Conquering Kilmarni (2 page)

"Mr. Campbell, come look at this!" he called excitedly. He knew about wild pigs, of course. The men of the mountain villages sometimes hunted them for food. And once his brother, Mark, had gone after a pig that was rooting up young coffee trees for sweet potatoes that the workers had secretly planted among them. Mark had hunted it with a rifle and, wounding it, had escaped only by climbing a cedar and yelling for help. But Peter had never seen a wild pig up close before.

Mr. Campbell strode in from the track and moved more of the ferns, again disturbing the cloud of flies that buzzed over the carcass. There were two wounds, Peter saw—one only slight, the other obviously fatal.

Crouching, Mr. Campbell examined the animal with care, and then rose to his feet again. "You see what happened here, Peter?"

Peter looked at him and waited.

"This wound on the pig's rump is just a scratch, enough to make him good and mad but not enough to kill him or even slow him down. The second shot—this one fair between the eyes—is what killed the brute, and it was
fired from not more than a yard away as the pig charged. That Zackie is a brave boy."

Remembering Mark, Peter looked around. There was no tree here that Zackie Leonard could have climbed. Armed with only that ancient, patched-up shotgun, the boy had had to stand his ground.

"What do we do now, Mr. Campbell?"

"Well, I think we'll just cover this up again to protect it"—Mr. Campbell was already doing so—"and then go back down. We can finish the numbers another time."

"We're going to leave the pig here?" Peter asked.

"I'll send some men up for it." The headman gave the dead animal one last look before turning away. "You know something else about Zackie Leonard, Peter? He's smart, even if the other kids do shun him. Not every village boy would have thought to cover a dead pig with ferns to keep the John Crows and the flies from cheating him out of it."

They went down through the coffee fields together, not stopping until they reached the little bridge over the mountain stream that ran through the plantation. Both of them stopped there, Peter because he was again remembering the older brother he missed so much, and Mr. Campbell out of respect for Peter's grief. It was there, before the bridge was built, that Mark had drowned while trying to cross on a log when the stream was a rain-swollen torrent.

Then, on reaching field one, where some men were chopping weeds, Mr. Campbell walked in among the
flashing machetes to the side of a worker and said, "Natty, you know young Zackie Leonard, don't you?"

"Yes, suh, me do," was the answer.

"That boy has shot a pig up there in the bush, Natty. You'll find it just off the track in field seventeen, this side of the windbreak. Take some of these men and bring it down to the house, please."

"That boy did shoot a wild pig with him father's gun, Mr. Campbell?"

"Fair between the eyes, Natty, from no more than a yard away."

"My Lord! When the boy's father did use that gun at the shooting match last week, it did fall apart and nearly blow him head off!"

"I believe you. Get the pig, please, Natty. And when you see the boy, tell him Mr. Devon and I want to talk to him."

T
he Kilmarnie house never failed to impress Peter. Constructed of fieldstone and juniper from the property, it was nearly two hundred years old and might easily last another two hundred. Because it had been built into a steep hillside, the kitchen and storerooms were on the first floor, the other rooms on the second. A long, wide veranda ran across the front on the second-floor level, with a flight of steps leading up to it.

His father was in the living room when Peter climbed the steps and walked in. Seated in front of the fireplace, he looked as if his thoughts were far away.

They probably were, Peter guessed, but not far from Jamaica. Both Mom and Mark were buried in the Morant Bay cemetery, eighteen miles down the road, and more than likely that was what Dad was thinking about, as usual. It had been a terrible blow, losing both of them just when the plantation showed promise of becoming everything he'd dreamed of. It had been shattering to Peter, too.

Mom and Dad had discovered Kilmarnie when they came to Jamaica on a two-week vacation—Mom from her Florida teaching job and Dad from selling real estate. It was for sale and they fell in love with it, and Dad wanted to own a coffee estate that had once produced some of the world's finest coffee. They'd spent the rest of that two-week vacation getting answers to questions about schools and taxes, whether there'd be any problem finding workers and whether the coffee cooperative down the road would buy their coffee and help them learn about growing it. Then they'd sold their house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and moved there, where they were the only non-Jamaicans owning one of the half-dozen coffee plantations in the famous Blue Mountains.

At first Mom had worried a little about how they would get along with the country people, most of whom were black, and if Mark and Peter would have any trouble at school. But neither had been a problem. All that the workers had asked was to be treated fairly, and at Knox, where Mark and Peter were enrolled, the color of a boy's skin made no difference to anybody. After all, the motto of the island country was Out of many, one people. And Jamaicans, themselves, ranged in color from white to black through all the in-between shades of brown.

In the beginning the Devons had had a small problem understanding the way the country people talked. English was the island's official language—Jamaica had been an English colony before gaining her independence—but such expressions as "Mek I do it" for "Let me do it" or
"Mek we go" for "Let's go" took a little getting used to. Not that all the people talked that way. Mr. Campbell never did, for instance. But the workers chose to, even though most had had some schooling.

As for the old Kilmarnie house, it had been furnished, so Mom and Dad hadn't had to bring a lot of things from the States. And within a few weeks they were coffee farmers.

No one had known then that Mom was ill with a condition that would soon cause a massive heart attack and kill her. No one.

At the sound of Peter's footsteps on the hardwood floor, Walter Devon opened his eyes and turned his head. "Well, hello. Did you get the numbering done, son?"

"We didn't finish, Dad." Peter told him about Zackie Leonard and the pig.

A flush of red chased the normal pallor from Mr. Devon's face. "You mean Campbell let the boy go?" he said angrily.

"Well, yes." Peter knew what was causing the anger. The thing Mom had loved most about Kilmarnie was "her" birds, as she called them. She had bought books so she could identify them all, especially the different kinds of doves and wild pigeons. "Zackie promised not to bring a gun on the property again, Dad. He's kind of a loner, I guess. I mean he lives alone with his father, like you and me, but his father's drunk all the time, so Zackie has to look out for himself. That's what Mr. Campbell said, anyhow."

The flush faded from his father's face just as the housekeeper came into the room with a lunch tray for him. Recommended by the manager of the coffee cooperative, Lorraine Crosdale had been keeping house since the Devons had bought the place, and Peter liked her. She was about thirty years old and liked to sing a lot, mostly Jamaican folk songs. She lived in the little village of Mango Gap, the roofs of which could be seen from the house veranda.

"Did me hear the name Zackie Leonard?" Lorraine asked cheerfully as she put the tray down on a small table beside Walter Devon's chair.

"Yes, Miss Lorrie," Peter said, and told her what Zackie had done.

"Me must speak to him," she said. "Him live near me, and me will have a talk with him when me go down this evening. Most likely him did want the pig for food, Mr. Devon."

"I will not have people shooting on this property!"

"And you shouldn't, because it truly dangerous. But if you did know the problems that boy have . . . Well, sir, you leave him to me." She turned to Peter. "Will you be wanting to eat your lunch here, too, Peter?"

Peter looked at his father.

"Why don't you have this?" Walter Devon said, indicating the tray prepared for him. "To tell the truth, I'm not hungry. I think I'll go to my room and rest awhile."

"Dad, wait," Peter said. "Please."

Walter Devon looked at him.

"You didn't sleep much last night, did you?" Peter said, knowing his father hadn't. Their bedrooms were off the same long corridor, and four times during the night Peter had heard the sound of footsteps. Since he and his father were the only ones who slept in the old house now—Miss Lorrie went home every evening after dinner—he knew that his father had been having another bad night. "Dad, I heard you walking up and down the hall a lot."

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"But, Dad, I miss them, too, you know. I know how it hurts."

His father managed a ghost of a smile, one that flickered on like a dim light for a second and then vanished. "There are degrees of loneliness, Peter. I don't think you're old enough to understand how I feel."

Peter wanted to say, "Dad, it's been over three years now," but knew he mustn't.
 
Instead, he said simply, "Well, all right."

Would they ever end, Peter wondered, these bad nights when memories of Mom and Mark tormented Dad all through the dark hours and left him so drained and listless in the morning? He, too, thought about them a lot, of course, and was sure he always would. He had learned to live with the memories, but Dad hadn't.

There was so much to remember, Peter thought. Even things that hadn't seemed important when they happened. Like the time Mom and he had had lunch in an old Chinese restaurant in the heart of the market district in Kingston, tried to eat with chopsticks, and ended up
laughing their heads off at each other. How could they have known it was a real Chinese place where everyone ate with chopsticks?

Or the time Mark and he had gotten lost exploring the wild Cockpit country with a teacher from Knox, and the limestone there, sharp as knives, had cut their shoes to ribbons before Mark found the way out. Yes, Mark. Not the teacher.

He couldn't discuss such memories with Dad, though. Time and again he had tried, knowing it would help ease his own loneliness. But Dad just couldn't talk about Mom and Mark.

Rising from his chair in front of the fireplace, Walter Devon touched Peter on the shoulder and said wearily, "All right, son. I won't make it hard for this Zackie Leonard, but I do want to talk to him about shooting on the property. Be sure you tell Campbell that." Then he walked slowly from the room, and his footsteps faded down the same hall that he had paced most of the night before.

Peter sat down and reached for the lunch.

"Peter." The housekeeper was still standing there.

"Yes, Miss Lorrie?"

"We must have to find some way to help that man. Him is too full of grief to help hisself."

"I don't know what to do, Miss Lorrie. I don't even know what to say to him anymore."

"Me don't know, either." She shook her head in sadness. "Remember to love him, though, because him love
you. If anything was to happen to you . . ." She stood there for a moment in silence, then turned away to leave the room.

Peter finished his lunch slowly and carried the tray with its empty dishes down to the kitchen. While he was there he heard a sound in the yard and, going to a window, saw the men from field one carrying Zackie Leonard's pig to the garage. The garage had been a carriage house in the old days and was used for all sorts of things. The pig's legs were tied, and it hung from a bamboo pole that two men carried on their shoulders.

Peter went out to watch, and the man called Natty had some news for him. "We did meet Zackie on the track as we was coming down," Natty said. "Likely him was going up to try and bring the pig down hisself somehow. Him say we did have no right to take the pig."

Another man added with a grin, "Better you lock the garage door here, or him might come tonight and try to tief it."

Peter nodded solemnly.

Zackie Leonard did not come to steal the pig, though. Just after dark, when Kilmarnie's power plant was running to light the house, he came trudging up from Mango Gap and stopped by the veranda steps. Tapping the railing with a stick, he called out in a determined voice, "Mr. Devon, suh! Me come for me pig!"

Peter and his father had gone out to the veranda after supper to watch the sun go down, something Walter Devon and his wife had done almost every evening when
she was alive. The two of them now rose from their big, flat-armed chairs and walked to the head of the steps. In the dark of the yard, all that Peter could see of Zackie Leonard's face were the whites of his eyes and the gleam of white teeth.

"Your pig?" Mr. Devon replied.

"Yes, suh! Me did shoot that pig! Him belong to me!"