Caden and Jayden

Marlon James

This here story is about Caden and Jayden. Caden and Jayden are names that rich boys get. Uptown Kingston boys. Jamaican boys who God bless with lighter skin, looser hair, Daddy’s fat wallet, and a white mother who family in Munich or Naples or wherever no longer speaks to her, not really, not like they used to. They live in place that have name like Paddington Terrace. At high-school recess they close ranks with other boys rich, uptown, and octoroon. But hear this: Caden and Jayden are good boys. Them good, man. Well Jayden is. Jayden used to lend me all his Cure cassettes. Caden thief my Phil Collins LP and when I ask for it back said battyboy me look like me’d borrow any fuckery from you? We are all boys in an all-boys high school. Puberty and dumb youth ballooning to burst out of our school uniforms, Caden and Jayden stuffing their boy clothes with man body parts. 

Caden and Jayden don’t really name Caden and Jayden. I made up those names because both men are still roaming and one day they might read this. Well, Jayden because I remember at least three times when he was within the six-foot radius of a book. Caden was the one who when the art teacher shouted at him to keep quiet and draw, said yow teacher, me beat woman your age. Right now, Jayden roams New York City and may very well be in this bar overhearing me tell the story of Caden and Jayden. Right now, Caden is standing at the end of the Burger King drive-through in Liguanea, trying to beg money from somebody he knows that he knows.

—Brethren let off a hundred-dollar nuh? Fifty? Twenty? Hold on, where me know you from?

—You still have my Phil Collins record.

—Your what?

—No, you don’t know me.

Jayden walks up and down New York because Jamaica is a place he punched a hole right through—he can never go back. Caden walks Kingston looking for the next woman, looking for the next man to make him their mission.

You know what, stop. Pull up. Do this in reverse. 

2016. 

I don’t see either in over ten years, maybe fifteen. But I hear. You know about Jayden, right? The boy have to chip out after them let him out of prison early, because truth be told, there was no place for him here. Not after what happened to him.

—Happen to him? Him is the one who happen to somebody.

—If you only forgive the unforgivable, then you not forgiving.

—I don’t have nothing to forgive him for.

—Him deh ’pon it again. Cocaine this time.

—That nuh the manageable one? Everybody in Fleetwood Mac used to hit coke. At least it’s not crack.

2016. 

Caden still on the street, a forty-seven-year-old man. Which mean the brethren deh ’pon the crack pipe for thirty years. Lean and ripped, but crackhead ripped. Each muscle punctuated by a bruise, from sleeping on the sidewalk. Or from getting knocked out by a man who thought of his wife in the middle of getting his dick sucked by a dude. At least nobody is fucking him at this wharf. 

Uh huh.

Except that no crackhead skips uptown drive-through for downtown docks unless he plans to end up with his end up. Because that type of business interest pays double. Caden gets half because there are boys here one-third his age. His friend, the musician, came down to see his son, then vanished for a month. Turns out he went to the crack house in Ravinia that same weekend. Overdosed in two hours, but his body sat under the kitchen counter rotting for weeks while addicts tripped up all around him. 

Caden don’t check for no crack house. Him seh him goin’ brush him teeth and look for a wounded woman on a mission. Sing a song, jump a hoop, quote a poem (lyrics to Lady in Red will do), show his wounds, cry to God and lick that clit like the last meal of the condemned and just like that he’s living with one now. She will save him until he falls. Then he will blame her. And she will try harder. And he will fall again. 

And blame her. 

And she will try harder. And he will fall again and blame her. 

And she will try harder, and he will fall again and blame her. 

And she will try harder and harder and harder until she learns (maybe in six months, maybe a year, maybe two) that she is looking for a lover, not a purpose. He was just looking for a bed.

2006.

Jayden is just out of prison, and I see into him in the nightclub. 

—Yow, you see Jayden?

—Eehi.

—Him recognize you?

—Me and him never spar like that still. 

—Well, there is one bredda who never goin’ take drugs.

—You think so?

—You don’t?

—You can’t kill the same person twice

—Him coming over here. Dance with me.

2006.

—You hear ’bout Caden?

—Him ah lick the heroin now.

—Like him could afford heroin. Him family gone. Vanish. Poof! Like a thief in the night.

—What?

—Yeah, just like that. Poof. Them get tired of him breaking in so them just leave. And by leave, I mean migrate. House stay just they left it. They didn’t tell nobody where them was going, no friend, no family, nobody me seh. Them couldn’t risk Caden following them. 

—How the fuck Caden was goin’ follow them? 

—He’d find a way. Anyway, them gone.

<hr />

1996.

Caden is at KFC hoping some man him don’t even remember will buy him a two-piece meal deal. He knows everybody who still ah lick the crack pipe, but he is not one of them. No sah, him clean now. Crack is for losers, crack is for cocksuckers, crack is for people with bad skin and bad teeth, but mostly crack is for the 1980s and this is 1996. And at least he’s not Jayden.

Jayden.

The last Monday night in September, they find Jayden naked on his lawn. Men are always naked when you have to find them and then you do. He was at his parents’, who had taken him out of detox because they were a respectable family and people at the Liguanea Club were beginning to talk. Detox made him paranoid. The family were plotting a birthday party, but Jayden thought they were just plotting. When they found him, he was still clutching the hammer, trying to grip it but the blood made it slippery. He had bludgeoned a crater in the side of his girlfriend’s head and had started working on his mother. But then his sister distracted him by breaking a vase in the living room and as he staggered in, she rushed to the hallway where her mother lay, dragged her into the bathroom, and turned the lock that had never been used in that house ever. Jayden did not stop hammering down the door until a plane flying low scared him outside to the lawn where he passed out.

1986.

Crack is ghetto business in America. In Jamaica it just means you’re young and uncomplicated and cocaine is complicated. In Caden’s house crack is on the kitchen counter like spilled sugar cubes. All the cha-cha boy them ah do it sounds like a cliché even then, but all the cool kids are really doing it. Cool boys, cute boys, boys who trip and fall and land between girls’ legs. Crack is on the kitchen counter like spilled sugar cubes. 

People ask Caden, why do people take drugs? He is but one, but the TV Camera want him to become a royal we and speak for everyone so that they never have to ask this question again. Why do people take drugs? Why do they keep taking drugs is easier to answer. Because nobody wants to take off a mask in 2016 to realize that they never left 1986. 

Why do people take drugs, Caden? 

Why did that woman cheat on her husband in the movie unfaithful?

Because the fucking drugs are there. And so are we.

Because the fucking drugs are here and so are we.

Because the fucking drugs are here.