The Rhythm of the August Rain (15 page)

“She still have a lot of boxes and things left, but we got all the furniture. She give some to me and some to Frank. She say she can't pack all of it into Horace's house, so Beth and I have a new bed.”

He placed the glass he was drying on a towel. “How's the boss doing?”

“Not good.” She took a beer from the fridge. “But he's not going to admit it.”

The bartender opened the bottle. “You right, but he getting soft in his old age.”

“That will be the day.”

“I telling you, he lost the fire in his belly, ever since the hurricane.” Shannon sat on a barstool and Shad leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “Remember how he used to be so sure of what he wanted, used to argue about every little thing? Well, them days gone. Anything I want him to do now, he usually do it. And Solomon take off plenty time, always suffering from a hangover, and he still let him work here. Days gone by, he wouldn't have stand for none of that.”

“Maybe he's depressed.”

The bartender pushed back from the counter, horror on his face. “Depressed! He don't have nothing to depress him. He going to get a new hotel with a nice apartment, and he don't even have to put up any money. All he have to do is sit back and relax because I going to manage it for him.”

Shannon took a swig. “Maybe he's lonely.”

Shad shook his head hard. “With all of us around him? Nah, man. He even have a nice girl—” He broke off and spun toward the fridge.

“Girlfriend?” Shannon finished, hearing the other shoe fall. The shabby bar was the first surprise, now this.

Shad turned around to face her, pulling his lips wide. “Well, they not exactly—”

“I'm a big girl, Shad. Is she a local?” The bartender shook his head. “Who is she then?”

Shad squared his shoulders. “Best I tell you than someone else. Is the woman who was living on the island.”

“The squatter?”

“She wasn't no ordinary, poor squatter, you know. She was a nice woman who just want to get away from everything.”

Shannon sipped hard at the beer while the bartender rushed away to fill an order at a distant table. “Tell me about her,” she said when he returned.

He raised both shoulders high and dropped them. “What kind of thing you want to know?”

“Her name.”

“Simone.”

“Is she, I don't know, big, tall, ugly . . . pretty?”

“Little bigger than Beth, not as big as you.” He got busy tuning the radio to a new station. Shannon raised her eyebrows when he turned around, urging him on. “She pretty, yes, a brown-skinned woman from Jamaica. When she was five, her family move to England, then later to America.”

“Why was she on the island?”

“She was grieving, grieving everything in her life. She was a big businesswoman, but you know how you reach a place sometimes when you want to stop and let the sadness catch up with you? That was where she was. The sadness catch up with her, so she come back to Jamaica to find some kind of peace. She say she was riding around in a taxi and saw the island, and she decide that was where she want to stay.”

“Was she—you know, unstable?”

“Crazy? No, I wouldn't say so. She talk calm and make plenty sense. She talk the boss into renting her the island, even though it wasn't legal, like how the hotel mash up. She live there for two months like a free woman, just do whatever she feel like doing. After a while, she didn't feel like wearing clothes and she walk around the island naked.”

Shannon let out a reluctant crow and raised the bottle. “Now that's a fantasy I've always had.”

“And another time”—Shad chuckled—“when some guys row out one night to rape her, she shoot a gun after them and they run away. They almost drown coming back in the canoe because they didn't know how to row good. The whole village laugh after them.”

Shannon took a slow sip, wanting to hate the woman and failing. “I hadn't thought of that, that someone would try to—to attack her. She must have been scared shitless.”

“You know Jamaicans. They see a woman by herself . . .”

“I'm glad she knew how to defend herself.”

“She a strong woman.”

“Has she—has Eric seen her since then?”

“No, but she's coming in two weeks' time—for the groundbreaking.”

“Two weeks?” Shannon ran a hand through her hair, untangling an unruly lock, her heart beating fast. Any remnant of sympathy she'd felt for Eric had vanished. There'd be no wiping of body fluids after this, of that she was sure.

“What day is she coming?”

“August first, Wednesday, so the boss say.”

Shannon puffed out her cheeks and released them. “And I wonder when he was planning to tell me.”

“Everything happening so fast at the end of the month, you know, he probably forget. The groundbreaking coming, then Danny, the investor guy, coming down with his girlfriend, and—”

“He should have told me.”

Shad examined something invisible on his arm. “Is just a little visit, not like he going to get married.”

“We know
that
,” the Canadian woman snarled. “He's not exactly the marrying kind.”

Shad picked up the glass he'd wiped before and wiped it again. “You know,” he said slowly, “if it was up to any man, I don't feel there would be any wedding business. Marriage is something created by women, I sure of it. I don't think any man is the marrying kind.”

“What do you mean? You're on the way up the aisle yourself.”

The glass being wiped was replaced with another. “Maybe not.”

“Spit it out, Shad. What's bothering you?”

Bracing himself against the counter, he gazed at the sink. “The way a woman can tie you up for the rest of your life, and she have to do it in front of a hundred people, and she have to impress the people with fancy dress and shoes. Then, guess who have to pay so the hundred people can eat and drink after to celebrate your downfall?”

“Wait a minute, hold your horses. Don't you love Beth?”

“Of course.”

“And don't you want your children to know that you're committing to stay with her and with them for the rest of your life?”

“Yes, but the wedding thing—is money for this and money for that. First it was material to make dresses. Now is flowers for the church, tomorrow is something else. And we don't even get to the food and liquor—or the rings.”

“Are you sure”—Shannon stood to leave—“that there isn't something else at the bottom of it, Shad?”

He breathed a hard sigh. “You know the truth? No Jamaican man like to get married. We just not used to it. Is like you give a woman the right to think for you. I don't even think American man like to get married, want to be tied down. Look at the boss. He free and single, run his own life. He have two children, but he don't marry again.”

Shannon sat down heavily. “Shad, let me tell you something. What you see is just one part of the picture. You see Eric
free and single
, as you say, but you're not thinking about the mothers of his children, who pay for it. He's only free and single at our expense. We're the ones who have to do everything alone because he isn't there when we have to help the children with homework, cook dinner, discipline them—
everything
.”

She knew she was raising her voice (the beer adding to the volume), hoping Eric could hear her. “What kind of life do you think that's been for Joseph's mother and for me? And don't you think the children resent his absence? They can't respect a father who's never there, who forgets their birthdays. He barely has a relationship with Joseph and Eve. You can see that for yourself.”

“I see that, true. He should have—”

“Leaving me aside, think of it from his point of view.” She swept her hand over the counter, almost knocking over the bottle. “He's shut people out, isolated himself. Miss Maisie, his housekeeper, has to take care of him when he has diarrhea because he doesn't even have a family member to help him.”

Shad looked down, one hand on his hip, the other stroking his scalp. “I hadn't really thought—”

“Well, think about it.” Shannon slapped the counter. “You said yourself that he'd lost his passion for life. I mean, just look at him, sitting alone on his verandah at night. I bet he's thinking about the mistakes he made and the people he's hurt. No wonder he's miserable.” She pushed the empty beer bottle toward him. “Free and single, my ass.”

Despite her jaunty walk out of the bar, Shannon's heart was sinking as she climbed the hill to the Delgados' house. Tears welled up in her eyes, reminding her of the pain she'd felt after she'd told Eric she was pregnant and his ardor had withdrawn, like a wave pulling back from the shore. The worst, ugliest pain came when she was leaving that last time. He'd stood awkwardly in the lobby, avoiding her eyes, giving her a brief hug before she boarded the bus to the airport. She'd cried all the way to Montego Bay, her chest aching.

“Oh, God,” she groaned as she approached the house, “what happened to us, Eric?” The only answer came from the night-blooming jasmine, its melancholy fragrance swamping her memories.

H
is name for the new pastor was Buffoon. Shad had heard the word once on the radio when a talk show host had labeled a politician, and he and Rickia had looked it up in the dictionary on the laminated coffee table.

“A person given to undignified behavior that causes amusement to others,” the child had read out.

“That sounding just like Pastor Buckingham.” Her father had laughed. The family had adopted the name, although Joella had wanted to call the minister Batman because of the oversize black sleeves of his robe, which he flapped throughout services. Beth said they were all disrespectful, that he was a good person, married to his wife like a God-fearing man.

Now observing the short, round fellow working himself into a sweat even before the sermon had started, Shad concluded that the Buffoon was nonetheless better than his predecessor, Pompous Ass. A judgmental man, he'd been replaced by the Kingston Baptists for his
misdeeds
, their name for a run-in with the law that would keep him in prison for several years.

Wiping his brow, the Buffoon waved his free hand like a magician's wand. “And now, a musical rendition from Sister Eustacia.”

Soon Sister Eustacia was warbling “In the Old By and By” over the piano, a combination of screeching and banging that made Joshua, perched on Joella's knee, arch backward to find his father.

“Hang on, boy,” Shad whispered. “We soon go home to Mamma.”

“We should have stayed home,” Joella muttered.

Beth would have taken care of things, would have remembered to bring a toy for Josh to play with—but she wasn't here today. She'd been up all night with Ashante, who'd been bothered by some unnamed fear that kept her awake and crying.

“You don't have to come to church today,” Shad had suggested when Beth pulled up groggily on her elbow that morning. Miss Mac's mahogany headboard towering above had made her look even smaller in the bed.

“I have to—”

“No, you stay home. I take the other children to church so you can sleep.”

She'd given him a look that said she was grateful but shouldn't even be talking to him. In the two days since his declaration that he wouldn't be at the altar when she got there, she'd barely said a word, had made him suffer the silence of her unhappiness—even as she stubbornly continued her wedding preparations. When he'd insisted again that she stay home, she'd offered little resistance.

“Mamma look like she tired,” Rickia had commented after Beth dozed off. “I can stay home and watch Ashante. I keep her in our bedroom.”

Buffoon got back to the too-tall podium, which cut him off at the nose, leaving him only two inches of visual clearance.

“Beautiful rendition, Sister.” He flapped his wings. He smiled at the singer. “Beautiful.” He turned to the congregation, fanning themselves on their folding chairs. “Give her some love, Brothers and Sisters.”

They obliged, a few even calling out belated
Amen
s.

The pastor removed his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. “
The old by and by
, what that mean?” he asked, beaming. The only answer that greeted him was the shuffling of feet. Shad looked out the open window behind the choir. Deep turquoise water lay under a bright blue sky, the waves curling, breaking in the sunshine even before they hit the shore, affirming for Shad that God was out there today.

Buckingham smiled on. “
The by and by.
It mean ‘times long ago,' don't it? And we're going to talk today about some of the words of the Old Testament that tell us about some dreams that Joseph—he was a dream interpreter, you know—anybody know that, that Joseph used to interpret dreams? Is not only the obeah man can interpret dreams, you know.” The pastor chuckled and a few members of the congregation joined him, the ones who visited the obeah man smiling uncertainly.

Half an hour later, Shad was still holding Joshua, shushing him, putting him down on the floor, picking him up again, patting him, wondering how much longer the child could hold out without bawling the place down. The pastor flapped and crowed, standing on tiptoe sometimes, jumping up and down a few times as he reached ecstatic heights. In the end, all that the young father remembered from the sermon was a quotation from Acts, at least he thought he remembered Pastor saying it came from Acts, words that ran around in his head long after he'd left the church.

“ ‘Your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions,' ” Shad repeated aloud as he poured oil into the frying pan for the family's Sunday dinner. “That what Pastor was saying today.”