Left at the Mango Tree Read Online Free

to Bang’s defense. “Well, something’s going on. I saw Gustave and he says every black-and-white word’s true. He ought to know.”
    “Black magic, if you ask me,” Bang continued. “Everyone says so. They say it’s been here all the time, right below the topsoil, festering, simmering, waiting. And then...
Voilà
! When you least expect it...” (Bang spread his hands into starbursts that he circled in front of his face.) “...black magical manifestation.”
    He slurped what was left of Raoul’s beer and stood up. “Should have planned on mystical melodies tonight,” he sighed. “Let that be a lesson to you boys.” (He bent over the two, a hand on each one’s shoulder.) “Never listen to Cougar. Steer you wrong every time.” He slapped them amiably on the back, clicked his tongue, and was gone, drawn by the noise of shins bumping against microphone stands on stage and the flat-sharp ululations of guitars being tuned.
    “So where did you see him?” Raoul reclaimed his newspaper for the second time and looked Nat in the eye.
    “Who?”
    “Gustave. You said you saw him.”
    “Took a tourist up to Puymute’s this morning. Some artist. Paints fruits and vegetables. Said she once so captured the essence oftomatoes that her real life models turned to pulp before her very eyes. Guess she’s onto pineapples now. She heard Puymute’s were the best. What’s left of them, anyway.
Rotund
, she said they were.”

    Before we go any further, there are a few things I should explain. I too am a painter, did I tell you that? I suppose it was only natural that I should seek refuge from my black-and-white world in a palette of colors that I could arrange as I see fit. And I can attest to the fact that the pineapples on Cyrus Puymute’s property were indeed worthy of the most discerning canvas. Not only were they Oh’s plumpest and brightest, but owing to the plantation’s fertility (which, I discovered, rivaled only that of a secluded beach to which my mother was partial), they were by far the most...the
most
per square meter. If enough of them had disappeared to put a noticeable—and newsworthy—dent in such bounty, then something was surely afoot.
    It may have been the wind playing tricks. Or Gustave Vilder playing his. Perhaps a combination of the two. Gustave Vilder worked for Puymute, and could have pulled off an inside job easily. He dabbled in magic, too, and was very possibly in cahoots with the moon herself. I’ll tell you more about him after Bang’s song.
    Me, I never actually met Gustave, though he figures in my mosaic. He died when I was a baby. The only white man on Oh, at the time, or since.

    “Gentlemen!” Cougar said, and nodded in greeting. He dragged along a chair, with which he annexed himself to Raoul’stable. He gave Nat a tall shot glass (yellow rum), and snapped his fingers in the air over Raoul’s empty beer mug, so that a waiter might replace it with a full one. Raoul raised his eyes from the paper in acknowledgement and Nat raised his rum. A long arpeggio leapt from the piano as if to welcome Cougar as well, and the room fell silent.
    “Ladies and gentlemen. Good evening and welcome to the Buddha’s Belly. My name is Bang and tonight we’re gonna to do some numbers for you inspired by the waters that surround this pretty little island of Oh. So order yourselves something to wet your whistle.” (He winked into the audience at Cougar.) “And if you feel like making waves on the dance floor, that’s why we put it there!”
    You don’t need me to tell you that when Bang opens his mouth, it’s sometimes hard to take him seriously. Other times, when he opens it in song, he commands the respect of a president or a prince, at least for a little while. So when the music started and Bang began to sing, Raoul shushed the bluebottle buzzing in his brain, Nat put down his rum, Cougar forgot about selling drinks, and the customers stopped shuffling their feet on the floor. The Belly’s