Later, Lin would not be able to recall the exact moment at which he was grabbed by the collar. Things had gone gray. He remembered two malnourished boys standing over him on the sand, their bellies sticking out like brown gourds over pinlike legs. They were probably from one of those families that lived in the wooden shacks just inland from there. He used to sell things to some of those families on credit until Little Man’s brother put a stop to it.
The boys had managed to drag Lin all the way up to the dry part of the sand. He lay there, spent and ashamed. He hadn’t even been able to kill himself properly. Soon after he got home, Pearl came running toward the house, wagging her arms in front of her, oblivious to what he had just gone through.
What was she saying? She was blabbing on about a local fellow, the one they called Short Shirt. Did the woman not see that Lin was soaking wet?
“He used to work for Little Man, remember?” Pearl was saying. The young man, she said, had been caught trying to poison Little Man’s brother by putting something in his drink, and police now were accusing him of murdering Little Man two years earlier. Didn’t Mister Lin see? Covey was no longer the main suspect.
So that was that. With any luck, this would mean no more threats from Clarence Henry’s family, no more wondering if someone might hit Lin over the head and drop him downriver where the crocodiles liked to feed. But all of this had come too late to save his daughter. And Lin would still be forced to work like a coolie in his own shops.
A more honorable man might have headed back to the shore for another attempt at killing himself. But Lin was, fundamentally, a cowardly man. He was also a gambling man. He couldn’t help but think that one day, he would find a way to win back everything. Everything, that is, except his daughter, Covey.
Short Shirt
Most people around town knew Short Shirt Higgins, but until that moment, Pearl would never have thought him relevant to Covey Lyncook’s story. Short Shirt was as skinny as a shadow but tall, and that was how he got his nickname. The shirts that his sister had sewn for him when he was still in eighth form continued to fit his slender body as he grew into manhood, the hems inching up, up, up, until you could see the brown of his stomach.
For a poor yout like Short Shirt, there were few options available but to work for Little Man Henry. Eventually, Short Shirt earned enough to buy himself two shirts that covered his torso, and trousers that reached all the way down to his shoes. But the nickname stuck.
By the time Short Shirt turned twenty-five, no one called him by his given name, except his parents and sister. His sister, though, hardly talked anymore. Earlier that year, she’d been beaten and left for dead under an oleander bush. The police said no one knew who had done this, but Short Shirt knew, and he was going to make the man pay.
Short Shirt’s sister had complained, more than once, about the persistent advances of Little Man’s brother, Percival. But what was Short Shirt to do, being in their family’s employ? At the hospital, his sis clutched his hand and whispered her attacker’s name before falling unconscious. After she left the hospital, she was shaky and slow-talking and given to occasional seizures, having taken the bulk of Percival Henry’s beating about the head.
Short Shirt’s mother had unwittingly supplied him with the solution. His mother had grown up among the ancient, forested hills and limestone caverns in the center of the island. She had taught her children to avoid plants like scratch bush, maiden plum, and burn wood. She had made them memorize the looks of things that they were never to put into their mouths.
One afternoon in 1967, Short Shirt was caught dripping water off the leaf of a poisonous plant into a drink that had been prepared for Percival Henry. Short Shirt, of all people! He didn’t seem the type. But this was what could happen to the heart of a young man whose sister had been treated like she was rubbish when, in fact, she was a princess.
No one liked the Henry brothers and their ways, but everyone agreed you couldn’t go around poisoning people unless you made sure you could get away with it. After his arrest, Short Shirt confessed and explained his motives, but he consistently denied his involvement in the murder of Little Man two years earlier. He hadn’t even been in town that day. Eventually, Short Shirt went to jail for trying to poison Percival Henry but was never taken to court for Clarence Henry’s murder.
Pearl knew that Short Shirt couldn’t have killed Little Man, but for Pearl, the most important thing was that his case had raised too many questions about the unsolved murder for Covey to remain the obvious suspect. The gossip around town was that perhaps Coventina Lyncook had merely taken advantage of the fatal collapse of her husband and run off without looking back. And who, they admitted, wouldn’t have done the same? Maybe one day, Pearl thought, Covey would be able to return home.