The Clearing Read online

  The two men seized him again, and hoisted him up effortlessly. With muscled arms linked through each of Nate’s, they propelled him down the hall, past startled faces of guests and staff alike. In moments he was thrust into the covered back of a small police pickup with a simple padlock door, where he lay on his side struggling to regain his breath as the vehicle bumped through the darkened Castries streets.

  Nate was terrified now, but anger was trying to find a way in. He could feel the brightness of the new cut on his cheek, and as he lay on his side with his hands cuffed behind him, he could see the blood dripping steadily and consistently onto the corrugated floor of the pickup. He wanted to call out to the policemen in the front, but he knew they had no interest in his side of the story. He was no longer the victim, and fear, anger and frustration swirled in generous proportions. How had this happened?

  The pickup swerved hard and Nate rolled against the exposed wheel-well, grunting as the air was driven out of him again. The men in the front laughed, and stopped the pickup hard sending Nate sliding forward and headfirst against the cab. The two policemen then pulled him roughly out, feet first, and let him fall hard onto the ground. Again the wind was driven from his lungs. His vision was spotty, and he was unable to speak. He wheezed and struggled to breathe, much to the amusement of the officers.

  Nate looked around and saw he was in front of a small white building with a police sign glowing blue in the night. Inside there was light, but the street, which appeared to be in an industrial part of town, was dark and deserted.

  Inside, grunted the larger of the two, and Nate was shoved forward. As they entered the lobby another policeman looked up and immediately left the room, closing the door behind him. There appeared to be no one else around. Something about the way that officer left, the look of resignation, of his complete understanding of what was about to happen made Nate’s heart sink even more.

  The room was starkly lit by a single neon tube, and on the two desks in the room sat stacks of papers and tan colored files. There was a water cooler with no water bottle sitting in the corner, two wooden chairs, and a row of steel filing cabinets lining the back wall. The room had not a single nod toward comfort. Nate looked back through the front door and into the street. There was nothing there, save the blue glow of the police sign. Something terrible was about to happen, and no one would be here to see it.

  “I didn’t do anything. I was attacked in my room.”

  The two officers exchanged glances. One said something to the other in patois. They both nodded, and turned to face Nate. This was it.

  The bigger of the two officers put his face directly in front of Nate’s, and stared hard into his eyes. Nate could smell the man’s breath, the sweat in his uniform and the lingering odor of tobacco. The policeman held the moment, and Nate became once again aware of the cut in his cheek. He could feel it oozing blood. It coursed down to his chin, where it gathered at the center and ran down his neck to feed a growing arc of crimson at the collar of his T-shirt.

  “Dis place here,” said the policeman quietly, “dis place can be a terrible, terrible place.” He pointed to the single door at the back of the room. “We take criminals from de street—hard, hard fellows, tough-as-nails, seriously bad—and we take dem through dat door. And when dem see de door, dem cry like li’l girls.” He took a deep breath and looked at the door. “If you go through that door, you not coming back. Happens all de time here. So I goin’ tell you once and only once. Dis island not a safe place for you, I think. My advice—leave before you dun get hurt.”

  Without hesitation he spun Nate around, unshackled him and shoved him through the front door and out into the night. Nate stumbled and almost fell, and stood confused in the glow of the Police sign looking back at the station. The two policemen were chatting to each other, paying no attention to Nate. He was confused, scared, and sure they would come after him the moment he looked away in some perverse game of cat and mouse.

  Nate walked away backwards, into the darkness, watching the front of the station and waiting for the officers to take up the chase. They never did.

  Nate had no idea where he was. It was dark, he was disoriented, and there was no one around to ask for help. He walked for two blocks until he found a payphone, and with no money he called the operator and asked to be connected, with the charges reversed, to the only number he knew: Smiley’s.

  Half an hour later he sat in Smiley’s white Honda in front of the Breadfruit Tree Inn. He was still shaken. “It’s aright, Mr. Mason. It’s aright.” Smiley’s voice was calm and reassuring.

  “The jandam gone now.” He helped Nate out of the car, and back up to his room. He brought him a towel from the bathroom and pressed it firmly into the arc of red beneath his right eye.

  “I don’t know what the hell…” He pulled the towel from his eye and it began to bleed again like an open faucet.

  Smiley quickly guided the towel back and held it firmly in place. “We’ll have to get that seen to right away, Nate. I think you gone need some silk.”

  “What?”

  “Stitches, my friend. You need some stitches to close dat.”

  Nate didn’t argue the point. He just sat and stared off into space. Finally he shook his head. “Christ, I have no idea what just happened. One minute I’m sleeping, then I’m fighting some asshole with a cutlass, and then I’m getting arrested.”

  “Look, don’t worry about de jandam, the police, they won’t be back to bother you. At least not tonight. You want to tell me what happened?”

  Nate struggled to describe the bloody scene in his room. Anxiety was returning like a gathering wave, but Smiley mercifully cut him short.

  “It aright, man. It aright.” Smiley smiled again. “We do need to go and get you eye fix. And I want to hear about de intruder. We can talk on de way.”

  “The hospital?”

  “Mmm, no. I don’t think so. We’ll go private tonight, I think.”

  Nate squirmed uncomfortably. “I don’t know if my insurance covers private.”

  “Dat’s okay, man—dat’s not the kind of private I talking ’bout.”

  “…so what kind of private are you talking about?”

  “The kind where people can’t find you.”

  “People?”

  Smiley barged on. “Come, le’ we pack you things. You checking out of the Breadfruit Tree. My brother can fix you up. He a doctor. And don’t worry ’bout cost.”

  Nate decided not to fight it. There were many more questions circling nearby, but they could wait. Together they collected Nate’s things and stuffed them into his single suitcase, then stood at the door for one last look back. There was blood spattered liberally about the room, and pooled on the floor where the man who had attacked him brandished the cow’s hoof. There were so many questions, but they would have to wait.

  “Your brother,” said Nate as they closed the door to the hotel room. “I thought he was the archives guy.”

  “He is,” said Smiley. “But dis a different brother.”

  11

  The road to Ti Fenwe Estate cut through some of the thickest parts of the island’s rainforest, and the dense green expanse of 1976 was much like it had been for thousands of years. The road was little more than a roughly hewn track—two wheel ruts, really. For two hours the tangled tropics scratched at the Land Rover like jade demons clawing at its sides, eager to snatch the occupants and drag them into the heart of its darkness.

  The boys squealed with delight with every pitch of the vehicle, every lurch of its rusting frame, especially through the wet spots. Where the track ran through a valley or a dip of any kind, the water pooled and the vehicle’s heavy treads churned it into a sticky black bog. Twice they had to stop and run the cable from the winch mounted on the bumper to a nearby tree, and each time the boy’s sense of true adventure doubled.

  Vincent De Villiers heaved the hood of the Land Rover open and slammed it against the frame of the windshield. “Out, boys!” he comma
nded. The four hopped dutifully out of the open back and took their spots safely away from the cable as the winch whined and slowly drew the vehicle out of the sticky mess. “Keep back, lads! If that cable parts, it’ll slice you in half and your legs will walk off without you!” He announced the horrifying fact the way a pirate might announce the execution of hostages—which of course thrilled the boys even more.

  Once clear of the mud, they all clambered back in and the Land Rover continued its jolting progress along the winding trail. “This path was cut by my great, great grandfather,” announced Vincent. “It was just a pony track back then, just wide enough for a few horses and a line of slaves in chains. There’s many a dead fellow in those bushes, boys,” he said, looking back for a moment and smiling giddily. “Any that couldn’t make the journey were cut loose and left to die where they lay.”

  Pip’s sense of adventure evaporated and was replaced quickly with anxiety. From his seat on the opposite side Richard reassured him. “Don’t worry about Uncle Vince, Pip. He’s just trying to scare us. There’s nothing in there but more bushes.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, boys,” Vince continued. “Nothing at all.” Then he turned and winked at them. “Well, not much to worry about—as long as it doesn’t take a dislike to you.” Then he threw his head back and belly laughed.

  “Quit it, Uncle Vince!” shouted Richard, half laughing himself, and the effect was only to ramp up the ham factor in his uncle, who twisted his laugh into the classic villain mwa-ha-ha.

  “Yeah, quit it, Mr. D.,” seconded Nate. “You’re scaring your son!”

  Tristan smiled acidly at the others, who all started laughing—including Pip. “I got nothing to be scared about—I’m the heir,” said Tristan defiantly. “And owners don’t get messed with.”

  The Land Rover trundled on. It took the group further into the rainforest, deep under the canopy that blocked out the sun for minutes at a stretch, and on through a wet lushness that seemed to close in on them more with every turn of the old four-wheel-drive’s knobby tires.

  The boys all liked Vincent. He was larger than life, and they liked him all the more for the fact that the parents collectively regarded him with mild suspicion. He was the De Villiers family bad boy, married and divorced three times, and as the eldest of three heirs, Ti Fenwe had passed to him on the death of his father—an inheritance rumored to be hotly contested by the rest of the De Villiers clan. He had fathered two sons: William, who died hours after being born to his first wife, Nora, who had herself died later that year in a boating accident, and, of course, Tristan. And with Tristan, it appeared the apple had come to rest just inches from the husky, weather-beaten trunk.

  At last, the disorder of the forest—the tangle of broad leaves, the sprawling vines woven through banks of lianas, the knots of bougainvillea tied inexorably to and through trees and tumbles of greenery dotted with splashes of color—finally it all gave way to a strangely ordered scene of monoculture: organized rows of tall and spacious nutmeg trees, each with a sudden and jarring expanse of space around their trunks, and each laden with clusters of woody colored fruit among their waxy leaves. The lush forest had just suddenly stopped, the day washed back in, bright and dry, and the boys all drank in the space.

  Behind them, beyond the first few rows of nutmeg, was a green wall of jungle. Were it not for the ruts that had guided them in, those two brown furrows through the short grass, the expansive green snarl would seem an impenetrable barrier designed to let no one leave.

  “Not far now, boys,” yelled Vincent over his shoulder. “Not far now!” Vincent forced the Land Rover into an unwilling gear and the old box-shaped four-wheel-drive lurched forward with a new determination. The vehicle followed the two dark scars in the earth that rounded the edge of the nutmeg orchard, and then gathered speed as it ran down a gentle slope and through a small river. Once clear of the water, they trundled up again, into a steep grade in the land that peaked in a crest where a series of rickety shacks stood clustered among coconut trees set on shortly cropped grasses. There was an even more welcoming sense of space here, and while the green mass was still there at the edges, somehow the little huts and the people milling around them made it all feel something akin to normal.

  Among the ramshackle buildings a handful of women were hard at work, the color of polished mahogany and glistening with sweat, carrying loads balanced precariously on their heads in brightly colored plastic bowls. They turned in measured, careful sways, waved unenthusiastically at the Land Rover and the group within it, then went back to their work. Vincent nodded in their direction and the boys, save Tristan, waved back.

  The Land Rover passed the little village of huts and turned right onto a track that was much more serviceable, almost a road in its own right. They picked up speed through the coconut grove, and Vincent pointed a well-muscled arm off to the right. “Swamps are over there. Stay away. All of you—and I’m not kidding.”

  The boys all turned and looked, and at the far end of the grove they could see a different kind of denseness, a thicker green than that from which they had recently emerged. This was much darker, blacker. From the track they could see the confusion of mangrove trees, an intertwined labyrinth of roots the size of scaffolding tubes, each jostling for position and overlapping as they disappeared into the bog below. The tangle was so thick it was impossible to see past the first flourish of mangrove, and as the Land Rover passed out of the grove the boys were all instinctively glad to leave the swamp far behind. “That place is creepy looking,” said Pip, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

  “And it’s out of bounds,” added Tristan.

  “How come?”

  “Pip, it’s a swamp, it’s dangerous.” Tristan’s tone was flippant. “Besides, if my Dad says stay away, you stay away, got it?”

  “Yeah, sure but…” Pip’s comment was lost as the pitch of the engine changed and the Land Rover braked hard.

  Vincent let the engine die and the vehicle shuddered to a halt. He threw his arm over the passenger’s seat, and twisted to face the boys in the back. He looked at them over the top of a pair of beaten old sunglasses. His face was weathered and deeply lined, and his hair was sun-bleached to a sandy blonde and cropped short around his face. At forty-seven he had aged well, and almost any woman on the island would agree. “You guys already know the rules up here,” he began, pointing at Tristan and Richard. “But you two—Pip, Nate—you boys need to listen carefully. This is a great place for exploring, running around, the mini-bikes, all of that. And I want you to enjoy it. But there are things you need be careful of here, too. It can be dangerous. So if I tell you something is out of bounds, it’s out of bounds. Understand?”

  “Like the swamp,” added Tristan.

  “Like the swamp,” agreed Vincent. He turned back to Pip and Nate. “There’s also rules around daylight. When the sun goes down, you all need to be back in the house.”

  Pip’s eyes widened and Vincent saw it. “It’s nothing like that,” said Vincent, smiling at last. “There’re no vampires here… It’s just that there’s no electricity this far into the bush, just a small generator for the one room where we sleep. Ti Fenwe is a big estate, and it’s easy to get turned around if you’re caught out in the darkness, so we have a daylight curfew: everyone in by nightfall. Got it?”

  “Got it,” said Pip. Nate nodded as well.

  “Great. Everyone ready for some fun?” He swung back around in his seat and started the Land Rover. “Next stop, Ti Fenwe Estate plantation house!” Vincent dropped the clutch and the vehicle jerked forward, toppling the boys onto one another. They laughed and the mood was once again light and cheerful.

  “Tristan, what were those huts? And those people?” asked Nate.

  “Laborers,” said Tristan. “They’ve been here since my great, great grandfather’s days. They work the plantation, look after the house, all that stuff.”

  “But they live here, like all the time?”

  “Ya, sure. They
’ve lived here for generations. Most of them are the descendants of slaves.”

  Pip’s eyes were as wide as they could be. “Slaves? For real?”

  “Of course! Who do you think built this plantation?” Tristan was warming to the conversation now; he leaned in and the others immediately followed suit. “Most of the people here, all the women you saw back there and…”

  Pip jumped in. “Where are all the men?”

  “Jesus, Pip. Will you let me tell the story? The men are working in the fields. You’ll see them later. Anyway, almost everyone who works and lives on this plantation is descended from Africans captured and brought here as slaves in the olden days.”

  “Back in the 1600s,” added Vincent without turning from the front seat.

  Nate was fascinated and listened intently. He’d never heard Tristan speak with such authority before. “The people who lived here before that were the Arawak Indians, and the Caribs—bloodthirsty warriors that could kill you and gut you before you even knew you were dead. They could cut your head off so fast that they could show you your own body lying there before you died.”

  “No way!” said Pip tentatively. “Come on, that’s not even possible.”

  Tristan went on. “You have Arawaks and Caribs, the most skilled warriors in the whole of the Caribbean—maybe the whole world—and then you add to that a whole mix of ancient Africans, with all their rituals, their secret potions, their millions of years of sorcery and magic, all that cool stuff, and what you get is something that exists nowhere else in the world. There’s stuff that happens on this island that is so ancient, so secret, so super-specialized that people from the outside—people like you, Pip—can’t even understand it. And you doubting it, shit, that’s proof of what I just said. You can’t even understand it.”

  “Jeez Tristan, ease up on Pip, will you,” said Richard.

  “Mind your own—”

  Vincent slammed on the brakes and the boys all tumbled forward into a heap against the cab. “We’re here!” announced Vincent triumphantly.