Voodoo Lounge

by Christian Bauman

  “Stupid name,” Pelton said.

  Riddle shook his head. “Nah, bro. Makes sense. It’s a definition.” He put his hands up, pantomiming. “Bus hits tourist—tap! Tourist hits ground—tap!”

  Pelton laughed. Tory, deep behind combat goggles this afternoon, didn’t react. She hadn’t slept well and wasn’t talkative.

  “Tap-tap,Sergeant Harris,” Riddle said. Tory heard, but didn’t answer. She kept stealing glances at Pelton, when she thought he wasn’t watching. It was disorienting, next to him; her dream of firing a shot into his head still vivid, his mute, pleading eyes and the spray of blood and tissue.

  The three were waiting for atap-tap of ten men hired to accompany the Haitian lorries already driven up the LSV’s ramp and secured to deck. The trucks were filled with food, medicine, drums of water and fuel, blankets, light construction material—all from the Red Cross. For Jacmel, hit by the storm.

  “Here it comes,” Tory said, ditching her cigarette. Over the heads of the crowd gathered outside the gate they could see an old van, painted bright stripes of blue and red and orange, dirty Red Cross flag flapping from a makeshift antenna. The vehicle was packed with a group of Haitian men in clean, white shirts, one in a Chicago Bulls ball cap. “That’s it,” she said to the corporal in charge of the gate detail. “The Red Cross guys.”

  The corporal gave his helmet a push back. “We need to go ahead and get some kind of ID from them,” he drawled. He didn’t like this chick sergeant, standing at his gate.

  “I’m gonna go out on a limb here, Corporal,” Tory said, “and guess that they left their library cards at home.”

  The kid twitched his jaw but didn’t say anything.

  Tory took the corporal through the gate with her to speak to the driver. Rifle in right hand, she ran her left quickly across her LBE suspenders and web belt as they walked out, making sure everything was tight, prepared to push through a crush of people. But the crowd parted with the gate opening, giving them room. Thetap-tap driver was an older man, crinkled around the eyes and mouth. He spoke perfect accented English and gave the corporal repeated assurances of their legitimacy, convincing him in the end. Tory stayed quiet, then pointed to where the LSV sat berthed, across port. They could see the lower radar turning lazily, and a group of soldiers on the bridge wing. Too far to see who they were.

  “You drive there and wait, Sir,” she said through the window to the van driver. “We’ll follow on foot and meet you.”

  “Oui,”he said, smiling large, and she smiled back and patted the man’s arm. All the men in the van waved as the vehicle rolled past, into the gate, and she raised an arm in return.

  The crowd moved in on Tory and the corporal, pressing forward in a slow, warm wave of flesh. The kid looked nervous for a second. He tried talking as he backstepped away.

  “Okay, then,” he said, and “Afternoon, ma’am,” and “All right, little fella,” and then the Haitians were shaking his hand and touching his arm—Bonjou!andWelcome, welcome! andYes America! —and Tory noticed he was trying to keep the muzzle of his rifle pointed to the ground and she wondered if he knew what a nice guy he’d suddenly turned into.

  “Hey,” she called out, amused, but he didn’t hear and then she was doing the same talking, “Pleased to meet you, Sir,” and “Hey there, girl,” and stepping back and stepping back and then she stopped and stepped forward, one straight step forward, arm extended, and gripped the outstretched hand of a young woman, a girl with dark, duty-smooth skin. “Hello,” Tory said, and the young woman shook her hand vigorously and laughed and spoke so fast Tory caught none of it, even the parts in English, but both smiled and they shook hands and Tory just said, “Hello,” and then again, “Hello.”

  Gate buttoned and everyone back in place, the corporal made it a point to shake hands with the chick sergeant before she turned and followed the van and her two guys back toward the boat they said wasn’t the Navy. The corporal’s name was Miller and he was smiling now—whistling, actually, when Lieutenant Vine came back—his head in a different place about all this.

  “I dunno, Sir,” he said. “I guess they’re just like regular people.”

  The officer looked out at the crowd. He was eating an apple. He swallowed, then said, “Women? Or Haitians?”

  But Corporal Miller had turned and didn’t hear the lieutenant’s question.

  The LSV’s cavern of an engine room gleamed with fresh coats of white and haze gray on the bulkheads and polished deckplating you could eat from. The bilge was wiped clean, by hand, weekly. Under bright fluorescent lights, Dick Wags and Scaboo went through the presails for the mains, spinning valves for water, fuel, oil. Both in coveralls, and Dick Wags had a sunburn from sitting out on the fantail most of the morning, smoking cigarettes and watching the Army settle in to the port. Scaboo gave a thumbs-up to Chief, sitting in the box, and the two massive locomotive engines whined then roared to life. Dick Wags tapped Scaboo on the shoulder, pointing forward, and the younger sergeant nodded then climbed the long stairs topside to go presail the bow-thruster engine. The ship was ready to move.

  The deck crew was up, the whole platoon, regular shift or not, in coveralls and gloves on the well-deck or in uniform and sunglasses on the bridge. T.K. guided the Red Cross van into the slot they’d saved for it, right inside the ramp. Behind him, Arnold walked the two rows of lorries, checking tension on the chains locking the vehicles in place. He’d never seen such a load on an Army vessel; rusted-out old trucks painted twenty different ways, the drivers all sitting up in their cabs because they’d been told by Victor Charlie not to move—and I mean don’t even lift your leg to fart!—until someone briefed them on where exactly they were allowed to go on the vessel—and that’s probably fucking nowhere!“Don’t yell at the boukies, you fucking chink,” Skip had said to Victor Charlie, and Arnold just about lost it on that one, tears popping. “What are you laughing at, Staff Sergeant Arnold?” Victor Charlie had growled. “You’re as boukie as the Haitians.” Arnold rubbed his palm on the officer’s head, unable to stop laughing. “Yes, Sir,” he said, “but better boukie than chink, right?”

  In the dry-goods storeroom off the galley the Steward checked on a plastic vat filled with fermenting juice and fruit. It smelled godawful—like a jar of kimchee set in the sun,he thought—but what it would eventually produce could be mixed with Coke andWhat the fuck, Roy decided,we run out of real booze this’ll start tasting better overnight. Dick Wags and New Jersey had the biggest stash onboard—of the enlisted anyway—jealously guarded and shared with few. But the two bottles of Jack and two bottles of tequila under the bottom drawer of their cabin desk was already a third gone, and they were less than two weeks out of home, one day in-country. The ship might hit Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico for fuel sometime in the next few weeks, but maybe not. That’s why Roy had started the brewing process. Just in case. When you go, you go for real.

  There were ten soldiers at the gate. They’d been on it five hours, and the yawns were starting to go around.

  A PFC named Wheeler stood next to Corporal Miller and said, “Who knew this would be boring?”

  “There’s just no goddamn war here,” Miller said. “There’s no war.”

  PFC Wheeler—who played bass in a Dead cover band at the Fort Drum USO’s talent nights—mimed grabbing a microphone and said, “Can I get a little more war in the monitors, please?”

  The crowd on the other side of the fence was pushing less but no smaller. Lively and moving about, people talking to one another, letting newcomers and children up front for a good view of theblancs in their helmets and green camouflage. Every few minutes a great cheer would go up, the Americans catching shades:Aristide! Lavalas! was the hands-down winner, withClinton! (or just plainBeee-ill! ) in close second.

  Drums showed up, drummers scattered through the crowd, the people moving and chanting in rhythm now. The air temperature pegged well beyond anything Corporal Miller had ever felt before, every move he made slow and heavy like he
was under water. He pushed the goggles off his eyes and up on his helmet, splashed his face from a canteen. Out in the street they were stomping now, dancing, some of the women spinning like tops.

  Boy, I’d like a nice iced tea,Miller thought, and stepped back away from the gate so he could smoke a cigarette.

  On the ramp, Tory and Pelton stood under the burning sun, watching as T.K. and Arnold secured chain locks on the Red Cross van. The Haitians were all out of their vehicles now, gathered in the shade of the tunnel under the house at the aft end of the well-deck. Riddle had run up to his cabin to grab some money, and he came back now, trotting across the well-deck, Temple right behind. Some boys were selling wood carvings and other trinkety things through a gap in the fence a few hundred yards south, past a massive mound of rusted scrap metal and useless ship’s parts.

  “Y’all set?” Riddle said, winded and puffing.

  “You’re gonna be in Haiti a year,” Tory said.

  “Early bird gets the worm, New Jersey.”

  “Don’t miss the boat,” she said, and Riddle winked, him and Temple and Pelton jumping to the concrete and moving down the pier.

  Tory turned to take a last look at the port before walking up the ramp and then there was Marc Hall, coming at the LSV from around the warehouses. He raised a hand when he saw it was her, and she waved back, taking a step toward him then stopping herself.

  “Sergeant Harris,” he said, stepping on the ramp, a smile on his face. It was what she needed, that smile, and she gave it back to him.

  “Sir,” she said, and the habit was ingrained to raise her right arm in a salute but this was a combat zone—down range—and you don’t salute down range and her arm went straight out instead and he grasped her hand with both hands and leaning in close he said, “It’s good to see you.”

  Chapter

  16

  The crowd around the port fence pressed again, moving with the rhythm of the drums but heavy and thick as the afternoon air. Tight and close, feet padded and arms waved. Naked and half-naked children zoomed throughout, through and around legs, over and under boxes, chasing and racing in circles. The noise was louder, distinct cries ringing out, singing, yells of liberation and yells of curiosity and mostly it seemed yelling for the sake of yelling. Corporal Miller stopped hearing it, mostly; he didn’t know what they were saying anyway, beyond the realization that the yells weren’t threatening to him. He stood behind the gate with his squad, too hot for anyone to talk now, moving slowly or not at all if possible. Watching, watching, eyes back and forth across the sea of bodies.

  There was a scream then, sharp, and he didn’t hear it because he’d tuned it all out, and he didn’t hear the next one either. But the crowd changed, like a pocket of cold in a warm lake, turning attention from him to something behind, and that’s what did it: realizing suddenly he wasn’t looking at anyone’s face anymore, just seeing their backs, and that snapped him out like snapping sober from a daydream.

  “What’s—” he said to PFC Wheeler next to him, and then the air was sliced by a real scream, a woman’s scream, high and horrible, from somewhere beyond what the soldiers could see.

  As if by invisible order, the rifles in the hands of the American soldiers all steadied, brought down from high port arms or up from low relaxed at-ease. Lieutenant Vine rushed from the hut, crossing the few steps to the gate, and his presence, the look on his face, was a second invisible command, all the squad pushing down the thumbs of their right hands, pushing their M-16s off safe.

  Marc Hall turned, hearing something, but couldn’t see the gate from the ramp of the LSV or the crowd on the other side. Tory thought for a second he was drawing away from her, then she heard it, too—a scream, then another, then a yell.

  “That was—” he said but was cut off midsentence by the blast of the ship’s foghorn, a long and low note, then Top’s voice on the loudspeaker: “All ashore going ashore. Deck parties to stations.”

  Marc Hall took a step forward on the ramp, one foot planted on the pier, looking in the direction of the port gate they couldn’t see.

  “No time,” Tory said. She cocked her head toward the well-deck. “Ramp’s going up.”

  “That was screaming,” he said.

  “I think so.”

  He looked up, straight up, to the bow over their heads. The portside line and anchor station. Voodoo Lounge.

  “Can you get me up there?” he said.

  “C’mon.”

  She turned and crossed the ramp in five quick steps, Marc Hall right behind. There was a fixed ladder inside the well-deck, and as she climbed up she could hear the winch turning for the ramp chains and felt the vessel shift slightly as the foot of the ramp lifted from the pier.

  The crowd parted in almost a straight line, bodies pushing back against the fence on either side of the gate, those closest to the road running away. There were two gray Jeeps out there, a group of Haitian men in caps and uniform standing around and looking at something, all of them with heavy riot sticks in their hands.

  “Who the hell is that?” Corporal Miller said. Lieutenant Vine came up behind him. He drew his pistol from its holster.

  “Police—sort of,” he said. “Beaucoup bad.”

  The crowd shifted again and then they could see where the screams came from, both men’s shoulders jerking back as they realized what they were seeing. Out by the road four or five FADH troops were taking turns plunging into the crowd with their riot sticks flailing, swinging high, connecting with heads and necks and chests, dropping people around them, writhing, bloody and moaning. The people had turned away from the Americans at the port, turned toward the FADH, and the Haitian troops were taunting them, pointing at individuals they recognized or pretended to recognize, yelling then laughing then yelling again and every now and then reaching forward and grabbing someone by the collar or hair and dragging them into their ranks, pushing them away or smacking them down. Miller saw a young man, a teenager, crying and running to a woman on the ground, bending to her, and as he bent a stick came swinging down and cracked across his lower back, dropping him across her.

  “Hey!” Miller yelled, involuntarily, pointing at what he’d seen, then turning and yelling again, “Hey!” He couldn’t get his mouth to form any other words.

  The ten American soldiers in Miller’s squad were all on the gate and fence now, pressed as tight to it as the Haitians on the other side had been. Out in the street, one of the FADH leaning against a Jeep, watching, noticed the Americans. He nudged the man next to him and pointed, and both of them broke into big grins. The bigger of the two raised his arm then in a greeting toward the American soldiers, letting it hang in the air a few moments, then waving from the wrist, still smiling, still lounging against the Jeep—one professional to another,Yes, don’t mind us. He yelled something then, at the Americans, and Corporal Miller could have sworn he said “Crowd control.”

  On the pier, Riddle, Pelton, and Temple were flat-out running back to the boat, T.K. standing in the pilot door, waving them on. They fell into the well-deck, pulling off their gear and dispersing to duty stations, T.K. securing the pilot door behind them.

  Forward, Scaboo came through the hatch from the bow-thruster room, wiping sweat from brow on the sleeve of his coveralls, dogging the hatch down tight. He turned to walk aft across the well-deck back to the engine room then saw a soldier above him on the ladder—Hall, the black captain from yesterday, with Tory Harris above, pulling herself onto the catwalk. Scaboo gripped the rungs and followed them up.

  “Open the gate! Open the fucking gate!” Miller was yelling to no one in particular. Turning around, looking for the lieutenant, he saw PFC Wheeler with rifle up, aiming, muzzle through the wire of the fence. Miller smacked his arm down. “You can’t shoot from here!” he ordered, then started pointing positions for Wheeler and the rest of the squad. “Let’s get this fucking gate open,” he said.

  Out at the Jeep, the FADH commander watched all this without moving, shifting his ey
es back and forth from his officers working through the crowd to watching the Americans in the port. He hadn’t moved when he saw one of the Americans level his rifle through the fence, and he didn’t move now. When Miller’s gaze passed in his direction, he waved again, pleasantly.

  Miller was looking in every direction at once. The lieutenant had completely disappeared. “Jesus H. Chr—” he said, then Vine came running from the hut. He’d ducked back in to get the handheld radio, and had it now to his ear as he ran.

  All right,Miller thought,now we’re in fucking business. He was a corporal—he couldn’t make a move like this without an officer, but his officer had arrived. He pointed at Wheeler and then at the still-closed gate. “Let’s go, man,” he said. He looked down to check that he had a round chambered then stepped forward as Wheeler fumbled with the latches on the gate. Miller drilled a stare at the FADH commander, then—without turning his head away—said to the lieutenant behind him, “I’m thinking Sir we’ll move through and forward and get him to—”

  Vine closed his fingers on Corporal Miller’s shoulder, cutting him off. “Hold it, Miller.”

  The corporal swiveled his head quick.

  “We can’t go out there,” the lieutenant said.

  Miller didn’t get it. “There’s no time to wait for another squad, Sir,” he said, thinking Vine was worried about numbers. Miller sure as hell wasn’t worried about numbers; he had ten M-16 rifles—fuck up a pack of stick-swinging boukie goons. “Price and Lopez can cover from here, me and Wheeler’ll take ’em down. We can’t wait, Sir.” As he spoke a FADH officer used both hands to bring his stick down directly on the head of a man who’d just gone to his knees. Amazingly, the man remained upright, almost hovering, certainly unconscious or perhaps dead but perfectly balanced. Eyes rolled up in his head, he swayed, once, twice, then the FADH officer kicked the man’s chest with his foot, knocking his body over.