The Clearing Page 4
“Ooh! Gonna tell your mama!” Richard teased. Pip laughed, and on some level he knew, as did the others, it would have the desired effect. Everyone wanted Tristan to do it. Even Nate.
Tristan stood and rubbed his hands together. “Is there anything you guys aren’t scared of? Jenn fi.”
Richard, as usual, obliged with a translation. “He called you little girls.”
Nate and Pip played it up and giggled like schoolgirls, but they got nothing more from Tristan.
He was making his move.
6
Smiley sat patiently while Nate wrestled with the question.
It would be easy for Nate to just tell him what he knew about the Bolom—what he’d heard, what he’d read in the years since he left the island, and what he knew from firsthand experience. It was simple, really. It was nothing more than just a series of statements about what Nate believed—knew, as a child—to be true. But the thought of even the smallest detail added yet another, and then another. And before he’d finished drawing a single breath, that simple series of statements had taken on so much more substance, so many more layers, like the base of a snowman rolled across a long stretch of perfect packing snow.
“Ma Joop!” called Smiley over his shoulder. In the rickety building, the large woman who had served accra and beer peered around the door jamb. “Ma Joop, we need more beer here, please!”
Nate looked over to the woman and took her in for the first time. He had seen her a few hours ago when they first met, of course, but he’d merely said hello, eager to get back to what Smiley had to say. But now, in the blush of a half dozen cold Heinekens, and while Smiley joked with her and laughed out loud, he took his first real look.
Ma Joop was a woman of generous proportions. She was probably in her late forties, and moved in practiced, deliberate ways, as if each move cost her greatly. Her hips were wide and as Nate watched, it became clear that she was favoring one leg. While she bore no evidence of it on her face, Nate was sure she was enduring pain of some sort hidden beneath her skirts and smiles. But despite her size and weight, her real defining factor was her booming voice, with which she exchanged easy and natural remarks in Creole with Smiley.
Temporarily outside of the conversation, Nate focused his attention on the envelope sitting among the empty beer bottles. He turned it so the opening faced him, pulled out a small handful of papers and laid them on his lap. The very first one stopped him cold.
It was an obituary, cut from the local paper, announcing the untimely passing of Tristan De Villiers.
Nate sat back heavily in the chair and scratched at his chin stubble; it never occurred to him that Tristan might not be alive all these years later. But did it matter? He wasn’t sure, but there was a new and sudden hollowness there. First Richard, then Collette, and now Tristan, too? It seemed that over the years the De Villiers family had been decimated. He looked up for Smiley, but the man was still deeply ensnared in laughter with Ma Joop. There were a thousand new questions Nate wanted to ask, but they would have to wait.
He dipped his head and read the obituary again, searching for details but finding scant few. It merely said that there would be a closed service for immediate family only. The obituary was dated at the top; it had run just over three years ago. Certainly coming back here wasn’t about confronting Tristan—that was never the plan—but now that he was gone, Nate sensed that something within him would remain forever unresolved. Maybe he had expected to see him. It wasn’t part of the plan, but he admitted it was something he might have been secretly relishing.
Something in the tone of the conversation happening around him shifted suddenly, like a brief jolt of turbulence at thirty thousand feet, and snapped him back. He looked up to a strange and uncomfortable pause in the conversation between Smiley and Ma Joop.
When the dialogue resumed a moment later, Nate thought he recognized a single word among the string of Creole consonants and vowels that Smiley was issuing. He saw an immediate change in Ma Joop. She broke from the conversation and stood suddenly upright, placing her hands against the top of her buttock at her back. “Come again?” she said in clear English.
Smiley’s reaction was both telling and instantaneous: no matter the language, his face was that of a man who had crossed an invisible line and either had, or had come very close, to offending a woman—a woman of whom he was at least a little bit frightened. His first defense was to wave his hands in that dismissive way designed to minimize the preceding comments, but Ma Joop was having none of it. She chattered back at him sharply, and the inflection at the end of her Creole torrent told Nate it was a question—one delivered in the form of a demand.
Smiley’s posture changed instantly. He became apologetic, diffusive, and while the string of words was lost on Nate, the man’s tone and actions said volumes. Smiley’s smile was gone, and he was now a picture of contrition, his pitch repentant and at the edge of pleading. The word popped through again, the one that seemed to have changed the entire conversation for Ma Joop, and this time Nate was convinced he had heard it clearly: Bolom. It was Ma Joop who said it this time, and as she did she cut a single and searing glance at Nate. It was venomous, and her eyes burned with anger.
When at last she spoke, it was in an eerily calm and quiet tone, and in English, perhaps for Nate’s benefit. “Don’t fuck aroun’ wit dis,” was all she said.
She then turned, smiled briefly at Nate, and moved off in that deliberate and unhurried way that was all her own. When she had disappeared inside, Nate let out an almost inaudible whistle. “Whoa. What was all that about?”
Instead of explaining Smiley said simply “You mus’ be tired. I think it time I took you back.” It was a definitive moment; the evening was over.
An hour later, Nate lay on the bed in his room at the Breadfruit Tree Inn, watching as the ceiling fan turned in lazy, ineffectual arcs. It was out of balance and the whole hub moved as the blades turned. There was no off switch to the thing, and no speed control that he could see; it was perpetually in motion, a repetitive, looping circle with no chance of stability.
He glanced at the envelope, and at the corner of a photograph peeking out. He reached down and pulled it out slowly—just enough until he could see that it was indeed the photograph of Richard, and then he pushed it back in. But it was enough. The thoughts began tumbling in: first it was Richard and Pip and the dense green of the forest, but then it was Cody.
The memory was Cody as a one-year-old, all warm and bundled in a soft yellow sleeper, and sleeping the impossibly peaceful sleep only afforded to infants. Cody was perfect in that moment, as he was in all Nate’s moments. But there was a pattern here, and the memory would be followed, as it always was, by a crushing reality.
He tried to steel himself against it, but there was no use. Nate knew exactly what was coming next. In his mind’s eye Cody was six, and their faces were pressed closely together, nose to nose. He could smell Cody’s breath, his hair, the scent of his clothes. And his perfect boy asked the question again, as he always did, in that innocent voice still untouched by the horrors of the world: Will I be okay, Daddy?
Fully clothed, Nate reached under the lampshade beside his bed and snapped off the light, rolled onto his side and drew his knees up tight. And then, like so many times before in the quietness of a day’s end, he began to cry.
7
Kathy swivelled her gaze to follow Nate’s and saw the feet—the slippers—through the bedroom door. She turned back and shifted slightly, obstructing Nate’s line of sight. “I know this is a very difficult time for you, Mr. Mason…”
Nate looked away from the room and into Kathy’s eyes. “You can call me Nate,” he said flatly. He was so tired. Not just sleepy, but body tired. Life tired.
“Have the officers spoken with you yet?”
“No—just the guy who said to sit tight.”
“All right. If you’d like, I can explain the process from here on in.”
“The process?”
Nate nodded. He knew all about overwhelming.
“An officer, or maybe a detective will want to sit and ask you some questions,” continued Kathy. “They’ll get you to make a statement if you’re up to it, but you don’t have to right now if you don’t want to.”
“That’s fine. That’s okay,” said Nate, looking again at the La-Z-Boy. That blanket. That goddamn blanket really needed to be washed.
“…and there will be some men here to collect your father. They’ll bring a gurney in, and they’ll take him to…”
Nate stood and walked over to the La-Z-Boy, gathered the blanket and put it to his nose. It smelled stale and dusty, with a sharp edge of something long since spilled and dried. And it smelled of his father.
“Mr. Mason?”
“I gotta wash this,” he said quietly, heading for the kitchen.
Kathy followed, but didn’t try to stop him. “Are you sure there’s no one I can call to come and be with you?”
Nate stopped and the unreasonable agitation swept over him again. She was there to help, he knew. She was there to bridge the gap between law enforcement and family, and in all fairness she was doing a pretty damn decent job. And so when he turned and snapped at her he knew she didn’t deserve it. “I already told you, there’s no one!”
Kathy nodded calmly. “I understand.”
“Everything okay here?” asked the policeman from before, edging his head around the kitchen wall.
“We’re fine,” said Kathy.
Nate turned away and shoved the blanket into the small stacked washer/dryer in the corner, and busied himself figuring out how to turn it on.
“Sir, I need to ask you not to do that just now,” said the officer. He spoke in calm, almost apologetic tones. “Just not until the detectives have had a chance to check everything out. It’s just routine, but they’ll want to talk to you.”
Something in that reached back into Nate’s own experience and echoed through him like a ghost in a far off canyon. They’ll want to talk to you. It bounced hollowly around inside him, and then finally landed home: policemen in pressed uniforms, bright lights and ceiling fans, parents with pinched, frightened faces anxiously imploring him to tell, tell, tell. For a brief moment he could almost feel the heat of the room, taste the moisture in the tropical air, and hear the anxious thud of his almost-thirteen-year-old heart.
“Sir? Could I ask you to leave the blanket be?” repeated the officer.
Nate let the present reclaim him. He seemed almost surprised to be standing there, looking down into the machine with the old brown blanket sitting inside. “Sure, sure,” he said, almost silently.
Nate went back to the couch, flanked by Kathy from VS and the police officer, and sat quietly, thinking about his father, thinking about how tired and worn down he felt. This might all be too much, he thought. It might all be too much, too soon. He knew he hadn’t processed it yet, not really, and he knew from experience that that would come later.
He closed his eyes for a moment and felt everything sag. Sleep was there if he wanted it. There were men at the door now, talking. He didn’t care. Nate kept his eyes closed and leaned back into the sofa. It was old and sprung, and sucked him in deeply. He felt himself going.
The screen door banged and a voice cut through: “You gotta be fucking kidding me… Sarge, come here.”
Nate could hear it, but he was too tired, too close to sleep. He let his eyes stay closed.
The same voice: “Sarge, it’s that guy again.”
Then another voice, quieter this time, as if trying not to be heard: “Oh shit,” said the second voice. “You’re right. It’s that same poor bastard…”
• • •
Nate’s dreams were alive with images. He found himself at the foot of a set of old concrete steps leading up to a sprawling and dilapidated plantation house. It was set among a thick and encroaching jungle, and the sun broke through occasionally in great shafts of softened yellow. He could see windows high above in the wooden structure set atop a great concrete foundation of arches, each yawning with darkness in the spans between the uprights. Some of the windows were sealed and closed, some partially covered with old wooden shutters, worn and peeling and hanging at tenuously odd angles, while others were vacant and hollow like dead, black eyes. There was peeling paint along the wooden boards, warping sills and rusting sheets of corrugated sheet metal streaked in red, and all around a sense of bleakness and senescence.
And with it all went an unexplained sense of threat, something hovering just out of view, and as Nate roused from his troubling dream the sense of unease stayed with him. Was it the house in the dream? Was it the sense of decay that hung on everything in it? Or was it the figure standing silently at the foot of his bed in the dark?
The sight at the foot of Nate’s bed was too impossible, too outlandish for his brain to accept. And so where there should have been fear, there was only confusion. He blinked heavily and struggled to understand what he was seeing. The room was dark, lit only by the glow of the street lamps in Derek Walcott Square, and filtered again by the chiffon drapes at the window’s edge. Where it did fall into the room, the light pooled at the foot of the bed in a soft, diffused shimmer, backlighting the figure of a large man. He was bathed in perfect black on a background of almost black, and the effect on Nate’s eyes was an illusion where the silhouette appeared and disappeared with every blink and twist of his head.
Finally the figure moved, just a tiny adjustment of balance, but enough for Nate’s brain to solve the puzzle. The figure came into sharp and sudden focus, and an instant later Nate’s conscious mind understood the gravity of the situation. The shadow raised its left arm, and light from the Square glinted once across a broad blade in its hand; it was the trigger Nate needed to move.
He lurched left on the bed, rolling once across the floral bedspread, just in time to hear a heavy grunt from the intruder and the muted thwap of something driven hard into the bedding.
“Help!” shrieked Nate as he struggled to find his feet at the side of the bed. “Help!” His hands went instinctively to the bedside table for something to defend himself with, and he launched the first thing he touched at the shadow with as much force as he could muster. The clock radio missed the target but forced the man to duck, buying Nate a precious few seconds to reload. Next he threw the lamp, but the cord pulled taut in mid-air and pulled the lamp up short, as if striking an invisible force field around his assailant. It fell vainly onto the bed and Nate shrieked again, this time something less comprehensible, more primal—it was half yell, half scream.
In the light from the window he saw the blade flash again, long and broad like a swashbuckler’s cutlass, and the figure made a sudden move around the edge of the bed toward Nate. Like a kid at a sleepover, Nate bounded over the bed, scampering across the sheets with an agility that he’d not seen in himself in years. The bed jarred suddenly and the man with the blade grunted as his knee drove solidly into the steel frame. It took the air out of his advance. The figure paused, uncertain and undecided, until he suddenly turned and bolted to the door. He heaved it open and darted through it in one motion, and ran headlong into the door on the opposite side of the corridor. He recovered quickly, and was out of sight in seconds.
Nate stood stunned in the shadows. He stared at the open door, and his eyes were drawn to the green glow of the clock radio sitting against the wall near the closet. Miraculously it was still showing the time—3:37 in the morning—and Nate could not understand why no one had come to see what was going on in his room. Surely they would have heard his cries for help? Someone would have called the front desk, even if they didn’t want to come out and see what bloody murder was being committed themselves.
At last he moved to the door, the light from the hotel corridor pouring into his room and painting a perfect rectangle of light on the floor. At the opening he paused, half expecting the intruder to be waiting in the hall
, then cautiously he pushed his head through.
The blow hit him hard in the chest, drove him back into the room and sent him sprawling onto the floor. The man followed through with his full weight and landed squarely on top of Nate.
Nate screamed, but nothing came out; there was no air in his lungs. He thrashed as best he could, but the intruder was large and powerful, and soon Nate was almost entirely immobilized by his attacker. Understanding that it was hopeless, Nate stopped moving and looked, for the first time, at the man who was clearly going to kill him.
The man from the shadows was dressed entirely in black, his face covered with a balaclava that left enough skin around his eyes and mouth for Nate to tell only that he was black. By the force of the man’s grip and the solidness of the flesh Nate could feel under his hands, he could tell that the man was well muscled and athletically toned. The man was breathing hard, and brought his face down close to Nate’s. He looked directly into Nate’s eyes, and watched as Nate struggled for breath like a newly landed fish. The big man then dropped his head lower still, and Nate could smell the sweetness of rum on his breath as he whispered almost silently into Nate’s ear. “Sòti la!” he said, and then he raised something in front of Nate’s face. Nate’s mind raced with panic, terrified of the heavy blade that the man had tried to kill him with earlier, but as his eyes focused, he saw something else.
The thing held in front of his face was some kind of animal part. At one end, the skin and bone was sliced through neatly—the action of a sharp blade, no doubt. But, where the cut ended, the skin was partially torn, as if sheer brawn had finished the job that the blade had started. Beneath the flap of skin white bone shone through, and something dripped off it and spattered on Nate’s forehead. He blinked wildly, and focused again on the object, and saw that at the other end, about eight inches from the cut, was a large cloven hoof. It was too broad and thick for a goat; a cow or bull seemed more likely. It spattered again on Nate and the floor around his head, and once again the man on top of him whispered, “Sòti la! Go now!”