There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) (34 page)

She took the mass in her hand and guided it to cover the subtle slit of Lolo’s mouth and end him.

She runs, runs fast down the shore.

She runs, runs till her lungs cry out.

She runs, runs till her sides scream.

She collapses, falls to the ground, fingers snagging the earth like anchor flukes. She would have sobbed if only she could breathe.

The prayers
–
long percolating, ready to bubble out of her
–
she caps.

Non.

This is not the time to call on some aloof Deity, the uncaring Thing of reputed power, the knowing Author of all this misery.

Non.

She hears the motorcycle coming along a parallel road, the bike’s grumbling cadence now familiar. Her tears wet the pebbles below, mingling till they dry and disappear. Soon a shadow hovers over her, and she can look only to its owner’s familiar feet.

He kneels beside her, bends over her, pauses before he wraps his arm around her. All will be well, he promises. All will be well, Jak whispers.

How can you say such a thing? How can you know?
she wants to scream at him.

But she doesn’t. She can’t.

He pries her hands from the earth, dries her eyes with the backs of his wrists. And seemingly possessed, he kisses her forehead, softly.

Libète,
my friend,
he whispers.
There is more.

Despite everything, she believes.

Her mind lingers in the fog of what followed her flight: the beach, the kiss, the walking back hand in hand. Stephanie and Dimanche setting to packing, planning in hushed voices, animated by new purpose and fear.

Questions were finally posed.

Why are we separating?
Too dangerous to stay together.

Where am I going?
The north.

With Dimanche?
Yes.

Where is Jak going?
The east.

For how long?

Silence. Empty air.

Jak and Libète sat side by side in the beached boat, given the gift of a final, quiet moment together.

He reached into his things and withdrew his salvaged notepad. He opened to a page, flipping through notes and sketches to a beautifully rendered portrait of her. Though torn into fragments, it was her, the restored her, smiling, eyes alight.

— You did that? She gave a sad smile, seeing herself as she longed to be.

— Will you take it? To remember me?

Her head bobbed.

Dimanche had a green canvas duffel he threw in the sidecar, a sack half-full. They saw him turn and pause to take in the boat, the peaceful water and dull, descending Sun. He turned his back on his nets and traps and solicitude to look at Libète. We’ll get you more things, he said quietly. On the road. To wear. Stephanie was fussing with the BMW’s trunk, its lid reluctant to clasp shut after its unmentioned collision.

A bird, a final messenger, was placed in Libète’s red book bag. To carry word once we’ve made it to where we’re going, Dimanche said. There’s no phone coverage there.

And then it was time. Dimanche, stiff and tall, shook hands with Jak and Stephanie. The tension between girl and woman had settled again, and they kissed the other’s cheeks coldly. Libète was reluctant to catch her eyes. Go safely, Stephanie said. You too, Libète said reflexively.

When Libète reached Jak, she could not look at him. These new, strange feelings stirring within her both frightened and consoled. The one held the other for a time, knowing they faced a future where the only certainty was that they would not enter it together.

— Now, Dimanche uttered.

Libète whispered to Jak and Jak whispered back, words none but the two of them could hear.

They separated.

As Dimanche kick-started the bike and Stephanie turned the car’s key, Stephanie spoke for them all:

— N a we talè,
she said, her eyes wet. We’ll see you soon.

Libète holds the cloth an inch from Lolo’s mouth.

She sees his brow is crumpled. The corner of his mouth tugs, as if what plays out in the depths of his subconscious is torturous. She breathes, and deep. Her fingers are inflexible talons, grasping the scarf.

There is more.

The words resurface, inexplicably so, spoken to her in what feels like another age. Her eyelids flit. Her mind toggles from past to present to past.

Jak.

Wha–what am I doing?

She reels back, repulsed by what has claimed her. And yet, unable to resist, she finds herself returned to her perch over Lolo, her cloth again at the ready. A battle rages inside.

— I’m so tired
, she sobs.

The door to the shack opens, and Libète leaps backward.

— Sophia? Magdala stands there, mouth agape. What are you doing?

Libète stammered something. Shame was writ large across her face.

Magdala laid down a bowl of piping hot cassava. Janel asked me to bring this one food, Magdala said. She shifted her stance and looked at what the girl grasped. Again she asked: Sophia–why were you so close to the sick man?

Libète skirted against the ground and into the corner. I’m a wretch! she cried. A wretch!

— Sophia! Magdala shouted. What’s come over you?

— I’m not Sophia, I’m not Sophia, that’s not my name. Please, please don’t call me that.

— You don’t look well, Magdala said. She touched Libète’s forehead. You’re ill! You’re feverish! And what’s this blood on you?

— The fever’s nothing! My name is Libète. And I was going to kill that man.

Magdala recoiled. How could you consider–

—
Paske m fini!
I’m finished, I’m finished, I’m finished.

Magdala tolerated none of this. She grabbed Libète’s shoulders and shook her. Calm yourself! The strength behind the words gave Libète pause.

— Sophi–I mean, Libète–tell me more.
Please
, so I can
help
you.

Libète couldn’t decide which place to start. I, I’m from Port-au-Prince. I was pursued, chased far from home when I came to you. I was accused, falsely, of the murder of a friend. I fled those who would take my life. And I know something, a secret, information that if learned makes my life–the lives of everyone I care about–worthless.

— What is this secret? What could it be?

Libète’s lips pursed and eyes watered. I don’t even
know
its meaning. But I don’t dare share it. I don’t dare place this burden on another’s shoulders. She moaned. I’ve thought about it for all of these months and I can’t understand it. I have many enemies. I ran afoul of a certain businessman. I ruined his name by making known his secret crimes. He wants me dead, I know. But there are others who want this secret. It’s the only thing that kept me from harm before I arrived here. So one hand shielded me while the other hand tried to end me.

Magdala shook her head. But who is this one here, then? The one who would end you or the one who would shield you? To find you all the way on the other side of Haiti! Ay!

— He is–
was
–a friend. I saved him a long time ago, and he betrayed me. Tried to poison me but poisoned my friend instead, the one whose death I’m blamed for. But how he has come to be here–I have no idea!

— He mustn’t see you then! You must hide! He’s a thief, I hear? No one will believe a word he says anyway. I’ll tell Janel! She’ll see you protected.

— No. I have to go. Now. It’s certain.

Magdala gripped the nearby wall for support. Then tonight, if it must be! Get down off the mountain! This will pass! Yes, yes. It all will pass. Magdala’s face betrayed the confidence of her words. Libète buried her face in her hands.

— Li-bè-te. Magdala said the name like it was difficult to pronounce–Foche will not let these vagabonds take you. Go away, just for a time. Félix can go with you. The Sosyete, they’ll change their mind if Janel is on your side. She’ll find a way!

Libète looked up with glistening eyes. You think?

Magdala nodded. I do. After all, the end of hope–

— Is the end of us all, Libète said, finishing the sentence.

— Go, Libète. Collect your things. I’ll keep watch over this one and make sure you have time to get away.

Libète hugged the woman fiercely. You are too good to me. I’m just a visitor who overstayed her welcome.

— A visitor? Please! Magdala poked Libète’s chest. You’re my daughter, through and through.

Libète kissed her cheek. Mèsi, Magdala. For your hope.

Libète took up her abandoned scarf near Lolo’s head. She turned back to see Magdala leaning against the wall, wide-eyed and gripped by fear.

— What is it? Libète turned back to Lolo. He faced them with open eyes and loosed a shout that defied his shriveled form:
It’s her!
I see her!
The murderer is here! Libète is here!

Flight

Fòk ou konn chemen anvan ou pran wout.

You must learn the way before you take the road.

They speed up into mountains bathed in cloud, a great haze of unknowing. North, north, north, until the light is spent, and they are spent.

A bump sends her bouncing an inch. Dull pain jumps from her battered muscles. Libète’s body aches from the day’s exertion: fighting off Dimanche, in whose custody she now found herself, and sprinting on the beach, an attempt to escape the very life she found herself careening toward. She shifts in the sidecar. Her knees are tucked into her chest and her chin tucked into her knees, to fit their bags, hide her face, and permit her to drift in and out of deep sadness and into sleep.

Another bump, and slowing. Dimanche pulls off the road into an ominous grove of trees.

— Why are we stopping here?

— You need rest.

She extracts herself from the sidecar. Her legs prick as her blood circulates again. It is cold, and a breeze heavy with unease twirls about in the mists. Uncurling makes her shiver. He sees this and takes off his loose, billowy jacket. Put it on, he orders. She does ungrudgingly.

The bike’s headlamp stays on, and he sets his sack before it to rifle through its contents. He hands her a blanket, then a half-full water bottle and peanuts, all without instruction. We’ll start again in a few hours, he finally says. There it is again, the pistol, pulled from his waistband as his gaze sweeps the rows of trees. He kills the light when the stillness satisfies him.

Moonlight struggles to pierce the canopy. She stumbles over the uneven clods of earth as her eyes adjust to the dark. She turns, questions the dark: You going to sleep?

— No.

— Aren’t you tired?

— No.

She lays the blanket down on a patch of level ground and wraps herself. Sleep descends after a time, but a final thought arrives before its fall.

What are you, Dimanche?

Lolo shouts, and he shouts, and he roars.

Libète cannot move, she cannot. Magdala throws the bucket of water over him, and he gasps and chokes. She next butts Libète to the side and straddles Lolo, the skeleton he is, and pins him with her strong arms. Her hand soon locks his mouth tight.

— Go! Get away! Magdala shouts.

Libète trips over the doorjamb and makes a mad sprint. Neighbors poke heads out of homes, but Libète is gone, slipping into darkness behind outcrops and cornstalks. Worrying about Magdala, she spins. Cinéus and Wilnor rush up to the shack, their dog lunging ahead of them.

She sighed.
Finally they’ll do some good
. Shouting spilled from inside, and then a scream. Magdala was there, in the entrance, and Wilnor yanked her by the wrist. She fought the grip and pummeled him. He retaliated. The blow, a hard one, sent her to the ground.

Libète ran toward Magdala reflexively, then stopped. Whether because of fear or selfishness or reason, she paused.

Cinéus next brought out Lolo, who was sopping and genuinely weak. He was bent double over the ground and coughed into it as his lungs denied him breath. All she heard was shouting, incomprehensible words, but still Libète knew.
They’re in league!
And yet again, Lolo was a lie.

She tried to fit the pieces into place.
Benoit sent Lolo here?
As far as she knew, Benoit wasn’t still pursuing her.

Neighbors began streaming to Magdala’s aid.
Foche won’t let this stand.
Weapons were drawn, and the shouting became cacophony.

It was a race. Libète didn’t know how long she had before Cinéus and Wilnor had dealt with the growing crowd and began prowling the hills to find her.

Her lungs burned as she tore along the mountain trails, speeding up inclines and treacherous drops to reach Magdala’s home. Her bag in hand, she stuffed everything she would need to hide: clothes, her recovered notebook and pen, a cup, toothbrush, matches, her roll-up sleeping mat, and three unripe avocados. She would head down the mountainside where she wasn’t so known, glean from crops, live in shadows, and let the truth gradually untie the knotted plot in which she found herself entangled.

She sprinted out the door and shot up the path toward the fort. It was past sundown. Félix would most certainly be there.

— Félix! she called in a rasped roar. Félix! She continued to work her way up the darkened rock path. The boy appeared, modesty seeing him don a collared shirt.

— Sophia? He finished buttoning it up. I mean, Libète?

— It’s me.

—
Sa k ap fèt
? Did Janel say she could help?

— She said she’d try–but that’s nothing now, absolutely nothing. I have to leave. Your mother . . . Libète struggled, her sick lungs rebelling against all of the exertion. Needs your help, she gasped.

— Leave? My moth–are you all right? Unsure what to do, he steadied her with his hand.

She shook her head. I’m not. The dig’s guards. The one called Wilnor, he hit your mother.

Félix’s eyes stretched wide, and he grabbed his machete. He’s dead. Félix began to head down the mountain path.

— But Félix, Libète called out, desperate notes ringing in her voice. She sent me to you. Entrusted me to you.

Félix paused.

— A man, from my past. He’s here. With those guards. I don’t know what it means, but it’s bad. I need to get away and hide. Your mother helped me escape. And with the Sosyete about, I just, I just don’t know whom I can trust.

— You’re asking a lot of me. You know that.

She opened her hands, closed her eyes, and whispered. I know.

He came close again, his top lip trembling. I’ll make sure you’re safe, he said, but then I have to return for her.

— Of course, Félix. Of course. She reached for his hand and tugged it. You’re a real friend.

The softness of the words, the touch: they undid him. He could only turn away from her. He looked over the path from Foche to the fortress and beyond, like he could see through the ridge’s curtain of tall rock and into the small plateau behind.

— Go and hide inside the fort. I’ll keep watch. We’ll go later, he said under his breath. Once people are settled. Once everyone will be asleep.

— But – she finally breathed deep – why wait?

— All but one path takes us down the mountain by the way you came.

— So?

— The path we need, the safest one, the one I know will take you to a small forest in which you could find food and hide . . . it’s a different way.

She followed his line of sight, straight to the dig site.

— To get there, we have to pass through there.

Dimanche struggles to wake his charge. Not with the decision to do so, but the way in which to carry it out.

Is it best to shake her shoulder? Or say something to make her stir? He didn’t want to frighten her with an unfamiliar voice in an unknown setting. Heaven knew he’d scared her enough already.

He stared up into the nightscape unpolluted by electric light. He awed at the same constellations he had charted as a boy, when he had been so sad to hear tell that the Americans had already laid claim to everything in the sky. He chuckled. His aspiration to be the first Haitian in space died young, as with too many of his other impossible hopes.

Dimanche knew their intended route north. He’d studied a map by flashlight while she slept. They would stay to the east as best they could and then cut across to reach Cap-Haïtien. Libète would soon ask as much, though their ultimate destination he would withhold–that could wait. He knew she’d never agree to it, and he didn’t look forward to the moment when she discovered the truth. He had already been mulling over what he’d say to get her to accept what she never could on her own.

He looked at a watch he kept in his pocket–23:47. Still kept on a twenty-four hour clock, a lingering habit from his days in the police. Assuming they passed without trouble, Stephanie and Jak would be poised to enter the Dominican Republic at first light. He hoped they would find the anonymity they sought there.

Libète gave a sad moan and turned over on her mat. He thought of himself at her age.
More similar than she knows
. So full of bluster, so set in his ways, so vulnerable. But he had had no one to hold the dark at bay once it descended.
No one to defend me.

But he
is
here for the girl. He
will
be.

Wisps of memory arise:

Father’s hand on shoulder

Callused fingers on wood cracked

Smiles ever widening

They made him feel an unexpected gratitude.

We’re so very, very similar.

He settled on a branch ripped from a tree. Standing a yard away, he poked her foot, and she woke with a gasp, like coming up from deep water.

— It’s time to go.

The hour is late. That is all she knows.

Libète had hated losing track of time here in Foche. She could have cared less in her younger years on La Gonâve, or in Cité Soleil. The Sun and shadows were the only necessary arms on the clock. Of course she could not sleep tonight, not with so many competing fears crashing about inside her like waves. So instead of sleep she lays on the stone, under the stars, with Félix’s blanket over her.

Félix had retreated somewhere deep inside himself and would not resurface. He kept watch over the path, letting his knife blade rise and fall on the earth in dull, quiet taps. She would have liked to speak to him and think things through as she might have done with Jak.

She closed her eyes again.

The guards and Lolo were working together to some end
.
The brothers brought him here.
But
how did they find him? Why would they do so?

What had Lolo cried out?

“It’s her! The murderer!”

A false accusation, but not so far off. His words were prescient. She had nearly done him in.

She remembered Cinéus’s eyes hovering on her after she had resuscitated Jeune. She had read a perverted intent into them, but maybe it was something else. Recognition of some fact. After all, who were these guards, these men who cast long shadows over the earth? They were no university employees. Ha! Private security more like it, of the type Benoit would hire. Maybe word traveled up and down their organization’s sinister lines of communication and this recognition somehow saw Lolo dispatched all this way to identify her. To speak conclusively to whether this peasant girl with a healing touch was who they had been seeking.