‘Because I listen to my elders,’ Granny said sarcastically. ‘When I was a little girl I didn’t think I know everything. I listen to my Mama and my Grandmama when they talk about the old days. That’s how I know what I know.’
‘That’s how you learn Arabic words too?’ James asked.
Granny rolled her eyes. ‘I know Abed is Arabic for slave because people here can be so stupid. Everybody think the trees say Abed to honour the slaves buried here but that’s not true.’
‘It’s not?’
‘Nope,’ Granny said. ‘Over a hundred years ago these trees didn’t have no markings on them. What happened was some rich people from Syria bought land around here a long time ago and one of their children, a little girl, scratched the word Abed on all the trees.’ Granny sat on a tree stump to rest her legs. ‘That family tried so long and so hard to buy the whole village. They was farmers, you know? But the Caribs said no. But the family wouldn’t give up and they kept troubling the chief and his family. So the chief get tired and he agree to give them just a little piece of land. They even exchange papers over it. But when it come time to pay for the land, whooo, that family tried to trick the Caribs. They give the chief something like fifty shillings for all this land and even in those days that wasn’t no kind of money. Funny thing was, the Caribs let them live on the land anyway.
‘But then bad things started to happen to the family. First, the wife died of some coughing disease and the same sickness end up killing half the servants in that house.’ Granny shook her head. ‘Everybody was afraid of that house. Then the other servants ran away when they see all that death and sickness. The master’s daughter, the little girl, and her father was the last ones alive. People say the girl think it was the servants that put a curse on the family. Maybe that’s why she scratched Abed on the trees in the Memory Garden because she knew the Caribs and some of the old black people went there to pray often. Abed was just an old insult in their language. Her father died and left her alone in that big old house.’
‘Where was the house?’ Jerome asked. An idea was beginning to form.
‘Oh, that house been gone a long, long time. It burn down to the ground when I was a little girl, about maybe seven or eight. She was in it, too. Mean old woman, Miss Hagar. She live in that big house by herself until she was a hundred and ten years old.’
‘All by herself?’ James asked incredulously.
‘Well,’ Granny said. ‘One of the servants never left. He stayed with her since she was a little girl until the day she died. Nobody knew his real name. Everybody just called him Abed – like she did.’
Jerome was more confused than ever. So where was the clue? Assuming Granny was wrong and there was indeed a treasure.
‘He buried in the burial ground on the other side of the village,’ Granny said, gesturing with her head to the west. ‘My Mama went to his funeral. She took care of his boy for a while.’
‘He had a son?’
Granny shrugged. ‘Yep. Look just like him. One day Mr Abed just show up at his Ma’s house with this baby boy. Everybody said the baby look just like old Miss Hagar but back in those days people didn’t get into other people’s business as much.’
‘Granny, can we go look at his grave?’
‘For what? Didn’t I tell you there wasn’t no treasure around here?’
‘We just curious,’ Jerome pleaded. But before he could continue begging, a Range Rover drove up in a cloud of dust. They waved the dust away to see Julius Mackey emerging with the caretaker of the Memory Garden at his side.
Jerome, feeling anger like he’d never felt before, rushed to confront Mackey. ‘Why you do this?! How could you dig up a sacred site? You’re an evil man!’
‘Get out of my way, boy!’ Mackey roared, his face reddening.
James ran into the fray. ‘You will pay for this!’
‘I already did,’ Mackey laughed. ‘I paid well for it.’
The boys looked at the caretaker; guilt was written all over his face. What a Judas! He’d sold the Memory Garden to Mackey for how much? They didn’t even want to find out.
‘Boys!’ Granny called out nervously. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘Good idea, ma’am,’ Mackey sneered. ‘Take these children home before they get into trouble.’
‘You’re still not going to find it!’ Jerome screamed at Mackey.
‘Are you sure?’ Mackey laughed. ‘If I don’t find it here I’ll just look elsewhere. I’ll dig up this whole, God-forsaken island if I have to. I have all the time and money in the world, boys. Don’t you ever forget that!’
‘Let us go!!’ Granny thundered and grabbed the boys by their arms. She shot Mackey a look but did not say a word to him.
They walked quickly to the bus stop, not turning back. ‘Granny, why didn’t you…?’
‘I don’t get into fights with people like him. I don’t have anything to fight him with,’ Granny said. Jerome tried to control his anger. How dare Mackey be so condescending to his grandmother? He would show him! He would show him someday!
Chapter 16
Surprisingly, Granny’s wrath didn’t fall on them like hailstones from heaven. Of course, Granny being Granny gave them a stern lecture on the bus ride back home. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Don’t never get tangled up with these rich foreign people who have these kinds of attitudes. OK? I don’t care if he Father Mackey’s brother. If he was a good man then he would have a better relationship with his own flesh and blood. Stay away from that man and anything he touch!’ The boys promised half-heartedly. They would do their best. Granny turned her back to them; she knew better than to believe their promises.
But she let them run free once they promised they wouldn’t miss any more summer school. There was only one problem. She refused to let them see Father Mackey – ‘who was too sick and would only put more crazy ideas in their heads.’This set the boys into a panic.
‘How we gonna ask him what we need to know?’ James grumbled to Jerome under his breath so Granny couldn’t hear. He had big questions: like, why was Father Mackey’s twin brother such an evil man and how did he come to know about the treasure? And, most importantly, how could they stop him from destroying Dominica in his crazy quest to become even richer?
That night, chastened in their room, they planned to keep a low profile while doing their best not to defy Granny.
‘So what else you read in the diary?’ Jerome asked as James lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling yet again with that irritating, dreamy look that angered Jerome to no end.
‘Know who is really in love with me?’ James asked seriously.
‘Who?’ Jerome asked, irritated by his brother’s smugness.’
‘Diane Jefferson.’
Jerome shot up quickly from his bed. It couldn’t be! Diane Jefferson was…was…the prettiest, richest, coldest, most terrifying girl they knew! Her father owned car dealerships, gas stations, grocery stores; she had travelled all over the world; she had been to Buckingham Palace and the White House; she lived in the biggest house on the island; she was the most beautiful girl Jerome had ever seen in real life…‘James, man you crazy!’ was all Jerome could muster.
‘Nope,’ James replied self-assuredly. ‘Petra wrote in her diary that Diane asks about me all the time. Every day. She want to know what I’m doing, what subjects I’m taking and what position I play in cricket.’
Jerome took a deep breath. There had to be some misunderstanding. ‘Diane Jefferson asked all those things about you?!’
‘Yes!’ James said. ‘Petra says she is jealous because she think Diane will take me from her.’ James snickered. ‘She don’t even stand a chance!’
Jerome sighed again. ‘What are you going to do?’
James shrugged. ‘I’ll do what a man is supposed to do.’
‘OK,’ Jer
ome said. ‘That…that’s a good plan.’ He wasn’t sure what a man was supposed to do in such situations and he was pretty sure that his brother didn’t either. That was the thing that scared him to near death.
***
The next Saturday they told Granny they were going to the river. Instead, they went back to Wouge Place. Charlie came with them.
They walked through what was left of the Memory Garden on the way to Abed’s burial ground. Julius Mackey clearly hadn’t found what he was looking for. The workers were now back-filling the garden and re-planting the flowers. But the boys knew that something permanent had been taken away. The ground had been tarnished by greed.
They walked silently through the trees careful not to draw the attention of the men; Mackey’s Range Rover was nowhere in sight.
Minutes later they stood at the ruins of the old house at a burial ground. ‘You think this really worth it?’ Jerome asked as they stared at the cracked headstone that said simply: Abed.
‘Yes,’ James said. ‘I believe Father Mackey. He wouldn’t lie to us.’
‘But he has had those strokes,’ Charlie said, observing the area around. He’d confirmed most of what Jerome remembered of the Caribs from his Internet research. But he was still not fully convinced.
James shook his head. ‘I still believe him. He say it’s ours if we have what it takes. I know I have what it takes. If you don’t then you can go back. I’ll go by myself.’
Jerome looked at his brother. ‘You cannot do it by yourself.’
‘No? What I need you for? Your brains? I’m smart, too.’
Jerome shook his head. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
Charlie tried to make peace. ‘Come on, guys. You’re twins. You complement each other. Where you’re weak he’s strong and vice versa.’
But James only rolled his eyes. ‘Stop being a chump,’ he told his brother. ‘We gonna keep looking till we find it.’
‘But we have to go to America in two months.’ Jerome said, still not sure that he wanted to leave his island or even that the prospect of leaving was a barrier to them finding the treasure. A part of him knew he’d never leave until he got to the bottom of this mystery.
‘We’ll stall,’ James said echoing his thoughts. ‘I’m not leaving here till I find it. I’m not gonna leave it for old, evil Mackey.’
Charlie piped up. ‘So what are we gonna ask this Hagar Abed person? That’s the plan, right? Find Abed’s son and pick his brain?
‘We gonna ask him if he’s the fifth clue,’ Jerome joked.
‘Really?’ Charlie looked horrified.
Jerome laughed. ‘No. We’ll ask him about his father. We’ll say we’re doing a project on the Syrians in Dominica and so on.’
‘That gonna work?’ James said wryly.
But Jerome wasn’t too concerned. If there was one thing he knew how to be good at was convincing – especially about school work.
They’d been wandering around and standing at Abed’s grave for an hour wondering what to do. ‘Maybe we should dig up the grave and look for the next clue?’ Charlie said.
Jerome winced. ‘I’m not digging up an old grave.’ Besides the scariness and unappealing nature of that task, that tactic sounded more like something Julius Mackey would do. There had to be a way to move on to the next clue ‘H’ without desecrating the resting place of their dead elders.
***
Mr Hagar was only a few years younger than Granny but he looked much older. He walked with a cane around his little garden, watering his flowers with a rusty watering can. ‘How you boys doing?’ He asked for the seventh time. ‘It’s so nice to have company. I been alone down here for so long. Mama gone. Daddy gone. My boys all gone.’
‘Yes, Mr Hagar, we know.’ Jerome tried to be patient. So far, all he’d found out from Mr Hagar was what they already knew or suspected. His mother died in a house fire and left him and his Daddy this little piece of land.
‘Did you know your Mama?’ Jerome asked.
Mr Hagar looked at Jerome with eyes clouded over by cataracts. ‘No. Well, yes. I know who she was. But she didn’t want nothing to do with me.’
Jerome nodded. He knew that. But there had to be a clue hidden in all of this family history.
‘Mr Hagar, did your Daddy or your Mama ever talk to you about any treasure?’ James asked. Jerome caught his breath and shot his brother a look. They’d agreed he would do all the talking; now James was ruining things. They had to be subtle!
Mr Hagar, surprisingly, nodded his head seriously. ‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes.’
‘Yes! What do you know about it?’ James asked.
‘Well, my Daddy live in that house a long time. And you know how servants talk among themselves.’
‘Yes? Go on,’ James said, barely able to keep from jumping up and down.
‘They said some old slave got set free by his master and when his master died he left him a treasure. Nobody know what it is. Could be money, land, gold.’
‘But did they ever say where it was?’ Jerome asked now, trying to get the man to think.
Mr Hagar sighed deeply. ‘Nobody know. Last person to know was my Mama.’
The boys exchanged glances. ‘How?’
‘My Daddy said she knew where it was; she wrote it on the trees.’
‘Mr Hagar? You mean the trees in the Memory Garden?’
‘No. Not just those trees. Other trees around the big house. Lot of trees.’
‘Why didn’t she just keep it for herself?’ Charlie asked.
Mr Hagar sighed again. ‘The thing about this treasure is that…I heard… Well, nobody know what it is. But it’s not for people like her. They say the day she found out about it and then wrote it on the trees, the house burned down that very same day with her in it.
‘That’s why my Daddy never went and tried to find it. Though he could have. And people around here know. They just afraid. If you the wrong person, bad things could happen. You know?’
‘So your mother died the same day she found out where it was?’ Jerome asked.
Mr Hagar nodded. ‘Don’t go playing around with that thing. Is not for fun and games. You hear?’
‘Yes, sir. But where are the trees she wrote it down on…’
‘Not too far from here,’ Mr Hagar pointed. ‘You see where the house used to stand? Band of trees round it have all kinds of stuff carved on them. Lot of it don’t make sense.’
‘Thank you Mr Hagar,’ Jerome said, gathering up his pen and notebook.
‘I hope you boys get good marks on your history homework,’ Mr Hagar said and winked his cloudy eyes.
James laughed. ‘Thanks, Mr Hagar.’
Chapter 17
Petra sat in Mark’s tiny living room on a creaky sofa facing her grandfather Mr Brown. He was smiling and drinking a cup of tea.
‘You like living up here?’ Petra asked him because she could think of nothing else to say.
He nodded. ‘It is cool and it is clean. A man needs a place out of the sun to lay his head.’
She’d developed a new respect for Mr Brown after she’d talked to her mother about his ‘accident’. Her mother had been reluctant but Petra had coaxed her to talk. ‘Mummy, I just want to know my family history. What is wrong with that?’ So Patricia relented that day in the beauty salon. It was nearly closing time and all of the customers were gone so her mother was more open to conversation. Once she’d closed off the register, she turned her attention to Petra:
‘Well, what happened was… After my mother, your grandmother died, my father grieved for a long while. But then he started to like this lady who lived in Guadeloupe. Eventually, he left his good job and his children and he run after this lady.’ Patricia paused at this point in the story and Petra had to nud
ge her to go on. ‘Well, you know how those people in Guadeloupe was back in those days.’ Petra shook her head; she didn’t know. But Patricia went on. ‘The woman’s father was a obeah man. A witch doctor. People say he didn’t want my father anywhere close to his daughter because my father was too old for her. The girl was in her twenties and already had a child with another man. But the father didn’t like something about your grandfather. So people say he put obeah on your grandfather and that’s how my father lost his legs.’
Petra’s eyes narrowed in confusion. ‘So his legs just disappeared over night because of a magic spell?’
Patricia sighed and shook her head. ‘No. He was walking on the sidewalk in Pointe a Pitre one day and a car hit him. At the hospital they cut off both his legs.’
‘Mummy, then it wasn’t obeah. He had an accident!’
Patricia shook her head. ‘Up till today they haven’t found the driver of that car. The car didn’t have any registration licence or papers or anything like that. Nobody in the government or the police force know where that car came from or who was driving it. Even your grandfather say he didn’t see anybody run from the car. Other people that was on the street say the same thing too.’
Petra took mental note of all of this so she could write it all down later. ‘So it’s just a mystery. A car hit him and nobody knows where the car came from and who was driving it?’
‘It’s not a mystery,’ Patricia said firmly. ‘It’s evil. And since then he’s been losing his mind little by little. My father used to be a handsome and intelligent man.’ Patricia sniffed sadly. Then she’d told Petra she wanted to be by herself. The story had fascinated Petra so that she’d called Mark that night to talk about it. ‘Don’t bring that up around him,’ Mark had warned. ‘He’s just going to get agitated.’
Now Petra stared at Mr Brown. ‘How is your leg?’ She was trying to stay away from sensitive topics because Mark was in the next room and could hear her.
‘My leg is very good, thank you,’ Mr Brown said and stretched out his skinny, healthy legs. ‘As you can see, they are getting stronger every day. Today, I walk five kilometres. Up the mountain and back down.’
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