Bruce Sterling - Distraction

They were perfectly friendly, but distant. It seemed that no one could be much bothered with visitors. They were all intensely preoc-cupied with their daily affairs. However, a small crowd of curious children formed and began trailing the three of them, mimicking them behind their backs, and giggling at them.

“I don’t get this,” Kevin said. “I thought this was some kind of concentration camp. These folks are doing just fine here.”

Fontenot nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, it was meant to be attrac-tive. It’s a Green, sustainable farm project. You bump people’s produc-tivity up with improved crops and animals — but no fuel combustion, no more carbon dioxide. Maybe someday they go back to Haiti and teach everybody to live this way.”

“That wouldn’t work,” Oscar said.

“Why not?” said Kevin.

“Because the Dutch have been trying that for years. Everybody in the advanced world thinks they can reinvent peasant life and keep tribal people ignorant and happy. Appropriate-tech just doesn’t work. Because peasant life is boring.”

“Yeah,” Fontenot said. “That’s exactly what tipped me off, too. They oughta be jamming around us asking for cash and transistor radios, just like any peasant always does for a tourist from the USA. But they can’t even be bothered to look at us. So, listen. You hear that kinda muttering sound?”

“You mean those hymns?” Oscar said.

“Oh, they sing hymns all right. But mostly, they pray. All the adults pray, men and women. They all pray, all the time. I mean to say, all the time, Oscar.”

Fontenot paused. “Y’know, outside people do make it over here every once in a while. Hunters, fishermen… I heard some stories. They all think these folks are just real religious, you know, weird voodoo Haitians. But that ain’t it. See, I was Secret Service. I spent years of my life searching through crowds, looking for crazy people. We’re real big on psychoanalysis in my old line of work. That’s why I know for a fact that there’s something really wrong in the heads of these people. It isn’t psychosis. It’s not drugs, either. Religion’s got something to do with it — but it’s not just religion. Something has been done to them.”

“Neural something,” Oscar said.

“Yeah. They know they’re different, too. They know that some-thing happened to them, down in that salt mine. But they think it was a holy revelation. The spirit flew into their heads — they call it the ‘second-born spirit,’ or ‘the born-again spirit.“’ Fontenot removed his hat and wiped his brow. “When I first found this place, I spent most of a day here, talking to this one old guy — Papa Christophe, that’s his name. Kinda their leader, or at least their spokesman. This guy is a local biggie, because this guy has really got a case of whatever-it-is. See, the spirit didn’t take on ’em all quite the same. The kids don’t have it at all. They’re just normal kids. Most of the grown-ups are just kind of muttery and sparkly-eyed. But then they’ve got these apostles, like Christophe. The houngans. The wise ones.”

Oscar and Kevin conferred briefly. Kevin was very spooked by Fontenot’s story. He really disliked being surrounded by illegal alien black people in the middle of an impenetrable swamp. Visions of boil-ing iron cannibal pots were dancing in Kevin’s head. Anglos… they’d never gotten over the sensation of becoming a racial minority.

Oscar was adamant, however. Having come this far, nothing would do for him but to interview Papa Christophe. Fontenot finally located the man, hard at work in a whitewashed cabin at the edge of town.

Papa Christophe was an elderly man with a long-healed machete slash in his head. His wrinkled skin and bent posture suggested a lifetime of vitamin deficiency. He looked a hundred years old, and was probably sixty.

Papa Christophe gave them a toothless grin. He was sitting on a three-legged stool on the hard dirt floor of the cabin. He had a wooden maul, a, pig-iron chisel, and a half-formed wooden statue. He was deftly peeling slivers of brown cypress wood. His statue was a saint, or a martyr; a slender, Modigliani-like woman, with a serene and stylized face, her hands pressed together in prayer. Her lower legs were wrapped in climbing flames.

Oscar was instantly impressed. “Hey! Primitive art! This guy’s pretty good! Would he sell me that thing?”

“Choke it back a little,” Kevin muttered. “Put your wallet away.”

The cabin’s single room was warm and steamy, because the building had a crude homemade still inside it. Presumably, a distillery hadn’t been present in the village’s original game plan, but the Hai-tians were ingenious folk, and they had their own agenda. The still had been riveted together out of dredged-up automobile parts. By the smell of it, it was cooking cane molasses down into a head-bending rum. The shelves along the wall were full of cast-off glass bottles, dredged from the detritus of the bayou. Half the bottles were full of yellow alcohol, and plugged with cloth and clay.

Fontenot and the old man were groping at French, with their widely disparate dialects. Fed with Christophe’s cast-off chips of cypress wood, the still was cooking right along. Rum dripped down a bent iron tube into the glass bottle, ticking like a water clock. Papa Christophe was friendly enough. He was chatting, and tapping his chisel, and chopping, and muttering a little to himself, all in that same, even, water-clock rhythm.

“I asked him. about the statue,” Fontenot explained. “He says it’s for the church. He carves saints for the good Lord, because the good Lord is always with him.”

“Even in a distillery?” Kevin said.

“Wine is a sacrament,” Fontenot said stiffly. Papa Christophe picked up a pointed charcoal stick, examined his wooden saint, and drew on her a bit. He had a set of carving tools spread beside him, on a greased leather cloth: an awl, a homemade saw, a shaving hook, a hand-powered bow-drill. They were crude implements, but the old man clearly knew what he was doing.

They’d left their ragtag of curious children outside the cabin door, but one of the smaller kids plucked up his courage and peered inside. Papa Christophe looked up, grinned toothlessly, and uttered some solemn Creole pronunciamento. The boy came in and sat obe-diently on the earthen floor.

“What was that about?” Oscar said.

“I believe he just said, ‘The monkey raised her children before there were avocados,’ ” Fontenot offered.

“What?”

“It’s a proverb.”

The little kid was thrilled to be allowed into the old man’s work-shop. Papa Christophe chopped a bit more, directing kindly remarks to the child. The rum dripped rhythmically into its pop bottle, which was almost full.

Fontenot pointed to the child, and essayed a suggestion in French. Papa Christophe chuckled indulgently. “ D’abord vous guettй poux-de-bois manger bouteille, accrochez vos calabasses,” he said.

“Something about bugs eating the bottles,” Fontenot hazarded.

“Do bugs eat his bottles?” Kevin said.

Christophe hunched over and examined his charcoal outline. He was deeply engrossed by his statue. For his own part, the little boy was fascinated by the sharp carving tools.

The kid made a sudden grab for a rag-coated saw blade. Without a moment’s hesitation, the old man reached behind himself and unerr-ingly caught the child by his groping wrist.

Papa Christophe then stood up, lifted the boy out of harm’s way, and caught him up one-handed in the crook of his right arm. At the very same instant, he took two steps straight backward, reached out blindly and left-handed, and snagged an empty bottle from its shelf on the wall.