“Jah, the Beloved, the Wise,” he called above the crick-crack of the fire, “your brethren come to you to ask blessings—blessings on the food, on the queens who made it, and on the feast. And I and I come before our emperor, the Most High Jah Rastafari, knowing you are everywhere around us. Your brethren walk before you in humility and follow your guidance, because wisdom is forgotten and overstanding is lost. Just as this fire represents the key to your presence, the judgment of the Almighty, may it also cleanse us all of wrongdoing. Jah and man, I and I, will keep all bad mind away from the door, now and forever more.”
“Jah Rastafari!” the group shouted.
“Eating time,” I-Verse said, releasing their hands.
Shad stared into the fire, the ganja making the crackling of the branches louder, the colors more vivid. He’d never noticed the greens and purples in flames before. A fire could hypnotize a man just as the sea did sometimes, but fire was like anger, the ocean like peace, and he preferred the latter.
By the time he made his way back to the bench, little room was left. “Give a man a seat, nuh?” he said to the teenager beside Shannon.
“Nuff respect,” the youth responded, and made space for the visitor. Chatter and laughter were building, spoons and forks clanking against bowls, the windy roar of the fire in the center.
Shannon touched Shad with her elbow, her purse clamped under her arm. “Should I ask I-Verse about Redemption again?”
A plate of stewed eggplant was calling to Shad. “Soon come, soon come,” he soothed as he spooned it into his bowl. “Like the man said, little patience. Eat something first.”
Shannon threw him an exasperated look and reached for the fish that Ransom had put down, an aroma of onions and thyme steaming from the dish.
I-Verse returned to Ransom’s side. “Redemption want you to join the reasoning.”
The professor looked at Shannon. “Do you mind? I won’t be gone long.” When she nodded, he picked up his bowl and followed I-Verse.
“Redemption was supposed to see me,” Shannon muttered to Shad. “I thought that was why we’re here.”
“Reasoning is a man thing.” Shad helped himself to the fish.
“A man thing?”
“They gone to talk about Rasta beliefs. When he ready to talk business, he will come to you.”
“When he wants to talk money, you mean.”
“He probably don’t know much, anyway.”
Shannon’s open mouth revealed half-munched fish. “He said he could help!”
“He keeping you in suspense, making you glad to get any crumb he can throw you.”
“Don’t you think he’s the man who—you know, the one Katlyn went off with? Something definitely registered with him when he saw her picture.”
“I think he taking advantage of you.”
“Don’t even go there, not after all this trouble, taking out money, coming to this thing, having that old man over there staring at me.”
“Who, him? He just an old-timer, some of them don’t trust white people.”
“He keeps looking at me like—he’s giving me the creeps with that stringy beard.”
“You a guest, man, Redemption invite you. He can’t do you nothing.”
When the bowls were cleared, someone passed Shad a joint, and he took one puff and then another. Shannon looked at it, wavering, but passed it on. Bread pudding was placed on the table.
“You not eating dessert?” Shad asked the teenager.
“No, my mother don’t make it. I and I don’t eat food she don’t make.”
“She must cook good then, because the eggplant was sweet and you eat that. Which one is your mother?”
“See her over there.” The youth pointed to a chubby woman in a yellow-and-black turban. “I-Verse wife.”
Shad frowned. “I thought Akasha was his wife.”
“Akasha his second wife. My mother is his first.”
“Two wife? How that work, star?”
The young man gave a half snort, half laugh. “Most of the time it okay.”
Shad whinnied. “I not going to try it with my baby mother, pure trouble that, fire-and-brimstone kind of trouble.”
“Were you born in this camp?” Shannon asked.
“Yes. The camp was here long time, though.”
“How long?” Shad asked.
“Thirty years. We celebrate our anniversary last year.”
The drumming had started again, this time louder, more urgent, calling the gathering from the tables.
“Round the fire,” the lead drummer called.
“Round the fire,” two women echoed, clapping and moving toward the center.
“Fire time, fire time,” a man chanted. Most of the diners joined them, the children’s hands held firmly as they approached the blaze with their parents.
The drummers started thumping out a tune, and the others sang, clapped, some with their heads bowed, the moonlight shimmering off the white shirts and tams.
Babylon is falling,
Babylon is falling.
Jah children leaving,
They leaving for Zion.
A nudge in Shad’s side from Shannon. “This looks like something we should join. What do you think?”
“If they want us to join them, they’ll ask us, nuh?”
The group around the fire was getting bigger, people drawn from behind buildings. The song changed to another. Feet shuffled from side to side. Voices rose and fell, some melodious, some plaintive. When the chanting stopped at intervals, the shuffling of feet and beating of drums filled the night air. The heavy scent of cannabis hung over the new chant that followed, a brisker tune with a strong beat, almost like a Marley tune. Shad’s head was starting to expand, the fire appearing larger and closer to him. He looked toward Redemption’s house for the professor.
“Oh, yes, oh, Jah,” a man in a big woolen tam shouted. He twirled a few times, clapping his thighs. Two women joined him, their arms wide, their white skirts spreading like flowers as they spun, the fire crackling orange behind them.
“I have to get this,” Shannon whispered. “It’ll be a great shot for the article.”
“You—you can’t—don’t—” Shad tried to gesture, but his elbows were glued to the table.
“I’ll make sure they don’t see me. I won’t use the flash.” Pulling a camera from her bag, she stood up slowly and stepped over the bench.
“Shannon, no,” Shad warned hoarsely, but his words were drowned out by the drumming. He watched as Shannon circled around the back of the tree, holding the camera behind her. No one seemed to notice. All eyes were on the whirling dancers. Unable to move, unwilling to bring attention to Shannon, Shad watched her slide behind a bush, her lower body hidden. She raised the camera and focused, and he could see her finger pressing the button one, two, three times. Suddenly, a scream went up.
“Babylon—she a spy!” the man with the stringy beard was shouting, pointing at the bush.
“Who? Who?” Urgent cries came from those sober enough to understand, glassy looks from those who weren’t, while the drumming thumped on.
“The woman—the white woman,” the man shouted, pointing at Shannon as she stepped out from her hiding place. He shouted for the drummers to stop and they paused, looking puzzled.
“I’m sorry—I was just—” she protested, trying to smile.
“She not troubling nobody,” Shad yelled, and scrambled to stand up. If he could make them understand, everything would be fine. If he couldn’t, it would end badly, he knew.
“I and I know she was up to something,” the old man kept saying, over and over.
A woman ran to Shannon and held her arm. “Is a tape recorder you have?”
“Leave her alone,” Shad said, stumbling over to them.
“Don’t worry, I won’t do it again,” Shannon blurted. She was backing toward the bench, pulling the woman with her.
“Ask Redemption!” Shad urged. “She come from a magazine. He invite her
.”
“Babylon!” the old man screeched, his eye sockets black under the moonlight.
“Leave her, leave her!” Shad yelled. “She don’t do nothing.”
“If the woman so pure, throw her in the fire, then,” the woman holding Shannon yelled back. “Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, prove she can’t burn.”
“I telling you, she don’t mean no harm. I should know, because I name Shadrack.”
“You name Shadrack?” The old man crouched down a little. “Jump in the fire with she, then. Fire will show faith, the fire of judgment.” The crowd was circling them, the bonfire flashing between their bodies.
“She taking picture,” a voice called. “She must be CIA!”
Shannon pulled her arm away from the woman and the Rastas followed her and Shad around the table, shouting that they were traitors, calling them downpressors.
“Get Ras Redemption!” Shannon cried, snatching up her bag.
“He invite us,” Shad explained yet again, his tongue feeling thick. “I telling you.”
“A devil woman that! Bloodfire for she!”
“Babylon must burn!”
“Richard!” the Canadian called toward Redemption’s house.
“Mistah Ransom!” Shad shouted, but the louder they cried, the louder the mob shouted and the more venomous their eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
* * *
Trying to ignore the twinge in his back, Eric heaved one side of the toilet bowl up and slid the tile underneath. Simone shouldn’t have to sit on a rocking toilet when she came. He’d tolerated it himself for the past six months, groaning every time he sat on it. Too small, too low, too cheap, the toilet would have to go soon—even if he had to build another hotel to get one. His family might have shared one bathroom in Cleveland back in the day, but times had changed, and he asserted to the mirror as he washed his hands, if he couldn’t afford a toilet that didn’t embarrass him or make his arthritic knees act up, then life wasn’t worth living.
Back on the bartender’s stool behind the bar, Eric found a scab on his forearm and scratched it away. He hadn’t minded taking the Sunday-evening shift so Shad could go with Shannon. It had given him time to contemplate the nature of a man’s life where a toilet and three women could create pure havoc. The toilet problem he would solve in time. He wasn’t so sure about the women. Simone, Shannon, and Eve had come, initially, anyway—without invitation—straight into a life that was otherwise peaceful if boring, creating a tangle of emotions—
“Another whites,” came a call from the end of the bar. Eric poured the rum and walked it to Tri, who was still laughing at a joke.
“Boss man,” Tri asked after he’d taken a sip, “what you call a woman who have two men at one time—one in Largo and one in Kingston?”
“A woman you run from,” Eric replied, and returned to his perch, the old fisherman’s words ringing in his ears. Having more than one woman always confused him, made him slip up. Women could handle it, some women, anyway.
Shannon was different. She’d always been straight with him, told him from the beginning that she was a one-man girl and didn’t have a boyfriend. Simone he wasn’t sure of. For all he knew, she could have a man in Atlanta. She didn’t seem like a game-playing woman, one who’d waste your time getting ready for her visit, breaking your back to steady a rocking toilet, buying new sheets for your bed. But, now that he thought about it (the twinge in his back joined by a twinge in his stomach), maybe that was the reason for her infrequent calls and nonchalant attitude. She had a man in Atlanta.
Her detachment had suited him at first. It had, after all, been his suggestion that they shouldn’t communicate after she left. He’d called her despite himself, even invited her to the groundbreaking, but they’d never discussed monogamy. Did she or did she not have another man? The question mark clung to him, making him queasy.
He was about to get the computer to write her when Carlton’s car screeched to a halt outside, accompanied by the smell of burning rubber. Shad and Shannon got out and, after the car drove away, walked into the bar glumly.
“What happened to the professor?” Eric asked, chuckling. “Got lost?”
Shad came around the counter and offered Shannon a drink. “A vodka, straight,” she said after throwing a black bag on the counter. “And make it a double.”
“What’s going on, Shan? A double?”
Her face was flushed, and he had to wait until she’d had a sip of her drink. “We had to leave him,” she said, so low that Eric had to lean in when she repeated it.
“Boss,” Shad explained as he helped himself to coconut water, “the Rastas chase us out of the place.”
“Shit.” Eric slammed his fist on the counter. “I knew something like this was going to happen.”
Shannon nodded with her eyes closed. “It was my fault.” She finished the drink in one swig, throwing her head back, grimacing when she put the glass down.
“Another double,” she told Shad with a tremble to her lips. “I’ll pay for it.”
“You don’t have to pay for it,” Eric said, “but you’re going to get drunk if you don’t watch it.”
“I want to get drunk.”
“You’re coming with me,” Eric said after Shad had given her the drink. He led her by the elbow to his apartment and into a verandah chair. “Tell me what happened.”
That was the night that Eric and Shannon shared a bed for the first time in fourteen years. Not that he’d taken advantage of her, although, not being used to strong liquor, she was almost too drunk to make sense after the second double. It was just that she couldn’t go home alone in that state, and he was too tired after her lengthy, stumbling description of the evening’s events to walk her up the hill to the Delgados’. She’d be embarrassed to let them and Eve see her in that condition, anyway.
It had been easier to help her to his bed, tears dripping down her cheeks, where he took off her muddy sneakers before she flopped back on the sheets. Then it seemed necessary to remove her long-sleeved shirt, so he’d unbuttoned it, rolling her over halfway to ease her arms out, trying to avoid touching the bra with the small breasts that now drooped to the sides. And since he dared not undress her further, he’d adjusted her until her head was on a pillow and her legs in their jeans under the sheet.
The moonlight was to blame. Eric had watched the silvery touches to her lips and her eyelids leaking their shiny tears as she’d talked, and it had made him think of when they’d first met. Her thick hair had sparkled while she related what had happened at the Nyabinghi, the moonlight picking out the white strands, and when she’d ended on a wail about feeling responsible if anything happened to Ransom, Eric had reached over and rubbed her arm.
“He can take care of himself,” he’d assured her, not caring if the man could or not. She’d kept lamenting that Ransom had gone somewhere to do something—she didn’t seem to know what—and finally wound down to a soft sobbing, almost falling asleep on her own words, mumbling about getting back to Eve.
“You’re not going anywhere in that condition,” he’d said, and she didn’t resist his throwing his arm around her waist and helping her to the bedroom.
She’d fallen asleep before he got into bed. Her snores had started off softly, gradually rising in volume, with interspersed snorts, much as she used to. He’d gotten little rest, thinking about her in his bed (after all this time!) and what would happen next. In the middle of the night, he’d felt like having sex. When the urge died down, he’d started to worry about what she would say when she woke up, what Eve would say, what the Delgados would say, each one needing a good half hour of anxiety. Close to morning, he’d considered what the other woman in his life might say if she knew, and the excuses he created kept him awake for another half hour, deciding it was better not to say anything to Simone—or ask her if she had another man.
It seemed only minutes later that he awoke in bright sunlight and rolled over onto his side. Shannon was lying faceup in
the same position he’d laid her in, but she’d pulled the sheet up to her chin and was staring at the ceiling. Sunlight slanted through the louvers onto the sheet. Beyond the window, the island was waking up, the branches of the almond tree swaying in the morning breeze.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” she murmured as if she were talking to herself.
“Sleeping, I hope.”
She turned with a worried frown. “Did anything—”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Good.” She rubbed her forehead. “I have a headache.”
“It’s no wonder.”
“And I feel like a total idiot.”
“Why?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, as if she’d been thinking hard since she woke up. “How many reasons do you want?” she groaned. “I shouldn’t have taken out my camera during the ceremony. That was just plain dumb, dumb, dumb. I don’t know what I was thinking—after all I’ve read and heard. A professional photographer doesn’t just walk into a sacred ceremony and start shooting without permission. I thought I could get away with it because I have before, but I shouldn’t have tried. I wasn’t even there to work on the article. I was there to find out about Katlyn, and now I’ve probably ruined my chances of getting any more information, dammit.”
She opened her eyes. “Then I shouldn’t have gotten drunk, and I sure as hell shouldn’t have ended up in bed with you.”
“You were sleeping it off.”
“I shouldn’t have taken this assignment. I don’t mind doing the article, but I never should have agreed to look for this woman.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda—”
“And for sure I shouldn’t have come to Largo.”
“Now that I disagree with.”
She was looking up at the ceiling again, blinking rapidly. “Maybe I should have just stayed in Kingston or Ocho Rios and done the research for the article. Coming back to Largo—”
“I’m glad you came.”
“We’ve butted into your life—”
“You brought Eve.”
She breathed into a pause. “Is that the only reason?”
“No.”
The minute that followed felt like an hour, and he dared not move. One word from him could change everything: his future, her future, Eve’s future. He had arrived at the fork, at the major decision he’d avoided for so long—and he couldn’t keep being a lone wolf (Maisie’s words alive in his head).
The Rhythm of the August Rain Page 20
