Conquering Kilmarni (10 page)

"Even if we found his mother, what could we do?"

"We wouldn't have to do anything, Dad. He wants to talk to her, that's all. That's mostly why he works so hard in his garden, to earn the money to go to Kingston and look for her. And if we could just help him a little . . . Dad, we have to."

This time the silence lasted even longer, but in the end Mr. Devon let out a long, slow sigh and nodded. "All right, if you're sure that's what you want. But don't forget I have to see the tax people and my lawyer, and go to the
bank, and do some other things. That's why we're going to the city, not just to help this boy find a mother who may not even want to be found."

"Dad, thanks," Peter said. But then he became aware of the rain again. It was really heavy now, turning the roof into a drumhead, and it could easily last all night. The Blue Mountains were notorious for their fierce rains.

If it did keep up all night, what would the road to the capital be like in the morning? A big rain almost always caused landslides between Richmond Vale and the bridge over the Yallahs River at Ramble. Sometimes the road was blocked for days.

And what about Zackie if it rained like this all night?

Peter went out onto the veranda. He could judge a rain by the way the water ran off the roof, because the roof had no gutters. Standing at the veranda railing now was like being behind a waterfall, trying to look out through it. He shook his head and went back inside.

Miss Lorrie had come up from the kitchen and was setting the table for the evening meal. "Would you mind eating a bit early tonight, Mr. Devon?" she asked.

"Because of the rain, you mean?"

"Yes, suh. If me wait till the usual hour, the track down to Mango Gap will be a river. Me mightn't able to get home."

"You could stay here, you know," Mr. Devon said.

"Thank you. But me should go if me can. A rain like this might could cause Zackie to come to me for shelter."

"What about his father?"

"It don't likely him will go traipsing around in such weather, Mr. Devon. Mek we hope not, anyway." She paused when Peter's father did not reply. Then she said, "Don't you agree is so, suh?"

"Yes," Mr. Devon said after still another little hesitation. "Yes, I do, Lorrie."

"One thing worry me, though." The housekeeper frowned. "Rosetta Manyan did speak to me when she come for she pay. She did tell me Zackie's father is saying bad things about the boy and likely to beat him. It don't sound good at all."

Mr. Devon nodded. "Somehow, Lorrie, we've got to convince Corporal Buckley that the dangerous one is the father, not the son. Even if Zackie is the one doing the stealing."

"Mr. Devon, is you saying you believe Zackie is the tief?"

"He could be, Lorrie. I don't want to think so, but we can't look at this through blindfolds just because we want to help the boy."

"Yes, suh," the housekeeper said. "And me can put supper on the table now?"

"Yes, Lorrie. Please do."

After dinner Peter watched Miss Lorrie hurrying down the path, with one hand holding
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pages on her head to protect her hair and the other trying to keep the gusts of wind from blowing her umbrella inside out.

The water rushed down the path with her, boiling about her ankles.

Unless the rain quit soon, there would be no trip to Kingston the next day, Peter thought glumly. Still, his father suggested they go to bed early, in case it did stop and they could make the trip.

"Let me know when you're ready," Mr. Devon said, "and I'll shut off the power plant." He had a remote control in his bedroom.

With his pajamas on, Peter called out and got an answer, and was in bed when the plant's chugging slowed to a stop. The fact that he could hear it surprised him. Getting up, he opened his door onto the veranda and saw that the water cascading off the roof was not so heavy now. Maybe they would get to Kingston, after all, he thought as he climbed back into bed and finally dozed off to sleep.

What time it was when he suddenly opened his eyes, he had no idea. He sat up in bed with the feeling that a strange sound had awakened him. There was no light in the room; there never was on nights when clouds hid the moon and stars. Now he definitely did hear a sound. Something or someone was tapping on the door that led onto the veranda.

Peter always kept that door locked at night. If he didn't, anyone coming along the veranda could walk right into his bedroom. And someone must be out there now, trying to get his attention.

Swinging himself out of bed, he snatched the flashlight he always kept on his bedside table. Without switching it on, he went to the door and, with his face close to it, said quietly, "Who is it? Who's out there?"

"Me! Zackie!"

With the light on, Peter quickly turned the key and drew the door open. There was no sound of rain anymore, he noticed at once. But when Zackie walked into the room, his pants sounded like wet sheets flapping on a clothesline, and in only a moment there was a puddle on the floor around his bare feet. With water running down his face from his hair, he looked half-drowned.

"Hey!" Peter said. "You got my message at the garden!"

"Yeah. After Corpie did let me go, me think it better me go up there." Zackie wiped the water from his face with both hands, and then wiped his hands on his shirt. "You really mean me can stay here tonight?"

"Not just tonight." In the light from the flash, Peter could see now how wet the boy really was. "Look. Why don't you take those clothes off while I get a towel from the bathroom? Go ahead. I won't be a second." He turned and hurried out, wondering if he should wake his father. Better not, he decided.

When he returned with the towel, Zackie was on the veranda, wringing out his wet clothes and draping them over the railing. "There's a bed in the room next to this one," Peter said while the boy was drying himself. "But we can talk first. That is, unless you're pretty tired. I bet
it was no picnic, walking all the way down from your garden in the rain." Suddenly he realized Zackie was naked. "Hey, you want some clothes to put on, or do you want some pajamas?"

"Well . . . pajamas, if me going to bed."

"Sure." Peter pulled open a dresser drawer and held out a pair of blue ones. "These okay?"

Zackie took them and looked at them for a few seconds, then grinned. "You know something, Peter? Never in me whole life did me ever wear pajamas."

"What do you wear?"

"When it warm enough, nothing. When it cold, me sleep in me clothes." Zackie stepped carefully into the pajama pants. "These fit real good."

"Yeah. We're about the same size."

Zackie put on the top part and grinned. "Boy! These good enough fe go to school in!"

"Sit down a minute. I've got something to tell you," Peter said. "Better yet, if you're tired, stretch out on the bed."

Zackie lay down on the side of the bed Peter hadn't been using, and after relocking the door to the veranda, Peter lay down, too. "How'd you like to go to Kingston tomorrow?" Peter asked.

"What?"

"My dad and I are going to Kingston. You can come if you want to. I've already asked him."

"Well . . ."

"We can look for your mother. Corporal Buckley says she works at a place called the Constant Spring market."

Zackie had been lying on his back, with his hands laced behind his head. He turned over on his side now so he could look at Peter. "Corpie did say what?"

"He said he knows your mother, and she works at Constant Spring market. My dad said we can go there. That is, if there's time enough left after he does what he's going to town for, like seeing his lawyer and other dumb stuff."

"Boy!" Zackie said in a whisper.

"My mom used to say everything that happens is for the best," Peter said. "What she meant is that everything's good if you find something good in it. Looks like she was right, hey? I mean, if the corporal hadn't come here looking for you, we wouldn't know where your mom works."

"Don't it the truth!" Zackie said. He was trembling enough to make the bed shake.

"So, after the corporal spoke to you, you went up to your garden and found the message I scratched in the dirt, huh?"

"That's right."

"Where'd you sleep last night? You didn't come back to the mule pen."

"Me daddy did know me was there the night before. Natty Anderson did tell me. So me afraid to go there again."

"How'd your father know?" Peter asked.

"Him was searching around for me and did find the
food me have there. It nuh easy, hiding from me daddy. Not when him mean business."

"So where did you sleep?"

"In the fertilizer shed in field four."

"Well," Peter said, "you'll have a real bed tonight. By the way, where's Mongoose?"

Zackie's mouth dropped open. "Oh-oh, me did forget about him! Me did tell him to wait by the steps."

"We ought to get him in, don't you think? He can't stay there."

Sliding off the bed, Zackie hurried onto the veranda and called his dog. He didn't whistle or make any loud noise. All he did was say, "Hey, Mongoose" in his normal speaking voice, as if the animal were already sitting there at his feet.

In response there was a scratchy sound on the steps, and a kind of fuzzy blur came speeding along the veranda. Mongoose skidded to a stop and looked up, first at one boy, then at the other. "Come on," Zackie said, and when the boys went back inside, the dog followed them.

"You suppose he's hungry?" Peter said. "And what about you? I could get something from the kitchen."

"Uh-uh. Me and him did share a tin of bully beef up in me garden."

"You sure?"

"We okay, both of us. Honest."

"Well, let's talk some more before I show you your room, huh?"

The boys returned to the bed, and Mongoose sat quietly
in a corner of the room, watching them. Peter said, "What do you think of Corporal Buckley? The way he treated you, I mean."

"Me really did try to steal some aspirin at the shop that day me did knock you over. What me saying, there was some money in the garden shed, but Daddy did have a terrible headache and for me to go up there would take too long."

"We talked to the corporal for quite a while after you left," Peter said. "Dad and I, I mean. He seems okay."

"Him a good man, but strict."

"You're not sore at him, then?"

"No. Him strict, like me say, but him treat people fair and everyone like him."

"He said he knows your mother, Zackie. You suppose he knows her well?"

Zackie did not answer.

"Zackie?"

Again, silence.

Turning his head to see why his friend had not answered, Peter saw that the Jamaican boy's eyes were closed. "Hey," he whispered, "you asleep?"

Zackie was.

Peter reached down and pulled the blanket over both of them. He, too, was tired, he realized as he got comfortable and closed his eyes. It had been a long day.

M
r. Devon had bought two vehicles for use at Kilmarnie: the pickup truck he used in running the plantation, and a small Cortina sedan made in England. Jamaica had been an English colony until a few years earlier, and many of the cars on the island's roads were from that country.

It was in the car, not the pickup, that Peter and Zackie rode to the island's capital the next day, with Mr. Devon at the wheel. Zackie's dog had been left in Miss Lorrie's care at the house. The rain had stopped altogether during the night, and the morning was so bright that Mr. Devon wore sunglasses.

A trip to Kingston never failed to hold Peter's interest. Descending past the cooperative's coffee factory to Rainy Ridge, the road then climbed steeply past the police station to its highest point at Bethel Gap. From there it was nearly all downhill and winding, and, being unpaved, could be dangerous at times where it ran along the edge of space, high above a branch of the important Yallahs River. Mr. Devon had once been fond of pointing out, no
doubt with a touch of pride, that a feeder stream of that branch, originating near the highest point in Jamaica, came down through the Kilmarnie property. He never said that now, though. It was in that same Stony Valley River that Mark had drowned.

The road was even more interesting to Peter that morning because Zackie kept pointing out things neither he nor his father had known before. As they came to the sprawling village of Richmond Vale, Zackie said, "You see that steep side road there by the church? It go up to Richmond Gap, and you can see the whole of you property from up there, Mr. Devon. You should drive up sometime, but it truly rough on a car." And later, as they passed through the village of Llandewey, on a road now paved: "You see that shop there? That belong to the daddy of Mr. Campbell." And then on Cambridge Hill, as the little English car approached a hairpin curve on its steep descent to the coastal road: "Me did hear-tell once that a movie was made here, Mr. Devon. Right here on this curve a truck or something did go flying off the road, on purpose."