The Night Boat (Page 13)
THE SHIP'S BELL mounted in front of Everybody's Grocers tolled six times. As the morning light strengthened across the island, the Square was filled with people in all manner of clothing and a wild rainbow of bright hues. There was much talking and laughing, and a couple of the island's musicians had set up their steel drums on the grocery's porch, intertwining their delicately sweet rhythms and motioning occasionally to an upturned hat used to catch coins.
There were tables of goods for Saturday market - bananas, coconuts, papaya, corn, tobacco, a myriad of vegetables - and beneath the shade of a thatched-roof shed there were large ice-filled buckets containing snapper, amberjack, squid, and grouper. Bundles of sugarcane were arranged in stacks, and children paid for them by the stick. There were cardboard boxes filled with chickens, and hogs grunting and pulling at the rope collars attaching them to poles in the ground. An aged man in a straw hat sat in a patch of shade, moving back and forth in a rocking chair, telling ghost stories to wide-eyed children who crowded around to hear. There was much probing and handling of goods, and voices were raised in the babble of haggling for the best price and determining whether corn grown to the east or to the north was the sweetest.
David Moore, carrying snapper fillets wrapped in newspaper under one arm and a sack of vegetables under the other, moved gingerly through the crowd, in the midst of its furious blare of voices, music, and colors. There was a man selling drinks from a cooler, and Moore paused to buy a lime soda before being swept up again in the crush of people. He saw people he recognized on every side, but no one spoke to him, and those who caught his gaze quickly looked away, whispering and motioning. He knew he was an outcast because he had been the one who had found and freed the U-boat; he could feel the tension in those who looked at him, and somehow he felt ashamed under those hard gazes. Moore was beginning to understand the fear in their faces after what he imagined he'd seen down in the U-boat. Imagined? Was it imagination after all, or the effect of the gases in that airless tomb? The entire thing had been like the nightmares he experienced over the deaths of his wife and son; didn't he awaken shuddering and sweating from those, ready to curse God yet again for allowing it to happen? But it had been so very real in the U-boat: the sounds, the smells, the apparitions rising toward him with gaping, awful faces. Stop it! he told himself, pretending to inspect a bunch of green bananas.
He had sat up half the night in the hotel's front room, drinking one dark rum after the next, holding the scorpion paperweight in his left hand and turning it before the bulb of a desk lamp. The colors of the spectrum had gleamed through the newly polished glass, and the imprisoned scorpion was outlined in a dark, bloodlike red glow. Sitting there, staring at the glass, feeling the warmth of the rum deep in his belly, he wondered what kind of a man had held it before him, in the cavernous darkness of the U-boat. Inescapable fate, Moore thought; it had been inescapable fate that those men had gone down together into the Abyss, inescapable fate that he had discovered the U-boat some forty years later. And now he realized his destiny had become strangely interlocked with theirs, through time and circumstance. He had raised the submarine from the dead, drawn to that ledge beneath the glimmering blue surface as surely as if there had been a path cut for him dropping down into the curling waves. It was after three when he had finished the rum and put the paperweight aside, hoping he would sleep. The terrible images still danced inside his head.
And this morning, as he made his way through the crowd of islanders, he understood their fear of the dark things they associated with the boat's decaying mass. They held him responsible for its being on the island, as if he had brought up some kind of Pandora's box filled with... what? The things he'd seen in his hallucinations? Jumbies, duppies, monstrous forms that crawled through brackish water like huge dark spiders? He shook the visions off. Voodoo superstitions, Moore thought, and not worth a damn.
There was some kind of commotion on one edge of the Square; Moore could see several of the islanders stepping aside as if to make way for someone. Heads turned; conversations stopped. The wild clatter of laughter and talking began to die, slowly at first, from that edge of the Square outward, and was replaced by a low whispering and murmuring. Moore couldn't see what was happening because there were too many people around him, so he walked toward a clear spot over by the hut where the fish were being stored. A group of islanders parted and Moore saw Boniface approaching, walking slowly, guided by his cane and dressed in a black suit. The glass eye around his throat caught the sunlight. The man looked straight ahead, not even acknowledging the others but seemingly walking directly toward Moore. Finally the outer fringes of the crowd grew silent in anticipation, and the drummers stopped their rhythms.
Boniface narrowed his eyes slightly, staring into Moore's face, and did not slow his pace until he was standing a few feet away from the white man. Moore saw that the whites of Boniface's eyes were bloodshot, as if he'd been either drinking or smoking ganja. Beneath the eyeglasses they appeared as inflamed, deep circles in the ebony face. Boniface leaned forward on his cane, both hands clasped at its hilt, and studied Moore in silence. Other eyes were on him, from all across the Square, and in the distance he could hear a woman hushing a group of children.
"You've been inside it," Boniface said quietly.
"That's right," Moore replied, meeting the man's gaze.
"Are you a fool? A madman, to disdain what I say? God help you! Ah, oui. You see it as historical, a curiosity perhaps. Would you so peer at the fangs of a snake? And now it sits opened behind those frail wooden walls. And tell me, what did you find inside?"
"Nothing. We found nothing at all."
"Liar!" Boniface hissed, his expression fierce. He looked around at the knot of people behind him, and when he returned his gaze to the white man he had regained his control. He said in a voice just above a whisper, "I know what you found there, Moore. Do you hear me? I know! And you thought yourself dreaming, or mad, or cursed with the sight of something you could never begin to understand. Do not return to that place. Leave the boat alone, I warn you!"
"What did I see, Boniface? You tell me."
The man paused for a few seconds, and when he spoke the voice came from the corridors of his soul. "You glimpsed Hades, Moore. You saw the place of eternal torture and damnation. And yet you are a fool to think it was a nightmare, to think you are safe because the things you fail to understand cannot reach you. But I tell you they can!" Boniface abruptly turned from Moore, sweeping his gaze across the faces around him. He stepped into the crowd and it parted for him, backing away.
Boniface held up a hand. "Wait! Hear me out! If you cannot do as I ask, then do these things! Board your windows, keep your shutters and doors locked! If you have guns, keep them close at hand!" The crowd's uneasiness increased and several people moved about nervously, but none dared turn his back or drop his eyes. "Stay off the streets at night," Boniface continued. "Watch your wives and children, and do not allow them to stray off the paths into the jungle..."
There was a chorus of angered, fearful responses from some of the men. Several of them stepped forward, as if to challenge Boniface. A woman fell to her knees and began to mutter wildly, her hands clasped before her.
"LISTEN TO ME, YOU FOOLS!" Boniface shouted, the veins standing out in his neck. Immediately all noise ceased; the men stood where they were, glowering. The reverend continued softly, "If you value your lives, you will not go down into the boatyard..."
This last warning held them breathless. The breeze swept over them and on inland; at the rear of the crowd a metal pot was knocked over. An elderly man came past Moore and picked up a bucket; he glanced at the white man, his eyes pools of fear, and then vanished. In another moment the rest of the islanders had begun to gather up their goods in silence. The musicians carried their steel drums off; women grasped for their children's hands and pulled them along, ignoring their crying. The Square began to empty rapidly.
"Are you crazy?" Moore asked Boniface, stepping beside him. "This is exactly what the constable didn't want! You've started a goddamned panic!"
"I've told them the truth," Boniface said. "Kip lies to himself. I'll have no blood on my hands!"
Moore held back the urge to grab the frail old man and shake him until he cracked open, spilling out his bilious secrets into the sand. "Tell me what it means," he said after a while.
"It may save their lives. It may save yours as well."
"But why won't you just explain?" Moore was infuriated. The islanders had been overpowered by Boniface's voodoo. There was nothing Kip could do.
Moore, knowing that now the islanders had been overpowered by Boniface's voodoo, watched the few people still left carrying away their goods. One of the farmers began to drag his unwilling hogs along, his wife and children switching at their flanks with sticks. Another bent to gather up armloads of sugarcane and throw them into a wheelbarrow.
"Remember," Boniface said, holding Moore's eyes. "Stay away from that boat."
"What in God's name is this all about?" Moore asked again, but the reverend had turned away without a word, retracing the path by which he'd come, moving through the rapidly emptying Square toward Front Street's sand ribbon. "WHAT IS IT?" Moore shouted, but the man didn't stop. He watched Boniface disappear among the clapboard houses.
Moore saw now who held the power; he had seen Mayor Reynard's face among the crowd, and a dozen others he knew. None of them had moved, none had spoken; they'd been frozen under Boniface's gaze. And the man's words had swept the Square, begging, commanding, pleading. None of his believers could dare to disobey.
Steven Kip drove a narrow, rutted goat-track of a road through the greenish-black jungles; the studded tires bounced and crashed over stones and the remnants of uprooted trees. Kip braked the jeep when he came to a crossroads to get his bearings as to which way to drive. He had been at this point on Coquina only twice before, and one of those times he had become hopelessly lost for hours on a road that wound around and around before dropping off into the sea. He lifted his arm and wiped sweat from his forehead. The air was thick and wet here, and the dampness had worked its way beneath his clothes, clinging to his skin in beads. Light streamed through the thick overhang of trees and vines like golden, liquid columns, but in places the darkness was like the bottom of the ocean. Birds screeched and fluttered in the maze of limbs, their forms giving a brief glimpse of red or blue or yellow as they sought safety at higher altitudes.
Kip chose the right-hand pathway and turned onto it, driving through a large circular puddle of standing rainwater that sucked at the tires. Strands of mist clung close to the earth, wrapping themselves around the dark trunks of trees and slithering into the high grasses. Kip had driven for perhaps ten more minutes, wondering if he'd made a mistake again, when he saw a tree lying directly across the road. He stopped the jeep just in front of it; the tree had been living when felled. He could see the marks on the shattered trunk where the axes had been used. This was the right road after all.
Kip climbed out of the jeep, stepped over the tree, and began to walk. In the absence of engine noise the cries of the birds seemed louder, some piercing and arrogant, others sadly sweet. A little farther on Kip saw a face drawn in ashes on a tree trunk; the eyes were wide and staring, the mouth open, showing rows of teeth. A warning, Kip thought. It was a sign to keep the curious out, and perhaps more than an obvious reference to the Carib's heritage of cannibalism. As he passed the symbol he heard someone running in the jungle, bare feet crushing leaves. The sound quickly faded away, and Kip knew he'd been seen.
The jungle had been cleared less than a hundred yards ahead; he could see the Carib village, which consisted of a score of shantylike, unpainted clapboard dwellings, battered from years of hard weather and sun. A rundown store with tin placards advertising COCA-COLA and PRINCE ALBERT TOBACCO stood at the center of the village, its shingled roof half-collapsed and in some spots bared down to the wood. Just beyond the village, on Carib Point overlooking the blue sheen of the Caribbean, was a useless squat tower, now decayed; green vines covered its base and all the glass on its lamp deck had been long broken. Strung between the houses were lines of drying, tattered clothes, and here and there were small square plots of scraggly corn and beans.
A naked child sat on the ground sailing a piece of wood whittled into a boat in a brackish-looking puddle, and he looked up with surprised eyes as Kip entered Caribville. A group of other children had already seen him and had run away, followed by their short-haired yellow dog, who stopped to snarl and bark at the constable. Some men had gathered in front of the store, their eyes sharp and bright, their features appearing more chiseled and harder than those of the Coquina villagers, their complexions a tawny gold. An attractive woman with long black hair who had been carrying a basket balanced on her head stopped in her tracks when she saw Kip; when she had regained her composure she continued on, moving away toward one of the houses. People peered at him from screened doors and windows as he walked deeper into Caribville. He sensed their hostility. They had never accepted him as the authority, as law on the island, and they disliked anyone whose ancestry was tied with the British.
The men at the front of the store began to separate as Kip reached them, and they were gone before he could speak to them. Kip stood at the doorway, his gaze sweeping across the village. A single road headed downhill to a semicircle of beach below. At the Carib harbor, there was a wharf where a few rusty old trawlers lay moored. Kip could see some of the men working on their boats. Farther along the beach stood a huge concrete hulk, just the steel framework and walls of a building. At one time, a British firm had tried to build a hotel and marina there but the project had fallen through. Now it stood as a silent sentinel of progress thwarted: the jungle had grown back around it, and spiders and lizards had claimed the building as a shelter from the heat.
"What do you want?" someone asked, in a heavily accented voice that mixed English and Spanish.
Kip looked around. A heavyset man in a T-shirt stood behind the screen door, his hands on his hips. His hair was cropped very short, but his glossy, black sideburns had been allowed to grow wild and full. His eyes were small burning embers under thick black brows, and they regarded the constable with a mixture of curiosity and disdain.
"I want to see the Chief Father," Kip told him.
The Carib was silent for a few seconds, sizing the other man up. "And why?" he asked.
"Official police business."
"Is that so? Well, then, you can talk to me; I'm Cheyne's brother-in-law."
Kip shook his head. "That won't do. Is Cheyne here or not?"
Kip didn't believe the man. When he looked to one side he saw two other Carib men, both burly and tough-looking, leaning against the remnants of a brick wall, watching him. One pretended to pare his nails with a knife blade. "It's Cheyne I want to see," Kip said, gazing at the men. "There's been trouble over in Coquina village. A man's dead, and I want to know..."
"We heard about that," the man said. "All about it. So you come up here to ask questions about us, thinking mebbe we had something to do with it? Go away, constable. You ain't welcome here."
"Thanks for your help," Kip told him acidly, watching the other two out of the corner of his eye. "I know where Cheyne lives; I'll find him myself." As he walked away, he heard the man call out, "Better watch your step around here, constable! This ain't no fuckin' pastel pink Coquina village you in now!" There was laughter, and someone cursed and spat, but Kip paid them no attention. He reached a house farther down the row of decrepit shacks, and knocked on the door frame. Waited, knocked again. The door opened a few inches and a smooth-skinned, pretty woman peered out at him cautiously.
"I'm looking for him," Kip said.
She shook her head, spoke a few words in the brisk native dialect. "Gone," she said. "He gone." She pointed toward the ocean.
"When is he coming back?"
The woman shrugged, not understanding. In the dim confines of the house a baby began crying, and Kip heard an aged voice call out. The woman looked over her shoulder, nodding, and then closed the door in the constable's face.
Damn! he thought angrily. Cheyne was the only one who'd talk to him, and he was a hard man to track down; the other Caribs would just as soon spit as look at him. Kip left the house, walking back past the store to his jeep, ignoring the stares of the men and their curses flung at his back. Deep within him he knew the Caribs had had nothing to do with Turk's murder. He was desperately trying to convince himself that the answer was logical, something he could put his finger on, but the more he brooded over it the more the answer seemed to elude him. It led him into a place of darkness, a cramped passage moving him inexorably toward a closed iron hatch.
THAT WAS NOT REAL! he told himself for the thousandth time, trying to make the thought convincing. That was not, could never be, real! Of course, it was his job to be concerned. He was responsible for the Coquina villagers and the Caribs as well, even though those people looked to their Chief Father as the ultimate authority.
As he reached the jeep Kip realized the birds were silent; the myriad noises now were strangely and disturbingly absent. The breeze swept in, rattling foliage and sending the mist through the trees with questioning fingers. Silence swelled in the sun-ribbed shadows, louder than the screeching of the birds. It was an oppressive quiet, and Kip wondered what had caused it.
He started the engine and began to thread his way along the road, away from the red points of eyes that had been watching.
And hungering.