The Rhythm of the August Rain (16 page)

Beside him, Rickia was rolling a raw chicken wing in batter. “What that mean?”

“It mean that old men look back on their past and dream about it. They done live their life already.” Like Mistah Eric.

“And the young men?”

Her father looked up at the grease-spattered wall. “The young men create their own visions, and they have all the time ahead of them to make their vision come true. They have to look ahead and create a future for their family.” He dropped a drumstick into the frying pan.

“How come they don't say
your old women will dream dreams and your young women will see visions
, Dadda? Is only men can have visions?”

“It don't mean that women can't do it. In them days, the men was the head of everything and the women stay home.”

The girl rolled out her bottom lip. “All the women in the Bible either tempting men or having babies. Men don't give them no respect.”

Shad dropped two wings into the sizzling oil. “You going prove them wrong, I know, sweets.” He grinned at his second child. He threw in the slices of onion and green pepper from the bowl beside him and sprinkled some thyme over them.

A dancehall song, a man bawling lyrics Shad couldn't make out, leaped from the living room. “Go tell your sister to turn down the radio, please, because her mother just waking up—and set the table for dinner.”

Shad was turning off the gas under the chicken when Joella appeared at the kitchen door. “Dadda, a man outside want to see you.”

“Come, finish frying the plantain for me while I check it out.”

The man turned out to be a stocky Rastafarian wearing loose white pants and a black scarf tied around his forehead. He was standing between two tall, striped drums, one on either side of him.

“Ras Bongo, what bring you here?”

“Carlton tell me that Mistah Eric's daughter needing drumming lessons.”

“I don't know how it going now because I hear she in punishment.”

“She the same little girl come with Jethro to the drumming circle the other night?”

“Same one.”

“She good,” the man said with jerking nods, his dreadlocks swinging forward on both sides of his face. “I could use a few extra shekel. I and I going to pass by the bar and talk to her father. What you think?”

“Ask the mother first, up at the Delgados' house.”

“Irie.”

The family was already seated at the dinette table when Shad went back inside. They were waiting for him, faces turned up, eyes down on the fried chicken and rice and peas.

Still in her nightshirt, Beth maintained order. “No dinner until we say grace,” she commanded. “Ashante, take your hands out of the bowl.”

“See Dadda here,” Joella said. “We can say grace now.”

“Where's Josh?” her father asked.

“Sleeping.”

They all held hands around the table, except for Ashante, who was allowed to chew on a piece of plantain to keep her quiet.

“God,” Shad prayed, “we thank you for the food you provide us, and for the money to buy it. And we ask you to bless us this week, and show us the way forward with school and the new hotel and everything. Thank you for having a loving family and taking care of each other, even when we get old. And, one special favor we asking you, make us wise and blessed in your sight—so we can see visions and make them come true.”

When he opened his eyes, everyone else's eyes were on him. “What?” he asked Beth.

“See visions?”

“Why not? Is our time now.” He passed the plantain to Rickia, remembering her comment about men's power over women, remembering Shannon spitting
free and single
at him. “And for you, madam”—he passed the chicken to Joella but addressed her mother—“all I have to say is this: five hundred US dollars. Is half the money Shannon giving me to take her around, but I giving it to you for the wedding. The rest I going to put to Joella's high school.”

He picked up his knife and fork and cut away at the crispy chicken. “You can put what money you want towards it from your own salary, but five hundred is all I have to give—and I don't want to hear one more thing about wedding and money, you hear me?”

T
he last twenty-four hours were the longest Eric had ever experienced. What had started as a simple case of jerk-pork revulsion had settled into fever, nausea, and an inability to keep anything down, even water. By midday Sunday, his bed was damp with sweat. He rolled from one side to the other, hoping to find a dry spot. The vibrating crash of the waves breaking beneath the cliff, usually unnoticed after all these years, made him feel worse. Nothing seemed to help, even looking at the island, which normally kept him in balance. Its strident noontime brightness was making his nerves raw.

Shannon hadn't come by this morning, although she wouldn't be working on a Sunday. He'd hoped she'd come, just to keep him company. He'd thought about her last night in the wee hours when he'd woken with a vicious headache. It would have been nice to hold on to her sturdy, womanly form when he had to climb out of bed, but he'd held on to the bed for support on his way to the toilet and groped his way back. He'd spent this morning—in between listening to the church bell clanking and the taxis honking as they turned the corner into Largo—feeling good and sorry for himself.

“I'm dying,” he'd groaned to Maisie as soon as she'd appeared after church.

“No wonder, you don't drink nothing, you don't eat nothing” was her matter-of-fact response. She'd removed her blue church hat and placed it beside her handbag on his chest of drawers. The ginger ale she'd brought him had made him feel worse.

“You want me to wipe you down, clean you up a little? You might have visitors and you smell kind of . . .
fresh
.” She'd wrinkled her nose, and he knew it meant he smelled like a pigsty.

“Help me to the bathroom.”

While he struggled through a shower, Maisie had stood outside the bathroom door, reminding him of his life's deficiencies. “You need a woman to take care of you, Mistah Eric. All these years you manage on your own, but you know what they say,
wanti-wanti no get it, getti-getti no want it.
”

“What's that mean?” Eric had asked as he dabbed his body with a towel.

“People who want something can't get it, and people who get something—you know, it just come too easy, so they don't want it.”

Eric didn't answer, the drying and thinking making it impossible to talk at the same time.

“I mean to say”—Maisie's voice didn't budge from outside the door—“you have plenty nice woman and you don't even want one of them. Look how much men would like to have even one.”

After he'd thrown himself back in the bed, Maisie's dark moon-face had hovered above his pillow. “I going to give you little bush tea.”

“No mumbo jumbo, Maisie.” He waved her away.

“A little bush tea with pepper elder and you good, man.”

“I'm getting better.”

“You look worse.” Maisie had crossed her arms above her rounded belly. “You losing all your liquid.”

“Dehydration?”

“Next thing I have to call the doctor and they give you that oral hydra-thing to drink, and it taste nasty. My niece baby had diarrhea last year, and is me have to give the child the nasty drink, but she live.”

Eric had rolled over in defeat. “Okay, give me the tea.”

Sipping tea later, his head propped up on two pillows and another under his knees, Eric thought about the woman's words and her reference to Simone and Shannon. The locals had never been bashful about telling him how to run his life, particularly his love life. Every few months some villager referred to one of his
lady friends
and teased him about the ease with which he attracted them. Some even goaded him to do the unspeakable.

“Why you don't just marry Simone, Mistah Eric?” Tri, draped on the bar on Christmas Eve, had asked. “Like how she still young, you can still have some
pickney
running around the place, don't it?” The old man was well into finishing a bottle of white rum, and Eric had told him to go home and sleep off the idea.

Talk of marriage always chilled Eric to his bones. His parents' marriage had been quarrelsome, and his marriage to Claire, Joseph's mother, had only been to stop her comments about her friends getting married. Since their divorce nineteen years ago, marriage had become a taboo subject for him. Claire had remarried a few months back to a surgeon, and he'd felt strangely betrayed. A Catholic, she'd said she'd never remarry, as had he, although his decision had nothing to do with religion.

Some men could stay happily married for fifty years, wouldn't know what to do if they weren't. That wasn't him, he'd told everyone, and he'd never encouraged any of his girlfriends or passing trysts to think anything to the contrary. Love affairs would end, bonds would be broken—and time had proven him right.

“I'm not into long-distance relationships,” he'd told Amanda, a self-described “recovering hippie” who'd stayed at Miss Mac's boardinghouse a few years back. It was her last night in Largo, and they were lying on top of the sheets after another round of her tantric sex, which he'd insisted on calling tangled sex.

“I can come down every couple months. I'm only in Florida.”

“I don't know. Maybe we should just leave it there. It's been fun, right? We wouldn't want to spoil a good memory.”

She'd stood up, naked, not a small woman, not a young woman, wiping one eye with the back of her hand. “I guess this is what you do for entertainment. You find women traveling alone and sleep with them for a few nights. Passes the time, right? You know what they call men like you, Eric?
Users, teasers
.” She'd pointed to the door without raising her voice. “Get the fuck out of my room.”

From time to time he'd think of Amanda, with her droopy breasts and wavy, gray hair, and he'd wonder if she'd seen the wisdom of his words.

His feelings on long-term commitment hadn't changed, and even if he'd felt inclined to tie himself down in a marriage now, no one was on the horizon. Shannon and Simone both had lives elsewhere, no matter what Maisie implied. One was comfortably settled in Toronto, and the other had never even hinted at moving back to Largo.

Simone seemed happy with the status quo. She seldom even called, and he hadn't heard from her since he'd told her that Shannon and Eve were in town. He liked that about her, that she didn't make demands or bother him. She was always busy, had even started group therapy, she'd told him a few months back. No doubt she and the group had analyzed her relationship with a man twenty years older, calling it emotional incest or some fancy term.

The age difference didn't matter in a once-a-year love affair. He'd reconciled himself to how one day Simone would find another man and it would be over. She was savvy and would know there was nothing for her in little Largo. Despite her temporary exile on the island, women like her needed a city with conveniences—therapists, airports, and technology. Only people who could live with permanent limitations could tolerate a place like this.

The thumping of a drum broke through his thoughts. It seemed to be coming from the restaurant.

“Maisie!” he called, but another round of thumping drowned him out.

He waited for a pause and called again. The woman appeared at the door, her eyes and mouth twitching. “Mistah Eric?”

“What's happening out there?”

“Your daughter taking a drumming class from Bongo, Ras Walker son. He say that Shannon tell him they were having lunch at the Delgados' and they must come down here and practice.” Maisie left just as the drumming started again, this time a tentative imitation of the thumping that had gone before—Eve's response, no doubt. He put down his mug and wedged his head between two pillows. This wasn't like Shannon, sending drummers to invade his recovery.

Drowsy with bush tea, he dozed off. When he awoke, the drumming had stopped. He could hear voices: first Maisie's, then Eve's. His stomach felt calmer—the tea had worked—and he was hungry. He sat up slowly, testing his head for the ache (gone) and his bowels (only slightly queasy).

Someone outside started singing in a high, slightly off-key voice, the rhythm pronounced, the lyrics repetitive. He walked creakily through his living room and padded past the kitchen where Maisie was working. Arriving at the bar counter, he held on to steady himself. His daughter was standing at the side of the restaurant, singing with her back to him. He couldn't make out the words of the song at first but eventually caught them.

She was chanting, “Shaking to the rhythm of the
Au-gust rain
,” over and over, hopping from one bare foot to the other, stamping her foot three times at the end of each verse.

“What's
that
all about?” Eric said, interrupting her.

Eve blushed as soon as she saw him. “It's a—just a verse—something Bongo taught me, so I can practice my drumming to it.”

“Do it again.”

The girl shrugged. “It's kind of silly.”

“I want to see it.”

Facing the ocean again, she started the song, stomping to the last few beats.

Shaking to the rhythm of the
Au-gust rain
,

Shaking to the rhythm of the
Au-gust rain
.

She chanted it louder each time, hopping with her hands on her hips, and Eric applauded when she finished. Eve turned to look at him and clapped, giving a yelp like a happy puppy.

S
hannon raised reluctant eyes from her iPhone. “He's not there?”

“I-Verse sick today,” Shad said as he jumped back into the car, escaping the misty rain.