Abruptly she left the coral road and unerringly stopped, in spite of the branching of leaf, at the cabin rising a little ways in.
"Water Spout!" she shouted, entering.
A wave of heat flew up at her. It was cane trash, hot hut heat. Heat smelted in a furnace untouched by a gust of fresh wind.
She called, but only a stream of hot mist, making for the door, answered her. "Oh berry well," she cried, "'im sleep, po' fellah."
She went to the table on the lower side of the hut and drawing a match lit the lamp. Darts of light flitted to the dark corners of it. Once able to distinguish things, she turned, and spied him on the bed.
She went to him, candied words on her mouth. He was in a deep, moist spot. A hole, really, bored into the rotting mattress. Gently she lifted him up, and the light fell on his sleeping face.
She took him to the table, and forced some of the soup into his mouth. But seized by a sudden spasm of energy, he refused, and spat it up, with a gurgling accompaniment. Then he curled back to her, fumbling for the avenue to her breasts. But she laid him back on thebed, consoled that he'd wake up in the night, demanding to be nursed.
"Lahd, me tiad, sah," she cried, yawning and undressing.
Presently she blew out the light and crawled in the bed beside him.
V
O! sleep, soundless sleep!
The night gathered heat. The straw crackled and pricked. Once a board slipped to the floor.
But sleep!—endowed, concentrated!
Cycles of the day sped through Seenie's head. There was a fugitive line between them and the half-realized happenings in a dream. It was a work cycle; not one of song. Cooking, washing, ironing. Peccadilloes. Scraps for Water Spout. Reining herself in, and not exploding at the golden rancor of Miss Esteena. Ready at any time to do for the Sergeant, a grave, white-templed man, who rose at dawn and retired at midnight. Saying but a word which kept his niece in talk for a week. Men drowning like rats on the Essequibo. The river atacabahnest. The Sergeant's men, dying by the dozens, of fever—worms breeding in the unemptied casks set to catch rain water—bringing inhossah,corass, for her to scale and stew—and bring home to stuff in Water Spout's hardening belly! Ah, the pepper soup did that. It had, about a barrel of it, straightened his legs; but at the expense of his gums and his belly which were hard as rock.
Suddenly—a flash back to reality.
Water Spout had begun to cry. About time. Had she been dozing long? There was no one to tell. And he was hungry, and he cried.
"Come," she said, awaking, "come to mahmie, son." And she put out a hand in the dark for him. Ah—there—there he was. Crying. Cockling. She seized him by the neck, frontwards. It was moist, swobbled. A bit cold. She drew him to her, forcing the tip of a breast in his mouth.
From her a luxuriant warmth flowed out to him. And she dozed back again.
Dream horses riding her. The Cayenne soup no doubt; whereas usually she would be dead, dead to the fires of the earthiest hell.
Nibbling at her breast.
Gently tugging.
Sensation sweet—pumping milk in a black child's mouth!
Letting him pump it himself.
Doze. Dozing. Dreams—
Bordeaux. All the old figures resurrected to a distant reality. Old, shaky, fire-eating Miss Ewing. Captain; Berbice hermaphrodite.Macaume!Blacks, girls in particular, on the banks of thelamahau, at night talking about her. The baboos, behind pots ofrotieandcallaloo, beating on the back of a frying pan—
Hack ba la laHack ba la laMahaica is comin' down!
The Hindu settlers begging for rain. Wouldn't the water in thelamahaudo?
Staring at her, the very coolies. Wildly.
Miss Ewing, at last, late one night, getting a midwife to finger her. This way, then that. Sometimes she refused. And Miss Ewing, heartless, lavished boxes and clouts. Thumpings. And then free of one ordeal, anotherensued. Urchins in thelamahaudusk slinging paining words at her. Swell belly Seenie. Swell belly—
Jahn Belly, Quackah Belly,Swell like a cocoa
Her own swollen in time like a ripe jelly cocoanut. Aiming at the stars.
Soft tugging—
No? He was crying again.
Nonsense.
"Nevah min', son, com' to yo' mahmie." She was loving and awake. No, it couldn't be—something was wrong—he wasn't crying. Was she still dreaming? No! She was nursing the brat! Here—his cold head pegging at her armpit—here—tugging away at her very gizzard.
She began to feel for him. A soft, cool, flat something met her hand. His forehead, most likely. Sweat—was it that hot—or was he sick—the ague—fever—the rain water—crying—
Still he managed to be on the floor yelling. How was that? Was he a dual being?
Here he was at her breast, gnawing away at it. And there he was down on the floor, howling.
Absurd!
Again the exploring hand went out. Why, here he was, of course, the dual rascal, nursing! (Pity it was so blamed dark!) Certainly he was nursing. And she proceeded to make sure for the last time.
But suddenly the head receded, slipped down into the gut in the straw. And on the other side of the room Water Spout gave a loud unmistakable yell.
Jumping up, Seenie flew to the child and snatched him to her bosom, tight.
"Oh, me Gawd, me Gawd," she screamed, bursting through the door into the silence of the Guiana night.
It was barren sky. Frosts of dew, flakes of sunlight, fell upon the earth, fell likewise on the black gleaming uniform of one of the Sergeant's men, unhurriedly making for the hut.
Some six hours later he returned, dragging on the coral road to the sea the fresh dead body of a bloaty milk-fed snake the sheen of a moon in May.
THE VAMPIRE BAT
9
THE VAMPIRE BAT
Hewas one of the island's few plantation owners and a solid pillar of the Crown. He had gone forth at the King's trumpet call to buck the Boer's hairy anger. But at last the guerilla warrior had become a glorious ghost and the jaunty buckras were trekking back to Barbadoes.
Flying into a breastwork of foam, the English torpedo boat had suddenly stopped, wedged in a sargasso reef a dozen miles from the Caribbean sea. After landing at a remote corner on the jungle coast, Bellon was forced to make the trip, a twelve mile affair, on drays and mule carts over the brown, hoof-caked road to Mount Tabor.
But Mount Tabor, once a star on a pinnacle of wooded earth, was lost to old Sharon Prout's Boer-fighting son.
Wrecked in the storm which swept the island the very week Bellon had embarked for South Africa—it was a garden of lustrous desolation. Weedy growth overspread it. The lichened caverns below the stoke hole, once giving berth to hills of cane husk—fodder for the zooming fire—fertilized beds of purple beans. A stable, housing a mare and landau, stood on the old mill's bank. Rows oftaches—troughs into which the cane's juice was boiled and brewed through a succession of stages until it became a quarry of loaf sugar—frothed green on the rich, muggy land. One was a pond. Frogs and green water lilies floated on it. Another, filled to the maw, gave fathomless earth to breadfruit.
The old shaggy mare, a relic of the refining era at Mount Tabor, plodded through the dead, thick marl. Wearing a cork hat and a cricketer's white flannel shirt, open at the throat, Bellon drew near the woods to Airy Hill.
He trotted down a slanting road in to Locust Hall. A mulatto cane cutter, poxy progenitor of twenty-one husky mule-driving sons, stood under the raised portcullis, talking to a woman. Pulling at a murky clay pipe he was slyly coaxing her to a spot in the cane piece. His juice-moist bill, bright as a piece of steel, shone in the fern-cluttered gut. Blacks on sluggish bat-eared asses mounted the hill mouthing hymns to drive away the evil spirits.
Father, O Father... past the fading rays of nightAwake! awake!
Game-vending squatters streamed down from Flat Rock, cocks gleaming on trays which saddled their heads. From the shining hills the estate's night hands meandered in, pecking at greasy skillets. Corn meal flecked the snowy marl.
Reminiscently Bellon ruffled the horse's mane. "You old war horse, you." Once, long before the storm, the blacks at Arise, one of the old man's estates—a stark, neurotic lot—had burned and pilfered the old sugar mill, while the buckras were confabbing on the seashore of Hastings. Rayside, then but a frisky colt, smelling a rat, had made a wild dash for the city—neighing the tidings to the buckras.
Now it fell to the young heir to be returningto Waterford, the last of the old man's estates, on the back of the heroic old mare.
It was ten o'clock at night and he had yet fourteen miles to go.
A lone moon-swept cabin or a smoker's pipe light, blazing in the canes, occasionally broke the drab expanse of night. The road trickled on, deepening into a gully. There rose above it rocky hedges, seeding flower and fruit. Swaying in the wind, the cane brake grew denser, darker. The marl lost its prickly edge and buried the animal's hoofs in soft, gray flour. Laboriously she loped through it.
The road gently lifted. It perceptibly dazzled the myopic beast. The marl returned. It blazed white, and shone. The earth about it seemed bare and flat and the cane brakes thinner. And the moon hung lower. A rickety donkey cart suddenly came jogging down the hill. A creole woman, atop an ass, trotted by. The wind soared to a higher, sturdier level. It blew like breezes on the gay Caribbean sea. Had it been noon, or dusk, blackbirds would have speckled the corn fields or sped low above the reeling canes. But the moon ribbed thenight and gave the canes, tottering on the high flat earth, a crystal cloaking.
Now the road faltered, steadied, and as the road slanted, the marl thickened until it became flour dust again. The cottages at The Turning hove into view.
"At last," the captain cried, and the lanky mare quickened at the proximity of feed. Her reins fell on her back, limp with sweat.
Opposite a Negro baker shop Bellon dismounted, hitched the animal to a guava tree, and knocked upon the door.
"Who dat?" shouted a voice from within.
"Captain Prout," he replied, and the door swung to.
Squat and stout, Mother Cragwell, a Ba'bajan creole—mixture of white and Negro—admitted him, and shuffled back behind the counter, eying the visitor. She had been kneading dough, the counter was lathered with it, and her hands were scaly with shreds of flour.
"Mas' Prout," the old woman exclaimed, "wha' yo' a do down yah dis time o' night? Yo' na'h go home no?"
"Why, yes, Mother Cragwell," replied theofficer jovially, "can't a law-abiding colonist walk the King's highway after dark?"
"De King's highways," the old woman sarcastically muttered, "wha' dey care 'bout any King?"
Fixing her brownish red eyes on the buckra, she looked puzzled, skeptical.
"Why, is that the sort of welcome you give a returning soldier, Mother Cragwell?" he inquired, flattered by the old woman's characteristically racial concern.
She shook her head, ruefully bestirring herself. "Han' me dat bucket dey," she said. "How much yo' want?"
"Oh, fill it," he said, fetching the pail, "the road is beginning to tell on the old wretch."
"'Bout time," murmured Miss Cragwell, who'd been a fixture at The Turning for over thirty years.
She half-filled the pail with molasses, burst a bag of flour into it and began mixing the mash with a ladle.
"Well, I suppose this is her last trip to Waterford—she's entitled to a pension for the rest of her life, the horny old nag."
He took the mare the foaming mash and returned to be confronted by a cup of chocolate, a knot of burnt cane and a tasty banana tart. Among bill twirlers, mule cart drivers, and cork-hatted overseers and estate owners, Mother Cragwell's "drops" and sweet bread, turnovers and cassava pone, were famous to the farthest ends of the Ba'bajan compass.
He cordially sat down to the mulatto's informal hospitality. "I knew," he observed, "that I'd have to wait till I reached The Turning before I could prove I was back in the colony." He took a relishing sip and the old creole's glare fell.
"Mas' Prout," she said, "yo bes' don't go down de gully to-night, yo' hear?"
"Why, what's happening in the gully, Mother Cragwell?" he smiled, splitting the sugar cane. "Is the man in the canes prowling about? Or do you think the duppies will be haunting Rayside's tracks?"
But the young Briton's banter chilled the old mulattress. "If yo' know what is good fo' yo'self, yo' bes' hear wha' Oi tell yo'," was all she said.
"H'm! this tastes like good old West Indian rum!" he cried, taking another fig of the cane. "Did you burn it yourself, Mother Cragwell?" "Who, me? No, bo," she retorted, looking up. "Dah cane yo' got dey come from down de road."
"What, did they have a fire there recently?"
"Yes, bo. Las' night. The fire hags ketch it fire las' night."
"The who?"
"Hey," the old woman drawled, shocked at the young man's density. "Hey, look at his boy, ni. Yo' don't fomembah wha' a fire hag is, no? An' he say he gwine down de gully to-night."
Bellon burst into a fit of ridiculing laughter. "Why, shame upon you, Mother Cragwell!"
"Ent yo' got piece o' de ve'y cane in yo' mout' suckin'?" she cried, fazed, hurt.
"Tommyrot! Some jealous squatter fired the brake, that's all."
"Yo' believe dat?" challenged the old lady, "Orright den, go 'long. Go 'long, bo. All yo' buckras t'ink unna know mo' dan we neygahs. Go 'long down de gully 'bout yo' business, bo."
He rose, handed her a shilling and started for the door.
Suddenly a whinny from the mare—a wild scream in the night—startled him.
"Who dat?" shouted Mother Cragwell, seizing an old cricket bat and going towards the door.
"Oh, me Gard, me Gard, me Gard—"
The door was slapped open and a Negro woman, draped in white, shaking a black parasol and a hand bag, entered. She was shivering and white-eyed and breathless.
"Calm yo'self, girl, an' stop wringin' yo' hands. Yo' gwine poke out a body eye wit' dat parasol yo' flo'ish dey."
"Oh, Miss Cragwell, Miss Cragwell—"
"Hey, sit down, Lizzie. It is Lizzie Coates. Wha' yo' doin' up yah dis time o' night, girl?"
"Oh, de man in de canes, de man in de canes—"
"Wha' he do to yo'?"
"Oh, de man in de canes, de man in—"
"Stop cryin' yo' big able goat 'n let a body see what's de mattah wit' yo'," frowned Miss Cragwell; she turned to Bellon. "Go behind decounter," she said, "an' like a good boy hand me de candle grease yo' see dey 'pon me chest o' draws."
"Oh, nutton ain't do me—he ain't do me nutton."
"Hey, yo' hear ris alarmer, ni," drawled Mother Cragwell, her lower lip hanging. "Wha' yo' mekin' all dis noise fo' den?"
A look of revulsion shone on Bellon's face as he returned. "God, she's black!"
"Oh, Mother Cragwell," the woman pleaded, dropping into a seat, "le' me tell yo'—"
Every word she uttered was punctuated with jabs of the inevitable parasol. "The light fool me," she said. "It war so light I bin taught it wuz morning."
"Yo' mean to say a big able woman like yo' ain't got a clock in yo' house?"
With difficulty the buckra kept back an oath of amused disgust.
"The light fool me, Ah tell yo'—"
"Yo' got a watch, Mas' Prout, wha' time it are?" asked Mother Cragwell.
He shifted his body to the other side. "Quarter to twelve," he said.
"Hey, it ent even twelve o'clock yet," breathed the black sweating woman, "an' here I wuz startin' fo' walk to St. Georges. I musta wuz drunk, an', gal, jess as I tu'n de corner—"
"Wha' corner?"
"Codrington Corner. By the wall. You know—down dey—"
"Ah'm."
"Who should I see standin' up 'gainst dey but a man."
"Lahd, tek me!"
"A man, gal, a man!" She fanned her black eagle face, the sweat brilliant on it.
"Wuz he alone?"
"Yes, ni."
"An' nobody wuz 'pon de road?"
"Not a blind soul gwine up or comin' down! An' me by meself mekin' fo' Waterford Bottom!"
"Gal, wha' yo' a do? Try fo' be a buckra?" And she cast an accusing eye at the white man.
A slow chuckle escaped Bellon as he tapped on his leggings with a black sage switch.
"Soul, I wuz so frighten I couldn't swallowgood. I nearly choke, yes. But anyway I had my trus' in de Lord—
"Fust I taught it wuz a duppy—one o' de mans in de canes come back fo' haunt de po' neygah."
"Dey do dat," agreed Mother Cragwell, irrelevantly.
"Well, soul, when I mek de gap fo' tu'n into de gulley somet'ing tell me fo' change me umbrella from my lef' han' into my right an' my bag from my right into my lef'."
"Whe' wuz de man all dis time?"
"I put he out o' me taughts, girl. I wuzn't t'inkin' 'bout he. I had my mind 'pon de Lord an' de goodness o' His wuks—"
"Wha' a foolish ole goat yo' is! Why, girl, I su'prize at you! Wha', you ain't know any bettah? Wha' de man in de canes got fo' do wit' de Lawd? He don't care nutton' 'bout he!"
"Well, anyway, when I got down in de gulley it wuz so quiet yo' could heah de mongoose runnin' in de canes. It wuz so dahk yo' couldn't see yo' own hand."
"Hey...."
"Den I mek out anudder man cornin' down de road...."
"Me po' Lizzie."
"Down de road. He wuz lightin' he pipe an' walkin' fast."
"Did he see yo'?"
"No, I don't t'ink he see me, but I could see he, dough, an' just ez I get up to he, I move one side fo' let he pass. An' soul just ez I got out o' he way, he bump right into somebody walkin' behind me!"
"Gard!"
"De man behine me wuz followin' me, gal, dah's wha' it wuz. Followin' me all dis time an' dere I wuz wouldn't knowin' it!"
"Yo' lucky, yes."
"Gal, I'm lucky fo' true! Soul, he bump into de man so ha'd de man even bu'n he mout' wit' de matches."
"An' wha' he do, buss he mout'?"
"De man comin' down de hill ax he pardin, but, soul, yo' should o' hear how he cuss he! 'Why yo' don't look where yo' gwine,' he shout out, 'yo' t'ink yo' own de road, no?'"
"An' wha' de man say to he?"
"Oh, de man only ax he pardin, an' went 'long 'bout he business."
"Why didn't he look whey he wuz goin'—"
"Shucks, he wuz so bent 'pon wha' he wuz gwine do he couldn't hav' eyes fo' nobody but me! An' de man humbug he object, dat's all. But wait, le' me tell yo'. Dah happen down in de gully. An' I went long, ent eben t'inkin' 'bout no man—"
"Ah tell all you' Seven Day 'Ventists unna is a pack o' nanny goats—"
"When all uva suggen somebody from behind put two long greasy arms roun' me neck, like he wan' fo' hug me!"
"De Lord hav' mercy!"
"Gal, I wuz so frighten I tek me umbrella an' I jerk it back ovah my lef' shoulder so ha'd de muscles still a hu't me!"
"Go 'way!"
"Jook! Straight in he eye—"
"Murdah!"
"Deed I did! Wha' business he ha' puttin' he ole nasty claws roun' me!"
"An' what he do, ni?"
"Gal, he le' me go so fas' yo' would 'a' t'inkde lightnin' strike he! An' I wuz so frighten I tu'n roun' ready fo' hollow fo' blue murder, but de Lord was wit' me an' He protect me. Fo' girl, he wen' runnin' in de gutter, pickin' up stones an' shying them at me."
"De wutliss whelp—"
"But girl, like I wuz heah, he was firin' dem ovah yondah! 'Yo' brute,' he say, 'yo' whelp, yo' wan' to jook out my eye, no! Yo' wan' to mek me blind, no!' An' all de time he was peltin' an' peltin' de rock stones at somebody a mile f'um fo'm me!"
"Yo' musta jook he in he eye—"
"Chile, if it wuzn't fo' dis umbrella I wouldn't know where I'd be by now. It's de Lord's own staff o' life."
With a piercing chuckle the buckra walked to the door. "Well," he drawled, "I guess I'd better be going. It's getting late."
Abruptly Mother Cragwell rose and went to him. "Yo' still gwine down de gully, son?" she begged, half-tearfully.
"Oh, don't be sentimental, Mother Cragwell," he said, with good-humor. "I'll manage somehow."
"Orright, bo," she shrugged, helplessly, "I can't say any mo' to yo'," and he went forth, loftily.
The mare took the road at a jog and a trot, till the huts grew dim, the canes and the hedges bushy. The moon was buried in a lake of blue mist and the marl ate into the animal's hoofs.
The Negro woman's tale excited a magic concern in the buckra.
There was a road opposite the baker shop which led through a dismantled estate, providing a short cut to Waterford. But Bellon remembered that it led over a steep gulley range—a tunnel a mile deep—a rattling river when it rained or stormed—now a rocky cave harboring wild dogs and lame mules, tusky boars and other, mystic finds.
He evaded it—the old Negress' tale ringing in his ears.
Somber, ruthless—the marl. The mare pawed and sieved it, stones soared topwards.
The moon burned the mist. It burned it away, leaving but a white crest of flame fire.
Suddenly, over the earth of gentle winds andsugar canes, balls of crimson fire plagued the sky! Fire hags at night—St. Lucia sluts,obeahridden, shedding their skins and waltzing forth at night as sheep and goats, on errands of fiery vengeance. Sometimes, on returning, at the end of the eventful night, they would find their skins salted—by the enemy—and, unable to ease back into them, the wretches would inquire, "Skin, skin yo' no know me?" And for the balance of their thwarted lives they'd go about, half-slave, half-free, muttering: "Skin yo' no know me, Skin yo' no know me?"
A bright-spirited party of Negro farm folk wrestling up the hill on basket-laden mules, came into view.
"Howdy, Massa."
"God bless yo' Massa."
"Gwine town, Massa?"
"Be ca'ful—de fire hag dem a prowl 'bout yah, Massa."
He pulled up the horse, puzzled at the spreading of the squirting fire.
"God—fire hags—surely the niggers can't be right."
He turned ashen, the reins in his hands tight,the horse pawing and pegging the marl understandingly.
The balls of fire subsided, but he was deep in the marl gully and unable to trace the origin of the pink hazes bursting on the sky's crest. The wind, however, was a pure carrier of smell, and the tainted odor of burnt cane filled the road.
"Wonder whose canes they're burning—"
Burning cane—the sky reflecting the distant glow—casks of rum boiling to waste at the will of some illiterate field hand!
He shouted to the animal.
"Giddup, horse!"
His head went swirling—the temptation to relapse conquered—barbaricobeahimages filled his buckra consciousness.
Sugar canes burning—men in the canes—fire hags—nigger corpses—
Perspiration salted Bellon's brow.
Nigger corpses—nigger corpses—
And a legend, rooted deep in the tropic earth, passed pell-mell before him.
It concerned a river, a river red as burningcopper and peopled by barques and brigantines, manned by blacks wedded to theobeah.
Once, the master of a vessel, taking a cargo of dry cocoanuts to a mulatto merchant on the other side of the coast, cheated; a few English crowns were at stake. But the trader was a high-priest of theobeah, and was silently aware of it. Forthwith he proceeded to invoke the magic of theobeahagainst the vessel.
At late dusk the returning vessel hoisted anchor. The festival rites, incident to her voyage, had drawn to the wharf, selling mango and grape, the mulatto courtesans of the river town. And the crew rained on them silver and gold, and bartered till the sun went down.
Upon reaching the vessel's deck the crew—the wine of lust red on their lips—grew noisy and gay at the sinking of the river sun. From below they brought a cask of rum, part of the cheated trader's store, and drank of it. With a calabash they dipped and wallowed in it, finding it sweeter than falernum.
Stars bedecked the night and a torch was lit. The vessel rocked on, falling in with the trade winds.
The rum was a siren, it led one on. The cask was deep, immense, but the liquor shrank till the huskiest of the Islanders had to be pummeled to lean over into it and dip the liquid out. With a score of itching throats there was a limit to the cask's largess, and the bottom was early plumbed. When they got to it, however, it was to find a rum soaked Negro corpse doubled up in the bottom!
The horse came to a dead, rigid stop. It was death dark and they had just entered the heart of the marl gully.
He was already fidgety, and grew urgent. "Come on, Rayside," he shouted, "giddup." But the mare shook, stamped, shuddered.
He stroked her mane, but a strange strong-headedness took hold of her. She flung her ears forward.
Bellon dismounted, and the mare's inelegant tail switched her bony flanks. He coaxed and patted her, but all she did was jerk her head the more.
Resorting to a flashlight, Bellon clicked it at her feet.
As the glare hit the marl, he recoiled, as one struck, at the spectacle it revealed—a little Negro baby sleeping in the marl!
"God, what's next!"—
Hesitatingly he approached, discerning that it lived, and moved.
For a spell he gazed at it, half-afraid. But for a diaper of green leaves it was nude. Then it occurred to him to pick it up.
Instantly the child reacted to its contact with human warmth and snuggled to Bellon's bosom. He smoothed its soft, bronze skin and the waif, with hands flagrantly like a bird's claws, burrowed closer to him.
With the child held close the buckra started for the horse, but—like a shot—Rayside bolted!
"Steady, mare!" Bellon growled, quietly reining her back in, "Easy, horse!"
One ear pasted flat on her mane, she stood impatiently still while he reached for the chamois blanket and swaddled the Negro baby in it.
Only then was he able to remount her.
Another of the colony's lurking evils, the desertion—often the murder of illegitimate Negro babes.
O God—another of the island's depraved nigger curses!
All the way up the hill Rayside reared and trotted, kicked and pranced, keeping to the edge of the marl road.
And the Negro waif's bird-like claws dug deeper into the buckra's shirt bosom.
He rode up the hill's moon-white crest until the shadow of Waterford fell upon him. He was tired, his brain fagged, his legs sore, his nerves on edge.
On the brink of a rocky hill extending beyond the estate stood a buckra overseer's cabin. Here Bellon's journey ended. He stabled the mare in the shed, glad to be rid of her. "Why, you don't even give me a chance to be temperamental—"
He took the Negro child in the cabin, angry at the physical proximity of it. "If any one had told me three weeks ago that after dodging Boer-shot I'd next be mothering a deserted nigger ragamuffin at two o'clock in the morning on a West Indian country road, I'd certainly have called him a God damned liar!"
He found a spot on the floor and brusquely cushioned the burden in it.
He was edgy, unstrung; he could not sleep. He tossed, half-awake, tortured by the night's fairy-like happenings.
As a boy at Arise the old man'd tell of fresh-born Negro babes dropped in eely wells in remote parts of the plantation jungle or wrapped in crocus bags and left in the canes for some ferocious sow to gnaw or rout.
Rapacious Negro ghosts—"men in the canes"—ha! ha! preying upon the fears of the uncivilized blacks.
Fire hags! St. Lucia mulatto sluts—changing their skins—turning to goats—sheep-prowling—going forth—
And weirdly interchangeable—Black Negro babes and vampire bats!
All night the fussy mare, with glassy eyes glued on the buckra hut, refused to touch corn or oats—stamping, kicking, growing uneasy.
The glory of the morning sun neared the canehills. It burned past the mare's shed, leaving the animal still nervously gazing out it.
Inside the hut there sprawled the dead body of Bellon Prout. With a perforation pecked in its forehead, it was utterly white and bloodless.
On the ground the chamois blanket was curiously empty.
Coming up the hill the mulattoobeahgirl who tidied the overseer's hut felt deeply exultant. For she was strangely conscious of the fact—by the crystal glow of the sun, perhaps—that a vampire bat, with its blood-sucking passion, had passed there in the night.
TROPIC DEATH
10
TROPIC DEATH
I
Thelittle boy was overwhelmed at being suddenly projected into a world of such fluid activity. He was standing on the old bale and cask strewn quay at Bridgetown watching a police launch carry a load of Negro country folk out to a British packet smoking blackly in the bay.
He was a dainty little boy, about eight years of age. He wore a white stiff jumper jacket, the starch on it so hard and shiny it was ready to squeak; shiny blue velvet pants, very tight and very short—a little above his carefully oiled knees; a brownish green bow tie, bright as a cluster of dewy crotons; an Eton collar, an English sailor hat, with an elastic band so tight it threatened to dig a gutter in the lad's bright brown cheeks.
He was alone and strangely aware of the life bubbling around Nelson's Square. Under the statue masses of country blacks had come, drinking in the slow draughts of wind struggling up from the sea. City urchins, who thrived on pilfering sewers or ridding the streets of cow dung which they marketed as manure; beggars, black street corner fixtures, their bodies limp and juicy with the scourge of elephantiasis; cork-legged wayfarers, straw hats on their bowed crinkly heads; one-legged old black women vending cane juice and hot sauce.
It was noon and they had come, like camels to an oasis, to guzzle Maube or rummage the bags of coppers, untie their headkerchiefs, arrange their toilet and sprawl, snore, till the sun spent its crystal wrath and dropped behind the dark hulk of the sugar refineries to the western tip of the sky. Then it was their custom to pack up and sally forth, on the singing jaunt to the country.
Scores of ragged black boys, Gerald's size and over, filled the Square, half-covered by the dust, snoring. Old boys, young boys, big boys, little boys; boys who'd stolen on the wharves atsundown and bored big holes in the wet sacks of brown sugar; boys who'd defied the cops, and the sun, and the foaming mules, or the ungodly long whip of the driver, and skimmed on to tin cups the thick brackish froth the heat had sent fomenting up through the cracks in the molasses casks; boys who'd been sent to the Island jail for firing touch bams at birds lost in the bewildering city or for flipping pea-loaded popguns at the black, cork-hatted police.
Melting target for the roaring sun, the boy turned and gazed at the sea. It was angry, tumultuous. To the left of him there rose the cobwebbed arch of a bridge. Under it the water lay dark and gleaming. Against its opaque sides there were scows, barges, oil tankers. Zutting motor boats, water policemen, brought commotion to the sea. Far out, where the sun kissed it, the sea shone like a sheet of blazing zinc.
Creeping to the edge of the quay, he peeped over and saw a school of black boys splashing in the water. They were diving for coppers flung by black tourists on the side lines. They slept on the Congo-slippery rafts holding up thecity, and would, for a ha'penny, dart after parasols or kites—that is, if the kites happened to be made of hard glazy "B'bados kite papah"—lost on the rolling bronze sea.
"Come, Gerald, eat this."
He turned and there was his mother. His big bright eyes widened for her. And a lump rose in his throat. He wanted to hug, kiss her. With the heat of his mouth he wanted to brush away her tears, abolish her sorrow. He wanted, too, to breathe the lovely, holy beauty of her.
"Come, son, tek yo' fingah outa yo' mout', quick, de launch will be yah any minute now."
He took the lozenge, the sun making it soft and sticky.
"Don't yo' want some ginger beer, son?"
"Oh, mama, look!"
The launch had come up, and one of the sailor-cops, a husky, black fellow, was making it fast.
"Orright lady, yo' is de nex'—come ahlong."
With much agitation she got in the boat. She had to hang on to her bag, to Gerald, and she was not prepared to get the ends of her slip wet. The men seized him, and she steppeddown, barely escaping a carelessly dangling oar.
Bewildered, they clung to each other. "All right, son?" she said. But he was too unspeakingly concerned over the concurrent miracles of sea and sky.
Leaping through the sea, the boat would drown them in a shower of spray every time it came up, and Gerald was repeatedly tempted to put his hand in the water. "Keep yo' hands inside, sah," she cried, "shark will get you, too."
He remained aware of only foam and water, and the boat's spit and sputter, and the warmth of Sarah's bosom. Away back, on the brown and gold of the horizon, he saw speeding into nothingness the scows and warehouses and the low lofts of Bridgetown. Now, the sea rose—higher, higher; zooming, zooming; bluer, darker—the sky, dizzier, dizzier; and in the heavens war was brewing—until the shroud of mist ahead parted and there rose on the crest of the sky the shining blue packet!
II
Sunday came. The sun baptized the sea. O tireless, sleepless sun! It burned and kissedthings. It baked the ship into a loose, disjointed state. Only the brave hoarse breezes at dusk prevented it from leaving her so. It refused to keep things glued. It fried sores and baked bunions, browned and blackened faces, reddened and blistered eyes. It lured to the breast of the sea sleepy sharks ready to pounce upon prey.
Falling night buried the sun's wreckage. To the deckers below it brought the Bishop of the West Indies, a wordy, free-jointed man. He was a fat, bull-necked Scot with a tuft of red grizzly hair sticking up on his head and the low heavy jowl of a bulldog. He wore a black shiny robe which fell to the tips of his broad shiny black shoes. An obedient man, he had deserted the salon on the upper deck—deserted red-faced Britons in cork hats and crash on a jaunt to the iron mines of Peru—to take the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ to the black deckers below.
He very piously resisted grime and filth. On one occasion to avoid stepping on a woman's sleeping arm, he was obliged to duck under a hammock. It swayed gently and the man in it was one of those rare specimens—a close-mouthed, introspective Savanilla trader. As he shot up from beneath it, the Bishop was just in time to have splashed on the breast of his shining robe a mouthful of the trader's ill-timed spit. For half a second he blinked, and heated words died on his lips. But seeing the Colombian unaware of the impiety, he gruffly scrambled onward, brushing his coat.
Edging between a carpenter's awl and a bag of peas and yams, something ripped a hole in the Bishop's coat. He was sweating and crimson. His collar was too high and too tight. Stepping over a basin of vomit, he barely escaped mashing a baby. He was uncertain that he had not done so, and he swiftly returned and without saying a word gave the sea-sick mother half a florin.
He clapped a fatherly hand on Gerald's head, and the boy looked up at him with wondering bright eyes. Sarah Bright was sitting on the trunk skinning a tangerine.
"Your little boy?" smiled the Bishop, "smart-looking little chap, isn't he?" It was a relief to come upon them.
"Tu'n roun' yo' face, sah," she said, "an'lemme brush de sugah awf yo' mout'—" Assiduously she tidied him.
It was dark, and the ship was rolling unsettlingly. A kerosene torch spun a star-glow on the Bishop's pale tense face. He was about to address them. He was buried amongst a cargo of potatoes and the litter of the deckers. His was a sober impulse. On all sides the Dutch of Curaçao, the Latins of the Pass, the Africans of Jamaica, and the Irish of Barbadoes—spat, rocked, dozed, crooned.
In a fetid mist odors rose. Sordid; tainted; poised like a sinister vapor over the narrow expanse of deck. And with a passionate calm, the Bishop, clasping the Book of Books, faced them.
"O Lord, our God," he trembled, "O everlasting Father, again it is our privilege to come to Thee, asking Thy blessing and Thy mercy. Great God and Father! Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest the hearts of all men, and especially the hearts of these, Thy children! O Sacred Jehovah! purify their wretched souls—give unto them the strength of Thy wisdom and the glory of Thy power! Lead them, O Blessed Father, unto the path-way of righteousness that they may shine in the glory of Thy goodness! Help them, O! Divine Father! to see the light that shineth in the hearts of all men—we ask Thee Thy blessings in Thy son, Christ Jesus' name, Amen!"
III
Fish, lured onto the glimmering ends of loaded lines, raged in fruitless fury; tore, snarled gutturally, for release; bloodied patches of the hard blue sea; left crescents of gills on green and silvery hooks. Some, big and fat as young oxen, raved for miles on the shining blue sea, snapping and snarling acrobatically. For a stretch of days, theWellingtonleft behind a scarlet trail.
He was back in Black Rock; a dinky backward village; the gap rocky and grassy, the roads dusty and green-splashed; the marl, in the dry season, whirling blindly at you; the sickly fowls dying of the pip and the yaws; the dogs, a row-rowing, impotent lot; the crops of dry peas and cassava and tannias and eddoes, robbed, before they could feel the pulse of the sun, of theirgum or juice; the goats, bred on some jealous tenant's cane shoots, or guided some silken black night down a planter's gully—and then only able to give a little bit of milk; the rain, a whimsical rarity. And then the joys, for a boy of eight—a dew-sprayed, toe-searching tramp at sunrise for "touched" fruit dropped in the night by the epicurean bats, almonds, mangoes, golden apples; dreaming of the day when the cocoanut tree planted at a particularly fecund part of the ground would grow big enough to bear fruit; waiting, in the flush of sowing time, for a cart loaded to the brim to roll rhythmically over the jarring stones and spill a potato or a yam. After silence had again settled over the gap, he'd furtively dash out on the road and seize it and roast it feverishly on a waiting fire; he'd pluck an ear of corn out of the heap his mother'd bring up from the patch to send to town, and roast it, and stuff it hot as it was in his tiny pants pocket and then suffer excruciating rheumatic pains in his leg days afterwards.
Usually on a hike to Bridgetown Sarah would stop at the Oxleys' on Westbury Road. Charlie Oxley was a half-brother of hers. Once he hadthe smallpox and the corrugations never left him. He was broad and full-bellied and no matter how hot it was he wore severe black serge. He was a potato broker, and a man of religious intelligence.
He had, by as many wives, two girls—and they were as lovely as fine spun silk. But Suttle Street, a pagan's retreat, was hardly a place for them so they were sent to Codrington to absorb the somber sanctity of the Moravian Mission. Now there came to crown the quiet manor on Westbury Road, another mistress, a pretty one, herself a mother of two crimson blown girls,the quintessence of a spring mating. They were a divine puzzle to Oxley. It was queer that their fathers, both firemen on a Bristol tramp, now blissfully ensconced in the heart of the Indian Ocean, had forgotten to return to tickle and fondle their pure white faces....
It had happened in a peculiar way. And all through a silly love of song. Why did she ever encourage such a feeling? The legend of it was fast taking its place beside the parish's scandals of incest. Sea songs; songs sailor-mensang; ballads of the engine room and the stokehole; ditties fashioned out of the crusted sweat of firemen. Ah, it went beyond the lure of the moment. Bowing to it, she'd go, the lovely whelp, to wharf and deck when sunset was spreading a russet mist over the dusky delta of Barbadoes and give herself up to the beauty of song. Greedily songs go to the heart; go to the heart of women. It was bad enough being maid at a grog shop on a bawdy street and the upsquirt of a thundering Scot and an African maiden, but it was worse when the love of songs of the deep, led one at dusk, at dark, to descending stairs to stokeholes or to radiant night-walks on the spotless fringe of Hastings.
Mosquito oneMosquito twoMosquito jump in de ole man shoe.
At last, song-scorning, no more a slinger of ale, she had crawled, losing none of the primal passion she had formerly dazzled him with, over to Oxley's—to fatten on a succession of gorgeous nights of deep-sea singing and unquestionable sailoring.
Meditating on the joys attendant to the experience of seeing the Oxleys there came to little Gerald's mind the vision of soup. Rock-hard crabs, tight-fisted dumplings, little red peppers, Cayenne peppers, used all to be in it. Sometimes there would be seasoning ithossahorcorassand parsley and white eddoes. And when they left, Mr. Oxley always gave Sarah a bag of potatoes to take home; but she was a lady and proud and it pained her to take it home on her head; but one of the neighbors, who had a donkey cart which came to town each day, would stop by and get it for her.
One forenoon when the sun was firing the hills of Black Rock, she had hurriedly decided to visit the Oxleys. To every one, down to the idiot Lynchee King, he of the maw worm, it was clear that something was tugging at Sarah Bright's throat.
To Gerald it was a quickening ordeal. All along the gap they went; up St. Stephen's Road—the birds brilliant-plumaged in the ripening cornfields—past the Gothic exterior of the Chapel to a steep decline where the hilly road was crowned by the falling leaves of a giantevergreen tree whose roots spread to every point of the compass. Up the road, the sun bright as a scimitar, the inexorable dust-marl heavy on them; past cow pens and meadows; past shops and cottages where folk inquisitively spied at them through half-shut jalousies. Then past the Mad House and Wolmer Lodge, a branch of the Plymouth Brethren, where Sarah "broke bread" and Gerald slept; up to Eagle Hall Corner and onward down to the roaring city. On the way he'd lift his piteous eyes to her sobbing face and implore, "Don't cry, mama, don't cry, God will provide for us."
At the Oxleys' the tension slackened. It was easing to be there. They had a big, pretty house, plenty to eat, and the girls were lovely as the flowers whose fragrance was a dewy delight to the boy.
Again it was some sort of soup, fish soup, and the sensation of a hearty meal helped considerably to dissipate Gerald's concern over the things agitating his mother.
After dinner he and the girls, Vi and Rupertia, slid to the floor to play. A Bible wastheir toy. On their lips the letters of the wordcontentsmade a lascivious jingle.Charlie open 'nen's t'ing ent 'nen's ting sweet.Caught in their own impishness, they clapped their hands over their mouths, shutting off the laughter, and rocked against each other in riotous glee.
"Hey, Sarah, duh ought to lock he up, yes. Hey, you would 'a' t'ink a man wid fi' chirrun would ha' a bit o' conscience. W'en yo' say yo' hear from 'e las'?"
"June—le' mah see," snuffled Mrs. Bright, diving in her hand bag, "yes—it is June. June will be eight months sense Oi las' hear from 'e."
"An' yo' mean fo' tell muh," cried Mr. Oxley, his incredible eyes big and white, "dat dah neygah man ent ha' de graciousness in 'e 'art fuh sen' yo' a ha'penny fuh de chirrun awl dis time?"
"No, Charlie."
"Gord! Dah man muss be got de heart uv a brute!"
"He must be fuhget we, Charlie."
"Wuh, moy Gord, yo' don' even fuhget ahdoig yo' fling a bone to, much mo' a big fambaly like yo' got dey. Fuhget yo'?"
"He must be," wept Mrs. Bright, swallowing hard, but Gerald was too impassioned himself to rise or let the girls share his sorrow.
"But wha' yo' gwine do, ni, Sarah? Wha' yuh gwine do? Yo' an' all dese chirrun yo' get dey, ni?"
"Oi ent stop fuh t'ink, Charlie, to tell yo' de troot. But de Lord will provide Charlie, Oi is get my truss in Him."
"But wha' kin de Lord do fo' yo' now yo' doan heah fum dat woofless vargybin?"
"Ev'yt'ing wuks togeddah fuh dem dat truss in de Lorrd. Oi'll manage somehow. Oi'll scratch meself togeddah. De lil' bit o' money Oi get fum de house an' de piece o' lan' will jus' buy me an' Gerald ticket. Now all Oi is axin' yo' fo' do is put up de show money. Oi ent wan' no mo'. Dah is anuff. An' as de Lord is in heaven Oi'll pos' it back tuh yo' when the boat land at Colon."
"An' wuh yo' gwine do wit' de chirrun, ni, Sarah? Wuh yuh gwine do wit' dum?"
"Oi got Rosa fuh look aftah dem fo' me, bo. Yo' know Peony is wid she evah sense de holliduhs, an' she don't even wan' fuh come way, de ownway t'ing. But, yo' know, Charlie, Oi can't blame de chirrun, ni. Um ent nutton home fuh duh. Rosa is berry well satified fi' hav' she, aldo me can't say she ah happy riddance. No, not at all. Well, an de uddah gyrls, it gwine be ha'd 'pon dem, but Rosa house on Coloden Road is big enough fee tek cyah ah all uh dem, an' Mistah Foyrd only come home once a mont'. Rosa so lonesome, an' she so like de picknee dem. She will tek cyah uh dem fuh muh till Oi sen' back fuh dem. An' Oi only takin' Gerald wit' muh, po' fellah."
"Oi gotto go," she went on, in a hollow, dejected voice, "an' see wha' de mattah wit' Lucian. Oi can' go 'long tyin' mi guts no mo'. Oi too tired."
"Hey, but dah is a beast uv a man fuh yo', ni!" muttered Oxley in incredible outrage.
"Yo' know, sometimes Oi t'ink he muss be sick—"
"Sick?" he flew up, like a hen striking at amongoose. "Dah man sick? Gyrl, hush up yuh mout'! Dah man sick? He ent sick no 'way! If he was sick doan yuh tink de nurse in de horspitral can write a letter even fuh a shillin' fuh he? Gyrl, go talk sense, ni! Dah man ent sick. He is jess a wufless stinkin' good fuh nutton vargybin' who ent learn fuh tek cyah uh he fambaly, dah is wuh he is! Oi tell yuh 'bout dese fancy mud-head men! Ent a blind one o' dem any blasted good! A pack o' rum-drinkin', skirt-chasin' scoundrels—dah's wuh duh is! Dey ort tuh lock he up, dey ort tuh get he 'n roast he behind fuh he—"
"Charlie!"
"Wha' Oi doin'? Ent um is de troot, ent um?"
"Oi ent gwine giv' up hope, Charlie, Oi still got my truss in de Lord."
"Yuh is ah bettah uman dan Oi is ah man, Oi know."
"If um is de will uh de Lord fuh me tuh suffer like dis, Oi is willin'. Didn't Christ die on Calvary's Cross tuh save yuh an' me an' Lucian—"
"Who, dat vargybun', don't put 'e 'long sideo' me, Oi ent wan' none o' 'e nasty self fi' tetch me."
Some one intruded upon them. Sarah wiped away a tear. It was difficult to be there, denuding herself before that woman and her saucy girl children.
She came in, one of the girls at her side. "Hexcuse me, Charlie, but wuh yo' say, le' dem go?"
"Go weh?" he roared suddenly looking up.
"To de fungshan, no?" she replied, scornful of his brilliant memory.
"Chu," he said, turning back to Sarah, and staring at her searchingly, "All de time sochalizin', sochalizin'." He swiveled back round "Ah say no! Yo' heah? No! Dem a stay in de house!"
"But it no a gineral saht o' shindig," she pleaded, "it a Miss Coaltrass dawtah what a hav' it."
"Ah don't giv' a dam pity hell who dawtah a hav' it—dem n'ah go!"
"But Charlie—don't!"
"Me don' mean fi' insult yo', Sarah, wit' me nasty tongue, but yo' mus' excuse me. Butdese pahties dem 'nuf fi' mek Christ hesell bre'k loose."
"But me don't tink it are much—"
"Dem n'ah go—dat a sure t'ing! Could as well put it in yo' pipe an' smoke it! Saht'n fact! Dem tek up wit' too much gwine out orready. Wha' ah mo', dat Miss Persha, dem low-neck dress she ah wear, dem gwine giv' ar cold, too, yo' mahk ah fi'-mee wud."
"Wha' time it hav' let out, Persha?"
"Early, mam."
"Oh, le' de picknee dem go, Charlie, yo' too a'd on de gal chile dem."
"Dat's juss why me don't wan' dem fo' go. Awl yo' go out o' dis house at all howahs o' de night time, like unna is any umans, disregardin' whatevah awdahs dere is. Look at dat Miss Persha, she bin gwine out eve'y night dis week. Wha' she a go so? Wha' she a fine place fi' go so? But no mind; wait till me catch she, yo' wait."
"Dat a fac', Charlie, me hagree wit' yo' dey, me gwine put my foot down once an' far-all 'pon dem trampoosin's."
"Well, let de rascals dem go dis time."
IV
One day Gerald stole out on the deck. The sun was broiling hot. His mother was with him.
"Mama," he said, "let's go roun' de uddah side."
"Wha' fuh, sonny?"
"Ah wan' fuh go out dere at the Portugee shop an' buy a ball o' cookoo an' a piece o' salt fish. My mout' ain't got a bit o' taste."
"Yo' can't do that, son, there ain't any shops in the sea," she said, smiling weakly at him. "Come, let's go back—I don't feel so good."
Then it suddenly happened. They were below, it was dark, quiet, noiseless. Even the engines had stopped. Boom! it came. It sounded like the roar of a cannon. It shook the ship. Glass jingled. Things fell. Gerald's energetic mind flew hurriedly back to Black Rock. Often there would be sun and rain—all at once. The gap folk had become so used to it that they said it was the "devil and his wife fighting."
Until now lazy and half-asleep, the deckersrose, scrambling up on the above deck. Their baggage was going with them.
Gerald turned to his mother, busy combing her hair. She said, "Come, Gerald, put on yo' Sunday hat, son, yo' at Colon."
But he was skeptical. He stole upstairs and was an eager witness to the ship's surrender. TheWellington, a princess of the sea, had given in to the greater force of the earth. Soberly and serenely she had done so.
V
"Well, Sarah, who's this?"
"The last one, Gerald."
"He grow big, yes."
"Skipper don't even know he own son."
"Suck fingah buay."
"Shut up, Saboogles!"
"Fairf!"
"Come heah, son, don't cry—come 'n say howdee to yo' pappy."
"Tek yo' fingah outa yo' mout', sah."
"Say, something, no, Gerald—"
"Howdee!"
"Say howdee pappy."
"Howdee pappy."
"Oi don't know wha' mattah wit' dis' boy, ni. Comin' on de boat he was—"
"Come an' kiss me, sah."
He flinched at the suggestion. But there was no escape and he had to put up his face to receive the wet, disgusting kiss.
"Like yo' ent glad to see yo' pappy," he heard his mother say, and was ferocious at her, "an' bin talkin' an' exquirin' 'bout what yo' look like, Lucian, evah sense we lef' B'bados."
He slunk back, shuddering at the touch of the man, and took a good look at him. He was crouched before a machine. He was fairer than Sarah—she was black, he a yellowish brown. He was soft, yet not fat, but he gave one the appearance of being weak and flabby. He was biting thread. Gold-rimmed brown glasses barely shaded eyes circulating in two seamy bloodshot pools. His hairy arms rested soft and heavy on the machine. He was bald, and his mouth was large and sensuous. It was a roaming mouth. His hands were of putty. Every time he swallowed, or raised his head, arum goggle as modest as a turkey gobbler's would slide up and down.
The place was noisy and vulgar. It smelt of brandy and Jamaica rum, but tuxedos and crash tunics were sewed there for the dandybomberosof the Republic. Far into the night it kept twenty men on the job, but it was an idler's and a lazy man's joint. Customers like the judge, a proud, blue-eyed Spaniard, would stop by on their way home at night—but it was a hang-out and an assignation spot forcabronsand bare-footed black mares.
"Go an' pick up dah cotton reel fuh mah," Bright said to him, "an' put dis empty bottle behind the counter—"
It was here that Gerald was to take on the color of life.
VI
"Mama, a las siete!"
It was seven o'clock. Anger, noise, confusion—a cock's lofty crowing. Opening his eyes, he stood quietly, deciding. In a tall bare room, he had been warmed in the night first by one adult body, then, an eternity later, byanother. Now he was free of the sense of both.
A sun, immortal, barbaric as any reigning over Black Rock, shot hazes of purple light on the evening's litter scattered about.
"Mama, a las siete!"
Ah, he was not now on the ship. Nor was he at the tailor shop. This must be—home.
He sat up in bed, gazing at the enormity of things in the room. "Oh, Mama—" he cried, but no answer came. He jumped off the bed and dragged on his boots. He dressed and made for the door. He was struck once more by the glow of the bright Panama sun. The room opened out on a porch, not very wide, and there was no awning to cool it.
"Mama, a las siete!"
Down by the stairs a half-sick, half-clothed little child was crying. Standing above him was a lank, black, cruel-faced woman, brewing a cup of hot milk. As soon as the milk was shifted from one cup to the other, she would turn and stamp at the little boy on the floor.
"Where am I to get it from?" she screamed at him, "shut up, I say—shut up—before I cuff you—what do I care if you haven't eaten fortwo days—your stomach burning you—well go to sleep—you been already—well go again—sleep, sleep—it will do you good—it will make you forget you ever had a belly.
"Think I pick up smoked sausage? I've got to buy it. And what have I got to buy it with? Filth! May the heavens consume you! Shut up, I say! Who cares whether it is seven o'clock—or eight o'clock—or nine o'clock? Let me be! The baby's got to eat, and you'd better begone, you're too noisy. Seven o'clock! Sing it to the birds, sing it to the canary, sing it to the winds. Winds can wake up the dead. Go try—bawl it to the winds! But I've got my own song, I've got my own tune. I don't want to hear you, shut up, I say."
All this in a tongue musical to Gerald, but the cries of the little boy and the pox on his face and the sores making a batter of his toes unforgettably moved him.
At the cesspool he espied a girl. Her back was to him. She was of mixed blood, of assafetida brown, and had once had the smallpox. She was shouting at the top of her voice to theChinaman downstairs to "giv' me wattah, yo' dam China-mang, you giv' me de wattah."
It took a long time for it to treacle upstairs. The water struggling up at last, she proceeded to bathe Madame's canary. To supervise the rite, Madame came herself—adding to the Cholo girl's swift parrot-like chatter words just as swift and as parrot-like.
Madame was a beauty. Wife of a Colombia rum merchant, she was fat and rosy and white. "Me white," she'd say to the West Indian lodgers in her tenement, "you no see fo' my skin?" The plate of her jeweled bosom soared high. Encountering it, one's first impulse would be not to lay one's head on it, but to cling, climb, sit safely and plumply on it. Her flat, wrinkled face had been smothered in some starch-like powder. She was white, as whites on the Isthmus went, but the flour or powder which she dabbed so thick on her face sometimes failed to accomplish its task. At intervals the wind or the latitudinous heat dissipated splotches of the starchy pallor, and Madame's neck, or the rim of Madame's mouth, or the balloons underMadame's eyes—would expose a skin as yellow as the breasts of the Cholo girl.
Mistress of the tenement, and using a row of six of its one-rooms, Madame's love of jewels rose to a fetish. Her suite was full of jewelry. Her opulent person was ablaze with them. Her bright, thick black hair was prickly with hairpins of silver, hairpins of gold. She wallowed in colors, too. Some of the pins were blue, some red, others green. Her fat, squat arms were loaded with bangles. Her gaping stomach shimmered in a sea of rich white silk. Walking, it rolled, and dazzled, and shimmered.
Waltzing by Madame and the Cholo girl, there sallied out of the kitchen a woman. She was a mulatto. She was carrying a smoking dish of stewed peas and her head was held high in the clouds. Squat as Madame, she, too, was mad about jewelry. Her arms were creased with bracelets. And no jewel-ankled Hindu maiden had finer nuggets of gold flung about her neck. Her clogged feet sent buxom out at you a belly bursting with a fat, mellow tumor.
She came clogging straight at Gerald, andsmiled. One of the one-room flats on that side of the porch belonged to her, but on spying him she swept past it.
"Run down to the John Chinaman's like a good little boy and bring me a loaf of French bread and a tin of sardine—"