Flight to the Lonesome Place

by Alexander Key

  Ronnie replied easily in the same mixture of languages. “Yes,” he said. “—I’ve got to have a safe place to hide. I’ve plenty of money. I’ll pay—” He stopped quickly, seeing that the mention of money was a mistake. The long eyes of the black boy had narrowed, and the thin face had tightened. From somewhere in the shadows the unseen Marlowe spat out, “Money!” as if it were the ugliest word ever devised by man.

  Black Luis said, “Money is not wanted here. If you are a friend of Ana María Rosalita, that is enough. Her friends are our friends. We share what we have. Come.”

  “Just a minute,” said Ronnie, slipping the coil of fishing line from his shoulder and reaching into his pocket for the hooks and the scrap of wrapping paper. “Here are some things I brought from your mailbox. I thought the note might be important.”

  Line and hooks were received with an understandable eagerness, but the scrawled note brought a frown. The black boy squinted at it in the fading light. “It is from Nicky Robles, my friend up at the beach.” He shook his head. “I cannot make it out now. But Nicky never sends good news. So this has to be bad.”

  Ronnie dug quickly into his bag, found his flashlight, and turned it on. It was instantly snatched away and turned off.

  “Never show a light up here!” Black Luis warned. “Never! It can be seen for miles.” He went to a corner behind a bench, spread the note on the stone floor, and read the message with the light carefully shielded by his hands and body. “Por supuesto” he muttered. “I might have known it.”

  “Is it—very bad?” Ronnie asked.

  “Bad enough. But you do bring us good news along with the bad. It helps to know that we will see Ana María Rosalita again, though she must have told you it is dangerous for her to return. She is in trouble too.” The black boy sighed. “Now Nicky tells me that the officials will come to search for me. Tomorrow. The police and the immigration people. I am not wanted here. I am what they call an—an undesirable alien. If they catch me, I will be deported.”

  “Ha!” Marlowe exclaimed. “If they catch you. That’ll be the day!”

  “But I can’t stay here forever. Not with the way things have been going.”

  Ronnie said, “Are you really an alien?”

  “I—I don’t know for sure. Only Don Carlos, Ana María Rosalita’s father, knew the truth about that.”

  “But surely there’s a record—”

  “Save it,” Marlowe interrupted sharply. “We’d better get him inside, marinero, before it gets too dark for him to see, since we can’t show a light.”

  “Then let’s go. Follow me close, Blue Boy.”

  To Ronnie, black dark came the instant they left the shelf and began crawling through the tangle. He could only feel his way along, guided by Black Luis’ feet and an occasional word from Marlowe. Every time he groped forward over the matted roots his stomach contracted, and he chilled with the fear of the unknown tropical horror his fingers might touch: scorpions, centipedes, snakes.…

  “Do—do you have any bad snakes here?” he asked once.

  His question brought an instant chuckle from Black Luis. “Not on this mountain, Blue Boy. You won’t find much of anything here that will bite, not even a mosquito. Anyway, there are no poisonous snakes on the island.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know. I—I’ve never been in a place like this before. To tell the truth, this is the first time I was ever in the woods.”

  “Don’t kid me, white feller.”

  “I’m not kidding you. I’ve always lived in cities. I never had a chance to get out before.”

  “I lived in a city once, but I sure got out.”

  “Where was that?”

  “New York. In that part they call Harlem. That’s where I learned to speak English. Oh, I had it in school in Córcega. But Harlem’s the place where I learned to use it. They got a real school there for teaching Spanish-speaking kids.”

  So that was why the black boy’s pronunciation had seemed so familiar. “Harlem,” Ronnie said quietly, “is where I first learned to speak Spanish.”

  “No!” Movement ahead stopped. “You’re putting me on, white feller. What were you ever doing in a place like Harlem?”

  “Trying to stay alive.”

  “Go on! The Blue Boy never had to worry about keeping his belly full.”

  “I wasn’t the Blue Boy then. I never knew my people, if I ever had any. About the first thing I can remember was crawling down an alley, hungry. An old black woman took me in. She used to steal so we could eat. All she had to give me that first day was some dry bread soaked in water, with a little sugar on it. Did that ever taste good!”

  “¡Hombre! I never had it that bad.”

  There was a silence. Then Black Luis said, “My mamma died early, but I had the best papa anywhere to look after me till he was killed in an accident. We lived in that house down below us that was burned. Did you notice it?”

  “Yes. What happened there?”

  Before the black boy could answer, Marlowe cried, “That unspeakable Bernardo put a match to it! With his own hands! Oh, how I would like to see Ana María Rosalita give him warts—”

  “¡Quieto! We’ll talk about him later.” To Ronnie he said, “We’re at the door. I’ll lift the vines out of the way and hold the light. You crawl in first.”

  The light stabbed into a narrow black tunnel under the vines. The mere thought of entering it made Ronnie shudder, but he gathered his courage and did as he was told. When he was finally able to stand erect and look around, he was astonished to discover that he was in a large cave, clean, dry, and pleasantly cool. Nor was it an ordinary cavern of eroded limestone, such as he had glimpsed during the afternoon. In the beginning, no doubt, it had been just that. But in some distant past man had smoothed the walls and leveled the floor; then he had carved extra rooms and grottoes, and decorated it all with symbolic designs of birds and fish chiseled into the rock. Finally—and Ronnie found this equally astonishing—modern man had furnished it with a variety of odds and ends and actually succeeded in making it homelike.

  Lanterns, ancient and modern, hung about the walls. Only one was lighted, and by its feeble glow he could make out chairs and an ancient table of carved wood, a cot with what seemed to be a hand-woven cover, and some built-in bookshelves jammed with old books. A net hammock hung in a corner between stout metal hooks driven into the rock. At an angle to the right of it was a man-made alcove obviously used as a kitchen. Beyond it, in a larger alcove, the lantern light glinted faintly on the ornate post of an old bed. The region on the other side of it was lost in darkness.

  “What I have is yours,” Black Luis said, and now there was more than mere politeness in his voice. “Make yourself at home.”

  “Thank you,” said Ronnie, peering about in wonder. “This is some place. Did you just find it, or what?”

  “Oh, we’ve always sort of known about it. I mean, Marlowe and I, and his ancestors and mine. The indios used it before the Spanish came. This country’s full of caves. Most of them are known, but the Spanish never learned of ours. Did Ana María Rosalita tell you about it?”

  “She said you’d gone underground.”

  “Well, she knows of it, though she’s never seen it. We’ve never used it except as a hiding place. My grandpapa got in trouble once, and hid in here for two years. He’s the one who fixed it up the way it is now. Worked in here all day and came out only at night to pick fruit or catch fish. That’s how we have to live.” Black Luis gave a short, bitter laugh, then added, “But we won’t be able to hide here much longer. A few more weeks …” He shrugged.

  Ronnie stared at him. “What’s going on? Besides what’s happening tomorrow, I mean.”

  “Tomorrow is part of it. It belongs to the same string of trouble. The string is being tightened all around us. Soon it will squeeze us out.”

  “And Bernardo is the one who’s pulling the string?”

  “Who else? But don’t ask me why. It makes no sense. It is a crazy thing.”
Black Luis sighed. “I am not afraid for myself. I would hate to lose this place, yes. But it is no great matter. I can get lost and manage somehow. The big worry is that the same string is tightening around Ana María Rosalita. That is what scares me.”

  “It scares me too,” said Ronnie, remembering how viciously the Señora had struck her after leaving the boat. “She told me she’d run away, if things got bad, and come here. She won’t let them take her back to Santo Domingo.”

  “But that is their plan! I know!” The black boy pounded his fists together. “They would get rid of us both. My grapevine is good. Marlowe gets around. What he misses, I get from Nicky Robles. His sister works at Las Alturas. That’s the old Montoya villa where Don Bernardo is living now. I don’t know how Ana María Rosalita can get out of that place—”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s built on the side of the mountain, like a fort. Anyway, it would be just like that dirty bribón to lock her in her room.”

  “Then we’ll go and get her out,” Ronnie told him.

  “If you think that would be easy—”

  “Nothing is easy on an empty stomach,” Marlowe interrupted from the darkness of the entrance. “It is past time to eat, marinero, which means it is no time to talk of troubles and make plans. The Blue Boy’s about had it today. Didn’t he tell you someone’s been trying to kill him ever since he reached San Juan?”

  “¡Madre!” the black boy exclaimed. “Who would want to do a thing like that? Sit down. Tell me about it while I bring the supper.”

  “I have his dessert,” Marlowe called. “I’ve just picked it.”

  A red and gold object the size of two teacups rolled out of the darkness and skittered across the stone toward the table. The aroma of it instantly filled the cave.

  Ronnie caught it up and held it in the light. “A mango!” he exclaimed. “A ripe one!”

  “Of course it’s ripe!” Marlowe said tartly. “Did you think I’d be scummy enough to offer you a green one?”

  “No, but—I mean—”

  “I’ve heard how the Blue Boy goes for mangoes,” said the voice from the dark. “So I thought I’d get you an extra-special one. Bet you never saw any like it!”

  “No,” Ronnie replied, his wonder growing. “I never did.” His fondness for mangoes had been well publicized, but almost no one realized how much knowledge he had acquired about the subject. This mango was not only out of season, but it didn’t even belong here. In fact, he couldn’t think of any place it did belong.

  “I—I certainly appreciate it,” he managed to say. “It’s hard to believe you just picked it.”

  “But I did! Not two minutes ago!”

  “You didn’t pick it from any of those trees I saw outside.”

  “Well, not exactly,” Marlowe admitted. “It came from one of the others.”

  “What others?”

  “Oh, don’t be so nosy! Can’t you just accept a good thing when it’s given to you?”

  “But, Marlowe, I can’t help wondering. I—I know this is extra special. That’s why I’m so interested. W—won’t you come out and show yourself, so I can thank you in person?”

  “Absolutely not! You just want to satisfy your overgrown curiosity. You’ll accept me as I am, or not at all.”

  “But I’ve already accepted you—”

  “Not for what I am! I’m really a ghost. That’s why I can’t show myself.”

  “But you’re not a ghost,” Ronnie persisted. “I know better! In fact—”

  “I am too a ghost!” Marlowe snapped. “I was even named for a ghost. If you don’t believe it, ask Black Luis.”

  Ronnie glanced at the suddenly grinning Negro, who was placing baked yams and hunks of cold fish wrapped in banana leaves on the table. “People around here think he’s a ghost,” said Black Luis. “When they hear him and can’t see him, they run. I mean, they run.” Black Luis chuckled. “But you didn’t run. You’re the first person I know who didn’t.”

  “I wanted to,” Ronnie confessed. “But I couldn’t afford to. I had to find a place to hide.”

  There was a sudden silence. Then Marlowe said in a puzzled tone, “I can’t understand why anybody would want to hurt the Blue Boy. It doesn’t make sense.”

  There were a lot of things around here, Ronnie thought, that didn’t make sense. Bernardo’s tightening string was crazy enough. And Marlowe, to put it mildly, had given him a walloping jolt. Even now, when he had finally begun to suspect what Marlowe could be, it was hard to believe.

  But the thing that made the least sense of all was the mango.

  He placed the incredible fruit on the table before him, then started in hungrily on the fish. Between bites he said, “I had to run away because somebody thinks I know too much. The trouble started in New Orleans.…”

  While he told what had happened to him, part of his mind centered on the mango. It was impossible, because it couldn’t have grown here. There wouldn’t be a ripe mango on the island until next spring, and that was months away. Yet here was a ripe one, finer than any he had ever seen, so fresh from the tree that the dew was still on it.

  Where did Marlowe get it?

  8

  HAUNTED MOUNTAIN

  RONNIE AWOKE SUDDENLY in the night, shaken by a dream as frighteningly real as the one he had had on the ship. He was sliding and plunging downward through wet jungle growth in absolute blackness. There was an instant of horror when he lost contact with Ana María Rosalita behind him, and Black Luis ahead, and abruptly began to fall, down, down, down.…

  The dream had neither beginning nor end, but the terrible reality of it brought him upright on the cot where he had been asleep, to stare wildly around at his unfamiliar surroundings. Then, in the dim light of the lantern, he saw the half-eaten mango on the table. Instantly everything fell into place.

  He sank back, trying to forget the dream, and wished he could have gone fishing with Black Luis. He had never been fishing in his life. But until he knew more about the area and had learned to find his way around in the dark, it had been agreed that it would be better if he remained out of sight.

  “This island’s crawling with people,” Black Luis told him before leaving. “You may not see them, but if they happen to be watching, they’ll see you. And they’ll see you for sure if there’s money in it for them.”

  It was something of a shock to realize that the price of safety was to become a voluntary prisoner in a cave. But there wasn’t the slightest doubt that Peter, or whoever it was that had followed him so far, would be able to trace him to the spot where he had left the bus in the rain. The search would broaden. Soon every person living for miles around would be on the watch for him.

  “It’s the same with me,” the black boy added. “Everybody around here works for Don Bernardo. Either in the cane or the coffee. They call themselves my friends. Ha! You could buy half of them for ten dollars. They keep Don Bernardo informed. Last month one of them saw me in my papa’s old house. Next day Don Bernardo came and burned the place down, then smashed the pump at the well.”

  “But why?”

  “Lots of reasons. Claimed it belonged to him. Claimed Don Carlos never really gave me the place. Claimed I was an—an undesirable alien and didn’t want me hanging around. Told people if I didn’t have water and a roof, I’d have to go back where I belonged. Well, I’ve got water and a roof he doesn’t know about. It’s all on my own property.”

  “If Don Carlos gave it to you, surely you have a deed to prove it.”

  “Of course he has a deed!” Marlowe exclaimed from the shadows. “It’s in that tin box on the shelf. I’ll bet that dirty bribón burned the house thinking he’d burn the deed with it.”

  “That wouldn’t make much difference,” he told them. “Deeds have to be registered. With a good lawyer—”

  Lawyer, he instantly discovered, was a bad word, almost as bad as money. It brought a shriek of “Vulture!” from Marlowe, and dire mutterings from Black Luis.
It developed that Black Luis actually had gone to a lawyer, the very man who had made out the deed in the first place, and who had often done work for Don Carlos.

  “He told me to get lost,” the black boy spat out. “He told me I was under age and an alien, and had no legal rights since I didn’t have a guardian. And he told me I’d better get back to Santo Domingo where I belonged, and fast, before the immigration people caught me. Then he said Don Carlos had made a mistake in deeding me property, but that Don Bernardo felt sorry for me, and would be glad to give me a little cash for my claim. I told the dirty diablo—”

  “But you went to the wrong lawyer! Can’t you see? Don Carlos is dead, and he wants the Montoya business. So he’ll do whatever Bernardo tells him. But the whole thing is crazy. Why does Bernardo want to drive you away and take your property? With what he’s inherited, I’ll bet he’s one of the richest men in the islands! He’s got thousands of acres! Why does he want this little piece?”

  I can’t figure it.

  “But there has to be a reason. Tell me what happened. I mean, you said you’d lived in Harlem. Why did you leave and go to Santo Domingo? If I can hear the whole thing, maybe …”

  “Well, when my papa died, I had nobody to look after me but an aunt. When she decided to live in New York, I had to go along.”

  “What about Marlowe?”

  Marlowe grumbled, “Somebody had to stay behind and keep an eye on things. Anyhow, I wasn’t wanted.”

  “I wanted you,” Black Luis said. “But I wasn’t allowed to take you. You know that. Anyway, when my aunt died, I wrote to Don Carlos in Santo Domingo and asked for a job. You see, my people had worked for him and his people for a hundred years. When he sent me the money to come down, I moved fast. Madre, was I glad to leave! I came here first and got Marlowe, then went on to Santo Domingo. Later, when the trouble came—”

  “I know that part of it. But what happened after you got here with Ana María Rosalita? Why did Don Carlos give you this particular piece of land? Did you ask for it?”

  “Sure. But not until he said he was going to give me some land anyway. He said land reform was coming, and the government was going to take land from people like him and divide it up in little pieces for people like me. So he wanted me to have the best of it. When I picked this place—and I wanted it anyway because I was born here—he said I ought to choose a piece that was worth more, a piece I could raise a crop on to sell. But I said no, this place had everything. My papa once told me a man could live here naturally all his life, the way a man should live, and never be in need.”