Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  But he and Luari hadn't come all this way to be depressed about Roddy and the problems he was creating. Taking a second big bite of the sandwich Luari had made for him, Cliff lay back on the rock and looked at the sky.

  On a bullet-tree branch high above him, a small gray-brown bird broke into song. "Look, Luari!" he said softly, so as not to disturb it. "A solitaire!"

  Even here, high in its mountain habitat, the solitaire was no common sight. You heard the song often enough but seldom saw the singer. Their lunch forgotten, they watched until the bird took wing. Then Luari tried to call it back by imitating—almost perfectly—its flutelike notes. By the time she gave up, Glencoe and Glencoe's problems seemed far away.

  The sun was above the river gorge when they finished a leisurely lunch. The rock on which they sat was warm as a heating pad. The pool before them glittered as though its water were liquid gold. "You ready for a swim?" Cliff asked.

  "Shouldn't we wait awhile? You're not supposed to go into the water right after you've eaten."

  "Well . . . okay. We can strip and get some sun, though." The pools were their only destination this Sunday, and Cliff had worn swim-trunks under his jeans. Not Luari, though. A swimsuit made her itch on such hikes, she claimed, and she had carried hers in a pouch hung from her belt. With a mysterious smile she said now, "Be right back," and disappeared into the woods.

  When sheemerged, she wore a one-piece white suit that made the rest of her look asgolden as the water. Cliff sat up and stared at her.

  "Hey . . . where'd you get that?"

  "When I went to Kingston Tuesday with your mom. Like it?"

  "Do I like it? It's terrific!"

  She sat down beside him, a golden girl of fourteen who looked at least as old as he. When he could stop staring at her, he lay back on the rock and reached up for her.

  "Come here, huh?"

  She did not resist. For a long time she lay in his arms, her head on his shoulder, her long black hair covering his bare chest. She, Luari Elliot, was in love with Cliff Bennett; she knew that. It seemed she had always known it. When she felt his hand moving down her back to her buttocks, pressing that part of her body hard against him, she made no attempt to pull away. It had to happen sometime. Now was as good a time as any. Especially in this magic place where they were always so alone, where they had never seen another human being.

  But Cliff at the last moment remembered suddenly that the girl in his arms was only fourteen. If they made love that way and he got her pregnant, the world they were so happy in would explode and blow them apart. Perhaps forever.

  "No," he whispered. "No, we can't!" Frantically he twisted himself away from her and staggered to his feet. Then, stumbling to the edge of the pool, he half dived, half threw himself into it.

  That water came from a spring just under Blue Mountain Peak, and even on a hot July day it was cold. When he had himself under control, he swam back to the rock, laid both arms on it to support himself, and said, "Are you coming in?"

  She had been sitting there watching him. "All right."

  Rising, she dived in, came up with a gasp, and swam to his side. "You love me, though, don't you, Cliff?" she said.

  "More than anything in the world."

  "I love you. And I'm glad we stopped. Your folks would have sent me away if they found out."

  "When you're old enough, we have to get married," Cliff said. "You know that, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you marry me?"

  "Of course I will!"

  "So can I tell them? That we're going to be married when you're old enough?"

  "Yes."

  They were side by side in the pool, clinging to the rock. The cold water gurgled and whispered around them. The sun blazed down on them. The small gray-brown bird was on the branch again, serenading them with its flute notes.

  Cliff Bennett turned to Luari Elliott and put his mouth against hers, very gently, and held it there . . . and after a while the water was not cold any more, not cold at all.

  On their way back, on the path between the river and the big flat called Tennis, they came upon three of Glencoe's workers. One, hurt and limping, was being held on his feet by the other two as he hobbled along. Even as Cliff and Luari caught up with them, he muttered something to the others and was allowed to slump to the ground.

  "What happened?" Cliff asked. The man he put the question to was the headman, Manny Traill. The one on the ground was Manny's brother, Ralph.

  "Him did twist him foot and must have to go home, Mr. Cliff." Manny said.

  "Can we help?"

  "No, Mr. Cliff. Me and Duppyman able to manage."

  Duppyman. The nicknames they gave one another, Cliff thought. It was a little like the "country talk" they spoke: almost all had had some schooling and could speak better than they did—a little, anyway—but still they used the patois.

  And while their real names were Cornelius, Neville, Hubert, Dudley and such, for reasons known only to themselves they were called by such non-derivative nicknames as Soijie and Moonse and Busta and Iron. You used one set of names when making up the pay bill and another when you talked to them.

  But today—Sunday—was not a work day. What were these men doing here?

  "What's going on, Manny?" Cliff asked. "Some problem with the intake?"

  "No, Mr. Cliff. We just lookin' where to run the new water line."

  "Oh." Tomorrow came the revolution, Cliff suddenly remembered. Or, rather, the renovation. A new pipe line to the Great House was to be a part of it. "Well, if there's nothing wecan do . . .”

  He and Luari went on.

  Manny Traill watched them go. When they were out of sight around a bend, the headman turned swiftly, in anger, to the man on the ground.

  "There now!" he said. "You see what almost did happen? If either of them two did lean over you and smell you breath, you would be fired this minute, and most likely me with you for begging Squire to give you a job in the first place!"

  Ralph gazed up at him in silence.

  "You do this one time more," Manny said, "and me finished with you forever! You hear me?"

  "Him not going to pay you no heed, Manny," the man called Duppyman said with a shrug. "Rastas believe ganja grows by God's will, so them have a right to use it."

  "Him is not a Rasta no more!"

  "So him say. But how you know if him telling the truth?"

  The renovation. Yes.

  After talking for years about building a new house on the knoll in Tennis, Lyle had finally called a family conference about it.

  "Do we actually want a new house? Or should we fix this one up?”

  Alison had said promptly, "If we could have our own water line and power plant, I'd vote to stay here. I love this old house. But I am tired of having the lights go dim every time it rains, and having the water taste like poison when the factory tars that old wooden gutter to keep it from leaking."

  "If we're going to stay here much longer, we'll have to do something about the roof," Cliff had warned.

  "A water line, a power plant, a new roof." Lyle nodded. "Also a kitchen stove that runs on propane, and a fridge and water-heater ditto. It would still cost a lot less than building a new house from scratch."

  "This is our home now," Alison insisted. "And, frankly, we've become used to having all these rooms to rattle around in. I say let's stay here."

  "Everyone agreed?" Lyle's searching stare took in his wife, Roddy, Cliff, and Luari. Lee was away in Haiti. They said they did.

  "Then how about you taking charge, Roddy?"

  Roddy's eyes had suddenly lost their dullness. His whole face came alive. "You mean it, Dad?"

  "I mean it. Some one person has to give the orders or we'll all be running around in circles." And if that someone is you, Lyle thought, you'll feel needed again.

  The following day, he and Roddy had gone to Kingston to buy what was needed.

  Now, this Monday morning, the renovation was under way. Lyle was at th
e river with a gang of men, working on a separate intake for Glencoe's water. A second gang, under Roddy's supervision, had begun laying what would eventually be half a mile of pipe through forest and gullies to the Great House. Cliff was on the Great House roof with two local carpenters, while an electrician from Kingston replaced the Great House wiring.

  There were problems, of course, in the week that followed this bright beginning. Item One: the water line. Installation of a separate Glencoe intake went smoothly enough, but where the Osburn Hall gutter crossed the stream on its braced framework of forest poles, Roddy balked. "One day that old trestle is going to collapse, Dad. We don't want our pipe to be on it when it does."

  Manny Traill emphatically agreed. "Mek we run it across some other way, Squire."

  Several possibilities were considered. Finally Roddy drove to Kingston for a length of wire cable, which he and his men stretched high enough between forest trees on both sides of the stream to be safe from flood waters. With the cable in place, they suspended the pipeline from it.

  Then the power plant. There was a company in Kingston that sold and installed the diesel engines, but before such an engine could be trucked out and put in place, a concrete slab had to be prepared to support its weight. Roddy supervised the mixing and pouring of one, then the construction of a shed to shelter the machine. Finally, Glencoe's workers had to cut, trim, and plant half a dozen juniper poles to carry the power line to the Great House, for the engine had to be far enough from the house to be all but inaudible to those living there.

  In Morant Bay, Lyle bought some empty oil drums, had them filled with diesel fuel at Jimmy Watson's gas station, and drove home with them. Workers wrestled them from the station wagon to the powerhouse shed. With an audience of workmen watching his every move, Roddy pumped oil into the engine's tank. Then while Lyle stood by and Alison and Luari strained to see from the Great House veranda, Roddy pressed the starter button.

  Slowly the engine responded. Chug, chug, chug. Its pulse-beat quickened. Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a. As Roddy and Lyle stepped out of the shed and looked toward the house, the sound turned into a smooth throbbing behind them.

  It was still mid-afternoon, but, of course, Alison had turned the veranda light on in anticipation. Lyle saw the bulb start to glow, saw it brighten, saw it become brighter than it ever had been when it was fed electricity by the factory's turbine.

  On the veranda his wife and Luari cheered and waved their arms. Glencoe had its own power.

  The rest of the renovation was simple. Tanks of propane were available in Morant Bay now. Roddy drove down for some. One fed the new stove—Alison had cause to cheer again when she held a match to a burner and saw the blue flame shoot out. Another serviced the water heater; no longer would the Great House residents hesitate to take showers on rainy days. A third fed the converted fridge. Not again would Ima poke a long, wire-handle brush down the fridge's chimney every few days to clean it—or forget to do so and risk an explosion that would turn the whole kitchen into a nightmare of soot.

  And with the new roof in place—aluminum over felt and wood to deaden the noise when rain fell—every room in the house could now be used.

  "We're ready for whatever comes to pass," Alison said happily. "Even weddings and babies . . . if and when the good Lord lets those happen."

  5

  Long before the man himself appeared, Lee and Carey saw his torch weaving down the mountainside in the lonely darkness. He knew they were there. All day the keening of the conch shells had announced their coming. Just as they finished their evening meal, he splashed through the stream and stopped at the edge of the fire glow—a very old man, barefoot, in rags.

  "Bon soir," he said. And, gazing at them curiously, he added in Creole, "You are the first strangers I have ever seen."

  Carey offered tobacco for his homemade pipe, and he sat down. For the next hour, with the river whispering in the dark nearby and the night air growing colder, he talked to them about himself and his neighbors.

  It had begun weeks before, when—as predicted so vehemently by Ginette Beaulieu—Dr. Carey Aldred had telephoned the Beaulieu home on the outskirts of Pétionville and asked to speak to Lee. Could he see her again? Perhaps take her to Cabane Choucoune for dinner and dancing?

  That evening at Pétionville's famous thatch-roofed nightclub had been only the beginning. This handsome, six-foot-two doctor had asked for and been given some time off from his duties at the Kelleher. He took Lee everywhere. They spent a day at a secret little beach he knew about, where no one but a few curious fishermen with throw-nets came along to disturb them. They visited a school for handicapped children run by an amazing woman whom Carey and apparently everyone else called La Petite Directrice. In Carey's jeep they drove through the Cul de Sac Plain to Haiti's Foret des Pins, the cool, whispering Pine Forest on Morne LaSelle, where they picnicked on ground covered with wild strawberries.

  It was there in the Pine Forest, in a world of their own, that Dr. Carey Aldred suddenly reached for Lee Bennett's hand and said, "How would you like to walk across the Massif du Sud with me?"

  The what?"

  "The southern peninsula mountains. No one knows anything about that part of Haiti. Not even Haitians. I've been wanting to explore it ever since I came here."

  Lee looked at him. They had finished their lunch and she was loading her camera to take some pictures. Above the massed pine tops the sun was two-o'clock high, but only a few flecks of gold reached the shadowed ground on which they sat. "Explore?" Lee said. Only people like Columbus "explored" places. No one did it any more.

  "That's no idle word," he insisted. "Granted, an Inter-American Geodetic Survey team went in part way once, and some years ago a group of Catholic mission priests hiked in a few miles.

  But the only map of those mountains is still one made from aerial photos, and except to its isolated inhabitants, the heart of that region is practically unknown. When Hurricane Hazel battered the peninsula in October of '54, it was weeks before word trickled out to the coast of the sufferings of those mountain people. Helicopters from a U.S. Navy ship had to carry relief supplies in." His grip on her hand tightened. "What do you say? I'm leaving next Sunday. Come with me!"

  The drive from Port-au-Prince to the end of the southern peninsular road at Les Anglais was an adventure in itself, so far as Lee was concerned. With them rode a young man from the Kelleher who would drive the Jeep back. There had been some unseasonable rains. For miles the sturdy little vehicle slithered in fourwheel-drive through deep red mud while curious peasants watched to see who would ultimately win out: the slop or the mechanical beetle struggling to crawl through it. In the city of Les Cayes, where this "main highway" ended, they spent the night at the Pension Condé, Carey and the Kelleher youth sharing a room, Lee having one to herself. This part of the country, it seemed, was the domain of Louis Dejoie, the gentleman farmer many thought might become president in September. At dinner time, the Pension dining room was full of political murmurings.

  From Les Cayes on, the road to their destination was for the most part a coastal one—unpaved, of course—through scattered small villages with intriguing names. Carey had driven it before. "Off there to the left, in St. Jean," he said as they passed a side road, "is a colony of Portuguese. The story is that a Portuguese ship was wrecked there years ago, and the present inhabitants are descendants of the survivors." And later: "This is Port Salud. When I came through here before, I bought a chicken and cooked it on the beach with half the kids in town watching me. After I gave them most of it they left, though, and I spent the night there. Had the stars and sound of surf all to myself, and felt like Robinson Crusoe. Ah, but it was lovely . . .”

  "You like this country, don't you?" Lee asked.

  He took time to think before answering her. "I like the gentleness of the peasants. Where else in the world would you knock on a strange door and be expected to exchange an ‘Honneur, compere' and a 'Respect, compere' with the person who opened it
before stating your business. Or be asked in for a cup of coffee, even if all you wanted was directions?" He smiled, no doubt at memories. "And I like the feeling of mystery here. The feeling that there's something exciting going on just out of sight or under the surface."

  They had been passing fields of millet—piti-mi, Carey said the peasants called it—that rippled in the sea-breeze like American fields of corn. And banana walks laden with fruit. And groves of mango trees. And peasant plantings of castor beans. "It's beautiful, too," Lee said.

  He flapped a hand to dismiss her remark. "You think this is beautiful? Wait'll you see Tiburon!"

  They had expected the road to terminate at Les Anglais, but it ended at a river just short of that village because a rain somewhere in the mountains had made the fording hazardous. "We might get the Jeep across all right," Carey said after studying the water's wild rush over half-hidden boulders, "but I'd worry about Roger getting back across here alone." To Roger he said, "Well, lad, here's where we part company. Be careful on the return trip, you hear?" The plan was for the youth to drive the jeep back to the Kelleher. Lee and Carey, when they reached the peninsula's north coast, would return to Port-au-Prince by ship from the seaport town of Jeremie.

  Packs in place, they stood in the road and watched the Jeep disappear, then felt their way carefully across the stream, trudged on through the village, and found themselves on a footpath.

  "The mission priest in Tiburon told me he does this on a motorbike when he has to get out," Carey said. "He carries it over the rough spots. We'll be staying with him tonight, by the way. I wrote him we were coming." He laughed. "Don't be startled when you walk in and find yourself in the presence of life-size statues of Mary, Jesus, and St. John. When I stayed there before, I came downstairs in the dark to get something and said 'Bon soir' to them, they're so lifelike."