The Sea Grape Tree (22 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

T
he stool lay on its side behind a patch of weeds. Shad leaned in to examine it, making sure to stay well away because Beth wouldn't tolerate him snagging the new khaki pants she'd bought him. It was a simple wooden stool with a round seat, the kind you'd find in a kitchen, or that an artist would sit on. Already late for work, he walked quickly toward the beach. Just before the end of the path, he stopped and made a full turn.

Earlier that afternoon, Sonja had pointed to the path Sarah used every morning to go to her painting spot, and he'd descended the driveway to inspect it. He was now standing in a clearing large enough for someone to set down a stool, yet have privacy behind a couple of coconut trees. Peanut shells were scattered among the fallen palm leaves. Shad crossed his arms and stared at the spot where Sarah must have painted. She was disciplined, Sonja had said, and she'd painted up to the day she'd left. He rested his cheek on the fist of one hand and looked at the waves, pounding and dragging, a few yards away.

Shad's excuse for coming to Roper's house on a Saturday­—when Carthena wouldn't be around—was to ask for Ford. He knew he wasn't at home, since he'd seen him heading out of town with Roper. The bartender had told Sonja he wanted to recommend some backup musicians to the trumpeter. She'd invited him inside when he'd appeared at the door, something a little unusual for a lady of her standing, but Sonja was different from the other browning women, her hair worn natural like she was proud of her kinky hair.

The writer had told him that Roper and Ford had gone to Ocho Rios, and the bartender had thanked her and started toward the door, turning back just as his hand reached for the brass knob.

“I sorry to hear that the artist lady gone,” he'd said sadly. “I wanted to see her paintings.”

Sonja's eyes had become unfocused. “I'm sorry, too.”

“People always have a reason for running away like that, you know, and I been wondering what make her do it.”

The woman had struggled with what she should say, he could see, her hand to her throat. She'd walked out to the deck in her long dress and leaned over the rail, as if she were expecting Sarah to appear on the steep driveway below.

“She used to walk down to that path every morning carrying all her art stuff. She insisted on doing it herself, never wanted any help. Every day she'd do that, except on weekends, just like she was going to work. She was really serious about her art.”

The bartender had nodded. “Strange, eh? She don't say nothing, just slip away like that.”

“Women do strange things when they're upset.”

“She was upset? I hate to know she leave Largo upset.”

Sonja had cupped her left breast with her hand, like she was carrying something heavy on her chest. Shad had leaned on the rail and looked toward the village's rusty rooftops peeking out between the coconut trees.

“What happen to her?” he asked Sonja, because he knew she was an honest woman.

She had leaned on the rail and sighed, blowing the air hard out her nostrils. “One evening, a few days before she left, my—boyfriend, partner, whatever—sometimes I don't know what to call him—he said something to her. He didn't approve of her dating Danny and he let her know.”

She couldn't look him straight in the eye, a person who always looked straight at everybody. It was the class thing, Shad knew, the same kind of foolishness that had kept Jamaican people apart from before Granny's time, that had made Horace want to deprive him of success, the wall that he and his children would have to climb all their lives. Maybe Danny Caines had dropped an
h
and his grammar had failed him, or he'd told them that his parents were poor. One way or another, the American had slipped up, enough for Roper to classify him as lower class
.

“We hardly saw her after that—she stayed out of our way, gobbled her dinner without saying much. I think she was really uncomfortable here.” The writer had turned toward the front door, ready to have him leave, but Shad had stroked his chin.

“She was having a good time, you don't think?”

“I thought so, but something happened—even before the argument with Roper. She started getting kind of anxious a couple weeks before.”

“After the night you all come to the bar, the night you ordered the jerk chicken?”

“Could have been, I don't remember exactly when. She never stopped painting, though. Right up to the day she disappeared, she went off painting in the morning.”

“She come back to get her things?”

“I didn't see her if she did. We left in the morning to go into town. Roper had a doctor's appointment and I wanted to go shopping, and Ford tagged along because he wanted to see Kingston. When we came back that night, she was . . . She must have planned to pack up and leave after we were gone.”

“So she must have had a taxi come and get her with all her things.”

“Carthena said she never heard anything.”

“She had a ticket to go back, then.”

Sonja shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“She didn't go into town to buy a ticket?”

“Maybe with Danny, but not with us,” she'd said, leading him to the front door.

After examining the trampled coconut fronds at Sarah's painting site, Shad walked back to the main road. High above the road, Roper's deck was empty and there was no sound coming from the house. Wiping his damp palms on his pants, the bartender crossed the road and walked up the driveway slowly, glancing up at the deck and the windows to check for onlookers. His excuse, in case he was seen, would be that he forgot to leave the names and numbers of the musicians for Ford.

Avoiding the steps leading up to the front door, he slipped behind the grove of bamboo that he'd seen from the deck. It was the kind of wall that thoughtful hosts planted to provide privacy for visitors—and for a guest room. On the other side of the bamboo was a stone patio with some chairs. Shad peered through the sliding glass doors. Inside, two twin beds faced the terrace, both neatly made up with colorful spreads. It was empty—no luggage, no clothes—a room standing ready for the next guest.

It only took a sharp penknife to work the lock and Shad slid the door open, remembering other doors he'd opened exactly like that, a long time ago. He slid the door shut behind him. The sandy soles of his sneakers crunched on the tiles and he tiptoed slowly toward the chest of drawers. A quiet examination of its six drawers yielded nothing but a few American coins and a hairpin. The drawers of a small desk and bedside table were similarly empty.

After turning on his heel in the middle of the room, Shad asked himself what Ellis J. Oakland, author and detective, would have done next, then he carried the desk chair to the closet and set it down without a sound.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

E
ric picked up the banana from the kitchen bowl and marched it into the bar with a disgusted mouth.

“Do you see that?” he asked Shad, who was pouring a white rum for the evening's first customer. Eric pointed to the dime-shaped hole in the side of the banana. “We have a rat, and he's eaten my Chinese banana.”

“The bar is open, boss, anything can come in. You forget we in the Caribbean, plenty roaches and spiders and mosquitoes. You don't think we going to have rats?”

“But we have an exterminator, that pest control guy with the green truck.”

“You stop paying him, remember?”

“Rats everywhere,” Tri called gleefully from the end of the bar. “They going to be here after we gone, Mistah Eric. Rats going to be king.”

“Somebody should have covered up the bananas or something.” Eric threw the fruit into the garbage and washed his hands. “I'm going to set a rat trap tonight and catch the son of a bitch.”

“You better set ten traps for the whole family,” Tri suggested.

“And, boss,” Shad murmured, “if you going into Port Antonio to buy the trap, don't forget to pay the phone bill. They cut off the phone this morning.”

“One damn bill after another.”

“So life go, boss.”

“Where's Solomon? He's late.”

“Maisie say he get a cut on the bottom of his foot, so he must be walking slow.”

“Good thing we don't have any customers yet.”

“Tri is—”

“You know what I mean.”

“Boss,” Shad said. “I want to ask you a little something.” He walked partway to the kitchen, spinning the towel in his hand. Eric followed him, in no mood to explain why he couldn't give him a raise or why his parents had been unhappy.

The small man turned and stretched the towel between his hands. “Can a foreign person—a real foreigner, not a Jamaican living abroad—can they leave Jamaica without a passport?”

“I don't think so. Once upon a time an American could get in on his driver's license, but not anymore. Everybody has to have a passport.”

“What about an English person?”

“Same thing.” Eric tucked his hair behind his ears. “Why do you ask?” Shad's reasons for asking questions were always as good as the questions.

“Remember I tell you that the English artist gone, just disappear one day? Well, she leave her passport.”

“You're kidding! How you know that?”

“Somebody tell me.”

“You tell the person that if her passport's here, she's probably still in the country, unless she left with a fake passport.”

“She don't look like the kind of lady who would make a fake passport, though.”

“If she has a real passport, she wouldn't need one.”

“You're right, you're right,” Shad said, starting back to the bar, snapping the towel as he walked.

“And tell the customer who's coming in that we're not ready to serve dinner yet,” Eric called, “unless they want corn beef sandwiches.”

CHAPTER FORTY

T
he dream was as clear to her in the light of day as when she'd awakened earlier in pitch darkness gasping for air. It was a continuation of the dream the night before. In this last dream she'd been an adolescent again, thirteen, she'd known somehow, the numbers
one
and
three
clear in her mind. She was wearing the same blue coat, still standing outside the dark church waiting for her mother. A taxi had approached and slowed in front of her, the profiled driver looking out from the murky interior, motioning with his finger, asking if she needed him. She'd shaken her head and he'd driven off.

Then she'd swung around in a circle on tiptoe, her arms extended, practicing a ballet step, and as she turned she'd blown her breath out through her mouth to see if it steamed up around her, but it hadn't. Her new patent leather shoes made a grinding sound on the sidewalk and she turned again because she liked the sound.

Four boys were walking past the closed offices and shops and coming toward her, their voices forced, almost vicious. They'd been drinking, she could tell. One taunted another while the others laughed. They'd started glancing toward her as they approached, and she pulled her coat closer around her. When they passed in front of the church sign, they grew quiet, listening to one boy talking. They were all around the same age, eighteen, maybe nineteen. At the steps leading up to the church, they'd gathered in a circle, but she couldn't hear what they were saying. She wanted to run away but she didn't want to attract attention, and they could outrun her, anyway. They were blocking the gate to the churchyard, the only opening in the black iron fence. A car turned the corner, followed by another. They drove past to the end of the road and were gone.

The boys started walking toward her with energized, self-conscious steps. Although she couldn't make out their eyes, she knew they were looking at her, coming straight for her. She stood still, frozen to the spot. One boy said something and the others laughed. They wore leather jackets and greasy hairstyles. The tallest one was in the front, their leader, the only one with brown skin and wavy black hair that he'd tried to plaster flat.

“'Allo?” he said, and stopped in front of her, his beer breath hitting her in the face. He was a few inches taller than her and had a pimple on his nose large enough to have a shadow. The others circled her.

“What's your name, then?” he said, the trace of an accent in the way the words came out. “Something like Jane, innit?” He tilted his head back, tickled by his own wit. The streetlight showed a broken tooth in front. His followers echoed him with their own cocky laughs. She could hear her heart beating in her ears, and she hoped they couldn't hear. Beside them, the road was silent, dotted on both sides by empty streetlights.

“Sarah Louise,” she'd answered, trying to control the shake in her voice. They laughed again. Their intensity pawed at the air around her and she knew she was their prey.

A thump to her pelvis made her hunch forward and look down. The leader, a silver chain still swinging from the belt of his pants, had hit her in her privates with his fist, startling her even though it was muffled by the heavy blue coat. The boy straightened his black-leathered arm to do it again and she took a step back. There were spots of dried cement on his jeans like he was a brickie, a bricklayer's apprentice. He grabbed her arm and she felt the pressure of his fingers through the woolen sleeve. She tried to pull away.

“Where you going, Sarah Louise?” he taunted her. “Just having a little fun, right, boys?” She glanced back at the church gate, measuring the distance.

“Where you going?” the others repeated, touching her, jostling her.

Sarah had awakened with a jerk and lay in the dark, panting. She wondered where it had come from, this dream so real she could still feel the mental version of the thump. Was it a prediction, a warning? After stumbling to the window, she'd watched the sky turning pale yellow, then pale pink, with a smattering of clouds above the ocean. She'd hung on to the bars and breathed deeply, the air faintly salty from this distance.

By breakfast, she'd sketched an addition to the growing watercolor painting on the large sheet. It was a view of the ocean sliver above the wall—and the jagged glass. She'd had to draw it leaning against the bars, the drawing board braced with one hand and the free hand sketching. The awkwardness of the position made it difficult to think of the dream and the insult to her privates.

Clementine didn't approve. “You can't make a picture standing up like that,” she said with a scowl. Another Sunday and the Walrus was in a starched purple dress and a matching hat with a wide brim. Another Sunday and ten scratches on the wall. After Clementine left, all was quiet. Then the church choir started up again, the soloist screeching at the top of her voice while Sarah painted bronze glitter along the edges of the broken glass.

She was sure that the distasteful dream had been inspired, if one could call it that, by the driver, who'd grabbed her chin and tousled her hair the night before, touched her as if he owned her. It had started when he knocked on her door, the first person to do so, the visit coming in the middle of a celebration in the living room. She'd heard people collecting in the early afternoon, until there were about six men's voices getting gradually louder, as if they were drinking. They'd talked about her. One man had asked about
de woman
and Batsman had answered that she was
cool.

“She don't give no trouble,” he'd said.

There was talk of a birthday, and she'd stood listening, both hands pressed to the door, smelling its cheap varnish, anxious about the change in the number of voices and the volume, surprised that these people celebrated birthdays like ordinary people, rituals with a prisoner in a nearby room. Music had suddenly erupted, a dancehall song that drowned out the voices and vibrated through the tiles into her bare feet.

The knock had come shortly after. “Who is it?” she'd answered, jumping away from the door.

“Man-Up.” The driver, using his name for the first time.

There was nothing she could do but tell the knocker to come in, every visit bringing hope and terror. After sliding the bolts, the driver had pushed into the room along with the throbbing music.

“You good?” he'd said after he spotted her beside the bathroom door. He was wearing baggy jeans and a black T-shirt, black sneakers. Taller than Clementine and Batsman, he crowded the room, the rough tones of the dance-hall singer a fitting backdrop.

“I come to tell you something,” he'd announced, slamming the door closed. He swaggered like he'd been drinking and was in a good mood. He walked to her easel and stood looking at the painting, an unfinished box showing a budding leaf projecting from the tip of a branch. “I hear you is a ahtist. Batsman show me the picture.”

Sarah had pulled down the hem of her shorts, glad she'd worn a bra. “I paint—yes.”

He'd lifted the board off the easel and walked toward her, examining the painting. “You paint good, yes, man.” His uplifted eyebrows almost vanished into the hairline above his narrow forehead. “Your day almost come, you know.” He'd glanced at her over the board. His face was expressionless except for the tiny muscles making his eyes squint.

She'd run her tongue over her lips. “What—what do you mean?”

“You going to get out soon, one way or another, dead or alive,” he'd said with a snorting laugh. He'd thrown the board onto the bed. “First, you have to paint me, though.”

To Sarah's slow nod, he'd continued, “I want a nice painting for my sitting room. No pencil drawing, you hear me? I want you to paint it with color. I come back later.”

He'd departed the room with a smirk and appeared again after dinner, after the other men had left. “You ready?” he'd demanded, and she'd moved to the easel and chair she'd set up near the bed. The bare bulb didn't give enough light, but she'd said nothing, knowing every detail of his face already.

“We need another chair,” she said.

“You didn't need nothing for Batsman.”

“He didn't pose for me.”

After he'd settled on the red velvet chair he brought in, Man-Up straightened his shoulders and turned toward the window.

“That good?” he'd asked, glancing quickly at her and back into the dark outside.

“Yes, but—” she said, gesturing to her own neck, and he'd straightened his black shirt under the thin gold chain. Black wasn't a good color for him, she thought. It didn't offer enough contrast with his ebony skin, skin almost as dark as that of the bartender who smiled a lot.

They'd spent an hour in silence except for the few times when she'd asked him to turn more to her or center his chain. She was glad he'd asked her to paint him. She wanted him to see that she wasn't the begging woman at his feet, but instead a sensible woman who could take the pressure, not make a fuss
.
Once he got up and left the room without explanation, returning after a few minutes.

“Tell me—Man-Up,” she'd started when he sat down again, as if she was asking for his opinion on the weather, “why am I here?”

“I don't come to answer no questions.”

She'd caught his eye, looking from her to the window and back again. “I just thought I should ask. You're holding me here, not—”

“Don't ask me
nothing,
” he'd said, his voice callous now. “I didn't come here for no fucking interview, you hear me? Just paint the
raas claat
picture.” He seemed to slip seamlessly from good mood to bad.

After the drawing was completed and she'd begun to paint, Man-Up had started moving his feet around restlessly between the chair's legs.

“You can go now, if you'd like,” she'd said. “You don't need to be here for the whole thing.”

He'd stood up and stretched, pulling the T-shirt taut against his stomach with its small spare tire. He'd walked over to look at the portrait. “Nice, nice.”

She'd kept her eyes on the painting until he reached for her, cupping her chin hard in his hand.

“You a sweet woman.” The smell of beer had oozed out of his pores. “Anybody ever tell you that you sweet?” She'd tried not to shrink from his touch, stared instead at his teeth and the small spaces in between.

“And I like your red hair,” he'd added, rubbing his hand roughly over her head. “Watch me, I coming back to take you up on your offer.” Then he'd pushed her head hard to one side before stalking out and bolting the door behind him.