Bay of Souls (24 page)

He thought he heard other runners behind him, splashing through the same stream he had followed, fanned out from bank to bank. He saw a car maneuvering along a road fifty yards away, halfway up a rise. The fires ahead were close to the road, barrel fires that stank of gasoline and sent out fumes of oily black smoke, visible in the fire's own light. The hill along which the road ran was walled by ridges of congealed earth whose contours showed against the firelight like the definitions on a relief map. At the top of the same hill, searchlights were being played around the valley. He did not try to stay out of their way, only to find his own by their intermittent patterns.

For a while, as he ran, he believed absolutely that Baron Samedi was running with him, not staggering in the same ungainly manner but moving along beside him, for amusement, to exercise his possession. He had to concentrate to put the thought out of his mind.

Reaching the road, he saw that its surface showed the traces of paving. For the first time since he had started running he was confronted with his own rational intentions. He had been running with the god entirely. The god had been his pursuer, his goal, the notion of his nearly mindless flight, the process of running.

Along that remnant of a modern road he felt he was either leaving the illusion of his master's presence or entering an illusion in which he was free of it. He had stopped running. There was no more breath for it.

Before him was a
blocu.
Fifty or so island people, almost all of them men, stood in the road. Piles of old half-burnt tires were heaped along the shoulder. Big hundred-gallon drums filled with tire strips sent up a black stink, like meat butchered and roasted raw, the living flesh of some vile animal. Farther from the road he could see stripped tires piled in towers and burning. Others stood as though prepared for the next occasion, a midnight Mass of Pére Lebrun, when the living meat would be less exotic, a more familiar dish, and the mystic ritual would be transubstantiation in reverse as every grain of life transcendent was burned howling out of the beast.

A big young cane cutter approached. "Hey mon, you got somefin' for me, yah?" "
Lajan, blan,
" another kid called. Patois hung at that end of the island. Her part. Who? Lara, her name was Lara. Her soul had belonged to Marinette, as his to Ghede, the Baron Samedi. There was a race and he had run it. She was gone.

He had wads of dollars and local bills. He straightened them out, flexed them with an appealing snap and delivered. He half shouldered his way through the crowd, a discreet, polite and most accommodating way of shouldering. The handouts worked somewhat; by the time he was out of bills he was among the losers and runts who had been forced to the rear and had nothing to play against his fear except their need and desperation. These were not to be despised, because he had survived the
blocu.
There had not been much tourism on the island for years, and the hatred of the islanders had cooled somewhat.

Walking beside the potholed road, he was never alone. The drums kept him company. Figures passed him, some moving so quickly he might have been standing still. From the darkness people shouted his name. Voices addressed him as Legba; sometimes he thought he was wearing a stovepipe hat. On his chin he felt the fringes of a false beard.

There was a car behind him sounding its horn. He moved farther off the road, but after the car had eased past it stopped for him. It was a Mercedes, the sleek fender covered in red dust. An island soldier was driving it and there was a soldier with an automatic rifle beside him.

The rear door opened and Michael saw a long-legged olive-skinned man with a neat mustache settled in the back seat. He was in uniform; his collar was adorned with the red tabs of a senior British officer. It was Colonel Junot, the administrator of the new order, graduate of Fort Benning and veteran of Grenada.

"Spare yourself, Ahearn," the colonel said. "I'll take you where you're going. Oh me," he said, seeing Michael's spattered trousers.

"No," Michael said. "I've worked it out."

The colonel reached out patiently and took him by the arm. "Yes, yes, worked it out, very good. Here, come take a ride with me."

So Michael got in and the soldier handed him a
Miami Herald.

"To sit on," the colonel explained. They followed the road along the Morne until they were driving far above the ocean, with the stars overhead and a risen moon at the edge of the sea's dark horizon. Low clouds dissipated against the jutting rocks below the road.

"Too bad, you can only get the view here by daylight, Ahearn. This is one of the great views of the Western Hemisphere. The French wanted to fight the Battle of the Saints here. On that bay!" He pointed into darkness to the right. "Well, you can't see it now."

When they had gone a little farther, Colonel Junot said, "Dutch Point! Lovely peninsula. I suppose you know we haven't been having many visitors recently. It's our somewhat violent political situation. Social unrest, you see."

"Yes," Michael said.

"Well, here's a secret. The cruise line companies use Dutch Point all the same. They just don't tell their passengers where they are. They tell them it's Point Paradise. Where could be sweeter? Mum and Dad and the wee bairns go to Point Paradise, wot? So close the bloody roads to the point, and put a skirmish line of about a hundred-fifty rent-a-cops to seal it off. Let a couple of colorfully garbed vendors and a steel band through. Good, isn't it?"

"It's good thinking."

"Yes," Junot said, "good thinking on the part of the cruise lines. Paradise Point. Bloody tourists disport themselves in the surf, no idea they're in between a Glock and a griddle, I mean a
hot spot.
No, they're in
Paradise.
If we had those rent-a-cops stand down, the bastards would think they'd died and gone to hell. They'd experience some social tension."

"You're taking over, aren't you, Colonel?"

The colonel shrugged modestly.

"Will you continue the Paradise Point tradition? With the cruise lines?"

"Certainly," the colonel said. "But one day we won't have to build paradise with rent-a-cops. With luck—and, unfortunately, a little discreet repression—we'll have good old paradise back all over the island. Paradise, paradise! Upscale, upscale!" The colonel laughed and sighed.

"I'm afraid for my friend," Michael said. "Lara Purcell. I left her behind. I'm afraid they may hurt her."

"I know your story, Mr. Ahearn. I know you're a thoughtful man, friend of herself. Well, you don't have to worry. Because everything is under control, including the lodge. And she will be safe, I can promise you. So you don't have to worry. Understand?"

Michael said nothing.

"How'd you like to live in someone else's paradise?" the colonel asked.

"I can't imagine it."

"Think of it as a misfortune. A huge fucking pink misfortune."

"I guess I don't understand," Michael said. "I haven't been here long."

"Yah, man. But I think you understand, eh? I would be surprised if you don't have a piece of the picture."

The road headed down toward a concentration of light at what appeared to be the end of the island. The mass of land gave way to an expanse of rolling moonlit ocean; just short of the waves were fields outlined in geometric patterns of red and white light.

"We don't have a choice, do we?" the colonel said. "We've inherited bloody paradise and now we've got to live by selling it. Paradise and every naughty little thing." He leaned back in the seat and slapped Michael on the knee.

"Oh yes, we have all those naughty things they want and don't need. The drugs, the coffee, the chocolate, the rum and the orange-flavored booze, the tobacco, the girls and the boys. Shouldn't have them. Bad for you. Live longer without them but they're oh so nice, yes, indeed. How you want them all. And that's our fortune."

The car passed a checkpoint at the approach to the All Saints Bay international airport. There were soldiers everywhere in the uniform of the island's new army. The soldiers took a look inside the Mercedes and waved them through.

"Hands across the sea, right!" Colonel Junot declared. "You get to Washington, say hello to my friends. Tell them I want my medal from the President! Soldier in the war on drugs!"

The car stopped and the driver came around to let Michael out. He stepped out of the air conditioning and into the warm ocean breeze.

"Soldier in the war on ganja. Soldier in the war on cocaine. That's right! Soldier in the war on sugar and sweeties. And the war on rum. The war on cee-gars. The war on fancy jewelry. The war on screwing and gambling and general do-badness. You tell the President that the armies of Paradise salute his tall fine figure and the war on everything is going great. Tell him I knew his daddy and I want my medal."

Michael had only the shoulder bag he had taken from his hotel room. He moved among the watchful soldiers toward the wooden terminal. Beside it, a DC-7 stood with its engines running, attended by half a platoon of American Special Forces soldiery in green berets. He went into the harsh fluorescent light of the terminal building. The young Cuban American woman at the commuter airline's desk checked his ticket. There was a mirror in the wall behind her desk and he could see that he did not resemble Ghede. But the Baron was waiting for him at the Emigration window, where a customs official was flanked by supportive soldiers. The Emigration man was Baron Samedi.

"You got to have your pink form," Baron Samedi said. "Otherwise you can't fly."

Michael checked his pockets twice. He checked them again. He searched his shoulder bag several times. He could not find his pink form.

"For God's sake," he told Baron Samedi.

"They got no special rules for you, mon," the Baron said. "Either you give me your pink form or get out of line. There are people behind you."

Michael turned and saw that there were indeed people waiting to pass Emigration.

"I flew into Rodney. I don't think they ever gave me the thing," Michael said. "I've got to get on that plane." In fact it was absolutely the only thing on his mind and he was ready to kill, or to die, in the process of boarding it.

He was at the point of losing control when he saw Colonel Junot enter the terminal. The colonel saw him and came to the window.

"Pass this man," the colonel said. "This is my messenger."

Baron Samedi had departed from the customs officer, who mildly stepped aside. It had been a farewell message, a little game typical of Ghede.

Colonel Junot had come into the unadorned departure lounge with Michael. Shaking hands, he quickly turned aside.

"Uh-oh," he told Michael. "I see someone I don't wish to meet." He hurried out through the customs gate where he had come in.

Making his way to the last bench in the departure area, Michael saw Liz McKie standing beside the ladies' room. She looked extremely angry. Two island soldiers were with her. The soldiers by contrast looked happy and well entertained.

McKie saw Michael and called to him.

"Jesus Christ! What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"I guess I'm leaving."

"You guess you're leaving?" She stared at him for a moment and then said, "Watch this stuff." She was surrounded by computers, cameras and recorders, all packed away in cloth, Velcro-banded cases. "I have to go to the john and I'm not leaving my stuff with these bozos."

"We're insulted," one of the soldiers said, laughing at her. "We don't steal."

"That's right," the other one said. "We never steal from a friend of Colonel Junot."

"Where is Colonel Junot?" the first soldier asked. "Not coming to see you go?"

"Fuck you," McKie told the soldiers. "Watch that stuff like it cast a spell on you," she told Michael. "Don't let these characters near it."

"We have to come in the lavatory with you, miss," the first soldier said. "Orders!"

Before she could react, they were doubled up with laughter, dapping.

"I mean," Liz said to Michael, "keep an eye on it."

While Liz McKie was inside, the soldiers tried to decide whether to pretend to steal some of the equipment, drawing Michael into their game. In the end—probably, he thought, because he looked so disheveled and unhinged—they let it pass.

When she returned to her possessions, Michael wandered out to the veranda of the departure lounge, which was the only place to get fresh air. It was a restricted area but the sentry there let him out. He took in the wind of the island and of the ocean, the jasmine and burning husks, a touch of the rubber stench. From ever so far away—although it could only have been a few miles—he heard the drums. He tried to understand whether it was his life he heard beating there, and if it was his life, his heart, where it might be inclining. But the drumming was only itself, only the moment. In the flickering lights beyond the airport fence, he thought he saw the wheelbarrow, the tongue of the goat.

They boarded the plane and Michael saw that one of the Special Forces soldiers was a woman, bespectacled, pretty, with man-sized shoulders.

When Liz McKie tried to address the woman soldier, the soldier stared straight ahead and addressed her as "ma'am."

"Ma'am yourself, troop," Liz McKie said to her.

To further McKie's humiliation, she was seated just behind and across the aisle from Michael on the flight to Puerto Rico. The impulse to explain it all was too much for her and she had not added up the emotional tokens yet.

"I cannot believe this," she told him. "I mean, it's all so typical I can't believe it."

She had been
persona non-ed
out.

"I mean, not with paper, not to the State Department, but my ass is flung out. I mean, my friend—my friend, my lover." People stopped their own conversations to hear her.

"I mean, this is your U.S. Third World hype—screwing of the classic type, right. So there's corruption. And some right-wing official Americans are in on it, right, and their Argentine, Chilean colonel friends, the worst
cabrones,
but hey, that's cool. It's cool because they're rogue elements, they're not really us. Us are the good guys, us are the girl Green Berets, and we fix everything and we throw the bad guys out. Except we don't quite get the bad guys out and the good guys turn out to be not very different from the bad guys and, hey, it's all looking kind of the same as it was. And when you look, the rogue elements are gone, vanished, except not quite. And some idiot reporter buys into the good guys' scenario and what happens to her? I mean, I knew it! You know when I knew it? When I saw you! I thought, Who the fuck? And I knew things were screwed."