The orderly had not heard. “Name,” he said, peering at the sheet in front of him.
“Morgan, Ferron Morgan . . .”
“Spell it . . .”
“F-E-R-R-O-N,” Ferron said slowly.
The orderly wrote, pausing after each letter or two to admire his work. Then his brows tightened. “Then nuh the same name this?” He compared the two words. “Cho, man, me say your name. Your name, boss, your name.” The orderly was erasing furiously.
“That is my name, Ferron Morgan. We have the same name.” Ferron was becoming uncomfortable. He was worried about the sun beating on the body in the trolley between them. He was aware of the absurdity of the dialogue. There was something dreamlike about the whole affair. “I just said—”
“You mean you and the man name . . .” he frowned at the clipboard, first sounding out the syllables, then saying them, “Ferron Morgan?”
“Yes, sometimes fathers do that.” His sarcasm was lost on the man, who was now smiling. “What?”
“Shit,” the orderly laughed. “Then somebody might read this an’ believe say the dead man nuh tek out him owna self.”
It did not matter that Ferron was not laughing. The orderly chuckled at his own little joke for the remainder of the time the two were together. Later, Ferron would tell the joke to Cuthbert, pleased with himself.
Ferron studied the short man carefully, trying to construct a fiction around his wrinkled face and bored eyes. The orderly scratched his head with the pencil. Sparse clumps of hair littered the glowing surface. He would make an ugly corpse. Ferron wondered if the orderly ever imagined himself on the trolley. That kind of thinking must come with a job like that. The orderly slipped the pencil behind his ear, which glowed transparent against the sunlight creeping over a huge Bombay mango tree behind the morgue. A line of sweat trickled along a vein that snaked down the middle of his forehead.
“Well, is him this?” He lifted the edge of the sheet at the old man’s head. The nose was stuffed with bloodstained cotton. The cheeks were bloated. The old man’s face was discolored—bluish. Ferron could see a hint of cotton sticking out of the corner of the mouth, mingling with his graying moustache. His eyes were closed. It was not like sleep—there was nothing there. Nothing.
“Who you taking him to?” The orderly fanned a fly from the open wound on the right side of the head. “Travis?”
“No. Abrams,” Ferron said. He wanted to ask about the wound. It was a tidy incision just above the right ear.
“Abrams? From where? Not from Mandeville?”
“No, town. We taking him to town.” Ferron tried to discern any reaction from the orderly. There was none. He nodded and then leaned forward, peering at the wound.
“It will alright,” the orderly said, pointing to the wound with his chin. At first Ferron thought he was talking about the heat in the car and the body. “Tha’s which part the doctor cut, eh? You cut it right there soh, an’ then you strip it back—jus’ fe see the brain, yuh understan’? After dat, yuh jus’ pull it back over. No need to sew ’im up, really. Mos’ time yuh can jus’ hide it. Nobadda fret ’bout it. Is a simple job, you know. Dem can jus’ stitch up clean-clean and pack the head good-good. No problem at all. Nobody will notice,” he assured Ferron with a smile.
“Right.” Ferron could feel the acid starting to churn in his stomach.
“Well, the res’ looking quite good, eh? Not bad. Could be worse.” He waited for Ferron to agree.
Ferron nodded.
The orderly craned his neck to look under the right ear, then satisfied with his appraisal, he turned to Ferron and reassured him: “Easy job. Them can fix him up no problem. Even me could do it.”
Ferron smiled stupidly.
“I know some Morgans, you know? Your people from Mandeville here?” The orderly was organizing the papers on the pad. Ferron just wanted to take the body and leave. He looked down into the parking area for Cuthbert. The Volvo was parked on the banking. The Toyota was gone. Cuthbert was not around.
“From Mandeville?” the orderly repeated.
“No, St. Ann.”
“Oh . . . St. Ann. Nooo . . .” He pulled the sheet over the old man’s face. “I know the face though.”
“Television,” Ferron mumbled. A part of him hoped his father would be recognized. The squalor of this piece of business had cheapened the man’s death, deprived him of dignity. It embarrassed him.
“No . . . no.” The orderly passed the clipboard to Ferron, indicating where he should sign.
Ferron looked back down the hill. Cuthbert was standing beside the Volvo eating from a box of Kentucky chicken. Ferron waved him to come up.
The orderly took the clipboard from Ferron and walked back into the morgue. A few seconds later he was outside. “Nuh this man use’ to run the Hilo supermarket hereso in Mandeville?”
“No,” Ferron said. “Not him.”
“Jesus Christ, the man favor Missa Morgan! Mus’ be a jacket business,” he laughed.
Ferron watched Cuthbert amble up the pathway with a bundle of white sheets. In the parking area, the Morris Oxford was back. This time the woman walked with three other women. They were dressed in white and their heads were tightly turbanned. The driver of the car, a skinny dark man wearing a red tam, did not get out. The women were singing as they climbed the hill to the morgue.
“Shit, I know them woulda wan’ come with this foolishness,” the orderly said, hurrying inside.
Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan
A supposed poet gave me some poems to read. They are awful. He is not a poet. Again the pathos. I shall suggest that he send them to publishers. The pathos is that he thinks he is a poet. Again the arrogance, the lack of humility. The lack of a sense of scale. I do not have the spare energy to deal with this.
Financial success is unbeatable in a capitalist country and we have it, running into many millions. Just keep up the form, invent new gimmicks, and advertising will do the rest. It cannot ever be important that there are not enough readers to increase sales because readers read to nonreaders and that nonreader is our man and his ignorance must not be disturbed. Keep it that way for as long as possible. The Adult Literacy Program was and is a failure and now we are going to kill it, but delicately, not as crudely as the Jamaica Information Service. What else do we need to kill?
I must try to probe the backgrounds and working careers of the black people in here. Could it have been a straight political choosing? There was obviously no “cultural” choice; speech will tell you—and speech will suggest that Tivoli Gardens is very strong. Again, my ignorance of offices might be responsible for this. But it is appalling what an effort has to be made by them to speak English. Further resentment comes from the articles I did on the “Great West Indian Writers” in my clearly idiotic effort to let them know that we have had quite gifted writers—world-class writers and there is something of a tradition of good writing. But this fell on deaf ears. And here in the office, it annoyed the younger writers. Too much space given to these old writers, they murmured. Perhaps they are right. After all, these are new times, and that lot were all brainwashed by colonialism and it is roots time, reggae time, man time now. Ah, my Revolution has finally arrived! Revolutions are for the young. I am now, at best, an old campaigner. Well, what to do? My point has been made and as I am clearly not going to be paid separately for doing those articles, I don’t care if the others are not published. I hope the two I did will at least lead to some sales for those writers.