The Sea Grape Tree (17 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he lone car was taking forever to pass. Later, she would recall it down to the smallest detail, was able to see, hear, and smell everything, to stretch time out and contract it like a rubber band, especially the approach of the car.

Rubbing one sandal against what felt like a mosquito bite on the other leg, Sarah waited to cross the road to Roper's driveway. It wasn't even noon, her watch was saying, but she'd finished painting for the day and packed up, among her accoutrements one of the thirty-six-by-twenty-four-inch sheets. The paper had seemed monstrous when she'd taped it to the board on her easel, but her new determination to get out of Roper's house as quickly as possible had fired her up to make a start on the large painting.

The morning had been heavily overcast, the coconut leaves making an empty, rattling sound in the wind gusts. Unlike itself, the ocean's aquamarines and turquoises had turned a solid mass of gray. Its life force seemed diminished without sunlight. The color of the sea was that of a dying human, she'd reflected while she painted it, ashen like her father in the hospital.

No one had passed on the beach today. No child had come, finger in mouth, to stare at her or her painting, and what little enthusiasm she'd started with was now gone. She'd awakened that morning determined to get done with her host's challenge. No more dillydallying, she'd told herself. Her naive fascination with Jamaica was gone, helped in part by Roper's behavior and Eric's explanations. It was time to finish the painting and go home to the familiar. But other than a watercolor of a lusterless gray sea and sky four inches wide and six inches long in the middle of the sheet, the paper she'd brought was still largely blank. With a charcoal cloud darkening the air by the second, she'd packed up and trudged to the side of the road.

“Get on with it,” Sarah muttered to the approaching vehicle. The car slowed to a crawl, the occupants looking straight at her. She thought about crossing in front of it, but decided against it. She'd already seen drivers racing side by side down the narrow two-lane road, once seen an Ocho Rios taxi drive onto the sidewalk to overtake a car. It was an illogical country this place, a madhouse, and she would wait.

Danny hadn't come today. He hadn't come yesterday either. He'd explained when he dropped her off after their trip to Boston Beach that he had several appointments coming up. The excuses weren't a surprise; she'd been waiting for them.

Things would probably come to a halt, she'd thought, after she admitted to not enjoying sex. Despite his gallant suggestion that they should continue seeing each other but be celibate, despite the dinner on Monday night and their day together on Tuesday, she knew that her sexual phobia, whatever it was, had put a damper on things. He was a virile man, Danny, a man who would want lusty sex with a willing partner, and she didn't blame him. Of course, he wouldn't tell her to her face what the cause of his absence was, because, even if he wasn't schooled in the proper use of cutlery, he was a gentleman, unlike Roper.

If it had only been Danny's pulling away, that would have been one thing, but it was the news he broke while they were paddling around at Boston Beach that had made her flounder, quite literally. He'd started talking about the small hotels he'd visited recently, saying there was one that he'd seen last weekend that he really liked, a hotel on a cliff.

“Did you go with Eric?” she'd asked.

“No, I was with Janet,” he'd announced with his usual honesty, sounding nonchalant. She'd let go of his shoulder and for a few seconds couldn't touch the sand below. She'd had to paddle hard to stay afloat in the tossing waves, one wave covering her head and panicking her, while he plunged underwater, preventing further questions.

She still couldn't think of an appropriate comment when he waded ashore behind her, but it was obvious why he'd returned to Janet. While they were toweling off, their backs to each other, he started to say something and stopped, changing it to tell her he had
stuff to do
over the next few days and would be busy.

“You're a free agent,” she'd answered.

Last night, sitting alone on her porch in the moonlight, she'd decided, firmly this time, that she was going to stay away from Danny Caines. Not only did her host disapprove of him, which made it difficult to bring him to the house again, but he was quite openly having a relationship with two women at one time, one of them being her, the other woman not to be messed with. It was too much like a telly drama. These kinds of things never happened to her, at least not until now. Her only comfort was that Danny had been honest with her, even if it was to confess his infidelity. Penny would have called him a rotten cheater. Roper would have called him lower class.

Her mind was made up. Despite her email to Penny the week before—the first in weeks—telling her she'd met
an interesting man,
despite her tentative foray into sex and the excitement she felt whenever she saw Danny, it was over.
Fini,
as her mother would have said. The only solution was to paint the bloody painting and get out.

She'd wanted desperately to tell someone, Sonja perhaps, about Janet's tirade in the bathroom. Her decision had been to keep quiet about the incident, but in doing so she'd felt more alone than she'd ever felt, which was saying something, because aloneness had lived with her all her life. Since the bathroom incident, her sense of injustice had grown. Janet, Roper, and now Danny had merged into one alien behemoth and she was trapped, the damn painting blocking her exit.

Since her argument with Roper she'd stayed largely to herself, saying little or nothing at dinner and excusing herself before dessert on the grounds of having gained weight. Sonja was keeping a low profile, spending most of the day in her office, and Ford was rehearsing endlessly, the sounds of his trumpet filling the house, alternating between scales and wails.

The white car drew up alongside and stopped. Two men were inside.

“Yow,” the young man in the passenger seat greeted her, his arm raised. He looked to be in his early twenties and he had unusually square lips framed by an even squarer jaw. His hair was cut close to his head and shaped in neat points at the corners. Certain they were asking for directions, Sarah was about to tell them she was a stranger here herself when the man opened the car door and stepped out.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Your name is Sarah?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can help me, yes,” the man said, in no hurry. On the other side, the driver got out of the car, both car doors left open, the engine running. Sarah's heart began to pound in her chest and she stepped back.

“You coming with us,” the driver said. He was a bigger man, in his thirties, perhaps, his arm muscles swelling the white T-shirt. He wore a thin gold chain around his neck and several gold rings on one hand.

Sarah clutched her easel box between them. “No, thanks, I'm going home.” She looked quickly up and down the road but saw nothing, no cars, no people. A feeling of déjà vu sent a shiver down her spine.

“We just giving you a ride,” the square-jawed man said, and reached for her arm.

“I don't need a ride,” she said, snatching her arm away, standing her ground, taller than the first man, the same height as the second. The younger man grabbed her wrist. She'd been here before, seen a man's hand grabbing her wrist before, felt his fingers chafing her skin.

“We not asking you, we telling you,” the driver said in a growly voice, talking as if he was in charge. His eyebrows overhung his eyes, making them almost invisible. “You coming with us.”

She looked at the square-jawed man fiercely and tried to pull her wrist free, tried not to look afraid. “Let me go!”

The driver pulled the box and bag out of her hands. The stool he threw down. “Get in the fucking car.” He pronounced it
focking,
the brutishness of it never forgotten.

“No!” she said, pulling away, tugging at her arm, feeling the man's grip tighten. She wanted to say they had no right to do this, no right whatsoever, but her voice abandoned her. The younger man dragged her to the back of the car and yanked the door open just as the first raindrops came splattering down.

“Get in,” the driver ordered. “Don't make me use the gun.”

He walked up close beside her, one hand raised to slap her. “Get in the
raas claat
car.”

Square Jaw shoved her into the backseat and her head was forced into a black hood as the smell of sweet, damp earth rose up and filled her nostrils.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

O
pening the drawer all the way and lifting his briefs, Shad complained to invisible listeners. “Pshaw, man, the thing just disappear.” He patted the bottom of the drawer.

Two minutes later he found what he was looking for—the little plastic bag with his grandmother's grave dirt. Better than any obeah man's oil, his good luck charm went with him everywhere. He tucked the bag deep into his trouser pocket, walked through the living room, and was closing the front door when he heard footsteps coming up the steps.

“Evening, Dadda,” Rickia called in a tired voice. She was carrying her books, and the skirt of her school uniform had dirt on it.

“You okay?” Shad said, and reached out to his daughter's arm and its fresh bruise.

“Matthew pushed me down.”

“That ignorant boy, he probably just like you. That's what boys do when they like a girl. Tell him if he trouble you again, he have to face me, you hear? What happen to Joella?”

“She gone next door to pick up Joshua.”

“Okay, homework time now. No TV, you hear me?”

”Yes, Dadda. Walk good.”

Fingering the bag of red soil from the Holy Sepulchre Baptist cemetery, Shad started along the main road to his evening shift. He definitely needed Granny's stubborn faith today, needed to remind himself of her prophesy that he'd be a man of means one day, because that day was looking further and further away, what with Janet upsetting the only man who wanted to put money into Largo. When he'd told Beth the story, she'd shaken her head over the shirt she was ironing. It was pure blackmail, she'd declared, and no good could come out of it.

Changing course, Shad turned down the lane where Janet lived.

“Hold the dog!” he called at the gate. He could see Janet having a beast prowling the yard.

“Who that?” a voice answered from inside the house.

“Me, Shad.”

“Shadrack Myers, what you want?” Janet appeared barefooted on the verandah in a half-sewn dress, the seams turned inside out. Chalk marks at the top of the dress hinted at a plunging neckline to come. Without makeup, her face looked shiny and tired, forty-year-old bags under her eyes.

He climbed the stairs and sat down. “I want to talk to you.”

Janet put her hands on her hips, the corners of her mouth turned up. “This the first time you ever come to my house since I come here from Port Maria. It must be something serious.”

“I want to talk to you about something that concern everybody in Largo, especially you.”

Janet crossed her arms. “What you talking about? I don't have no time to waste today.”

“I don't even think you know what stupidness you doing.”

“Look here, boy, I older than you. Don't tell me what I can do.” She spun around to go inside, but turned to face him again. “What you come to tell me, anyway?”

“Sit down.”

“The dress have pins.”

“Sit down.”

After making a face at him, Janet went inside and returned wearing shorts. “I don't even want to hear it, all this
stupidness
you think I doing.”

Shad looked at her in silence until she sat down with a pursed mouth and crossed her legs.

“I hear you make Danny promise—” he started.

“Is none of your business.”

“You know where this could end up?”

“With me going to America.”

“You realize you could kill the whole town with all this scheming to get a green card, and all the obeah you putting on Danny?”

“Is
you
talking stupidness now.”

“If he ever find out you put oil-of-whatever on him, you don't think he going to get vex and leave Largo? You know what that mean? He is the
onliest
man who ever interested in building up the town. Nobody else going to want to come down here, to this little hole at the end of the island. And if you get him vex and he gone back to America, you think we getting any hotel?”

The woman stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Just get out my yard, you hear me.”

“You just being selfish if you keep running the man down.”

“Leave my yard.”

“I leaving,” Shad said, getting to his feet. “But know this, if the hotel business fall down because of you, the whole town going to be after you. Everybody hoping to get little work and little money from the new hotel, and they going to know that is
you
kill they dreams. You not going to be able to sew nobody's clothes, because everybody going to say is you put obeah on the hotel.”

Janet pulled in her bottom lip. “You just jealous. You think I don't know you want to go to America, too?”

“If it go well, I happy for you,” Shad called behind him as he jogged down the steps. “But don't come back to my bar if everything mash up. You not welcome no more. No more freeness—like how you never pay your bill—and no place else for you to meet American men in Largo. Remember that!”

He was striding down the main road, still hot from his meeting, when he saw a man sitting on the beach in red trunks, his naked back to the road. Arms resting on his crossed legs, he was perfectly still, staring out to sea like a fisherman's widow.

It was almost sunset and Shad was pouring a drink for Minion when Danny walked into the bar still in the red swimming trunks. He looked angry, sorry, sad, down on his luck, all rolled into one.

“I know you don't want a white rum,” Shad commented, waving the rum bottle.

“I came to ask if you could take me to the airport on Monday. I know it's your day off.”

Shad rubbed his head. “You leaving?”

“Yeah, time to get back.”

“I have to ask the boss for the car, but I sure is okay.”

“We need to leave about nine o'clock. Sorry it's so early.”

“I never knew you was leaving, though, kind of sudden like.”

Danny was all business. “I need to drop the car off in Port Antonio first, so you can follow behind and then drive me to Montego Bay, okay?”

“No problem, man.” Shad finished pouring the rum for Minion. He slid it along the counter before turning to Danny. “Drink on the house?”

“I'm kind of sandy and wet—”

“These bar stools made for water, don't worry.” The bartender opened the fridge and pulled out a beer. “On the house.”

Popping the bottle open, Shad tilted his head at Danny. “Look like a bad day, man.”

“Life,” Danny said, looking down at his fingers wrapped around the red-and-white label.

“Life rough, yes.”

The big man took a swig and licked his lips. “Maybe Jamaica does that to people.”

From the end of the counter a call went up from Eli for another rum. Shad filled the order and returned to lean across the counter. “You know what happen, star? Problems follow people to Jamaica, and the country throws them back in their face. You can't run away from yourself, even on an island.”

“I don't know where you get your wisdom from, boy, but you make sense.”

“How things going with Janet?”

“Same shit, different day. I always seem to attract these kind of women.” Shad raised his eyebrows and spread his hands. “That's the shit I brought with me, you mean?” The bartender shrugged, leaving the man with his own words.

Danny wiped his forehead. “I tell you, Janet is like a fucking vine. I can't get rid of her.”

“You play with puppy, you catch its fleas.”

“The lesson I just learned,” Danny said to the beer in his hand. “I should have known better. Forty-five damn years and I don't know to leave the crazy ones alone.”

Shad walked to the wall next to the kitchen and snapped on the lights. Stark shadows suddenly appeared, his signal to tune the radio to a song that would make the starkness more tolerable, tonight a song about red-red wine.

“How is the artist lady?” he ventured when he turned to Danny. “You not seeing her no more?”

The man's eyes were dark under the lightbulb, his nose spreading a broad shadow over the lower half of his face. “She left.”

“Left? When?”

“This morning. Just packed up and cleared out, didn't tell a soul.” Danny dabbed at his scalp with a napkin. “Maybe it's a good thing, I don't know.”

Shad frowned and felt for the stool behind him. “What you telling me, she leave Largo and nobody know?”

“She told the maid she was going painting this morning and that's the last anyone has seen of her.”

“Who told you?”

“I went by the place where she always paints. It was around lunchtime, around one, when she usually takes a break, but she wasn't there. I figured she was up at the house, so I drove up there. The housekeeper told me Sarah had gone. She said she didn't say a word to anyone, just left when no one was looking.”

“But she went to paint, you say. She leave then?”

“Apparently, she went out painting like normal, but at some point in the morning she came back and packed up.”

“That sound strange,” Shad mused, looking across the darkening bay toward the house on the far end. “She go painting and then come back and pack up, don't sound right. And she didn't say good-bye to nobody?”

“Not even a note.”

Offshore, the island was just a silhouette with the red strands of clouds behind it. It was that slippery time between day and night when nothing looked real. “She don't seem like a woman who would do that, just disappear sudden like that. I thought she was a woman with
broughtupsy,
you know, good breeding.”

Danny drained his bottle. “Jamaica does funny things to people, man.”

“And you don't know
why
she leave? Must be a reason.”

It took the man a while to answer. “I have an idea, a couple of ideas, really. She might have left because she felt kind of trapped. Roper paid her plane fare one-way from England. He said he'd pay the other half of the trip when she painted even one large picture. She usually paints these little things,” he added, making a square with his thick fingers. “Beautiful things, but always small, but she never painted a big picture the whole time she was here. It was like she couldn't do it. She might have got frustrated and just gave up.”

“You want another beer? You have to pay for it this time, though.”

Danny nodded. “She said she had a plan, though. She was going to paint bigger and bigger until she got up to a real big painting. Maybe she couldn't do it.”

“No apology, no explanation.” Shad shook his head and grunted. There was something unnatural about it, a suddenness that didn't suit the woman's personality. “You said you had a couple ideas. You thinking she know you don't like white women?”

“No, I'd gone past that and we were getting along real good. I was doing like you said, just seeing her for who she was inside, a real sweet woman. I was even starting to feel that maybe I'd missed the boat in the past by focusing on the whole color thing with women.” A shrug, a boyish gesture on him. “No, I think it was something else.”

Shad placed a Red Stripe in front of Danny and waited. There was always another reason, every customer had one.

The American took his time, sipped his beer, took a breath. “I told her I'd gone out with Janet again. She never said nothing when I told her, she didn't even seem upset. But now I'm thinking she was angry and that's why she left.”

“That sound more like it,” Shad exclaimed. “I knew it! No woman going to leave because of a painting. Women act from their heart, not the head. She was feeling—”

“How much I owe you?”

“Two dollars. You going to call her in England?”

Slapping a couple US dollars on the counter, Danny stood up. “She never gave me her number. See you Monday.”