The Bone Readers

by Jacob Ross

  Pet chuckled. ‘It goin make it worse when she give it to you, then.’

  Night fell quickly and with it an orchestra of insect sounds rose up and filled the valley. I was surprised at how comfortable the silence was between us. Somewhere down the hill a radio came on, then it was cut off.

  ‘Digger, I, I could stay if you want.’

  I knew it took a lot from Pet to say that. But, for me, there was a cost to every ill-considered impulse. Lately, it was not just Lonnie who’d been making me understand that.

  ‘Pet, it will spoil the work – in the office I mean. And mebbe between you and me. Besides…’

  ‘S’awright, Digger. Don’t think that’s what I come here for. I here to help you out, that’s all.’

  ‘You make nice company.’ I said, and I hoped Pet knew I meant it.

  ‘That woman from Marais, what’s her name?’

  ‘Lonnie.’

  ‘I believe she still want you, Digger, but she got something she can’t tell you. ’

  ‘What?’

  Pet shrugged. ‘Dunno. I not every woman; I just me. Mebbe she not the person you tell yourself she is. Mebbe you see what you want to see.’

  And that was odd, because Lonnie once said the same thing to me.

  I’d seen her sitting with a man at a bar on Lagoon Road a couple of months after we got together. I’d popped in for some food on my way home. I was surprised to see her there. They were leaned in close in conversation and she was giving him that smile that did funny things to my stomach. I stood at the doorway watching them. She must have sensed my presence. Lonnie rose from the table and came over to me.

  ‘Digger, you look vex.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘That your man?’ I said.

  ‘I know him.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘What you think?’

  She turned up her face at me, closed a hand around my elbow. ‘What you want me to do right now?’

  ‘Do what you want.’

  ‘Digger, tell me what you want? You want me for serious?’

  ‘I been serious from time, and you know it.’

  ‘I didn know for sure; you never tell me.’

  She went over to the table, pointed her finger in my direction, said something to the man. Then she joined me at the counter.

  That night, her head resting on my chest, I told her that I loved her.

  She raised herself on her elbow and looked into my face. ‘I didn know.’

  ‘Who was the fella at the bar?’

  ‘My cousin, Raul.’

  ‘That’s the way you talk to Cousin Raul?’

  ‘People see what frighten them. Even if it not happening for real.’

  She threw a leg across my stomach and rolled over to sleep.

  *

  Pet tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Digger, I ready to go home.’

  35

  The churchyard was unusually quiet. The women followed my progress up the path with stony-eyed gazes. It was obvious that Miss Stanislaus had told them about the purpose of this visit.

  By now, of course, they knew I worked with San Andrews CID, and whatever my connection was with Miss Stanislaus, it involved her carrying a gun and using it if she had to. The women did not seem to mind her – perhaps because she took the blame for what happened to Bello on the beach. They’d embraced her and her daughter completely.

  With me – apart from Adora’s brassiness – they adjusted to my presence the way water flowed around a stone.

  Would they talk to me now? Would these women let me in on the intimate transgressions of this churchman who had held such power over them? Would they help me find Nathan and Alice?

  I did not have Miss Stanislaus’s faith in them. As I told her once, we – Camahoans – have no language for atrocity; or if we do, we cannot bring ourselves to use it. We’d rather make ourselves forget. I said that to her in the office, and pointed out of the window, which offered a full view of Fort Rupert. She’d followed my finger, quivered her lips and turned to her reading.

  I was in no mood for niceties. I returned the women’s stares and walked right up to them.

  ‘We have to talk,’ I said. ‘We got a scandal waiting to bust open, and when it happen, it going sink this whole damn church and everybody in it. Lemme tell y’all why. First, the Deacon got killed in unusual circumstances. Nobody here look too sorry about that, in fact some of y’all look as if Carnival come early.

  ‘I sure y’all know that it got people in high places who used to use Deacon Bello’s services. I know one, for certain, who want the circumstances around his death investigated. Y’all done know what the results of that investigation going to show.

  ‘Second, you got two young people missing. One of them, Alice, disappear almost four years ago; another – Nathan – gone for almost as long. Alice left her cell phone and her one boychild behind. She never been in touch with her son since, or for that matter anybody else. Y’all know that something wrong. Problem is y’all not talking. I dunno why. I don’t understand it. As far as I can see, we have just one chance to limit the damage or hopefully avoid it. And that is by showing, if it comes to it, that what y’all did to Deacon Bello was the only way to protect y’all self from him. I believe that the best way to make that case for y’all self is by finding the two missing people.

  ‘Now,’ I pointed at the church door, ‘I going in there, and I expect people to come sit down and try their best to help me find some answers. I can’t force nobody. I don’t intend to. Is up to y’all.’

  Silence descended on the yard, filled by the whispering of fabric against skin, the soft metallic grating of the church roof soaking in the early evening heat.

  On the periphery of the group, the two Watchmen looked on, as still as posts, their fouets resting easy in their hands.

  I waited, conscious of Miss Stanislaus’s eyes on me – a sidewise, almost surreptitious, appraisal of my face.

  The Mother broke from the group and walked into the church. The others filed in after her.

  In there, the smell of camphorated oil and incense. At the front, the altar with its Shepard Rod and staff, the Taria and Lothar vessels and the bell whose bronze multiplied the candle flames around the room. About five paces from the altar, the gaping door that led to the Mourning Ground.

  Miss Stanislaus sat on the front bench, hands on her lap, knees pressed together, as if she were in the middle of a service. She seemed to be daydreaming.

  Pike, the Watchman with the pointed beard, came in and placed himself in the corner to my left. I looked at him, then at Mother Bello.

  ‘Is awright,’ she said. ‘Ask whatever you want.’

  At the back of the room, Adora lit a candle, held the struck match to her lips and blew on it. Iona was a shadow in the corner near the entrance.

  ‘I want to start with Alice,’ I said. ‘I interested in anything y’all remember about her: what she look like, the last time anyone saw her, the last thing y’all saw her wearing. What state of mind she was in just before she disappeared. Body marks like scars, tattoos – that sort of thing. But first, anybody here was a close friend of hers?’

  Thick silence; heads cocked as if they were all listening to something outside of the room.

  Miss Stanislaus stirred, swivelled her body on the bench so that her face was partly turned toward the whole room.

  Her voice was very, very calm. ‘Mebbe,’ she said, ‘mebbe De Modder–’ at that Miss Stanislaus smiled – ‘who know her husband best of all, will try to help out first.’

  I took Miss Stanislaus’s cue and turned toward The Mother. ‘Deacon ever used to go out on his own?’

  ‘Nuh,’ The Mother said. ‘Before the car break down, he used to go with Pike or Popo to get the provisions.’ She lifted her head at Pike. Pike nodded a vigorous confirmation.

  ‘He never went out any other times?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘No ot
her times or hardly? Mother Bello, which one?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Pike said.

  ‘Hardly meaning?’

  Pike raised a hand, the way a school child might. ‘Missa Digger, I could answer?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Deacon Bello go out once or twice in the car to collect water in Kalivini when we don’t have enough. A coupla times he go off to give a politician or big shot a bush-bath to clear away de bad luck, or clean up his spirit, yunno. Or jus to fix im up.’

  ‘Fix im up?’

  ‘A bath with herbs; give him some strength, yunno. Specially if he got a young wife.’ Pike was quivering an eyebrow and smiling at me.

  ‘He go on his own those times?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘How long since the car broke down?’

  ‘Last year, round September, October… Dunno,’ The Mother said.

  ‘Dunno don’t mean nothing to me, Mother Bello. Somebody in here should know.’

  ‘Third week in August last year,’ Adora’s voice cut in. She was leaning against the frame of the door, legs crossed, the box of matches poised between her fingers.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I sure.’

  ‘How come?’ I said.

  ‘Because I remember.’

  ‘You remember when Alice left too?’

  ‘I wasn’t around when that happen.’

  ‘How come you remember when the car break down and the others don’t?’

  ‘They tell you that?’ She sucked her teeth. ‘Some people talk but they don’ always say.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘A pusson could only dead once, y’unnerstan? Santopee don’t frighten me. If it wasn’ for my girlchile…’ Adora tightened her headwrap and stalked out into the yard. I turned back to The Mother.

  ‘How y’all manage for water and provisions after the car broke down?’

  ‘Popo friend got a lil van.’ She gestured at the older Watchman standing directly behind her. ‘One of them go for the provisions every coupla weeks. Everybody carry water, including the children.’

  ‘Mother Bello, I got a question to ask you: how come this carried on so long? Why nobody report it to the police, or say anything to anybody in the world out there?’

  I watched the heavy face crumble, the moistening eyes and lowered eyelids. ‘A pusson dunno what to do. You know dey goin come after you. You think all dis feel good? You think…’ She began sobbing silently and openly.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘O-okay fe-fe-fella, I a-askin you to st-st-stop right now, please!’ It was the older Watchman, the silent one from whom I’d never heard a word before. The strength of his voice surprised me and the fact that he stuttered. I shot to my feet and turned to face him, felt my lips peel back, felt the heat of my own breath in my mouth.

  ‘Don’ fella me! And you never rest your hand on me again, not even as a joke. You do it next time I make sure you never use that hand again.’

  I strode out of the church, quivering with a rage that I hadn’t been aware of until that Watchman laid his hand on me.

  The house was silent and I wondered where the children were. No sign of Adora either.

  ‘Missa Digger.’ A small breeze shook the top of the guinep tree that hung over the yard. Miss Stanislaus smelled of something lemony; she filled my head with Lonnie.

  ‘Missa Digger. The Modder ask for you to eat with us.’

  ‘I have to go. I got some things to settle.’

  ‘Like what, Missa Digger?’

  ‘Like my mind. I got to settle my mind.’

  ‘When you say’z de meeting?’

  ‘I got twelve days starting from tomorrow.’

  ‘I kin post them swops today…’

  ‘I did that this morning, thanks.’

  Daphne appeared from the back of the church, wrapped her arms around Miss Stanislaus’s waist. The girl looked up at her mother before fixing me. Brown as an evenly baked loaf. Clear-water eyes. At least, I thought, when Miss Stanislaus looked at Daphne she saw a younger version of herself. I wondered if that made a difference.

  ‘You didn ask ’bout Nathan.’

  ‘Alice feels more real,’ I said.

  Miss Stanislaus frowned. ‘That mean?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘I dunno where to begin.’

  She looked disappointed. ‘None ov what them tell you help?’

  ‘I can’t say right now, Miss Stanislaus. I need something to… to kick me off. A spark, yunno. Something. I didn’t get that from them. Or mebbe I got it, but I don’t know it yet. By the way, what’s going on with Adora – all this talk about centipede and her girlchild?’

  ‘Adora is Adora. She a fighter woman who not feeling good about what she done to Bello. Missa Digger, killin is a stain dat can’t wash out.’

  ‘Miss Stanislaus, I been thinking you should go back to your house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A feeling I got – that’s all.’

  She stared at the gaping doorway of the church for a while, then shook her head. ‘Nuh! Not yet. Mebbe when tings start makin sense. Mebbe when I feel satisfy.’

  36

  I called Ramlogan in Trinidad and thanked him for the last job. A parcel should be with him that evening, containing eight samples. Did he think he could get the results back to me in ten days? And could he make sure that the return address was the PO Box I sent him, rather than San Andrews CID?

  Crosschecking and analysis took time, he said, but he thought that he could do it.

  I gave him Miss Stanislaus’s number. ‘She’ll wire the money when you confirm receipt. The timing is important,’ I said. ‘A matter of life and death.’

  Ramlogan said nothing for a while, then he told me, okay.

  Wanting something to distract me, I turned to my grandmother’s belt. I shredded the banana tree behind my house and was sorry afterwards, which did not prevent me from destroying the one beside it. I dropped the weapon on my kitchen table, stood looking out at Old Hope valley. I couldn’t get Adora off my mind.

  I reviewed my conversations in the church, reminding myself of Chilman’s mantra, especially during our first few months of training: ‘Fellas, it got four ways an officer does get misleading information. First, the witness or guilty party tell you a barefaced lie intended to make you look the other way; second, the witness or guilty party not telling you what you need to know because they assume you know already; third – the one I won’t forgive y’all for – is when the witness or guilty party tell you everything you need to know and you don’t realise it.’

  ‘And the fourth?’

  ‘When I find out that one, Digson, I’ll let you know.’

  The trick was to examine every word I might have misunderstood. My list was very short.

  *

  ‘G’d afternoon, Miss Stanislaus. Can I speak to The Mother?’

  Miss Stanislaus’s voice faded. The background noises of the yard took over.

  ‘Yes, Missa Digger!’ The voice was sullen, deep.

  ‘A question I want to ask you, Mother Bello. You said the men get the provisions every week – where they buy the provisions from?’

  ‘They don’t buy it; they collect it.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘The lands in Saint Davids. A fella up there name Crane wuk the land for us, keep his portion, an leave our share by de road. One of them collect it and bring it here.’

  I sat back. ‘Okay, thanks. Lemme speak to Miss Stanislaus.’

  ‘Something wrong, Missa Digger?’

  ‘Nuh, Mother Bello. Pass the phone to Miss Stanislaus, please.’

  ‘Missa Digger, is me here.’

  ‘Miss Stanislaus, give the phone to Adora, please.’

  ‘Eh-heh?’

  ‘Miss Adora, is Digger here…’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Miss Adora, you always talk like that?’

  ‘Go ahead an ask de question, Mister.’

  I lowered my voice. ‘You talk
ing to me, but you not saying anything. What you want to tell me, Adora?’

  ‘Missa Digger, thanks for the call. Ba-bye.’

  37

  Early evening, we took the road to Saint Davids. Miss Stanislaus was her old self – alert and cheerful, although she wouldn’t look at me directly. When I picked her up she dropped a brown paper bag on my lap. I brought it to my nose and smelled potato pone. I rested it on the dashboard, smiled my thanks at her.

  ‘You not eating it?’

  ‘I waiting for your permission, Mam.’

  She patted her green handbag and kept her eyes on the road.

  An hour later, we were climbing through the colder, damper air of the Mardi Gras foothills. On the peaks above us, the deep-throated thrum of high winds; down below, the clotted green of vegetation speckled with wooden houses stuck against the hillsides.

  ‘What make you so sure is up here?’ Miss Stanislaus wanted to know.

  I quoted her: ‘Sometimes a pusson know and they dunno how they know.’

  She nodded, as if I’d just given the best possible explanation.

  An hour later we topped the hill. ‘The Lands’, I explained, was anywhere in the mountains where a farmer grew cash crops – always treacherous to get to, but the richness of the soil made the trouble worthwhile. Here, the forest gave way only briefly. After a few months of neglect the place returned to bush.

  We walked the grassy ridge above a banana plantation. I kept my eyes on the giant silk cotton tree that Pike, the Watchman, told me marked the western boundary of Bello’s land. Miss Stanislaus strolled ahead, her handbag dangling from her bent elbow as if she was on a royal tour and the bushes around us were her subjects.

  The misshapen shed of rotting wood and galvanise told us we were there. Directly in front, flowering pigeon peas, sweet potatoes and eddoes; halfway down the slope, earth mounds of growing yams, a field of sweet cassava. Beyond all that, a dense expanse of plantains and bananas.

  The garden ended at a gully. From that point the ancient forest began its climb towards the peaks of the Mardi Gras. Treetops laden with a heavy weave of vines. A green Purgatory.

  Miss Stanislaus must have felt the same thing – or something like it. I heard her slow intake of breath and when I looked at her she was dabbing at her eyes with a square of tissue.