Children of Paradise: A Novel (41 page)

—These aren’t dangerous people. They’re holy crusaders—idiosyncratic mavericks, I grant you, but not sinister in any way.

The president reduces his chortle to a smile and looks at his watch as the more persistent members of the delegation wave their petitions from concerned parents. He gives up on getting rid of the delegation and orders tea and tells his secretary to cancel his next meeting. The president asks if the parents of the children will be satisfied with evidence that their young offspring are happy at the commune. If the minors elect to remain at the commune, will the relatives accept their decision? The relatives, between accepting finger food off trays pushed at them by young men dressed from head to toe in white, feel it fair for an adult to choose to do as he pleases but not a good thing to leave such a choice up to an impressionable child, given the very high probability of coercion. The president, who prefers white sugar to brown, provides both kinds for his guests. He directs a waiter to add spoon after spoon to his cup of tea, and he speculates aloud if it would not be wiser for the concerned relatives to act at that future time when such a change of heart occurs rather than cause a fracas now.

The relatives respectfully inform the president that he has way too much regard for the preacher, who masks his bad actions with the holy cloth. The president sets aside his very sweet tea and sits back in his high chair. Surely the president must have heard about the preacher’s claims to cure the crippled and the diseased, feats of chicanery performed with the collusion of trusted followers to lure new and gullible followers into the organization. The highest office in the land says that the man he knows as the commune’s leader never claimed such powers on this soil and never performed any miracle healings to win gullible converts. The president encourages the relatives to eat and drink as much as they wish, but he has another appointment, and will they kindly excuse him. The relatives of the delegation protest that the preacher preys on the poor and the weak and collects the pensions of the old and vulnerable. The president pauses at the door and says that sounds a lot like taxation, but the relatives do not find his quip the slightest bit funny.

The moment the president returns to his office, he makes a private call to the leader of the commune and asks how he is keeping. The preacher hears the smirk in the way the president says his name, but nevertheless replies that his feet are bothering him, fluid retention, and he cannot sleep well, worrying about the delegation coming to disturb the peace of his community. The president wants to know if he should worry about the safety of this high-level delegation or whether he can trust his old friend to handle the matter. The preacher says he would be insulted by the insinuation that he and his members were prone to violence had it not come from the trusted leader of the country where he and his members were honored to be guests, no, the president should not worry, and no again to any notion of violence on the part of his members against the delegation. He hopes the delegation is not coming all this way to stir things up and disrupt his peaceful community. Has the president heard of any violence within the community? No. Has any indigenous Indian in the area complained about any disturbance at the community or received any violent threat from members of the community? No.

—Well, actually, now that you mention it, there is the matter of the pig farm polluting the river, and there are rumors of commune guards forming some sort of firing squad and shooting down the forest.

The preacher ignores this altogether and asks the president to imagine what it would take to drive the commune to violence against anyone, what type of threat and what manner of provocation.

—I don’t know. What would it take?

—A lot, Mr. President, a whole lot.

The president wishes the reverend good luck with the visit and promises him all the help of the highest office in the land to see that the delegation departs the capital expeditiously upon its return from the commune. The preacher thanks him, but the call ends without the usual cordial goodbye. The president pelts his chewed cigar across the room. The preacher pounces on a guard and pounds him with his fist.

Trina wishes to secure permission from the preacher to rehabilitate the prefect struck dumb by the tarantula. The prefect’s parents express gratitude for the help with their daughter from someone gifted with insects and animals and people. Trina asks the preacher for the scorpion boy, so called by the other children, to be included in her therapeutic plan to cure him of wetting his bed and to stop his hair loss, both maladies inflicted upon him by the insect sermon, as the commune has come to call it. The preacher asks her what she has in mind. She says she will not stray off commune property, but she has a plan to reintroduce the girl and the boy to the rewarding side of life in the forest, lessons she has learned herself from the commune’s schools.

She wants her mother to be her assistant. The preacher says Trina understands him more than most; she cues into his ideals better than most. And if she plays her cards right, one day she can lead lost souls, just as he does. With that, Trina and her mother walk to the river with Ryan, his head shaved, included in the therapeutic group of Rose and the two prefects. Kevin guards them. As they pass Adam’s cage, Trina, Rose, and Ryan run their hands along the bars and touch Adam’s hands poking through. Adam’s chain is removed from his ankle to allow the torn skin to heal. The group marches toward the pig farm, and Trina looks back at Adam several times, and each time he waves at her with a flick of the back of his hand, and Trina thinks he might be ushering her away from this place. She waves at him, copying his gesture of shooing flies from a surface.

The party turns right at the pig farm and eases along the trail that slopes down to the pier. Joyce and Trina try to remain calm and act casual and avoid each other’s eyes just in case seeing one or the other’s glee triggers some uncontrollable reaction that might make Kevin suspicious. Joyce stops in the path and tells the children to look closely at a broad leaf, and they bunch up close and peer at it, and the blemish on the leaf sprouts a head and legs and hops away and croaks at them. They hear more frogs than they can see. Guided by an expert Ryan, they shout at each other about their sightings: a caterpillar with bands of flesh and feet like waves coming into shore, a butterfly as big as a dinner plate mistaken for a large piece of bark on the ground until it flaps and lifts away from them, a colony of bees formed in a black cloud around a newly hatched queen moving overhead in a promenade of kazoos.

The group meets Eric at the wharf. Soon Kevin and Eric wander a little away from the dock, engrossed in conversation. The children search for flat stones on the riverbank and skip them on the water to see who makes the most skips. Ryan enjoys this right away and counts for everyone. He asks where Kevin and Eric got to, and Joyce says they are sure to be nearby, spying on them. Ryan watches everyone’s attempt with a stone and counts the result aloud each time. Trina tells him that she can do her own counting, thank you, and she looks at the mute prefect for solidarity, but the prefect looks away. The five youngsters search for the best stones to skip, choosing and discarding one for another, and straightening from their search to watch each other taking turns skipping the flattest stones on the water.

Joyce divides her time between scanning the slope for signs of Kevin and Eric, watching the children, and looking up- and downriver for any traffic as she sits on the landing pier and swings her legs and her toes just skim the water. The mute prefect finds a particularly flat stone that fits into her hand as if molded by her palm. She aims at the river and swings her arm and sends the stone skidding on the surface, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times. And that is how the prefect counts aloud and for herself and smiles. Everyone looks at her and she covers her mouth and they nod approvingly and she takes her hands off her mouth and smiles. They hear a hum and turn toward the water, wrinkled by a faint breeze, and they see this rainbow vessel tacking toward them with the captain and first mate waving. The children hold on to each other and on to Joyce and do everything in their power to keep calm and still rather than jump up and down and wave.

Kevin asks Eric if his love for the commune is greater than his love for him.

—I love God, and He sent me to the preacher and this commune, where I met you.

Kevin counters that their love cannot thrive here, that there is no place here for their kind of love.

Eric declares that this situation may be a test:

—If we’re patient, we’ll be rewarded.

—Are you certain about the afterlife?

—As certain as my love for you.

The first mate throws a mooring line to Joyce, who catches it, kisses it, and ties a layman’s knot around the anchor post. The first mate aims a stick with a hook at the landing pier and pulls from the back of the boat, which swings in a perpendicular arc from the river to the dock. The captain leans and looks aft and stern as he maneuvers with a series of reverse and forward engine thrusts; the river boils around the propellers. The first mate jumps off the boat, followed by the captain. Everyone hugs and exchanges hurried introductions. The first mate jumps back onto the boat, and the captain lifts the children over the side to the first mate. The prefects say they cannot board the boat and they prefer to return to their parents at the commune. There is an awkward pause in which the captain looks at Joyce and she says fine and tells them to stay on the wharf until the boat is out of sight. She hugs them, and Rose and Ryan lower their heads, but Trina looks agitated. The captain and first mate glance around to see if anyone might be coming to the pier. Each takes Joyce by the hand and helps her, one handing over to the other as Joyce takes a big step from the dock into the boat. The captain jumps aboard and takes the wheel as the first mate unties the mooring strop with a raised eyebrow at the terrible knot, flings it aboard, and climbs on.

Eric says they should get back to the landing pier just to show their faces and keep Joyce in check, in case she has something up her sleeve.

—What can she do out here? One more question: What if the preacher asks us to die for him?

Eric replies that it won’t be for him but for Christ.

—I wish you could feel my certainty.

—I do when you talk about it like that. I hope you are right.

Joyce hugs Trina, Ryan, and Rose, and the captain opens full throttle upstream from the pier. They wave at the prefects on the dock. Trina shouts at her mother, and her mother hears her but asks her to repeat it to be sure she heard right.

—Mother, we have to go back for Adam and the other children.

—Darling, we are free of this place. We should count our blessings.

—We must go back for Adam and the other children. Please, Mother. We must.

—It’s too late, darling.

The captain looks at the first mate for help with the talk, since he cannot hear, and the first mate is positioned much nearer to Joyce and the children. He tells the captain that Trina wants to go back for some Adam and all the other children. The captain shakes his head at Joyce to indicate that this one is her area of expertise and responsibility. Joyce holds Trina and asks her to think very carefully about what they just achieved and how close they came to courting disaster and what luck they had in securing the safety of Ryan and Rose.

—I dreamed this very moment, Mother, us on this boat with Adam and the other children, otherwise we don’t make it.

—But Trina, we cannot go back, not now, darling, please be reasonable.

Trina breaks from her mother’s embrace, runs to starboard, and leaps into the water and disappears. Joyce screams and the captain shouts to everyone to hold on and he throws the engine into reverse, which jolts the boat and throws everyone forward. The captain swings the wheel several revolutions to the right to cut as steep a curve as possible without taking on water. The first mate grabs a buoy attached to a rope and dives into the river and swims as hard as he can to the spot where Trina disappeared. His head ducks under the river and his back curls up and under as he propels himself down.

Joyce lunges to the side of the boat, but Ryan and Rose hold on to her and cry for her to stay with them and barely succeed in keeping her on board. The captain shouts at Joyce to wait for his first mate to do his job. She stops fighting to free herself and they all come to a standstill and stare at the water, and apart from the buoy rope attached to the boat, there is no movement. The captain calls Joyce to take the wheel and he pulls his shirt over his head and kicks off his boots. He runs aft and starboard, and just as he is about to dive overboard, up pops the first mate with Trina in one arm and the buoy in the other. The captain extends his arm and pulls Trina out of the river and passes her to Ryan and Rose. He helps his first mate up and pats him and they retrieve the buoy and the captain takes the wheel from Joyce, who runs to Trina and hugs her. The captain sets the engine in neutral and turns to Joyce to see what he should do.

—Take us back to the pier. Trina’s right. We can’t leave all those children behind.

The captain opens his eyes wide and inhales deeply to hold his tongue. His first mate looks at him and shrugs. The captain aims the boat back to the wharf, where they are met with puzzled looks from the prefects. The captain passes the children to the first mate before helping Joyce out of the boat.

—Aubrey, you owe my daughter an Anansi story, remember?

—When shall I come back?

Joyce stares at the captain, unsure what to say, having heard exactly what she needs to hear from him.

—Stay close to here if you can.

Kevin and Eric walk out of the trees and meet Joyce, Trina, Ryan, and Rose and the two prefects at the dock. Kevin asks Joyce what in hell’s name she is doing back on commune property. Joyce says she must go back and save the children. Kevin says there is no time left to save everyone and she should save herself, that this is Eric’s last shift before another guard takes over the area. Joyce thanks Kevin and tells him he is a good man to distract Eric for her. He says she should stuff her thanks, because all his efforts are in vain now that she and Trina are right back in the lion’s den.