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On her way to The Traffic Light, Peta&039;s pager buzzed

She ignored it at first

The restaurant where she&039;d been headed was so named because the owners had imported and erected what had, until recently, been the only traffic light on the island The traffic light didn&039;t work, nor was it meant to do so It was a curiosity, intended for no other purpose than to direct people to stop and sample the food Of course, the truth was that the place was already so popular with the locals that they had all the custo only because it wasforward to stopping in at The Traffic Light and eating Maggie&039;s oildown She had never been good atthe Grenadian national stew of breadfruit cooked in coconut etables, , but she loved to eat it Especially now, in early August, when lobster season was in full swing and Maggie could be persuaded to throw in the occasional tail

That was the way Arthur had liked it best too

The two of theht once aof poetry Since Maggie would not accept payment froe for the meal Arthur didn&039;t mind In fact, he occasionally read some of his own scribbles to an enthusiastic audience Peta only half listened, drea a mutiny because he had used essential water for his breadfruit saplings instead of giving it to his crew

The pager buzzed again insistently

Peta pulled to the side of the road and checked the number It was her service Everyone&039;s service, really, since it was the only halfway efficient one on the island

Hoping it was sorabbed the cell phone from her purse and called in

"One of your patients called A girl Patty Grant She says ato do with Carnival Says the house is in the bushes and hard to find, so she&039;ll send her brother out to the road to flag you down"

Though she didn&039;t recognize the name, Peta made a note of the address, apparently a shanty in the rain forest, on the road to the Grand E´ tang, the island&039;s dorhed heavily So much for oildown

The whole island was only twenty by twelve miles As the crow flies, the house was probably no ht miles away, but it would take her the better part of an hour to get there The road through the rain-forested mountain was far and away the best on the island The proble to it Most of the secondary roads barely deserved the name They were often unpaved, and those that were had more potholes than paveh the countryside, almost as if to make up for the fact that there were no poisonous snakes on the island

Hungry, she reached into her pocket for a protein bar and settled into the driving,as she always did at the spectacular landscape and the variety of fruit there The rain forest around her contained an astonishing- the island&039;s o, cocoa, apple, soursop, cashew, avocado, plue The list of edibles was endless

For those whose taste ran to meat, there were all ion The forest hid the armadillo or tatoo, the manicou or opossum, not to speak of the Mona h her open , Peta could feel the increasing hu, she had clai not to think

She passed a house where several young htly colored satins Carnival dancers preparing for the next day&039;s parade

Carnival season in Grenada was joyous for so in the streets and strange business afoot as gangs of young locals, faces painted with tar, created equal parts of music and mayhem They wore masks and devil costuine oil and ju you close to dance with thereasy black residue

As a child, she had been terrified of the in both personas of hell and da redemption, too, to those who did not thwart them As an adult, she avoided thehout Carnival in case she ran into them anyway

The Jab Jab Molassi

Another all- Arthur&039;s tales of his years a them

It took her a minute to remember the last time she had participated in the parade, or any of the revelry of Grenada&039;s late-summer festival She had told herself that she didn&039;t have time for that, either In truth, neither the activities nor the hedonism held any appeal, but at this tiust, the people of Grenada geared up for the days of revelry as if they were readying for war

Beginning with the Rainbow Festival in St Andrew&039;s, during the first weekend in August, big tents mushroomed around the island for the steel-band and calypso competitions Because the calypsos were, in the main, politically based, the lyrics inevitably spawned hts than were usual on the island and, under cover of Carnival&039;s loose attitude, more assaults on tourist

This year however, there were fewer political songs, and many more that stretched thethe frenzy row ever fiercer, Peta could not but wonder how many - or ho - Grenadians remembered that Carnival was supposed to be about Lent It had been easier to remember when it coincided with the Lenten season Once the influx of suust, none but the ht to its origins

She chuckled someryly at herself

For the first ti As an intelligent being and as a doctor, she had an intense awareness of life&039;s transience, but she&039;d never concerned herself hat lay at the end of her tunnel

Not so these days

These days she thought a lot about her own mortality

Doubtless, this was related to Arthur&039;s death This would be her first Carnival without hiht away, of course, but ultimately When it was her time

Meanwhile, the annual celebration had to be endured

In the glooht flashed ahead of her Glancing at the odo the location of her house call She had been averaging no more than fifteen miles an hour Even had she not recalled the location on her own, she was hardly likely to have ht at the side of the road

She stopped the car and stuck her head out of the open

The ht&039;s beam into her eyes She covered them with one hand and, with the other, opened the car door

"How&039;s the patient?"

"Patient be dead"