Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  "I am."

  "I believe I'll come to your church."

  "I hope you will," Barry said with a smile. "You haven't told me your name."

  "It's Micheline."

  "Is that all? Just Micheline?"

  "Laroche."

  "Thank you. I'm happy to know you."

  The blunt bow of the boat crashed into a sea at that moment, and the shattered wave flew the full length of the deck. Some of the women voiced shrieks of laughter or dismay, and all over the wallowing craft was a flurry of movement as the passengers sought to make themselves smaller targets for the next bombardment. Barry was as wet again as when he had walked in the sea. The girl named Micheline Laroche huddled against him, giggling.

  He thought it best to ignore her, lest he encourage a boldness that might become embarrassing. They were devils for making a white man feel foolish, these young peasant girls. It was a game they loved playing. For something to do he looked for Pradon Beliard again. The plantation boy and his friend were still talking.

  It was then that Barry noticed the resemblance between the girl at his side and Pradon's companion. No doubt it was only a racial resemblance. They were descended from many different African tribes, these people. Their ancestors had been brought to St. Joseph packed like living logs in the holds of slave ships. A certain tribal purity still existed in some country districts, and it was often possible to look at a person and say with some degree of accuracy, "This one is a Mandingue" or "That one is an Arada."

  He found he could not identify the strain common to Pradon's chum and the girl, but it certainly existed. Both had high foreheads and sharp, slender noses. Both had attractive mouths, full but not thick. The pupils of their eyes were bright, the whites clear.

  A handsome pair, he decided, and wondered whether they might be brother and sister. There was nothing distinctive about the man's dress. Except for faded khaki trousers he was naked. But he sported an enormous ring on the middle finger of his left hand, a ring with a square green stone; and on a slender gold chain about the girl's throat hung a similar stone, winking prettily against her smooth blue-black skin. Fortunately she hadn't a missing front tooth to flaw the picture, as he had. Her teeth were beautifully small and even, like a row of tiny white shells.

  THE BOAT LURCHED ON, every little while plunging into a wave and drenching the passengers with spray. Barry felt ill. He tried shutting his eyes, certain he was about to be sick, but opened them again almost at once on becoming aware that he felt even worse with them closed. He tried taking deep breaths and then holding his breath for seconds at a time. Nothing helped much. He was going to make a spectacle of himself, he was sure.

  "Just a minute more, Father," the girl said.

  He nodded, unable to answer. Heaven help him if he had to do this often. He would never get used to it. But before the heaving in his stomach grew unbearable, the motion of the boat became less violent and the sound of the wind's rushing diminished. They had reached a point where the eastern tip of Ile du Vent broke the wind's back.

  He waited a moment longer, then lifted his head and looked at the island. It was now close enough so that he could distinguish a dozen shades of green on its steep slopes, and a shimmer of sunlight on a sheet of metal that must be the roof of the church, halfway to the top. Thatch-roofed cailles snuggled among the trees. Coconut palms leaned gracefully over a score of tiny white-sand beaches, shaking their tops in the breeze.

  A paradise. There was no other word. Only in St. Joseph could such an island exist in a still primitive state. Americans or Englishmen would have built a good road from the capital to the channel shore, provided motorboats to take tourists across, and established hotels to accomodate them.

  Look, they'd have said. Here's a place that was once a rendezvous of pirates and buccaneers! Henry Morgan sailed his ships through this channel. The terrible L'Ollonois was here, and Montbars the Exterminator, and Pierre le Grand, Bartolomeo Portugues, John Davis, and dozens of others who made history in the West Indies. Here on Ile du Vent stood a town where rum flowed in the streets and women of loose morals strutted about in lace and jewels from plundered ships! This is history!

  In St. Joseph no one cared. Tourists stayed in the capital, balked by lack of transportation, atrocious back-country roads, and the baffling Creole spoken by the peasants. But Barry was glad Ile du Vent had no roads or hotels and was all but impossible to get to. He wanted no intrusion.

  He would not teach these people to hold out their hands and mumble "Gimme fi' cents" as the poor in the capital did. They were a proud, fine people. He would teach them farming and sanitation, something of their dramatic history, and, if they were receptive, something of Christianity.

  He would learn from them. Perhaps, as Peter Ambrose and so many others insisted, there was nothing in their primitive religion worth knowing. Perhaps it was a hopeless faith, to be condemned for having kept them all these years in poverty and ignorance. That remained to be seen. At least he would be free here to investigate, if he could.

  His companion smiled at him. "Was it so bad, Father?"

  "Bad enough."

  She laughed at his expression. "You should see Father Mitchell when he makes the voyage. Someone always has to hold his head."

  "Father Mitchell is an old man," he scolded, and wondered if it were true, as Edith Barnett had said, that old Mitchell was a victim of vodun.

  He had talked to Edith last night at a farewell party given for him at the Plantation Couronne. Everyone of importance had been there. Most of them had seemed genuinely sorry that he was leaving. The one exception had been Warner Lemke, the manager here on Ile du Vent. But then, Lemke was a ruggedly athletic young man who looked on all church people with contempt.

  He had talked to Edith for some time on the bungalow veranda, first about themselves and then about the job he was going to. "Barry, haven't you been told why Mr. Mitchell asked to be relieved?" she had asked.

  "His health, according to Peter. He hasn't been well."

  "He was poisoned."

  Recovering from his shock, he had let a wry smile form at his mouth corners. "Really, Edith."

  "It's true. When he went over there just fourteen months ago to establish a mission, he thought he knew everything. He'd lived in St. Joseph for years. But he's been poisoned."

  "People get queer notions about vodun, Edith."

  "Queer notions! Oh, you churchmen are all alike. You don't know anything."

  "You forget I was a boy in these islands."

  "Have you ever seen a real vodun service?"

  "Well, no, I don't suppose I have. But—"

  "You never have. You never will, now that you're in the church. You're going to Ile du Vent without the faintest notion of what you're up against!"

  Barry had wondered if she knew what she was talking about. Of course, vodun did exist on the Isle of the Wind. It existed in one form or another everywhere in St. Joseph, even in the capital where thrill-seeking tourists, escorted to ceremonies by the agency people, came away complaining it was a fake, not knowing that the same "fakers" in the same hounfors communed with the vodun gods in deadly earnest on nights when the tourists were not welcome.

  He wished he knew more about it. As a boy he'd seen very little, his parents, especially his mother, having flatly forbidden him to "get mixed up in it." And now, of course, as Edith had pointed out, he was looked upon as an enemy.

  "Have you proof that Mr. Mitchell was poisoned?" he asked.

  "Warner Lemke told me. He heard some of his workers discussing it." She stepped to the veranda rail and stood with her back toward him, gazing out into the darkness. "I asked Pradon Beliard about it afterward. His home is on Ile du Vent. His aunt is Mr. Mitchell's housekeeper." Suddenly she had turned, reaching for his hands. "Barry must you go?"

  "You know I must."

  "When am I going to see you again?"

  "Soon, I'm sure. I'll be coming back here quite often. I'm bound to."

  "Will you
?"

  "I'm leaving most of my clothes and books, for one thing. And I'll need advice. There'll be people on the island who will require medical help beyond my capabilities. I'll have to bring them here to Peter's clinic—" His voice ran down as he looked into her face. All this was difficult, so damnably difficult. "I'm sorry, Edith. What else can I say? I can't possibly take you with me."

  It was true, of course; he couldn't take her. The Bishop would never permit it. A bigger truth nagged at his conscience, however. He did not want to take her. At least, he was not sure.

  In the beginning he had been flattered by her show of affection; she was a most attractive girl and he a man who had had little time for romance. Then, slowly, he had come to realize that she sought his companionship only because there was no one else. She had been buried at Plantation Couronne for years. Her schooling had been managed through books and the mails, some system by which lessons were sent from the States to be completed and sent back for grading. Her sole recreation was a monthly visit to the capital, where for a few days she might enjoy the company of people her own age at the club maintained by the foreign colony.

  She couldn't be in love with him, really. Nor, probably, did he love her. They were simply two people thrown together by circumstance. "Edith, I'm sorry," he said again, moving to her side.

  Her mouth quivered. She said with an effort, "I think we'd better go in now. Just—just be careful on your island, Barry. Please."

  Had Mitchell been poisoned? By people like these on the boat? He didn't believe it. With a shake of his head he put the plantation scene from his thoughts and turned to watch the approaching shore.

  A crowd had gathered on the island beach where the boats landed. Naked children noisily pursued one another over the sugar-white sand and into the shallow water, swooping and diving as gracefully as the white seabirds above their heads. Aboard the boat the passengers had begun to gather up their possessions.

  Presently the water became beautifully transparent and, peering over the side, he saw formations of coral that resembled buildings in an undersea city, and patches of sand and shells that looked like streets and parks. It was like something seen in a dream.

  Never had he seen anything more breathtakingly lovely. If there was a heaven, as he had been taught to believe, it must be like this. Here on Ile du Vent he would surely find answers to some of the questions that troubled him. Where there was so much beauty there must be truth.

  WITH THE ANCHOR DOWN the people crowded to the bow and dropped overboard into knee-deep water, the handful of men going first and reaching up to help the women. There was a good deal of squealing and giggling from the latter, inspired, Barry suspected, by sly pinching and squeezing on the part of the gallants. When his own turn came, he found the girl named Micheline just ahead of him at the rail.

  She glanced back at him, smiled, and nonchalantly hitched the butterfly-print dress up about her sleek thighs. It seemed a natural thing to do. She was, after all, about to leap into the sea. But some of the older women giggled, and Barry felt a flush spread over his face.

  She had lifted the dress higher than she needed to, he realized. Had it been intentional, to embarrass him? He had no way of knowing. Having dropped into the water, she went straight ashore without a backward glance, and when he reached the beach himself, she had vanished.

  Pradon Beliard was waiting. "It will take a little time to bring the cargo ashore," the boy said. "Why don't you go on up to the mission, sir?"

  "You can arrange to have my things brought up?"

  "Of course." He seemed almost offended. "Go straight past the little house there and follow the path. There is only the one path in that direction."

  Barry saw that the people were busy with their own affairs and decided there was nothing to be gained by waiting. He preferred to walk alone in any case. At the back of the beach he circled the hut Pradon had pointed to and discovered the path. It began to climb almost at once. It could hardly do anything else.

  Judging by what he had seen from the boat, his island possessed no level land other than the beach, and even that was more sharply tilted than most beaches. There might be something different beyond the ridge, however.

  He looked back after climbing a short time, and the view increased the feeling within him that here on Ile du Vent he might find contentment. Green slopes fell abruptly, everywhere, to the trim thatched huts along the shore. He saw tiny fishing dugouts, each apparently fashioned from a single tree trunk, tucked away in a necklace of sheltered coves. There were other huts on the hills, among garden patches that transformed the slopes into fanciful checkerboards. He wondered why he saw no people.

  His clothes dried as he climbed. When he stopped again he emptied his hat, returning his possessions to his pockets and strapping his watch back on his wrist. Soon the trail emerged from the cool shade of mango and breadfruit trees and became a ladder of boulders open to the sun.

  He began to sweat and glanced up. The sun, almost overhead, was a naked flame that seemed determined to melt him among the stones. He took off his coat, understanding now why the gardens were deserted. No one in St. Joseph worked at this hour. With a longing glance at the next clump of trees impossibly far above, he sank onto a boulder to wait for new strength. His three years on the Fond Marie plain had softened him for this sort of thing. It would take some getting used to.

  He took up a handful of earth and examined it. Was it good earth? The peasant farmers could judge by smelling and tasting it, or claimed they could, but he knew no such simple way to evaluate it. Color was not a reliable guide; most of the soil in St. Joseph was a rich-seeming dark red, yet much of it was worthless. The smell-and-taste test was probably worthless too. Just another native superstition, like their belief that a cool stone touching the head would kill you if you were perspiring, or their fancy that pineapples were fatal to pregnant women. They were children. Still, his own Massachusetts-born mother had firmly believed that cherries and milk taken together meant certain illness . . .

  A sound of footsteps brought his head up. He saw a man in khaki trousers climbing toward him with complete lack of effort, long legs flowing and arms lazily swinging as though the ascent were nothing at all. It was Pradon Beliard's pal from the boat.

  "Bon jour, mon Père." Despite the missing front tooth, the voice was clear and pleasant.

  "Good day to you. I wish I had your knack on these paths."

  "It will come, Father." The polite smile became a frown almost at once. "But not if you sit like this too long, eh? This sun can eat a man!" In Creole the phrase sounded oddly like a threat. "Soleil-sa kab mange youn moun!"

  "You're right, of course." Barry struggled to his feet. "I'll move along." He leaned aside to let the man pass, wondering what there was about the fellow that made him seem familiar. The answer came quickly and almost made him laugh.

  He was looking at himself, he realized. This islander with the blue-black skin was a dusky image of the Reverend Arthur Barry Clinton: the same 160-odd pounds, six feet of height, narrow hips, modest shoulders, longish arms and legs. He wore different clothes, of course —in face he wore practically nothing—and his hair looked like a skullcap of black periwinkles, but in every other respect the resemblance was startling. There was even a facial likeness.

  "Compère," Barry said curiously, "how old are you, if you don't mind the question?"

  "Old, Father? Twenty-eight."

  "That really wraps it up."

  The fellow frowned. The white man's last remark had been in English, which he did not understand. He waited, not sure the conversation was over. Odd, his encountering Father Mitchell's successor like this, actually coming over on the boat with him. He had meant to avoid him until he could learn more about him, size him up as an adversary. The loa may have had a hand in this; it was entirely possible. He had gone over to Anse Ange this morning to buy candles for the hounfor. For no other reason. The business of the loa, pure and simple. On the beach below, he had made a po
int of talking to some of his people, so as to give the new Father time to reach the mission ahead of him. Now this.

  Something else was strange. This man was young. My age, he thought. My height. My weight. A remarkable thing. If our skin were the same color, we might be brothers. Is there some truth, perhaps, in the belief of my ancestors that every man has somewhere a twin, a marassa? Curious, this thing. Very curious. The mystères had a hand in it perhaps.

  He waited. The white man said at last, with a gesture, "Well, friend, you'd better go first, or I'll delay you."

  "Not at all, Father. After you."

  Barry resumed the climb. All the way to the top of the slide, which turned out to be the plateau on which the mission stood, he heard the measured slap of the other's bare feet behind him. It was a most uncomfortable feeling, like being pursued by an unshakable shadow. He wondered who the fellow was.

  3

  IT ISN'T MUCH OF A PLACE," Peter Ambrose had said in an attempt to prepare him.

  It certainly wasn't.

  There were two buildings: a miniature church cringing under a crooked wooden cross, and an L-shaped one-story house some forty yards distant. Both had corrugated-iron roofs dark with rust streaks but were otherwise constructed in the same fashion as the island huts. They leaned atrociously because the poles they were framed with had been hacked from tree trunks crookedly with machetes. They appeared to be disintegrating because the white limestone mortar on their walls of woven palm fronds had begun to crack and fall off.

  The ground around them was red and bare. Only a few struggling tufts of grass poked through it. There was but one tree, a very old campeche or logwood, lightning-struck, thirty feet from the house.

  Barry crossed the baked red earth to the house and halted by its door, which stood open. With a cheerfulness he did not feel, he called out in English, "Hello! Is anyone at home?"

  He heard a muffled grumbling, followed by the sounds a man might make on waking and groping about in a dark room. "Who is it?"