When Orélus heard the steps of someone coming over to the car, he said a last prayer to God and commended his daughter to Him. As the man reached the car door, he ordered Orélus to lift up his head. Orélus obeyed and told himself he would not be weak: he would die with dignity. He raised his head and saw the man who had been driving the other car, and seemed to be the boss of the squad, make a little gesture of surprise. Then he said, “You don’t recognize me?”
Orélus shook his head; no sound could come out of his mouth at that moment.
The man went on: “Do you have a baby who was born fourteen months ago?”
Orélus nodded.
“Do you remember someone coming into the waiting room in the hospital that night and asking for money to buy medicine for his wife, who was at death’s door?” The event returned to Orélus’s memory. “You’re the only one who took out his wallet and gave me money. You forgot my face but I will never forget yours. Get out of here right away or you’re a dead man. Don’t ask me any questions. I’ll say you ran away.”
Orélus grabbed the few sheets of his report within his reach.
“Hurry up. If the others come back, you’re dead.”
A part of the health survey would have to be redone.
The stranger opened the gate and Orélus ran out and never looked back. He kept moving until he met a passerby and asked where he was. The answer: “You’re at Santo 19.” He asked where he could catch a tap tap and followed the man’s directions. He crossed through town in a mental fog as if he’d come back from the grave, from the other side of life.
When he got to the office, he collapsed and told his fellow workers every detail of his misadventure. They gave him unsweetened coffee and herb tea to calm him down.
In the truck bringing him back to Saint-Marc that afternoon, he resolved to say nothing to his wife. Women talk too much. Even the least talkative end up talking. The experience he had just lived through must not be known in Saint-Marc.
Orélus met Pierre four days later, and when his friend asked him how things were going, Orélus thanked him warmly for helping him get to his appointment in Port-au-Prince on time. Pierre left without asking any more questions, without any particular emotion showing on his face. Orélus listened attentively to the news on the radio, hoping someone would talk about the incident he’d just lived through. But no, nothing. Absolutely nothing.
That night, Orélus stayed up until almost two a.m. A light breeze was coming in from the sea. He eventually went to bed without having solved what would be the enigma of his life from now on. Who was the man he happened to get a ride with in that SUV going to Port-au-Prince?
MERCY AT THE GATE
by Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel
Croix-des-Bouquets
The contrast of jet-black, knotted pubic hairs against the squirmy white objects confirmed for Moade, called Moah, that what she was seeing was not rice or lice, but maggots.
“Aunt Haba, do you think the man is dead?” Moah asked in a voice no more audible than the flapping of butterfly wings.
The hustle and bustle of the early-September morning in Croix-des-Bouquets was well underway. The man in question was lying still; his naked legs, naked ass, ashen penis, exposed for all of Croix-des-Bouquets to see. Moah lifted her gaze from the sprawling man’s scantily clad body and the tattered doctor’s lab coat. Leaves covered his forehead and hair. There was the matted fur of an unrecognizable animal next to the man. Flies swarmed the animal’s carcass.
Moah looked at her aunt who was wrapping her old, frayed scarf, the color of budding okra flowers, around her nose. Moah watched and admired her aunt’s long, slender fingers as Haba broke a stick from a nearby bush to poke the body. The man winced faintly. Haba flung the stick to the side and took a step back.
Slowly, a mud-clad hand arose from beneath the pile of leaves. It had a scar the size of a nickel between the thumb and the index finger. Another scar, like a miniature Earth, was centered in the middle of the man’s palm. The hand lifted up from the top of the body. Moah flinched as it flung the debris from the man’s face. Moah realized that her aunt had been squeezing her hand. She couldn’t feel her fingers. She looked at her aunt, perhaps for confirmation, permission, or condemnation; however, unlike Moah, Haba hadn’t focused on the dark patches of matted pubic hair. Instead, Haba noted the brown eyes sunk deep into the man’s head. Those eyes looked as if at anytime they might become submerged into some deeper place in his head.
The man stared back at Haba. His gaze narrowed slowly like the lens of an old camera. He smiled a decayed smile. In shock, Haba’s face closed as though choking. Her left eye and cheek twitched involuntarily. Haba’s eyes grew wide not with fear, but with seething anger. A boiling swell of rage climbed out from deep inside of her and poured out of her eyes.
Moah looked at the half-dead man and wondered about his identity. If she asked her aunt, Haba would ignore her or change the subject, like she always did when Moah asked about her father and mother. When really pressed for an answer, Aunt Haba would only say, “Isn’t it enough to have an aunt who loves you? Isn’t it marvelous to have a name like Moah, ‘the word’? The word today is obedience.”
The look Haba was giving the man at that moment was further proof that this was a subject not to be broached. It was as if Haba had seen a ghost. No, the devil. At least that was the look Moah would give the devil, she thought, if she ever saw him. It was an I-don’t-have-any-fucking-business-with-you look. While she stood there unable to move as everything seemed to go in slow-motion, the wind howled as if to echo the complaints of an oppressed world. The butterflies humped the wind because there were so few flowers in Croix-des-Bouquets.
Moah thought back to the crowd she had seen in that exact spot only a few hours before as she and her aunt had made their way to morning mass. Her aunt had avoided the throngs of people by crossing the street and cutting to rue Stenio Vincent. They had rushed past the Charlotin boys’ school, the massive khaki-colored walls of the military headquarters, then into the yard of Our Lady of the Rosary. Now Moah knew that the crowd must have been looking at the man too.
Moah assessed the situation, trying to ascertain its advantages. After all, in addition to her beauty, a quick mind had made her the object of desire for three old men. Even though this was something she was proud of, she knew at that moment that there would be no more fooling around with old men. There would be no more Mondays with Jacques who visited while Haba was at mass. Jacques who always brought five green bananas or plantains. And for that, Moah allowed him to cup her breast for five minutes. No more than that. She counted every second. He held her generous breasts in his wide, rough palms, as if they were some mythic goose eggs or gifts from God. Afterward, he would brush her cheek with his index finger, put on his hat, and walk his long, lean body down the winding path back to Beudet where he lived in a small shack on a small farm.
Equally, there would be no time for old Pierre-Paul who paid her two gourdes for a medicinal foot bath and her listening ear. He talked of his exploits as a bodyguard during the olden days of the Paul Magloire presidency.
“Magloire was the best president because he loved to party with the people. This made my job very hard. I was shot at least five times when I was protecting him.” He repeated the same facts every ten minutes, as if he were meeting her for the first time. The story she most liked to hear him tell was how her town got the name Croix-des-Bouquets.
“There’s a curse of violence that constantly looms over this place. It’s from long before Croix-des-Bouquets was the famous place that allowed the slaves to seize Port-au-Prince during the Revolution because of how they massacred the French. There was a famous battle fought right here. However, long before that, it was the cradle of secret societies. Open your eyes and see. Wives go missing. Husbands die young. The curse I’m talking about is from a love affair that ended with a cross and a bouquet by the side of the old road at the onset of colonialism. This is how people came to know and name the town. There was a cross by the side of a road from Port-au-Prince. This cross was surrounded by a bouquet of flowers that never died. It marks the body of a beloved, unjustly killed lover.”