The list of tasks seemed endless. The first one was moving Miss Mac and her possessions to her son Horace’s house. Shad’s best friend, Frank, had been corralled to help load up Eric’s Jeep and a truck rented by Horace on Thursday coming, the day before the sale of her nine acres to the new hotel company. The other tasks Shad would take on one at a time.
Although the hotel was the priority for Shad (the turning point of his life, he’d decided), in the eyes of Beth and his four children, the wedding was by far the most important of the year’s events. Everyone was getting into the act. When he walked into his living room after his Saturday-morning shift, Joella, his eldest, was trying on the bridesmaid’s dress her mother had sewn for her. From one of the two bedrooms came the sound of a sewing machine roaring away, the vibrations shaking the small wooden house.
“What you think, Dadda?” the seventeen-year-old asked above the noise. She twirled around to show off the full, pink skirt. “I think the top should be strapless, but Mamma say that the wedding is in a church and we must cover up. It look old-fashioned to me.”
“I think you lucky to have a mother who can sew such a pretty dress, that’s what I think.” Shad patted her respectably covered shoulder.
In the bedroom, squeezed between the wall and the foot of the bed, Beth’s nose was inches away from the whirring machine, her toes barely touching the foot pedal. One hand held down a swath of shiny blue fabric, the other fed it under the needle. Sweat was sticking the T-shirt to her plump arms, a drop trickling down her neck under the permed hair.
Shad leaned against the door and crossed his arms. “You want the fan?” he shouted above the roar. Beth nodded without looking up, and he clicked on the ceiling fan. “Like how is Saturday, you not selling in the market today?” he asked just as the machine twanged to a stop.
“You see what happen? You make the thread break.” Drawing the air through her teeth in a long, disgusted suck, she wet the thread and restrung it. “I don’t have time for no market today. I still have to finish Rickia’s dress.”
“You can’t get a little time off from the library during the week to do your sewing?”
“Who going to clean the toilets for them?”
“We have plenty vegetables ready to sell, you know, tomatoes and string beans and potatoes. I been keeping them up on my day off. What you want to do with them?”
“See if you can sell them, nuh?” Beth resumed her sewing.
Before his evening shift, Shad lugged a large basket with vegetables up the Delgados’ driveway. He walked to the rear of the house and opened the back door.
“Miss Bertha, you here?” he called into the quiet of the kitchen.
A large dog crossed the black and white tiles toward him wagging its tail.
“Sheba, how you doing? They give away all your puppies?” Shad patted the chocolate Lab, keeping well away. Nobody wanted a bartender with dog hair on his pants. When Sheba padded off, Shad put the basket on the counter and washed his hands, wiping his brow with the paper towel afterward. “Miss Bertha?”
“Coming, coming.” The chunky housekeeper appeared in her uniform, fanning herself. After inquiries about the wedding, she settled down to sorting and counting the vegetables. “I glad you bring them. I couldn’t get to the market today, I been so busy.”
“Is that Shad?” said a voice from the doorway.
Shad looked up. “Shannon, is you?”
The old friends embraced, holding each other tight for a second, Shad’s head reaching only to the woman’s ear.
“It’s been so long,” Shannon said, “but you look just the same!”
“And you fill out a little,” Shad said, laughing. He didn’t want to say that she was lovely, lovely as ever, with her upturned nose and peachy skin, looking as if she should be milking Canadian cows. “You was kind of mauger before, you know.”
“You’re such a diplomat, Shad,” she said, her smile wide and easy, the intelligent eyes looking straight at him.
“When did you come?”
“Just got here. We took a taxi because Jennifer and the kids had to go into Kingston for some medical appointments. I heard your voice, so I had to—”
“And who is that—that pretty girl?” Shad interrupted, pointing to the somber-looking adolescent at the door. “Is that Eve?”
“That’s right,” Shannon said with a tight smile.
In response to her mother’s wave, the girl came forward, almost dragging her feet.
“Take your earbuds out, Eve, and come and meet Shad,” Shannon said, gesturing.
The girl pulled the plugs out of her ears and stuffed them in her pocket. Something about the child was unhappy, he thought, her eyes down most of the time, the round face inherited from her mother made plainer by her refusal to let it smile. The blouse she wore didn’t help either; it slouched off her shoulder and sank into her hunched chest.
“We glad to have you in Largo, Eve.” Shad touched her arm and she pulled away, only an inch or so, and he dropped his hand. “Can you believe, I know your mother from before you was born? She used to come to the Largo Bay Inn—and we love to have her every time.” The bartender started playacting Shannon’s coming into the lobby, burdened with her bags and cameras, looking for her taxi driver.
“And Rufus was always late for you, remember?” he said to Shannon.
“Like yesterday.” She laughed. “And I would wait by the lobby bar with you until he came.”
“You tell me about Canada and how the leaves change colors and what snow feel like on your face.”
“And you’d tell me where I should take photographs. Remember that time Rufus and I went looking for this river gorge you’d told us about, and how we got lost for hours? Boy, did I let you have it the next day!”
They sat at the kitchen table while Miss Bertha went to get the money for the vegetables, and Eve slunk out the door. Shannon asked the names of the children (four now?) and what they were doing. She and Eve might still be here for the wedding, she added, but she wasn’t sure. It depended on how much work she got done. Although it meant two more mouths to feed, Shad assured her they were invited to the wedding. Eve didn’t look as if she’d eat curry goat, anyway.
Miss Bertha came back with the money. “The two of you just make yourself comfy. I going to the back to do laundry.”
“Tell me what happened to the hotel, Shad,” Shannon said after Miss Bertha had left. “I was looking at it from the verandah and it—it just broke my heart. It was so beautiful. It’s not even part of the mainland anymore, nobody told me that. After the storm hit, I kept trying to call, but I couldn’t get through for weeks. They kept saying the circuits were down. The news on TV was pretty dismal, but I had no idea . . .” She stopped, blinking hard. “When I finally got through to the Delgados, Eric was staying here, and he—he just made light of it, said there was a bit of damage which would take some time to repair, but I wasn’t to worry about it. He never said a word about it becoming an island, and we never discussed it again.
“Well”—she looked away—“we don’t talk much, anyway. But the next thing Jennifer said was that he was opening a bar. I thought—I don’t know what I thought—that the hotel was being repaired, slowly, maybe.”
Shad started in on the dreary story that he hated to tell but she had to hear. “It was a terrible storm, terrible. When the radio tell us it was coming, Mistah Eric sent the guests to the big hotels in Port Antonio and Ocho Rios, and he told the receptionists and housekeepers to go home. The men stayed and battened down the shutters and put the furniture up on blocks. Then he told me to drive the men home that afternoon and park the Jeep in Mistah Lambert’s garage.”
“Why didn’t Eric leave?”
“He say he have to stay in case anything happen. Early next morning, now, the wind start picking up and it was dark, dark. You could hardly see the gate in front of your house it was so dark. Then Albert start to scream—”
“Albert?”
“The hurric
ane—no baby in Jamaica call Albert after that. Anyway, the wind start, a hundred and eighty miles an hour, pure hellfire wind, I telling you. Everything was blowing down, shutters tearing off, branches breaking, dog and cat flying through the air. The roof come right off the house next door to me, but my house was good. I just finish putting on a new roof with the last of the money Granny leave me, so Beth, me, and the children was fine. But the village, Lord, help us, the village look terrible when we come out after it was over, almost nighttime then. Every blade of grass gone, every house near the beach get flood out.”
Shannon’s eyes opened wide. “Did anyone die?”
“Two people dead—Miss Queenie grandbaby when a tree fall on her house, and an old man who didn’t have much sense. But we was lucky in my house, only two windows break.”
“What happened to the—the driveway to the hotel?”
“You remember Old Man Job telling the boss from long time to build a retaining wall along the driveway?”
“I remember that.”
“And the boss always say he don’t have no money to build no wall. For seven years, people telling him to build a wall, even Mistah Lambert—I hear him with my own ears. The driveway going to wash away, Mistah Lambert say, but the boss was too hard ears. He say his hotel strong, no storm can mash it up.
“Then come Albert, and the boss couldn’t believe his eyes because he never gone through a hurricane before. The waves come up twenty feet, come right over the cliff and sweep straight through the hotel. He alone was there, and he climb on top of the reception desk to stay away from the water, so he say.”
“He never thought of running away?”
“Too late, rain was falling thick, thick. He have to wait for the eye of the hurricane so he could make a dash for it.”
“And did he?”
“When the eye come through, the wind and rain stop and the waves get lower. So he come down off the desk and walk outside and take a look at what happen. The roof on the dining room was gone and the roof over the other building where he was, the guest rooms and reception area, was coming off. He know he have to leave now, because the wind going to come back, and he start wading down the driveway before the second half of the hurricane hit.”
The little man stood up, gesturing. “He get to the end of the guest-room building now—and the driveway gone. It wash away, just like Old Man Job and Mistah Lambert had said. No land was left between the hotel and the main road. He find himself on an island.”
“Oh, my God.”
“He decide to jump in the water and start swimming.” Shad’s arms churned, windmill-like, in the imaginary ocean. “He swimming, swimming, thinking he could make it, but he never realize the waves was still high. Halfway across now, the storm start to lick again behind the eye, and the waves get big again. He said he never swallow so much water in all his life, but he make it to the beach and crawl up to the main road, naked. He decide to come to the Delgados’ house, and he fighting wind and rain now, dodging tree limb and everything, crawling up the driveway—this very driveway outside here—and he make it to the verandah and bang on the door, and Mistah Lambert pull him inside.”
Shad sat down, drained, and they both looked out the kitchen window at the orphaned island. From this distance, the ocean surrounding it looked as harmless as a baby’s blanket.
“And he built the bar,” Shannon said, adding a sigh that mourned the old and accepted the new.
“But like his spirit die with the hotel, and he didn’t have no money to build it back.”
“I had no idea—”
“But time is longer than rope—you ever hear that saying? It look like we going to have another hotel now.”
“Another hotel? Is Eric building it?”
“Is a three-partner business—the boss going to be the managing partner, then an American man named Danny Caines going to put up the money, and me. I going to be a partner, too, and help run it. How you like that?”
After answering Shannon’s questions, Shad said he had to go to work, and she walked him to the front door.
“Tell Beth hello for me,” she said. “We’ll have to labrish—isn’t that the word for ‘chat’? I’ve almost forgotten my patois.”
“You better brush up on your wedding labrish,” he said, shaking his head, “because is that Beth going to talk the whole time.”
Starting down the driveway with his basket, Shad turned to wave, and Shannon waved back, her smile sad but hopeful. Off to the right, the young girl was looking through a living-room window, a frown on her farm-girl face.
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
The four young people arrived in their open-sided Wrangler with its canvas top rolled back—as if their tans could get any darker—and ordered Red Stripes.
“From the mud on the car, looks like you’ve been doing a bit of driving,” Eric ventured after he’d served them. He never knew how to speak to this new breed of visitors with their sun-bleached hair and braided bracelets, not an inch of fat on their bodies.
“Yeah, we’ve just come down from the Blue Mountains,” one of the men said, tattoos from his shoulders to his wrists. “We were hoping to find some beaches where we could kitesurf, but we haven’t found any yet.”
“Kitesurf?”
“You know, the big wing things you surf over the water with?”
“That’s a new one on me.”
“It’s really great in Aruba,” one woman said. “They have those long, flat beaches.”
Eric looked toward the parking lot. Shad was always better with these types. “Maybe you should try Negril.”
“Too many tourists,” the other boy said with a grin that boasted a half-broken tooth in front, a badge of kitesurfing honor, perhaps. The four left twenty long minutes and a small tip later.
Eric turned on the radio as he cleaned off the counter. A news reporter was talking about a shoot-out in Kingston’s torrid Mountain View neighborhood, two gunmen killed by police, and he switched off the radio. A man could hear only so much bad news when he had no money in the bank. He was piling beer bottles into the empties crate when Shad appeared, balancing a basket on his head.
“Is that your new job, market woman?”
“Good for my posture.” The bartender took down the basket. “It kept knocking me on my leg coming down from the Delgados’ house.”
“What were you doing up there?”
“Selling vegetables—I turn market woman now, like you say.” Shad went around the partition to the kitchen and returned without the basket. He started bustling around, preparing the bar for the Saturday-evening clientele.
“You know you’re late, right?”
“Sorry, boss, I started talking.” Shad flashed the Bugs Bunny grin he used to get himself out of trouble. “And you know who I was talking to?”
“Let me guess.” Eric turned away. “Shannon.” She was finally here, not two thousand miles away anymore—but across the street and in full view of the blighted hotel. “Did you see Eve?”
“Yes.”
“How was she?”
“She going to need time to get to know us.”
“I better go up to Lambert’s.”
Eric returned to his apartment and took a shower. As he shaved, he leaned in to the mirror, examining the new grooves around his eyes. He’d deteriorated since Shannon had last seen him. The Caribbean had a way of beating up white guys, turning their skin red and dry, but he cleaned up pretty good—even if his bar was just a shack with barstools.
Minutes after he emerged from his apartment, he saw Jennifer, Casey, Shannon, and Eve (Sheba trotting behind) crossing the road. Shad scurried away to the kitchen, as if he couldn’t bear to watch.
“Hey, there,” Jennifer called as they walked up the conch-lined path. She was wearing shorts and sandals, Casey on her heels, a smaller, browner version of her mother.
A step behind them, Shannon waved with a book in her hand. She looked . . . like a woman, Eric thought, no lon
ger the gangly fawn he’d first met or the anxious mother he’d last seen. Her hair, which used to be short, now fell to her shoulders, a few gray strands sparkling among the brown, and she was wearing a flowing white skirt and blouse. Her long strides had a gracefulness, a self-assurance, he hadn’t seen before.
“Hello, you handsome devil,” Jennifer said and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Eric,” Shannon said, holding the book between them as she leaned in to kiss his cheek, a cool, clean scent around her. He didn’t remember her wearing perfume before.
“Good to see you,” he replied.
“Hey, Uncle Eric, whazzup?” Casey bubbled.
“You know what?” Eric said after she’d hugged him. “Your father is going to have to beat off the boys soon.”
Casey boasted that she’d just had her thirteenth birthday. “I’m a teenager now.”
“How’s boarding school?”
“Finished for the summer, that’s all we need to know.” She grinned.
“Eve, come say hello to your father,” Shannon said, turning around.
A gloomy shadow to her mother’s glowing presence, his daughter loitered behind, the torn jeans and baggy blouse matching the tangle of hair that hid one eye. She didn’t look like a criminal, just a shy girl hoping to avoid attention.
“Welcome to Largo Bay, Eve.” He held on to her stiff arms to give her a kiss and she leaned over to pat Sheba as soon as he released her.
“She’s still getting used to the heat, I think,” her mother commented.
“Good reminder,” he said, “let’s all have something cool to drink. I’ll get Shad.”
After Eric returned from the kitchen with the bartender, Solomon came shuffling in, his white chef’s uniform (a souvenir from the old hotel) starched and pressed down to the fraying cuffs and collar. Holding his hat in one hand, the tall man lowered his chin and stared at the woman before him.
The Rhythm of the August Rain Page 4
