The Girl With the Golden Shoes (9 page)

They quickly left the stalls behind, and moved along a flat, unpopulated coast. The road held closely to the water, which she heard above the engine, breaking on the reef. It was a long, straight beach with hardly any curves, and the water was so clear that in the daytime you could see the shadows of the fish against the ocean’s rippled floor. The sand was so white that on the coolest days you had to squint to see it, and so dry that people said it had been blown there by a desert wind.

She wanted him to try to hold her hand again, and was a little disappointed that he didn’t reach.

Suppose he was just holding my hand to make me feel good? she thought. Suppose he ain’t even have no son. But nothing ain’t wrong with that. Nothing ain’t wrong if a person tell a little lie to make another person feel okay. I do it all the time. Maybe he was asking for himself. Sometimes them old man have some crafty ways. But it felt good all the same. He touch me nice. I was feeling little wetty when he touch my leg in truth. But you know what? I ain’t want to tie up my head with no stupidness. I have important things to do.

But she was young and disappointed and couldn’t help herself.

“Why you being so nice to me?”

“You know if they catch me with my headlights on they lock me up?”

“So why you ain’t turn back?”

“Is blackout time now, you know. If they catch me now is grief.”

“So why you going so far out o’ you way to do something for me? You ain’t know me. And I ain’t know you. And I ain’t make no kind o’ promise to you.”

“Sometimes in life you shouldn’t ask so much,” he said. “Sometimes you should just take the ride.”

“I think you say you like woman with lip?”

In his mind he said,
But I like them more with hip
.

Aloud, he said: “How old are you, Miss Cinderella? In truth how old are you?”

“Old enough,” she softly taunted.

“Girl, talk to me in a serious fashion. How old are you?”

“Pick a number.”

“Okay, let’s call it sixteen. When you turn into a big woman and have children and all that, you going realize something. When you is a pretty woman, you could get a man to do all kind o’ things. You could get a man to work all his money and come and give you like you name is bank.”

“You so full o’ talks,” she said. With an elbow on the door she’d begun to stroke her hair.

“Well, I is a old man. What you expect?”

“They say is better to be a old man darling than a young boy slave,” she offered, playing at being adult.

“Well, is who full o’ talks now? Me or you?”

“That ain’t talks, man. That is truth.”

“You know what is true?” he tested, as the tires crushed a mob of crabs caught crawling in the road. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you anything ’bout my son. Maybe I should keep you for myself.”

“But how you could keep what you ain’t have?”

She resettled herself in her seat.

“So what it take?”

He reached for her. She eased away, but let him hold her hand.

“I ain’t know,” she answered as she squeezed his palm. “Nobody ain’t catch me yet.”

“So what it would take?”

His foot had left the pedal and the truck began to slow.

“I ain’t know,” she said, and shook him loose. “Drive up. Drive up, fast.”

“Tell me,” he said sincerely, “and I promise to do it for you.”

When she saw now that she’d broken him, her skin began to tingle with the warm electric current of a thrill, and she told him in a bossy way, “Well, take me into town.”

“I can’t do that,” he mumbled with regret. “I ain’t have the petrol in the tank.”

“But you care for me,” she said, the bossiness receding from her voice.

“I ain’t know you long. But in this short, short time, I do.”

“Don’t make it spoil then.” There was a part of her that wasn’t sure if what he’d said about his tank was true. “Here’s what you do. Stop the truck right here and touch me ’pon my leg again and call me beautiful. Don’t do one then do the next. Don’t touch then talk. Do the two o’ them together. And when you finish, put me out and wish me luck. I’ll do the same to you.” She kissed her palm and pressed it to his cheek. “You make me feel real nice, yes. And I ain’t want that niceness to spoil. ’Cause it always spoil. It always spoil. Thank you very much.”

VIII.

The road was dark and silent, and she focused on the slapping of her feet against the asphalt as she walked. In the distance, she could hear the engine fading and the short compression coming just before the elongation of the gears, a pattern like a snore. She hummed to rinse the loss before it stained.

There was grass along the verge, and as her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, she could see a narrow path.

Shit…I ain’t know what in them grass, she thought, standing in the road. Them grass could have all kind o’
macka
to jam me in my foot. And it have some worse than snakebite, I hear. Those, when they jam you, make you foot swell so much you feel like you walking with a ball and chain. The road hard, and my foot feel soft, but I ain’t able for no swell foot tonight—especially how my driver gone.

Her conversation with Joseph had left her feeling sentimental, and now, for the first time in her life, she felt uneasy in the dark. Like a novice sailor in a boat caught up in big waves, she couldn’t find a way to put herself along an even keel. And her skin began to prickle as she grudgingly admitted that she, Estrella Thompson, a castaway, was something precious that someone could lose. Her life was not her own. It belonged to all who showed her love. Like the woman in the red bandanna and Vashti, the handsome man with the rash along his face. Like Joseph. Even Asif!

It would matter if they woke up in the morning and heard that something awful had occurred…that she’d been robbed or killed or raped. If something awful happened it would count. She began to feel now that she should have talked to Joseph more to find out what it would have cost to take her into town. If it had come to it…if he’d said he’d do it but her body was the price, she would have paid it, she was thinking, would have found a way to make it work. Maybe she would have asked him to repeat that she was pretty while he touched her leg as if it were a length of rich, imported cloth. Maybe she would have touched herself and thought of someone else while he was sliding in on top of her…just so she wouldn’t have to be alone…just so that she wouldn’t be the one in charge of making sure that nothing awful happened, of making sure that sadness didn’t flood these people’s lives.

One mile. Two miles. Three miles. Four. She walked without seeing a soul. Sometimes she saw dim flickers and heard voices, and knew she was passing by a hut set back into the bush. Sometimes a shadow in a larger clump beside the verge would break away and she’d recognize the blotchy outline of a moving thing. When she thought it was human she’d say goodnight. If she thought it was a ghost she’d cross herself and pray.

Eventually, the beach gave way to cattle country and the road began to swerve. As it swerved, it drifted and began to change its course, and Estrella found herself being pressed on either side by humps of aromatic pasture tipped with chimneyed houses and rectangled by fences of stone.

I know for sure where I going now, she thought, on seeing the houses, which were silhouetted on the slightly lighter sky. When I make it, that’s the kind o’ house I going buy. Far away on top of a hill where nobody ain’t have to know my business, and I could see if anybody coming to interfere with me and send my dog to bite them. You getting to town soon. Not soon like
soon
. But soon. You moving. You not staying behind. When you see things like a fence it mean you close to people who know that things can’t just be wild like that, that you have to set them so they have a proper look like lines you see in books. And you only find them kind o’ people in town.

As Estrella walked, a sour taste began to creep into her throat and she sat on a stone. She’d eaten some mangoes as she’d waited on the bridge; now the juice had fermented, and the acid burned her stomach walls.

I tell you…sand ain’t easy when it hot, she thought, rubbing her aching feet. But if you put you mind against it you could bear it. Them paved roads that it have here ain’t easy—hot or cold. This town thing going take some getting used to. To live in town…even if you only manage to get a simple job…even if you don’t get to reach you ambition…even if all you going get to do is walk around and sell peanut or newspaper, you going have to get a pair o’ shoes.

As she’d done when she’d been traveling on the bus, she took her bearings by projecting out to sea, and gathered that she was a little under thirteen miles from town.

Walking again, her nostrils caught a trace of smoke. It was too dark to see the columns in the sky. And in truth it could have come from someone cooking late at night or burning coal. But there were disturbances in Black Well, she remembered. And Black Well was directly on the way.

As she wondered if there was another route, she heard the clop and scrape of iron shoes behind her. Turning now, she saw the shadow of a rider on a horse.

“Begging a ride,” she called out from thirty yards away. “Please, if you could help me. I’m begging you a ride.”

The rider waited till he’d drawn his horse beside her.

“Who is that?” he asked in Spanish. “How do I know you’re not a thief?”

She was standing by a tree that overgrew a fence, and though the rider was ten feet from her she couldn’t see his face. But from his voice, which had a rasp, as if his vocal cords were made of rope, and from the fact that he was speaking Spanish—which she understood but couldn’t repeat—Estrella knew he was
criollo
from the South Atlantic coast, a descendant of the early Spanish settlers who’d accepted British rule.

“I ain’t no thief,” she said in
Sancoche,
a slave-born bastard child of Spanish. “If I was a thief I wouldn’t call you from afar. I would bide my time and wait until you passing easy, like everything is fine, and then I’d knock you off you horse.”

She imagined that he had a tapered face and skin the color of the waterpots his people made from clay—and she was right. His hair was dark, and he wore it in a
cola
—a lengthy ponytail—partly hidden by his hat, a black fedora.

“I know the horse tired,” she persisted, “but my feet is tired more, and they ain’t stony like you horse’s foot that wearing iron shoes.”

The horse stomped. The movement scared her and she jumped away.

“How old are you?” the horseman asked in Spanish, leaning over.

“Old enough.”

“Old enough for what? It’s very late,” he told her in a curt, officious way. “I’m sure you know there’s a curfew. Where’s your mother? A girl your age should be at home.”

“I ain’t no child,” she said. “And I ain’t live with my mother for a long, long time.”

He got off his horse and tied it to a limb of the overhanging tree and leaned against the long stone fence.

He was an experienced seducer who understood that women fell in love through words, and whenever he met a prospect, he’d take the time to find out what she liked to talk about. In his district he was famous for remarking, “If you listen, you will learn.”

“Nice night,” he said matter-of-factly. “Look at that beautiful moon.”

“I been watching at it all night.”

“What do you think of when you see a moon like this?”

“That night is darker than day.”

“You don’t like to talk about the moon?”

“It have other things I like to talk ’bout more.”

“Like what?” he asked indulgently.

“Nothing I can bring my mind to think ’bout right now. Right now, all I can think ’bout is getting into town while the moon is in the sky. Because when sun come is morning.”

“Did the horse frighten you?”

“I frighten, yes. I think I see ’bout four ghosts on this road tonight. My nerves ain’t able for no excitement.”

Oh, he told himself, she’s afraid.

“I am very sorry,” he told her. “He is a strange horse, you know. A faithful one too. Whenever he gets a feeling that I might be in danger, he tries to warn me that I should escape.”

“Horse have so much sense?” she said, her intellect aroused.

He eased up from the fence and paced the verge with his long, slim legs. He was short, but high-waisted, and wore a denim workshirt and tan trousers, which were tucked into his knee-length riding boots.

“This is not an ordinary horse,” he told her, improvising on a story he’d often told before. “First of all, he is a police horse. He was trained by the police. All my family is police, you know. And this horse was a good police horse. Strong horse. Faithful horse. But he got a damage to his foot.”

He heard Estrella laugh with recognition as he shifted from Spanish to
Sancoche
.

“You smell smoke?” he asked, sniffing loudly.

“A little bit,” she said.

“Trouble,” he said mysteriously.

“What kind o’ trouble?”

“Black Well hot tonight. That is a place I can’t understand. They always having some excitement.” He shook his head. “You see that same Black Well where the smoke coming from? Right down in there. That’s where it happened. This horse took a policeman down in there when they had a disturbance and one o’ those wild people—’cause they
wild
, you know—just all of a sudden jump up and swing a machete. The edge was going to take his head. But at the last moment the horse rear up and took the chop on his front leg.
Bam!
And you know that after all those years o’ service the police was going to shoot him? But I was there at the time. And I jump up and say, ‘No! You shouldn’t do that. This is a good horse and a faithful horse, a horse you can always trust.’ And I told them I would keep it and care it. And look at the horse now.” As if apologizing, he paused and said, “Well, if it was day you could really see what I talking ’bout. A damn fine horse as you’d ever see.”

The passion. The engagement. The details. The drama. The way he told the story made her think of Joseph. Now she felt as if she knew the rider better than she did, and because of this suspended disbelief.

“When you go through a lot and people help you, you have to be grateful,” she said in deep reflection. “Even a horse could know that. But it have some people in this world, you know, sir, who never learn that lesson in their life.”