Left at the Mango Tree

by Stephanie Siciarz

  But Gustave was mixing his flies. He had started the evening preparing one crime and now he found himself contemplating another. The mathematical Mr. Stan Kalpi would never have approved of this. One polynomial at a time is all that you should ever ponder. Your process must be logical and your calculations orderly, if you’re to harbor any hope of defining your undefined variables. Would Mr. Stan Kalpi have reclaimed his family had he galumphed sentimentally from plantation to shore and rushed cock-a-hoop into the scrapping tide?

  Why, most certainly not.

  18

  Raoul, too, possessed a work ethic nothing to sniff at. The  devotion with which he applied, and applied himself to, the principles of Kalpi maths was but one example of it. Indeed, since that morning when the sun revealed the triangle that was Sinner’s Cove and the treasure that lay hidden in its sands, the enthusiasm with which he treated, and treated himself to, the pursuit of Gustave—and his cohorts—was but another.

  Mind you, Raoul had no desire to see his friends behind bars. Rather his efforts were spurred by hopes that in cracking the case he would disprove his own suspicions, for surely his friends weren’t really stabbing him in the back. Surely there was a logical explanation for their apparent and utter disloyalty. In his philosophy Raoul stood firm: there wasn’t a mystery anywhere on the island that couldn’t be explained, no truth that, like the raw cashew, couldn’t be freed of its shell, roasted, and rendered agreeable.

  Three weeks had passed since Raoul’s fingers plucked the sandy prism from Sinner’s Cove, three weeks since he had spoken with Fred and placed the second ad to induce the regret and confession of his three best friends (not one of whom had been induced to either, but I’ll get to that in a minute). Three weeks, now, too, since Gustave had hatched his pineapple plan, pleated his newsprint boats, and bloated them full of peanuts. Both men had spent the interim days in furious activity, Raoul investigating and Gustave orchestrating, while the rest of the islanders thought and spoke of little but marimbas. The revival of the annual marimba competition, and Cougar’s generosity in hosting the affair at the Sincero, had in fact so captivated the attention of Oh that, as if in jealousy and neglect, the island rebelled, pelting the inhabitants with a persistent and unseasonable rain.

  An inconvenience, yes, but not enough to dampen the merry spirits awake and awaiting a dead nice party. The islanders made friendly bets on whose marimba-playing would win, drank bottlefuls of beer and rum in the days’ run-up to the show, and generally ignored the island’s tantrum. If one of the islanders grew impatient and complained about the showers, another was quick to note how very lush they were making the hills. When Cougar griped about the outdoor tables the rain would make obsolete, Bang pointed out the merits of a Belly tight with ladies in festive skirts. It didn’t happen often, but now and again the islanders made their own fate, relegated Oh to the rank of scenery. There was magic in the air, and marimba songs on the wind, for which a bit of thunder in the dark was no match.

  Like the triangles that grace Sinner’s Cove, the scenery of the story as it nears its end is delineated by three vertices, the Belly, Puymute’s Plantation, and Edda’s beach, defined and familiar variables in the polynomial of Raoul. So as not to mix my own flies, I’ll report on them singly, at least for as long as their stories will be kept apart.

  To the Belly, then, where, contrary to Raoul’s hopes, newspaper ads do not evoke pity and penitence. Or not enough of the former to inspire the latter. Raoul’s mates were certainly sorry, sorry that their friend was still making a fool of himself and sorry that Edda’s circumstances were what they were. Their involvement with Gustave was another matter entirely. It had started innocently enough, and if Raoul’s mates’ plan to get information from Gustave had failed (though none had ever posed even one question to him about my mother), the mates saw no reason to give up their extra cash. Even Cougar, who didn’t really need it, had fallen irretrievably under the spell of all those rainbows, with which he planned to purchase embellishments for the Sincero that justified higher nightly rates.

  Whether, as in the case of Bang and Nat, doing business with Gustave was blamed on fear (and maybe a little greed), or, as in Cougar’s case, on a silly and convenient delusion (Cougar had to go along, remember, so his island influence could protect them should they ever get caught), the important thing was that no one was smuggling for the sake of smuggling, conspiring with Raoul’s declared enemy just for the thrill. That would have been too striking an affront to their friendship.

  The night before the marimba competition found Bang, Cougar, and Nat gathered at the Belly’s bar, where, after closing, Cougar was perfecting his signature cocktail.

  “Try this one. Think I’ve finally got it now.”

  Bang took the glass Cougar extended. He held its cloudy golden contents up to the light and twirled the glass for effect. Then he raised the drink in quick salute to Nat and downed the icy mix.

  “Bloody hell!” Bang slammed his fist onto the bar. “A bit strong, don’t you think? What do you call it?”

  “Pineapple Slam,” Cougar replied.

  “You feed the audience drinks this strong, they’ll be under the tables before it’s even my turn to play!”

  Cougar passed a taste to Nat. “What do you think? Bang’s used to water.”

  Nat tried the drink and scrunched up his face as he swallowed. “Bang’s right, man. Too strong.”

  “Okay, less rum, more fruit, and we downgrade it to Pineapple Sting.” Cougar set about mixing one last prototype.

  “You guys hear from Gustave?” Nat’s voice hung in the hollow of the Belly. The bar was closed and empty, but even so, to speak of Gustave so openly and so close to home left all three as if sprinkled with a soft and eerie dust.

  Bang coughed the discomfort from his throat. He looked at Cougar and then at Nat and said, “No, not a word. Wonder what’s going on. There was supposed to be another load going out this week.”

  Cougar shook his cocktail and shrugged. “Probably the rain. Bet he decided to wait until it dries up a bit.”

  Nat shrugged a silent reply and paged through the Morning Crier looking for something. When he finished, he sighed.

  “What?” Bang asked.

  “Nothing. Just making sure Raoul didn’t go placing any more ads. He’s out of his head, you know.”

  “He’s fine,” Cougar insisted. “Just a little desperate, that’s all. This baby business has him so mad he can’t see straight. He just won’t admit it. So he’s playing dumb, placing his ads, hoping some fool will feel sorry for him and spill the beans. He should know better than to think anyone on this island would rat out Gustave. If Raoul would just keep quiet about it, it would all go away. All you need on Oh is a little time.”

  “I guess,” Nat said. “I just feel bad seeing him act a fool. And the three of us making a fool out of him too, as if he weren’t doing a fine enough job of it on his own.”

  “How do you figure we’re making a fool of him?” Bang’s inquiry was genuine.

  “How?! Are you as mad as Raoul is? By smuggling pineapples with Gustave, that’s how!”

  Cougar intervened. “No one’s making a fool of Raoul but Raoul. Babies are one thing, pineapples are another. This has nothing to do with him. It’s not his acreage we’re carting away, is it?” Cougar put three mugs on the bar. “Here. Make sure this is okay, so I can mix up a few batches before the competition tomorrow night.”

  Bang picked up one of the mugs. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” answered a reluctant Nat and a relaxed Cougar. Then the three men sat in silence, sipping their still-bitter Pineapple Sting.

  At Puymute’s Plantation things were not going smoothly at all. The rain had turned what should have been a two-week job into a three-week job, seriously testing even Gustave Vilder’s proven organizational skills. He had put off some of his orchestrating, in hopes the rain might stop before he should strike his next pineapple blow, but as the marimba competition and Gustave�
�s rescheduled coup grew nearer, the rain merely thickened. As it appeared it might never stop, the strike could be postponed no further.

  Gustave had garnered the boats to flit away his booty to Killig, boats that had now spent two days waiting and bobbing just beyond Oh’s coast. Their crews were bored and restless and threatening to abandon ship, so to speak. Gustave had to hand over some cargo soon or he’d owe more to the crews in payment than what the heist was due to earn in profits. He would have to move his fruit the very next night.

  Although Gustave had already laid the groundwork for much of what would be needed that next night, firming up arrangements on a day’s notice was no mean task. The plantation was soggy and Gustave felt himself slip at every turn, both muddily and metaphorically. A muffled buzz hummed in Gustave’s brain, a niggling suspicion he couldn’t put his finger on. All systems were go, all his personnel poised, but rather more like sticks in mud than militiamen primed to the attack. There was magic in the air, and impatience on the wind, for which, Gustave feared, his plans in the dark were little match. Which is why the night before the marimba competition found him tentative, preoccupied, and prickly as a soursop.

  Raoul was prickly too. Three weeks gone by and his ad had yet to bear the fruit he’d hoped, that of his friends’ confession. He had mixed up his own pineapple sting, and Bang, Cougar, and Nat were three ingredients too many. Gustave’s bobbing boats had not gone unnoticed by the Customs Office, and the bigger picture, elucidated by the loquacious and simple-minded Pedro, suggested to Raoul that victory was nigh. But his thrill at the prospect of cornering Gustave, of bartering Gustave’s freedom for information about me, was soured by the thought of his friends. How could he protect them from the law if they wouldn’t come clean?

  To minimize the risk that his friends might be arrested, and convinced, still, that some explanation for their conspiracy would ultimately surface, Raoul conducted his operation subtly and secretively, calling on a bare minimum of back-up and informing the called-on officers of as little detail as possible. Thanks to Pedro (who had no idea of the amount of information he’d been tricked into revealing), Raoul confirmed his hunch that the suspicious crafts loitering beyond Oh’s coastline belonged to Gustave, at least for the duration of the crime. Raoul learned, too, that the boats were awaiting cargo to carry off to Killig. Raoul didn’t know the timing of the transaction, but even Gustave could only keep his boats afloat and idle for so many days. The strike couldn’t be postponed much further now.

  So like ripples in one of the many puddles that dotted the sodden island, the crescent shore at Edda’s beach was encircled by the crescent of Gustave’s waiting boats, which were encircled in turn by the crescent of Customs and Excise, a semi-circle of small, manned crafts far enough way that they shouldn’t be seen, close enough that, on Raoul’s signal, they should easily block the path of escape. Raoul had only to wait. Soon, Gustave would be his. Soon, his, the answer to the riddle of Almondine. All that Raoul needed was a little time.

  As if by magic, shortly after the mention of his name in the quiet, empty Belly on that night of the Pineapple Stings, Gustave appeared there in person. Although Bang, Cougar, and Nat were now more used to, if not more comfortable with, his nearness, they tended to tread lightly when Gustave was close by. Which is why they greeted him in complete silence and with blank faces, their mixed feelings of fear, expectation, and discomfort too complicated to express in words, or in any single conjunction of the muscles and wrinkles of jaws, lips, and eyes.

  “I know this is short notice, but we’re moving tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?! No way!” Bang slid off his bar stool in one fluid motion and thudded onto the floor. Not even fear of Gustave could keep him from his marimba. “Tomorrow’s the competition. I’m a shoo-in to win, and even if I wasn’t, I can’t miss it! What would people think?”

  “He’s right, Gustave. I’m the one hosting the contest tomorrow. I can’t leave the bar,” Cougar added.

  Nat watched them all and said nothing.

  Gustave wanted to protest, to throw his weight and scare all three of them into compliance, but he realized they were absolutely right. It would be suspicious indeed if Cougar left his bar on the biggest night of the year and if Bang, of all people, were not to compete for the marimba prize. Better to keep things business-as-usual.

  Gustave could scare Nat into coming along, but would Nat alone be enough collateral if Raoul and his colleagues should catch them? He wasn’t rich like Cougar or flashy like Bang. Then again, there was no reason to think Raoul might know anything of the next night’s plans, so the muffled buzz humming in Gustave’s brain told him better-than-nothing Nat would do. Gustave put a hand on Nat’s shoulder, high up, at the base of the neck, and pressed the flesh with his thumb. “What do you say, Nat? Just you and me then?”

  The next night finally came, its arrival marked not only by strains of melodious marimba, but by thunderclash and rainsong as well. The jealous island still raged, its noisy fit a culmination of the previous weeks’ pouting and pouring, of Gustave’s offensive maneuvers on Puymute’s Plantation, and Raoul’s defensive ones at Sinner’s Cove. The gibbous moon waned high in the cloudy sky, though hidden as it was by the storm’s watery curtain, you’d never have known so. Likewise, the voice of the leaves, if they sang on that night, was trapped and smothered in the curtain’s heavy folds. On the waters beyond the island, boats bounced, empty ones hungry for pineapples and Excise ones starved for revenge.

  Inside the Belly, the air was dry and fresh, the storm’s inadvertent breeze purifying the space as it made its way through one entrance and exited from the next. The mood, too, was light and winsome, untroubled by the outburst of the wet, dark sky. Every table was full and at the edges of the locale the islanders leaned in little groups along the walls, chatting and smoking and downing batches of Cougar’s signature cocktail. On stage a marimba glistened under blue and yellow lights, awaiting the touches of the first marimbist’s hammers. Ten finalists were slotted to perform, starting at ten o’clock (which on Oh means 11:30, if you’re lucky).

  At the Plantation, the atmosphere hung somewhere between anxious and enervated. The patches were drenched, as were the men collected to clear them and carry them off. Despite the urgency of the task at hand, the weather dampened the spirits gathered at Puymute’s, and a sluggishness reigned. It helped matters little that Gustave was hardly himself, slipping in and out of the stalks as if in a trance, mumbling barely audible orders and directions that were, consequently, barely obeyed. If a crew is as good as its captain, you’d have wagered this one gone down with the ship before night’s end.

  As thoughts of his Almondine multiplied in Raoul’s head, where the flies were looking forward soon to a good long rest, in Gustave’s head, too, I figured prominently. No longer just the silly baby of a silly pregnant girl he barely knew, I had become for Gustave the only family he had left. He thought of me day and night now, to the detriment of his smuggling plot, which was shaping up sloppily at best. Why I should disturb his thoughts so much just now, he couldn’t say, but disturb them I did. Perhaps it was the lonely moon stirring trouble from behind the rain’s curtain, or perhaps Edda was to blame, for parading her brand new baby all over the island. Gustave had seen us both a number of times by now, and each made him more convinced that I was his.

  Then there was the ad. Gustave couldn’t stop thinking of that, either. He hoped as badly as Raoul that someone would come forward and explain what was going on. Maybe he would go to Raoul himself when the night was over, confess to a crime he knew nothing about, and take his little girl home, stop all this mixing of mangoes and almonds.

  While Gustave waxed sentimental under the rain and the hidden moon, trudging through the tall plants and muddling through his operation, Raoul hid behind the mango tree at Edda’s beach, hoping this would be the night when from the soft, green brush a stone’s throw from the edge of the sea the truth would finally emerge. Both men were glad for the mar
imba competition, for it would keep the attention of the island diverted and its music would drown the noise of their misdeeds. Bang and Cougar were glad for the marimba competition, too, neither much fancying a night’s work in the pouring rain, no matter the number of rainbows to be pocketed at daybreak.

  Poor Nat. He wasn’t glad at all about the way things were shaping up. Not only would he miss Bang’s marimba performance (and his likely victory) and the most festive night of the year, but he would spend the night in the rain, working with frightening men (were they?) who seemed to float and glide above the ground, bearing heavy burdens without the slightest strain. It hardly seemed fair. How much help could he really be, he alone? What would happen, he wondered, if he simply didn’t show? Did one skinny Nat Gentle make that much of a difference?

  At nine o’clock, under cloak of the wet, dark sky, Gustave set into motion the workings of his plan. By ten, it was clear that the plan was flawed, in its implementation if not its design. The rhythm that typically characterized Gustave’s heists, the waltz of turns and passes, was out of time with that of the rain; the slosh-clunks of the crates as they were carried through the water, out of tune with the nightsongs of the frogs and the wind.

  The trouble lay in the transporting of the heavy cargo. The picking and packing went easily enough; a bit more slowly than usual, perhaps, but that was the fault of the weather. Getting the fruit from the plantation to the shore, however, was taking far too long. The crates piled up, creating a bottleneck at Puymute’s, while on the beach the boatmen stood idle and angry, waiting for wares to shuttle to the bigger boats that hid beyond the coast. Nat, whose courage and rebellion thrived only in private rumination, waited, too, his part in the dance that of carrying the crates from shore to ship. That Nat shouldn’t bump into Raoul, who waited eager behind the mango tree nearby (puzzled, by all the inactivity of the actors pacing the sand), was thanks only to the wet, dark sky, which rendered the stage so gray and blurred.