Under the Wide and Starry Sky (40 page)

1892

Morning. Fanny got up off her cot and looked for something clean to put on. Her native dresses were all in need of laundering. Louis had invited Mr. Moors in for a tour of the new house, and she didn't want to greet him in the battered
holoku
she wore for gardening, all blotted with muck. In between her old gowns hung bridles, horse ropes, and straps. Leather tack seemed to disintegrate in the Samoan humidity. Her room was piled high with the things that she dared not leave out lest they turn to mush or get taken. There were boxes of tobacco, and matches, and a can of kerosene. One corner held spears, a Manihiki drum,
tapa
mats. On the bureau and trunks and boxes, spread across every flat surface, lay necklaces made of sharks' and whales' teeth, shells, bird bones, red berries. Cases of Bordeaux wine rose in a stack above her head. At her feet, a bucket from a Scottish hotel in the Highlands contained her pistol and cartridges. Boxes of things from Bournemouth had started to arrive as well, and she stopped for a moment to pry the lid off one to see what it held. Books. She lifted out her father's Bible. When she paused in her search for clean clothing to open it, the smell of cigar smoke floated up from its sepia pages as if he were in the room.

On the Chinese chest that served as her dressing table were her tools—chisels, wrenches, nails, pincers; her toothbrush, a comb, and a pouch full of pearls; and
thank God,
the bundle of laundry. She high-stepped to get to the chest, where the clean, folded
holokus
sat atop a box loaded with salves and syrups, pills and powders—medicines she'd collected over time from Louis and the doctors, plus an assortment of patent medicines she'd found useful.

Her reputation as a healer had spread widely, and now natives and non- came to her for help. With her limited supplies, she could at least treat the pain. She'd helped a man with crushed fingers by soaking them in a mix of water and crystals of iron. When a worker came to her with elephantiasis, she relieved him with Epsom salts, though she knew it was no cure, she intended to write to the
Lancet,
asking the editor to find a doctor to do a study of the disfiguring disease.

There was so much to do, and no one else to do it except her. Her mind flew through an unwritten list of projects, great and small. She needed to organize, but she had no time. Worse, she had no idea anymore what was the most important thing. Everything called out to be fixed or cured or solved. Everything felt the same weight as it pressed down. Where to begin?

With the kerosene.
It did not belong in here. If it was going to be stolen from the barn, so be it. She cleared a path to the doorway and lifted the heavy can only to find Mr. Moors standing outside, gazing in with a stunned expression. Fanny quickly pulled the mat across the opening without greeting him. The woven door curtains let breezes in and kept insects out, though they didn't allow much privacy.

She lit a cigarette and sank down on the cot. She knew perfectly well what Moors was thinking:
Poor Louis, saddled with an old wife, and a dirty one at that.
Well,
Mr. Moors, there are some things dirtier than mud,
she said to him in her mind.
Blackbirding, for example. Everybody knows you used to be a cargo supervisor on a boat that “recruited” black boys for the plantations. And you, Louis, you should be ashamed for not confronting your entertaining friend. Where would you run off to, though, if you could not race out of here in the afternoons to go hang about Moors's store, even though the man overcharges us for every nail and bag of flour we order from him?

Through the open window, she heard the voice of Belle and Louis's mother, laughing on the lawn below. Tears welled in her eyes. How thrilled she had been to know the whole family would be together in one place, yet here she was, avoiding them again, feeling like an outsider among them.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a full night's sleep. Weeks. She snubbed out the cigarette in a coconut shell by her bed, pushed the laundry and medicines to the end of the cot.
Ten minutes. I will close my eyes for ten minutes.

“Fanny?” Maggie Stevenson's voice called from the doorway, behind the drawn curtain. “I hate to bother you, dear, but you said you wanted to know. Your seeds have come.”

Fanny looked at the clock. Nearly eleven. She had slept for two hours. “On the way!” she called back, and leaped out of the cot. It was almost lunchtime, but she couldn't waste another minute.

Fifteen hundred cacao tree seeds. The number had thrilled her when she'd ordered them. Now it rather horrified her. She had planned to deal with two escaped pigs today and a horse that Joe was insisting had glanders. But the seeds were here, and the seed man said they ought to be planted on arrival. That meant fifteen hundred little pots had to be plaited out of cacao leaves, then filled with dirt, then put out into the field where the cacao plantation would be. It would require all of them—the hired men, Belle, Joe, Maggie, Louis, even little Austin.

Fanny raked fingers through her matted curls and went downstairs. The first person she saw was Mary, the spotless, corseted, and shoed little ninny whom Maggie had brought over from Sydney to work as their maid. She would be of no use. Wouldn't take direction from anyone but Louis's mother. Wouldn't even take care of Maggie's veils; one of Fanny's men had to do the starching and pressing. “Phhh,” Fanny huffed through her teeth when she passed her. She came upon Maggie next, who was wandering around the house winding clocks, one of the ways she believed she made herself immensely useful.

“I'll do the varnishing next,” Maggie called out when Fanny passed. “It's so beastly hot.”

The varnishing had been Louis's job, and it was actually a necessary one; it kept mildew and cockroaches out of the books. And books constituted nearly half of their house “furnishings.” Even if she had no household jobs at all, Louis's mother would never in a million years consent to getting dirty on this project. She didn't know how to cook or even clean, for that matter. She'd rather be out having tea with church ladies, or leaving her calling card. Such a life seemed utterly boring to Fanny, and the feeling was mutual, she suspected. Since Maggie had come to live with them in Samoa, the two women had learned to give each other a wide berth. She would prefer not to have Louis's mother involved in the project, anyway.

Fanny went to Louis's study next, where she found her husband and Lloyd working together. She heard Louis say, “Make yourself invisible.” Their faces fell when she entered, and she wondered if Louis's words were about her presence and not some bit of writing wisdom. “I need your help,” she told them. “The cacao plants have arrived.” She noticed Lloyd glance at Louis, seeking a sign that it was all right for him to leave. “Louis may do as he wishes,” Fanny said angrily. “You, Lloyd, will go down there right this minute.”

When she arrived on the verandah, she found Joe Strong sitting on a rocking chair, a
lavalava
tied above his leggings, his parrot on his shoulder in a show of style he obviously thought was island bohemian. “I'm all tuckered out,” he muttered when she approached. She almost laughed out loud. Hungover, more like. She had put him in charge of feeding the chickens. One would think that was equal to building a pyramid, by the looks of him. She wouldn't get much help, but she wasn't going to let him sit there and watch while the others worked. “I will give you an easy job, then,” she told him. “Stay right where you are.”

“You no got work?” she called out to Faauma, Lafaele's pretty new wife, who cleaned house for them. The girl looked like a wood nymph, with fresh flowers woven into the crown of her oiled hair, a white cloth around her hips, and the tails of a red bandanna hanging between her breasts. “You bring Lafaele me,” Fanny ordered.

In the cottage she and Louis had vacated, where Belle's family was now encamped, she found her daughter at the sewing machine. Belle was in charge of cleaning the lamps, among other things, but found more pleasure in making pieces of clothing for the workers. With Louis's approval, she had made
lavalavas
out of tartan plaid. The natives had given Belle the name Teuila, which meant something like “beautifier of the ugly,” according to Louis. Along with Lloyd and Joe, Belle was supposed to be part of the cooking team who had replaced the terrified Emma after Fanny fired her in exasperation.

“Belle, round up the men out in the field. Everyone should gather on the verandah. The cacao seeds are here. It's all hands on deck! Wear your worst work clothes.”

Belle looked disappointed to have to abandon her sewing. “Now!” Fanny shouted over her shoulder as she departed.

She knew she'd need her best men to see it through. She had Henry and Lafaele, both of whom would walk into a fire for her. They could be counted on to stay with the project to the last planted tree. She'd had a few whites working for her at the beginning, but all the laborers at Vailima were natives, and almost all Catholic, or “popies,” as the locals called them. That fact rested fine with everyone, except Maggie, who was in charge of Sunday prayers and didn't know what to do with the popies who lived at Vailima.

Beyond the Pineapple Cottage, Fanny saw her ten-year-old grandson playing with a worker who should have been out in the field. Arrick had clearly been lured away from his weeding by Austin's fort, and the two of them were busy constructing a roof out of branches to set upon the walls made of mud and twigs. Arrick's age was unclear; when he'd come to Vailima, he was a scrawny thing not much bigger than Austin. His chest and back were covered in welts, gotten in his boyhood when he was bled by elders trying to drain his body of poison from an enemy camp's arrows. Whether he was kidnapped from his island or had put his X on a work contract voluntarily, no one knew. What Fanny could ascertain was that he'd run away from one of the German Firm's plantations on the island and had been hiding in the bush, nearly starving. Louis was so moved by the young man's desperate appeal to be hired that he had gone down to the Firm's office and bought out the remainder of Arrick's indenture contract.

Both Louis and Fanny had been curious about how Arrick's presence would be received by the Samoans who lived and worked at Vailima. Likely they would resent the intrusion of a New Hebridee into their society. Why, the inside help even discriminated against the outside help! Sometimes they didn't invite them in to the lunch table but sent their food out to them. How would Arrick be treated? To everyone's relief, Lafaele and Henry and the others had been won over by Arrick's sunny disposition, his small stature, and his unlucky fate.

“Fa' ape'ape'a le tÅ«,”
Henry said sadly. “He is like a swift. Never can rest. No home.”

Soon enough Arrick was everyone's favorite. They lavished him with treats, and he had begun to put on bulk, even muscle.

“Fanny-gran!” Austin called out when he saw her. “Come look at the fort!” Fanny's anger dissipated at the sound of the boy's voice. She dropped one knee down, then the other, and crawled into the fort's opening. “My, but this is fine!” she said. “We'll camp out here together when it's done. Now, look, I have a job for a couple of strong men. Can I count on you?”

By noon, everyone on the property was elbow-deep in the tree project. Fanny sent ten workers into the barn and set them to weaving small baskets. Another four native workers were sent out to the field to dig up dirt and bring it back to the verandah, where it went to Louis, Belle, and Lloyd, who removed lumps of clay and rocks, then filled the leaf baskets making their way up from the barn. Arrick rolled the cacao seeds in ashes to kill any insects. Austin and Faauma, who had replaced her white
lavalava
with a faded old red tablecloth, carried the seeds over to Fanny, who sat on the floor of the verandah planting a seed in each basket. Joe arranged the little containers close together on the perimeter of the verandah, where they would stay until sprouts appeared and they were ready to be planted out.

As evening fell, Belle went into the kitchen and produced a vat of hot chocolate so the Samoans could taste what they were, in a sense, making. Even in the clammy ninety-degree heat, the hot drink was wildly successful in encouraging everyone.

The verandah felt as if it were the site of an Indiana barnraising, with everyone joking. The dirtier they got, the more they laughed.

Around ten o'clock, Fanny went in to the bathroom Maggie had built for Louis's birthday; she bathed and put on a clean dress and went upstairs to collapse.

She fell into a mellow drowsiness quickly, smiling to herself over all that had been accomplished. She turned to tell him she judged the day a success and then remembered:
He no longer sleeps here.

By the next day, Louis dropped out, pleading work duties, while Belle complained of sore arms. Only Lloyd stuck to the work. Fanny oversaw the planting while urging, cajoling, and threatening the men to keep them engaged. Some walked away from the project; others grumbled bitterly.
“O le Fa ataulāitu Fafine o le Mauga,”
she heard one of the day workers say to another. Lafaele, who stood nearby, shoved the man when he heard the remark.

Fanny stepped between the men, whose fists were raised, and sent the day worker away. “What did he say?” she asked Lafaele.

“I cannot—”

“Tell me.”

“Bad man,” he said.

“Tell me! I am not afraid of words. What did he say?”

His sad eyes reluctantly met hers. “‘Witch Woman of the Mountain.'”