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“Yes, that talk.”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” Sebastien said. “I keep hearing it, but I don’t know if all of it is true.”

“Just before you came, we were speaking about you,” Yves said, slipping back on his own mat across the room. “Did your ears burn?”

“What were you saying?” I asked.

“Yves was telling me I should sell the wood,” Sebastien said.

“Papi’s wood?”

“We can sell it,” Yves said, twisting his neck and turning his large Adam’s apple towards us. “I know someone who’s looking for good well-cured wood to make tables and chairs.”

“I don’t want this wood near me,” Sebastien said. Even though he was not speaking of the rumors, I could tell he was becoming as troubled as the others, distracted even. “Since we didn’t use it for the reason we took it, I want to return the wood to its owner.”

“There’s no taking it back.” Yves yanked a few sisal strands from the edge of his straw mat.

“Then, it is your wood now,” Sebastien said. “I give it to you. It’s yours to do with what you wish.”

Yves coiled his body into a ball and turned his back to us. “There’s no taking it back,” he repeated, his voice already fading with sleep.

“You sent Kongo with word for me,” I whispered to Sebastien.

“There are plenty of men who would have made a promise to you long ago,” he said.

“Should we go to Father Romain for blessings?” I asked, becoming more and more impatient about being promised in a time-honored way to Sebastien. “I know you don’t like priests and rituals, but Father Romain is our friend.”

A piece of cooking wood held ajar the slat of lumber that served as Sebastien’s window. The wood creaked as though about to fall. Sebastien got up and fixed it so the night air could freely enter and cool the room.

“We may not live together in the same house, you and me, until the end of this harvest,” he said. “I don’t want to bring you here, and I don’t want to squeeze myself into your room on that hill and live with those people. Can you please wait for me?”

“I can wait,” Yves shouted in his sleep.

“What can you wait for?” Sebastien asked him, laughing.

We walked over to Yves’ mat. His eyes were wide open, staring at the wall with a glaze over his pupils, like the cloudy gloss of river blindness.

Sebastien waved his fingers in front of his face. Yves did not blink.

“Ask him how he is,” Sebastien said.

“How are things with you, Yves?” I asked.

“Who is asking?” said Yves, still asleep.

“I have known him since we were both in short pants,” Sebastien said as we walked back to his mat. “I’ve lived here in this room with him for many years. Never before has he talked in his sleep, plus with his eyes wide open. It started only after Joel’s accident.”

Yves and Sebastien both mumbled in their sleep all night, as though traveling through the same dream together.

“Papa, don’t die on that plate of food,” Yves said as dawn approached. He rolled onto his back, his eyes fixed on the dirty ceiling. His voice was clear yet distant, as though he were reciting a rote school lesson for the hundredth time. “Papa, don’t die on that plate of food. Please let me take it away.”

Sebastien turned over on his side and mumbled through his own nightmares.

“Is he still talking?” he asked as he woke up.

“About his father dying on a plate of food,” I said.

“His mother liked to say that his father died over a plate of food,” Sebastien replied in a wearied voice. “The father was put in a bread-and-water prison by the Yankis and let go after thirty days. First thing done by the mother is to cook him all the rich food he dreamt about in prison. The father eats until he falls over with his face in the plate and he’s dead.”

A cock’s crow finally woke Yves. He jumped up and grabbed his work clothes, wanting to be among the first at the stream.

“Did you have bad dreams last night?” I asked Yves.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as though it were going to leap out of his mouth. “You want to use my dreams to play games of chance at Mercedes’ stand?”

“We