Anne makes a series of hand signals to BeBe, then says to me, “Had we arrived earlier, we could’ve holed up the boats in there”—she points to the colored bits of cloth—“then trekked the road to take up our clues. Now, best we can do is leave the Sazerac Star here, and Sundown to watch her; take the Esmeralda up Cap-Haïtien’s shantytown river far as we can.” Anne points deeper south. “Down there, the river’s more sewer than river, but with the water risin’ . . . we’ll dock, commandeer a vehicle, and make for Bois Caïman, dodge the rebels and UN, ride five miles of bad, overcrowded road.”
Sistah shouts at Anne: “Kolonèl Idamante is not ‘the rebels.’ They are the true Ayiti—”
“What?” I choke on the name. “Who the fuck did you say?”
Anne says, “Easy, Bill.”
“Did she say Kolonèl Idamante?”
Anne nods. Sistah bristles, her shoulders back.
“That rapist motherfucker is here? He’s alive?”
Sistah growls, sets her feet—Anne pats at Sistah to calm down, then says to me: “Ida rebels are with Idamante. When the USA disbanded the army and the CIA contractors shot the officers, the kolonèl went into the mountains.”
I look inland, then out to sea, try to figure how the fuck I got to this fucking moment. “He’s alive?”
“Aye, Bill. Kolonèl Idamante is Haiti’s Rebelyon. If he’s alive three or four days from now, he’ll be Haiti’s new president for life.”
***
The Esmeralda is moored upriver in a dark, filthy lagoon that stinks of flood and squalor. Five of us are now crammed into a sweaty, overfull tap-tap school bus, creeping a westbound road jammed with Cap-Haïtien’s refugees.
Diesel exhaust billows in headlights and fills the open windows. Anne rides on Sistah’s lap. Both have their hair tucked high into Rasta tams. Kerchief veils hide their faces.
On our right, armored UN vehicles and helmeted faces brace for the Rebelyon’s first charge out of the trees. The UN’s truck-mounted lights shine into those trees but die ten yards in. This is the picket line Anne described.
The final two miles burns an hour we don’t have and stalls at the last, isolated UN-defended intersection. I’ve seen peacekeepers in action. The UN draws their Alamo defenders mostly from poor countries. The country gets reimbursed at $1,000 per day and pays the guy on the ground about $50 every day he’s alive. Good use of third-world HR, unless you’re the HR. These guys here will run if they get the opportunity. And if they can’t run when Hurricane Lana fires the starter’s pistol, the poor bastards won’t live any longer than Davy Crockett did.
BeBe shoulders through to the front of our bus and tells the tap-tap driver to stop three hundred yards past the last intersection the UN controls.
He does. Five of us file out, run across to the rebel side of the road, and duck into the bush. Assuming Cap-Haïtien is the rebels’ main target, we should be just outside the main body of the rebel force.
Sistah grabs Anne’s shoulder, stops, and barks: “No.”
“Aye.” Anne shushes a finger to her lips. “The woods at Bois Caïman.”
“No! You say plantation de Mezy.”
“Quiet now, Sistah. All of this was plantation de Mezy.”
“Bois Caïman is sacred ground; Anne Bonny cannot go there.” Sistah jabs a finger at me. “He cannot go there.”
Anne nods. “And we wouldn’t be goin’ if there were another way. But the treasure papers say we have to go.” Anne points east. “There’s a storm comin’ and the Rebelyon with it. Sistah can lead quiet or Sistah can stay. Anne Bonny goin’ to Bois Caïman.”
Sistah fixes Anne with an absolute death stare.
Anne doesn’t fold.
Sistah bares her teeth. “Step careful, then, white woman, and only where I go; there are traps.”
I hear the safety drop on Taller’s AK and BeBe’s MAC. We single-file south in waist-high scrub and moonless dark. Sistah refuses a flashlight, leading us through downed fences and tree stumps. Weeds grab for my feet. Malaria buzzes our ears and eyes. Sistah stops. Our flashlights shine waist-high across a clearing we’ve entered. The light beams die at the surrounding logwood and tamarind forest.
Bois Caïman.
Small offerings gleam in the clearing. Little piles of small animal bones, colored glass, food tins, bits of cloth, and crosses—lots of little crosses, monuments to the devil or a slave revolt that worked.
Anne says, “And the traps, Sistah?”
Sistah glares. “I warn you not to come.”
“You’ll let Anne Bonny die?”
Sistah hesitates in Anne’s face. “No.” Sistah nods to me. “Him.”
My fingers squeeze pistol grip and flashlight. I fan again with the flashlight and rerun the last half of this treasure clue from memory:
Forever bound by Code Noir
Maroons, multâre, and mara-bou
Births the crocodile as sailor’s star
A star to fear And to find
the one true race
who grows the vine.
Sistah stays put. Four of us and our three flashlights soft-step into the clearing. My companions give me a wider berth than usual. Unfortunately, I don’t know what I’m looking for—inductive reasoning being a grade below mind reading. But based upon Eddie O’Hare’s style so far, I’m guessing the clue will somehow resemble, or incorporate, his tortoise-shell drawing.
The tortoise shell has what I’ve decided is a coffin-nail vodou cross. Anne is fifty-fifty on that guess. She’s 100 percent that the shell drawing was Tortuga Island and that the tortoise’s head and flippers pointed here.
Anne’s also 100 percent that whatever’s here in Bois Caïman is the “sailor’s star” we’re supposed to fear and to find.
I’m hoping one of us stumbles over a giant stone turtle with the inscription “Game over. Treasure here” before the shit hits the fan from five directions.
We spread out, searching amid the scrub and booby traps for thirty minutes.
Distant lightning splits the eastern sky. Hurricane Lana’s thunder rumbles across us. I stumble upon a low shack of rusted tin and wood scrap. Next to the shack, my flashlight lands on a foot, connected to a leg—I jump back; the foot’s connected to a body prone in the grass. Our other two light beams converge on me, then the body. A man’s body. Next to him is a bottle. A long snake crawls across his leg and into the brush. I shine my light into the man’s face. Old, white-haired, a few teeth.
He stirs, pats at the light, then swats and rolls over, mumbling Kreyol.
Anne steps to him and kicks lightly at his hip. In English, Anne says, “Old man, is there a stone? A tortoise? A monument to Dutty Boukman and the Rebelyon?” She kicks him lightly again.
“Ajam sdk afaaa.”
“I have rhum, old man. Barbancourt.”
He rolls to his side, then up to sitting, roofing his eyes against the flashlights. His hand trembles. He shouts Kreyol at Anne.
Anne interprets. “He is the keeper of the slave Rebelyon. Is paid to talk.”
I belt my pistol, dig out $20 US and push the bill into his hand. “Is there a turtle? Would’ve been here since you were a boy.”
Anne translates. The old man looks up, trying to see her behind the light, then me. His eyes are clear. No part of this guy is drunk.
Anne jumps back, stiff-arms her pistol at him, and yells to all of us: “On your guard.”
The old man switches to barely decipherable French English, wants to know how I know about the turtle.
“Boukman came to me in a dream; told me that I must find his turtle.”
“Why you? A white devil?”
“Because, motherfucker—” I stop mid-threat. It’s not this guy’s fault I’m back in Haiti. “So I could kneel and ask him what I can do for Haiti.”
“You sp
eak American.” The old man straightens, more interested, probably because all Americans are rich. He glances to Anne, then me: “No turtle; you are fools.”
Anne keeps her pistol on him. “Ezili Dantor is no fool.” In English, Anne says to me, “Show him your lifeline. Then my hair.”
I shine my light on Ezili carved into my palm.
The old man squints at my hand.
I shine the light on Anne’s tam. She pulls it, spilling the flaming red hair.
Anne says, “Pétion-Ville, 1986. I rose from hell—Anne Bonny, just like the mambos say I did—and took the Baby.” Anne turns and yells across the clearing, “Sistah!”
The old man is frozen.
Out of the dark, Sistah appears behind Anne. Anne rips off Sistah’s tam and veil. Sistah glares Anne with the birthmarked eyes. Anne pulls Sistah into the old man’s vision and shouts: “See? It is I who bring the Baby! I bring the Rebelyon back, not Idamante!”
The old man’s eyes widen at Sistah’s skin color and birthmarks. Both arms jerk up to cover his face and head.
“Tell me. Or tonight when I take Ayiti from the white man, I take all your family to hell with them.”
Head down, the old man points into the forest. Anne’s light beam follows his finger.
Sistah spits on the old man for his assistance, yelling insults in Kreyol. He ducks lower, covering his head.
Anne glances to me. “On your horse, Bill, we’ve wind and company comin’.” She cuts to the old man, then Sistah. Anne stares hard at Sistah, but speaks to me: “And careful now, somethin’ isn’t as she should be.”
BeBe and I slow-step toward a dirt trail that leads into the thicket.
Flashlight sweep—
Ten paces up the overgrown trail, we reach a muddy creek. I hear something and stop; BeBe stops behind me. We sweep both banks with our lights. My beam lands on two pairs of wide-set eyes in the water.
BeBe jerks me back.
My foot slips. I stumble to a knee and my light shines the ground where my next step would’ve been. Two inches from my knee is the exposed rim of a brick-edged pit . . . covered with fresh thatch.
I stand, easing backward with BeBe, his light now on the wide-set eyes in the creek.
BeBe says, “Yellows. Six to eight foot, and fast. Put your light on the crocs.”
I do. He shines his light on the pit’s exposed edge, steps around me, grabs a heavy stone and drops it on the pit’s thatch. The thatch collapses and the stone thuds ten feet to the pit’s bottom. Sharp sticks point upright.
BeBe says, “Man pit.”
He finds a smaller rock and tells me to do the same. We throw them at the crocs. The crocs splash backward. We jump the man pit, run through the creek, and scramble to the top of the other bank.
I reshine my light in the creek. BeBe finds us two long branches to prod the ground ahead of where we will walk. Insects stick to our skin and buzz our lights.
After sixty feet of forest and no more man pits, we stumble upon two piles of rocks stacked into crude pyramids. Stabbed into the top of each pile is a bayonet. Both bayonet grips are wrapped with red and blue wire.
Beyond the pyramids, my light lands on a flat, three-foot, oval-shaped stone. A cross is etched into it. Around the cross is an outline of a splayed, four-legged animal.
Not a turtle; might be a pig, but the cross is unmistakable.
BeBe mumbles, “Black pig . . .”
I belt my pistol, dig out Eddie O’Hare’s drawing of the turtle with the cross on it, shine my light on the drawing—
—then back to the stone. The cross matches the drawing.
BeBe says: “Black pig is what Ezili Dantor sacrifice at Bois Caïman. Use its blood to start the slave Rebelyon, kill all the white masters—1791.”
I lean my light on the ground. “Grab your end; this has to be it.”
BeBe doesn’t move.
“C’mon, man, you’re a pirate. You don’t believe this vodou shit.”
BeBe glances the Ezili carving on my hand, doesn’t move.
I try to budge one end of the stone but can’t, then grab one of the bayonets in the rock pyramids. The bayonet won’t come out. I drop to my knees, dig with both hands under my end of the stone, and try again. Nope.
“Anne!” My hand fans insects away from my mouth and eyes. “Send some muscle up here.”
No one answers. No one comes up the trail.
“Anne! You there?”
BeBe waves for Eddie O’Hare’s poem. I hand the paper to him, then grab my light and shine it back down the trail for Anne.
BeBe shines his light into the thickets that surround us. “Dis fuckery gonna kill us. Sure as shit.”
“Anne!” I pull my pistol. “Anne, goddammit! Are you there?”
“Comin’.”
“Watch out! At the creek. There’s a man pit . . . and crocodiles.”
We hear movement. It’s already on our side of the creek before we see a light beam, then Anne behind us, Taller with her.
She says, “Had to calm Sistah. Have we found the gold?” Anne fans away the insects. BeBe hands her the poem and drawing. She looks at him, doesn’t like what she sees, then points Taller to the stone. “Be quick about it.”
Taller and I dig out the stone, then move it. BeBe and Anne shine lights into the hole. The sides are bricked like the man pit. At the bottom are animal bones, a hook-blade knife . . . and a Barbancourt bottle. I lean in to reach for the bottle—
“Wait!” Anne jerks me back.
Her light slides the four walls and the bottom. She grabs a branch and moves the bottle from left to right, careful not to disturb the bones. “Okay. Just the bottle, Bill, and quickly.”
I grab the bottle. It doesn’t have the same wax-sealed cork as the ones we found in Chicago and Hunts Bay. I shake the bottle; it clinks. The cork loosens easily and opens with a musty pop. I pour five square-head nails and a smudged, charred page of old linen stationery into my hand. The stationery has a series of numbers in the middle—map coordinates—and a drawing of a five-pointed star.
Okay . . . five nails; five-pointed star.
Anne’s chin touches my shoulder. She points at the drawing. “The ‘sailor’s star’? Except there’d be no need for a star to follow . . . if we’re holdin’ map coordinates.”
“Yeah. Doesn’t feel right.” I match Eddie O’Hare’s stationery clue that led us here. The new clue’s handwriting and drawing could be a match. “Any idea where these coordinates are?”
“They’d be where we’d be going directly from here. First numbers mean it’ll be Haiti for certain. Can’t be exact on the remainder till we get back to the boat.”
“Doesn’t feel right.”
Anne looks at me, then the nails and new stationery, then beyond BeBe into the trees. “You’re thinkin’ she’s a lie, Bill? Like led Susie to the Camagüey Breaks?”
BeBe fast-scans the trees in every direction.
“Don’t know.” I roll the nails in my palm, then stand into a sudden chill. “Can’t say for sure, but theses nails, the drawing . . . just doesn’t feel ‘artful’ like Eddie, like a white guy from outta town.”
Anne does a slow 360 with her flashlight. “Gentlemen, if we’ve come here in error, misread our poem”—she points her pistol back toward the road—“then the old man works for the Gryphon. The old man would have a cell phone and has used it by now.”
“Shit.” I squint at the paper. “Then these coordinates are where the Gryphon wants us to go. Probably got traps all over Haiti with these same buried coordinates . . . everywhere a treasure hunter might stumble . . . or be led.”
Anne turns to Taller. “We go. AK on point; BeBe on the follow.”
We trek back to the road. The old man’s gone. We hide in a dark uphill curve and prepare to commandeer the first vehicle fro
m the westbound exodus and turn it around toward our boats. As they say in the Boy Scout manuals, We need to get the fuck out of here.
Eastbound headlights. High, like a UN armored vehicle heading against traffic, back into the city. We shrink deeper into the bush. A three-truck convoy rumbles past. Heavy trucks with uniformed reinforcements.
BeBe whispers, “National police.”
The UN’s budget is paying the national police; and for sure those payments are making the police commanders rich. But no telling whose side the rank-and-file police will be on after the storm passes and the rebels start shooting.
Anne tells BeBe we have to grab a car.
BeBe says we can’t; another driver will phone in that we hijacked the car. The first UN checkpoint will shoot us.
One hundred yards up the main road, a sweaty man tips a gas can into a rusted flatbed in his yard. The truck is packed with possessions and family. BeBe tells the startled driver that we will pay six month’s wages for a fifteen-minute, two-mile ride to Cap-Haïtien, or we’ll shoot him and steal his truck.
***
The family man and his truck have dropped us and gone. On foot, Anne stops our column just shy of the lagoon basin where we moored the Esmeralda. The sewer stench is almost unbreathable.
All five of us crouch in the dark outside the roofless scavenger shacks we left two hours ago. We can’t see the Esmeralda. She’s invisible with her black hull and decks. We can see what remains of the dock that the rising lagoon hasn’t covered.
Taller aims his AK; BeBe flashes a penlight at where the dock disappears.
A small light flashes back three times.
BeBe ducks to our right to scout the mangrove bank for trap. He signals for Taller to track behind him. Sistah remains motionless with Anne and me. We aim cocked pistols at the dark.
Anne says, “Don’t be taken alive.”
Bugs are half the air. I breathe short with my free hand over my nose and mouth. Three minutes. No Gryphon. No gunshots.
Privateers Page 21
