Who can he call? Who does he know in this place? His brother Eddie would tell him to call a cab and then would tell him where he could buy a Chrysler Cordoba demonstrator with only 3,500 miles on it for two grand off list. A steal. Elaine would borrow a car and drive out eagerly, but she’d come with one of her friends from the trailer park, probably Ellen Skeeter, that nervous, redheaded Georgian with the sudden, loud laugh and the three-hundred-pound husband named Ron who works at the Dairy Queen in Cypress Gardens. And Elaine would wake the girls and bring them too. A big production. Lots of talk. He doesn’t want lots of talk tonight. Not now.
His brother or his wife, then. Or Marguerite. Yes, he can call Marguerite. She should be nearly home by now. Auburndale’s not that far. Unless she didn’t go straight home. Unless she stopped off for a nightcap at a bar on a corner a few blocks before her house, a dim, smoky tavern filled with black men and black women and soul music on the jukebox, and she’ll meet and drink and talk black talk with a guy she knows from the neighborhood, a tall, slim, good-looking guy named Steve or Otis, with a pencil-thin mustache and long black eyelashes, and she’ll leave with the guy and go back to his apartment, smoke some marijuana and have wild, Negro sex with him. Afterwards, they’ll lie back on his purple satin sheets, and she’ll fondle his huge prick and wonder why on earth she tried to make it with the liquor store clerk when, any time she wanted, she could have this. The guy will shrug and say, “Beats me, baby. Everybody know honkies got small dicks.”
He unlocks the door and enters the store, stopping at the threshold to flick the switch for the light over the cash register, so he can read the telephone book. Locating the name M. Dill, he starts to dial the number, when he hears a soft male voice behind him. “Hang up the phone.”
He glances over his shoulder and sees two black men, one a few feet behind him and carrying what appears to be a shotgun, the other standing in the shadows over by the door, locking it.
Bob hangs up the phone.
“Hit the light,” the man with the shotgun tells the other. He’s young, in his early twenties, and the other is even younger. They’re both wearing nylon shirts with silver-and-black geometric patterns flashing over them, tight double-knit bell-bottomed slacks, and jogging shoes.
“What do you want to kill the lights for, man? We gotta see.”
“Hit the fucking light. We got enough light from the sign.” The man with the shotgun speaks in a slow, patient manner, as if worried about being misunderstood. The light goes out, and the store drops back into soft, gloomy semidarkness. “Now, what you got to do,” he says to Bob, “is let us make your deposit for you tonight. You understand me?”
Bob nods his head up and down, but doesn’t move the rest of his body. His feet feel bolted through to the floor, his arms bound to his sides. His heart is pounding like a pile driver, but his blood is congealed in the veins, thick and heavy, moving like cold syrup, sluggishly, reluctantly, against the frantic, terrified beat of his heart.
The man with the shotgun regards Bob quizzically. “Did you hear me, man? We going to make your deposit for you tonight.” The man has delicate, small, excellent teeth, and his skin is a yellowish color, the dimly golden shade of a pair of Italian loafers Bob was thinking of buying as soon as he got paid.
“I …” Bob carefully clears his throat. “I already made the deposit tonight. Earlier.”
The man with the shotgun motions with his head for the other man to come forward. This one’s chinless, with skin the color of brown glass, and his head is covered with tiny plaited cornrows laid in parallel strips from his forehead back to the nape of his neck, an elaborate hairdo that, to Bob, looks more like a skullcap than hair.
“Look, man,” the first one says to Bob. “Just open the fucking register, don’t be cute, and nobody gets hurt. We in a big hurry, so if you cute, motherfucker, we just going to blow you away. Now gimme the fucking money. All of it. Checks and all.”
“I really did. I already made the deposit. Early, at nine.”
“Blow ’im away,” the younger man says. His hands open and close quickly, as if he’d like to get them around Bob’s throat. “Go on, blow the sucker off. I hate the sucker already. I hate the way he looks.” He laughs suddenly. “I hate ’im!”
“Shut up. Get busy and find us a case of Scotch, a case of Dewar’s. I’ll take care of …”
“Fuck ’im, fuck the pig! Just blow off his fucking head!”
“Look, I’m telling the truth. I came in to make a phone call. My car …”
“Oh, man, you are so fucking stupid!” The man lifts the barrel of the shotgun and places it lightly against Bob’s chest. It’s a twenty-gauge pump with a choke, Bob notices. He looks down the long black barrel to the man at the other end. The safety is off, and the man is handling the gun firmly, but with ease. He is familiar with the gun. The stock is buried snugly under his right arm, and his right hand curls around the trigger guard, index finger laid against the trigger, while his left hand carries the weight of the gun.
The man with the cornrows has taken a step away and is watching his partner excitedly. “Do it! Go on, do the motherfucker! We can get the money without him.”
“Shut the fuck up and get the Scotch.”
“Listen, I’ll give you whatever you want, everything in the store. I don’t give a shit, it’s not my store. I’ll help you load up, even. But the register’s empty. You gotta believe me. I already made the deposit, and then I went out with my … with my girlfriend for a while, and then my transmission got jammed, it does that a lot, so I came in just to make a phone call, that’s all. We closed up at nine.”
“You’re closing now, man. We seen you closing up, which is why we come in here. But I don’t want to argue with you, white man, I just want to stop a minute in my travels, get me some change and a case of Dewar’s, and keep moving. But you making it hard for me. We in a hurry. You understand me?” He pokes Bob’s chest with the muzzle of the gun.
“Yeah, sure, okay, fine.”
He’ll kill me if I argue, Bob decides. The information comes to him like the rule of a game he has been struggling to understand.
“Here, look,” Bob says, waving an arm in the direction of the cash register. “See, cash drawer’s wide open. Empty. Nothing. You want my watch? It’s a fucking Timex, but you’re welcome to it.” He peels off his watch and slaps it onto the counter, smashing the crystal. “Here’s my wallet. Empty too. Not even any fucking credit cards. I just work here! I’m a peon, a clerk, a nobody!”
Holding the gun level with Bob’s chest, the man steps carefully around the counter and looks down its length at the cash register. “Gimme the bag. You know, the night deposit bag. I don’t want your fucking tin watch, man, so don’t get so excited. Just gimme the bag.” Glancing toward the back of the store, he calls to his partner. “You got that case of Dewar’s? Hurry the fuck up, man!”
“It’s too dark. Ask the guy where the fuck it is.”
“In the stockroom in back,” Bob says in a low, almost confidential voice. He and the man with the shotgun, the man who will kill him, are alike, Bob thinks. They’re different from the man with the crazy hairdo and the wild eyes. “No shit, mister, I really did already make the deposit tonight. I left the store at nine because I had to meet a girl.” Bob wants to tell him that his girlfriend is black, that she lives in a black neighborhood and knows lots of black people, and even though she’s a nurse, she comes from a poor family. “My girlfriend …” he starts.
“I don’t give a fuck about you, man! Or your girlfriend! Just gimme the bag!”
“Forget it!” the other man hollers. “I found it. Dewar’s.” Then, after a few seconds, he says, “Shit! Empty. These’re just empty cases here, man. Ask whitebread where the fuck the Dewar’s is. Do you got to have Dewar’s? There’s some other kinds here on the shelfs. I could fill one of these empty cases with one of these kinds.”
“Look in the fucking stockroom!” the man shouts, angry now. “And hur
ry the fuck up!”
“It’s dark back here, man. I can’t see no Dewar’s, I can’t see nothing.”
“Where’s the light switch for the stockroom?” the man asks Bob.
“On the wall on the right, by the door.”
The man relays the information. Then he raises the shotgun and aims it directly at Bob’s forehead. He says, “I’m going to blow your fucking head all over that wall behind you.” His voice is as cold and calm as the ground. “I’m going to splash your fucking brains, you white sonofabitch, unless you get me that money bag right now.”
“All right, all right. Relax. I’ll get it.” Bob moves slowly to his left, keeping his eyes on the muzzle of the shotgun, as if planning to duck when it goes off. “I’ll get it.” He reaches under the counter by the cash register, gropes around, finds the gun and flicks the safety off with his thumb. He draws it slowly out, inch by inch, thinking, in a howl, Oh Jesus, Elaine, my poor babies, I’m going to die now. The man is going to kill me because I lied. But I had to lie, he wouldn’t believe me when I told the truth and he was going to kill me for that. So I lied. And now I’m going to die for lying. The man will kill me, and maybe I’ll kill him too. Oh, Elaine, oh, my babies, oh, Jesus, I love you, Elaine, I don’t love the nigger girl, I never did, I just love you, Elaine, you and my babies. I’m a good man.
He half faces the silhouetted figure of the man cradling the shotgun. Crouched over the pistol, as if shielding it from rain, Bob squeezes the trigger, hears the explosion, hears Silhouette’s roar of pain, then hears the deeper explosion as the shotgun goes off, hears glass behind him shatter, and suddenly notices the sweet taste of gin on his mouth, all over his face, or blood, he can’t tell, because it’s warm like blood and he’s never tasted warm gin, but there’s no pain, just a numbness in the hand that fired the .38 and a ringing in his ears, broken suddenly by the sound of the shotgun firing again, and at the same time there’s a yellow flash near the door, and smoke and the smell of gunpowder and burning cardboard and the clatter of broken glass above and behind him. Then silence, except for the slosh and trickle of liquor spilling from broken bottles down the shelves to the floor. He hears a noise from the stockroom—Cornrow bumping against cases in the dark—and from the front of the store, the sound of the door latch, Silhouette trying to unlock the door. Bob stands and holds the .38 out in front of him with both hands, the way he’s seen it done on TV. He aims through the rear sight and fires. Sihouette grunts and gurgles and slams against the door. The shotgun falls, and then the man falls too.
Bob races alongside the counter and darts across to the back of the store next to the open stockroom door, where he presses against the wall and listens to Cornrow on the other side struggling in the dark to escape, bumping walls, smacking against head-high stacks of beer, knocking over George Dill’s broom, panting, pushing, groping for an opening in the unpainted cinder-block wall, until, finally, there’s silence. Then Bob hears it. First a whimper, then the awful bawl of a child. And he smells it. Human shit.
He steps through the doorway, flicks on the overhead light and sees the shuddering boy huddled on the floor against the far wall, inches from the back door. The boy looks up, eyes wet, large mouth loosely open, his whole body trembling in terror. He looks around him and sees how close he is to the door, sees that one push on the crash bar would open it. Escape. Freedom. Gone from him now. “Don’t kill me, please don’t kill me!” he blubbers. “Let me go, please let me go! I didn’t do nothin’, honest. Please, mister, don’t kill me!”
Bob holds the gun out in front of him with both hands and aims it at the boy’s head. “You black sonofabitch. I oughta blow you away.”
“Aw-w-w!” the kid bawls.
“You’re disgusting.” Bob lowers the gun. He wrinkles his nose. “You stink like shit too.” He takes a step backwards. “Whew! Jesus H. Christ! You just lie there, shitpants. Lie there and stink. I don’t want your smell near me. And don’t move a muscle, or I’ll blow your fucking brains out. I’ll do you the same favor you wanted to do me.”
Slowly, Bob backs out to the counter and picks up the telephone, and laying the gun flat on the counter, punches the number for the police. “This’s Bob Dubois out at Friendly Spirits on Route 17,” he declares. “D-u-b-o-i-s. Yeah, Dubois. Spelled like that. I know, I know. Yeah, listen, I just shot a guy trying to rob the place. Friendly Spirits. Route 17. Yeah, and I got his buddy too. Got ’im right here. No, no, just one of ’em, the other guy shit his pants. Yeah. The other guy? I don’t know, I might’ve killed the guy. Yeah, Friendly Spirits. On Route 17, opposite the housing project south of the base.”
Hanging up the telephone, Bob walks with a bouncy step back to the stockroom, and when he enters the room, he sees at once that the back door lies wide open, and the boy has fled. Bob stands there, shocked, looking at the wet spot against the wall where the boy lay, then at the open door, then at the parking lot beyond.
Exhaling slowly, he suddenly, and to his surprise, feels relieved, and when he looks down at his hand and the heavy gun in it, discovers that he’s bleeding. His white short-sleeved shirt is spattered with blood, and the back of his neck and arms are laced with tiny glass cuts. They aren’t painful, but Bob knows that bits of glass are still embedded in his flesh, so he’s careful to avoid touching them.
When he checks on the man he shot, he sees immediately that the man is dead, shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the mouth. The crumpled body lies like an island in a large, spreading puddle of blood. Suddenly nauseous, Bob jogs his way back through the store to the stockroom, then out the open door to the parking lot, where he glances at the robbers’ car, a dull, pale blue Dodge Charger with battered New York plates, and vomits onto the asphalt.
When the police arrive, he is seated cross-legged on the counter next to the cash register with his gun laid beside him, feeling giddy and swilling on a bottle of Dewar’s while light skeins of blood run down his back and arms.
À Table, Dabord, Olande, Adonai
The young Haitian woman, with her infant in her arms and her adolescent nephew standing beside her, watches the sea behind them slowly swallow the Haitian hills. The small, crowded boat plows northward through a choppy, slate-blue sea, toward America, Vanise believes, toward Florida, where everything will be different, where nothing except the part of her that’s inside her skull will be the same, and gradually even that will change. First the village of Le Mole at the base of the green hills is devoured, then the low slopes checkered with cane fields and coconut palms go under, gone to where the dead abide, and at last the familiar dark green hills succumb. There is no known place peering back at her from the horizon, and now she faces only a point on the compass, an abstraction called south, Adonai, that refuses to speak to her in any voice but her own.
This is a new kind of silence for Vanise, one that frightens her, and she begins to chatter at the boy, Claude, scolding him for having stolen the ham from the wrecked truck, pointing out his stupidity in having brought it back to the cabin in Allanche, his deceit in not telling them immediately where he found the ham, before they had eaten at it, so that he could have put it back uneaten before anyone discovered that it and the rest of the meat had been stolen and Aubin came looking for him, and not finding him there would punish his mother and her and her baby, unless Aubin did find him there, in which case Aubin would have taken him off to jail. We would still be at home in Allanche, she reminds him, cooking a chicken and yams on the fire, if you were a good boy. You would have your mother, and we would all have each other, if you were not a thief.
The boy looks down at the rising and falling deck. Slowly he turns away from the south and faces north. Yes, he says, but now we are going to America.
Vanise feels the weight of a huge, swelling stone in her belly. She sighs, turns away from the southern horizon to the north and starts waiting for the sight of America rising from the sea.
For centuries, men and women have sailed this passage north of Hispani
ola waiting for the sight of one idea or another rising all aglitter with tangible substance from the turquoise sea. Columbus approaches from the east in search of Cathay, and Ponce de Leon cruises north from Puerto Rico looking for the fabled Bimini, and now comes Vanise, huddled by the low rail in the bow of a small wooden fishing boat out of Haiti, scouring the horizon for a glimpse of America. None of them is lost. All three know they’ll recognize the substance of their idea as soon as they see it, Columbus his Cathay, Ponce his Bimini, Vanise her Florida.
And so they do. Columbus, with a globe in his mind half the size of Ptolemy’s, knows at once that he has reached the fringes of the Empire of the Grand Khan. Ponce, coming upon an island he believes has not been seen before, in his excitement brushes too close to the uncharted reef and has to beach his ship for repairs on the shore of what, for several days, he knows is the Island of the Miraculous Waters. And Vanise, sighting a finger of green land just before sundown blots it out, knows that she has seen Florida.
Columbus, of course, has merely reached part of an archipelago that extends from continents he does not know exist, an unbroken land mass emerging from ice in the north and ice in the south and creating an almost insuperable barrier between old Europe and old Cathay. Ponce has merely landed accidentally on a small, uncharted, brush-covered island where the Indians, though peaceful, will not come out and speak to him of Bimini while he waits for his men to repair the ship.
Vanise has come to North Caicos Island, an easy place to locate exactly. With a map in hand, you can sit at a table in a city in North America, and by marking a point at 21 degrees 55 minutes north, 72 degrees 0 minutes west, you can locate where the Haitians will land tonight. Or you can draw lines, 100 nautical miles north from Cap Haitien, 400 nautical miles south-southeast from Nassau, 575 nautical miles southeast from Miami and 150 nautical miles north-northeast from Guantanamo Naval Station in Cuba. The four lines will converge over North Caicos Island, where there are a few tiny villages, Kew, Whitby and Bottle Creek, a small hotel and miles of deserted white beaches.