When they have finished the fruit, the boy decides to risk another question. What are we going to do, Vanise? He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and studies the door of the house across the road from them.
We shall wait. She says it firmly, as if waiting were an action, like hiding or running away or building a house. She passes the boy the sleeping baby, which he holds expertly in the crook of his skinny arm, and she breaks off a leafless branch of the tree behind them, squats in the dust and begins to draw. As she draws, she prays in a broken way that she knows is amateurish and incomplete, but it’s all she can remember from her sister-in-law’s teaching. She knows the names of the cardinal points, and she addresses them properly: to the east, À Table; to the west, Dabord; in the north, Olande; and in the south, Adonai. She draws a long horizontal line from east to west in the dust, then two verticals, one long and one short, that cut the horizontal into three parts. She crosses herself, and while she draws elaborations and curls, circles and lines around the crossbars, she salutes the two trinities, first the Christian God, his son Jesus and the Holy Ghost, then les Mystères, les Morts, and la Marassa, the sacred twins.
Standing, she crosses her arms and examines the drawing at her feet, a vever for Papa Legba. Now, she says, we wait.
The boy relaxes and sits down on the low wall, the baby still in his arms. He’s no longer afraid. He did not know that his Aunt Vanise possessed so much rada knowledge, that she was a mambo, or he would not have been frightened before, when he did not know where they were. They will wait now, here at the crossroads under the sacred cottonwood tree, for old Papa Legba to help them.
The sun rises above the trees, and soon the day is dry and hot. A car rumbles down the lane to the crossroads and slows as it passes; the driver, a skinny black man wearing a painter’s cap, does not seem to notice them. A few minutes later, a boy on a red Honda putts by, changing gears and gunning his motor at the intersection, spinning his rear wheel as he turns to the left and heads up the rise and over it out of sight. Soon schoolchildren emerge from the houses and from the woods on narrow pathways. They are dressed in white and blue uniforms and carry books and papers under their arms and in satchels. Behind them, on the far side of the crossroads, a store has opened to the street, and several of the children stop there in the shade for box milk or Coke. They ignore Vanise and Claude and the baby as they pass, but look back at the trio when they have got behind them.
At the tops of breadfruit trees and utility poles, turkey buzzards perch and show their backs and stretch dew-wet wings to the sun. Doves coo in the crackling underbrush, and long-legged egrets stalk the marshes and gutters and now and then rise awkwardly from the moist ground and soar, suddenly graceful, against the cloudless blue sky. The sun moves slowly higher in the sky, and the shadow of the cottonwood tree in the center of the village of Kew shrinks until it is no larger than the circumference of the tree itself, a blot on the dusty gray round. Vanise and the boy are thirsty now, and the boy, Claude, finally, after thinking about it for close to an hour, asks his aunt if he can try to buy a Coca-Cola at the store behind them.
No, she says. We must wait for Papa Legba. We cannot leave. Besides, we have no more money. She reaches down and plucks from the ground next to the vever a smooth round pebble she has suddenly spotted there, as if it were a new plant that broke through the ground a second before. There, she says, passing the pebble to the boy, who puts it into his dry mouth. You see, Old Bones is looking after us.
The lad smiles and sucks contentedly on the stone. After a moment, he, too, reaches to the ground and retrieves a smooth pebble, which, with a broad, understanding smile, he gives to his aunt.
The hours pass, and as the afternoon comes on and the day begins to cool slightly, women and older girls emerge from the darkness of their houses and stroll down the road past the cottonwood tree to the store, to the butcher over the low rise beyond, to their neighbors’ houses. All of them ignore the strangers, the boy and the woman and her baby. They see them, of course, but this is a shy, careful people, a patient people as well, not like Jamaicans or Bahamians, not like Cubans, either, all of whom would have accosted the strangers by now and demanded to know why they were sitting in the center of their town, where did they come from, what do they want here.
It’s nearly four in the afternoon when a yellow, three-legged dog steps with precise delicacy from the brush at the top of the rise in the road facing Vanise and Claude, looks toward them, turns and approaches them at a lopsided trot. Vanise saw the dog the instant it emerged from the trees and recognized him at once.
With the baby asleep in her arms, she stands, pulling the boy off the wall to a standing position beside her, and together they watch the yellow dog draw near. He has an intelligent, slightly cockeyed face, one ear perked, the other flopping, and he moves on two front legs and one hind more easily, it seems, than if he had all four. He walks with a slightly airy lope, as if gravity did not hold him quite the same way other creatures are held.
A few feet away, the dog stops and stares orange-eyed up at them, one eye looking straight at Vanise, the other studying the boy. He sniffs the air, then suddenly darts toward the basket at the boy’s feet.
Feed him! Vanise whispers hoarsely. He wants to be fed!
The dog pokes his muzzle at the bottom of the boy’s basket and then looks up and says in a smooth voice, What have you got in there? I want what I smell in your basket.
The boy looks wonderingly over at his aunt. Feed him! she commands. He wants the ham. Feed him.
Quickly, the boy yanks the top from the basket and reaches down, gropes past the clothing and comes to the ham his mother carefully wrapped two nights ago in Allanche. He draws it out, unties the knot in the red kerchief and lays the meat and bone on the ground next to the drawing in the dust. The dog watches warily.
Put it at the top, above the cross, Vanise says in a calm voice.
The boy obeys, moves the ham and stands, and the dog leaps upon the offering, grabs the meat with his mouth near the smaller end, sinks his teeth deeply into it and lifts it, the heavy end dragging the dog’s head down on one side like a man with a pipe in the corner of his mouth.
Then the dog turns away from them, takes a few steps and looks back. He puts the ham carefully down in the middle of the road and says, Come along now. Hurry. Then he grabs onto the ham again, lifts it and starts trotting quickly up the road in the direction he came from. Vanise and Claude reach for their baskets, hoist them to their heads and follow along behind.
The dog moves swiftly, and they can barely keep up. At the top of the hill, he stops a second, looks back at them and steps into the bush. Then it’s down into a tangle of liana vines and low, dense mahoe trees and macca, with the yellow dog darting up and down and over limestone outcroppings and underbrush, the woman, baby and boy with their heavy baskets scrambling along behind, panting in the heat, lashed in the face and on the arms by vines and low branches, losing sight of the dog for an instant, then spotting him again and clambering over stones and fallen trees after him. The baby is awake now and crying, frightened. Vanise ignores the child and scolds Claude, telling him to hurry, run on ahead, don’t lose sight of him!
Soon they find themselves running along a sandy pathway that winds down a narrow defile between two limestone ridges. The dog stops ahead of them a ways and watches them stumble along behind. He drops the ham again, as if to rest a moment, and says loudly, with tricky laughter in his low, smooth voice, Come on, now, Vanise! Don’t tell me you can’t keep up with an old, three-legged dog! He laughs and grabs up the ham and races on, suddenly leaving the path and scrambling up the steep side of the defile to the top of the ridge and over. They follow, out of breath and wet with sweat, Vanise pushing the boy from behind, urging him on. Hurry, Claude, don’t lose sight of him! Get to the top and find him.
At the top, they stop for a second and search the underbrush beyond, low palmettos all the way to a turquoise streak of sea in the distanc
e. They see the tin roofs of scattered cabins and small, cleared patches of ground here and there. He’s gone! the boy wails. I can’t see him. Then, a second later, No, there he is! and he points ahead at a yellow flash of fur on the ridge fifty yards beyond.
When the dog at last picks his way down the rocky side and enters the palmettos, they leave the ridge and in the palmettos come upon a mud flat, circle it halfway, following the dog’s three-legged tracks in the gray mud when they cannot see the dog itself. Then, beyond the mud flat, the ground rises slightly and opens to a grassy field, and they see at the far end of the field a small, unpainted cinder-block house. The dog heads straight for the house, through a corn field, old, dry corn stalks clattering in the afternoon breeze, across a packed-dirt front yard and around the side of the house to the back.
Vanise and Claude run along the windowless side of the house, their breath rough, their clothing wet and stuck with burrs and leaves, and they suddenly come upon the dog lying in the center of the backyard, gnawing at the ham with deep concentration, as if he has been there all afternoon.
There is a door and stoop on the back side of the house, closed, curtainless windows on either side of it. Beyond the dog there is a shed or henhouse made of old doors and roofed over with green corrugated plastic, and beyond the shed, a garden plot with yam poles stuck in the ground and tiny, bright green corn shoots peeping through the dirt. In the distance is a field, then woods, then sea.
Vanise sits heavily down on the stoop, and the boy sits next to her. Before long, their breathing slows, their hearts stop pounding, and their clothes, in the cooling breeze off the sea, loosen and dry. The yellow dog goes on chewing at the ham quite as if they were not present. Beside them squats a large metal drum, a rain barrel with a spout leading to it from the low roof. Lying on the ground next to the barrel is a white enameled cup, and the boy grabs it up, fills it with water and hands it to his aunt, who drinks and hands the cup back in silence. The boy drinks, then sits down again next to Vanise, and they resume waiting.
Will Papa Legba speak to us again? Claude asks.
Just be silent, she whispers. See, even the baby knows how to behave, she adds, looking down at the infant asleep in her lap. Give him water, she commands, pointing toward the dog with her chin, and Claude quickly obeys, filling the cup and placing it with great tenderness a few feet in front of the animal.
The dog studies him, and when the boy has returned to the stoop, lets go of the ham, steps warily toward the cup and slurps at the water. Returning to the ham, the dog curls around it, and holding the meat with his front paws, tears at it with renewed concentration, getting down to the white bone now, licking and chewing, gnawing against it and poking his long pink tongue after the marrow.
Suddenly, they hear from the other side of the house the sound of a car, loud and blatting, a car without a muffler approaching the house rapidly, bumping across rocks and ruts and coming to an abrupt stop. A door slams, a man shouts, a harsh, loud voice that carries no sense to Vanise and Claude but is filled with the sound of anger and impatience. Robbie! Where de fuck you at, mon? Come get you out here, mon! You goddamn bumba-clot, me gwan tan you hide, mon! Then silence again, until the front door squeaks open and is flung shut, and the man hollers again, this time from inside the house. Robbie! Lazy sonofabitch! Me cyan leave dis house a minute widdout trouble.
Vanise and Claude do not move. They hear the sounds of someone rummaging through the house, hear pans clatter behind them, then silence. A moment passes, and the screened door at their backs opens, bangs against them, forcing them quickly off the short stoop, and when they turn, they face a large, coal-black man, balding on top, with a thick, bristly gray mustache and wearing a bright green safari shirt and khaki trousers. He puts his fisted hands on his hips and stares down at them. His large brown eyes are covered with a film, as if behind a pane of yellow glass, and several shiny scars lie across his cheeks and upper arms, raised and thick, like serpents. Vanise sees the cross-eyed dog peer across the yard at the man and flop its thin tail against the dusty ground.
Wal, now. Who dis? The man’s voice is low and comes rumbling from his chest, and he smiles with the expression of a man who has unexpectedly won a small prize. His two front teeth are rimmed in gold, his wide, full lips shiny like his scars.
Vanise and Claude examine the ground at their feet. The dog gnaws at the hambone, hurriedly now.
You Robbie’s woman?
Vanise knows he is speaking to her; she looks up and says nothing. The baby has awakened and turns uneasily in her arms.
C’mon, gal, talk to me. Where Robbie at? Him send you over here to say him sick again? Ras-clot, dat mon, me cyan deal wid him no more! Him s’posed to work dat patch by de salt flats, an’ me check him all day, an’ him never show once, lazy, simple sonofabitch. You tell him, sister, you tell him find himself another job. Me cyan deal wid him no more.
The man turns and swings open the screened door, stops and looks back at the woman. G’wan, now, nothin’ more to say. Go home, sister, and tell Robbie him fired.
Vanise stands there in silence, looking away from the man, waiting.
What your name, gal?
She says nothing, shifts her weight and looks down at her baby’s face. The man lets go of the screened door and takes a step toward her. For several seconds he studies the people before him, a young and pretty black woman with a baby in her arms, and a boy, and two baskets on the ground.
Suddenly, he smiles broadly. He knows everyone in town, practically everyone on the whole island, and he’s never seen this woman before, or the boy. He drives a taxi between the landing strip in Bottle Creek and the Whitby Hotel, and he moves around the island a lot, and these faces are new to him. They are strangers’ faces. You one of dem Haitians, dat’s what. Putting out his hand, he places it heavily on her narrow shoulder and says loudly into her face, Haytee? You from Hay-tee, gal? He removes his paw from her shoulder and turns to Claude. Hay-tee? C’mon, bwoy, you can tell me. Me nagwan do you no harm, bwoy. Me a fren, he says, pointing to his beefy chest. Me like Hay-shuns! Sonofabitch, fucking Haitians, dem, dey cyan understan’ English, even. Then to Vanise, Hay-tee, gal?
She nods her head slowly up and down. Haiti.
Ah-ha! The man flashes his gold-rimmed teeth. He swings open the screened door again and this time waves the woman into his house, but she stands rooted to the ground. Giving up, the man walks inside alone and returns a second later with a bottle of white overproof rum in his hand. He takes a long slug from the bottle, sighs as if relieved of a burden and sits down on the steps, looks back and forth from the boy to the woman. So, the man says to no one in particular, me kotched me a coupla Haitians. He takes another drink, extends the bottle to Vanise, who shakes her head no. You gotta name, gal? What dem call you? he tries.
Silence. Claude, wide-eyed at the sight of the large, loud man, clings to the side of his basket with both hands. Vanise’s face is expressionless, impassive, as if she has turned herself into a stone.
The man points to his thick chest. Me George. George McKissick. George, he repeats, stabbing himself with his finger. All dem other Haitians, your frens, dem, dey got kotched already, got ’em dis mawnin’ near Bellefield Landing. Jus’ sittin’ on de beach, thinkin’ dem in America. Now dey in de jail over on Grand Turk. What you think o’ dat, gal? You lucky, dat’s what. Lucky.
Vanise listens closely, but nothing the man says makes sense. Now and then a word or string of words sounds familiar, but she loses the meaning instantly. She can read the man’s face, however, and his body and the tones of voice he uses, bass tones, not harsh, not sweet, either, but rising and falling in a low range, as if he were trying to tell her a funny story.
He’s playing with them, she knows, treating them like babies. And he likes to drink, drinks quickly and deeply with obvious pleasure and need. He lives alone: the house and yard are of a man alone; no signs of a woman or children here; no clothes drying on a rope, no toys scattered in
the dirt, no curtains in the windows. Except for the yellow dog, no animals, either. The henhouse seems empty, and there are no chickens or roosters in the yard scratching and pecking in the dust. No pigs or goats. The man probably doesn’t even eat here much; he comes home to drink alone and sleep and go out again. His scars tell her what happens when he is out at night in the bars. Another man must tend his crops, she decides, because this man is too bulky to be a farmer, too quick and nervous in his movements. And he has a calculating look, the look of a man who likes to buy things low and sell them high, who likes to haggle with people, not with the ground, the rain and the sun. And despite his playfulness, she can tell that he is not a kind man.
George goes on talking to Vanise, almost as if she understands his words. He tells her about the other Haitians from the boat, how they’ll be kept in jail until they can be shipped back to Haiti, how stupid they were for trusting someone to bring them all the way to America in a boat small enough to get through the reef off North Caicos. The police are used to Haitians coming ashore here, and most of them get caught and sent right back. A few hide out, they’re good farmers and stonemasons and sometimes metalworkers, and they work cheap, because they’ll be turned over to the police if they don’t, same as up north in the Bahamas. The Haitians who got caught this morning, he points out, were not as smart as Vanise. They stayed bunched up like cattle at Bellefield Landing, where they were bound to be seen. They should have separated and run into the bush, as she did, where they might have been lucky enough to meet up with someone like George McKissick, who would be willing to help them. Instead, they’re in jail tonight, and she and her baby and little brother are here, with George McKissick, on his farm.