Love and Glory: The Coltrane Saga, Book 3 (11 page)

“Goddamn you, say something!” he screamed, slapping her so hard her head snapped back. Then he exploded, “See what you made me do, you bitch? Made me hurt you again! You like for me to hurt you? You like for me to beat you? Didn’t you hear me just get through sayin’ how I’d rather be good to you ’cause, damn it, I think I love you?”

He slapped her again, harder. “You speak to me or I’ll kill you, Kitty Wright.” He was nearing hysteria, furious with her and with himself. “You tell me you’re gonna make the best of it, ’cause I swear to you I’ll see you dead before you leave me again.”

“I wish…” she spoke in a feathery voice so frail it was caught on the wind and swept away, “I wish I were dead.”

He jerked away, stunned.

“I think…” she forced the words past numb lips, “I think I am already dead.”

Her eyes closed, long, silky lashes sweeping against ivory-smooth cheeks. She went limp. Luke carefully lowered her body back to the ground.

She was breathing. He knew she was alive, but a cold chill passed through him as he saw that something in her
had
died. A part of her really was dead.

And as Luke stared down at her, he wondered whether Kitty would ever live again.

Chapter Six

Travis did not have to open his eyes and look outside to see that it was raining. The rumble of the thunder matched the constant throbbing in his head. Another night spent soaking up too much rum, and the only thing that was going to ease his pain was to get up and start drinking again.

Damn the rain. It had poured every day and every night since he had arrived in Haiti. Someone had said there were two rainy seasons—April to June and August to October. That meant he could look forward to July. It was nice to have at least that much to anticipate, even if the blasted rains came again after one month.

He licked his dry lips. Blast it, did everything have to taste of rum? He felt disgusting, saturated by the sickly sweet drink, but at least it helped ease his emptiness for a little while. He fingered his recently grown beard and thought about opening his eyes but decided against it for the moment. He did not want to know just yet whether the girl was still lying beside him. Probably she was, for it was, after all, her hut. He remembered staggering down the road sometime during the night, with her helping him, the two of them entering the thatched-roof hut with its dirt floor. He vaguely recalled her undressing him, fondling him between his legs, and finally cursing him in that strange mixed language of French and Spanish that she used when she was angry. Which was often.

The straw in the mattress beneath him was starting to prickle his bare buttocks. Soon he would have to get up and get dressed and get the hell out of that place. There would be another day of drinking rum, staring out at the mountains, and wondering what the hell he was doing in Haiti.

Haiti, he had been told by one of the government officials on the voyage over, was an old Indian word meaning mountainous land. He could well believe it. The mountains were densely wooded with peaks that rose to great heights. The tallest, Pic la Selle, was almost nine thousand feet high.

At first, Travis had enjoyed exploring. It was something to do besides brooding, which he had begun doing when he’d found out that his only role here was to serve as a marshal, of sorts, should he be needed. He hadn’t been needed so far, so there was much free time. Wandering around the coastline of cliffs, broken by indented coves and harbors, had been an adventure at first. In some places the mountains rose straight from the sea. He had enjoyed learning of the different kinds of fine woods found in these forests, mahogany, oak, pine, lignum vitae, cedar, satinwood, and rosewood. He had never seen some of them before and doubted he ever would again. In an arid area there had also been cacti and a tiny tree called a dwarfed thorn.

He had not minded the food so much, either.
Diri et djondjon,
a concoction of rice and black fried mushrooms, served with a sauce of onions and herbs called
ti
malice,
had been particularly tasty. There were ample tropical fruits growing wild, but the peasants mostly ate rice and beans.

So, he thought with eyes still closed and the straw still prickling his buttocks, he could get up and eat some beans or rice, and then go wander around the coves or into the forest and get soaking wet in the infernal rain. And a little later he could get soused on rum and wind up in bed again with Molina.

Molina. Lord, she was beautiful. Of course, he had not seen too many native girls who were not lovely. But there was just something special about Molina. Her skin was black and shiny, and her body molded into delicate curves that made a man’s fingers itch to reach out and touch. Her coffee-colored eyes were fringed with thick, silky lashes, but good God, they could spit fire when she was in one of her rages.

Molina was, no doubt, a descendant of the slaves from Africa who had been imported to replace a race of people called Arawaks, exterminated by the Spaniards in the 1600s.Masters intermingling with slaves through the years had produced a class of mulattoes, and Louis XIV had declared them free.

Molina, he figured, was part African, part French, part Spanish, with a little bit of English slipped in somewhere down the line. She was darker than most of the other people on the islands.

He let his breath out in a long sigh. Damn it, he had never meant to take up with another woman, but he had never been the kind of man to go without one for long. Besides, he had nothing else to do with his time besides drink and make love. If there had even been Sam around to talk to, but how in the hell was he supposed to know Sam would be sent with the other committee to Santo Domingo, for Christ’s sake?

Travis did not remember much about the train trip to Washington. He was drunk when he got on the damn thing and drunk when he got off, and Sam kept pouring hot coffee down his throat and telling him if he didn’t sober up he’d get left behind, but he didn’t give a damn. He just wanted to stay in a stupor.

Somehow he wound up on the boat, and the second day one of the men on the committee came around and told him it was time he sobered up. Travis had agreed. He felt like hell by then and could not remember the last time he had eaten. With solid food in his stomach, a bath, and clean clothes, he had gone in search of Sam, and that’s when he learned his friend was on another ship heading for another place.

He felt a stirring beside him, then the cool touch of fingers wrapping around his penis, gently squeezing. He felt himself rising.

“You make up for last night, no?” Molina’s voice was as soft as her touch. “You make Molina feel like a real woman, for you are such a real man. See what I make you do? Oh,
mon,
but you are big. I never had a
mon
so big before.”

“Molina, you never had a man before I came along, and you know it,” Travis said wearily. Her virginity was a sore subject with him. Damn it, he never would have taken her if he had known she had never lain with a man, but she still continued to pretend to be grown up and sophisticated in the ways of womanhood. He still had not been able to get the truth out of her about her age. She damn well was not the twenty years old she swore she was.

“Not this morning,” he said firmly, grasping her wrist and pulling her hand from his swollen organ. “My head feels like one of those blasted drums that beat every night, and I think I might be sick.”

“Too much rum again,” she said petulantly. “Molina is getting tired of her man being such a drunk. You do not please me. I think I will go to the
mambo
and tell her how you treat me, and she will call on the
loa
to make you want me.”

Travis’ eyes flashed open and turned to stare down at her in fury and disgust. “Damn it, Molina, I have told you I will not listen to any of that voodoo nonsense. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t like it.”

He swung his feet around and winced at the feel of the soggy mud floor. The rains had soaked the ground outside and seepage had moved into the cabin.

Glancing around, he spotted his boots far away and was obliged to walk through the squishy mire to retrieve them. His pants were tossed carelessly on the floor nearby, and as he pulled them on, he cursed because they, too, were damp.

“You should not make fun of things you do not understand.” Molina’s voice cut into the silence. “The
loa
will not like it. You could be punished. People have died…”

Travis stood up. “Molina, I’m not listening to any more of this. I told you—I don’t feel good. I’m going out to get something to eat. When I come back, I’ll make it all up to you, I promise.”

He swayed suddenly and realized he was still not rid of the alcohol he had consumed the night before. As he lowered himself slowly back to the bed, Molina hovered over him. “I see you are sick, Travis. Molina is sorry she is so mean to you. It is only that I want you so bad.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Travis closed his eyes, threw his arm over his face. Damn. Bored or not, he was not going to drink any rum today. All he wanted was to get some food in his stomach and then sleep, if possible.

“You lie there, my beautiful
mon,
and Molina will prepare something that will make your insides feel not so sick.”

He was too weak to protest, and soon she said, “Here. You eat.”

He looked up to see Molina standing over him with a wooden bowl in her hands. She was smiling, her brown eyes warm.

“This will make you feel all better. The
mambo
said so.”

Travis took the bowl and managed to keep from lashing out at her about the
mambo.
There would be time, later, to talk to her about the fat old hag who ran the village where Molina lived. He was ravenous, and the hot, savory-smelling stew appeased his stomach quickly.

He had seen her only a few times, and there was something about her that made him want to take a stiff drink and hope she was only a nightmare. Old, fat, she wore some kind of white paint on her black face. Like most of the women around there, she wore only a cloth skirt wrapped about her hips and allowed her breasts to hang freely. Hang they did, all the way below her waist. Travis found the sight disgusting. He enjoyed viewing Molina’s bare breasts, firm, with delectable nipples that resembled chocolate drops, just as he had liked seeing the naked breasts of the other island women. But the
mambo
was revolting.

Once he had asked Molina what those god-awful-looking things were that she wore hanging on a string around her neck. Molina had promptly told him not to ask questions about the
mambo,
but he had persisted, and after persuasion she had told him they were teeth. Human and animal.

“Strange jewelry,” he had said sarcastically, figuring it was just a stupid native custom that only an old washed-up hog like the
mambo
would follow.

“Not jewelry,” Molina had shrieked at him, eyes wild with fright. “You must not say such things. You do not understand
voodoo.”

She whispered the word with awe. Travis knew what voodoo was about. To the natives, like Molina, it was big magic. To Travis, it was bullshit. He had known about it before ever setting foot on Haiti. Many Negroes in the South, especially in his home state of Louisiana, as well as in Mississippi and Alabama, believed in voodoo. They also believed in zombies, bodies that voodoo rites supposedly brought back from the dead. He had talked to a Negro about it once, when they were both only boys and had fished in the bayou together on occasion.

The boy’s name was Lemuel, and he had told Travis about the belief that a
bocor,
a sorcerer, possessed an evil power that enabled him to put a death spell on a victim. Then, after the victim was buried, the
bocor
would revive him and make him a slave.

Lemuel had said, trembling all the while, that a
bocor
could also resurrect a buried person who had died of natural causes. That was why, he explained, a dead person’s family tried to have their relative’s body buried in the part of the cemetery closest to a road, where there would be activity, so that the
bocor
would have difficulty digging up the corpse without being seen. Travis had considered the tale so much rubbish then, and he felt the same way now.

When he had finished eating the stew, he looked up at Molina and murmured his thanks, then his eyes fastened on her breasts, naked, inviting. He reached up to cup one, pulling her forward until he could fasten his lips about the nipple.

“You make me happy, yes?” she whispered eagerly, lowering herself on top of him, bracing her hands on either side of him to hold herself up. He continued to suckle. “You be big
mon
for Molina?”

The only woman Travis had ever liked to talk to while he was making love had been Kitty, and that was because he loved her and wanted to tell her so. In the beginning, it had been like the others—take what he wanted, but always make sure the woman was satisfied. That didn’t take conversation.

But everything about Kitty had been different, he thought, a painful flash of memory going through him. Damn! He wanted to be with her, not with Molina, not with any other woman in the world. But she was not here, and Molina was, and he could only apologize for being a man, because already she was spreading her thighs to lower herself onto his shaft, undulating her hips to and fro but still leaning over him so that he could keep his lips on her taut nipple.

He closed his eyes, saw Kitty’s face swimming before him, then opened them to see Molina, head thrown back, lips slightly parted as she moaned in unison with their steady rhythm. Cupping her buttocks, he pulled her tighter against him. She screamed out loud and he began to push upwards, plunging into her to meet her downward thrusts.