key turn in the lock.
    After that he kept to himself. He took a knapsack with him when he left the house in the evenings. Sometimes they saw him
     when he brought the knapsack back late at night, bulging with whatever was inside it. He cradled it to his body like a lover.
     He stayed in his room