Robert Stone: Bay of Souls

"No," Michael said. "I had time for a shower and everything. To get the salt off."

"To get the salt off," Hilda repeated. "Was there blood? The guy didn't have, like, blood all over him? From the impact?"

While Michael tried to stammer an answer, the drums and the hounfor outside exploded in triumphant rolls. Lara had disappeared from his side. In a moment he heard her outside.

"She's calling the name of the god," Roger told him.

"Such a pretty girl," Hilda said. "Pretty girl, pretty fella. Nice pair you make, the two of you."

"I thought that immediately " Roger Hyde said. "As soon as I saw them together."

"So what happened, Michael?" Hilda asked. "What were you doing out there with our airplane?" She laughed as though the situation were droll. "All in the dark and wet there. What happened?"

"It was easier than I expected," he said. "It didn't take much—"

"What were you doing out there, Michael?" she shouted, interrupting him, pushing her powdered slumkid's face in his way. "Who told you to go down?"

"Lara did," he said. Saying it that way made him feel somehow like a snitch.

"Lara did," Hilda repeated. "How did you find out the plane was down?"

"She told me. She came to the hotel."

"She came to your hotel and asked you to dive on a crashed plane? And you said sure?"

"I was ready to do it."

Hilda looked him over.

"Love, huh? Love makes you do crazy things, right?"

He nodded.

Hilda asked one of her Colombian miliciano associates if he thought love made people do crazy things. The soldier considered a moment.

" Claro que sí " he said.

"Sure it does," Hilda confirmed. "Lie and cheat and steal. All that. Right, Michael?"

"The first two containers weren't a problem. Maybe I got careless." A certain tension settled on the room. Roger Hyde drew himself up and looked at the floor. Hilda grew more serious.

"Careless," she said and shook her head. Michael understood that he should not be accusing himself of things. "Careless is bad, Michael."

"But I don't really think I was careless. I handled everything step by step."

He could see Roger cheer up a bit. He felt fairly calm.

"My friends say," Hilda told him, "that when somebody makes a mistake, somebody's got to pay. It goes for you. It goes for me."

"He did his best," Roger said. "I saw him chasing down after it. It got away from him in the current. Anyway," he said, refilling a glass of brown rum, "we can make it up. We can cover it in a few months' business."

"Other people have made mistakes," Hilda said.

"Everybody does," Roger agreed.

"But," she said, "you don't want to hear about what happened to them." Then she laughed and said something in Spanish that made the Colombians laugh loudly and caused Roger to warily chuckle.

"So you did your best, mister? If there was a next time maybe you'd get it right?"

"I was careful," Michael said. "I did my best. I went after it."

His plea had a summary quality that made him uneasy.

"I should carry the cross?" Hilda asked. "I should explain for you characters? Get my own ass in the bad chair?"

"It can be made up," Roger said.

"I," Michael said, "I'd do anything I could to make it up."

"Yeah?" Hilda asked. "There in America you would?"

"Yes," Michael said.

"You're fucking right you would. If you thought you could just go back up there and forget about us you'd be making a bad fucking mistake. If we called on you, you'd deliver."

"Yes," Michael said.

"You know," Hilda said, "I'm not like the cabrones that say America this and America that. I lived in America a long time. I lived in Rhode Island. Americans are sometimes OK with me. Some of them." She looked from Roger to Michael, a guilty comic coquette's glance. "The good-looking ones, know what I mean?"

"These two are good kids," Roger said. "John-Paul loved them dearly."

"Go on," Hilda said, "go ahead, Michael. Dance the dance there. Go with your friend."

When they were outside, among the drums and the exhausted serviteurs, it struck him that Hilda and her friends must be waiting for night — that whatever happened to them would happen shortly. The darkness came down quickly, the sudden night of that latitude. Lara whispered in his ear.

"Marinette! Marinette is here."

That was as much as she could tell him. Hours ago, seconds before, she had fallen. After falling she had no idea of time; she had fallen into the darkness at the world's first beginning where the only light came from the glowing snake.

"Where is my brother?" she had asked.

She was with him. She saw Marinette in the snake-light.

"John-Paul?"

"Little sister," said John-Paul.

She felt great sadness and cried. She carried the two govi that held their two souls to the wall of the hounfor. Michael was beside her.

"Lara," he asked, "what do you think they'll do? Are they going to let us go?"

But she was past such questions, dancing now with an old woman in stained silk and lace who held a lit cigar in her mouth. The dance was a whirl, and as the old woman performed its turns, she made a noise between her clenched teeth. The noise sounded like the rage of a child, but it was a louder and more savage sound than any child could make. Her eyes were not dull like those of the other dancers, but keen and charged with an anger as fierce as her scream. Lara, trying to imitate her, to match her moves, in her own exhausted state could not get close.

The old woman, or man, whichever it was, took the cigar out of her mouth and flicked the ash like a comedian. She threw back her head and screamed louder. What followed might have been composed of words or mere sounds, he had no way of knowing. Instinctively he moved away.

"Marinette!" Lara shouted.

Then Marinette seemed to find Michael and to laugh at him. She pointed and screamed and then planed out her arms in imitation wings and circled Michael as though she were pretending to be an insect. Lara was laughing.

Marinette embraced him; he stood stock-still, choked by the smell of her sweat-drenched silk and lavender perfume. There was a gray wig on her head, a painted beauty spot on her cheekbone. Her clothes seemed genuinely old, taken out of a chest, and her with them, out of the same chest or the same grave. He followed her gestures and saw that she was holding a pair of rusted gardening shears. She swung the shears over his head, screaming into his face. Lara was screaming too, kneeling. The other serviteurs pressed around her, holding red cloths to her head, kerchiefs and bandanas. Then Marinette swung out of sight, into the darkness.

Michael knelt and brought Lara to her feet. She had stopped screaming. She rested her head against his shoulder. He thought she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her.

All at once a plane passed overhead. From its lights, he thought it was a medium-sized passenger plane, a DC-7. It flew at an altitude that seemed to him no more than a few hundred feet. Looking after its passage, Michael saw that more milicianos had gathered at the edge of the lighted hounfor. There were a dozen or so, looking easy, rifles slung. It seemed to him that there were more islanders as well, swaying to the quiet drumming that had followed the departure of Marinette, clapping their hands gently. Lara clung to him. The mambo, smiling, gave her some of the colorless rum to drink. Lara put the stuff away like water. When Michael tried the bottle, he gagged on less than a mouthful.

He tried to take Lara in his arms, to comfort her. Give her a moment's rest. Somehow she had the soiled-rag smell about her. He looked into her face and saw that he was holding Marinette. She laughed at him, her eyes were sly, bright with triumph. She began to scream, a kind of yodeling ululation, in mockery of him. She spat and he saw her hatred. She waved the shears in front of his face.