Eden Burning (48 page)

“Is that the way it is?”

“That’s the way it is.”

Her eyes met his. Hers were austere and steady in their gaze. And he knew that she meant what she said.

“Let me think,” he said. “Oh, let me think.”

Her face closed. “All right. Just don’t think too long.”

She went back inside, and he walked down the hill toward that silver river to sit on a rock with his chin in his hands. On a bush close by a yellowbird was gathering twigs for a nest. So still he sat that the bird was unconcerned with his presence. Just so had he sat one day not long ago with Megan, showing her how a bird goes about the making of a nest. It had even picked up a piece of cotton torn from somebody’s shirt. He had showed her that. And he had thought: Just something, some little thing missing in the making of her,
some juice in the brain, some electrical connection, what? And she would have been whole and who knew how intelligent, how creative. Oh, God, he begged now, speaking aloud, and the yellowbird fled.

The air was filled with the fragrance of wild ginger, and he knew the white flower could not be too far away. One of his colts went galloping through pangola grass behind the rail fence that he had himself helped hew and set in place. Well, if he were to leave, he’d be leaving things in very different shape from what he had found when he came. The drenching sweetness of the ginger swept over him. Oh, my God, the place bewitched you! And he thought of his mother: could she, too, have felt this wrench when she left? Was that why she had never wanted to come back, and not, as some people thought, that she hated it? Human behavior! How can you hope to understand it, when you can’t even understand yourself?

And he sat there for a long time until he heard Megan’s voice from somewhere above. No doubt she would be looking for him, his shadow, his Megan, his poor simple girl.

Slowly, stiffly, he rose and went up the hill. In the shelter of the old library he picked up the telephone.

“Mr. Aleppo,” he said. The word stuck in his throat. “Mr. Aleppo. I’ve considered the offer and I’ve decided to accept. You can draw up the papers for me to show my lawyer.”

Aleppo said something about having to go back to the States, something about time, a few weeks or a month or so.

“Take your time. Whenever you’re ready.”

“You’re doing the right thing, Mr. Luther. Come back in a couple of years and you won’t recognize your place.”

“I’m sure I won’t.”

“You’re a gentleman, Mr. Luther. I’ve met all kinds and I know a gentleman when I see one.”

When he had hung up the receiver he went outside and
walked around the house, with no purpose except the walk itself, the need to move. A voice sang from the cook’s radio in the kitchen wing.

He went around to the front of the house. Somewhere inside Marjorie was waiting, determined and frightened, too, he knew. Well, he would just go in and make his peace. A man had to be strong enough to lose gracefully. He’d made a start here and he could make another.

Not far from the front door grew a great acoma, very old. His mother had said, “My grandfather used to touch a tree as though it spoke to him.” This same tree, it might have been, as he came in at this same door. And before he went up the steps into the house Francis reached over to lay his hand on the ancient bark, and spoke to it softly, without words.

In a shady grove near a beach another crowd had gathered, the second one in a day that was to provide three of the same in various parts of the island. Blue paper streamers, enblazoned in gold with the words
Vote for Courzon,
dangled from the trees and festooned the skirts of the long sawbuck tables on which the food was laid out. Patrick, standing in line for calalu stew and soursop custard, reflected that he hadn’t had such food since Agnes had cooked it, for Désirée had no taste for what she called peasant food. Then he wondered what Agnes would say if she could see this day. Next he thought about the connection between those kids dancing over there to
a frantic rhythm band and the issues which were tearing their country apart, issues about which, according to theory, they were expected to think carefully before casting their votes. Well, it was a gradual thing, the evolution of a democratic government! It had taken, after all, quite a few centuries in England between Magna Charta and one man, one vote.

As for himself, after the first nervous, hesitant week or two, things had begun to pick up, “things” being his own sense of confidence. He was even becoming inured to the long days, the late nights, the voice gone hoarse, the food to be stuffed down his throat, and the hands to be shaken. All in all, he was doing better with this campaign than he would have expected a normally reserved, almost a reclusive, man to do.

Men were rushing about now, trying to quiet the crowd. Someone bellowed, pleaded, and commanded over the microphone. It was clouding up and they’d want to get the speech finished before the rain came. Patrick glanced over the assemblage. There was the usual cluster of journalists, some, now that this part of the world had drawn the rest of the world’s attention to itself, having come even from European countries. More white faces fringed the crowd: a few curious tourists, the planter Fawcett and the Whittaker nephew who was known to be “liberal,” the youngest Da Cunha son with friends, and of course, Kate and her staff, who followed all the campaign speeches, Nicholas’s as well as Patrick’s. All of these stood forth from the dark-faced mass.

When the noise ceased the hush was absolute. They were waiting for what Patrick had to say. And as always, he gave himself a mental reminder to speak in strong, clear language. He might not be able to bewitch them with passionate oratory nor impress them with his manner and dress, but he could surely speak to them in language they would understand about things they would understand. He reminded himself also: never underestimate the intelligence of the “common” man.

His points were simple and consistent. He had said before, and would say again, that they were a farming people, that they would remain a farming people, and that such industries as they must establish would stem from agriculture.

“We are told about world markets and such things as balance of payments, all fancy expressions to describe and explain why we are poor, why some of us go to the cold north to pick apples in another country, why shoes cost so much, as do soap and even sugar, which although we raise it here ourselves, so many of us can’t afford to buy.

“Yes, you’ve heard all this. Our present leaders asked for your vote because they promised to do something about these things. Now, we all know they can’t be changed overnight; the structure of years can’t be overhauled in hours. But you do have to make a beginning! Here we are, approaching the third year of this administration, and I see not one small sign, none at all, that anybody cares to alleviate any of our pains. Have you?”

A roar went up: “No! No!”

“What I do see is a display of fantastic luxury in high places. I see men in red uniforms—expensive ones, by the way, as are their fancy barracks and their new cars. Yes, men in uniform with large fists in white gloves and”—he paused—“men without uniform, who stalk and spy among you, extorting taxes, often known as contributions. Contributions, mind you, while they rob and beat, terrifying you in your homes at night, silencing your tongues.”

And while he spoke, other recollections, sharp as hooks, attacked him: the farmer who, having written an open letter protesting taxes, was found dead in his field when he failed to come in for lunch; the son of one of Clarence’s old union friends who’d come home, after three days’ detention on some vague charge, with an empty socket instead of an eye; his own Will, who’d returned one night with torn clothing and a knife slash. “A fight over a girl,” he’d said only, but he hadn’t left the house for a week.

“Even under colonial rule we never knew terror like this. People never disappeared. People weren’t afraid to talk out loud in public places.”

The silence was so deep that he thought he could hear them all breathing, or hear a long collective shiver and sigh. Behind him on the platform he did hear his bodyguards shifting in their seats. They were wary and nervous.

“You lay it on pretty thick, Boss,” one had told him only yesterday. “You’re not afraid?”

“The foreign correspondents are my safeguard. If anything should happen to me,” he’d answered, “wouldn’t it prove that everything I’ve been saying is correct?” He almost believed that himself.

Plowing back into the substance of the speech, making promises, but not too many, promising only to give his honest effort and, above all, to remove the terror, he rose at last into a peroration and stood to acknowledge the applause.

The dark peasants gathered their children and departed. I must have had great-grandparents who looked like them, he thought, or maybe great-greats. Who knew? For a moment, half unconsciously, he stretched out his hand to look at it, then remembering where he was, put it quickly into his pocket…. Two young blond photographers from some news service were taking pictures of Patrick and the crowd, while he, looking back at them, felt again, as so often, that old confusion—
I am of them, too
—a confusion that would never leave him, he knew well.

When, after the last applause, he turned to step down from the platform, the rain came. The sky opened. The soaking rain pounded a furious drumbeat on the earth, so that the foreign newsmen, astonished at its vehemence, went scuttling to their cars.

Patrick’s car was a station wagon seating nine, among them Kate and her two young cousins who worked on the
Trumpet.
Franklin Parrish sat in the rear with Patrick, who could sometimes stretch out a little there to rest.

“The rain will be over by the time we get to the next place,” Franklin said. “This was a very responsive crowd, I thought. Not one heckler in the lot. You know, Boss”—although Patrick disliked the appellation
Boss
and had told Franklin so more than once, it still slipped out occasionally in pure affection—“you know, Boss, I’m beginning to think we might make it after all.”

“We’ll see,” was all Patrick said.

The other side had the money and the power. Best not to think farther ahead than each day’s uphill climb. Still, he was grateful for Franklin’s confidence. The young man’s intelligence and enthusiasm nourished and sustained him. If he won, he was resolved to put Franklin into a position of importance and trust. Not that the young man needed Patrick’s sponsorship, for he was obviously destined to rise in the party ranks through his own abilities, his firmness, his tact, and his welcome smile. He was a fine speaker with a natural talent, unlike Patrick, who had taught himself through his persevering observation of Nicholas Mebane. Franklin was clever enough, too, to utilize a few politician’s tricks.

“Look at me,” he’d say. “I am one of you.” Referring, of course, to his color, which was as dark as any worker’s.

Patrick smiled inwardly. It was pretty clear that Parrish was having serious thoughts about Laurine and that she, now almost twenty years old, was having thoughts of her own. Patrick and Désirée had even talked about it. Désirée had raised objections: “He’s too black,” she’d said. And Patrick had put her arm next to his own, making an elaborate play of doing so. “Too dark,” he’d said, in such a mock-tragic tone that she had begun to laugh at herself. “Thank goodness for your sense of humor,” he’d told her.

The car, last in a short procession, turned inland and uphill. Alongside the road Patrick observed a farmer, helped by his neighbors, building a house. They were wattling and thatching. There would be food and drink for them all when the job was done, he knew. And he laid his head back on the
seat, closing his eyes, thinking of the kindly comfort there was in such a continuation of old ways during this time of speeding change.

He’d seen more of country life during these weeks of his campaign than he’d seen in a long while, ever since he’d begun to live in the town. He’d gone looking for votes in the sugar factories, where, although the windmills were gone, the workers still skimmed the boiling foam and tested the liquid thread between the forefinger and thumb to judge when to strike. He’d eaten chicken and yams and drunk mint tea with prosperous farmers in their comfortable homes. Oh, yes, there were many such farms on which the descendants of slaves worked their own fields, played with their children, and married off their daughters to the sound of music! He’d talked to teachers while children played cricket on the village green, exactly as he had once done. He’d talked to planters at the Agricultural Show; most of them, he knew, would be on the other side, with Nicholas, for “law and order;” nevertheless he’d tried to show them he was for better law and order…. Certainly it never hurt to try. And he remembered now, apropos of nothing, that he’d seen Osborne there, standing before a pen, guarding a handsome cream-colored bull. There to collect the prize for Francis, probably! A queer pain shot through him, making a shudder and a chill.

He opened his eyes.

“You dozed some?” Franklin asked. “You needed it. Did I tell you that young Da Cunha sent us a check?”

“The older brother’s for Mebane, I take it? Like the father?”

“The father, yes, of course. The brother, though, doesn’t care one way or the other. Whatever’s better for business is what he’ll be for.”

The road was dry and dusty, for on this side of the Morne it had not rained. They drove through a string of villages, where, the caravan having been expected, people had come out to stare, more often now to wave and cheer. It occurred to Patrick suddenly that he might really, after all, win! The
prospect thrilled him and scared him, too: what had he let himself in for? He pushed the thought away.

“You’ve made an impact,” Franklin said positively. “More than we’ve realized, I think.”

“We’ve still a long way to go.”

“True. But if we lose, we’ll try again. We’ll have to, that’s all.”