The Rhythm of the August Rain (20 page)

“One day,” Shad said, feeling it, knowing it, “I going to own my own tuxedo. I not going to just rent it. I going to wear it to the hotel's New Year's Eve parties, the way Mistah Eric used to.”

“You can take it off now,” the salesman snapped.

“How much it cost if I take it for three days?”

“Ninety thousand for the weekend.” The man eased Shad's arms out of the jacket.

“I don't want to buy it, you know, star. Is only
borrow
I going to borrow it.”

“Ninety, and if you dirty it up, is more for cleaning.”

Shad shrugged out of the jacket and paid in cash (insisting on a discount and getting none). He'd pick it up the coming Friday, he told the attendant.

When he and Maisie were in the Jeep again, heading out of the Ocho Rios back street, he sighed deeply. “Miss Maisie, so much good things happening to me that I getting scared.”

“You mean, the wedding?”

“No, man, I talking about the hotel.”

“What you mean? The wedding is a big thing! Everybody in Largo waiting for it.”

“The wedding big, yes, but nothing going to change after that—except that Beth's money jar going to be empty.” He honked at two taxis stopped in the middle of the road, the drivers chatting. “Is the hotel that keeping me awake at night, man. The more I hear the tractor next door and the more I see the land being cleared, the more I worrying. It make me realize that the new hotel coming for true. All the talk over the last year, and suddenly it happening.”

“You work hard for it, all these years working in the hotel, then in the bar. You deserve it.”

“You know how my life going to change? No more quiet life—pure aggravation after that.”

“But is Mistah Eric going to run it.”

“Mistah Eric!” Shad snorted. “The only running he doing is running out of steam. Is
me
going to be steam and engine and engineer.”

“You wait. Once it open—”

“You don't see what I saying? It different now. I is a partner, I
responsible
this time.”

“But wait.” Maisie pulled her chin back into her neck. “Is not you responsible for seven years now? Is not you who tell Mistah Eric to build the bar when the hotel gone? Is not you stocking inventory and keeping ledger and holding welcome party for the investor man? Is not you organizing party in the bar?”

“Pshaw, man, that easy. Hotel business is different. I going to have to go to conferences at the Tourist Board, and I not no big-shot man with education and passport. You ever hear of a poor man like me becoming a hotel manager?”

The old lady stared at him, her moon face beautiful in its righteousness. “All you have to do is remember what Jesus say: ‘In the world you have tribulation, but take courage
.
' You is a good man, Shad, and you like to help people. Everybody going to help you, don't worry. Why you think Solomon and him friends come leaning up on your counter every night? Why people coming to your parties? Is because they like you, they respect you.”

“They might respect me, but they can't help me with a big business like that. You talking twenty bedrooms, lobby with receptionists, dining room, swimming pool, beach, two bars—and you have to keep forty, fifty guests happy all the time. When they not sleeping, they want good food and hot sun. Nights, they want entertainment. They want to know Jamaica, the Jamaica they see on them advertisements on TV.”

“You will find things for them to do, man. You always full of ideas.”

Shad drove on, his mind working faster than his foot as he braked around the back streets' tight corners. “And all the workers them, working in housekeeping and bar and kitchen and garden, how I going to manage them?”

“You don't manage Solomon and me now?”

“Yes, but is fifty-plus workers we talking about hiring.”

“What you don't know, you will learn.”

Shad bumped into the parking lot of a strip mall. “Is not that shop we going to? The Party Shoppe, so is called, right?”

Maisie nodded with conviction. “Yes, but I telling you, if Jesus on your side, nothing can go wrong.”

“Suppose He not on my side?” Shad chuckled. “Maybe He don't like the tourist business, like how Jamaica is a different place from what the TV selling. They telling people abroad how is one love, one heart, and they come and find people harassing them to buy ganja and braid them hair. Jesus don't like no lying business, and I not the best candidate for Jesus, anyway, like how I was a thief.”

“That was in your youth, man. You done save and baptize now. You go to church every Sunday, even help Pastor fix up the church, give it a fresh coat of paint and everything. Nobody asking you to be perfect, just to do your best.”

Shad thought of the Buffoon flapping his wings. “Maybe you right, even the minister not perfect.”

After they'd finished shopping (she for blue decorations for Beth's shower, he for silver balloons for his party), Shad headed east back to Largo. A few miles before the turning to Gordon Gap, Maisie put her hand on Shad's arm.

“You mind if we stop by my cousin's house just five minutes? She kind of sickly and I don't see her for a long time.”

“No problem, man. Where she live?”

“Up here so, not far from the main.”

Shad turned the Jeep onto the road Maisie indicated, then turned onto a side road and stopped in front of a small house, its narrow front yard crowded with flowering bushes.

When they walked up the short path to the house, Shad pointed to a bush close to the verandah wall, its furry, red flower looking like a cat's tail.

“What they call that one again? My grandmother used to grow it in the yard, but it dead now.”

“They call it kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate.”

“That's right.” Shad whinnied with delight. He loved the old-fashioned sound of it, and he could hear his grandmother roll it around in her mouth when she said it. “You think your cousin will give me a clipping to plant in the yard? I could put it right where the old bush used to be.”

No sound came from the house when they climbed the porch steps. “She must be in her bed.” Maisie called a loud
howdy-doo
. A weak voice echoed back and she disappeared inside while Shad sat on an aluminum folding chair on the porch.

His eyelids had just started to close when he was roused by a whirring sound. A tiny doctor bird had zoomed up to the passionflower vine shrouding the porch and was sticking its beak into a flower. With its long tail and iridescent, blue-green body, it reminded Shad of why, as a boy, he'd always loved hummingbirds, even if he couldn't catch one.

“Excuse me, please,” a voice said, and Shad peered between the heart-shaped leaves of the vine. Standing at the bottom of the steps was a young man holding a basket. “Miss Mattie living here?” His short dreadlocks almost covered his eyes; a Rasta novice.

“Miss Mattie is the sick lady?”

“My mother ask me to bring her some soup.”

“She inside with a friend of mine.” The youth went into the house and returned without the basket.

“Tell me something,” Shad said before the boy could descend the steps. “You know any Rasta camps around here?”

The teenager's eyes narrowed. “Why you want to know?”

“I inquiring for a friend of mine. My name is Shad, sorry, I should have said.”

The young man's name was Unity. “They have plenty camps.” He rubbed a pimple on his nose. “The Nyabinghi camp, the place where the wood-carvers live, and then some brethren live just below them. They have a big farm, growing vegetables and thing.”

“They been there a long time?”

“I think so.”

“How you get to that camp?”

“Little before the Nyabinghi camp, you turn right.”

Maisie appeared with a pair of clippers in her hand. “Time to cut bush.”

I
n the two weeks since Eve had arrived in Largo, Eric had learned a lot about her. Just playing Scrabble had taught him that his daughter was competitive and funny: when she won, she'd do her rain dance, making everyone around her laugh. Another discovery was that she had a quick retort to every comment, usually delivered in a flat voice. She also reacted as strongly to her environment as her father. If the bulldozer roared close to the bar, they both got distracted and the Scrabble scores were low. She was moody, and on a couple occasions she was almost as morose as when she'd first arrived from Canada.

“What's the problem?” he asked her on Friday afternoon as he placed the word
zealous
on the board, a double-word play. He'd been feeling lucky today.

After trying to shrug it off, Eve conceded that she and her mother had had words. “She's gotten weird.”

“She has a lot on her mind.” Eric drew six new letters from the bag. “But then, your mother always takes on a lot. Maybe sometimes she can't handle it all.”

“Like me?”

“Of course not. I mean she was always a—a multitasker, you know. She likes to have several things on the fire at the same time. I don't know how she does it. She probably gets exhausted with all the things she has to do, gets weird, you know.”

Eve's stolid face looked more adult than usual. “You're saying I'm a burden.”

“Where'd you get this burden business?”

“If I'm not a burden, why don't you want me here?”

Eric put down his rack of letters and looked into her “Keller-blue eyes,” as his mother would have described them. “Of course I want you here. Look at us, we're playing Scrabble, for goodness' sake. I wouldn't do that for just anybody, you know.”

“Yeah, but you never invited me down to Jamaica. Mom had to—”

“The short version?” he asked with raised brows. “No money, no space.”

She lifted the right side of her mouth like her mother.

“I haven't been the greatest dad, I know.” His eyes fell to his letters.

“You haven't been a dad at all.”

“Absolutely true.”

“You owe me. You know that, don't you?”

He pushed the letters away. “I tell you what. Your birthday's coming up. Let's plan something.”

She couldn't hide her smile. “You remembered.”

“You didn't think I'd remember? What do you want to do?”

“Go snorkeling. Mom doesn't have time to take me, and Aunty Jennifer hates deep water.”

“It's a deal. What day do you want to go?”

“On my birthday, that's Wednesday.” She looked at him with her eyes half-closed, as if she knew he hadn't remembered the date.

“Wednesday it is.”

“And another thing.” She laid out the letters for
zany
. “I want you to promise that you'll call once a week—when we get back.”

He nodded. “A little expensive, but you're worth it.”

“If you had a computer, we could—”

“Who says I don't have a computer? My hotel partner, Danny, gave me one as a gift when he came down.”

“You have a computer!” Eve pushed back her chair. “Are you on the Internet?”

“Yeah, I don't use it, though.”

“You're kidding.”

“I only know how to turn it on, but—”

That was all Eve had to hear. She made him fish out the laptop and insisted on showing him how to send emails, instructing him to write someone an email. Grunting that he never should have told her, he looked up the email address on a letter from Danny Caines and tapped out a greeting, adding that everyone was looking forward to his arrival for the groundbreaking. Eve showed him how to send off the letter and entered her email address into his contacts; then she opened her Facebook page as he stood behind her chair.

“What in the world—?” He leaned over her shoulder. “You have all this—all this stuff about yourself—for the whole world to see?”

“Everybody does it.”

He inspected the photographs, a few of her making faces, a dog, a goldfish, a skinny girl laughing, a boy with greasy hair grimacing to show off his braces, two girls with arms wrapped around each other. They all seemed to be wearing black.

“Who
are
these people?”

“That's Randy, and that's Mariana and Shanti, and—”

“Do they steal cigarettes, too?” The thought had sprung from his lips uncensored, and he straightened as soon as he said it.

Eve looked at him, brows low over her eyes. “You, too?”

“What do you expect? I'm your father, I care about you.” And he knew what it was to steal when you wanted something, even if it was only a
Captain Marvel
comic book that your mother said she couldn't afford, although your father spent money on beer every night.

Her face dark and furious, Eve logged off and slammed the laptop closed.

“You shouldn't be stealing cigarettes and you know it.” He stepped back to let her pass.

She turned at the door. “I hate you, both of you.” She was gone before he could think of a follow-up.

Back in the bar, Eric slid the Scrabble letters into their bag. There were no customers, the norm for early afternoon, a good thing since all he could think about now was Eve and her crime. It had been easier in his time. His mother had forced him to go to confession and had sat outside the confessional until he'd finished describing his sin to the priest. Ten Hail Marys later, he'd felt like a criminal and she'd been relieved.

A slight headache was creeping around his temples, brought on by remembering they weren't supposed to talk to Eve about her indiscretion. He stashed the Scrabble box on top of the refrigerator and took two aspirin from the bottle inside. Damned if he'd go along with some wimpy counselor's advice. Shannon could tiptoe around the child if she wanted to, but he had every right to speak his mind.