Left at the Mango Tree (27 page)

Now as Raoul makes his way to the grimy-windowed offices of the
Morning Crier
, ostensibly to further his investigation into where
I came from, let me tell you what
I
discovered about my birth, a happy (for some) and moon-blessed event, in counterpoint to Raoul’s sad discovery that his loved ones have fallen short.

It was a shiny night when I came into the world. The gibbous moon waxed high in the still, dark sky and beckoned my mother, who went to stroll in its light at Sinner’s Cove, her own Edda’s beach. It was there, while walking with her naked arms bent at her sides and her gauzy, transparent skirt entangled in her ankles and thighs, that she felt the first assault inside her swollen belly. Like the salty strike of the waves upon the shore, a watery tongue prodded her rent middle until she yielded and folded, compliant and pliable host to the tide that splashed and stormed her body’s threshold. She cried out and fell, into the very sand where on her wedding night, to the accompaniment of the singing leaves, Wilbur had first discovered what lay past her hem.

As luck would have it, when Edda collapsed to the ground with a cry, Abigail was there, exacting her due from the moon, whose affairs the midwife often minded, now covering things up nice and even, now balancing both sides of some account. Clever Abby. The island’s nighttime magic, in her had found its match.

Though Abigail hadn’t expected to find Edda at Sinner’s Cove that night, having altogether other business to attend to there, find her she did, and just how fortunate a finding it was, probably only I can appreciate. Abigail had known since early on in Edda’s pregnancy that this delivery would be more delicate than most. She feared for Edda’s health and for the happiness of her blood-sister’s little girl. But not even Abigail had dreamed of the lengths she would need to go to to save Edda’s life.

Had Abigail not intervened, Edda would most certainly have lost her baby. I would have succumbed to the sand as my
grandmother succumbed to the snow. My mother would never have survived the sadness of another loss; she knew nothing of the nature of lost people and things, of how they sometimes struggled to misplace themselves, or struggled once they were found. She knew nothing of Mr. Stan Kalpi, of how a man (or woman) can find the way home if he (or she) really wants. My grandmother taught me that to be lost is not always a bad state, and I figured out for myself that to be found is sometimes unsettling. There really are some prisms better left buried in the sand.

Where was I? This part of the story always gets me out of focus. It splits the light of my attention into so many rainbows on the beach. Suffice it to say that I did not perish in the sand that night. I could not count myself among the lost. Abigail harvested what the moon had sown and, happy, the moon took its leave. In the morning my cry marked the end of Edda’s travail, her joyful tears christening the dawn of my journey. Together we rested, then with Abigail’s help we found our way home.

I know. You’re thinking I left out the best part. The guts and the gore, the blood and the marrow. I’ll come back to them, I promise. But my story belongs to Raoul a little longer, and if he thinks newspaper ads stir confessions and one crime solves another, then who am I to question?

“Bruce! Bruce, where are you?” Raoul burst through the door, his enthusiasm propelling him right into the desk of the
Morning Crier
’s editor-in-chief, copyeditor, reporter and special correspondent.

“Raoul! Hello! What a nice surprise!” (Bruce always officially classified unannounced visits this way.)

“You remember that ad I placed a couple weeks ago?” (Both men knew that he did.)

“I remember,” Bruce replied.

“I need to run it again. With a few changes. Here you go.” Raoul stretched his arm past Bruce’s bulky typewriter, and handed him a piece of paper.

“Uh, what’s that? Run it again?” Bruce recalled the visit Abigail had paid him a few days earlier. He wasn’t scared of a lady, not exactly, but it was always best to stay on the good side of a woman of Abigail’s repute. Although he had defended his journalistic integrity against her accusations once, he shuddered to think what she might do to his integrity should he see fit to run the ad a second time. “It’s only been two weeks,” he stalled. “You can’t expect to get a call so quick, Raoul. These things take time. Maybe a month. Or more!”

Not normally prone to violent outbursts, or indeed to outbursts of any kind, Raoul listened startled as his voice reprimanded Bruce with a vehemence in complete disproportion to the crime. While Raoul ranted, Bruce recalled again the visit from Abigail, weighing the wrath of the one versus that of the other and deciding ultimately that his health would be better served by obeying Raoul’s request. When Raoul finally stopped his shouting, Bruce accepted the piece of paper, along with payment of a rainbow bill, and thanked Raoul for his custom. Raoul thanked Bruce in turn, and left the
Morning Crier
for the still dark of evening.

To clear his head of the flies and bees that populated it, Raoul took a walk, feeling a proper fool for his explosion in front of poor Bruce. It was fine and dandy, nay, helpful, for the islanders to think
him mad, but it was another thing entirely for them to think him a thug.

Raoul was unduly hard on himself. The weeks since my arrival had been tough. He had juggled the demands of a public smuggling case and those of private turmoil. And he was troubled to find them more intrinsically linked than he thought, the common denominators none other than Bang, Cougar, and Nat. On top of that, Raoul had gotten himself black-listed at the one haven Oh ever offered him, the Pritchard T. Lullo Public Library.

What right-minded, dark-eyed, bespectacled Customs and Excise Officer of the plain-as-noses-on-faces philosophical school, when faced with a red-eyed, cheek-stained, white-skinned grandchild; a red-eyed, cheek-stained, white-skinned smuggler; pineapple-poaching pals who betray him; a blind and desperate daughter; an indifferent and starry-eyed son-in-law; a midwife who won’t go away; a barefooted mathematician-musician mentor; and a ban from the public library,
wouldn’t
be moved to threaten the editor-in-chief, copyeditor, reporter and special correspondent of the local paper who had qualms about placing an ad? A blow-up was long overdue.

Raoul’s walk didn’t take him along Edda’s beach, or indeed along any beach, where the geometry was too stark and the secrets that lay buried in the sand too shocking. Instead Raoul walked through town, his legs carrying him, as if by instinct, past the public library just as Ms. Lila was locking up. She pulled the heavy doors shut with a thunk and turned to the road in a hurry, late for her appointment with the hairdresser. When she saw Raoul she gave a start. “Oh! Good evening,” she said.

“Good evening,” replied Raoul, who had been tempted to turn away and avoid her gaze. It wasn’t that Raoul didn’t want to see Ms. Lila. He very much did. But recalling his fit of madness—real
madness—on the Tuesday before, and her subsequent fit of pique, he felt a proper fool for the second time that day, and simply couldn’t bear for her to see him. He had been wrong to think there was something better out there than the librarian’s usual offerings.

You can imagine how great his relief when she addressed him: “Raoul, I’m in a bit of a rush, I’m afraid. If you’d like to keep me company a piece, I’m just walking to the next gap ahead.”

They were a perfect match that night, Raoul and Ms. Lila, as Ms. Lila was feeling a bit of a fool herself. No one had ever shown more respect for her material than Raoul, and if something had moved him to tear up her sheets, she might have tried to find out what it was instead of just kicking him out. The shade of the cookery shelf was dark and drab without him, and she waxed nostalgic for Tuesdays past.

Raoul tried to speak, but the apology in his head wasn’t quite sure how to displace itself. Thankfully, Ms. Lila was a clever chickadee, who sensed his embarrassment and remorse even as she struggled to communicate her own. Perhaps if his words and hers were insufficient, those of loftier minds might do. From her bag she removed the book of poetry that he had refused when she offered it on Tuesday, the book with the poems about the beach and with the very nice cover. Raoul accepted it with a grateful nod, one that Ms. Lila returned.

At the gap they parted. Ms. Lila climbed the Staircase to Beauty and Raoul continued his walk, his thoughts momentarily distracted from his earlier outburst and from poor Bruce. Raoul’s right hand clutched Ms. Lila’s gift, his fingertips gently rubbing the cloth of the book’s spine, his head gently mulling the book’s endless and various implications, some heavy and sleepy, some sticky and sweet. It was a promise, the book was. Mysterious, exciting, unexpected; a Customs notice, and he, the lucky addressee whose prize awaited.

17

G
ustave Vilder possessed a strong work ethic that was not, as you might suspect, at cross-purposes with his moral slackness. If his deeds and objectives were questionable, the zeal with which he went about achieving them was not. Did it matter if he orchestrated Agustín Boe’s snakebite or pumped a few pickers full of beer before Puymute hired him? He got the job he wanted, and had done it well for a very long time. But Gustave was tired of managing another man’s money, tired of keeping the plantation “up and running” and answering to its ostrich of an owner. Ten years of that was quite enough. Instead, Gustave wanted to make some money of his own, and to do so he would draw on every resource at hand.

A firm believer that one man’s mealybug is another man’s meal ticket, he first hatched his plan to get rich when he heard of the blight on Killig. Oh had plenty of pineapples to funnel to its island neighbor, and who better to finagle the funneling than Gustave himself, what with the many and varied forces at his command? He could arrange in a few weeks what it would take months to arrange via diplomatic channels, and for a bigger bite of the profits. He had tried to explain as much to Raoul, but Officer Orlean wouldn’t be bought off and he wouldn’t be bartered with. He had no head
for business or economics, that one. No appreciation for the fact that Gustave was single-handedly expediting the resolution of a potential produce crisis of potentially global proportions.

Of course, Raoul would prove no obstacle to Gustave’s determination. If Gustave couldn’t boldly sail past Customs with his paperwork seemingly in order and his pineapples all aboard, then he would spirit away the fruit by dark of night. What other choice did he have? It was hardly his fault if he was forced to dabble in magic. So dabble he did, and a few days later, right on schedule, two of Puymute’s acres were infamously picked clean.

Before Gustave could see to the clearing of two acres more, his pineapple plan had required a bit of fine-tuning. For one thing, Raoul had been snooping around, poking his nose the way up and down Dante’s Mountain. For another, half the island (or more) was certain that Gustave had fathered Edda’s baby. Though Gustave wasn’t nearly as certain of this himself (and was, frankly, miffed by the distraction just then when he had business to conduct), he feared (and rightly so) that Raoul would pursue his Customs investigation with unusual rigor, to exact revenge for the presumably-ravaged Edda.

To escape the clutches of Customs and Excise, Gustave might have suspended his Killig business straightaway, after just the one transaction—at least for a little while. But the variables (and those marbles!) he pulled from his desk on that day Raoul paid him a visit, they had advised him otherwise. Like Stan Kalpi with his toe in the mud, Gustave saw the solution’s next logical step. Not to back down, but to flummox the islanders with magic so dazzling they would be frightened even to meet his gaze. He would spirit away Puymute’s whole plantation if necessary, manor house and all, and would do it with the help of Bang, Cougar, and Nat.

Thus in the light of the complicit moon, Gustave got the next two acres carried off, a second coup that left the policemen and the excisemen shaking their heads in wonder. You know all this already, I realize, but it’s just the start. Gustave’s story and Raoul’s are still intertwined. Gustave is trying to flummox and dazzle and Raoul is stalking and waiting, hoping his adversary will stumble. Not that you should expect this to happen, for Gustave was feeling very sure-footed after two successful heists and with three marbles for collateral in his pocket. So sure-footed, in fact, that plans for his biggest sting yet were under way.

It would take him almost two weeks more to pull his resources and coordinate his forces with those of the moon, which would be just full enough by then to provide the light his nighttime operation would require. Gustave would double the take this go-round, haul out four acres at once, which meant securing twice the pickers, packers, and transporters to get the goods from plantation to beach. There Bang, Cougar, and Nat would again lend a hand carrying the crates to the boats, their presence only insurance should Raoul get wind of the scheme. For brute strength and stealthy speed, Gustave would engage other, more expert, hands. Instead of sending the fruit to Killig in the swift but small wooden crafts that glided as easily as the tide, Gustave would get three properly-sized boats, big enough for all of his cargo. The smaller crafts would shuttle the crates to the bigger ones, whose bulky bodies would be camouflaged by their distance from the shore.