Left at the Mango Tree Read Online Free Page A

insides stilled.
    You and me by the moonlit sea, our love our only company.
    To the soft accompaniment of sparse piano, solemn bass, and tenuous brushes on drum, Bang’s sounds left his chest, a vague conjunction of heart, soul, and lung, found shape in his throat, and slid past his lips in an audible, airborne kiss. A kiss that expanded and encompassed the crowd until it was a lover’s tongue lapping every listener’s ear. They closed their eyes and leaned into the ticklish pleasure of the notes, smiles of anticipation snaking across their faces.
    Still, dark sky, you and I, I will give myself to thee.
    They listened until the kiss became happily predictable, until they could determine when the tongue’s melody would turn up, or down, and ready themselves.
    When you miss my loving kiss, I want you to remember this—
    But the happily predictable is easily overlooked, and before long, the bartender again noisily shook the shaker in his hand. Cougar got distracted by a low-slung sarong, Nat drank, and Raoul let the bluebottle buzz. Soon Bang’s voice was pleasant background noise to the Belly’s rumblings, a lover’s tongue grown familiar, relegated to that realm of comfort and assuredness where it can be sought at will, but robbed of its ability to catch you unawares.
    By the sea, look for me, look for me by the moonlit sea.
    Cougar re-focused his attention on Raoul. He knew what was in the newspaper that morning, and he knew it meant a headache that Raoul hadn’t dreamed of. “Figures Gustave is at the center of all this. He’s always been trouble. His whole family since they came to Oh, even before Grandpa’s day. What do you plan to do?”
    “Get to the bottom of it, I suppose.”
    “Raoul, be careful, man. Don’t get mixed up with this guy’s magic or voodoo or whatever the hell it is. What happened, happened. You don’t know what Gustave’s capable of. And it’s not like anybody’s hurt or anything.”
    Nat piped in. “You think he...you know,
did
it? Or you think things just...happen whenever he’s around.”
    “Of course things don’t happen just because he’s around,” Raoul snapped. “Of course he did it.”
    “But how, man? All that heavy fruit? I don’t see how.” Cougar lit himself a cigar.
    “He gives me the creeps,” Nat said, finishing off his double.
    Your eyes are like the sea, full of mystery.
    “Speak of the devil.” Cougar let his tilted chair fall onto its legs with a thud. He watched Gustave walk in from the beach and make his way to the bar.
    “The creeps,” Nat reiterated. “Just look at him.”
    “Nat’s right, Raoul. He seems weirder than usual. Look!” Cougar poked Raoul. “I bet this front-page business is getting to him.”
    “His people are used to attention,” Raoul said. “Bruce at the
Crier
told me Gustave called the paper himself with the story.”
    Whenever you look at me, I forget my misery.
    The song Bang was singing that night was an old island love song and one, I’m told, my mother Edda sang to me often. When Gustave walked in, as if by magic, the song carried Raoul from his cozy table at the Belly to the cushions of Edda’s sofa a few weeks before. I was less than a week old then and had yet to meet the harsh sun of Oh. I
had
met most of the neighbors (or, rather, they had met me), and more of them were turning up every day. My complexion, it seemed, had become a matter that Raoul could no longer ignore.

    Whenever you look at me, I forget my misery.
    Edda cooed gently into my newborn ear. I was enraptured by her song, awakened, and I peered up at her, my eyes two roses in the snowy whiteness of my tiny, expectant face.
    “Isn’t she beautiful, Daddy?” Edda asked.
    Raoul sat balancing a cup of tea on a saucer on his knee. He had been dipping cookies into it and was studying the crumbsfloating on the bottom, hoping that like tea leaves they would tell him what he should say. It’s not that I wasn’t beautiful. What baby isn’t?