The Rhythm of the August Rain (29 page)

“Can we have some?” Casey asked.

“Please, don't. They're for the birthday party.”

“I was just wondering what time the—the party was,” Eric stammered when she glanced up at him, the memory of Monday morning creating a fog between them.

Her voice was even, no emotion. “About four o'clock.”

“Righto.” He rushed back to the Jeep without lunch.

At the bar, Shad was wiping glasses and setting them on a towel.

“Didn't Solomon relieve you?” Eric asked. “Isn't it your break time?”

“Boss, I stay here with Miss Mac while they was tearing down her house.” The bartender shook his head. “She start to cry, and I almost cry myself. Is a sad, sad thing when you see your house mash up like that. The old roof just give way, then the walls come down, easy, easy. You would never think that they stand up to all them hurricanes.” He sniffed hard. “They should have said a few words before, though. The bulldozer have no respect, man. All them years she live there and bring up her son, all them people who stay in her boardinghouse, all the time we used to sit in her kitchen and talk—just gone with the dust when they smash it. I decide that I don't want to learn to drive a bulldozer. It don't know the difference between right and wrong.”

Eric murmured his sympathies and walked down the conch-lined path to what had been the house next door. The nine acres of land that had belonged to Miss Mac now lay bare, a few cedar and mahogany trees standing over the wasteland. In the middle of the property was a pile of concrete chunks and old beams: Miss Mac's demolished three-bedroom house. Although the land now belonged to the Largo Bay Grand Hotel Company—the name already making him uncomfortable—it still belonged to his former landlady, Miss Mac, in Eric's mind. True, she'd wanted to sell her house and land, she'd been saying so for years now, but that didn't change her stamp on it or fill the emptiness she'd left behind.

As Eric stared at the rubble with a heavy heart, a fat, brown rat ran up a beam lying askew. When it got to the end, the creature turned its head—sensing an observer—and locked beady eyes with the new owner.

“Get ready, bud,” Eric announced. “Your life is about to change.”

B
low them all out!” Shannon urged the birthday girl.

“Make a wish,” Rickia added as Eve blew out the thirteen candles, sweeping her head around the square cake with her name in the middle.

“Don't tell us the wish or it won't come true,” Casey said.

“I wasn't going to tell, anyway.” Eve was wearing an orange dress that Casey had given her, and her hair was swept away from her face in a fluffy ponytail. She looked older to Shannon all of a sudden, her face longer and calmer, its former sulkiness almost absent.

“Don't the senior citizens get cake first?” Lambert called from the adjoining living room.

“Coming right up,” Jennifer said, carving into the cake.

The first slice went to Eve, who held it up and crowed, “Chocolate, my fave.”

“I better not have any,” Shannon heard Eric say behind her. He had come to the party on time, and he and Lambert had retreated to the sofa, a safe distance from the women and the seven children clamoring around the table.

Shannon handed Joella a slice of cake for Baby Josh, standing shakily clutching his sister's skirt, the dead stamp of Shad in his little jeans and sneakers. Behind them, Shannon heard Lambert lower his booming voice, saying something about a
lack of testosterone
. Eric's reply was too muffled to hear. Intrigued, she cut two large slices of cake and walked them to the men, determined to show Eric she didn't care if he had a lack of testosterone or not. Lambert thanked her when he took his plate, and Eric mumbled something, turning as pink as the rosebuds on his cake.

As she spooned out ice cream for Rickia, Shannon knew—felt it for the first time in the depths of her—that there was no going back to what could have been with Eric. Red flags were flapping all over the place. He hadn't pursued her, hadn't told her about his girlfriend, and—the biggest flag of all—he couldn't get it up when they were making out.

The feeling that the relationship was over had been coming on since she'd left him on Monday morning, and she'd spent the rest of the day feeling despondent. But Tuesday was a new day, and she'd resolved to focus on the tasks she had to complete before leaving the island, helped by the news that Shad had sprung on her.

“I met an interesting lady Rasta,” he'd said when he called at midday. “The one we start to visit the night of the Nyabinghi, but the road was blocked, remember? Aziza is her name. Anyway, she tell me about the man she and her husband bought their land from, an old man who live by himself. I went to visit him.”

He'd related his encounter with the angry Rasta and clucked his tongue. “Not a nice man, not a nice man at all.”

“Did he know anything?”

“He just vex. He thought I was police.”

“I guess we should rule him out.”

“Yeah, no woman would want him,” Shad had quietly mused. “Something funny, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“When he open the door, I see something strange. I see a piece of glass, like a diamond hanging on a string in front of the window.”

“That doesn't mean anything.”

“I never see nothing like that in a Rasta house yet.” The would-be sleuth paused. “Anyway, we still don't know what Ras Redemption was going to tell you.”

Shannon had lifted her lip. “I really don't want to go back. I'm pretty sure they don't want me back—and I don't trust him.”

“And I can't help you now. I have to do all kind of thing before the wedding, pick up flowers, suit. Mistah Eric lending me the Jeep.” And the following week, before the groundbreaking, he explained, he had to collect people from the airport. She wondered if he meant Simone.

Not long after, Miss Bertha had called Shannon to the phone again. Richard Ransom was returning her phone call from Monday. He apologized for calling back a day late; he'd been entertaining a visiting colleague from Scotland. He didn't use any pronouns.

“I heard you left the Nyabinghi in a hurry,” he added in his radio voice, this time with a soft laugh.

“I'm sorry we had to leave—”

“What happened?”

“It was my fault. I took out a camera, and the folks around us weren't happy. Stupid mistake, one I'll never make again.”

“I'd never have known about it if I hadn't asked where you were. One of the drummers told me you'd gone because of some
confusion
—that's what he called it—and I-Verse got me a ride down the mountain. When I left, everybody was celebrating. You wouldn't have known that any drama had gone on.”

“How did you get back to Largo? I saw that your car was gone—” She broke off, about to reveal that she'd seen his car missing from the car park early Monday morning.

“I took a taxi when I got down to the main road.”

“That's a relief. I felt terrible leaving you, but things got a bit hairy. I thought I was going to be burned at the stake.”

“I hardly think so, although I'm not surprised you got some verbal threats. They're suspicious of outsiders, you know, for good reason. They've been outcasts for so long. But they're a peaceful bunch, Rastas; they really don't want any trouble.” His deep voice rumbled into a laugh. “I'm sorry to tell you, but burning a foreign journalist would bring them far more attention than it would be worth.”

“You're probably right, but what about Katlyn?” Shannon inquired, the journalist in her scavenging for any crumb he'd gained from Redemption. “I wonder if she was ever threatened. I'm glad to hear the Nyabinghi would never have actually harmed me, but maybe she wasn't so lucky.”

“Redemption never mentioned a word about her. He only wanted to reason with me, best me at Rastafarian philosophy.”

Shannon updated him on Shad's visit to Sister Aziza and the man named Dread. “I'm sorry I never had a chance to talk to Ras Redemption,” she added, a little dig.

“He might be worth another visit.”

“I'll have to think about that.”

“You know, I was thinking about another community I know that's not far from Gordon Gap. It's in a place called Heron Hill. I did some research there a few years ago. Maybe we can go up there one day. They might know something.”

“Whatever I do, I need to do it soon. I want to get out of here by the middle of next week the latest. Shad can't help me, though. He's busy getting ready for his wedding Saturday afternoon.” She'd wondered if it was too big a hint.

“Getting married, huh?” Ransom had said, accompanied by the sound of pages turning, as if he was consulting a diary. “I could help you Saturday morning. That's the only time I can do it, because I'm having company after that.”

“Would you?” She'd grinned into the phone, deciding that she could deal with this man—even if the company was female.

Eve's birthday party moved on to the opening of gifts: a book from Shad's children and a return ticket to Jamaica from the Delgado family, at which Eric had looked a little chagrined about Lambert's helping him out again. Eve had hugged everyone, saying she would read the book on the plane back to Canada—and then come back next year.

Shannon's gift had been opened at the crack of dawn when Eve shook her awake. “It's my birthday.”

“Happy birthday,” her mother had moaned as Eve jumped into her bed, the first time in years. “I know you're here for your gift.” She'd chuckled as she kissed her daughter.

The teenager had pulled away. “I bet I can guess what you're giving me.”

They'd laughed when they both looked at the tall drum with the bow sitting in a corner.

It had already gotten dark and the party was winding down by the time Beth appeared for her children.

“You have to have some cake and ice cream,” Jennifer insisted.

“Might as well build up my strength for the wedding.”

“Want to see my drum?” Eve asked her guest, and rushed out of the room without getting an answer.

Jennifer cut a slice of cake for Beth. Shannon was spooning ice cream on top when the room went black.

“Lights gone!” a child shouted. Everyone started talking in the darkness.

“Don't get excited,” Lambert called above the hubbub. “I'll turn on the generator.”

“I going to eat my cake,” an invisible Beth said with a laugh.

“We have candles around here somewhere,” Jennifer said.

Shannon felt her way around the dining table to get Eve, who wouldn't be used to electricity outages, and had just reached the opening to the corridor when she bumped into a large figure with a sour-earthy smell.

“It's just me.” Eric grabbed her arm. She started to pull away, but he held her firmly. “Shh.” He gave her a hard kiss, the kind that a woman feels to her toes.

S
hifting his weight on the old barstool, Shad tried not to compare the Quality Life Bar with his own bar, but some things he couldn't ignore, such as shaky chairs for the customers. The small bar in the square was better known for the cheapness of its rum than for its comfort, and although his grandmother had been a friend of the owner, Shad could count the number of times he'd visited the bar on one hand.

“You mean all you going to drink is Coca-Cola?” Tri said. “Is one time a man get married, if he even do that, and the least you can do is take a decent drink.”

“Is your stud party, man,” Solomon agreed, his tongue already heavy. “Time to loosen up.”

“Stud party?” Frank repeated, standing at the end of the bar over a Red Stripe. “Is
stag
party, you don't know that?”

“Stag party, stud party, man party, don't matter,” the chef grumbled.

Super-blue, the bartender, held up the rum bottle. “Who want more?”

“Put some in his Coke, nuh?” Tri urged, and the bartender started to pour rum into Shad's glass.

The guest of honor pulled his glass away. “I soft-drinking like Winston, keeping him company.”

Winston raised his pineapple soda to Shad, the man who had fathered him when his own father had left. “Thank you, suh.”

Tri had come up with the idea for the stag party one night a couple weeks back. He'd told them that in America the men celebrated before the wedding, he'd seen it on TV. “Is to big-up the husband, help him say good-bye to his happy, single days.”

“Look how long I living with Beth and I still happy,” Shad had replied. “I don't need no stag party to say good-bye to happiness.”

“Pshaw, man, we giving you a little send-off,” Tri had declared. “Just accept it, nuh?”

The town bar next to the cricket pitch would be the venue, and
only five man
would be invited, the elder had assured Shad. “Is not no free-for-all. I not paying for every man jack to come and drink liquor.”

The fluorescent bulb above the bar cast a greenish glare on the men's faces and long shadows on the linoleum floor. Frank started boasting about the horse races last Saturday when he'd gone to Mas Abe's betting shop in Port Antonio and won over J$1,000 (and still wanted his money back from the rocksteady party that night, Shad noted). A couple of customers in the bar joined in the conversation with their own gambling stories.

Not a gambler since his youth, Shad stared at the pinup calendar behind the bar. A pretty girl leaned on a tree trunk, her skin glowing as if it had been rubbed with coconut oil, like Sister Aziza's face. Shad drifted away, thinking of how high he'd gotten at the Nyabinghi, wishing he hadn't indulged in the weed he'd been offered. It had only made him panic when, maybe, things weren't quite as bad as they felt at the time. He wondered if Aziza smoked ganja. She didn't look as if she did. Dread probably did, which would explain his crazy response to the visit. Shad thought again of the glass pendant above the old man's curtain, which had reminded him of the diamond he wanted to buy Beth one day, the ring she deserved.