Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

  “It’s not really a hymn.”

  “Then I’m afraid it’s unsuitable. This is sacred ground.” Reverend Christie reached into his pocket and produced a bill. “Reverend Thomas Christie, B.A., Enterprises,” it said, “All-inclusive burial and service—$200.00.”

  Matthias, reading it, felt the reverend’s eyes on him, perhaps calculating whether haggling would ensue. Matthias handed over the cash.

  “Bless you,” said Reverend Christie.

  Matthias walked around the church to the road. Moxie, wearing a wool tuque with a Boston Bruins logo, was waiting for him. He nodded at the Happy Times Bar.

  Matthias crossed the street, stepped over hunks of corroded car parts and peered through the glassless window of the Happy Times Bar. The bar had a dirt floor, a few barrels for sitting, and a big piece of plywood resting on two sawhorses for drinking. A chicken pecked at the dirt, a one-eyed cousin of Reverend Christie watched over the half-dozen bottles on a warped shelf, and Nottage sat on one of the barrels, his hand around a greasy glass and his head on the plywood. Matthias walked in.

  Reverend Christie’s cousin followed his progress with his good eye; there was no other eye, just an empty socket covered by a concave eyelid. Reverend Christie’s cousin said nothing. White men didn’t enter the Happy Times Bar; neither did Reverend Christie or any other respectable villager.

  Matthias sat on a barrel next to Nottage. “I’ll have a beer,” he said.

  “No beer,” said the one-eyed man. “Rum.”

  “Rum, then,” said Matthias.

  Nottage spoke without lifting his head. “Rum,” he said, in his deep, frayed voice. Matthias felt it vibrating in the plywood.

  Reverend Christie’s cousin reached for a bottle behind the bar. It had brown liquid on the inside and no label on the outside. He took a small, dusty glass off the shelf, dumped out the dead fly inside and set the glass before Matthias. He filled it to the brim and topped up Nottage’s. Nottage made no attempt to drink, but his hand remained wrapped around the glass.

  “They just buried Sir Hew,” Matthias said.

  No one said anything.

  “Did you know he was dead, Nottage?”

  Nottage didn’t reply, but his hand tightened on the glass. Reverend Christie’s cousin stood motionless behind the bar, looking at nothing.

  “Let’s go outside, Nottage,” Matthias said.

  Nottage didn’t move. Matthias laid a hand on his shoulder. Nottage went rigid under his touch. Matthias removed his hand. Time passed, silent except for the sounds of the chicken scratching and pecking in the dirt. Then Nottage rose, quite abruptly, and walked outside without a misstep, leaving his glass on the bar. Matthias followed.

  Nottage started down the Conchtown road. Matthias had never seen him move so fast—for a few seconds he came close to running. Soon he had passed the last mean dwelling; the road narrowed and jack pines closed in on both sides. Nottage, like an animal at the edge of its territory, slowed down and finally stopped. Matthias stopped a few feet behind him. It was quiet: just the wind in the sparse branches of the trees, the rustling of crabs in the brush and, almost inaudible, the sea.

  “They’re saying Hew fell,” Matthias said, “but he jumped, didn’t he?”

  Nottage turned to him. His eyes were red; he needed a shave, a shower, a different personal history. He looked directly at Matthias for a moment; a red gaze that quickly shifted away.

  “Did you see it happen?” Matthias asked.

  Nottage didn’t reply.

  “You were on the Bluff. There was a moon.”

  Nottage, his eyes on the ground, said, “I don’ know nothin’.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Nottage’s head came up. He took a wild swing at Matthias. Nottage’s body, old and ruined, still possessed the raw power that came not from gyms but from a lifetime of hard outdoor labor. Matthias, too surprised to move, felt the blow land on his shoulder, heavy enough to hurt. Nottage seemed surprised too: he stared at his fist, as though unsure it had done what it had. Then he dropped it to his side, hung his head and spoke, but too quietly for Matthias to hear.

  “I can’t hear you, Nottage.”

  Nottage raised his voice. “Hit me, boss. Hit me.”

  “I’m not going to hit you. I just want to know what you saw on the Bluff.”

  Nottage shook his head.

  “Look at me, Nottage.” Nottage looked up, but his eyes had gone blank. Matthias had seen that blankness before: a protective blindness to white men’s business. Nottage, a black citizen of a black nation, governed by black men and women freely elected by black men and women, still had that look. He had been born too soon.

  “What are you hiding from me?” Matthias asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Hew jumped, didn’t he? But you don’t want to speak badly of a dead man, is that it?”

  Nottage said nothing.

  “Did he say something before he died? Did you try to stop him, maybe, but too late?”

  Nottage sighed, a sound that deepened into a moan. “Be a wicked place, mahn,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Nottage was silent for a long time. Then he said: “Sea on fire.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Nottage stared down at his bare, dusty feet. His body sagged, once more incapable of punching, or any nonsubmissive movement at all.

  “What sea?”

  Nottage turned toward the east; shiny fragments of gray-blue, like puzzle pieces, quivered between the trees. “Where Happy sank down,” Nottage answered quietly.

  Matthias took a step closer. “You knew Happy Standish?”

  Nottage backed away.

  Matthias came no nearer. “Did you?”

  Nottage nodded his head.

  “When he was a boy?”

  Another nod.

  Matthias examined the red eyes, trying to see what hid behind them, without success. “But he wasn’t in a fire, Nottage. It was a diving accident. He had bad air in his tank.”

  Nottage said nothing.

  “Was there a fire near the compressor? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Nottage remained silent.

  The sky darkened. A cold raindrop fell on Matthias’s head, then another. “How did you know Happy Standish?” he asked.

  Nottage sighed again. “I work for the family. On Two-Head.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Garden work. Until the new man come.”

  “What new man?”

  “Gardener man.”

  “What year was this?”

  “I don’ know. In the Duke’s time.”

  “The Standishes let you go?”

  “‘Sack Nottage,’ he say.”

  “Who?”

  “Gardener man.”

  Wind gusted down out of the sky, driving a fusillade of raindrops against Nottage’s face. He didn’t react.

  “But Happy wasn’t born then,” Matthias said.

  Nottage stared at his feet.

  “How could you have known Happy if they sacked you before he was born?”

  “I knows him. After.” Nottage’s head came up. “Where you think they get their fish, mahn?”

  “You sold them fish?”

  Nottage grunted.

  “And that’s when you saw Happy?”

  “I be taking Happy in the boat. Mrs. Albury she be holding him and I row.”

  “You rowed from here to Two-Head?”

  “No motor. Long time ago, boss.”

  “I’m not your boss, Nottage.”

  But Nottage stood still and slumping in the middle of the Conchtown road as though Matthias were indeed his boss and he was waiting to be dismissed.

  “When was the last time you saw Happy Standish?”

  “The night before he sank down.”

  “The night before he sank down? Do you mean just last year?”

  “I don’ know the years,” Nottage said. />
  “Where did you see him? At the club?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  Nottage pointed in the direction they’d come from.

  “At the Happy Times?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He came there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “To see me,” Nottage replied, with something like pride in his voice.

  “Why did he want to see you?”

  Nottage shrugged.

  “What did he say?”

  “He say, ‘I remember you Nottage. You teaches me to fish for grouper with a hand line and a bent nail.’”

  “Is that all?”

  “He shake my hand.”

  “And then?”

  “He aks where is the fire at sea. And I tells him.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Where is the fire.”

  “But there is no fire, Nottage.”

  Nottage stared at his feet; the dust on them was turning to mud.

  “Did you see a real fire?” Matthias asked.

  “I sees it.”

  “What do you mean? Now? You see it now?”

  “Every night.”

  “Goddamn it,” said Matthias, and before he knew it he had taken Nottage by the shoulders and shaken him. Nottage was a big man, but he shook. “Was this a real fire or a fire in your mind?”

  Nottage didn’t speak; he waited for the blow to fall. Matthias dropped his hands. “Shit, Nottage,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  But Nottage didn’t move. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and said: “Real fire.”

  The rain fell heavily now, but Matthias hardly felt it. “When?” he asked.

  “In the night.”

  “Every night?”

  Nottage shook his head.

  “What night?”

  “In the Duke’s time.”

  “Did you see it?”

  He nodded.

  “Where from?”

  “The Bluff.”

  “What happened?”

  “The sea got on fire. Then it be black.”

  “Do you mean a boat? Was there some boat on fire out there?”

  Nottage shook his head.

  “Did wreckage wash up?”

  Nottage shook his head again.

  “Did anyone else see it?”

  “See what?”

  “This fire.”

  “God.”

  “God?”

  “The Lord He see. Send down a warning to Nottage.”

  “What warning?”

  “Sea on fire.”

  “But why would God warn you? What did you do?”

  Nottage hung his head and didn’t reply.

  Rain beat down, soaking them to the skin. Nottage kept his head down. The rain saturated his white curly hair and ran down his wrinkled brow. Then, without warning, he vomited. He didn’t bend forward, he didn’t move away, he simply vomited, and looked at Matthias like a sick and helpless child. Matthias put his hand on Nottage’s shoulder. It went rigid again. Matthias took it away. “Let’s go,” he said.

  They walked back into Blufftown. The rain cleaned Nottage’s body. As they came to the Happy Times Bar, he slowed down, now like the territorial creature returning to home base.

  “Come on,” Matthias said. “Have something to eat.”

  But Nottage, without another look or another word, went inside. The chicken was on the bar now, headless and plucked. The two glasses of rum were still there too. Nottage downed them both. Matthias turned and headed for the dock at Zombie Bay.

  The rain began falling more lightly, then not at all. Water ran down the stony roadside gullies, toward the sea. Matthias passed a boy rolling a hoop with a stick, a woman staring out the window of a concrete-block house that had been half-finished for as long as he had been at Zombie Bay, and a pregnant girl sitting in a doorway, looking at the pictures in a worn copy of Mademoiselle.

  As Matthias came to the beach, So What was gliding into its slip. Brock tied up. A guest who might have been in shape long ago put down his beer and tried to help with the unloading. A tank fell in the water. Moxie, anticipating, plucked it out before the man finished saying, “Oops.” A woman in a pink wet suit said: “Wrasse—is that spelled like ‘Rastafarian’?”

  “Aks Krio,” Moxie told her.

  “Is he the scary-looking one?”

  Moxie busied himself with the equipment.

  Matthias climbed on the deck and checked the fuel level.

  “Going out?” Brock asked, heaving a tank on each shoulder.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s lousy out there today,” Brock said. “Water’s all stirred up.”

  Matthias cranked the engines.

  “Want me to come along?” Brock called out over the noise.

  Matthias shook his head and cast off. He backed So What out of the slip, swung the bow around and hit the throttles. Arms folded across his chest, Brock watched him go.

  So What cut across the chop on Zombie Bay, rounded the Angel Fingers and surged into open water. Big pointy-headed waves rolled in endless formations from the west. They bounced the little boat up and down, and hurled their torn-off tops at Matthias, soaking him. Seawater did what the rain had not: it awakened something in him—hope, purpose. And the speed of the boat and the roar of the engines gave birth to possibility. He had a week to file his appeal. He didn’t have the money to pay a lawyer, but perhaps a lawyer could be found who would handle the case if the chance of winning was 100 percent, with a countersuit in the future. For the first time since he walked out of Dicky Dumaurier’s office, he sensed that it could be done. The two heads of Two-Head Cay appeared on the horizon. Matthias aimed the bow of So What at the blank space between them.

  He skimmed over the top of the Tongue of the Ocean. Details appeared on Two-Head Cay, rapidly, like brush strokes on the canvas of a landscape-painting instructor on a half-hour TV show: two rocky bluffs, green and gray; a crescent beach between them, bracketed by royal palms and topped by wispy casurinas; and signs of man—a Whaler tied to a long wooden pier and glimpses of a large white façade behind the trees.

  All at once, the sea changed from slate-gray to greenish-brown; the waves lost their aggression. He had reached the other side of the chasm.

  Matthias pulled back the throttles and coasted toward the pier. The shield of noise fell away. He remembered that the sea had deluded him with feelings of power and possibility in the past, starting with the ride into the beach at the foot of the Sierra Maestra.

  He was still thinking about that when Gene Albury came on the pier with a shotgun in his hand, barrel pointed down. There was a woman beside him, gray-haired and leather-skinned: Mrs. Albury. She was holding something. When Matthias drew nearer, he saw it was a Cabbage Patch Kid.

  27

  Private, said a sign posted at the end of the pier at Two-Head Cay. NO FUEL, WATER, FOOD OR PROVISIONS AVAILABLE. ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING.

  Matthias cut the engines and drifted in. He wound a few figure eights around a cleat at the end of the pier, tied off the line with a half-hitch and hopped up on the sun-bleached boards. Gene Albury and his wife hadn’t moved. They watched him from the other end of the pier. Matthias had met them before, once at a fueling stopover in Chub Cay, once at the Conchtown regatta, where Albury raced his cigarette boat, but he didn’t see any recognition in their eyes. He explained who he was.

  “I know who you are,” Albury said. He spoke softly, his speech slightly musical, slightly drawling, slightly burring: the white Bahamian accent, inherited from his United Empire Loyalist forebears. The physical type too had been preserved: Gene Albury was short, trim, pale-eyed. Mrs. Albury closely resembled him. Her skin, like his, had been roughened by a lifetime under the sun; her hair, like his, was gray, dried-out, wispy. They could have passed for siblings and probably were cousins of some sort, thought Matthias: the gene pool was small, and inhabitants of the old white Ba
hamian settlements on cays like Spanish Wells, Harbour Island and Man o’ War seldom married outside it.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Albury,” Matthias said.

  “What about?” asked Albury.

  “Dr. Standish.”

  The woman shook her head, a movement so fleeting it was almost imperceptible. Albury was looking at Matthias, but he must have noticed it because he said: “Go on up, Betty. I’ll not be long.”

  Mrs. Albury turned to her husband. They exchanged a glance that meant nothing to Matthias. Mrs. Albury walked away, dropping the doll in a trash barrel at the foot of the pier. Gene Albury stayed where he was. “I’m listening,” he said. A man with a twelve gauge in his hands could take that risk.

  “I’m trying to learn the circumstances of Dr. Standish’s death,” Matthias told him. “Hew Aikenfield said you could help me.”

  “I had no use for Hew Aikenfield.”

  “You’ve heard the news.”

  Albury licked his lips. “I heard.”

  “He said you knew Dr. Standish.”

  Albury nodded.

  “He told me Standish drowned in the blue hole behind my place.”

  “It was not your place then,” Albury replied in his soft voice.

  “That changes everything.”

  Albury’s brow furrowed. “What’s that?”

  “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Albury. I suppose it belonged to Señor Perez in those days.”

  “No, sir,” Albury said. “This was before the spic. There was nothing there, belonging to nobody.”

  “What year are you talking about, exactly?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Albury answered, taking no time to think about it.

  “But you can say it was before Señor Perez built the club.”

  “I told you that already.”

  “Where were you when it happened, Mr. Albury?”

  “When what happened?”

  “When Dr. Standish drowned in the blue hole. He did drown in the blue hole, didn’t he?”

  Albury squinted at him. “You the one with the bad air, right?”

  “That was never proven. Not to my satisfaction.”

  Albury ignored him. “The one that got Happy Standish hurt. And now you’re coming here to me that knew him from a boy and asking questions.”

  “I’m asking for your help, Mr. Albury. I take it you liked Happy Standish. Supposing what happened to him wasn’t an accident. Wouldn’t you want to find out what went on?”