Eden Burning (49 page)

Franklin was actually enjoying himself, which was surprising. One wouldn’t expect a bookish fellow like him to like this business. The strategy of government was one thing, but the hullabaloo of an election was quite another.

“If we lose,” Patrick said, “you’ll carry on. You and your generation.”

Franklin was astonished. “Why, you’re a young man! What are you talking about?”

Kate, sitting in front, had overheard. “You’re only forty-one, Patrick! How can you talk like that?”

They were right, of course. Still it was good to see many young people ready to go forward, a man like Franklin’s cousin, for example, that thin fellow with the odd green eyes, home on vacation from the University of the West Indies, so reasonable, intelligent, liberal, never fanatical. And he thought of Will, then blocked out the thought.

“I wish,” Kate said, “I had the courage to come out flatfooted for you. This business of presenting both sides equally as ‘news’ just sickens me.”

“You’re doing a good job this way,” Franklin told her. “At least, you’re printing Patrick’s message so people can judge for themselves. The other way, if you took sides, they’d just close up your paper. You know that.”

“You’re a great help, all of you,” Patrick said softly.

The road mounted through cane fields toward more hills; ahead, you could see the dance and dazzle of the heat; on the platform the sun would burn; he would be glad to get this over with for today.

“Good God,” Franklin cried, as they approached the meeting
place, “there must be two thousand here! It’s the largest yet!”

From miles about they must have collected, to stand now sweating and fanning themselves with their straw hats, drinking beer and nursing their babies, while they waited for the afternoon’s event.

Patrick got out of the car and mounted the platform. He saw, with his new “political” eye, that there were many young in the audience, so he began by addressing them.

“The world is harder for the young today. There are more of you, and you have higher aspirations, which you should have. I think I understand the young because I’m a teacher. So you’ll forgive me if I’m long-winded, like a teacher.” He paused for the laughter, aware that it was a good thing to begin a speech with a little joke, preferably at one’s own expense.

“A great responsibility rests upon the educational establishment … not to raise everyone to the top of the heap, which is a quite obvious impossibility, in spite of the worldwide propaganda to the contrary, because men are not equal in their capabilities … nor to lower everyone to the same bottom … to want that is only futile envy and revenge … no, to give every person the chance to climb up if it should be in him to do so…. That and that alone is the voice of fairness, decency and common sense…. I ask you to listen…. I favor a mixed economy, government to do those things that governments do best and free enterprise to do the rest.”

Patrick’s eyes moved over the crowd, which was listening, with interest. At the far edge of the field, where trucks and Hondas were parked, he thought he saw a flurry of arriving cars, latecomers. The heat was dizzying and he hastened on toward a close.

“I made a little joke before about talking too much. I’ve really tried not to. I hope you’ll go home and give thought to what I’ve said, then come out and vote against this regime
which will, if allowed to continue, drive you first to despair, and in the end, I’m afraid, to communism.”

“Dirty communist yourself!” a man cried. Cries came from all over the field. “Smash the son of a bitch! Yeah, dirty communist himself!”

Cries came as a line of men shoved forward from the rear of the field.

“Shut up! Shame! Throw them out!”

Somebody hurled the first stone. A woman screamed as a man fell with the blow. Then, with the suddenness of an earthquake or explosion or any cataclysm that gives no warning, the field erupted into chaos.

From all sides and as if from the sky itself came a bombardment of stones. Chairs and tables went hurtling. From somewhere came the stench of rotten eggs: precious eggs! Men wrestled, women wailed in turn and fell on one another, trying to flee. In the confusion, it was impossible to tell who was assaulting whom. Some seemed to be joining up with the invading ruffians. A hail of paper bags descended on the crowd to burst and spatter their incredible contents of excrement and garbage. Police, appearing out of nowhere, melted into the crowd, some attempting to attack, some trying to restore order, and some observing, doing nothing.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Patrick heard his own frenzied, futile screaming. His throat strained with his screams, even after he had been struck with some foul liquid that soaked his shirt and knocked him, for a moment, to the ground. It was unbelievable, first this attentive meeting and an instant later this vicious brawl!

Somebody helped him up. Out of the savage mob men mustered in a ring, three deep, around him. The outer ring, as they pushed him through the uproar toward his car, sustained a bloody battering. Men armed with clubs and nail-studded boards went flailing. Patrick saw Franklin dodge a blow. Stumbling and shoving, they edged toward the car.

We won’t make it, Patrick thought. Strange way to meet
your end, in an open field on a blazing summer day, at the hands of Mebane’s thugs.

And suddenly the crowd fell back. A dozen or so young men, coming from behind the row of cars which Patrick and his men were trying to reach, stepped forward and threw.

“Tear gas!” Franklin cried. “Run, run!”

Over their heads and behind them the acrid cloud sprayed. The engine was already racing in Patrick’s car; it was in motion before the doors had even been closed, and they were out of the field, onto the road, with tires skidding in a foam of dust when a last stone smashed through the windshield.

“The tear gas?” Patrick gasped. His eyes stung. “Whose?”

“Our own people. We were prepared for something like this. We knew it was bound to come eventually,” Franklin said.

“My God, I hope there weren’t too many hurt!”

“Bastards! Are you all right, Patrick?”

“Yes. A stone got me in the shoulder. And I stink. Other than that, I’m all right.”

   Désirée was furious, scolding and weeping as she brought clean clothes for Patrick. “You idiot, you could have been killed!”

They were on Clarence’s porch. Crippled with arthritis, he had taken to the old custom of sleeping out of doors in a hammock.

“I hear it’s a triumph wherever you go,” he said now. “Franklin and his boys tell me. Next time I’m coming along for the thrill, if I have to get someone to carry me.”

“Triumph!” cried Désirée. “Thrill! Is that what you call this?”

Clarence ignored his daughter. “I’ve news for you. This afternoon, while you were out there, the trade union congress voted unanimously to support you.”

“Well, I shouldn’t think they’d want Mebane,” Patrick said, pleased.

“No, but you might think they’d want the left wing, mightn’t you? And they don’t. They don’t want the radicals. They want you.”

“Everybody wants you. They’ll destroy you with their wanting,” Désirée mourned. Then anger seized her again. “You’re nothing but big, overgrown boys, the two of you, sitting here boasting over this—this horror! You’re naïve, that’s what you are, naïve.”

The adjective amused Patrick, since it was one he had always privately applied to her.

“I wish you could see yourselves,” she went on. “Neither one of you has faced the truth of what life is!”

“Well, well,” Clarence said. “Suppose you tell us, then.”

“I’ll tell you what it isn’t! It’s not knocking your brains out, eating your heart out, sacrificing your health and safety for other people, when they don’t give the least damn about you! Do you actually think all these people here in this dinky place really care who’s elected?”

“Yes, I do think so,” Patrick said.

“Well, you don’t know what you’re talking about! All they want is food to feed their faces with and enough rum, and bed on Saturday night—”

Patrick smiled at her modest words.

“—and you think they’ll ever thank you for giving them the means to get what they want?”

“I’m not looking for thanks,” Patrick said.

“The more fool you, then! Go! Go! Get yourself killed!”

He sighed. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever make you see, Désirée. And don’t be melodramatic. I’m not going to get myself killed.”

“Oh, if I’d married a preacher I would not have had to put up with this holiness! You’re so damned holy, Patrick!” She amended the judgment. “I don’t mean you’re a hypocrite. No, you really mean it all; you care. But I’m not like you. I want things first for ourselves—”

“I’ve tried to give them to you, I’ve done the best I
could,” he said stiffly now, aware at the same time that his words were perhaps self-pitying and sulky.

“Oh, I know. But I don’t want only
things,
Patrick. Not so much anymore. It’s peace I’m talking about now. I just want peace.”

“I’m trying to give you that, too. Don’t you understand how I’m trying to give it to us all?”

She sighed. “You’ve had no supper. Shall I fix a tray here on the porch? I’ve fresh broiled yellowtail with lime juice.”

He was too utterly done in to be hungry. Nevertheless, he stood up. Food had always been her remedy, her way of expressing her concern and giving love.

“I’m ready. We’ll go inside,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She caught his hand, kissing the palm, then turning it over and kissing the back. She cradled his head, comforting and protesting.

“Oh, dear God, what have they done to you! The animals! What have they done! But animals don’t do things like that! Still, I’m so proud of you, Patrick, no matter what I said. I’m angry at you and proud of you and I’m so afraid. Oh, my dear, my dearest, I’m so afraid!”

“Did you know Rob Fawcett’s supporting your good old friend Patrick for election?” Marjorie asked as they arrived at the Fawcetts’ anniversary party.

“No, I didn’t, and I wish you wouldn’t be sarcastic,” Francis said.

“Erstwhile friend, then. Sorry.”

Not wanting to talk about Patrick, he was, at the same time, curious. “Fawcett never mentioned it to me.”

“He wouldn’t. He’s a gentleman. He knows how we feel.”

Francis liked the Fawcetts. They had a depth often lacking in this ingrown, tight community where relationships could yet be so superficial; their house held music and vitality and good talk. Tonight Whim Longhouse, illuminated like an ocean liner, floated in the darkness; out of its windows streamed a glitter of celebratory light.

Francis followed his wife as, in crisp lime-green taffeta, she rustled up the steps. Her spirits were high, higher than they had been since the day of Megan’s birth and this, of course, was because they were at last “going home.” Her increasing animation silenced him, although he knew he had made the right, the inevitable decision. He simply didn’t want to talk about it.

Everyone was already outside on the rear lawns. The Luthers were late; they usually were, because Francis would never leave home until Megan was asleep.

“You go on out. I’ll phone home first,” he said.

“But we’ve just left home!”

“Forty minutes ago. I want to make sure of things. It’s the first time we’ve left her with this new maid.”

The rule was that whenever the parents were away, a maid must sit in the room next to Megan’s until they returned. The idea was Francis’. He supposed it was neurotic to be so apprehensive, but that fire was always with him; he never came up the driveway at Eleuthera without seeing the ruin all over again and feeling terror in the pit of his stomach.

When he had made the call he walked past the dining room, where the dinner would be served later in the evening, and through the great drawing room. Here was a comfortable clutter of overstuffed Belter furniture, all curved and curlicued. “So tacky!” Marjorie always said. The walls were hung with ancestors in broad, heavy frames. He wondered whether they were fake or real and decided, knowing the
Fawcetts’ candor, that they were very probably real. So even these nice people had a need to worship their ancestors! Well, it was all right as long as you didn’t get to thinking you were better than people without ancestors—as if we didn’t all have them, even though they hadn’t left their portraits behind!

He was oversensitive to everything tonight, he knew, without knowing why. It was just one of those times when, because of glands or hormones or something or other, his worries tormented him. He felt as if he were in limbo, still here on St. Felice, but not really here anymore, because his mind had already lurched on ahead to the new place, to the new start. It was almost like assuming another identity.

Yet at the heart of it all was Megan. Going on six, past kindergarten age, with each passing month she made plain the difference between what she was and what she ought normally to be. Her future was becoming more cruelly certain. And silently Francis groaned, while he went outdoors toward the clatter of music and voices.

Little round tables for hors d’oeuvres had been set up at the edge of the terrace, under a triple row of maria trees so tailored that their intertwining branches formed a flat and solid roof of leafage. Candle flames wavered in hurricane lamps, each set in a ring of red hibiscus blossoms. The bar stood under a flaring tulip tree, against a background of marble-striped croton leaves. For a moment Francis stood looking over a scene now grown familiar, the pastel luster of the well-dressed crowd, the black waiters, soft-footed and white-gloved, and the wealth of flowers. Already, he saw, the men and women had separated. He wondered what the women could find to talk about, since they saw so much of each other at the club most days. The men, who did not see each other that often, had politics to talk about, of course. Now, spotting his host, he went down the steps.

“Congratulations on twenty good years,” Francis said, shaking hands. “I’d like to be around to celebrate your fiftieth.”

“If we make it, God willing,” Fawcett replied. “It’s a pity you won’t be with us here if we do. You’ll be missed,” he added.