Swimming in the Volcano (81 page)

Mitchell squinted back into the sun at Ben, feeling only callousness toward such ministering, saying no it didn't help but he imagined Ben had gotten good mileage out of it on his own political trek toward nobility.

“I see you as a man in transition between contexts,” said Ben. “I see you as a rider galloping hellbent from his father's house to the border, trying to stay in the saddle until the rules change or all is forgiven. Would you like the key to the code? Here it is, no conversion necessary: The rules don't change. All can be forgiven.”

“I grant you this is a bad state of affairs,” Sam offered, “but not a hopeless case. Cut yourself some slack on this.”

“Sam will only meet me halfway on this,” Ben said ruefully, “but ideologies are not always reliable. And political decisions based on moral arguments are not always a good bargain. Think of fairness. It's the perfect template, the ideal standard of conduct. It precludes the need for justice. But who plays fair?”

“Let's turn the corner on this,” said Sam. “You relied on yourself and the goodness of your intentions. It was the best you could do. We applaud that effort.”

“You don't like the banality of being railroaded,” said Ben. “You don't appreciate the simplicity of it. There was no old white bwana up there in the mountains running the show, was there? There was only you.”

“Moral dandyism,” said Sam. “Moral vanity. That's where Ben and I agree. The folly of sentimental commitment.”

“The world preys on naïveté. It's not much of an insight, is it? Priced too fucking high, for one thing. But you learned something, didn't you?”

“About gamesmanship. You have to play. You can't not play.”

“Well wait, it ain't that goddamn simple,” said Ben. “You have to play
well
. Let's put the emphasis where it belongs. And, man, you didn't do that, did you,” he said with a cryptic smile, showing teeth too perfect not to be caps. “Not even with alacrity, not even for the
fuck of it. You're here running around taking drugs with the wife of a bigtime shithead, you purchased a weapon illegally, you go tramping around the jungle with a gun in an area that had been placed under martial law, telling yourself you're making the world a better place. I'm afraid I side with Jack on this. People like you give me the creeps.”

They reached the western limit of their walk, there was the guard with his sinister curiosity, Ben grabbed Mitchell's arm only to swing him around, because it appeared he was about to keep on going. He was just too tired, his brain circuitry signaling emergency sleep, to protest. Ben kept his arm, marshaling him forward.

“Do you want an explanation or not?” Mitchell said.

Ben stopped and so they all stopped to watch him spit over the parapet, watching like boys must watch anything fall as the white dot of phlegm sailed out down to the rocks and placid sea.

“You know,” said Ben, “Sam's right. Your case is not hopeless. I think you've been getting better at this. I think you're at like the fifth-grade level of a formative political and spiritual experience, which means you are now as smart as any ten-year-old who realizes that lies solve problems, especially when nobody, for reasons that are not often admirable but sometimes unavoidable, is able or willing to listen to the truth.”

“Maybe Ben's saying he's worried your explanation will bore him,” said Sam.

“Bore us,” Ben corrected him.

“Maybe he's concerned it won't be of use to anybody, especially to your own situation.”

“Let me be clear,” said Ben. “I want to hear a really first-rate lie, something that inspires me, something that works for us all. I don't think I'm asking too much, am I? We came all this way. I don't think this is going to strain your creative resources, is it? It would just ruin my little vacation here in paradise to have to listen to some weak-minded explanation.”

“Or maybe,” suggested Sam, “the particular truth we seek from Wilson is so delectable, he's saying to himself, Why lie at all?”

“Maybe,” Ben allowed, skeptical.

“Another thing,” said Sam. “A free man blames nobody but himself.”

“What do you think about that, Mister Wilson?” chuckled Ben. “There's something to think about. Once they let you out.”

That was it. No more friends. He was on his own, knowing that
he, in history, must assume the blame for Sally, but someone would have to rub his face in it hard, harder than this, before he'd live with the guilt.

Don't be insolent. Don't set precedents. Final advice from the friends of golf. It's better to believe the lies, they said. In a case like this.

They were off to brief the ambassador for the Windward Islands, who had just arrived from Barbados. The ambassador would be talking with Edison Banks that afternoon. He was going to lecture Banks about cozying up to Cuba. He would also be announcing a new aid package for the island: a five-thousand-dollar shipment of school supplies.

By the end of the week, Mitchell had a higher understanding, a supreme understanding, of his naïveté. He had underestimated them, the friends of golf. He had of course underestimated everybody. Kingsley got on the radio to electrify the island with his dema-goguery, laying out a sequence of astounding accusations. Yes, it was true, he harangued, as the new People's Revolutionary Party alleged, that a paramilitary force existed in the northern mountains. Yes., it was true, as the PRP alleged, that a young man named Isaac Knowles was the leader of this international conspiracy. Yes, it was true, as the PRP alleged, that there were foreign agents involved—one of them sitting right now in a cell in Fort Gregory. But,
it is not true
, Kingsley countercharged, that these were his bad children. This allegation was a Machiavellian lie, another of the PEP/PRP's falsehoods, because, in fact, these people he was talking about were the enemies of the PIP and the enemies of democracy. He could prove it, he railed, he had gathered the evidence, and it was damning. Let us go to the courts, he challenged. Let us have two trials, three trials, many. Let us go to the ballot box and divine the truth.

When Mitchell heard the news, his mind leapt to Johnnie, and he felt as though Kingsley had just married them, bonded them forever together. Some things you can't get behind you no matter what, he thought: an amendment to the extraordinary power of Johnnie's imagination, which had convinced her to reappear in his life, to come back aboard, as if it were a beautiful white ship under beautiful blue skies, and away they'd sail.

You're so mine, she had said, and it was proving true.

June 9, 1977

Low & Behold
by Epictetus

Eppy
: Well, gents, the politicians have us stumped again, I can see by the hard put look on your faces. Let me make my little speech and then have at it: Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Now I am willing to gamble I speak for many Catherinians when I ask,
What in God's name is going on???
Anything reasonable will be supported.

Sir Cease-All:
Murder and Mayhem, sir, Wickedness and Undo-itness, and not a lick of it in God's name. The signatures I read at the bottom of the page are Joe Stalin, Mr. Castro, and the Prince of Darkness. Now add to that rogue's gallery a most unexpected lackey, this poor misguided fellow from the great USA who has grabbed the spotlight in our High Court follies.

Beau of the Bawl:
Grabbed? Why not pushed, kicked, shoved, and booted into it?

Joe Pittance:
Murder it is, and mayhem too, fellers, but Sir C has stood the perpetration on its head, to accommodate his favorite view, arse-backwards topsy-turvy. Why, it wasn't so very long ago Sir C was screaming bloody hell in this scamp Wilson's defense, no surprise a'tall from an enthusiastic admirer of James Bond fantasy, the Vietnam War, the ruling class, the gilded
class, the House of Lords, the Shah of Iran, men on the moon, Princess Margaret, the flim
Lawrence of Arabia
and, last and most, His Majesty Joshua Kingsley.

Beau:
I see gallows humor is the coming rage. He left out Jesus Christ, Will Shakespeare, and the kitchen sink.

Joe:
And after such spirited support for Mr. Kingsley's Yankee agent—er, I mean economist, that is what they are calling saboteurs these days at the Ministry of Agriculture—Sir C and his disloyalists gall us with their cry,
About-Face, Abracadabra!
and poof, come look, their Innocent Boy Scout is the Second Coming of Che Guevara. Even our obeahmen wouldn't dare try that brand of black magic.

Sir C
: Funny you should mention the name of this feller's mentor, Joe, who is also the matinee idol of your man Edison Banks and his bloodthirsty band of schoolboys. There is no depth low enough, including Flames of Hell, that these so-called Revolutionaries won't scrape and bow to, to disgrace us. The only magic to be had is the stuff supplied by the two magicians Fidel sent PRP to entertain at rallies and witch-hunts, not to mention the Cuban teachers who are pushing our own out of the classroom. Next we'll see the Russian bear dancing at carnival. As if Communist basketball coaches and Soviet-trained dentists weren't bad enough, now we have Cuban ships pulling into the harbor, and when the lights go out at night, I don't have to tell you what comes ashore and is hidden in depots around the island. This is not scandal, Joe, we must call it what it is—Treason. We demand new elections, as I for one have no desire to conduct my business in the language of Spain. Failing that, let me once more issue a plea to those guardians of liberty in Washington:
Come save us
.

Beau:
I'm flummoxed, fellers. You have me playing eenie meenie minie mo. My plea goes out to our spook-in-residence, this boy we hear so much about, Isaac Knowles, to come down out of the mountains, if he is truly there, and answer Eppy's question. Is it as Banks says—like father like son—or Kingsley says—monkey see monkey do? Who was it firing the shot killing that poor woman up in the wilds of Soufrière, isn't that the question? Bandits, we hear from PRP. Cassius Iman Colly-ibra-more-him or whatever this unfortunate is calling himself, we hear from PIP. Well, which is it, eh? This fellow Wilson seems uncertain, and now he is discredited by these new allegations.

Sir C
: Not allegations, fellers. Evidence. The books in this man's library were printed in the Kremlin. He purchased firearms illegally, for what purpose I shudder to imagine. And his mistress is the moll of a notorious renegade and drug peddler, of Cuban extraction, who takes his orders from cigar-smokers in Havana. Seriously, Joe, this Wilson is not the type you'll likely find conspiring with a man of Kingsley's principles.

Joe:
The principles of a gangster, no less.

Beau:
Well, that fixes it, boys. No longer am I flummoxed—now I'm bewildered as well.

Eppy:
Gents, am I mistaken or is it not Mr. Wilson on trial in our courts, though prosecution and defense seem to think otherwise, but this pitiful tongue-tied orphan from Cotton Island, the youth Cassius Collymore. Mr. Wilson should be allowed to testify without disruption or further accusation and sent home. Difficulties are things that show what men are, and he has conducted himself with dignity. By the way, life goes on despite our crab antics and current turmoil. Family Planning will hold a fair this Saturday on the esplanade, with balloons, games, and free food for the kids.
Until next week then,
Clarior E Tenebris
.

After the trip to Scarborough, he went home then to Howard Bay for the sole purpose of knocking himself out flat and senseless, washing down codeine from the hospital with numerous rum and tonics and after a while, still awake but floundering, hurrying unconsciousness along with one of the Mandrax Johnnie had so considerately left behind. He passed out in the hammock on the veranda and woke up at dawn with a brain seriously fogged and every joint aching, wondering how close he had come to killing himself, which was not as far as he knew what he had in mind.

He showered cold and began to dress, only to stop himself in the middle of slipping on his pants to sit on the edge of the bed, lost in a void, fighting back the desire to vomit which made him break out in a sweat. He was not well, he was not going to be well anytime soon, but he had things to do, only he couldn't put his finger on what they were, all he could remember was that he had forgotten something, and was forced to sit there sweating and wanting to puke while his thoughts, sluggish and blind, grabbed at whatever it was, until he had regained enough presence of mind to notice, there on the floor, kicked into a corner of the room, the pair of pants he had worn up Soufrière, streaked and splotched with stains that were Sally's blood, and he thought,
Get rid of those
. He sat there for a few more minutes, unsatisfied, and then of course remembered the letter he had retrieved from the body of Captain Eddins. He buttoned his pants and stood up.

It was exactly what he now knew it would be—evidence, a crudely drawn map of a camp in the mountains behind the volcano—not the sort of thing you should be carrying in your pocket up Soufrière, in this day and time.

Addressed to nobody, signed by nobody, all-incriminating. He
ripped it up and poked the pieces down into the fly-blown slop bucket on the side stoop—more garbage for Mrs. Fetchalub's pig. Mr. Quiddley was in the yard, cracking open the second pit. Removing his hat, he stood up straight and offered condolence.

“I am sorry to hear of dis sahd news of you lady friend.”

“You should never have done this,” Mitchell shouted irrationally. “Never. Never,” and he went back inside to finish dressing, packed his knapsack with bread and cheese, a water bottle, gym shorts and a change of underwear, his rain poncho and envelope of codeine and the handgun he had bought in Scuffletown wrapped in a tee shirt, walked down to Augustine and took a jitney loaded with merry schoolchildren into Queenstown, saw as they passed toward Brandon Vale that the red letters PRP had been splash-painted on the roof of
Miss Defy
, soon to be invisible in a sea of cane. He went to the ministry which was still locked up though he was taken aback to see the vet's assistant Morrison standing in the door of his dispensary, a clean bandage around his head and both eyes puffy, reading a government broadside. They does get you too, eh bwoy? Morrison smiled, curling his upper lip into a sneer. Morrison told him Kingsley was still up leeward side, playing the fool, but the time was coming to kick his ass, Wilson, we will have some fun with these fuckers, we will revenge the girl, nuh?