"What Remains" The Road to Zion (Part 1)

Because righteousness govern the world.

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The Roots Land podcast stories that are music to your ears.

I'm in the security line in Fort Lauderdale airport.

Shoes in the bin, boarding pass in my hand.

Kingston flight about to board.

My phone rings.

It's Curly Locks.

He knows I'm landing in a few hours, but I answer anyway.

Yes, Patrick.

I'm about to get on the plane.

He says something I don't understand at first about Zion, his young son.

Zion dead in Henry.

What?

He repeats it.

Yo, bro, I said, Zion dead.

Zion's dead.

What happened?

Right now, I can't get a straight answer, bro.

I can't get a straight answer.

But I saw my son.

And it is obvious that he fought for his life.

He fought with everything he had, believe me.

Good afternoon, this is the captain speaking.

Just about ready.

I sat down and buckled in.

Across the aisle was a family.

Mother, father, and a little girl about Zion's age.

She kept kneeling on the seat and looking out the window, asking questions the way kids do.

Where are we going?

How high are we flying?

Why is the wing moving?

Her parents answered patiently, like this was just another flight.

She laughed at something small.

I don't even remember what it was.

There's nothing you can do on a plane.

You can't drive anywhere.

You can't see anyone.

You can't fix anything.

You just sit there while the air carries you forward.

So your mind starts moving instead.

And somewhere over the Caribbean, mine kept going back to Patrick.

Not just the artist, not just the songwriter, but the man.

We met at Anchor Recording Studio in Kingston.

I was down there working a session that was slipping through my fingers.

A roots reggae producer trying to navigate a modern dance hall world that didn't speak my language anymore.

Carlilocks was mostly quiet that day, sitting towards the back, watching.

Then at some point, he stepped forward.

Not loud, not flashy, just steady.

Yo, engineer, tell Bigger.

Do that last line over again.

Tell him to do it over.

You know, come on.

He began shaping things, guiding the artist, tightening the direction.

What felt scattered suddenly had direction.

And that was the beginning.

Over the months that followed, the sessions turned into conversations.

Conversations turned into trust.

We were different in a lot of ways.

Different paths, different worlds.

But we both knew what it meant to survive in an industry that gives you just enough to stay hungry.

When that universal project wrapped up and everyone flew back to the States, I stayed in Kingston.

Decided to work with Curly Locks and his brother, Two Locks, Patrick and Paul Gaynor.

Twin of twins, built a small studio up in Red Hills in my half of a small house I rented overlooking the city of Kingston.

Before I made that decision to return for good, Patrick drove me up into the hills to see a piece of land he and his brother had bought.

He said they paid for it with the crumbs of the music business.

You see this piece of land, Henry K. We got this with the crumbs of the music business.

And then said, imagine if we get a slice of the cake.

Just imagine we get a slice of the cake.

We walked away from the car to a quiet spot on the property.

Open sky.

The kind of land that feels like promise, like a future.

That's when he reminded me about his son, Zion.

We had talked about him for months, but this time was different.

Curly said he needed something to break in the business, something fast.

Needed a house built on that land quickly and his little boy, Zion, to live under his own roof.

He said his son was different and needed special care.

And the only way his son would really be safe was.

Would be in Patrick's own home, under his own roof.

Zion is a special youth.

He's gonna need a special kind of care.

I need to be the most urgent.

Get him up there.

You know that's the only way he'll ever be safe.

I know that.

And that wasn't ambition talking.

That was a father.

You see, I was a father, too.

My daughter was only five years older than Zion.

She was also born in Kingston, right in the middle of gang wars and police shootouts.

I knew what it felt like to lie awake at night, listening, thinking.

And I knew what it felt like the day I finally got her out.

Zion deserved that same peace.

I remember the first time he came by the studio.

He didn't run up to strangers the way most kids do.

He was shy.

Stayed close to Patrick at first, watching.

He picked up a small toy truck he'd brought with him to the studio and started driving it slowly around the lines on the floor like they were roads.

Patrick watched him the whole time we were talking.

Every few seconds, his eyes went back on his son.

At one point, Zion looked up and smiled at him.

And for Patrick, the world stopped.

For a second, you can see exactly why that house mattered to him.

Within a few years, the music started moving.

Not just songs, commentary.

Patrick's voice calling out corruption, violence, hypocrisy.

Began to echo beyond Kingston 13 and carried with it an invitation to speak at Harvard University, a rare privilege for a youth from the Garrison.

The roof went up on the house, and Zion's room was almost finished.

It would be a room he would never sleep in.

The flight from Fort Lauderdale to Jamaica is just under an hour.

Almost 20 years later, I never really got off that flight.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

We've begun our descent into Norman Manly International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica.

Please return to your seats, fasten your seatbelts, and ensure all carry on items are securely stowed.

The plane touched down hard.

It always does in Kingston, coming low over the harbor and the short Runway.

I'm usually first off, first in the customs line.

This time I stayed seated.

When the cabin door opened, that warm, familiar Kingston air hit me.

Salt, fuel, humidity.

All at once.

Around me, everything felt ordinary.

People reaching for bags, devices turning back on, conversations starting again.

I waited until almost everyone was off, picked up my bag and walked off the plane, looking down at my phone.

No new messages.

Kingston is always chaotic.

But this time was different.

I wasn't calling the twins for my usual airport ride.

Outside Norman Manley airport, taxi men were shouting for fares, pulling at bags, competing for passengers.

Normally I would have taken one of the unlicensed cabs and saved a few dollars, but not this time.

I climbed into a Judah, an official government taxi.

Anytime you're heading into the Garrison, you want to know who you're riding with.

I was going to Kingston 13, where Patrick and Paul grew up, Ricketts Avenue off a Chisholm, a place they never really left.

The road narrowed as we drove in, music playing somewhere in the distance, people watching the car pass.

I stepped out, unwrapped the chain that kept the metal gate closed and started walking towards the yard.

Before I reached the house, I could hear voices.

Mama Lu, the twins mother screaming for answers.

Paul was louder, sharper, not grief.

This was something else.

When you hear a child has died, your mind goes to sickness.

An accident.

I wasn't prepared for anything else.

Patrick came towards me slowly.

He looked like he wasn't fully inside himself, and he began to explain what happened the day before.

Patrick was hoping to go to the hospital, expecting answers.

Instead, they sent him to the morgue.

He wasn't prepared for that.

The room was cold in a way that didn't feel like air conditioning, quiet in a way that hospitals never are.

They pulled back the sheet.

For a second he didn't react.

Almost like his mind was waiting for Zion to move, to breathe, to complain about being woken up.

Patrick stood there and touched his boy's hand.

And that's when he knew.

Not sickness, not an accident.

Something had happened to his son.

At that mug.

I remember the waiting more than the walking.

Time felt distorted.

People were speaking.

Doors were opening and closing.

But none of it felt connected to me.

I kept telling myself it had to be a sickness, an accident.

Something we would soon understand.

They led me down a corridor.

I could hear the normal sounds outside the room.

Someone taking footsteps.

Life continuing.

Then the door opened.

There was a sheet.

A white sheet.

I wasn't prepared for how small the shape beneath it was.

For a moment, my mind refused to make the connection.

I stepped closer.

I told myself it was a mistake.

It had to be a mistake.

And then I saw him.

My six year old son.

He looked so still.

Smaller than I remembered.

I was fully conscious, but it felt like I was in a dream.

Except dreams let you wake up.

I closed my eyes and opened them again.

Nothing changed.

There was no difference between seeing and not seeing.

I kept waiting for something inside me to react.

Tears, anger.

Anything.

But what came first was silence.

Not in the room inside me.

I realized standing there, I would never again hear his voice call me Daddy.

And yet, just outside that door, the world kept moving.

Without my son.

Next week, Part two of the Road to Zion.

One love, one heart we are Roots Land.

Sitting here in limbo But I know it won't be long.

Sitting here in limbo Like a bird without a song.

Well, they're putting up resistance But I know that my faith will lead me beyond.

Sitting here in limbo Waiting for the tide to flow.

Sitting here in limbo Knowing that I have to go.

Yes, I'm putting up resistance But I know that my fate will lead me on.

I don't know where life will lead me But I know where I've been I can't say what life will show me But I know what I've seen Tried my end at love and friendship but all that is passed and gone this little boy is moving on

hey.

Sitting here in limbo Waiting for the dice to roll.

Sitting here in limbo Got some time to search my soul.

Yes, they're putting up resistance But I know that my faith will lead me on.

Sitting in limbo Sitting in limbo Sitting in limbo Sitting in limbo.

Produced by henry cave.