Conquering Kilmarni (8 page)

P
eter awoke at daybreak the next morning to hear the sound of rain on the roof. The roof was shingled with Jamaican cedar, and the shingles were covered with moss after so many years. When rain fell, it sounded a little like someone gently beating on a drumhead covered with a thick towel. Other than that, the house was so silent it was almost creepy, and Peter guessed that his father was still asleep. That often happened when Dad visited the cemetery. He stayed awake most of the night, and then slept late in the morning.

It was a difficult morning for Peter. While waiting for Miss Lorrie to come and make breakfast, he sat on the veranda, alone with his thoughts. The veranda faced west, so the house blocked his view of the sun as it rose from behind the mountain range. He watched its golden glow creep slowly down the river valley, though, and while doing so thought about Zackie.

It was strange, he realized, that he and Zackie had become friends. At their first meeting, Zackie had been
stealing something—or trying to—at the shop in the village.
Stealing what?
Peter wondered. On their next meeting, the Jamaican boy had been hunting a pig on property not his own, where hunting was prohibited. Did they really have anything in common? Yes, they both needed a friend, but it was more than that: They trusted each other.

Peter suddenly realized he had been sitting on the veranda for quite a while and was hungry. Was Miss Lorrie sick?

Leaving the veranda, Peter went to the door of his father's room and listened. There was no sound from inside. He opened the door a few inches, not letting it make any noise, and looked in. Mr. Devon lay there in his pajamas, asleep, and the bedding was half on the floor, as though he had tossed and turned a lot during the night. At least he was getting some good sleep now, Peter thought sadly, and drew the door shut again.

In the kitchen he broke two eggs into a bowl and whipped them up with a fork, then took a frying pan from a rack on the wall and turned to the stove. The stove ran on propane gas that his father had to bring up in tall cylinders from Morant Bay.

He lit one of the burners and scrambled the eggs, then poured a glass of milk. It wasn't like the milk you bought in supermarkets back in the States. Kilmarnie was too far from any such markets for that to be practical. Mom had suggested they buy powdered milk and mix it with Kilmarnie's water, which they knew was pure because
they'd had it tested. Miss Lorrie, of course, now made it that way.

With the eggs and milk Peter ate two slices of Jamaican hard-dough bread. He had just finished breakfast and was sitting at the kitchen table, still thinking, when Miss Lorrie arrived.

"Me sorry to be late," she said. "Me truly am, Peter. But me did have to find out something."

"It's all right, Miss Lorrie."

She put down the sisal bag she always carried and took his dishes to the sink, but after turning on the water she swung around to speak to him again. "Zackie did come, Peter?"

He shook his head.

"Has you any idea where him is?"

Again Peter shook his head. "I wish I did."

She looked at him in silence for a few seconds, frowning as if she were not sure she should say any more. Then she turned to shut off the water and came to the table and sat down facing him. "Peter," she said, "the police are looking for him."

"What?"

"Some tiefing is going on in Mango Gap, Peter." Miss Lorrie seemed to be choosing her words with care. "Some houses are being broken into while people not at home. Someone is tiefing food and money and other things. The police are looking for Zackie to question him."

"Zackie wouldn't do—" As a certain picture flashed through his mind, Peter fell silent. The picture was of
Zackie Leonard almost knocking him off his feet while racing out of that village shop, and of the Chinese proprietor yelling, "Stop, thief!" as he rushed, too late, from behind the counter. "Why—why do they think it's Zackie who is doing it?" he finished in a more subdued tone.

"Well, him is a boy with troubles, even if we like him and sorry for him. That don't make him a tief, of course, but it natural for the police to think him might be the one doing this, Peter."

Peter realized he didn't know much about the police in Jamaica. There was a two-story building in Rainy Ridge with a station on the ground floor and a courthouse above it. In charge of the station was a Corporal Buckley, and there seemed to be three or four men under him. Peter saw the corporal on horseback sometimes—he certainly could ride that horse of his—and sometimes saw him riding around with one of his men in a police Land-Rover, which was a four-wheel-drive English vehicle like an American Jeep.

Suddenly aware of what the housekeeper was really saying, Peter looked at her in alarm. "Will the police be coming here, Miss Lorrie?"

"Most likely them will, Peter. Me do wish you could find Zackie and warn him, because maybe him is only hiding from him daddy and don't yet know the police are after him."

Wondering if he should wake his father, Peter went upstairs. Mr. Devon was already up and taking a shower, he discovered to his relief. That was a good sign, for Kil
marnie's hot water was pretty cold at this hour. There hadn't been any hot water at all until Mr. Devon had rigged up a solar-heating system on the roof. But the plantation water came from just under Blue Mountain Peak, the highest point on the island, and the sun had to be real high and hot to warm it.

Showered and dressed, Mr. Devon looked like a new man when he came striding into the living room at last. He really was a handsome man, Peter realized. Mom had always insisted he was, and she'd been right, even though she was undoubtedly prejudiced.

Hoping his father would know some way to help, Peter told him about the trouble Zackie was in.

"Stealing?" Mr. Devon said. "Well, it shouldn't surprise us, I suppose. He wants money to find his mother, you said."

"But why would he steal it, Dad? He has that garden up in the bush."

"Yes, he has that. But he's only a boy and probably impatient. Put yourself in his shoes, son." Mr. Devon was frowning now. "This boy wants to get out of here, away from his worthless father, and find his mother in Kingston. Once he finds her, he won't come back here. So if he can hurry things up by stealing . . ."

"Well, I hope the police don't find him!" Peter said defiantly.

"You don't have any idea where he might be?" Peter shook his head.

"Have you spoken to Mr. Campbell?"

"Uh-uh. Why would I do that, Dad?"

"Zackie is on the Kilmarnie payroll now, and if he doesn't know the police are looking for him, he's probably working. Campbell should be able to tell you where."

That was true, Peter realized. If Zackie had finished the stretch of track the day before—and he probably had, no matter how long it took him—he would have checked back with the headman and asked for another piece of work.

"Another thing," Mr. Devon said. "Today's payday. He'll be coming with the others at four o'clock for his pay." He rubbed the jaw he had just shaved. "Maybe you ought to warn him not to come. Corporal Buckley might have heard he's working for us and plan on being here."

"Did the women finish planting field six, Dad?"

"No, not yet."

"Mr. Campbell should be there, then. Is it okay if I go talk to him?"

"Go ahead, if you want to."

Peter hurried up to field six and found the headman supervising the planting again. He was leaning against a tree and writing in a notebook. He seemed surprised when Peter asked him where Zackie was working.

"I don't know." He shook his head. "I thought he'd surely finish that piece of track yesterday and ask me what to do today. But I haven't seen him. Maybe he's sick."

Peter didn't think Zackie was sick. It seemed more likely that he knew Corporal Buckley was looking for
him and had gone into hiding. Peter thought he knew where the boy might be hiding, too. It was a long way, though, and if he went there without saying where he was going, his father might worry.

Peter went back to the house and found his father on the veranda, gazing down at the roofs of Mango Gap. "Mr. Campbell doesn't know where Zackie is, Dad," he reported. "But I think I know. Is it okay if I go up to his garden?"

"That's a long hike," Mr. Devon said. "Are you sure you—"

"If I don't, he may come here at four o'clock, like you said, and get caught. You'd do the same for any friend of yours, Dad."

Mr. Devon was frowning now. He still didn't want any part of Zackie's problems, Peter guessed. But he said at last, with a kind of sigh, "Well, all right, I suppose. But be careful, Peter."

On the way up to the secret garden Peter noticed that Zackie had finished the piece of work he'd been given. But when he arrived at the garden itself more than an hour after leaving the house, there was no sign of the Jamaican boy, or any sign that he had been there and gone. The place was exactly the way the two of them had left it after eating lunch there the day before.

For a minute Peter was tempted to dig up the money box to see if Zackie had taken the money. But he wasn't sure he ought to do that, and, besides, the floor didn't look as if it had been disturbed.

Should he leave a message in case his friend did come here? He would try, he decided. He thought for a while about what he ought to say and then in big letters, with a stick, he scratched some words in the reddish earth of the hut's floor.

"Zackie, Do not come for your pay. Come tonight after dark and stay with me. Peter."

That might help, he thought as he started back down the mountain. Even though he was in hiding, Zackie probably would come to work in the garden. He wouldn't waste the day.

O
n the once-a-week paydays, when the workers came for their money, Mr. Devon used the garage for an office. It was more convenient than using a room in the house, and still it provided the necessary shelter in case of rain.

It was his custom to set up a table there about three o'clock, at which time Mr. Campbell would come and sit with him to go over the weekly work sheets. Mr. Campbell would read off the amount of money due each worker, and after putting that amount in an envelope, Mr. Devon would write the worker's name on the envelope.

With planting going on, there would be more than the usual number of people coming for their money this time, and Mr. Devon had suggested that Peter might help by writing the names on the envelopes. So the three of them—Mr. Devon, Mr. Campbell, and Peter—were seated at the table, getting ready for the arrival of the workers, when the police Land-Rover came down the driveway and stopped.

Out of it stepped a tall man in his thirties, with red
stripes on his dark blue pants. Like every other policeman Peter had seen in Jamaica, he looked like an athlete. That, Dad said, was probably because of the rigorous training they all had to go through at Fort Charles. To be a policeman one had to have a certain amount of schooling, too, and a clean record.

The man had parked the Land-Rover where the garage would hide it from anyone coming down the driveway. Now he approached the table and stood stiffly at attention, as if he were about to salute. Mr. Devon stopped putting money into envelopes and looked up at him.

"Good afternoon, Corporal. What can I do for you?"

"I am looking for someone, Mr. Devon."

Peter felt himself start to shake, but only the slightest of frowns appeared on Mr. Devon's face. And Dad's voice betrayed nothing at all as he said, "Looking for whom, Corporal?"

"Someone who works for you. The boy named Zackie Leonard."

"Zackie? May I ask why?"

"To question him. There has been some stealing going on."

Mr. Campbell, too, had stopped working on the paybill now, and both men simply sat there, calmly gazing up at the tall policeman. Mr. Campbell was taking his cue from Dad, Peter realized. Stay calm. Look normally curious but not anxious.

"Are you saying Zackie has been stealing, Corporal?" Mr. Devon asked quietly.

"Well, sir, he's been reported for stealing before."

"I see. But you have nothing tangible to go on."

Corporal Buckley moved his shoulders in a shrug.

"Very well," Mr. Devon said. "If all you want to do is talk to him, I have no objection. But if your plans include more than that, I'm entitled to see some sort of warrant or court order, am I not?"

The corporal's face changed. "What, sir?"

"I'm not too familiar with the rules here," Mr. Devon said mildly. "But I can't believe it's proper to drag a person off to jail simply because you think he might be the thief you're looking for."