The dogs ran through the yard kicking up ruckus outside. They said that dogs could hear a man coming down the road from a mile away due to their superior auditory mechanism. Something was coming and the dogs were afraid.
Diamond rolled over in her bed and fell back into a deep sleep. She could have sworn she heard noises outside, boots stampeding the ground and low guttural voices but then people always checking her Uncle early in the morning. She was falling back into a deep sleep when she heard a strong thud.
Diamond looked out the window, the place was chillingly silent. She knew what that silence meant, she had experienced it several times over the years. It was the sound of catastrophe. She heard a pop, it sounded like a gunshot and then eight more similar ricocheting sounds and it was coming from her Uncle's house.
She could have sworn she heard her uncle scream “Murder! No! No!!!!!!!!!” in her sleep. She knew it then even if the Police Officers standing at his gate and the several Lorries of Soldiers promenading on the road did not confirm that her Uncle was either dead or seriously injured.
She saw her mom ran out onto the Verandah and Uncle Patrick on the ground with his head in his hands. His face was strewn with tears. The soldiers and police officers were barricading her Uncle John's home preventing her mother from going inside to see her brother. She watched through the curtained window as they pulled her Uncle out by his arms and flung him into the back of the police Jeep. His baby mother and the child kneeling outside on the ground, crying inconsolable. As they drove away with him, he appeared to sit up in the back of the Van and the officers pushed him back down. His lips were moving, he was not dead.
Diamond ran outside feeling as if she was in a trance. Why didn't anyone follow the Police Jeep? She heard another pop reverberate down the road where the cane fields began. Her mother wailed on the ground at the feet of an officer who retreated and she fell on her face, rolling from side to side in a fit of hysteria. People were milling out of their houses, neighbors shouting "murderers" at the Police officers.
Diamond convulsed and her head spun, she knew the police had just murdered her Uncle. It was very clear in her mind. John was still very much alive when he left here. She grabbed her stomach, a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with her pregnancy overtook her. The police had simply murdered her uncle in cold blood. She spun around and then she heard the Police officer said “lady” after which all went blank.
The lights went out and Diamond fought to regain consciousness. She was dreaming, that was it! But she kept hearing her mother's screams and her Uncle Patrick's sob. She saw the blank look on the Officer's faces as they executed an innocent youth. John was no badman and everyone knew that. She saw John sitting up in the Van pleading to the police officers “Please officer don't kill me”, his chest covered in blood. Everything went black again.
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