Authors: Charles Runyon
With a sinking sensation, Drew realized the revolution was doomed; fishermen and charcoal burners who had never fired a gun would never stand against trained cops and experienced gunmen. The revolt would be too quickly smashed to serve as a cover; he would have to finish before it began.
“Okay, I’ll do this. I’ll signal when it’s done. We’ll work that out later. I’ll do it where somebody can see that he’s dead, right? So your men’ll have the guts to fight. But I use my own gun.”
The two looked at each other and exchanged some invisible sign of agreement. Guillard nodded. “All right. Where?”
“Barrington’s Isle.”
Guillard raised his brows, then nodded to Chaka. “I like that concept. In the bush Ian has his own private army; in town he walks with an armed companion. Only on the island will he be off his guard, in the company of his loving, faithful wife.” He turned to Drew. “That brings us up to the last question. When?”
Drew thought quickly; he would need as much time as he could get. “Okay, you plan to trigger your revolution the minute he’s dead. You’ll need time to instruct your men and distribute the guns. You’ve got to have men inside the cable office so they can’t call for help. And the yachts in the harbor will have wireless radios. You’ve got to isolate the island from the outside world until you’ve got full control. Dynamite the airfield so they can’t land soldiers. Sink a couple of ships in the harbor entrance. What’s a good day? A holiday, when half the police force is drunk and nobody’s working, when the streets are clogged with people ready to be formed into mobs the minute there’s a chance for action—”
“Carnival,”
breathed Guillard, whirling so that his jacket billowed out. “The masks, every man a stranger. Parades, steel bands, firecrackers, drums, chaos, see the picture, Chaka? Emotion runs high. A few blacks get out of hand and smash store windows. Let them have their fun, say the masters, we’ll work their black asses off when it’s over. But lo! The violence increases. A white is killed, then another. The masters tremble in their villas. Why doesn’t somebody do something? But the communications are out. The governor cowers in the palace, burning official documents as his family prepares to flee the island, wondering: Why isn’t Barrington here to tell us what to do? But alas, Barrington is dead, killed by a man he trusted. Yes!” He slapped both hands onto the table. “Chaka, we have only a week to prepare.” And then, as though he had just remembered Drew, he turned and asked: “You need anything more, man?”
Drew smiled; now there would be time. “A little legal advice, a few supplies. And I want Chaka to sneak me onto Barrington’s Isle—tonight.”
The sinking sun throws the humped shadow of Barrington’s Isle across Petty-lay. An old man lights an oil lamp in the
savanne.
Black bare feet move silently on white sand streets as lovers go to the beach in pairs. In a dozen doorways, cutlasses sing on stone as their owners sharpen them for tomorrow’s work. In the
savanne,
old men sit on fallen palm trunks and talk in their bubbling patois, invisible except for the red glow of their cigarettes.
Chaka sat in the middle thwart, filling a space wide enough for two oarsmen. Drew felt the narrow pirogue leap forward each time the twelve-foot oars bit the water. The sea seemed to be a mound sloping off in all directions. Ahead, a line of white marked the beach of Barrington’s Isle.
“You can blow the conch?” asked Chaka softly.
“I will learn,” said Drew.
“Three times when he is dead. A man will answer from Petty-lay.”
“Yes.” Drew fingered the conch he held in his lap. As large as his head, the whorled shell was cut off at one end to leave an opening like a mouthpiece. Drew slid his hand inside the flange and grasped the pearly interior as though it were a sword hilt. He would blow the conch, yes, but whether or not Barrington died would depend on Barrington.
The boat passed beneath the ramparts of the fort. Here the current fanned out from the narrow strait and dissipated its force into the open sea. Chaka strained at the oars, heading the boat toward the northeast. The direction of their movement was due north; they would land on the seaward side of the island, away from the big house. Rounding the rocks below the fort, Drew saw the white line of the reef and the pluming spray where the sea charged against it. Chaka maneuvered toward an opening, back-paddled until he caught the crest of a wave, then sailed over the reef and into a tiny lagoon. He vaulted out into thigh-deep water, seized the prow, and dragged the boat onto the sand.
Drew stepped out and picked up the woven straw bag which contained his supplies. He looked at Chaka, who was almost invisible in black shirt and black trousers. “I’ll make it from here.”
“Then … in three days I return to this spot.”
“I’ll be here,” said Drew, and clambered up the ten-foot cliff behind the beach. His feet crunched on salt-crusted grass as he stepped onto level ground. This was the island’s windward slope, a bleak plain covered by short grass, dotted by flaring agave and spindly hexagon cactus. The sea drove into the honeycombed rock beneath his feet, sending fumaroles geysering up through holes in the surface. The rushing air made a medley of sounds: the mournful bleat of a fog horn, the distant howl of a coyote, the moaning of women and children trapped in a cave. Drew realized he would miss Leta; he would even miss those two tentative, uncertain allies, Guillard and Chaka. Maybe it was better to be alone, now that he had things to do. He had been getting soft.
He reached his shack and found no sign of disturbance. Even his rum bottle remained on the table with his glass beside it. It seemed years since he had taken that last drink.
He retrieved his bag from its hiding place and labored up the ancient stone steps to the fort. Reaching the opening in the waist-high parapet, he lowered his burden and took a roll of black nylon fishing cord from his bag. He tied one end to the left side of the opening, about eighteen inches from the ground, passed it between two stones on the other side, then walked on, unrolling the cord. The fort itself was an irregular two-acre rectangle paved with flagstones. At the northern end stood four concrete pillars, still holding the severed base of a steel radar tower. A low stone roof rose three feet above the center of the fort, sheltering an underground room which had once held powder for English cannon. He attached the cord beside the three-foot-high entrance, made sure it moved freely, then tied two pill bottles to the end. They would tinkle if anyone came up the steps.
He leaned through the opening and shined his flashlight down the eight-foot ladder. A rustling noise came from below. He blinked his light and evoked a shrill chittering. A hundred beady eyes looked up at him.
Sorry brother rats. I need your hole.
He gathered up an armload of the waist-high grass which grew between the flagstones. Twisting a bunch into a faggot, he struck a match and held it to the grass. It caught with startling speed. It crackled and spat like a pine knot, singeing his eyebrows with a sudden gout of flame. He flung it into the room and thought: No wonder those poor girls didn’t escape from the harem. The whole damn island’s a tinderbox. He tossed more grass down onto the fire, and within a minute smoke was billowing out of the opening. Suddenly the hole disgorged a gray, squeaking flood of rats, blinded and terrified, blundering into his legs, and finally disappearing into the grass. While he waited for the room to air out, Drew returned to the shack and carried up a charcoal cookpot, a blanket, charcoal cooking utensils, and his Coleman lantern. The underground room still held a stench of smoke and rats, but he’d get used to it. He lit the lantern, threw out five dead rats that had perished in the purge, and built a fire in the cookpot. He fanned it until the coals glowed red, put on a frying pan, and dropped in a dozen lead sinkers which Chaka had bought in the fishing supply store. Then he clambered quickly up the ladder to escape choking from the smoke.
He strolled around the parapet, surveying his citadel for weak spots. On the western end, the wall joined the cliff and dropped straight into the sea. To the south, the jumbled rocks sloped steeply into the strait, where the current roared like an avalanche. To the east, a fifty-foot cliff descended to the concrete platform which held the radar shack. From there the land spread out, rising on the left to the watchtower, sloping down on the right to the big house.
Drew lit a cigarette, hiding the glow in his cupped hands. A night wind caressed his face and rippled through the tall grass. The stunted guava trees looked like lumps of black coal strewn about the slope. Pale banyan trunks rose from the ground like bodies twisted in agony. From the windward side of the island came the moaning of the fumaroles. Drew thought of an adolescent Leta quivering on her cot as she waited for Barrington, listening to those weird sounds. She would have been … how old? Fourteen, fifteen. He remembered how she’d turned pale when he said he’d have to come back here. She’d bent her head, then spoke as though drawing the words up from a great depth: “I will be at Marie’s if you wish to come to me.”
Drew leaned on the parapet and found that he could see the villa through its screen of palms. Lights blazed on the open ground floor, a white-coated Negro stood behind a corner bar, and a figure sat on the terrace, alone. Even as he went to his bag for his binoculars, he cursed himself for his haste: Why torture yourself by watching her? You can’t do anything tonight.
Back at the wall, he leaned on the parapet and brought her into focus. She wore a green dress which left her white shoulders bare. A frosted glass sat on the table before her, and a half-finished plate of food was pushed to one side. He wondered if she had, as usual, eaten only the meat and left the vegetables. He felt a terrible urge to go down. The grand lady, all dressed up to eat alone? Wouldn’t she welcome company? Why couldn’t he—?
Then he saw why he couldn’t. Doxie strode onto the terrace, dressed in white shirt, white shorts, and knee-length socks. Drew was gratified to detect a limp in his strut, and was oddly pleased that Edith didn’t ask him to sit down while he talked. Whatever Doxie said made Edith turn her back with an angry toss of her copper hair. When he took a step forward, she whirled and threw her glass. It did not come close to Doxie, but sailed across the room and crashed against the bar. Doxie hurried away. The old Negro glided onto the terrace, bent at the waist, and held out a silver tray containing a fresh glass. Edith took it, jerked out the straw and threw it on the floor, then tipped the glass to her lips and emptied it. Then it, too, went sparkling through the air to disappear over the low wall which separated the terrace from the beach. She jumped up and walked to the wall, stared out at the sea for a minute, then whirled and strode to the bar in the corner. The old Negro was already there, pouring liquor into a third glass. Edith downed it with a toss of her head and set it back on the bar for a refill. Whatever news Doxie had brought, it had made Edith decide to get soddenly drunk. Drew had seen this before: an hour or two of sullen, determined drinking, capped by a roaring public scene with some taxi driver, doorman, or bartender presumed to have insulted her. And Drew would drag her to their apartment, hold her limp swaying body beneath the shower, then accept her maudlin apology and receive the wanton offering of her body….
With Edith drunk, anything might happen. But it would be an hour yet; meanwhile his lead might be malleable.
It was. He pulled the rubber tip off the crutch and forced the putty-like metal up its base. He replaced the tip and hefted the crutch. It was a comforting weight, a blackjack four feet long. He could now meet Doxie on equal terms.
Returning to the parapet, he was dismayed to find the lower floor dark. But a light gleamed through the French doors of the second story. He saw the foot of a bed and a section of pale green carpet. He moved to the left and perceived a pair of legs up to the knees. They moved, the ankles crossed, uncrossed; feet stretched out with toes pointed straight ahead; big toe on the left foot scratched the instep of the right foot. He tried to see the rest of her, but a bamboo thicket blocked his view. She was restless, waiting….
He heard the hollow growl of a marine engine. Before he could look, Edith moved. She flashed across his field of vision, two white legs stretching out in a run, a filmy blue garment flowing behind her. She held a bottle by the neck. A moment later she returned and sat on the foot of the bed, her hands empty in her lap.
What followed was like something seen in the flickering frames of a stag movie. Edith looked at the door with a vacant, neutral expression on her face. She spoke no greeting to her unseen visitor; she only lifted her arm with a limp-wristed movement, as though she were very tired and this were the seventh rehearsal, and untied the bow which held the gown at her throat. The hand dropped back into her lap and lay palm up, while the gown slid from her shoulders and hung suspended on her breasts.
Her visitor stepped into view—a stocky man with sparse sandy hair, dressed in a rumpled seersucker suit. He walked to the French doors, stretched out his arms to catch the drapes on either side, and closed the scene.
Drew waited for the light to go out, but it didn’t. Finally he left the parapet, made a bed of grass beside the sunken room, and lay down with his face turned up to the stars. Her visitor had to be Ian; no other man would have been so bold. Tomorrow would be a busy day.
The liquor was wearing off too soon. Edith was too aware of the weight pressing her down; of the flaccid flesh of Ian’s breasts moving when he moved; of the pale hair which curled around his nipples like dead grass. She had forgotten what day it was until Doxie reminded her, and then it had been too late to reach that fuzzy state of not caring.
She must have had a good memory once. A series of numbers—4-1315—kept appearing in her mind like an emergency message flashed on the screen of a darkened theater. A telephone number? What city, what state? Whose number? Her own, a lover’s, the gas company? She wasn’t sure; she hadn’t been sure of anything since they had touched those two electrodes to her skull and
zzzzzzzzzt!
Everything went away. Like a flash but black at the same time….