There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) Page 13

  The door falls to the ground.

  Attached to it is a hook, and to that a rope, and to that a car.

  — Vini, Stephanie says, worry making her voice shake. She grabs Libète’s forearm. We need to go.

  Jak has his arm around Libète as they move down the road toward Tòti, the idling green Land Rover. Uncle sits at its wheel. Neighbors disturbed by the commotion pry.

  Libète is at the vehicle now. Wait, she says. Wait! It is all too much, simply too, too much. Her mind stalls as it tries to shift to a higher gear. Uncle, what’s happening?

  He is downcast. I let you be stolen again, he said, each word weighted with shame.

  — Stolen? But, by whom? Benoit? Hold on, let go of me. She rips her arms from Jak and Stephanie. My things! They’re still inside!

  — Jak, go grab them! Steffi gave a flick of her neck and Jak rushed to the cinema and came back with her book bag.

  — Where’s Lolo? We can’t leave him! What’s happening? Libète is screaming now. Stolen by who? By who?

  Jak pulls himself around, grabs her by the sides of her face, locks eyes with her. Things are no good right now. No good at all. But they will be.

  — But Lolo–

  There is something in his look, the shape of his mouth, his face turned cold. It is something she does not understand. He can say no more, not now, not yet. He grabs her hand, fingers locking with hers, and he is dragging her into the vehicle, but she cannot go with him. Not like this.

  Uncle lifts her against her will, puts her inside. She resists these tides beyond her control. By whom? By whom? None will fill her question’s gaping space with the answer she knows yet refuses to believe.

  Thrown in the seat. Buckled tight. Jak’s head in hands. Steffi in the driver’s seat. Her eyes in the rearview mirror. So very terrified.

  There is someone there.

  Libète turned, and at first noticed nothing. The machin’s burst of speed made the neighbors pouring into the street appear as a blur. But then she saw. There was Uncle, who stayed behind, but another person who rounded a corner, running madly after them, arm outstretched, fingers grasping for her.

  Lolo!

  He was yelling and shouting and screaming until her ncle caught him and threw him to the ground and the people encircled him.

  She cried out, for it was all too much, simply too, too much.

  She awakes, looking up into the wide blue sky.

  Félix did not lie–the old fort did not have any roofs. A bird cuts through the open air. She envies its speed, its grace, its freedom.

  She lies on a bed of gravel and weeds, her head rested on her bag of meager possessions. Stones stacked on stones, the fort’s walls reach high. There is a bowl next to her head, full of desiccating rice. Her stomach shouts. She scoops it up barehanded, devouring the stuff. Exhaling deeply, her most acute pangs subside. The insufferable gloom returns. How foolish to think it might end. That suffering might not cloud every little thing, every single moment . . .

  Her mind travels to innocent days. Not innocent days, she decides–that would be too early, before she could think and remember. More like ignorant days. Of not knowing the darkness of human hearts and the hopelessness that permeates everything.

  The ignorant days were those at the St. Francis school. Of visits to art galleries. Dinners with poets and artists. Holidays spent with Stephanie and Jak in Cap-Haïtien, Jacmel, Les Cayes. Days of leisure and learning. To read a book by Jacques Roumain or Marie Vieux Chauvet! To listen to music, Martha Jean-Claude, Boukman Eksperyans, even Sweet Micky! She hated being cut off from culture. From knowledge. Memories of such pleasures caused dull and persistent pain, like that of a missing limb.

  How were Jak and Stephanie these days? She hadn’t the slightest idea. Had their plans too been so easily cast aside by Fate? She longed to see them, to laugh with them, to dream of a brighter future for her and her poor countrymen.

  She saddened at the thought. Libète had believed she’d moved beyond recurring hunger pangs, dirty water, needless sickness. Not that she had become better than to suffer those things; she had been rescued from them, as all those who were in misery ought to be. No, Libète was still a product of where she grew up: birthed in the backwater La Gonâve and forged in the crucible of Cité Soleil. Foche’s poverty was still a world she could understand and pass through. But it was no longer her world. It was foreign, as were its customs and its people.

  People like Magdala. Like Dorsinus.

  Magdala was a kindred spirit. Libète knew that. There was something achingly familiar in her way, an essence that drew them together. Did she remind Libète of her own mother? Of Stephanie? Not quite. Magdala had a gravity that was foreign to her mother’s soul, and a grating edge that Stephanie lacked. Though Libète did not know Magdala’s past, that there was no husband, no immediate family besides Félix, spoke much.

  She thought of poor Dorsinus. Ridiculous as he was, there was kindness there, and admirable conviction. Indeed, if not for him she might have withered away on the river’s banks, or been found by those dogs and their masters. She shuddered at the thought, and shuddered again. To be suspected for Dorsinus’s death was another blow coming just months after her name had been smeared with the loss of poor Didi.

  Libète sat up, wiping sleep from her eyes. Based on the Sun’s progress, she had slept for hours.

  She poked her head out of her staked claim, a small room on the fort’s eastern side. Félix was nowhere. She decided to explore the ruins.

  She felt like an infiltrator, stepping back two hundred years to the French outpost in its heyday, and then in its demise. She pictured Frenchmen trembling as Maroons–self-freed slaves–overcame their defenses. The rumbling cannonade, the smell of spent gunpowder and smoke making the oppressors cough and hack even as they were cut down by machetes and pikes. She found Félix’s blade leaning against a wall and picked it up, feeling its heft in her hand. Clenching her jaw, she imagined plunging her own cutlass into an enemy as he begged for mercy in a foreign tongue, gurgling as blood filled his mouth, as his body slumped to the ground. She imagined what it was to experience killing someone hated and how good it might feel . . .

  — You’re up.

  She jumped, blinked twice. Sucked out of her imaginary world of death and revenge and back into waking life. She laid the blade down and said nothing while straightening her shirt’s creases.

  — You were staying at my mother’s, no? With Dorsinus?

  She looked him straight in the eye.

  — Why did she take you in?

  Her eyes did not waver.

  — Why did she put you out?

  — What did you spend the money on? she asked.

  — Excuse me?

  — There’s not much to show for it. Not much at all.

  It was his turn to be quiet.

  — Let’s make another deal, she said. How about you don’t ask me about anything from before today, and I do the same. We can keep things simple.

  — I see why she kicked you out, he grumbled.

  — What was that?

  — Whatever. He scratched his head then massaged the bridge of his nose. Can we start the lessons? I want to see the benefit of my bargain. Before you disappear, having eaten all my food.

  Inertia kept her still. She finally moved to grab a stick from the ground–one firm and small–to scratch the earth. Have any water?

  — A bucket, filled from the spring. He pointed to it in a corner. She picked it up and threw it on a patch of loose dirt.

  — Hey! That’s where I sleep!

  — Oh. She knelt down and began stirring the new, soupy mud. This is where we’ll write.

  — Why not your notebook?

  She didn’t answer. She shaped the first letters of the alphabet in the ground.

  Félix inhaled deeply. Dorsinus told me you were a kesyon. A big, open question.

  She cringed at the man’s name. He spoke with you?

  — He spoke. And
unlike some, listened. He said he’d come again today.

  — You don’t . . . you haven’t heard?

  He shook his head.

  — Dorsinus–he–died. Last night.

  Félix twitched. Shock at the news was writ large across his face. That’s not possible. I saw him yesterday evening. He told me all about the sentenci–the meeting, and about the plan to take our land. It’s not possible.

  — All I know is what I saw, Libète replied. This morning, early on, I helped your mother deliver a baby for a woman in the lakou down the road, the one called Délira, and–

  — Is the baby okay?

  — Yes. She let the word stretch and Félix’s body loosened. Libète was disturbed by how quickly Dorsinus seemed forgotten. The baby–Delivrans, she named him–is all right, Mesye Concerned-for-His-Dead-Friend. You’ll need more focus to learn to read, she grumbled.

  He tucked away his relief and gave a violent wave, becoming sullen. You’re an outsider. You don’t understand. He sat uncomfortably, unsure how to handle the disparate feelings brought by news of Delivrans and Dorsinus, life and death.

  — Dorsinus fell. Libète blinked away new tears. He was drunk–his bottle was emptied out, and he tumbled down the slope, down into the crops. Kou kase. Broken neck.

  — Jezi.

  — Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. He looked at her blankly. She was surprised she said it, a reflex from another time. Félix stood and walked one direction before stopping, like he forgot why he got up. He walked behind a nearby wall.

  — Where are you going? Huh? I’ve got to teach you, remember? ‘Benefit of your bargain?’

  No reply came. She tapped the ground impatiently, letting the beat slow. She looked over her shoulder and bit her lip.

  She crept toward the wall, not making a sound, and inclined her head to listen. She heard sniffling. Crying. The two were sitting on opposite sides of the wall, facing opposite directions. She was letting her insides show again, letting them seep out on display for the world to see. This scared her tremendously.

  — They’re blaming me, Libète said into the open air. The people who found him. They think I did it. They saw some stupid bèt, a big lizard, crawling by Dorsinus, and said it’s a baka or some such thing. Stupid superstition. Everyone thinks I planted it, that I was behind his death . . .

  She waited for him to ask the natural question, the one she surely would have asked him if their roles reversed. The question did not come.

  — Let’s go.

  — What?

  — There will be a funeral. I need to go. We need to go.

  She huffed. The pair we are? You think a thief and a murderer will be welcome down there?

  — Let them think what they will. It’s time, he said.

  And that is all he said.

  In Memoriam

  Mò pa jije.

  The dead aren’t judged.

  — Tell me what’s going on.

  Life along Carrefour streams past. Vendors hawk wares. Hundreds of oblivious passersby go about their lives, unaware of what Libète and Jak and Stephanie have escaped. Stephanie pulls over after a motorcycle seems to linger behind their vehicle a bit too long. She watches it pass, only to resume her course along the road a moment later.

  — Answer me! Libète shouts.

  Neither Stephanie nor Jak will speak.

  Unbelievable. She punches Jak. What are you not telling me?

  But he is nearly catatonic. His eyes are hollow and his expression void, like he’s lost the ability to detect shapes and faces and see things for what they are.

  — Libète. You must calm down, Stephanie says.

  — Tell me what’s happened, then!

  — Libète, Stephanie said definitively. Shut up.

  She crossed her arms. I . . . will . . . not! Why did we run from Lolo?

  Stephanie glared at Jak, but the boy remained distant.

  — Tell her, Jak.

  But he couldn’t. He gave Libète a pleading look, which only maddened the girl further. She unbuckled her belt and slid her hand along the door’s release. She punched it open, nearly clipping a dirt bike trying to pass. I’ll jump out of this damn machin if you don’t start talking! I’m not staying with you two if you keep secrets from me like everybody else! Her voice was tremulous, and her whole body shook.

  — Calm down!

  — Lolo is no friend, Jak blurted. No friend of mine, no friend of yours.

  She let the door hover open and the road streaked past below. What?

  — I never told you, Libète. I never told . . .

  — Told me what?

  — It brings back too much . . . Jak grabbed his head and dug his fingers into his temples.

  — Jak, if you don’t tell me what you mean, I will kill you. I mean it. I will take my fist and put it straight through your chest.

  — Let him talk, Libète. Give him space.

  — Claire and Gaspar, Jak choked. Lolo knew. Lolo helped.

  — Helped what?

  — Kill them.

  — What the hell are you saying? He was–is–innocent!

  Jak was crying. That’s an untruth. One I let you, wanted you, to believe. To keep you safe.

  Libète’s teeth were digging into each other, top row against bottom. Pain shot from her gums. You’re lying.

  — He didn’t put the knife into Claire, didn’t strangle Gaspar. But he led them to the knife, and strangling hands. So another could do the job.

  — You’re lying, she repeated.

  — Lolo tripped up. In the hospital. The last time you or I saw him. He told two versions of his story. Two versions. And I caught him in the lie. He led them there for money, and revenge. Maybe not knowing all that would happen, but still knowing harm would come. I told him to leave, to never come back, or I would turn him in. And he threatened me.

  A string of curses burst from Libète’s lips. No. No, no, no.

  — It’s the truth. I promise. I swear. I promise . . .

  — He lied to me. You lied to me?

  — To keep you safe, Libète. To protect you.

  — Oh God! With the door slammed closed, she laid her head against the window’s hot glass and wept.

  Dorsinus’s body lays there, clad in white.

  Magdala’s hospitality was without end. Though drained from the delivery of Délira’s child, she had accepted the responsibility of dressing her friend’s corpse, bathing him, perfuming him. Her one-room home is lit with candles, and linens hang from roof to wall. Magdala stands within the doorway, greeting those who come and blessing those who leave.

  When a member of the Kè Ini Gwoupman Peyizan dies, there is a funeral. This is the way it has been, and will be. When life strips one of dignity, in death there should be no humiliation. The community makes sure of that.

  But was Dorsinus a member of the Gwoupman? Technically, no. But Magdala had convinced everyone. Dorsinus had drifted through Foche enough, sweat alongside enough people in the fields, offered a bottle of rum here and there, shared his take from his meager mining on extravagant celebrations. The majority of people in Foche would not disrespect him in his passing.

  Dorsinus’s circumstances made the arrangements as easy as they could be. He had no kin in the area, so there would be no traveling mourners to prolong the ceremonies. The customary burden of washing all of his linens and clothes to prevent his spirit from lingering was mitigated by the fact he had just two sets of clothes and no bed to call his own. But what of the burial? He can be laid down in my family’s plot, Madanm Janel had offered. The itinerant preacher and undertaker, Reginald Honorat, had traveled up with his own donkeys from down the mountain, dragging a coffin behind him on his wagon. He happened to have a coffin ready that would accommodate the old man–with only the slightest bit of bodily manipulation, he said.

  Members of Foche brought firewood, rice, and rum, and helped tend to the cooking that greeted the body under the watch of the late-afternoon Sun. Reginald lin
gered in the room in his frayed suit, his skin sallow, leading the ceremony known as nevenn. He sat on a stool with the open pages of a yellowed prayer book. Memorized scripture and hymns slid out of his mouth. The only openly nonplussed members of the community were a trio of professional mourners; Magdala had refused to pay for their tears and chorus of wails. Dorsinus wouldn’t have cared one bit, she said. He would have called it a waste.

  By the time Libète and Félix came down the hill, the crowd had grown. The Gwoupman’s music brigade was present and accounted for. They chose more sedate selections than their usual boisterous drumming and trumpeting, meant to spur on members’ toil in the fields.

  When eyes first fell on Félix, there was pointing. He ignored it. Two broke off from the throng as if to intercept him and Libète. One was Prosper, and the other the young man who had found Dorsinus.

  Félix raised his fists. Let me pass.

  — You don’t deserve to be here, said the young man.

  — It’s for your own good, Prosper added. He cocked his head and took note of Libète, who stood crossly a few paces back. Félix turned toward Libète, appearing to relent. With their guards down, Félix crashed through the pair and proceeded down the hill. Both youths’ tempers flared, but Libète stepped between them, a hand for each of their shoulders.

  — Not now, Prosper. Take it up with him later.

  — You shouldn’t be seen with him, he muttered. It’s not helping your reputation. He said this earnestly.

  — Why, Prosper, do you even care about my reputation? She left them and proceeded down among the assembly. The drummers stopped. Félix didn’t.

  — Manmam, he said, as he entered his old home. Magdala looked down. Libète nodded to her, and in return got a furtive glance. The others in her house slid along the walls and out. Only the preacher, the boy, the girl, and the dead remained.

  — Here to pay your respects? Reginald asked.