Eden Burning (40 page)

Will had friends in the Trenches. The boy was so secretive! You couldn’t ever get at him. Remote, and perceptive enough to understand that with his secrecy he was inflicting hurt, he didn’t care whether he hurt or not! Patrick had so wanted to love him, did love him, and was not loved in return. He wasn’t hated either, simply disregarded, mostly in that cool
way just short of disrespect, as Will stood off, thinking his own amused and scornful thoughts.

In the yard, Laurine and Maisie were sitting among their friends talking about whatever it was that girls talked about, clothes probably.… They gave him joy, his girls. They were fond of him, which was, when you came down to it, most of the reward that parents wanted: that their children should be fond of them.

He kissed them. “Where’s Will?” he asked.

“Back in the shed.”

He needn’t have asked. Will and his steel band had struck up again behind the garage. They had constructed their instruments out of spare parts, mostly rusty. Will played the tock-tock, the most important of the instruments. He had made it himself out of the bottom half of a kerosene tin. One of the boys had made a tom-tom out of goatskins and a rum barrel. Another had made his own shack-shack out of a bamboo cylinder filled with pebbles.

Patrick sat down on an upended barrel and watched. The watching was as much a part of the entertainment as the listening; the concentrated vigor of the players, their rhythm and sway were a dance in themselves. Sometimes on Saturday nights he’d pass the dance hall near the wharf where the young hung out and he’d wonder whether the girls in their earrings and bright skirts knew that they were basically dancing the calinda, brought out of Africa. Perhaps they did know. The racket now in the shed assaulted his eardrums, but his feet were swinging in time, nevertheless.

“That’s great!” he cried when the music stopped and the boys began to leave. “You practically set fire to that thing, Will! Almost burned me to a crisp just watching you!”

Tom Folsom poked Will. “Oh, when it’s setting fires, Will sure knows how! Always did. Biggest and best fires of all time.” He bent over, laughing.

Will’s fist struck Tom a fearful blow between the shoulders.
“Damn fool! Damn loudmouth son of a bitch of an ass!”

Tom straightened and sobered, his eyes aghast. And while Patrick stood astonished, the two boys stood staring at each other until, flinching under Will’s fury, Tom picked up his books and sidled out.

“What the devil was that about?” Patrick asked.

“Nothing important.”

“You were pretty mad about something unimportant.”

Not answering, Will busied himself with a pile of music sheets. Patrick frowned, trying mentally to reconstruct the swift byplay.

“Fire. He said something about you setting fires.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s an idiot.”

“One of your best friends, isn’t he?”

“So?”

There was a silence. Something lurked in the air. Something serious was being hidden. The least suspicious of men, nevertheless Patrick made a connection.

“You ever set a fire anywhere? Tell me, Will.”

“Sure. Kids make bonfires all the time, don’t they?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Oh, it was preposterous, what he had meant, too hideous to consider, and yet he was considering it!

“Then what did you mean?” Will looked up boldly.

“‘Biggest fire of all time.’ Isn’t that what he said? Like the one—at Eleuthera, maybe?”

“Bullshit!”

“I’m asking you, Will: did you have anything to do with that?”

“I did not!”

“Is that the truth, Will?” Patrick’s palms were sweating. “Because if you had anything to do with that, I’d not only have to give you up to the law, I’d have to give up
on
you. And that’d break my heart.”

“I said no, didn’t I? What more do you want?”

I want to believe you, Patrick thought. Please God that you’re telling the truth. Those hard, bright eyes of yours—I never really meet them, never get behind them. How can I know who you are?

And taking out a handkerchief, he wiped his hands, swallowed a painful lump in his throat, made an inner resolution to go forward hopefully, and changed the subject.

“We had a fruitful meeting this morning. Thought maybe you’d like to hear about it.” Make contact with the boy, share your interests with cheer. Bury those ugly fears. “Nicholas will be leaving soon for the constitutional conference in London. When he comes back he’ll have it all signed, sealed, and delivered. Independence.” The word fitted the mouth, a crisp, snappy, prideful word. He smiled, wanting to coax a smile from Will, but none came.

Will asked only, “And then?”

“Well, elections, of course. The New Day will surely get in, unless there’s some unexpected coalition of all the splinter parties. No, we’ll surely get in,” he repeated, adding brightly, “and then our work begins.”

“What part will you play?” Will inquired.

“Nicholas said this morning he’d want me to be minister for education, which would suit me fine. It’s not all that political, or shouldn’t be! I won’t have a lot of speeches to make, thank goodness. Although I suppose I’ll be asked to do a couple here and there during the elections…. Well, I’ll manage that if I must.” Feeling enthusiasm, he sounded cheerful to his own ears.

Will didn’t answer. It could be like pulling teeth to get him to talk, but Patrick, accustomed to this reluctance, was usually patient. When a minute or two had passed in silence, however, he became exasperated.

“Well, haven’t you anything to say?” he demanded.

“Yes. I spit on your elections.”

Patrick was astonished. “Spit on them?”

“They have no meaning, your silly elections. They’re just
the old colonial farce with different actors. We’ll still have the bosses. The white man will still have the money and people like you will front for him. Read Fanon. Learn all about it.”

“I’ve read Fanon. There are truths in him and untruths. He’s too angry, too violent for me.” Patrick paused. “Frankly, I think you’re rather young and inexperienced to have a valid opinion about Fanon.”

Will looked at him. Often his eyes would slide away in avoidance, but at other times he would switch his head about like a whip so that the eyes came straight at you, narrowed and intent, with a cat’s cold, powerful stare. You’d grow uncomfortable and look away, then be ashamed for allowing yourself to be intimidated by a boy less than half your age.

“I only meant,” Patrick said delicately now, “you haven’t had enough time to learn and judge, to evaluate and weigh. These men with the fiery messages—they’re fanatics, Will. They can—and have—lured whole nations to their downfall.”

“Downfall? How much farther down can we go?”

“A hell of a lot farther. We can go down into tryanny and bloodshed, a slavery worse than you can imagine. Yes, there’s a lot wrong now, but nothing that can’t decently be fixed. Think about it, Will. Look at your own situation, a nice home, an education—”

Will interrupted. He had risen and stood tensely, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“How many of my kind don’t have a ‘nice home’? You think I should be happy because I live here, but I’ll tell you I’m not, I’m ashamed that I do!”

Patrick felt a rise of pity. Thin and tall now, the passionate youth took on again, for an instant, the guise of the terrified and beaten child, tied to a tree. He spoke quietly.

“Must you think so hard about these things, Will? You’ve so many years ahead to watch the world getting better, to help it if you will. Right now’s the time to enjoy yourself, to—”

“It’s all right for you to talk. Oh, yes! Pass-for-white! A couple of shades lighter and you’d have it made! What chance is there for anybody like me under this system? Enjoy myself!”

“That’s foolish talk, exaggerated—”

“That’s why you used to hang around Francis Luther, until he got rid of you the minute you wouldn’t do what he wanted.”

“That’s unjust, Will. How can you know what’s inside my head? Or anybody’s? I don’t judge people by their color, I’ll tell you that, though. This morning I was with Kate Tarbox—”

“A fool of a woman! Can’t have children of her own—”

“That’s a cruel thing to say.”

“—and doesn’t want anyone else to have them. ‘Overpopulation,’ she says. Yes, of course, overpopulation of
our
kind! Genocide and nothing but!”

Patrick was suddenly exhausted. Rational argument had always been stimulating for him, a pleasurable challenge, but this blind ‘thinking with the blood’ had no direction and no end. It was a tiring, infuriating muddle. He got up.

“I’ve had enough for now, Will. I’m going inside.”

He went down the hall. Will’s bedroom door was open, revealing not only the usual jumble of sneakers, books and sundries, but also a large blowup of Che Guevara over the bed. Something new.

He went to his own room. Désirée was posing in front of the mirror. Her lemon-colored dress smoothed her body like a stocking or a glove. She knew how to move as models do, lithely and lightly.

“Pretty, Patrick?”

“Pretty,” he said, for once not caring very much.

“Doris gave it to me. It’s brand new but it didn’t fit her. You have to go to New York to get clothes like this. If,” she said wistfully, “you can afford them.”

“Lovely,” he assured her. He had no patience.

Clarence was reading the paper in the front room. He put it down when Patrick came in.

“Were you having an argument with Will? I was passing the shed and couldn’t help hearing.”

“He’s steamed up over revolution and class warfare. It worries the hell out of me. Where will it lead?”

“I’m an old man and you’re a young one, Patrick, but he’s only a boy and his language isn’t yours or mine. It’s language, that’s all it is.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Did I hear him say something about Francis Luther?”

“You did.”

Clarence was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “I know how wounded you feel. Life hasn’t toughened you up and maybe it never will. Remember, I told you long ago not to put too much trust in Luther, didn’t I? Later, I got to know him a bit and changed my mind, but still later I found out I’d been right the first time. It’s in the blood. The call of the blood—and the money—it’s all the same. In a crisis, at a crossroads, a man goes with his interests and his own. As far as that’s concerned, at least, Will may be right.”

Désirée, still wearing the yellow dress, had come into the room.

“You talking about Will? Is he giving you trouble again?”

Patrick didn’t want to involve her in the discussion. She was always too ready to turn against Will.

“Nothing much,” he said. “Just a mood.”

He didn’t fool her. “I could take a strap to that boy! Poor Patrick, you wanted a son. Two healthy girls weren’t enough, were they?”

Clarence intervened. “No I-told-you-so’s, Désirée.”

“I don’t mean it that way, Pop. Patrick knows I don’t. But it’s been such a hard job with Will from the very beginning.”

“He has his placid moments,” Patrick argued.

“Yes. Like a hornet resting between flights.”

“He’d had such hardship. I thought just loving him would rebuild him.”

“Well, maybe it will,” Clarence said cheerfully. “It’s the
idealism of youth, carried too far, maybe, but still, you have to remember the world would never advance without it. When the rough edges are sandpapered, what’s left will be a building block, something solid in the structure we call civilization.” He moved his old hands as he spoke, as if piling stones, setting them precisely, and pleased with his own metaphor.

But Désirée was disturbed by Patrick’s mood. “Go on out in the hammock and read till I fix you some lunch. You never have any time to do nothing in,” she complained kindly.

“I think I’ll do that.”

In the string hammock, under mottled, moving shade, he lay back with his book unopened. “Building the blocks of civilization,” the old man had said. Well, perhaps. Or tearing them down? Destruction wearing the guise of justice? There was an awful lot of that in the world these days. And he lay there, frowning and troubled, wishing he could sleep.

On the front lawn the girls were still holding animated conversation. “He can’t even dance!” he heard one say, and smiled to himself. Little women! He was reminded suddenly of Francis, whom he had glimpsed a week or two ago in town with his own little daughter, a soft little thing in a fancy pink dress. Francis, like himself, had so wanted a son, a friend of his blood, a healthy son. Instead, he’d got a sick daughter. The injustices of life, the cool indifference, the “luck of the draw”!

Then he was angry at himself for still thinking about Francis. It shouldn’t matter to him! “A man goes with his interests and his own,” the old man had said a few moments ago. Was that just nature, then, just bloody tooth-and-claw, when you came down to it?

A young man with his leg shot away in a festering jungle, a baby animal, still half alive, skinned to make a coat for a fine lady, a mother raped by special interrogators in a great stone city: just nature, bloody tooth-and-claw? Every man for himself and the devil with the rest? His head ached.

He woke with a smooth hand on his forehead.

“You needed that sleep,” Désirée said. “Come inside, I’ve made cold cucumber soup.”

She had changed from Doris’s dress into a blouse and skirt. Her long hair was pinned up in hot-weather style and she smelled of flowers. He felt a swelling of desire, now in the middle of the afternoon! Oh, if he had any sense he’d take his own advice, that which he had given to Will, to enjoy his youth, or what was left of it, and let the world, including Francis Luther, take its time getting better. And swinging himself out of the hammock, he followed Désirée into the house.

From the high walls of Government House the portraits still looked down. Princes, queens, generals, and judges in the velvets and ermines of authority regarded the push and jostle of the crowd as serenely as though the world had not been turned inside out. Music buzzed and voices shrilled in Francis’ ears. All day he had been pounded by the enthusiastic noises of oration, churchbells, and gun salutes from the warships in the harbor. The frenzy was still echoing in his head.