by Otto Penzler
He allowed himself to be hauled far enough back along the trail so that he could peer into the valley. It was frighteningly far down but in no way marked by fire.
“You see? If there had really been a fire raging down there, you would still see and smell smoke. Now will you believe me?”
“I know what I saw!”
“You know what you think you saw, that’s all.” Oh God, if only there were words in Creole for this kind of discussion, but there were not. It was a bare-bones language, scarcely adequate even for dealing with basics. So few words to think with.
Well, then, stick to basics. Stop trying to explain things.
“All right, Joseph. There was a fire, but it’s out now. Let’s go, hey?”
He shook his head. “No, M’selle. Not me. I am turning back.”
“What?”
“These things that have happened are a warning. Worse will happen if we go on.”
Guessing her face was telltale white, she confronted him with her hands on her hips. “You can’t do this to me, Joseph. You agreed to guide me to Bois Sauvage. I’ve already paid you half the money!”
“I will give it back. Every cob.”
“Joseph, stop this. Stop it right now! I have to take Tina home, and you have to help me. These crazy things that have happened don’t concern us. They were meant for someone else. Who would want to stop Tina from returning home?”
“I am going back, M’selle. I am afraid.”
“You can’t be such a coward!”
He only shrugged.
She worked on him. For twenty minutes she pleaded, cajoled, begged him to consider Tina, threatened him with the wrath of the police who had hired him out to her. Long before she desisted, she knew it was hopeless. He liked her, he was fond of the child, but he was terrified.
“All right. If you won’t go any farther, you can at least tell me how to get there. Because I’m going on without you.”
“M’selle, you must not!”
“Does this trail lead to Bois Sauvage, or can I get lost?”
In a pathetic whisper, with his gaze downcast, he said, “It is the only road. You will not get lost.”
“Please rearrange our gear then, so Tina and I will have what we need.” Extracting the brown leather shoulder-bag from her mule’s saddlebag, she stepped aside with it.
He obeyed in silence, while she and Tina watched him. The child’s eyes were enormous.
“Now lift Tina onto my mule, please. I know I’ll have to do it myself from now on because of your cowardice, but you can do it one more time.”
He picked the child up. Before placing her on the grey mule, he brushed his lips against her cheek. His own cheeks were wet.
Kay carefully swung herself into the saddle, then turned and looked down at him. “You won’t change your mind?”
“M’selle, I will wait for you at my aunt’s house, where we stayed last night.”
“Don’t bother,” she retorted bitterly. “A lizard might eat you.”
Tight-lipped and full of anger, she rode on.
AFTER THE FIRST hour, her fear began to subside. It had been real enough earlier, despite the bravado she had feigned for Joseph’s benefit. But the trail was not so formidable now. At least, they had not encountered any more Devil’s Leaps.
Mile after mile produced only bird-song and leaf-rustle. She and the child talked to push back the stillness.
“Will you be glad to see your mother and father, baby?”
“Oh, yes!”
“What are they like? Tell me about them.”
“Maman’s pretty, like you.”
“Bless you. And your father?”
“He works all the time.”
“Doing what?”
“Growing things. Yams, mostly. We have goats and chickens, too.”
“What’s his name?”
“Metellus Anglade.”
“And your mother’s?”
“Fifine Bonhomme.”
Not married, of course. Few peasants married. But many living in plaçagé were more faithful than “civilized” people in other countries who were married.
“Will you be glad to see your sister and two brothers too?”
“Yes, Miss Kay.”
“Are they older than you?”
“Only Rosemarie. The twins are younger.”
“Your brothers are twins? I didn’t know that. It must make your family very special.” In voodoo, twins played important roles. There were even special services for the spirits of marassas.
“Would you like to know about my village, Miss Kay?” Tina asked.
“I certainly would. Tell me about it.”
“Well, it’s not as big as the one we rode through this morning. Vallière, I mean. But it has a nice marketplace, and a spring for water . . .”
Just talk, to pass the time. Then, as the afternoon neared its end, the trail ascended to a high plateau, levelled off, and began to widen. Wattle and mud cailles appeared on either side, and people stood behind bamboo fences gazing curiously at the strangers. Had they ever seen a white woman before?
But she was not the main object of their attention, Kay presently realized. They were staring mostly at the child who sat in front of her.
Tina stared back at them. This was her village.
THE ROAD DIVIDED, and Kay reined the grey mule to a halt. “Which way, Tina?”
“That way!” The child’s voice was shrill with excitement.
Kay reined the mule to the left, looked back, and saw the trailing crowd of villagers turn with her.
What did they want? And if they recognized the child, why in heaven’s name weren’t they calling her name and waving to her? Could the hunch that had prompted her to bring along the brown shoulder-bag be valid, after all?
The trail they followed now was only a downhill path through a lush but unkempt jungle of broad-leafed plantains and wild mangoes. More cailles lined its sides. More people stared from yards and doorways, then trooped out to join the silent and somehow sinister procession.
Oh God, don’t tell me things are going to go wrong now that I’ve finally got here! What’s the matter with these people?
“There it is!” Bouncing up and down on the mule, Tina raised a trembling right arm to point.
Standing by itself near a curve of the path, behind a respectable fence of hand-hewn pickets, the caille was a little larger than most of the others, with a roof of bright new zinc. “We’re home! That’s my house!” the child shrilled, all but out of her mind with excitement.
End of the line, Kay thought with relief. We made it. Be proud, gal.
She turned to look at the crowd behind them and was not proud. Only apprehensive. Worse than apprehensive. Downright scared.
At the gate in the fence she reined in the mule, slid wearily from the saddle, and reached up for Tina. Out of the house came a slender, good-looking woman of thirty or so, wearing a dress made of feed bags. Staring at Kay, she walked to the gate. Then her gaze shifted from Kay to Tina, and she stopped as though she had walked into a stone wall. And began screaming.
The sound tore the stillness to shreds and brought a man from the house, stumbling as he ran. He reached the woman in time to catch her under the arms as she sank to her knees. Standing there holding her, he too looked at the strangers and began to make noises. Nothing as loud as the woman’s screaming but a guttural “huh huh huh huh” that seemed to burble, not from his mouth alone, but from his whole convulsed face.
From the crowd came a response like a storm roar, with words flashing in and out like jabs of lightning. “Mort! Mort! Li Mort!”
Clasping the youngster’s hand, Kay pushed the gate open and walked to the kneeling woman. There was nothing she could do to stop the nightmare sounds. Don’t listen to it, Gilbert. Just do what you have to.
“Is this your mother, Tina?”
For answer, the child threw her arms around the kneeling woman’s neck and began sobbing, “Maman! Maman!”
The woman wrenched herself free and staggered erect. She looked at her daughter in horror, then turned and ran like a blinded, wild animal across the bare-earth yard, past a cluster of graves at its edge, into a field where tall stalks of piti mi swallowed her from sight.
The man continued to stand there, gazing at Tina as though his eyes would explode.
The child looked up at him imploringly. “Papa . . .”
“Huh huh huh . . .”
“It’s me, Papa. Tina!”
He lurched backward, throwing up his arms. “You’re dead!”
“No, Papa!”
“Yes you are! You’re dead!”
“Papa, please . . .” Reaching for him, the child began to cry. And Kay’s reliable temper surged up to take over.
She strode to the man and confronted him, hands on hips and eyes blazing. “This is nonsense, M’sieu Anglade! Because the child has been missing for a while doesn’t mean she’s dead. You can see she isn’t!”
As he stared back at her, his heavy-lipped mouth kept working, though soundlessly now. His contorted face oozed sweat.
“Do you hear what I’m saying, M’sieu? Your daughter is all right! I’m a nurse, and I know.”
“You—don’t—understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
As though his feet were deep in the red-brown earth and he could move them only with great difficulty, he turned in the direction the child’s mother had fled. Lifting his right arm as though it weighed a ton, he pointed.
“What do you mean?” Kay demanded, then looked down at the weeping child and said, “Don’t cry, baby. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Metellus Anglade reached out and touched her on the arm. “Come.” He began walking slowly across the yard, his bare feet scraping the earth. Beyond the cluster of graves toward which he walked was the field of kaffir corn. What could there be in such a field that would make him afraid of his own daughter?
Kay followed him, but looked back. Tina gazed after them with her hands at her face, obviously all but destroyed by what had happened. The crowd in the road was silent again. The whole length of the fence was lined with starers, the road packed solid, but no one had come into the yard even though the gate hung open. She had neglected to tie the grey mule, she realized. Should she go back and do so, to make sure the crowd wouldn’t spook him? No. It could wait.
Metellus Anglade reached the edge of the yard and trudged on through the gravestones—not stones, really, but crudely crafted concrete forms resembling small houses resting on coffin-shaped slabs of the same material. Nothing special. You saw such grave markers all over Haiti. Kay looked beyond to the corn field.
Where was the woman?
Suddenly the leaden feet of her guide stopped and, preoccupied as she was, Kay bumped into him. He caught her by the arm to steady her. With his other hand he pointed to the last of the graves, one that was either new or had been newly whitewashed.
“Look.”
The name was not properly carved. Like those on the other markers, it had merely been scratched in with a sharpened stick before the concrete hardened. It was big and bold, though. Kay had no difficulty reading it.
TINA LOUISE CHRISTINE ANGLADE.
1984–1992.
Kay’s temper boiled to the surface again as she turned on him. “You shouldn’t have done this! Graves are for people you’ve buried, not for someone you only think might be dead!”
He looked at her now without flinching, and she saw how much he resembled Tina. About thirty, he was taller than most mountain peasants and had good, clean features. “M’selle, you don’t understand. My daughter is buried here.”
“What?”
“She died. I myself made the coffin. Her own mother prepared her for burial. I put her into the coffin and nailed it shut, and when we put it into this grave and shovelled the earth over her, this yard was full of witnesses. All those people you see standing in the road were here. The whole village.”
Kay got a grip on herself. Watch it, Gilbert. Don’t, for God’s sake, say the wrong thing now. “M’sieu, I can only say you must have made a mistake.”
With dignity he moved his head slowly from side to side. “There was no mistake, M’selle. From the time she was placed in the coffin until the earth covered her, the coffin was never for one moment unguarded. Either my wife or I was with her every moment.”
We can’t stand here talking, Kay thought desperately. Not with that mob in the road watching us. “M’sieu, can we go into the house?”
He nodded.
“And Tina? She is not dead, I assure you. All that happened was that she lost her memory for a time and could not recall who she was.”
He hesitated, but nodded again.
They walked back across the yard to Tina, and Kay put a hand on the child’s shoulder. “Come, baby. It’s going to be all right.” Metellus Anglade led the way to the house. Kay followed with Tina. The villagers by the fence still stared.
If they actually think they buried this child, I don’t blame them. I’d probably do the same.
The house seemed larger than the one Tina and she had slept in the night before. But before attempting an appraisal or even sitting down, she said, “M’sieu Anglade, will you please see about my mule? He should be unsaddled and given some water, and tied where he can eat something.”
He did not seem eager to comply.
“You’ll have to put me up for the night or find someone nearby who will,” she went on firmly. “So please bring in the saddle-bags, too.” Especially the one with my shoulder-bag in it, she added mentally.
He frowned at her. “You wish to spend the night here?”
Kay made a production of peering at her watch, though she knew the time well enough. “I can’t be expected to start back to Trou at this hour, can I? That’s where my jeep is. I’ve brought your daughter all the way from the Schweitzer Hospital, M’sieu Anglade. Do you know how far that is?”
“All that way?” He peered at her with new respect, then looked again at Tina. What was he thinking? That if the child had been at the Schweitzer, she must not be a ghost, after all?
“The mule, please,” Kay repeated. “Tina and I will just sit here until you return. Believe me, we’re tired.” As he turned to the door, she spoke again. “And try to find her mother, will you? I must talk to you both.”
While he was gone, she asked Tina to show her around. In addition to the big front room, which was crowded with crude but heavily varnished homemade furniture, there were three bedrooms. But despite the zinc roof, which indicated a measure of wealth in such a village, the floors were of earth, hard-packed and shiny from years of being rubbed by bare feet. At least there would be no lizards dropping from the thatch.
As they waited for Metellus to return, Tina began to cry again. “Come here, baby,” Kay said quietly.
The child stepped into the waiting circle of her arm.
“Listen to me, love. We don’t know what’s going on here, but we’re not going to be afraid of it. You hear?”
“I hear, Miss Kay.”
“You just concentrate on being brave and let me do the talking. For a while, at least. Can you do that?”
Tina nodded.
Kay patted her on the bottom. “Good girl. Now go sit down and try to relax. The big thing is, you’re home.”
It took Metellus Anglade a long time to attend to the mule. Or perhaps he spent much of that time trying to locate his woman. Daylight was about finished when at last he came through the door, lugging the saddle-bags and followed by Tina’s mother.
Having already decided how to handle the situation, Kay promptly rose and offered her hand. “Hello, Fifine Bonhomme, how are you? I’m Nurse Gilbert from the Schweitzer Hospital.”
Tina had said her mother was pretty, hadn’t she? Well, she was, or might be if she could get over being terrified. A certain firmness was called for at this point, Kay decided.
“Sit down, Fifine. I must
talk to you.”
The woman looked fearfully at her daughter. She had not spoken to the girl, and obviously had no intention of embracing her. But then, she actually thought she was staring at a child who was buried in that grave outside, didn’t she?
Suddenly the door burst open and three children stormed into the room: a girl who resembled Tina but was a little older, and two peas-in-a-pod boys a year or so younger. Rosemarie and the twins, Kay thought. All three were out of breath but remarkably clean for country kids. Barefoot, of course, but decently dressed. And handsome.
At sight of Tina, they stopped as though they had been clubbed. Their eyes grew bigger and bigger. The girl backed up a step. The twins, as if they were one person, took two steps forward and whispered Tina’s name in unison.
Tina lurched from her chair and stumbled to her knees in front of them. Wrapping her arms around their legs, she cried so hard she must have been blinded by her own tears.
Reassured, Rosemarie dared to advance again. Dared to sink to her knees and press her face against her sister’s.
“Let the children go into another room,” Kay said to their mother. “I would like to talk to you and Metellus alone.”
Fifine Bonhomme only gazed at her brood in a silence of apprehension. It was their father who told them what to do.
“Now listen, both of you,” Kay said. “I’m going to tell you what I know about your daughter, how she was found by Father Turnier and—” She paused. “Do you know Father Turnier?”
“The priest who used to be in Vallière?” Metellus said. “We know of him.”
“All right. I’m going to tell you how he found her and what happened afterward. Then you are going to tell me why her name is on that grave out there. You understand?”
They nodded.
“After that,” Kay said, “we’ll decide what’s to be done here.”
She took her time telling it. Had to, because her Creole was not that good. She even included a brief lecture on amnesia, because it was so terribly important for them to understand that the youngster was perfectly normal.
In telling of her journey with Tina from the hospital to Bois Sauvage, though, she was very, very careful not to mention the dragon lizard or the strange occurrence at Devil’s Leap.