by Ben Fountain
Jacmel’s huddled lights were far below now, disappearing and reappearing as the road switchbacked, finally vanishing for good when the mountains shouldered in. Syto tried not to hope, which as the miles ticked by became an act of will like holding his breath: every once in a while he had to let go. Through it all he continued praying to Jesus and Mary and the voodoo lwa, praying not for success, not even for the safety of his skin, but for a truer deliverance, whatever that might be.
Which was, he supposed when the warning shots came, just as well. The Land Cruiser swung wide and overtook the bus on a desolate mountain curve, the cops hanging out the windows and waving their pistols, screaming at the bus driver to stop. That higher deliverance, then, that’s what he should strive for—Syto felt strangely unburdened as he stepped off the bus, almost wise, as if he’d finally grasped the point of life, and the only thing he really wanted now was to see Esther one more time. Michelet ordered the passengers to line up with their baggage, and as the people went about organizing themselves the cops were seized by a kind of authoritarian fit, charging around the road and kicking and screaming, cuffing women and children no less than the men. Michelet himself stood off to the side silently quivering, simmering in his own little world of rage. The passengers gradually fell into line with the guardrail at their backs, the rail skirting the lip of a dark ravine with a woodcut silhouette of mountains beyond. Syto was conscious of the faint thump of drums in the ravine as Michelet made his way down the line and stopped.
“Syto Charles.”
“Oui, m’sieu le chef.”
Michelet cast a brief, seemingly thoughtful glance to the side, then wheeled and struck Syto a lashing blow. The other passengers turned away with a resigned moan.
“What is this?” Michelet screamed, kicking the cardboard box.
Syto tried to shake the blue sparks out of his eyes. “Coffee, m’sieu le chef. To sell in Port-au-Prince.” He thought Michelet was going to hit him again, but after a gruesome pause the chef snapped at his men to open the box. One of them sheared through the top with a nasty-looking knife, then the others pulled out two heavy burlap sacks. At a nod from Michelet, his deputy slashed them open with a single stroke, the sacks stuffed so tightly that the fabric burst with a lightning rip, releasing a dense arcing spew of—
Coffee. For several moments Michelet could only stare. He stepped into the road and scuffed at the beans, then shook the sacks until every last particle had rattled free. He turned and gaped at the crowd as if this were a dream, then his eyes fixed and hardened, coalesced with a plan. He advanced on Syto, drawing his pistol as he came. The other passengers inched back, and even the cops seemed to cower and avert their eyes. Syto had turned his face to the stars and consigned his soul when two buses suddenly blew around the corner, horns wailing, boom-box drums blaring, a profound, gurgling hum underlying it all like steam boilers about to explode. The buses pulled up with their lights on high-beam, wallowing in a backwash of diesel exhaust. The doors flapped open; cops and prisoners squinted into the void, and the next moment a swarm of Gédés was tumbling out the doors, coming at them like a horde of demented undertakers.
No, Syto thought, keep going, but in a moment he saw that it was out of his hands. The Gédés danced into the road singing and clacking their teeth, gleefully farting as they went for the officers. Many of Syto’s fellow passengers were possessed at once, lurching about until they were caught by their neighbors, then coming to with saucered eyes and sucking cheeks to exchange ritual greetings with their fellow Gédés, vigorously shaking both hands and twirling around, blowing mists of pepper-rum in one another’s face. Soon the road was filled with leering, chanting Gédés, most of them strutting about in fashions from the nineteenth century. They wore tattered frock coats with thickly padded shoulders, top hats, wing collars, a stray spat or two; several men sported veils and full-length evening dresses. They stole the officers’ hats first thing, then demanded food and money and tried to pick the cops’ pockets. A group of six or seven Gédés was roughly hustling Michelet—so changed was Lulu by the crisis of possession that Syto barely recognized his brother, an especially eloquent Gédé who was praising the formidable pungency of Madame Michelet’s coco, the savory little stinger that was her langèt.
“Get out of here!” Michelet screamed. “This is a police matter!” The Gédés immediately tossed off pompous salutes, then marched around with their canes thrown over their shoulders, spouting idiotic orders as they circled Michelet. Several others ran off and pretended to bully the crowd, which inspired shrieks of laughter up and down the line. Michelet weakly raised his gun, but how could he kill the god of death? His deputies were gagging and clutching their throats, having inhaled the mists of pimento-steeped rum—more noxious than the mace they carried on their belts—which the Gédés were swilling and blowing at each other. The chef’ s hat was gone, his shirt blotched with rum and spittle; he took a faltering step toward Syto, then clenched and spun about with a retching sound, eyes goggling as he fought the god in his head. The last Syto saw of Michelet, the chef was bellowing at his harried deputies for rum as they bundled him toward the refuge of their truck.
“Come with us!” Lulu shouted to the crowd. “We’re going to the palace to see the president!” The passengers cheered and gathered up their parcels, and soon the convoy was barreling through the countryside, the Gédés hanging out the windows and singing dirty songs, roiling villages from the mountains to the capital. Syto had the address in Port-au-Prince where they were supposed to go, but neither Lulu nor the delighted driver would hear of it until they’d driven up the Champ de Mars and stopped in front of the palace. The park was full of late-night revelers, the nucleus of a riot of collective joy that erupted when the Gédés poured off the buses. The startled guards refused to open the gates, but the crowd chanted so robustly that the president was flushed at last from the palace. Flanked by bodyguards, laughing and mugging like it was all a big joke, he made a short, dull speech about the manifest uniqueness of the Haitian people, then passed five-gourde notes through the fence to each Gédé.
So even presidents must acknowledge the primacy of death. Once they had their homage the Gédés left willingly enough, Syto coaxing them onto the buses and directing the lead driver to the house in Bellevue, where Nixon and his gang herded everyone inside. As the god departed each man’s head a somewhat dazed Trois Pins fisherman took his place; once he’d recovered, his jacket and pants were removed and turned inside-out, revealing a system of compartments sewn into the lining. After a lifetime of mending battered nets and sails, the women of Trois Pins were expert seamstresses. Each niche was rolled and tufted so that the lining was smooth, not the slightest bulge visible from the outside. Every man had smuggled eight to ten kilos in his clothes; Gédé’s extravagant costume had carried the weight, and while possession had not been part of the plan, the men were elated to learn that the god had been in their heads. In short order a celebration commenced, a fiery bamboche with singing and dancing and gallons of rum. Nixon kept standing on chairs and making sentimental speeches; Lulu wept and laughed and hugged his brother a hundred times, and every couple of minutes they drank a toast to Syto, who was sitting with his chair tipped against the wall so that they couldn’t slap him on the back anymore.
Syto, he was happy, sure. But mainly he just wanted to go home.
Lulu laughs at him sometimes. He’ll be sitting there watching Syto, then for no apparent reason he’ll break up laughing and say, “I still can’t believe it.”
“Believe what?” Syto asks.
“Nothing, brother. You’re just funny, that’s all.”
In some ways life is easier, though filled as always with worry and risk. Everyone in Trois Pins has a new house now, concrete-block structures with running water and stout zinc roofs that purr in the rain. After several weeks in her new house, Esther started to hum, and lately she’s been singing in a close, cautious voice; the change, as Lulu predicted, has done her good, tho
ugh Syto knows he has to be patient. Most of their neighbors have new boats as well, with big outboard motors that boom them along, but Syto kept his old gaff-sail rig. He doesn’t do so much fishing these days, anyway. Every month Nixon sends him money from the Texaco station they own together, more money than Syto could earn in a year of fishing. He turns over half to Esther, and most of the rest he gives away or spends on ceremonies for his lwa.
So life is easier, but Syto knows he can’t relax. From time to time Land Cruisers ease by his house, and at night the American helicopters buzz Trois Pins as they head out to sea—they shoot at the go-fasts now, the marksmen dangling from the hatch with their high-powered rifles, though lately the go-fasts are shooting back. Syto knows their nightly flybys are a message, just as he knows Michelet will take him if he gets a chance. And while he has no knowledge of the classified files in Langley, Virginia, concerning the drug-running franchise of one “Cito Charle,” Syto nevertheless suffers sometimes from “eyes,” the general fretfulness and anxious feelings you get when too many people are talking about you.
He doesn’t doubt that sooner or later they’ll come for him—the Americans, perhaps, or the gangs or the cops. Meanwhile Syto watches his back, and at night he thanks God for another day of life and prays for the soul of his daughter in heaven. The last time Marie-Lucie appeared in his dreams, she was fourteen or fifteen, a trim, pretty girl wearing loafers and the plaid uniform of the École Supérieure. She had books and a looseleaf binder in her arms, and she smiled at Syto as she entered the yard.
“How is school?” Syto had called to her in the dream.
“I’m studying mathematics!” she answered brightly.
“Mathematics!” Syto cried, impressed. Marie-Lucie joined him under the almond tree, and Syto was happy while they sat together looking through her books, even as he realized it was no more than a dream.
The Lion’s Mouth
Jill arrived at the Royal Sierra every evening around six, took a stool in front of the TV at the open-air bar, and passed the time watching the news and quietly drinking herself stupid while Starkey did deals out on the terrace. In the last few weeks this had become her favorite thing to do, watching cable news and drinking while the day faded out, feeling Starkey at her back like a snug bedfellow. She had a theory about this, a half-serious notion that she could sense his presence without turning to look, as if he gave off a subtle heat or smell to which she’d grown peculiarly attuned.
“Kushay-o, Miss.” Bazzy was dressing a tray of drinks with pineapple and cherries, smiling as Jill slid onto the stool. She was a good customer—patient, soft-spoken, pretty, white. A friend of Starkey’s. It was like being a member of a club.
“How’s the body, padi?”
“Not so bad. Way you-sef, Miss?”
“Not so bad. Can I get a rum-cola?”
“No problem, Miss.”
A breeze like moist velvet blew off the ocean, and for several minutes after sunset the sky filled with brilliant silver blue light, as if rinsing itself of the day’s corrosive glare. The Royal sat on one of the peninsula’s remotest points, a cheap concrete shell with a nice beach and a crumbling veneer of tropical luxury. No one touched the pool for fear of cholera; weeds and debris were overtaking the neglected grounds, and mold billowed over the walls in complex swirls like countries on a sprawling fantasy map. The Royal was, however, possibly the safest place in Freetown, and certainly, to Jill’s mind, the most degenerate, the hotel of choice for the louche community of foreigners who viewed Sierra Leone as an opportunity. A clutch of coal black whores sat on a couch near the bar, boldly eyeing every white man who walked through the door, while a few more girls were trolling the terrace. Last year the front line had been a few miles south, and though the rebels had been driven out months ago shooting could still be heard at night, the U.N. skirmishing with the holdouts or freelance gangs. In the mornings bodies occasionally washed up on the Royal’s postcard-perfect beach.
“Rum-cola, Miss.”
“Thanks, padi.”
The news segued from the American presidential campaign into a story on the wealth effect, the triumphant affluence that the U.S. was enjoying thanks to its high-tech genius and the long bull market. Jill felt discouraged, if only briefly; she’d let the greatest money-grab in history pass her by, though even if she’d been living in the States all this time, she would have done her best to ignore it. She had a congenital distrust of money and luxury, her militant asceticism further aggravated by a very low tolerance for boredom. How did you get the money from there to here? First of all you had to care, and caring, as far as Jill could see, was an accident of birth, just as her own predilection was an accident, a random number that came up. Her father cared about money, very much so; she’d grown up more than comfortably on Connecticut’s gold coast. She had a brother at Salomon Brothers who apparently cared, and an entrepreneur sister who was getting rich off the software she cooked up in a Tribeca loft. So much on the one hand, so little on the other; often she wondered what kept the world from going up in flames. Do you think they’d cut my funding if white people were dropping dead? She’d written that to her mother, who’d written back: Come home. We have hungry people in America too.
She turned on her stool and caught Starkey’s eye; he was deep in conversation with a glistening black man, but not so deep that he couldn’t manage a little irony for Jill, a smug shadowing around the corners of his lips. They were talking diamonds, probably, though it could be anything, palm oil, bauxite, shrimp, titanium, rubber—for a country with a ruined economy, there were an awful lot of deals around, and Starkey, who’d lived here on and off for years, seemed to have a paying role in most of them. And he made it look so easy, a revelation for Jill, who’d always viewed the getting of money in terms of hassle and guilt. “Don’t work hard, work smart,” he told her in his plummy English voice, and that was part of it, the mellow, cheerful voice that made the things he said sound so reasonable. He gave people hope, he made them feel close to something real, this in a place that kept threatening to slide past zero.
Presently he excused himself and came over to the bar. Physi cally he wasn’t much, a short, thick-legged man with a blunt, fleshy face and thinning hair dyed an improbable midnight black. He had an embarrassing taste for gold accessories, and most days dressed for business in shorts, espadrilles, Hugo Boss golf shirts—resort-wear, here in one of the world’s genuine hellholes. Shed of his clothes he was worse than she’d expected, his body pale and soft as a mitt of dough, shot through with a vestigial stringiness. What had surprised Jill as much as anything was how little all this mattered to her.
“How’s the time, Bazzy?”
“Eh boss, I manage small-small. You want Sassman’s?”
“As long as you’re pouring.” Starkey brushed Jill’s hand, a gesture that managed to be both casual and intimate. “So what’s the news at home, love?”
This was a running tease, his insistence on seeing her devotion to the news as a bright girl’s interest in current events. They both knew she watched mainly for the sedative effect.
“Oh, they’re still getting rich,” she said. “And wondering which Third World country they need to bomb next. Being an American these days, that’s sort of like being a walking joke, right?”
“Come now, no one holds you responsible. Have you had anything to eat?”
She shook her head.
“Then join us. Come have dinner and forget the news.”
“I would,” she said in mock distress, “but I never know what to say to your friends.”
“Nonsense, you’re perfectly charming. All of my friends adore you.”
Adored, sure; white women of any description were in short supply. “Who’s that black man you were talking to?”
Starkey accepted the drink from Bazzy; his hands around the glass were like plump beef filets. “That’s Kamora. The diamond officer at the heliport.”
“I knew I’d seen him somewhere. So he’s a
friend too?”
“After a fashion. He dropped by with a bit of news.”
“Good or bad?”
“Well, you’ll probably be pleased. Though it’s not so nice for me.” Starkey cut her a look; in the dim light of the bar his eyes were wine-dark. “They arrested a man in Antwerp today, someone from Ferrin’s outfit. Trying to pass a batch of Salone diamonds, apparently.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not.” Starkey’s face was grave. “Rather a shock, isn’t it? Everyone knew the ban was good PR, but nobody thought they’d actually try to enforce the damn thing.”
For months pressure had been building for an industry embargo on unregistered diamonds out of Sierra Leone, the “blood diamonds” that kept the rebels in operation. Years ago the RUF had charged out of Liberia pushing some vague Marxist rhetoric about liberating the country, their rationale for an agenda that mainly involved robbing, raping, and murdering every peasant they could get their hands on. They kept their columns well-stocked with ganja and coke, and it was the rebel foot soldiers—most of them teenagers, some no older than ten or twelve—who’d filled the DP camps with amputees. “Chopping,” they called it, their signature practice of hacking off one or both of their victims’ arms. “Short sleeves or long?” they were said to taunt as they raised their machetes.
“Go on, Jill. I give you permission to gloat.”
Jill was staring stonefaced at the TV. To feel conflicted at this point was impossible—there was no conflict, not when she thought about the suffering she’d seen.
“I’m not gloating. I just don’t see how they can do it.”
“They can’t,” Starkey agreed, “but they could definitely slow it down. And trade’s been sketchy enough as it is the last few months.”
Jill sipped her rum. “So what are you going to do?”
“Oh,” he said easily, “no sense running off in a panic. I’ll stick around a bit, see if they’re serious.”