Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  She handed Roddy a bottle of French rose and a corkscrew. "Here. You're the man of the house this evening. You open it."

  He filled two glasses and handed one to her with a flourish. "To us."

  "To us," she said.

  They touched glasses, then emptied them while gazing at each other and broke into grins at exactly the same second. Roddy poured refills.

  The meal was asgood as the wine. "I have a confession to make," Roddy said. "When you asked me if I like curried goat, I lied. The only other time I've had it was in a country restaurant, and I was picking splinters of bone out of my mouth for a week."

  "That was because somecooks chop the goat up, bones and all, with a machete or a cleaver. Carlene taught me to take the meat off the bones first, then cook both together for flavor, but throw the bones out before serving it. Aren't I clever?"

  "What about these mushrooms? How did you get them to taste so great?"

  "Well, for one thing, they're those little dried black ones from Haiti. The ones called djon-djon. A friend of Father's brought them back."

  "Oh."

  "Mixed with rice this way, you have what they call di-ri et djon-djon over there, he said."

  "It sure is different."

  "Speaking of Haiti, you remember what Prof Atkins said about the yaws campaign there?"

  He nodded.

  "Well, this man told Father it's a big thing there now. That Dr. Francois Duvalier who was chosen by the Inter-American Affairs Commission to head the program has opened clinics all over the country and is really getting yaws under control."

  "Yaws." Roddy frowned. "What is it, anyway? I mean, I know it causes big ulcers and rots bones away, but what is it?"

  "Well, it's a contagious disease something like syphilis, but you don't catch it the same way. You just have to be in contact or something." Heather shrugged. "I don't know. But anyway, this Dr. Duvalier is really getting rid of it over there, and the peasants love him. Father's friend said they call him 'Papa Doc' now."

  The conversation stayed more or less on that level through the meal, and even after they had carried their dishes to the kitchen and returned to the judge's study. It was a little like when you were exploring a cave and came upon a deep pit, Roddy thought. The pit was scary, so you walked very carefully around its edge trying to see how deep it was. And if it was really deep, like what was happening here, you kept wanting to think about it a while longer before making a commitment.

  Perhaps he'd drunk a little too much wine at dinner.

  But wine or no wine, it was time to do something about this. Right now, before he went crazy from thinking about it. Closing his book, he laid it on the floor beside his chair. "Heather?"

  Had she, too, sensed it was inevitable, given the fact that they were alone together and everything was so right? Without answering him, she put her own book down, rose from her chair, and went to sit on the sofa. There, as if knowing what would come next, she looked at him and said, "Yes, Roddy?"

  "I love you." So strong was the pressure, he simply blurted the words out. "You must know that. You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to. Willyou marry me when you're through school? I have to know!"

  She watched in silence while he leaped from his chair and strode to the sofa. Then when he went to his knees and reached for her hands, she leaned toward him and put her face against his. "Of course I will, Roddy, if father gives hisapproval. And I'm sure he will."

  Roddy moved to her side and put an arm around her. "Maybe we can find something for us out where we went last week, in the Christiana area. You saidyou liked it there. You'll have your degree in education and there are some good schools there and—"

  "You talk too much," she whispered just before her lips stopped him.

  Roddy had never made love to a girl before. In Rhode Island he had been too young. At the college, before she came into his life there, he had been too busy adjusting. But surprisingly his hands and mouth, his whole body, seemed to know what to do at this moment. And so did hers.

  With their outer clothes off, the two of them lay face to face for a time, hands hungrily exploring, mouths welded, bodies never for a moment still. Then, with each encouraging the other, they managed somehow to be rid of the rest of their clothing and become wholly naked and wholly one, so lost in a world of feelings that neither heard a car rattling the cattle guard at the end of the driveway or doors opening or footsteps approaching the room inwhich they lay. Lost in an ecstasy so new to both of them that they were deaf and blind to everything else, neither suspected a thing until the alto voice of Heather's father exploded like a bird-scream in the study doorway.

  "What in God's name are you doing?"

  In all twenty-one years of his life Roddy had never felt as defenseless as when he lurched up on his knees and saw the big man standing there. He was about to die; he knew it. Forthe first time he actually realized he was undressed and so was the girl who lay there gazing up at him in horror. Wanting only to shrink to a size that would make him invisible, he stumbled while struggling to get off the sofa, and then groped frantically to his feet beside it. And then he could only stand there staring helplessly at Heather's father, who was not merely a big man now but an enraged giant threatening both of them with destruction. Even reaching to the floor for his clothes required a coordination of mind and body of which Roddy was not capable.

  Advancing on them, Judge McKenzie had turned into a monstroussteamroller certain to crush them flat. He would grind Heather into the sofa where she now sat up, wide-eyed with terror while frantically trying to cover her nakedness with her hands. He would flatten Roddy into the floor on which Roddy's clothes were out of reach in another world. Why, oh God, had the judge come back early?

  "Young man"—though not a bird-scream now, the voice was far from under control—"I think you had better go."

  "Judge McKenzie," Roddy stammered, "I know this looks—"

  "Go, I said. Pick up your clothes and shoes, walk out of this house, and dress in your car. Go! This moment!" The big man turned to Heather. "And you, young lady, go to your room!"

  Nothing he might say would change the look of fury on that face, Roddy realized. It was chiseled in granite. Still, he had to try.

  "Judge McKenzie, Heather and I love each other and—"

  "Get out of my house! Never come here again!"

  "But—"

  "Now! This instant! And if you ever even speak to my daughter again, I will find some way to put you in prison!"

  Somehow Roddy managed to pick up his clothes and shoes. Holding them in hands that would not stop shaking, he turned to the girl who had said she would marry him. But her head was bowed. He could not see her face.

  Refusing even to look athim, she groped to her feet, still naked, and walked slowly past her father to the door. As if walking in her sleep, Roddy thought. Or in a trance.

  "Heather, please . . ."

  She neither paused nor answered him.

  Aware that he no longer existed for her, Roddy, too, walked to the doorway. Behind him Judge McKenzie said in a voice still full of rage, "Your books. Get them out of here!"

  Roddy stopped and slowly turned. For a few seconds he gazed at the books in question, one of them on the floor beside the chair from which, a lifetime ago, he had risen to join Heather on the sofa. Leaving them where they were, he walked out of the room and out of the house.

  From the far end of the veranda the McKenzies' golden retriever ran to greet him, but stopped when ten feet away and simply stood there with head atilt, gazing at him. A naked, barefoot young man with wadded-up clothes under one arm and shoes in hand was obviously not someone the dog wished to become better acquainted with. Roddy went down the steps and across the driveway to his car, where he put his clothes and shoes on and turned for a last despairing look at the house before sliding in behind the wheel.

  When Heather McKenzie did not show up at the university the next day, he tried to phone her. Her mother answered. On hearing h
is voice, she hung up.

  The next day, Tuesday, he tried in the evening. This time it was her father who hung up on him.

  He tried countless more times before the Christmas holidays. Heather had not shown up at college, yet not once was it she who picked up the receiver when the phone rang in that Constant Spring house. Obviously she had been forbidden to do so. And always the one who answered the call hung up when Roddy asked for her.

  But if she wanted to talk to him, she could find some way to call him, couldn't she? The judge was not at home all day. Her mother could not monitor her every movement. The housekeeper would never give her away . . .

  When he climbed into his car to go home to Glencoe for the holidays, Roddy still had not spoken to her and was inconsolable.

  3

  Since the Bennett takeover, Glencoe had prospered. Coffee trees past their prime had been replaced with seedlings obtained from local small farmers. Lyle had established a nursery of his own, with an eye to expansion. Osburn Hall coffee, a large part of which came from Glencoe's fields, had twice won first prize at the Denbigh Agricultural Show.

  "And don't forget," Desmond Reid said, "the best at Denbigh is the best in the world. No coffee anywhere is bringing in a higher price than Jamaica Blue Mountain these days."

  A temporary setback had occurred when a hurricane roared across the island in 1951. The storm was a major one. But American planes had tracked its progress, and battery-run radios in the Great House had brought in the almost hourly reports from Palisadoes. By the time the moment of truth arrived, Lyle and Manny Traill had nailed sheets of plywood over the Great House windows, workers had corralled the plantation's donkeys and mules in some of the thick-walled downstairs rooms off the kitchen, Imogene Bailey had filled the dozen or more oil lamps in the house, and only the coffee fields themselves were unprotected. Nothing could be done about those.

  The storm had struck at night. At its height, the poles supporting the power line from the coffee works were blown over and the Great House had to rely on the lamps. It had been a little frightening, with a screaming, howling wind doing its best to lift that old cedar-shake roof and shatter the windows. But the Great House had been built with such weather in mind—hurricanes, after all, had sent many a treasure fleet to the bottom when Spain was looting the region—and it was still standing after 200 years. Though no one at Glencoe was likely soon to forget that wild night, Lyle and Alison had worried more about the safety of family members who were not present. Roddy was at the university in Mona, Cliff and Lee at the separate private schools they attended. Only little Luari wasat Glencoe at the time.

  Afterward, the short route to Kingston by way of Richmond Gap and Cambridge Hill—that road on which Freeland Elliot had died after a similar storm—was blocked by slides for days, and Lyle had discovered some expected damage in the fields. Uprooted shade trees had fallen on some of the coffee, and the heavy rain had caused a rockslide that wiped out both a section of track and fifty feet of the coffee works gutter. But the track and gutter were easily restored, and the only way to kill a coffee tree was to root it up. Those valuable red cherries grew only on new wood anyway, and the trees were periodically pruned to induce new growth.

  Yes, Glencoe was a leading plantation now, and earning money. Not yet as much money as Lyle had optimistically hoped for but enough. The twins were happy in their respective schools.

  Alison, thanks to her friend Kim Tulloch, was deep in a study of the island's fascinating history and loving it. Little Luari, now eleven, was loved by everyone— especially Cliff. Yum-Yum, the Siamese Blue Point, was a constant delight. The Reids, Desmond and Mildred, had become closerfriends than any the Bennetts had had in Rhode Island, which no one in the family now referred to as "home" anymore.

  But Lyle had a problem and knew it. Something was eating at the heart of his older son, Roddy, home now for the Christmas holidays.

  "What is it, Roddy? What's bugging you?"

  On his knees on the garage floor, hammer in hand, Roddy looked at him across the Christmas tree stand they were making. "Damn it, Dad, you're bugging me! I tell you there's nothing wrong!"

  "I haven't heard a laugh out of you since you came home. Haven't even seen a smile on your face."

  "I'm okay, I tell you. Come on, let's finish this."

  Finish the stand or the conversation, Lyle wondered. The latter seemed to have ended already, even before he'd been able to get it out of low gear. As for the stand . . . was it heavy enough to hold the tree Manny Traill had cut and delivered that morning?

  He could still see his headman striding down the Glencoe driveway with the huge cupressus over one shoulder. Those handsome evergreens grew in only one place: on the sides of a ravine—a gully, his workers would call it—above a series of pools some three miles up the Stony Valley River. Since coming to Glencoe he, Lyle, had been there only once, and then only out of an urge to see the whole of this property he had inherited. Getting there took a couple of hours, the going was so difficult in places. Cutting this tree down with a machete and lugging it back down the river had probably taken Manny another three hours, at least.

  In trying to express his gratitude, Lyle had only embarrassed the man. "Squire," Mannyhad protested, "you did say you would be having a Christmas party for the workers' children. So me say to meself, 'Manny, if Mr. Bennett going to do that, you must have to get a nice tree for the party.’"

  "Well, I thank you. Believe me. And you'll be coming to the party yourself, won't you? With your missus?"

  "What you smiling at, squire?"

  "Myself." Lyle's smile had expanded into a grin. "Listen to me. 'Missus.' I'm getting to be a real Jamaican, Manny."

  "You is that, squire. But no, me won't be coming to the party. Only Roselda." Manny looked sad. "Begging you to excuse me, but last Sunday me did hear the Rastas have a camp at Cambridge Hill again, and me did go there to talk to me brother. Ralph say him need a few days to settle him affairs, but if me there Christmas Day him will come away with I."

  "Come here, you mean? To live with you?"

  "Yes, squire. Me nuh want him going back to Kingston. Maybe him can even work for you here at Glencoe now and then. Him was a good man till him wear the dreadlocks."

  Would it be wise to give work to a man who for several years now must have been a regular user of ganja? If ganja was addictive as some said it was, wouldn't brother Ralph be likely to go right on using it? And what about the Rastafarian philosophy—that such drulp were a gift from God, and using them was a God-given right? Well, he would face that problem when he had to, Lyle decided. "Manny, thanks again for the tree. It's a beauty."

  But as Roddy and he wrestled the tree onto its stand now, he wondered what tomorrow would be like with his older son in such a black mood. Ever since Roddy's arrival, all of them had been talking about it, wondering what was wrong and trying in vain to find out.

  This was not the same Roddy Bennett who had sent that toy tank whirring through the Great House attic and made the rafters ring every time he captured an empty condensed-milk tin. This was a young man who had been hurt somehow and was full of anger.

  "Tell me something, Roddy." The tree was up and they had stepped back to look at it. "Will Heather be here tomorrow?"

  "No.”

  "But after you spent Christmas Day at her home last year, you told us—"

  "We're not seeing each other anymore," Roddy said without looking at him.

  "What?"

  "We've broken up."

  "Broken up?" Yes. It was written there in the blend of anger and misery on the boy's face. "But why, Roddy? What on earth happened? I thought you two—"

  "Dad, I don't want to talk about it. Just leave me alone, will you?" Turning his back, Roddy walked out of the garage and across the yard to his car where, jerking up the bonnet, he began doing something to the engine.

  On a stool at the kitchen sink, where she was peeling onions, eleven-year-old Luari Campbell sang a folk song. Her clear, swee
t voice could be heard throughout the whole upper part of the house. In the drawing room where they had their heads together over directions for operating a newly acquired tape recorder, Leora Bennett and her Haitian schoolmate, Ginette Beaulieu, stopped to listen.

  "Carry me ackee, go-a Linstead Market,

  Not a quatty-worth sell.

  Carry me ackee, go-a Linstead Market,

  Not a quatty-worth sell.

  Oh Lord, not a mite, not a bite,

  What a Saturday night!

  Lord, not a mite, not a bite,

  What a Saturday night!"

  At the kitchen counter where she was shelling peas, Imogene Bailey said with a frown, "Why you must sing such a sad song, child? With Christmas coming tomorrow, don't it better you sing something happy?"

  "Like what?" challenged sixteen-year-old Cliff Bennett, on a straight-backed chair at the kitchen table. Whenever he was at Glencoe nowadays, the place to look for Cliff was wherever Luari was. "Name me just one happy Jamaican folk song, Ima."

  "Well . . ." Ima thought about it while her long black fingers continued to strip the pods, and the peas fell tinkling into the saucepan. "There's Cordelia Brown, for one."

  "I know that one," Luari said happily. With Alison tutoring her, she spoke what she called "proper English" now, only occasionally lapsing into country talk. Certainly she used better English than most of the children at the Rainy Ridge school she also attended.

  "Sho' child!" Ima said. "You know every song that ever was!" And you're singing them just about all the time, shemight have added. Just a few days ago Mr. Bennett had mentioned how the child's singing reminded him of the Sunday he and Mr. Reckford, the barrister, had gone to the Campbell house in Wilson Gap and Luari had come in from the back yard singing a children's game song.