The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  His bayonet was raised above the figures of the sleeping men. I was too late to do anything to save them. Markham had nearly completed his crime—the murder of Privates Ford and McIlhane.

  I do not know how I sensed the situation so quickly. Perhaps I saw unconsciously the blood on the bayonet, or I intuited that the captain had lost his reason from the mad expression on his face. But I reached for my revolver and shot Markham once in the thigh, missing on the second bullet. When I came to him, dashing past the remains of Ford and McIlhane on their bedrolls and catching only a brightly lit glimpse of their savaged faces, he was raving at me, laughing and crying out in gibberish. His leg was shattered—I saw the bone at five paces—but he seemed to feel no pain. I shouted at him to be quiet, but he was beyond reason, and I had to strike him with the butt of my pistol to silence him.

  I will not go into detail about the state of the bodies. There are full details in the charging documents that I provided to the Marine investigators and have no wish to revisit. As is commonly known, Ford and McIlhane were already dead or near death when I checked them. But that, of course, was only the least diabolical of Captain Markham’s actions that night. When I came upon him, he had just finished removing the organs of Private Ford and had already cut up McIlhane around the midsection. Three organs—two kidneys and a heart—were carefully laid out on a clean piece of buckram that the captain formerly used for storing his sidearm. I will remember that sight for the rest of my life and for as long as my poor spirit lingers in the afterworld, of that I am sure.

  I can write no more of this night. And I cannot account for Markham’s actions, except to say that I believe that he was unbalanced to his core.

  * * *

  November 13th: I have only one more thing to add to this sad narrative, and it concerns our translator, Joseph. I had long been curious about what passed between Markham and Bule on that fateful day when the captain ordered me from the hut and spoke to the prisoner only in the presence of Joseph. I searched for our translator after the events; he had survived Markham’s bullet, that I knew, but after being treated at one of our field hospitals, he quickly disappeared into the countryside. We hired a new translator in Plaisance, but all efforts to find Joseph were unsuccessful. The Haitians did not even wish to speak his name.

  It was soon after the murders of my comrades that I came upon him. We were driving in our auto-truck toward Gonaïves to bring supplies to a unit there—tents, medical bandages, and boots, as I recall, to replace the ones that tended to rot away in the tropical heat. We were passing through a small town whose name I do not know, and Haitians were lined up on either side of the road.

  I was in the passenger seat, with Private Shaughnessy from Colonel Fine’s unit doing the driving, when I happened to glance out of the window and caught sight of Joseph in the mass of black faces watching the truck push its way through the streets. I cried, “Stop!” and dismounted immediately. Joseph didn’t run away but only observed my approach with red-veined eyes and a slack expression.

  He was much altered; the neat and even dapper man was gone, and he stood now in poor clothing: a much-used gray shirt, filthy at the cuffs and stained, with a pair of ragged black half-pants. He might have not changed the outfit he was wearing for the previous weeks, I would guess. This educated man was now indistinguishable from the mass of peasantry. I hustled him into the back of the auto-truck, made room among the provisions, and spoke to him there for the rest of the journey.

  It was an odd conversation. The raw smell of clairin—Haitian moonshine—came across the short space between us, and his speech, at least early on, was slurred. He slipped into Creole on several occasions, and I had to call him back to English, that we might continue the conversation.

  “What happened in that hut?” I asked him finally.

  He guffawed. “You blans! More curious than children. You must know everything. You must have everything and you must know it, too.”

  “Tell me what happened,” I said, impatient with his new freedom with me.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “What did Markham ask Bule? Was it about the leadership of the cacos?”

  Joseph leaned over as if he were to impart a great revelation, breathed a mouthful of clairin fumes into my face, and solemnly intoned: “No.”

  He sat up, laughing.

  “Do not become too familiar, Joseph.”

  He gave me an insolent stare. “What then?” The gaiety passed out of his expression—perhaps it was the last fumes of intoxication—and the lines of his face hardened. “Why don’t you ask Markham?”

  “Because he’s insane. He won’t talk to anyone.”

  Joseph laughed softly to himself. “What does he eat?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What does he eat, the captain? Your blan food or griot?” Griot was the local pork dish, the food of the common people here when they could afford it. I didn’t respond. “He loves his griot now, yes? Yes, I’m sure.”

  Again he leaned over, but this time his face was serious, as if he really wished to impart a secret with no one hearing, although we could barely make ourselves heard above the shifting of the auto-truck on the road.

  “Markham is dead,” he whispered. “He just doesn’t know it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Joseph stared at me contemptuously. “Just what I said. Markham believes he lives. Maybe he believes that he’s been unjustly accused. Maybe he believes he’s back in America, romancing some woman. Or perhaps he is suffering unimaginable torture. He experiences what Bule allows him to experience.”

  This was madness, and I looked at Joseph as I would a man ranting about the end of the world. With pity and solicitude. But his face was so calm, his voice as reasonable-seeming as a pastor back home discussing some minor event. It made me uneasy, and I found myself at a loss for words. What could he mean that Markham was living some kind of shadow, hermetic life?

  “You are not like your captain,” Joseph said finally after a minute or two of silence. “You are satisfied with the world you see, eh? Markham, oh, much different. Much. When I first met him, I expected him to carve me with his knife and ask about the cacos. That’s what the Marines do, that’s all they’re interested in. We have a saying, you know, us Haitians: the Americans came to Haiti to see the color of our blood.”

  He glanced back at the receding landscape. “But Markham invited me to sit down as if we were courtiers at the presidential palace, and he offered me brandy from his private flask. He didn’t ask a single question about the rebels.” His eyes back on me, intent. “All he wanted to know about was Bule. You thought he was in those ‘interviews’ grilling the Haitians about the cacos, but he wanted to know the sorcerer’s secrets. How he did his . . . magic. Yes? How he enchanted Francelow—that is the man he shot in the village—during the ceremony of voudoun. And then other questions: What had Bule done with Monk? And more so, how had he done it. Very strange questions for a blan.”

  I gaped at him as we bounced on the benches, the landscape of rural Haiti dancing beyond the canvas flaps.

  “Ahhh, yes. Captain Markham was curious. He told me he had always been curious about the spirit world, that he had attended séances back in his home, and was a member of the Rosicrucians. He called himself a seeker.”

  There was a certain correspondence between what I was hearing and Markham’s odd behavior.

  “And that was his downfall,” Joseph said.

  “Why? Bule died in the fire at his compound.”

  Again, disdain in the Haitian’s eyes. If he’d looked at me that way in the street, I might have struck him down. But I wanted to hear what he said.

  “Bule,” Joseph said, his eyes unfixed and his voice hoarse, “is the greatest sorcerer in Haiti for three or four generations. Since the time of Charlemagne Herivaux, or that is what they say. But even he had lim
its.” Joseph sat back against the canvas. “You see, everyone in Haiti goes to Bule, but everyone fears him, too. They will not open up themselves—” Here he put the palms of his hands together, then slowly peeled them back, as if to reveal something inside. “No, they have defenses against the likes of Bule.” He slapped his hands together quickly and held them grasped together. “They know what he will do. They will not allow him in.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Exactly. Be happy you don’t understand. I told Markham this. I said, your seeking will get you more than you bargain for. But he was determined.”

  “So in the hut, on that final day, he didn’t ask about the cacos either? He didn’t ask about the rebel networks, about who was supplying them? What did he burn him for, then, if not to find out these things?”

  Joseph shook his head no.

  “He said, ‘Bule, I admire you. I want to learn your secrets. Tell me and you will live.’ ”

  “Impossible!” I nearly shouted.

  Joseph laughed. “Believe what you want. But those were his words. I, too, was shocked. Shocked because I saw Bule thinking, thinking.

  “He laughed. Bule knew that Markham couldn’t grant him life. If you Americans didn’t kill him, the Haitians would make them, Dartiguenave”—the president of the Senate—“and some others in the government. He’d grown much, much too powerful and now they had the chance to do away with him without being . . .” Joseph had a smile on his lips. “Contaminated. So he spit on the ground. Markham sprang at him, shouting bloody mur-deerrr. But Bule only went quiet. And soon, I knew it was done.”

  “What was done, Joseph?”

  Instead of answering me, Joseph glanced up at the bright day. “I’ve been waiting for him.”

  “For Markham?”

  Joseph laughed. “Markham is dead, I tell you. As am I. But let me ask you this—” His face was grave as I ever saw it. “The things Markham removed from the two soldiers. What was done with them?”

  I gaped at him. “The organs, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I couldn’t possibly—”

  Joseph’s voice rose. “They are part of Bule’s power now. He was feeding his spirit, do you see? You must not let them be offered to the fire. If those organs are brought to the flame, Bule will grow even stronger. And that will not be so good for you.”

  “For me?” I said.

  “How many children do you have, Sergeant?” he asked, with concern in his eyes.

  “That is none of your affair.”

  “Let me give you this one piece of advice. When you return to America, move as far away from Captain Markham’s home-place as you can.” He coughed. “And should you find your family plagued by strange illnesses and terrible ends, do not think that you are the victim of bad luck. Seek the evildoer among the descendants of your squadron. The squadron, Sergeant. That’s where you will find the traveler. Do you understand me?”

  Joseph had clearly passed into the realm of delirium tremens, or outright madness. I could get no more sense out of him after that. He simply stared at the ribbon of road spilling out behind us, as if lost in reverie. After a few more questions, I gave up.

  I felt Joseph had been wrongly done by Markham, and I was struck to see him so fallen. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a few dollars and handed them to him. He took them without thanks. “Tell your driver to let me out here.”

  I did, and Joseph marched off, swaying as he went, the clairin still not out of his system.

  I resumed my seat next to the driver, but I saw only that yard in Saint-Michel-de-l’Attalaye and Markham stumbling from the hut. I went over and over it again, but I couldn’t make any sense of Joseph’s ramblings. Did he mean that Bule had cursed Markham somehow? Or were the two in league together, consorts in some evil I still didn’t comprehend?

  It was a long trip to Gonaïves, and I wished to God I had never come to Haiti.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  John Bailey stood in front of Stephanie Godwin’s door and rang the bell. A light rain drizzled on the flagstones behind him. It sounded far off, a feeble rattle, as if the electric current in the house were running low. Nothing moved behind the three ­diamond-shaped windows in the wooden door; no breath of wind stirred the little lace curtains that covered them on the inside.

  He took a deep breath. If he was going to tell his boss that zombies—no, nzombes, as Nat had told him—were running wild all over Northam, he needed to get his ducks in a row. He had to be able to say Chuck Godwin was wandering the woods and have his wife, Stephanie, to back him up on that little fact. That’s why he was here. To get her on board in case he needed to go to the chief.

  He didn’t know what else to do. Nothing else made sense right now.

  John clomped his size-13 boots impatiently on the red-­colored porch. He couldn’t believe he was standing here, but that was his life now. The shock of Charlie holding John’s gun in his mouth hadn’t left him; it had simply joined the other stream of images that had turned everything into a continuous walking nightmare.

  Finally, the thin lace curtain that hung over the bottom window trembled and John saw an eye with pale flesh around it regard him from the corner.

  “Mrs. Godwin?” he called. “It’s Detective Bailey. Can we talk for a minute?”

  The curtain dropped, and it was as if the eye had never been there. The door didn’t open. No sound came out of the house. John grimaced and leaned on the doorbell. What was the city coming to, when people stopped talking to cops? John walked along the porch, whose red paint was chipping and showing the cement beneath, and ducked his head to look in the picture window.

  The living room was sunk in a green aquarium light, dark at the edges. There was a red knit throw on the couch, trailing down to the carpeted floor, as if someone had been taking a nap and just gotten up.

  He returned to the railing, turning his back to the house. He looked up and down the street. What the fuck was going on here?

  Something caught his eye to the east. It was in the Raitliff Woods, high up on a slope. Must be half a mile away. Something glowing red. Did some idiot start a fire up there? John thought. He watched it for a moment, trying to remember the last time he’d seen flames in that forest. Never, that’s when . . .

  He shivered, gritting his teeth. He watched to see if the flames, which were sending up a pall of dirty gray smoke, were spreading. But the fire wasn’t moving. Maybe it was kids, he thought; kids playing Lewis and Clark, roasting some marshmallows or passing around a bottle of cheap schnapps, had let their campfire get out of control and touched off a grove of pines. But he was uneasy, and he couldn’t take his eyes from the flames that were sending a dark plume of smoke into the drifting mists that covered large swathes of the forest.

  Finally, he pulled his gaze from the woods and went back to the door, pulled open the screen door, and gave the wood three hearty raps.

  Silence. Then a shuffling. Like feet being dragged on a carpet.

  Suddenly John heard a rasping noise as the handle of the door was being slowly turned. It caught, and then the door swung open. John Bailey lowered his head and peered into the greenish gloom as the door was pulled back.

  “Mrs. Godwin, is that you?”

  She was standing by the open door, her hands down by her side. She was wearing a white cardigan, a rust-colored turtleneck, and rumpled khakis. She glanced past him out into the street, her eyes startled and fearful.

  “Hi, it’s Detective Bailey. Can I come in?”

  She said nothing, but turned and walked into the room.

  “Now she’s gone off the fucking deep end?” Bailey muttered as he followed her inside.

  The house smelled of . . . tomato soup. And stale, unwashed flesh.

  John walked through the living room, with a stunted Christmas tree in the corner, pine needles d
ropped to the pomegranate-­colored Oriental carpet. He found her in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, staring at the plastic roses in a delicate green vase that served as a centerpiece, as if she’d never seen the things before. A clock on the wall was clicking loudly into the musty air. The kitchen walls seemed to reflect the sound back so that either the ticking or its echo was always hanging in the room.

  He sat down in a padded black-and-white chair, the corner of the table between them. There was a white plastic tablecloth with yellow flowers on it, and Mrs. Godwin rested her arms heavily on it.

  “Mrs. Godwin, are you okay?” he said.

  The woman looked in his direction as if there were no one sitting in his chair.

  “Everything good?” he prompted her again.

  She nodded once.

  “Has anyone come to visit you?”

  Her eyes shot up to look at John. “Visit?” she said worriedly.

  “Yeah, your kids?” Shit, he didn’t know if they had kids in the area. “Or neighbors? This can be a tough time.”

  “No one’s come. No one needs to come.” There was a light in her eyes now.

  “I came to talk about your husband.”

  “Everything’s fine,” she said, and a smile spread across her dry lips.

  “Fine? I believe you talked to Dr. Thayer . . .”

  “Everything,” she said, turning to him with her dry, sagging face, “is fine.”

  The clock was ticking, but he thought he heard another sound, a shuffling again. When he waited for the clock strike to fade, it was gone.

  Mrs. Godwin watched him.

  “No more sightings of your husband?”

  Her eyes. They were that of a . . . a hardened person. One of the wiseasses he picked up for phoning in death threats to school or a homeless guy who’d been on the streets for years. A bully’s eyes, maybe.