'You know what always gets me?” he said, studying it with what was surely affection. “This here is from the same kind of tree like cherries, you know, or peaches, I forget the name...'
'Drupes,” said Gideon.
Tari showed mild surprise. Gideon had risen in his estimation. “Yeah, that's right, drupes. Only with cherries, peaches, you eat the fruit, throw away the pit. Simple, right? But coffee, you throw away the fruit, keep the pit. Then you got to dry it, roast it, grind it, pour hot water over it, and then drink the damn
Gideon smiled. “It beats the hell out of me, Tari. It was probably the same guy who first looked a lobster in the eye and had the nerve to wonder if there was something good to eat in there.'
'Beats the hell out of me too,” said Tari.
* * * *
As they bumped back down the mountain road, Gideon noticed something he hadn't spotted on the way up. Lying on its side in a jungly gully fifty feet below the road, half-overgrown with wild ginger and lantana, was the rusting carcass of a U.S. Army jeep, ghostly and forlorn, the white star still dimly visible on its olive-drab side.
'Is that the one that went over the side a few months ago?” Gideon asked
'Yeah,” Tari said. “No fun, man.'
Gideon looked at him. “You were in it?'
For an answer Tari hooked a thumb behind his upper front teeth and popped them out: a finely made removable bridge consisting of the two central incisors. “Best you can buy. The boss, he ordered it for me from France.” In it went again, with a little click. “And Brian, he bust his arm really bad. Two places, you could see the bones sticking right out. We damn near get ourselves killed. No fun, man,” he said again. “I don't even like to talk about it.'
For something nobody liked to talk about, Gideon thought, those accidents seemed to crop up a lot in conversation. “You're lucky you weren't killed,” he said, hoping it might draw the big Tahitian out a little more.
It did. “You bet,” he agreed soberly. “Maggie even luckier. Brian, he the unlucky one. Didn't have no business riding around Thursday morning.'
Thursday morning, it seemed, was when Maggie usually made her weekly personnel tour of the plantation, with Tari at the wheel. They would stop and chat with the workers at the various locations, eliciting gripes and suggestions and holding informal “tailgate sessions.” The other four mornings of the week Brian and Tari made their normal production rounds. But on this particular Thursday morning, the Thursday morning that the jeep's rear axle decided to come loose at the worst section of the road, Maggie was scheduled to give a guest lecture on employee relations at the Lycee Technique de Hotellerie et Tourisme in Papeete. So she and Brian had traded days: Maggie and Tari had made their rounds on Wednesday, and Brian and Tari on Thursday; the fateful Thursday.
The result? A compound fracture for Brian, two dislodged teeth for Tari, and a brush with death for both.
And Maggie? mused Gideon. Maggie had gotten off scot-free. Almost on its own, the thought tucked itself away for future retrieval.
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Chapter 16
* * * *
Gideon's single-minded intention, when Tari delivered him to the Shangri-La, had been to go to his room and buckle down to work on those symposium notes. But at the meeting of lawn and sand in front of his cottage—in front of each of the cottages along the strand—a net hammock was slung invitingly between two sturdy guava trees. As he passed it his resolution wavered, just a little. It was John's fault, really, for bringing up the idea of a hammock in the first place. But the thing was, it looked so comfortable swaying there in the cool, dappled shade, and it had been such a long time—years?— since he'd been in one, that he climbed in to get the feel of it, pushing off with his foot against a nearby lawn chair to start himself swinging. Overhead, the thick green leaves swayed soothingly back and forth against a cobalt sky.
He woke up an hour later, at a little after four, with his foot still hanging over the side, a warm breeze off the lagoon stirring the hair on his arms. He felt rested and loose. The temperature was about 70 degrees, the air like satin on his skin. Stretching away on either side of him, along the curving fringe of the beach, coconut palms nodded on slender, arching trunks. The air was perfumed with wildflowers and the crisp tang of the sea. He remembered the last weather report he'd heard before leaving home a day earlier: snow showers mixed with sleet and changing to freezing rain, but with a slight possibility of late-afternoon “sunbreaks,” those rare, brief phenomena offered up almost daily throughout the gray winter by the sadistic weather forecasters of the Pacific Northwest.
Like Julie, he preferred coolness to warmth, fir trees to palms, and misty, pearl-gray skies to flat, hot, sunny ones, but, by God, he had to admit that there was something to be said for the tropics, particularly at this time of year. Assuming that the confusion over the exhumation order was some kind of mix-up that could be straightened out, he had three, maybe four, more days of summer ahead, three days to bake the winter hunch out of his shoulders, three days of tropical flowers, and lush fruits, and no sleet-changing-to-freezing-rain weather forecasts.
One long sunbreak.
'Hey, Doc, what is it with you, sleeping sickness? Come on, wake up, it's almost five o'clock.'
'John,” Gideon said with his eyes still closed, “I really wish you'd stop doing that. It's extremely annoying.'
'What do you want me to do? Every time I need to talk to you, you're flat on your back. It's amazing. We haven't even been here one day and you're already going to seed.'
Gideon smiled placidly. “It does seem that way, doesn't it?'
Well, why not? Going to seed was what you were supposed to do in Tahiti. Anyway, what was the hurry?
