In World City Read Online Free PDF

into a coffin. “What happen to a kid like you that try that shit is he get noticed by a lot of bad stuff that roamin’ around and he get eaten alive. I told you, Dion – what put Edward Charles right is not just something you turn on ‘n off. Not like machines in hospital. I tell you, Dion, what put Edward Charles right is like the King of America.”
    Dropping her severity, she said, “Listen, suppose you go up to his door – this King of America – an’ you go up to his door the way you are right now, young Dion, an’ you say, I want to see the King of America. You know what happen? If you lucky, the guards laugh at you. More likely they lock you up and give you a hard time, call up a psychiatrist, that kind of stuff. No, if you want to go see the King of America you got to work at it a long time. You got to get to know the right people and you got to get to know how to talk to them. And you got to get to be someone of some consequence, so the King of America might be interested in spending a few minutes with you. All this take time, Dion – lots and lots of time it takes before you ready to call on the King of America and get him to do favours for you. So you got a lot to do and a long path to take if you want to call up the one I called up on the Cabrits. And you start by learning to see the world properly. And that why you follow me about and see what I see. Long path to the King of America, Dion, but I make sure you start on the right track.”
    She was indeed teaching him a different kind of attention to the one they taught in school. When the class planted seeds and charted the growth of the seedlings, Dion found it made no sense. It was entirely arbitrary compared with the growing world his grandmother had shown him. How could you understand seedlings when they had only the unchanging object of the container and its little charge of compost? What his teachers showed him in class was what you could do with isolation. He felt that isolation in the classroom and in all he was being taught. His truancy increased.
    The school punished him with detentions and additional work, and complained to his father about his son’s absences. His father said it was their problem if they couldn’t keep an eye on the boy while he was in their care. Dion’s father was taken up with other things. He was busy. Dion’s mother would wring her hands and half-heartedly scold her wayward son, with half an eye on his father as she tried to judge the proper line to take. He got bad reports, there was talk of expulsion, but his technology was considered exceptionally good. All his grandmother would say was, ‘There’s different ways of knowing your way around, Dion. You listen to me and you maybe get to know one way.’
    Dion’s parents didn’t much like his grandmother, although they tolerated her occupying a small room in the corner of their house. She was his father’s mother. She said to Dion, “Your father’s father, French white from Martinique. Can’t remember his name. He quit like they all do, but he treat me okay – leave me provided for because of his kid. No more than that, mind you. Your father got no time for you, I know. All he want is to get rich. That why he make up to that Trinidad Asian and marry his daughter. That all right. Your father, he want to be a proper man. He stick with your ma and he make the kind of husband her father want for his daughter. But you, young Dion – I don’t know about you. You real mix. Bet you got some damned Arawak in there somewhere. But you certainly got a lot of me in you – black ‘n black. You want to get rich? You listen to your daddy. But if you want to live so when Death come for you, you good and ready, you listen to me. You live so you learn how to die – that’s all. Must be that way, else how come everyone who ever lived finish up dead?”
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    The air over the