The New Moon's Arms (20 page)

I stepped inside. The ground was dry, not soaked with brine. There was the same little patch of scrub before you hit the scrum of trees. Little after Mumma was gone, Dadda ceased to care them. The fallen apples had sprouted trees which had grown to fill the rows in.

I stopped at the first line of trees. They were bowed down with red and yellow pear-shaped fruit, each with a shiny grey shell hanging below it. A few of the branches dipped so low that they touched the ground. I’d have to prune those back; they could root and sprout whole new trees that would compete with the others for soil and light. But watch at me! Thinking like I was going to take this straggly copse of cashews seriously.

I went a little way in amongst the trees. It was dark in there, spotted in places with shifting sunlight.

The smell. I had forgotten it; the cloying sweet smell of hundreds of fallen cashew apples. The reason I hated cashew juice, though I could drink distilled cashew liquor; the smell of the alcohol was quite different than the smell of the fruit. And now I was mashing overripe cashews beneath my feet with every step, releasing that overpowering odour into the air.

I squeezed through a few more trees, pulled a cashew apple off a low branch, remembered how the smooth, shiny scarletness used to feel in my hands.

A shadow moved at the corner of my vision. When I looked, nothing was there. I went still, held my breath to hear better. Was that a rustling noise? I threw the cashew apple I was holding in the direction of the sound I thought I’d heard. The apple flicked leaves and twigs in its trajectory, landed with a thump. There was another small rustle. The sound of feet moving out of the way?

“Hello?” I said. My voice broke. It was fucking
dark
in here. Maybe jumbies didn’t need nighttime; maybe they only needed
darkness
. I was surrounded by trees, their branches interlaced like fingers. My scalp prickled. I took a step backwards. Right into someone’s arms. I yelled. He wrapped them tighter around me. I pulled his thumb up to my face and bit into it. The arms released me one time, and I spun around to fight.

I once pulled Ife out of the way of a car before my brain had time to understand that my eyes were seeing a red Volvo bearing down on her. Same way so it was now: I was already cocking my elbow to drive into the man’s belly when it began to dawn on me that he had been speaking. And that the words had been: “Ow! Calamity, it’s Gene! Don’t—”

Momentum. Hell of a thing. Was a good 189 pounds of Calamity moving at speed behind that elbow. The blow was already in progress, and I couldn’t stop it.

Gene took a little step backwards and pushed on my arm. Not quite quickly enough; I gave him a glancing strike across his body. The air whuffed out of him as he fell. My elbow caught air. I overbalanced, and went right down beside Gene onto my bad knee. The pain made me shout. Gene was on his back, gasping a little for air, one hand on his solar plexus. He was sucking the bitten thumb of the other hand, watching me warily.

“What the fuck you doing in here?” I asked.

He scowled. “Getting my hand bit off by a crazy woman. Every second word with you have to be a swear word?”

“You didn’t have no right sneaking up on me like that!” I pushed myself up to my feet. My knee made a popping sound. “Ow.”

Groaning, Gene rolled to his knees. I offered him a hand up. He ignored it. I shrugged. “Fine by me,” I told him.

I held onto a tree trunk, shook my leg out to straighten it. The pulp of a cashew apple I’d landed on came detached from my knee and plopped to the ground.

Gene managed to stand up. Grimacing, he slowly straightened his back, one fist pressing against the small of it.

“I hurt your thumb bad?” I asked him.

“Jesus Christ, woman! You know how much bite force a human being can produce?”

“About sixty-eight pounds of pressure per square inch, on the back teeth?”

“No, that’s only for regular chewing. If you bite down deliberately, it can be up to twelve hundred pou… How you know that?”

“You’re fast on your feet,” I said. “Didn’t know you could move like that.” But actually, I’d experienced how agile he could be. “Come to think of it, I shouldn’t be surprised.” My face flushed.

He twisted his torso, making joints in his back pop. “I getting too long in the tooth for this kinda fighting, though. Going to pay for it tomorrow.”

“And your hand’s bleeding. Come into the house. I’ll throw some white rum on that cut.”

He grumbled, then said, “All right. But bring that thing with you.” He pointed with his chin.

In the dark, it took me a little while to see what he was talking about. It was a rusty cutlass, lying at the foot of one of the trees. I picked it up. “You…came with this? To see me?”

He kissed his teeth. “Don’t flatter yourself.” He stomped out of the grove, headed for the house. I followed him.

“You coming to put that alcohol on?” said Gene from my front door. “I don’t want to catch anything from you, you know.”

“It’s like they say.” My knee crunched and ached up all five steps. “Don’t trouble trouble or trouble will trouble you.”

“W
HERE YOU LEFT THE CUTLASS
?”

Where had I put it? “I think it’s out on the porch. It had mud caked all over it.” Menopause memory loss, I guess. I smoothed the Band-Aid onto Gene’s thumb. “So, you want to tell me why you were sneaking around in my cashews? Help yourself to some paw-paw.” I indicated the orange slices of paw-paw I’d put on the kitchen table.

“Thank you.” He reached to pull a chair out from under the table, then stopped. “May I?”

“Awoah.
Now
you asking permission. All right, sit down.” He did. I sat in one of the other chairs, got myself a slice of paw-paw. The faint, soapy smell always made me want to blow bubbles.

“I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” Gene said. “The last few days must have put you through some changes.”

That surprised the laugh out of me. “If you only knew. Fuck.”

He grimaced at the word. Too bad if he didn’t like my potty mouth. He helped himself to a slice of paw-paw, cupped his hand under his chin so he wouldn’t get its orange juice on his uniform. Then, uncertainly, he said, “Those trees. Where they came… I mean, I didn’t see them the last two times I was here.”

“You didn’t? Why, Officer, you must be under some serious stress. Trees don’t just appear out of nowhere like that.”

“All right. All right.”

“You think maybe you should have a glass of water? Maybe you’re dehydrated.”

“All
right.
I’m sorry, okay?”

“Maybe okay. I’m not sure.” I was wearing my tough broad face, but inside I was giddy.
He came to see if I was all right.

“How you knew about the biting force thing?” he asked me. Strips of orangey-green paw-paw skin were accumulating on the kitchen table.

“How I knew what?”

He frowned. “You just said it back in the trees. Humans? Bite force?”

“Oh! That. Chuh. Can’t remember what I said twenty minutes ago, but the project I did on sharks in Fourth Form is still crystal clear in my head.”

He nodded. “I know the way. You get to be a certain age, you start to find the past make more sense than the present.”

“Excuse me,” I said half-jokingly, “I don’t think I’m quite at that age yet. And if things in my past didn’t make any sense then, I don’t think they going to start now.”

“Maybe not.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to catch the next ferry, or I’m going to be late for work.” He stood up. “You have a plastic shopping bag you could give me?”

“Yeah, man.” I got him one from the basket under the sink.

As we walked through the living room to the front door, he asked me, “How you learned to fight like that?”

“Michael taught me. When we were young.”

“A boyfriend?”

“Michael was
never
my boyfriend.”
But
you
came to see if I was okay,
I thought. Gene was starting to look more my type after all.

We went out onto the porch. Most of the mud on the cutlass had dried to a clay-pale colour. Gene picked it up carefully. Bits of dried mud sloughed off in clumps. He wrapped them and the cutlass in the plastic bag.

“Why you carrying around an old piece of something like that?” I asked him.

“Found it, just lying around.” He gestured vaguely out over the island. “Somebody could get hurt. I’ll dispose of it.”

Sweet guy. I waved till his car was out of sight. Went in and took a quick shower, changed into clothes that didn’t have cashew apple smeared on them. Time to get Agway yet? My belly was all butterflies from happy nerves. I looked at my watch. Good. Plenty of time to be on the next waterbus. I grabbed up my handbag and headed out.

On my way out, I glanced over at the trees. Now that I was watching them from out in the sun again, they looked only unkempt, only goofily short. Last week in the mall I’d spied a woman with a Chihuahua in her handbag. Her handbag, imagine! Suppose it had pissed in there, or shat? So shrunk up, it had looked like a rat. Any self-respecting member of its canine cousins could have had it for dessert. The dog had looked at me and I swear it’d trembled, mortified at what it had been bred to be. The trees looked like that Chihuahua. They were trembling too in the cool morning breeze. Just fermenting fruit on truncated trees. Maybe Agway would like cashews.

I
HEAVED AGWAY UP ONTO MY HIP
. I was really getting to take him home! He murmured at me and started playing with my necklace, a string of bright red-and-black jumbie beads. “Don’t let him put those in his mouth,” Evelyn said. “They’re—”

“Poisonous. I know. Went through that already with Ife. These are fake.” Still, I pulled the beads away from Agway’s hands.

“Let me walk you to the car.” She held the door to her office open to let me and Agway out.

“Chastity? Chastity Lambkin?”

It was Mrs. Winter, limping painfully towards me. Her ankle was wrapped. She was leaning on a cane on her left side, and on the arm of her son Leroy on the other. She eyed Agway in my arms.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

She stopped, puffing hard. “You remember, dear. That unfortunate accident. Your poor father’s funeral. I sprained my ankle when I fell. And I bruised my tailbone.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told her.

“Yes, well,” said Mrs. Winter. “If people are going to have outdoor events, dear, they really should secure the premises first. Make sure there are no hazards for others to trip on. Your father would have done that.”

Agway was staring curiously at Mrs. Winter. She frowned at him. “Your grandson?” she asked.

I wasn’t going to answer that. “I’m sorry you got hurt, Mrs. Winter.”

She peered at me little harder, and her nosehole flared. Her eyes widened. She looked like a marabunta wasp had stung her.

“That’s my pin!” she said. “You’re wearing my pin!”

Her
pin? I had straightened out my gold pin that she’d been using to hike her drawers up, and I was wearing it on my blouse. “No, it’s mine.”

“Yours?”

“Yes, I found it the day of the funeral. I’m so glad to have recovered it. I lost it when I was just a little girl.” Holy crap. At the funeral—the pin! That had been the first magical power surge!

Mrs. Winter straightened up, gave me her best patronising smile. “No, Chastity. I lost it at your father’s funeral. I’ve had it all these years. I was using it to… I was wearing it that day.”

She’d been wearing my pin at her panty waist, to hold it together. I tried to keep my lips from twitching. “See what the letters spell, Mrs. Winter?”

She looked at the pin again. Agway reached to touch it.

Gently, I pulled his little hand away. It had a sharp point, that pin. “Those aren’t letters,” spluttered Mrs. Winter. “They’re—how you call it—rococo.”

Evelyn leaned over and looked at the pin. “C, T, L,” she spelled out. “Chastity Theresa Lambkin. Oh, and I recognise it, too! Isn’t that the gold pin your mother gave you for your birthday? The eighth or the ninth, wasn’t it? I remember you bringing it to school and showing it off!”

Huh. I owed her for that one. Owed her for a lot, right now. Never mind.

“Yes,” I replied. “It’s mine.” I turned to Mrs. Winter. “I’m so glad you found it and kept it safe for me. All these years. What a generous thing to do.”

Mrs. Winter’s face was a picture.

“Well, you know Mummy,” said Leroy, amused. “Too kind-hearted for her own good.”

Agway burbled at me. He was getting restless.

“I have to go,” I said. “Time to give Agway his lunch.”

“Agway?” asked Mrs. Winter.

“Yes,” answered Evelyn. “Calamity is doing a wonderful charity for us; this poor boy’s family drowned at sea, and she’s fostering him.”

“
She’s
fostering him?”

“So good to see you, Mrs. Winter,” I burbled, heading for the doors to the outside. “See you at work next week?”

“That woman is a witch,” declared Evelyn once we were outside.

“True that.” Oh, this next thing was going to hurt. “I need to thank you,” I said, “for helping me just now with Mrs. Winter.” I managed not to choke on the words. “And for letting me look after Agway, too.” I sighed. “And for the car.”

“You’re welcome.”

We walked in delicate silence the rest of the way to my car. The mechanic hadn’t patched the flat tyre; instead, he’d replaced all four and the windshield. Evelyn had paid for it. Victoria perched on her spanking new wheels like a dowager in shiny patent pumps.

I opened the passenger side. A fiery belch came from inside; the car had been sitting in the sun for an hour. So I opened the driver’s side, too, to let some air flow through. Agway stared curiously at Victoria, and at the others in the parking lot. He pointed at it and asked me a question.

“I’m sorry, babby,” I said. “I don’t understand you.”

He looked frustrated, repeated himself, this time more irritably. He pointed at the car again.

“It’s a car,” said Evelyn. She tapped on the roof of the car. “Car. Can you say that?”

He just frowned at her.

“Calamity!” came a voice from behind me.

I turned. Leroy was running up to us.