Crash! Leroy Smart slammed down his winning card on the Formica and yelped in triumph.
“Still here!”
The frail 78-year-old straightened his back and threw up his arms. He’d marked his birthday a week before with a quiet glass of the Appleton’s his son had brought back for him from home. But now he was properly- and happily – ‘home’ again, in the curving cradle of the bar in the Noah’s Ark.
It was filling up. The sun was over the yard arm and the small team behind the counter were juggling glasses, clutching notes and change. The Ark was loud with the crack and clatter of the hard, hopeful, dominoes played to a chorus of background murmur and shouts.
The sun shone bright through the frosted windows but offered nothing back to the curious as they filed by outside. A private party in the public bar, a glimpse of Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Antigua celebrated without fear among the bricks and stones of wharfs which had once anchored slavers invested in the misery of their forebears.
Bitterness of the folk memory muted now, known but repressed, held back and reserved for the angry days.
But these old men didn’t share the rage of the youth. Riots, mayhem and looting were not their way. With the stoicism of the truly helpless they’d taken the taunts, smarted under the blows and suffered the injustice. But their passive refusal to yield was not enough for a new generation, not so hungry for food but determined to grasp a slice of the future.
“What the hell is wrong with these kids?” Leroy wondered.
“Drive-by shootings – what good can come of that? They only hurt our own, even younger than they are. Lord, it was a nine-year-old they killed last week! It’s heartbreak and it’s dumb.”
His pal Winston drew his mouth down and stared hard.
“It’s the drugs of course. But it’s greed and everyone out for their own selves. That comes from fear – they’re ’fraid there’s no future, you gotta have money to protect yourself and the guns are their only way to get it.”
The dominos crackled out a fresh burst followed with a whoop and a shout from the table around the bar.
Winston’s face cleared and he looked up again with a grin. Leroy peered back at him and, without looking at the table, hit down a fresh card perfectly at the end of the run.
As if on cue, there was a rat-a-tat-tat around the bar. The noise swelled and the joyful shouts echoed out defying and drowning out the crawling traffic. A group of youngsters in a new black jeep leaned out as the line drew past.
“Go for it granddad!” shouted a young fellow with tight corn rows and a gleaming gold tooth. “Hit it killer!” The roar of laughter from the wound down windows faded away as the frenzy at the bar inside pitched to another crescendo. Winston jumped up, all five foot six of him clenched like his fist as he crashed down his final blow.
“Yeeagh! Nailed you boy,” he hollered. “Got you this time Leroy – you’re gone.”
Leroy frowned then grinned back. “Not so fast,” he said, raising his voice over the rat-a-tat deafening the bar. “Again – a decider?”
At that moment the sirens blew loud in the streets on both sides, the dominos were quietened and the players confused as a new shout rang out from a megaphone.
“Armed police! Lay down all weapons and file out with hands behind your heads. Now!”
DoubleSpeak 