The Sea Grape Tree (2 page)

The murmurs stopped when Eric appeared in the parking lot, Miss Mac and a strange man in tow.

“They come!” Shad called, turning down the radio. Beth and Maisie rushed out of the kitchen with plates of fruit as the bar's owner waded into the crowd.

Taller than any villager, out of place among the well-dressed folk, Eric looked like he should have been on a dock somewhere in his old shorts and sandals, his flowing white hair, reddish face, and small paunch those of the captain of a vessel. The newcomer behind him—the man Shad had told everyone must be
treated with respect
—was looking around and smiling. Mahogany-colored, his big scalp bald as a baby's, Caines appeared to be in his early forties. He was muscular for a tall man, almost as tall as the boss, and he stood with his chest high in its banana-patterned shirt, as if he had a world, or an island, to conquer.

“What's going on?” Eric called to Shad, and raised his arms, the flabby skin underneath shaking with indignation, questioning the cost already. The bartender lifted his own skinny arms and grinned, and everyone laughed. An elderly man with a shock of fluffy gray hair patted Eric on the back.

“A little surprise business, suh,” said Old Man Job, village elder and contractor on the old Largo Bay Inn, a man who made up for his lack of teeth with his common sense. “We know you want to welcome the gentleman to Largo, give him a nice party. Not true?” Eric shot a look at the bartender under his thick eyebrows and lowered his arms, and Shad exhaled, knowing he'd have to endure only a couple days of grumbling before all would be forgiven.

“A party for me?” the visitor said. His voice warmed the room, and when he laughed the sound came straight from his big chest. “I love it!”

Shad circled the bar and grasped the man's hand. “Mistah Caines, welcome! My name is Shad, and I run things for Mistah Eric.” The newcomer had a firm, friendly handshake, making you want to shake it again. “We
privilege
that you come down to see us. You going to love Largo, I know it.”

Shad swung around to the crowd and held Caines's arm high like a boxer's. “Give the man a Largo Bay shout-out, people!” he yelled. The crowd clapped and whistled, and a few even stomped their feet.

“Thank you, thank you,” Caines said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Nobody's ever thrown me a party before!” He spoke with a nice American twang, but his proud, almost arrogant stance said something different.

“What about a beer, a nice, cold Red Stripe?” Shad asked, a man who liked to guess his customers' drinks.

“Perfect.”

“I'd better change,” Eric grunted before he escaped to his apartment at the end of the building.

Shad got busy with the drinks. When he looked up, Caines was chatting with his new landlady, and Shad wondered if they were talking about the old woman's house and land next to the bar, the property that he and Eric thought would be just right for a hotel. Miss Mac wanted to sell it—so she said, anyway, but if old ladies didn't like you, they wouldn't sell to you, no matter how much money you had.

The bartender placed the visitor's drink on a tray and added a Coke. “One beer,” he said, approaching the two, “and one Coke for the lady.”

Caines removed his glass with its perfect head of foam and Miss Mac took her glass. “And I didn't even order nothing.” She laughed, the gold fillings flashing at the back of her mouth.

Shad was about to answer when he felt a stiffness in the air, heard the falling away of chatter. A woman had stepped onto the floor of the bar. It was Janet, the village seamstress who visited the bar almost every night, on the prowl for the American man she'd predicted would marry her and take her away. Fishermen could only buy her rum, she'd declared, and she was a
champagne girl
(a girl still at forty).

Short and well-padded, Janet walked carefully on her high heels, the plunging neckline of her tight white dress putting the church dresses to shame. A vision of village sophistication, she wore a new wig that framed her rounded features and curled around her ears. Looking left and right as if she'd never been in the bar before, stopping with one leg bent like a beauty queen, she looked at Danny and smiled.

“You ever see such a thing?” Beth hissed when Shad got back to the bar.

“He don't stand a chance.” Shad nodded, watching as Caines, a red-blooded man with no ring on his finger, turned toward the woman.

“Queen of diamonds,” Beth muttered.

Shad shook his head, remembering the dressmaker beating some regulars at twenty-one in the bar with a pack of cards she'd brought. Janet had slapped down the winning card and said, “That's me you see there, in America, the queen of diamonds.”

The bartender closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into the lids.
Jeezum peace,
he groaned,
plenty shark in the water tonight.

CHAPTER TWO

S
tepping high to avoid the prickly nettles, Eric plodded through the grass, still damp with morning dew. His flip-flops were already slippery and he was annoyed he'd forgotten to wear sneakers.

“Watch out for rocks,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “The place hasn't been cleared for a long time.”

In Reeboks and neat white socks, Daniel Caines was walking with hardly a sound, staring at the ocean through the coconut trees. It had been his idea to walk Miss Mac's land the day after his arrival, and it had turned out to be the perfect morning to show it. The sky was clear, the sea wasn't too rough, and a light breeze was blowing through the palms.

“The property is nine and a quarter acres,” Eric said. “The beach is coral sand, a really good-quality sand, and it runs to the end of the bay over there, about a quarter mile long. The village is on the other side of the point and that's where the fishermen keep their canoes, so we wouldn't be interfering with them.”

He stopped walking and waved toward the water, strands of white hair blowing across his face. “There's no reef, which is why it's a bit rough, but there's a—a kind of natural wildness to it, don't you think, that makes it different from the usual tourist spot.” He hoped Caines wouldn't ask about sharks and currents, because he'd have to tell him that, yes, there'd been a couple sightings over the eighteen years he'd lived there, and, yes, a woman had drowned in the old hotel days, which was why they'd written in a lifeguard for the new hotel.

“By the way,” Eric added, feeling a blush spread up his face, “I never thanked you properly for the gift, the new laptop. I was a little thrown off last night with the party and all.”

“I mailed it ahead to Miss Mac's so I could surprise you,” Caines said with a chuckle. “Little did I know you guys had a surprise for
me,
eh?”

Eric gathered up his hair and pulled it back. “Yeah, right. It's going to be—I haven't used a computer in—sheesh, I don't know how long.”

“You said you didn't have one,” Caines replied, brushing away the sweat already collecting on his bald scalp, “and if we're going to do business—”

“I know, I know.” Eric turned away from the man to sigh as quietly as he could (still chafing at the cost of the party and Shad's deception, annoyed at Caines's assumption that he couldn't afford a computer, irritated most of all that he had to learn to operate the damn thing).

When they reached a cliff on the far end of the property, the bar owner stopped under a tamarind tree. Two nightingales quarreled at the intruders from a branch, the noise almost drowned out by the crashing of the surf in front of them.

With large, square hands, Eric mapped out the acreage. “The land slopes uphill from the beach to the road. It's long and rectangular. Closest to my bar on the eastern end, it's about eighty feet wide, then it broadens out coming west, to four hundred feet across, perfect for a hotel site. That area over there is where we think the main building should go—like you saw in the drawings we sent you—twenty guest rooms, swimming pool and Jacuzzi like you want, restaurant and bar area facing the ocean. Over here, we'd have a separate housekeeping and maintenance building.”

Caines pointed to the bungalow partly visible through the thick foliage. “Would we have to knock down Miss Mac's house to put up the main building?”

“That's right.”

“Has she given any conditions, caveats?”

“I—we never—well, it would be our land. I guess we could do anything with it, couldn't we?”

“She might want some graves or—something, trees maybe, preserved.”

“I guess, out of respect, we can ask—”

But Caines had already started loping down to the beach. Eric followed, stepping gingerly over the weeds and vines that snaked along the ground. By the time he reached the sand, the visitor was standing with legs apart and arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the sapphire water in the distance.

“Nothing like the smell of the sea, eh?” Caines said, taking a slow, deep breath like he was sucking in the morning.

“Are you from the Caribbean?” Eric ventured. “Most Americans wouldn't ask about graves. Where are your people from?”

Caines glanced at him and back out to sea. “St. Croix.”

“Oh, yeah, the US Virgins. I've been there. I used to travel around the Caribbean looking for a place to live when I retired, using all my vacations to go to different islands. I went to St. Thomas and St. Croix on one of those trips. It took me years, but I finally found the spot. . . .”

When Caines didn't answer, Eric walked to a driftwood tree trunk and sat down. A small crab scurried around his sandals and disappeared into a hole. Over the water, a pelican dove and snatched at a breakfast tidbit. This was the bar owner's favorite time of day in Largo, just after the sun had risen and before the village had sprung to life. Within a few minutes he felt his shoulders relaxing, felt more tolerant of Caines, who was ignoring him, his strong legs in their khaki shorts still planted in the sand. On the trip from Montego Bay, he'd said he was forty-five, a good age, the bar owner thought, for a man to go into a venture like a hotel. If it failed, there'd be time to recoup. He wouldn't be throwing his retirement savings down the drain.

A passing car blew its horn, the sharp rat-a-tat-tat startling Caines. He walked over to the log.

“Beautiful spot, man,” he said, sitting down and brushing sand off his shoes. “Seems like a waste, all this undeveloped land.”

“Probably didn't occur to them. It was originally a larger parcel of about fifty acres owned by Miss Mac's father, and when he died it was divided among the heirs. I think they must have done a little farming on it at one time.”

“Don't people use the beach?”

“Not much. They prefer the beaches near Port Antonio.”

“We'd have to be real careful about guests swimming in the ocean,” Caines said, and bit his lip. “We'd need a lifeguard, for sure. We don't want no law suits from families back in the States.”

“I know. That's why—if we build the place—we should put in a swimming pool, like you suggested. We'd also have our registration form include a waiver in the event of a drowning, that's what the lawyer said. We can't be too careful.”

The morning passed with a number of
we'd have to
s
and
what-if
s tossed back and forth between the men, trying on for size how it would feel to be partners. Questioned about his hotel experience, Eric told of his successes and failures. The inn had always been full in the tourist season, from mid-December to mid-April, and they'd depended on repeat business and referrals. But he'd made a mistake with the size: fifteen rooms had been barely enough to cover operating costs. Caines confessed that, although he was good at managing small businesses, he had no experience in the tourist industry and would need help.

“I made my money with beauty salons and a few strip malls,” he said.

“Then why go into a hotel?”

“I guess I'm tired of fights between stores that want to sell the same products, salons going belly-up halfway through their lease. I really want to get out of those businesses altogether, but it's not the time to sell, you know, so I thought I'd make some other investments, like this.”

“Why here? It's beautiful, true, but it's—there's more than meets the eye to doing business in Jamaica. There's a ton of government paperwork to begin with, and we have a problem with crime. You know that, I'm sure.”

“Heck, the whole Caribbean has crime, the Virgin Islands, probably the whole Third World, even the US. I mean, look at Detroit, New York—”

“But we have some serious stuff here.”

“I know it's risky,” the visitor said, shaking his head. “But I like to take calculated risks, that's just me. And for some reason, I love the idea of owning a hotel here. Maybe it's the idea of owning a piece of Jamaica. When I was coming up, we spoke of Jamaicans with respect, you know. To us in the Virgin Islands, Jamaicans stood up for their rights. When they got their independence—”

“In '62.”

“I heard about it from my people—they felt that that was what we should have been doing, that we should have fought the Danes, not just sat back and allowed them to sell us to the US in 1917. A lot of Crucians were ticked off that they had no say in the deal. Then when Jamaica and Trinidad got their independence, my grandfather used to say that we should have been getting ours, too. He used to talk about Jamaica like he was talking about the Holy Land. He and my great-grandfather were Marcus Garvey men from way back, when they used to get Garvey's papers from Jamaica on the docks in Frederiksted. It's like I'm honoring the old men with this business, you know. And I want to see what it's like operatin' in a black-run country that's independent of Big Brother. You mightn't understand it, but—”

“It's different from doing business in the US, just know it.”

“Cameron warned me already.” The man was not to be deterred, it seemed, and Eric, who'd been wondering if Caines had the stamina to endure, realized that the man's resolve to build a hotel probably outstripped his own, because Caines had a motive greater than money.

“You've done business with Cameron before, right?” Eric asked, tipping one shoulder down to his companion.

“Yeah, nice guy. Know him long?”

“His sister was living on the island out there last year.” Eric's throat tightened. “Then Cameron came down to find her and we became friends.” Caines didn't need to know that Eric and Simone had been lovers, that he and Cameron hadn't talked for a while because Eric wouldn't let him take Simone off the island against her will, or that he still thought about her at night while he sat on his verandah listening to boleros on Radio Santiago de Cuba.

“Cameron and me go back about nine, ten years,” Caines said. “He's sold me most of my malls in Queens and in the Bronx. I never had no reason to doubt him.” He rubbed the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “Good man, Cameron, good man.”

Eric looked sideways at Caines. He seemed solid, sure of himself. One had more reason to trust a man who wasn't handsome, whose nose was more square than round, whose lips were unusually thin for a black man. And there was something about his eyes, eyes that looked straight at you and burned with intensity at times.

“What's
your
story?” Caines asked with one brow lifted.

“Oh, I had enough of New York. I went there from Shaker Heights, Ohio, right out of high school, worked with a paper company my whole career. But I always wanted to live in a warm climate.” Eric blew out of the side of his mouth. “Hell, I couldn't wait to get out of New York when I retired. Like I said, I'd started scouting for a place to live before I moved down. Then I found Largo and decided I wanted to run a hotel here.”

“And a hurricane wiped it out, Cameron told me.”

“Yeah, sank the land connecting it to the main road. I swam to shore in the middle of it, from there to there, close to where my bar is now.” They both gazed at the bar. Even from this distance it was embarrassing, the thatched roof Simone's rent money had paid for already looking shabby.

Caines clapped his hands. “At least you didn't fold up your tent and run back to the States.”

“You mean, with my tail between my legs.”

“The bar was a good idea.”

“Shad's idea,” Eric said, nodding. He'd always liked to give people their due; it took the responsibility off you, anyway.

“I like Shad,” Cameron said. “He's a straight-up kind of guy. I'm glad you're thinking of making him a partner. We'll need someone from the community, someone who know the lay of the land.” A twist of St. Croix had slipped into the man's language, like he was feeling more at ease.

“Since we're both foreigners, we'll need a local partner, anyway.”

“The island,” Caines said, turning to it. “The report said it might be leased to a Horace—I can't remember his name—for a campsite.”

“Horace MacKenzie, Miss Mac's son, our lawyer. He wants the right to lease it from us in exchange for doing all our legal work, free of charge. He jumped on the campsite idea.”

“Not a bad idea, passive income for us.”

Eric looked down at his old, sandy toes. He saw Joseph's handsome profile outlined by the dim light coming from the bar. “My son and I were sitting on my verandah one night and he brought it up.” Joseph had asked if Simone had lived in a tent on the island. It had made him think of camping, he'd said, and of using the island as a campsite.

Caines stood slowly, easing his shorts away from his thighs. “When can we go and see the contractor?”

“Lambert Delgado? He's away for a couple days, but he gets back at the end of the week.”

“And I'll talk to Miss Mac about the property.”

“I think she'll sell,” Eric said. “Ready to head back?”

“I'm going to stay here awhile.”

“If there's anything else . . .”

The visitor's face remained blank and Eric started back toward the bar. When he got to the brow of a hill, he looked back at Caines, now standing shoeless and sockless on the sand. He was stripping off his T-shirt, followed by his shorts and his briefs. With hardly an ounce of fat on him, he stood still for a few seconds, an Afro-Greek sculpture. Then he waded into the foam, the waves crashing around his legs and thighs, dove into an oncoming wave, and disappeared.

Just when Eric began to worry, he popped up farther out and swung around to face the shore, his upturned face gleaming with joy, a man returning to his roots—the hotel an excuse to do it.