Judge says he’ll make some calls.
Later that day, the judge calls back. It’s a problem, he’s not going to tell stories; it’s a big problem. They’re not going to give no motorcycle to just anyone who walks in off the street. No, sir, you can’t send your cousin. They want the mayor himself to sign for that motorcycle, watch a video on safety, fill out the forms. Uh-huh. Oui. Uh-huh. Fortunately, the judge is in the problem-solving, not the problem-making business. For a little consideration, he would be happy to assist Mayor Fanfan.
The mayor sends his cousin to Jérémie straightaway with the money, grateful that he has a friend, and Johel tells the mayor that he’s arranged everything. He’s going to send his mechanic out with the motorcycle the next day. Only the next day, the mechanic never shows. Not the day after that either.
The way the judge tells it later, Fanfan gets to calling multiple times every day. Fanfan’s got to thinking about that motorcycle so much he’s not thinking no more. Fanfan so mad, he could eat a chili pepper and shit flames.
Fanfan’s thinking that with a motorcycle like that, no more walking in the mountains, embarrassing himself like that. Now he can head up into the hills, visit his ladies, visit his kids in dignity. Fanfan is thinking that the development of his commune just starts with a motorcycle. You can’t be donating a motorcycle if you’re not donating money for petrol, maintenance.
He calls the judge up, says, “Where’s my motorcycle?”
Judge says, “That motorcycle, it’s got a problem with the tires.”
Only way a beautiful bike like that got a problem with the tires, somebody been riding it. Mayor Fanfan’s not dumb. Fanfan figures only person riding that motorcycle is the judge.
The judge is making excuses.
The judge is telling the mayor that the tires are okay now, but his mechanic has a fever, motorcycle just sitting in the judge’s house, waiting for the fever to break.
The next day the judge is telling the mayor that the bike has no gas, and there’s a gas shortage in Jérémie, no way to fill it up.
How much more I got to suffer, thinks Fanfan.
Mayor Fanfan looks on his Facebook and sees a photograph of Johel Célestin riding high and proud on a motorbike. Johel Célestin don’t even look like he know how to ride that bike, how you got to sit low and nice.
* * *
The story germinates, an idea blossoms. The idea gets tossed back and forth, those two guys on those long, bad roads, bouncing and jostling—they’ve already talked pussy and the four-seam fastball and love powder and pussy again, considered the effects of love powder on pussy—and the one guy says to the other, “You know, brother, I was serious what I was saying the other day. We could do this thing, we could get it done. Get that road built.”
And the other guy says, “Huh.”
Soon the judge was hearing the same thing everywhere, from ordinary people. His neighbor comes over for rum sours and says, You should be senator, Judge. Get that road built.
Huh.
The pharmacist sells him some ibuprofen for his headaches and says, Judge, this country wouldn’t be the way it was, men like you were in charge. We’d get this done.
* * *
Everywhere Mayor Fanfan goes, he’s hearing laughter. He figures folks laughing at him on account of him still driving the Camel while the other mayors be cruising. He’s out near the Protestant church, and he hears a little boy giggling. Mayor Fanfan gets down from the Camel, takes the belt right out of his pants, and teaches that boy that no one laughs at legal authority. Then one of his ladies asks Mayor Fanfan just why his face is so sour, whether he shoved a lemon up his ass. He talks; then she says, “Fanfan, you so angry about the motorcycle, you go get it. Be a man.”
Mayor Fanfan starts feeling angry. Calls the judge in the dead of night. Judge wakes himself up and says, “Listen, Fanfan, you want the bike so bad, come and get it yourself.”
Mayor Fanfan says he will.
Not that night but the next, Mayor Fanfan gets to drinking clairin infused with ginger. That kind of brew makes a mild man headstrong, and a headstrong man wild. What Mayor Fanfan starts thinking is how good it’s going to feel driving his new motorcycle back to Les Irois, his people seeing what kind of mayor they got for themselves. How nobody be laughing then, they be seeing him riding low and nice on the blan’s motorbike.
That’s how it happened that Maximilien “Fanfan” Dorsainville presented himself at Johel Célestin’s very home at three in the morning, the judge saying, “Let’s go get that motorcycle now, Fanfan.” The judge and Fanfan driving right down to the commissariat together. And even in jail Mayor Fanfan was telling the other prisoners that Johel Célestin stole his damn motorcycle.
* * *
Then the judge starts thinking it over at night, when he’s alone and he’s sitting out on the deck nursing a whiskey and listening to Coltrane. Johel thinks of what Ogoun told him: Trees will come across mountains and fish will live on land. He thinks of big trucks laden with fruit, of flatbeds filled with mangoes, bananas, breadfruit, avocados, and papayas; he thinks of the fishermen putting their redfish, mahimahi, tuna, and bonito on ice.
The judge starts wondering whether he could win the election. That’s what he asks Terry the next day. They’re sitting out at that little restaurant at Anse du Clerc, taking a break from the roads and the heat, celebrating the arrest of Mayor Fanfan.
Terry says, “Honestly? You know what I think? I think you and I got a destiny. I think of all the things that brought us here, all the crazy luck and weird chances, and I don’t think we’re just out here by accident.”
* * *
A couple of weeks after the arrest of Mayor Fanfan, a Haitian lawyer presented himself at Mission HQ. He represented Toto Dorsemilus, and he said that a member of the Mission had severely violated the rights of his client.
The lawyer for Toto Dorsemilus claimed that his client had been returning to his home from an evening at a Jérémie nightclub when a paralyzing electrical shock caused him to tumble from his motorcycle. The fall caused skin abrasions of the forearms and face. Toto Dorsemilus, lying on the ground, was shocked multiple times. He was then beaten unconscious with a heavy stick, the blows concentrated on his legs, arms, and abdomen. He had lost multiple teeth in the beating. His pants were then pulled down around his knees, and the toothbrush on which his client habitually chewed had been forcibly inserted into his anus. A blow from a boot had caused the toothbrush to puncture his bowel.
Toto Dorsemilus claimed to recognize his assailant as the “blan” who had been present at his arrest all those months ago.
The case was referred to the Special Investigations Bureau of the Mission for further investigation. The SIB quickly discovered that Terry White was checked in on the night of the alleged assault to a Port-au-Prince hotel, where he had been traveling with Johel Célestin to attend a judicial conference. Mission travel logs confirmed travel to Port-au-Prince the day before the assault. Investigators from the SIB spoke with Judge Célestin, who confirmed that he had dined with Terry on the evening of the alleged assault. No physical evidence linked Terry White to the assault, and although Toto Dorsemilus insisted that Terry White was his assailant, he failed to pick out Terry White in a photo array.
The investigators from SIB sent the dossier to the review board with a recommendation that no further action be taken, owing to insufficient proof of the assailant’s identity. All members of the Mission enjoy complete immunity from local prosecution under the Status of Forces Agreement signed by both the United Nations and the government of Haiti, and the case was dropped.
PART FOUR
1
I met Toussaint Legrand just a few days after I came to Haiti. I was walking to the beach, about a mile from the center of town, and all along the way, little voices shouted, “Blan!” I waved and dispensed casual smiles and received in reply giggles, grins, and suspicious stares. The yellow sun cast sharp, sparkling shadows on the white dirt road. I
t was cockfighting day, and the men carried roosters, the birds’ heads stuffed into socks. The way it works, a rooster can’t see, he thinks everything’s copacetic: soon as the sock comes off, first thing he sees is some other damn rooster there, disrespecting him.
I was halfway to the beach when a very skinny kid with an incongruously deep bass voice stopped me. If you closed your eyes, it was like talking to Sidney Poitier. Open them, and there was a malnourished kid who looked about twelve, with a large plastic bag of potatoes and manioc balanced on his head. He had a face like a space alien, with very big eyes, a broad forehead, and prominent cheekbones tapering down to an angular chin. I don’t remember how he began the conversation—that we were conversing at all was a sign of what a natural salesman he was—but the upshot was this: he was seventeen years old and called himself a student; his family had no money; he had no money; his mother had no money; his little brothers were hungry; and he wanted to be an artist. He asked me for money to feed his little brothers and I gave him the change in my pocket. His name, he told me, was Toussaint Legrand.
A few days later Toussaint presented himself at the front gate of the Sénateur’s mother’s house. Jérémie is a small place, and Toussaint, going from neighborhood to neighborhood and door to door, had found me. As he waited for me, he had a look on his face of patient, fragile hopefulness. I invited him into the house, where he drank a glass of orange juice. Much later I learned that he was so excited to see me that he hadn’t slept the night before. That’s exactly the look he had on his face as he sipped his orange juice, as if he couldn’t quite believe that he, Toussaint Legrand, of Carrefour Prince, Haiti, was sitting there on my terrace drinking orange juice.
In the weeks and months thereafter, no pretty lady has ever been courted by such an animated and constant suitor as I was courted by Toussaint Legrand. He came by the house all the time. He was unshakable.
My wife and I tried many schemes to convince Toussaint to leave us alone. We told him that he was allowed to visit only every third day. Every third day without fail he showed up at our door. We asked him to visit only after five in the evening, with the result that we had a standing appointment with Toussaint Legrand at 5:01 p.m. Once, we asked him not to visit us at all. Hah! He was resistant to hints, oblivious to suggestions. What did he want? Not just to ask for money, but also to say hello, or to eat a meal, or to hang around, or to ask a question. What he wanted more than anything, I think, was to be part of the family. He wanted to sit with us out on the terrace in the evening and belong.
In the end, Toussaint wore us down. He was the kind of kid you could horse around with. He was always up for kicking around a soccer ball or taking a trip to the beach. You could send him up the mango tree, and he’d come down with half a dozen fresh, juicy pieces of fruit. He had an easy laugh. You could tease him about girls. My wife taught him to dance. After a couple of months, it got to be an accepted fact of life that two or three or five days a week, Toussaint Legrand would show up at our house and hang around until we told him that he had to leave. It was hard to be mean to somebody so young who wanted so badly to be liked.
Brilliant smile aside, Toussaint wasn’t very handsome. He had terrible body odor, and his hair was reddish at the roots—he asked me for money to buy soap and shoe polish, which he rubbed in his head. His red hair bothered him more than hunger, because every girl on the street knew, just by looking at him, that he was broke. Even the qualities of Toussaint’s own character weighed against him. He told me he wanted to be an artist but had no talent: only once did I ever see him actually try to make art. Illiterate, years behind his age in a school he rarely bothered to attend—who could even start to say how intelligent or capable he was?
It was hard to imagine somebody who had been dealt fewer good cards in life than Toussaint. He and his family had nothing. They had no money, no property, no savings, no skills, nothing but hungry bellies. They were out in the storm. And so the family lurched from crisis to crisis. Shortly after I got to know Toussaint, his mother’s stall at the market caught fire. Then Israel, his younger brother, contracted typhoid, and the family spent his brother Junior’s school fees on doctors. Then Toussaint’s grandmother died, and the family was desperate to give her a decent funeral. About once a week Toussaint would rap at our gate late at night with some new, ever more elaborate story of dramatic need. Some of these stories might even have been true.
Toussaint had only one asset in life, but it was considerable. It was the reason why I gave him money. Despite every disadvantage he suffered, despite every self-inflicted wound, he was nevertheless making his way in the world with radiant, unshakable optimism. One day he bought a hen, whom he named Catalina. This was to be the start of a chicken-breeding empire. Then his family got hungry and ate Catalina. Toussaint was undismayed. He asked me for money to buy another starter chicken. If you gave him fifty gourdes, he’d give half to the kids on the street to buy candy—Toussaint saw himself as somebody who could afford to be generous. When he told me he wanted to be an artist, I think he chose the word almost at random from a list of grand words that to him were synonymous with hope. He would tell me later that he wanted to be a preacher, a doctor, a poet, an engineer. Step by step, he went forward toward an opaque future that he was sure—absolutely, unshakably sure—would one day be glorious.
In the meanwhile, he got by.
* * *
The judge had a discussion and study group at his house three times weekly. He started by inviting the smartest high school kids in town, all of them curious about the world and wanting to know what was out there past the sea and the hills; but the group soon expanded to include kids back home from university in Port-au-Prince, seminary students, young lawyers—anyone eager to talk, listen, argue, and think. Nominally a group devoted to human rights issues, they’d come to the judge with stories of abuse of power and corruption and the kinds of things that make up the pages of the Amnesty International country report, but soon it was more like a bull session on Justice and Liberty and Freedom. What does it mean to have the Separation of Powers? How do we get an Independent Judiciary here in Haiti? What is the Rule of Law? Anything with a capital letter was grist for the mill: they’d sit out on the judge’s terrace, yakking until sundown. Then the judge, who was a talker, would start talking about whatever was on his mind: building a road to Port-au-Prince, the mangoes, how long it took fish to get to market in the DR. Long before I had sat with Terry and the judge that day out at Anse du Clerc, those kids had heard the speech a hundred times, had started to repeat it around town themselves.
Every time I saw Johel, he was on me. “Brother, why don’t you come over and talk to my kids?”
“What do they want to talk to me for?”
“These kids—Port-au-Prince is the end of the world for them. They want to meet anyone who’s been anywhere.”
Next time, same story: “Brother, when are you coming to talk to my kids? And why don’t you take Toussaint with you?”
After the shooting incident, Terry had insisted that the judge throw up a wall around his house, so three masons worked ten hours a day for three days, and now when you came up the road, there was a fifteen-foot stone wall topped with razor wire. Open the gate and you’d expect a mansion, something commensurate with that mighty wall, but there was just a tiny concrete cottage, painted sunflower yellow, still pockmarked with bullet holes.
Now keep your eyes on Toussaint Legrand. He’s the skinny kid in the back of the room, looking all shy and intimidated by these smart, lycée-educated kids. But the judge is saying with his eyes, Toussaint, I’m glad you’re here.
The judge was thinking of a funny story. So he was just a little judge, thirteen years old, fresh off the metaphorical boat, just arrived in the Cold Country, and believe me, you people don’t know cold until you know an upstate winter, and he was competing in his first spelling bee. Spelling? He barely spoke a word of the language. He would have been better off at a flying bee.
Then he explains to the kids what a spelling bee is, how it works, and they’re nodding up and down, locked in on him, emoting with him, sharing his story—even Toussaint.
So this is an ordinary school spelling bee, and he has no idea if he can compete with all these white kids. He’s just a little Haitian boy, after all. Strange thing about being a Haitian. We know we kicked Napoleon’s ass, won our freedom and independence … same time, we’re never sure we’re as good as anyone. They asked him to spell “I,” he might have stuttered and choked, he was so nervous. And what’s the very first word that comes up? What did the good Lord ask him to spell right there and then?
Ratatouille.
R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E.
And he knew that word because his Haitian mother had clipped a recipe from Le Nouvelliste and left it on his Haitian refrigerator for the first twelve years of his Haitian life. That’s when Johel knew he belonged. He knew he could compete. Doesn’t matter that he screwed up his next word, “irony.” He knew he was as good as anyone anywhere.
Not the next year, but the year after that, the judge was national spelling champion, best speller in the whole country. They put him on TV.
Haitian kid.
Then he finished third in his class, straight off to college, scholarship.
Haitian kid.
Law school, where he was Law Review; clerkship for a United States appellate judge.
Haitian kid.
Just like them.
All they needed to do was go down the road, and to go down the road, you needed a road.
And there was one kid in particular who was soaking in that message—a kid who couldn’t have spelled “ratatouille” to save his life, no less defined it, and that was Toussaint Legrand. I’d hauled him along to the judge’s meeting, no agenda or intention on my part, just thinking it might interest him. But this was what Toussaint Legrand—those big space-alien eyes not blinking, his whole being absorbed in the judge’s message—had been looking for.
Peacekeeping Page 15