Color Him Dead Read Online Free Page B
Author: Charles Runyon
still had enough foot-pounds of kinetic energy to blast an impact crater in the flesh above his left ankle, to break the two bones of his left leg, then glance off and smash a nerve and gouge out a vein before dropping to the rubber floor mat. The pain hit his leg like a block of ice dropped from a great height.
Goddam,
he told himself,
this cools it for you, lad.
But the car had an automatic shift, and so he thought: Screw the left leg, just grit your goddam teeth and keep that right foot on the floorboard, keep your eyes on that nude hood ornament, and keep those chromium tits pointed west. Keep your mind on that little cabin in the high pine forest. Don’t think about the pain that rakes your leg like fishhooks pulled upward, forget the blood that fills your shoe. You got a clear road ahead and nobody behind, and if you don’t make it now, you don’t deserve to live….
ONE
The jagged cinder of St. Patricia thrust up from a lonely sea, fifty miles from the touristed comfort of the Lesser Antilles. A string of semi-dormant volcanoes split the island like the spiked back of a prehistoric monster. Boiling thunderheads formed above them and marched down to the western sea, trailing streamers of rain into splintered ravines. On the steaming leeward slope, the frogs grew as big as capons, bamboo formed impenetrable thickets, and the night-hunting
fer-de-lance
ruled the bush beyond the glow of kerosene lamps. On the windward slope, trade winds swept through hexagon cactus and screwpine, combing and parting the shoulder-high citronella grass. To the north the island dwindled to a hundred rocky, wave-lashed fragments; to the south it joined the sea in a marsh inhabited by reptiles and foot-long centipedes.
St. Patricia was a garden closed to visitors. The only flat-lands large enough for a landing field belonged to a planter named Barrington. The only harbor deep enough for cruise ships was also Barrington’s. He liked privacy, and the island’s 40,000 inhabitants had to share it.
A diesel coaster circled the island twice a week; six ancient trucks rattled over forty miles of pitted asphalt laid by U.S. Army engineers in 1943; two jitney-cabs careened about the capital, their original colors bleached and rusted to a mottled brown.
Still, visitors came. Junketing students wheedled deck passage on cargo schooners which carried off the booty of the rich volcanic soil: bananas, nutmeg, copra, cocoa and rum. Hardy yachtsmen arrived after sailing fifty miles against the tradewinds. Now and then a chartered floatplane deposited determined sightseers in the shallow harbor of the capital.
These visitors found a social pyramid as ancient as Egypt. At its bottom were 30,000 blacks, descended from a mixture of African slaves and native Caribs. At the same social level, but not part of it, were two hundred poor whites whose ancestors had been exiled from England in the eighteenth century. These lived in xenophobic poverty in a crumbling village called Hope. The island’s middle class of shopkeepers and small farmers consisted of 5,000 Bengalese Indians descended from indentured laborers who’d been paid off in land. At the peak of the pyramid perched twenty-seven planters of English descent, of whom Barrington was by far the richest. They ruled the island through some 3,000 mixed-blooded managers, foremen, overseers, clerks and bookkeepers. The most powerful of these was Marcel Eudoxie, called Doxie in the island’s French patois. An octoroon of French descent, he was manager of Barrington Estates….
Doxie sat in the wooden shed of the Customs and Immigration office and tapped his swagger-stick on the toe of a black riding boot. His crossed legs were sheathed in white riding pants, and one brown arm rested on the back of his chair. His red face and bulging eyes made him appear on the verge of a violent rage, but his voice rolled out in a controlled lilt which mocked the man behind the desk:
“A white man can’t disappear on
Goddam,
he told himself,
this cools it for you, lad.
But the car had an automatic shift, and so he thought: Screw the left leg, just grit your goddam teeth and keep that right foot on the floorboard, keep your eyes on that nude hood ornament, and keep those chromium tits pointed west. Keep your mind on that little cabin in the high pine forest. Don’t think about the pain that rakes your leg like fishhooks pulled upward, forget the blood that fills your shoe. You got a clear road ahead and nobody behind, and if you don’t make it now, you don’t deserve to live….
ONE
The jagged cinder of St. Patricia thrust up from a lonely sea, fifty miles from the touristed comfort of the Lesser Antilles. A string of semi-dormant volcanoes split the island like the spiked back of a prehistoric monster. Boiling thunderheads formed above them and marched down to the western sea, trailing streamers of rain into splintered ravines. On the steaming leeward slope, the frogs grew as big as capons, bamboo formed impenetrable thickets, and the night-hunting
fer-de-lance
ruled the bush beyond the glow of kerosene lamps. On the windward slope, trade winds swept through hexagon cactus and screwpine, combing and parting the shoulder-high citronella grass. To the north the island dwindled to a hundred rocky, wave-lashed fragments; to the south it joined the sea in a marsh inhabited by reptiles and foot-long centipedes.
St. Patricia was a garden closed to visitors. The only flat-lands large enough for a landing field belonged to a planter named Barrington. The only harbor deep enough for cruise ships was also Barrington’s. He liked privacy, and the island’s 40,000 inhabitants had to share it.
A diesel coaster circled the island twice a week; six ancient trucks rattled over forty miles of pitted asphalt laid by U.S. Army engineers in 1943; two jitney-cabs careened about the capital, their original colors bleached and rusted to a mottled brown.
Still, visitors came. Junketing students wheedled deck passage on cargo schooners which carried off the booty of the rich volcanic soil: bananas, nutmeg, copra, cocoa and rum. Hardy yachtsmen arrived after sailing fifty miles against the tradewinds. Now and then a chartered floatplane deposited determined sightseers in the shallow harbor of the capital.
These visitors found a social pyramid as ancient as Egypt. At its bottom were 30,000 blacks, descended from a mixture of African slaves and native Caribs. At the same social level, but not part of it, were two hundred poor whites whose ancestors had been exiled from England in the eighteenth century. These lived in xenophobic poverty in a crumbling village called Hope. The island’s middle class of shopkeepers and small farmers consisted of 5,000 Bengalese Indians descended from indentured laborers who’d been paid off in land. At the peak of the pyramid perched twenty-seven planters of English descent, of whom Barrington was by far the richest. They ruled the island through some 3,000 mixed-blooded managers, foremen, overseers, clerks and bookkeepers. The most powerful of these was Marcel Eudoxie, called Doxie in the island’s French patois. An octoroon of French descent, he was manager of Barrington Estates….
Doxie sat in the wooden shed of the Customs and Immigration office and tapped his swagger-stick on the toe of a black riding boot. His crossed legs were sheathed in white riding pants, and one brown arm rested on the back of his chair. His red face and bulging eyes made him appear on the verge of a violent rage, but his voice rolled out in a controlled lilt which mocked the man behind the desk:
“A white man can’t disappear on
Readers choose
Stephanie Tyler
John Everson
Robin Cook
Steven Clark
E. Lockhart
Patrick Lewis
Tim Hehir
K. Elliott
Kate Pearce