Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [375]
At other times boatloads of colored men were taken out on the ocean to be drowned. I liked this way even less than the other, because of the sharks, and the story Guiaou told of the Swiss and what became of them, all but him. The colored men went into the water with their throats cut sometimes, or with only light cuts about the arms and body, bleeding enough to bring the sharks. Sometimes Guiaou was on those boats himself, or not there really—Agwé would be riding in his head, because without his spirit he had great trouble crossing water. With the sunlight burning from the water, I saw how the curved coutelas rose and fell in Guiaou’s hand, and I wondered, but Guiaou was only serving the colored men the way that they had served the Swiss. Afterward, we never spoke of it. It was a long time after before I would eat fish again, because I could not stop the thought of what the fish had been feeding on.
If a colored man stood firm and showed himself ready to fight to the death, sometimes Dessalines would not kill him. He found places for such people in the army, and they were well accepted there. But those who begged for mercy did not find it. Toussaint had published a promise of mercy from Les Cayes, but that promise was not very much respected. All during that time, Toussaint was somewhere else. When news came to him of the killings, he would throw up his hands and put on a face of misery and say, I told him to trim the tree, not uproot it. Often there were some whitemen watching when he said this, or one of the priests who were always near him in those days. Of course it was not possible that Toussaint did not know what Dessalines was doing. Still, it was Rigaud who had left all the trees in the south with their roots in the air, Rigaud who had sent his men to try to kill Toussaint so many times, when Toussaint was coming through the crossroads.
It was not possible, either, to leave the gens de couleur with men enough to make another army. Toussaint was thinking that if Rigaud had gone to France, maybe France would be persuaded to send out soldiers for Rigaud. I saw him thinking this, though he did not say it where I could hear, and I do not think he said it to anyone out loud. I saw myself that it was possible, and that we must do what we were doing in case it did happen. But I was glad when the order came from Toussaint to come away from that bloody place and bring my men back to Ennery.
At that time there were riding with me—Guiaou, Bouquart and Bienvenu. There were sixteen others too, under Captain Riau’s order, but among those sixteen there were often changes, for sometimes some of them would be killed in a battle, or sent into someone else’s command, or one of them might even run off to be a marron again, if there was still a place in the country where marrons could hide from Toussaint’s army. Guiaou and Bouquart and Bienvenu were always there and none of them was ever badly hurt in the fighting. Also Quamba and Couachy, who were like brothers with Guiaou. Any one of these could lead the men, if Captain Riau was called to the hospital instead of to the battle. Bouquart especially led them well, because the other men admired his great strength and his fearlessness.
It did not take us very long to reach Ennery from the Grande Anse, because all of us had good horses now, taken from the colored men who had been killed. I looked for the doctor when I came to Thibodet, although I knew he would not be there, unless perhaps he had brought Nanon back from Vallière already, but there