The Rhythm of the August Rain (6 page)

“Kitesurf?”

“You know, the big wing things you surf over the water with?”

“That's a new one on me.”

“It's really great in Aruba,” one woman said. “They have those long, flat beaches.”

Eric looked toward the parking lot. Shad was always better with these types. “Maybe you should try Negril.”

“Too many tourists,” the other boy said with a grin that boasted a half-broken tooth in front, a badge of kitesurfing honor, perhaps. The four left twenty long minutes and a small tip later.

Eric turned on the radio as he cleaned off the counter. A news reporter was talking about a shoot-out in Kingston's torrid Mountain View neighborhood, two gunmen killed by police, and he switched off the radio. A man could hear only so much bad news when he had no money in the bank. He was piling beer bottles into the empties crate when Shad appeared, balancing a basket on his head.

“Is that your new job, market woman?”

“Good for my posture.” The bartender took down the basket. “It kept knocking me on my leg coming down from the Delgados' house.”

“What were you doing up there?”

“Selling vegetables—I turn market woman now, like you say.” Shad went around the partition to the kitchen and returned without the basket. He started bustling around, preparing the bar for the Saturday-evening clientele.

“You know you're late, right?”

“Sorry, boss, I started talking.” Shad flashed the Bugs Bunny grin he used to get himself out of trouble. “And you know who I was talking to?”

“Let me guess.” Eric turned away. “Shannon.” She was finally here, not two thousand miles away anymore—but across the street and in full view of the blighted hotel. “Did you see Eve?”

“Yes.”

“How was she?”

“She going to need time to get to know us.”

“I better go up to Lambert's.”

Eric returned to his apartment and took a shower. As he shaved, he leaned in to the mirror, examining the new grooves around his eyes. He'd deteriorated since Shannon had last seen him. The Caribbean had a way of beating up white guys, turning their skin red and dry, but he cleaned up pretty good—even if his bar was just a shack with barstools.

Minutes after he emerged from his apartment, he saw Jennifer, Casey, Shannon, and Eve (Sheba trotting behind) crossing the road. Shad scurried away to the kitchen, as if he couldn't bear to watch.

“Hey, there,” Jennifer called as they walked up the conch-lined path. She was wearing shorts and sandals, Casey on her heels, a smaller, browner version of her mother.

A step behind them, Shannon waved with a book in her hand. She looked . . .
like a woman
, Eric thought, no longer the gangly fawn he'd first met or the anxious mother he'd last seen. Her hair, which used to be short, now fell to her shoulders, a few gray strands sparkling among the brown, and she was wearing a flowing white skirt and blouse. Her long strides had a gracefulness, a self-assurance, he hadn't seen before.

“Hello, you handsome devil,” Jennifer said and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Eric,” Shannon said, holding the book between them as she leaned in to kiss his cheek, a cool, clean scent around her. He didn't remember her wearing perfume before.

“Good to see you,” he replied.

“Hey, Uncle Eric, whazzup?” Casey bubbled.

“You know what?” Eric said after she'd hugged him. “Your father is going to have to beat off the boys soon.”

Casey boasted that she'd just had her thirteenth birthday. “I'm a teenager now.”

“How's boarding school?”

“Finished for the summer, that's all we need to know.” She grinned.

“Eve, come say hello to your father,” Shannon said, turning around.

A gloomy shadow to her mother's glowing presence, his daughter loitered behind, the torn jeans and baggy blouse matching the tangle of hair that hid one eye. She didn't look like a criminal, just a shy girl hoping to avoid attention.

“Welcome to Largo Bay, Eve.” He held on to her stiff arms to give her a kiss and she leaned over to pat Sheba as soon as he released her.

“She's still getting used to the heat, I think,” her mother commented.

“Good reminder,” he said, “let's all have something cool to drink. I'll get Shad.”

After Eric returned from the kitchen with the bartender, Solomon came shuffling in, his white chef's uniform (a souvenir from the old hotel) starched and pressed down to the fraying cuffs and collar. Holding his hat in one hand, the tall man lowered his chin and stared at the woman before him.

“Solomon!” Shannon cried.

“I don't believe it,” the old man said in his rumbling voice as she hugged him. “You come back to us?”

“She's visiting.” Eric introduced Solomon to Eve, grateful for the distraction.

“I know you from your picture,” the old cook told Eve. She put out her hand, warding off a hug, and he shook it gravely.

“Do you still make that fabulous oxtail? I told Eve about it.” Shannon said
about
in her Canadian way, and Eric felt a tug in his heart that accompanied the memory of teasing her that it wasn't
a-boat
.

“Solomon is the man for oxtail,” Shad confirmed.

The cook beamed, lips closed tight, and left for his kitchen duty.

“I brought something for you, Shad,” Shannon said (
And nothing for me,
Eric noted), and gave the bartender the book she was holding, the hard, red cover well handled.

“Grossman's Guide to Wines, Beers, and Spirits,”
Shad read slowly.

“The best, they tell me,” she said. “Can you use it?”

“A book about keeping a bar?”

“It was my father's.” Eric recalled a photograph of the bulky man he'd avoided, not wanting to explain why he wasn't marrying his daughter. “He liked to try a different drink every evening. I wanted you to have it.”

Beaming at the volume, the bartender nodded. “Imagine? Your father used to hold this book in his hands just like me. Thank you, thank you.”

“If you need Eric to read it to you—”

“No, no, I can read good now. Miss Mac been teaching me from last year and I can read documents and all kind of things.”

Shad went behind the counter and placed his gift in the drawer he referred to as his library. He'd once shown Eric the only other book in the drawer,
The Secret World of the Private Investigator
, a gift from a hotel guest long ago, and he'd admitted that his only other book in the world was a dictionary he'd bought for the children. “I don't want them to be ignorant like me,” he'd added, making a funny mouth.

A few regulars were drifting in for their Saturday-evening fixes. Eric greeted them by name, glad that Shannon could see he still had customers who respected him. He herded Shannon and her party to his table, and Shad took their drink orders.

When it came to Eve's turn, the bartender leaned toward her. “You want to try some coconut water?” he asked with a wink.

The girl looked perplexed. “What's it taste like?”

“Like manna from heaven.”

She shrugged after he turned away.

“So, you're doing research into Rastafarianism,” Eric said to Shannon.

“I think they call it the Rastafarian Movement now,” she replied, an invisible punch to his stomach.

“Where are you going to start?”

“I want to find Rufus first. Remember him, my old taxi driver? I thought we'd drive around the area to begin with, talk to a few Rastas—”

“Rufus gone to Montego Bay,” Shad called from behind the bar. “He running his father's barbershop now.”

“Oh, no.” Shannon wrinkled her nose in the funny way she always had. “Is there another driver I could use? I want to be free to shoot scenery and spot locations from the passenger seat.”

“The only taxi driver in Largo with a decent car is Carlton,” Shad responded. “But he come from Kingston. He don't know the country parts so well yet.”

“What do you need exactly?” Jennifer asked.

“I'm starting from scratch since I didn't really know anything about Rastas when I came down before. Seeing them play in a band doesn't qualify, I'm afraid. I'm going to have to go into their communities, meet them where they are. And since I'm pretty green here, I need somebody who knows where Rastas live. From the research I've been doing, I've read that there are three main groups”—Shannon tapped her fingers on the table—“the Nyabinghi, the Bobo Ashanti, and the Twelve Tribes. I want to interview at least one of each, and I want to interview as many Rastas as I can find otherwise.”

“Is Rasta—Rastafari a religion?” Eve asked, her eyes sliding to the ground.

“Some people think so,” her father said. “Some people say it's a lifestyle and a philosophy. It's been around for a while.”

The girl was slouched in her seat, still not looking at him, but he could tell she was listening, and he liked that she asked good questions. It reminded him of when they'd been at the zoo when she was five and she'd told him that kangaroos came from Australia.

“How do you know?” he'd asked her, pretending he didn't know.

“My teacher told us and she's from Australia,” Eve had reported in her pert voice. “She told us about the big reef, too.” He'd been tickled that she knew about kangaroos and the Great Barrier Reef, glad that she was smart—and that her mother was bringing her up.

“From what I've been reading,” Shannon was telling Eve now, “the Rastafarian Movement is a combination of a spiritual, social, and economic lifestyle.” Shannon pushed her daughter's hair back and Eve turned her head away. “They're opposed to greed and colonialism. It's about improving life for the poor, living together in camps to support one another, eating healthy food—”

“Not all Rastas live in camps,” Jennifer said. “A lot live like regular people, in towns or on small farms. And they're not all poor, either. Things have changed a lot in the last twenty years. Some are professionals now, lawyers and doctors, some work for the government.”

“And they smoke a lot of ganja,” Eric said, “so get ready to inhale.”

Shannon kept a straight face. “I know they use marijuana for their religious ceremonies. I don't know how much they do outside of that. I guess I'll find out.”

“Are you going to smoke any?” Casey asked, grinning.

“Of course not.”

Eric stifled a laugh, remembering Shannon smoking weed in his suite once, and how he'd opened the windows and turned on the fan so the staff wouldn't smell it.

“Why do they wear their hair in those—long rope things?” Eve asked.

“Dreadlocks?” her mother responded. “I was asking this guy who sells ice cream on Yonge Street, a sweet, young Rastafarian man, and he said that it had to do with his belief in Jah, that's their name for God. I guess I'll find out exactly what.”

“You could start with a few Rastas here in Largo,” Eric put in. “They're a bit more—they're a decent lot.”

“As opposed to what?” Shannon queried.

“You know, they're used to tourists and regular people. The Rastas who live in the camps, well, sometimes they don't like people coming around. They've been known to—I could be wrong—but I've heard that they can get pretty hostile if visitors ask too many questions.”

“She okay, no problem,” Shad said, doling out the drinks. “But she going to need two local people to go with her.” Eric shot him a questioning look. “Is true, boss. She need somebody to drive the car and watch out for crazy taxis and buses, and she need somebody else to give the driver directions and make sure she safe. Not that anything going to happen to her, but she need some manpower with her if she going to go up into the mountains and all over.”

“And you're just the manpower she needs, right?” Eric said.

“Are you moonlighting your way into another job, Shad?” Jennifer teased.

“We not going in no moonlight; daytime I talking. Like how Beth is working in Port Antonio and she not at home at lunchtime anymore, I have plenty free time in the middle of the day, right, boss? Carlton can drive her and I can help her.”

Shannon looked at Eric. “What do you say, boss? Sounds like a good idea to me.”

Cornered by years of guilt, Eric nodded. “Sure, I can take care of the bar while he's gone.”

“I really appreciate that,” Shannon said. “I could rent a car and Shad could drive it. Would that work?”

“I think the taxi driver arrangement is better,” Eric said quickly. He wouldn't tell her that his employee didn't have a driver's license and probably couldn't get one with his prison record, even though Eric let him drive the Jeep.

“Should be fun,” Shad said gleefully. “More fun than sitting in the bar.”

Eric swallowed a sarcastic comment and turned to Eve. “Interested in helping me out while these two are gone?”

“Not pouring liquor, I hope,” her mother shot back.

Another comment swallowed, Eric raised his hand. “I'll be behind the bar and she can take food orders and run them to the kitchen. No alcohol, I promise.”

They all looked at Eve, who took a sip of coconut water and grimaced.

“You can keep the tips,” Eric told her, and she shrugged again.

Jennifer tossed back her hair. “And the rest of the time you can spend with Casey.”

“I guess,” Eve replied.

“Eve's in a new school,” Shannon blurted out, glancing sideways at her daughter. “I think she likes it so far—don't you?—although it's only been a year. It's really progressive, part of a chain started in Germany. They aim to develop students to be well rounded, you know, strong bodies, creative thinkers. Ninety-four percent of their graduates go on to university.”