“You got a name?” Riddle asked for the fifth time, but the boy didn’t understand.
“Ti garcon Qui jen ou relais?”the doctor asked.
“Henri,” said the boy.
“You got to stop following me, Henry,” Riddle said, “or I’ll marry your sister and take all your money.”
“Henri!” the boy said.
“Right.”
Tory explained Riddle’s near-zombification to Brinia Avril and the doctor burst out laughing.
“Thecoup poudre !” she said to him. “You thought you fell to thecoup poudre !”
“What’s that?”
“Zombipowder,” she said, exaggerating and rolling her accent.
“That’s it exactly.”
“Yes, except there is no such thing. It was a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
Riddle shook his head. “No, it was real,” he said. “I couldfeel it. Working in me.” He pounded his chest. “Only my strength of will and total powers of concentration kept it at bay.”
Pelton smacked him on the back of the helmet, walking past on his way to the Humvee. “You mean you talked it to death.”
Riddle stared after him, wounded. Then he thought about it, and slowly began to nod. “That’s it!” he said, snapping his fingers, Pelton already out of earshot. “Dude, you’re right. That’s what I did! I talked the zombie right out of me.”
No one was listening. They’d all walked away, except Henri and his sister. Riddle stooped down, talking directly to him. “I talked the zombie out, Henry,” he said. “I cured the voodoo curse. The great mystery of Haiti—solved, Henry. By me.”
“Henri!”
“Exactly.”
Across the hospital’s open yard, Pelton fired off the hummer’s engine. Tory wanted her two soldiers back on the boat before sunset, and already the afternoon shadows were long. They’d make the distance much faster without the convoy, but had to leave now.
“Riddle!” Pelton called.
“Gotta go, Henry,” Riddle said, shaking the boy’s hand, then taking one of the girl’s hands and clasping it. “Y’all keep it real.Vive le Haiti. ”
“Henri!” The boy stamped his foot.
“Variety is the spice of life, Henry,” Riddle said, pocketing his camera. “Expand that vocabulary, son.”
The hut was empty when Tory entered it, but Marc’s rucksack lay on one of the two cots, a spray of belongings across the cot from where Marc had been digging through his stuff. A notebook and papers, his flashlight, open shaving kit. Tory dropped her own ruck on the other cot, and her helmet. She unclipped her web belt and pulled off her flak jacket, folding it back together and laying it flat. She drank from one of her canteens and ran a few drops of water through her short hair. There was a small, green lizard on the hut wall over her cot and she watched to see if it would move but it didn’t. Outside she heard a baby crying, and a woman talking to another woman in Creole. It would be sundown soon; Tory hoped for some coolness in the air. Her belly rumbled, and she remembered how long it had been since chow.
She stepped over to Marc’s cot and without bending over used the fingers of her right hand to open farther the already-open shaving kit. She pulled out his razor and held it to her nose, sniffing. It didn’t smell of him. It didn’t smell of anything. She dropped it back in. She looked again. There were two pill bottles, brown prescription bottles. She pulled them out, one at a time, reading the labels then placing them carefully back in the bag. She pursed her lips and zipped the bag, remembered it had been open and unzipped it again. She picked up her rifle from where she’d propped it in the corner, checked the safety, put her soft cap on, and left the hut. Evening was near and though it wasn’t cooler yet, it felt cooler just from the late-day stillness of the yard and promise of night.
Tory saw Brinia Avril through a window and entered the building. It was a long white room with tables and equipment. A silver clock hung on the far wall, another green lizard perched beside it.
“Your lab?” Tory asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
The doctor was on a stool, alone in the room, her lab coat off. She wore blue jeans and light blue T-shirt.
Tory looked around a minute then said, “Can I walk through?” She nodded in the direction of the far door and the ward behind it.
“Yes.” Brinia Avril smiled. “Do you need that?”
She meant the rifle slung across Tory’s back.
“I’m sorry.”
Brinia Avril shrugged.
The ward was darker than the outside and quiet, those in the beds seemed to be sleeping. Ten beds lined each wall, a narrow walk down the middle. Four ceiling fans turned lazily overhead. Almost all the lights were off.
“Most nap after dinner.” Brinia Avril had come up behind. “Those who can eat dinner.” Tory hadn’t heard her coming but wasn’t startled.
“What’s the—”
“AIDS,” the doctor answered, not needing to hear the question. “In the last year, two years, we treat HIV early and aggressively. As much as possible, anyway. The medicine flows more freely down here than before, somewhat. Relative.” Tory moved slowly down the ward, Brinia Avril right behind, almost whispering in her ear. “Still, it is inevitable some will slip through the cracks of treatment. Others will eventually just stop responding to treatment. Then HIV becomes AIDS.”
As her eyes adjusted, Tory began to see the emaciation of the bodies in the beds, then realized they were all women. And they weren’t all asleep. Eyes followed the two as they walked, silent eyes. Tory wished to be rid of her rifle, rid of her uniform. She wished dearly she could strip it all off. She was, she realized, a scary, unknown presence in this quiet place. She was a disturbance, an imposition on tranquility.
“The tragedy—” Brinia Avril said, then stopped herself and started again. “One of the tragedies is that in the States, HIV is not quite the death sentence it once was.”
“Retrovirals,” Tory whispered, staring at the blank-faced women they padded past.
“Among other things, yes. The key is you must be quick and stay the course.”
“The course?”
“The course of treatment.”
“The course of treatment is forever.”
Brinia Avril nodded. “In this case, in HIV, yes.”
They were at the far end of the ward now, standing by a nurses’ desk. “How many Haitians can afford a course of treatment for HIV?”
“None.”
Chapter
30
Junior Davis made a peanut butter sandwich standing at the stainless-steel counter in the empty galley. The missionaries made their own bread onboard, graveled with seeds and grain and sliced thick. The peanut butter was from shiny, label-less cans, gritty and you had to mix in the oil and though he hadn’t liked it at first he’d developed a taste for it since. He took a bite from his sandwich, spit it out. He drank from a glass of water. All was quiet, twilight tonight moving down through the vessel like a magic spell, ship’s company dropping and falling with exhaustion.
Back in his cabin he found Lorraine deep asleep under a blanket, breathing gently. He realized the stack of stuff on his one chair was a pile of her clothes and belongings; evidently, she’d moved in. Junior stayed as quiet as he could, finding what he needed by touch. He stripped naked, washed, and shaved himself in the small head, then pulled on a clean black T-shirt and pair of coveralls. He found his engineer boots under the chair, grabbed his cigarettes, and closed the door quietly behind him.
He worked alone in the engine room almost two hours before another soul disturbed him. He was very tired and very weak and no getting around it, with the ironic, uneasy chemical feeling you get after the chemicals have left your body. His brain moved slow but he was clear-headed; clear-headed and completely sober for the first time in quite a long time. He didn’t imagine he’d remain sober, it didn’t seem likely or even desirable, but he was for now and thought he’d better keep it up a bit.
; There was so much to do.
Again with the bilgewater,he thought, wondering about the Jesus crew he’d trained and why they hadn’t taken care of this then wondering if he’d actually trained anyone to do this and thinking probably he hadn’t so it was his fault after all. He started the bilge pumps and stood a moment, listening to themthump, thump, thump.
He unlocked his toolbox, dug around for a three-quarter-inch and one-inch socket and took a pile of wrenches, sticking them all down in his deep coverall pockets, and worked his way around the engine room. Anything belt-driven was bound to be loose and still running on nothing but luck, he knew. It had been so long since he’d checked. He did forty-five minutes of nothing but bolt cranking. Belts, filter cases, the packing gland on the shaft. Little in the world vibrated like an old ship’s engine room; truly it was remarkable everything was still intact.
He wondered about that.
Lord, did you make us a place in your heart?
Maybe Pastor was on to something.
Junior worked steadily, sweat dripping.
It was McBride who finally came down, two hours later. He’d searched the boat for his engineer, and was somewhat surprised to find him in the engine room. The old skipper had caught a few hours’ sleep. Not enough, but a start. His hands shook a little, much like Junior’s. Different reasons for it, but they were a team. Junior lit a cigarette and joined him in the small watch box. With the main down and just the generator running it would be possible to talk in there if they talked loud. McBride took a cigarette out of Junior’s pack and lit it with his own Zippo. Davis tapped the dials on the electric control panel, his back to the skipper.
“Sorry about all that,” he said.
“Turned over a leaf, have you?”
“No. You’ll probably need to get yourself a new engineer.” He turned and looked McBride in the eye, so the man might know there was at least a little substance behind his words. “I’ll make sure she hums until then,” he said. “I owe you that much, and I can do it.”
McBride coughed. He never smoked cigarettes anymore. He stubbed the thing out in the old piston cap Davis used as an ashtray then told him Pastor’s news, the fate of them all.
Junior sat down on his stool.
“You didn’t know this was coming, then?”
“No,” McBride said. “Well, you know.” He shrugged. “I guess somewhere in me I knew. Knew it more than she did. But she didn’t want to believe it so I kept my mind clear of it, too.”
“What will she do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did she say what she’d do?”
“No. She’ll ride her ship to the end, for one. I’m sure.”
Junior wondered if McBride envisioned her riding the mast, cross in hand and held high. A crusader. And him not even religious. It was funny if it wasn’t so awful.
Mannino didn’t say anything about it for a while, mostly because he didn’t know how to. This was the drawback to a warrant officer’s roots as a sergeant—these were all your friends. And Mannino never did a very good job pretending it was any other way.
Friends or not—drunken, singing bar-closers onshore aside—onboard drinking was strictly segregated. It was courtesy, and caution, back and forth. The Skipper minded his business as long as he knew a level head ruled the crew’s quarters. And the NCOs kept it close to the vest and out of obvious sight as protection to their warrant officers.
When Mannino called down below to Dick Wags and told him to come topside and bring a bottle, though, it clearly wasn’t time to argue or deny. Dick Wags checked his uniform, opened the desk drawer, reached into the empty space below the drawer, and drew out a bottle of Jack Daniels. He put it in a laundry bag along with two cans of Pepsi and went to report in.
In the Skipper’s quarters, Dick Wags started talking about the missionary ship. “I got someone collecting up some stuff in boxes—”
“Shut up. Close the door and sit down.”
Mannino had a tin of good Italian anchovies and a plastic container of calamata olives. He laid them on his desk with some crackers and a couple of forks and two glasses. Dick Wags didn’t say anything, just asked Mannino if he wanted it straight or with a Pepsi, filled both glasses with Pepsi, and added a few shots of Jack. They raised their glasses and drank.
“Absent friends,” Mannino toasted.
“Absent friends.”
“So tell me about your friend.”
“Who do you mean, Skip?”
“New Jersey.”
“What do you need to know?”
Mannino didn’t say anything.
“She’s turned into a fine NCO,” Dick Wags said, and ate a handful of olives because he was nervous and didn’t want to say more.
“I got a problem here, Sergeant Wagman.”
Dick Wags chewed his olives.
“I got a feeling you know a little bit about my problem.”
The staff sergeant shrugged.
“I’ll be honest—if you do know, it’s a serious fucking ding on you, Sergeant.”
Dick Wags put his drink down and lit a cigarette. He noticed then the paperwork on the desk next to the ashtray and picked it up. He read through it. Mannino lit a smoke of his own, drained his glass, then said, “I guess I just need to know if you’d thought through the implications of it all, of her being here, or her being out there.”
Dick Wags let the paperwork drop and sat back in his chair. Mannino leaned forward. “There’s a phrase, Sergeant,” he said. “A label. It’s called ‘a danger to yourself and others.’ Heard it?”
Dick Wags nodded, then finally spoke. “Look, she—” and then his voice cracked. “Ah, Christ,” he said.
“You knew?”
“Yeah. I knew.”
“Anyone else know?”
Dick Wags shook his head. “No one,” he said, defeated, sad. The top sheet on the stack of paperwork was Tory’s deployment physical, just catching up with them.
“She found out on her own?”
“Yeah. She paid for her own test.”
Mannino ran a hand over his head, then hooked his thumb behind him, in the general direction of the pier.
“This came from our boy next door?”
“That’s right.”
“Shit.”
Dick Wags nodded.
“How long did she think she could—”
“Not long, Skip,” Dick Wags said. “That’s the only reason I went along with it. She knew it was borrowed time.”
“She wanted to make the sail.”
“She’s worked very hard to be here, Sir.”
Mannino lit a new cigarette off the first. “Did you see Davis when you were next door?”
“No. Scaboo did.”
“What’d he say about him?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Said he’d changed. Looked bad.”
“I’ll bet.” Mannino thought about it, then said, “You can hold all those supplies, anyway. There’s a tug coming to pull that ship to the scrap yard.”
“Do they know that?”
“They do now.”
The two smoked in silence for a minute. Dick Wags poured them a second round, and they drank it. Mannino rubbed his head again. He tapped the ash from his smoke and said, “Problem is if something happens, to her or someone else, if someone gets wounded—”
“I’ll go out tonight and bring her in. Let me do it.”
Mannino picked up the paperwork and tapped it on his knee. “You know what, let her finish out there. When’s she coming back? Tomorrow?”
Dick Wags nodded.
“If I send you out there, everyone’s gonna know it, and think something stupid. She’s earned better than that.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“They’re going to fly her out of here, though, Dick. No way around it. That paperwork is already in Port-au-Prince. Sooner or later they’re going to come looking for her.” Mannino rubbed his chin. “Medical disability, I guess is what they do. Or let her keep
her rank and put her in an office.”
“I don’t think that’s much comfort to her.”
“No,” the Skipper said. “I suppose it isn’t.”
Junior Davis stepped out on deck to see the moon but found just a pale circle shimmering on a gray cloud. No stars, just black. He walked aft on the main deck, the night sweet and moist, a light breeze in his curly hair. He still wasn’t used to having hair, and never remembered to comb it. He stopped at the head of the gangway. No one around. He walked the steps down to the pier.
The Army ship’s gangway was just feet from him. There was a quarterdeck watch up there, Junior could see a dark form, but couldn’t tell who it was or even if he knew the soldier. It didn’t matter; he certainly didn’t want to see anyone.
He walked down the pier toward the beach. There was a small, stone house not far from the end of the pier. A group of American soldiers had moved into it. Special Forces, they must be, Junior thought. They’d moved in this morning. He’d also heard their previous digs had been the Hard Rock Café. He didn’t know if he believed the story, but it was a good story.
One of them stood outside guarding the place, a big Hawaiian called Mickey. The rest of the team was inside the house, four of them at a large wooden table playing pinochle.
“Hey, come on, sailor,” Master Sergeant Rice said to Davis, knowing about him only what he’d told them—that he was American, the engineer of the missionary ship down the pier. “Take a break from the Lord and play some cards.” Someone had scrawled on the wall with spray paint:909TH HAITIAN VACATION: THE VOODOO LOUNGE .
Voodoo Lounge,Junior thought.That’s pretty funny.
Big Mickey was leaning in the doorway, his rifle over his shoulder. “I already checked, he says he ain’t got a bottle.”
Rice motioned Davis over to the empty chair next to him. “You meet someone new, and all you want to know is can he get us some booze?”
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