Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  Daure Cesar reached him first. "What is it, mon Père? What happened?" She looked at the boy in his arms and her eyes widened. "God in heaven!"

  "My mule kicked him. I need help." He must have instruments and medicines. He must make a complete examination.

  Her husband, big Louis, pushed through to her side. Barry laid the boy in his arms. "Carry him to the rectory for me, Louis. Be gentle. He has broken ribs. But hurry." He could do nothing here. There were fifty people crowding around now, all trying to see, all talking at once. He plucked at Louis' sleeve and hurried down the path.

  The mule blocked the path, tearing up mouthfuls of the tough grass at its edge. He caught the bridle and jerked its head up and could have sworn he saw triumph in the mean eyes that returned his gaze. He led it from the path so Louis could pass without danger, then handed the animal off to a sturdy peasant who looked capable.

  "Take care of him for me, please."

  The fellow said morosely, "There is only one way to take care of this bete diable. With a machete!"

  Pretending he had not heard, Barry hurried after big Louis.

  8

  ALMA LEMKE WAS WAITING in his office, sitting on the cot he had placed there for his patients. He nodded but went past her quickly to draw aside the curtain, so that Louis might carry the injured boy into the bedroom. As he scrubbed his hands at the washstand, Alma watched him from the doorway.

  "What happened?"

  He told her briefly. When he turned from the washstand she had entered the room and was bending over the bed. "It looks bad," she said. "Is it as bad as it looks?"

  "I hope not."

  Lucille came in. Someone must have told her the story, for with scarcely a glance at the boy she said crisply, "Dufour is to blame for this. He knew that mule was a devil when he sold you the beast." When Barry failed to answer, she went on in a bitter tone, "It's partly my fault, too. I should have warned you. But you seemed able to handle the animal."

  "Heat some water, please, Lucy," he said.

  He worked over the boy for half an hour, with Alma and big Louis silently watching him and Lucy trotting back and forth between bedroom and kitchen. So far as he could determine, there were three ribs fractured. It was not too disastrous then, provided there were no other injuries. The boy's breathing made him anxious. But for the moment, at least, he could do no more.

  He rose from the edge of the bed and moved to a chair, momentarily exhausted. "Who is he, Louis? What is his name?"

  "Toto Anestor, mon Père. He lives in the village with a no-good aunt who never takes care of him. His parents were drowned three or four years ago when a boat turned over in the channel."

  "How old is he?"

  "I think about nine or ten."

  "He is badly hurt," Barry said gravely. "I'm not sure how badly, but even if there are no injuries that I can't see, he will have to stay here for some time. If there are internal injuries I may have to take him to Fond Marie. Can you stay for a little while, Louis? I may need you."

  Louis said, "I will wait outside, mon Père," and left the room. When Lucy followed him, Barry turned to Alma Lemke. It seemed a long time ago that he had discovered her in church and been surprised to see her there. Had all this really happened in only an hour or so?

  He drew a breath. He had wanted a shower, he remembered. He had wanted to sit and think. Half an hour ago he had thought that if he could not sit and think, he would explode.

  "I'm glad you're here," he said. "You don't know what it means to have someone"—he groped for the word—"someone from one's own world on hand at such a time."

  She frowned. "I stayed to find out what was happening. The drums. The way you dashed off. If there's anything I can do—"

  "There's nothing to be done. Not now, anyway. We wait and watch."

  She sat down. There were just the two of them in the room now. "I suppose you're wondering why I came to church this morning," she said. Why had she come? she asked herself. To satisfy a woman's curiosity? To get away from Warner for a time? She certainly hadn't come for the service. Even as a child she had never gone to church.

  "I did wonder. You hadn't mentioned being a member of old Mitchell's congregation."

  "I wasn't."

  "Why did you come, then?"

  "For something to do, I suppose. And to see how you'd get along at your first service. Were you nervous?"

  "I might have been, if there'd been more people."

  She looked idly about the room. How could a man live in such a cell, she wondered. It wasn't big enough to turn around in. How could he stand it? For that matter, how could he endure his job? What possessed a man to make him give up everything worth while in the world and devote his life to preaching sermons to a lot of stupid people who didn't want to listen?

  Of course, he wasn't just a preacher. He didn't just sit around all week as old Mitchell had done, waiting for Sundays to come so he could lecture on sin and salvation. This one was a worker. But even so, what satisfaction could he possibly find in it? The clinic, for instance? Did he actually enjoy looking after a lot of dirty black-skinned peasants? Didn't it bother him that they were black? It certainly would bother her. She mightn't hate her husband so fiercely if the girl hadn't been black.

  She looked at Barry. What kind of man was he, anyway? His face held no answer. She couldn't picture it as the face of a saint, all radiant with dedication and noble sacrifice. Those rough, homely features belonged on a farmer. He looked more masculine than Warner, who considered himself very masculine indeed. Not a single thing about Barry Clinton fitted the mental picture she had of a sanctimonious cleric. Even in church he hadn't seemed especially religious.

  The picture of him in church induced another one. "Who was the very attractive girl in the white dress this morning?" she asked. "The one who kept rearranging herself."

  Barry had to smile at her description. "Her name is Laroche. Her brother is the big houngan here."

  "It was her brother who interrupted the service, then? Those were vodun drums, weren't they?"

  He nodded.

  "Is that where you went when you dashed off on your mule?"

  "I was angry with him."

  "What happened when you confronted him?"

  "Nothing, really." He was not anxious to discuss what had happened at the tonnelle. Not until he had talked it over with Catus, at least. He turned to the boy on the bed and listened to the lad's breathing for a moment. There seemed to be no change. "Am I to expect you in church every Sunday?" he asked then.

  "Perhaps."

  "With Warner?"

  "Don't be silly." Her laughter was short, with a note of bitterness in it.

  "You might try to persuade him. It would set a wonderful example for the people."

  "My husband sets a different sort of example for the people," she said. "Let's skip him, shall we? He's my problem and I didn't come here to have you solve it for me. You've a few of your own just now."

  He thought wryly, You don't know how right you are, and was aware that even while talking to her he had been thinking of other things. Of Catus Laroche. Of the hypocritical little politician in Petit Trou who had criminally sold him the mule. He certainly had no desire to be drawn into any marital squabble between Alma and her husband, if that was what it was.

  The boy on the bed moved and made a moaning sound. Barry was over him instantly. The lad's mouth opened to exhale a noisy, bubbling sigh, and the bubbles were crimson.

  He turned quickly to Alma. "Can I go across to the mainland on your launch?"

  "Of course. You mean he's got to be taken over?"

  Answering her with a nod, he hurried through the front room to the yard. Louis Cesar was talking to Lucy in the kitchen doorway. "Louis!"

  How on earth would he manage it? Big Louis would have to carry the child to the plantation; any attempt to ride him there on Alma's horse might cause irreparable damage. But what about transportation from the mainland landing place to Fond Marie, after he cros
sed the channel in the launch?

  Alma answered the question for him. "I'll ride ahead and use the short wave," she said. She was looking at her watch. "We keep a schedule with Couronne at noon every day. I'll have them meet you on the mainland with a jeep."

  "Can you ask them to pick up Peter? The sooner he sees the boy, the better." Dear God, whatever had made him think he was a doctor? At the moment he was utterly helpless, terrified. If young Toto's life depended on him, it would be the end of the boy.

  He folded the bed sheet about his patient and fastened it with safety pins, lifted the lad gingerly, and placed him in big Louis' arms. "We're going to the plantation, Louis, and across to the mainland in the launch."

  "Go straight to the plantation beach," Alma said from the doorway. "I'll meet you there."

  CATUS LAROCHE was talking to his sister at the edge of the black shadow cast by the tonnelle roof. His hands were clenched.

  "You were late for the service this morning because you went to the Father's church. Why did you go there?"

  Micheline stood with her feet wide apart and her fists resting on her hips, a posture that only served to increase his anger because it made her look like a peasant woman arguing in the market place. That was how the marchandes always stood when shouting insults at one another.

  "Why shouldn't I go there?"

  "You are my sister!"

  "Daure is your sister too, isn't she? You're not angry with her for going."

  "She went with Louis because the Father helped their child." Catus snatched her hands away from her hips and held her by the wrists. "You had no reason for going, except to defy me."

  "I went because I wanted to."

  "Why should you want to?"

  She tossed her head. "I'm eighteen years old and have a mind of my own. I don't have to explain myself. If you want to fight him, that's your business, but you won't get me to fight him for you, no." A look of shrewdness came into her dark eyes. "Besides, how can you fight him after what happened at the service?"

  "I'll fight any white man who looks at you!"

  "Well, you needn't worry; he doesn't look at me. If you must know the truth, he doesn't know the difference between me and a donkey."

  A husky peasant came into the yard, walking with a wary eye on a mule he was leading. It was a powerful beast, the color of dirty limestone mud, with a curled and twitching upper lip. His left hand gripped the bridle and his right held a stout cocomacaque stick. He looked nervous. Catus knew him. His name was Monestime and he came from Petit Trou. He had been at the vodun service.

  "The Father told me to take care of this animal," he said to Catus. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

  Catus walked around the mule, frowning at it. "Isn't this the beast Felix Dufour bought in Anse Ange a couple of months ago?"

  "It is."

  "The one he never could ride? The one that broke the leg of that market woman?"

  "The same."

  "He said last week he was going to destroy it."

  Monestime showed his teeth in a crooked grin. "He found a better way to get rid of it. He sold it to the Father."

  Catus stopped pacing and stood lost in thought for a moment. "Dufour should not have done that, no. To palm off a sick animal on an unsuspecting stranger might be considered smart, but to sell a beast that might kill someone—for a trick like that a man ought to be ashamed of himself."

  "The day Dufour feels shame for anything he has done, I want to be around to see it," Monestime said. "Only yesterday he doubled the tax in the market and threatened to triple it when the women protested. He thinks he owns Ile du Vent, Dufour does. Do you want the job of punishing him?"

  "Tie the beast to the hedge over there, out of the way," Catus instructed. He did not discuss his thoughts with everyone who passed by. Let the others do the talking. He preferred to listen.

  ALMA LEMKE was trying to establish contact with Jeff Barnett on the short wave when her husband came into the room. Warner sent a suspicious glance in her direction as he went to the little sitting-room bar for a drink.

  "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded. "It isn't time for the schedule yet."

  "I hoped Jeff might come on a few minutes early." She turned on her chair and told him about the injured boy.

  His reaction surprised her. He had no particular love for the peasants, so far as she knew; yet when she described how the lad had received the injury—only repeating, of course, what Barry Clinton had told her—Warner stopped what he was doing at the bar and looked at her strangely, his face actually pale.

  He finished pouring his drink and swallowed half of it at one gulp. "Who is this boy?" he asked. "Anyone important?"

  "An orphan, I believe someone said."

  "Oh." Her husband seemed relieved as he finished his drink and put the empty glass on the bar. "Well, tell Jeff about it and we'll get down to the beach. We may be able to lend a hand."

  They had to wait ten minutes on the shore for Louis Cesar and Barry to arrive. Alma watched her husband, puzzled by his behavior. He spent the time walking back and forth at the water's edge, frowning at the sand as though searching for shells. He glanced up at her only when some distance away. When he saw Barry coming along the beach, followed by Louis, he went to meet them and scowled at the big man's burden.

  Alma hurried forward too. Only the boy's face could be seen. The rest of him was wrapped in the sheet. The sheet was wet with blood, the boy asleep or unconscious.

  "How is he?" Warner asked.

  "He needs attention quickly. Is the boat ready?"

  "Is he in pain?"

  "No. He's had morphine." Barry motioned Louis toward the pier where the plantation launch, a stubby, broad-beamed work craft with the word COURONNE on its stern, waited with its engine softly coughing. "Is Peter meeting us, do you know?" He put the question to Alma.

  "Jeff promised to bring him," she said.

  "Thank God." The relief was like a long drink of cold water after the forced march over the island trails from the rectory. Once, halting to examine the boy, he had thought him dead and been seized with panic.

  He followed Louis out onto the pier, stepped into the boat, and reached up to take the youngster from the big man's arms. The boat boy watched, awaiting a signal to cast off. Louis hesitated on the pier.

  "Come with me," Barry urged. "You can return when the launch does."

  Louis stepped in and the craft rumbled out into the channel, Barry carefully holding the boy, Louis wide-legged beside him, the boat boy braced on bare feet at the wheel. Alma and Warner Lemke watched from the pier in silence.

  It was some time before Lemke spoke. He said then, turning with a frown to his wife, "How did you get mixed up in this, anyway?"

  "I was at church."

  "Church, for Christ's sake!"

  She looked at him without expression and turned away. "Perhaps for my sake. Who knows?"

  ON HIS WAY THROUGH TERRE ROUGE to make himself useful at the Father's house, Pradon Beliard saw the gray mule in the yard of Catus Laroche and stopped. If the mule was there, the Father must be there too. He passed through the gate in the cactus hedge and made inquiries.

  "No, the Father is not here," Daure's mother, sitting in the doorway of the Cesar house, told him. "There was an accident.He has gone to Fond Marie on the mainland."

  Pradon questioned her. As she told him what had happened, he began to sweat. This was a bad thing, a very bad thing. There was going to be talk about it. People were going to blame Felix Dufour for selling Père Clinton a dangerous animal.

  Pradon felt himself shaking. If people did blame Dufour, what was to prevent the magistrate from squirming out of it by revealing that Pradon Beliard had put him up to it? Something would have to be done about this, quickly.

  There was only one thing that could be done. He knew that. The way to stop people from thinking about something was to give them something else, something more sensational, to think about. He murmured his farewells to the old
woman and went on down the path to the village. By the time he reached the village proper he had stopped sweating and was nodding his head.

  It was a Sunday. On a Sunday no one worked. The occupants of the houses sat about in the shade of the trees in their yards, bored with having nothing to do and hoping something would come along to relieve their boredom. Pradon stopped to talk. They were always glad when a passer-by did that. This business of the mule was something to talk about, too: a refreshing change from the usual discussion of bad crops and the weather. Pradon was glad he had put on a clean white shirt this morning and persuaded maman to run an iron over his trousers. A man well dressed was one to be looked up to and listened to with respect, even if he had been born with one leg shorter than the other.

  He talked by asking questions of his own. Oh, such innocent questions. Wasn't it a terrible thing, what had happened to young Toto? Such a good boy, too. An accident, of course. But what could the Father have been thinking of, to leave a notoriously dangerous animal on a main path where it was almost certain to hurt someone? Of course, he may not have known the beast was ill-tempered, but he had owned that mule for several days, hadn't he? How could he not have known? He had been riding mules for years, no? A man shouldn't be so thoughtless of others. Really he shouldn't.

  He spoke gravely with just the right amount of head-shaking. It wasn't necessary to be insistent or indignant. Just plant a thought or two and pass on to the next yard. He knew these people. The peasant mind was an amusing instrument. Drop an idea into it, and in a short time its owner would forget where the idea came from and be absolutely certain he had thought it up himself. Then, puffed with pride for his mental offspring, he would hasten to show it off to his neighbors.

  Pick the right people, say the right things, and you could start a rumor on Ile du Vent in no time. And once it was set in motion, nothing short of a bigger and better story could stop it. So, of course, you made your story big in the first place. You stuffed it with mysterious hints and innuendoes. The peasant mind loved to build mysterious maybes into monstrous facts.