Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross

  He braked, backed away a few steps. A sound rumbled out of the man as he dropped his gaze on Miss Stanislaus. She returned his stare – calm, unreadable – her mouth moving around words that didn’t go past her lips. With his eyes still on her, the big body erupted, and in a single sideways movement, Juba was on the concrete walkway that ran along the beach front. Miss Stanislaus followed the rolling shoulders up the road, her eyes as attentive as a cat’s.

  At the bend in the road, Juba stopped, his back to us. The big head swivelled round, the silver hook tapping the tree trunk of his right leg. I could hear the slap of the steel against his flesh. He rumbled something. I cocked my ear.

  ‘What he say?’ Miss Stanislaus said.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ I said. I changed my mind and told her. ‘He say next time he catch you, he, erm . . . ’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Cripple you.’

  She blinked and muttered, ‘He done do that already.’

  With Juba gone, a hive of murmurings rose up around us. I raised my badge above my head. ‘Okay, people. Party done. Go home.’

  An elderly woman, dark and gnarled like the bark of a seagrape tree, raised a shaking finger at my face. ‘Why you stop her? Eh? What you know about Kara Islan bizness? Eh? Is God send her to get rid of the dog, and God going punish your Camaho-man arse for stopping her.’ She sent a cloud of spittle in my direction, then turned her back on me.

  Miss Stanislaus was throwing up sand with her heels in a fast walk down the beach. I hurried after her, my whole body tense with the words of the old witch who spat at me. I caught up with her in the shade of a whitewood tree at the other end of the beach.

  We sat on an upturned crate, our bodies angled so that we had a good view of the road along which Juba disappeared.

  Twenty-footers cluttered the foreshore, their insides piled high with fishing tackle. A couple of sleek, low-profile crafts bobbed quietly among them, their transoms reinforced to withstand the thrust of oversized engines. Sprint boats – the ganja runners’ choice for fast dashes between Kara Island and Vincen Island.

  From time to time, we made a raid to give the Justice Minister something to boast about on the news, but we didn’t break the trade because, in Chilman’s words, Kara-Islan-Man wouldn have no Gee-Dee-Pee. Tell Donald Trumpet, haul his arse, with all his talk bout ‘War on Herbs’.

  ‘War on drugs,’ I’d corrected.

  He’d turned rum-shot eyes on me. ‘So! You siding with him? Illegal is anything that Donald Trumpet can’t find no way to tax. How come you dunno that yet?’

  ‘Missa Digger, you didn have to throw no obstreme words at me.’

  ‘Miss Stanislaus, I want to understand why the smartest woman I know leave her one girlchild alone and go off to do the stupidest thing any police officer could do. You cross twenty miles of water with a loaded gun to kill a fella in broad daylight. You think youd’ve got away with it?’

  ‘What make you fink I want to get away with it, Missa Digger?’

  ‘Is murder, plain an simple, Miss Stanislaus.’

  ‘Is murder here too, Missa Digger.’ She dropped a hand over her heart. ‘Somefing get kill’ inside you. Man do what he do to woman, he go to jail. He come out an’ he ferget it. De woman he done that to can’t walk decent in the worl till she build back what he take from ’er. She got to born again. Not all woman could do that. And like I tell you, it wasn that that bring me here.’

  I unloaded the Ruger, stacked the gun with standard shells and handed back the weapon. She dropped it in her bag, the butt facing upwards as usual for a quick draw. I held out my palm. She rummaged in her pocket and dropped a packed speed-loader along with a handful of snub-nosed bullets in my hand.

  ‘The gun you left with Daphne, soonz I get back, I want it. Okay?’

  ‘You—’ She stopped short, pulled a tissue from her bag and flung it in my face. ‘You mus’ never hold onto me and drag me back like that, y’unnerstan?’

  ‘Dragging you back like that or dragging you to jail, which you prefer?’

  I pulled out the plasticuffs and tossed them at her feet.

  ‘I wan’ to walk,’ she said.

  ‘Not on your own, you not!’

  I followed her all the way up to the highest point on the island.

  We stood shoulder to shoulder on Top Hill looking down on the wooden jetty, now empty. Against the dazzling morning glare, the boat Juba had arrived on was perched like an overfed cockroach. Further out was Goat Island, facing Devil Tooth. Just after that stood the curving chain of rock-islands dotting the stretch of boiling sea that Kara Islanders called Blackwater. Down there, the Atlantic had sliced through one end of the land and created a channel. A shortcut to the chain of islands further north and North America.

  The departing Osprey was taking the treacherous turn just before Goat Island, the engines of the big white catamaran creating its own whirlpool behind it.

  Scatterings of houses along the coastline. Patches of green here and there. Kara Island had no natural source of water. Rain avoided the place – all twelve square miles of it. Yet these people thrived.

  ‘Where you staying?’ I said.

  ‘I got people here,’ she said. ‘You goin meet them after here.’

  She’d spoken with her back half-turned. A different kind of calm came off Miss Stanislaus – almost as if she’d left the raging part of herself on the jetty. She pointed at the storming sea below then slid me a sideways glance. ‘Missa Digger, what you know about the two Wimmen of the Waters?’

  ‘A lot, Miss Stanislaus. My granny was—’

  ‘What she tell you?’

  ‘Olokun and Yemaya. Olokun is the god-woman of the Dark Waters. She rule the bottom of the ocean, yunno. The only one who know what happen to all them African who never reach this side of the Atlantic. Everything go down to her in the end. My granny used to say that whiteman religion got it wrong. Hell is not full ov fire, hell is full ov water.’

  Miss Stanislaus smiled. ‘You talk pretty, Missa Digger. Is so you sweet-talk Miss Dressy?’

  ‘Dessie, Miss Stanislaus, not Dressy. Wait till I tell you bout Yemaya. She rule the surface. She’s the storm-bringer, the life-giver and life-taker. She’s a man-chastiser too! Ain’t got a single fella in Camaho who not afraid ov her – except me, of course. Is that temper she got. Lord Gord! Spare us! And,’ I winked at her, ‘she don’t take no shi – er – nonsense from nobody.’

  Miss Stanislaus was tinkling with laughter. ‘Missa Digger, you too stupid!’

  ‘Which one of them you follow, Miss Stanislaus?’

  ‘Both,’ she said.

  ‘Makes sense,’ I said. ‘Scuse me, I got to call your father. You talk to Daphne yet?’

  She said yes with her eyes.

  DS Chilman picked up promptly. ‘Digson, what time it is?’

  ‘Right now I not looking at my watch, Sir. I talking to you.’

  ‘Why you got me waiting so . . . so, bu-laasted long?’

  Stinkin’ drunk, I thought, or almost there. ‘Why you bawling me out this time-a-morning, Sir? I done the job.’

  That shut him up for a second. ‘You stop ’er? You handcuff ’er like I order?’

  ‘Nuh!’

  ‘Handcuff ’er, Digson. Bring her on the, erm, plane or boat, or – how you bringing her back?’

  ‘I can’t do that, Sir.’

  ‘Can’t! What she done to you?’

  ‘Sorry, Sir, I not doing it.’

  ‘Digson, she got to know is cuuuu-riminal behaviour.’

  ‘She know that already. I not doing it.’

  He went into a sputtering riff about rude’n’stubborn jackass. ‘Digson, you’z a damn failure! I should’ve got Malan to do it.’

  ‘Then you’d have two dead fellas up here and you’d have to arrest your daughter yourself. Sorry, Sir, I got to go. Urgent matters.’ I switched off.

  Chilman rang back twice. I ignored his calls.

  ‘Drunk?’ She sniffed.
/>
  ‘From guilt,’ I said. ‘When you going start behaving with him like a daughter?’

  ‘After you start behaving with yours like a son, Missa Digger.’

  She turned to me, her brows pulled together. ‘You move so quick – unloadin an loadin Miss Betsy like dat.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘How come?’

  ‘Usain Bolt. Ever hear bout him?’

  ‘What bout im?’

  ‘He got what I got. A lot of it.’

  ‘Wozzat?’

  ‘Switching muscles, Miss Stanislaus. Make you quick, yunno. My time in school, I break every sprinting record.’

  She raised a finger. ‘Dat remind me, Missa Digger.’ Miss Stanislaus took the Ruger from her bag. ‘I never show you how me and Miss Betsy get on, not so? I want you to throw her at me any ole how.’

  She handed me the gun. I emptied the cylinder, closed it and tossed it at her. She caught it easily. I sent it looping, spinning, underarm and overarm. I tried every bowling trick I knew. Miss Stanislaus caught the weapon every time, and by some trick of her left hand had the muzzle pointing at my chest.

  I suppressed a flush of envy. ‘Where you learn that?’

  ‘Knittin muscle,’ she said. ‘And I not even showin off.’

  7

  Miss Stanislaus’s ‘people’ were two elderly women, one of whom had spat at me. I looked into a fine-boned face, skin taut and dark like polished ebony. Cotton white hair peeped out from under a purple headwrap. She held a small machete in her hand.

  ‘Dada,’ Miss Stanislaus said. She pointed at me. ‘Missa Digger.’

  Sharp disapproving eyes scoured my face then slid off it.

  The other woman was dressed like Dada – a loose paisleypatterned cotton dress that reached a couple of inches above her feet. She said her name was Benna. Skin the colour of burnt cinnamon, with a way of looking that seemed as if she were staring from a great distance. Unusual eyes – pale and with that glass-like translucency. I sensed that I was in the presence of a woman who was not unlike my grandmother: fearless, full of mystery and reserve.

  Benna had a hand around a long black stick. From time to time she tapped her leg with the rounded tip.

  Close up, I realised their age could be anything between seventy and eighty, and that was more by the foam-white hair peeking from their headwraps. They had the bearing and the firmness of body of women half their age. But then, centenarians were no big deal on Kara Island.

  Miss Stanislaus stood quietly in their presence, her arms down her sides. The old women had caressed her face and called her ‘daughter’.

  ‘My house,’ Dada said.

  We followed a curving road till we came to a pair of stunted Bermuda fan palms, then walked into a yard surrounded by a low hibiscus fence. A blue house, with a small veranda crowded with spider plants, sat in the middle of the space.

  There was a rusting machete stuck in the soil beside the first rung of steps leading into the house.

  They sat me in the veranda and disappeared inside.

  I walked out into the yard, taking in the brown rounded hills that overlooked everything. I heard footsteps behind me, then Dada’s voice, sibilant and accusing, ‘Why you come and spoil it? Why you stop Kathleen? If I was her, I wouldn have nothing to do with you after that. You know what Juba done to her?’

  I opened my mouth to answer. The woman silenced me with a flick of her wrist. ‘You know the trouble Juba been causin us? You know what he done to my gran’daughter? What the hell you know bout us?’

  ‘If I didn spoil it, she’d’ve been in jail tomorrow and awaiting trial for murder. And lemme ask you this: every case y’all bring against Juba Hurst y’all drop it last-minute. Why?’

  The old woman did not answer. She seemed more interested in the movements of my mouth than in my words.

  Benna came out and joined her. ‘What’s she to you, Missa Digger?’

  I opened my palms and stared at her. ‘Who?’

  ‘Kathleen.’

  ‘She’s an officer; I’m an officer. I—’

  ‘You lying to yourself.’ She tapped her staff and shook her head. ‘We talk bout Juba now?’

  ‘Is all everybody want to talk about since I got here,’ I muttered.

  ‘Juba been doing something over there by the sea,’ Benna said. ‘He used to bring over boys from Vincen Island to work with him. He had a camp o’ somefing on the piece of land he take over a coupla years ago from Missa Koku. Missa Koku bring up Kathleen, yunno that?’

  Juba, she said, had funny-looking boats that had been coming and going until a few months ago. They wouldn’t have given a damn if he didn’t start turning Kara Island’s children into thieves and liars.

  According to her, Kara Island children never used to threaten their own parents with murder before. Whatever Juba been feeding them changed them.

  ‘The whole of Kara Island gone and change and every man here turn useless with fright. And look what Juba done to Dada’ granddaughter Lena, and nobody couldn stop im!’

  She fixed me with cool, defiant eyes. ‘Somebody had to take the fight to Juba Hurst, not so? And who better than us?’

  She said that whenever Juba left for Vincen Island, they filled bottles with kerosene, went to that place he set up by the sea and emptied his demijohns. They drove nails into his containers and set the place alight. They’d been doing it for the past three months.

  ‘And what Juba goin do to us?’ The old woman threw me a look. ‘Kill us, Missa Digger – that’s all. But yunno, death is nothing. Death is an embrace for those ov us who prepare for it. Besides, we done live this life – or most ov it. So!’

  Did they know exactly what Juba was doing? I asked.

  They didn’t care, they said, though they’d heard that it was drugs.

  ‘Y’all show me the place tomorrow?’ I said.

  ‘You give back Kathleen ’er gun?’ Dada wanted to know.

  I told her, yes.

  ‘You got yours too?’

  ‘Nuh,’ I said.

  ‘Just one should do, not so?’ Benna might have been enquiring about the effectiveness of a kitchen knife or spoon.

  ‘I just want to see the camp,’ I said. ‘We not looking for Juba.’

  Benna tapped her rod and looked very disappointed.

  ‘Where’s Miss Stanislaus?’ I said.

  ‘Restin,’ Dada said. ‘She tired.’ The woman placed a hand over her heart.

  They fed me fried sweet potato wedges and spiced fishcake. Miss Stanislaus came and sat beside me. The day had suddenly quietened. The sound of the sea became more present in my consciousness. The last of the evening sun threw a yellow glow on everything. I looked at my watch: 6.45. I wondered where the time went and suddenly felt exhausted.

  The women mentioned a small guest house further inland. They’d already called the couple who ran it and told them to expect me.

  ‘I meet you here tomorrow,’ I told Miss Stanislaus. ‘First ferry.’

  ‘I comin with you,’ she said.

  The women gave us a small bag stuffed with lambi roti and waved us off.

  Dada even smiled.

  Kara Island became a ship at night – all twelve square miles of it – anchored in some of the worst waters in the Antilles.

  I sat on the edge of the bed in Sea View Guest House suffering from the hammering out there. It felt as if the ocean had invaded my head. And there was that smell of rotting fish and rancid diesel oil that seemed to seep through the crevices of the building and wrap itself around me.

  I heard a tap on my door. ‘Missa Digger, you decent?’

  I got up and pulled on my tracksuit.

  Miss Stanislaus was in the corridor in black slacks, a pair of canvas shoes and a loose-fitting, beaded T-shirt. She looked as if she were going for a jog. ‘Missa Digger, you want to take some breeze?’

  I glanced at my watch: 3.57. ‘This time-a-morning?’

  ‘I know you wasn sleepin. Didn hear no snorin.’

  ‘I don’t
snore,’ I said. ‘Best to wait it out. Ferry leave eight thirty.’

  ‘First quarter moon,’ she said. ‘A pusson want to walk.’ Miss Stanislaus sounded desperate.

  ‘Gimme a minute.’ I slipped on my sneakers, grabbed my torch and pulled the door closed behind me.

  A clear sky and a hard wind coming off the sea and grabbing at our clothing, though the thundering of the ocean was less amplified out here.

  We walked the main road towards the town and then branched off it, Miss Stanislaus in front, her head switching this way then that, as if she were reacquainting herself with the island. Some houses were no longer there, she said, and there were quite a few – big concrete constructions that looked ghostly in the moonlight – that hadn’t been there before.

  A long stone building was the school she went to. She took me past it, her walk purposeful, her footsteps quicker. She headed for a patch of limestone rocks and razor grass, stopped at a tangle of old sea-island cotton trees, their trunks choked with tufts of cus-cus grass and sun-parched weeds. Miss Stanislaus pointed at the tangle of vegetation. ‘Right there, Missa Digger, is where I got Daphne.’

  And then gently, very gently, she rested a hand on my upper arm and led me back onto the main road.

  ‘You think you’ll ever come back here to live?’ I said.

  ‘I feel the pull sometimes, Missa Digger, when my fam’ly blood is callin me, but yunno—’ She turned up her face at the moon. ‘Juba all over dis islan, Missa Digger – you been smellin im too, not so? Benna say they even smell im in deir sleep. And if you dunno it yet, he been outside de guest house waitin’n’watchin.’ She stopped short, pointed a finger at her chest. ‘So, Juba Hurst in here – and Juba Hurst out there, too. You don’ fink I have to clear him out?’

  Miss Stanislaus released my arm, dropped it stiffly on her bag, sniffing the air. ‘And s’pose I tell you, Missa Digger, that I smell im comin? S’pose I tell you I got to finish it right now becuz I don’ have no choice?’ She threw me a sudden urgent look. ‘Use your speed.’