Ezekiel knows her trial. He stepped off the bus in Hector’s Castle and was making his way across to Hector’s Hardware and Grocery, intending to buy a couple bottles of beer to take up the hill, for Vads enjoys a Red Stripe, when he came across her grandson, Ralston, and two other young men leaning against the wall of the shop, each with a bottle of warm Red Stripe — “hot hops” — and a cigarette in hand, though it was only ten in the morning.
Ralston was idling at full throttle. “Elvin, him that see it, know it. And him that feel it, know it better.” He sputtered on the swill of beer he’d just taken, finding his own joke funny. “I go show you living proof that if cousin boil good soup, sister boil better!”
Gramps wondered at first if under the bravado he detected something tremulous, a degree of unease. One good look at Ralston said it was wishful thinking.
“Morning, Ralston,” Gramps greeted the young man. Ralston raised his chin somewhat, but made no further response.
Gramps entered and threw his voice into the cool darkness of the store. “A howdy to you, Mr. Hector. I hope your day goes well and I would thank you to reach a couple Red Stripes for me.”
“You rather them cold, or you prefer them just so?”
“Just so is fine. Time I walk up the road, they going be hot anyhow.”
Mr. Hector emerged from the shelves and came to the counter to see Gramps searching in his pocket for the wherewithal to make his purchase. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Carpenter. I never see it was you. Welcome to Hector’s. Last time I see you was in fifty-eight, right? Good to see you after this long little while.” He looked uncertain as he settled the beers into a paper bag and handed them over. Then he ventured, carefully, “I take it you come to see Miss Evadne?”
“You know that’s why I come, Mr. Hector, excepting of course for my regular November visit to Elsie’s grave.”
“Miss Evadne will be glad to see you, for sure, sir.” The grocer inclined his head, gesturing with an eyebrow in Ralston’s direction.“I am slow to pronounce it, but it’s as well I be the one to tell you. Ralston boasting out there these past days that he make a baby on his sister.”
“Is there truth in that, Mr. Hector?”
“I put nothing past that one, Mr. Carpenter.”
Now Gramps is looking at Evadne as she pours the lemonade for them both, She’s put the Red Stripes in the ice-box, for though many people maintain that warm beer is good for lungs, teeth, and general well-being, they prefer their beer cold. Given the twisted fingers, he considers taking the jug from her, but she is managing, and he knows the importance of a person feeling that they have control, even over small things, when they have lost much bigger control. He notes his own hands on his knees and realizes he is clutching them. Never mind age and experience, if what Mr. Hector says is true, he is in alien waters. Still he’s never been a man to shirk a hard thing. He goes across to Evadne, takes the glass she offers, and says, “Thanks, Vads. I need something to cool me down.”
Seating himself again, he takes courage. “First things first, Vads. How is Phyllis? Is she here?”
“How you mean, Zeke?”
“I mean the plain words I’m saying, Evadne.”
“You mean to say that you know?”
“I know what Ralston is broadcasting in the shop piazza.”
“In that case, you see why I had to send her off. How could I have her here exposed to the cruelty of that boy and the bad-mindedness of people? You know all this time, she washing and ironing his clothes along with hers and mine? For is not much I can do with these now.” She displays the fingers again.
“I’m sorry Vads — ”
She cuts Gramps off. “Not only that, she cook food if I can’t manage, clean this house from top to bottom, and all the while,” Evadne reaches down between breasts rising in swift tremors for a handkerchief, “the child is trying to keep up with her schoolwork.”
“And you’re sure he did it?”
“That girl never yet tell me a lie.”
“And is she now in good hands? Is she safe?”
“I think so, Zeke. I s-s-send her to Alton Mount.” Evadne sniffles into the kerchief. “It’s a place the church recommend.”
“Which church, Vads?”
“Which church you think? The Church of England, which I was brought up in.” She adds, with some ire, “The self-same church you and Elsie attend when you live here, for there was no Methodist Church then. You don’t recall?”
Evadne’s annoyance at his question helps her to compose herself, which is his intention.
“I don’t mean to suggest that it was a foolish thing to do, Vads. I’m just concerned that Phyllis is in a place where people can offer her comfort as well as care for her and the baby, when it comes. She not the first to make a baby at her age, but having her half-brother’s baby is another matter.”
Evadne’s hands flutter up to hide her face.
“Think about Phyllis and you will manage it better, Vads.” He pauses. “So. You still don’t tell me where she is.”
“They start a home for girls pregnant like she in Alton Mount. The home is Archdeacon’s idea and his wife is running it. Reverend Myers say he would talk to Archdeacon. It’s not many girls, but they are all high up in their teens, so Reverend Myers was worried about Phyllis.”
“It’s the child’s age that is worrying me, as well. Twelve years is very young. Pikni making pikni.”
“Well, Reverend Myers say we will tell a kindly lie and say Phyllis is nearly fourteen. And till the baby come, because of the circumstances, Archdeacon Miller say he and Mrs. Miller will have her in their own home. I praise God for that. You know Mrs. Miller’s work is to counsel young people.”
Gramps wonders what there is to say to a twelve-year-old having a baby because her half-brother raped her.
“Not that I don’t try to comfort her, Zeke. I tell her is not her fault, and I work quick to move her once I know what happen, for people too unkind. Everybody know her mother was working on papers for she and me, so I put it out that they come through. That time not a soul but me and Phyllis and Daphne know about the baby. Then Ralston start running his mouth down at the shop!”
“Sound like you did the best you could, Vads. How far along is she?”
“Two months. That boy is wicked to advantage her. The day he force himself on her, I wasn’t here. When I come back about four, she vanish clean-clean. I search and I search, walk and walk, examine everywhere, saying over and over, ‘The Lord is my shepherd ...’ ”
Evadne is distraught, her tale a tremulous outpouring, but Gramps doesn’t stop her, conscious that the grief and powerlessness and guilt of it all are trying her sorely, and the words are a way to get it out. Gradually her speech fades, and her head falls to one side.
He looks across the road to a white scar of track running up a steep ridge on the other side. There is an old quarry up there. He must ask Vads when she wakes if it is still in use.
Evadne starts at the sound of metal banging against metal, as someone slams the gate. It is at the side of the property, the house placed on the land so it is parallel to the road. Done before Evadne and Malachi’s time, it meets the need for privacy ingeniously. An arbour running down the side of the house prevents people from seeing through the bedroom windows, with the hanging orchids a further obstruction to prying eyes. They were Malachi’s comfort as he dwindled into dementia, and mercifully, death.
The front verandah faces beds of gerberas and roses, a wide lawn of zoysia, bounded on the near side by a new fence, then guinea grass for the goats, and for the larger livestock grazing grass that continues to the steep mountains known as Long Backs. There is also a view across to the lower hills on the other side of the road.
“So why you let me sleep, Ezekiel?”
“You were such a pretty picture, Vads. How could I disturb you?”
“That’s why I warn Elsie Dixon about you! That day she come back from Queenstown carrying on about how she meet some
body on the bus that was reading poems. ‘Imagine, a man reading! And poems, Vads, poems!’ ”
“You warn her about me because I was reading poems?”
“I warn her when she say you tell her, ‘This parting is sweetest sorrow.’ ”
“Nothing wrong with making a good line better.”
Ezekiel is glad of their banter, for Evadne needs the diversion. He fears her reaction when they get to serious talking again.
“That’s what I warned her about. Cocksure of yourself from the start.”
Clang. Clunk. Clunk. Whoever is coming round to the front of the house is announcing his entry by hitting the containers that hold the orchids.
“Is so your acquaintances have licence to assault your property?”
Evadne’s top lip pushes out, her chin muscle pleating her bottom lip so she resembles an angry fish. “That is my grandson, who do what he like, more so since he is now owner and controller of the piece of land yonder,” she flaps a wrist at the new fence, “as of his sixteenth birthday, just past, his no-good father having prevailed upon Malachi to sign a paper to that effect.”
“Come again, Vads? All this not your house and land?”
“No, siree.” Ralston swings the corner, a stout stick in hand. He is using it to swipe at the rose plants, slap-slap-slap the rails of the stairs, and thwack at the empty chair before he slouches down into it, exuding fumes of beer. “She own right up to that fence.” He gestures tipsily. “Me, Ralston Patterson, is rightful proprietor of what lie beyond.”
Having asserted his right of ownership, Ralston sets his stick to one side, pulls a pack of Lucky Strike from his back pocket, offers one to Gramps, to his great surprise, and when Gramps declines, lights up and blows a mighty puff of smoke in Miss Evadne’s direction.
“How much time I am to tell you that I don’t like that cigarette smoke, Ralston?” Miss Evadne rises. “I know with dinner in the offing, you not getting up to go nowhere, so I will just excuse myself. Ezekiel, I hope you plan to stop with us. I’m going to finish frying plantain. Once I done, dinner will be served.”
The two men sit in silence for a while, Ralston taking long drags on the cigarette and blowing smoke rings, Gramps staring out across the garden and up to the hills. Thank God, Phyllis and the baby are safe for the moment. His concern is now Evadne. Obviously it takes every effort of will for her to be in Ralston’s presence, and he wonders why the fellow is still in her house. Perhaps Ralston has threatened her. Gramps doesn’t know what kind of company he keeps. Though the young men with him are rough sorts, they don’t look like thugs, but who can tell? As he sees it, ensuring that Evadne has a plan of action for Phyllis and herself is half of what is necessary. The other half is what to do about Ralston. They can go to the police, rape and incest being against the law, but the case will have to be made on Phyllis’s word, and he is loath to put her through that ordeal.
Before she dozed off, Evadne had related more of her wretched tale. “That evening, I pray, Ezekiel. I ask the neighbours to help, and we search outside and up and down the road with lantern till late-late, and then I lie awake in what was left of the night begging God to show me where she is. When morning come, he lead me to the bruck-down shed by the river, where Malachi tend his plants. Is there I find her, sitting on a piece of old crocus bag, shivering with cold, wet from the dampness, and coughing like she have TB, her eyes red, for she couldn’t stop crying. She wouldn’t tell me what happen, why she run off and hide herself. When I see the blood on her, I remind her that we talked about that. I say, ‘That mean you’re becoming a woman, Phyllis. You remember, don’t it?’ Same time she start a cow-bawling, and roll herself from side to side, and wouldn’t stop.”
Gramps beholds the cause of all this trouble enjoying his smoke. He doubts that Ralston has any feelings for the half-sister whom he raped, any interest in what is happening to her, and the child he boasts he has put in her belly. There are a lot of things it behooves him to discover, but somehow the idea of a composed discussion on Evadne’s verandah seems atrocious. He has to persuade Ralston to go somewhere else with him.
He decides it is as well to begin with some embellishments to the vagabond’s status. “Ralston, I wouldn’t mind if you and me could have a talk, seeing as you are now a person of property and in a position to help your grandmother, who will shortly need care and assistance, for you know she is not well.”
Ralston is taken aback at the request, but after a lengthy pause, he replies. “Don’t see any reason why not.”
“What about we take a walk?” Gramps says as he gets up. “Then whatever we say will be between you and me.”
Ralston looks askance at him, and Gramps realizes the fellow would remember how close Elsie and himself had been to Malachi and Evadne. He had been a big boy when the Carpenters left Hector’s Castle, old enough to recall their many interactions. Gramps can envision him sitting in the moonlight on these same shiny concrete steps with Malachi and Evadne, his mother, Daphne, cradling Phyllis, who was still sucking her finger, Miss Elsie, and himself, listening as the five grownups told duppy stories. Pretending that there are things between him and Ralston that he’ll keep from Evadne makes no sense. He rectifies his mistake. “Not to say is anything secret we going to be talking, but I would like to spare your grandmother’s feelings. She been a self-sufficient woman all her life, and her sickness will in time make her weak, in need of support. It’s a hard adjustment to make.”
Gramps is twisting the truth, but just then all he wants to do is get Ralston’s backside up out of the chair and out into the road. After that he has no inkling what he will do or say, where they will go, what kind of arrangement he will try to make so Evadne can live in some kind of peace.
Ralston achieves his feet, checks to see that his parts are secure in his trousers, and with his free hand pats his shirt pocket to make sure he has the pack of cigarettes.
“A-right,” he says to Gramps. “So where we going?”
Gramps leaps down the stairs like a man half his age and is barrel-ling down the path by the side of the house, headed for the gate.
“What happen, Zeke? Where you going? You not leaving?” Evadne calls to him through the kitchen window.
“Me and Ralston just going for a walk, Evadne. Coming right back.”
“Hold up, Mr. Carpenter. Is bus you running to catch?” Ralston pauses so Gramps can grasp that he doesn’t jump to anyone else’s rhythms. “Only one thing I put on so much haste for!” He guffaws so loud that he chokes on his cigarette, whereupon he regards it with annoyance, observes that it is down to the butt, and hurls it into the bush.
Ezekiel makes an enormous effort to restrain himself from thumping Ralston. Knowing that won’t help the cause, he grunts in a manner he hopes Ralston will interpret as appreciative of his wit.
“Listen, Ralston, if you own land, you have to behave like a landowner. You don’t know that flinging a cigarette butt into the bush can start a fire? You could burn down your whole property from one careless act like that!”
Ralston absorbs this. “That make sense. I will heed it in future.”
He is tempted to think that perhaps Ralston isn’t an entirely depraved creature whose most decent act is the consumption of hot hops in company with hooligans. Then, letting Ralston walk ahead of him, he notices the young man has a stout knife in a case attached to a leather belt that also sports a metal ring with a length of sash cord looped through it. The implements are in plain view, for the landed proprietor has on a tight white shirt that stops at his waist, and a pair of expertly laundered jeans. Gramps decides it is probably better not know what the knife and rope are for.
They are on the road now. Gramps halts for a bit and surveys the track running up the ridge on the other side that once led to the quarry. “You ever go up that road yet, Ralston?”
“After nothing not up there, no food, no diversion, no female company.” Hope flickers again at the relative delicacy of the remark until Ralston chuckle
s, groping his parts. “Me only go where the freeness is.”
“They used to have a quarry up there. That’s where the stone that built your grandparents’ house comes from.”
Ralston does not regard this as worthy of notice. Instead he offers, “One time few years ago, me and the fellows take slingshot and shoot bird up that way. The pickings wasn’t bad, but is a long time now we don’t go back up there.”
“I tell you one thing, Ralston. If you want a good idea of the size of your property, up there is the place to look from.”
Ralston debates Gramps proposal for a while Then he says, “Me don’t have nothing better to do, so yeah, we could walk up there.”
Gramps doesn’t know what he has in mind when he makes the suggestion. He certainly isn’t worried that this strong, well-armed teenager may choose to hurt him. Malachi and Evadne Patterson were fine people who painstakingly raised their one child, Daphne, Ralston’s and Phyllis’s mother. But what he knows of Desmond, Ralston’s father, is not encouraging. Clever, moody, own-way, Desmond gave up school to join a gang that trafficked in weed. An amiable fellow when he chose, he could be generous and funny, but his ganja smoking worsened his moods so that during the bad ones, even his comrades avoided him. Daphne lost her innocence to his charm at a church picnic when she was sixteen. She’d given birth to Ralston, who spent his growing-up years missing his father, for Desmond was by then as often in as out of the penitentiary. By age ten, never mind his grandparents’ efforts, Ralston was as truculent as Desmond.
If the father has bad blood, what evils might lurk in the son? But they have no quarrel, Ralston and he. Besides, as Gramps often said when provoked, “I go to war and come back. Plenty never return.” He can handle Ralston, if need be.
They climb for five or six minutes, taking the steep slope without difficulty. When they reach a ways up, Gramps addresses Ralston’s back. “If you stop now and look, you will see the whole place, starting from the river over yonder and coming all the way forward to the fence on the road right under us, and also going up, Long Backs way.” He gestures as he speaks, towards the slim line of wetness glinting through the trees, then down to the barbed wire threading the posts on the road below them, then north, towards the mountains shrouded in low black clouds.
Red Jacket Page 22