A Rendezvous in Haiti

by Stephen Becker

  The whorehouses in Hinche were off-limits but not under surveillance, and were mostly daunting hovels. Claps could mean the brig: you could strut down the street high and mighty and go limp on the threshold just thinking about it. The sour smell, too. The inmates were of all shapes, sizes and ages. They were black, bone-poor, swarming, competitive and easy to please. It was rumored that they trooped out of Hinche’s shacks and huts as the jitney trucks appeared on the horizon. Evans summed it up by saying that every goddamn woman in Hinche humped and some of them brought their ti moon to watch. That was “petit monde”: children.

  So the men dispersed to their favorite hovels. They traveled in pairs. Soon lamps were lit, and men and women laughed in the velvet night.

  At open windows the ti moon watched.

  McAllister was full of life now, and worried: his heart was not in his work. But he cleaned his weapons, and spent two hours with Flanagan, grooming both his mounts. He tried and failed to keep his mind off Caroline, and on war. “Men at war, so other men can sit in leather chairs and clip their cigars with gold clippers. I shouldn’t be asked to kill, in this mood,” he said.

  “You haven’t been asked,” Healy said. “You’ve been told.”

  Next day Dillingham flew out with Wyatt, and McAllister assembled his platoon. He conferred with his new sergeant, an Oklahoman called Neubauer, short and tough, his own age. He caught up on intelligence: Martel’s Cacos were chivvying their way in all directions at once, and to the south Batraville’s Cacos were fighting Martel as hard as they fought the Marines—right down to drunken brawls in the market. “The real news comes from our master spy Lafayette,” Healy said. “He gads about a bit on his day off. Sumbitch knows everything. A real mercenary too. Wants a whole dollar.” He scuffed his camp chair sideways and laid a thick index finger on a hanging map. “Right here, you see, about a day’s ride east, over this range and down into the valley. Several of these small valleys parallel so be careful. There is a village, some forty gentlefolk in normal times, maybe fifty, and about three miles away this farm, a big one, cane and beans and some livestock. It is called La Ferme, which means ‘the farm’.”

  “Funny,” McAllister said. “It also means ‘shut up’.” Healy peered cautiously for veiled ironies, found none, and went on. “Anyway Lafayette tells me people been drifting in there by twos and threes, and mainly male. They may be joining Martel, or moving in to wait for him, and we will find out what’s what. That is, you will. These here La Vie Parisienne just arrived, straight from Paris, and I got to catch up on my reading.”

  After a briefing and a good sleep they rode out at dawn; the drums seemed to track them all day; and in the evening they bivouacked on a slope above the valley. They set pickets and made a meal and told some lies and smoked, and soon enough dawn came and they were stretching and groaning and trudging off into the bushes, and gargling from canteens and salivating over coffee. Some brushed their teeth and some only gargled. McAllister growled them into formation and they policed the bivouac. The sun rose slowly and late over the hills to the east, and McAllister was uneasy, blinded, his binoculars useless for the moment. He squinted down into the dappled valley. Livestock grazed. Colors were pale and false. Smoke rose from a copse: huts in there. The sky above was pink and pearly.

  An hour later he saw more. A stand of cane, a sizable farmhouse beside a dark blue stream; and upstream, a village in the forest. He lay prone and steadied the glasses on his pack. Tendrils of smoke, a somnolent goat. Cauldrons, or kettles. No human face, no startled figure: a disturbing distant hush. “Neubauer, you better take a look.”

  Neubauer fell beside him and borrowed the glasses. “Not a damn soul. But there was ten minutes ago.”

  McAllister said, “Let’s go down there and see what’s what.”

  They reached the farm after a slow prickly ride down the slope, through a peaceful grove of mahogany, and across a stretch of healthy savanna. Only the flash of a yellow bird caught the eye, or a pale lizard, or a busy field rat. The farmhouse was in use, a dwelling, but they—whoever—had seen the blancs coming and were long gone. McAllister noted hearths, iron pots, bowls of grain, beans; the usual scrawny irate chickens. A farm.

  “Withdrew across the stream,” Neubauer said. “Sir.”

  “To the village. We’d best move carefully, and have a look.”

  They did, and the village was full of life but empty of villagers. Fires burning, stores of food, sheaves of cane, more incurious goats, a houmfort with its altar; but the village was empty.

  “They’re in the forest,” Neubauer said. “It is amazing how they can disappear.”

  “Look here, sir.”

  They joined Clancy in one of the huts. “Ammo crates,” Neubauer said. “Stolen thirty caliber ammunition.”

  “Four of ’em,” Clancy said.

  “Numbered,” McAllister said. “We’ll take them back.”

  Neubauer asked, “Not going to round up some of these people?”

  The village was surrounded by dense forest—cedars, acacias, raintrees, mahoganies. Between the temple and the stream, and curving among the huts like a boulevard, was a kind of esplanade or pleasance, a village green as at Deux Rochers of cursed memory. Peaceful. Where children would play, does and kids caper. Deux Rochers: they were less than a day’s ride from Deux Rochers. But here the silence was eerie. “No. One ambush a month is enough. We withdraw,” McAllister said. “I need open country.” All the way out to the treeless fields he felt huge, a target; and even then he wondered who lay hidden in the cane.

  They reconnoitered four villages, all empty. They found no more crates, only a couple of empty sweatstained American cartridge belts. “It’s damn queer,” McAllister said. “These people are nervous. They’ve been scared. This is new.”

  Neubauer agreed.

  “I wish they had an army,” McAllister said. “Wars are easier to fight when you can see the enemy.”

  Neubauer worried. “You notice even the drums are quiet?”

  McAllister had noticed. “We’ll go ask the captain. There must be four or five thousand Cacos within fifty miles of us. Suppose they all gathered together and marched on Hinche?”

  Neubauer grinned and patted his rifle. “It would simplify matters considerably, sir.”

  They were five miles east of Hinche, at a place on the plain where many trails coverged, when they spotted horsemen. Clancy flung up a hand and they halted. “That’s us,” McAllister said. The setting sun blurred his vision but there was no mistaking horse Marines. “Half a dozen.”

  “They’re looking for us,” Neubauer said.

  “Clancy! Forward at a trot!”

  It was Dillingham with an escort, and McAllister’s first thought was peace. On second thought he called, “Is it a general offensive?”

  “It’s bad news, Mac,” Dillingham replied, and reined in, and his men with him; dust rose.

  “Just tell me, Dill. Gunny’s dead?”

  “I wish that was it,” Dillingham said, and told him.

  McAllister was hot-eyed and reckless and dripping sweat. They were standing on the veranda, drinking whiskey now and no one making jokes.

  “Her father’s been informed,” Healy said. “He’s on his way but it will take time. The colonel has ordered a reduction in patrols and no raids. Wyatt has been flying zigzags but hasn’t seen a thing.”

  “Did they check the gendarmeries? In town, around, all over?”

  “Sent word everywhere.”

  The camp was in shock. McAllister stood with half a glass of bourbon in one tight hand and saw his men waiting in twos and threes, glancing again and again at the veranda.

  Dillingham said, “If she’s been taken somewhere it’s for a purpose. They won’t hurt her and they’ll be in touch.”

  “Thanks. Or they’ll send pieces of her. Where’s Wyatt now?”

  “Captain!”

  “What is it, Neubauer?”

  “You got a nigger lurking.” Neubauer gestured.


  The three officers leaned over the side railing. Lafayette hunched and smiled. “Just keeping himself informed,” Healy said savagely.

  Lafayette hopped up and hunched again. “Mon Capitaine.”

  “Shut up and leave us alone,” Healy said.

  “La blanche, mon Capitaine.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Dillingham said. “These people. They know everything before it happens.”

  “Come up here on the porch,” Healy ordered. They returned to the table and Healy poured more bourbon.

  McAllister needed someone to kill. When Lafayette cringed before him, he set a hard hand on the yard-boy’s shoulder and said, “Tell me.”

  “Mon Lieutenant.”

  “Hurry it up,” Dillingham said.

  Lafayette pleaded in silence.

  “The bastard wants money.”

  McAllister slid his hands toward the black throat and said, “Lafayette, you will tell me right now or I will strangle you. I will strangle you with my bare hands and you will have no last rites and my men will bury you and no one will know or care. Do you understand that?” He said it again, swiftly, in French.

  “Oui, mon Lieutenant. Only that in Port-au-Prince they say Martel take la blanche.”

  The man was trembling in McAllister’s grasp.

  “They say.” McAllister grimaced at Healy. “Your master spy. Our intelligence. Lafayette: what else do they say?”

  “No more.”

  “What else do they say?”

  “I tell you the truth, mon Lieutenant. No more. Please, mon Lieutenant. This is hurt.”

  McAllister let him go and sucked down an inch of whiskey. “Martel was educated by Jesuits. He’s not a brute. Captain: when will Wyatt be here?”

  “Couple of hours. Coming for you.”

  “Yes. I have to go to town.”

  “Right. Colonel’s cancelled all leave but he wants you there.”

  “Hell with the colonel,” McAllister said. “I want to talk to a priest. I am no goddam use to anybody here and for that matter neither are you two.”

  “We have a war to fight.”

  “Fuck your war,” McAllister said, surprising himself; the words echoed from another, forgotten, quarrel long ago. He spat off the veranda. He stood at the railing and cursed, long and loud. “I’ll kill them,” he said. Then he hunched like Lafayette and stood struggling with the pain.

  Maps. Wyatt tracing his crisscrosses. “Mainly one or two Haitians beating a loaded donkey. Sometimes a cart. Piccaninnies herding goats. Had one parade over by that Deux Rochers, looked like voodoo, scattered when they saw me. Trouble is I don’t know what to look for.”

  “She may be in a shack in Port-au-Prince,” McAllister said.

  “We’ll hear,” Healy said. “They took her for a purpose and they’ll tell us that purpose. Stands to reason.”

  “Reason! Wyatt: let’s go.”

  “What do you want with a priest?” Healy asked.

  “To find out where she is,” McAllister said. “If we go by the book she’s dead.”

  “We’ve offered a reward for information,” Colonel Farrell said. “Every gendarme knows and every agent and double-agent and triple-agent knows. It’s a damn poor country and anybody at all is liable to tell us for money.”

  “Including a lot of swindlers who know nothing, sir.”

  “We’ve considered that. We’re doing all we can. Colonel Barbour has flown to Southampton and boarded the Massachusetts; he’ll proceed directly to Boston and try the rest by plane. I’ve ordered defensive patrols only. Washington is firm: we cannot, ah, offer a replacement. We cannot exchange an officer for her.”

  “Money? Prisoners?”

  “We may. It’s not ruled out. But nothing can be done until—”

  “Yes. I’d like permission to speak to Haitian friends, and I’d like an extended leave.”

  “You’re a serving officer, McAllister.”

  “I’m sorry, Colonel, but this war doesn’t mean a damn thing to me now.”

  “I regret to hear that.” The colonel straightened, cold.

  “It’s an exercise, Colonel. It’s like the Philippines and Nicaragua and Cuba and everywhere they send us—we don’t give a damn about these people. We’ll rule the world because there’s nobody else left to rule it, and all we want from lesser breeds is respect for our law. Well, all I want from them is my girl.”

  “We had best consider all that unsaid,” the colonel told him. “Your leave is granted; I’ll inform Healy. If you plan to travel anywhere but here or Hinche, you will inform me. You will commit the Corps to nothing, is that understood?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Don’t lose your nerve, Lieutenant. You didn’t lose your nerve in France.”

  Port-au-Prince was a filthy teeming tropical city full of thieves and traitors. His small open carriage clopped through trash and excrement; exhausted old men lay at the roadside (there was no true gutter); every able-bodied Haitian might be a Caco and every door might hide a Caroline, bound and gagged. The stalls, picturesque a week ago, were now merely pathetic: contrived of planks, tin cans, cardboard boxes, offering catchpenny utensils or aging foodstuffs. And Caroline everywhere and nowhere—he grimaced, told himself to be calm, and unclenched his fists.

  The cab halted, the horse drooped, the crowd gathered. McAllister asked, “On est chez le Père Scarron?”

  The cabbie seemed a papery centenarian and was wearing a derby hat. The world was slipping away from McAllister; what was real here? The crowd muttered; a cry, B’jou le blanc! The old man assured him: it was Father Scarron’s rectory.

  What had McAllister expected? Spires? A porch? A majestic edifice of stone? The rectory was a pleasant, open, two-story tropical house with balconies on the three visible sides of the upper floor. He paid the cabbie and stepped to the door, with its crucifix: he was looking Christ in the eye. McAllister knocked.

  In time a young man opened the door, perhaps a novice, a student. “Father Scarron, please. It’s urgent.”

  The young man bowed and showed him in. Thank God, thank God: the priest was at home and not off on a round of rural parishes. The room was spacious, cool, louvered. A salon, a wall of books. On another wall, a white wall, a map of Hispaniola: Haiti blue, San Domingo green, the sea yellow.

  Scarron came forward briskly, but looked sleepless, malarial. They spoke each other’s name and shook hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sick with shame, for all of us. Please sit. You’ll take a glass?”

  “Thank you.” McAllister set his broad-brimmed campaign hat on an end-table.

  Scarron sent the young man for Pommard and two glasses. “I’m not sure I can tell you more than you know. She has been abducted. She was abducted by four Haitians who are presumed to be Martel’s people. There has been no word since. Very likely she is on her way to Martel. A hostage.” He plucked at his soutane, scratched his cheek, glanced at the map.

  “You must know more than that. Our yard-boy in Hinche knew that much.”

  Scarron made no answer.

  The priest was deeply perturbed; McAllister kept at him. “Martel. Is he a … is he a moral man, has he any sense of decency at all?”

  “He had until the Jesuits got hold of him,” Scarron said. “Listen to me: he a serious man, a political leader, a general, and he and his staff can have a thousand women a night without her.”

  “You do come to the point. Thanks,” McAllister said. “How long have you known him?”

  “Twenty years, twenty-five.”

  “Are you a Caco?”

  Scarron said, “What!”

  “I only want to know for tactical reasons. Put it another way: will he listen to you?”

  “Saint Rita,” Scarron said. “The patron saint of the impossible. Now listen. You cannot know what levels of deception we wander through; of irony and condescension and native shrewdness. Let me tell you a story. Three or four years ago when your Major Butler was our dictator, the government was not legal
because there were not enough cabinet members. You understand: it was a hazardous occupation. Smedley Butler had a Haitian aide, and asked him to nominate a minister. The aide did so, the government was installed, and Butler congratulated himself: he had cut a Gordian knot, and what did the Haitians know or care about process, law, precedent?”

  “It was a start,” McAllister said.

  “The new minister’s first act was to draw an advance on his salary; his second was to repay a loan of fifty dollars in gold to Butler’s aide. Shortly the government died of inanition. Whose was the more delicate sense of irony—Butler’s? the aide’s? the minister’s?”

  “You’re being polite,” McAllister said. “You’re trying to tell me I can’t understand Haiti.”

  “I’m trying to tell you that you cannot know what is at stake.”

  “But I do know Americans,” McAllister said. “The Marines have a war to fight and very soon they’ll be fighting it as they always do and never mind Caroline, but just now they’re shocked, they’ve paused, and I want to use that pause. I want to go to Martel. I don’t give a goddam about irony. I want you to go to Martel and do what must be done to bring her home.”

  “And then leave Haiti, I suppose.”

  McAllister was confused.

  “What would become of me? The government would call me Caco; the Cacos would call me a white priest.”

  “But it’s a woman’s life at stake!”

  “A white woman’s. Your woman’s.”

  “Yes. But you know her, she’s a good woman, it isn’t just that I love her, it’s that she’s good, and you’re fond of her and why should she pay for my sins? You could go in mufti. Would that help?”

  “Never. A priest out of uniform is behind the enemy lines in disguise. I am God’s servant, not his spy. Ah, McAllister! Do you know what I am to Martel? Just another blanc. It is not always the skin, you see. When a coal-black Haitian attorney, in a suit from Paris and a cravat and gold pince-nez, comes to my door my houseboy announces, ‘C’est un blanc, mon père.’”