The Sea Grape Tree (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

L
eaning into the full-length mirror, Sarah layered on a coat of bright red lipstick. Her lips were not too bad, the bottom one almost pouty.

“Blessed from birth,” Penny had pronounced while making Sarah up for an exhibition. “The celebs would pay a fortune for them.”

After dabbing on face powder (
geisha white,
Penny called it) and some blush, Sarah swished mascara on her lashes. Her skimpy eyebrows she left natural, hating penciled brows like her mother's, and pulled a few strands of hair over the eyebrows. The smile on her lips ended with a shake of the head. The image reflected back to her was undoubtedly the tallest, palest woman on the island, swan neck and all. To make matters worse, the lavender dress looked like a dowdy country cousin to her wild urban hair, which had frizzed into a red dandelion. By tomorrow she'd be the laughingstock of the village.

The Friday-night expedition had been announced at dinner by Roper the evening before. They were to go to the Largo Bay Bar for a drink before sunset.

“They have an excellent cook,” he'd added, “so maybe we'll stay for a bite.”

After moussing her hair one last time, Sarah ascended the stairs to the living room, and she and Ford waited for the others on the deck. To Ford's delight, a hummingbird was poking its beak into the hibiscus flowers in a large pot. Her fellow guest, she'd discovered, was a member of the Audubon Society, a wildlife organization in the States.

“I'm usually the only black guy on the trips,” he'd said once with a sad smile. “It takes the other birders a while to get used to it.”

Over the five days since he'd arrived, she had become friends with the quiet trumpeter. They'd walked on two afternoons along the main road, she under her floppy hat and he in a Panama hat he'd bought in Ecuador. While he scouted the trees for birds, pointing out a woodpecker to her once, they talked about her life in London—tame compared to his in New York—and described Harlem and Camden to each other. On a few occasions, he'd referred to Jewel by automatically saying “we,” but he never brought up the miscarriage or the breakup, which was fine with Sarah.

Roper joined them on the deck, followed in a few minutes by Sonja in a long cotton dress, her hair held back by a scarf with an African print. Carthena came out of the kitchen as they were preparing to leave.

“Miss, since you going out, can I leave early tonight?”

“No problem,” Sonja said. “Enjoy yourself.” The young woman wished them good night and returned to the kitchen.

When they arrived at the bar, there were already a few people scattered around.

“Shad!” Roper called to the bartender as soon as they seated themselves at a table.

“Coming right up!” the petite man called from behind the bar, the same man who had shooed away the teenagers. Within a few minutes, he rushed to the table and Roper introduced him to the visitors as “Shadrack, the power behind the throne of the Largo Bay Bar.”

“I know this lady already,” he said, tipping his chin at Sarah. “She was walking on the beach.” She smiled to thank him again and he answered with a broad grin, complete with the gap between his teeth, and the thought crossed her mind that, had she been a portrait painter, she would have asked him to be her model.

“Who you painting now?” Shad asked Roper.

“A young girl from Port Antonio,” the artist reported. “How Miss Beth doing?” The easy, affectionate way the men talked about their personal lives showed Roper as very much a part of Largo—a surprise to Sarah, who'd assumed he was an outsider.

“Boss man,” an emaciated man said as he shook Roper's hand. “Miss Olive want you to paint her before she die. She say if I see you I was to tell you. She say she want a painting more than a photograph, because a photograph going to fade, but a painting last long after you dead.”

“Tri,” Roper said with a big smile, “tell Miss Olive I stop by her house next week.” The artist switched from Standard English to Jamaican dialect without batting an eye, something that made Sarah now appreciate why Sonja (whom she'd been pitying) might want to be with him.

Ford inquired about the island a few hundred yards out, its ruins bathed in the orange-gold light of sunset.

“That's where the old Largo Bay Inn was,” Sonja answered. “A woman was living out there by herself last summer. It caused quite a commotion.”

“Why was she there?” Sarah asked.

“She wanted to be alone, I guess. I never met her, but—but I always admired her. It takes a lot of guts for a woman to do that in Jamaica.”

A tall, middle-aged man with a shock of platinum hair approached the table and Roper introduced him as Eric, the owner of both the old hotel and the bar. For a bar owner, Sarah thought, he seemed odd, even shy, perhaps an introvert like herself. Blushing, pulling back his hair, the American asked if they were staying for dinner and Roper said yes. Shad took their order and the four were left to wait, commenting on the streaks of color filling the sky. The bar's lights were turned on, including a string of blinking white bulbs under the bar's counter, and the crowd grew by a few more tables.

Ford turned to Sarah. “Not exactly a London pub, is it?”

She liked that he knew a lot about England from his frequent trips, and she'd already promised to attend his next performance in London. Penny would encourage her to sleep with him, no doubt, but it was enough for Sarah that Ford was her friend, an admired musician and her first black friend, and she was looking forward to introducing him to Penny as exactly that.

Dinner came with Roper sucking on goat bones, Ford and Sonja on chicken bones, and Sarah using a knife and fork to separate the bones from her snapper. When the dishes had been cleared away, Eric approached again.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked with a hangdog expression, like he needed the company.

“Have a seat,” Sonja said. The bar owner sat down heavily between Sarah and Ford.

“How is the new hotel coming?” Roper said. “Lambert told me the investor guy was down.”

“He just came in,” Eric replied. “I'll introduce you.” He waved Shad over and said something to him.

Shortly after, four people approached the table with drinks in their hands. In the lead was a couple: a man Eric introduced as the investor, Danny Caines, and a plump woman named Janet wearing a bright floral dress. Two men, who looked to be in their forties, trailed behind them. They were friends he'd made in Ocho Rios, Caines said, and they were visiting Largo for the evening. One of them, Alphonsus, a man with an imposing belly, wore a large gold necklace with a cross, and the other, Emile, was a slim, intense man in a busy gray shirt. The two men stood a step behind the couple and soon moved back to the bar.

By far the most imposing member of the group, Danny Caines carried himself like a man who was proud of who he was. He wasn't handsome, but he had strong features, and his bald head made Sarah think of gangster films with villains who were really good guys. And there was something about his complexion that stayed with her, a deep brown with a hint of auburn, like old blood.

The woman with him, Janet, smiled broadly at everyone and sat down, keeping her knees tightly together. Caines shook hands with everyone at the table and, for a long time after, Sarah could feel the warmth of his large hand wrapped around hers, see the eyes, soft gray like a dove's breast, eyes that beamed straight into hers before they blinked. She'd never known that a black man could have gray eyes and, embarrassed, she looked away even before he moved on to shake Ford's hand.

Two additional chairs were added to the table, and no sooner had the couple taken their seats than Roper started drilling Danny about the hotel and, after fielding the questions about his intentions and the progress thus far, Danny asked a few of his own. He wanted to know how long Roper had lived in Largo, why he'd chosen the village to live in, and what the prospects were for future development in the area.

While they talked, Sarah observed how the investor controlled the conversation, had controlled it from the beginning. He didn't do it by talking louder or faster or more than anyone else. He did it with the power of his personality, which pulsed across the table, encircled them, held them captive. Without even seeking the spotlight, he owned it.

It wasn't long before Danny Caines inquired about everyone else at the table. He was pleased to hear that Ford was a musician in New York and wanted to know where he could go to hear him play. They spent a few minutes talking about the trumpet and about Danny's lack of musical talent.

“I play business instruments, man,” he admitted with a rich laugh, “not musical ones, but I love to hear people who can play.” When it came to Sarah, he asked only where she was from.

“England—London, actually,” she said, adding quickly, “I'm an artist.”

Danny looked down at his drink and back up at her. “I dabble a bit myself. We should talk.” He turned to Roper, switching gears easily. “Tell me something, how often do you have hurricanes here?”

“About every five to eight years,” Roper told him. “We're expecting one anytime soon, but then, it could be another ten years. You never know with hurricanes.”

“Do you think the bay back there, Miss Mac's land, would be protected enough?” Caines asked.

Eric jumped in for the first time. “If we strap the roofs down, like the new building codes say, Lambert says we should be fine.”

“What about tsunamis? How high do the waves rise in a storm?” Caines continued his research, making the locals squirm. Then he suddenly changed the subject to the last election, and Roper started in on the politicians.

For the rest of the evening, Sarah was more conscious of Danny Caines than of anyone else at the table. She wanted to ask him about his interest in art, which was ridiculous, since he only dabbled in it, but she spent the time listening, wondering if Caines and Janet were sleeping together, wishing she'd had something brighter to wear. Every now and again she held a sidebar conversation with Ford and Sonja, once with Eric, but Caines ignored the parallel chatter and never addressed her again.

When Roper insisted on paying for the evening's expenses, Ford leaned over to Sarah and whispered, “I guess that means I'll be paying next time.”

“Better start saving,” she muttered, “because I can't, penniless as I am.” They laughed quietly, her eyes following Danny as he rejoined his two friends at the bar. Close beside him was Janet, who had thus far smiled wordlessly.

The bill paid, Sarah's party started back to their car, walking in front of a table at the rear of the restaurant where Carthena sat drinking a beer. She was wearing a pink striped dress that matched the beads in her hair. Her companions were two older women, perhaps in their forties. One, a slim woman with bulging eyes and a straight nose, fingered her cigarette as they passed, her hair piled high in a fancy braided hairdo. The other woman was dressed in a glamorous purple one-shoulder blouse, but she'd had too much to drink already, her lips set in a crooked smile and her eyelids having trouble staying open.

Carthena smiled at Roper and Sonja, smiled wider for Ford. When it came to Sarah, the last in the line, the housekeeper looked away almost guiltily, as if she'd just been talking about her. Settling into the car and buckling up, Sarah thought about the woman's averted eyes. Carthena was probably moody, she decided, or she had expected to be tipped, and she reminded herself to ask Sonja about the protocol for handling helpers.

The thought lasted only a few seconds. By the time Roper swung the car onto the main road, it had been erased by the memory of dove-gray eyes, eyes that had stared at her and blinked.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

W
atch your toes!” Shad called while the young man handed Beth from the riverbank into the seat of his bamboo raft.

He watched her sit down carefully, avoiding the spaces between the logs and adjusting the straps of the bathing suit borrowed from Joella. Under the seat she placed a tightly folded plastic bag (
we don't want it to get wet,
she'd told him) with their clothes and money.

Still on the riverbank, Shad handed a covered basket to the raftsman. “Put the food somewhere safe,” he instructed, and the man passed the basket to Beth.

“You okay?” Shad yelled at her, but his words were drowned out by the roar of the river filling the valley. Only thirty feet across in its upper reaches, the Rio Grande galloped down the mountain under overhanging trees, lashing at the rocks and coarse gray sand lining the banks.

“Your turn,” the raftsman said, and held out his hand to Shad, who insisted on jumping onto the raft without help. The long, narrow craft lurched and the youth—Carlton was his name, he'd said—sucked his teeth.

“You ever see my
raas claat
trial?” the teenager exclaimed as he pushed his pole deep to balance the raft.

A few yards away, Danny and Janet waited on another raft—the American's red trunks filling most of the narrow seat. Janet's hips, threatening to erupt out of a gold bikini, were crammed into the space that was left. At the front of their raft, the raftsman held his long bamboo pole in the water, poised for takeoff.

“Let's go!” called Carlton, and both boys pushed off with their poles, maneuvering into the center of the river, heading for the ocean.

“I never thought I would ever ride a raft on the Rio Grande,” Beth shouted into Shad's ear.

“I hear you,” Shad shouted. He arched his back, tried to get comfortable on the bamboo seat, tried to unkink his lower spine, a daily ritual that came with a sagging mattress.

The invitation from Danny the Saturday evening before had come as a surprise and even caused Shad some confusion. Rafting on the Rio Grande was reserved for people with US dollars to burn, not people like him. But he'd loved the idea and looked forward to telling Beth that night when he got home. It was a good way to end their weekend, which had started badly with Beth's announcement that she was going into Port Antonio on Monday to look for work.

“Like how my sister still living there,” she'd said while he was eating breakfast, “she can help me inquire around.” She'd sat down opposite, putting the baby on her lap and a bowl of mashed banana in front of him. Shad had kept buttering his johnnycake, the fried roll he loved.

Beth put a spoonful of mashed banana into Joshua's mouth. “Valerie tell me she hear of something with a lady in a big house, cleaning and washing. She tell the woman her sister looking for a job.”

Plastering guava jelly on the johnnycake, Shad pictured Rickia seated at the bar counter doing homework while he poured a drink for a customer, Joshua on his hip. “Sound like more than
inquiring around
to me,” he said. “You talking about interviewing for a job. You talking about leaving me in charge of Rickia and Joshua while you working.”

“I tell you I make the arrangements already,” she insisted. “You don't have nothing to do.”

Gulping the bread down, Shad held up a warning finger. “You and me know that when one thing go wrong, when Rickia have no school because of a teacher meeting, that is
me
have to do the mothering. You can't take care of them all the way in Port Antonio when something happen to Miss Livingston. Who going to look after them, not me?”

“You mean to say, Shadrack Myers, that five thousand dollars a week more not going to help us?” Beth had countered, waving a spoon with mashed banana in front of Joshua's open mouth.

“You realize that five thousand Jamaican dollars sound like a lot, but that is not even sixty US dollars? If you not careful, you going to spend the whole thing on taxis from Largo to Port Antonio.”

The argument had gone round and round, circling Beth's now-firm decision. When no agreement was reached, his partner had switched to another reason why she had to work miles away.

“And I going to find out how much it cost to put Ashanti in the autism school. If I working, we might can afford to send her. She not learning nothing sitting down here. The teacher don't spend no time with her.”

Shad had shaken his head and left for his morning shift feeling unsettled. At lunchtime, he decided not to go to Saturday market, where Beth was selling vegetables from their garden. Instead, he trotted next door to eat with Miss Mac. Feared as a schoolteacher (her reputation enhanced by the tight gray bun and steel-rimmed glasses), the elder had softened in retirement and become Shad's mentor, the person he sought out when something was troubling him.

“Beth just hard of hearing,” he complained over his bowl of red pea soup. “She won't listen to no reason.”

“You sure you're listening to
her
?” Miss Mac said, clasping her hands in front of the twin mounds on the table. Even in school days, the woman had rested her breasts on the desk whenever she sat down, much to the children's delight.

“She do all the talking,” Shad protested. “I doing the listening.”

“Did you ask her exactly why she want to work in Port Antonio, why she not looking for work here?”

“She have all kind of reason. We going to have more money coming in, she can drive on the bus with Joella, she can pay for wedding, she can put Ashanti in school—every kind of reason.”

Miss Mac put her head on her fist, the moles on her face standing out more than he remembered. “Maybe she just want some freedom.”

“Beth have plenty freedom, man. She don't have no work to go to.”

“What you mean? She working all the time, taking care of you and the children, growing vegetables, selling them in the market, sewing clothes, cooking, cleaning. She don't have no time for herself. A woman need a little freedom sometimes.”

Shad had frowned. “Next thing—”

“Didn't you say she want to get married in a church? If she want to marry you, she not looking to run off. If you keep putting her off, though, and don't marry her like she want, she going to be miserable, and is you going to pay.”

The Saturday-afternoon lunch had ended with Shad admitting that Miss Mac had a point, although it still puzzled him that a woman would want her freedom and a wedding at the same time. And since it was obvious that Beth wasn't going to back down, he decided that simply allowing her to do what she was going to do anyway was probably the only solution, since he'd already lost the battle.

When he got home that night, Beth was in bed with her face turned to the wall and her head full of rollers for church. She was awake, he could tell, no snores coming from her.

“I know you vex because I didn't come to market today,” he said, offering a truce to the rollers. “I had lunch with Miss Mac.” She turned over and sighed, her eyes closed, and he knew she was listening, angry but listening. “But I have something nice to tell you.”

She opened her eyes and squinted at him in the lamplight. “First, you must say you sorry for not coming to market. I have to mind all four children, and Rickia have a quarrel with Joella, and Joella go off and leave me with the three of them. You know I need you to come help me Saturday, 'cause I can't handle all of them and sell vegetables at the same time.”

“Sorry.”

“Promise me you not going to do it again.”

“Promise.”

“What you have to tell me?”

“Danny invite us to go rafting on the Rio Grande with him and Janet.” He knew what it was about but didn't say. The investor wanted to see them close up so he could decide if he wanted to be in partnership with a bartender.

“We can't afford no rafting—” Beth started.

“He going to pay.”

The announcement had been met with slow, almost reluctant pleasure, if not the lovemaking he'd hoped for. Instead, she'd let him snuggle up to her while she planned her preparations, that she'd get up early to cook fried chicken, and that Joella would take the younger children to church and keep them after. Before they drifted off to sleep, he'd lifted his head and worked his lips between the rollers to kiss her on the ear.

“And you can go work in Port Antonio, even though I don't like it,” he'd muttered, to which she only harrumphed.

The Rio Grande took a deep curve to the right and Carlton used his pole to push them off the bank. Around the corner, the river widened and calmed and Shad leaned back in his seat. The ride between the rapids had been frightening for Beth, who, holding tightly to the basket on her lap with one hand, had squeezed his hand bloodless with the other and given yelps whenever they bounced against a rock. To make matters worse, another raftsman toting a tourist couple had competed with Carlton to shoot some of the rapids, both bellowing war cries like Indians as they shot through.

“You want to stop?” the youth asked when they approached a wide stretch of sand.

Shad looked back at Danny's raft. “Ask the man behind us.”

Danny agreed and they heard Janet call, “Yes, stop, driver,
stop
!”

The two rafts were beached and tied up together. After balancing his way off the raft, Shad took the lunch basket and helped Beth jump onto the gravelly sand.

“Thank Gawd!” Janet said when her raftsman helped her off. “I feeling sick. The thing just rocking and rolling. My belly feeling funny.” Plopping down on the old blanket Beth had spread, she rubbed her abdomen, large enough to make Shad grateful for his partner's one-piece suit.

“Here, have little tea to settle your stomach,” Beth coaxed Janet, feeling guilty, Shad knew, that she'd called her
a little opportunist
before they got into Danny's rental car.

Janet took a sip of ginger tea. “This taste good,” she said. “I still feel kind of—I wonder if I—I hope I not—”

“Not what?” Danny said, and sat down cross-legged on the blanket. “You mean—oh,
no,
don't even go there!” He was laughing but shaking his head with such force that it left no doubt that making babies with Janet was not part of his plan.

After lunch and while the raftsmen ate the leftovers Beth had given them, the two couples waded knee-deep into the river. Another raft passed with waving passengers and they waved back. As soon as the raft passed, Danny waded out deeper, rolled over, and swam backward away from them. Janet stood watching him, her hands on her hips.

“I can't get my hair wet,” she called to Danny.

“Well, don't come in,” he shouted back.

Looking pretty in a pink shower cap, Beth waded in up to her waist. “I want to float,” she told Shad. He obliged, holding her while she looked up into the overhanging tree, and he dug his toes into the sand against the current.

“This feel sweet,” she murmured. “I could do it forever.”

“You can't do it forever,” Shad chided her. “You have to go to Port Antonio to find a work tomorrow, remember? My time to stay home now.” He tickled her side and she, giggling and protesting, tried to keep her legs up. He'd just gotten her relaxed and floating again when Janet waded out beside them.

“Pshaw, man,” she said, pouting. “Watch him, he just swim off and leave me.”

“He soon come back,” Shad said.

“What he doing over there?” Janet said, and sucked her teeth.

Shad scanned the gushing river, unable to spot Danny. After a minute, he saw the investor standing in the midst of a shady grove on the opposite bank. He was standing under a massive cedar tree, his hands flat against the bark and his eyes fixed on the branches above, almost like he was listening to the tree.