by Cave, Hugh
"He is not here now."
"Oh? When did he leave?"
"Soon after the funeral, didn't he, Metellus? Just a few days?"
Metellus nodded.
"Where did he go?"
Metellus shrugged and said, "We heard, to Cap Haitien, where he makes a lot of money betting on cockfights. But who knows for sure?"
Feeling she had sat long enough, Kay rose stiffly and walked to the door. It was open, but would soon have to be closed because the yard was turning dark. There were still people in the road and at the fence. But most had departed. She looked across the yard toward the cluster of graves.
Turning back into the room, she frowned at Tina's father. "And you personally put Tina into a coffin and nailed it shut and buried it, Metellus?"
"Yes, M'selle. Personally."
"There is no doubt in your mind that she was in the coffin when you buried it?"
"None at all."
"Are you saying, then, that the child I've brought back to you is not your daughter, but someone else?"
He looked at his woman, and she at him. He turned to meet Kay's demanding gaze again. "M'selle, what can we say?"
With her fists against her hips for perhaps the fourth time that day, Kay faced them in a resurgence of anger. "You can admit there's been a mistake, that's what you can say! Because, look. When the name Bois Sauvage was read to this child by a doctor reading a map, she clapped her hands and cried out, 'That's where I live!' For weeks she hadn't been able to remember anything of her past, but the name Bois Sauvage changed all that. Then she remembered her name—her full name, mind you, just as you've got it inscribed on that grave out there. Tina Louise Christine Sam. And she remembered your names and her sister's and the twins'. So if she isn't your Tina, who in the world do you think she is?"
The woman whispered something.
"What?" Kay said.
"She is a zombie."
"Oh, for God's sake! Zombies are dead people, if there are such things. Tina is a normal, healthy child!"
"Li sé zombie," the woman stubbornly repeated, then rose from her chair and went into a bedroom. Returning with a lamp, she placed it on a table and beckoned her man to come and light it. "I must prepare some food. M'selle, do you eat our kind of food? Chicken? Yams? Peas and rice left over from noon?"
"Thank you, yes. But wait. We ought to settle this before we think of eating. What do you intend to do about Tina?"
"That is up to Metellus." She opened the door of the room where the children where. "Rosemarie! Come and help with supper!"
Both girls responded, but she held up a hand when Tina tried to follow the older one from the room. "Not you."
"But, Maman, I can help too."
Her tears glistening in the lamplight, the child retreated and shut the door. The woman turned to direct a silent command at Metellus.
Rising, the man exhaled heavily and said, "I will make a light in the kitchen and get a fire going." Then, to Kay, he said, "Excuse me, M'selle," and walked out the front door.
Later that evening Kay tried to break down the woman's resistance, but failed. She probably could have convinced Metellus, she told herself, had the child's mother been a different kind of person. It was a pathetic situation. Tragic. The father was strong and intelligent but unwilling, obviously, to make trouble for himself by challenging this baby-faced feather-brain he slept with.
I need sleep myself. We can pick this up again tomorrow.
It had been decided that she and Tina would share a bedroom, though the other children had told their mother Tina could sleep with them. Only with the greatest reluctance had Fifine allowed the child to sit at the supper table, and not once during the meal had she looked at or spoken to her "zombie" daughter.
Kay's temper had more than once surged up like lava. She was exhausted now from having expended so much energy controlling it.
Go to bed, Gilbert. Maybe during the night Metellus will find himself some guts.
She lay with her right arm around Tina, the child's head on her breast. A lamp burned low on a chest of drawers made mostly of woven sisal.
"Miss Kay?"
"What, baby?"
"My mother doesn't want me. What will I do?"
"It's all a big mistake, ti-fi."
"They think I'm dead. Did I die, Miss Kay?"
"Of course not."
"Why do they say I did, then? Even Rosemarie and the twins."
"Because they. . ." Oh, Christ, baby, I don't know why! I'm way out of my depth here and don't know what to say or do about it. I'm out of my depth the way Sam Norman was, and he didn't have any answers, either.
The child was silent. Fell asleep. Kay moved her arm and lay there in the lamp glow staring at the roof and thinking. What am I doing in this place? I don't understand these people. What am I doing in Haiti, anyway, for God's sake? None of us who come here really know what we're doing. All we can do is kid ourselves into thinking we have superior intellects while we muddle along and make mistakes and foul everything up.
But she knew she was tired. That, she was sure of. All day long on a mule, most of the day scared because Joseph had left her alone with the child. Her knees ached, her thighs burned, her arches must be permanently warped from the stupid stirrups, even her fingers were cramped from holding the reins, and nothing but sleep would change anything.
She listened to Tina's breathing and it helped, it was soothing. After a while, she dozed off.
There was a tapping sound at the room's only window. A window with no glass in it, and she had decided not to close the shutters lest the smell of the kerosene lamp give her more of a headache than she already had.
The tapping was on one of the open shutters, and she sat up in bed and turned her head in that direction, still half asleep, and heard the voice of Metellus Sam whispering to her from the opening.
"M'selle . . ."
"What is it?" she said to the face peering in at her. Still a strong, good-looking face, it was warped with some kind of fear now. The lamp glow created yellow highlights in the white of his eyes.
"I have to show you something!"
She looked at the watch on her wrist. Why, on this crazy pilgrimage, was she always trying to find out the time in the middle of the night?
Three-ten. Well, at least she'd been sleeping. Would be rested tomorrow.
"What do you want, Metellus?"
"Come out here, please. Be careful not to wake anyone!"
"All right. Just give me a minute."
She had worn pajamas to bed. Was damned if she would get dressed at this idiot hour just to go into the yard to see what he wanted. A glance at Tina. The child was sound asleep. Starting for the door barefoot, she remembered what chigres could do to the toes of the careless and went back to put on her sneaks. Then left the bedroom, walked silently across the dim front room with its clutter of chairs, opened the door, stepped outside, and found him waiting.
He took her by the arm and whispered, "Come!"
He led her across the yard, through moonlight bright enough to paint the ground with dark shadows of house, fence, trees, graves. He walked her to the graves. Next to the one with Tina's name on it was a hole now, with dirt piled at its edge and a spade thrust upright in the dirt.
"Look, M'selle."
She approached the edge and peered into the excavation. Saw what he had done. Unable to move the concrete slab that covered the grave, he had dug down beside it, then tunneled under. Far enough under, at least, to find out what he wanted to know.
"You see? The coffin is gone!"
She nodded. There was nothing to argue about. He had dug enough dirt out to prove his point. Not enough to risk having the slab sag into his excavation, but he had certainly discovered there was no wooden box under it. She stood there staring and heard all the usual night sounds in the silence. Crickets. Tree toads. Croaking lizards. Insects.
"How could anyone have stolen it without moving the slab?" she asked, but knew the answer before fi
nishing the question. Let him say it anyway.
"M'selle, we don't do the tombing right away. Not until the earth has settled. In this case it was more than six weeks before I could go to Trou for the cement."
Which you brought back on a mule, she thought, walking the whole way back yourself so the mule could carry it. And then you built this elaborate concrete thing over the grave to show your love for a daughter whose body had already been stolen.
Gilbert, what the hell are you saying?
"Metellus, I don't understand this."
Let him explain it, even though she guessed how he would do so.
"There can be only one answer, M'selle. I know my daughter died. I know I put her into a coffin and buried her here. The coffin is not here now. So . . . she is a zombie."
"She was not really dead, you mean."
"Well, there are two kinds of zombies, as perhaps you know. Those who truly die and are restored to life by sorcery; that is one kind. Others are poisoned in various ways so they only seem to die, then are taken from their graves and restored."
Still gazing into the hole, Kay nodded. The second kind of zombie was the one believed in by most Haitian peasants, of course. And it was hard to censure them. You heard some strangely convincing tales.
"You think Tina was poisoned?"
"Now I do, yes."
"With that mango you told me about?"
Metellus reached for the spade and, holding it in both hands, turned to frown at her. "Luc Etienne gave her two mangoes. One for herself, one for the twins to share. You know what I think? I think on the way home she got them mixed up, and when she found no one at home and ate her mango, the one she ate was the one she had been told to give to the twins."
"I don't understand." This time she really did not.
"He wanted the twins for some special purpose. Twins are different."
"Who? This fellow Etienne?"
He shook his head. With a glance toward the house, he began quietly putting the earth back into the hole. "Not Etienne, M'selle. At least, not for himself. He was friendly with a much more important person at that time. With a bocor in Legrun, named Margal. There are people here who say Luc Etienne was that man's pupil."
"The legless one," Kay said.
He stopped the spade in mid stroke. "You know of him?" -
"I think he tried to stop me from coming here."
"Very likely. Because you know what I think happened after he stole the coffin from the grave? I think he brought Tina back to life the way they do—with leaves or herbs or whatever—and then sold her to someone in some distant place where she would not be known. He wanted the twins, yes, but still would have stolen Tina to sell her. Someone who needed a willing servant would have paid him well."
"And she wandered away."
"And the priest found her."
"How did Margal know I was bringing her back here?"
"That man would know, M'selle. He probably knows we are standing here discussing him right this minute." Metellus plied the spade faster now, obviously anxious to get the job finished. But again he stopped and faced her. "M'selle, Tina cannot stay here. Next time, he will surely kill her."
"I think you're probably right." Gilbert, what in God's name are you saying? Has this spooky grave-dig in the moonlight got your mind? You were trained to be a nurse!
"I love my daughter. You must know that by now."
"I'm sure you do."
"Fifine loved her too, but she can never feel the same again. You must know that."
Kay nodded.
More earth fell into the hole, adding its lumpy sound to the noise of the night things. In the moonlight Metellus was a strange figure working there by his daughter's grave: a man deserving of respect, Kay thought. Many of the country people were like that. Solid, sincere, polite. And,of course, beset with superstitions as burdensome as Sindbad's Old Man of the Sea.
He finished refilling the hole. Turned to her with the spade over his shoulder. "M'selle, I have a brother in Port-au-Prince."
"Oh?"
"He is two years younger than I and has only two children. He would give Tina a home, even send her to school there. She can't stay here. All of Bois Sauvage knows she died and was buried in this yard and must now be a zombie. She would be shunned, even if Margal did not destroy her."
"You want me to take her to your brother?"
"Will you? I will ride out with you to where your jeep is."
She thought about it while he gazed at her, awaiting her reply. A white owl flew across the yard from the road to the field of piti-mi. "I'll sleep on it, Metellus. Tell you tomorrow."
"M'selle, you must love the child or you would not have done so much for her already."
"Tomorrow, Metellus," she said and, deep in thought, walked slowly back to the house.
26
"We are going to destroy your president, Dr. Molicoeur."
"Why?"
"Because Margal wishes it."
"Who is Margal?"
"A man with no legs."
"I do not understand."
"A man who lost his legs
as a result of a beating
administered by thugs
sent to kill him
because he refused to assist
some member of your government.
That is what he told me.
He wants revenge
and you have been selected to obtain it for him."
"But why me?"
"Because—it is simple—
you have access to the president.
You see him almost daily.
He trusts you."
"I will not do it!"
"I wish I could hope so,
Dr. Molicoeur.
But you will."
They sit in the study
of Dr. Molicoeur.
Their conversation is interrupted by a light,
polite knock on the closed door.
Glancing at Dr. Bell
and receiving a nod of permission,
the Haitian rises
and goes to the door
and opens it.
His beautiful young wife,
a light-skinned girl who once rode a Mardi Gras float
as Haiti's beauty queen,
smiles at her husband and Dr. Bell
and says with a smile,
"Dinner is ready."
At dinner,
in the presence of this charming woman
and her delightful, small daughter,
Dr. Bell is sad,
knowing that the success of his mission
will destroy them.
His mind screams yet another challenge:
"Margal, I will not do this!
You cannot force me to do this!
I refuse!"
And, as before,
his hands begin to shake,
his face pales,
and his pores spurt sweat.
Madame Molicoeur,
in sudden alarm and compassion,
abruptly leans toward him.
"What is wrong, Dr. Bell?
Are you ill?"
"Forgive me. It will pass."
And it passes.
But only when his mind abandons the challenge
and bows again
to the will of the legless man
in the mountains.
In his room,
Dr. Bell lies awake for hours,
waiting.
In the deep stillness of the night,
he calls again to his daughter,
who is on her way to the terrible place
she must not be allowed to reach.
"Milly, Milly,"
do not go!
I am not there.
I am in the capital.
Turn back, child,
please,
for God's sake.
That man is a devil
who finds it all too easy
to have his way with people like you and me."
>
27
Vallière was behind them. The trail snaked on and on through shades of green and sounds of silence. Had Daddy really reached her last night?
He could have. He had sounded most anxious to, in order to tell her he was not where she thought but in the capital, in trouble, and needed her. When it was that important for him to make contact, he usually was able to.
Like the day when Mama. . .
She had been home alone that day in the house on Gorton Pond in Warwick, Rhode Island. Daddy was in Vermont, finding out whether he would or would not be teaching philosophy there in September. Mama had gone to New York with her friend Edna Vaughan to do some shopping.
Seven P.M. She was standing at the kitchen sink with an opened can of spinach in her hand, wondering whether to heat it or just put some dressing on it and have it cold. Along with the lamb chop she was broiling, of course. Absolutely no other thought but what to do with the spinach. And Daddy had reached her.
"Milly?"
She was startled, but managed to answer him. At least to acknowledge the contact.
"Milly, do you know what hotel your mother and Edna Vaughan planned on staying at?"
"They weren't going to a hotel, Daddy. They were invited to stay with a friend of Edna's on Riverside Drive."
"Do you have a phone number?" Daddy had drilled it into them never to go anywhere without leaving a number where you could be reached in case of trouble.
"I'm sure she left one on the telephone table. But, Daddy, why aren't you phoning me instead of this? You know how I suffer from headaches afterward!"
"I can't get to a phone, Milly. I'm out in the middle of the lake here in a sailboat. Got the job, came out here to relax, and then suddenly got this feeling. Call your mother, Milly. Tell her she mustn't drive home with Edna. It's terribly important! She must not drive home with Edna!"
But when she called the number Mama had left by the phone, no one answered. Ring, ring, ring for ten minutes —no answer. For the next hour she dialed again every five minutes, and still got nothing. It was too late, anyway. Mama and Edna wouldn't have left New York as late as this. Edna hated driving at night.
Months later, when Edna recovered enough to go into details, she got the story of what happened. "We were just going along there in Connecticut, not even fast, Milly, I'm sure not even fifty, and just as we came to one of those overpass roads with the big abutments—you know, those big stone abutments that scare you anyway—well, just then a dog ran into the road. It was only a mutt, but I tried not to hit it, and I guess I sideswiped the abutment."
