The Rhythm of the August Rain (7 page)

Eric tried not to think of the college payments ahead, while Jennifer and Shannon compared day schools to boarding schools. Casey followed up with a story about a midnight picnic in her dorm, the food hidden under the sheets when the monitor appeared. Everyone laughed and even Eve cracked a smile.

After the visitors left, Eric placed the empty glasses in the sink and nudged Shad's elbow. “You wormed your way nicely into that one.”

“Think of it this way, boss. Shannon need somebody she can trust to go with her. The taxi driver not going to shaft her because I going to be there, and she have two men to protect her. You know it not easy for a foreign woman to move around Jamaica by herself.”

“You're probably right.”

“And you get to spend time with your daughter.”

“She didn't seem too keen, but I hope she liked the tip idea.”

“You never know with them teenagers. They keep their good feelings for their friends and let the parents see the bad ones—like they want to torment you. When Joella was twelve, she used to suck her teeth so much that Beth had to slap her one time.”

“I couldn't do that, but I wish Eve was—happier, you know?”

“Next to Casey—”

“That should be interesting, the two of them together. Casey's like a debutante waiting to come out.”

“A
debu
—what?”

“A little beauty queen, all pretty and giggly.”

Sitting on his verandah later, Eric filled one of his pipes with the Canadian maple tobacco that always reminded him of Shannon. She'd introduced him to it when she brought it down once as a gift. In those days, she'd appear out of the blue and lean on his office door, making his heart jump. He'd tell his secretary not to disturb them, and they'd run up to his suite and start kissing before he'd shut the door. After an hour of frenzy, they'd call room service—she was always famished—so she could devour Solomon's specialty of the day. It was the affair of affairs, the best of his life, which came to a screeching halt the afternoon his lover made her announcement over dessert.

“You're pregnant?” he'd spluttered. “I thought you were on the pill.”

“I must have skipped a day—”

“You don't just skip a day with birth control.”

She'd looked at her spoon, laden with lime sherbet. “Well, I did.”

“Are you sure you're—”

“You pee in a cup, the test comes back positive—you're sure.”

“Have you thought of—you don't have to have it, you know.”

She'd dropped the spoon with a clatter. “I'm keeping the baby, Eric. I'm not having an abortion.”

Everything, everything had changed in that moment, the lusty passion transformed—like ice water falling on fire—by the dull reality of parenthood.

He lit the pipe, shielding it with his palm, let the wind blow out the match, and settled back in the chair. The verandah faced the ruined hotel, and tonight a quarter moon glittered off the water, the island a black rock in its midst, a stiff northeaster carrying the flapping of the leaves from the almond tree that he'd planted long ago in front of the reception area.

This was his evening ritual, looking across at his destroyed hotel, watching its ghostlike appearance and disappearance under a waxing or waning moon as each month slipped by, and it had been a comfort knowing that he still owned the isolated piece of land and its mildewed buildings, regardless of Hurricane Albert's destruction. However, he was no longer the sole owner. The island now belonged to the corporation formed earlier that year to build the new hotel, and there were plans to lease it to Horace MacKenzie for a campsite—Eric's son Joseph's idea. Renovations were to begin in a few months. Truth be told, Eric would have preferred the buildings to remain mottled, empty, and
his
, no one else's, because they housed not only the past, his glory days as the owner of the inn, but more recently they reminded him of Simone, who had lived under a tarpaulin in the roofless lobby for two months last summer.

A brave woman, or perhaps only a woman with nothing to lose, she'd stood up to Eric and Shad when they'd confronted her under the tarp, and needing the money to replace the thatch roof on the bar, Eric had ended up renting the island to her. When she'd left, he'd felt all life go out of the ruins, missed knowing he could row out to see her, missed the flickering light of her lamp he'd watch from his verandah as she moved around at night, cooking or getting ready for bed. He'd yearned for her every night ever since, thought about her as the waves crashed on the cliff beneath the porch, each tremor sending him deeper into reverie. Grieving her nightly had been the only reward to his day.

Now everything was about to change. The island was going to go through a transition and Simone was coming back—to meet Shannon and Eve. He exhaled the Canadian maple, picturing the two women sitting in the bar, Simone on his right and Shannon on his left, civilized darts flying between them, and him, of course, skewered in the middle.

S
hannon stood up from the breakfast table. “Are you going over to your dad's today?”

“Boring.” Eve was still in her nightclothes, the T-shirt she'd had on the day before and a pair of stretched-out cotton pants she always wore to bed. Her iPod was sitting on the table next to the glass of orange juice, her only concession to breakfast.

“It's up to you.” Her mother took a last sip of her coffee. “I'm leaving in a few minutes. Maybe you can do something with Casey.”

The wounded look was back. “I don't know these people. You can't just bring me here and dump me—”

“I couldn't leave you in Toronto either.” Shannon picked up the two cameras on the table and slung them over her shoulder.

“You're always leaving me in Toronto. I don't know what's so different this time.”

“You can't be trusted
this time
.” To hell with the counselor. Into her safari-jacket pockets Shannon dropped a small tape recorder and her cell phone. She was getting tired of measuring her words. She had a job to do, two jobs if she had to find out about this Katlyn woman, and Eve needed to know that.

“I'll play games on my iPad,” Eve grunted.

“Or help your father in the restaurant.”

“Babysitting an old man all day? I don't think so.”

“Well, you choose. I have to work.”

“When are we going home? If it's more than a week, I'll kill myself.”

“I told you, I don't know yet. I have a lot of work to do and we'll go home when it's done—and stop being so dramatic. You know how many kids would love to be in Jamaica?”

“When are you getting back?”

“Probably midafternoon.” A horn tooted outside. “That's Shad and the taxi driver.” Shannon planted a kiss on Eve's cheek. “Be good, or at least be nice.”

On her way through the living room, Shannon looked off at the morning-hazy mountains and bays stretching in front of the verandah. She was glad to leave her daughter's sourness behind. If she could help it, she wasn't going to let Eve interfere with her pleasure at being back on the island and back in Largo—a change she'd needed more than she'd realized. She'd told Jennifer and Lambert the evening before that she was feeling her shoulders slowly descending.

“I'd forgotten that, whenever I'm here, I become like a Jamaican, kind of relaxed and easygoing,” she'd said, knowing it was a half-truth, knowing she couldn't completely relax around Eve or Eric.

Cool morning air greeted her on the verandah. At the top of the driveway a small, red sedan with shiny rims sat waiting, Shad waving out the back window. After she climbed in, she was introduced to Carlton, the driver, whom Shad instructed to descend the driveway and turn right on the main road.

“We can start with a Rasta man here in Largo,” Shad explained. “He know my granny from way back.”

Carlton, a silent nodder, wove the car around potholes and up dirt lanes until they arrived at the base of the mountain that rose behind Largo. They stopped in front of a wooden cottage, its fresh red, yellow, and green trim singing out behind the rusty zinc fence. The man Shad had in mind wasn't home, his elderly wife reported from the door. Her long dreadlocks were tied back and she was wearing a housedress, the front of it wet.

“Can I speak to you, then?” Shannon asked, thinking it might be a good idea to start her interviews with a female. All of the books she'd researched over the last few weeks had been written by men, and she was ready for another perspective.

It took more than a little persuasion on Shad's part for the woman, Leah was her name, to be interviewed.

“I washing right now, but I try to help,” she said at last, sitting down on one of the four concrete steps leading up to the house.

“Do you mind if I record you?” Shannon said, but Leah declined and the photojournalist took out her notebook.

In answer to the first question, the Rasta said that she and her husband were members of the Nyabinghi, but they didn't belong to a church. “Our God is Jah, and Jah is God of all, and Jah-Rastafari don't need no walls.” She and her man had been together for thirty-eight years, and she'd become a Rasta after she met him. What seemed to interest her most was describing the
ital
food she cooked, which she pronounced
eye-tal.

“Is spiritual food, and it must be full of
itality
. It must increase the
livity
, the strength that Rastaman get from God, and everything must be natural, natural as possible. If we drink juice, we must juice the orange with our two hands, you see me? When we cooking, we don't put in no salt, and we don't eat nothing coming out of a tin, nothing that mix up in a factory, nothing with no chemicals. We eat plenty fruit and vegetables, no pork, no meat. But we eat fish and sometimes little chicken, when we can get it. We don't eat no crab or lobster or shrimp, though, no bottom scavengers.”

The conversation ended when a boy, tiny dreadlocks sprouting from his head, came to the door and said he was hungry. Shannon asked if she could take a few photographs before she left, and Leah agreed, as long as she could take them with her grandson. Shannon photographed the two standing on the step, the boy sticking out his chest, his feet at right angles.

Back on the road, Shad directed Carlton to drive to the village square.

“We have one Rasta man who fix everybody's shoes,” Shad explained while wiping his brow. “I don't like to disturb him, like how he working now, but he might be able to give us a little direction.”

“We're doing well for a first day, don't worry,” Shannon said. “It always takes a few days to start getting into the story.”

Ras Walker's shoe stand near the village square was a small bamboo shack; from its roof hung a red flag with a lion in the middle. Inside the shack, shelves were laden with shoes held together with elastic bands, one shelf reserved for new leather sandals with a stamped pattern. Three tall drums stood on the ground underneath them.

“Ras Walker, blessings!” Shad hailed the man behind the counter, and hammer in hand, the man touched his heart in greeting. “I have a nice Canadian lady visiting us who need to talk to you. She is the baby mother for Mistah Eric and she writing about Rasta people.” Shannon winced a little at the introduction, understanding for the first time what her standing in Largo was now: Eric's baby mother.

The news seemed to have an effect on the middle-aged Rastafarian, who said he could give her five minutes. He had a customer coming back shortly to pick up his shoes. With his waist-length locks and enormous smile, he'd be an excellent subject for a photograph, Shannon decided as Shad retreated to wait in the car with Carlton.

“Shad don't recommend anybody who not a good person,” Walker told her, “so you must be trustable. You will overstand what I and I have to say.”

“I won't take up much of your time,” Shannon said, settling on the stool he offered. “I'm working for a magazine and—”

“You know anything about Rasta?”

“A little from what I've been reading.”

“Is a whole different way of seeing the world, you overstand?” The man selected a tiny nail and tapped it into the sole of the shoe he was working on.

“One thing that fascinates me is the language you use. Why do you say
I and I
, or
I-
man
, and
overstand
, when other people say
I
and
understand
?”

“Rasta language is not like everyman language. Some people call it
livalect
, different from dialect, you know, because I and I believe words is a powerful thing. Where you have sound, you have power. Words have a meaning higher than man. That mean”—Walker searched for another nail—“you say
I
, but we say
I and I
because we believe that a man always connected to Jah. No man stands alone, so is I and Jah, I and I, not I one.”

“What about
overstand
?”

“When you say
understand
now, you using a weak word. Being
under
is weaker than being
over
, right, so Rasta say
overstand
. I and I use power words, not weak words. You must ask Shad to translate for you.” Walker chuckled. “He know the language good. Is in every song he play on the radio in the bar, ask him.”

While Walker continued hammering nails into the heel of the shoe, he told her that he was from St. Thomas, the parish south of Portland and over the mountains. When he was a teenager, he'd worked with some Rastafarian fishermen and had come to like their attitude toward life. He'd started growing a beard and dreadlocks, although his mother didn't approve. The men came from the hills above where the Walkers lived, from a community known as the Bongo Rastafari. The leader of the group was Prince Michael, a man Walker respected a lot because he was a wise man. When he was in his early twenties, Walker had moved to the community, and there he'd learned shoemaking. More important, he'd learned to
reason
, to debate the meaning of life and his place in it.