Tangled Passion

by Stanley Ejingiri

  “Believe it my friend,” Bushawacker said putting his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “Now let’s go get your girl.”

  Ashana felt it running down her legs as they ran; it was warm and thick, sometimes it travelled fast and other times slower, but she refused to stop or tell Jonah about it—not when they had just being informed that an aggressive pursuer was on their tail. Now as they sat down to rest she dared a look. Jonah was scared at the sight of blood between Ashana’s legs; she let him gently spread her legs and noticed the alarm on the alarm on his face. She raised her blood soaked cloth a little higher; she was not half as scared as Jonah was but was just as confussed. Her menstruation wasn’t expected for another two or three days and even when it came it was never so heavy. “What do you see?” she asked, gently resting her back against the tree to allow Jonah a better view.

  “Em...ah. ah, Ashana?”

  “Yes Jonah,” she answered weakly like a mother who was now trying to get some sleep after been kept up all night by a troublesome child.

  “Why… why didn’t you tell me about this earlier on?” He stammered, his hands shivering.

  “I didn’t know” she lied, not willing to scare him more than he already was. “Where is the blood coming from?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered innocently.

  “Well then look!” she said gathering all her energy to speak up, a little frustrated by his slow pace, she spread her legs a little wider and completely took off the cloth. He closed his eyes momentarily, then focused his face squarely between her legs, opened his eyes and closed them almost immediately to process what he had seen. It was a bloody sight; everything was red.

  “Ash, Ash,” he called out gently but there was no response, at first he thought she must have fallen into a deep sleep, he wanted to let her sleep, but something bothered him about this sleep. He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently, “Ashana, Ashana!”

  She heard her name very faintly but when she looked back, there was nobody behind her; she was walking all by herself in a long bright tunnel. She wondered how she got there and why she was there, most of all she really wanted to know why she was alone. She felt like she was supposed to be with somebody but she couldn’t remember whom or if she had to be with anybody at all. She continued walking deeper into the bright and inviting tunnel noticing the light getting brighter as she got closer to what seemed to be the source.

  Her body was suddenly getting really cold. He felt for her heartbeat, his eyes clouded, and his head becoming foggy; his world seemed to be crumbling. “No! Ashana, No!” he screamed at the almost lifeless body, completely lost as to what to do.

  After a long time of wailing and a vocal cord that was so strained it could no longer produce a sound capable of travelling his arm’s length, Jonah sank to the ground watching the body of the one person that meant everything in his life lie lifeless.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  I

  t was about the time for dawn to be ushered in when the leader of the group raised his right hand. The horses behind him came to a screeching halt and fumes of protest shot through their noses as they neighed angrily.

  Even though Nathan was very pleased at Bushwacker’s sustained enthusiasm to capture the fugitives, which had resulted in the denial of any breaks since the chase resumed, he was gladly relieved when Kanker suddenly raised his hand and called for a stop. It was their first stop since the chase began early that morning. The man whose head was shaped like an avocado jumped off his horse, causing his bulging calves to dance like water in a plastic bag. His equally bulging eyeballs travelled from east to west sweeping the region in a mechanical manner.

  The group remained still, watching Kanker who was still at the same location, staring intensely at a spot in the ground. Even when the others felt it was time to move on and that the spot had no more clues to offer, he remained put. It was as if he smelt something that none of them could smell and Nathan was already on his horse when he noticed the leader's hand fly up in the air a second time.

  “Blood!” the leader screamed at the top of his voice. Nathan heard him but didn’t understand until he heard the translation.

  “Blood! Blood!” Bushwacker translated, carefully climbing down his horse. Nathan jumped off his horse and joined the man who was already far into the bush pointing out blood-stained grasses. Nathan’s heart skipped a beat and several beats with the following minutes.

  “Where’s the blood from? Is it human? What happened?” Nathan blurted, premature wrinkles suddenly taking residence on his brow.

  “Gather the horses immediately; now we travel on foot,” Bushwacker announced and everybody followed.

  Ashana was still hearing her name, sometimes it was loud, other times it was faint and distant, and yet other times she didn’t hear it at all. She turned to the beautiful woman that was now leading her and asked, “Did you hear my name?”

  “No,” the woman replied immediately, still maintaining the same kind she had since they met. “I didn’t hear anything,” she said, shaking her head and gently nudging Ashana along. But Ashana continued to hear her name and it was growing louder and louder each time she heard it.

  “Did you hear it this time?” she asked again, a little concerned but the woman simply shook her head once more and beckoned Ashana on, she had suddenly added a little haste to her pace and wanted Ashana to do the same.

  “Wait!” Ashana said suddenly and halted. The woman smiled softly and stopped. “I hear my name and the voice is familiar,” Ashana said, looking at the woman for any sign of confirmation. There was none. “Listen and you’ll hear it too,” she added impatiently, it was impossible that the woman wasn’t hearing anything. The woman smiled but Ashana had already read the impatience on her face before she adjusted it with a smile. “Wait!” Ashana ordered, as if suddenly aware of something sinister and began walking backwards.

  She wanted to get away from the woman as quickly as possible. The woman made no attempt to stop her; she simply stood there watching her go. After a few steps backward, Ashana turned around and began to run, she ran as fast as her legs could carry her towards the direction that her name was coming from—she recognized the voice. “Jonah!” she screamed excitedly, running wildly until she reached a point from where the call seemed to originate. Ashana stared at the curtain of gently swirling wind in front of her and a strong feeling that Jonah was behind it overtook her. After a few moments of hesitation she closed her eyes and jumped.

  When Jonah heard his name the first time, it sounded like a loud whisper, causing him to turn around and inspect his surroundings frightfully. But when Ashana called his name the second time, he jumped from a mixture of fear and excitement.

  “Yes! Ash… Ashana!” he half stammered and half shouted staring at her face as if it was the first time he was seeing her. He noticed the movement of Ashana’s eyeballs under her eyelids, watched anxiously as her fingers twitched, her arm moved slowly to her hair and her eyes opened lazily.

  “Ashhh...Ashana!” he stammered, after she stopped blinking and stared straight into his eyes.

  “Jonah!” she said resignedly.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked her. It wasn’t what he wanted to say but it was the first thing that came to his disoriented mind; he was completely lost for words and too shocked to gather his senses. An ocean of tears swelled in his eyes as Ashana’s head moved slowly in response to his question. “Thank God you are back,” he said, then very gently he lifted her head and rested it on his lap. “How are you feeling?” he whispered like a father singing lullabies to a child. “I love you Ashana, I love you so much,” he wept as the last restraint that held back his tears broke and a shower of tears rained on Ashana’s face.

  “I love you too,” she managed. He fed her small pieces of bread and gave her water to drink and a ball of happiness bounced continuously against the walls of his stomach; he was happier than ever.

  “What happened?” she asked as strength slowly return
ed to her body. “I had such a weird dream,” she added before he could say anything.

  “You fell asleep,” he lied saving the real story for the day when all of their current misery was somewhere in the distant past. He had noticed a sharp cut on the inside of her thigh and managed to stop the profuse bleeding but the other bleeding from between her legs he figured was due to the natural monthly bleeding that women experienced. Bleeding so much at the same coupled with the running and lack of proper food must have caused her to faint. Jonah concluded.

  “I feel really weak,” she said interrupting his thought.

  “Go ahead get some more rest Ash,” he said, still caressing her hair.

  “Hmm,” she groaned trying to sit up.

  “No! No!,” Jonah said, trying to persuade her to remain still. “Please relax and get some rest,” he insisted.

  “Jonah, aren’t we supposed to be moving?” she asked slowly returning her head to his lap. Some of her strength had returned but her last attempt to sit up sent her a clear message that she probably was better off taking Jonah’s advice.

  A moment of silence descended on the two, each isolated and lost in their individual world of thought as they stared at the many shapes of clouds sweeping the face of the moon. When the temporary silence eventually broke, it was Ashana’s voice that shattered it, “How do you think she is doing?” she asked calmly. “My mother, how do you think she is doing?”

  “She is fine, I believe. I really think she’d be okay, she is a strong woman and you know that. She is just as strong as you are and I am sure she’d be okay,” he said. He wished he could do a better job of reassuring her that her mother would be fine. He too had wondered many times how Ashana’s mother was keeping but had kept it to himself, not wanting to upset Ashana.

  She nodded but her nod had grains of lack of conviction; she wished that his answer could allay her concern about her mother, which weighed a ton on her mind. She wondered if the already frail woman was really going to be okay and if she was as strong as Jonah thought. What if her mother was no longer as strong as she used to be? If that was the case, how much toll would her running away with Jonah have taken on the poor old lady? What would eventually become of her mother bothered Ashana immensely, sending a million thoughts, questions and fears floating freely in her head.

  “Now that I am rested we must continue to move.” Ashana broke the silence once again.

  “OK,” Jonah agreed half-heartedly but he was barely on his feet when his heart failed. A sharp pain slit through his chest; fear took a tight grip on his heart and threatened to squash it. They were surrounded by a group of men and as he looked up, his eyes met with the last pair of eyes he ever wanted to meet—Nathan’s.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “T

  ie him up,” Nathan ordered.

  “No!” Bushwacker countered.

  “No?”

  “No, there is no need for that,” Bushwacker replied, Nathan was still waiting for an explanation when Bushwacker’s gun went off. Alarmed and completely flabbergasted Nathan stood frozen as he watched Jonah buckle and hit the ground. Ashana’s scream rose as Jonah hit the ground and tore through the night like a sharp siren.

  “What are you doing?” Nathan shouted at Bushwacker, “You must be out of your mind?”

  “No but I have changed my mind, I’m keeping the girl,” he added and before Nathan could reach for his gun Bushwacker squeezed the trigger and Nathan’s body was on the ground.

  “Bloody fool, now you’ll keep your big mouth shut and stay out of my way,” Bushwacker said. “Get her,” he ordered and his men jumped on Ashana, who was on her knees wailing hopelessly.

  “Massa! Massa!” Jonah whispered into Nathan’s ear but there was no response. A closer look at Nathan told Jonah that the Massa had been shot in the chest; blood was still gushing out of the spot where the bullet hit and if the bleeding wasn’t stopped quickly, the young Massa might lose his life, he worried, temporarily lost as to what to do.

  Jonah’s left hand was also bleeding; Bushwacker’s bullet had caught him in his hand. He’d raised his right hand the moment Bushwacker’s gun went up; the move was purely involuntary but saved his life. Bending over he grabbed a part of Nathan’s shirt with his teeth and with his right hand ripped off a slightly long piece. He tried to work it over the bleeding spot but the piece was too short to go around Nathan’s shoulder or around his body. “Massa!” he called out, frustrated and confused. His eyes swept the surrounding helplessly and fell on a stone and a thought crossed his mind. He dragged himself to the stone too weak to walk over and dragged the stone back with him. Then he folded the piece of cloth flat, placed it on the bleeding spot and placed the stone on it; the bleeding subsided. Then he adjusted the bandage around his left arm, the piece of cloth was soaked with blood but the bleeding had stopped. “Oh God!” he cried and stretched out on the ground, closed his eyes and replayed the events that had just taken place; they were too complex to wrap his mind around. Ashana was gone, he was shot and the Massa’s son was lying on the ground almost lifeless; he couldn’t stop wondering wondering what could have come over Bushwacker to make him shoot the Massa’s son.

  Minutes later, he sat up and broke down in tears, crying for Ashana and confused as to what to do with the young Massa. It was a long way home and he was wounded and too tired to make it back to the Fort on his own, much more so if he had to carry Nathan. “Ashana!” he cried, crawling on his knees and one arm in the direction that Bushwacker and his men had ridden through. He was far into the bush and standing at the edge of losing his own mind when sounds of horse hooves reached brought him to a halt. He turned around shivering in fear as he hurried back to where Nathan’s body was lying. He’d barely dropped to the ground next to Nathan and closed his eyes when a band of five horsemen pulled up.

  From the corners of his eyes he could see that they weren’t Bushwacker’s men, so he groaned as one of the men reached for Nathan.

  “Can you hear me?” one of the men asked in Creole.

  Jonah opened his eyes very slowly and looked at the three men stooping over him and then closed them again.

  “He is alive!”

  “What in the world happened here?” the leader of the group asked visibly shaken, “that’s Longstands’s son.”

  “This must be his slave then,” the second man added. “What happened?” he asked Jonah in Creole. “Who shot you and the young Massa?”

  “Bushwacker,” Jonah whispered.

  “Bushwacker?” The men chorused.

  “Get them on the horses, we must take them to Longstands immediately,” Inglewood said and two hours later they were back at the Fort.

  Suzanne was so hysterical that she fainted; when Nathan was brought in she was sitting in the balcony combing her hair carelessly. She jumped to her feet and the comb in her hand fell to the ground when she saw her son’s body in the arms of two men but when she noticed the blood on his shirt she collapsed into her chair knocking over the table and the cup of tea on it. Then almost immediately she jumped to her feet and took off to the back as if running from a ghost then returned to parlour and passed out on the ground without a word.

  It was a little over two hours before Doctor Bullwealth arrived from Roseau; he pulled in Nathan’s bedroom door and immediately went to work on the young man. For another hour and half Longstands was pacing the entire house; from the parlour to the end of the hallway and into the bedrooms, kitchen and balcony. And when it appeared as though the house was not big enough for him he began to walk around the house. The Fort itself was as quiet as a graveyard; slaves knew to stay out of sight at times like this and did exactly that. They all prayed for Nathan to survive, it was in their best interest; the consequences that his death was sure to bring was too painful to imagine.

  “He’s a very lucky fella; lucky he had someone to stop his bleeding. I can tell you that if the bleeding wasn’t stopped when it was, he’d have died a long time ago and there are no t
wo ways about that,” Doctor Bullwealth said to Longstands, who had been speechless since Nathan was brought in.

  “Thank you very much Doctor,” Longstands said, one could see that he was completely drained and still unrecovered from the shock.

  “He’d be fine,” the Doctor said, slapping Longstands gently on his shoulder, “the bullet missed his heart narrowly and his bleeding was stopped on time—he is a lucky fella; he’d live.”

  Longstands shook his head and slowly and gently lowered himself into a chair and thanked God for Bullwealth and for the fact that the man was on the island at a time when he needed him.

  “Edwards!”

  “Massa,” Edwards answered and appeared before Nathan. The young Massa hadn’t called him in three days and he was both excited and apprehensive to hear from Nathan.

  “Get me Jonah, immediately.

  “Yes Massa,” Edwards replied and reappeared in fifteen minutes with Jonah, fear plastered all over their faces.

  “Massa,” they both chorused.

  “Sit down Jonah. Edwards, tell him to sit down,” Nathan said.

  Jonah nodded, bowed and then carefully lowered himself into a chair.

  “Now ask him why he saved my life,” Nathan said to Edwards.

  “Because you are human,” Jonah answered after a brief period of loss and confussion at the young Massa’s question. “Human life is precious,”

  “Do you love Ashana?” Nathan asked, without acknowledging Jonah’s response.

  “Yes, with all my life.”

  “Me too,” Nathan snapped, he wasn’t sure why he was so angry and was even more upset because he couldn’t hide his emotions. “So what should we do?” Nathan asked, he couldn’t believe he was actually negotiating with someone he didn’t have to, someone he had wanted to punch a few days ago. Jonah remained silent; he too wanted to know what should be done and how things would eventually play out.