Swimming in the Volcano (62 page)

“Ease it,” he barked, finding fault with the way the boy had closed the car door. “Ease it, mahn. Dese dyamn bwoys.”

They parked down at the anchorage several hundred yards past the Beach Bar, next to an outfitter's shed and the kiosk for charters and rentals, and went out on the dinghy dock to hail Captain Pat and the woman but only five sailboats lazed on slack lines out in the postcard of Howard Bay—four sloops and a two-masted schooner. They asked around and learned the ketch had pulled anchor shortly after sunrise and motored out the channel. Terror, guilt, or slaves to a schedule? Mitchell wondered, more hurt and disappointed by discourtesy than this rather effective denial of confirmation from eyewitnesses. Case closed, he thought, but the inspector didn't seem to regard this as a
setback. He intended to carry on, swing by the shanty where Davidius made a crude home for himself, out on Pilo Bight.

“You don't need me anymore, do you?” The thought of confronting so depraved a personality as Davidius produced in Mitchell a small cautionary surge of adrenaline.

No, they didn't need him anymore, he'd be kept informed. Off went the police, happy to be involved. At the Beach Bar, a new relief bartender explained he was in the dark about white people on a sailboat, but Winston would be back for the evening shift. He walked the long drive up the steepening land to Rosehill, feeling the need for a nap. The gardener was out on the grounds chopping something up, said he'd go down directly to measure for new glass. Mitchell tracked down Tillman catching up on paperwork in his cluttered, airless office behind the registration desk. He was hunched over his desk, bare-chested, wearing a bathing suit and reading glasses, a pot of tea at his elbow. An overhead fan stirred the atmosphere like oatmeal. He knew next to nothing about last night, except that ransack and plunder appeared to be a theme. One of his own guests had been robbed at gunpoint, somebody came at him out of the bushes as he walked down the drive to the bar. Two night watchmen had been added to the payroll this morning to supplement the worthless one who had been thrown into the deal with the original purchase. As for Mitchell's situation, Tillman said he wasn't one to lecture but what was he thinking of, giving the key to perfect strangers and then bugging out?

According to Winston, the boat people returned to the bar sometime shortly after midnight, arguing loudly and insensibly among themselves. The captain had a shiner half closing one of his eyes. He bellowed for a drink, bellowed for Mitchell, cursed black demons, cursed womankind. Winston calmed him down, got the key back, the captain implied there'd been trouble up at the house but he wasn't in what you'd want to call a coherent state of mind. Heading back out to the anchorage in their Zodiac, he tottered overboard just ten feet out from shore, pulled himself back in and continued on. Later, when Tillman had finished talking with the police about the assault on his guest, he came down the hill to help the staff close and got the story from Winston, decided to drive over to Mitchell's place for a look, saw what had happened, the breakage popular with juveniles and psychotics. Didn't look like a robbery as much as a rampage. It seemed like a good idea to have the gardener's boy sit by until Mitchell returned, get everything sorted out in the morning.

“They hauled their fucking anchor and cut out,” said Mitchell.

“Ah, well that explains it. Dragged out to sea on a guilty conscience.”

“Does it? Maybe they thought that was the best way to protect themselves from more trouble. Maybe they thought they were vulnerable, maybe they thought let's get the hell out of here.”

“Maybe they thought, Hoist sails, party ho!” Tillman paused, tapping his ballpoint pen on the desk. “Vulnerable to what, exactly?”

“That son of a bitch Davidius.” Mitchell explained the scenario he believed had occurred, but Tillman was not as persuaded as he would have liked. Davidius offended with style, his transgressions were mas-turbatory, but who knows, conceded Tillman, maybe another screw came loose in the guy.

Tillman invited Mitchell to stay for lunch, grouper sandwiches, fried plantain, tall cold glasses of lime rickey, which they ate on the front veranda, gazing like crows down on the majesty of Howard Bay and its ocher dollops of reef. Tillman was smitten with his new cook, Vera, she was big, in resolve as much as weight, wore a blue watch cap over her knotty hair and smoked bush cigars and defied anyone, dead or alive, to cross her path.

“The dead have too much power here.”

“They just don't die as fully as they do up north.”

“Which reminds me, have you heard from Isaac?”

“I imagine he'll have quite a headache by the time we track him down.”

He would do anything for this Vera, she was a master of procurement, had wooed the Augustine fishermen and ordered a cousin to lead a chubby pair of beef cattle up the hill, where yesterday he had slaughtered and butchered them for a fair price, and here was an island miracle for you, the meat was not so rangy it couldn't be grilled. So he felt good, Tillman declared, there was every reason for optimism, things were going well, he could finally say, and let's see last night's crime spree as an aberration, not what's becoming fashionable, though God knows the gods are hoarse from clamoring for my downfall. It would be better if Davidius weren't implicated, so he wouldn't have to crack down on the minority of riffraff that had found a Friday night home at the Beach Bar, but you do, he said cheerily, what you have to do, and playing master was part of it, as long as you recognized when to stop.

The boy came by—Calvin was his name, Mitchell had been too distracted to ask before at the house, a bad sign, namelessness being
next to soullessness. He reported that Abel had been down the road and back, for measurements, but glass won't reach till Monday day. Meaning Mitchell would have to board up the hole until then. Calvin shambled off, swinging his machete at gnats.

“I forgot to mention, I owe him a rifle. They took his away from him.”

“Who did?”

“The police. They're confiscating firearms.”

“That's the first I've heard of it. Why, do you know?”

“I don't, I couldn't even guess. Every farmer keeps a little twenty-two or shotgun to hunt monkeys and manicou. They're the only ones with guns. They'll be the ones affected. No more pigeon fricassee for the peasants.”

“Someone in the government's paranoid.”

“Everyone
in the government's paranoid. The coalition can't survive another six months, no way. Banks will have to call a new election.”

“There's an original idea. Then what?”

“And then there'll be a new coalition, I guess.”

“Here an oink, there an oink. They should just hold a fucking Cold War raffle.”

“That's flattery. No one's beating down the door to get in.”

“You're going to hurt people's feelings, talking that way. What about Edison Banks? Doesn't he know a place like this can't exist except in the back pocket of a superpower?”

“No, that's wrong. I believe in him. He's the one I think who has the will and the vision. We'll see.”

“Crippled imaginations galore. Dark inspirations. It's what we do now instead of war. Good night, Vietnam.”

“Just what are you predicting?”

“Never a dull moment in this world.”

“Listen to us. We sound like whitemen in control. Smug and self-amusing.”

“We can't help it. We're good at it—the sound, I mean. The confident tonalities, the morally superior inflections. We have a noble tradition to mimic. At least we know better than to take ourselves seriously.”

“I'm not sure about that. What kind of flowering tree is that you've planted over there?”

“Scarlet datura from Peru. It seems to like it here. As long as you've changed the subject, I'm not your mother but where were you
last night, and what do you suggest we do to keep our womenfolk happy, now that they've tasted of the sins of Cotton Island? Can we compete with aging rock stars? Must we?”

“And that one over there?”

“Blood-red trumpet. Mexican. It climbs. What about Adrian and Johnnie? If you want to talk about those who take themselves seriously, what about Josephine?”

“You know about her?
Already?
Jesus.”

“We're a brotherhood of cocksmen, here at Rosehill. Winston noticed you left the bar with her last night. She's strictly a no-touch item, all work, no play. She's obsessed with being the island version of Coco Chanel, if I'm thinking of the right person. Are you now an investor?”

“I'm now an admirer, that's all.”

It was easier to debate the lesser crises, break-ins and politics, than to think about the women. They demanded a deeper understanding, self-knowledge and a high level of emotional acuity, all of which he felt were irregular qualities. The adjustment produced a dullness of mind, incipient depression.

“Do you love Adrian?”

Tillman grinned: the question was queer. “Am I supposed to?” Hotel guests drifted by, complaints replaced with dreamy, sun-drunk smiles, coming and going to the beach.

“I'm supposed to love Johnnie. That's what I've been made to feel.”

“Extortion.”

“No, heartwashing. That should be a word. And a statutory offense.”

“Wilson, I have to say, you look and act like a man in love.”

“Maybe I am. But I shouldn't have to feel obligated, that it's do or die for her if I'm not. She's gotten herself into some kind of trouble, needs me, and can't afford to leave love to chance. Love should be left to chance.”

“Trouble?”

“Drugs, I think. She probably got busted and skipped town.”

“The islands are overrun with America's drug fugitives.”

“There's also the matter of a husband somewhere, whom she doesn't seem to want anymore. She hasn't elaborated. In fact, she hasn't said a thing. I suspect he sees things differently. I can't trust this girl.”

“You can only love her?”

It ruled him in a way that begged understanding. “What type of
tree is that?” he said, pointing. They agreed an excursion up one of the coasts was in order, contingent upon Mitchell's ability to borrow a Rover from the ministry's motor pool, since Tillman's wagon and his own Rover couldn't be relied upon for the distance. They left it at that.

A trail of sucked-out halves of orange guided him home. He was in a mood, knew he would spend the day inactive and inert. The sun stung like an astringent on the skin of his face, the beer he drank after lunch made him drowsy. In the yard, there was Mr. Quiddley, termite erectus, triumphant in denuding the giant of its limbs, stacking cords of branches in his double pits. Mitchell, implacable, ignored him, unwilling to make peace.

Inside the cottage, he felt the wantonness of the violation set upon him, heard its war cry, which only unlocked the door of his depression and instead of cleaning up the place first thing, he lay down to a nap in the sweatbox of his shuttered room, waking hours later in the same false night he had fallen into, cloudy-eyed and clueless, thinking he had missed something but what could it be. Johnnie was there, tangible in his napheaded lust but he failed to make the connection and rolled over in the agony of his sweat, the bedsheet tangled between his legs like a coolie's dhoti, to fall reaching toward erotic chimeras, burying his face in the feverish images of desire that were outside of him but relenting, welcoming him back to the release of sleep. He awoke a second time in Saturday's true nightfall, breathing a haze of smoky incense, mosquitoes stuck to his cheeks and forearms, realizing he had missed the plane to Cotton but there was nothing he could do about it now. He showered and dressed, then thumbtacked his bath towel over the shattered glass in the kitchen door. Outside, fragrant curls of smoke rose like wraiths from within Mr. Quiddley's coal pit number one, which resembled a burial mound, its dead smoldering as if hell had found them.

Down at the beach, there was no salvation in Winston's account, only a single answer that Mitchell dreaded hearing. The sailor and his woman had made no mention of housebreak, they were spatting between themselves, Winston said, remembering the man was drunk and angry, the woman's hair and clothes were wet, maybe she hit him, maybe him walk into a tree. Trouble at the house he understood to mean lovers' quarrel. Captain said tell the owner sorry about the window, which he had to stop cussing the woman to say. And here now, Wilson, that kunkle-face pussy mad bwoy Davidius dance up a frog-storm on the patio, I have to tell you in truth, the whole time the
whitepeople up the road in the house, I am not saying so to protect a scamp such as he, right, and when he leave off he follow home a whore from the Bight he does fancy, and this is what I know. Here, mahn. Here. Fire a next rum. The police lock him up in the station, you know.

There was a moment before him where self-assurance seemed to collapse inward and he was confronted with the speciousness of his own certainty. The music was as dissonant as shopwork, harrying. He declined the rum, rum was not the leap to clarity he must depend on to judge this mistake that did not quite feel like a mistake. He left, goaded by an unclean touch of responsibility back over the hump in the road, and at the Augustine station they told him to go home and come in Monday morning, the inspector was off duty until then, only he could answer Mitchell's queries, don't worry yourself, Davidius was staying by them till Monday when an official statement would be required and the magistrate would see to this confusion. To argue otherwise against the villainous mutability of events was futile. He didn't try.

At the cottage he finally committed himself to straightening up the mess, taking the broom to the knocked-over plants in their pots and coffee tins, relined his collection of books on the dining room shelves, righted the furniture, wiped the ejaculatory spray of mayonnaise off the kitchen door, washed the frying pan where Captain Pat had cooked and devoured his hospitality and even threw out the panties and gold hoop earrings the seawitch had left behind in the haste of her alleged violence, then he changed the sheets on the bed and returned clothes neatly to their hangers, firm in his opinion that perhaps some but not all of what he repaired was the result of what lovers might dare to call a quarrel. He discovered his briefcase open, its contents—reports and documents—rifled though complete. No blackmarket for statistics? he said out loud to an invisible thief, a lingering presence he couldn't seem to clean away. When he had done what he could do, he went back to the kitchen to cook himself the fish he had intended for lunch. Watching it brown in the pan, he realized what the thief or thieves had taken, though he checked again throughout the house, because it was too hard to believe that their greed could be so stupidly appeased, that all they wanted out of all they could have had, seeing only what wasn't there instead of what was, was the daypack he had prepared the night before to carry on his endlessly delayed trip of goodwill to Cotton Island.