Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [98]
“Ki moun ki pasé la?” I said. Who are the people passing there?
“Sé l’armée Toussaint Louvti yo yé.” She threw her head back, grinning, and whipped the air with the little stick she used to drive her donkey. “Yo pralé batt l’anglais!” She rode on.
The army of Toussaint Louverture, going to beat the English. Bouquart wanted to follow them, but Riau wanted to go north, out of the desert to the green of the mountains. We rested through the high heat of the day in the thin, dry shade of the raquettes, and I gathered salt from the flats and put it in a cloth bag I carried in my small macoute. When the sun turned red and began to fall, we walked on along the road, and in the darkness we turned from Gonaives on the trail toward Ennery. We rested and traveled through that night and at dawn had come to the coffee trees on the heights of Habitation Thibodet.
Most of Toussaint’s army had left that place, it was plain, gone to the fighting at Saint Marc. There were some few black soldiers left to guard the habitation and the camp, and sick or wounded men in the hospital, where Riau had helped the whiteman doctor Hébert before I ran from Toussaint’s army. Many of the women had stayed behind the army, with their children, and now they were coming out of their ajoupas, lighting cook fires and beginning to grind meal.
I left Bouquart to rest in hiding in the bush beyond the coffee trees, and I went down softly through the ajoupas. That ajoupa I had raised was still standing where it had been, but the roof was larger now and someone had woven palmiste panels to make walls. The banza I had made for playing soft music hung still from the ridgepole where it had hung, and Caco, my son Pierre Toussaint, lay sleeping on a straw mat, curled like a kitten. Merbillay was standing just outside, working a long pestle up and down in a stump mortar. Her arms were smooth and strong and she wore a blue dress and a red headcloth with gold threads on the edges. I plucked a note on the banza and she turned and peered into the shadows of the ajoupa, first looking to see that Caco slept safely, then finding Riau’s face.
“M’ap tounen, oui,” I said, no louder than a whisper. Yes, I have come back. Her face went blank as the surface of the sacred pool at Bahoruco. A moment passed, and then she smiled and came underneath the roof with me.
Riau slept afterward for a time, tired from the long night of traveling. I thought Bouquart must be sleeping too where he was hidden above the coffee trees. When I woke, Merbillay was still by me, lying on her back with her eyes open to the cracks of light in the woven walls. I spread my hand across her belly and felt the hard curled shape of a new child.
Merbillay sat up sharply then, and so did I, turning my shoulder from her. Caco had waked and looked at Riau with his bright, curious eyes.
“Vini moin,” I said. “Sé papa-ou m’yé.” Caco hesitated, till Merbillay clicked her tongue, and then he came to me quickly. He had grown very much—his legs hung below my waist when I lifted him to my chest. I carried him outside the ajoupa, kissing the short hair on top of his head. When he began to squirm, I let him down and he ran away toward the voices of other children.
Merbillay came out from the ajoupa, with all her clothes adjusted. Our eyes looked every way but at each other. At last I kissed my fingers to her and began climbing the hill to look for Bouquart. Anger was rising up my throat, but if my thought went outside of Riau, it said that Riau had left with no word or warning and had been gone more than one year. Why would Merbillay not take another man? But the anger with its bitter taste was hard to swallow back.
Doctor Hébert had gone to the fighting