Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  What a turn of luck, this accident! Pradon was grinning now. He had foreseen nothing like this. He had hoped simply that the Father might be thrown from Dufour's bête diable in front of witnesses—a mere incident for the people to laugh at.

  This was really something, this was. By the time Père Clinton got back from the mainland, his name on the island would be a word to frighten babies with.

  9

  JEFF BARNETT AND PETER AMBROSE arrived in the plantation jeep soon after the launch reached the mainland. Peter examined the injured boy and shook his head. "My guess is that a broken rib has punctured a lung. It's more than I dare tackle. I think we'd better take him straight to the capital."

  They dropped Jeff off at the plantation. Arriving at the hospital just at dark, Peter and Barry remained there while the lad was operated on. It was a bad night for Barry. He could not forget that young Toto had been hurt trying to do him a favor. When the lad recovers, he told himself, I'm going to make it up to him.

  When the youngster was brought from the operating room, Barry sat beside the bed, waiting. It was four in the morning when the anaesthetic wore off.

  He held the lad's hand. "When you're well again, you'll be taken to Fond Marie, Toto. Père Ambrose will send word to me and I'll come over from the island to get you. Would you like to live with me at the mission?"

  The boy looked at him as though he had promised heaven. "Oui, mon Père! Mais oui!"

  "Good. I need someone like you around the place to liven things up. I'll arrange it with your aunt, and the day you arrive we'll have a celebration." He wanted to say more but knew he mustn't; even at this much the lad had begun to tremble. "You rest now. Sleep. You need lots of sleep. I'll see you at Fond Marie."

  The youngster's gaze was still on him when he turned in the doorway to wave good-bye.

  On the way to Fond Marie, Barry did the driving. He did not feel like talking and Peter did not press him. They were more than halfway to the mission before he was able to shake off the effects of what had happened. Then under his companion's gentle prodding he told of his success on the island, the clinic, the garden, the size of his first congregation. He didn't mention the vodun service or his conversations with Catus Laroche.

  "I'm going to have to enlarge the rectory, I can see that," he said. "It's hopeless the way it is now. I need much more room."

  "For your clinic, you mean?"

  "Yes. As it is now, if two parents come with a child, one has to wait outside while I make an examination. That confounded office is nothing but a box. I'm thinking of another wing with one big room or possibly two, one of them a waiting room. I can pay for it without going to the Bishop. My folks left me several thousand dollars that I've never touched." He gazed wistfully through the dusty windshield. "What I'd really like to build is a combination clinic and rectory on the ridge."

  "Where old Leander Mitchell first thought of putting the mission? There's no water."

  "Gutters and tanks would solve the water problem. There's plenty of rain."

  "It would cost something."

  "Hang the cost. But for a project like that I'd have to have the Bishop's approval."

  Peter Ambrose sent a curious glance at him. "You really do want a clinic, don't you?" he murmured. What a strange young man Barry was, really. So intense, so impatient to get things done. The ordinary young fellow in his situation would be groping along with the greatest care, wary of every forward step lest he blunder into some unseen pitfall and come a cropper. Poor old Mitchell, it seemed, had stumbled at the very start and accomplished nothing. But Barry was no Leander Mitchell. He was a young man who knew where he was going. If ever he acquired a faith to match his eagerness, there would be no stopping him.

  "Suppose I talk to the Bishop for you," Peter said mildly.

  Barry stiffened at the wheel. "You mean he might listen?"

  "It's not impossible. He visited the island last year and must know what you're up against. I'll be seeing him in Raphael tomorrow. He's stopping there for lunch. Suppose I feel him out."

  Barry wanted to shout.

  HE WENT TO THE PLANTATION that evening, saw Edith, and told Jeff Barnett his plans. Jeff seemed interested. Perhaps it was a relief to discuss something other than the slumping price of sisal.

  "I'd forget about a wooden building if I were you and think in terms of stone," the plantation manager advised. "It would be expensive to truck lumber from the capital to Anse Ange and get it across the channel. There's good limestone on Ile du Vent. I can lend you Clement St. Juste. He's a smart man with stone."

  Barry could scarcely control his eagerness. He felt he would burst out of his skin.

  "I don't see that you have much of a problem, really," Jeff went on. "We'll draw up a simple set of plans and St. Juste can show your island workmen what to do. We've some sheets of corrugated iron left over from the warehouse we built last year. You can have those for your roof. I believe we've even got some plastic pipe."

  If only the Bishop consents, Barry thought.

  He drew a sketch of the rectory as he wanted it, and they sat about a table discussing it, Edith leaning over Barry's arm to make suggestions. She was in one of her happy moods this evening. She seemed almost childishly gay. He would have to include a guest room, she joked; she was planning to visit him, no matter how much scandal it caused. Her father and mother smiled at her happy chatter.

  Her father filled sheets of paper with figures, redrew Barry's rough sketches, and worked out a system of gutters for catching the water. Marian Barnett suggested ways to improve the kitchen. It was after midnight before the talk turned to plantation affairs.

  "We're having a rough time," Jeff said. "We may have to tighten our belt and let some of our people go. I don't know what's going to happen here if the market keeps falling."

  Barry was startled by the man's tone. Something happen to Couronne? It didn't seem possible. The company's holdings extended along the coast for miles and crept back inland to the very base of the blue-black mountains that made a moonscape of St. Joseph's inhospitable interior. Couronne was one of the biggest things in St. Joseph. Annually the plantation shipped thousands of tons of sisal to the States to be made into twine.

  Jeff probably exaggerated. He was by nature a dour sort of fellow anyway, an odd contrast to his wife who was always determinedly cheerful. Still, he should know what he was talking about. He had worked in the tropics for years. He'd met his wife in the islands—she'd been an embassy secretary in the Dominican Republic—and Edith had been born on a Caribbean coffee plantation. If anyone could see into Couronne's future, Jeff should be able to.

  On the way back to the mission Barry thought about it. But the prospect of a new clinic for Ile du Vent was too joyful a thing to be darkened by Jeff's gloom. If only the Bishop would say yes!

  AT FOUR THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON Peter returned from Raphael.

  "The Bishop approves," he announced triumphantly, "with one reservation."

  Barry's heart sank. "Reservation?"

  "That you build a new church first. The one Mitchell put up is a disgrace, he says."

  "I'll build ten new churches!"

  "One will do for a start." Peter smiled. "You should be able to do both jobs for five thousand dollars in a place like that, he says. He's allotting you that amount. If you go over, you're on your own."

  BARRY WENT TO THE PLANTATION for dinner, and Jeff presented him

  with a set of finished drawings for the rectory. "They wouldn't do for a house building job in Massachusetts, I imagine, but they're all you'll need here. Just be sure you get your markers in the ground properly, so the house will be where you want it, and leave the rest to St. Juste. You'll have no trouble getting workers. Be sure they understand the pay scale, of course. And if you're wise you'll hire a boss boy to referee the minor disputes that are bound to keep cropping up. Pradon Beliard should be a good one for that."

  Barry hesitated. "Pradon's been away from Ile du Vent rather a long t
ime, don't you think? I might do better with someone they know more intimately."

  "That's true. But at least you know he's to be trusted."

  Do I? Barry wondered. Beliard would have cheated me that first day if old Mitchell hadn't stopped him. Well, he would solve that problem when he came to it. He told Jeff about the church.

  "No trouble there," Jeff said, promptly reaching for pencil and paper again. "I helped Peter build his."

  Clement St. Juste stopped in later for a chat. He was one of the dark-skinned plantation men who had attended the farewell party: a tall, thin young man with a firm handshake. He looked forward to being of help, he said, and was ready to leave for Ile du Vent at once. He seemed delighted with the prospect of spending some time on the island, as though it would be a kind of vacation for him.

  After dinner Barry and Edith went for a walk, at Barry's suggestion. He wanted to talk to her about his work, he said. They strolled down the road a quarter mile and took a path through the fields of sisal that led to the shore. There was a strip of beach there where the plantation people went for picnics and swimming. He had used it occasionally when he was at Fond Marie. Raisin-la-mer bushes formed a barrier between the beach and the sisal, and there was one large figuier tree with broad round leaves under which, in the daytime, bathers could escape from the sun.

  He found it pleasant sitting under the tree with Edith, on a carpet of fallen leaves. They had the beach all to themselves at this hour; no one came here after dark. The incoming waves broke with a soft rushing sound on a small reef near shore, and there was a constant rustling of little crabs at the water's edge. A breeze stirred the leaves overhead. He talked to Edith about his garden project.

  "I have the seeds you asked for in your letter," she said. "Freddy had to go to the capital last week and I gave him a list." She smiled at him. "But you weren't serious when you said the peasants had never seen seeds in a packet."

  "I was. A real garden will be a revelation to them."

  "And an inspiration to go and do likewise?"

  "I certainly hope so. That's the whole point of it."

  "I wish I could help you set it out," she said.

  "I wish you could too. You've always had green thumbs."

  She was silent a moment, then took his hand and looked at him. "Have you been lonely, Barry?"

  "In less than a week? Many a time when I was here at the mission I went longer than that without seeing you."

  "I thought it might have been different, your being alone there on the island."

  "It was different." He put an arm about her and drew her closer. "I've thought about you more than I should have."

  It was the truth. He had thought about her a great deal there on the island, especially at night when he lay on his cot, in his cubbyhole of a room, going over the day's events. Here in Fond Marie she had been someone to pass the time with, an available escape from the routine at the mission. There it was different. He had wanted to talk to her about his plans and problems. Not just anyone, but her. She would understand, he had felt. He had really been lonely for her.

  She put her head on his shoulder and moved his hand so that it lay over her breast. "Is it true what you wrote me about old Mr. Mitchell, that he drank too much?"

  "He was certainly drinking more than a man ought to, living alone like that."

  "And he wasn't poisoned?"

  "I doubt it very much."

  "But there is vodun on the island, isn't there?"

  He told her of his talks with Catus. "As things stand at the moment I don't regard him as an enemy, at least not an active one. He may be later on, of course."

  "When you take a stand against his vodun, you mean?"

  "Yes. But I don't see that I'm even close to the point of conflict yet. I've a church and rectory to build, the clinic to look after, the garden to work at."

  "But you do hold services?"

  "I hold services." He smiled, enjoying the warmth and softness of her body against his own, and the sounds of sea and breeze and the cool fresh smell of the air about them. "But look at it this way. My job is to make them better people. There are two ways of doing it, as I see it. I can stand up Sunday after Sunday expounding and explaining church doctrine, or I can offer them the simple story of Christ the humble teacher, persuading people like themselves to love one another for their own good. Which approach would you choose?"

  She frowned. "Only Christ the teacher?"

  "If I insist on more, I shall have to spend all my time trying to explain a mystic birth they could never understand. I'll be hopelessly floundering in the maze of the trinity and atonement. These are simple people, Edith."

  "I'm not sure the Bishop would approve," she said, shaking her head.

  "He doesn't have to be practical. On Ile du Vent I'm back in the same sort of world Christ himself was in. The same people, same problems. He didn't complicate his teaching with dogma."

  "Well, I suppose there's no harm—"

  "Catus Laroche and his people aren't going to discard their vodun beliefs just because I recommend it. They've got to be convinced that I've something better to offer them. Not just a better doctrine, Edith. A better way of life."

  "Won't it take a long time?"

  "Very long, I'm afraid."

  She lay back on the carpet of leaves and Barry turned sideways to look down at her. Her face seemed strangely pale in the darkness.

  Her eyes were wide, gazing up at him. "You'll be going back tomorrow?" she asked.

  He thought of young Toto in the hospital with a punctured lung, of the church and rectory he had to build, of the people on the island even now waiting for him to return so that they might line up at the clinic for the help they needed.

  "Yes, I'll be going back tomorrow."

  "Then you'd better take me home now, don't you think?"

  "Yes, I suppose I'd better."

  He stood up, brushing the sand from his clothing. He waited for her to get up and after a while, a long while, heard her doing so. He took her hand. They walked back to the plantation house in silence.

  BARRY LEFT FOND MARIE the next morning in a plantation pick-up, with Clement St. Juste and a driver. In the truck were his books and the rest of his clothes, a supply of medicines given him by Peter, and some tools donated by Edith's father. They arrived in Anse Ange at ten.

  He and St. Juste walked about the town, doing the shops. It was not much of a place. Still, it was the largest town for miles and the shops contained a surprising assortment of merchandise. He bought bags of cement and some tools that Jeff had not been able to provide, saw a wheelbarrow and bought that, acquired buckets, nails, nuts and bolts, hinges, shutter-hooks, and such an assortment of other small items that the size of the load, when he saw it all together in the truck, gave him a moment of panic. How in the world was he to get it all up the trail to the rectory?

  He counted the money in his wallet. He had spent more than seventy dollars and had less than two hundred left. "We'd better call on the rector here," he said wryly to St. Juste.

  The Anse Ange rector was a round, jovial man who didn't hesitate a moment to accept a check on Barry's personal account and deal out a stack of ragged gourde notes in exchange. "Small stuff is what you want," he chirped, "and the dirtier the better. They're always suspicious of clean money, these people." He produced a sisal halford and stuffed the paper notes into it, thrusting some at Barry with the advice to keep them in his pocket where he could get at them. Then he insisted on making rum cocktails "to settle your stomachs for the channel crossing."

  It took half an hour, with more than a dozen husky natives making a noisy game of it, to transfer the load from the truck to the boat. After the crossing, the boat crew were an hour unloading it. Barry stood on the beach beside his small mountain of property and breathed a sigh of relief. The way to do this job was to move forward a step at a time, he told himself. Face up to a problem, solve it, then face the next.

  Instructing St. Juste to keep an ey
e on the pile, he climbed the beach. There were always men on hand when the boats came in. Some were fishermen who lived in the huts along the shore; others came to meet relatives returning from the mainland, or were simply curious. He halted with a cheerful "Bon jour, compères" before a group of five or six.

  At once, by their lack of expression and reluctance to return the greeting, he knew something was wrong.

  "I've a lot of stuff to be carried to the rectory," he said, apprehensive. "I can use a dozen men, at least."

  They looked past him and shrugged their shoulders. Sorry, they said; they had things to do. But they were not sorry. They were sullen. The group broke up, its members slouching off in several directions. Puzzled, he tried a smaller group nearby.

  It was the same. They were busy. They could not help. "Something's wrong here," he said to St. Juste. "Do you mind guarding the stuff while I go up to the mission?"

  St. Juste said he would wait.

  Climbing the trail, Barry recalled his first conversation with Catus Laroche at the place where the path became a ladder of boulders. Was Catus behind the islanders' refusal to help? It was certainly possible. If Catus thought a new church would threaten his role as high priest of vodun, he would do everything possible to stop it.

  But I haven't told anyone here that I'm building a church, Barry thought.

  The mission clearing looked as though it had stood unused for years; as though old Mr. Mitchell had walked out with never a backward glance and Barry Clinton had never existed. He went past his office to the kitchen. Lucille sat there at the table, her head on her folded arms. When he spoke her name she raised her head to look at him and seemed bewildered for a moment, then quickly stood up.

  "Mon Père!"

  "Is everything all right, Lucy?"

  "Oui, mon Père. Everything is all right. But you did not say when you would return."

  There was no time for that now. He leaned toward her, his hands flat on the table. "I have some things on the beach that must be brought up here, Lucy, and the men won't carry them. Why won't they? What's happened?"