Conquering Kilmarni (13 page)

Ten minutes later the three of them were out of the Princess Margaret and on their way home, with Zackie sitting beside Mr. Devon on the front seat and Peter in back.

Zackie told about finding his mother.

"Where she live is not nice," he said with a note of sadness in his voice. "It just a lane in a poor part of Kingston. To get to her door you have to walk through a yard other people use, too, and it full of old junk and trash. Everybody is crowded together and everything smell bad, and all the time we trying to talk, somebody's radio did make such a racket we did have to yell to hear each other. Me want her to leave there and come back here where everything better."

"Is she ill?" Mr. Devon asked.

"Sick, you mean? She say no, but she thin and did cough a lot. Maybe the coughing was because somebody burning trash in the yard and the whole place did fill up with smoke, though. Me have to cough some, too."

"What else can you tell us, Zackie?" Mr. Devon asked, and again Peter saw that strange, tight look on his face. What did it mean, that look?

"Well, not much, me guess, Mr. Devon. She say she
don't able to get any decent kind of job, even in Kingston. When she work, she a higgler, mostly."

Zackie was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Mr. Devon, to tell the truth, me think me mother is kind of ashamed of how she not able to do better than she doing. When me leave, she did take hold of me hand and start to cry. She say she a country person and she never supposed to go there. Mr. Devon, me going to bring her back here if me can."

When Zackie said that, they were on a stretch of road from which the lofty peaks of the Blue Mountain range seemed light-years away from anything like the slums of the capital. Mr. Devon glanced up at them through the windshield and said, "That seems a fine idea, Zackie. First, though, you have some problems to solve."

"Problems, Mr. Devon?"

"She'll need to earn a living somehow. When we're picking coffee, she might work at Kilmarnie. I'm going to plant pine trees on some of the high-up land, too. She could help with that."

"Yes, suh! And me can work!"

"Right now you're in trouble with Corporal Buckley, and if he's right about your being involved in this stealing, it could mean very big trouble. And you should be in school."

"Me nuh steal nothing, Mr. Devon," Zackie protested. "And school don't last the whole entirely day. Me can work for you after it finish."

"Your mother would still need a place to live, you
know. And there is still the problem of your father."

"Yes," Zackie said in a low voice. "Me daddy." Then he was silent.

Peter had listened intently to every word and realized suddenly how scary Zackie's problems were. Aside from the stealing, which could be like the end of the world if Zackie was really doing it, what would Merrick Leonard do if Elaine Grant came back out to the country? Peter was still thinking about it when the car climbed the steep stretch below Rainy Ridge and stopped at the police station as Mr. Devon had promised.

It was Peter who went into the station to get Corporal Buckley. The corporal came out and talked to Zackie, asking him first how he felt and then questioning him about the stealing. It was plain the corporal thought Zackie was guilty and that he would do his duty no matter how he felt about Zackie's mother. He asked about Elaine Grant, though, and before returning to the station he thanked Mr. Devon for stopping.

Less than a minute later, as the car climbed through the village, the man Peter had been thinking about earlier lurched out of the shop where Zackie had tried to steal the aspirin. Without looking to see if the road was clear, Merrick Leonard started across it.

The brakes squealed as Mr. Devon slammed his foot down on the pedal. The car swerved to a stop only just in time.

Startled, Leonard turned and shook both fists in an outburst of anger that caused some of the onlookers to
laugh at him. Then, it seemed, he realized whose car it was, and that his son was in it, and his anger turned to hatred.

His face changed expression as if it were made of soft wax and invisible hands were twisting it out of shape. His mouth curled open to spit out a string of oaths. The villagers stopped laughing and watched in silence to see what he would do.

"So now you trying to run me down, is you, Devon?" he yelled in a crazy-sounding voice. "It not enough you steal me boy away when him should be caring him daddy! Now you looking to kill me!" Another string of curses followed. Then he screamed, "You will sorry for this, Devon! You hear my words! Before me through with you, you will wish you never did lay you eyes on me! And it won't be for just knocking you fire alarm, either!"

He staggered out of the way then, still shaking his fists. Mr. Devon drove on. As the car climbed the steep grade past the coffee works, Mr. Devon turned toward Zackie on the seat beside him. "Zackie, after what just happened, I think you'd better plan on staying at the house for a while. Don't you?"

Zackie hesitated. "Me can do that, suh? Even if you think me a tief?"

"We'll talk about the thieving later. At the moment, our biggest problem is your father."

"Thank you, suh," Zackie said softly.

At the house Mr. Devon insisted Zackie go to bed and took him to the room he was to use. When he returned
to the living room where Peter was waiting, an expression of deep thought was on his face. Lowering himself into a chair in front of the fireplace, he said quietly, "Son, I'm sorry."

Peter was standing by the big mahogany table. "Sorry, Dad?"

"It's my fault Zackie was hurt. If we had waited for him—if I hadn't been so obsessed with wanting to stop at the cemetery . . ." Mr. Devon shook his head. "Your mother would be the first one to tell me I was wrong, Peter."

"Dad, you couldn't know what would happen," Peter said.

"All the same, I was wrong. Do you know what the word
priorities
means?"

"Like things that come first in importance?"

"That's good enough. And I had mine out of place." Mr. Devon took in a big breath and pushed himself to his feet. "I've probably been wrong about other things, too, and it's time I gave the whole matter some thought."

"Yes, Dad," Peter said. Then he stood by the table as his father walked slowly from the room. He only hoped Dad meant his going to school in Florida. Dad was certainly wrong about that. Peter belonged at Kilmarnie, with his father.

I
t
began to look as though Zackie's accident had brought about a real change in Walter Devon's attitude. Or, at least, in his thinking about that attitude. During the next three days he spent much more time with Zackie Leonard than would a man who didn't want to be "involved" with other people's problems.

Zackie left the house only when Mr. Devon drove him to the village clinic to have his arm dressed. The clinic was in a small building run by the government, in the same compound that contained the police station, the courthouse, and the post office. The remainder of the
time
,
by order of the clinic doctor, Zackie had to be content to rest and let his arm heal. But Mr. Devon seemed to feel he ought to stay close in case he was needed, and Peter welcomed the chance to talk to him.

On one occasion both of them were seated at the big table. Peter had a book on coffee growing open in front
of him
and was writing down some helpful pointers in a notebook he kept. His dad was working on the plantation paybill.

Peter looked up. "Dad, what do you suppose Mr. Leonard meant?" he asked.

"About what?"

"When he said next time it wouldn't be just knocking the fire alarm. Or whatever it was he said."

Mr. Devon thought about it for a few seconds. Then he said, "Perhaps he meant that next time it wouldn't be a false alarm." His tone of voice said he hoped he was wrong. "He seems to think he has to get even with me. I just hope . . ."

"You hope what, Dad?"

"Forget it," Mr. Devon said. "He wouldn't go that far."

Peter, too, let a moment of silence go by. "What do you think about Zackie?" he asked then. "Is he the one who was doing the stealing?"

"He could be, Peter."

"But you're letting him stay here. You drive him to the clinic."

"Because he needs help. And after being the cause of his accident I owe him all the help I can give him, wouldn't you say?"

Peter could only nod.

Mongoose was at the house, too, but spent most of his time in the kitchen or the yard. On the morning of the fourth day, Zackie was in the kitchen with him when Peter went to get a cold drink out of the fridge.

"Peter, what happen to you handkerchiefs this week?" Miss Lorrie asked.

"My what, Miss Lorrie?"

"You handkerchiefs, with the P on them. Mama Rose did bring in the wash just now and me don't find any." Mama Rose was a middle-aged Mango Gap woman who came to do the laundry.

"I put some in the dirty-clothes hamper," Peter said. "I know I did."

"None is here now. And some tins of food look to be missing, too."

"Food?" Peter turned to Zackie.

"Most likely me daddy," Zackie said with a shrug. "But how him could get in?"

Peter remembered something. "Dad and I left the front door unlocked the night we thought you might come back from Kingston on the truck."

"But why him would take handkerchiefs?" Miss Lorrie asked. "Food me can understand, but handkerchiefs? Not even clean ones, either, because Mama Rose nuh do the wash till yesterday."

Peter could not think of an answer.

After lunch that day, Peter happened to go down to the kitchen again, and Miss Lorrie had something else to talk about. "Peter, me have a favor to ask of you."

"Yes, Miss Lorrie?"

"Zackie want to write a letter to him mother, and him is not able. Him say Elaine Grant read and write well, and him want the letter to be good. Will you write it for him, please?"

"Of course!"

She went to the door and called Zackie to come in from the yard, where he was on his knees weeding a flower bed. The boy's injured arm was still bandaged, but only lightly now, and the doctor had said he should use it. When Zackie came into the kitchen, Miss Lorrie told him Peter would help him. "Here," she said. "Me have some paper and a pen for you, Peter. Both of you can sit here at the kitchen table."

She hovered over them while Peter asked Zackie what he wanted to say, and wrote it down. It was the same thing Zackie had said in the car: He wanted his mother to leave where she was living and come "home." He would be earning money at Kilmarnie and she could work on the plantation, too, when women were needed. He would find her a place to live where he could live with her.

"She can
stay
with me till you find it," Miss Lorrie said.

Zackie's eyes grew big as he looked up at her. "You mean it, Miss Lorrie?"

"Me mean it. Get on with you letter."

"Tell her . . ." Zackie paused to think. "Tell her me will go back to school as soon as she have a job and me nuh have to earn all the money for both of us. And tell her ... Tell her me really want her to come."

Peter wrote it all, and Zackie handed him the scrap of paper on which the woman in the Constant Spring market had written Elaine Grant's address. Peter addressed the
envelope, put the letter in, and sealed it. He looked at his wristwatch. "It's half an hour to mail time. Maybe I can get Dad to drive me down to the post office."

"Mongoose and me can walk it down," Zackie said.

"No, you can't. The doctor doesn't want you walking that far yet. Anyway, Dad probably has some things of his own to mail."

He was wrong about that, but Mr. Devon was more than willing to drive to the village. When he and Peter left the pickup and climbed the post office steps, half a dozen people were already waiting on the little veranda for the mail van to arrive.

Mr. Devon bought a supply of stamps, and Peter handed the postmistress Zackie's letter instead of pushing it through the slot, because she was already hand stamping the outgoing mail. Then, as they turned away, Peter overheard some talk that startled him.

"That is right," a woman said. "The Chinaman, Mr. Lee, did find it after a tief break in him house. Him did take it to the police."

"And him say there is no question 'bout where it come from," another woman replied.

Peter would have stopped to listen, but too many people were trying to crowd onto the veranda now, as they always did at mail time. He heard more, though, as he wormed his way through to the steps.