A Rendezvous in Haiti (5 page)

“You know what they got in France?” he asked. “
Air-fields
. Even a paved runway sometimes.” His airstrip here was a stretch of plain that baked hard in steady heat and dissolved into sump and bog in overnight rain. “There is one over by Gonaïves,” he snarled, “that they got a million slaves to spread a million bushels of gravel onto, and somebody made a fortune, and the goddam gravel shoots up like bullets on takeoff. Tear off your tail!” He scratched furiously at his crotch. “Not a mechanic in the whole fucking country,” he said.

“You taking off right away?” McAllister had pinned on his ribbons and was a mite embarrassed.

“All right, all right. Goddam sex maniac. I suppose this island going to be full of cocoa-colored kids in a few months.”

“There's cocoa-colored grownups running the place right now,” McAllister said. “Bring me back in three days or so?”

“Any day you like. I once made this run three times between breakfast and bourbon. A goddam taxi, is what. And no white nooky nowhere. Sorry I ever left Burnt Corn.”

“Left
where?
”

“Burnt Corn, Alabama, and no jokes, sonny.”

“Burnt Corn, Alabama. Bet you got a store and everything.”

Healy said, “We even have railroads.” Beside Wyatt, Healy seemed muscular, even burly.

“Captain! You're not from Burnt Corn?”

“Two from Burnt Corn would be depopulation. No; I'm from Montgomery. Wyatt: how are you?”

“Good enough, Captain. I am going to loop and dump this Yankee out.”

“Yankee!”

“Where you from, then?”

“Virginia.”

“Never heard of it. Captain: you lost a man, I heard.”

“One killed, one wounded.”

“This damn country,” Wyatt said. “Sorry, Healy.” Wyatt made a quick farewell, and hustled McAllister aboard. “Just don't fool with the instruments.” The pilot sang and chattered all the way to Port-au-Prince, but any meaning was lost in the engine's racket and the shrill windstream. McAllister was too busy for talk: to fly was immensely exciting, and below him rose and fell Haiti's verdant hills and valleys, while within him rose and fell his own gorge. He skimmed blue rivers, he terrified whole villages. Faces twitched toward him and Haitians ran for cover in huts or beneath trees, one white-thatched long-legged farmer, stiff as a stork, plunging into a stream and ducking under. Beyond their port wingtip, to the southeast, sullen clouds drifted; to starboard the sky was an immaculate blue. A rude and barbarous land, but beautiful from the air: emerald hills jutting up from the plain, tendrils of black smoke above circular villages; verdigris rivers, or silver, winding to the sea; massing cloud and clear azure sky; and tiny black people, McAllister's brothers and sisters in God's great family, scurrying from a monstrous and incomprehensible wingèd enemy.

3

In cool Kenscoff, a mile up the mountain from steamy, stinking Port-au-Prince, Caroline Barbour greeted His Excellency the President-Elect—by whom elected, no one was certain—and Her Excellency, and chatted with cabinet ministers and permanent under-secretaries, doctors and judges and poets. She was informed that there was a notable surplus of poets in Haiti and a notable shortage of plumbers. She accepted champagne. She glanced at the doorway. There were far too many Marines present who were not Lieutenant McAllister; most were captains and majors. One was a lieutenant colonel, avuncular—perhaps presumptuous? (“How is George, that old rascal?” Caroline: “The colonel is well, thank you. He's left Versailles, for the embassy in London.”)

She found the Haitians far more intriguing. The men suffered in bat-wing collars. The wives, of shades from black of black to warm gold, wore gowns and scarfs of silk—so hot, but silk!—or fine lawn or French-milled cottons. Their hair was curly or wavy or kinky or straight, their noses were flat or Semitic or Grecian; they conversed in French and English and Creole.

A Mrs Brundage hovered, pale, American; her husband maintained the Baptist presence in Port-au-Prince. Mrs Brundage was spare; fortyish; hair in a bun; skirts to the ankle. She whispered from time to time like Gossip in an old play: “The mulattoes aren't so bad but. Morals simply do not exist but. We do what we can with the New Testament in French but.” Was it worse that Robert was late at all, or that he could not have spared her this dowd? “Luke works from dawn to dusk,” the woman was saying, “preaching the Word and doctoring.”

“A doctor?”

“He is a chiropractor.”

“How fascinating,” Caroline said. “Major! How good to see you!”

Mrs Brundage whispered, “The major is unmarried. Be careful.”

Colonel Barbour had cabled,
PROVERBS
31:29
SEMPER FIDELIS LOVE POP
. It was his customary message, twenty times at least in her life of travel, and she loved him for it—the simple reiterated heartfelt unoriginality: “Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.”

Caroline smiled gently, even mistily, at the woman and said, “Mrs Brundage, I am a colonel's daughter, and have heard Marines curse. I have been a nurse's aide, and have both placed and removed bedpans. I have seen Paris by night in the company of a Frenchman wearing a beret. Good evening.” She slipped her arm through the major's, and they crossed the crowded room.

“It seemed time,” he said.

Caroline said, “She told me, ‘We were never blessed with children, but we have our Haitians.' I'm Caroline Barbour.”

“Of course you are,” said the major. “And every Marine in the room is jealous of McAllister. How did you meet Mrs Brundage?”

“She was there when I disembarked.”

“You came across from Guantánamo.”

“On the
Catamount
. Captain Tolleson was my father's classmate.”

“You were escorted by ensigns, of course.”

“Three and four at a time, on the bridge. We must have looked like a recruiting poster, or an operetta.”

She wore a dark blue confection of crepe that set off her “fine shoulders”; yet she felt rather plain, bleached and ordinary, among the Haitian idols. And where was the insufferably casual Lieutenant McAllister, to raise her spirits and restore her bloom?

Shortly she stood beside Colonel Farrell, who asked, “What did you say to Mrs Brundage?”

“Commonplaces. I'm rather tired of commonplaces. Why do you ask?”

“She has left us. You have accomplished in one night what the Marine Corps could not in three years.” The colonel, who commanded the Marines in Haiti, bowed to a roly-poly black gentleman with long white wavy hair. “Maître! Et comment allez-vous?”

Caroline inclined her head with a smile, and later asked, “Maître?”

“A lawyer. Nearest thing we have to an attorney general. Ah! Father Scarron! Miss Barbour.”

Caroline shook his hand. “Caroline Barbour.”

“Jean-Baptiste Scarron.” The black priest bowed over her hand. He was young and cool and athletic, with a faint insolence of manner—perhaps only a steady eye.

“Is it true,” Caroline asked, in English to flatter him, “that you recognize thirty-two shades of skin?”

There was a break in the swirl of copper and ebony faces, Paris and New York fashions, a wink in the soft blaze of jewelry. His Excellency paused ponderously, a crab's claw in hand; Caroline saw a gleam flash to the surface of his eye, and he inspected her more carefully. She had stolen a moment from them all, in the saffron glow of tropical candlelight, and the priest betrayed an instant's consternation which altered immediately to approval. The colonel stood like a Dresden china dragoon, eyes carefully glazed. He was perhaps more accustomed to commonplaces.

“Indade, yes,” Scarron assured her. “Thirty-two for the connoisseur. But at one time, long ago, a hundred and twenty-eight. What is now an art for the eye was once a science for the mathematician. I myself have the honor to be black of black, and if not for the Jesuits of Paris would be digging yams on the mountainside.”

Caroline's pleasure deepened. She missed McAllister even more; if sharing laughter was one of love's joys, laughing alone was one of its sorrows.

“The higher levels of our society are of course mulatto,” Father Scarron continued innocently. “The infusion of white blood is said to sharpen the wits. His Excellency is living proof.”

For a small and attentive circle, including his Excellency, the priest proceeded to translate his own remarks. Caroline wondered if this was characteristic: was there a Haitian cunning, a Haitian wit? A confident self-mockery was perhaps the mark of a civilized people. How odd: she could recall no self-mockery among the French.

“We have also café au lait, gingerbread, griffe, bronze, copper, creamy and two ivories. Most desirable is Mediterranée.”

“Thirty-two is excessive,” Caroline said. “In the United States we have only two.”

“That is nothing boast of,” said the priest.

Smiles congealed.

Caroline's did not: “Touché. And why do you sound Irish, Father? Your accent should be French.”

“Ah! I was shipped to France as a child, and dragged through church schools and lycées and the Sorbonne; but from that last I took French leave, so to speak, and studied for two years with the fathers at Dublin University. You must forgive my brogue-an English.”

Colonel Farrell laughed; His Excellency, comprehending or not, laughed in agreement; the evening's flow and glitter and melody resumed. And were accompanied: drums spoke from the darkened hills. Their faint boom pulsed in the scented air, through shadowed archways between fluted white columns, across the candle-lit terrace. From the candles in the salon itself suicidal moths fluttered to the figured cloths of a dozen antique end-tables. The moths were pastel, gray, green, beige. A pale blue specimen bore red rondels, one on each dead wing like some fallen French aircraft.

“By heaven,” Scarron said, “that is one fine-looking officer. Bigger and taller than I am, and my people were bred for size and strength.”

Caroline glanced quickly at the doorway, astonished at the surge of bliss when she saw McAllister, unutterably handsome in dress whites, a small spray of colors on his left breast. He saw her; she could not look away; and the awful possibility arose of shameful spectacle, public embarrassment, the passionate gaze across a crowded salon. She turned to the priest and asked, “Am I bright red?”

McAllister was a gentleman first, and only then an officer. He paid his respects to His and Her Excellencies; was presented to a bewildering procession of Haitian dignitaries; and was finally handed along to his colonel. He came to perfect attention, relaxed and shook hands, met a major newly arrived in Haiti, excused himself, and strode—scarcely aware of the brief amused silence—to Caroline Barbour. “By God,” he said, “you've brought a priest.”

“By God,” she said, “you're late.”

“What do we do? May I kiss you?”

“On either cheek,” she said, and when he had done that, and they had clung, she added, “and quickly on the mouth.”

In time they broke apart.

“We damaged a wheel,” he said. “I had to help. And what with bathing and changing and being nervous—I couldn't hold the soap. Oh Christ. I would never have believed that any woman could be so beautiful. Does the Father speak English?”

“Lieutenant McAllister, Father Scarron.”

The men shook hands. “Don't mind me, Lieutenant,” said Scarron. “Is one of those medals for the gift of the gab?”

“I thought I'd be tongue-tied,” McAllister said, “so I was going to be the strong silent warrior but I feel like a child. I could hardly button my blouse. I tripped on the staircase.”

“God bless you both,” Scarron said. “You make me regret my vows.”

McAllister set his hands on her shoulders, and did nothing for many seconds but look into her eyes. He touched her hair, and he leaned forward to kiss her lips again.

“A year,” she said.

“Thirteen months,” he said. “I almost wrote to … release you, but I couldn't do it.”

“Don't be a fool,” she said.

“I do hope you'll excuse me,” Father Scarron said. “I'll catch you up later and we'll talk politics. If you should require a Catholic ceremony in the next few minutes …”

“Stand by,” McAllister said, and when the priest chuckled and bowed and strode away the lieutenant said, “A Negro. I never talked that way to a Negro in my life. Or a Negro to me.”

“You're not yourself,” Caroline said. “Our fighting men are not accustomed to well-reared young ladies.”

“That sounds vulgar,” he said.

“To the vulgar all things are vulgar. Are you one of those aggressive service men I read about, maddened by their ordeal?”

“Aggressive! I'm scared to death.”

She considered him. “I believe you are.”

“I'm just not old enough to go out with girls.” He added less gaily, “I've had a bad week.”

They held hands for a time, and when they were calm Caroline said, “Well! We've exchanged the obligatory sighs; how's your war going?”

“Just fine,” he said. “How's your father's peace going?”

And then it was How was your trip and How is the food and How was Paris when you left and How is Port-au-Prince, and soon they were even able to join the others and participate in civilized conversation.

“Drums, lizards, parrots, huge red spiders, blistering heat, the obdurate Haitian peasant with his spells and his poisons, the primitive Domingan montagnard across the border,” Father Scarron catalogued. “I pity you Americans even as I wish you gone.”

“It would be the same old mess if we left,” McAllister said. “Civil war, God knows what. Speak frankly, you said.”

The attorney general sighed agreement. “It would be Guillaume Sam all over again.”