Free The Sly Company of People Who Care: A Novel by Rahul Bhattacharya

jugular. Kachack . The man dead. And I blame him. Yes! I blame that man for he own death. Because why? Because he make the provocation. The same thing going to happen to you one day, y’unstand? Kachack .’
    ‘What happen to Odetta?’ I asked inquisitively.
    ‘She done come out of jail, buddeh, she come out quick. She have a baby and the court go easy on she. But the man – he dead dead dead.’
    Labba glared at the youthman.
    The youthman looked chastened.
    And I was flushed with gratitude that my pleat had been located.
    I went back in, to such a terribly poignant event, I almost wept. As humans and the powis around him rose and fell, the dacta had stayed fixed at his spot on the bench, eyes set like quartz stones.
    ‘I’m veveveve very rich spiritually. I do say my prayers because I do recognise there is a Supreme, and I get answers, I get clairvoyance, I could actually do telepathy, I actually recognise that you could talk to the supreme source, you could get answers. I personally come from a family which know a lot of herbal remedies and cures so as I was in desolate situation and places. I’s be in the mountain there’s be no hospitals. After some time I start seeing this is good thing and I start doin my own research. I write potion within my head that I could just lay my hands on, the type of illness the patient may have and get em going. Sometimes for weeks you don’t see another person, just there by yourself. No, no, no, you
don’t. I enjoy that, we live in close contact with animals and birds, know the time when they would come and know the time when they would go, the time when they would feed cause normally I would feed them. Just like I would feed this powis. Know when the rain would be there, when the storm would be there. Know when a person coming. As bad as it may sound on them, I don’t like really hypocrites. To be hypocritical I feel is a terrible sin. Know wha I mean?’
    And upon that the Siddique man came and uprooted Dr Red and plonked him outside the shop. It was startling, so unjust. He tried to come back inside, bumping up the three steps like his knees were giving way. The Siddique man held his palms out again and administered a simple, firm push that toppled Dr Red to the ground. His cap fell off, exposing a patch of bald, which, in the circumstances, carried an unbearable pathos. I gathered that Dr Red had as usual imbibed and not paid. Even so. I had assumed that he commanded respect in his surroundings; that he had insight, gravitas, and mere merchants at the very least would look up to him.
    He petered out into the dark.
    Below the mango tree Nasty and a short dreads in denim hotpants had drawn long knives and were holding them at each other like fencers. They had clothing wrapped around their free hands and made to use it like a shield. The moon was a ghostly galleon, as we learnt in school, and underneath such a moon they went at each other in grasshopping jabs. I could not tell if it was a serious affair or not. Where Labba and Baby were cracking up watching them, slapping their thighs and the tree trunk in laughter, Nasty seemed to have some blood on him. Neither of the combatants looked amused. It was actually a little distressing.
    Things, one sensed, were getting out of hand. Morning was not far. I felt multiple organ failure coming on. I went to the nearest shack and lay down on the floorboards and rolled into a ball. I was struggling. It was the shack of December, a returned porknocker. As I lay there like a wretch he kept saying he cyan sleep on any
surface but a hammock because for the last twenty years he’d slept in a hammock so a flat surface don’t make sense no more. He lit the small gas stove in the corner and said he would cook an overland omelette. He could cook any damn thing at any damn time and this damn thing was an overland omelette. And that was the last thing I remember before somebody shook me awake and poured cold water down my throat with the