A Rendezvous in Haiti (10 page)

“And he pours back the half-bottle. If he has to, he snatches up the funnel himself and does it. And if the barkeep starts to hoot and holler, Lafayette even gives him back an ounce or so extra. I imagine there follow a few imaginative and injurious remarks on both sides, but Lafayette is already on his way off the premises, headed for the next distillery.”

Dillingham said, “By God. After three times he'd have seven-eighths rum.”

“And after four, fifteen-sixteenths, which is a proportion legally sufficient to warrant cattle pure-bred. And this stuff is clear as a mountain spring and young as the dawn. Three tots of it will flush the liver and lights for a week.”

“It is a corrosive broth,” Dillingham confirmed. “I'm not even sure red blood cells can survive in it.”

“The men don't seem to pay much attention to the rules,” McAllister said. “Rum and whores. Talk about tradition.”

“Boys will be boys,” Healy said, “and the Corps is famous for improvising in unforeseen circumstances, where theory proves inadequate. Lafayette sells this poison by the bottle or the half-bottle or the pony and he is making big money, and if I tried to stop him I would have a mutiny on my hands.”

“Or if you tried to clean out the women in Hinche,” McAllister said.

“You are not to be thinking about sluts,” Healy said.

“That poor colonel's daughter,” Dillingham said. “In the clutch of a rapist. You been to those cribs, Mac?”

“I only know what Gunny Evans told me.”

“God bless the man,” Healy said. “Here's to him,” and they hoisted three beer bottles, and Healy added viciously, “and a fatal clap to that son-of-a-bitching rebel Martel.”

Gunny Evans had deplored those shacks outside Hinche, the poor goddam Marines out of bounds but irrepressible. A couple of dollars here and a couple more there, and along came a rickety Ford truck, about half a mile from camp. Always half a dozen Marines hopped aboard: out of bounds was out of bounds but lust conquered all. They would chat intermittently in the last light, releasing their impatience in brief bursts of small talk. One would polish his boots nervously, boots that he would shortly drag through the dust and rubbish of Hinche's main street, or the rotting garbage that paved Hinche's alleys. “I used to think the daylight lasted forever in the tropics,” one of them would say, “but it shuts down about six o'clock like some small town in Georgia.”

“It's a damn funny place and a damn funny war,” another would say. “Every time we kill one, three or four more jump up.”

“Got to protect the Panama Canal,” one would intone, and the others would cackle; that solemn absurdity issued from Washington.

“Jeez, against who?” was the liturgical response, and the answer to that was always a racial slur, varying only in style and venom: “Irish. Gone fill it in and plant spuds.” “Jews. Gone double the tolls.” “Niggers. Gone sit on the bank and fish.” “Chinese. Gone line it with washtubs.”

“Gone take a while.”

“Gone take forever. Marine Corp's forever anyway.”

Upon some such gloomy note they would subside for a time. The truck would rattle on, and eventually check with squeals and rattles. “Tree heure,” the driver would announce. “Tree heure go beck.”

They hopped from the truck and sought their bearings. The truck clattered away and was replaced by shadowy platoons of children clucking “fack-fack” like a flock of black chicks. Some cosmopolitan Marine would say, “Allez, ça va.” An urchin would plead, “Ba iune gourde, ba iune gourde,” give me one gourde, and what was that now, an American nickel? The children were barefoot, woolly headed, mostly naked, all but featureless in the bleary light of an open-air grog shop, the straining glow of a single oil lamp; their faces were blank and black, their soft voices more music than speech. The Marines strode through them as through stands of black hibiscus. The children trailed, slowed, pleaded.

The men had at first believed that the country women here were worthy but the town women vicious. They also believed that true in their home states. There was agreement among the Marines that hard-working Haitian family women would not be molested. Such women, Gunny Evans pointed out, were rare. McAllister disagreed but held his peace. How could Gunny know the first damn thing about the life of a Haitian woman?

The whorehouses in Hinche were off-limits but not under surveillance, and were mostly daunting hovels. Claps could mean the brig: you could strut down the street high and mighty and go limp on the threshold just thinking about it. The sour smell, too. The inmates were of all shapes, sizes and ages. They were black, bone-poor, swarming, competitive and easy to please. It was rumored that they trooped out of Hinche's shacks and huts as the jitney trucks appeared on the horizon. Evans summed it up by saying that every goddamn woman in Hinche humped and some of them brought their ti moon to watch. That was “petit monde”: children.

So the men dispersed to their favorite hovels. They traveled in pairs. Soon lamps were lit, and men and women laughed in the velvet night.

At open windows the ti moon watched.

McAllister was full of life now, and worried: his heart was not in his work. But he cleaned his weapons, and spent two hours with Flanagan, grooming both his mounts. He tried and failed to keep his mind off Caroline, and on war. “Men at war, so other men can sit in leather chairs and clip their cigars with gold clippers. I shouldn't be asked to kill, in this mood,” he said.

“You haven't been asked,” Healy said. “You've been told.”

Next day Dillingham flew out with Wyatt, and McAllister assembled his platoon. He conferred with his new sergeant, an Oklahoman called Neubauer, short and tough, his own age. He caught up on intelligence: Martel's Cacos were chivvying their way in all directions at once, and to the south Batraville's Cacos were fighting Martel as hard as they fought the Marines—right down to drunken brawls in the market. “The real news comes from our master spy Lafayette,” Healy said. “He gads about a bit on his day off. Sumbitch knows everything. A real mercenary too. Wants a whole dollar.” He scuffed his camp chair sideways and laid a thick index finger on a hanging map. “Right here, you see, about a day's ride east, over this range and down into the valley. Several of these small valleys parallel so be careful. There is a village, some forty gentlefolk in normal times, maybe fifty, and about three miles away this farm, a big one, cane and beans and some livestock. It is called La Ferme, which means ‘the farm'.”

“Funny,” McAllister said. “It also means ‘shut up'.” Healy peered cautiously for veiled ironies, found none, and went on. “Anyway Lafayette tells me people been drifting in there by twos and threes, and mainly male. They may be joining Martel, or moving in to wait for him, and we will find out what's what. That is, you will. These here
La Vie Parisienne
just arrived, straight from Paris, and I got to catch up on my reading.”

After a briefing and a good sleep they rode out at dawn; the drums seemed to track them all day; and in the evening they bivouacked on a slope above the valley. They set pickets and made a meal and told some lies and smoked, and soon enough dawn came and they were stretching and groaning and trudging off into the bushes, and gargling from canteens and salivating over coffee. Some brushed their teeth and some only gargled. McAllister growled them into formation and they policed the bivouac. The sun rose slowly and late over the hills to the east, and McAllister was uneasy, blinded, his binoculars useless for the moment. He squinted down into the dappled valley. Livestock grazed. Colors were pale and false. Smoke rose from a copse: huts in there. The sky above was pink and pearly.

An hour later he saw more. A stand of cane, a sizable farmhouse beside a dark blue stream; and upstream, a village in the forest. He lay prone and steadied the glasses on his pack. Tendrils of smoke, a somnolent goat. Cauldrons, or kettles. No human face, no startled figure: a disturbing distant hush. “Neubauer, you better take a look.”

Neubauer fell beside him and borrowed the glasses. “Not a damn soul. But there was ten minutes ago.”

McAllister said, “Let's go down there and see what's what.”

They reached the farm after a slow prickly ride down the slope, through a peaceful grove of mahogany, and across a stretch of healthy savanna. Only the flash of a yellow bird caught the eye, or a pale lizard, or a busy field rat. The farmhouse was in use, a dwelling, but they—whoever—had seen the blancs coming and were long gone. McAllister noted hearths, iron pots, bowls of grain, beans; the usual scrawny irate chickens. A farm.

“Withdrew across the stream,” Neubauer said. “Sir.”

“To the village. We'd best move carefully, and have a look.”

They did, and the village was full of life but empty of villagers. Fires burning, stores of food, sheaves of cane, more incurious goats, a houmfort with its altar; but the village was empty.

“They're in the forest,” Neubauer said. “It is amazing how they can disappear.”

“Look here, sir.”

They joined Clancy in one of the huts. “Ammo crates,” Neubauer said. “Stolen thirty caliber ammunition.”

“Four of 'em,” Clancy said.

“Numbered,” McAllister said. “We'll take them back.”

Neubauer asked, “Not going to round up some of these people?”

The village was surrounded by dense forest—cedars, acacias, raintrees, mahoganies. Between the temple and the stream, and curving among the huts like a boulevard, was a kind of esplanade or pleasance, a village green as at Deux Rochers of cursed memory. Peaceful. Where children would play, does and kids caper. Deux Rochers: they were less than a day's ride from Deux Rochers. But here the silence was eerie. “No. One ambush a month is enough. We withdraw,” McAllister said. “I need open country.” All the way out to the treeless fields he felt huge, a target; and even then he wondered who lay hidden in the cane.

They reconnoitered four villages, all empty. They found no more crates, only a couple of empty sweatstained American cartridge belts. “It's damn queer,” McAllister said. “These people are nervous. They've been scared. This is new.”

Neubauer agreed.

“I wish they had an army,” McAllister said. “Wars are easier to fight when you can see the enemy.”

Neubauer worried. “You notice even the drums are quiet?”

McAllister had noticed. “We'll go ask the captain. There must be four or five thousand Cacos within fifty miles of us. Suppose they all gathered together and marched on Hinche?”

Neubauer grinned and patted his rifle. “It would simplify matters considerably, sir.”

They were five miles east of Hinche, at a place on the plain where many trails coverged, when they spotted horsemen. Clancy flung up a hand and they halted. “That's us,” McAllister said. The setting sun blurred his vision but there was no mistaking horse Marines. “Half a dozen.”

“They're looking for us,” Neubauer said.

“Clancy! Forward at a trot!”

It was Dillingham with an escort, and McAllister's first thought was peace. On second thought he called, “Is it a general offensive?”

“It's bad news, Mac,” Dillingham replied, and reined in, and his men with him; dust rose.

“Just tell me, Dill. Gunny's dead?”

“I wish that was it,” Dillingham said, and told him.

McAllister was hot-eyed and reckless and dripping sweat. They were standing on the veranda, drinking whiskey now and no one making jokes.

“Her father's been informed,” Healy said. “He's on his way but it will take time. The colonel has ordered a reduction in patrols and
no
raids. Wyatt has been flying zigzags but hasn't seen a thing.”

“Did they check the gendarmeries? In town, around, all over?”

“Sent word everywhere.”

The camp was in shock. McAllister stood with half a glass of bourbon in one tight hand and saw his men waiting in twos and threes, glancing again and again at the veranda.

Dillingham said, “If she's been taken somewhere it's for a purpose. They won't hurt her and they'll be in touch.”

“Thanks. Or they'll send pieces of her. Where's Wyatt now?”

“Captain!”

“What is it, Neubauer?”

“You got a nigger lurking.” Neubauer gestured.

The three officers leaned over the side railing. Lafayette hunched and smiled. “Just keeping himself informed,” Healy said savagely.

Lafayette hopped up and hunched again. “Mon Capitaine.”

“Shut up and leave us alone,” Healy said.

“La blanche, mon Capitaine.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dillingham said. “These people. They know everything before it happens.”

“Come up here on the porch,” Healy ordered. They returned to the table and Healy poured more bourbon.

McAllister needed someone to kill. When Lafayette cringed before him, he set a hard hand on the yard-boy's shoulder and said, “Tell me.”

“Mon Lieutenant.”

“Hurry it up,” Dillingham said.

Lafayette pleaded in silence.

“The bastard wants money.”

McAllister slid his hands toward the black throat and said, “Lafayette, you will tell me right now or I will strangle you. I will strangle you with my bare hands and you will have no last rites and my men will bury you and no one will know or care. Do you understand that?” He said it again, swiftly, in French.

“Oui, mon Lieutenant. Only that in Port-au-Prince they say Martel take la blanche.”

The man was trembling in McAllister's grasp.

“They say.” McAllister grimaced at Healy. “Your master spy. Our intelligence. Lafayette: what else do they say?”

“No more.”

“What else do they say?”

“I tell you the truth, mon Lieutenant. No more. Please, mon Lieutenant. This is hurt.”