Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  "Merci, zami!" Opening her handbag, Ginny took out some qourde notes and put them into the girl's hand. At the same time, Lee noticed how pretty she was.

  Pretty was hardly a strong enough word. They were beautiful, some of these Haitian peasant girls. Constant walking with ruinously heavy head-loads might make them old at thirty and crones at fifty, but in their youth many were blessed with slim waists, shapely hips, and an erect, graceful carriage that accented all their best points. The "civilized" woman didn't live who could walk with that effortless, flowing rhythm, all the motion originating in the hips while the upper part of the body simply floated through space.

  Not all were like that, of course. Not even most of them. But you saw it often. More often here than in Jamaica, though country women there carried things on their heads, too, and also went barefoot. Was it, perhaps, because these Haitian women came from different ancestral roots in Africa?

  Clutching the paper money without even a glance at it, the girl ran back up the road. They had seen the last of her, Lee guessed. Carefully, Ginny put the Jeep into the ruts of the by-pass, and for the next five minutes the machine bucked and rattled over a temporary road along the river, bound upstream.

  Suddenly Lee saw the Haitian girl again, waiting for them where the ruts turned toward the stream.

  "Vini!" the girl called, beckoning.

  "You know what?" Ginny said. "I think she's going to lead us through!"

  She was right. Walking backward, glancing over her shoulder every little while to see where she was going, the girl guided them halfway across the broad stream, then down along a gravel bar, and finally through one deep, treacherous pool where without her they almost certainly would have foundered. They had traveled at least a quarter mile through water before, like a dog shaking itself after a swim, the Jeep shuddered up on the far bank. The girl had walked backward every step of the way while other women, washing clothes in the stream, stopped work to be spectators.

  "How much did you give her?" Lee asked as they struggled up the bank.

  "I'm not sure. Two or three qourdes, I think." A qourde was equal to twenty American cents.

  Lee opened her purse, but the girl had not waited. Already she was back in the river, the money still clutched in her upraised hand. When Lee called to her to come back, she only waved and laughed. Then she was gone.

  "What a wonderful thing to do!" Lee exclaimed.

  Matter-of-factly Ginny said, "You shouldn't be surprised, you know. They're the kindest people on earth, our country folk. You could walk from one end of Haiti to the other with a thousand qourdes in your pocket, and when you got to where you were going, you'd still have the whole thousand if you wanted to. Every day you'd have had something to eat and every night a place to sleep. Of course," she added with a wry smile, "you'd probably lose the thousand to a pickpocket if you stopped in Port-au-Prince, but that's another story."

  The journey continued. Five or six kilometers farther on, from a ditch beside the road, a slim, coal-black girl waved to them, oblivious to the fact that she was naked as Mother Eve. Ginny removed a hand from the wheel and gaily waved back.

  "Watch out!" Lee yelled too late.

  Half hidden by dark tree shadows, the limestone chunk in the road was twice the size of a basketball. Some under-part of the Jeep struck it with a tremendous thud.

  The forward end of the vehicle soared skyward. The rear end followed with a roar like that of a rock crusher. There was a savage, back-wrenching jolt as the machine returned to earth again. Its two occupants sat stunned and silent.

  The Jeep was silent, too.

  "Oh, my God," Ginny wailed. "Now look what I've done. And we must be a million miles from any garage."

  4

  Wriggling out from under the disabled vehicle, Ginny got to her feet with a gesture of helplessness. "I can't tell what's broken. Even if I could, I wouldn't be able to fix it."

  They had one thing to be thankful for. The big trees in the shadows of which the boulder had ambushed them now kept the Jeep from becoming an oven while its unhappy occupants waited for someone to come along. The first to do so was a white-haired old man on a donkey. Ginny got out to speak to him.

  She spoke, of course, in Creole. With a frown that seemed merely an extension of his many wrinkles, the old man wagged a gnarled finger at her and grumbled something about a "caille" and "bon soir". Or that was what Lee, waiting in the jeep, thought she heard.

  Then she thought she heard Ginny say, in a tone of apology, "Mwen rectrete, m'sieu. Mwen dit ou bon soir." This was followed by a dialogue in Creole that went beyond the few simple words Lee had mastered.

  When the conversation ended, the man tipped his hat and rode on. Ginny returned to the Jeep, shaking her head.

  "What did he say?" Lee asked.

  "Well, first he gave me a lesson in manners. 'Alle mande caille bon soir,' he said, meaning literally 'Go to the house of good evening,' meaning in effect, 'You should bid me good evening before you ask questions.'" Ginny heaved a sigh. "Then when I said 'I'm sorry and good evening, m'sieu,' he said he was only going down the road a mile or so and didn't know anyone who had a car, and it looked as though we'd have to wait for one to come along. Or a camion—but with the road out at the Limbe, he couldn't predict when the next camion might be coming."

  "How would he know the road is out at the Limbe?"

  "Well, yes, how would he? The telediol, I suppose."

  "The what?"

  "Our word-of-mouth wireless. Don't smile. To find out if there really is such a thing here in Haiti, two priests in Port and Cap Haitien set up a test for a time when the phones would be out between those two cities. That happens often, of course. The next time the service broke down, the priest in Port started a rumor that the president was dead. It took just two hours to reach Le Cap, he found out when he checked with his buddy later. Would you believe that? —when it takes twelve hours by car and there were no planes flying? That's the story, anyway, and I for one believe it." Again Ginny sighed. "But what are we to do? Just sit here?"

  "Well, you told me back there at the Limbe that if a person were to walk from one end of Haiti to the other with a thousand dollars—"

  "Qourdes. But if we leave the jeep here and go to some caille, we won't be able to flag down any car or bus that does come along."

  "I see what you mean."

  "Are you hungry, Lee?"

  "To be truthful, no."

  "I'm not, either. So that's not a problem, is it? I could kick myself, though, for not seeing that boulder."

  A bee flew into the Jeep and landed on the wheel. Ginny only looked at it. When it flew away, she looked at the watch on her wrist.

  "What time is it?" Lee asked.

  "Ten after two."

  At twenty past three a cloud of dust far down the road signaled the approach of a vehicle of some sort. Ginny got out of the Jeep and stood in the road with her arms wide, as the driver of the camion with the dead battery had done earlier. The oncoming machine slowed. When it stopped, the dust cloud caught up and rolled over it. Out of that grayish white cloud materialized a tall white man perhaps thirty years old, hatless and blond, in khaki slacks and a short-sleeved white sport shirt.

  "Hello. Trouble?"

  "We hit that." Ginny pointed sadly to what was left of the limestone boulder, in the road behind the Jeep.

  "It happens," he said with a wry smile. "Let's see what the damage is."

  He was covered with limestone dust when he crawled out from under their vehicle a few moments later. Even his hair had a streak of gray in it—rather an attractive one, Lee thought. He shook his head. "The guard plate under the flywheel took most of the shock, it seems, but the rear housing or whatever they call it hit the boulder too. I'm afraid it's no screwdriver job, and I'm only a screwdriver mechanic. In fact, I'm a doctor. Where are you going? Cap Haitien?"

  "Yes," Ginny said.

  "That where I've just come from, and it isn't far. Road isn't bad, either. I'v
e got a rope; let's see if I can tow you." He returned to his Jeep and after turning it around positioned it in front of theirs. The two girls watched him while he connected the two with a rope that, to Lee, looked heavy enough to pull a truck. Finished, he said, "One of you had better ride with me to keep an eye on things. Otherwise I'll be looking in the mirror when I ought to be watching the road."

  "You, Lee," Ginny said. "By the way, I'm Ginette Beaulieu." The doctor shook her hand. "Any connection with the Beaulieu stores in Le Cap and Port?"

  "They're my father's. And this is my American friend from Jamaica, Leora Bennett."

  He looked puzzled. "Your American friend from Jamaica?"

  "My father owns a coffee plantation there," Lee said.

  He shook Lee's hand, too. "I'm Dr. Carey Aldred, from the Kelleher."

  Lee looked at him with even more interest, if that were possible. She had supposed he was a tourist, or perhaps someone who worked with some American aid program or at the American Embassy. The Kelleher was something else. Anyone who worked at that hospital in the Artibonite Valley, built by a wealthy American to care for Haiti's poor, had to be a special kind of person. And that was more important than his being so tall and good-looking and cheerfully helpful . . . wasn't it?

  Yes. It was. With no reluctance at all, she climbed into Dr. Carey Aldred's jeep.

  Whatever was wrong with the Beaulieu vehicle, it did not prevent the doctor from towing it. Nor was the remainder of that road to Cap Haitien any deterrent. At a safe and leisurely fifteen miles an hour or so, with Lee keeping an eye on the vehicle behind and the doctor amiably chatting as he drove, the journey proceeded.

  "How come your father owns a plantation in Jamaica, Miss Bennett?"

  She told him. "And how come you're working at the Kelleher? You're American, aren't you?"

  "Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And I'm at the Kelleher for several reasons, I suppose. First, I admire Andrew Kelleher for building that great little hospital here. He did so after visiting Albert Schweitzer in Africa, perhaps you know. Even studied medicine and became a doctor so he could be more than just the man who put up the money."

  "He must be some kind of man."

  "He is. And second, I suppose I'm here for the experience. It's an education, working in Haiti. A doctor gets to deal here with more unusual problems in a month, than he'd see in a year back home."

  "Did you study medicine in Florida?"

  "At the University of Florida, in Gainesville."

  The conversation continued, covering a range of subjects Lee would not have believed possible. He answered all her questions about being a doctor in Haiti. He asked many about living and going to school in Jamaica. "These islands can be a grand adventure," he said at one point. "You find yourself wanting to know all about them—their history, their people, everything."

  "That's true."

  "After Jamaica, what do you think of Haiti?"

  "It's fascinating. Exciting. But, oh, it needs help so badly."

  He turned his head and looked at her for a dangerously long time. Might have driven off the road, in fact, had not a tree branch brushed the canvas jeep top as a sort of warning for him to pay attention to his driving. When Lee looked back to make sure the vehicle they towed was in no trouble, Ginny Beaulieu removed a hand from its wheel and wagged it in warning. But she smiled as she did so.

  By the time the expedition pulled up at the Cap Haitien garage that was its destination, Leora Bennett of Glencoe in Jamaica knew a good deal about Dr. Carey Aldred of the Kelleher Hospital in Haiti's Artibonite. And he knew as much about her.

  He spoke to the owner of the garage, and a mechanic crawled under the Beaulieu Jeep to assess the damage. It would be a long job, the man said. A day or two, at least.

  "Why don't I drive you to the Christophe," Carey Aldred suggested. He meant the Hostellerie du Roi Christophe, the city's leading hotel. "You can make that your headquarters and do the Citadelle the way the tourists do—take a taxi or a tap-tap from there to Milot. Or maybe"—to Ginny—"someone at your dad's store can lend you a car."

  It was an excellent solution to the problem, Ginny agreed. He drove them to the Christophe. There he went to the desk with them to make sure a room was available, and then to the room itself to make sure it was satisfactory. Before leaving, he took a pen and a small notebook from his shirt pocket and said, "It's Leora, isn't it?" He had been calling her Lee since the introductions back at the scene of the breakdown.

  Lee said "Yes" and watched him write her name down.

  "And Ginette?" But that, of course, was merely being polite. Ginny nodded, keeping a wholly innocent straight face as she spelled it for him.

  "And may I give you a ring the next time I'm in Port?" His look included them both but lingered on Lee.

  Ginny gave him the phone number. He wrote it down. The girls thanked him for his help and shook his hand again, then walked with him to his Jeep and said goodbye a second time. As the vehicle disappeared down the road, Ginny turned with a smile to Lee.

  "You're going to be seeing that man again, I guess you know."

  "Do you think so? Really?"

  "I'll bet you the thousand qourdes we were talking about. Make it two thousand. Hey, make it anything you like."

  4

  Inaccessible Precipice, Awful Gully, Great Broken Ground, Very Steep Woodland, Junipers on Narrow Ridge, Great Overhanging Rock, Edge of Great Break, High Fall, Tremendous Hole . . . these were but some of the surveyor's annotations on the old plantation map that Lyle and Roddy had discovered at the Institute. From the beginning, Cliff had been intrigued by them.

  Early that summer of 1957, while his sister Lee was in Haiti, he found to his delight that his "Little Luari" was equally fascinated by the map markings. In fact, it was she who suggested one Sunday that they—the two of them—take a picnic lunch and try to find those "Inaccessible Precipices."

  Almost every Sunday thereafter they went in search of something else on the map. Or were they, without being aware of it, searching for something closer to home—within themselves?

  Today, with the weather about as hot as it ever got at Glencoe, their destination was the pools below Three River Mouth on the plantation's wild mountain stream. Leaving the Great House soon after daybreak, they crossed on the log bridge below the intake and hiked upstream along the rim of the gorge.

  This was a familiar path by now, leading as it did to some of the more interesting parts of the Glencoe property. At times it followed the edge of space and one looked down in awe on the silver ribbon that was the river—in places so far down that its roar was reduced to a mere whisper. At other times the makers of the path, whoever they were, must have found the edge of the gorge too dangerous—like some of the "broken ground" noted on the map, perhaps—and the path veered off into the map's "Very Steep Woodland."

  After a couple of miles of this the path descended steeply to the stream itself—a good two thousand feet higher here than the intake from which Glencoe drew its water—and there was a fording. You took off your shoes and waded across through knee-deep gliding water so clear that every pebble on the bottom, every tiny crayfish not hiding under a rock, was so visible it appeared to be under a magnifying glass. Then you proceeded single file through a forest of junipers on the other side until suddenly there was the stream again, and there were the pools.

  Three pools. The first was cupped in the huge flat rock on which they found themselves standing. Number two flowed into that from a gap in a circle of rounded boulders a few feet higher. The third cascaded down from a shallow depression just above. Having been here before, Cliff and Luari simply stood for a moment without speaking, awed by the feeling that they were again in some secret Eden. But this time Cliff reached for the hand of his companion and held it, something inside telling him today's visit was special.

  He was nineteen now, Luari fourteen but really so much older than that! With her long, black hair, her perfect face with its soft, full lips and incredib
ly blue eyes, with a body that had been all legs a year ago but was now so exactly right . . . how could such a girl be only fourteen? Anyway, from the day the Wilson Gap shopkeeper had brought her to Glencoe, he had had special feelings for her.

  Her voice, as lovely as the rest of her, shocked him out of his reverie. "Hungry? Shall we eat something?"

  "Let's." Putting down the canvas bag he was carrying—they had long since learned that a basket was an awkward burden in the difficult places they went to—he dropped to his knees and emptied it. Hard-boiled eggs, hard dough bread, a tin of bully beef, a bottle of soda-pop apiece—the picnic meals were not an important part of their Sunday adventures, hence, were kept simple. Luari hummed a folk song as she laid out the food.

  But if eating was not important, talking was. On these Sunday excursions they talked about many things. Had they been brother and sister, growing up under the same roof, they could not have known more about each other.

  "Cliff, what do you think about Lee and her doctor?" Lee's last two letters from Haiti had been full of her Dr. Carey Aldred. Apparently nothing else was happening in Haiti, even though that country was gearing up for an exciting election in September.

  "I think she's in love with him," Cliff said with a laugh. "And I'm a little surprised. I thought she had her eye on Terry Connor and his pine trees."

  "She did. I'm sure she did. Then this Dr. Carey happened along. But, Cliff, she can't stay there with him. She has to go to college in the fall!"

  Cliff laughed again. "Nobody tells Lee what she has to do. You ought to know that by now."

  They talked about other things. Then Luari said with a frown of concern, "Your dad is worried about Roddy, Cliff. You know?"

  "I know."

  "Did you see how much he drank last night when Roddy didn't come home?"

  "Uh-huh. So did Mom." Cliff, too, was worried. Since his brother had dropped out of college after breaking up with Heather McKenzie, there had been a certain something at Glencoe that was hard to define. Roddy himself was in a kind of lasting sulk that often flared into anger and defiance. Mom and Dad were disappointed in him, perhaps even a little afraid. Mom had Kim Tulloch and Millie Reid to talk to, of course, and that was a big help where she was concerned. But Dad was trying more and more to solve the problem by drinking it away.