down on the floor in a puddle of seawater. Quickly, and with the
grace of habit, a few misfits calmly walked over to him and carried
him upstairs. Niles turned around just in time to see that he wore a
“Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt.
“That kid,” Niles said. “He’s the one that Yak saved from suicide.”
“Suicide?” Partment exclaimed, “No. Not suicide. He was out
chasing after mermaids.”
“Mermaids?”
“He says there are mermaids out in the ocean. Kid’s kooky, you
know, but harmless. So long as you don’t tread on him, of course. Ha
ha!”
Niles pulled a joint out of a dreadlock and stuck it between his
teeth. “Brother, this place isn’t a halfway house. It’s a halfwit house.”
Partment seemed to take this as a compliment. Niles guessed he
was not a fan of wit. The old man rejoined, “A bunch of halfwits
together beats any number of wholewits apart. You Rastas, for
example. One of the silliest religions on the planet. But who cares, as
long as it keeps you together. Right?”
Niles was too pooped to protest. He stretched his long body out
on the sofa. Partment kept on talking, but the drone gradually ceased
to reach him until he fell asleep with an unlit joint sticking out of his
mouth.
He dreamed of a glittering golden goddess taking him gently on
her wings to a wide Abyssinian field, the Canaan of his Caribbean
creed. Under swaying date palms and beside the long blue river they
fed each other with kisses and calabash pipes. His scars faded to
invisibility under the unfiltered highland sun. Friends spread
themselves out all along the riverbanks and at night they curled up
close in each others’ arms and dreamed of a lesser world, this one.
When he finally awoke in the early hours of morning, he found
himself back in Venice, cold and damp and the joint was gone.
ABYSSINIA
84
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