Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  As they walked out to the car, Alison put a hand on her husband's arm. "Can you stop smoking, Lyle, or at least cut down? Will you try?"

  "I'll try," he promised. "God, yes. After what we saw in there, I know I'd better."

  "The drinking, too? Can you cut back on that?"

  "I'll try, Al."

  "Because if you don't, you could end up in one of those beds," she warned. "Now tell me—what are we going to do about this Isaac Lowe? Who is he, anyway? Does he work for us?"

  Lyle shook his head. "No, he doesn't work for us. He has a shop in Mango Gut—a tavern, I guess you'd call it—where he sells more than rum, or so I've heard."

  "More than rum?"

  "Ganja. Apparently a lot of it is being grown in our Blue Mountains these days—some of it on remote parts of our own property, perhaps."

  They got into the car and began the homeward journey. "On our property?" Alison echoed. "And we let them?"

  Lyle's gaze was fixed on the road again, but he shrugged. "Al, we've been at Glencoe fifteen years, and there are still parts of the property I've never set foot on. You'd need to be a pig hunter or a sawyer, for instance, to get to some of the wild land above Three River Mouth. I did tell Corporal Webley that I'd heard ganja was being grown on our place, but he didn't seem very concerned. It couldn't be an operation of any size, he said, and the chance of finding it even with a Defence Force helicopter would be pretty slim."

  When Alison did not answer, Lyle broke his eye-on-the-road rule to glance at her. She was not happy, he saw, to learn that marijuana growers might be using Glencoe for their illegal activity. But when she spoke again, she returned to Ima's problem.

  "What about the shopkeeper, Lyle? Will he let Ima be buried next to her husband, do you think?"

  "All we can do is ask him."

  "But do you think he will? After all, he's already got one grave on the place that he probably wishes he hadn't." It was interesting, Alison thought, that Jamaica's country people still interred members of the family in their own yards. Such burials took place only in the country parts, of course, and not even in all of those, but it was common around Glencoe. Perhaps the country people had simply followed the example of the old plantation owners. A number of former owners of Glencoe, for example, were buried on the slope below the Great House. The "burying ground," as the local people called it, had been overrun with wait-a-bit and other wild growth when she first saw it, but was a proper little cemetery now with a low bamboo fence around it.

  "Yes," Lyle was saying, "he already has one grave that doesn't concern him. But I'll talk to him."

  "Soon?"

  "Soon," he promised.

  Isaac Lowe's shop was empty when Lyle and Cliff approached it on foot the following afternoon. The man himself stood behind a cedar counter that bore the stains of many years' service. In front of him lay a stack of Gleaner sheets torn into halves.

  Lowe folded a sheet of paper into the shape of a bag and placed it on a rusty hanging scale. Into it he poured flour scooped from a barrel under the counter, weighing out the amount he would sell as a pound. He made sure it actually weighed an ounce or so less before closing the bag and putting it aside. As he reached for a second sheet of paper to repeat the operation, the Bennetts entered and he looked up at them.

  A short, sharp-eyed man of fifty or so with a large lump on one cheek, the shopkeeper seemed momentarily startled at being confronted by two Bennetts at once, but quickly recovered and spread his flour-whitened hands in welcome. "Gentlemen! How can I help you?"

  When they told him why they had come, he fingered the lump on his face and scowled at them. "Another buryin' on my place?" His voice wasgravel in a shaken tin. "No! I won't allow it!"

  Patiently Lyle explained why it was so important.

  "I say no!" This time the shopkeeper thumped the counter with a fist, hard enough to rattle a screened box full of hard dough bread and send some Gleaner sheets sliding to the shop's grimy floor.

  Even more patiently Lyle told him how Ima, even after her husband's death, had been faithful to the memory of the man buried on his property.

  "So she is faithful," Isaac Lowe sneered. "What is that to me, I ask you? I and my woman have a coffee walk, and thanks to that man's grave it is already too small. You think I live in Hope Gardens?"

  "We could make it worth your while to be generous, Mr. Lowe." Seeing a glint of greed come into the man's small eyes, Lyle began to feel triumphant. Then he felt a hand on his arm.

  "Dad, no," Cliff said quietly.

  "Well . . . in that case I might think about it," Lowe said. "No, Dad," Cliff pressed. "If Ima were here now, she'd say so too. If he doesn't even want her husband there . . .”

  "How much?" Lowe demanded.

  "Come, Dad." Cliff turned his father to the door. "I've a better idea."

  In the path outside the shop, Lyle faced his son and waited. Not often did Cliff so firmly oppose a logical suggestion offered in good faith.

  "Why don't we bury them both in our own little graveyard, Dad?" Cliff said quietly.

  "What?"

  "He won't object to our moving the body from his yard; how can he after what he's just said? And Ima could die in peace, knowing she and her man will be together side by side in a place she loves, where they'd be taken care of." The grip on Lyle's arm tightened. "Dad, let me go in and talk to him—"

  "I'm not sure we'd have a right to move the body."

  "Let me speak to him, anyway. If he says yes, we can ask Corporal Webley. If the corporal doesn't know, we can try Eric Reckford. A barrister is bound to know."

  "Who would move the coffin?" Lyle persisted. "That is,if there's any coffin left to move after all these years. More likely we'd be transferring only a few bones."

  "I'll do it, with Manny Traill and a couple of workers."

  "Well . . .”

  "Wait here," Cliff said with confidence, and hurried back into the shop.

  He was gone long enough for Lyle to become anxious, but when he reappeared, his expression said he had been successful. "He's what they call a ginnal, that fellow—it cost me fifty dollars—but I've got his permission in writing." Cliff tapped his shirt pocket. "Now let's see if we can do it, hey?"

  The following Sunday, Cliff and Manny Traill and two others who had long loved Imogene Bailey exhumed the bones of her husband and placed them in a coffin they had just finished making in the Glencoe garage. Manny Traill carried the box on his head to the fenced graveyard on the slope below the Great House veranda, and the four, with Lyle and Alison and Beryl Mangan watching, reburied it there.

  There would be a headstone, Cliff pointed out, as soon as one he had ordered in Morant Bay was finished.

  And there was more than enough room for a second grave alongside Medwin Bailey's new resting place.

  5

  Luari's first record had been Jarib's biggest success to date. Her voice was a familiar one now on the radio. Terry Connor proudly passed along a report from his brother Chris that sales were good all through the Caribbean. Tourists, too, were eagerly buying the record, and their enthusiasm had created orders from Miami and New York.

  From Haiti for a week's visit came Lee and Carey, with their daughter Carita and their adopted daughter Virgilie. "You must learn some Haitian songs, Luari," Lee said, and taught her some. The second record by The Caribbean Solitaire included Haiti Cherie and the original Creole version of the popular Haitian song, Yellow Bird, under its proper title, Choucoune.

  It outsold the first Solitaire record two to one, and in Kingston, at least, people began asking who the singer was and why she never appeared in public. Rumors flew that she must be a very homely girl, or perhaps crippled in some way, and the Jarib Company was afraid to let her be seen. When Terry Connor laughingly reported this at Glencoe, the Bennetts laughed with him.

  In October of that year, Luari gave birth to a beautiful baby girl at the Princess Margaret Hospital. She and her husband would have named their daughter after C
liff's mother, but Alison declined the compliment. "No one would ever know which of us was being talked about," she said with a smile.

  "Alice, then?" Luari suggested.

  "No, not Alice, either. We'd both be called Al."

  In the end, after days of discussion, the child was named Andrea. She had her mother's dark hair and brilliant blue eyes, and Cliff insisted there was a musical lilt to her crying when she cried.

  Then in November, Ima died as expected.

  There was a proper funeral in the small country church she had attended, and she was laid to rest beside her husband. At the correct time, the Bennetts let it be known that with the help of Ima's lifelong friend Beryl Mangan, they would host a Ninth Night service in the Great House yard.

  "Ninth Nights or Nine Nights differ from place to place, Mr. Bennett," Beryl said to Lyle. "Sometimes only the family and a few friends turn out; other times a whole lot of people. For a person who was loved as much asIma, everybody round here who is able to is bound to come pay their respects."

  "And what will happen?" Lyle asked.

  "Well, there will be somehymn singing, of course. And the Reverend from Ima's church will be here, and he will talk some. Other people who knew her well, like you and your family, will be expected to step forward and say a few words about her. Then if Miz Luari is willing, it would be nice if she sang some of Ima's favorite songs before the refreshments are served."

  "Refreshments," Lyle said. It was not a question, exactly; more like an echo.

  Alison, who was also present at this conversation in the Great House drawing room, said quietly, "That's not your department, dear. Beryl has already told me what's expected, and we've prepared for it."

  "We'll be serving rum, I suppose," Lyle said.

  She shook her head. "Not at this one. Ima never touched it, as you know, so in her honor we'll be serving only coffee and soft drinks."

  "Rum is not a good idea when you is expecting a big crowd of people, Mr. Bennett," Beryl said. "Some people bound to drink too much and spoil things for the rest."

  If Cliff had not had the forethought to string lights from the garage, the part of the yard set aside for the Ninth Night would have been dark that Saturday evening when people began arriving. A small table at the front was covered with a white cloth on which lay a Bible. Farther back were other tables, long ones, heaped high with food and drink. By eight o'clock the yard was crowded.

  They must have come from all over, Lyle thought. All of Glencoe's workers were present, of course—he had expected that—but there were many faces he did not even recognize. At his side, Beryl explained that certain ones would have come by bus from as far away as Seaforth and Hagley Gap. Men, women and children alike wore their Sunday best.

  On the Great House veranda, close to the rail, Kim Tulloch sat with the Siamese Blue Point, Yum-Yum, on her lap. Both were too old to mingle with such a crowd, but both were keenly interested in what was happening in the yard below. Though 97-year-old Kim had given up driving and reluctantly abandoned some of her other more strenuous activities, she still did not need glasses to see what was going on, and still had no difficulty looking after herself in her Trinity Ville home. At fifteen, the cat on her lap was equally independent, though no longer quite so determinedly acrobatic.

  A tall man wearing a dark suit, white shirt and black bow tie came forward then. He was Ima's minister, Hezekiah Tate, known to all present as Reverend Kiah. After shaking hands with the Bennetts, he took up the Bible and read from it in a deep, booming voice that filled the yard.

  "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world, and they who dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He who hath clean hands, and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation."

  Reverend Kiah closed the Bible and stood before the crowd with his arms upraised. Their Ima, he told them, had gone to meet her beloved Maker with clean hands and a pure heart. Never once had she lifted up her soul unto vanity. Never doubt for a moment that the Lord would grant her His blessing.

  "Now let her friends speak up," he said, and stepped aside.

  One at a time some twenty others came forward. Some spoke for only a moment or two, others for much longer. Had Ima been alive to hear them, her face would surely have turned red somehow with embarrassment. The last to speak were the Bennetts: Luari first, Lyle last.

  His father, Cliff noticed, had seemed to be nervous while awaiting his turn. But the nervousness vanished when he began to speak. "Friends, everything that can be said about our beloved Ima has already been said—and said better than I could possibly say it. Let me just add one thought. When Ima came to live here at Glencoe, she became one of our family and all of us loved her. We still do. We always will." He turned to Reverend Kiah. "Her favorite hymn was Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel, Reverend. Could we begin with that, do you suppose?"

  They sang hymns. Ever so many hymns. While they were doing so, Cliff noticed a movement near the veranda steps. Terry Connor, who had come for the weekend, took them two at a time, silently, and disappeared into the house. A moment later he reappeared carrying what could have been a tape recorder. But he disappeared so quickly into a clump of hibiscus bushes close to the speaker's table that Cliff could not be sure.

  The hymn sing ended soon after. The minister beckoned Luari forward and with a hand on her arm announced that she would sing some of Ima's favorite songs. When he stepped back, leaving Luari to stand there alone, the crowd's every movement ceased. The whole yard became so silent that when a bird sang in a mahoe tree beside the garage, its song soared like a thing unreal. Later, Cliff was to swear the cry was that of a solitaire, but others insisted that solitaires were too shy for one of them to have been present with so much going on. Nevertheless, the flute-notes that soared across the yard were a solitaire's trademark, Cliff insisted.

  Then Luari sang.

  She sang for half an hour, and no one became restless, no one madeeven the smallest move toward the waiting refreshment tables.

  She sang songs she had not recorded, in case some in the crowd had bought her records and would recognize her as the Caribbean Solitaire—not likely, of course, with nearly all of them living in homes that had no electricity, but they might have heard the records played on a jukebox in some shop that did have it.

  When she finally stopped, the stillness continued for an eerily long time until someone at last began, hesitantly, to applaud. Then the applause became deafening, and the yard filled with talk.

  Except for the consumption of food and drink, which would go one for an hour or more, the Ninth Night for Ima Bailey was finished.

  BOOK SIX

  1971

  Gaunt, pale, coughing every few minutes, Lyle lay in bed at Glencoe looking years older than he was. He was sixty-one. Dr. Tom Kirk finished examininghim and motioned Alison to the door, then followed her out of the bedroom and walked with her into the drawing room. There he led her to the group of chairs before the fireplace and indicated they were to sit and talk.

  "Al, he's smoking too much again. I wish he'd stayed off the damned things when he quit that time."

  "Quit? Lyle?"

  "Don't you remember? After the two of you visited Ima at the cancer center, and he saw what can happen to people with lung cancer?"

  "Oh." She nodded, and then sighed. "He actually did quit for a week or two, didn't he? But do you know something, Tom? I don't believe he can."

  "Nonsense. Of course he can."

  "No, I believe he truly has tried to quit half a dozen times, but can't. It's an addiction or something. Anyway, he goes through three packs a day now, every single day. When this last spell of coughing began, ten days or so ago, I had Beryl count the empty boxes—he buys a brand in boxes now—that she found in the trash. And
that doesn't take into account any he might have thrown away outdoors." Alison sighed. "I wish to God the things cost a hundred dollars a pack, Tom. I really do."

  Kirk shook his head. "I don't know what to tell you. His lungs are bad and getting worse. Somehow or other you've got to make him stop." He frowned. "Can you get Cliff to talk to him?"

  "Cliff's tried. Over and over again."

  "Luari? He thinks the sun rises and sets in Luari."

  "She's tried too, Tom."

  "What about Desmond Reid? He and Lyle were so close. Are they still on the outs?"

  "They speak when they meet, but just barely. Since the workers forced us to leave Osburn Hall and the Osburns accused us of trying to destroy them, the Reids have been like strangers to us. For a while Milly and I tried to keep things going, but it didn't last."

  "But I saw you and Millie in the Bay together only last Friday," Kirk said.

  A smile briefly touched Alison's face as she remembered. With Lyle feeling under par that day and Cliff busy with plantation affairs, she had undertaken to drive to the Bay for the pay bill money. There had been a downpour, and the road between Seaforth and Serge Island was under water, as it usually was after a heavy rain. The Reids' car, with Mildred at the wheel, stood there hubcap-deep in one of the dips.

  She had pulled up alongside and, for the first time in months, she and Millie had talked. Not about anything personal, of course; only about Millie's being stuck there and what they could do about it. "The trouble is," Millie had said with a headshake, "Desmond isn't at the coffee works today. He's in Kingston for a meeting with the brothers." That was her word for the Osburns: the brothers.

  "Let me drive you home, then."

  "Are you going shopping?"

  "Yes, and to the bank."

  "Could I go with you? There are some things I really need, and I can ask Leonard, at the garage, to come take care of the car. Nothing much can be wrong; it was running fine until I tried to drive too fast through the water here."