Raymond held the Peugeot’s back door open and Oscar jumped in, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. Raymond shut the door. He had him.
“Where to, patron?” He took his place behind the wheel and avoided the warden’s gaze in the rearview mirror. But Oscar was too preoccupied to bother looking. He was leafing through a passport. Raymond caught a glimpse of green American dollars in his briefcase.
“Aéroport! Hurry, I have a plane to catch.”
Raymond took off, swerving around other cars. His hands were sweating against the steering wheel. He’d lured the animal like he wanted, and now he was not turning back. He had a plan for this son of a bitch. Raymond watched the orange-and-red flower petals, the bright pink buildings, the banners and painted signs, and the dome of the cathedral all dissolve into a blur against his windshield.
“No luggage, sir?” Raymond asked.
“Just get me there, and mind your own business!”
Raymond caught a brief glimpse of that nasty scar. His mouth filled with spit and he swallowed back the rage. He sped down narrow streets through the town of Nazon. Oscar grabbed the empty passenger seat in front of him for support. Pedestrians and bicycles swerved out of the way of the honking taxi. They merged onto the major vein of Delmas before pulling down smaller corridors, zooming past residential neighborhoods. Then Raymond veered right and drove toward a wide expanse of green—a sugarcane plantation. The rooftops of shacks and slums mushroomed on distant hills.
“What the hell are you doing?” Oscar asked. “This isn’t the way to the airport.”
“Don’t worry,” Raymond said. “I know my way.”
“Turn around right now,” Oscar shouted. Sweat pearled on his scarred cheek. He pulled out his handkerchief—white linen with his initials embroidered in the corner—and wiped his brow. His eyes were bloodshot, and Raymond knew he was angry.
Raymond accelerated, throwing Oscar forward.
“What are you doing? Stop the goddamn car!”
The Peugeot entered the fields at full speed. Raymond caught flashes of green as the sharp edges of leaves scraped against the vehicle’s window. In the rearview mirror, he saw Oscar shut his eyes and hold his breath, as if afraid that the thick foliage would close in on him, swallow him up.
Finally, the car came to a stop in a clearing among the cane fields. Oscar opened his eyes, panting like a rabid dog.
He looked around nervously. “Where the hell are we?”
Out the window, Raymond caught a glimpse of black birds, crows, swirling above the field. He could hear their caws in the distance as they flew in formation.
“What are we doing here…?” Oscar’s voice trailed off, and he tried to maintain his composure. Raymond smirked at his wide eyes, his lips wet with fear. He had him cornered. Oscar was realizing this was no average taxi ride.
“Who are you? Have you been sent to kill me?”
Raymond killed the engine. Oscar leapt toward the door and grabbed the handle, pulled it toward him in a rage. Nothing. He slammed his fist against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He pushed against the handle for the window, then pulled up, but the glass did not move. Now he’s looking for a way out, like a real animal would, Raymond thought. Like a rat cornered in a drain, and he was about to pour the hot water to scald the life out of him. It was only right, after all Oscar had done. He didn’t deserve to live.
Oscar sat up and tried to adjust his suit. Raymond felt his blood boil as he watched in the mirror, eager for the moment of recognition.
“I don’t know who you are or what they’re paying you, but—” Oscar stopped and licked his lips. “Listen, I have money. I can double it. Tell me your price.”
Raymond spun around and removed his hat. The warden froze in his seat.
“You?”
Oscar’s eyes grew wider, and his lip curled to reveal the gold rim on his tooth. Raymond stared back, his eyes glued on the disfiguring scar. Warden and prisoner, torturer and victim, sitting in a car together face-to-face. Raymond could smell the terror seeping through Oscar’s pores.
“You remember me, don’t you?” Raymond said.
Oscar tried to grin, but his face distorted into a grimace. Raymond’s upper lip curled in contempt. Oscar tried to open the door again to flee, but the handle came off in his hand. Raymond leaned over to the glove compartment. He turned and revealed Nicolas’s revolver, the barrel aimed right between Oscar’s eyes.
“Say you recognize me. Raymond L’Eveillé. Say it.”
Raymond’s arm trembled as he aimed at the warden’s face. He’d practiced holding the Colt before. Sauveur had shown him how to use it. Yet it still felt like the first time he was touching it.
“You have some fucking nerve, you know that?” Oscar’s lip quivered before speaking.
Raymond noticed. He recognized the stench of cologne coming from the backseat, the way the white shirt Jules Oscar wore now stuck to his skin. He knew fear because he’d seen it in the prisoners, in the way Nicolas’s face changed every time someone was pulled out of their cell for interrogation. He knew fear because Oscar had taught him all about it. Now it was Oscar’s turn.
Raymond felt his jaw twitch and his finger wrapped around the trigger.
“Who do you think you are, hein?” Oscar hissed, still pressing against the back door. “How dare you? You think you can just shoot me and get away with it? Hein? You fool! The entire country is hunting you down. They will find you, and they will kill you. You and your brother are dead men!”
“I don’t care,” Raymond snapped back. “You said it: We’re dead men. We’re already dead. So why would I let you live after what you did to my brother? To all of those people!”
Raymond adjusted himself behind the wheel, turning his body entirely to face the warden. He steadied his shaking hand with the other, gripping the revolver the way Sauveur had shown him. Men like Oscar or like the Tonton Macoutes made holding a gun look so easy, like it was a toy. A revolver meant something, weighed something, felt cold to the touch.
“I’m not afraid to die,” Raymond said. “Are you?”
His voice did not waver. But his heart, pulsing in his chest, felt like a balloon ready to pop. There was a rushing in his ears that deafened him, the sound of his own blood coursing in his veins. The sun beat down on the vehicle, cooking the men inside.
Crows cawed again overhead.
“Are you?” Raymond repeated.
He knew the answer by the way the warden’s eyes searched the car for a way out. There were no openings. The back doors would not give. Raymond had chosen this old Peugeot because an accident had left the doors permanently locked from the inside. The driver at the car service center, an old friend of Faton’s, had guaranteed it.
“Let me out!” Oscar roared. “You can’t shoot me in here like a fucking coward. You can’t shoot an unarmed man.”
Raymond stared at him and cocked the weapon slowly. Oscar jolted at the sound of the click. His good eye filled with tears, and Raymond hoped he would cry. He wanted to see him squirm and beg. He wanted this man reduced to his basest form, to crawl like a worm. But tears did not fall.
“That’s just it. You’re not a man,” Raymond said. “Don’t you see? You are a monster, and I will make you pay for your sins!”
He wanted to pull the trigger and see Oscar’s face blasted apart, see the blood splatter. He wanted Oscar to scream, to beg for his life like his victims did in that interrogation room where he tortured Nicolas and every other man who spent the night screaming and crying, keeping others awake in their cells. He wanted Jules Oscar dead. It was his right.
“My brother is a man,” Raymond said. “Nicolas L’Eveillé is a man, and you tried to break him. I am a man. And you tried to break me.”
“I was doing my job,” Oscar said. “Understand—I was acting under orders. I was correcting you. It was my duty.”
“Shut up!” Rage spewed out of Raymond’s throat like a gurgling volcano. He tightened his grip on the weap
on even more, biting his lower lip. “You’re a murderer!” he shouted. “You tortured all these people. You killed them.”
Oscar took a breath. “My brother, I have no idea what you mean. I only do what I’m—”
“Brother?” Raymond scowled, cocked his head to the side. “I’m not your brother,” he said. “You and I are nothing alike.”
“You won’t shoot me,” Oscar said. “You don’t have it in you.”
Raymond saw the warden’s face morph, his lips stretch into a grimace, and then he understood that the warden was smiling, a wicked, ghastly smile.
“You’re a good man,” Oscar continued. “A cabbie, right? A poor taxi driver. You’re not a killer.”
For a moment, the car was silent as they tried to inhale what was left of the air. Raymond’s brain seethed. Now what? Shoot him? That was the plan, and now the plan seemed sordid. He couldn’t go through with it. As much as he hated this man and wanted him to pay, Oscar was right. Raymond was not a killer. He could not pull the trigger.
He didn’t react quickly enough when the warden lunged forward to grab his arm. Jules Oscar was notoriously strong, and he flung Raymond’s arm to the side. He held on to him and started to smash his wrist against the dashboard. The horn blared, Raymond’s back pressing against it as he fought off his opponent. The crows darted upward into the indigo sky.
Raymond pushed back and shoved his elbow into Oscar’s stomach. Pain surged through his arm, but he would not let go of the revolver, and he turned it, angled his wrist to aim the barrel at Oscar. The warden’s face was close to his, and Raymond suddenly found it impossible to breathe in this simmering cauldron in which he’d imprisoned himself and his worst enemy. Raymond thrust his leg forward and kicked deep with his knee, pushing Oscar into the backseat. The car rocked furiously as the men struggled, and Raymond’s skin crawled with panic. He sat back up and aimed again. Oscar seized his arm once more, but let go when the gunshot tore the air.
The blood splattered like wet confetti on Raymond’s face. He recoiled as he saw the warden’s body fall onto the backseat, mouth ajar in surprise, eyes wide and staring at him. Under his good eye, a fleshy red hole let loose a torrent of crimson blood that ran down his face and onto his suit. Blood was everywhere, on the windows, the seats, and Raymond froze in awe. He’d shot the warden. Jules Sylvain Oscar was dead.
Raymond dropped the revolver and looked down at his hands, but he didn’t recognize the sweaty yellow palms, the shaking fingers. He saw the blood on his skin. Oscar’s body was bent, his neck twisted at a strange angle, like a stuffed effigy tossed in a corner after the last day of Carnaval.
Raymond dry heaved and pushed his door open, a gust of hot air assaulting him. He stumbled out and fell onto his stomach in a dry patch of grass that smelled of manure. Raymond sat up and held his head in his hands. He’d killed the warden, and yet the anger was still there, eating at his entrails.
When the sun prickled his skin like angry fire ants, he stood up with care. He looked back into the car, at the monster’s body, and felt nothing but emptiness. Raymond heard the crows cawing furiously, as if talking to one another. His eyes swept the fields around him and caught a glimpse of their purplish-green feathers glistening in the sun, their beady eyes peering curiously from behind the sugarcane stalks. He looked up into the endless blue sky, marveling how undisturbed the world was when he’d just taken a life. He hadn’t meant to shoot, really. Or had he? He couldn’t remember anymore.
Raymond climbed back into the car. The warden’s briefcase was still there. As he grabbed it by the handle, he noticed something poking out of Oscar’s pocket. Raymond pulled it out, as if afraid to awaken the body. It was Oscar’s passport, with those crisp American bills stacked inside the pages. Money. American money. So much of it. He blinked. He could use it to pay his rent, buy food, pay his children’s tuition.
Enough with the daydreams, he thought. This money would do a lot, but it couldn’t bring Enos, Adeline, and Yvonne back to him. He tossed the passport onto the body and stepped away from the car, leaving the back door open.
The crows would be hungry. They would need a way in.
Raymond walked away from the car without turning back. He entered the sugarcane field and wove his way through it, ignoring the leaves scraping his skin, the call of birds. He was alone. No one was around for miles. Money in his pocket, blood on his hands, Raymond marched forward, losing himself in the foliage.
NASSAU, BAHAMAS 1972
Nicolas wiped his face with a handkerchief that still smelled of Eve. Her lavender perfume clung to the fibers of the embroidered linen and eased his nerves. The crowd he was about to address was smaller than the ones he’d grown accustomed to in Paris. Only twenty-three people were there for his book signing, but this was the Bahamas, after all.
Half the guests were Haitians, migrants who’d fled Haiti and ended up here by accident or by fate. The others were simply curious readers who wanted to see Nicolas L’Eveillé, that man whose name was barely pronounceable in English, that brave soul who’d escaped the neighboring island of nightmares. They sat in wooden chairs in the cramped bookstore, the women fanning themselves, the men listening closely to the manager’s introduction.
“Nicolas L’Eveillé’s first book, The Reaping Season, was published in Paris last year, just two months before the death of Papa Doc. It was recently translated into English, and we are so lucky to have him here in the Bahamas to speak to us about the ordeal of our neighbors.”
Nicolas wasn’t comfortable reading in English, but the store manager had found a French speaker to help translate, and the manager would be reading portions in English himself. Still, it was with a pounding heart that Nicolas read. Public speaking made him immensely uncomfortable now. Plus, he still struggled with cramped spaces and darkness, and the bookstore, which sat on the flank of a hill in Nassau, was so small that he felt trapped inside a matchbox. He replayed his wife’s voice in his head. “Just breathe and take your time,” Eve had said. “It will be over quickly. You’ll see.”
He looked at the brown faces around him. They looked back eagerly.
“The book is dedicated to Mr. L’Eveillé’s brother, Raymond, who valiantly helped him escape and who today has yet to be found.”
Whenever someone spoke of Raymond, Nicolas felt a sharp blow, as if someone were chopping down a great tree. Raymond’s disappearance had left a hole in his life that he could not fill. Life abroad, away from Haiti, was hard enough. Since he’d moved to Paris, he’d spent his days trying to conquer his anxieties, souvenirs of his incarceration in Fort Dimanche. It was difficult to step inside the small elevator in his building in the arrondissement of Menilmontant, and his sleep was punctuated by nightmares of Jules Oscar biting his flesh like a rabid beast. When he thought of Raymond, of the last time they saw each other on that beach, Nicolas felt a crushing sadness that sat on his chest.
He was desperate for a drink. They’d offered him water at his table, but he wished he had a glass of whiskey to numb the gnawing pain in his heart.
He began to read. He’d selected the passage about just how many arrests and executions Duvalier had ordered during his presidency. He looked up from time to time and saw how the guests shook their heads in contempt and outrage. What good was this reading doing? Nicolas wondered if it wasn’t all a waste of time. These folks would go back home to their families, have dinner, and sleep soundly while Haiti sank deeper into quicksand. When the news of Papa Doc’s death from illness was announced, he’d felt so relieved he burst into tears in the middle of a supermarché, a supermarket. The Haitian population in Paris had been frenzied with joy. They’d gathered at local cafes or friends’ homes and poured liquor and played music and danced. “Bawon Samedi mouri! Vive Haiti!” The laughter had poured out of them uncontrollably. Nicolas twirled Eve in the middle of their living room to the sound of Webert Sicot, while their friends, Haitian immigrants from neighboring apartments, clapped their hands and sang along, engag
ing in dances of their own, everything bumping against the furniture.
But the celebration was cut short when the news broke the next morning. The Duvalier reign had not ended. Papa Doc’s nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude, was proclaimed his successor. Nicolas’s blood ran cold. Then a neighbor in their building, another migrant from Port-au-Prince, blasted “Duvalier Pou Tout Tan” on the radio. Duvalier for life. Nicolas felt ill and confused by the absurdity of it all and stopped talking to the man.
“Maybe we shouldn’t worry,” Eve said. “He’s young, he’s not his father. Maybe things will be different now. Maybe we can go back…”
But Nicolas would not consent to returning to Haiti. It was too dangerous.
“Piti tig se tig,” he said. “Tigers only birth tigers. We can’t risk going back.”
Nicolas looked around him now, in this bookstore, and knew that these Haitians were here for similar reasons. There was no salvation for them. They knew it was unwise to return too quickly. He read to them because he wanted to share his story, but really, this could have been their story. They were all here to escape brutal oppression.
After the applause had died down, the manager invited the audience to ask questions. Nicolas poured himself more water. He couldn’t wait to get out. He needed to return to his hotel, to have a drink, to call Eve in Paris and tell her he missed her. Book tours in the Caribbean wore him down, and plus there was the fear, the persistent paranoia that one day, as he spoke, someone would walk in and shoot him in the head, or take him away, abduct him and kill him in an unknown place where they would dispose of his body. Who knew what young Duvalier’s henchmen could do? That very thing had happened to Jules Oscar, after all. He’d heard the news, that the man was found dead in a field, his face half eaten by crows, blood everywhere. Nicolas had felt overwhelming relief at the news, but also a tinge of jealousy. He’d fantasized often about being the one to kill Jules Sylvain Oscar himself.
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