The Rhythm of the August Rain

by Gillian Royes

  “You crazy, man. We can’t be taking no weed break now.”

  “Little herbal essence give us mental livity to find them, man. This good stuff, from Orange Hill.” I-Verse lit the joint with a lighter, took a long pull, and held his breath. When he finally exhaled, a sweet cloud surrounded them and Shad took a guilty gulp. “So is true you was going to married today?”

  The would-be bridegroom pulled up the pleats of his pants and squatted down. “My girlfriend vex all now. Guests come from England and America for it.” He pictured the disappointed faces of Danny, the investor, his red-haired English girlfriend Sarah, and Ford, the trumpeter, who’d come all the way from New York. Although Shad had been prepared to pick them up from the airport, they’d arrived in Largo on Thursday in a rented car Danny had driven from Montego Bay. It wasn’t going to be fun facing them when he got back.

  I-Verse laughed on an exhale. “Maybe you not supposed to marry.”

  “You don’t know my girlfriend.”

  “Satta, man, calm yourself. Next thing—”

  An explosion rang out. “What that?” Shad cried, jumping to his feet. “Is not a gunshot?”

  “Must be your friend.”

  “Don’t turn on the flashlight.”

  They plunged into thicker foliage toward the sound, I-Verse beating the bushes away with the flashlight, their eyes getting used to the pale moonlight. They were walking up a hill now, the ocean to their right.

  “Wait.” Shad pointed. “You see a light coming from up so?”

  “I see it, yes.”

  “Put out the spliff, man. Next thing they see us.”

  The sculptor threw down the joint and stepped on it. “I and I tell you a little weed would help us.”

  They continued walking uphill toward the light, pushing through the bushes, until Shad touched I-Verse’s shoulder. “You hear somebody talking?”

  “Not far now.”

  Stooping down, they crept closer and parted the weeds. The scene in front of them was lit by a lamp on the ground. Shannon and Dread were in the middle of a clearing, he behind her holding his stick across her throat. She was trying to push the stick away, her breathing labored, but the old Rasta was holding it firmly with both hands. They were standing in front of a raised flowerbed and facing a rectangular hole, the dirt from which was piled to one side.

  “Is not a grave that?” Shad whispered, nodding to the hole. “Like he going to bury her in it.”

  “Throw up the gun!” the old man was calling toward the hole. “I going to kill her and then I kill myself. I know Jah send you because it our time now, and I sick of pain. But I not going to let no Babylon soldier kill me.”

  Eyes closed, Shannon pushed at the stick again, her attempts futile.

  A shout rang out from the hole. “Rastaman,” an unseen voice called, “you won’t get away with this.”

  “Backside!” Shad hissed. “Lambert down in the hole.”

  “You say you going to kill the woman.” It was Eric’s voice. “Tell you what, trade me for her.”

  “I not trading nothing,” Shannon’s captor shouted. “And you sound like you from Canada, too. You is police from Canada, you think I don’t know? The two of you is police come to get me. Well, I too smart for you now. This don’t have nothing to do with you. She and I going together. She know it already, that why she come back. I telling you, throw up the gun.”

  “Don’t!” Shannon squeaked, her arms flailing.

  “What you telling him?” Dread’s voice was low. “If we have a gun, we can die quicker, then you can take me back with you.”

  “I’ll give you the gun,” Lambert called. “But you have to come and get it.”

  “Then you going to shoot me and take the woman. You think I stupid?”

  “You have to let her go,” said Eric.

  “I know all of you is Babylon,” Zadock shouted. “You going to kill me or lock me up, like when you burn down Pinnacle, but I get away from you then, and I going to get away from you now. She and me going to fly up to where she come from, and after that you can climb out of the hole. But you must promise to bury us when it done.”

  “Is madness that,” Shad whispered.

  “Live alone too long,” I-Verse said, shaking his head.

  “If you don’t give me the gun,” Dread shouted, “I going to strangle her first, then you can kill me when you come out.” He pulled tighter with the stick while Shannon gagged and whirled her arms, trying to hit him.

  “Stop that!” Eric called.

  “He going to kill her, man,” Shad whispered. “We have to do something.”

  I-Verse stood up. “Rasta don’t kill nobody!” he shouted, sending the flashlight sailing through the air. It smashed into the old man’s forehead, making him spin with the blow, his dreadlocks flaring wide as he fell. While I-Verse ran and pulled Shannon away from his grasp, Shad rushed to the side of the hole.

  Eric’s chalk-white face looked up. “Thank God.”

  Standing close to him, Lambert held the revolver upright. “Take the gun.” He threw it to Shad, who caught it and swung toward the man lying on the ground.

  “Don’t move!” Shad called, waving the gun CSI-style. “I got you covered.” The Rasta looked up, dazed, and felt around for his stick, while I-Verse helped Eric and then Lambert out of the grave.

  “Shannon,” Eric cried, running to her, “are you okay?” Hands to her throat, Shannon staggered and fell on the mound behind her, gasping for air and crushing the flowers.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  * * *

  Did they charge us extra for the drum, Mom?” Eve asked, looking up from the boarding pass in her hand. She was wearing the lime-green T-shirt she’d bought in Ocho Rios as a souvenir, matching it with a band that held back her hair. The color looked good with her tan, she’d said.

  “No, they didn’t charge us for the drum.” Shannon patted her own souvenir, the black-and-blue from Zadock’s stick, covered by a scarf.

  Every sofa and seat in the in-transit lounge was taken, even though it was midweek. The flight to Atlanta, the first leg of their journey, was filled, the clerk had told them at the check-in counter. “Jamaicans like to travel in the summer,” she’d said as she attached a FRAGILE sticker to the drum. “We can’t take the winter, we have thin blood.”

  Eric had stood a few feet away fidgeting with the keys to Lambert’s Rover, borrowed for the trip to the airport, even though Shannon had said they could take a taxi. Jennifer had told her that Simone was coming in on the same flight, and the news that dropping them off was a matter of convenience had been met with a bitter laugh from Shannon, releasing the last thread of hope from her heart.

  Much as she’d have liked to, she couldn’t say that Eric had treated her poorly during her visit. He’d been kind throughout and even more solicitous since the Zadock incident. She’d always be grateful that he’d offered to trade himself for her and would never forget how, leaving the old Rasta sitting on the ground, he and Shad had linked their arms through hers and rushed her down the hill and through the abandoned camp. They’d followed I-Verse’s flashlight in front, guiding her around bushes, catching her when she tripped, Lambert behind them with his gun. Driving back, Eric had made her lie with her head on his lap, and he’d stroked her hair every now and again while she, shivering, had kept her eyes closed.

  “Don’t drive so fast,” she’d asked Lam once, and Eric had repeated the request, as if it were his own.

  Not once had he said, I told you so. Even when he’d carried her into the house and placed her on the bed—Eve clinging to her arm, Jennifer asking what had happened—he’d never made her feel foolish or guilty. While the women fetched an ice pack for her throat and massaged her feet, he’d shrunk back and finally left.

  The next afternoon, Sunday, she’d been about to take a nap when he’d appeared at the door. Eve, lying beside her mother, had seen him first. “Come in, Dad.”

  He’d stood looking down at Shannon with
a crooked smile. “Welcome back to Jamaica, kiddo,” he’d said. She’d given a laugh that hurt her throat, but she’d liked that the comment had harked back to their past, to the name he used to call her in the early years of their affair, and she’d felt a surge of love for him. And in one of those clear-air bolts of lightning, the insight one gets after a shock, she realized that she had been as guilty of pushing Eric away as he had been of her—their estrangement had been mutually created.

  To begin with, she’d wanted to get pregnant despite his clear statement that he didn’t want another child, and she’d found excuses not to take her birth control pills (dark spots on the back of her hands). When he hadn’t reacted happily to her news, when he hadn’t suggested that she move down to Largo with the baby, her anger had created a barrier of frost between them. She’d stayed away on purpose, taking his money and not calling him, trying to hurt him from a distance—but it had backfired.

  From the foot of the bed, he’d asked how she was feeling, and she’d replied in monosyllables, her throat hurting too much to talk. When she’d rolled over onto her left side, Eve had curled up behind her. “Like two spoons,” her daughter had said, stroking her arm, a different girl from the one who’d arrived on the island.

  She’d already told her mother how much she’d worried about her. “I thought something horrible had happened to you, that you wouldn’t come back,” she’d said while she was massaging her mother’s feet, ready to cry.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Shannon had whispered.

  “I’m sorry I’m so awful sometimes.” When her mother had said nothing, the girl had continued, squeezing her mother’s feet tight as she talked, “You’ve been gone so much—all the traveling, I missed you so much. I know you do dangerous things when you’re working, and I don’t know what would happen to me if—if—and Dad didn’t seem to care about me, either. I thought he wouldn’t want me if—and—and Grandma just watches television when you leave me with her. I know I’ve been a mess, but I just wanted you to—to—be home. I’m sorry—”

  “A fresh start, how about that?” her mother had wheezed, and they’d slept together that night.

  While Eric stood looking down at them as two spoons and chuckling, Eve had urged him to lie down with them. She was trying for a reunion, a healing, Shannon could tell, and her heart ached for their daughter. To Shannon’s surprise, he’d walked around and lain down on the bed behind Eve, covering the awkwardness with talk of Zadock and their adventure.

  “Your mom is a trouper, I’m telling you. I think the old man was in love with her.”

  Shannon had cleared her throat. “Your dad was very brave.”

  “What did you do?” Eve asked him.

  “I helped Uncle Lambert.”

  “I’m glad,” Eve said. “You know, you’re not like how I expected you to be.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “A total asshole.”

  “Eve!” Shannon had growled.

  “Well, it’s the truth.”

  “And?” Eric asked.

  “You’re pretty cool.”

  “That’s big praise, coming from you.” Shannon could hear him relishing the compliment, having surpassed his expectations of his parenting skills.

  “Can I come back next year?” Eve asked.

  “You have a ticket, don’t you?” He rolled over toward them. Three spoons.

  “Dad, do you know what we are?” Eve had suddenly said, her voice carrying a broad smile. “We’re a whorl, like that nautilus shell Mom gave you.”

  “You’re right,” he’d said after a second. “We’re a whorl.” He’d followed with words that burned into Shannon’s mind, that day and every day thereafter. “Better than that, we’re a family. Your mother and I may not ever be together, but we are your parents and we love you. Nothing will change that. And that means I will always care for you, and you’re welcome to come and visit anytime. I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen. And now that I’m going to have a fancy hotel again, you’ll be staying in a fancy suite next time.”

  “I can deal with that,” Eve had quietly commented.

  Despite the shadow that had descended upon her, Shannon heard herself saying the unimaginable. “We love you, Eric,” she’d whispered, for Eve’s sake, of course, not his.

  “I love you both,” he’d answered right away, reaching to pat Shannon’s arm and then Eve’s.

  The message had been clear. The romance was at an end, her bitterness toward him contributing to her loss and another woman’s gain. While he hadn’t had the guts to speak to her directly, at least she knew where she stood. From here on, they were to be a family and nothing more, the love between them agape, not erotica, as her father, a historian at York University, used to say.

  Shannon breathed in the new normal, the pain in her chest settling in for a stay, while Eve reminded her father he was to write at least once a week.

  “I want to know everything that happens in Largo. Casey is going to let me know when Sheba has puppies again, so you don’t need to tell me that.”

  “You’re forcing me to do emails.”

  They could try skyping, Eve had suggested and had to explain what that meant. They would be in touch, he agreed, every single week, because he wanted to hear about her drumming lessons in Toronto and how she was doing in school.

  “And no more shoplifting or anything like it, you hear me, young lady? Or no trip to Jamaica for you next summer.”

  “I hear you,” Eve had muttered, and Shannon had managed a smile into her pillow.

  After he left, she’d asked Eve to get her some of Miss Bertha’s lemongrass tea for her throat, and while Eve was gone, Shannon had allowed herself a few moments to accept the finality of Eric’s statement, allowed a few tears to grieve the end of their love affair. One door had closed, but a window of truth had opened: they were to be a family, a separated family. Like Zadock, she thought, she’d have to live with the cruel reality of separation from the love of her life.

  Shuddering at the memory of the stick at her throat and his unwanted intimacy, she’d written Angie a long email about him later on Sunday, downplaying the previous day’s drama, but telling her what she’d pieced together with Shad’s help:

  Katlyn fell in love with a Rastafarian and they were man and wife in the very best sense. She became a Rastafarian herself, even changed her name, and knowing that her parents would never understand or approve of her radical new direction, she stopped writing everyone after she left Gordon Gap. Her lover had been akin to a terrorist in his day, when it was illegal to be Rastafarian. He’d been locked up after the police had broken up Pinnacle, his community near Kingston, and he’d spent time in prison and a mental hospital.

  Shannon recounted how Katlyn had refused to go to a doctor when she got diarrhea, how Zadock had tried to treat her himself and finally took her to the hospital, hoping to save her, and kept hidden because of his fear of the authorities.

  He had no rights as her common-law husband to claim her body or bury her where she wanted to be buried, and he would probably have been under suspicion of murder with his record and a foreign woman involved.

  Poverty, cultural history, and isolation had caused Katlyn’s death, Shannon had added. But Zadock had spent all his money to get her body back, and he’d buried her in her favorite bedspread exactly where she’d asked to be buried. For thirty-five years thereafter he’d kept every memento that reminded him of her—and longed for her return.

  By the time she sent the email, Shannon knew why she’d gone easy on the lunatic who’d almost choked her to death. It was out of respect for Katlyn, who had found a love that had more meaning to her than her own family and friends, and for Akila, who wouldn’t have wanted an evil word said about her lover. Based on what Redemption and the heartsick Zadock had said, the last year of the dancer’s life had been filled with a new philosophy and a loyalty so deep that she wouldn’t leave the Rastafarian community or betray Zadock when she
got sick. Her death had been a sacrifice for him, and his life had been a commemoration of hers.

  “Just as I thought,” Shannon had told Jennifer huskily as they sat on the patio that evening. “Finding the answers to Katlyn’s death has—it’s clarified what I want my own future to be.”

  “Obviously not with Eric,” Jennifer had said over her soup.

  “No, it’s not. But I know now that I want to be loved the way Zadock loved Katlyn, steady and true. Not this on-again, off-again thing I’ve had from Eric all these years, which just leaves me off-balance, never knowing where I stand.”

  “You’re worth a lot more, girl.”

  “I want to be the beloved, you know what I mean, of a man who adores me.” The journalist had been a little embarrassed by her own immodesty, but it didn’t stop her. “I want to be loved from the top of my gray hairs to my big toe with the fungus.” She raised her wineglass. “I want to be the last name the man whispers before he dies.”

  “Amen.”

  They’d clinked glasses.

  On Monday morning she’d asked Jennifer to find out what St. Ann’s Bay Hospital had on their records about Katlyn. A call to a physician friend of the Delgados’ was rewarded a few hours later: Katlyn Carrington had died of amoebic dysentery with attendant dehydration. Her body had disappeared, and the Jamaican authorities had never found out who the body snatcher was. And they wouldn’t be hearing it from her, Shannon decided, so that Akila, as the Rastafarian she’d become, could continue to rest in peace under her Julie mango tree with the ocean view. The young woman’s short, idealistic life deserved nothing less, Shannon would tell Angie, and if she wanted to see the spot, Shad could show it to her.

  Richard Ransom had called later that morning with apologies for not having returned Shannon’s call on Sunday. He’d been entertaining a colleague from the Netherlands who’d come into town (again not using a pronoun) and hadn’t had a spare moment to call until then.

  “What happened to you?” she’d asked. “They said you’d gone already when we got back—”