Color Him Dead by Charles Runyon Read Free Book Online Page A

shards of silver on the sand. They had slid their dresses off their shoulders and gathered them up between their legs, tying them up in front so they looked like Hindus dressed in their dhotis. Sweat gleamed on naked shoulders and bare torsos; young virgin breasts with purple-shining nipples, set high and wide on round black chests; mothers’ breasts sagging full and tight like ripe fruit, old dead breasts like empty pockets lying flat on wrinkled stomachs….
    Gradually he expanded his field of vision. To the west he could see the Windward Islands, a few faint blue brush-marks on the horizon. Far to the east, a tanker rode low in the water, laden with Venezuelan oil, headed for a refinery in New Jersey. He turned toward the main island, saw the wide, dry prairies of the northern tip, watched a boy drive a dairy herd into a barn. On the palm-fringed beach at Petty-lay, a garish blue-red-yellow bus stood waiting for the fleet to return with fish for the capital. He turned toward the south, saw the sharp peak of Morne Diable, highest point on the island, with an ancient lava flow scarring its side like a gray bird-dropping. Nearby a tongue of land stretched into the sea, marking the entrance to the capital’s harbor.
    A ship was leaving the harbor. By its sleek lines he knew it was no cargo schooner. She was a pleasure-yacht, ketch-rigged, running on power with sails furled. And her course was bringing her directly toward Barrington’s Isle. It was too far away to read her name. But Leta had spent a lot of time around the waterfront; she knew every yacht on the island.
    He found her dressed in her red dress, white shoes, and purple beret, sitting on his old cardboard suitcase. He took her out on a point of land and showed her the approaching ship.
    She looked at it a long time through the glasses, while her stomach rose and fell with her slow breathing. After a moment she handed him back the glasses and spoke with finality:
    “It is the
madame’s
boat. She has returned. Now we have to go.”
    She walked back into the house. He followed her, his muscles tense with excitement. “Are you sure she’s back? Maybe the skipper’s just cruising.”
    “The yacht never leaves the harbor without the
madame.
Never. She is aboard.” She picked up his bag. “I will have the fishermen carry us to Petty-lay.”
    He sat down in the chair and poured out a glass of rum. “Leave my bag. I’ll be along later.”
    She looked at him with her eyes wide. “I have not convinced you of the danger.”
    “It is not a question of the danger,” he said, and smiled inwardly at himself for adopting her stilted speech. “I have something more to do, then I will leave.”
    Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she came toward him with a quick patter of her bare feet.
“Ba mwe un ti-bo.”
    He gave her the kiss she asked for, felt her lips trembling beneath his, felt her weight against him, sliding down. Her lips traced a tingling path on his thigh. “You are so white,
moi dudu,
I am afriad …”
    He laid his hand on the top of her head, squeezed the springy hair in his palm. “Better go, Leta, if you want to catch the fleet.”
    She rose slowly, and there was no anger on her face, just sadness. She turned and pulled the old gray dress off the hook, then left the room. Drew went to the window and watched her walk down the path, carrying the white shoes in her hand. He stayed at the window until she left the island, sitting in the bow of a fishing pirogue with her head bent and her elbows on her knees. A vague sadness squeezed his chest; he might never see her again.

THREE
    Through the slanted louvres of the shack, Drew watched the
Edie III
ease cautiously into the lagoon beyond the big house. Her diesel auxiliaries growled a low-voiced complaint; a Negro crewman squatted behind the bowsprit with a sounding line. His measured chant came faintly up the slope:
    “Cing … cing … kwat … kwat …”
    The concrete floor beneath Drew’s stomach was