Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [57]
“That bastard.”
“It’s only a matter of time, Lulu.”
Lulu was painting a funeral procession of dancing Gédés, the coffin borne aloft at a rocking, joyous angle. Syto looked closer: inside the coffin a handsome couple was screwing for all they were worth.
“I tell you what I think,” said Lulu. “I think you ought to dish it.”
Syto groaned.
“Yeah, slip out on the boat while everybody’s doing Gédé and dump it, just get rid of the shit.”
“I can’t do that.”
“What, are you kidding me Syto?” Bop buh bop bop brrrrp—the drummer burned into the sexy, driving beat of the banda, Gédé’s song. Lulu’s hands trembled for a second, then stopped. “You want to die for a bunch of junk you suck up your nose?”
“No, but I don’t want to live as a fool either.”
“Syto, man, nobody’s calling you a fool.” Brrrr-rup bop bop. Lulu’s eyes flickered and rolled back; the drum was edging him toward possession, but he gasped and shook his head, pulled out of it. “We aren’t cut out for this stuff,” he continued, clearing his throat. “Listen, even Nixon won’t mess with this and he’s tougher than any Macoute. And us, we’re just paysan, okay? That’s just who we are and there’s no shame in it, we were born to serve God and live unimportant lives. So forget the drugs, Syto. Let those thieves fight it out.”
“I just don’t want them to have it, that’s all.”
“Neither do I,” Lulu snapped in a thrumming, nasal voice, the voice Gédé took when he possessed someone. Lulu slumped as if unconscious, then shook himself awake. “So dump the shit,” he said, more or less himself again. “Just dump it and be done with it.”
“That’s not good enough. They almost killed you.”
Lulu frowned and turned to a different painting, a Gédé leaning forward with his hands on his cane, butt thrust between the tails of his frock coat. He was diddling his pink, rather dainty tongue at a group of high-toned bourgeois women.
“That was my affair,” Lulu said, techy, annoyed. Brrrrp-bup. “I went kind of crazy that day.”
“Maybe I’m a little crazy too,” Syto said, scaring himself. “Just once in my life I’d like to stick it to those guys.”
Lulu abruptly pushed to his feet, the stool flying backward as he swagged and reeled around like a spooked horse. He was trying to fight the god coming into his head, but Lulu succumbed so easily to possession—a little drumming could do it, a little dancing and rum, or at times the mere sight of someone else who was possessed. “Look,” he said, his voice a high-tension drone, “this is your affair, you’re the one who took the stuff. You tell me the plan and I’ll help you, but it’s not my deal. You have to decide, Syto.” He tried to walk, but one of his legs stayed rooted to the ground. He heaved at it like a stubborn tree stump, then lurched off, dragging the leg behind him.
“But I’ll tell you this,” he said over his shoulder, “you better figure out something fast. Because when I look at you lately, I’m seeing crosses in your eyes.”
Lulu shuffled into his hut; Syto heard him collapse on his mat, and soon a slurred, restive muttering drifted back through the door, the hiccupy ke ke ke of the gravedigger’s chant. Syto felt the skin along his spine prickle, a hundred tiny needles jabbing to the bone. He stared at the paintings. Think of something, he told himself. Think.
Syto Charles bought a seat on the last tap-tap out of Jacmel on All Hallows’ Eve, just as the Gédés were starting to appear on the streets. Waiting in the bus with his hat pulled low he watched them emerge in their absurd clothes, their faces crudely smeared with white greasepaint. They went around harassing people with their jokes and stupid songs, air-humping the women with their fluid hips. The victims shrieked and played along, but even as they laughed they stiffened and shrank away, uneasy in the living presence of death.
At sunset the tap-tap finally trundled forward, Syto bowing his head and saying a silent prayer of thanks. His big cardboard box was secured on the roof, sealed with tape, additionally bound in sisal twine, and labeled “Caf