Cross Current (35 page)

Once more Gil surprised me with how fast he could move. In an instant, he was at my side, squeezing my arm in that grip. “I said, shut up,” he hissed, and shoved me hard toward the back of the boat with Solange.

Then I heard another voice behind us, speaking Creole. Malheur had arrived, and he was castigating the slim Haitian man for not doing something to his liking.

Gil had done his best to hide any reaction, but I had seen his eyes widen slightly at the mention of Red and Cartagena. He had been surprised.

Once we were all in the boat, Gil shoved off and headed the boat back toward the harbor entrance. Our leather-shoed friend pushed Solange and me down in the back of the boat, making us sit on the wet deck so that our heads were not visible above the boat’s gunwales. The boat would look like it carried three men going fishing. When they were all deep in conversation, I raised myself up on my knees and took a look over the rail. We were idling along, passing a marina, and I nearly did a double take when I saw a familiar boat tied up to the seaplane dock. It was an Anacapri with two big outboards, just like Rusty’s.

I sat down quickly when Gil turned around to check on us. He glanced over at the seaplane dock, and even in the darkness, I could see the recognition on his face. That boat meant something to him, too, and he turned around and shoved the throttles forward. We surged up into a plane and sped across the channel toward South Bimini. Like the Anacapri, this boat could do maybe twenty knots—more than twice the speed of the
Bimini Express
. Now, with our bow raised and the stern lowered, I didn’t need to get up on my knees to see over the top of the outboards. Under the bright dock lights, I could just make out the name of the boat tied to the seaplane dock:
INS AGENT
.

We had not yet left the harbor basin when we abruptly slowed and turned into a canal on our left. What we call Bimini is really two islands—North and South Bimini—and the harbor entrance is through a slot where the two islands overlap. The canal entrance on South Bimini was next to a dock. I’d heard there was a ferry between the two islands, and I presumed we were passing the ferry dock as we idled into the canal. Although the night was very dark, I could see that there were a few homes lining the canal as we motored back in. The farther we traveled, the more numerous the homes, though all looked dark, perhaps deserted. At one point we took a hard left turn, then passed what looked like an abandoned hotel. Soon after, there were no more concrete seawalls, and then, finally, we were traveling through something that looked like a scene out of the old Bogart movie
The African Queen
—a narrow creek with low-hanging branches forming a canopy over the waterway.

Swamps have never been on my list of favorite nightspots. There was no breeze whatsoever, and as the outboard slowed, and we inched our way up the creek, I felt the mosquitoes on my back and arms and legs. I couldn’t swat them off one patch of bare skin before another bug landed somewhere else. These weren’t really the kind of mosquitoes you swat, either; these were the kind that smeared into your sweat, leaving a black sooty smudge mixed with blood across your skin. The odors of ammonia and rotting vegetation combined with the gas fumes from the outboard engine that was right next to Solange and me, and it made me start to feel sick. I was grateful when I heard Gil shift the engine into neutral, and we glided up to a rickety wood dock where the waterway dead-ended.

Something about Gil’s docking was not to Malheur’s liking. As the other Haitian man tied up the boat, Malheur yelled at Gil, his nose almost touching Gil’s, and then Malheur spat in his face. The two men stood with their faces inches apart as a large wad of spittle slid down Gil’s cheek. When the Haitian captain turned his back, Gil’s lip under that huge mustache curled back in a soundless snarl.

Malheur then jumped onto the dock and disappeared into the brush without a glance back. I helped Solange out of the boat and held her hand as they led us into a dark passage someone had cut through the mangroves. Gil was in the lead with the flashlight that, this time, thankfully, was not pointed into our eyes. Someone had attempted to build a dirt path above the tide line, but the earth underfoot gave with each step, and when I walked through a puddle, the water that seeped into my boat shoe felt more like mud. My feet were soon slipping around in the grit inside my shoe. The Haitian crewman brought up the rear, apparently guarding us, and I wondered how he was doing in his leather shoes.

The smell was the first thing I noticed. The stink of the rotting vegetation in that mangrove swamp was nothing compared to the stench coming from somewhere up ahead. I pulled my shirt up over my nose. The deeper into the mangroves we walked, the more putrid the air grew.

Then I noticed the quiet. It seemed as though even the insects and the slithery mangrove critters had decided to take a night off. The stillness was giving me goose bumps in spite of the sweat that had now completely soaked my shirt.

We came to a piece of high ground in a clearing; there the cause of the stench became clear. A cinder-block house stood in the center of the clearing. It had been built on big concrete columns so the tidal surge of a hurricane could pass beneath. But tonight, it wasn’t water moving under the house and spilling out across the cleared land. Gil swung his light across the silent ground, and I saw eyes. As the flashlight beam played across their faces—black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Indian—they all turned their heads away, as though ashamed to be found living in such conditions. Hundreds were trying to sleep on the ground, on top of one another, with no shelter from rain or bugs or whatever might come crawling up out of those dark mangroves.

Above us, I heard a door slam, and from the middle of the sea of people came a cough—a chest-rattling, wet, phlegmy cough. Then another. From the other side of the clearing, I heard a young child start to cry and then a mother’s voice speaking softly to him in Creole, trying to calm him. The moaning began from several directions at once and in a variety of pitches, all of them resonating with a hopelessness that was painful to hear. From beyond the tree line, somewhere out in the mangroves, came sputtering noises from somebody suffering from a case of explosive diarrhea.

They’d somehow kept quiet as Malheur had passed.

“My God, who are all these people?”

“None o’ yer business,” Gil said as he stopped at the bottom of the stairs, clicked off the flashlight, and drew a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket.

As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dark, I saw next to the house several rusted drums attached to a water catchment system on the roof and a two-burner propane stove resting on a plywood sheet on sawhorses. I wondered if this was the place Solange had worked with Erzulie. No wonder she’d been so thin.

“But they’re human beings. The smell, these conditions— so many kids, too—and they’re sick, Gil.”

He sucked on the end of his cigarette, making the ember glow bright, then nodded his head toward the top of the stairs. “You think he gives a fuck?” His voice sounded different from that of the man who had been yelling at me to shut up in the boat.

I thought about the immigrants who had been killed in Florida and about Margot at the Swap Shop. “But if he is going to sell the
restaveks
, he must want to keep them healthy.”

“They don’t normally stay here this long,” he said, then he took another long drag on his cigarette. He blew smoke toward the upstairs. “He hasn’t been making runs across since he’s been trying to track down the kid there. He don’t usually stay in Florida.”

“What is it about her? What do they want with her?”

Gil ignored my questions. He dropped the half-smoked butt and ground it out. “You really Red Sullivan’s kid?” 

“Yeah, I run
Gorda
now. So, you did know Red.”

From upstairs came the sound of a door opening, and streams of angry-sounding Creole poured out. Gil mumbled something unintelligible and pointed to the concrete stairs. “Git moving,” he said, and nodded toward the upper landing. “He wants you upstairs.”

I helped Solange up the stairs and through a wood door at the top. Gil was breathing hard just from the climb up the stairs. The room we entered reminded me of Racine Toussaint’s place in Florida. The main light came from two pressurized kerosene lanterns, but at one end of the room was an elaborate altar with dozens of flickering candles, as well as dolls and shells and what looked like a real human skull resting on a crossed pair of thigh bones. Off to one side was a wooden cross that looked like it had been removed from a grave—the downward stake was caked with dirt on the lower third of its length. A rusty shovel leaned against the wall.

Gil and the slim Haitian left us and began talking to some men in an adjoining room. I had no idea what they were saying, but I recognized Malheur’s voice. As the conversation continued, Solange squeezed my hand tighter and she pressed her body against mine.

Seconds later, Malheur made his entrance. He had changed clothes and was now wearing what he had worn that night at Racine’s—black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie, and top hat with a skull and crossbones made of metal studs. His machete was in an elaborate beaded and fringed scabbard on his belt. The slim Haitian entered the room, pushing two other fellows dressed in rags. The three of them crossed to the altar and pulled out drums from beneath the cloth. Malheur produced a bottle of rum and began passing it around. The men drank from the bottle, tipping their heads back, their Adam’s apples pumping as they gulped the liquor. The volume of their voices increased in direct proportion to the amount of rum they consumed, but all the talk was in Creole. Malheur and the other men exchanged comments, looked at me, then burst out laughing.

You don’t have to know the language to know when men are talking about sex. It’s in their eyes, in the way they laugh. I remembered the Capitaine’s little game with my zipper on the ship. I began to understand why Solange was acting as though she feared she would never see me again, and I imagined that anyone looking at the side of my neck would see my pulse pounding in the veins there.

Malheur seated himself with a flourish on a big wooden spool next to the altar. The spool’s wood was weathered to a silvery gray. Probably, it had once been used to run wire around the island, but now it served as a throne for the leader of what seemed to be shaping up to be a Voodoo party.

Solange and I were still standing against the wall about ten feet from the door. I squeezed her hand, and she looked up at me. Inclining my head in the direction of the door, I raised my eyebrows slightly to ask her if she understood. She nodded. Very slowly, we began inching our way toward the exit.

Malheur lined up several bottles and clay pots and produced a mortar and pestle from beneath the table. He began adding ingredients from the pots—dried leaves and dark, foul-smelling liquids—and grinding them together. After pouring some of the rum into the stone bowl, he lit the mixture with a wooden match. He waved his arms in the air over the blue flames and spoke aloud, but his voice was blotted out by the drums that had just started. I had thought the drums at Mambo Racine’s were loud, but these were brutal. It felt as though the drummers were beating directly on my body.

I pressed my hand against my chest and felt for the pouch that Racine had given me. The drums, candles, lanterns, potions, real human bones—these produced some kind of irrational fear. Potions couldn’t hurt me. To be afraid of a six-foot-four-inch murderer was perfectly logical, but it was the blank stare of that skull that made me want to clutch the pouch and start talking to
La Sirene
.

Malheur had his back to us, but because he was sitting at an anlle, I could see part of his face. We had halved the distance to the door when he called out my name.

“Seychelle Sullivan,” he said, his voice loud enough to be heard over the drums.

Gil appeared at my side. He grasped my arm and put an end to the progress we had made toward the exit. He shoved me in front of Malheur. I never let go of Solange’s hand.

Malheur’s eyes looked really out of it—drunk or high. The look was not the same I’d seen on the faces of the people at Racine’s who claimed to have been possessed by the
lwa
.

“The
bokor
is gone. I am
Bwon Samedi
.”

He grabbed at the front of my shirt and pulled me down to him. I tried to twist out of his grip, to turn my head aside, but he just held me there, my face not two inches from his. I could feel and smell his breath on my cheek. He didn’t try to kiss me or bite my nose off—he didn’t do anything. The longer we stayed like that, the more frightened I grew. What was he doing? Then he leaned in until his nose almost touched my cheek and his nostrils flared. He was sniffing me. I squirmed when his nose actually ground into my ear, and he made grunting noises like a foraging pig. Then he leaned back, though he still held the front of my shirt. I felt a second of relief before he smacked me open-handed across the face.

I was dazed, couldn’t see a thing out of my left eye, and probably couldn’t have told you my own name. I stumbled back, the room spinning, but I was determined to stay upright. Too late, I realized I had let go of that little hand.

I heard her call out over the noise of the pounding drums and saw the blur of her yellow tank top and bright red shorts as the Haitian crewman disappeared with her into the other room.

“Solange!” I cried as I started toward the spot where the blur of color had disappeared.

The second slap rocked me even harder, and I tasted the blood where my teeth had pierced the inside of my cheek. The pain must have shown on my face because Malheur threw back his head and laughed again. He was standing now, and he motioned to Gil, who stepped in and grabbed my arm again in his viselike grip. I shook my head to try to clear my blurry vision. There seemed to be only one other room in the house, and though I called out her name, I could barely hear my own voice inside my head. Malheur lifted the bowl that contained the mixture he had cooked up earlier, then shouted something to the drummers, and the rhythm grew even faster. Gil dragged me out the front door and onto the landing. Malheur followed, bringing one of the kerosene lanterns to light up the clearing. Whatever he intended to do to me, he wanted an audience to appreciate it.