Edwidge Danticat - Haiti Noir

His wife Yva was fast asleep, exhausted. She’d just gotten up to give her daughter a bottle, then went right back to sleep without even realizing how uncomfortable it was, what with the heat and the mosquitoes. Yva didn’t complain. Yva rarely complained. And luckily didn’t ask too many questions. Which was quite convenient as far as that incident was concerned-the incident that still made him shiver sometimes, just thinking about it. Orélus looked at his daughter Natasha for a moment. She had come into his life a year ago and he’d promised himself he would give her a better life than his own. That incident had made him even more determined. And he could see the scene of her birth at the hospital once again. Since from now on everything was connected.

In his mind, Orélus went over that day, the third of July, for the nth time.

Just like every month, he was getting ready to leave for Port-au-Prince and go to the main office of the health organization he worked for, to turn in his report on the assignment he’d completed over the past month. He had visited every corner of the main towns of Bas Artibonite and meticulously filled out the questionnaires: Age, sex, number of children, marital status, date of last visit to doctor, declaration of illnesses, etc. He had slept very late the night before, in order to file the papers according to the organization’s guidelines. His employers liked him, and Orélus was very much attached to his job, which not only allowed him to feed his family (the beginning of dignity), but to pay for his younger sister’s computer studies and be generous to strangers who’d been pummeled by misfortune. His compassion had saved him on that third of July. It made him all the more aware of his own good fortune and he had no desire to lose it.

He’d had a hard time waking up that day and had almost run to the station where the trucks left for Port-au-Prince. They were all full already, and time was passing. He looked desperately at his watch several times. Then a friend he hadn’t seen for a few years walked over and jumped for joy when he spotted Orélus. Pierre had left Saint-Marc for the United States when he was a teenager. His school friends heard from him once or twice, then silence. Orélus was sociable and liked companionship. They embraced each other with mutual warmth. They exchanged the usual questions friends ask after a long absence, but Orélus couldn’t help looking intently at the trucks to see if luck was smiling on him at last. Pierre asked him what was making him so impatient. When Orélus explained that he needed to get to Port-au-Prince for his work, Pierre told him not to worry. A friend was going to drive to Port-au-Prince that morning and he was alone. Pierre called that friend on his cell and the man agreed to take Orélus with him. Orélus thanked Pierre warmly for putting an end to his anxiety.

Ten minutes later, Orélus was comfortably seated in a brand-new SUV with four-wheel drive. He immediately stopped worrying. He exchanged a few words with the driver, whose name was Dudley and spoke Creole with a strong English accent. Although the guy was driving extremely fast, Orélus was so relieved that with the help of the air conditioner, he dozed off after the first few minutes. He remembered being suddenly awakened by the squealing of the brakes on the asphalt and realizing that the driver had just dodged a truck speeding in the opposite direction. Orélus promised himself not to fall asleep anymore. He tensed up a bit. All the more so as he noticed Dudley glancing constantly at his rearview mirror, trying to keep the car behind them from passing. Orélus knew those drivers-all too many of them-who staked their honor on the wrong things. And risked their lives for totally childish reasons. He said to himself he’d rather get there fifteen minutes late, but alive. Orélus told Dudley in a tone neutral enough not to offend him that he wasn’t in that much of a rush and it would be a good idea to let the impatient madman on their heels pass them. Taking advantage of that moment, when Dudley wasn’t paying attention, the vehicle went ahead and passed them and, to Orélus’s great surprise, swung a quick right and blocked their car.

Three men got out, each with a gun in his hand. The first came over to the driver’s door and aimed his 9mm at Dudley’s head. He made him get out and sit in the backseat. He then sat down next to him, against the left door. Orélus thought it was a classic attack by an armed gang, as happens sometimes on these roads-until the moment when Dudley said, “Elien, what’s happening?” And Elien answered, “You’ll find out what’s happening soon enough.” So Dudley knew them. This left Orélus completely at a loss.

The second armed man had already walked around the other side of the vehicle. He asked Orélus to move to the back of the car, pushed him in right next to Dudley, and sat down against the right-hand door. The third man got behind the wheel and took off fast. Orélus had the feeling he had landed at the wrong place at the wrong time, and with the wrong person. He also knew that people sometimes lost their lives because of such unfortunate coincidences. They weren’t far from Titanyen canyon: all the ghastly stories about the place came back to him. Titanyen, an isolated garbage dump where organized gangs and politicians got rid of their unwanted corpses. Orélus thought of his daughter who would never know her father, and his wife, left helpless.

It was eight a.m. Two trucks, one coming from Port-au-Prince, the other going to the city, sped by them without noticing anything. He was given the order to lower his head and not raise it again unless one of them asked him to. Orélus lowered his head. From the questions they asked Dudley in a threatening, cold, sarcastic tone, like killers in a movie, Orélus became acutely aware that not only was he caught in the middle of some dirty business-some very dirty business-but he knew nothing about it.

“What did you do with the packages that were unloaded at Fort-Liberté? Where’s the money from the sale of the merchandise? This is the last time you’re gonna enjoy yourself with other people’s money. The party’s over-got it, Dudley? Over. Because, you know, the boss, he’s not happy. Like, really not happy. You thought you could be a wise guy, well, forget it. Take a deep breath, because you don’t have long to live.”

Then Orélus remembered a piece of news that had made the headlines two months back: a plane crashed in the middle of the countryside in the Fort-Liberté area and two SUVs arrived on the scene a few hours later to take away the cargo. So he was caught in an affair involving the drug cartels.

When they asked Dudley who his companion was, he answered without a tremor in his voice: Orélus had nothing to do with the whole thing, a friend had simply asked him to drive the guy to Port-au-Prince, and that was it. He hardly knew him. Orélus thought he was home free until one of the three men observed that as he had seen everything, he was becoming a potential witness. Orélus didn’t hear any response from the two others. Since he couldn’t see them, he imagined they must have made simple hand gestures to decide his fate. Orélus had a strong urge to pee in his pants. But he held it in and decided he had to keep up his strength so he could explain himself when the time came.

After another ten minutes, the car turned off to the left. There was no more asphalt, just a bumpy road heading far into the countryside. Orélus prayed to God and invoked the eighty-third psalm. After the tenth invocation, the car stopped suddenly. The driver honked three times and a gate opened. Orélus had no strength left to pray. Entering a gated property meant it was all over for him. The driver of the car that had followed Dudley from Saint-Marc stood before the open gates and told the three thugs in Dudley’s car to get out. The men dragged Dudley with them. But in a burst of frantic energy, he decided to resist. They shoved him brutally to the ground and ordered Orélus to keep his head down. Orélus heard words being exchanged between these men, violent blows raining down on Dudley, the dull sound of a bullet from a silencer, and a noise like someone clearing his throat. Dudley made the noise twice. Then nothing.