The mule plodded on through the unreal darkness. The drums thundered. Tongues of scarlet leaped high from the valley - high enough to curl in over the trail and stab at her feet, as if to force her to lift them from the stirrups and lose her balance. Fighting back the panic, she clutched the saddle with both hands and ground her knees into the mule's sides for an added grip.
What - oh God! - was happening to Joseph and Tina? She could not even see them now.
Saut Diable. The Devil's Leap. Had the man named Margal been crippled in a fall from here? She didn't believe it. No one could survive such a fall.
Dear God, how much longer?
But the grey could see! She was convinced of it now. He trudged along as though this journey through the nightmare were all in the day's work. Not once did he brush her leg against the cliff, so she had to assume that not once did he venture too close to the drop on the other side. Was the darkness only in her mind, then? Was Margal responsible for it?
Never mind that now, Gilbert. Just hang on. Pray.
It almost seemed that the one creating the illusion knew his grisly scheme was not working. Knew she had not panicked and spooked the mule into plunging over the edge with her. The thunder of the drums grew louder. She thought her skull would crack under the pounding. The darkness became a gigantic whirlpool that seemed certain to suck her into its vortex. She tried shutting her eyes. It didn't help.
I'm not seeing these things. I'm thinking them.
The big grey walked on.
The whirlpool slowed and paled. The flames diminished to flickerings. The sky lightened and let the sun blur through again. Slowly the image of the other mule took shape ahead, with Joseph and Tina on its back.
She looked down and saw darkness leaving the valley, the smoke drifting away in wisps, the green returning. It was like the end of a storm.
Ahead, Joseph had stopped where the cliff passage ended and the trail entered a forest again. Dismounting, he swung Tina down beside him. The child clung to his legs. On reaching them, Kay slid from the saddle, too.
She and Joseph gazed at each other, the Haitian's handsome face the hue of wood ash, drained of all sparkle, all life. Trembling against him, the child, too, stared at Kay, with eyes that revealed the same kind of terror.
The nightmare wasn't just for me. They rode through it, too.
Kay felt she had to say something calming. "Well… we're here, aren't we? Saut Diable is behind us." Brilliant, she thought. Just what we didn’t need.
"M'selle… what happened?"
"What do you think happened?" Get him talking. Get that ghastly look off his face. Off Tina's, too.
"Everything went dark, M'selle. The valley was on fire. The flames reached all the way up to the trail and the smoke made me cough."
She only looked at him.
"Drumming," he continued hoarsely. "I heard all three drums -the manman, the seconde, the bula. And I think even a fourth. Even the giant assotor."
"It was all in our minds," Kay said. "It wasn't real."
"M'selle, it happened." He turned his ashen face to look at Tina. "Didn't it, ti-fi?"
Still too frightened to speak, the child could only nod.
"No." Kay shook her head. "The drumming was only thunder, and there was no real fire. Walk back and look."
He refused to budge. When she took him by the hand to lead him back, he froze.
"Just to the cliff," she said. "So we can see."
"No, M'selle!"
"It didn't happen, Joseph. I'm telling you, it did not happen. We only imagined it. Now come."
His head jerked again from side to side, and she could not budge him.
At the hospital she was known to have a temper when one was called for. "Damn it, Joseph, don't be so stubborn! Come and see!" Her yank on his wrist all but pulled him off his feet.
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 barebones 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 saddle-bag, 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 placage 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. Valliere, I mean. But it has a nice markeplace, 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 were 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.
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