Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [56]
“Only us. But the cops are hanging around, they’re suspicious.”
“Anybody else? What I mean is, any étrangers?”
“No, only Haitians. Just us and the cops.”
“How much is it worth?” Lulu asked. His eyes shone like lacquer in the candlelight.
“The going rate’s four thousand,” Nixon told him. “Four thousand dollars U.S.”
“For one sack?” Lulu cried, delighted, but Nixon frowned and glanced at his friends. Then he turned back to his uncles and spoke very slowly.
“That’s four thousand,” he touched the kilo bag on the table, “for one of these.”
When Syto heard that, he assumed he was going to die. There was too much money involved, too many desperate people, but the next moment he was thinking: is this what a black man has to do to get a little respect? Risk your life, as Lulu had done when he denounced the government thieves? As Nixon had done running his contraband gasoline? And he sensed the same motive in Méreste and Michelet, that they’d taken the drugs as a matter of self-respect—you were either a chump or a thief, those were your choices in this world. Syto despaired, knowing he’d never be able to explain his sense that they were all, however improbably, on the same side.
“We need help,” Syto said, staring at Nixon over the candle. “We can’t do this alone.”
“Well,” Nixon said, “there’s a problem. I think I know the people who brought this in. For me to take it back to Port-au-Prince when these people still have a claim on it—I can’t do that. It’s too direct, I wouldn’t be able to walk the street. There’s a way we can do it, but you have to get it to Port-au-Prince yourself. Once it gets to Port-au-Prince we can wash it, but until then I can’t touch the stuff.”
Syto wanted to weep. “There’s three hundred kilos here,” he said, waving at the sacks that seemed as big as tanker trucks. “The cops are watching every move I make.”
Nixon frowned; he was sympathetic, to a point. “Uncle, I hope you think of something soon. And if you don’t, I suggest you put these sacks in your boat and go dish them in the sea.”
It was tempting. There were moments during the next few days when Syto felt like dishing the drugs or himself into the sea, whichever would bring the fastest relief. People began to talk of strangers cruising the highway, slick-looking characters from Port-au-Prince who were nosing around the local beaches and coves. The cops continued to harass Trois Pins with their presence, and Michelet brought the pressure in other ways: the next several nights a U.S. Army helicopter thundered over the village, its spotlight scything through the palms and huts as a canned Creole message blared from the loudspeaker. The Americans had done this before, during the invasion, when they’d rained words of goodwill down on the people; now they were giving lectures, reminding the people of Trois Pins of their patriotic duty to surrender drugs and criminals to the law. At times it seemed to Syto that the helicopter was parked on top of his house, shattering his mind with its demonic whacka whacka whacka while the voice droned on like madness itself.
“Yeah,” Lulu said one afternoon, “they’re trying to get inside your head. They’re trying to drive you nuts.”
Syto’s jaw was still tingling from the percussive effects of last night’s visit. “Well, they’re succeeding. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.”
Lulu studied his brother with solemn eyes, then went back to his painting. He was working on four different pictures at once, various incarnations of Gédé propped on chairs and easels with Lulu pivoting on his stool in the middle. All month he’d been painting Gédés, anticipating a big demand from the nonexistent tourists as Papa Gédé’s fête and All Souls’ Day approached.
“So what are you going to do, brother?”
“I don’t know.” Syto pulled a chair into the shade of the lean-to. It was early afternoon, the air thick as paste; a couple of houses away someone was noodling on a drum. “I’m empty, man. I can’t even think.”
“Michelet still hanging around?”
“Esther took a bunch of eggplant into Marigot yesterday. He stopped her