by Cave, Hugh
On the way back to Sister Merle's road Sam briefed the corporal on the full story of Juan Cerrado's disappearance. The Red Stripe solemnly shook his head.
"No sensible man would start a fight with that woman, Mr. Norman. He was just beggin' trouble."
"If she's that big in obeah, why haven't you arrested her?"
"Unless somebody in our district complains, what can we do?"
"You mean no one has complained?"
"Not even your Mr. Cerrado, so far as we know in Wait-a-Bit. Maybe he should have."
It was not from this small station, then, Will decided, that the man who had slapped Sister Merle's face had come. Well, there were other stations in the area, no doubt. Of course, if the man who lost his hand had come from Wait-a-Bit, the police there would have good reason to leave the obeah woman strictly alone.
They stopped at the top of a footpath winding down the slope to the peasant hut he had pointed out to Will earlier. The corporal led the way. When they reached the hut with its small patch of garden, a young but worn-looking woman came from inside to confront them. Visibly nervous, she gazed at the corporal in silence, waiting for him to address her.
"Good mornin', Celia. Where you man is?"
"Him inside, Corpie."
"Fetch him."
She turned back to the open doorway and spoke to someone in the house. Into the yard slouched the man who had worn the dyed field boots to Sister Merle's home. He was barefoot now. Most of his toenails were split and deformed, Will noticed.
"Is this the man, Mr. Norman?"
"Yes."
"Keith, what happen to you shoes?"
"Shoes, Corpie?"
"The ones you was wearin' when you did call on Sister Merle, little while ago."
"Oh, them." Mowatt turned and went back inside the hut. Reappearing, he held a pair of Jamaican-made dress shoes, old and worn but highly polished.
"Those are not the ones, Corporal," Sam Norman said. "Are they, Will?"
"No. He was wearing field boots, nearly new."
"These the only shoes me own," Mowatt protested. "Don't it so, Celia?"
The woman looked frightened but briskly bobbed her head up and down.
"I'll just have a look," the corporal said, and went into the house.
Sam and Will waited outside with Mowatt and his woman. At first Mowatt ignored them, gazing blankly at the ground, but after a while he raised his head and glowered at them. Reading murder in the man's eyes, Will felt his stomach muscles tighten.
For relief he looked around. If, indeed, Keith Mowatt was an enforcer for Sister Merle, there was nothing about this place to indicate he was well paid for his services. The house was a dirt-floored hovel perched on a skimpy pocket of red earth in the midst of desolation.
The corporal reappeared, holding something in his hand. He held the hand out to Mowatt's woman, palm up. "Is you did use this and lef' the cover off it?"
She hesitated, nodded, then apprehensively glanced at her man.
"Don' you know shoe polish mus' dry out if you don't put back the lid?"
"Yes, sir. But me did use it only a short while ago."
"To shine the shoes him is holdin'. Is that what you sayin'?"
Again she shot a glance at her man, but it was too late. "Y-yes, sir," she had to admit.
"Now that's interestin'," the policeman said. "Mowatt, is you plannin' to go to town today?"
"Matter of fact, yes."
"Wha' for?"'
"Well, me need some t'ings."
"Wha' you need?"
Mowatt was not that fast a thinker, and had to hesitate. When he said, "Well, matches," it was unconvincing. In any case, it was a bad choice.
"You got plenty matches inside," the corporal said. "I just now saw two–three boxes on the table in there."
"Well—"
Suddenly the Red Stripe dropped his patois drawl. "I say you had Celia shine those old shoes of yours so you could say they're the ones you wore to Sister Merle's, if somebody like me came and asked you! Now suppose you go get the ones you really did have on!"
"Is not so, Corpie. These is the ones me had on."
"Celia, go get the others."
The woman looked terrified. With Mowatt glaring at her on one side and the corporal commanding her on the other, she was caught in a crossfire and began to tremble. Suddenly she broke and ran—not into the house but down the footpath that continued past it and disappeared below among scrub growth and limestone crags. The corporal watched her disappear, then turned to Mowatt again. "The U.N. fellow's boots are not in your house, Mowatt. I looked. Where are they?"
Silence.
"Did you bury them?"
"Me don' know what you talkin' about!"
"All right, you hid them where I'll never find them. But you'll tell me where they are before I get through with you, I promise. Come, we're going to the station." The corporal placed the palm of his right hand against his holster and tapped the leather with his fingertips.
"You first, and walk slow."
They climbed the steep path to the Land Rover, where Red Stripe and Mowatt got in the back. Sam drove on down the road to the turning place he had used before, then back out to the main road, to stop at last in front of the police station again.
The corporal got out and kept a wary eye on his prisoner as Mowatt dropped out after him. "Can I telephone you, Mr. Norman?"
"I'm sorry. I don't have a phone."
"Then if I have anything to report, I'll call the station in Christiana. They'll send a man to your house."
"Thank you."
"Come on, you," the policeman growled at Mowatt.
Before turning away, his prisoner stood motionless for a few seconds, glaring at the two men in the Land Rover. Once more Will Platt felt his stomach muscles tighten as he read the hatred in the man's eyes.
"Did you see that?" Will asked as Sam put the machine in motion.
Sam nodded. "This isn't a game we're playing, is it? All at once it's turned into something that is scaring the hell out of me."
"Will they make that fellow talk, do you think?"
"They might, I suppose. But not if he's more afraid of the obeah woman than of them."
"Sam," Will said after a silence, "what do you think about this boot business? Is your man dead?"
"It looks that way, doesn't it?"
"Unless they've got him in hiding somewhere and took his boots to keep him from escaping. No one barefoot could walk far in that Cockpit Country, for instance." Will raised his right leg and scowled at his foot. "I've just about ruined my shoes this morning."
"Juan once introduced me to a man who had walked across the Cockpit from Quick Step to Windsor Cave," Sam said. "That would be about seven or eight miles as the crow flies, I think—God knows how far on the ground, through those impossible sinks. The fellow said he reduced two pairs of tough hiking boots to shreds and arrived at Windsor with his bleeding feet wrapped in banana trash."
While making the turn onto the Christiana road, Sam was silent. Then with a frown he said, "But what's the profit for them in keeping Juan alive?"
"I've no idea," Will said. "Let's just hope there is one."
12
"Hear Me, Master!"
In a rude little cemetery below her house in the Cockpit, Sister Merle knelt in the shadow of a tall gravestone. The cemetery was the one in which, a long time ago, a policeman had so foolishly slapped her face. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was a fiery golden ball, but she could not be seen from the path because the stone concealed her.
It also concealed what she was doing.
She had scraped a few inches of earth from the grave in question, to reveal a sheet of flattened-out zinc. Now, still on her knees, she removed the zinc and peered into the hole beneath.
The lid of the pine coffin there had long since been knocked in with a shovel—not by her but by one of the men who served her—and sufficient light reached down to disclose a human skeleton. Or, rather, what
was left of one after many earlier visits by the sorceress.
Lying prone now at the edge of the hole, Sister Merle reached down with a chunk of limestone and struck the skeleton a sharp blow. Bones broke and, dropping the stone, she reached for one.
It happened to be a clavicle. But the kind of bone did not concern her so long as it was freshly obtained from a grave after the recital of certain ritual words. She had recited the words.
Slithering backward now, she placed the clavicle on the ground behind her and, before rising to her knees, scraped a handful of earth from the grave wall. Her face was a study in concentration. Anyone watching would have noticed a strange, reddish glow in her small, dark eyes, and a movement of her lips. The onlooker would have heard no sound, however, other than the usual humming and buzzing of insects in the afternoon heat, or the occasional croak of a lizard in the dry grass.
Having replaced the sheet of zinc, Sister Merle carefully put back its covering of earth before reaching for the bone again and rising to her feet. The zinc had been a fine idea, she thought, congratulating herself. On her first half-dozen visits to the burying ground, she had been forced to bring along an assistant with a shovel.
Now with everything in the graveyard left the way she had found it, she turned for a last look at the stone. It was of concrete, as most of them were, and the lettering on it had been done by a non-professional with something like a triangular machete file while the concrete was still soft. Little except the name was now legible.
The name was Mordecai Adams.
She trudged on up the winding path to her home, carrying the bone and the handful of earth in a plastic bag. With a key she unlocked her door.
Inside, she relocked the door and drew the bright red curtains at the front-room window. What she was about to do was not for the eyes of any caller who might decide to peer in at her. Not even for the eyes of those who faithfully served her.
Opening a wooden chest on the floor against the far wall, she took out an assortment of items: a tall black candle, a rum bottle, and a number of small, unlabeled jars, the contents of which only she could name. These she carried to a table on which she had spread a carefully ironed black cloth.
She lit the candle, placed an empty bowl on the table and sat down with the bowl between her and the flame. With the curtains drawn, the room would have been nearly dark without the candle flame; with the flame it was full of shadows. Soon a smell of incense filled the room as well, for while the candles came from a Christiana store, she always melted them down and added certain obligatory herbs before using them.
With her gaze fixed on the flame, the woman began to sway very slowly toward it, then back again, as though at first attracted by it, then repelled. This continued for some time. Then she opened a jar and lifted from it a pinch of its contents, which she placed in the bowl while intoning words in a hoarse singsong.
"Mordecai, arise! I call to you! Through me our master calleth! Turn to the north, south, east, and west. Come and perform with me the powers of demons!"
Now the gaze of her glowing eyes was fixed not on the flickering candle but on an empty chair at the side of the table. She peered at the chair as though waiting with confidence for someone to come and occupy it.
And someone—or something—did. Or was the dim figure that appeared there only a shadow created by a change in the candle's brightness? For the candle did waver as in a sudden draft. It did nearly go out. And when it recovered, it was not as bright again as it had been.
Sister Merle reached for other jars then, murmuring incantations as she added bits and pieces of their contents to the bowl in front of her. "Master, accept this tip of a goat's horn. Master, I give thee the dried blood of a black cat. Master, here is grave dirt, and these are human ashes; this is a cat's foot and this a ground-up toad. Take them and hear my plea, for I serve thee well!"
In the empty chair—if it was empty—the shadowy figure seemed to lean forward to peer into the bowl. But again it could have been an effect produced by the unsteady burning of the candle.
"Master," the sorceress intoned, "I have in my hand now a piece of skin from an unborn kid, with thy name writ in human blood on it. And I have this bone just taken from the grave where Mordecai lies. Thy Mordecai, who taught me and now sits here beside me. Now hear me, Master, while I tell thee what I want from thee in return."
With the bowl half full of her offerings, Sister Merle unscrewed the cap from the rum bottle and poured in an ounce or two of its contents. There was no smell of rum when she did so. Rather, there was one of tar or pitch, though the liquid was free flowing and colorless. Then she took the candle and touched the mixture with its flame.
A small explosion followed. Thick black smoke arose in a cloud above the table, blotting out the misty figure in the other chair. With it came such a stench that even Merle turned her face away and covered her nose with her free hand while returning the candle to its former position.
The stench—was it sulphur?—endured and filled the room. But the candle still burned, and Sister Merle recovered. And the misty figure was still there on the other chair.
Now the obeah woman gazed at the candle and spread both arms wide in a gesture of supplication.
"Master, I speak of the man called Keith Mowatt," she called out in a loud voice. "Thou knowest what he did. Thou knowest he must be punished. As I serve thee in all things, so must thou serve me when I am in need. Give my mind the power to punish him!"
Slowly the stench dissipated and the air in the room became clean again. Sister Merle blew out the black candle. Methodically she screwed the tops back on the jars and on the rum bottle, and returned all her paraphernalia to the wooden chest.
But she did not open the curtains. Seating herself again, she placed her elbows on the table and pressed the tips of her fingers to her forehead and closed her eyes.
An hour later she was still in the same position. Only her lips moved, and no sound came from them.
The figure on the other chair seemed to have departed with the blowing out of the candle.
13
The Cocomacaque
After leaving the Wait-a-Bit police station, Will Plat and Sam Norman spent the rest of the day awaiting word.
None came.
In the morning Ima Williams asked if she might walk to town to do some shopping. "I need some salt fish," she said. "Yesterday I bought some akee from a higgler who came around. If I can find the fish to buy, I can make salt fish and akee for your supper tonight." It was the Jamaican peasant's favorite dish, popular with the elite as well.
"Of course," Sam told her. "Run along."
He and Will continued their wait.
"Do you suppose we might learn something by going to the police here in Christiana?" Will asked.
"I doubt it. They'll come to us when Wait-a-Bit calls them. If Wait-a-Bit calls."
Still no one came.
Just after eleven Ima Williams returned with her plastic shopping bag full. Not for her the basket on the head, of course. As housekeeper for a United Nations agricultural expert and now for two other men of means, she was above that. She walked like a peasant, though, Will noticed. Tall, straight, with that haunting grace and taunting movement of the buttocks.
After carrying her purchases into the kitchen, she came at once to the living room where they sat. Hands on hips, she faced them. "I heard something, Mr. Sam."
"Heard what, Ima?"
"I met an old friend in the grocery across from Len Kirby's hardware. She told me she saw Mr. Juan the morning he disappeared."
Sam smiled his disappointment. "Ima, I'm sure a lot of people saw him that morning. After all, he went to market with you and no doubt wandered all over the place."
"She saw him leave the market."
Sam sat up straighter.
"She said he left with two men. One was an obeah man from Silent Hill, a man named Emmanuel Bignall who sometimes works with Sister Mer1e. She didn't know the other. They got into an ol
d yellow Prefect that was parked down by the bottom market gate, where she was buying charcoal, and went up to the main street and turned left.
Sam's bushy brows were low over his eyes. "The way to Silent Hill, if they turned at Barclay's Bank," he said.
"Yes."
"Emmanuel Bignall, you say?"
She nodded.
"What kind of man is he? What does he look like?"
"He is a big, ugly, black man who hangs around the bar there a lot. The one by the bottom market gate, I mean. I don't know him to talk to, but people say he is afraid of nobody."
Will Platt, speaking for the first time, said, "What's this Silent Hill, Sam?"
"A little village about ten miles from here, on the road from Alston to Dump. A few houses, couple of shops, that's all."
"How could anyone be hiding Juan in a place like that?"
"Well, there are other houses off in the fields and bush, of course. All over this area you find those." Sam took in a breath that swelled his chest. "Will, I'm going there. Right now!"
"We're going, you mean."
"No." Getting to his feet, Sam emphatically wagged his head. "If two of us turn up asking for this Bignall fellow, he may feel threatened. I don't want him running off and hiding. Or even worse, surrounding himself with buddies and trying to put me down. This calls for diplomacy, not a show of strength."
"You should not go there!" Ima Williams said in a voice unusually sharp for her.
"Why not?"
"Silent Hill is too far from anything. If you get into trouble, who can help you?"
"Damn it, Ima, we have to find Juan Cerrado. If he was taken there, that's where I have to look for him."
"Eat some lunch first. Think about it."
"No. The sooner I get there, the better."
She planted her hands on her well curved hips. "Mr. Juan didn't disappear yesterday, you know. He has been gone for days."
