Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  He looked back. He had reached the end of the planted area, where the ruler-straight rows of sisal gave way to peasant plantings of plantains. The house was out of sight. He followed a path through the plantains to a native caille. A woman sat on a chair beside the doorway, tipped back so that the wall of the hut supported her shoulders. Her eyes were closed, but they opened as he halted before her.

  "Comment sa, commère? I'd like to speak to Tina."

  "Tina, m'sieu? She is not here."

  Damn, Lemke thought. All this walk for nothing. "Why isn't she here? I told her I'd be back today!"

  "M'sieu, it is not her fault. She had to visit her sister beyond Terre Rouge, who is expecting a baby."

  "When will she return?"

  "Who knows? Who can tell when a baby will arrive or how long the mother will need help afterward? Of course, if it is important I can send someone for her."

  "Never mind," Lemke grumbled. He looked about him. Since he had come this far and would get nothing out of it but exercise, he might as well walk back along the shore. He might find a shell or two. Alma could say what she liked about him, call him a beast, accuse him of having a mind that was always in the gutter, but he had a damned fine collection of shells. She had to admit that.

  He took his time. The coast here was a succession of short strips of sand separated by clumps of mangroves. The path turned inland at each mangrove cluster. The bushes grew close together in a solid bright-green mass, and the tangles of twisted roots were impossible to get through. He found a tiny, almost perfect conch and dropped it into his pocket. Two beaches farther on he picked up a pink shell the size of a half dollar, that he could not identify. He must get a book some day.

  He stopped. He had come round a tangle of mangroves to still another small beach. He had been thinking about Tina, how he would have to be more careful or Alma would find out about that one, too.

  The word "divorce" might rear its ugly head if she did, and Jeff Barnett might not be pleased. He'd have to go slow. As a matter of fact, a man was crazy to play around with these peasant girls. He ought to cut it out altogether. Maybe he would. Sooner or later, if he didn't, there'd be the devil to pay in the form of some wild-eyed boy friend with a machete.

  He'd cut it out, that's what he would do. Never again. That was a promise to himself, a solemn promise. Never again. Never.

  On the beach before him were three women. One was on the beach, at any rate; the others were in the water. Those in the water had a thing like a laundry tray: a piece of wood three feet long, hollowed out like a flat-bottom boat. They were walking into the sea with it, pulling it between them. It didn't contain laundry. He could see a bottle of kola, a glass, a plate with a knife, fork, spoon, and napkin on it. He could make out a circular slab of cassava bread and some fruit.

  He remembered witnessing once a service to Agué, the god of the sea, in which a similar wooden tray—a barque, they called it—had been set adrift by the people of Petit Trou to insure the safety of the fishermen. This must be something of the same sort, though smaller.

  He watched the two women walk the laden tray into the sea. They were crones, both of them. One was at least seventy. They wore dresses made of feed bags. The water climbed to their hips, their breasts. One of them reached for the kola bottle and the other, with an angry outburst, slapped at her hand.

  An argument ensued, the two crones standing in the sea screaming at each other with the tray between them. Suddenly Lemke's attention was drawn to the one on shore. He had not been watching her. He took in a breath.

  She had silenced the two crones with an angry shout of her own. Now she was stripping off her dress. He noticed the dress for the first time. It was an attractive cotton print. Birds. No, not birds; butterflies. She dropped the garment on the sand and strode into the sea, naked as Eve. Handsome as Eve, too. By God, she was handsome. Her breasts didn't bounce as she forced her way through the water; they rippled. She swung her hips from side to side. Her thighs rippled. She was young. It was something to watch.

  Lemke's mouth had gone dry. He wet his lips with his tongue but never took his gaze off the girl. She strode into the sea as if it were her home and she were returning to it. He fully expected her to arch that gorgeous body in a graceful dive and disappear. But she didn't dive. She halted between the two crones and spoke to them sharply. She took the wooden boat from their hands. The crones fell back, silently watching her.

  She dipped a handful of sea-water and tossed it in four directions, intoning some chant or prayer that Lemke could not hear well enough to interpret. She poured kola into her palm and repeated the gesture. Replacing the kola bottle, she gave the boat a little push, watched it glide out of reach, then crossed herself, spoke angrily again to the two crones, and strode back to the beach. She snatched up her dress and pulled it over her head.

  Without waiting for the crones, she turned and marched up the beach. A clump of mal fini bushes swallowed her from sight, the almond-shaped fruit trembling in a phantom dance to mark the way she had gone.

  Lemke wet his lips again. My God, he thought. My God. He waited for the two crones to come out of the water and then strolled down to greet them. He was very polite. He was so polite that they giggled.

  "What have you been doing?"

  "Nothing, m'sieu. Only a little offering to Agué for the protection of the children. One was attacked by a shark two days ago."

  "The child was hurt?"

  "Only a little, m'sieu. But badly frightened."

  "That's something to be thankful for," Lemke said. "Tell me, who was the girl who just left?"

  "She came from Terre Rouge to help us."

  "Oh? What's her name?"

  "Micheline Laroche, m'sieu. She is a sister of Catus Laroche, the houngan."

  Micheline Laroche, Lemke repeated to himself as he resumed his walk. I'll remember that.

  ALMA LEMKE finished her instructions to the cook and returned to the house, stopping at the refrigerator in the hall to fill a glass with ice. It was a kerosene refrigerator. There would be no generator at the Ile du Vent plantation until a processing plant was built. In the sitting room she added rum and soda to the ice. Then she sat on the veranda and let herself relax.

  Home again, such as it was. Where had Warner gone?

  There would be a divorce eventually, she supposed. She was in no particular hurry, provided Warner left her alone. She didn't hate Ile du Vent as he did; it was as good as any other place. Anyway, if the price of sisal kept slumping, they probably would be recalled to Fond Marie. There was no sense trying to foresee problems and solve them in advance. People drove themselves crazy that way. Live from day to day, that was the thing to do. Make the best of a bad situation. As Warner Lemke's wife she had no future.

  Her drink was finished. She always drank the first one fast. She thought about getting up for another but felt lazy and called the houseboy instead.

  "Fix me a drink, Alberse, will you? Rum-soda."

  "Oui, madame."

  "Alberse."

  He swung back to face her.

  "Do you know where M'sieu Lemke went?"

  "No, madame."

  "All right. Fix me a drink."

  Why had she married Warner in the first place? She shrugged, knowing the answer well enough. She had been too young to see past his good looks and know what he really was like. She had been bored with her job in the mill, desperate for a change, and Warner was a good-looking boy with an expensive car and a good salary. He'd been a football hero in college and had a scrapbook full of pictures and clippings. That was enough at the start to put him head and shoulders above anyone else she was likely to land.

  Later, when he had taken her to Ohio to meet his folks, she had been thrilled. That was the word, thrilled. His folks were wonderful. They really were. His mother was a sweet, white-haired woman right out of one of those small-town movies where people talked for hours and nothing ever happened. His father sold insurance and thought "darn" was a swear w
ord. They had a big white house that must have been a hundred years old but still looked expensive and had called her "daughter" before they knew her name well enough to remember it. Some contrast to her own folks and her own home. Brother.

  But it hadn't worked out. Whatever it was Warner wanted, it was something she couldn't give him, something no one woman could give him. He was the kind of man who had to keep on proving himself with one conquest after another. There had been other women in the States when he worked for the sugar company there before coming to the islands. He thought she didn't know. She knew, all right. There had always been other women, beginning with that red-haired trollop in his office less than a month after they were married. There always would be other women.

  "Okay, Alberse. Thanks."

  She drank half the second rum-soda and went to the end of the veranda to see if she could see him. He wasn't in sight.

  "Oh, Alberse."

  "Oui, madame?"

  "I'm going to move my things into the guest room. I'll need some help."

  "Now, madame?" The boy's face was a study in lack of expression, as blank as the plywood ceiling.

  "Now."

  They worked for twenty minutes, carrying her possessions across the hall. When the job was done, she went to the veranda again. Still no sign of Warner. Sisal, that was all she could see: long, straight rows of sisal plants. Pretty, sort of, if you didn't mind the monotony of it. Turn your head slowly and the lines seemed to turn with it, like spokes on a revolving wheel. She turned to get the effect. A boy in a white shirt and khaki trousers was standing at the foot of the steps.

  "Bon jour, madame." He raised a hand as if to tip his hat, though he wore none.

  She said "Good morning" and frowned at him. "I've seen you before. Who are you?"

  "Pradon Beliard, madame. I work for Mr. Barnett at Fond Marie."

  "That must be it. I've seen you there. What do you want?"

  "Is Mr. Lemke here, madame?"

  "No."

  Pradon seemed disappointed. "Will he return soon, perhaps?"

  "I suppose so. I don't know."

  "If I may wait—"

  She only shrugged, and Pradon went to the mango tree and sat in its deep green shade, looping his arms about his knees. She watched him for a moment, then shrugged again and returned to her chair.

  Five minutes later Warner Lemke came along the path from the beach. The boy rose to greet him.

  They talked for some time by the tree. The woman on the veranda could not hear much of what was said; only an unconnected word or two. Pradon used the word bête several times. He used the word diable. He mentioned a sum of money, so many gourdes. "Whatever it was about, it was apparently funny. Pradon grinned and her husband laughed aloud.

  Toward the end, Warner did all the talking. She could not hear him, his voice was too deep to reach the veranda, but she saw his lips moving and could tell that Pradon, his back to her, was intently listening. Warner took money from a billfold and gave it to the boy. He laid a hand on the boy's shoulder in dismissal. Pradon went down the path and Warner came to the house.

  "Why the secrecy?" Alma asked as he climbed the steps.

  He leered at her. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

  "Of course I'd like to know. I live here, don't I? What was he saying about a beast and a devil?"

  He halted in the doorway on his way into the house. "I don't seem to remember. Maybe he was telling me that all women are beasts and devils. Present company excepted, of course."

  "Of course." She finished her drink and stood up. "Are you ready for lunch?"

  "When I've had a drink and washed."

  She thought she knew where he had been. "Do wash," she said. "Thoroughly."

  "Don't be a bitch."

  She went to tell Renee they were ready. Warner poured himself a rum and downed it, then strolled down the hall to the bathroom. A glance into the bedroom, as he passed, told him his wife had made good her threat to move across the hall. He shut the bathroom door behind him with force enough to rattle the bottles of medicine on the shelf.

  His face in the mirror above the wash basin glowered back at him; then his scowl changed to a grin. It had been quite a morning. First that girl on the beach, Micheline Laroche, and now the good word from Pradon Beliard. Quite a morning. He had an idea he would be a very busy man from now on. Much too busy to care a damn whether his dear wife approved of him or not.

  7

  ON SUNDAY MORNING the Reverend Arthur Barry Clinton counted seventeen persons in church and was delighted. Not bad for his first week on the island, he told himself. More than half of them were people he had treated at the clinic—he now thought of his office as such—during the past five days. He had treated more than these, of course. Many more. About half of them had only thought they were sick, and some of the others had been very sick indeed. Yaws, mostly. It was a lucky thing that yaws could be arrested with a good jolt of penicillin; otherwise he would have had his hands full. He wondered what he would do about the armless little girl who had so pitifully begged him to make her like other people. Perhaps that school for handicapped children in the capital

  He surveyed his congregation again. Lucille, of course, was present. So were big Louis Cesar and his wife Daure, the little magistrate from Petit Trou, Micheline Laroche, and Alma Lemke. The latter two puzzled him. He certainly hadn't expected the houngan's sister, and as for the Lemke woman, she was the last person in the world he would have thought interested in things spiritual. He had met her at Couronne affairs and always felt slightly uncomfortable in her presence. She seemed to think every man she talked to or danced with was secretly longing to be her lover. And what would her husband think of her being here? Warner despised clerics, or said he did. To the great football hero, men of the church were odd ducks, not entirely masculine. Well, he was glad Alma had come, even though her presence in church was a real surprise. As a matter of fact, he hadn't been aware that she and her husband were back from Fond Marie.

  He tried to hide his pleasure under a mask of sternness. "Many others should be here," he said, wondering vaguely what old Leander Mitchell had done with his time during his months on the island. "Apparently some were afraid to incur the displeasure of"—he was going to say "a certain individual whom they fear" but changed his mind in midsentence; why beat about the bush, after all?—"of Catus Laroche. This puzzles me. I have talked with Catus. We have a gentlemen's agreement. I feel sure that if he had forbidden anyone to come here this morning, he would have been forthright enough to tell me so."

  There was, of course, no answer.

  "I welcome those of you who are here," he went on, taking pains to include them all in his gaze. "Especially the two sisters of the man mentioned. Their presence would seem to prove my belief that Catus issued no orders."

  That was enough of that, he decided. He hoped they would notice he had cleaned the church.

  He had, in fact, spent hours cleaning it and was proud of the results. With Louis' help, after the garden on the ridge was planted, he had even knocked some rectangular openings in the walls to let in light. The only real remedy, of course, would be a new church in a location where there was a breeze to be let in too, but he knew what the Bishop would say to that. Still, this was better than it had been. The windows lent a feeling of airiness, even though the atmosphere was still a mass of hot cotton. The floor and benches were clean, the altar and rail had been scrubbed, and the church had lost its look of neglect.

  He led his little congregation in some of the hymns from the Creole hymnbook, selected after a talk with Lucy. If he ever did get a new church, he would have to find an organ for it, he told himself; hymns without an organ lacked something. One of those little ones with the pedals would do. Peter Ambrose managed nicely with one at Fond Marie, and they were not expensive. He'd have to play it himself, he supposed. The sour notes would certainly fly. But the peasants did love music . . .

  He talked to them about the conversion of Paul. Paul,
he pointed out, had been a good deal like someone they well knew, misunderstanding the church and stubbornly setting himself against those who carried on its work. Yet God had found a way to reach into his heart and win him over. He hoped they understood what he was driving at, and watched them for a clue.

  Their faces told him nothing. Lucy, on the bench directly in front of him, sat with her long hands clasped in her lap and her back straight as a stick; she was the new Father's housekeeper and let there be no doubting it. She wasn't wearing her Sunday dress but the new one she had bought with the money he had given her: a hideous pink thing that came halfway to her ankles. She wore new shoes as well, and had had her hair done. He had watched the hair operation yesterday afternoon, from his office. For two solid hours she had sat statue-still on a kitchen chair under the campeche tree while some girl from the village, hardly more than a child, had fussed over her. The result was a beehive sort of thing that made the old girl look like an African jungle queen.

  The others were only slightly less expressionless. His gaze traveled over them and he catalogued Louis Cesar as hot and bored, Daure as bewildered, the little magistrate as faintly amused, the islanders only curious.

  Of Catus Laroche's sister he could make nothing. It was folly to guess at what went on behind those remarkable eyes. She never once looked directly at him as he spoke. Yet she was never still. He sensed that she was aware of his every word and gesture, even aware that she held his attention a good part of the time. Little things she did, like taking a slow deep breath that caused her white dress to tighten over her breasts; letting a shoulder droop; languidly reaching down to rub an ankle . . . all of it was deliberate, he was certain.