Nellis thought about it a moment. Then he said, “Draw straws. Three of them can stand down for the night and have cocktails. We take the bottles when we leave, and rotate drinking parties every few nights.”
“You’re an officer and a gentleman, Sir,” Master Sergeant Rice had said, then left the captain alone on the roof.
Rice found a uniformed Haitian waiting for him downstairs, a grizzled pot-belly who said he was a major, the first of what would be a steady stream of visitors through the early evening, until the Americans finally locked the gate. Rice thought they were creepy—the FADH and whatever else they called themselves, some in uniform, some not. Creepy. They smiled big behind sunglasses and grabbed their crotches, talking loud and not seeming to care if Rice couldn’t understand a word they said.
And now, next morning, enjoying his cigar behind the gate, Rice saw the day’s first group approaching. These looked different, though. Scared, for one thing. They completely lacked the swagger and arrogance of the official visitors from yesterday. Older, too, these men.
This’ll be interesting,Rice thought, grinding his cigar out under his boot, turning to go inside to wake Captain Nellis. The officer could deal with the visitors while Rice took a few men in a Humvee to scout a permanent place to billet. Battalion said to prepare for a year in Haiti. They might not be able to stay at the Hard Rock Café, but Rice had no intention of being uncomfortable. He was getting too old for that shit.
The air warmed as the sun filled the sky over Jacmel. The boy and his blind sister sat outside their crate, the newsprint pages ofLa Nouveliste spread on the ground under them. They ate the few beans he’d bought with thegourde from the old chicken men. He clucked at her from time to time, reaching over once to wipe her chin. She swiped at him with her hand when he did, waving him away. Then he reached and wiped her chin again.
They were refugees twice. First to the small shanty camp outside Jacmel, last year when their maman died. Then last week the shanties and theSIDA hospital beside—and, it seemed, everything on that part of the mountain—slid to the sea in the hurricane, the whole world north of Jacmel flowing in mud to the ocean. The boy and his sister were lucky; they’d been caught in a flow and he’d barely gotten them out. Many whom they’d known had gone to the water. Whether they died in the mud and trauma on the way down or drowned later, the outcome was the same. The undertow was vicious inBaye Jacmel ; in a hurricane, no chance. If there were bodies they weren’t to be seen again in this world.
Maybe they made it to Miami, the boy thought. Everyone talked about Miami like it was heaven, golden heaven. Maybe his neighbors floated off to Miami.
That was a happy thought.
After the storm, drenched and alone, the boy got his sister into town. He found the crate near the Place d’Armes, and turned it so wind didn’t push the rain in. Perfect. Home.
Now, eating breakfast, he clucked at his sister again. They must hurry, he said to her. A woman had told him that Americans were coming today, in a ship. She said he’d want to be up front, first in line when the Americans walked down the pier. Surely, they’d have food to share. Something.
Standing, he looked at their wooden crate. He hated to leave it unguarded. There was nothing in it—they had no belongings, only the two plastic buckets that provided his livelihood—but the crate itself was shelter, hard to come by. Hard won and easily lost. The opportunity to see the Americans come in was too great to miss, though, and he had to take his sister. Her wide, blind eyes were their ticket. The woman this morning had told him so, had explained it all to him.
Come on, let’s go, he said. He put his arms around her, rubbing up and down until she giggled. He kissed the top of her head, then hand in hand they left their crate and themarché behind, stacked empty buckets swinging in his free hand, winding down through Jacmel to the port below.
The ships rose as two dots on the horizon, far down the long, sheltered bay. One overtook the other, and within an hour was clearly identifiable to any by its gray as a military vessel. The other ship was blue, dark blue, and moved it seemed not at all, except when you looked from time to time it was clearer in vision so must have moved.
There was one narrow pier, concrete, pointing out into the water, a single finger beckoning. It filled quickly, a mass of people so solid some fell into the water, pushed by accident and then by joke. Mostly it was laughs, and the swimmers were pulled back up. The gray ship, small for the American military, was huge for Jacmel. It grew, funny looking with its massive raised ramp. The ramp slowly began descending, allowing the people on the pier to see inside the ship’s open well-deck: Haitian trucks, Red Cross, overfilled. When the people realized the ship was headed for the black-sand beach, the pier emptied, swift as a draining sink, everyone moving to the shoreline. An American Humvee with two soldiers pulled up, the captain and master sergeant from the Special Forces detachment, watching the ship’s progress.
The crew stood battlestations, but the loosest possible definition of the word. In Voodoo Lounge, on the port bow, Sergeant Tory Harris and PFC Brian Temple sat on two deck bits, weapons locked and loaded but safed and loose in their grips. They were up here less for security than just it was a good place to watch. Tory had a pair of binoculars around her neck; she raised them to her eyes.
“What do you see, Jersey?”
“Heaven.”
If riding into Port-au-Prince had been creeping into the belly of something urban—shadowed and smog-filled—Jacmel rose in their view distinctly Caribbean, tropical and overgrown, Old World. The town clung to its hills like Port-au-Prince, a cathedral rising in the center, but the comparison ended there. Spanish tile and thatch roof sat on pink and tan plaster, bright blues and yellows dotted throughout, and the brown-red of old brick.
Tory pulled the leash over her head and handed the binoculars to Temple. He let his rifle hang on its strap around his neck and put the glasses to his face with both hands. He whistled a happy note.
“You think they got breadfruit here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What’s breadfruit?”
He lowered the binocs. “From that movie—Mutiny on the Bounty.”
“It was a book.”
“Whatever. Place looked like this. They spent the whole flick eating breadfruit. I always thought it looked good.”
“On my honor as an NCO, I’ll try to find you some breadfruit.”
“Yum,” he said, raising the glasses again. Then yelled, “MistahChris -tian!”
Tory took a long swig from her canteen. The bay here was not at all like the Port-au-Prince basin. It was narrow, long—hills and jungle rising sharp to the north, a low, clear peninsula to the south. There were ranch houses with satellite dishes there, new-looking iron gates and swimming pools—Mac had told them it was Colombian drug lords, Cuban smugglers, Duvalierists, all hunkered down for the American occupation, nervous on their private coast.
“Nice neighborhood,” Temple said. “Doesn’t seem too devastated to me.”
Tory was looking for why they were here, and now she found it. It hadn’t been obvious, she realized, because why they were here looked like nothing—there was nothing there anymore, which is why they were here. It was a swath of brown, cut into the hillside just north of town, a wide mudslide that had taken everything in its path and dumped it into the sea.
“There,” she said, touching Temple’s arm and pointing, taking the binoculars from him.
On the starboard quarterdeck the Steward stood at the mounted .50-cal machine gun, binoculars up, sweeping the beach. Victor Charlie came through the hatch from the wardroom, late for battlestations. He reached and tried to grab the binoculars from the Steward’s hand. “Gimme that,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” Roy said, holding tight.
Victor Charlie was hung over and his head hurt. “Now,Sergeant,” he said, pulling harder.
Roy took a step back, not giving up the binoculars. “Goddamn it, wait!” he said, a wounded look on his fac
e. “Who’s fucking this chicken, anyway? I’m the machine-gun NCO.”
Victor Charlie looked at him, prepared to yell, then couldn’t be bothered. He waved him off, turning and lighting a cigarette instead. “It wouldn’t kill you to saySir, ” he mumbled.
“Yes, Sir,” the Steward said, eyeing the beach again.
“Worthless cook.”
Riddle sat on the deck behind the .50 cal, leaning against the bulkhead, his helmet to one side. Eyes drooping, then closing, he snored, loudly. Victor Charlie leaned over, putting his lips an inch from Riddle’s ear, then yelled:“Wake up!”
Riddle jumped and grabbed his helmet, mumbling incoherently.
Victor Charlie smoked, watching him. After a couple of puffs he said, “How long you been awake now, Riddle?”
“I dunno,” he said. “Two three days. Since Port-au-Prince.”
“Damn, Riddle,” the Steward said, turning and handing the binoculars to Victor Charlie. “You’re screwed. A zombie for sure.”
“You done screwed the pooch, man,” Victor Charlie said. “Kissed the baby. Shot the president. Fucked the monkey—”
“Shut up, man!” Riddle yelled, almost crying. “Just shut the fuck up!”
Victor Charlie turned his head so Riddle couldn’t see him smile. “That’s ‘Shut up,Sir, ’ asshole.”
Ramp most of the way down, the LSV stood off the beach like a gaping mouth. The Haitian drivers had all turned their trucks on, waiting to drive. The well-deck quickly filled with sooty diesel exhaust and the bosun ran from door to door yelling at the drivers to turn their engines off again. The men sat in the cabs of their trucks, eating Army apples and waving at their countrymen on the beach.
The ship approached, slow, then pulled back. The skipper moved the nose five degrees, tried again, then had to pull back. There was a sandbar offshore, too high even with the peak tide, he couldn’t get the tip of the ramp on dry ground. Their Humvee might have done it, maybe, but these Haitian trucks wouldn’t have made it two feet before sinking then cementing in place, yards offshore. On the bridge, Mannino paced, chain-smoking, anxious and muttering to himself.
The crowd gathered to watch had settled in the shade under a line of trees, most of them sitting now, enjoying the show. A cheer would go up as the ship pushed forward, then excitement belayed as the vessel rose on the sand and pulled off to try again. The men in the crowd chattered and pointed, quarterbacking the skipper’s moves and decisions, each with a solid idea of how best it should be done. Up on the bridge, Mannino received none of their telepathic messages, just a headache, growing behind his temples.
An hour into it, the Special Forces master sergeant picked up the radio in the detachment’s Humvee and answered the ship’s call. They talked back and forth awhile. The ship’s skipper asked a question and Rice squinted into the sun, looking over the single, long concrete pier jutting straight out into the small bay. “I dunno, Sir,” he said into the microphone, “looks stable enough to me.”
There were a few seconds of silence, then Mannino’s voice came back through the speaker: “Why don’t you put that Humvee of yours on the end of it and find out?”
Rice looked at Captain Nellis, and both men shrugged. Nellis stepped out of the vehicle—no reason why both of them should take a swim this morning—and Rice drove off the beach, up and around then back to the pier. He eyeballed it, shrugged again, then slowly drove down its length, stopping at the very end. He sat there a minute, then picked up the microphone.
“Affirmative on stability.”
The trucks left the ship single file, off the ramp and down the pier into the cheering crowd. The ship sat like an extension, straight off, the skipper using tiny corrections in the main engines and bow-thruster to hold the nose absolutely steady while the Red Cross trucks moved. Fairly sure there would be no invasion against the ship from the starboard quarterdeck, Victor Charlie left Roy at their battlestation and walked forward. He lit a cigarette and watched the maneuver, looking up at Mannino pacing the bridge wing. “He’s really good,” Victor Charlie said aloud, to no one. The Army didn’t teach things like this.
The ship’s Humvee had remained shackled in an aft corner of the well-deck since they’d loaded in Fort Eustis. It was released now and fired off, pulling up behind the line of disembarking trucks. Inside, Pelton and Riddle sat alone, Pelton at the wheel.
“How long’s it supposed to take to get to this place?” Riddle asked. He was pale, unhealthy looking.
“Don’t know, man,” Pelton said, packing a line of dip behind his lip. “Hard to tell from the map. An hour or so, I guess.”
Riddle sighed, then removed his helmet and curled up on himself in the front seat. “I can’t take it anymore, P. I gotta sleep.”
“Hey, whatever you think is best, man. It’s your funeral.”
“Don’t let them bury me,” Riddle said, and was asleep before the Humvee cleared the ship’s ramp.
The lorry first in line to leave the ship was loaded with grain bags. Marc Hall pointed to it, picking the vehicle with the largest promise of comfort on what might be a long, bumpy ride to the hospital and the camp beyond. Tory crossed the well-deck forward to where he waited. He climbed up the back, then reached down for her rucksack and weapon.
“I’m surprised they even issue rucksacks to boat soldiers,” he said as she scrambled forward and settled in next to him, midtruck on a stack of the grain bags.
“Me, too,” she said. She pointed to the truck cab’s rear window before them, an illustrated picture pasted in it. “Who’s that?”
“Samedi,” he said. “The real Samedi. Papa Doc tried to be Samedi, too. Baron Samedi. Who knows, maybe he was. My mother had this same picture, inside a kitchen cabinet.”
“So your mother believed in Voodoo?”
“Vodoun—yes. Of course.”
“You wear a cross, though.” She’d seen it when he was showering, hanging between his dog tags—she spoke evenly, but felt her cheeks blush as she realized the implication. If Marc realized, made the connection, he didn’t show it.
“Yes,” he said. “I was raised Catholic. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
She looked at him, a question.
“They’re hand in hand, in Haiti. The Catholic Church, the real church, in Rome, would say it isn’t so, it couldn’t be so.” He sipped from his open canteen, wetting his lips. “But Rome is a long way from Gonaives.” He smiled.
Tory turned, squinting through the bright sun back over the well-deck to the ship’s house. She gazed up, Mac and the skipper on the bridge wing, both looking down at them. She raised a hand and Skipper raised a hand back. It was not a coincidence she was the sergeant picked to join Captain Hall on the relief run. There was another ship entering port behind them, a civilian missionary ship. Skip had taken her aside to tell her. “I don’t know who’s onboard now,” he’d said, but they both had a good idea—they both knew who had been onboard. She’d said simply, “It doesn’t matter. I would have volunteered to go anyway.” If Dick Wags had seen her leave he might have said something to her, but she never saw him—an absence so conspicuous she wondered if it was intentional: If he didn’t see her go, he couldn’t say anything.
Tory faced front again. The truck fired its rattling old diesel, belching fumes, and pulled forward slowly. The two Special Forces soldiers had kept the crowd off the pier, so there was a straight, empty shot off the ship to solid land. Tory held her breath a little as the truck’s tires began to roll—but the pier held.
The crowd didn’t roar like in Port-au-Prince, but the people cheered as the relief trucks rolled toward them, off the pier then onto the small, unpaved road winding from the harbor up into Jacmel. The cheer could barely be heard over the whine of the truck’s diesel engine. Marc Hall leaned in to ask her a question and she couldn’t hear that, either.
“What?” she said, waving at the people they passed, feeling slightly absurd and glorious all at once up here on the back of this truck, sun be
aming on her face. She felt like a GI, like a hero, like she was needed. It was a good feeling. Especially after Port-au-Prince. A good feeling.
Marc put his mouth next to her ear. “I said, ‘And what religion are you?’”
“None, really,” she said. “Why?”
Marc didn’t answer at first, then leaned over to her again. “Because,” he said, “I noticed youdon’t wear a cross with your dog tags.”
Chapter
25
Dick Wags waited for Scaboo in the crew’s mess, standing alone with a cup of coffee, staring out the window. The younger sergeant stuck his head in, and the two left the ship by the gangway, the first time the gangway had been lowered since they were in Haiti. After the truck roll-off, Mannino had put the ship starboard-side-to, directly across the pier from where the ragged blue missionary ship tied off portside-to. The two sergeants stopped to salute the flag and the quarterdeck, one at a time, then quick about-faced and headed down the stairs. Also for the first time in Haiti, the two wore soft caps instead of helmets. Dick Wags had his rifle slung across his back barrel-down, but neither had their flak jacket or LBE suspenders and pistol belt. Scaboo kept shrugging his shoulders as they walked down the gangway; he felt naked and strange leaving the ship without the extra weight.
On the pier they both lit cigarettes. TheAgape ’s gangway was steps away, but they took a minute. The pier was empty, T.K. and Temple and a deckie named Carver standing guard at the end of it. T.K. had his helmet off, acoustic guitar strapped around his neck, murdering what sounded to Dick Wags like a Bob Marley song, a gaggle of Haitian children gathered around him dancing and clapping. Scaboo walked across the pier, smoking, looking up and down the length of theAgape. No one was visible on deck above them, but they could hear people, the sounds of early dinner maybe, silverware and chatter. The sides of the ship were pitted and rough under the faded blue paint, tired old steel, but not too bad with rust around the waterline.
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