The Rhythm of the August Rain

by Gillian Royes

  “If we have a picnic, can we go back?” She’d eaten worse.

  Crumbs fell onto Zadock’s dirt-blackened shirt as he bit into a cracker. “Take time, man.”

  Redemption’s revelation had been worth the $200: Zadock was, without doubt, Katlyn’s lover. After Shannon had knocked at his door and called his name, the old Rasta had opened almost immediately. His height and the thick, black moles that intertwined across his cheeks had frightened her at first and she’d taken a step back. But he’d invited them gruffly into the one-room shack and told them to sit down, talking to them, talking to himself, even talking to the stick he was leaning on. Yes, he was Dread, he’d said, but call him Zadock. He didn’t know how they’d found him, but he was glad they’d come. He didn’t use Rasta jargon, perhaps from being alone so long, and he’d mumbled in patois as he fussed around a two-burner stove, the smell of kerosene swamping the room.

  While he made tea, Shannon had looked around the home at the faded paintings of angels, fairies, and dancers that hung on the walls, one of them looking like Isadora Duncan on tiptoe, another of an angel balancing on one leg, the other extended. She’d felt transported back in time to meet Katlyn, and she could almost feel the Canadian’s presence around her imprinted in the pictures, the dirty cushions she’d probably tie-dyed herself, and the ragged chiffon curtains that were once blue and green. She pictured the young woman in the peasant blouse hanging the pendant over the window, the crystal that was still bright beneath a rusty dragonfly.

  Shannon reached for a cracker. If she could engage Zadock long enough, Carlton and Richard would surely find her. The cracker was dry in her mouth, no saliva to soften it.

  “You still sweet, my queen, and you getting gray like me.” Zadock reached out and patted her hair and she ducked.

  “My name is Shannon, you know that, right?”

  He smiled, chewing cheese with his mouth open. “You come back with a different name, but your voice give you away. I know you was Akila when you call my name at the door.”

  “My voice might sound like hers, but—”

  “You come back like you say you was going to. You don’t look the same and your name is different, but you speak the same. You the same sweet girl. You think I don’t know you? You used to believe in all this reincarnation business, and I used to tell you is foolishness.” He was in a reverie now, chewing and gazing at nothing. “You say you was going to come back in another body. You say you would find me and we would stay together. I used to tell you to hush your mouth—but you come back, just like you said. You never lie to me, you was always good to me. You always say I was the love of your life.” He gave a low, coarse laugh.

  “It was raining plenty when you move up here end of August, and we used to love up in the little bed when the rain was falling, you remember now? And next morning you would cook my porridge with nutmeg and cinnamon, just the way I like it. You was a good-good wife, even though you say you miss your family and friend. I sorry you couldn’t write them no letter or send them no photograph. You say you don’t want to tell them you turn Rasta because they would make you go home or send police to find you. But you say one day you would take me up to Canada to meet them, remember?”

  “But I got sick.” Better to identify, she figured, give him less to worry about.

  “You wouldn’t let me take you down to the hospital because you was afraid they arrest me. You ask for the Rasta doctor and you let her treat you with them herbs. You say you put yourself in Jah hands.” His lips and voice quivered. “Nobody cook for me after you get sick and die, you know. They all leave me. I would starve here if it not for the boy who get me a few things from the grocery. I still have little money left from the land I sell, and is that I give him. I tell him not to tell nobody that he see me or Jah will strike him dead and he believe me.

  “I know if anybody see me, they going to arrest me. They going to say that I kill you, I cause you to dead. They going lock me up and throw away the key. Worse, they could hang me.”

  “Why didn’t you—”

  “You gone and get sick,” he insisted, swinging toward her, the moles of his face inches away, making her heart leap to her throat. “Nothing I could do for you. You stop dancing, stop teaching the children, stop eating. I try everything, all the bush tea and coconut water and herb the Ras doctor bring, and even that couldn’t help you. All I beg Jah to save you, and you still get sicker. Nothing could stop the running belly, all blood start to come out of you. I wipe you up and clean you up, but you still have it coming down and you still don’t want to go to hospital. Babylon, you say.” His age-reddened eyes glistened in the lamplight, water gathering on the lower lids.

  “I’m sorry.” She was.

  “You tell me where you want me to bury you”—he coughed and spat—“and that where I bury you.”

  Shannon’s voice went low. “It was you. Where did you bury me?”

  “But I didn’t, no, no, no,” he proclaimed with a vigorous shake of the head. “I didn’t want you to dead. I carry you down to St. Ann’s Bay Hospital in a friend taxi one night when you was so weak and poorly you wouldn’t even wake up. I was hoping they could do something. But I had to leave you because I know they was going to arrest me if they know I bring you. They hate Rasta, and you was an upper-class woman and they would have lock me up, like how they lock me up and send me to the madhouse after they burn down Pinnacle. Next thing they going to say that I poison a white woman and charge me with murder.”

  He brushed the crumbs off his shirt, matter-of-fact all of a sudden. “So we put you in front of the hospital, and I put your purse with you so they would know who you was, with your passport and everything. I stay far and watch you lying on the steps until they pick you up. I hoping they can save you, even though you tell me yourself that you was going to dead.”

  “How did you find out she—I had died?”

  “I go back to the hospital the next day and I see a nurse leaving. I ask her if she know what happen to the foreign woman and she tell me you was dead.”

  “And you took the body?”

  Zadock looked down at the old pieces of tire and twine that made up his sandals. “I cry, you see, cry and cry, like my heart break. But you make me promise that I must bury you under the Julie mango tree, because you love Julie mangoes and you could see the sea from there, and you show me the spot.” He sat up straight with his justification, still blameless. “I have to get your body, have to get it.”

  “How—how did you do it?”

  With a triumphant smile, the old man snorted. “Who Jah bless, no man curse. I take all my money, twenty-three dollars—big money them days—to pay one night-shift guy who carry the stretchers, and he bring the body out the back door that night on a stretcher with a sheet over you. We put you in the taxi, and we drive and come back while it was still night, so nobody see us bring you inside the house. I wrap you up in the pretty spread you always like, the one with the flowers. The next night now, I dig the grave right where you say you want me to bury you, and I come back for you and bury you. I have a funeral for you, just me one, and I ask Jah to take care of you since I not there to do it.”

  The cheese finished, he rolled up the bag of crackers. “But life hard since you gone, everybody leave me.”

  “Will you show me where you buried—?”

  “I going dead, but you know that already. I don’t need no doctor to tell me. I have pain morning time, afternoon time, nighttime. I ready to die, the sooner the better.” Leaning on his stick, he groaned his way to standing.

  “After that little man come asking if I know a Canadian woman, I know you was coming back. He like John the Baptist, telling me you was coming. I realize you know that is my time now to dead, and you coming to take me back to wherever you come from, so I ready for you when you knock on my door. But I have to get rid of the university man with you, so I mix up the bush tea I use when the pain come on bad and I can’t sleep. When the two of you fall asleep now, I did bring
you up here to rest little bit. And while you was sleeping, I get things ready for us, so we can leave and go back to your home. I want to do it decent like, so I make things nice, and I do it before I get too sick and don’t have the strength.”

  He bent down and picked up the lamp. “You want to see our burial ground? Come, I will show you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  * * *

  Nobody lives here,” Eric whispered as he knelt beside Lambert. The light from I-Verse’s flashlight bobbed up and down between the compound’s weeds and houses, coffins of darkness.

  “We have to wait until they give us the all clear.” Lambert held the gun upright and ready.

  A mosquito whined around Eric’s ear and he slapped his cheek. “You’re making me nervous with that thing.”

  “I’ll only use it if I have to.”

  The flashlight went out. In the pale light of the moon they could make out the shadows of Shad and I-Verse sidling along the wall of a house, advancing to a window. The flashlight popped back on and was directed into the house. After a minute, the light was turned upward before it went out again.

  “The signal,” Lambert said, and they hurried across the bushy yard to join the advance team.

  “The man not here,” Shad whispered.

  “The window open, though,” I-Verse said. “Like somebody living there.”

  “Shine the light inside again,” Eric said. “Maybe we’ll see something.”

  I-Verse pulled the ratty curtain aside and directed the light into the house. The one-room shack had a dirty mattress, a few pieces of furniture, and several framed pictures on the walls. Two enamel cups sat on the crude table in the middle.

  “Interesting decor,” Lambert noted.

  “I see something on the floor,” Shad hissed.

  I-Verse ran the flashlight around the floor. A black purse with a long strap sat beside one of the chairs.

  “That’s Shannon’s!” Eric exclaimed. She’d had it the night she’d gotten drunk and he’d put it on the bedside table.

  “I think you’re right,” Lambert agreed.

  The four men looked at each other.

  “They around here somewhere.” I-Verse turned off the flashlight. “They not far, like how he don’t have no car and don’t go nowhere. If is Dread, he too old, anyway.”

  “Stand still,” Shad said. “Let we listen good.”

  There was nothing to be heard but the creaking of bamboo.

  “We have to spread out,” I-Verse said.

  “If you go so”—Shad directed Lambert and Eric, pointing to the front of the shack—“we will go so.” He nodded to the rear of the house and started off.

  “I don’t like us splitting up,” Eric said. “If anything happens—”

  “Hence the gun,” Lambert snapped as they rounded the house, its door shut. Visible in the gloom on the other side were two long buildings, their roofs fallen in.

  “Looks like they had a farm here or something,” Eric commented. “This must have been—”

  Lambert put his hand out, shushing him. “I hear something.” Distant voices floated through the night, no words clear.

  “Where’s it coming from, Lam?”

  “Over there.” Lambert pointed straight ahead, and Eric screwed up his forehead to make out the dull forms of trees and hills. The voices had stopped, but there was something else. “You see that? It looks like a—”

  “—a light.”

  They started toward the glow, the contractor in front, plowing through the bushes behind the buildings. The light seemed to be moving up a hill, and they followed as best they could, pushing bushes and weeds aside with hands and feet.

  Soon they were walking up a slope, Eric’s leather shoes sliding backward on the soft earth. “I wonder where Shad is,” he muttered as he pushed at some guinea grass. “Maybe that’s only the Rasta guy’s flashlight.”

  “I don’t think so. They went in another direction.”

  Fifteen minutes farther uphill, Eric halted. “Is it,” he said between breaths, “has the light—stopped moving?”

  “I think you’re right—and we’ve gained on them.”

  They crouched down to cover the hundred yards separating them from the light. As they approached, they could hear voices filtering through the vegetation—a man’s rumble followed by a woman’s low comments.

  “That’s Shannon, I’m sure,” Eric whispered. The two men crept closer, the light finally visible in splices through the tall grass.

  “. . . a view of the sea like you wanted,” the man was saying, his voice growly and insistent.

  “Can we go back now?” Shannon was pleading with a small tremor. “I’m tired.”

  Her companion gave a short laugh. “You don’t have to worry about that where we going.”

  Eric parted the grass. He could make out the backs of two people, Shannon and a man in a filthy shirt, his long dreadlocks blocking out the light he was holding. They were standing over a mound covered by flowers and grass.

  “See how I bury you nice?” the man said, sweeping a lamp over the mound, the other hand leaning on a stick as tall as his head. “You always like lilies, so I plant them on top.”

  “Very nice, you did a nice job.” Each of Shannon’s words was clear but trembling. “Let’s go now, you’ve shown me Katlyn’s—my grave.”

  “I want you to write a letter, so we can tell people where they to bury us, nuh?” The man moved closer to her. “Then when our time come, they can bury us here, me and you. They don’t even have to dig no grave.”

  “How will they know—”

  “The boy will find the letter.”

  Tugging at Eric’s arm, Lambert whispered, “On the count of three. One, two, three!

  “Hands in the air!” he shouted as he ran toward the Rastafarian, pointing his gun, Eric stumbling behind. The big man and Shannon spun around.

  “Babylon!” Zadock screamed, lifting the staff.

  “Stop!” Shannon shouted—too late.

  Lambert, flailing, went headfirst, Eric on top of him. Dirt showered down as they fell into the deep, narrow hole, the smell of fresh earth smothering them.

  “What the—?” Eric squawked.

  “Where’s my gun?” Lambert said.

  Eric’s hand touched the gun and he gave it to Lambert as they struggled up, brushing themselves off. The top of the hole was a few inches above their heads, lamplight burnishing the leaves of the overhanging mango tree.

  “Get us out of here!” Lambert shouted.

  “Serve you right,” the unseen man called. “You coming to trick us and Jah trick you.”

  “Shannon, you okay?” Eric yelled.

  A cackle met their shouts, followed by the sounds of a struggle. The lamplight jerked around.

  “You’re hurting me!” Shannon cried.

  “Stop hurting her!” Eric shouted.

  “You mustn’t go near them,” warned the man in a soft growl. “Is the same people who tear down Pinnacle. They come to arrest me. They won’t give us no peace.”

  Eric strained to look over the top of the hole. He could see the heads of the strange duo a few feet away, the lamp turning them into Halloween masks. Shannon was looking at the old man with worried eyes. His face was close to hers, as if he were holding her tight.

  “You think you so bad,” the old man rumbled, nodding to Eric. “But I not going to let you kill us. We going to kill ourselves.”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” Lambert called. “Just let go of the woman—”

  “She dead, anyway,” the Rasta chortled, and yanked Shannon out of sight. “Is our next grave you sitting in. She going to dead twice.”

  “He’s crazy,” Eric hissed.

  “Get up on my knee,” Lambert said in a low voice. “Can you climb out?”

  “I think so.” Eric stood on his friend’s leg and put his hands on the edge of the hole, now at chest height.

  “Don’t try nothing!” the lunatic yelled, bran
dishing his stick, clutching Shannon tighter. Eric jumped down and the two men crouched as the stick thrashed above.

  “I going to hit off the head of the first one who climb out!” the old man screamed.

  “No, you’re not!” Lambert shouted back, and fired into the mango tree.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  * * *

  We walking in circles,” Shad said irritably as I-Verse’s flashlight showed yet another stand of prickly grass ahead. His tuxedo pants were snagged already, and he was wondering how much they’d make him pay for the damaged suit.

  “Jah will guide us, man,” I-Verse said, humming a song in time to his steps.

  “You calm, boy.”

  “Nothing worth stressing up over, even this.” The big man beat back the grass to allow Shad to follow and continued humming as he started forward again.

  “What you singing? I know plenty music, but I don’t know that one.”

  “I-Ternal Fire, Capleton sing it.”

  “Sound nice. I must play it in the bar.”

  “Pshaw, man, all good Jamaica music created by Rastafari. I wonder what the country would do without us.”

  “Is not all Jamaica music write by Rasta.” Shad stopped and shook a stone out of his new shoe. “What about—”

  “Starting with Bob Marley, come right down, star. Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Mutabaruka, Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown, Barrington Levy—”

  “True, is plenty.” Shad caught up with I-Verse. “How come so much Rasta is musicians?”

  “Rasta music is the voice of poor people, of all downpressed. That why the music gone far now, all to Japan and Africa, everywhere. Is universal music with universal messages. When music speak for the downpressed, Jah make it go all around the world. I and I music is conscious music, it make people think, make hearts open.”

  I-Verse stopped walking and turned off the flashlight. “Where Dread house?”

  “Behind us, I think.”

  The Rastafarian pulled a spliff out of his pocket. “A little weed going to help this journey.”