The Rhythm of the August Rain (12 page)

As Eric climbed out, Shannon flew to the gate. “Hi, I'm Eve's mother. Has she come back yet?”

“No, not yet,” Joella said meekly.

“And they never said anything about where they were going?” Eric asked.

“No.”

“What Eve and Jethro say about what they was going to do?” Shad called from the back of the pickup, throwing out his hand, chastising her. “They
must
have tell you something.”

“They was talking over there”—Joella pointed to one side of the verandah—“then they come and tell us they going.”

“Pshaw, man,” Shad insisted and hit his knee, “you
promise
me you was going to walk her back to the Delgados'. Why you didn't do it? I think I could trust you. Now, look what—”

“Jethro said they soon come back, suh,” Winston interjected. “He said he going to show her something and bring her back.”

“Lord, have mercy.” Shad sucked his teeth.

“Jethro have any friends?” Beth queried, leaning in front of Shad.

“He tight with Naar,” Winston replied.

Naar's house was on Bartow Lane off the square, a house with two lights on either side of the verandah. When Eric blew the horn, a thin woman said that the teenager was inside watching TV. Bare-chested, the boy appeared and said a good evening and, no, he didn't know where Jethro was and hadn't seen him all day. His hair was braided tightly on one side and fluffed out on the other, as if someone was in the middle of plaiting it.

“He must be home by now,” Naar added, and gave them directions.

The road to Jethro's house was behind the village, the part off the grid. Thank God, Eric breathed, clicking on his high beams, there was a half-moon tonight, the road as remote as a country road could be. The Jeep's lights stayed stubbornly low and askew, one beam showing the road right in front, the other the road up ahead, and he sucked his teeth as best an American could, irritated at himself for not fixing them. Dense foliage crowded in, hiding the thousand frogs and their belly honks. Naar's vague directions led them past a few houses, most in darkness, all nothing but lumps in the night's gloom. The road ended when the mountain rose like a black wall in front of them.

“Shit,” Eric groaned. He started turning the Jeep around in the narrow space.

“It's got to be one of those houses we passed,” Shannon said, putting one hand on his bare arm. It was a touch he remembered, the long fingers soft and cool.

“Let we go back and ask,” Shad called. He sounded nervous, perhaps because of the darkness behind.

A few reverses and hard turns later, Eric headed up the road, slower this time, until they arrived at a house that loomed to their right behind a low hedge. Yellow light from a lantern lit an interior room, the two front windows glowing like a Halloween pumpkin. As soon as they stopped, Shad leaped out of the back and knocked on the front door. They heard his polite inquiry when a man opened the door, a lamp glowing on a table behind him. The man pointed farther up the lane.

After Shad had jumped back into the Jeep, he leaned over Eric's shoulder. “That was Brother Michael's house. I didn't even know he live out here. He say that Jethro and his mother live a few chains down the road, a house with a wooden fence.”

Shannon's hands now rested limply in her lap, as if she was forcing herself to relax. “Please, please, let her be there,” she whispered. Resisting the urge to say something soothing, Eric changed into first gear and started forward, stopping at a dark cottage behind a wood fence. He kept the motor running as Shad clambered out of the Jeep.

“Don't step on no frogs,” Beth called.

Shad knocked twice on the front door before someone opened a window and beamed a flashlight straight at him.

“Ay, man,” Shad called, holding up an arm against the light.

“Who there?” a woman's growly voice said.

To Shad's answer, the woman coughed and spat through the window, shining the flashlight down to look at the spit. “Yes, is Jethro house,” she snapped. “What you want?”

When Shad replied, the woman left the window, the light from the flashlight moving around the little house, bouncing off furniture and a framed picture of Jesus. After a few minutes, an hour to Eric, the front door creaked open. They could see the woman's head above the flashlight shaking in answer to another question from Shad, then some muffled words before she closed the door. Shad returned to Eric's side of the Jeep and slapped the door.

“That was Jethro grandma. She said he don't come home all day.”

“Any idea where he is?” Eric asked.

“She don't know.” Shad climbed into the back. “She say he stay out late sometimes.”

“Oh, God.” The soft cry from Shannon made Eric catch his breath. She buried her face in her hands and leaned toward him, releasing her fear in sobs. He put his arm around her and pulled her toward him, feeling the weight she'd been carrying—the years of bringing up Eve alone. It was as if the nights she'd stayed awake with a crying baby, the days she'd struggled with diaper bags and tantrums, the parent-teacher meetings she'd attended alone, had suddenly become real to him.

“Why is she doing this?” She was sniffling, her voice muffled by his shirt. “Where did I go wrong?”

“You haven't done anything wrong.”

“It hasn't been easy,” she said between sobs, turning her head so he could hear her, “but I thought I was managing. But, dammit, things have gone so wrong. She hardly talks to me, she hates my guts, I know it. Now she's started stealing, a shopkeeper is calling me, and I'm going down to get her.” She turned her head into his shirt and let out a wail. “I'm a terrible mother!”

He waited for her to let it out, the noise of the Jeep's motor encircling them. When he lifted her chin, her tears dampened his hand. “Don't ever let me hear you say that again, you hear me? You're a great mother.”

She sniffed. “But look what she's—”

“We'll find her, don't worry.” He stroked her soft hair. She looked as fragile as on that first night he'd seen her lying on the lounge chair staring up at the stars. He kissed her wet cheek. “And she'll be safe.”

Shannon sat up straight, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “You're right.”

He started back to the village square. “We're going to the police. There's nothing more we can do at this point.” He turned and yelled to Shad. “I'm going to Port Antonio, to the station. You coming or you want me to drop you off?”

“We coming with you, man. My cousin is a police, remember?”

Eric swung onto a shortcut, an unpaved road that angled west toward the main road and Port Antonio, all the worse for the years since he'd taken it. Thick bushes crowded in on both sides, and he'd just slowed down for another pothole, cursing the National Works Agency under his breath for neglecting Largo's roads, when Shannon touched his arm.

“What's that?”

“What, that noise?” He braked to a stop. The thumping of drums, accompanied by discordant chanting, was coming from somewhere.

“Let's go and talk to them,” Shannon urged. “Maybe they know something.”

“She wouldn't be there.”

“Let's do it, anyway.”

Eric turned off the engine. “Hey, man,” he said to Shad, “you hear that?”

“You mean the Rastas singing?”

“Is that what it is?”

“They singing a
sankey
, one of them religious songs.”

“Shannon wants to check it out.”

“I better come with you. Next thing I have to come find you.” All four climbed out of the Jeep.

“Where's it coming from?” Shannon asked. Shad pointed to a narrow lane and started toward it holding Beth's hand. Straining to see the stones and holes, Eric followed behind, Shannon at his side. They'd only gone a few steps when she stumbled.

“You okay?”

“Thanks,” she said, grabbing his outstretched hand. It had been a long time.

When they turned into the lane, they could see a dim light a couple hundred yards ahead. The chanting and drumming got louder, and Eric's heart started thumping. Breaking into a private religious ceremony was not a good idea. He'd often heard Rasta drumming at night, sometimes saw the head-wrapped Pocomania women walking to their meetings, but he'd never visited a ceremony of either religion, afraid he'd trigger accusations of disrespect or worse. Holding tight to Shannon's hand, he told himself not to be a coward. He had just as much right to be here as anyone else—but he'd let Shad do the talking. In local situations like this, it was always best to let him handle it.

The light was coming from a kerosene lantern hanging in an open hut beside the road. Sitting in a circle beating drums of all colors and sizes were about eight men, all Rastafarians, it looked like, their locks tucked into a variety of headgear. They were chanting in a slow, sad chorus:

We are worshipping our precious Jah,

Worshipping our precious Jah,

Worshipping our precious Jah,

Till the break of day.

The four newcomers stood in the glare of the lamplight—a familiar man acknowledging them with his eyes—and waited until the last drumbeat sounded.

“You want something?” the man asked, and Eric felt the eyes of the musicians appraising them.

“Greetings, Ras Walker.” Shad dipped his head to the shoemaker. “We was wondering if you—”

“Eve!” shrieked Shannon, tightening her grip on Eric's hand.

Eric's eyes raced around the drummers, settling on a slim figure seated between two teenaged boys. Their daughter looked up with startled eyes under her black cap. A smile broke over her face, her hands still resting on top of a drum.

S
hannon settled into the backseat of Carlton's taxi and rolled down her shirtsleeves. Rastafarian women should cover their head and arms, the craft-market vendor had explained, and the photojournalist had made a note to wear long sleeves on future excursions.

Calm as her actions were, Shannon felt frazzled. She hadn't slept well. A stew of emotions and thoughts had kept her tossing all night, adding to her heaviness this morning. Eve, on the other hand, seemed to have had no problem and was still fast asleep when Shannon woke her at ten o'clock.

“What?” she'd groaned, turning away from her mother. “I'm sleeping.”

“We're going down to your father's. We have to talk, the three of us.” Her daughter hadn't answered, hadn't moved. “Get up
now.
I mean it.”

When they arrived at the bar, Eve was still yawning and Shad reported that Eric was on the cliff planting a young coconut tree. Annoyed (she'd called him only an hour before and they'd agreed to talk to Eve together), Shannon had reminded herself that he'd been sweet to her the night before.

There'd only been time for the obvious questions after Eve had been found. She'd climbed into the Jeep and sat on the brake between them, the knitted cap still on her head.

“Why didn't you let anyone know where you were going?” Shannon had said through almost-gritted teeth, trying to stay in control for Eric's sake.

Eve had been talkative for a change. “Jethro was showing me his drum, and then he started teaching me, and then he invited me to come to a drumming class, and—”

“You should have let someone know,” Eric had interrupted. “Your mother was worried sick.”

“We weren't near a phone.”

“That's no excuse,” Shannon had said. “You can't just disappear like that.”

“I was perfectly safe.” Neither of them had wanted to counter her, at least not yet, and Shannon had been too upset to talk after they got home.

Despite her earlier phone call, Eric had looked surprised to see them when he came around the corner, and he took his time washing his hands.

“So,” he'd said, sitting at their table, “what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” He'd pulled a carved pipe and matches from his shirt pocket, a bag of tobacco from his shorts.

“Smoking isn't good for you,” Eve had muttered.

“Let me worry about that.” He lit the pipe. Shannon had leaned back, noting the Canadian maple, relieved she wouldn't have to go it alone this time.

“Eve, honey,” he'd said after the pipe had caught, “explain how you got from Shad's house in the early afternoon to a shed in the middle of the bush in the evening.”

The excitement of the night before had left their daughter, and she'd sat in her usual slouch. “I wanted to see his drum, that's all.”

Eric had drawn the pipe out of his mouth. “And?”

To Eve's raised eyebrows, her father had raised his, looking like a befuddled grandparent with his white hair and pipe.

Shannon sighed and crossed her arms. “Why didn't you tell Shad's kids where you were going?”

“We weren't going to be gone for long.”

“But you
were
gone for a long time,” her mother argued, “and when you saw it was getting dark, you should have come right back.”

“I didn't know how.”

The story came out one sentence, one answer, at a time. Jethro had taken her to see his drum at a friend's house. He'd demonstrated a few strokes of the drum and she'd started practicing. When he said he was going to his drumming circle, she'd accepted his invitation to join him, believing that the village was so small they'd know where to find her.

“You're the one who wants me to take drumming lessons, anyway,” Eve had added with a huff.

“Yes, but we need to know where you are and who you're with,” Shannon insisted. “Last night—you didn't know those people.”

Eric had cleared his throat. “Eve, you can't just—you have to be careful about the kind of people you—”