VIII
The dark clouds were breaking up, and it was almost ten o’clock by the time I hooked the Whaler back up to the davits at the Larsens’ dock and cranked her back out of the water. The sun was quickly turning last night’s rain to steam. Henri and the three other members of his lawn service crew were working with weed whackers, gas blowers, and hedge clippers. When he saw me, Henri hurried over and waited while I cranked up the dinghy.
“Hi, Henri,” I said as I bent down and scratched Abaco’s ears. “What’s up?”
He looked distressed. Henri was a tall, handsome Haitian in his mid-forties. He was a successful entrepreneur with a thriving lawn service, a good husband, and the father of five beautiful kids. Distress didn’t look right on his face.
“A man came. He said he wanted to see you. I told him you were not here, but he insisted and left his things in front of your house.”
“What?” I stood and started down the brick path to my cottage. I could see the stuff piled in front of my place: a backpack with dozens of patches sewn on it, an army surplus duffel bag, an old footlocker, and a torpedo-shaped blue Dacron bag.
“This man,” Henri continued, “he did not look very clean even though he was very polite. I thought perhaps he was a homeless man. But he claimed he was your brother.”
I whooped and grabbed Henri by the arm. “This is great!” It was the windsurfer bag that had left no doubt: My brother Pit had come for a visit. “Henri, it was my brother, and don’t you worry what he looks like. He’s a great guy.” Sensing my excitement, Abaco came loping over and started to bark. I knelt down and ruffled her ears. “Pit’s come to visit, girl.” Abaco sensed the excitement in my voice and began turning circles. I stood and turned back to Henri. “Did Pit say where he was going? When he would be back?”
“He left a note.” Henri smiled tentatively. “So it is good your brother comes?”
“Oh yes, very good.”
“Then I am happy I did not let Jean-Phillipe chase him off with his machete.”
“Yeah, Henri.” I laughed. “That is good.”
I shoved Pit’s things into a corner of my little living room. Surely he didn’t travel all over the world on the World Cup Windsurfing circuit with all this baggage. The last thing I dragged in was an old footlocker, which I recognized as one that used to belong to Red. When we were kids, we used to get into old clothes and U.S. Navy uniforms he stored in the locker. I remembered it being in the garage when we had cleaned out the house after Red’s death. I didn’t realize that Pit had saved it.
I finally sat down on the couch and read Pit’s note.
Seychelle,
In town for 3 days. Thought I could bunk at Tina's but she threw me out—along with my gear that Id left at her place. Hope I can borrow your couch for a couple of nights. Gone down to Hobie Beach.
See ya. Pit
My brother Pit was the laid-back middle child, the free spirit. Possessions, timetables, careers—they all made little sense to him. Hobie Beach was the windsurfers’ hangout down on Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Pit was a professional windsurfing teacher and competitor, and while you’d think he’d get sick of it sometimes and want to do something else, it didn’t surprise me that windsurfing was the first thing he wanted to do on his first trip home in years.
After a quick shower, I threw on some old jeans and a T-shirt and dialed Jeannie’s number.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hey, you. I was just getting ready to go over to visit our little friend.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. There’s someplace I need to go first, but I’d feel better knowing there will be somebody there with her for the next few hours. Somebody to run interference with cops and reporters, give the kid a chance to rest. At least till I get there.”
“You know me,” Jeannie said. “I’m damn good at interference.”
Ignoring Abaco’s forlorn looks, I locked up my cottage and headed out the gate. Henri and his crew had wrapped up their work and headed out, leaving behind trash cans that smelled sweetly of fresh-cut grass. I propped the business card for Racine Toussaint up on the Jeep’s dash and pulled a map of Broward County out of the glove box. The address was off Hammondville Road in Pompano Beach. I’d read about that part of the county, but I’d never been up there. Back in the fifties, the area was all agriculture, and the mostly black farmworkers had lived in lousy conditions in farmworker housing on Hammondville Road. There was still a good deal of poverty in what was now called Collier City and Western Pompano, and some people would say I was being unwise to go up there alone.
There was a saying about South Florida: To get to the South from here, you had to go north. There was a small kernel of truth in that, but in areas like Hammondville Road in Pompano, I suspected aspects of the old Deep South were still right here. In spite of the glitz and glamour of Broward County’s waterfront and modern facade, racial tensions and segregated neighborhoods were still the norm in much of the county.
Traffic was sparse on 1-95 and Lightnin’ held her fifty-five-mile-per-hour average in the slow lane. The old Jeep wasn’t an expressway vehicle, and given the roaring engine and flapping canvas, I was relieved when I pulled off the interstate at Atlantic Boulevard. In much of South Florida, affluent neighborhoods abut squalid government-assisted housing, so I wasn’t surprised to see the new, gleaming, well-lit gas station and mini-mart, the kind that has disembodied voices that speak to you each time you pull up to the pump, while just beyond the fresh black asphalt were dirt yards around small cinder-block homes and businesses of the old district.
The Haitian Baptist Church, a clean and new-looking structure, indicated how this neighborhood had changed in the last twenty years. This was truly the New South. The huge influx of Haitians and other Caribbean immigrants was apparent in the signs in the stores, the smells of fish and plantain frying, the sound of Creole being spoken on the street.
I located Racine Toussaint’s house a few blocks north of Hammondville and fairly close to Old Dixie Highway. I was pleased to see the place looked so well tended and prosperous in comparison with many of the other houses in the area. The house stood alone on almost an acre of land and looked home-built of gray unfinished cinder block, the mortar between the blocks smoothed out neat and clean. Floral-print curtains fluttered between the bars that protected the front windows, and the wood door was painted a bright sea foam green.
When I turned off the Jeep, I could hear the breeze rustling the branches of the tall Australian pines scattered about the dirt lot that stretched between the house and the road. There were no children’s toys or old abandoned vehicle parts like those that decorated the vacant lots and the yards of many of the houses I’d passed on my way here. Behind the house, a giant strangler fig tree loomed large, the huge limbs framing the house with prop roots supporting the heft visible around both sides. The tree blocked out all sunlight and looked as though it would engulf the house if the inhabitants dropped their vigilance for only a few months. Aside from a couple of free-ranging chickens that darted behind the house when I drove up, there was no sign of life.
I knocked on the green door, wondering if my decision to come alone had been wise after all. Why would the card of the woman who lived at this address be on board the Miss Agnes? But then that is why I was there: to find out if Solange was on that boat. To find out something that would help her stay in the United States.
The place was too quiet. The sound of the traffic out on Dixie and Atlantic was the only noise. For a moment I thought I heard drums from inside the house, but then the amplified voices of angry rappers blasted from a bright orange Impala lowrider that cruised by, the gold rims glinting, the bass booming into the yard and seeming to fill the air with threat. Two muscular young black men in matching white undershirts, flashing gold in their grimaces, glared at me as they rolled by. I faced the street, keeping my eyes on them, refusing to turn my back. There was a slow-mo cinematic quality to the moment, like a high-noon face-off, the only element of speed being my pulse, which had kicked into overdrive.