Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [260]
I thought it was better to travel through the mountains, since the French blanc soldiers had taken all the coast from Port-au-Prince to Gonaives at least. Even in the mountains it seemed better to travel by night. After we crossed the Artibonite River we heard that Dessalines and blanc soldiers under Rochambeau were chasing each other all through the mountains of Grand Cahos, but we kept away from both of them and so came on a bright morning to Ennery and Thibodet.
Guiaou was not at Thibodet when I and Jean-Pic came there. Guiaou was away somewhere else, following Toussaint, so I went at once to stay in the case of Merbillay, as Guiaou would have done if he came when Riau was not there. It seemed long since Riau had been with Merbillay. Between that morning and the noon meal we lay in the quiet cool of the case, because all the children had gone out, and I had sent Jean-Pic for Zabeth to find him a place to sleep somewhere, so Merbillay and I were alone. We spoke little in that time, and when I woke she had gone down to the grand’case to begin her cooking for the blancs. There was no sound but the buzzing of a wasp from a mud-daubed nest on the wall of the case, and outside the voices of children.
Caco was waiting for me outside the case, and so were Yoyo and Marielle. I kissed the little girls on their lips. They sat looking at me with big eyes in the shade of an ajoupa roof Caco had built out from the back door of Merbillay’s case, and listened to Caco talk. Caco had a lot to tell, because he had been to that big battle at Ravine à Couleuvre, traveling with the doctor and his son Paul. He had not done any fighting himself but he had seen a lot of it, though Tocquet took him and Paul out of that place before it was all finished.
It was from Caco that I learned all of the news. There were not many men of fighting age left at Thibodet now, because they had all uncovered the muskets Toussaint had given them to hide and gone off to one battle or another, and there was not much work happening on the plantation, even though the blancs had come back to the grand’case when the fighting had finished at Ravine à Couleuvre and all around Gonaives. There was no one there to work but women and old men and children and these only worked their own provision grounds. There had been a lot of French blanc soldiers here too, Caco told me, with all of their officers staying in the grand’case, but they had all marched away south a couple of days before Riau and Jean-Pic came there.
In the weeks that I had been away, Caco had grown. I saw that he was big enough to be in the fighting himself, if it came to that. His eyes missed little, and he spoke with a good understanding of what his eyes saw. But I did not want him to go into the fighting. When I looked at Caco and his sisters, I only wished that the fighting would stop.
Zabeth found a place for Jean-Pic in the ajoupa where Michau stayed, not far from the grand’case. This Michau was a house servant who came down from Le Cap with all the blancs when the blancs had to run away from there. In the evening we all gathered by this ajoupa and Merbillay gave us food she had saved from what she had cooked for the blancs that night. There was a lot of griot, and other good things too. They had just killed pigs on Thibodet, which was where the griot came from, and Caco had a story to tell about how he had helped hide those pigs from the blanc soldiers when they were there. It was a good feast that we had that night, and afterward I went to the case with Merbillay and the children. I slept well through the night because I was tired from the fast traveling, even though I had slept part of that day.
In the morning I learned that Jean-Pic had plenty of sleeping room in that ajoupa because Michau, he thought, had slipped into the grand’case to stay with Zabeth. At that I remembered from the night before that Zabeth’s eyes had seemed brighter, and her smile deeper, than at any time since