Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  "Of course." She turned to face him and he sensed that she was trying very hard to escape the mood she was in. "Did you think about me last night?" she asked.

  He had to smile. "I couldn't very well. I was at a vodun service till daylight."

  "A what?"

  He told her of the affair in the grotto. Just as he finished, a little group of people arrived from the village and he had to excuse himself. When he returned after giving them the medicine they had come for, he was grinning. He had obtained two more workers.

  Edith frowned at him as he seated himself beside her again. "Are you sure it's a good thing for you to attend these vodun affairs?" she asked.

  "Of course it is. How else am I going to understand these people?"

  "Surely you don't condone it?"

  "At the moment I'm observing, not judging."

  "I don't like it," she said.

  He thought it wise to change the subject and asked if she were comfortable at the Lemkes'. The question brought another frown to her face.

  "I don't think I'm very welcome," she said. "If I'm not mistaken, they were using both bedrooms and I've put one of them out. Warner sleeps on the veranda."

  "They've been quarreling, you mean?"

  "They hardly speak to each other. When they do, it seems to be always with a double meaning." Her lips tightened and Barry felt her shiver. "I don't like Warner Lemke, Barry. I don't like the way he looks at me or the way he speaks of you. It's always 'dear Mr. Clinton' as though he despised you."

  "He feels that way about all clerics. We're a bit queer, he thinks."

  "I wish I could stay here at the mission."

  "I wish you could too." He squeezed her hand. "But the Bishop wouldn't like it, with things so crowded here."

  EDITH INSISTED ON GOING TO THE RIDGE IN the afternoon. There must be some way she could help, she said. Her petulance seemed to have vanished, and Barry was delighted at the prospect of her company.

  He gave her a trowel and she stood at his side, applying mortar to the wall as he lifted the stones into place.

  Soon afterward, Pradon Beliard arrived. He was not dressed for work. At sight of Barry stripped to the waist and toiling with the others, his eyes widened and he had a moment of panic. His job was to help Mr. Clinton. He was being paid for it. But he had no intention of working like a peasant.

  It was too late for flight; he had already been seen. He advanced slowly, his glance darting this way and that in frantic search of an escape. What kind of man was this Clinton, anyway, to be acting like a common laborer? And what in God's name did the white girl think she was doing, working there beside him? Had the world gone crazy?

  Barry, amused by his antics, watched him out of an eye-corner.

  "I—I have come to offer my services," Pradon stammered.

  Barry solemnly nodded. "We certainly can use you. Do you know how to lay up a wall?"

  "I'm afraid I don't."

  "You'd better help carry the stones, then."

  "Sir, with this leg of mine—"

  "Oh, yes, the leg. I'd forgotten. Well"— Barry looked around—"we've a lot more digging to do. The church is to have a concrete floor. Go and help Louis dig, why don't you, if you want to be useful."

  Pradon was now actually trembling. "I—I thought I might help with the supervision," he managed weakly.

  "What the devil would you supervise?" Barry was thoroughly enjoying the young man's discomfiture. "Come off it and pick up a shovel. You're no better than the rest of us, are you?"

  Pradon reluctantly trudged over to where Louis was digging. Louis leered at him. They had all heard the conversation. They were all watching to see what he would do. He picked up a shovel and saw that the audience under the pomme-rose trees was observing him too. His lip curled. He went to work savagely.

  "You're going to get that pretty shirt dirty if you don't take it off," Louis said innocently.

  Pradon swore under his breath, threw down the shovel, and peeled off his shirt. His eyes blazed. Every few moments, as he dug furiously at the hard ground, he lifted his head to look at Barry, whose back was toward him. There was pure hatred in his gaze.

  A little later Catus Laroche came. The work was going well, with Louis and Pradon shoveling, four men now carrying stones, and St. Juste and Barry laying them up. Catus glanced at the audience of peasants and sat down beside his sister, who had gone home at noon but returned soon after the siesta hour. At sight of the white girl working at Barry's side, he frowned. His sister was frowning too.

  "Look at her!" Micheline said. "If she is not careful, she'll get her pretty hands dirty! You'd think she would be ashamed to let the whole world know she is after him."

  "How do you know she is after him? It could be the church she is interested in."

  "The way she looks at him? Don't be stupid."

  Catus saw that she was right. As she worked, the woman kept glancing at the Father. They were not talking much, but she seemed unable to keep her mind and her eyes on what she was doing. He shrugged. The mind of a white woman was something he knew nothing about. He knew the mind of his sister though.

  He scowled at Micheline. "The way she looks at him is no concern of yours," he said.

  She tossed her head but made no retort.

  Catus watched the men at work and was impressed by what they had accomplished in such a short time. When Louis had told him the new church was to be of stone, he had thought of the task as a tremendous undertaking. On Ile du Vent no one built with stone. He saw now that it was relatively easy. You simply placed one chunk of limestone on top of another with a mortar of sand and cement, and if a chunk didn't fit you broke it with a hammer. They would need a certain amount of skill when they came to the doors and windows, he guessed, but the walls were no great problem.

  He frowned, running his tongue over the gap in his teeth. Perhaps he should build a stone hounfor.

  His sister glanced at him sideways. "Why don't you help them?" she asked.

  "Why should I help?"

  "The Father is your friend, isn't he?"

  "It is not up to me to build a church for him. Let him build his own."

  "When he does, will you set fire to it?"

  Catus turned his head slowly toward her. "That is not amusing."

  "Then it wasn't you who destroyed the Father's altar?"

  "You know it wasn't."

  He wondered who had set fire to the Father's church, and, for that matter, who had told the people about young Toto. His gaze fastened on the white girl again, and after a moment he rose. As he strolled toward the Father he was aware that people were watching him. What were they expecting? That he would call on the loa to knock this new church to pieces?

  "May I speak to you a moment, Father?"

  "Certainly." Welcoming the excuse to rest a moment, Barry strolled with him to the edge of the ridge, not failing to appreciate the magnificent view of the sea as he halted. "What is it, Catus?"

  "You said you would ask M'selle Barnett if she talked to anyone about Toto."

  "I asked her at lunch. She didn't."

  "Is she positive?"

  "Quite. She told no one."

  "Well, I won't keep you from your work," Catus said, and returned to his sister.

  There was but one answer, he told himself. If the girl had spoken to no one, the news of the boy's death must have reached the island another way. There was only one other way. M'sieu Lemke, at the plantation, conversed with Couronne every day on the radio. Someone at Couronne must have told him.

  This raised another question. The story, it now seemed certain, had first made its appearance at the ceremony in the grotto. Catus had spent the morning making inquiries and was positive on that point. But Lemke had not attended the service. The whispers had been set in motion by someone else then.

  By whom?

  Catus looped his arms about his knees and scowled at the men working on the church. At one in particular—Pradon Beliard. He had been thinking about Pra
don for some days now. There were rumors in Petit Trou, where this young dandy with the limp lived, that he and the magistrate, Felix Dufour, were thick as thieves. It was Dufour who had sold Père Clinton that mule.

  And what about the curious remark Pradon had made to him on the boat, the day of the Father's arrival? "Don't worry about this one making trouble for you," the dandy had said. "He won't last long." How could Pradon Beliard know how long the Father would last?

  One thing was certain: the Father had an enemy here on the island, and that enemy was no ordinary peasant. Only someone with a special knack for intrigue could have set in motion the lie that Toto was dead before he left the island, and convinced the people the Father was to blame. Ordinarily they wouldn't have dreamed of doubting Louis, nor would they have blamed a man for something his mule had done.

  As for the mutterings in the grotto last night—well, Pradon had been there, hadn't he?

  Had he also set fire to the church? Catus thought it was very probable. The Father, of course, was wrong in believing that no one at the service could have set the fire. The tunnel into which the tide flowed was not the only entrance to that cave, and many people knew it.

  He would have to watch Pradon. Oui.

  He watched him now, and another thought came. What if he did discover proof that Pradon was the Father's enemy? The Father was building this big new church. At the very first service in the old church, before the Toto affair, a surprisingly large number of people had turned out. Far more than old Père Mitchell had ever been able to entice. What would happen if Pradon were exposed? The Father would have everyone's sympathy. Already the people admired him for his industry. Just look at him now, half drowned in sweat but working as hard as any black man and laughing while he labored. They went to him for medical help when he, Catus, could not cure them. They were watching to see what kind of vegetables would come up in the model garden he talked so much about.

  If I stop Beliard from destroying him he will grow strong, Catus thought. He may soon be strong enough to preach against vodun, as old Père Mitchell did. And if this man raises his voice against the things I believe in, people may listen to him.

  Still, the very things for which the people respected the Father were the things Ile du Vent needed so badly. His interest in their health. His efforts to improve their way of life. The example he set by working so hard.

  Perhaps he will not preach against me, Catus reflected. After all, he did come to the vodun service. And he doesn't claim that his sacred book holds all the answers. . . .

  14

  LUCILLE BRISTLED WITH INDIGNATION as she bustled about the breakfast table. She had gone early to the market in Petit Trou this morning, hoping to get her pick of the vegetables and a choice cut of the pig to be slaughtered. She had returned seething.

  "That Dufour!" she stormed. "You will have to do something about him, Father! It's all very well for you to be working at the church and killing yourself over a crowd of patients every day, but someone's got to put that man in his place, and who but you can do it? In Anse Ange the marchandes are taxed only two cents a basket. Here they must pay ten now!"

  "Ten?" Barry was truly concerned. The previous complaints had been about a tax of five.

  "He raised it again this morning. He has no right!"

  Barry looked at his watch and then across the table at St. Juste. "Perhaps I'd better go down there, Clement. I hate to run out on you, but she's right. Something has got to be done."

  "You don't need to work on the church every morning, Mr. Clinton," St. Juste said. "We've got quite a crew now. You don't need to go up there at all."

  "I like it."

  "You go at it too hard. You're losing weight."

  "Wrong. I've gained." As a matter of fact he had never felt better in his life. The week of hard physical labor on the ridge had toughened him. He could climb that ridge path now without even puffing, and lift stones that would have broken his back before. He was very nearly as dark as a native too, from the sun. When he undressed at night he looked like a man made of two half bodies, one white and one dark brown, stuck together at the waist.

  "I'll go and see Dufour now, Lucy," he said. "If people come for treatment, have them wait. I should be back soon." He had been having her tell them to come back in the evening, unless it was an emergency. Mornings he worked on the church, and in the afternoons Edith usually came.

  As he rode to Petit Trou—he had a horse now, a sturdy little animal sent over from Anse Ange by the rector there—he thought about Edith and shook his head. She wasn't having much fun, he supposed. Even though he had arranged his schedule so that he might spend some time with her every day, there was really little they could do together. At Fond Marie there had been the Couronne parties and the beach. Here they could only stroll about the island paths. On the one occasion when they had gone down to the channel shore for a swim, half the people of Ile du Vent, it seemed, had gathered to gawk at a white girl in a bathing suit, and Edith had been furious.

  The truth, he supposed, was that Ile du Vent was a pretty deadly place for anyone not concerned with its problems or blessed with a streak of adventure. An adventurous girl might find things to do. Those caves in the great cliff just begged to be explored, for instance. And spear-fishing on the channel reef should be an exciting experience. He wished he had time for such pleasures himself. Some day he would have. But for a woman like Edith there was nothing. She simply wasn't the curious sort. She had come here for one reason, to be with him, and being with him was turning out to be dull.

  She wants to be loved, I suppose, he told himself. But confound it, I can't make love to her when I don't feel like it, and there's never a moment when someone isn't watching us, anyway. He had walked with her one day along what had seemed to be a deserted path, and stopped to kiss her, and the kiss had been interrupted by the giggling of two little girls sitting less than ten feet away under a tree. Another time, thinking themselves safe, they had been caught in the act of embracing by Micheline Laroche and her sister Daure. It was hopeless.

  She wouldn't come in the evening, that was the trouble. She disliked the long ride back to the plantation in the dark. He, of course, had been invited to the plantation by the Lemkes, but so far had been able to avoid going. He could foresee no pleasure in a pointless struggle to make conversation with a married pair who were scarcely speaking to each other. Especially when one of them frankly despised him in the bargain.

  He dismounted at Dufour's house and climbed the veranda steps. People in the village street stopped to watch as he knocked on the screen door.

  "Père Clinton!" the little man exclaimed through his bad teeth. "This is a surprise!"

  "I don't get down here very often, do I?" Barry tried to sound pleasant. "I'll mend my ways when the church is a bit farther along."

  Dufour held the door and Barry entered, wondering if the fellow never had his shirts laundered, and how he could possibly stand having his sleeves rolled down with their filthy cuffs buttoned about his wrists. He accepted the chair Dufour gestured him to and waited for the magistrate to stop bustling about, picking things up and putting them down again. The room was just about what he had expected: sisal rugs on the floor, the furniture fashioned of thick mahogany planks layered with varnish, the walls decorated with framed magazine illustrations and calendars advertising Coca Cola, Swiss drugs, and sundry other commodities for sale in the stores of the capital. The females pictured on the calendars were white and alluring, but the Swiss presentation was a striking color photograph of snow-covered mountains.

  Dufour sat down, adjusting his black bow tie. "Now, mon Père. What can I do for you?"

  "I've come to quarrel with you," Barry told him with a smile.

  "Quarrel? But no!"

  "But yes, my friend. And not about the mule you sold me, either. What's all this I hear about a whopping big tax in the market place?"

  Dufour's gray-white eyebrows dropped a fraction of an inch and his bony fingers curled
over the edge of his chair-arms. "Tax? There is some complaint, you mean?"

  "You're darned right there's some complaint," Barry said, determined to keep the discussion breezy as long as possible. He did not want this man for an enemy; Dufour was too clever and too powerful. "You can't go around slapping taxes on people just because you're a little short of money, you know. It isn't done."

  "The money is for a new market," Dufour retorted.

  "A worthy project, I'm sure." If you were telling the truth, Barry thought, but of course you're not. "But have you the authority?"

  "Authority?"

  "I realize you're the magistrate here. But a tax increase would have to be approved by the legislature, wouldn't it? I'm quite sure it would. Taxation is a very serious business, you know."

  "I have raised the market tax only a little."

  "It doesn't seem a small amount to the marchandes."

  "Those women! They look for things to complain about!"

  "At the moment they're looking for relief," Barry said, "and I'm bound to say I think they ought to have it. A ten-cent tax is a whopping burden, really. Why, suppose a woman has only a basket of mangoes to sell. Fifty mangoes, say, at two for a penny. After walking here to Petit Trou with them and sitting in the market all day to sell them, she'd get twenty-five cents for the lot. And out of that you demand ten."

  "They don't all sell mangoes."

  "They don't make a lot of money, any of them. Really, Dufour, you've got to cut this out."

  Dufour was squirming. "Well, I'll reduce it to eight."

  "That won't do. The legal tax is two, and you know it."

  "Five, then."

  Barry shook his head, still smiling.

  "We need a new market!" Dufour sputtered.

  "I'll tell you what," Barry countered. "You have a talk with the deputy for this district. It's Beauvoir, isn't it, over in Anse Ange? Ask him to bring the matter up at the next session of the legislature. If they'll approve an increase, I'll not only shut my mouth; I'll donate a tidy sum toward a new market myself." That ought to hold the old buzzard, he thought. It sounded just plausible enough to be entirely innocent, just the sort of suggestion to be expected from a well-meaning outsider who didn't know how local politics were managed; yet it left Mr. Felix Dufour with only a handful of air. He pushed himself to his feet, smiling again. "Meanwhile, back we go to the legal two-cent tax, hey, until the increase is all proper and aboveboard. Agreed?"