The Lower Deep Read Free Page B

chunks of driftwood littering the shore attested to that. Some weeks ago, at the cove called Anse Douce, a whole rose apple tree—a big one—had been washed ashore.
    The tree had come to rest among coral boulders in a wide gully that ran from the beach's backdrop of sea-grape bushes to the water's edge. It was gone now, Henninger noted. Someone must have chopped it up for firewood, or to make charcoal.
    Peering at the boulder-choked gully as he trudged past it, the manager felt his fear return. His hands began to tremble. He thrust them into the pockets of his khaki shorts and clenched his fists. He must stop being terrified here, he told himself angrily. But the fear rode him like an Old Man of the Sea until, with the cove well behind him, he came to the fishermen's shacks at Pointe Pierre on the outskirts of the town.
    There was a road now, leading up past yards where fishermen worked on boats and nets and on bamboo fish traps shaped like oversize coffins.
    Climbing up through the town, it took him between rows of assorted small shops with, here and there among them, some of the town's better homes. Second-story verandas with rickety railings overhung the sidewalks. The deserted open-air marketplace was dark and spooky under its half-acre roof of banana thatch, its tables bare because this was not the once-a-week day for buying and selling.
    On passing one of the better-class homes, Henninger returned a cheerful "Good morning" from one George Benson, an American hired by the St. Joe government seven or eight months before to help the area's fishermen solve a few of their many problems. A little farther on, at the end of his journey, he climbed the steps of an old, unpainted wooden building that wore on its door an unpretentious sign indicating it was the office of one Dr. Louis Clermont.
    Entering, the Azagon's manager smiled sadly at Simone Valcin, the doctor's plump and cheerful receptionist, and said, "He's not expecting me. I hope to God he'll see me."
    "Of course he will." Rising, the young St. Joseph woman opened an inner door and said, "Mr. Henninger is here, Doctor." And then to Henninger, "Go right in, please."
    At his desk, looking a lot like a brown-skinned Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Clermont motioned his caller to a chair. He was, Henninger knew, one of the best medics in all St. Joseph, a truly brilliant man who had done his schooling in Paris as so many of the island's elite did. Without doubt a lucrative practice in the capital could be his for the asking, but he'd been born here in Dame Marie and felt needed here. Peasant patients came to him from miles around.
    "Paul, you must lose some weight."
    Henninger sighed. "I know, I know. And I will. But that isn't why I'm here."
    "That other business again, eh?"
    "Doctor, I'm frightened! Believe me, I don't make such an admission easily, but it's true. My nights have become nightmares!"
    Folding his long-fingered hands over his belt, the man who looked like Lincoln leaned back and waited.
    "I am not a hypochondriac, Doctor," Henninger said carefully. "At thirty-seven I am physically and mentally sound, so far as I know. As a young man in Belgium I played world-class soccer. Now all at once I'm behaving strangely."
    Clermont frowned. It was a little hard for him to picture this barrel-shaped man playing a game that required agility and stamina. He solemnly nodded, though, then just as solemnly listened.
    The manager of the Azagon, that retreat for alcoholics, was walking in his sleep, it seemed. Not aimlessly. Not just strolling around the former hotel where that aging Dr. Driscoll and his staff did whatever it was they did with their patients. He was sleepwalking out of the place, leaving the grounds, finding himself at times as much as a mile away when he came to.
    "I have never in my life done this before," Henninger moaned. "Yet in the past two weeks it has happened eight times!"
    "That's a lot of walking, Paul."
    The expected smile was not forthcoming. "Then there