I also remembered something I had long forgotten. Years before, when I was an undergraduate at M.I.T., I used to visit a fellow in Providence, who wrote for the pulp magazines. Once this friend told me about a pen pal of his, another pulp writer, who lived in the Southwest and wrote gory stories about heroes with muscles of steel and heads of oak. I did not remember the pen pal's name, but the description fitted.
When I returned and started to gather the makings for breakfast, Denise said:
"Willy darling, what is the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost."
"Maybe I have," I said, fanning the fire with my cowboy hat.
The Yellow Man
The yellow man said: "And what, Monsieur, are you doing, moving into my house?"
I had rented the station wagon in Fort-de-France and driven out to the place I had taken. I, my wife, and three children were carrying suitcases, dress bags, cameras, and other gear into the house when this man appeared in the driveway.
Something told me at once that he spelled trouble. He was about of my height, but slender, with a yellow-tan skin and curly rather than kinky hair. Before such people became hypersensitive about the term, we used to call them mulattoes.
"Your house?" I said, putting down the two suitcases. "Excuse me, Monsieur, but is this not the house of Marcel Argenton?"
"Technically, it is," he replied. My family, also, had put down their burdens to listen. "But Monsieur Argenton has rented it to me for the summer."
"There must be some mistake," I said. "Monsieur Argenton has rented the house to me for the next three weeks. I can show you the lease."
"Me also, I could show you the lease if I had it with me. I rented the house only the past week, through the agent Privas, in Fort-de-France."
"Ah," I said, "that explains it. I met Monsieur Argenton in the United States, three months past. I rented the house from him directly, and I suppose he forgot to cancel his listing with the local agent. I regret to cause you of the trouble."
"You will not cause me of the trouble, Monsieur. On the contrary, it is I who must excuse myself for dispossessing you."
This was going to be sticky. Luckily, I outweighed the man by twenty pounds and was in good condition for a man of sedentary occupation. I put on my fighting face.
"You will not dispossess me, Monsieur," I said. "I am here; my lease antedates yours; and here I stay."
The man started to say something, then jerked his head around as another appeared. This was a stocky, muscular, black Martiniquais in shabby shirt, pants, sandals, and a big straw hat with a wide, unbound brim. He parked his bicycle, looked from one to the other, and said:
"Which of you gentlemen is the Monsieur Nevuree?"
"I think that you mean me, Wilson Newbury," I said. "Are you Jacques Lecouvreur, from Schoelcher?"
"Yes, Monsieur. Monsieur Argenton arranged that I should work for you."
"That's good, Jacques. Please, help the family to carry this baggage into the house."
"Lecouvreur!" said the yellow man sharply. "Knowest thou who I am?" He used the familiar form.
Jacques Lecouvreur looked puzzled. "Are you—are you that Haitian gentleman, Monsieur Duchamps?"
"C'est moi, donc. Now tell Monsieur Newbury that, when I demand that he retire and leave the house to me, who has a valid lease on it, he would do better to comply."
Jacques's eyes grew large. "Oh, Monsieur Newbury, this is a bad business! He can make of the trouble for you."
"1 have known of the trouble before," I said. "Carry that baggage into the house, Jacques. Go on, Denise; go on, kids. Take the stuff in."
Duchamp's lips tightened; he took a step toward me, with a malevolent look in his eyes. I stood my ground. After a silent minute of confrontation, Duchamps said: "You will regret this, Monsieur." He turned and walked away down the drive.
As soon as we were settled, I called Jacques Lecouvreur aside. I had met Marcel Argenton, a white Martiniquais, at a banker's convention in New York. Learning that he was from Martinque, I expressed a wish to spend a vacation there. He explained that he planned to go to France for the month of June—something to do with exports of sugar — and that I might rent his house, near the shore between Fort-de-France and Schoelcher, during that time.
Argenton had also arranged for Jacques Lecouvreur to work for me. Jacques was a fisherman of Schoelcher, but he wanted the job to get money for an outboard motor. I asked Jacques:
"What's all this about Duchamps? Who or what is he?'
Jacques gave a little shiver. "I do not know, Monsieur. I know nothing at all."
"Oh yes, you know! Allons, open up."
With a little gentle arm-twisting, I got it out of him: "He is Oreste Duchamps, a big quimboiseur from Haiti."
"A what?" the word was strange to me.
"You know, Monsieur, a houngan; a bocor. What you would call a sorcier."
"Oh, a sorcerer! A priest of voodoo, hein?"
"Ah, no, Monsieur. Respectable followers of vodun will have nothing to do with him. Me, I am good Catholic; but not all partisans of vodun are so wicked as the priests would like us to think. But Monsieur Duchamps has his own following. He is trying to bring all the bourhousses of the island under his control. He is a bad one to mock oneself of."
I sighed. Although I am no more psychic than Paddy's pig, I seem to draw such people as garbage draws flies.
We spent the rest of the day at moving in and setting up. During this time, we drove Jacques to the village of Schoelcher, named for a man instrumental in freeing the slaves in 1848. Denise laid in a stock of food.
While she shopped, Jacques showed me his boat, the St. Timothee, drawn up on the beach with a score of others. They were narrow, sharp-ended craft, with the peculiar projectng keel found in Caribbean fishing boats. This keel sticks out beyond the stem like the ram of a battleship of 1900. Nearly all the boats had good Catholic names—St. Pierre, St. Jean, Sainte Famille—but one fisherman, evidently a Muslim, defiantly called his boat the Inchallah.
Jacques explained how he meant to attach the motor. He spoke volubly but mostly in such Strong Créole that the meaning passed me by. Denise claims to understand it, but she is a Frenchwoman born and thus familiar with at least some French dialects. Still, Jacques had given much thought to the motor, comparing models and taking measurements.
Having promised us a cook, he went away and came back with a huge, shapeless, scowling mass of black fat, with her belongings tied up in a flour sack. She wore one of those turbans they make by folding a bandana around a cap of newspaper, with the points sticking up. Jacques introduced her as Mme. Claudine Boussac. We squeezed her into the station wagon and drove back to Argenton's house.
I was not prepossessed by Claudine's looks. Nonetheless, after our servantless life in the land of the free, it seemed like an almost indecent luxury to have people to fetch and carry for very modest wages. I felt a little guilty about such economic imperialism. It was made possible by the fact that, despite some progress, most of the folk of these isles of the Spanish Main were still dirt poor. But then, if I did not hire Jacques and did the fetching and carrying myself, poor Jacques could not buy the outboard motor on which his heart was set.