Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  "Dad, go back," he begged again, and on receiving a nod in answer, went toiling up the track to catch up with the workers.

  For weeks it was talked about, not only at Glencoe but in Mango Gut, Rainy Ridge, and everywhere else Glencoe's workers lived or went. The "second shift," as Cliff and the small army with him came to be known, proudly told the tale as a joke on themselves—how when they got there, the fire was only a sea of smoking embers with Terry Connor and his three helpers seated in a row, arms about their knees, looking like black scarecrows—even Terry was black—with grins on their faces.

  The arsonist caught by Terry's men had refused at first to tell his name, but Manny Traill knew him. "Him a Rasta," the headman said sadly to Cliff. "Me did see him one time at the camp on Cambridge Hill."

  Seated on the ground with thirty or more men glaring at him, the fellow confessed.

  "But two of you set the fire, damn you to hell!" Terry Connor challenged him. "Who's the one who got away?"

  The man lifted his head and looked at Manny as though he didn't want to. "That man brother," he mumbled.

  "Ralph Traill?"

  "Yes, suh. Ralph Traill."

  Cliff stepped to Terry's side. "And where are we to find him? At the camp?"

  The fellow nodded.

  But when the police went to Cambridge Hill they came back empty handed, and Ralph remained missing. A sad but angry brother Manny suggested places they might look for him; he was in none of them. Then one afternoon, six days after the fire, Cliff and two Glencoe workers going to the river to clean the intake saw John Crows circling.

  The three stopped at the bridge. "It look like something might dead just below here, Marse Cliff. Ought we go look, you suppose?" The speaker, Leslie Grant, turned to point upstream. "That ridge up there is where the fire was. Ralph most likely did come down through here."

  "And if him was trying not to go near the house, him would have gone on down the river," Derek Millwood added. "But a terrible deep hole is just below the bridge here—wider than the stream and mostly hid by brush so you don't see it until you right on the edge of it. If him was in a hurry . . .”

  Cliff remembered being warned about the place when he first came to Glencoe. Was it Manny Traill who had warned him? Someone, anyway. "All right, let's have a look."

  They walked very carefully in the stream itself, the men predicting that if they tried to stay dry while battling through the tangled brush on either side they might themselves end up as something for the John Crows to investigate. Even so, when Cliff reached the spot where the stream slid over the brink of the hole, he suffered a moment of near panic and had to grab an overhanging branch for support.

  A man standing at the edge of this awesome pit should hear something, he told himself. He should hear the water thundering down on rocks at the bottom. But the hole was so deep that no such sound arose from it.

  He leaned back and looked up. In the sky above, four John Crows slowly circled. But if the carrion eaters saw or smelled something in the hole, how could they get down there to feast on it? "Wait a minute, fellows," Cliff said with a frown. "What happens to the stream down there?"

  "It just widen out and flow on down to the Yallahs," Leslie Grant said.

  "Can we get into this hole from below?"

  "If you nuh mind some hard climbing."

  Cliff knew he had to find out what was down there. "Let's go then. Let's do it."

  Millwood shook his head. "Not this evening, suh. Us don't have enough daylight left."

  "In the morning, then. I'll meet you at Anderson's shop in the Gut at eight o'clock. And don't talk about this, you hear? Don't say a word until we find out what's down there."

  The two men nodded.

  Next day the three spent half the morning toiling upstream to the hole and found the body of Manny Traill's brother, battered broken, in a rocky pool at the base of the fall. As the two workers fashioned a crude litter on which to carry it out, Derek Millwood paused to gaze at the corpse and shake his head.

  "Marse Cliff," he said, "me can't help but wonder how him did feel, thinking him safe from being caught and then all at once finding nuttin' under him foot. It must was awful, suh, falling and falling and falling and knowing all the time him going be dead when him hit bottom."

  Manny Traill buried his brother in a small cemetery in Mango Gut, but shed no tears and would permit no Ninth Night.

  10

  "They called it the wickedest city in the world—and the quake just wiped it off the map."

  On this special day, her birthday, 95-year-old Kim Tulloch had the attentionof everyone in the Glencoe drawing room.

  Despite a few more wrinkles on her cheerful face and some new blue veins on the backs of her eloquent hands, she was as brisk as ever this evening. Ensconced in her favorite easy chair before the fireplace, she had elected, for no particular reason, to talk about the great Port Royal earthquake.

  "I'll have you know I made a special study of that disaster for our Historical Society," she said with pride. "I read just about everything that's ever been written about it—sense and nonsense alike—from the earliest stuff in the archives to the present. Yes, I did."

  No one interrupted. For some reason—perhaps because it was her ninety-fifth birthday—the old lady was truly wound up this evening. All through the very special dinner given in her honor by the Bennetts, she had talked about the past—both her own and the island's. Now she obviously had no intention of relinquishing the stage.

  Those listening included Lyle and Alison, Cliff and Luari, and the Reids. There had been others, but they had departed. Kim would stay the night.

  "Almost every account of the destruction of Port Royal contains the same details," Kim said, "and the reason is pretty obvious to any literary detective. It's because the best account was one of the earliest. Historians and novelists who came along afterward borrowed from it. It appears in Edward Long's The History of Jamaica, published in 1774."

  She held her hands toward the fire, which was a real blaze this November evening, filling the whole drawing room with warmth and light. When no one interrupted her, she happily went on.

  "The quake began at twenty minutes to noon on the seventh of June, 1692, when the people of the town were going about their business as usual. The weather was hot, the sea calm. The House of Assembly, which met there, was in session. Suddenly those in the streets heard a sound like thunder rumbling across the bay, and under their feet the earth began to move.

  "Two distinct shocks preceded the one that finally destroyed the city. That third one brought an enormous wave rolling in just when people were running out of buildings and milling about in the streets, wanting to know what was going on. Edward Long points out that all the principal streets were close to the water, so the wave simply rolled in over them. Ships in the harbor were overturned or flung up on the shore and smashed. In only two minutes, whole sections of the city simply disappeared."

  Kim paused. "Remember, there were eight thousand people in Port Royal at that time. About two thousand of them perished."

  "What was the island's population then, Kim?" Alison asked. "About ten thousand."

  "That few?"

  "That few. Port Royal was Jamaica then. But it should have been named Port Morgan, because Henry Morgan and the city had the same temperament. In his day, both thrived on rum and brawling." Kim wagged a finger. "It was the new Tortuga, the buccaneer headquarters of the Caribbean, the wildest, loudest, drinkingest, and sometimes the richest town in the islands. Buccaneers swaggered from taverns with barrels of rum on their shoulders, knocked them apart in the streets, and ordered passers-by to drink at gunpoint, whether they wanted to or not. Whole regiments of loose ladies waited for their loot-happy lovers to return from raids with treasure to pay for their charms. And pay they did, according to historian John Esquemeling, who was a buccaneer himself and sailed with Morgan. He says he saw one of his comrades 'give unto a common strumpet five hundred pieces-of-eight only th
at he might see her naked.' Ha! When only a hundred pieces-of-eight would buy a good slave! But who cared? With ships so thick in the harbor that their masts were like bristles in a brush, any man able to swing a cutlass could be sure of joining an expedition to somewhere. On his return, the loot would be unloaded and auctioned off to the merchants whose warehouses lined the waterfront. Then off to the taverns and gay ladies while the money lasted, and never mind tomorrow. The merchants, of course, built up enormous fortunes by reshipping the plunder to Europe."

  Behind an unnecessary clearing of her throat, Kim peered at her listeners to be sure they were not merely feigning interest. Satisfied, she gripped the arms of her chair again and continued.

  "But back to the earthquake. Port Royal wasn't the only place where it was felt. Most accounts skip over what happened in the rest of the island, but plenty did happen, believe me. The sea came in thirty feet high at Saltpond Hill near Yallahs, drowning everything and everyone in its path. The mountains on both sides of Bog Walk Gorge came crashing down and blocked the road and river there. Planters' homes all over the island were demolished. Not a house was left standing at Passage Fort, and only one at Liguanea.

  "Edward Long writes about after quakes, too. He says they continued for weeks. The sky became dull and reddish, he says;the heat was unbearable, and prodigious swarms of mosquitoes appeared, driving the people half crazy. At the same time, terrible stenches poured out of fissures and openings in the land near the harbor, fouling the air."

  Again for a few seconds the only sound in the big drawing room was the crackling of logs in the fireplace.

  "Go on, please," Mildred Reid urged.

  "Yes. Well, many of those who survived in Port Royal moved to where Kingston now stands. But of course there wasn't any city there then. Long says they had to take refuge in miserable huts that could not even protect them from the rain. They got sick with all sorts of things, and in the end the death toll climbed to over three thousand. Can you imagine what it must have been like? And to make it worse, the bodies of hundreds who had perished in the earthquake itself were still floating in the harbor."

  Alison said, "Parts of Port Royal have been found, haven't they? At the bottom of the harbor, I mean—by that man Edwin Link with the special ship he designed for undersea exploration. Didn't he and his divers find a whole shop intact, just three or four years ago?"

  "In 1959, yes. People at the archives in Spanish Town made a map for him, showing Port Royal asit was at the time of the earthquake. The diving went on for weeks, and all of us wondered what Mr. Link would find. A thick carpet of silt had formed over everything since the earthquake, he said—the sunken city wasn't just lying there under the waves, waiting to be discovered—but he uncovered parts of old Fort James, and a ship chandler's shop almost intact, and a kitchen, and all kinds of bottles and other small things."

  "I'm surprised he found anything much at all," Mildred Reid said. "You'd think an earthquake powerful enough to drop a city of eight thousand into the sea would have reduced everything to rubble."

  "Well . . . several theories have been advanced to explain that. Until recently the accepted view was that the tip of the peninsula where old Port Royal stood was an island, with a causeway of fill connecting it to the peninsula proper. The Spaniards called it Cayo de Carena, so probably ships were careened there. Now geologists are saying that the city rested on a foundation of quicksand some thirty feet down."

  Kim paused, and then spoke more slowly. "Think about that for a minute: an islet resting on quicksand. What may really have happened is that the city of Port Royal simply slid into the sea, like a fried egg from a greased frying pan when the pan is tipped."

  There was a long silence this time. When Kim Tulloch talked about her beloved island's past, one never quite knew when the time had come for a change of subject. At last Alison said, "Well, now, would anyone like coffee? Beryl has just brewed some; I can smell it."

  "I believe I'll have a smoke while she's bringing it," Lyle said, rising.

  Alison looked at him.

  "On the veranda, of course," he added quickly. "Coming, Desmond? Cliff?" The women always wanted a few minutes to talk about things of interest only to themselves, and he did need a cigarette. No doubt Desmond could do with a pipe about now, too. Cliff didn't smoke—never had—more power to him.

  The three men strolled out to the veranda. There, hanging fromthe railing with a stone holding it in place, wasa sheet of brown wrapping paper some two feet square with something crudely printed on it in dark, heavy pencil strokes. As Lyle strode toward it, frowning, it fluttered in a whisper of breeze from the valley.

  Taking it in his hands, Lyle read the message.

  BUSHA AN MASS CLIFF WILST BUSHA REID IS HERE AT GLENCOE WE IS ASKIN YOU TO TALK WITH HIM BOUT HOW HIM IS NOT PAYING WE AN YOU A FAIR PRICE FOR WE COFFEE. THIS GONE ON TOO LONG AND MUST HAVE TO STOP OR ALL OF WE MUST HAVE TO QUIT WORKING FOR GLENCOE AN DEAL WITH MR BRIAN LINDO ON WE OWN.

  NEW-FORMED COFFEE FARMERS UNION

  POSEY NICHOL AND MATTHEW MULLEN, CO-PRESIDENTS

  Oh, my God, Lyle thought. Of all the times for this to happen . . .

  "What is it, Dad? Cliff asked.

  Lyle passed him the paper. Cliff read it and looked at him. Desmond Reid gazed questioningly at both of them.

  Without comment, Cliff handed the paper back to his father. But Lyle knew the moment of truth was at hand, and passed it to Desmond.

  Both Bennetts watched the coffee-works manager as he read the workers' demand. Later they were to agree that his image of a still-virile American cowboy disappeared at that moment—forever, actually—and he became a very tired old man. He must have read the ultimatum three times before handing the paper back. Then he walked slowly to one of the veranda chairs, sank into it, gazed at Lyle in silence for a few seconds, and finally said, "How much has Lindo offered you?"

  "He said he'd pay at least fifty shillings a bushel."

  "How would you and the farmers get your coffee over to him?"

  "The farmers would bring theirs to our warehouse, just as they now carry it to your place, and Lindo would send his truck over here."

  "Fifty shillings." The aged cowboy sat there staring into space now, with his hands flat on the chair arms. Another silence took over. "You know I can't match it."

  "Why can't you?" Cliff said, and again Lyle noted how quietly, even gently, Cliff spoke. It was as though he had foreseen this confrontation and decided in advance how to handle his part of it. "If Brian Lindo can make a profit at those prices, why can't Osburn Hall?"

  "Coffee is Lindo's life. With the Osburn Brothers it's only a diversion. Only one of several, in fact. Their big interest is party politics, and always has been."

  Lyle leaned against the veranda rail, frowning at this man who had been his best friend since his arrival at Glencoe.

  "Desmond, isn't that all the more reason for them to match Lindo's price? If Osburn Hall is just a sideline with them, just a hobby, so to speak, why should they insist on its showing such a big profit?"

  "Because that's the kind of men they are, Lyle. To interest them, whatever they play around with has to pay off big."

  "And you've been working for them all these years, knowing Osburn Hall really meant nothing to them?" Lyle shook his head in genuine bewilderment.

  "What else could I do?"

  "You weren't always in coffee. You managed a coconut plantation once, you told us."

  "When I was younger. A man doesn't go looking for a new job at sixty-three." Desmond pushed himself to his feet and stood there with his hands at his sides, facing Lyle and Cliff with a look of resignation on his leathery face. "I'll talk to them. I'll explain the position you're in. But I know in advance what they'll say."

  "Lindo's price is fair, you know," Cliff said quietly. "I've made inquiries at the Coffee Industry Board."

  "I know it is."

  "Yet all this time you've said nothing, while the Osburns went on cheating us and
the farmers?"

  "Cliff, they know their price is low. They're greedy, not stupid."

  Lyle felt he had to rise to Cliff's defense. "Did you ever even urge them to pay more?" he demanded.

  "No. That is . . . I told them they would eventually have to. All they said was, they'd face the problem if and when it came up."

  "Well"—Lyle exhaled a long sigh—"I'm afraid it's comeup now, Desmond. We have no choice but to sell our coffee to Lindo unless you can match his price. If the Osburns refuse, and we stay with you, we'll have no workers."

  "Unions," Desmond Reid said. "God, how I hate them."

  "Desmond, this isn't your J.L.P. or P.N.P. It's just a crowd of simple country farmers banding together to insist they be treated honestly."

  "Maybe so. But they wouldn't have thought of it if our political unions weren't always sounding off."

  Cliff said very quietly, "Desmond, you can't be saying the workers are wrong in this. You know they're not."

  "I'll phone the Osburns from the Bay tomorrow."

  "And—?"

  "I know what they'll say, but I'll do my best. Soon as I have their answer, I'll come here. Right now, if you'll excuse me . . .” Looking older by the minute, the coffee-works manager turned away and trudged back into the drawing room. There he went to his wife and, standing before her chair with his hands outstretched, said in a dead voice, "Milly, something's come up and we'd better go home. Say goodnight and come on, please. I'll explain in the car."

  He did not return the following day. His yard man came with a note written in pencil on a piece of paper torn from a pad.

  "I tried. They said no. It's a sad business, but I suppose you have to do what you must. Desmond."

  1963 produced one more dramatic event in the lives of the Bennetts. Flora was her name. Warned of her coming by weather reports issued hourly over the radio, the family took the usual precautions and the Great House weathered the storm. But certain coffee fields did not.

  The pay book reflected the damage. To explain the increased cost of running the plantation, Lyle wrote: