“Solomon!” Shannon cried.
“I don’t believe it,” the old man said in his rumbling voice as she hugged him. “You come back to us?”
“She’s visiting.” Eric introduced Solomon to Eve, grateful for the distraction.
“I know you from your picture,” the old cook told Eve. She put out her hand, warding off a hug, and he shook it gravely.
“Do you still make that fabulous oxtail? I told Eve about it.” Shannon said about in her Canadian way, and Eric felt a tug in his heart that accompanied the memory of teasing her that it wasn’t a-boat.
“Solomon is the man for oxtail,” Shad confirmed.
The cook beamed, lips closed tight, and left for his kitchen duty.
“I brought something for you, Shad,” Shannon said (And nothing for me, Eric noted), and gave the bartender the book she was holding, the hard, red cover well handled.
“Grossman’s Guide to Wines, Beers, and Spirits,” Shad read slowly.
“The best, they tell me,” she said. “Can you use it?”
“A book about keeping a bar?”
“It was my father’s.” Eric recalled a photograph of the bulky man he’d avoided, not wanting to explain why he wasn’t marrying his daughter. “He liked to try a different drink every evening. I wanted you to have it.”
Beaming at the volume, the bartender nodded. “Imagine? Your father used to hold this book in his hands just like me. Thank you, thank you.”
“If you need Eric to read it to you—”
“No, no, I can read good now. Miss Mac been teaching me from last year and I can read documents and all kind of things.”
Shad went behind the counter and placed his gift in the drawer he referred to as his library. He’d once shown Eric the only other book in the drawer, The Secret World of the Private Investigator, a gift from a hotel guest long ago, and he’d admitted that his only other book in the world was a dictionary he’d bought for the children. “I don’t want them to be ignorant like me,” he’d added, making a funny mouth.
A few regulars were drifting in for their Saturday-evening fixes. Eric greeted them by name, glad that Shannon could see he still had customers who respected him. He herded Shannon and her party to his table, and Shad took their drink orders.
When it came to Eve’s turn, the bartender leaned toward her. “You want to try some coconut water?” he asked with a wink.
The girl looked perplexed. “What’s it taste like?”
“Like manna from heaven.”
She shrugged after he turned away.
“So, you’re doing research into Rastafarianism,” Eric said to Shannon.
“I think they call it the Rastafarian Movement now,” she replied, an invisible punch to his stomach.
“Where are you going to start?”
“I want to find Rufus first. Remember him, my old taxi driver? I thought we’d drive around the area to begin with, talk to a few Rastas—”
“Rufus gone to Montego Bay,” Shad called from behind the bar. “He running his father’s barbershop now.”
“Oh, no.” Shannon wrinkled her nose in the funny way she always had. “Is there another driver I could use? I want to be free to shoot scenery and spot locations from the passenger seat.”
“The only taxi driver in Largo with a decent car is Carlton,” Shad responded. “But he come from Kingston. He don’t know the country parts so well yet.”
“What do you need exactly?” Jennifer asked.
“I’m starting from scratch since I didn’t really know anything about Rastas when I came down before. Seeing them play in a band doesn’t qualify, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to go into their communities, meet them where they are. And since I’m pretty green here, I need somebody who knows where Rastas live. From the research I’ve been doing, I’ve read that there are three main groups”—Shannon tapped her fingers on the table—“the Nyabinghi, the Bobo Ashanti, and the Twelve Tribes. I want to interview at least one of each, and I want to interview as many Rastas as I can find otherwise.”
“Is Rasta—Rastafari a religion?” Eve asked, her eyes sliding to the ground.
“Some people think so,” her father said. “Some people say it’s a lifestyle and a philosophy. It’s been around for a while.”
The girl was slouched in her seat, still not looking at him, but he could tell she was listening, and he liked that she asked good questions. It reminded him of when they’d been at the zoo when she was five and she’d told him that kangaroos came from Australia.
“How do you know?” he’d asked her, pretending he didn’t know.
“My teacher told us and she’s from Australia,” Eve had reported in her pert voice. “She told us about the big reef, too.” He’d been tickled that she knew about kangaroos and the Great Barrier Reef, glad that she was smart—and that her mother was bringing her up.
“From what I’ve been reading,” Shannon was telling Eve now, “the Rastafarian Movement is a combination of a spiritual, social, and economic lifestyle.” Shannon pushed her daughter’s hair back and Eve turned her head away. “They’re opposed to greed and colonialism. It’s about improving life for the poor, living together in camps to support one another, eating healthy food—”
“Not all Rastas live in camps,” Jennifer said. “A lot live like regular people, in towns or on small farms. And they’re not all poor, either. Things have changed a lot in the last twenty years. Some are professionals now, lawyers and doctors, some work for the government.”
“And they smoke a lot of ganja,” Eric said, “so get ready to inhale.”
Shannon kept a straight face. “I know they use marijuana for their religious ceremonies. I don’t know how much they do outside of that. I guess I’ll find out.”
“Are you going to smoke any?” Casey asked, grinning.
“Of course not.”
Eric stifled a laugh, remembering Shannon smoking weed in his suite once, and how he’d opened the windows and turned on the fan so the staff wouldn’t smell it.
“Why do they wear their hair in those—long rope things?” Eve asked.
“Dreadlocks?” her mother responded. “I was asking this guy who sells ice cream on Yonge Street, a sweet, young Rastafarian man, and he said that it had to do with his belief in Jah, that’s their name for God. I guess I’ll find out exactly what.”
“You could start with a few Rastas here in Largo,” Eric put in. “They’re a bit more—they’re a decent lot.”
“As opposed to what?” Shannon queried.
“You know, they’re used to tourists and regular people. The Rastas who live in the camps, well, sometimes they don’t like people coming around. They’ve been known to—I could be wrong—but I’ve heard that they can get pretty hostile if visitors ask too many questions.”
“She okay, no problem,” Shad said, doling out the drinks. “But she going to need two local people to go with her.” Eric shot him a questioning look. “Is true, boss. She need somebody to drive the car and watch out for crazy taxis and buses, and she need somebody else to give the driver directions and make sure she safe. Not that anything going to happen to her, but she need some manpower with her if she going to go up into the mountains and all over.”
“And you’re just the manpower she needs, right?” Eric said.
“Are you moonlighting your way into another job, Shad?” Jennifer teased.
“We not going in no moonlight; daytime I talking. Like how Beth is working in Port Antonio and she not at home at lunchtime anymore, I have plenty free time in the middle of the day, right, boss? Carlton can drive her and I can help her.”
Shannon looked at Eric. “What do you say, boss? Sounds like a good idea to me.”
Cornered by years of guilt, Eric nodded. “Sure, I can take care of the bar while he’s gone.”
“I really appreciate that,” Shannon said. “I could rent a car and Shad could drive it. Would that work?”
“I think the taxi driver arrangeme
nt is better,” Eric said quickly. He wouldn’t tell her that his employee didn’t have a driver’s license and probably couldn’t get one with his prison record, even though Eric let him drive the Jeep.
“Should be fun,” Shad said gleefully. “More fun than sitting in the bar.”
Eric swallowed a sarcastic comment and turned to Eve. “Interested in helping me out while these two are gone?”
“Not pouring liquor, I hope,” her mother shot back.
Another comment swallowed, Eric raised his hand. “I’ll be behind the bar and she can take food orders and run them to the kitchen. No alcohol, I promise.”
They all looked at Eve, who took a sip of coconut water and grimaced.
“You can keep the tips,” Eric told her, and she shrugged again.
Jennifer tossed back her hair. “And the rest of the time you can spend with Casey.”
“I guess,” Eve replied.
“Eve’s in a new school,” Shannon blurted out, glancing sideways at her daughter. “I think she likes it so far—don’t you?—although it’s only been a year. It’s really progressive, part of a chain started in Germany. They aim to develop students to be well rounded, you know, strong bodies, creative thinkers. Ninety-four percent of their graduates go on to university.”
Eric tried not to think of the college payments ahead, while Jennifer and Shannon compared day schools to boarding schools. Casey followed up with a story about a midnight picnic in her dorm, the food hidden under the sheets when the monitor appeared. Everyone laughed and even Eve cracked a smile.
After the visitors left, Eric placed the empty glasses in the sink and nudged Shad’s elbow. “You wormed your way nicely into that one.”
“Think of it this way, boss. Shannon need somebody she can trust to go with her. The taxi driver not going to shaft her because I going to be there, and she have two men to protect her. You know it not easy for a foreign woman to move around Jamaica by herself.”
“You’re probably right.”
“And you get to spend time with your daughter.”
“She didn’t seem too keen, but I hope she liked the tip idea.”
“You never know with them teenagers. They keep their good feelings for their friends and let the parents see the bad ones—like they want to torment you. When Joella was twelve, she used to suck her teeth so much that Beth had to slap her one time.”
“I couldn’t do that, but I wish Eve was—happier, you know?”
“Next to Casey—”
“That should be interesting, the two of them together. Casey’s like a debutante waiting to come out.”
“A debu—what?”
“A little beauty queen, all pretty and giggly.”
Sitting on his verandah later, Eric filled one of his pipes with the Canadian maple tobacco that always reminded him of Shannon. She’d introduced him to it when she brought it down once as a gift. In those days, she’d appear out of the blue and lean on his office door, making his heart jump. He’d tell his secretary not to disturb them, and they’d run up to his suite and start kissing before he’d shut the door. After an hour of frenzy, they’d call room service—she was always famished—so she could devour Solomon’s specialty of the day. It was the affair of affairs, the best of his life, which came to a screeching halt the afternoon his lover made her announcement over dessert.
“You’re pregnant?” he’d spluttered. “I thought you were on the pill.”
“I must have skipped a day—”
“You don’t just skip a day with birth control.”
She’d looked at her spoon, laden with lime sherbet. “Well, I did.”
“Are you sure you’re—”
“You pee in a cup, the test comes back positive—you’re sure.”
“Have you thought of—you don’t have to have it, you know.”
She’d dropped the spoon with a clatter. “I’m keeping the baby, Eric. I’m not having an abortion.”
Everything, everything had changed in that moment, the lusty passion transformed—like ice water falling on fire—by the dull reality of parenthood.
He lit the pipe, shielding it with his palm, let the wind blow out the match, and settled back in the chair. The verandah faced the ruined hotel, and tonight a quarter moon glittered off the water, the island a black rock in its midst, a stiff northeaster carrying the flapping of the leaves from the almond tree that he’d planted long ago in front of the reception area.
This was his evening ritual, looking across at his destroyed hotel, watching its ghostlike appearance and disappearance under a waxing or waning moon as each month slipped by, and it had been a comfort knowing that he still owned the isolated piece of land and its mildewed buildings, regardless of Hurricane Albert’s destruction. However, he was no longer the sole owner. The island now belonged to the corporation formed earlier that year to build the new hotel, and there were plans to lease it to Horace MacKenzie for a campsite—Eric’s son Joseph’s idea. Renovations were to begin in a few months. Truth be told, Eric would have preferred the buildings to remain mottled, empty, and his, no one else’s, because they housed not only the past, his glory days as the owner of the inn, but more recently they reminded him of Simone, who had lived under a tarpaulin in the roofless lobby for two months last summer.
A brave woman, or perhaps only a woman with nothing to lose, she’d stood up to Eric and Shad when they’d confronted her under the tarp, and needing the money to replace the thatch roof on the bar, Eric had ended up renting the island to her. When she’d left, he’d felt all life go out of the ruins, missed knowing he could row out to see her, missed the flickering light of her lamp he’d watch from his verandah as she moved around at night, cooking or getting ready for bed. He’d yearned for her every night ever since, thought about her as the waves crashed on the cliff beneath the porch, each tremor sending him deeper into reverie. Grieving her nightly had been the only reward to his day.
Now everything was about to change. The island was going to go through a transition and Simone was coming back—to meet Shannon and Eve. He exhaled the Canadian maple, picturing the two women sitting in the bar, Simone on his right and Shannon on his left, civilized darts flying between them, and him, of course, skewered in the middle.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
Shannon stood up from the breakfast table. “Are you going over to your dad’s today?”
“Boring.” Eve was still in her nightclothes, the T-shirt she’d had on the day before and a pair of stretched-out cotton pants she always wore to bed. Her iPod was sitting on the table next to the glass of orange juice, her only concession to breakfast.
“It’s up to you.” Her mother took a last sip of her coffee. “I’m leaving in a few minutes. Maybe you can do something with Casey.”
The wounded look was back. “I don’t know these people. You can’t just bring me here and dump me—”
“I couldn’t leave you in Toronto either.” Shannon picked up the two cameras on the table and slung them over her shoulder.
“You’re always leaving me in Toronto. I don’t know what’s so different this time.”
“You can’t be trusted this time.” To hell with the counselor. Into her safari-jacket pockets Shannon dropped a small tape recorder and her cell phone. She was getting tired of measuring her words. She had a job to do, two jobs if she had to find out about this Katlyn woman, and Eve needed to know that.
“I’ll play games on my iPad,” Eve grunted.
“Or help your father in the restaurant.”
“Babysitting an old man all day? I don’t think so.”
“Well, you choose. I have to work.”
“When are we going home? If it’s more than a week, I’ll kill myself.”
“I told you, I don’t know yet. I have a lot of work to do and we’ll go home when it’s done—and stop being so dramatic. You know how many kids would love to be in Jamaica?”
“When are you getting back?”
“P
robably midafternoon.” A horn tooted outside. “That’s Shad and the taxi driver.” Shannon planted a kiss on Eve’s cheek. “Be good, or at least be nice.”
On her way through the living room, Shannon looked off at the morning-hazy mountains and bays stretching in front of the verandah. She was glad to leave her daughter’s sourness behind. If she could help it, she wasn’t going to let Eve interfere with her pleasure at being back on the island and back in Largo—a change she’d needed more than she’d realized. She’d told Jennifer and Lambert the evening before that she was feeling her shoulders slowly descending.
“I’d forgotten that, whenever I’m here, I become like a Jamaican, kind of relaxed and easygoing,” she’d said, knowing it was a half-truth, knowing she couldn’t completely relax around Eve or Eric.
Cool morning air greeted her on the verandah. At the top of the driveway a small, red sedan with shiny rims sat waiting, Shad waving out the back window. After she climbed in, she was introduced to Carlton, the driver, whom Shad instructed to descend the driveway and turn right on the main road.
“We can start with a Rasta man here in Largo,” Shad explained. “He know my granny from way back.”
Carlton, a silent nodder, wove the car around potholes and up dirt lanes until they arrived at the base of the mountain that rose behind Largo. They stopped in front of a wooden cottage, its fresh red, yellow, and green trim singing out behind the rusty zinc fence. The man Shad had in mind wasn’t home, his elderly wife reported from the door. Her long dreadlocks were tied back and she was wearing a housedress, the front of it wet.
“Can I speak to you, then?” Shannon asked, thinking it might be a good idea to start her interviews with a female. All of the books she’d researched over the last few weeks had been written by men, and she was ready for another perspective.
It took more than a little persuasion on Shad’s part for the woman, Leah was her name, to be interviewed.
“I washing right now, but I try to help,” she said at last, sitting down on one of the four concrete steps leading up to the house.
The Rhythm of the August Rain Page 5