Jason Overstreet: Beneath the Darkest Sky

James did as I said and the officer read.

“Both of you, stand… now!”

James and I got up and rushed to get in line. At least the blue tops had some kernel of humanity within them, because I hadn’t been certain they’d allow the two of us to stay together. Still, I kept my fingers crossed, hoping this would remain the case.

As we stood in line, a guard walked the line and checked all of our passports once more. He wrote each of our names down on a list. I assumed it was for later roll calls.

I made quick observations as I boarded the car. To the right was a compartment with a regular wooden door. It was open and inside was a bunk bed, an NKDV uniform hanging on the wall, and two cushioned seats, obviously the living quarters for this car’s guards.

Returning my focus straight ahead, it was fairly dark, the windows to my left along the corridor covered with heavy curtains. It stank of sweat and tobacco throughout. A few lit lanterns hung along the corridor wall, but most remained off. There were compartments to our right, six wooden seats in each—sets of three facing one another.

I counted ten compartments total, or cages, if you will, as the only thing separating them were heavy, black chain-mail curtains. As we continued down the corridor, the smell of urine and feces became intense. Just as I began to cover my nose, an officer far ahead in front yelled for us to stop. I had been so consumed with studying how they’d reconstructed the car for the sole purpose of transporting prisoners that I bumped hard into the man in front of me. James and I were now standing in front of compartment eight, and the corridor was completely full.

“SIX TO A COMPARTMENT!” yelled the blue top. “QUICK!”

I held James’s arm and led him to the far seat on the right next to the curtain-covered window. I sat next to him in the middle seat. It wasn’t long before the two officers began sliding shut the ceiling-high metal fences that separated all of the compartments from the corridor. They then locked them with bolts. This entire setup was obviously designed to make sure the guards could see us at all times.

“LISTEN!” yelled a blue top. “You hold in your shit! You hold in your urine! When it is time, you can use the hole at the end. We will let you go once in the morning and once at night. You go on yourself and you will get this hammer on the head!”

He began banging it against the fencing.

“Don’t ask for food!” he said. “We will give you your ration when it is available. The less you eat, the less you will have to shit. The less you drink, the less you will have to urinate. You are all lousy wreckers and pigs and saboteurs, so sit in your seats and keep your mouths closed. If you talk, I will use this to knock the teeth out of your mouth and give you a pretty pig smile.”

After he’d given his orders, the lanterns were turned off, and we sat on the train in silent darkness for two hours. Finally, as we began to move, the faint sound of sighs and whimpering from a few men could be heard throughout. I wondered if the officers considered that “talking.”

I wrapped my arm around James. He had no tears left and was motionless. All I could do was be strong for him. Where we were heading was beyond all of us.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Four years earlier

IT WAS GOOD NOT LIVING A LIE WITH MY WIFE ANY LONGER. A DECADE of truth can do wonders for a man’s sanity. And our ten-year-old twins knew only a father of complete transparency.

The cause behind the spy work I had done in Harlem, ostensibly for J. Edgar Hoover, still pulled at my soul, but I had to find another way to seek equality for my colored brethren. Nine years in Paris teaching college engineering courses to French students part-time had hardly been the answer. But it appeared I was destined for a life of lecturing, at least until my good friend Bobby Ellington came to Paris in 1929 to serve as the U.S. Embassy’s First Secretary. He’d brought with him his new wife, Dorene, and their son and daughter. The family was delightful and a joy to spend time with.

During his three-year post, we’d reconnected, discussing everything—from our past Bureau days dealing with J. Edgar Hoover and my killing of the four British Intelligence men—to Marcus Garvey’s arrest, Adolf Hitler’s rise, the spread of global communism, etcetera. He also tried to convince me to come work alongside him as an embassy consultant whenever his promotion and new post came about.

As fate would have it, his call from Haiti to be U.S. Counselor came in 1932, shortly after Momma passed away. The loss of her, Loretta’s need for a new cultural experience, and my desire to do politically centered U.S. Government work was all the reason we needed to join the Ellingtons in Port-au-Prince. I also had this burning desire, a yearning, to somehow be a part of my America, even if from afar.

I was hired under a personal service contract as a safety engineer consultant for the embassy, and Bobby had also arranged for me to work as his interpreter. “You can have a lifelong career as a diplomatic interpreter,” Bobby had said back in Paris, “and it will allow you and your family to see the world.” I’d become obsessed with languages the moment we’d arrived in France, so I was now fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, and German. It had all been born out of paranoia and a fear of having to move my family out of Paris if British Intelligence ever discovered my whereabouts.

It felt like a lifetime ago that my name was Sidney Temple. I was now comfortable with my relatively new one—Prescott Sweet—and having been posted in Port-au-Prince for a year at this point, I realized how freeing it could feel getting lost in a sea of black faces, a luxury Paris hadn’t provided. I was the perfect embassy employee for Haiti, a colored American who spoke French and was well-educated. Most of the people, especially in rural areas, actually spoke Haitian Creole, a language based largely on eighteenth-century French, so I’d quickly mastered it, too.

Unlike the white embassy staff, Bobby included, the Haitian people accepted me, and I was determined to help them cope with being subjugated to an American occupation that was now eighteen years in the making. It was a bit ironic, considering I, too, was a U.S. Government employee, but still, I was not working as an “official” Foreign Service officer like Bobby.

Save for a gentleman named Clifton Wharton, I didn’t know of any American coloreds in the world who were actual FSOs. Every other who’d served abroad, men like Frederick Douglass and James Weldon Johnson, had been appointed directly by a sitting president. As for me, all I knew was that Bobby insisted he’d keep me employed for as long as he continued to rise through the ranks.

The social climate in Port-au-Prince was volatile to say the least. The U.S. controlled the customs, collected taxes, and ran many governmental institutions, all of which benefited America. There was reason to believe that U.S. soldiers would soon be ordered home by President Roosevelt, but part of my job was to go out into the streets and convince the angry locals of such, to assuage feelings between those willing to accept employment from us and those who’d rather stick a knife in us. I was a peacemaker. Luckily, our twins attended the private American school, which kept them insulated and oblivious to all of the surrounding cultural noise.

Loretta had grown comfortable with Port-au-Prince. So much of the strife and upheaval in the area was feeding her artistic appetite. Remnants of Africa, in terms of color, clothing, musical rhythms, food, and art, were very present throughout Haiti, so she anxiously soaked it all up. She was much tougher these days, and had many friends who enthusiastically shared their stories with her, most of which involved violence and unrest, along with diatribes about “puppet presidents” from years past.