Fire Rush

Also by Jacqueline CrooksThe Ice Migration VIKINGAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLCpenguinrandomhouse.comFirst published in hardcover in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Ltd., London, in 2023First American edition published by Viking, 2023Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline CrooksPenguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.Text credits may be found on this page.ISBN 9780593300534 (hardcover)ISBN 9780593300541 (ebook)Cover design: Gregg KulickCover photograph: (colorized) Peeterv / Getty ImagesAdapted for ebook by Cora WigenThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.pid_prh_6.0_143148852_c0_r0 ContentsCoverAlso by Jacqueline CrooksTitle PageCopyrightDedicationEpigraphBook One: The Crypt: Underground (November 1978–November 1980)Chapter 1: Follow the SmokeChapter 2: Abeng HornsChapter 3: Terra IncognitaChapter 4: ResonanceChapter 5: Psychic-Sonic Shay ShayChapter 6: BluesingChapter 7Chapter 8: DissonanceChapter 9: EcholocationChapter 10: Earth RiddimChapter 11: RemixingChapter 12: Version Excursion: Reverb and DelayBook Two: Safe House (November 1980–November 1981)Chapter 13: SlipstreamChapter 14: StaticChapter 15: Bad BloodChapter 16: ChannelsChapter 17: Midnight MovesChapter 18: Echo ChamberChapter 19: Sonix DominatrixChapter 20: UnderstoreyChapter 21: Lights OutChapter 22: Black SarcophagusThe AtlanticChapter 23: Version Excursion: Trailing InfinityBook Three: Outtasphere: Cockpit Country (November 1981–January 1982)Chapter 24: Floating PointsChapter 25: AcoustemologyChapter 26: BacchanalChapter 27: Control TowerChapter 28: RiffsChapter 29: Last DanceChapter 30: AudiotopiaAcknowledgementsAbout the Author_143148852_ Dedicated to Kirsten and PaulGratitude, always I had thought of walking far from the terribleKnowledgeOf flames. Spathodea. From ghost-riddenTrumpet Tree. From personalDisaster. God’s binding judgement. Drunken mysteryAnd wisps of smoke from cockpits crying lonelyLonelyBut walking in the woods alternating dark withSunshineI knewNothing then of cities or the killing of childrenIn their dancing time.Olive Senior, ‘Cockpit County Dreams’ in Talking of Trees BOOK ONEThe Crypt: UndergroundNovember 1978–November 1980If sound is birth and silence death, the echo trailing into infinity can only be the experience of life, the source of narrative and a pattern for history.Louis Chude-Sokei, ‘Dr Satan’s Echo Chamber: Reggae, Technology and the Diaspora Process’ 1Follow the SmokeOne o’clock in the morning. Hotfoot, all three of us. Stepping where we had no business.Tombstone Estate gyals – Caribbean, Irish. No one expects better. We ain’t IT. But we sure ain’t shit. All we need is a likkle bit of riddim. So we go inna it, deep, into the dance-hall Crypt.‘Come, nuh,’ Asase calls. Pushing her way down the stairs. High-priestess glow. Red Ankara cloth wound round her hair like a towering inferno.Asase is the oldest, twenty-five, a year older than me and Rumer.Rumer is nothing like her red-haired Irish family. My gyal is dance-taut, tall with a rubber-ribbed belly – androgynous. Blonde, she dyes her hair Obsidian Black, stuffs it underneath a knitted red-gold-green Rasta cap.We squeeze past chirpsing men. Stand in front of the arched wooden door. Suck in the last of the O2.I follow Asase inside. My gyal follows the smoke. Beneath barrel-vaulted arches. Dance-hall darkness. Pile-up bodies. Ganja clouds. We lean against flesh-eating limestone walls near two coffin-sized speaker boxes that vibrate us into the underworld.Runnings: the scene goes the usual way; a Rasta pulls Rumer which is good because that’s the only kinda man she’ll dance with. ‘They’re respectful, they’re my bredren,’ she says. A sweet bwoy pulls Asase.Testing, testing: one, two, three. Lights go on for a few seconds.Only one type of man left for me.A tall, light-skinned man, face the colour of wet sand, stalked green eyes, standing in his silence. Man pulls me with not so much as a ‘What’s up. Wanna dance?’ Nuth’n.Watchya: there’re only three kinda man-pulls – usually from behind.Pull 1: grip above elbow; pull-back-bend-ram-hard-rubbing.Options: forget it!Pull 2: hand-grip-spin-face-to-face-body-check-ram-rub.Options: none. Best give up your body for one tune – at the very least.Pull 3: soft bwoy tap on shoulder.Options: nuff.This man’s trouble. I can tell by his use of Pull 1 and the size of his belt and the way he jooks himself into my centre of gravity. His body’s not tuned for riddims; it’s flexed for the war zones of history, the battles of the streets.I tip my arse, inch my pubic bone away from his hard-on.He puts his mouth to my ear, warm breath: ‘Simmer down.’ Flattens his palms against my batty, pulls me back in.Version after B-side instrumental version, he grips me. Wordless. We’re in a crypt in the thick of duppy dust; lost rivers, streams and sewers bubbling beneath us.Smoke’s taken over, thickening, choking me. And I wonder why I attract these kinda men, who are just like my father. Men who strike fear in people just by the way they stand. Skewering the silence with their stares.Four dances in before I make my soft-gyal excuse, mouth ‘Gotta go. Toilet.’Man nods. I exhale. One floor up, I sit in the toilet cubicle. Smell candles and incense and old wood from the church. Light my spliff, suck more smoke into my lungs, feel Muma shoot into my veins.I hear her song, her voice, treble, reed and flute. She cuts inna me with soundwaves, singing: ‘Daughter, I-and-I is tune.’Spirit or not, Muma’s all I’ve got. The only one I trust.‘Stay,’ I whisper. But she’s gone.I imagine my ganja smoke snaking around my dance partner, dragging him into the afterworld beneath the Crypt. But the man’s waiting for me downstairs, to raas. One hand clipped on his belt like he’s toting a gun.‘Inna it, baby,’ he says, and pulls me into the dance hall, positions me against the wall, wedges himself into my body.I hold my breath, and pray for a rootsy liberation track to put him off his slow-winding moves. But I’m locked in. Tune after tune after tune.Three o’clock in the morning. We’re ten feet