Read Online The Rhythm of the August Rain by Gillian Royes - Free Book Online Page B

the back window. After she climbed in, she was introduced to Carlton, the driver, whom Shad instructed to descend the driveway and turn right on the main road.
    â€œWe can start with a Rasta man here in Largo,” Shad explained. “He know my granny from way back.”
    Carlton, a silent nodder, wove the car around potholes and up dirt lanes until they arrived at the base of the mountain that rose behind Largo. They stopped in front of a wooden cottage, its fresh red, yellow, and green trim singing out behind the rusty zinc fence. The man Shad had in mind wasn’t home, his elderly wife reported from the door. Her long dreadlocks were tied back and she was wearing a housedress, the front of it wet.
    â€œCan I speak to you, then?” Shannon asked, thinking it might be a good idea to start her interviews with a female. All of the books she’d researched over the last few weeks had been written by men, and she was ready for another perspective.
    It took more than a little persuasion on Shad’s part for the woman, Leah was her name, to be interviewed.
    â€œI washing right now, but I try to help,” she said at last, sitting down on one of the four concrete steps leading up to the house.
    â€œDo you mind if I record you?” Shannon said, but Leah declined and the photojournalist took out her notebook.
    In answer to the first question, the Rasta said that she and her husband were members of the Nyabinghi, but they didn’t belong to a church. “Our God is Jah, and Jah is God of all, and Jah-Rastafari don’t need no walls.” She and her man had been together for thirty-eight years, and she’d become a Rasta after she met him. What seemed to interest her most was describing the ital food she cooked, which she pronounced eye-tal.
    â€œIs spiritual food, and it must be full of itality . It must increase the livity , the strength that Rastaman get from God, and everything must be natural, natural as possible. If we drink juice, we must juice the orange with our two hands, you see me? When we cooking, we don’t put in no salt, and we don’t eat nothing coming out of a tin, nothing that mix up in a factory, nothing with no chemicals. We eat plenty fruit and vegetables, no pork, no meat. But we eat fish and sometimes little chicken, when we can get it. We don’t eat no crab or lobster or shrimp, though, no bottom scavengers.”
    The conversation ended when a boy, tiny dreadlocks sprouting from his head, came to the door and said he was hungry. Shannon asked if she could take a few photographs before she left, and Leah agreed, as long as she could take them with her grandson. Shannon photographed the two standing on the step, the boy sticking out his chest, his feet at right angles.
    Back on the road, Shad directed Carlton to drive to the village square.
    â€œWe have one Rasta man who fix everybody’s shoes,” Shad explained while wiping his brow. “I don’t like to disturb him, like how he working now, but he might be able to give us a little direction.”
    â€œWe’re doing well for a first day, don’t worry,” Shannon said. “It always takes a few days to start getting into the story.”
    Ras Walker’s shoe stand near the village square was a small bamboo shack; from its roof hung a red flag with a lion in the middle. Inside the shack, shelves were laden with shoes held together with elastic bands, one shelf reserved for new leather sandals with a stamped pattern. Three tall drums stood on the ground underneath them.
    â€œRas Walker, blessings!” Shad hailed the man behind the counter, and hammer in hand, the man touched his heart in greeting. “I have a nice Canadian lady visiting us who need to talk to you. She is the baby mother for Mistah Eric and she writing about Rasta people.” Shannon winced a little at the introduction, understanding for the first time what her standing in Largo was now: Eric’s