The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [59]
“Everyone says the Generalissimo is at the border now. Maybe he’s there, waiting to greet us.” He spat out his words, pausing for a reply, an agreement, or an argument.
Yves looked back to where I was walking next to the two Dominican women, with Tibon hobbling behind us. He had a sneer of disappointment on his face, as though he could not believe that I had forsaken him so early in our journey for newer company.
“They have so many of us here because our own country—our government—has forsaken us,” Tibon started again, but no one replied. “Poor people are sold to work in the cane fields so our own country can be free of them.”
The sun was setting, the valleys far below us fading into a void. The night brought with it a ghostly echo so that each time Tibon spoke it seemed as though you were hearing many people say the same thing at once.
“The ruin of the poor is their poverty,” Tibon went on. “The poor man, no matter who he is, is always despised by his neighbors. When you stay too long at a neighbor’s house, it’s only natural that he become weary of you and hate you.”
28
We found a point where the road widened into a broad level patch, and each person claimed the spot where he was standing when it was announced that we were stopping for the night. A few sheets were thrown open from the bundles, and we all fared well enough with something between us and the cool dirt and something else to throw over our bodies.
Wilner ordered us not to light any fires, which might make us discernible from a distance. Even a pipe, which Tibon desperately wanted to smoke, was not permitted.
There was a full moon overhead, but it was the stars that caught my attention. I had never seen them so massive and so close before. Every once in a while, one would plunge from the sky and crash someplace behind the mountains, fading from an explosion of fireballs into a hush of darkness.
Yves made his way towards me and offered two of the bananas he had bought on the road early that morning. He also gave me a block of coconut chunks, which I hadn’t seen him buy. I ate the coconut first and then one of the bananas. Putting the other one in my bundle, I saved it for later.
“If I doze, awaken me,” Yves whispered. “Don’t let me speak in my sleep.”
“Not all of us should sleep at the same time,” Wilner said as he crawled into the small space near Odette. “There should be watchers to wake the sleepers if need be.”
The three men divided among themselves the task of being sentinels. Yves was to watch during the last part of the night, into the next morning.
We all took turns sleeping and waking. Each time they woke up, the Dominican sisters had to remind themselves where they were, in murmurs, secret grunts, and mute conversations with each other.
I drifted off to sleep a few times myself, but when I woke up, it was so dark that if not for the coldness of the ground and the pebbles digging into my side, I still would have thought I was asleep.
Once when I woke up, I thought I felt the ground shaking. Powdered dust and pebbles sifted down from above us. I clung to the soil with my fingers. Then, realizing that this would be a cowardly way to die, I shook a mound of dirt off me and stood up.
Everyone rose and roamed in circles, trying to establish what was taking place. Then just as abruptly as it had started, the mountain’s shaking stopped.
The night was still after this. The fireflies disappeared from the air. Even the bats must have been stunned.
“It’s only the mountain settling,” Wilner said, breaking the silence with his voice.
“Let it not settle on top of my head,” Tibon said. Odette laughed and I was calmed.
We stayed awake for some time, waiting for the mountain to stir again. The stars stopped falling and slowly disappeared from the sky. We returned to our places, and perhaps because our bodies demanded it, most of us fell asleep.
Yves was the only one who did not sleep. Towards dawn, I saw him sitting on the edge of the hill with his body facing the road ahead. He was playing a game in which he buried a stick in a pile