Russell Banks - Continental Drift

Bébé , Claude corrected.

No. With Papa. And they send you back so he can put you in jail in Port-au-Prince forever. Better to stay here in the Bahamas, the old man said. Forget America.

Claude could never forget America. Not now, not after all he’d suffered, all the pain and humiliation and fear he’d faced and overcome for it. There was an exchange that had taken place, and he’d come out with a vision, and he clung to it, like a sailor off a sunken ship clinging to the wreckage of the ship. There was a big difference now between him and Vanise, he thought, and also between the boy he had been, as recently even as when he had been locked down in the stinking hold of the Kattina , and the boy he was now, raising marijuana for the Chinaman in the Barrens on New Providence, and the difference was that while Vanise still looked to les Invisibles for definitions she could not provide herself, he was beginning to look to America for that. The loas had moved around from in front of him to the back, and in their place America had come forward, insisting, like the loas, on service and strategy, promising luxury and power, scolding, instructing and seducing him all at once, and in that way, as the loas had done before, creating him.

I know you drank off my rum, the old man said, holding the empty bottle upside down before the boy’s face, as if that were proof.

I don’t drink rum, Claude said wearily. It makes your brain mushy. Like yours. He smiled.

The old man grunted, farted loudly, and mumbling curses at the boy, Zobop … diab …, turned away from him.

Claude looked out from the shade of the lean-to at the marijuana plants, large, thick-stalked, mature plants cultivated in clots among small patches of corn so as to be indistinguishable from the corn if seen from the air. François, the boy said in a low voice. Tell me this, François. How come I work all day weeding and watering and tending the plants, while you sleep all day, and yet the Chinaman pays us the same? And how come I sit up all night guarding the plants alone, while you go into town and get drunk, and yet the Chinaman pays us the same? What’s your secret, Loupgarou?

François sat up and rubbed his eyes. He stroked his grizzled chin and said, If he paid either one of us less than he does now, then he’d be paying one of us nothing. Zero.

True.

So if you want to make more money than I do, you must ask the Chinaman for a raise.

Claude smiled. You’re not as stupid as you look, he said. No, I don’t need to make more money than you do. What I want is for you to do your half of the work.

Someone has to go into town for food and report to the Chinaman about his crop, right? He told me to do that, every day, or he’d think we stole his crop ourselves or maybe got chopped up by someone else stealing the crop or maybe got arrested by the police and were locked up over in Nassau. Unless he hears from us once a day. This is serious business, boy. We’re not out here raising yams, you know. The old man lay back on his filthy blanket and eyed the boy. Give me the water, he ordered.

Claude passed the jug of tepid water over to him. Tonight, Claude said, I’ll be the one to go into town. You can sit up and watch over the plants.

No. You don’t know where to go or what to say. I’ll have to be the one to do it.

I’ll bring you back your rum.

No, I’ll go. You stay. I know where to go. No one bothers with me. They’ll stop you.

Claude said, I know where to find the Chinaman. He’ll be with his woman, the mambo , his placée , taking all the Haitians’ money by cheating them at dominoes. I’ll just go in the back way and tell him his crop is fine, and I’ll buy you your bottle of clairin and some sardines and tinned beef and come back. I won’t stay all night and come back drunk in the morning like you and then have to sleep all day.

Like hell you won’t, the old man grumbled. You’ll get drunk, you’ll find yourself a jeunesse and get caught by the police or beat up by the Bahamian boys. They’ll find you dead on the beach in the morning. I know what happens to young boys like you. All you want is a bousin , a whore. You have to go to Nassau for that anyhow. They don’t have any whores in Elizabeth Town.

They don’t, eh?

No.

There’s one.

Which?

The one above the shop. Grabow’s whore, Claude said. You’ve heard about her, the Haitian girl he keeps there.

Yes, certainly. But that’s not for you, boy. She’s not for Haitians. Grabow, he keeps that girl for his friends and for the fishermen. If you walked in there and asked for the girl, he’d throw you out, if he didn’t feel like turning you over to the police. Or beating on you. He’s bad, that one.

Well, Claude said, no matter. I’m not going to town for a whore.

You’re not going to town at all, François said.

Claude stood up and stepped out of the lean-to into the bright sunlight. Of course I am, he said. Give me the water, he said, pointing with the machete at the jug.

Slowly, the old man reached over and handed up the plastic container. Claude took it and tipped it up and drank, spilling water in glistening sheets down his bare chest and shoulders.

Vanise did not hear him enter the room, and when she saw him she did not at first recognize him, for somehow in the intervening weeks his face had changed. His chin line was sharper, his features had lost a boy’s softness around the cheeks and brow, and his hair had bushed out, so that he looked older, stronger, more dangerous, and for a second she thought he was a man sent up from the bar by Grabow.

As soon as she recognized him, however, she was afraid. Go away, Claude! she said. You must not be here.

He smiled. The man didn’t hear me. He’s drunk, out front at a table on the street, playing dominoes with friends. I came in the back way. Besides, he said, I’m not afraid of him. Claude was wearing his short-sleeved shirt and thin, tattered trousers and was barefoot. He carried his machete loosely at his side, as if it were a plaything.

They sat down on the bed and talked in whispers, Vanise asking questions, Claude telling her about the Chinaman and the marijuana fields and old François, and also telling her about the Haitians he had found living right here in Elizabeth Town and in the bush nearby, whole communities of them, he said, many of them working in the kitchens of the hotels and in private homes as gardeners and maids.

She did not seem impressed or even surprised, which disappointed him. There was even a société here, he told her, a hounfor with many houncis performing all the services for the loas, and although he himself had not yet been to any of the services, he said, as if apologizing, he soon would go. He wished to make an engagement with the loas, he explained somberly, so as to get them over to America, which he now knew was not very far from here. Every day there were boats going across to Florida with Haitians on board, boats operated by Americans who knew how to carry you over to Miami itself, where there was a whole city of Haitians living in their own houses just like Americans, with automobiles and plenty of food to eat and nice clothes to wear.

She knew about the boats, she said, and how close America was. She told him about the Jamaican, Tyrone, who worked on a boat for a white American, a fishing boat they used for carrying over Haitians, as many as ten and twenty at a time, Tyrone had told her. Tyrone’s job was to round up the Haitians. The white man just drove the boat.

But it costs lots of money, she sighed. Too much.

How much?

She wasn’t sure. Hundreds of dollars, however.

Claude asked her about the baby. Where was Charles?