Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  Lyle stood up, went to his son, and laid a hand on Roddy's shoulder. "Go on to bed now, why don't you?" No longer was there anger in his voice. "You're beat. You need some sleep. We'll talk about this again after your mother and I have had time to think about it. Okay?"

  "I'm sorry I spoiled Christmas for you. I didn't mean to."

  "We know you didn't," Alison said, lifting her arms to him.

  He went to her and leaned down to put his cheek against hers. He was crying when he straightened. With a look at Lyle that begged for forgiveness, he walked out of the room.

  Silence took over in the drawing room until they heard his door shut. Then Alison said, "Sit down, Lyle. Please. We have to talk about this."

  He obeyed but said, "What's there to talk about, Al? I know exactly how that girl's father must feel. As I told the boy, I'm sure I'd feel the same way if it happened to Lee. Or," he added, "to Luari."

  "Lyle . . . you and I had sex before we were married."

  "But your dad didn't know about it. He isn't the Judge McKenzie type, anyway. All we'd have gotten was a lecture." "Lyle, our son loves that girl."

  "I know he does."

  "And she loves him. We've seen them together often enough to know that."

  "But if the judge has put his foot down . . ."

  "Yes." Alison nodded. "If he has put his foot down, there's nothing either Roddy or Heather will be able to do about it. Unless Heather is prepared to be disowned, of course. And a girl with her upbringing would never break with her own people like that."

  Lyle stood up. "Would you like a drink? I think I need one."

  She shook her head. "Lyle—must you?"

  "I think I must. Yes." He went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of rum and ginger ale. By the way he was tonguing his lips, Alison guessed he had already had some straight rum in the kitchen. Seating himself, he sipped the drink and lit a cigarette before speaking. Then he said, "Just what are we up against here, Al? If he's actually lost her, I mean."

  "A problem, I think. A big one. Roddy has always been—what's the word? He's always had deep feelings."

  "He's had other girls. Alma, in high school."

  "That left its mark on him, too. Remember what happened to his grades when she moved away?"

  "The point is,he got over it."

  "Did he?" Alison said. "I wonder sometimes. Anyway—“ she could not suppress a frown as her husband emptied his glass— "this is really a crisis for him, Lyle. We have to face up to that." She stood up. "I've got to go to bed. I'm done in."

  Lyle looked at his empty glass, then toward the kitchen.

  "Please, Lyle. You had three or four with Desmond before you went to the police station."

  "All right." He put the glass down. "It's been a rough day for me, too, you know."

  She stood up and reached for his hand. "I know it has. And I don't mean to nag. But come on, let's go to bed."

  Lyle rose from his chair and kissed her, then went to lock the double front doors. Returning, he found her waiting and put an arm around her.

  "That's better," she said. She put an arm around him. As they walked along the hall to their bedroom, she looked up at him and smiled.

  Roddy dropped his bombshell the day before he was scheduled to return to college. It was an ordinary work day, rather a relief to Lyle after the near frenzy of the holidays. The workers had gone home. Lyle sat at the desk in his office off the garage, working on the week's pay bill.

  Through the open door behind him he saw Roddy enter the garage, and thought his son had come to tell him dinner was ready. But a glance at his watch told him it was too early.

  Roddy came to the office doorway and stood there.

  "Well, hello." Lyle finished an entry in the book and swung around. "All set to go back to school tomorrow, are you?"

  "Dad, I have to talk to you," his son said.

  "Okay. Shoot."

  "I'm not going back to school."

  It was the wrong time, wrong place, wrong everything. Lyle had to steady himself before he could answer, and then could say only, "You're not going to what?"

  "Ever since we talked—Christmas Day—I've been thinking about it," his son said. "I know you're going to be sore.

  I know what you're going to say. With only a little while to go before I get my degree, I'm stupid, I'm out of my mind, I'm crazy. But I can't help it. I just can't go."

  Rising, Lyle stood with his back to the desk, both hands clutching the edge of it. "Why?"

  "She won't be there. They won't let her go back if I'm there. And it was all my fault, what happened. She shouldn't have to pay for it."

  "You're insane," Lyle said.

  Roddy slouched against the doorframe as though in need of support. "I'm sorry."

  "Only a few weeks to your degree—"

  "I said you'd say that."

  "All that time wasted—"

  "It wasn't wasted. I got an education out of it." Roddy's composure suddenly disappeared and he was angry. "What's a degree from something called The University College of the West Indies, anyway? When it began six years ago it was just a bunch of old wooden huts put up during the war, for God's sake."

  Lyle was a graduate of England's Cambridge. "To house refugees from Gibraltar and Malta, let me remind you," he said quietly. "And soon it will be the leading college in these islands, if it isn't already. Believe me."

  "Well, I won't be in it!"

  Lyle looked at him, surprised by the anger. What was behind it? A sudden realization that life had been less than fair? That the punishment was too cruel for such an innocent infraction of the rules? "Roddy, listen. Have you really thought this through?"

  His son nodded.

  "If you don't go back to school, what will you do?"

  "You need help here on the plantation, Dad. You wouldn't have to pay me much. I still have money in the bank account you set up for me.

  The bank account? Lyle had to think a moment, so great was the shock of what he had just heard. But yes, the bank account. Rather than dole out money in bits and pieces for their son's education, Alison and he had agreed to establish an account in his name and let him handle his own finances. Periodical examinations of his bank statements had shown them their trust was well placed.

  "Have you told your mother about this?" Lyle asked.

  "Yes, Dad."

  "What did she say?"

  "That it was my life and I'd have to make my own decisions. I guess she feels the way you do, though. That I'm crazy."

  "All right." Lyle sat down. "If your mind is made up—and I suppose it is—tell her I'll talk to her when I've finished here."

  "When you've finished what?"

  "This. The pay bill."

  "All right, I'll tell her." As Roddy departed he glanced back over his shoulder.

  Lyle, watching him go, caught the look and quickly bent over the open book on the desk. Not until the sound of footsteps on the concrete garage floor had died away did he reach down and open a desk drawer.

  Out of it he took a bottle of rum and a glass.

  Pouring a good three ounces of rum into the glass, Lyle drank it down straight. Then, before closing the book and going to the house, he drank a second three ounces and lit a cigarette.

  On the veranda steps he stumbled and had to clutch the rail to keep from falling.

  BOOK THREE

  1957

  On her way home from Morant Bay, where she had gone to do some shopping, Alison turned her new estate wagon in at Kim Tulloch's gate. It had become a habit with her to buy for Kim, too, whenever she happened to see something she knew the old lady liked.

  Not that Kim was unable to get out on her own. Far from it. Even at 89, that incredible woman still thought nothing of jumping into her car and going places. The little red Fiat, however, was a thing of the past. Now she drove a more sedate English sedan. A blue one.

  "I've brought you some sprats, Kim. Got them down where the fishing boats come in." Kim's Mavis had
a way of slow-frying those tiny herring that made them out-of-this-world delicious.

  "Lovely, Al. Just lovely. But have you time to sit awhile before you go? I haven't seen you in days."

  "Well—" Alison frowned at her watch. "Just for a minute." They sat in rockers on the screened-in porch, where even on this dazzling May morning the vines blocked out the glare and produced their usual bird rustlings and insect sounds. Curious to know who the caller was, but not enough so to be in any hurry, Kim's cats lazed out to look Alison over. When she spoke their names, they came forward to be stroked.

  "How's Lyle?" Kim Tulloch asked. That aging face had a few more hollows and ridges now, but the eyes were as bright as ever, the body language still as brisk.

  "Drinking too much. Smoking too much. I'm scared to death, Kim."

  "Is it because of Roddy?"

  "Some of it is,I suppose. But I can't forget that his sister drank herself to death at Glencoe."

  "Pam was drinking before they bought Glencoe," Kim said. "Free told me that's one of the reasons he bought the place, hoping she'd quit when he got her away from the Kingston crowd."

  "Well, anyway, Roddy's giving us a hard time. He feels he ought to be in charge because he's older, but Cliff can't accept that. When they have an argument, which happens all too often, Roddy is likely to just disappear for a day or two. We never know where he goes or what he does. He's a grown man of twenty-four now and doesn't have to account for everything he does, he keeps reminding us. And of course he's right, but it's unsettling. I'm tired, Kim. I really am. By the way, Kim"—Alison tilted her rocking-chair forward, causing Tai-Tai, the mother of the Bennetts' Yum-Yum, to leap back out of range— "do you know a man named Terry Connor? Young? Very good looking?"

  Repeating the name, Kim shook her head. "Should I?"

  "From the Forestry Department? He said he knew you. He came around the other day and—"

  "Oh. I do know him. He stopped by a month or so ago to ask about people in this parish who might be persuaded to grow pine trees. 'At your age, you probably know everyone in St. Thomas,' he said. The nerve of him. But he is handsome. Indeed, he is. What did he want?"

  "To ask if we'd grow Caribbean pines on the parts of Glencoe that aren't suitable for coffee. Hetalked for quite a while, explaining how the price of imported lumber was going sky high and Jamaica could so easily be self sufficient. He said the Forestry Department would supply the seedlings if we'd plant them, and, of course, any profit from the venture would be ours. What do you think?"

  "Why not?" Kim said.

  "It would cost quite a bit to plant them in the quantity he suggested, of course. He looked at our map of Glencoe and talked about fifty thousand seedlings. Eventually, that is. Not all at once.”

  "Well, I suppose if you're talking about a pine forest, that isn't such a lot. But, of course, digging that many holes . . ."

  "You don't dig holes the way you do for coffee," Alison said.

  "At least, we wouldn't have to in our soil, which is mostly serpentine. He said the seedlings would be only a few inches high and we could plant them bare-root, with machetes."

  "And are you going to do it?"

  "Should I, do you think?"

  "What do you mean, 'should I'?"

  "Well"—Alison's laugh betrayed a touch of nervousness—"Lyle wasn't what you'd call gung-ho about it but saw that I was interested and said he'd agree to the project if I took charge."

  "You!"

  "I could do it, with Terry advising me. I know which of the workers I'd use, and he promised to come by every so often to check on the work."

  "Go for it, then." Kim advised. "You need something to get your mind off your problems. The boys are behind you, aren't they?"

  "I haven't asked them. But Leora certainly is.One look at Terry Connor and she was suddenly very interested in pine trees. I almost wish she hadn't been home from school that day."

  "She's nineteen now, isn't she?"

  "Yes."

  "And will be going to college in the fall."

  "To Haiti first, to spend the summer with Ginette. Then to college."

  "Have you decided where? The last time you mentioned it, she was debating between U.W.I. and Miami."

  "It's to be U.W.I. Miami is too far, she says." Alison got to her feet. "Look, I really have to go. The way things are, with Roddy and Cliff at each other and Lyle drinking so much, I get scared if I'm away too long."

  "Start planting those pine trees," Kim Tulloch advised, rising with her to open the veranda door. "Even if the venture produces new problems, it'll be good for you."

  A forestry Department Land Rover was in the yard when Alison reached home. Its bonnet was up, and from the looks of the steam rising from the radiator, it had not been there long. The young man she had asked Kim about stood beside it with one end of a garden hose in his hand. Leora bent over a standpipe some distance away, apparently about to turn on the tap for him.

  When Alison braked her car and got out of it, both stopped what they were doing and came toward her, the forestry man with a hand outthrust.

  "Mrs. Bennett, how are you? I just stopped by to see if you've reached a decision about the pine trees."

  Did you now? Alison asked herself. A glance at the two of them told her she was right in suspecting a different motive, or at least an added one. Terry Connor's grin was a giveaway. And the expression on Lee's face was one that hadn't been there too often in the past. Never, perhaps, in that degree of sparkle. Was it because she had finally found an attractive young man who was also tall enough to interest her?

  "I brought a couple of seedlings to show you what you'll be getting, Mrs. Bennett." Reaching into the back of his vehicle, young Connor lifted out two black plastic pots. In each grew a miniature Caribbean pine some seven or eight inches high. "What we can do for you, as I said, is take them out of the pots at the nursery and tie them up in bundles of, say, a hundred just before you pick them up. We'd wrap the bundles in moss and wet them down, of course."

  Alison only looked at him, waiting for the rest.

  "If you were to pick them up about seven in the morning," he said, "you'd be back here by nine and each man could take a bundle of a hundred, plant them out, and be back down again by the end of the work day. It would cost a lot less than if they carried the potted seedlings up there in trays, a few at a time."

  "And I, of course, would have to leave here at five in the morning to get to Silver Hill by seven," Alison said with a smile.

  "Well, yes, but—"

  "It's all right. I'm an early riser anyway and I've decided to do it. And your way does sound interesting. Just give me a few days to select the men I'll need."

  "Men, Mother?" Leora said with a frown. "Dad uses women for planting coffee."

  "Because the holes have already been dug for them. No, I'll be using men. It's a long, hard walk to where my pines will be planted. We're talking about up there"—Alison turned to point—"on that high, wild land above the coffee. And to plant a bare-root seedling, you have to use a machete."

  "Like this, Lee." Lifting a machete from his Land Rover, Terry Connor dropped to his knees and with a powerful downward thrust drove the blade into the ground. Pulling the handle of the tool toward him, he created a V at least six inches deep.

  "You put the seedling in like this," he said, demonstrating with a pencil from his shirt pocket, "and firm the ground around it. Some fellows get so good they can firm the ground with their feet after they stand up." Extracting the pencil, he stood up himself.

  Lee looked at him as though he had performed a miracle.

  "By the way, Lee," Alison said, "where's your father?"

  "What, Mother?"

  "Your father. Where is he?"

  "Oh. Up in the fields."

  "And Roddy and Cliff?"

  Lee seemed to hesitate. "Cliff's with Dad. Roddy took off soon after you left for the Bay."

  "Took off for where?"

  "He didn't say, Mother."

>   He never does any more, Alison thought as she looked at her watch. "Well, it's lunch time, you two. Can you stay for lunch, Terry?"

  "I've already asked him and told Ima," Lee said. "When you didn't come back, I figured you were having lunch with Kim."

  "Mrs. Bennett," Terry Connor said quickly, "if you'd rather I—"

  "Of course I wouldn't! You can't just talk me into planting fifty thousand pine trees and then walk out on me. I've a million more questions to ask!" She touched him on the shoulder. "I mean you're welcome. Of course you are. Come on, both of you. I'm hungry."

  With a knowing nod her daughter said, "Uh-huh. You know something, Terry? Now that she's made up her mind about this, my mother is a new woman. Just look at her, raring to get started."

  2

  The house was on the upper outskirts of Pétionville, well above the heat and smells of Port-au-Prince.

  "My father built it himself," Ginette Beaulieu said, as she and Lee stood at a window of Lee's room, looking down at the hibiscus and bougainvillea in the walled yard. "I don't mean he mixed the concrete with his own hands, of course. But he designed it himself, even to the fancy wrought-iron gate down there. The road, by the way, goes to the mountain village of Kenscoff, and even higher to Furcy and La Decouverte if you have a Jeep."

  The Beaulieus, of course, had a Jeep. And about everything else a family of wealth could be expected to possess in this most poverty-stricken country of the Caribbean. Because in addition to his architectural talents, Georges Beaulieu owned stores that catered to the wealthy elite in both the capital and the country's second largest city, Cap Haitien.

  "And we're going to Cap Haitien," Ginette promised. "One thing you absolutely have to see while you're here this summer is the Citadelle. I can't get you into a genuine voodoo service—only the kind staged for tourists—because I'm not into that at all, but La Citadelle is a must."

  The day was nearly over, and it had been a full one. First, the drive from Glencoe to Palisadoes, for the flight to Port-au-Prince. Then the flight itself, eastward over incredibly blue water and the equally incredible mountains of Haiti's southern peninsula. Then the ridefrom Haiti's airport in the Beaulieu's big Buick, driven by the Beaulieu's driver. At the moment it was all something of a blur made up of fragmentary impressions: airplane noises, those roadless mountains, black people speaking French or Creole, drivers in a hurry trying not to run over peasant women sitting sideways on little grey donkeys . . . not to mention slums even more depressing—and mansions more lavish—than anything Lee had ever seen in Kingston. "Don't worry," her companion had said with a laugh. "You'll get used to it. Just as you'll get used to people who go to mass on Sunday after spending all of Saturday night at a voodoo ceremony."