The Sea Grape Tree (10 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

S
unlight falling through the mango tree speckled the children's arms as they gathered around the kitten. Skinny legs folded under her, Ashanti sat on the floor to one side, in her own world as usual.

“Can I hold him, Dadda?” Rickia said, and picked up the black-and-white ball of fluff before Shad could answer.

“Where you get him?” Joella inquired. She had Joshua in one arm, fanning the other hand to let her nail polish dry.

“I found him under the bar counter this morning,” her father answered. “He drank a whole bowl of milk.”

Baby Joshua held his hand out to the kitten and Rickia pulled the wide-eyed animal away. “Can we keep him, please, please?” she begged.

“If your mother says yes,” her father said. “No spoiling him, though, no sleeping in the bed.”

Joella frowned. “Is he going to wee-wee in the house?”

Shad stroked Ashanti's hair and the child pushed his hand away. “I don't think so. Where your mother?”

“She gone to Port Antonio,” Rickia announced.

“I in charge,” Joella said, patting the baby's bottom like any big woman.

“Everybody do homework?”

“No homework today,” said his eldest. “Teacher meeting this afternoon.”

“I reading,” said Rickia, and held up a book.

“You don't buy no book, right?” Shad asked. “We can't afford to—”

“Mama borrow it from the library for me.”

“Good,” Shad said. “I going to take my nap. Keep it down.”

“A sandwich on the table for you,” Joella announced behind him, sounding so much like Beth he could have confused them.

After Shad woke from his nap, he walked out to the kitchen, where Beth was washing rice in a strainer in the sink. She was still wearing her good green dress with the belt, and in her ears were small earrings he hadn't seen before. Their eyes met for a second and she lowered hers and turned off the tap.

“I get a job,” she said, sighing as if she was sorry, although she wasn't. When he didn't answer—not trusting his feelings or the words to express them—she continued. “Is not the first job I was telling you about, is another job.”

“Doing what?”

“Cleaning, Port Antonio library.” She half filled a pot with water and put it on the fire.

Shad leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “You going to clean toilets for a hundred people, people with all kind of sickness? I hope they paying you good.”

“The hours suit me, from eight to four, better than the housework with the woman. I was going to the school for autistics yesterday, and I see the library next door. I went in and ask about work, and they tell me to come back today.” She looked out the window. “I always like books. The manager take me on. You want little soup before you go?”

“No, I had a sandwich already and I going straight back to work. The boss say he want to talk to me about something.”

“What kind of something?”

“He don't say. Must be about the hotel.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I tell you tonight.”

“Mistah Shad,” she called behind him, “I see you bring a puss in the house, another mouth to feed.”

He laughed over his shoulder. “We can afford it now, man, like how you have a big job.”

When Shad arrived at the bar, Eric rose from his table. “We're going over to Miss Mac's for a minute. I left Maisie in charge.”

They walked the hundred yards around the fence to Miss Mac's front door. The boardinghouse owner was standing on her verandah with Danny Caines. Closing the wire gate behind him, Shad felt his throat go dry. Jumbled thoughts came to mind, none pleasant: it had to be either bad news or something he wouldn't understand.

“Miss Mac,” Shad and Eric said at the same time as they walked up the verandah steps.

“Danny,” Shad greeted Caines, and the two exchanged fist bumps. The men followed the old woman into her front room, where glasses and a tall jug of juice were waiting on a tray.

“I feel like I coming to a wake,” Shad said, and everyone laughed, maybe a little too much.

When they were all seated and drinks handed around, there was an awkward silence until Danny spoke up. “You know that Eric and I talked about having you as a partner. You not only work hard, but you helped to build the first hotel and the bar. Eric says he couldn't have done it without you, and I believe him.” The investor put down his glass and leaned back in the heavy mahogany chair.

“Miss Mac says you was a good student in the old days,” he continued, and the bartender bit down on his lips. “And I also hear you spent some—some time in prison—had a little run-in with the law.” Shad looked from Eric to Miss Mac, neither looking at him, their eyes fixed on Danny. “But since then you prove that you're a good, solid man, churchgoing and everything. You work hard and you take care of your wife and family. I seen that with my own eyes.”

He threw a hand toward Shad. “What I'm saying, man, because I don't want you to worry, is that we all know you deserve a break. You paid your dues.”

It was coming, Shad thought, the news was about to come. He took a sip of June plum juice, but its acid stung his throat and he coughed, almost choked. Danny stopped talking while Shad wiped his mouth with a napkin.

There was no reason why he should hope to be a partner in a hotel. He couldn't read well, couldn't write well. He liked words, big words, and tried to use them sometimes so his children would learn them. But it didn't matter that he traced the shorter newspaper articles with his finger and read them out loud to Beth, or that she helped him sometimes with words he couldn't recognize. He wouldn't be able to keep up with these men who had gone to high school and college. No way he could understand all the hotel papers. Even the young employees would be more educated than him. Nobody would respect him if he had to hire them or fire them. It didn't make sense that a little man like him should be a partner with a rich man like Danny or a white man like Eric.

“Shad,” Miss Mac followed up. “It's going to be different with the new hotel. When you a partner, you have different things, management things, you have to do. You must stay informed about all the comings and goings of money and government documents and everything.”

“I thought Beth could . . .” Shad started but stopped, thinking of how little time she would have to help him now.

“You're going to need more than that, my friend,” Eric said, shaking his head.

“Well—well, I just want you to know,” Shad said, “that I not going to hold up anything to do with the hotel.” He rubbed his scalp with one hand and closed his eyes. “I don't have to be a partner. The hotel more important than me. I just want a job—”

Miss Mac's forehead was folded into a deep crease when he opened his eyes. “Wait, Shad, they not forcing you out. They just saying that if you want to be a partner, you have work to do, some catching up. Like how you left school at nine to start fishing, you miss out on a lot of learning.”

“What kind of learning?”

“I think,” the boss said, “we should be straight with you. Danny and I are foreigners here, and we need a local partner. We want you to be that person. But there has been—there are people who think you might not be in a—a position to be a partner. I think you can do it, because I know you, and I've stood up for you, and Danny here has stood up for you. We think you can handle it. But the truth is that there's going to be a lot you might not understand about running a business.”

“I can learn.”

Eric leaned back and crossed his feet in the old flip-flops. “That's the point. You
can
learn. I remember when we were building the hotel, Old Man Job taught us how to build with block and steel, and you learned faster than me. And when that finished, you got yourself to Port Antonio and learned bartending from your cousin in two weeks flat. I remember that. But this is more complicated.”

“You just tell me what to sign, boss, and I will sign.”

Miss Mac rested her elbows on her wide-spread knees. “Is not for Mr. Keller to tell you what to sign. You have to make up your own mind about everything. If you're willing to take up the reading and writing lessons again, I will teach you, because you going to have to read legal contracts and sign your name to things you understand. I can read you the documents, we can discuss them, and then you can decide what you going to do.” She looked at him above the metal rims of her glasses. “Are you willing to do that work, though? Do you really want to be a partner?
That
is the question.”

Shad stared at Miss Mac, the elder who'd held him, a grown man, like a baby when his grandmother died. He was more than aware, the bile starting to crawl in his stomach, that she was forcing him to make a choice that would change everything for him and his family. He could either remain a bartender for the rest of his life or venture into the land of the
bushas
. The downside, he knew, was that—­ignorant, untraveled, burdened with a criminal record—he could also make a fool of himself and fall flat on his face.

He held her gaze and swallowed hard. “Miss Mac, how I going to learn if you do all the reading?”

“You will learn as you go along, I will teach you. And what I don't understand, we ask Mr. Eric to explain.”

Looking first at the men to see if they had any doubt, Shad turned to his old teacher. “If you have the patience, Miss Mac, so do I.”

“It going to be hard work, you know,” the woman said, shaking her head.

“I never afraid of hard work yet.”

“When you can start? They have a document right now for you to sign.”

“Tomorrow?” Danny said.

“I just have to tell Beth I not coming home for lunch.”

“You can have lunch here every day, you know,” Miss Mac said.

“No problem.” Soon there'd be no lunch at home for him, anyway.

After shooing Maisie home from the bar later, Shad climbed up on the counter and replaced the burned-out lightbulb overhead, still thinking about the meeting. The three other participants had clearly been discussing the difficulties of having him as a partner. Miss Mac, who'd always been disappointed that he'd dropped out of school, had probably been the one to suggest that she teach him to read big words so he could understand all the legal business, and the men had gone along with it. If he wanted to, he could have made something of it, this talking about him behind his back—but he wouldn't, because they'd made decisions for his good, ones that gave him a chance to be a partner in the hotel.

Later that night he slid into bed, cuddling into Beth's back, and she rolled over sleepily in his arms. “Something bothering you, I know.”

He described the meeting in its entirety, including the part about someone suggesting to Eric and Danny that he shouldn't be a partner.

“Why they would do that?” she asked.

“They think I don't have enough education. I not the right class, must be.” His heart started racing as he said it, his chest burning. “The person think I not good enough to own a hotel.”

“Who you think the person is?”

“Only two people possible. One is Lambert Delgado, but it not him. He don't have it in him to be a small man.”

“The other one?”

Shad rolled onto his back and folded his arms under his head. “Mistah big-shot lawyer, Horace Mac. It have to be him. He always know everything, always have to have the last word and like how he was the teacher's child, he used to get away with murder in school. Then, after he go to university in Kingston and become a lawyer, he think he somebody. I went with the boss to see him once, about the woman living on the island, remember, and he act like he don't even know me, and I pretend like I don't know him neither.”

Beth snorted and, although he couldn't see her expression in the dark, he knew her upper right lip was curling. “Horace Mac?” she said.

“He too
bad-mind
.”

“You don't remember he went to Titchfield High with me?” she said. “I never tell you, but he used to want to talk to me. I couldn't stand him. He was so skinny and stupid looking. Even though he was bright, I just . . .” She shuddered.

Before he went to sleep, Shad had a word with God. First, a short thank-you for good friends like the boss and Danny and Miss Mac, people who would look out for him the way they had. Then a request that he be restrained from killing Horace–
bumba claat
–MacKenzie the next time he saw him, because he didn't want to leave his children fatherless.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

F
ore!” Lambert shouted. A tourist
couple in matching shorts looked up just as the golf ball landed in a patch of weeds
beside them.

“Damn!” Lambert spat, and stalked a few paces to one side.

Next up, Danny placed his ball on the tee and spread his legs, rocking
until he was comfortable. After shielding his eyes to peer at the distant flag, the
man wrapped his fingers around the handle of his rented club. He rocked again from
one leg to the other, settled, and drew the club back—his left arm straight as a
board. When he hit the ball, it soared high and landed neatly in the middle of the
fairway.

“
Damn!
” Lambert murmured, glancing at
Eric.

The three men walked back to the golf cart and Eric climbed in behind the
wheel, relieved he didn't have to swing a club. When Lambert had invited him to join
them at the course where he was a member, the bar owner had been tempted to say no.
Instead, he'd volunteered to drive them from one hole to the other, because his back
was acting up, he said. He didn't want to miss the outing, but he hated golf. The
few times he'd played in New Rochelle with Arnie, his office mate at the paper
company, he'd embarrassed himself so badly he'd avoided the game thereafter. His
rationalization was that only people with money had the stamina to learn golf. The
rest, with the exception of Arnie, got depressed.

At the next hole, the tenth, Lambert declared that it was too hot today
and that they'd started out too late. By the fourteenth hole, Danny had become the
clear leader, having parred three holes and even birdied one. While the two men
chatted, analyzing their strokes, Eric stood to the side trying to remember what a
par and a birdie were, eventually having his memory jogged by the men's talk. At the
sixteenth hole and limp with sweat, Eric stayed in the cart and wished his
companions every par and birdie to get them through quicker, reminding them that
there were other golfers behind.

In the clubhouse bar at last, Lambert ordered a round of Red Stripes
before they made their way to the patio overlooking the course.

“The third hole,” Danny started as soon as they'd sat down, “the way you
had to drive from the tee across that huge pond—that was crazy!”

Lambert gave his big guffaw. “That's the first thing every visitor
mentions.” He turned to Eric. “You're kind of flushed there, boy. You okay?”

“The damn heat,” his friend answered, pulling sticky hair away from his
neck. “I don't know how you guys do it.”

“It's the melanin.” Danny laughed and left for the restroom.

“How's the project going?” Lambert asked as soon as the man had
disappeared.

“Shad is taken care of,” Eric said, and outlined the meeting two days
before. “He's going back to school with Miss Mac.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” his friend agreed. “He's a good boots-on-the-ground
man.”

“Like I'm not?”

“You know what I mean. He's loyal, and you need somebody who can negotiate
with the Parish Council guys in patois.”

“And make sure that you keep construction within cost, right?” Eric said,
swatting his friend on the arm.

Lambert pulled the corners of his mouth back. “Would I cheat you? How long
have you known me, man?”

“Just kidding,” Eric said, only half kidding. “So what do you think?”

“About what?”

“About Danny.”

“Plays a decent round of golf.”

“As a business partner, man. He's kind of a perfectionist, don't you
think? I don't want to be in business with somebody looking over my shoulder all the
time. I thought he was going to be a silent partner, so Cameron had said, anyway,
but he seems very hands-on, you know. He has an opinion about damn near
everything.”

“I think he's a good businessman.”

“How so?”

“You can tell a lot by how a man plays golf. Didn't you notice how he
wrote down every stroke he made? He kept notes on each hole, comparing the hole
before with the hole he just played. He even wrote down my strokes.”

“So he's going to be a pain in the ass.”

“He's going to make sure you both make money, that's what I mean. I think
he's a—” He broke off while the waiter served the frosty beers and Danny took his
place at the table.

“Great game!” Danny said, and clinked his glass with the other two men.
“I'd love to do it again sometime.”

“Definitely,” Lambert replied, holding his mustache away from his drink
with two fingers while he took a sip. Below the clubhouse, the greens were in shadow
and the sea beyond them navy blue. The disappearing sun was glinting off the ribbon
of foam along the reef.

“How's Jennifer?” Eric asked Lambert.

“She's in Florida at her sister's. Her mother is going down fast. She's
been in and out of hospital with this spinal cancer thing. It's not going to be long
now, the doctors are saying.”

“Jeez, Lam—”

“And I'm in the doghouse.” The contractor grimaced. “Seems I forgot
Valentine's Day, first time since we've been together.”

“Valentine's?” Eric said.

“That's right, last week Tuesday,” Danny weighed in. “Janet invited me to
a friend's party in Port Maria. It was crazy, man. They'd blocked off a street and
the whole thing was in the middle of the road.” His fingers were dancing up and down
on the wooden table. “There must have been a hundred people there, all kinds of
people, and there was this deejay guy who kept yelling into the mike.” He shook his
head. “The music was loud enough to kill every dog in the neighborhood. I know the
neighbors couldn't sleep.”

“That's a Jamaican party, for sure,” Eric murmured, his head still filled
with Valentine's, and that he'd forgotten it. Maybe Valentine's wasn't important to
Simone and she wouldn't be expecting anything, anyway.

The first man to finish his beer was Danny. “What's the next step with the
job, guys?”

“Permits,” Lambert said. “Now that you've formed the corporation and set
up a bank account, we can submit the applications for permits. Then you folks have
to appear before the Parish Council committees. They're going to have a lot of
questions.”

“What committees?” Danny asked.

“The Planning Authority's committees, they have to approve the
drawings—fire, health, and roads committees,” Eric said. “Then the whole thing has
to be approved by the Authority at the end.”

“Before we do that, I want to meet with the architect,” Danny said. To
Eric he raised his eyebrows. “You've met with him, right?”

“I saw the drawings and they looked fine. Lambert said he was a good—”

“
She,
” Lambert chimed in. “I can set up a
meeting with her right away. She called me yesterday and asked if there was anything
we needed to change.”

“Let's do it,” Danny said. “I have a couple questions for her,
anyway.”

“Like what?” Eric said, chewing the inside of his cheek, back on the golf
course and out of the game. “You never said anything about the drawings before.”

“Like the size of the guest rooms. They seem too big to me.”

“That's the standard size for small hotels,” Lambert said. “I did the
research. But we can talk to her about it. Anything else?”

“I was thinking we could use some of that empty land between the main road
and the buildings to plant vegetables, you know. We could supply the kitchen with
tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, herbs, that kind of thing—and save some money, have a
kind of farm-to-table restaurant. And if we do that, we going to need a couple more
workers and a shed for the garden tools.”

Eric uncrossed his feet under the table and planted them on the ground. “I
thought we could have a nice garden with flowers there, some frangipani trees, a
lawn, maybe a fishpond. Guests like that kind of thing. I had Joseph put that in the
budget.”

“I saw it, but I was thinking—”

“We can have both,” Lambert interrupted. “Flower gardens in the front
where the guests can see them, and a vegetable garden behind. You have nine acres to
play with—shouldn't be a problem.” His companions sat back, the quashed argument
still in the air. Discreet patio lights appeared around them.

After a minute, Danny looked at Lambert. “I wanted to ask you—I'm driving
into the Blue Mountains tomorrow and I've been looking at some maps, but I'm still
not sure. What's the best way in, you think?”

While the discussion between the two continued about roads into the hills,
Eric looked out at the dark sea, still pissed about the loss of his garden with its
fishpond and benches. True, it made sense to grow their own produce—he hated to
admit it—but it was one more sign that Danny wanted to be in charge. If he needed
Eric's experience, as Cameron had assured him, he wasn't acting like it. He had a
mind of his own about everything, even if he was twenty years younger and knew
nothing about running hotels.

A clap from Lambert made Eric start. “One more round, gents?” his friend
was asking.

“I guess I'll have to,” Eric said, tugging at the neck of his T-shirt so
he could breathe better.