Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  He shook his head. "It happened too long ago. Besides, what cop these days would tackle a Tonton?" Anyway, he thought, glancing at his watch, by the time any police answered a summons, the bastard would probably be gone. At this hour, he and his pals could only have stopped in for a drink or two.

  He was wrong. When the three left the bar two hours later they were drunk, and they went into the dining room. It was the head housekeeper, Dela Basile, who sought Roddy out this time to report what was happening. By then he was in his suite with Olive, having a before-dinner drink as they relaxed after the day's work.

  "But you must not go in there!" the mother of the blind boy warned. "All three of them are probably Tonton Macoutes!"

  "How many guests are in there, Dela?" Roddy's face had hardened again.

  "Well . . . all of them. But we don't have many this weekend."

  "And those three are disturbing them? The way the four did that other time?"

  "Roddy, never mind!" Olive said. "We're going to give up the place anyway."

  "That's just it." Roddy finished his drink—soda with barely an ounce of rum in it—and rose from his chair. "We're giving it up, so I don't have to take this crap anymore and I don't intend to."

  "Roddy, no!" Olive cried. Her own drink fell from her hand to the carpet as she rushed to get between him and the door. With her arms flung wide, she blocked his way.

  "Now don't worry." Roddy—so much taller than she—simply put his hands under her arms and set her aside. "I won't get nasty. I just want them out of here."

  "But—"

  "I'm not stupid, love. I know just what I'm going to say. Come along if you like and back me up."

  Olive followed him down the hall to the dining room, frightened but at the same time finding it hard not to admire him. He had courage, she thought, and was so handsome. Certainly, in his gray slacks and Hawaiian-style sport shirt he looked at least as young and much manlier than the three men he was going to confront. In the dining room doorway he stopped, and she caught up with him.

  At a window table halfway down the room, the three were still drinking. No food had been served to them yet. Pounding the table, they filled the room with loud, coarse laughter and obscenities. The other guests, though served, were too uneasy or disgusted to eat and simply sat there like figures in a still photograph, staring at the source of the disturbance.

  Roddy touched Olive's hand and stepped forward. She followed. As they approached the table, the offending trio saw them coming and stopped shouting. It was as though the sound had suddenly been shut off in the midst of a very noisy motion-picture scene.

  "Messieurs." Roddy should have been an actor, Olive thought; good Lord, he was even smiling in a sort of sad, apologetic way! "Messieurs, I am sorry, but we have no food that we can serve you." His shoulders moved in a very slight shrug. "You see, tourism is dead in this country now, and Le Refuge is about to close. This is our final weekend. These are our last guests and we ordered only enough food to feed them."

  He had spoken in French. The three stopped glaring at him long enough to glance at one another. Then one said loudly, "You mean you have nothing you can serve us?"

  "Nothing. To be truthful, we have two more guests than we expected, so my wife and I must go without dinner this evening." Again Roddy shrugged. "We are sorry." He turned to Olive. "Aren't we, my dear?"

  "Oh, yes!" With three sullen men staring at her, Olive had trouble getting the words out. "Oh, yes, we are."

  "Your drinks are on the house, of course," Roddy said.

  The three said nothing. When he and Olive reached the doorway and looked back, they were still sitting there, still staring. To a waiter standing nearby Roddy said in a whisper, "Come and tell us when they leave. We'll be in our suite."

  "If they leave," the man whispered back, wide-eyed with fright.

  But the men did depart a few minutes later. Dela Basile, acting as self-appointed lookout, came from the dining room to report that after a long, quiet conversation with their heads together, they had risen from their table, trooped out of the room "like zombies," and driven off into the night in their black limousine. But there was no note of triumph in the woman's voice as she delivered her report. There was, instead, a distinct tremor of fear.

  "You should not have done what you did, lesieu Bennett!" she cried. "Never will those men forgive such an insult!"

  "Nonsense." Roddy laughed. "They were too drunk to know they were being insulted. But thanks for being so concerned, Dela. Go have yourself an extra nice dinner now."

  Dela Basile did not eat dinner that evening. Leaving Roddy and Olive, she went not to the dining room but to her own quarters in the employees' building down the road. There, because the December night was cool, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders before going out again.

  It was dark now as she continued on to the seacoast village of Bayeux. Lamplight turned the windows of peasant cailles into yellow eyes that seemed to wink when the breeze fluttered leafy branches between them and the road. Near the mouth of the Port Margot River that flowed into the sea there, she approached a gate in a bamboo fence, opened it, crossed a cluttered bare-earth yard, and knocked on the door of a ramshackle dwelling. When the door opened, she murmured, "Honneur, compere. Bon soir."

  Silhouetted against the lamplight inside, the old man in the doorway leaned forward on bare feet to peer at her. "Ah, yes! Madame Basile from Le Refuge. Respect, commere. Please come in." He stepped aside to let her enter, and then motioned her to a chair. "You require some fish for a special occasion, perhaps?" He was one of several local fishermen who supplied the hotel.

  Dela shook her head. "Not this time, Meynar. Tell me, did you not buy a new boat in Le Cap recently?"

  "He did," said a woman's voice from a corner where the light of the single kerosene lamp barely revealed a seated figure. "And spent all our money on it, too, if you must know."

  "Now Zannie," her husband protested.

  "Well, you did. Not that you didn't need a new boat, of course. I worried myself sick every time you went out in the old one, that's for sure."

  Dela Basile reached out to touch the old man's chest. "That old boat, Meynar. Where is it now, please?"

  He shrugged. "At the shore. I hope to sell it someday to some young fellow starting out."

  "For how much?"

  He shrugged again. "Who can say? Enough to buy this nagging woman of mine some new shoes or a new dress, perhaps." When he laughed, his breath stank of strong rope-tobacco and Dela saw that his few remaining teeth were the color of mustard. "Why do you ask? Do you need a boat for something?"

  Roddy Bennett's head housekeeper reached into a pocket of her dress and took out a roll of money. Handing it to him, she said with a frown, "This is all I have at the moment. Is it enough?"

  Licking his thumb, he carefully counted the bills. "Well, if it is all you can manage, I suppose so. You will come for the boat tomorrow?"

  "Show me now where it is."

  "Now? In the dark?"

  "You fish in the dark, don't you? So come!" Politely Dela bade the fisherman's wife goodnight before turning to the door.

  Grumbling under his breath, the man stuffed the money into a pocket of his pants and followed her out.

  Side by side in silence the two walked down to the sea and then along the shore until they came to the boat in question.

  It had been the trunk of a cottonwood tree before Meynar, with the help of fishermen friends, had hollowed it out. Some twelve feet long and three wide, it appeared to be more canoe than boat and scarcely safe enough to be taken far from shore, but it had to be seaworthy, Dela knew, or its owner would long since have drowned.

  "Help me to get it to the water," she demanded.

  "What?"

  "The water. It's a boat, isn't it? I don't see any wheels on it, for it to run on land."

  "Commere, since when have you been a fisherman?" Meynar challenged.

  "Never. But I've lived near the sea all my li
fe and I know about boats. Now stop talking, please, and help me."

  Together they dragged the craft to the water's edge. There Dela paused to take off her shoes and lay them in the boat before helping her companion push it into the water. Then while he held the craft steady, she stepped in over the side, took up one of two homemade paddles that lay in the bottom, and made herself as comfortable as possible on her knees.

  "Thank you and goodnight, zami," she said. "Now give me a push, if you will."

  He did so. The last Dela saw of him, he was standing at the water's edge with his hands on his hips, staring after her.

  With care, because she had not handled such a boat in a long time, she paddled on down to a large black rock that marked the western end of the hotel's own little beach. Despite the breeze that caused her to shiver a little, the sea was only a little rough. With the rock between her and the place where she worked, she drove the dugout up on the sand, stepped out, and made its painter fast to the sturdy trunk of a sea grape bush. Then she sat to put her shoes back on and, very tired now, began the short walk to the hotel.

  What she had just done she owed to them, yes. Because, first, M'sieu Bennett's sister had given her son Lucien a new life when it seemed he would never be anything but a blind beggar, and second, M'sieu Bennett had given her honest work at good pay for more than twenty years now. Of course, those men might not comeback. She hoped and prayed they would not. But if they did, perhaps she could repay some of the debt she owed.

  4

  For four days Roddy stayed close to Le Refuge and kept a wary eye open. Dela Basile was even more alert. The morning of the fifth day, convinced that nothing would happen, he drove to Cap Haitien to see his lawyer about selling the hotel. In Haiti one did everything of that sort through lawyers.

  With bookings cancelled, Le Refuge had no guests.

  Two hours after Roddy's departure, an open truck full of men growled into the hotel's parking area. For the man at the wheel it was his third visit. For the two on the seat beside him it was their second. For the dozen or more in the body of the vehicle, it was their first.

  All were armed, some with Uzis. Some wore the dreaded blue uniforms of the Tonton Macoutes. Yelling as they leaped from the truck, they began firing as they ran toward the building—so recklessly firing, in fact, that one man was hit in the upper arm by a companion's bullet and turned in his tracks with an aggrieved look on his face. The hotel doorway was a ruin before they reached it.

  They stormed inside. The lobby was empty, but they shot it up anyway as they yelled their way through it and went thundering down the main corridor. The three who had been denied a meal in the dining room were only a few yards away from the door of the Bennetts' suite when it flew open and a frightened Olive stepped out to see what was happening.

  With no duties requiring her attention, and her husband away for the day, Olive had been taking advantage of the chance for a leisurely bath. Usually she had time for only quick showers. She stepped into the hall with a towel wrapped around her.

  The first pair of hands to grab her tore the towel away and flung it to the floor.

  They raped her on the carpet just inside the apartment, ignoring her screams and then her whimpers and finally her silence while one after another fell on her like hyenas at a feast. The last to take her looked up at the others—specifically at the driver of the truck—and said in Creole, "I should kill her now?" On receiving a negative headshake in reply, he shrugged and rose to his feet.

  But then the same driver pointed his Uzi at the woman on the floor and killed her with a burst of fire from that. And when the thunder ceased and the walls and bloody floor stopped shaking, he said, "Now we find the man."

  There had been four employees in the building when the truck arrived. Three had fled. The fourth, Dela Basile, stayed to watch what was going on, so she might tell Roddy about it when he returned from Le Cap. Knowing every niche and closet of the hotel, she managed to avoid detection yet overheard some of what the men said as they stormed through it, shooting and looting. She heard their leader yell that the cochon who owned the place must have gone somewhere but never mind, they would wait for him to return if they had to wait a week. Then he, the speaker, would personally attend to him.

  Knowing there was nothing she could do and no way she could summon help, Dela Basile then fled from the carnage and ran down the road a quarter mile. There she sank to the ground at the base of a roadside tree called tétée jeune fille and hugged her knees and waited. After a while she picked up a fallen fruit from the tree and looked at it blankly and thought how like a young girl's breast it really was. After another while she became aware that the air she breathed had begun to taste of smoke. Getting to her feet, she looked back toward the hotel.

  The sky above Haiti's north coast was a brilliant blue that day, without even a thread of cloud in it. Above Le Refuge, however, a pale gray cloud was forming. It was not large in a structure built mostly of concrete there was not that much for flames to consume but it was there. The Tontons were stupid, Dela thought. If they hoped to take her employer by surprise, why had they set fire to the place? But, of course, they were all probably drunk by now. They could never have resisted all that expensive foreign liquor in the bar.

  She thought of her employer's wife, lying there naked and raped and savagely murdered . . . that pretty lady who had almost never spoken harshly to those who worked for her. But perhaps, if the fire reached her, M'sieu would not be able to see what those terrible men had done to her.

  The cloud of smoke in the sky grew larger for a time, and then slowly began to dissipate. After a long while the sky was blue again. At last, at three-fifteen by her watch, Dela Basile heard a car coming.

  Leaving her place at the base of the tree, she hurried out into the road and stood there, facing in the direction from which the hotel station wagon would come. There was a bend in the road a hundred yards distant. When the machine swerved into view around it, she violently waved her outstretched arms.

  The car lurched to a stop and Roddy put his head out the window. "Dela? What are you doing here?"

  She went to him and stood there looking at him, her face only a few inches from his. She had cried a lot during the long wait for him. Now the tears began to flow again.

  "Dela." A frown changed the shape of Roddy's face. "What's going on?"

  "They came."

  "Who came? What are you talking about?"

  "Those men—the ones you sent away—they came back. They are waiting for you. Look." She stepped away from the car and pointed downthe road, then shook her head. "No, you can't see it now. The smoke, I mean. It's gone now. They burned the hotel. They—I can't say it, but I have to. Madame is dead."

  Unable to reply, Roddy simply sat there looking at her.

  "You must not go there," Dela said. "I have a boat hidden for you to get away in. I knew they would come back."

  Finding his voice, Roddy said slowly, as though just learning to speak Creole, "My—wife—is—dead?"

  Dela moved her head up and down, licking away the tears that dribbled onto her lips.

  "Dead?" Roddy whispered.

  "Yes. They shot her. And they set fire to the hotel. And they are waiting to kill you."

  For a moment Roddy's mind refused to shape her statement into a mental image he could grasp. But only for a moment; then came the reaction. His left foot slammed the clutch pedal to the floor. His right hand stabbed out to throw the wagon into gear.

  "No!" Dela wailed. "No, no, m'sieu! They will hear you coming!" She reached into the vehicle and pawed at him. "If you must go there, hide the car here and go on foot through the bush!"

  He weighed what she had said, and it made sense. Reluctantly he put the wagon back in neutral and looked for a place to conceal it.

  Dela stepped back and pointed to a tangle of trees and tall, scraggly undergrowth. "Over there," she said. "Behind those bayahondes. Then if they give up waiting for you and drive out, they will not k
now you have returned from Le Cap."

  As he drove the wagon off the road to conceal it, Roddy was still not fully able to grasp what she had told him. Olive dead? Murdered by Tontons? The hotel burned? But he locked the machine after getting out of it, and on reaching the road looked back to be sure it was safely hidden. Turning to his housekeeper, he said then with only a slight frown, "You're sure they are still there?"

  She nodded.

  "How many of them?"

  "They came in a truck, and it was full. Ten, at least. Perhaps more."

  "And they are waiting for me."

  "Yes. Waiting for you. To kill you."

  "Let me go alone, then. There's no need for you to—"

  "No, no!" She pawed at him again. "There will be nothing you can do there. If you try to go into the hotel, they will surely see you. I must be with you to show you where the boat is!"

  "I don't need a boat to get away from here," Roddy protested. "I can come back here and use the car."

  "To go where?"

  "Well, to Pétionville, I suppose. To my sister's house."

  She shook her head and made a face at him, as though he had suddenly become a child unable to think. "Misieu, no! If the Tontons want you dead, you would be stopped a hundred times between here and Pétionville. The hotel car is known! We will walk to the hotel if you insist, but then I will take you to the boat."

  "Well, we'll see." Roddy reached for her hand. "Anyway, let's go."

  Still not thinking clearly, he would have walked down the road itself, but of course Dela stopped him. "The truck might come," she said, leading him into a sandy terrain bristling with the same thorny bushes that concealed his car. Born within a few miles of Le Refuge, she knew every footpath, and in a few minutes they were close enough to the hotel to see what was left of it.

  With blackened walls and only part of a roof, it looked like some kind of fort after a battle, Roddy thought. As for those who had assaulted it, they were all over the grounds. Some staggered about brandishing bottles of liquor. Others slouched on stone benches to do their drinking. A group of four sat around an outdoor table.