Voodoo Lounge

by Christian Bauman

  Just that she was here, in Haiti, was all the proof he needed. It was a feeling beyond anything he’d ever felt, the wordrelief not even approaching, something more, something in his soul.

  He couldn’t have hoped for this. Hadn’t hoped, actually. Something like hope stirred somewhere inside him—he wouldn’t have come to Haiti, otherwise—but he’d never really believed. It was too impossible, there was no way hehadn’t infected her.

  But, obviously, he hadn’t. She couldn’t be here, otherwise. No soldier deployed without the mandatory HIV test. The battlefield blood supply had to be pure. Here stood Tory—ergo, Tory was clean.

  Junior’s fingers went to the door handle again, actually touching it this time before withdrawing his hand. He lit a cigarette, instead, and saw her face move in the direction of his, their eyes locking although he knew she couldn’t see him. Then, she was gone. Stepped into the prison and out of sight.

  One of the front doors of the Humvee opened and a soldier’s face appeared, Big Mickey. “Must be creepy, huh? Back here?”

  Junior nodded. Actually, he felt nothing. Nothing at all. His time here, what he’d suffered inside, all of it was unimportant and hard to even remember now. But he nodded at Big Mickey and said, “Yeah—I’ll be happy to be gone,” and laughed a little and Mickey laughed, too, then was gone.

  Junior Davis sat back in his seat; alone in the dark, alone in Haiti.

  I didn’t kill her. If nothing else, there is that. She’s not infected. I didn’t kill her.

  Chapter

  34

  She had to remove herself from the blood chain. She knew it, had always known it, had ignored it. She regretted being so selfish, to risk infecting another just so she couldsee. So she coulddo.

  There are, she thought, other things tosee. Other things todo. She’d not believed it so before, convinced nothing but oblivion awaited. One of the reasons, perhaps, she’d not begun any course of treatment. Why? Why bother? For what? The Army wouldn’t have her. Not as a worthwhile active, deployable soldier anyway.

  The hospital today changed that, changed how she saw it. She didn’t quite know why, but it was unmistakable. She had changed. She shouldn’t even be here right now, should not have come, should go wait in the back of one of those Humvees.

  These thoughts all passed through her head as she made the step through the old door into the open-air prison courtyard. There was a hesitation in her step, then it was gone, then she was gone—inside.

  On the LSV, Dick Wags left the Skipper’s office. He went down below and woke Pelton, telling him to get dressed and suited up for driving into town and beyond.

  “Damn, what time is it?”

  “Never mind.”

  Ten minutes later, walking down the pier to where they’d parked the ship’s Humvee by the SF house, Dick Wags said, “Whatever happens, don’t ask any questions, and nothing gets repeated.”

  “Sergeant, yes.”

  Tory didn’t know if Captain Nellis’s anger at Marc had been bluster or real or both, but either way he was silent now. A still, wordless silent only shock can bring. He walked in front, Rice a step behind, Marc a step behind him. Tory followed Marc.

  They didn’t go far into the prison. They didn’t really expect trouble—hurting them in some way now would be suicide. Still, it was the middle of the night, their numbers were few. So they didn’t go far. But they didn’t have to go far. They circled the open-air courtyard, the far end lined with cells. Then moved cautiously down one narrow passage, until Nellis decided it was too narrow and backed them up.

  Master Sergeant Rice was first to vomit, and Captain Nellis followed almost immediately. Tory held out, gagging, trying hard to think of who might be sent to clean it up, then could hold it no longer and leaned over where she stood. Marc Hall was the only one of them who did not throw up. His skin went cold and he felt as if his blood had chilled, but he refused—refused—to allow himself to vomit.

  “There’s a big courtyard, and open-air group cells around it. Four of them, I think. Maybe five. I spent most of my time there.”

  Sitting at the table in the cottage hours before, Junior squinted his eyes, trying hard to be precise. He was a soldier, or had been. Precision was important.

  “Five, yeah five,” he said. “Four in the back and one on the side.”

  Rice scratched away with a pen, trying to get this all down. Junior took a drag off his cigarette, exhaling into the already smoky, thick air around them.

  “They shove twenty, thirty bodies into those courtyard cells.”

  “How big are the cells?”

  “Ten by ten, maybe.”

  Rice stopped writing. “Can’t be right. You can’t fit twenty people in a ten by ten.”

  Junior shook his head. “Sure you can.”

  The stink was first, then the realization of what the stink was. Excrement, people standing in it, sitting in it, sleeping in it.

  “Oh Jesus,” Rice said, and that’s when he lost it.

  “In each cell there’s a big barrel for shitting, and if it gets emptied you’re okay. But sometimes they forget, or sometimes they just don’t want to. Then it stagnates, then it overflows.” Junior paused, then said, “It’s awful hard to get used to.”

  Nellis pulled a small flashlight off his belt, clicked it on and moved the beam around one of the cells. Tory followed the light, trying to count. She’d never seen people so closely packed together. What was skin, what was scab, blood, shit, hair, scalp. For a second she thought they were all dead and really hoped so in a way, but then someone moved and hope fled. She hung her M-16 over her shoulder and pulled her helmet off her head. It was a reflexive action, the only sign of pity available to her.

  “And who’s in there? Who’s locked up?”

  “Not much rhyme or reason, not that I could tell. Some got slammed in and were out in a day. Others told me they’d been in there two years and I had no reason not to believe them. They were certainly skinny and sick enough.”

  “What’re we talking, murderers here?”

  “None that I met. Couple of petty thieves, I guess. Bunch of kids—boys, mostly. But, you know, most people in there, I don’t think there was much of a real reason. Wrong place at wrong time.”

  “Political, then.”

  “Sort of. But who the fuck talks politics when you know this will be the outcome? The real political prisoners were just shot, I think. Or dragged out and machetied in the street. That’s what theattachés are for,Macoute or whatever they call themselves now.Loup garou, right? They just shoot dissenters. No, most who got jailed, I think it was money. Nothing much to do with politics. Lock ’em up till their folk can pay to get ’em out. It’s a system.”

  “And you?”

  “That’s it, really. I passed out drunk in the town square one night. Woke up in a cell, sleeping in someone else’s shit. They held me until the mission could come up with enough bread to get me out.”

  “How long?”

  “Almost three weeks. They kept raising the price.”

  What was worst, somehow, to Tory, was the silence. No pleas, no begging, no cries. Just small moans and sighs and snores, the sounds of bodies moving against one another, the sound of wet and slick.

  On Marc Hall’s face, a brick wall, jaw set and unmoving. Tory couldn’t look in the cells anymore so she looked at him, looking for his reaction. He turned once and their eyes met but he would give nothing in his gaze, nothing on what he was thinking. Neither disgust at what they’d found, nor satisfaction at being right. Marc looked into Tory’s eyes for one brief moment then turned away. Tory clicked on her own little flashlight, panning it around.

  “What’s down there?” She pointed at a stone passage.

  Sergeant Rice shook his head. “C’mon, it’s too fucking narrow. No way we’re going in there.”

  “There’s a downstairs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  Junior shrugged. “I went down twice. First tim
e, they took me out of the main cell and I’m thinking, ‘Great, I’m out of here.’ I’d only been in a day, and they had no reason to hold me, so I’m thinking this is one big inconvenience. Then we passed right by the main door, right by the office, and go down this narrow, stone stairwell. I thought they were taking me down to shoot me.”

  Davis lit another cigarette, and smoked it in silence a few moments. “Second time they took me down, few days later, I begged them to shoot me.”

  He stood up then and lifted his shirt.

  The Haitian major had declined to accompany them on their tour. His men had found Ben Narcisse and brought him outside, where Big Mickey half-carried him over to the Humvees. The Haitian major stayed a step outside the gate, smoking a cigarette.

  The Americans, inside—the clean Americans—had seen enough. They walked back across the courtyard to the main gate. As they walked Marc accelerated. Nellis was half-looking behind him at the cells and Rice was looking at his feet and only Tory saw Marc pick up his pace, reverse the rifle in his hands. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. By the time he reached the door Marc Hall was almost running, rifle held high. He stepped through the door and slammed the butt of the rifle into the major’s head, sending the man’s peaked hat and cigarette flying, a spray of blood and teeth chasing.

  Slumped on the ground, unconscious, Marc stood over the major, reversed his rifle again, and put the barrel against the officer’s forehead.

  “Marc!” she yelled, and stopped in her tracks. It had happened so fast Nellis hadn’t seen it, only how it was now, with Hall poised above the Haitian major.

  “Captain Hall,” he yelled, trying to keep his voice even. He gripped tight the pistol in his hand and stepped quickly forward. “Captain—Marc. Marc, right? Marc, don’t do it, man. Don’t pull that trigger.”

  Marc didn’t look up, didn’t move or even twitch, didn’t say anything. He was staring at the major below him, his only thought that he was disappointed he’d knocked him out.

  “There are lines and then there are lines,” Nellis said. “This is a line you don’t want to cross, Marc.” He was only two steps away. “Drop the clip from that rifle, Captain. Drop the clip and then drop the rifle.”

  Marc finally spoke then. He didn’t look up, just talked quietly. “You can’t order me to do anything. We’re the same rank.”

  “That ain’t true, Captain. You have to know I was sent up here tonight to take you into custody.”

  Marc looked at him then.

  “Captain Hall, I’m giving you a direct, lawful order to drop that weapon and surrender yourself.”

  “Here’s the thing I never understood,” Junior said. He took a long drink of water from the cup Rice had offered him, then leaned forward, laying his arms across the table. “There were times when the cells would be opened, for cleaning or whatever. And sometimes they’d stand around and guard, and sometimes they wouldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, there were twenty-five unshackled men in the courtyard, with maybe one guard or no guards and the door wide open.”

  Rice shrugged. “They knew there was probably a guy with a rifle outside. Wasn’t worth it.”

  “I don’t know, man, I don’t know. You haven’t seen it yet, you don’t know how bad it was. And twenty against one, even if that one has a rifle—those are pretty good odds.”

  “So, why didn’t you ever take them? Did you ever cut and run?”

  Junior snorted. “Fuck no. I was too scared.”

  Voodoo Lounge

  Chapter

  35

  Jean drove his old truck back to the hospital much slower than the trip out, for which Tory was profoundly grateful. Also, in the front seat, the bumping was less noticeable. She rocked back and forth, her elbow and forearm occasionally grazing the brown, leathery skin of Jean’s arm. They didn’t speak the same language, and for that, too, she was profoundly grateful. The ride was silent. Through the windshield the clouds parted and a hazy moon lit the road ahead.

  She was so tired. She’d nodded off a few times in the truck, but sleep would have to wait. She had a lot to take care of if she was going to pull this off. A lot to take care of, then she could sleep. Later, much later. She would sleep then, deep and undisturbed. Sleep and sleep and—

  Her head slammed into the dashboard of the truck. She’d dozed again. Jean offered her a banana.

  He’d asked her, when they’d started, “TheCapitaine …he, uh…?” and through a series of hand gestures and translation guesses she figured he was asking if Marc would be joining him.

  “No,” she said. “Non.”Shaking her head. “Just me.Moi.” He’d smiled sadly and with no more questions started his truck.

  Dawn was coming. She could see the outlines of trees now. They were close to the hospital. She ate her banana. When they got to the hospital Tory thanked the older man and tried to hand him a ten-dollar bill. He refused it and gave her another banana, which she accepted. She walked through the hospital gate in the dim gray of early dawn, no one about, alone in the stone yard.

  There’d been no goodbye with Marc tonight. There’d never been a goodbye with Junior either. He’d left her, and the one time she saw him again—at the diner in Norfolk, when he told her what he’d done to her—she’d seen no trace of the Junior Davis she loved, and she left him. She had no intention of seeing him now. If she hadn’t been sure on that before, she was now. And as tender as she felt for Marc this morning, she wondered the same simple but not simple question about him that she did about Junior: In the end, what is there to talk about?

  Tory sat on Marc’s cot. Then she stretched out on it. She could smell him. She curled up, burying her nose in his poncho liner and the blanket. There was some crying to do and now is when she did it, her face pressed into the poncho liner, pulling in his smell and warmth, the feel of his smooth skin and hands. She slept, briefly, then she woke, a headache fierce behind her eyeballs. She rolled off the cot to the floor, breathed through it a few minutes. Then she kneeled in the corner, cleaning her equipment best she could, taking it all apart, fitting her LBE and ammo pouches and everything into her rucksack, tying the helmet to it, trying to make it as easy as possible for whoever would have to carry it and turn it in.

  And that’s where Dick Wags found her, on the bare floor, using her toothbrush to clean the bolt of her M-16 rifle. She looked up, genuinely pleased to see it was him.

  “Hello, Roomdog,” she said.

  “I came in before but you were sleeping, so I went to get some chow.”

  “They take care of you here?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Me and Pelton. He’s waiting in the hummer.”

  “Have a seat,” she said. “I’m just cleaning up here.”

  He sat on Marc’s cot and asked if he could smoke then lit one for himself and one for her. She was putting her rifle back together now.

  “You have to shoot that thing last night?” he asked.

  “No. Just cleaning it.”

  Tory gathered up all the cleaning gear into its little bag and shoved it back in the butt stock compartment.

  “I’m really sorry, Rick,” she said.

  “You should be,” he said. Then, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I do, though. Especially with you,” she said. “Discharge and other death sentences aren’t an excuse for bad manners, are they?” She grunted. “That was a bad place to put you in.”

  “No one held a gun to my head.”

  She looked at him then. “No, no one did, I guess. Thank you.”

  He took a drag off his cigarette, trying to keep his face clear. She did the same.

  Tory handed him her rifle. Thinking something else, he stood and slung it over his shoulder. Then she picked up her rucksack and handed that to him, too. “Little bit lazy this morning, huh?” he said.

  She smiled. “I’m not going back, buddy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not going back.
” She began unbuttoning her uniform top. “I don’t know if I died going off the side of the road in that fucked-up Haitian truck or what exactly happened, but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.” She pulled her top off, placed it on the rucksack in his arms. She reached down then and lifted her T-shirt up and over her head, putting that on the pile, too.

  “What are you talking about, Tory.”

  She pulled her sports bra off—onto the pile it went. She sat on her cot and began unlacing her boots.

  “I can’t go back, Rick. I can’t face anyone, don’t want to face anyone, and there’s nothing for me there anyway. What is there? Bullshit or discharge or both. Skipper will know that soon enough.”

  “He knows.”

  Boots and socks off, she began to unbutton her pants.

  “Well, you know. They can use me here, and I can use them. So I’m just not going back.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “They’ll want a body.”

  “Yeah, but only a little, especially when there’s no family back home bothering them for it.” She pulled her pants off, folded them carefully into a square, and placed it on the pile in Dick Wags’s arms. She hooked her thumbs in the elastic of her underwear. “Mostly, all the Army cares about is property. And I’m giving it all back.” She pulled her underwear off, folded it neatly, and put it on the pile. She stood there, looking him dead in the eye. “What—you seeing something you haven’t seen before, Rick?”

  “Does this make you feel better,” he said. She thought he might be mad. That was okay. She was mad, too.

  “Yes,” she said. Tory reached up and laid her open palm on his cheek, holding it there a moment. “Yes, it does make me feel better.” She stepped around him then and grabbed the poncho liner from Marc’s cot, wrapping it around herself. “This was Captain Hall’s, so I don’t feel any personal responsibility in returning it.”