Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [53]
“I think the cops would’ve killed him,” said Alcide, one of the men who found him in Jacmel. “But we told them he was crazy, he didn’t know what he was doing.”
Lulu grabbed his brother’s arm and pulled him close. “I’m not crazy,” he told Syto in a clenched hiss. “I’m just looking for a little justice in this life.”
“See what I mean?” said Alcide, rolling his eyes. “Totally nuts.”
In the days that followed Lulu’s girlfriends worked in shifts, nursing him through the hell of his healing pains. They arrived according to some unspoken schedule, always carrying a pot of griot or fried plantain, and there was hardly any unpleasantness among them, at least until they were sure he was going to live. After several weeks he was strong enough to move back to his house; meanwhile Syto sailed out on the hot summer nights and grimly did the fishing for both of them. At this time of year the fish were always sluggish, the baret and snapper yet to make their runs; Syto had to sail out five or six kilometers to make a decent catch, out where wicked squalls whipped through several times a night and salvos of flying fish exploded from the dark, stinging like clusters of tiny whips. Late one afternoon he piled his gear into the boat and headed out to sea, rowing first into the cut at Cayes Caiman to pluck sea urchins off the rocks for bait. It was a hot, bright day, the light a harsh actinic blue. He fetched his boat up on the scrap of beach, then hunted among the sluices and tidal pools for chadwon, the waves swatting the boulders with sharp, crackling sounds. He was picking his way along and not thinking of much when the duffel bags caught his eye, three of them laid in a row at the edge of the woods like cooling loaves. He scrambled up the beach and stood over them, blinking, swaying, strangely short of breath. Sunlight pulsed off the water in glittering barbs. Cicadas rowled in the woods that skirted the beach, the big, solemn trees looming at Syto’s back like a congress of village elders. For several moments he thought about Michelet and Méreste, and Lulu’s savage beating, and the soldiers’ cruel laughter and the shame of being a Bouki, but there was really no need to convince himself. The second he saw the stuff he knew he was going to take it.
“You’re asking me?”
Lulu was sitting under the lean-to in his yard, a rough shelter of palm fronds he’d woven together to keep the rain and sun off his head while he worked. Crinkled tubes of paint, old cans stuffed with brushes, half-finished pictures propped on wobbly easels—Lulu sat on a stool in the middle of it all and painted.
“Lulu, come on. I’m just asking for a little help here.”
“Forget it man, I’ve had it with drugs. I did the right thing and it almost got me killed.”
Syto sagged, pulled up a chair, and eyed his brother’s latest painting. A tall, skinny black man in a top hat and tails was grinning while a cane field burned in the background. With his fancy clothes, his sunglasses and smart walking stick, this had to be Gédé, the voodoo god of death who doubled as the oversexed lord of misrule. He seemed to be dancing a little jig while the fire raged at his back, delighting as always in chaos and havoc. Papa Gédé was one of the lwa who’d come with the ancestors from Africa and had sustained them through the bitter times of slavery and beyond. Even now, in the globally networked age of computers and cell phones and transnational crime, the lwa refused to fade away, refused to abandon their serviteurs. Syto could no more imagine negotiating life without them than he could without his eyes or the guidance of his reason.
“Lulu, I’m dying here. I’ve got no idea what to do with the stuff.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you took it.”
“Listen, the only thing I