He squatted over another coconut, ran a slow finger along the cracks in its grey surface, and placed it in his sack. He levered himself up, yanked the cutlass from the ground and slid the blade into a leather sheath around his shoulders. Tara was now looking at him with open curiosity and, as he saw this, he moved across, closer to her. So did Margaret.
“You staying here?” he asked
Tara smiled and inclined her head.
“In the guesthouse?” His head gestured to the all-inclusive bar, restaurant, post office, guesthouse.
“No. In a house up the road.”
“How long you here for?”
“Couple weeks, maybe.”
“So you come for a sea bath?”
“Not really… posting a letter… taking a walk. What you doing here?”
“I just come to collect nuts.”
He came towards her, holding out his hand. “Shiloh.”
Tara took his hand in hers. She looked into his eyes and then looked, with a start, at a dark stone hanging from a cord around his neck.
Following her glance, he held up the pendant, shaped like a fat water drop, its colour, the deepest black, intensified by a bright white inclusion in its middle and a black dot within that gleaming white. An accident of geology and sea action had made an eye inside a tear drop. It was framed in a mesh of string with a cord of rough plaited fibre. Tara reached out and he let her cradle the pendant in her palm. The back of her hand grazed his chest.
“You make this?”
“Yes, coconut fibre. The stone from over there.” His chin indicated the dark cliffs bracketing the bay.
She let the pendant slip from her fingers to fall back against his chest. “Strange… unusual… like it could see.”
“That’s true… this eye looking out for me.” He paused a while, his gaze dropping to his feet. “I from town, like you; but I leave Babylon and confusion.” He paused again, looked out to sea for a long moment and then he continued. “I find peace now… with this.”
The flat of his palm covered the pendant, pressing it tight against his heart. It was oddly like making a pledge, Margaret thought.
Tara smiled as he continued. “I have a little place where I does grow things.” His right arm pointed behind, beyond. “I does bring stuff down here to sell. Best on the north coast.” At Tara raising a quizzical eyebrow, he expanded, “My place real nice, peaceful. It even have a river.”
As his arm flowed through the air between them, tracing the slow rolling of a river, the plunging sun framed his silhouette against piled red and purple clouds sheening the black teardrop. Tara was now gazing at him, her dark eyes transfixed, as if at an apparition from another world, bringing to Margaret’s mind a painting that she had once seen – the enraptured face of Bernadette at Lourdes. She turned away quickly to look at the dimming streak of light soon to be extinguished by the dark sea merging with the sky. She read there a warning of encroaching night, the two of them in darkness, alone with a stranger, “We should go back now.”
Shiloh’s gaze stayed on Tara’s face. Margaret led the way up the slope, her short curly mop of black and grey hair, like a raincloud. He picked up his bag and followed her, Tara behind. He addressed Margaret, “Come and see where I living. Is heaven.”
She turned slightly towards him. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Come tomorrow. Come any day.”
Margaret didn’t answer. He spoke again. “I down here by the shop every afternoon.”
They continued climbing in silence. At the top, as the women were making to move off, he made another attempt, “Look, take my number.” He called out his cell phone number.
At a bend on the darkling road, they looked back. He was there, straddling his lumpy bag. Before bed, both women entered his number into their phones.
Next morning, they sat on the bench under the half-umbrella shade of the flamboyant, stunted on the seaward side, leafy, lacy on the sheltered landward side. The fragrance of Margaret’s mint and camomile tea mingled with that of Tara’s freshly brewed Arabica. The two sat in Trappist silence, intent on the silver ocean ahead. Their unresolved argument of the morning before lay heavily on Margaret’s stomach like chronic indigestion, one that even the herbal brew could not relieve. She knew that Tara blamed her. On reflection, perhaps Tara was right – it wasn’t her business to interfere in Tara’s life. She felt she must make amends, break the silence somehow. She chose the last evening’s encounter.
“You didn’t find that meeting strange yesterday?”
Tara didn’t alter the direction of her gaze. “You mean the Rastaman by the sea?”
“Yes. You weren’t afraid?”
Tara turned to face her. There was a derisive little smile on her face. “What it had to fraid? Was only a man picking up dry nut.”
Margaret bristled. “I don’t know what you saw, but I saw a man with a cutlass. We were alone. We had no way of escape.”
“But he didn’t mean no harm. I find he was quite friendly.”
“You are forgetting where we live. Two hundred and fifty murders since January and it’s only June.”
“Well, the story I hear is, is gangs, is guns, is drugs.”
“And they also say that if you take away the murders from domestic violence and take away those from gang warfare, the murder rate is nothing to be alarmed about. But who in their right mind swallowing that?”
In silence they sipped their drinks, while looking at the sea. After a minute or two, Tara picked up the conversation.
“But ent that is why we here? For peace and quiet in the countryside? And too besides, is safer?
“It’s quieter, for sure, but I’m not certain about safer. What about the army raiding marijuana fields in the hills, random attacks, trip guns, guard dogs, shooting…” Margaret’s voice trailed off.
“You find he look dangerous?”
“No, not really. If it wasn’t for the cutlass, I wouldn’t have worried.”
Margaret contemplated the tree above, its flame flowers with one white frilled petal. Just that little accent, that tiny flash of white, and the red is shown up as so much more intense. Margaret closed her eyes. Could it be, she wondered, that it is in contrast we see things more vividly, like how you can focus better with closed eyes? As the shade shrank tighter, drawing closer to the tree trunk, Tara stood, moving across in that jerky, awkward way of hers, to take Margaret’s mug. “Why you think he invite us by him?”
Margaret looked up. “Perhaps he thinks we’re rich and he could befriend us to get money?
“Maybe he just want us to see where he living. Just harmless hospitality. He living here and we only visiting.”
“I find it hard to trust so quickly.”
“That ent so. You take me in and I was a complete stranger. That was trust.”
“You had to trust me, not the other way round.”
Tara took the mugs into the kitchen and when she returned, she resumed the conversation. “I feel he harmless. No different from you.”
“That has not been your whole experience of people, has it?” In Tara’s silence, she continued. “You surrender yourself so easily. People see you as naïve.”
“I find you overprotecting me. From since I small I taking care of myself.”
“You are still recovering from that… that… episode. You’re not better”
“I better. I plenty better. The problem is, you don’t want me to be better. I feel you want me to keep on needing you.”
“I only want you to get truly well. Able to fend for yourself with confidence.”
“You don’t get it? I feel stifled, like I’m in intensive care… and you over me all the time… constantly checking my vital signs.”
“I want to protect you, even from yourself.”
“You rescue me that time from Tino… I can’t forget that… I grateful for that… I owe you, but you don’t own me.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I’d do the same for any despe
rate girl. What I can’t understand, now you’ve brought it up, is why you would want to go back to Tino. He abused you, threw you out on the street and yet you write him a letter to ask if he’ll take you back?”
Tara hurried back towards the kitchen, leaving Margaret to grapple with her inner turmoil. The girl was badly scarred in so many ways. She had seen some actual scars, long, slanting, white scars across a brown body, across her upper arms and thighs – putting Margaret in mind of those slashes on the trunk of a rubber tree for draining sap. Did she do that to herself or was it someone else’s work? Either way, there were serious issues that needed to be resolved so that Tara could come to a better understanding of herself. Where she had picked up Tara was clue enough about her life; Margaret knew very well what work girls like Tara were doing, dressed that way, alone at night on that infamous street that swiftly turned pretty young girls and boys into used and bedraggled creatures. Had she not, at a time that haunts her still, been there too, looking for Lisa? She couldn’t guess what in particular had brought Tara to that state – retching into the gutter, her splayed, red-stilettoed feet damming the wastewater flow – and she did not ask when she took Tara home, bathed her, gave a bed, food, clothes and a chance to heal, to start anew.
In the weeks that they had been together, Tara’s spirit seemed to become calmer, but now the girl was restless, craving excitement. She had even written that letter, the one she had posted the day before, the one that had caused the quarrel between them. The letter was addressed to Tino, the man who had thrown Tara out when she refused to perform with a new client some thing she had found distasteful. Margaret had deduced, from the little Tara revealed, that in the letter Tara asked forgiveness, begged to be taken back. It tormented her that girls like Tara didn’t know how to protect themselves. They didn’t even seem to believe that they were worth protecting, worth anything.
Tara returned from the kitchen with a packet of Rizlas, the roller and her little carved teak box. She rolled two cigarettes, lit them and handed one over. The rising smoke encircled them in its calming, herbal embrace. She sat, her back against the solidity of the tree trunk, its scrubbed wrinkled folds like the skin of an elephant’s leg.
“So, why you think he invite us?”
“The Rastaman? I can’t figure out a motive, except as I said before, he thinks he can get something from us.” Margaret closed her eyes, to shield them from the smoke.
“We meet him by accident… he invite us just so… I don’t think it was plan.”
Margaret looked up at the flamboyant again as if to find guidance there. If there was any on offer, she couldn’t discern it. She shrugged.
“I get the feeling you think we should go. Why?”
“Me, I just curious… the idea of going to bathe in a pool in a river… and, another thing… nah, don’t bother…”
“What is it? Tell me… go on…”
“I know you going to find this stupid…”
“Do I ever call you stupid?”
“OK… OK… is partly curiosity, partly the pool… but the real thing is…”
At this, Tara turned to look directly into Margaret’s eyes and continued.
“Is that pendant. The seeing-eye pendant around his neck… you see it too… is like something magic… He say that since he wearing it, it make him calm, make him live good… It make me trust him.”
“I suppose that things like that can have an effect on people. My mother wouldn’t leave the house if she wasn’t wearing her miraculous medal pendant. But, I’m not so sure about nowadays. In the old days, I would have gone without a second thought, no question. You could trust anybody then. Sometimes I don’t recognise this place… it’s like a foreign country with people I can’t figure out… it’s become a puzzle… a puzzle that could blow up at any time.”
Tara rolled up a sleeve of her T-shirt, picking off an errant ant that had strayed from the tree on to her arm. She set it on the ground, watching as it scrambled determinedly back up the tree.
“I going.” Her voice was strong, resolute.
“Why?”
“I tired of this place.”
“I can’t let you go.”
“Let? …Wait nuh, is ‘let’ I hearing you saying? I is a free woman, don’t forget that… Nobody don’t have to let me do nothing.” An edge had crept into her voice.
“Please listen. You know nothing about him, where he lives, who he is. It’s just reckless, going with a stranger.”
“But I did come with you… I was desperate then… I desperate now… Bit by bit I forgetting who I is… Sometimes I don’t even know what I want to do for myself.”
“And you think you will find yourself by exposing yourself to every danger? First you want to go back to the streets to be sent out to pick up strange men with kinky tastes and bizarre demands… and now – an unknown Rastaman?”
Margaret leaned over and ran a finger along a long stripe, stark white against the brown skin of Tara’s exposed upper arm.
“You want to be driven again to… this?”
Tara dropped her head on her clasped knees, convulsed with silent sobbing. Margaret sat beside her, rolled down the sleeve and ran a stroking hand along it. She realised that Tara wanted to prove she could take care of herself, that she was an independent person. Going off with the strange man was an opportunity for her to do so. Margaret knew she didn’t have the power to prevent her. She didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t let Tara go alone. She would hold herself responsible if anything went wrong. She would have to go along too if the girl persisted with her stubborn determination to court danger. At least two would be safer than one alone.
That afternoon, Tara dressed in jeans, T-shirt and sneakers as if for a normal afternoon walk. Margaret threw on her walking clothes too and they set out. As they neared the village they could see him in the distance, standing outside the post office, watching their approach, grinning widely as they came nearer.
“So, you decide to come? You wearing sneakers. Good. Is plenty bush where we going.” And, at Margaret’s alarmed expression, he added, “Don’t worry, we have it under control.” He clicked his fingers and a black mongrel, flopped in the shade, pricked up his ears and came to his heels. “We’re off.”
He led them along the sea-fringed road where bright white light flashed off sea and road, turned inland, crossed a log footbridge spanning a stream, then darted through a colonnade of indistinguishable tree trunks into darkness. Swinging his cutlass in casual flicks, he opened a living tunnel through the mesh of vines linking the trees. Tara was sniffing the air, inhaling the essences of the extravagant fecund life around. She was looking from side to side, exclaiming at each new sighting – the iridescent sapphire flash of a Morpho, the red flare of a pachystachis, the orange flame of heliconia – a rather exaggerated, touristy reaction to these ordinary butterflies and flowers, Margaret thought – and, she felt, playing up somewhat to the man ahead. She herself was grateful for the rare piercings of radiant sky that speckled the trail, shimmering with sap from the newly cut vines and branches – a distraction from the anonymous calls ricocheting above, the invisible rustlings stirring beneath, which, unseen and unknown, made her uneasy.
The trail led upwards and further upwards, was lost in twists and turns, as were Margaret’s thoughts. Sure, at that moment it was just one man and two women, but they were in his space, led by him, at his mercy. Margaret wondered what he had in store for them; who was waiting in ambush, who might be waiting at his place? What a fool she was to agree to this reckless scheme. When things went badly as they surely must, people would quite rightly say, “Those women must’ve been mad or on drugs to go off with a strange Rastaman in the bush. They were looking for what they got.” Margaret’s imagination balked at exploring the possibilities of “what they got”.
As she stumbled along behind them, there came, without warning, a startling summit vista of freed, brilliant sky, and they emerged, blinking in the raw light. Margaret felt herself
exhale as unknown forest trees gave way to familiar cultivars: mango, pawpaw, sapodilla, avocado. Yam vines curled over bamboo tepees, butter-yellow pumpkin vine flowers dotted the ground, pale green ochroes stood erect in their nodes, pendulous, purple melongene hung low. “I have other things growing, over there.” Shiloh waved a proprietorial arm towards a distant embrace of dark trees.
His house was a hut in a forest clearing – carat palm-leaf roof, plaited split-bamboo walls plastered with daub, a beaten earth floor. Tara claimed the hemp-bag hammock, hung from poles supporting the tin-roof verandah; Margaret sank with relief on a log bench. She watched as Shiloh pulled up cassava, yam; picked ochroes and melongene; flared a dry-twig fire in the belly of the mud oven; dipped rainwater from a barrel under the verandah guttering and set it on the chula to boil the roots. He chopped tomatoes, onions, garlic, thyme, peppers, diced pumpkin, shredded bhaji and added them to a frying pan of aromatic coconut oil. In the glowing embers, roasting melongene and ochroes split open, spilling sweet seeds, succulent flesh.
“Food ready,” he called, dishing up on to four enamel plates decorated with red roses and Canada geese. “Here we does eat with hand, no metal in mouth.” The two women sat side by side in the hammock; he faced them on a low stool.
“I hope you don’t mind Ital. No flesh, no salt.”
“What have you put in this? It’s amazing.” Margaret tried an ochro.
“Mountain magic.”
“I never had bhaji that taste so good… even the bhaji that my aji use to make don’t taste so nice.” Tara brought a handful to her lips.
“Hungry belly is the best appetiser. Eh, boy?” A black tail wagged.
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