Cross Current

by Christine Kling

  Gil ignored my questions. He dropped the half-smoked butt and ground it out. “You really Red Sullivan’s kid?”

  “Yeah, I run Gorda now. So, you did know Red.”

  From upstairs came the sound of a door opening, and streams of angry-sounding Creole poured out. Gil mumbled something unintelligible and pointed to the concrete stairs. “Git moving,” he said, and nodded toward the upper landing. “He wants you upstairs.”

  I helped Solange up the stairs and through a wood door at the top. Gil was breathing hard just from the climb up the stairs. The room we entered reminded me of Racine Toussaint’s place in Florida. The main light came from two pressurized kerosene lanterns, but at one end of the room was an elaborate altar with dozens of flickering candles, as well as dolls and shells and what looked like a real human skull resting on a crossed pair of thigh bones. Off to one side was a wooden cross that looked like it had been removed from a grave—the downward stake was caked with dirt on the lower third of its length. A rusty shovel leaned against the wall.

  Gil and the slim Haitian left us and began talking to some men in an adjoining room. I had no idea what they were saying, but I recognized Malheur’s voice. As the conversation continued, Solange squeezed my hand tighter and she pressed her body against mine.

  Seconds later, Malheur made his entrance. He had changed clothes and was now wearing what he had worn that night at Racine’s—black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie, and top hat with a skull and crossbones made of metal studs. His machete was in an elaborate beaded and fringed scabbard on his belt. The slim Haitian entered the room, pushing two other fellows dressed in rags. The three of them crossed to the altar and pulled out drums from beneath the cloth. Malheur produced a bottle of rum and began passing it around. The men drank from the bottle, tipping their heads back, their Adam’s apples pumping as they gulped the liquor. The volume of their voices increased in direct proportion to the amount of rum they consumed, but all the talk was in Creole. Malheur and the other men exchanged comments, looked at me, then burst out laughing.

  You don’t have to know the language to know when men are talking about sex. It’s in their eyes, in the way they laugh. I remembered the Capitaine’s little game with my zipper on the ship. I began to understand why Solange was acting as though she feared she would never see me again, and I imagined that anyone looking at the side of my neck would see my pulse pounding in the veins there.

  Malheur seated himself with a flourish on a big wooden spool next to the altar. The spool’s wood was weathered to a silvery gray. Probably, it had once been used to run wire around the island, but now it served as a throne for the leader of what seemed to be shaping up to be a Voodoo party.

  Solange and I were still standing against the wall about ten feet from the door. I squeezed her hand, and she looked up at me. Inclining my head in the direction of the door, I raised my eyebrows slightly to ask her if she understood. She nodded. Very slowly, we began inching our way toward the exit.

  Malheur lined up several bottles and clay pots and produced a mortar and pestle from beneath the table. He began adding ingredients from the pots—dried leaves and dark, foul-smelling liquids—and grinding them together. After pouring some of the rum into the stone bowl, he lit the mixture with a wooden match. He waved his arms in the air over the blue flames and spoke aloud, but his voice was blotted out by the drums that had just started. I had thought the drums at Mambo Racine’s were loud, but these were brutal. It felt as though the drummers were beating directly on my body.

  I pressed my hand against my chest and felt for the pouch that Racine had given me. The drums, candles, lanterns, potions, real human bones—these produced some kind of irrational fear. Potions couldn’t hurt me. To be afraid of a six-foot-four-inch murderer was perfectly logical, but it was the blank stare of that skull that made me want to clutch the pouch and start talking to La Sirene.

  Malheur had his back to us, but because he was sitting at an anlle, I could see part of his face. We had halved the distance to the door when he called out my name.

  “Seychelle Sullivan,” he said, his voice loud enough to be heard over the drums.

  Gil appeared at my side. He grasped my arm and put an end to the progress we had made toward the exit. He shoved me in front of Malheur. I never let go of Solange’s hand.

  Malheur’s eyes looked really out of it—drunk or high. The look was not the same I’d seen on the faces of the people at Racine’s who claimed to have been possessed by the lwa.

  “The bokor is gone. I am Bwon Samedi.”

  He grabbed at the front of my shirt and pulled me down to him. I tried to twist out of his grip, to turn my head aside, but he just held me there, my face not two inches from his. I could feel and smell his breath on my cheek. He didn’t try to kiss me or bite my nose off—he didn’t do anything. The longer we stayed like that, the more frightened I grew. What was he doing? Then he leaned in until his nose almost touched my cheek and his nostrils flared. He was sniffing me. I squirmed when his nose actually ground into my ear, and he made grunting noises like a foraging pig. Then he leaned back, though he still held the front of my shirt. I felt a second of relief before he smacked me open-handed across the face.

  I was dazed, couldn’t see a thing out of my left eye, and probably couldn’t have told you my own name. I stumbled back, the room spinning, but I was determined to stay upright. Too late, I realized I had let go of that little hand.

  I heard her call out over the noise of the pounding drums and saw the blur of her yellow tank top and bright red shorts as the Haitian crewman disappeared with her into the other room.

  “Solange!” I cried as I started toward the spot where the blur of color had disappeared.

  The second slap rocked me even harder, and I tasted the blood where my teeth had pierced the inside of my cheek. The pain must have shown on my face because Malheur threw back his head and laughed again. He was standing now, and he motioned to Gil, who stepped in and grabbed my arm again in his viselike grip. I shook my head to try to clear my blurry vision. There seemed to be only one other room in the house, and though I called out her name, I could barely hear my own voice inside my head. Malheur lifted the bowl that contained the mixture he had cooked up earlier, then shouted something to the drummers, and the rhythm grew even faster. Gil dragged me out the front door and onto the landing. Malheur followed, bringing one of the kerosene lanterns to light up the clearing. Whatever he intended to do to me, he wanted an audience to appreciate it.

  The drumming stopped and the silence was nearly as painful as the noise had been. My head had taken too many blows; it felt as though my brain had been jarred loose. The hiss of the pressure lantern was the only sound in the night air when Gil pressed me against the railing at the edge of the landing. Though my vision was blurred, I could still make out the countless white eyes looking up from the dark ground. Malheur held the stone bowl over his head, and he began talking to them in Creole. In the flickering lantern light, it grew clear to me that this man, this bokor, thought himself some kind of charismatic leader. Power. And fear. These were what he fed on. The machete on his belt, the potion in his hands, the death images on his hat and glasses—these were the instruments of fear he used to gain power over these people, just as he had done years ago in Haiti under the Duvalier regime.

  As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dark, I realized that, from the balcony, we were able to see across the tops of the mangroves to the ocean beyond. We’d entered on the west side of the island, and now I could see open water ahead through the mangroves. I knew South Bimini wasn’t very big, but I didn’t realize that we had nearly traversed the width of the island on our canal passage. As Malheur continued his speech in Creole, I scanned the water off to our right and understood that I was looking at the Great Bahama Bank that stretched out eastward toward Andros. And there, traveling not more than a quarter mile offshore, I spotted the dim light of a small boat. I wondered if it was Rusty.

  “Do
n’t look this way,” a voice whispered right next to my ear.

  I gave a barely perceptible nod of my head.

  “Don’t swallow,” Gil whispered, so quietly that I could barely hear him over Malheur’s rantings.

  “What?”

  Malheur abruptly stopped speaking and motioned to Gil to bring me closer to him. Gil grabbed my ponytail and yanked my head back, while Malheur’s huge ring-covered hand pulled on my chin to open my mouth. The move took only seconds and surprised me. I couldn’t clamp my jaw shut in time. Malheur splashed his mixture on my face, getting equal parts down my throat and all over my shirt and hair. The taste was foul, and as I gagged and choked, some of it went down my windpipe. When Gil finally let go of my hair, I bent forward from the waist, coughing and trying to spit it all out on the ground. But I knew, as I gagged and tried to make myself vomit, that I had swallowed some as well.

  Malheur spun around and went into the house, calling out instructions to Gil.

  Gil let go of my arm for a few seconds, walked to the door, and checked to make certain it was closed. Malheur had taken the lantern with him. It was now pitch-black outside. My coughing had just started to subside when Gil emerged from the dark, grabbed me, pried my jaws apart, and stuck his fingers down my throat. I heaved what tasted like pure stomach acid, and Gil jumped back while I puked over the railing.

  “Geez, Gil,” I said. My throat burned. Then I had another, milder coughing fit.

  “He uses drugs. He wants the people to think he’s a hot shit Voodoo priest, that he’s making people into zombies. He makes it look like a potion, then he just mixes in some drugs—roofies. Makes people kinda paralyzed. He does shit to ’em then. Plays with ’em.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Go. Get out of here.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’re right, I knew Red. He was all right. Malheur’s a psycho prick and I’m sick of his shit. Thinks he’s my boss. That’s the last time that asshole’s gonna spit on me.” Gil spat onto the deck. “Now get outta here.” He pointed down the stairs. “He expects you inside.”

  I looked out across the mangroves. The white light was still out there. It wasn’t moving now. Maybe it was just some fisherman anchored out there. Maybe it was someone coming to help. “I can’t leave Solange.”

  He shook his head. “Shit.” He walked away and then returned. “Act like you’re totally drugged out.”

  He grasped my arm and dragged me to the door. Inside the Voodoo room, the drummers were gone, and the bright lantern was out. The only light in the room came from a couple of candles on the altar. There was no sign of Malheur or the other Haitian man. Gil took me to a chair at the far end of the room, and I sat, slumped over, eyes closed.

  Gil and Malheur were speaking in Creole in the other room for quite a while before things grew quiet. Then I heard footsteps crossing the room. They stopped in front of me. I had ingested enough of the drug that I was feeling woozy and disoriented. It was growing more and more difficult to remain still. It felt as though the room were tilting, and I was in danger of slipping off the chair.

  A hand enclosed mine where it rested, loose at my side. I could feel the cold metal of the silver rings, so I knew it was Malheur. He lifted my hand level with my shoulder and then let it drop, evidently testing my drugged state. I let the hand flop free and swing.

  His breath smelled of rum and cigarettes, and the odor mixed with the earthy smell of the potion he had spilled all over me, making me feel like I was going to vomit again. His face was so close to mine that I could hear the noise his breath made in his nose.

  Then a new sound. An odd sort of swish. The sound of two surfaces sliding against each other. Then something cool touched my cheek, and I knew that the sound I had heard had been the noise of his machete being drawn out of the sheath on his belt. The steel lay flat against my face. He pulled it away, and the smell of his breath disappeared. Then the thin sharp edge came to rest on my upper arm. I’d seen how much damage that blade could inflict. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to flinch as he drew the steel across my arm and began to cut into my flesh.

  I heard running footsteps, then the scream. At first I thought it was me screaming, until I opened my eyes and saw Solange on his back, her tiny fists pounding around his shoulders and knocking the sunglasses off his face. When he stood, she rose with him, still clinging to his back, shrieking at him with words I could not understand. I looked down at the blood dripping to the floor from the cut in my arm, and I felt that it was all happening to someone else. I didn’t feel any pain. Then Malheur reached around and threw the child to the ground. She landed in a still heap, and he was looking at her, laughing, his face turned away from me, his shoulders shaking.

  I laced my fingers together, shot up out of the chair, and slammed my hands down across his injured arm just above his grip on the machete. The weapon flew from his hand, and I kicked it across the floor. He roared like an enraged animal and backhanded me across the face with his ring-encrusted hand. I fell against the altar table and heard the sound of breaking glass, saw the flames where the candles ignited the rum, and then I fell to the floor when the table collapsed beneath me. At once, Malheur was standing over me, the whites of his eyes made red by the flames and the rum, his goatee and mustache making him look like Lucifer incarnate. I reached through the rubble, trying to get my hands on a piece of a broken bottle or splintered wood. The flames caught at the nylon tablecloth that had covered the altar and raced toward me. Malheur bared his teeth in a sickening grin, then his eyes grew unfocused and he fell forward on top of me.

  The cloth of his black suit was suffocating me as the weight of his body pressed down on my abdomen, nose, and mouth. I couldn’t move his massive chest off my face because my arms were pinned down where his arms crossed mine. I squirmed and struggled, unaware at first that he was not trying to rape me, that he was not, in fact, even moving.

  Then the weight was lifted off my face, and I gasped for air and crabbed my way across the floor, away from the bokor and the flames, into a corner of the room. Gil was holding one of Malheur’s arms, and when he released it, the Capitaine flopped back to his facedown position. I saw the machete driven deep into the back of the big man’s skull.

  I retched up more stomach acid as I crawled toward Solange’s still form. I hovered over her protectively, eyeing Gil, who stood frozen, staring at the body. I knew the drug was affecting me, and I wasn’t even sure if any of what I was watching was real. The whole table was in flames now, and the smoke was making it difficult to breathe.

  Solange began to cough. “Are you okay?” I asked when she opened her eyes. She sat up, rubbing the back of her head, and coughed some more. “We’ve got to get out of here.” I stood up, took Solange’s hand, and gave Gil’s shoulder a shove. “Come on.”

  We crossed to the door, and before I opened it, Gil put his hand on my arm, touched the blood. “You’re cut,” he said.

  I nodded. “It’s not deep. Come on.”

  “I’ve got to stay. He’s coming.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “You go. Take the kid. Stay away from the dock—go the other way. You don’t want him to find you.”

  “Come with us, Gil.”

  “I can’t.” He shrugged. “Get her out of here before he gets here.” He pushed open the door, then grabbed a blanket and started beating at the flames that were now licking around the body on the floor. He looked up. “Get the fuck out of here,” he shouted.

  I grabbed Solange’s hand, and we raced down the steps, then bore right, away from the direction of the dock where we’d arrived. There was a pathway of sorts through the bodies stretched out on the ground, but as we passed, the path widened as the people drew back. They were clearly accustomed to violence, and they did everything they could to stay out of reach. At the edge of the clearing, we stepped onto a crudely built wooden walkway that led out through the mangrove swamp toward the island’s eas
tern shore.

  The wooden walkway led out to a short pier over open water, at the end of which was a small shed. I’d seen this type of thing before in the islands. No plumbing required for this head; it was a straight shot down to a tidal flush.

  We stopped at the base of the pier, and I looked at the dim white light bobbing about half a mile offshore. It was all shallow out there. The banks stretched for miles. Probably just some fisherman. But it might be Rusty. The light looked like it was dancing, and every time I tried to look right at it, it swerved out of my line of vision.

  I looked down at Solange.

  “Can you swim?” I asked.

  XXVII

  She cocked her head at me, not understanding. I pantomimed an Australian crawl, and she shook her head.

  “Okay, get on my back and put your arms around my neck.” I adjusted her around behind me piggyback style. I could feel her body trembling, and I knew it was not from the night air. “See that white light?” I pointed the light out to her, attempting to focus my own eyes. I figured she would be less frightened if she could see our destination. “I think that’s Rusty’s boat.” I felt the cut on my upper arm. While not deep, it was still oozing blood. “I’m going to swim us out there, okay?” I tried to sound more confident than I was.

  For the first hundred yards or so, I was able to walk across the uneven bottom, my sneakers crunching on the shell and coral, the soles of my shoes getting sliced up in the process. I began to worry about someone seeing us, so I lowered my upper body into the water and started a slow but strong breaststroke. I was glad no one was there to watch my technique— I’d never felt so uncoordinated in the water. It was as though part of my consciousness were standing aside, looking at the rest of me, which was impaired—mentally and physically. The night was so dark, I couldn’t even make out the line of the horizon, where the clouds ended and the waters of the Bahama Banks began. The white light we were headed for looked like it was suspended in a black sky. I began to feel that vertigo again, like I was swimming uphill.