The New Moon's Arms Read Online Free PDF Page A

doing, accepting his offer to see me all the way home? I didn’t even know him, not really. Ife and Clifton would have come home with me.
    I got a flash of Dadda’s coffin in the grave, the dull thumps of earth falling on it from the backhoe. I hugged myself to hold in the sobs threatening to shudder up from my belly.
    We were underway. A few people got out of their cars and went to the railing of the waterbus to look out. Gene was one of them. He looked around for my car. I looked away, pretended not to see him.
    Damn Gene. I had been trying to put my doubts about Dadda away. But with one sentence, he had them welling up inside me again.
    I couldn’t keep still in the car. I got out of Victoria the Rustbucket and picked my way to the back of the boat, where Gene couldn’t see me.
    Saturday evening. Peace on the water. No cargo ships taking equipment to the new salt plant. No speedboats, sport fishing boats, or glass-bottomed boats, either. Most of the pleasure boats had docked for the night. The dining rooms of the big hotels would be filling up with tourists. Later, the clubs would be filling up with locals and visitors. So long I hadn’t been out dancing.
    I stood beneath the setting sun and watched the evening exodus of bats streaming out of the towers of the harbour buildings, flitting erratically, catching insects. They looked happy, like bat school was out and now it was time to play. A few of them dipped to the surface of the water, came away with small silver fish in their claws. The waterbus started making its stops: Tingle Island, Vieille Virgèn, Creek Island. The cars thinned out as people drove off at their stops.
    “Nice evening,” came a raspy voice from behind me. I turned.
    “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Mckinley.”
    He jerked his chin at the water. “Not really evening till the little ones come out.” He was from Cayaba, made his living as a fisherman. More a white man than any other colour, from the look of him; but after a lifetime in boats in the sun, his skin was brick-ruddy, and wrinkled as a dirt road in dry season.
    “Little ones?” I asked. “The bats?”
    He leaned with his back against the railing, put his foot up on the big yellow tackle box he always had with him. “Yes. Some nights I like to go out in the rowboat, so it’s quiet. Bring a flashlight to draw them to the boat.”
    In blackness, surrounded by warm velvet skins, flapping, touching your face… I shuddered. “Don’t sound to me like a good lime.”
    “I like to hear them singing all around me in the dark.”
    “The bats sing?”
    “Well, kind of a chirp, you know? Like birds.”
    “You right! Now I remember! Used to have clouds of them in the sky come nighttime, out around Blessée. You don’t see so many any more.”
    He shook his head. “No. They used to roost on Tamany Heights. Fill up the whole cliff wall.”
    “Mm.” Tamany Heights was now the Grand Tamany Hotel. “You going to bring me some red snapper next week?” Every Saturday morning, Mr. Mckinley or one of his sons came by with the morning’s catch. “So long now you haven’t had red snapper.”
    He frowned. “Saline plant been messing up the water from since. Only few little snappers in the nets nowadays. Going to be worse now we have two plants.”
    “Or some shark. Shark would be nice.”
    “If we catch any, I bring it for you.”
    “When I was small and I would tell Dadda that the bats were chirping, he never used to believe me.”
    “Mr. Lambkin? How he doing?”
    My heart lurched. “He passed. Tuesday. I just now coming from his funeral.”
    “Awoah,” said Mr. Mckinley softly. “I see. So sorry to hear that.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Chastity? Everything all right?” It was Gene.
    “Calamity.”
    “Yes. Sorry.”
    Mr. Mckinley reached out and shook Gene’s hand. “I was just telling Mistress Lambkin how sorry I am to hear about her daddy. So many years now I know Mr. Lambkin. From before Blessée went down.” You know how some