Russell Banks - Continental Drift

He heard a thud against the side of the boat, and voices, the captain’s and the Englishman’s, and then, astonished, Claude heard a Haitian voice, a man shouting in Creole.

Resté arresté la! Pa wé ou, messieurs! Moin la !

Claude sat upright, and hearing now a mumbling mix of English and Creole as several people came aboard, understanding more of the English words than the Haitians seemed to and more of the Creole than did the captain and his crewmen, he decided that this was a prearranged stop, that the Kattina was picking up marooned Haitians and the captain was being paid in American dollars for it.

Haitian people, Claude said to Vanise.

How many?

I don’t know. More than two. Listen.

Police.

No. People from Haiti, going to America. The gros neg is taking money from them.

Vanise grunted. What food have we? They’ll want our food.

Maybe they have their own. We have only biscuits and cheese and some tinned beef.

I’m thirsty, Vanise said in a low voice cut with resignation, as if she expected never to drink again.

Maybe the Haitians will have water with them. Listen, he said. I believe one of them speaks English.

The men were standing almost directly overhead now, and indeed, one of the Haitians was speaking in broken English to the captain, arguing that they should be allowed to stay abovedecks, promising to go below if another boat came in sight and assuring him they’d stay out of the way of the captain and his crew. We pay money, plenty money. We have got wet from the open sea, now we must dry, or a cold will enter us, Captain. No problems for you.

All right den, mon. Stay above if dat what you want.

Ah.

Got sumpin down dere better’n up here, mon.

Yes?

Got a gal. Haiti gal down dere, jus’ waitin’ for a big ol’ black Haiti mon to come down an’ chat wid her.

Yes?

Haiti gal an’ her pickney an’ a pretty bwoy down dere wid her.

Yes? A pretty boy, eh? Massisi?

The fat man laughed. Yas, mon, him a pretty bwoy, all right, but de gal, dat de real beef. Make de journey sweet.

Yes. So we dry and warm ourself in the morning sun, eh? Then we go chat up the Haiti gal and pretty boy, eh?

Eh-eh-eh, the captain said, laughing, walking aft toward the wheelhouse. Eh-eh-eh. Dem Haitians-dem, all over de fuckin’ ocean, worse’n Cubans-dem .

The engine turned over slowly, caught, and resumed its steady, familiar rhythm, and the bow of the boat lifted slightly, and once again Claude and his aunt and her child adjusted their balance and body weights to fit the lapping of the waves and the slow rise and fall of the boat.

We will get to America now, Claude said. Because of the Haitians.

In a short time, it got very hot, still and close, and soon they were taking short, shallow, quick breaths, like dogs sleeping in the noonday sun. Claude stripped off his shirt, rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the bundle behind his head. He was very thirsty, thirstier than he had ever been before, and he knew Vanise was also, and after a while he pulled himself slowly to his feet and made his way aft, climbed the ladder and pushed the hatch cover up.

The glare of the light hit him in the eyes like a hard slap. All he saw was white, a pure, sourceless field of white. Staggered by the blow, he looked back down into the hold. Then, shading his eyes with one hand, holding up the cover with the other, he squinted and saw through a white cloud that three Haitian men were lounging on the deck a few feet away. They were young men, under thirty, thin and wearing farmers’ clothes, short-sleeved shirts and faded cotton pants and sockless leather shoes. One of them, who looked the oldest of the three, smoked a pipe. He turned slowly and saw Claude.

Hello, boy, he said, speaking Creole. You decide to come up for some air?

The others turned and looked at him with idle curiosity.

This the massisi ? one asked.

The man with the pipe laughed.

Will you ask the man for water for us? Claude said. The breeze on his face cooled him and smelled clean and fresh, and he pulled himself halfway out of the hold.

What de hell you doin’ up here! the captain called. He was at the wheel in the aft cabin. Too many fuckin’ Haitians up here already!

Him want water, the man with the pipe said.

The captain nodded and sent the young white man forward to the hatch with an old rum bottle full of water. When the Englishman handed Claude the bottle he smiled, and Claude saw that he was missing most of his front teeth and was very ugly.

Now get yer arse back down there, the white man said. These boys here are travelin’ first class. Tou an’ yer sis are steerage . He laughed, and he shoved Claude back down the ladder and closed the cover over him again.

The hold stank of seawater and burlap and body sweat and got worse as the temperature rose. They urinated and defecated into bilge water between the slats of a pallet as far from their place in the bow as they could, and the soft, hot odor of their own wastes drifted slowly back to them. There were rats now, emboldened by the stillness of the people in their nest in the bow. Twice Claude reached to adjust the bundle at his head and heard a rat scuttle away in the darkness, until he took his shirt and the biscuits and cheese out of the bundle, gave half the food to Vanise, ate half himself, and threw the bundle toward the stern, where he soon heard the rats foraging for crumbs.

They suffered silently, even little Charles, although now and then Vanise, in a weak, low voice, sang a line or two from a baby’s song and then left off, as if the effort were too much for her. And much later, when the heat lessened somewhat, the men came back down again, the brown Inaguan and the Englishman, laughing and drinking clear rum, sending Claude with the baby aft while they raped his aunt.

When the Haitian men came down, Claude was surprised, for they behaved like the others, even the man with the pipe, who tried to grab Claude when he stepped away from them, grasping at the boy’s trousers and yanking on them, and when Claude fought and squirmed free, the man hit the boy in the face with his fist and cursed at him and moved forward to where the others were holding Vanise against the sacks of sea salt.

They did not sleep, but, like small animals in shock after being hit by an automobile, they were not awake, either. It was cool for a measureless period of time, and then it grew hot again, like the inside of an oven, and when it was hot, the men did not come down into the hold, so that Claude almost felt grateful for the stifling, stinking heat. But soon it began to cool, and he knew they would come again, and they did, sometimes one at a time, sometimes two or even three, and eventually one of the Haitians, not the one with the pipe, grabbed Claude by his arms from behind so that he could not get away. The man threw the boy down, and when he had yanked his trousers down, the man jammed his knee between Claude’s legs and spread them and entered him — a savage tearing, a rip in both his body and his mind that made the boy scream and left him crumpled, burning with rage and shame and holding inside himself a dark star of pain. When the man was through with him, the boy cried, and when he could stop himself from crying, he picked his body up with pathetic care, as if it were not his own, and carried it forward to where Vanise lay with her child.

Then one time, after it had been cool for a long while, it did not get hot again as it usually did, and the boat began to surge and dip, and the waves began to smack harder against the bow, until soon the boat was lifting in the water at a steep angle, as if climbing a mountain, then tipping, sliding swiftly down into a hole. The bilge water sloshed wildly, and sacks of salt shifted and fell.