Outside, Sebastien took my face in his hand and kissed me on the mouth.
“I’m tired of the harvest and all the cane,” he said. “Perhaps it’s time to see my mother. My mother, she did not think I would be gone this long. I’ll go find Mimi and we’ll meet you at the chapel.”
When I reached Señora Valencia’s house, I found that Papi had not yet returned. Luis was still out looking for him. After she cooked supper, Juana joined him in his search. Lidia stayed inside with Rosalinda while Señora Valencia sat out on the front gallery watching the road.
To make her go inside, out of the evening damp, I wanted to tell her what Kongo had told me, that her father was well, at least he had been that afternoon—but I didn’t want to reveal anything Papi might have wished to keep secret. Nor did I want to start talking and accidentally say more than I should about my own plans to leave her house, most likely for good. Where would such causene begin and where would it end? At this point it was a matter between our two countries, of two different peoples trying to share one tiny piece of land. Maybe this is why I’d never let the rumors engage me. If they were true, it was something I could neither change nor control.
I had decided that when it came time to leave, I would not say good-bye to the señora. But as soon as I was across the border, I would send word back to her with Doctor Javier.
While the señora was waiting for her father to return home, Beatriz came up the hill from her mother’s house. She sat herself down next to Señora Valencia, in one of the rocking chairs on the front gallery. Señora Valencia got up and leaned against the corner post overlooking the main road.
“Where is your brother?” she asked Beatriz. “Maybe my father is with him.”
“Javier is at the house preparing to leave for the border,” Beatriz said. “Your father is not with him.”
“I’d like to know what draws Javier to the border,” Señora Valencia said. “Perhaps it’s the same thing that keeps taking my husband there.”
“Pico and my brother are not the only people going to the border. Mimi is leaving us,” I heard Beatriz say. “Her brother took her away.”
I came out and asked if they wanted a cooling drink. It would be my last gesture of kindness to Señora Valencia. She asked for a glass of cool water.
“Amabelle, do you know Mimi is leaving us?” Beatriz asked me.
I feigned shock as best I could. “¡Que lástima!” A pity!
“My father has never disappeared for this long a time,” Señora Valencia said as I served her the water.
“You’re afraid for your father because you’re thinking of only bad possibilities,” Beatriz said in her usual nothing-is-ever-grave manner. “Perhaps he has a mistress.”
“Why would he hide it if he was friendly with a woman?” Señora Valencia slipped back into the rocker. “My mother has been dead for so long.”
“Maybe there is something scandalous about his mistress. She could be too young or already married.”
“This is not in Papi’s nature,” Señora Valencia said.
“Dies diem docet,” answered Beatriz, showing off her Latin.
“What do you say?” asked Señora Valencia. “What does this mean?”
“A man’s schooling is never complete,” interpreted Beatriz.
Señora Valencia asked for another cup of water. When I brought it, she drank again without stopping.
“Perhaps my father’s been arrested.” She scanned the property for unknown faces as she handed the cup back to me. “He may have said something to the wrong persons.”
“We will not think this now,” Beatriz said, her voice composed enough to soothe the señora. “Let us think of happier things while we wait for your father to return. Tell me, what will you paint to follow this portrait of El Jefe inside?”
It took the señora some time to switch from thoughts of her father to thoughts of painting.
“Do you have another subject in mind?” Beatriz persisted.
“My son. I would like to paint my son,” Señora Valencia said. “And you?” she asked, turning their chat to another course. “What of you? I’m told that these days you chase away young men like flies from your stew.”
“You took Pico from me,” Beatriz replied, laughing. “I have never found a man like him. Now I am waiting for the right one to arrive. Maybe he’ll speak to me first in Latin, and the things he says I will not completely understand. This is a dream I had, that the man intended for me first spoke to me in Latin.”
“Honestly, do you feel that I have taken Pico from you?” the señora asked.
“There is a side to Pico that I never liked,” confessed Beatnz. “He’s always dreamt that one day he would be president of this country, and it seems to me he would move more than mountains to make it so.”
“He is a good man,” Señora Valencia said, using her customary defense of her husband.
“Many good men commit terrible acts these days,” Beatnz said.
“So you want to marry a priest who will first speak to you in Latin?” Señora Valencia asked, turning the conversation back to its original direction.
“A señorita who speaks Latin, my mother says, will never find a husband,” added Beatriz. “My mother married when she was even younger than I am now. Look at her, she is alone all the same, a young widow in the end.”
“So you are afraid of being more alone than you are now?” the señora asked.
“It is not that I am afraid,” Beatriz said. “I would like to travel, escape, to go far away.”
“Where would you go, to the capital?”
“I don’t know. Maybe further. In Alegría, the girls dream only of going to schools of domestic science in Ciudad Trujillo. Elsewhere, in Spain for example, perhaps they have other aspirations.”
“I don’t think I will ever leave here,” Señora Valencia said. “This is the place of my mother’s grave, my son’s grave. It is likely my father will be buried here. I will never leave here.”
“Soon people will come to places like Alegría only for rest, for the tranquility of the land,” Beatriz said.
“I think they will come for the wealth of the cane.” Señora Valencia pushed her rocker forward and wrapped both her arms around the gallery corner post. “Since I was a child, the cane fields have grown. The mills have become larger and there are more cutters staying here after the harvests. This is our future.”
There was still some time before the Mass would begin. I heard the rumble of automobiles and hurried out to the top of the hill. A truck was approaching. Señora Valencia and Beatriz got up and walked down the incline to the road. Beatriz was holding the house lamp, lighting their way.
By the time they reached the road, the truck had already sped by and disappeared. They both squeezed themselves into the narrow space between the drainage ditches and Juana and Luis’ front door as another group of military trucks rushed by without stopping.
It took a while for the sun-baked dust to settle. The road was empty now, except for a few roaming goats regaining their footing.
The dust was too much for Señora Valencia, I thought. She was breathing hard and fast as though a pillow full of rocks was being pressed down on her face. Beatriz rushed into Juana’s house and came out with an earthen jar of water. She spilled some of the water into her cupped palm and wet the señora’s face.
Beatriz and I propped her up on each side and carried her back to the top of the hill as a few more army trucks raced by, heading in the direction of the border. The trucks speeding by worried me, but more worrisome somehow were the face-sized splotches of blood that I now saw on the back of the señora’s dress, stains that were growing wider even as we carried her to her bedroom. In spite of this, I told myself I would just see that the señora was put to bed and then I would hurry to the church.
“Amabelle, please stay with me.” Señora Valencia reached up and grabbed my wrists as she was lowered into her bed. She held me with almost the same force as when she was in l
abor.
“Amabelle knows how to look after me,” she told Beatnz. “I did not give myself enough time to rest after the births, isn’t this so, Amabelle?”
“Por favor, Señora, release me so I can go and find you a remedy,” I said.
My wrists ached when she released them. Her eyes trailed me out the door. Perhaps she knew that I wouldn’t be coming back.
I went down to the pantry, intending to leave by way of the grounds in the back. Lidia was pouring tea into a cup for her cousin as Papi entered the house with Juana.
Papi dragged a cross made of freshly sawed cedar across the red clay floor in the pantry. The cross had Señor Joël Raymond Loner, carved in small uneven letters.
“Amabelle, take this tea to the señora,” Lidia said, “while I make her a compress.”
“Has something happened to Valencia?” Papi asked, alarmed.
“She was overcome with dust from the road,” I explained. No need to tell him of the bleeding. She would if she wanted to.
“What was she doing on the road?” Papi asked.
“Looking for you,” Lidia said.
I gave Papi the tea to take to his daughter, as he was going to her room anyway.
“Where did you find Papi?” I asked Juana.
“On the road with a cross on his back,” Juana said.
The roaring of more engines could be heard from outside, mixed in with screams and loud voices. One of the voices was Señor Pico’s.
We, all of us—Juana, me, Papi, then Beatnz, who came out of the señora’s room—went outside to see what was happening. Two army trucks had stopped, crisscrossed in the middle of the road. Their front headlamps were ablaze, lighting a long trail from Juana and Luis’ house down to Doña Sabine’s gate.
The soldiers formed a wall, blocking a line of men from Unèl’s brigade. Unèl and his friends had their machetes in their hands. Señor Pico stood on the front guard of the lead truck watching the confrontation.
Some cane workers had already been loaded into the back of the other truck, guarded by a small squad of young soldiers. The cane workers in the trucks huddled close, clinging to each other for balance. I recognized a few faces of those who worked in nearby towns, men and women I had seen once or twice when they traveled to visit friends to celebrate Christmas, Haitian Independence Day and the National Day of Independence Heroes, on the first and second days of the year.
Beatriz, Juana, and I moved towards the flame tree, where we could see the road better. I felt Juana’s nervous breath on the back of my neck. She muttered Hail Marys and supplications to saints whose names I had never heard her call on before.
“Kneel or sit!” Señor Pico shouted to Unèl’s brigade. “Lower your machetes. We will put you on the trucks and take you to the border.”
A few more soldiers jumped off Señor Pico’s truck and joined the line in front of him. Luis wandered from the latrines and walked over to the flame tree.
We moved down closer to the road, standing on a sharp grade on the lowest part of the hill. We were now directly behind the truck where Señor Pico was standing. He had his back to us and could not see us.
“Kneel or sit,” Señor Pico repeated. “Lower your machetes. We will put you on the trucks and take you to the border.”
Unèl motioned for his people to stand still. No one kneeled or sat. Instead they took small steps towards the truck where Señor Pico stood giving orders.
“No kneeling!” Unèl cried out.
“What you do in the cane fields is worse than kneeling!” Señor Pico shouted back. “You work like beasts who don’t even know what it is to stand. Put down your machetes. I have no cane for you to cut now.”
The men called Señor Pico’s mother the worst whore who was ever born to a family of whores; his grandmother and godmother were both cursed as disgraceful harlots. The day he was born was damned. Many of the men of Unèl’s nighttime sentinel brigade wished him a painful, tortured, macabre death, promising him that he would choke on his words one day, chew them up, vomit them, and chew them again.
The soldiers laughed at the cursing. I could tell by the points of light sprouting all over the hills that neighbors were coming out of their houses, trying to listen or watch.
Señor Pico looked down at Unèl’s men as he considered his choices. Doctor Javier and Beatriz’s mother, Doña Eva, ran through the crowd, brushing past the soldiers on her way to Señor Pico’s truck.
“Could I speak to you, Señor?” she yelled out to Señor Pico.
He bent down towards her and said, “Doña Eva, have patience, please.”
“I must speak to you now,” she said. “It concerns my son. It concerns Javier.”
“Doña Eva, wait in the house, please.”
Beatriz stood and beckoned to her mother.
“Your brother has been arrested,” Doña Eva said to Beatriz when she reached us. She was out of breath, and her whole body was trembling, including her face. “Javier was arrested at the chapel, along with Father Romain and Father Vargas. Someone ran to tell me, but by the time I got there the soldiers had already taken them away. I want to tell Pico. Perhaps he’ll remember all his friend Javier has done for him, and help us.”
If Doctor Javier was taken, what of Sebastien, Mimi, and all the others who were leaving with him?
“I don’t understand it,” Juana muttered. “In the sight of all our saints, we are losing our country to madmen.”
Doña Eva gathered a thin flowered scarf around her back and pulled it closer to her chest. Beatriz walked her up the hill to the house. Señor Pico turned and watched them climb. He saw Juana, Luis, and me sitting at the foot of the hill.
“We are going to take you to the border now,” he said, turning back to the men on the road.
The group chanted, “¡Nunca!” Never!
Unèl clapped his hands, encouraging the others.
Señor Pico motioned towards the soldiers blocking the road. The truck with the people from Don Carlos’ mill slowly edged forward. One man ran toward it and fell in its path. The front wheel moved over his knees, his face twisting with each endless motion that took the truck through the rise and descent over his legs.
Two other members of Unèl’s group rushed forward to help him, but scattered as the truck came at them. The wounded man fell on his back, then rolled onto his side, his face frozen in shock. He tried to lift his legs before the rear tire could pass over them.
I ran towards him, colliding with a few of my countrymen, who were now trying to escape. The truck stopped before the rear wheels could reach the downed man. A group of soldiers moved in, seized him, and threw him into the back.
It was a short drop from the deck of the army truck to the ground. The man with the crushed leg attempted the leap. He fell on his outstretched hands and crawled towards the brush alongside the road until the high grass engulfed him.
The soldiers seemed to have orders not to use their rifles; otherwise, they could have fired at those who fled. Instead they grabbed those in front of them. Two or three circled one person, seized that unfortunate by the arms and legs, and threw him into the back of the truck.
I heard Señor Pico call my name. “Amabelle, out of the road!” he shouted, as if my being there was a sign of disrespect to him and his house.
I dodged and ducked, trying to bypass the khaki uniforms. The soldiers were using whips, tree branches, and sticks, flogging the fleeing people. One of their bullwhips landed across my back; I felt the heated sting on my waist as I hurtled forward into the dense banana grove behind Juana and Luis’ house.
Seizing my hidden bundle, I peered through the banana leaves. Juana and Luis were no longer where I had left them.
I moved to the edge of the grove, as close to the road as I could come without being seen. Unèl was one of three men still fighting. The others either were in the trucks with the soldiers’ rifles aimed at them, or had fled.
Unèl hurled his machete at one of the young soldiers and cut him
on the side of his face. As a small squad tried to grab him, Unèl twisted and dived between them, all the while screaming that he had never lived on his knees. All of the soldiers were racing after him now, except for Señor Pico who was standing on top of the truck, watching.
Unèl was trapped inside a circle. Three of the soldiers grabbed his right arm. Others grabbed the left, joining his arms behind him on his buttocks. One of the more anxious soldiers pierced one of Unèl’s arms with the point of his bayonet, cutting a gash from wrist to elbow. Señor Pico jumped down from the truck and watched as Unèl was tied with a cattle rope and raised to the back of the truck. Unèl made jerky movements, trying to free himself from the soldiers’ grasp. He was thrown into the back of the vehicle with the two remaining men. The gate was raised, shutting them in with all the others.
Señor Pico gathered a few of his men, and, after a brief survey of the road, he and half a dozen recruits marched up the hill to his house, while the others drove away with their prisoners. For him it seemed to have been regular work. He had seen to it and now was off to something else.
Once he’d disappeared, I turned and followed the stream up to Don Carlos’ mill. Perhaps Sebastien had not yet left for the church. Maybe he was still at the mill with Mimi, waiting.
Two soldiers were drinking at Mercedes’ stand when I got to the compound. I stayed out of view while they bragged to Mercedes and her sons about what had taken place at the church, telling them that their friends had arrested two recreants—Father Romain and Father Vargas—and many peasants, and of how the priests had pleaded to be brought to the same fortaleza as the peasants who had been arrested outside their church.
“You know how much I admire the Generalissimo,” Mercedes said, her voice quivering beneath the weight of too much of her own firewater. “Even so, I say we are asking for punishment when we arrest the priests in their own churches.”
“You should have been there to see it,” one of the soldiers argued. “They cried like new widows, those priests.”
The church was empty, with only a wooden Christ looking down at the silent pews from his uncomfortable place on the cross. I walked past every neat, untouched bench, hoping to find someone who might be crouching in the dark, another voice to tell me more about what had taken place there. So far as I could see, everything was as usual, nothing had been moved or pushed aside. It was as if no one had ever entered the church at all; the Mass had never started, the people had never gathered.