The Rhythm of the August Rain

by Gillian Royes

  They’d laughed when they both looked at the tall drum with the bow sitting in a corner.

  It had already gotten dark and the party was winding down by the time Beth appeared for her children.

  “You have to have some cake and ice cream,” Jennifer insisted.

  “Might as well build up my strength for the wedding.”

  “Want to see my drum?” Eve asked her guest, and rushed out of the room without getting an answer.

  Jennifer cut a slice of cake for Beth. Shannon was spooning ice cream on top when the room went black.

  “Lights gone!” a child shouted. Everyone started talking in the darkness.

  “Don’t get excited,” Lambert called above the hubbub. “I’ll turn on the generator.”

  “I going to eat my cake,” an invisible Beth said with a laugh.

  “We have candles around here somewhere,” Jennifer said.

  Shannon felt her way around the dining table to get Eve, who wouldn’t be used to electricity outages, and had just reached the opening to the corridor when she bumped into a large figure with a sour-earthy smell.

  “It’s just me.” Eric grabbed her arm. She started to pull away, but he held her firmly. “Shh.” He gave her a hard kiss, the kind that a woman feels to her toes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Shifting his weight on the old barstool, Shad tried not to compare the Quality Life Bar with his own bar, but some things he couldn’t ignore, such as shaky chairs for the customers. The small bar in the square was better known for the cheapness of its rum than for its comfort, and although his grandmother had been a friend of the owner, Shad could count the number of times he’d visited the bar on one hand.

  “You mean all you going to drink is Coca-Cola?” Tri said. “Is one time a man get married, if he even do that, and the least you can do is take a decent drink.”

  “Is your stud party, man,” Solomon agreed, his tongue already heavy. “Time to loosen up.”

  “Stud party?” Frank repeated, standing at the end of the bar over a Red Stripe. “Is stag party, you don’t know that?”

  “Stag party, stud party, man party, don’t matter,” the chef grumbled.

  Super-blue, the bartender, held up the rum bottle. “Who want more?”

  “Put some in his Coke, nuh?” Tri urged, and the bartender started to pour rum into Shad’s glass.

  The guest of honor pulled his glass away. “I soft-drinking like Winston, keeping him company.”

  Winston raised his pineapple soda to Shad, the man who had fathered him when his own father had left. “Thank you, suh.”

  Tri had come up with the idea for the stag party one night a couple weeks back. He’d told them that in America the men celebrated before the wedding, he’d seen it on TV. “Is to big-up the husband, help him say good-bye to his happy, single days.”

  “Look how long I living with Beth and I still happy,” Shad had replied. “I don’t need no stag party to say good-bye to happiness.”

  “Pshaw, man, we giving you a little send-off,” Tri had declared. “Just accept it, nuh?”

  The town bar next to the cricket pitch would be the venue, and only five man would be invited, the elder had assured Shad. “Is not no free-for-all. I not paying for every man jack to come and drink liquor.”

  The fluorescent bulb above the bar cast a greenish glare on the men’s faces and long shadows on the linoleum floor. Frank started boasting about the horse races last Saturday when he’d gone to Mas Abe’s betting shop in Port Antonio and won over J$1,000 (and still wanted his money back from the rocksteady party that night, Shad noted). A couple of customers in the bar joined in the conversation with their own gambling stories.

  Not a gambler since his youth, Shad stared at the pinup calendar behind the bar. A pretty girl leaned on a tree trunk, her skin glowing as if it had been rubbed with coconut oil, like Sister Aziza’s face. Shad drifted away, thinking of how high he’d gotten at the Nyabinghi, wishing he hadn’t indulged in the weed he’d been offered. It had only made him panic when, maybe, things weren’t quite as bad as they felt at the time. He wondered if Aziza smoked ganja. She didn’t look as if she did. Dread probably did, which would explain his crazy response to the visit. Shad thought again of the glass pendant above the old man’s curtain, which had reminded him of the diamond he wanted to buy Beth one day, the ring she deserved.

  Winston nudged Shad. “You want little music?”

  “Yes, man, turn it on.”

  The teenager put the radio on the bar counter and tuned it to a woman singing a slow, sexy song. “You like Lady Saw?”

  “ ‘Lady Truthfully’?” Shad grinned. “What man don’t like that song?”

  “Turn it down,” Eli pleaded.

  “Turn it down, yesh,” Solomon said, raising his glass. “We have to give Shad a eulogy.”

  Tri hit the counter, doubling over with laughter. “You burying him?”

  “You mean a toast!” Eli exclaimed.

  Frank raised his glass. “I want to toast him, yes. I want to toast the man who making our life hell.”

  “What you mean?” Shad pulled back.

  “All the woman in Largo nagging they boyfriend to marry them,” Frank said. “You don’t hear?”

  “Miss Olive tell me she want we to marry before we dead,” Tri said, sucking his teeth.

  Eli leaned in. “Minna say if Beth can get wedding ring, she want one, too.”

  “And Maisie start up now,” Solomon said.

  “I sorry, gents, but the wedding not even my decision.” Shad shook his head. “Is Beth who want it, and she not happy until it done. And when she happy, I happy. Only one thing going to change—no more harassment about wedding.”

  “That what you think,” said Frank.

  “Ring on finger, chain on foot,” Eli added, and Winston snickered.

  “I don’t care if she a angel before,” Tri said. “She turn into a devil after.”

  And then it came back, a picture in a black frame on a wall, he couldn’t remember whose wall it was. But it was a picture of a woman standing on tiptoe, one leg high in the air behind her, and on her back she had huge, white wings like an angel—a dancing angel.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  Remember, I’ll be there on Wednesday. This Wednesday, mind you.” She was laughing at him already, at his forgetfulness, his age, he could tell.

  “How could I forget? August first.” Eric had never liked the month of August, with its heavy rains and mosquitoes, and this time it was bringing the tra-la-la of the groundbreaking—and the dreaded meeting of the two women.

  “It’s going to be quite a week,” Simone said. “Up here in DC until Tuesday, then back to Atlanta for one night, unpack and repack, and on the plane to Montego Bay the next day.”

  “You’ll be ready to collapse when you arrive.”

  “If there’s anyone sleeping in your bed”—a titter hid her gibe—“you’ll have to ask them to leave.”

  “My bed is empty, I told you.”

  “If your daughter’s still there, I’d love to meet her.”

  “You’re asking if her mother’s here.”

  “How well you know me.”

  “They’re still here. Shannon hasn’t said when she’s leaving.”

  “I’ll be cool, don’t worry.” Simone sniffed sharply. “Have you seen them a lot?”

  “Eve’s been helping out in the restaurant, and we went snorkeling for her birthday.”

  “That’s great. What about her mother?”

  “I see her sometimes, not as often. I saw her at Eve’s birthday party on Wednesday.”

  “I guess she’s soaking up that Jamaican sunshine while she’s writing her article.”

  “I’m not hearing a tinge of jealousy, am I?” Eric pulled the stool closer to the phone, anxious to turn the conversation away from Shannon, the one who’d been on his mind the last few days. His former lover’s lips, the soft skin
of her face and arms, had been haunting him since they’d embraced in bed. In between fretting about his libido, he’d kept wondering what it would have been like if they’d had sex. She’d wanted him, he knew it—and he’d failed her.

  Being at the party had been torturous at first, and Shannon had ignored him much of the time. She’d gone off to the TV room with board games for the older children, while Jennifer had taken care of the younger ones. He’d sat with Lambert and they’d ruminated on the hotel project for a solid hour until Eric had switched to talking about his discovery of Google. Just then, the children and their supervisors had reassembled around the dining table for the blowing out of the candles, Shannon’s long legs calling to him under her shorts. For some reason he still didn’t understand, he’d chosen that moment to make a joke with his friend about all the ads on the Internet for Viagra and Cialis.

  “You’d think every American man was suffering from—you know,” he’d chuckled.

  “I think all that stress in the States is leading to exhaustion, lack of testosterone,” Lambert had intoned.

  “If you ask me, the baby boomers are trying too hard to stay young,” Eric had mumbled.

  When Shannon brought them cake, leaning over to hand him his plate, he’d been given a quick view of the breasts he’d stroked only two days before. Forgetting his comment that he wouldn’t have any cake, remembering the fluttering kisses she’d given him, he’d felt a quiver in his groin when he took the plate.

  As soon as the lights went off and before he could even think, he’d gone straight to where he’d last seen her, almost tripping over two excited children. Not finding her, he’d moved toward the corridor, knowing she’d be thinking of Eve. He’d found her, held on to her arm, needing forgiveness for his failed libido, and kissed her hard enough to prove that younger, toffee-skinned men had nothing over him.

  “Of course, I’m jealous!” Simone burst out laughing. “You’re thousands of miles away on a tropical beach with—I’m sure—the beautiful mother of your child. What’s not to be jealous about?”

  “I didn’t know you cared that much.”

  An exasperated snort. “Why would I be coming down to Largo if I didn’t care? We’ve had this conversation before, Eric. You’re a pretty hot guy—know it, own it.”

  “That part’s hard.”

  “And speaking of hard, you’re a great lover.”

  He reddened, not knowing what to say, not wanting the only customer in the place, a woman in a beige suit (a bank auditor, she’d said), to hear anything about his private life. Her head was bent over the cow-foot soup Solomon had left in the fridge and Eric had warmed up.

  “I can’t speak too long. Shad is running around in the Jeep doing stuff for the wedding, so I’m holding the fort.”

  “It’s tomorrow, right? He must be freaking out.”

  “Like a chicken with his head cut off.”

  “Did he buy the rings?”

  “The party he held was a flop, so he didn’t make the money to buy them. He’s gone off to buy a small silver band. Better than nothing, he says.” The auditor was signaling him and he nodded at her. “How’s the weather in DC?”

  “Hot as Hades, especially downtown. Thank God for air-conditioning.”

  “Keep cool until I see you then—August the fourth, right?”

  “Are you—?”

  “Just joking, just joking.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  * * *

  Shannon arrived at the bottom of the Delgados’ driveway at the exact moment the sun was rising over the hills. A rooster crowed, then another and another in a cacophony of awakening. Shielding her eyes, she looked up the road for Ransom’s car. The only sign of life was a woman with a basket on her head walking toward the square; a scrawny dog in the middle of the road was eyeing the basket. The journalist leaned against the gatepost with her bags. Across the road, the sun-drenched bar sat silent, the chairs stacked on one side. The hedges around the parking lot were freshly, if unevenly, clipped—Eric’s contribution, no doubt, to the wedding reception that afternoon.

  She’d never understand the father of her child. Just when she’d given up on him, he’d do something unexpected, such as kissing her in the dark and then disappearing, muttering about helping Lambert with the generator. The kiss had excited her, given a jump start to her dying hope.

  The silver Volvo pulled up beside her. “You’re right on time.”

  Ransom grinned. “My bad habit.”

  “Am I forgiven for abandoning you?” She stood outside his window, pretending to cringe.

  “Only if you’ll forgive me.”

  “We were supposed to be joined at the hip, weren’t we?”

  As Shannon settled her bags in the rear seat of the car, Ransom explained that he hadn’t wanted to insult Redemption, the community’s elder, by not joining him for a reasoning, especially since he hadn’t officially been invited to the Nyabinghi. “Then I would have been burned at the stake.” They both laughed, both relieved. “I think he knows and trusts me now, though.”

  “And that’s a good thing for me.”

  “Do you know where Carlton lives?”

  “ ‘Up the road, left at the mango tree, and look for a yellow house’—Shad’s exact words.”

  They picked up Carlton in front of a brown house and set off for Gordon Gap. The taxi driver had agreed the day before to act as extra security in the absence of the bartender. “You don’t have to drive,” Shannon had explained. “The professor is driving.”

  “I have to be back by three for the wedding.”

  “Me, too. I’ll make sure we’re back.”

  Before leaving the house that morning, she’d laid out the dress and shoes she’d brought for the wedding, wondering if her own time-faded dream of marrying on the beach in Largo would ever come to fruition.

  “First stop,” Ransom said, “is the group I told you about in Heron Hill—if that’s okay with you. It’s on the way.”

  The Nyabinghi camp in Heron Hill was in the mountains several miles before the Gordon Gap road, and it took a while getting to it. Remembering her promise to Carlton that they’d be back in time for the wedding, Shannon could feel his discomfort behind her all the way. She was relieved to see the farming community appear, and her hopes rose as she looked over the well-established fields and buildings that must surely have been older than three decades. After being introduced by Ransom to the elder in charge, a middle-aged man with a long, thick beard, she wasted no time asking about Katlyn—only to be disappointed.

  “I and I don’t really encourage foreign Rastas up here,” the leader told her. “They come down, all excited about living off the land and being Rasta, but in one or two years, they gone back. They get homesick. No foreign Rasta ever live here.”

  “Have you heard of a Canadian woman who was dating—living with—a Rasta man thirty-five years ago?”

  “I and I wouldn’t rightly know.” The leader stroked his beard.

  Shannon asked—as respectfully as she could—if she could take a photograph of him with Ransom and, when they both agreed, posed them in front of the entrance to the camp, no visit to be wasted.

  “Next stop, Ras Redemption, right?” Richard confirmed as they climbed into the Volvo.

  “Hopefully, the last stop,” Shannon said, “so we can get back by noon.”

  They got to the shed where the community’s sculptures were sold by late morning. The teenager in attendance said he thought Redemption would be home, and they drove to the compound, stopping in the clearing next to the houses. Shannon added a floppy hat to the sunglasses she was wearing, her self-conscious disguise after Sunday’s debacle. The camera bag left in the car beside Carlton, she set off with Ransom through the nearly empty yard.

  “Is Ras Redemption here?” he asked a statuesque woman staring at them.

  “You is the professor from the university, right?” The woman squinted at Shannon. “And she is the woman who come with you last Sund
ay.” The woman cast an eye over the photographer’s hands, holding nothing but an envelope. “But she don’t bring no camera this time.”

  “No camera this time,” Shannon repeated, looking quickly at Ransom, and the woman pointed to Redemption’s cottage. “I think I got the all clear because of you,” Shannon murmured as they walked toward the house.

  “You’re the celebrity.”

  “And still a white foreigner.”

  “Greetings!” Ransom called when they arrived at the open door. Ras Redemption appeared in a striped pajama bottom and a T-shirt.

  “You come back,” he said casually, waving them in while he took up his seat on the sofa. “Make we have little reasoning.” He sounded clear and sober. “You ever see this book?” he asked Shannon, pointing to the brown book on the coffee table, the same book he’d been holding on her first visit.

  “Tell me about it.” She removed a pile of newspapers from a stool, now used to the protocol of light conversation before substance.

  “It call The Kebra Nagast,” the Rasta said, looking at her but trying to impress Ransom. “Is like our Bible. You should read it, like how you going to write about Rastafari. You must know the truth.”

  She twisted her head to read the spine. “The Lost Bible of Rastafarian Wisdom and Faith, eh?”

  “They say the sources come from the Old Testament,” Ransom added, “from Egyptian and Ethiopian texts.”

  “I’ll make sure to mention it in my article.” She cleared her throat. “Ras Redemption, I’m sorry I didn’t see you when I was here last.”

  “I and I hear you run for your life.” The Rastafarian held down the quivering corners of his mouth. “Nothing was going to happen to you, you overstand?”

  “It didn’t feel like that at the time.”

  “Little misunderstanding was all,” Ransom said.

  Shannon raised one eyebrow a fraction at him before turning back to her host. “I still want to talk to you about the Canadian woman. You said you could help me.”