Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  "There was no one else in my house that day."

  "What I'm telling you is the truth. Have I ever lied to you?"

  "You are lying now."

  "If I had done this thing, to turn your people against you, would I be here now denying it?"

  "You have made me your enemy and you are afraid."

  "It wasn't fear that brought me here, Catus. I'm not afraid of you."

  "We are enemies." Catus made it sound like a simple statement, but his eyes left no doubt that the words were a threat. "I bid you good day and warn you not to come here again."

  He shut the door.

  Barry turned away, feeling weak, drained of energy. The eyes were on him as he walked to his horse and swung himself into the saddle. He saw Micheline again as the horse wheeled half about before heading for the gate. Her mouth wore the same triumphant smile.

  Was this her doing, to punish him for having refused her in the grotto? How could it be?

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON Catus emerged from the hounfor and returned to his house. The others had been watching and waiting for hours. Daure at once took him a tray of food.

  He ate as though he had no appetite, though he had eaten nothing since shutting himself up in the hounfor the evening before. Daure sat on a chair and sadly shook her head at him. Micheline came and leaned in the doorway.

  "What's the matter?" Micheline taunted. "Aren't you hungry? Haven't you made up your mind what to do yet? I thought griot and djon-djon were your favorite foods."

  Paying no attention, Catus poked with his fork at the chunks of fried pig and the mound of rice and mushrooms.

  "Leave him alone," Daure said.

  "What did the Father say to you?" Micheline persisted. "That he didn't do this thing? Did he tell you again that he was really your best friend?"

  "Be quiet, Micheline!" Daure snapped. "What's the matter with you lately anyway?"

  "I suppose you think he didn't do it!"

  "As a matter of fact, yes, that's right. I do think he didn't do it. You can say what you like, all of you, but the Father is a good man."

  "Because he saved your child? Because Fifine likes him?"

  "Yes. And because he has done a lot of other good things. You know he has."

  Catus raised his head to look at her. "Are you taking his side against me?"

  "Am I what? No." She seemed puzzled by his question. "No, of course I'm not. Would I take any man's side against my own brother? But you don't know for certain he did this thing. People say he accused you, but I haven't heard any of them say that he talked to them about it."

  "Do you believe I let the child die?" Catus asked her.

  Daure frowned. "If I heard the Father say it I might believe it. Fifine would have died, wouldn't she? But I have not heard him say it, and I don't believe he did. I think someone must have said it for him, to make you hate him."

  Micheline gave her sister a pitying look. "How generous of you. And who do you think must have said it for him? Who on this island would dare tell such a lie about Catus?"

  "I don't know. But the Father is a good man."

  "Good! Good! You said that before. Why is he good?"

  "He wants to help us. He has helped us."

  "He did that so we would build his fine new church. Perhaps you noticed that as soon as the church was finished he stood up and said we couldn't go to it unless we had `clean hearts’."

  "The Bishop said that, not Père Clinton," Daure argued.

  "They planned it between them, don't think they didn't. Oh, he's a shrewd one, Père Clinton is. His trouble is that he never learned the old proverb, you can't speak evil of a friend's house and expect to be invited to it again. He thought he could have us for friends and we wouldn't guess what he was up to. And now when he finds out we are too smart for him, he tries to shake our faith in Catus with this filthy lie!"

  "Be quiet, both of you," Catus said. He frowned at Micheline, wondering again what had happened between her and the Father to make her hate him so. The very intensity of her hate made it open to suspicion.

  He shifted his gaze to the face of Daure. It was not strange, of course, that this sister of his defended the Father. Still, she was his sister, and you would think that when a man was wronged, his own family would stand up for him. Did she really think Père Clinton was innocent? That someone else had spread this story? Who else could have spread it? Was it possible someone had overheard the conversation in this room the day of the child's death?

  Catus glowered at the plate of food before him. The trouble was, he still wanted to believe the Father innocent. He still wanted that man for a friend. He couldn't understand himself. All the evidence pointed to Père Clinton's being guilty of the worst possible breach of faith, and yet he wanted to disregard it. The Father was guilty. He had to be guilty. Yet why had he come to the hounfor just now, swearing he was not? If he were guilty he ought to be gloating over the knowledge that he had done his enemy great harm. Catus did not understand that.

  Another thing. Since yesterday evening he had stood before the altar in the hounfor, or, seeking counsel from the mystères. All night long he had performed the most secret and sacred rituals, begging the loa to make their wishes known to him. But none of them had come, none had spoken. Why? Because the Father's god was more powerful than they, and they did not wish to become involved in this quarrel? Or was it because he, Catus Laroche, the protege of the great Salmador, no longer believed in what he was doing?

  Perhaps this is not a conflict between the Father and me, Catus thought, but one between his faith and mine.

  "Well," Micheline was saying, "are you going to tell us what you've decided to do?"

  He looked up at her. "What should I do?"

  "You're asking me? It isn't me he has made the laughingstock of Ile du Vent!"

  "Nevertheless I am asking you. Both of you."

  Daure said timidly, "I wish you would wait. What harm can there be in waiting a little while to be sure you are right?"

  Micheline, tossing her head, said with a sneer, "If I were the great Catus Laroche and a two-faced white man set out to destroy me and what I believed in, I would show him things about vodun he never dreamed of."

  Catus sighed. "Go away, both of you, and let me think." Micheline sent a look of pure hate at her sister and strode from the caille.

  ALL THE REST OF THAT HOT, airless afternoon Micheline watched the door of her brother's house, waiting for it to open. She could do no work. When she was not standing in the doorway of her own house she was pacing the hard-packed red earth of the compound. Her parents watched her in uneasy wonder, disturbed by her behavior. Daure and Louis Cesar noticed and whispered. Little Fifine sucked a thumb and stared.

  "Something has come over that sister of yours lately," Louis said to his wife. "What is it?"

  "I don't know. But I've certainly noticed it."

  Evening came. The sun performed its nightly ritual over the island and the blazing colors faded from the sky. The shadows deepened. Micheline in her black dress was scarcely visible as she walked back and forth, back and forth, with her gaze on her brother's door.

  Suddenly she strode to the door and jerked it open.

  Catus occupied the same chair, the tray of food still scarcely touched before him. He raised his head from his hands as though it were very heavy. His sunken eyes regarded her without interest.

  "What do you want?"

  "I have something to say to you." She shut the door and stepped forward. Snatching up a box of matches from the table, she lit a lamp and turned to face him. "Something you won't like to hear."

  "All I hear lately is things I don't want to," he muttered. "So say it and get out."

  She looked at him and her mouth twitched. She was breathing hard. The front of the black dress rose and fell and the noise of her breathing was loud in the room's hot stillness. She said, "I didn't want to tell you this yet. Not until I had to. But in a few weeks I would have had to, so it doesn't matter, does it? I'm
going to have a baby."

  The shock was too abrupt. Catus was too tired. "What?" he said.

  "Can't you listen? I said I'm going to have a baby. His baby."

  He began to understand. He took in a quick, noisy breath. His body straightened from its slouch and hardened like a thing of rubber suddenly shot full of air.

  "A baby!"

  "Yes," she said. "His. The Father's."

  He sprang to his feet, upsetting the tray of food on the little table before him. "You lie!"

  "Would I lie about such a thing? Do you think I enjoy telling you this?"

  "How could you know so soon? It was only a few days ago that you spent the night in the grotto with him!"

  "I slept with him the first week he came here. We've been meeting ever since."

  Catus stood before her with his body heaving. He had thrown off his red shirt hours before and was clad only in the dark trousers. His shoulders jerked. His arms were like hard black earth with tree-roots growing just under the surface. "A white man!" he shouted. "You've been sleeping with a white man!"

  She shrank from his fury. "He wanted me. I didn't know how to refuse him."

  "My sister, going with a white man! Having a white baby!"

  "I thought he was a good man. You thought so yourself. Daure, just this afternoon—"

  "Get out!" Catus thundered.

  She was frightened. She backed away from him. Her eyes opened wide.

  "Get out!" Catus kicked the overturned table aside and lunged for her, then stopped and looked wildly about him. He stumbled across the room and snatched up a cocomacaque stick, long, slender, tough as steel. It was the kind of stick used in slave days by brutal overseers to beat defiant slaves into submission. The kind of stick used by the slaves themselves on their white masters when they rose in bloody revolt and won their freedom. Catus swung it over his head. "Get out! Out! Out!"

  Micheline ran screaming through a barrage of blows and flung the door open.

  He pursued her across the clearing, flailing the air with his stick and every few strides catching her across the back or shoulders with it. "Sleeping with a white man!" he howled. "My own sister! A Laroche!" Through the gate in the cactus hedge he raced after her. Down the path to the village. The stick rose and fell. Micheline screamed in pain and terror. Long before they reached the village her black dress was in ribbons, her back and arms streaming with blood.

  The whole village heard them coming. People ran from lamplit cailles to line the sides of the path. Micheline shrieked at them to help her but they only shrank back and watched. When she snatched at them they tore themselves free. She ran into a yard and Catus followed. The stick rose and fell, whistling in the air, thudding against its target. Whistle, thud, whistle, thud. The sound pouring from the girl's throat was now a continuous scream.

  Halfway across the yard she stumbled and fell, struggled to her knees, rolled onto her back and lay moaning. Only remnants of the dress remained. Her naked, bleeding body writhed on the ground and her hands fluttered over her face to deflect the blows of the stick. The stick fell once more. It smashed her hands aside. Catus looked down at her, his own face contorted and unrecognizable.

  "Get up!" he shouted.

  "No, no! Mother of God—"

  "Get up!" He seized her by the wrist and jerked her to her feet, then threw down his stick and with both hands whirled her to face the crowd of people in the yard and on the village path.

  "Look at her!" he commanded hoarsely. "Look at this slut who was my sister! By her own confession she has been sleeping with Père Clinton—not just once but for weeks! She is going to have a baby. His baby. Look at her!"

  He suddenly flung her away from him and watched her stumble to her knees. "Get out!" he screamed. "Take your baby and get out, before I forget myself and kill you!"

  She staggered to her feet and turned toward him, lifting her bruised arms in supplication.

  "Get out!"

  Moaning, she covered her face with her hands and went reeling across the yard into darkness.

  Catus picked up the cocomacaque and curled his hands around the ends of it. He bent his hands downward. The stick snapped. A cocomacaque is tough as steel, but it snapped. He let the pieces fall and walked slowly out to the road.

  The crowd made way, silently staring at him.

  23

  THE TELEDIOL WAS IN MOTION even before Catus disappeared into his house. During the night it functioned through the village and at daylight it spread outward. Women from Terre Rouge, carrying their wash to a nearby stream, whispered the story to those who came from Petit Trou to fill the family calebasses. At the Petit Trou market it was heard by women from The Cabrit. Fishermen walking the shore with their sardine nets told it to other fishermen. A cousin of Lucy's heard it and ran breathless to the mission.

  A little after ten o'clock that morning Barry dismounted by the gate in the cactus hedge. The gate was closed. He opened it and entered. Big Louis came from the nearest house and stood before him, barring his way.

  "I must see Catus."

  Louis shook his head, not moving his enormous bare feet. His great ugly-gentle face was now only ugly.

  "I tell you I must see him," Barry insisted. "This thing is a lie, Louis. I am not the father of Micheline's child."

  Louis said nothing. He only stood there. It was impossible to go around him. Barry looked into the soot-black face with its misshapen mouth and nose and knew that if he tried to force his way past, Luis would stop him. Those powerful hands might do serious damage.

  The child, Fifine, appeared in the doorway of Louis' house and saw him. She cried out in delight and ran across the yard toward him, her small feet flying. Louis thrust out a hand and stopped her.

  "Daure!"

  Daure came from the house. Louis thrust the child at her. She caught the little girl by the arm, glanced fearfully at Barry, turned without a word and hurried the child back into the house.

  "If you won't let me see him," Barry said, "at least tell me where Micheline is. Perhaps I can find out why she did this."

  Louis hesitated. "We do not know where she is." The impediment was back in his speech. The words were half hiss, half rumble.

  "Very well," Barry said with a shrug. "I don't blame you, but you are wrong."

  He turned away.

  The village held its breath as he rode through. Then the whispers began again. The Father went to see Catus. Catus would not talk to him.

  St. Juste was waiting outside the rectory. He had been standing there since Barry's departure. At sight of Barry, unharmed, relief flowed through him like warm water through a man half frozen, but his hands began to shake as he helped Barry dismount.

  "Would he talk to you, Mr. Clinton?"

  "No. Nor would Louis. Even the child was forbidden to speak to me.

  St. Juste looked at Barry's stricken face and shook his head.

  Lucille sat at the table in the kitchen, weeping. Barry entered and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Will you do something for me, Lucy?"

  She lifted her head. The movement brought a fresh flow of tears and he had to wait. When her convulsive sobbing subsided a little and her head moved up and down, he said, "I must talk to Micheline. Can you try to find out where she is?"

  She stood up, nodding through her sobs. She went out.

  He walked slowly back to the office and sat at his desk. St. Juste was there, sitting on the cot where so many of the islanders had sat to describe their ailments. Nothing was said for a time. Then St. Juste stopped staring at the floor and looked up.

  "I wish there were something we could do, Mr. Clinton."

  "There isn't. At least nothing I can think of."

  "Can I get you a drink?"

  "No, thanks. Not now."

  "Do you mind if I have one?"

  "Help yourself."

  St. Juste filled a water glass with straight rum, drank half of it down, and sat again to sip the rest. He seldom drank. When he did, he watered his rum until
the mixture was almost colorless. He said now, "We've been through a lot together since I came here. I want you to know I appreciate the way you've treated me, Mr. Clinton. No matter what happens you can count on me."

  Barry looked at him and nodded. "I know."

  "You've been a wonderful friend. I've never had a friend like you before. Not even a colored one."

  "I believe I will have a drink," Barry said.

  St. Juste jumped up and poured it. They drank together. They were drinking when Edith arrived.

  She stopped short in the office doorway and widened her eyes at them in astonishment. "Good heavens!" she laughed. "At this hour in the morning?" She was very attractive in a pale blue skirt and white blouse and had done something to her hair, drawing it back tight against her ears. She had ridden slowly from the plantation to avoid becoming overheated. She held in her hand a small orange-red fruit with a few glossy leaves attached.

  "Look at what I found," she said. "Isn't it lovely? I can't think what it might be. There aren't any near Fond Marie, I'm certain. Do you know the name of it?" She put the fruit on the desk between Barry's hands.

  Barry turned the stem in his fingers and silently shook his head.

  Edith frowned. "What's the matter? Is something wrong?"

  He put her treasure down. "If you haven't heard, you must be the only living soul on the island who hasn't. I suppose the plantation is the end of the line for the telediol."

  "Heard what?"

  "I am now accused"—he turned his head toward her—"of being the father of Micheline Laroche's expected child."

  The color fled from Edith's face. She groped for a chair and sat down. "No," she said slowly. "No, Barry. Oh, no!"

  He shrugged. The drink had warmed him a little. Not that he was drunk or even partly drunk. He emptied his glass and put it on the edge of the desk, with a glance at St. Juste who rose without comment to refill it.

  "It's like a play, isn't it?" Barry said then. "I came here thinking I was only a harmless missionary with a job to do, and if I tried very hard and was very careful, I might make friends and get the job done. I was careful according to my own lights, and I even did make friends. A few, anyway. But it seems I have enemies too, and they are resourceful."