The story of Dally Gray-excerpt from a short story by Austin Mitchell

The Story of Dally Gray

by

Austin Mitchell

        “Hey, guy, do you know who you’re dealing with?” bus driver, Dally Gray shouted and his hand dipped into his pocket.

            “I’ve fired bigger guns than any you’ve fired, guy,” the other driver warned.

            “Why don’t you guys drive properly on the road?” Dally asked.

             Several passengers had come off the bus to remonstrate with both drivers. A woman, who looked like the other driver’s wife, was trying to make peace too.

            “Why don’t you go after the other driver? He was the one who was driving carelessly,” the driver hissed his teeth. He went to his car and drove off after his passengers got in.

            Dally took his hand out of his pocket and watched the man drive away. He got back into his bus and drove off.

            There was another incident in May Pen a couple of years before this. Dally was in a bar drinking when the other patrons started discussing politics. It was soon realized that he was the only one not supporting their party and they had sought to attack him. Dally had hastily pulled his gun and fired shots, one of which caught one of his attackers, killing him on the spot. Dally’s lawyer was able to prove that he had shot in self defense as some of his attackers were armed with a variety of weapons.

            I was reflecting on these incidents as I sat in Reid’s bar on Princess Street in Downtown, Kingston. I had witnessed the first incident, but a friend told me about the second one.

            Still, there was another incident that Dally told us about. One night he was in a bar drinking with some men from the area. Into the bar, walked one of his former classmates, an ex-policeman. Dally had to idea that the man was a marijuana dealer. It wasn’t until he drove his bus through the area a few weeks later and stopped at the same bar. While drinking, the same men came into the bar and accused him of setting the ex-policemen on them. Dally had introduced his friend to several of the men whom he knew were marijuana farmers. They had taken him to their fields after he promised to buy marijuana from them. The man had returned with his police friends and raided their fields.

            Dally had to pull his gun and hastily leave the area with his bus.

            I was just about to leave when into the bar walked Dally’s cousin and my long time friend, Elroy Lobban.         

          “Elroy, it’s years I haven’t hear from you.”

            “Brucey Morrison, it’s some forty years I don’t hear anything about you,” Elroy said.

            Elroy looked gaunt, after all he was nearing sixty five year of age, a year older than I.

            “So what are you drinking Elroy?” I asked him. I was drinking white rum and milk. We had already shaken hands.

            “I want a cold beer,” he told me and I shouted his order to the barmaid.

            Both of us as young men worked on Misty Morning buses. That was back in the late fifties and sixties. I went to the United States in 1962 and Elroy had gone to England the previous year.

            Dally, drove the one from Glengoffe to Kingston. I was a loader on that bus.

          “Sometimes when I remember Mytle and Dally I really feel bad over what happen,” I said.

            “When I look back, I really feel sad about the whole thing. I tell my children about it because I feel that things could have turned out better,” Elroy said.

          “You ever see Miguel or Sasha?” I asked him.  Both Miguel and Sasha were the Grey’s children and would be grown adults now. They were also Elroy’s cousins.

            “Miguel went to America and Sasha went to England. She lived with my sister, Vinette, for a couple of years. Then she got married and she and her husband went to live in the States,” Elroy replied.

            Elroy and I would exchange buses every Wednesday. We liked travelling these rural routes. Sometimes we’d jump off the bus and shake down a mango tree or pick oranges or cut sugar cane or pineapples but we were always up to one prank or another.

             Myrtle would have our dinner ready by the time we reached her shop each evening. 
Read the full story in 'Bring back the good old Days' or 'The Fire by the Wayside'.