The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [50]
“Amabelle, take this tea to the señora,” Lidia said, “while I make her a compress.”
“Has something happened to Valencia?” Papi asked, alarmed.
“She was overcome with dust from the road,” I explained. No need to tell him of the bleeding. She would if she wanted to.
“What was she doing on the road?” Papi asked.
“Looking for you,” Lidia said.
I gave Papi the tea to take to his daughter, as he was going to her room anyway.
“Where did you find Papi?” I asked Juana.
“On the road with a cross on his back,” Juana said.
The roaring of more engines could be heard from outside, mixed in with screams and loud voices. One of the voices was Señor Pico’s.
We, all of us—Juana, me, Papi, then Beatnz, who came out of the señora’s room—went outside to see what was happening. Two army trucks had stopped, crisscrossed in the middle of the road. Their front headlamps were ablaze, lighting a long trail from Juana and Luis’ house down to Doña Sabine’s gate.
The soldiers formed a wall, blocking a line of men from Unèl’s brigade. Unèl and his friends had their machetes in their hands. Señor Pico stood on the front guard of the lead truck watching the confrontation.
Some cane workers had already been loaded into the back of the other truck, guarded by a small squad of young soldiers. The cane workers in the trucks huddled close, clinging to each other for balance. I recognized a few faces of those who worked in nearby towns, men and women I had seen once or twice when they traveled to visit friends to celebrate Christmas, Haitian Independence Day and the National Day of Independence Heroes, on the first and second days of the year.
Beatriz, Juana, and I moved towards the flame tree, where we could see the road better. I felt Juana’s nervous breath on the back of my neck. She muttered Hail Marys and supplications to saints whose names I had never heard her call on before.
“Kneel or sit!” Señor Pico shouted to Unèl’s brigade. “Lower your machetes. We will put you on the trucks and take you to the border.”
A few more soldiers jumped off Señor Pico’s truck and joined the line in front of him. Luis wandered from the latrines and walked over to the flame tree.
We moved down closer to the road, standing on a sharp grade on the lowest part of the hill. We were now directly behind the truck where Señor Pico was standing. He had his back to us and could not see us.
“Kneel or sit,” Señor Pico repeated. “Lower your machetes. We will put you on the trucks and take you to the border.”
Unèl motioned for his people to stand still. No one kneeled or sat. Instead they took small steps towards the truck where Señor Pico stood giving orders.
“No kneeling!” Unèl cried out.
“What you do in the cane fields is worse than kneeling!” Señor Pico shouted back. “You work like beasts who don’t even know what it is to stand. Put down your machetes. I have no cane for you to cut now.”
The men called Señor Pico’s mother the worst whore who was ever born to a family of whores; his grandmother and godmother were both cursed as disgraceful harlots. The day he was born was damned. Many of the men of Unèl’s nighttime sentinel brigade wished him a painful, tortured, macabre death, promising him that he would choke on his words one day, chew them up, vomit them, and chew them again.
The soldiers laughed at the cursing. I could tell by the points of light sprouting all over the hills that neighbors were coming out of their houses, trying to listen or watch.
Señor Pico looked down at Unèl’s men as he considered his choices. Doctor Javier and Beatriz’s mother, Doña Eva, ran through the crowd, brushing past the soldiers on her way to Señor Pico’s truck.
“Could I speak to you, Señor?” she yelled out to Señor Pico.
He bent down towards her and said, “Doña Eva, have patience, please.”
“I must speak to you now,” she said. “It concerns my son. It concerns Javier.”
“Doña Eva, wait in the house, please.”
Beatriz stood and beckoned to her mother.
“Your brother has been arrested,” Doña Eva said to Beatriz when she reached us. She was