The Ghost Apple

by Aaron Thier

  But now, at last, Mr. Cavendish seemed to come to himself, for he turned suddenly and squinted into the smoke. Huge shadows rose up and flickered and died away again, so that it was impossible to say if there were men in the fields, or if these were only the fantastic shapes thrown up in the firelight by the dancing cane.

  Now several things happened. First, Mr. Cavendish released me, and I retreated immediately to the edge of the yard. Next, Mr. Drax and Mr. Hertfordshire came around the corner of the longhouse, both of them now armed with rifles, and commenced firing into the smoke. Then Mr. Cavendish started toward the longhouse, no doubt to take cover, but he had not gone more than a few steps when he was lifted off the ground in a most peculiar way, as if tugged off his feet by a receding wave, and before my eyes, so slowly that I could watch every change of expression on his face, he was pulled gently apart, an arm now detaching itself from his trunk, and then an ear spinning slowly into the night. A moment later I realized that the noise of gunfire had alarmed my hearing, for now sound returned in a murmuring rush, even as Mr. Cavendish fell to the ground. His head was broken like one of the clay pots we used for cooling sugar, and blood covered all.

  Mr. Drax and Mr. Hertfordshire had fled without my seeing them go, and suddenly there were men all about. I knew at once that these were the maroons, and indeed they were a dreadful lot, for they had wild hair, and were tattooed all over, and had no shirts upon their backs, nor shoes, and their speech was so rough that I could make out only one word in three.

  So often, lying upon my worm-eaten pallet during my first weeks in the island, I had dreamed that Professor Kabaka might descend from the mountains and carry me off to freedom. Yet now, when I had every reason to believe that he was upon the plantation, and indeed when I might have expected to see him at any moment, I experienced a feeling closely allied with heartbreak. Indeed, I think I can say that I was quite heartbroken, for I had before my eyes the tangible proof that he was not the man I thought he was, nor indeed a man with whom I would have willingly spent even a moment of my time. My crucial realization was this, specifically that not until that moment had I allowed myself to believe that he might make so bold as to translate his thought, and his fiery speech, into bloody action. Now that he had done so, I saw that whatever love or admiration I had felt for him was based upon the fiction of his good nature, and now that my cherished image of him was extinguished, I was left, in a manner of speaking, bereft.

  But I could not pause to savor this exquisite disappointment, for I had a decision to make, namely whether to stay where I was and trust that I should be used well by the maroons, or else to flee and take my chances upon the wild paths of the jungle. And indeed it was not an easy choice, for although I could not be sure who these men were, nor whether they served under Professor Kabaka or under another maroon leader, I nevertheless had good reason to believe that they wished me well, and that they had come to free me from the tyranny of the Big Anna corporation. Yet at the same time, their probable intentions notwithstanding, I did not like the idea of remaining dependent upon the desires and calculations of others, nor did I relish the prospect of meeting Professor Kabaka here, in this dismal place, after what I had just seen.

  Before I knew what I was doing, and almost without having decided to do so, I was running through the rows of smoky cane. The ground was hardly visible beneath my feet, and I was cut all over by the leaves of that terrible plant, but I pushed on, heedless of these discomforts, and made as near as I could guess for the eastern boundary of the plantation. I could not have fled west in any case, for the fields in that direction were all aflame.

  I ran for some twenty or thirty minutes, until I had put at least a few miles between myself and the plantation. When I had recovered my wits, having come by now to the wasted and poisoned fields beside the Big Anna factory, and supposing myself secure in that desolate place, though of course I had a great fear of snakes and other ravenous beasts, I sat down and hugged my knees, and there I wept for some considerable time, while the sky to the west was all alight, and the factory continued its nightmarish work some distance away. In truth I felt that Mr. Cavendish had deserved what he had gotten, nor was it difficult to recall innumerable examples of that man’s cruelty, even excluding the events of that very night, but at the same time it had been an awful thing to see him picked apart by gunfire, as it would have been awful to see any human being thus mutilated, for it reminded me how provisional and how fragile is our life in this world.

  After a period of ten minutes, or perhaps much longer, I succeeded in banishing that dreadful image from my mind, and at the same time I realized that I could not stay where I was, for I was quite without shelter in that field, and there was every reason to believe that Big Anna employees in the factory would soon learn of what had happened nearby, and would shortly be abroad, so I picked myself up and continued on.

  I traveled all that night and into the morning. I was horribly confused in my mind, but I understood that it was better now to avoid giving the slightest advertisement of my condition, and not to make myself conspicuous in an attempt to remain inconspicuous, for I did not know who I could trust in the island, or who might be an agent for Big Anna. Therefore I tied a rag around my head as a sort of head scarf, after the fashion of the local women, whom I resembled enough at a glance, and I continued east, first across newly harvested cane fields and then, in the first light of dawn, along a dirt road. I was at least an hour upon this road before I encountered another soul, it being still very early. This was a young man, an islander, and when he asked me where I was going, I explained that I was going to visit my sister, who lived not far away. As my accent was unfamiliar to him, he became suspicious, but I persuaded him that I was not from the United States, as he had guessed, but from another island to the north, and that my sister had come here with her husband some years before. It was a preposterous story, and I had little hope of its being believed, deciding that if he expressed further suspicion, or if he attempted to lay his hands upon me, I would pick up a rock and therewith attempt to crush his skull, but he let me pass, saying only that if I wanted to have some experience of a real man, I had only to ask for him in San Pedro. He seemed to have no knowledge of the events of last night, and though he must have smelled or seen the smoke, which was impossible to ignore, he did not ask me about it.

  I walked for another hour or more, until I was in a more densely wooded place. Here I had less fear of being seen, but I was afraid that my presence would occasion more suspicion, there being nowhere I could plausibly be going to, so I kept off the road and made but slow progress through the jungle, which grew thicker as the land rose toward the mountains. There were enormous silk-cotton trees hung all about with great vines and creepers, and there were tree ferns, palmettos, and all manner of unfamiliar flowers, nor was the place at all silent, for birds and other creatures made a great racket as I passed. Later that day, a gray parrot addressed a greeting to me, saying, “Hello,” in the distinct voice of a woman in her mature years, and I was much impressed by the oddity of that event.

  By evening, I came to an abandoned estate, which I knew to be a cocoa estate, having read of such places in the program materials I had received before coming to the island. The cocoa grew in the shade of tall trees, and the pods were of many colors, reds and purples as well as greens, and there was a scent in the air which I took to be vanilla or some similar pod or bean. But it was plain that no one had lived here in some time, for the paths were all overgrown, and the plants had not been tended, and there were shaggy coffee bushes growing abundantly among the cocoa, their red berries very striking in the green dusk. It was cooler among the trees, though still very warm, and the scent was delicious. I pressed on and soon came to the old estate house, which was a sprawling edifice of a single story, with elaborate woodwork and a verandah on three sides. It was mostly overgrown now, and even collapsed in places, the white ants of the tropics having done their work.

  Beside the house were fr
uit trees, which were derelict and unsightly after long neglect, but upon which there was some fruit nonetheless. Only now did I realize how hungry I was, for it had been at least twenty-four hours since I had last eaten, and perhaps longer. I ate some grapefruit, which is here called “the forbidden fruit,” and also a small soursop, as well as some of the coffee fruit, which gave me the same thrill that a cup of coffee might have done. It amused me to spit out the coffee seeds, which elsewhere are considered the only useful part. At some distance from the house I also found a jackfruit tree, the bulbous and irregular produce of which recalled to my mind the shape of Mr. Cavendish’s head. I had already begun to hammer at the fruit with a rock, splitting it into two irregular hemispheres, when suddenly my sight was oppressed by an image of that man, and the terrible grimace I had seen on his face as the bullets tore his life away, and though I was still ravenously hungry, yet I could eat no more. I picked my way up onto the verandah, where I went to sleep on a bench, for it was too hot to sleep inside the house, and the mosquitoes would have had no more difficulty getting at me inside than out.

  I woke early the next morning, oppressed by cramps and wind as a result of having eaten so much fruit on an empty stomach, and yet I could not remain to luxuriate in that discomfort, nor would I receive any sympathy from the beasts of the jungle, so I left that place and continued on my way. By afternoon I had reached an altitude from which it was possible, by the fleeting glimpses I had through the trees, to see the flatlands stretched out below me, and to gauge their extent, and mark out a path toward San Cristobal in the north.

  I saw a few Ghost Apple trees, which were heavy with fruit, but thankfully I knew enough to disdain them, for they are said to be poisonous. Then I came upon a sapodilla tree. Though I had seen this fruit before and I knew it was much prized, I had never tasted it, and I did not know how important it was to eat it only when it was perfectly soft and ripe. I placed one of the small, firm fruits into my mouth and began to chew, and the milky white sap was so powerfully adhesive that I thought I would choke, my throat having been glued shut. I was forced to scrape the sticky pulp out of my mouth with my fingers, and only after some ten minutes of coughing and spitting did I succeed in overcoming this discomfort.

  After this I was wary, though I soon found another stunted grapefruit tree and refreshed myself well enough. Thus I kept from starving, although the reader who, perusing this chronicle of woe in the safety of his armchair, supposes that a diet of tropical fruit may be counted a luxury, is advised that the body continually cries out for something to accompany it, even if it be only a glass of milk or a crust of bread, for the sweetness of the fruit seems to suck the strength from the blood. I was all this time in a state of the most unendurable discomfort, moreover, having been bitten all over by insects, and suffering greatly in the heat, for St. Renard is so hot that one may pick a mango green and find it ripe when one has raised it to the mouth, and spoiled after a few bites. It might have been a consolation that the night was cooler upon the hills than it was in the lowlands, but I could not sleep for thinking of Mr. Cavendish, his image now linked grotesquely to that of the battered jackfruit. In my exhausted state I saw the fruit splitting open again and again, and felt it yield under the rock, and imagined that I had been the one to break apart Mr. Cavendish’s head, and that his head was filled with fibrous pith and fruity seed pods.

  With the dawn I felt somewhat cheered, if not refreshed, for I soon chanced upon a kind of pass in the hills, and came through and down the other side, from which slope I could see the ocean, which was a glittering sunlit blue. From the position of the sun that morning I knew this to be the north coast. As I have said, my idea at this time was to make for San Cristobal, which was not far distant, for I knew there would be hotels and resorts, and tourists in whose company I should feel safe, and in that place I could contact my parents. I also held out a hope of meeting with my friend William Brees, who was the dean of students at Tripoli, for he had told me he might be coming to the island, and though I did not believe him at the time, knowing how slowly he moved, and how indecisive he was, yet now I was ready to believe anything.

  I had only a few hours’ journey left to me, for I could see the city well enough, and there were signs of habitation now: men and women among the trees, at work on their provision grounds, and crude shacks with palm roofs, and all manner of garbage scattered in the undergrowth. But I had not seen any fruits that morning, nor had I collected any to carry with me the day before, and hunger soon lay heavy upon me, for I was not used to going very long without nutriment. I tried eating some sea almonds, but I could not separate the hard rind from the nut. Later I came across a stand of very small banana plants and, thinking myself saved, I picked their diminutive fruit, which was quite red, and ventured to taste it, but it was like chalk and ash in my mouth, these plants being, as I later discovered, an ornamental variety gone wild. So I had nothing to eat that morning, nor did I want to appeal to those islanders I saw now and then, for I did not feel that I could place my trust in the Renardennes if I did not know to whom their allegiance was compelled.

  At last I came to the shantytown which is known as “Buzzard Point.” This neighborhood extends east from the margins of San Cristobal and swarms up the slopes of the hills. I kept to the less trafficked parts of that neighborhood, where dogs and children scrounged among the garbage or slept beneath rusted sheets of corrugated iron. At first the houses in this place were little better than the derelict huts in which the islanders on the plantation had lived, and there were many that were as bad, but the aspect of the place improved as I walked west, and soon I came to a paved road, and I began to see shops and stalls offering items which were plainly intended for tourists, such as T-shirts, carved pieces of mahogany, alarm clocks fashioned from conch shells, and pieces of coral rock.

  I intended to throw myself upon the mercy of the first tourists I met, eager to bring my ordeal to a close by whatever means I could. And now, to my great joy, I saw Americans again, being able to identify them at a glance by their complexions and their glossy hair, as well as by their general exuberance. I went up to the first of these people that I saw, a couple in their middle years, and with tears in my eyes I began to describe my condition, and to beg them for assistance. But no sooner had I opened my mouth than the eyes of the man went dark, and he began shaking his head, at the same time taking his wife by the upper arm and conducting her across the narrow street. In torment, I followed after them, almost shouting now, and indeed hardly able to control myself for the exhaustion, hunger, and anger that I felt. And yet I was too filthy, and my general appearance too incredible after days in the jungle, to convince them that I was an American like themselves, and only temporarily disadvantaged. Nor did it help that I was nearly as dark as the peddlers and beggars who oppressed tourists in these places, shouting entreaties and demands as they passed. I still had my head scarf, moreover, having found it useful not only as protection against the sun, but also for the pressure it exerted on my forehead, that pressure helping to alleviate the discomfort of my headaches, from which I had been suffering in the last day.

  I made a second attempt to engage the attention of some tourists, and this time, although they might have been deaf for all the attention they paid my cries of lament, a woman snapped a photograph of me as I stood beseeching her with my arms outstretched.

  Thereafter, downhearted and very much exhausted, I sat down on a broken crate in the shade of a sea almond tree, its rusty leaves scattered all around me. Upon the crate I saw the hateful emblem of the Big Anna corporation. At this time, it seemed as if there were no place in the world I might turn to for help, my clothes having turned to rags and my shoes having fallen apart, leaving me with no outward sign of my identity, and indeed, save for my accent, which had gone unremarked by the Americans I had confronted, no manner of proving who I was, and where I had come from.

  Though I was very much distracted by hunger, and indeed wretched in every respect, it di
d occur to me to wonder why there were no more visible signs of the chaos that reigned in the interior of the island. Indeed, it might have been a day like any other, with tourists snapping photographs, and locals accosting them, and policemen with saturnine expressions lounging on the street corners. I had only the smoke, and a brief glimpse of a Big Anna military convoy, to convince me that the events of the last days had been no dream.

  Upon the corner opposite was a coconut seller of East Indian appearance, as indeed there are many East Indians in the island, descendants themselves of coerced laborers. I fancied that this man was now looking at me with an expression of particular attention, though all this time he was speaking most demonstratively with an American woman who stood sipping the coconut water from a colored straw. When she had gone, he stood watching me for some time longer and then took up his machete and began cutting the rind from a coconut, and making an opening at the top, and then he came over to where I was and presented the coconut to me, saying that I looked as if I could use it.

  I drank the coconut water, which was not sweet, but rather of a cooling, astringent mineral flavor, and directly I felt stronger, and told the man thank you. He said once again that I looked as if I could use the coconut, and he asked if I knew that coconut water was the most healthful substance to be found in the natural world, being almost identical in the balance of its minerals to the humors of the body. I replied that I believed it. He then divided the empty coconut into several sections and cut the meat from the rind, handing it to me piece by piece, and I ate it, though it hurt my stomach, for never had anything tasted so wonderful.

  The coconut seller did not press me to give an account of myself, but my eyes filled with tears at the kindness he had shown me, and feeling that I could trust him, there being nothing but goodness in his eyes, I revealed myself to him, and told him my story, omitting only that part which concerned the killing of Mr. Cavendish, for I could not bear to think of that now. He was amazed at my relation, and could scarcely believe his ears, frequently asking me to repeat myself, and to elaborate a point, and to return to a previous one, talking all the while in an excited voice. When I had finished, both of us had tears in our eyes, and he insisted that he would do all he could to help me, and more.